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Insurance
Insurance works if You have a sufficiently large population of people at risk of some loss. Otherwise, the insurance company can’t get started, since it can’t earn enough in fees to pay off the loss when it happens. The loss is large enough that most people are unable or unwilling to take a chance on…
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Compiler to Assembler
The gcc compiler has always worked by writing out assembly code in text format. The assembler reads this text file to produce an object file. Most compilers work this way, although there have been some exceptions such as the MIPS compiler used on Irix. Clearly this process of producing text and then parsing it again…
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Back
It’s been a year. I’m back. I don’t have much new to say, but I’ve been starting to write blog entries in my head, so I might as well write them here. I’ll be aiming for three posts a week for now. I’ll start with a few quick comments that came to mind as I…
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Hiatus
I’ve gone over a year of blogging most weekdays, but I’m running dry. I think my posts are starting to repeat themselves and I think they are generally less interesting. I’m going to put the blog on hiatus for a while, probably a couple of months, and see what seems like the right next step.…
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Liquidity
There is a disagreement as to just what caused the Great Depression, but the general problem once it started was one of liquidity: there was not enough money available. This led to price deflation, which led to people saving their money rather than spending it, which led to people not buying things, which led to…