However, it is fairly new on these types of instance and has just as devasting effects as it does on the t1.micro instances. Amazon are going to have to tread carefully here, especially when charging $556/month for a c1.xlarge (20 EC2 compute units) and then “steal” them exactly when you need them most.

I run over 50 instances on EC2 and I am seeing stealing on all instance type I am running.

Is there a storm brewing in Amazon’s cloud?

Personally, all other things being equal, I’d always prefer to have money now rather than potential money in the future unless there is a considerable potential risk premium to the future income: $1000 today can be used/invested immediately and be put to use, whereas $1300 in two years time is but a dream, and besides it’s purchasing is far from guaranteed.

What’s your take of the iPad?

Man was I let down this thing could have been insane instead Jobs settled for a cheap device.

Apple Tablet

Associational Databases are on the horizon.

Data has been a center. Process has been a center. Network has been a center. Currently People are the center. The center will continue to move.

Ask yourself, “What will the next center be?”

I’d like to see some improvements such as invisible “frame holders” and a fix so these frames for placing objects not get pasted in by mistake – something that happens quite often, but overall, I am super impressed!

Wrote some lines about it earlier in winter in Swedish: http://ms–online.blogspot.com/2009/02/prezi-for-president.html

Nicolai – is Prezi used by people in US yet?

Some are calling “bullshit” on what they think is another one of TechCrunch’s fake news on a slow news day (remember “Google buying Digg” last year?)

People sometimes mistake capitalism and markets for the actors working within them – they are not one and the same, and their interests are rarely aligned (which company wants more competition for themselves?).

It is a bit bizarre to see how some companies like Fannie and Freddie for years have received government grants and similar favours, then turned around and used those same favours to pay lobbyists and ask for even more special favours.
It is almost a system where politicians subsidize market actors so that they can get the subsidies back as bribes through the backdoor.

That being said, I would claim that how this all will play out is quite easy to guess with a high level of probability, making it probably one of the best points in recent history for good investments based on macro trends (everyone else is too focused on the short term to pay attention to the long term effects).

– Socioeconomic freedom (a summary of things below actually).
– Working judicial system, even if corruption exists, you will actually be prosecuted and sentenced.
– Ownership being fundamental in the legislation.

Most important is the ability to own things, own land, a company so forth.

In some of the corrupt African countries the corrupt system is so well established that it is the only economy that works. The only way to improve your life is to be part of the corrupt economy. That is why it is so hard to replace once it is so widespread.

People on the left often thinks that wealth in itself creates corruption, but the matter of fact the biggest driver for corruption is when people have no other means to improve their lives.

I know a couple of Nigerian people, and for the most part they are hard working, thrifty and inventive people always on the lookout for ways of saving money and doing things better. Furthermore, because credit has never been a big part of the continents economy and welfare states never been built out, people don’t expect anything for free and realize they have to work hard.

The biggest issue in Africa is endemic corruption, bad protection of property rights and bad government in general (funnily enough, most Africans I have met don’t want to resolve bad government by putting “their team” in power, they want less government, go figure..).

And I think you are missing the point, I do not dismiss asset backed currencies, but the backing asset do not have to be gold (or similar)… Also a lot of things that were true 4 000 years ago are not true today, there world is very different place today, and trade which is the basis of our global society is very different.

Some (like economist Michael Sproul) even claim that there is not such things as the currency is backed by the bank that issues them. All fiat currency central banks agree to exchange their currency with another currency (which is the basis for the fiat currency).

I do agree that they are used as a political tool. My point it is that fiat currencies is not the problem, put political tampering, the market sets the price of the fiat currency.
And the credit based currencies that can hid behind a fiat currency. The backing in gold (or equivalent) is not the actual issue here. But you put your finger on it again, the problem arises on how credit is managed.

But the asset backed currencies were just as abused by the governments through-out history, with strict control of the trade on gold to protected the currencies. So these have been just as abused and controlled (just in another way).

Fiat currency values are set on the global spot markets for currencies (just any other commodity is), and should the true represent the market appreciation of the currency at any given time.
Now if they always will represent a fair value is another discussion, because there will always be a discrepancy (in knowledge or advantage), but should not be too far of, except in extreme cases (which we have seen a few), so I am not saying it’s perfect model far from it.

This whole thing goes back to, is there a limited supply of wealth in the world? Is there one cake with a 100 pieces and that’s is? If your only actual input is natural a finite resource such as gold that would be true, and is what the left movement (socialists and communists) based there wealth distribution models on.

But our economy is not based on what can be produced out of gold (or limited thereof), but increasingly out of services. And we are constantly making things more effective, and see a constant growth. So how do you fit that into a currency backed by Gold? It’s hardly the solution either.

What drives the economy changed more in the past 100 years than in the past 10 000 years, so why would 4 000 old models still be as applicable?

The real problem if you ask me is that I am not sure either model works in a global, service and technological driven economy.

Secondly, a currency that is not anchored in anything will result in wealth distribution that does not reflect productive output of people – those who have direct access to central bank money (primarily banks) will have an unfair advantage in both access to capital and information, which skews the market. The fact that they can get credit cheaper than anyone else means they will profit the most from subsequent credit bubbles.

Thirdly, fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking are inherently unstable, which means banks need the implicit backing of the government to exist in the long run. What that does to “Moral Hazard” I think we all can take a guess at.

A skewed market place, productivity and accountability having little impact on actual wealth distribution, unstable financial markets and moral hazard are all things that are damaging to any hope of free markets.

Dismissing asset backed currencies, which have existed for 4000 years, while accepting fiat currencies out of hand is a bit strange (after all, fiat currencies have always been political projects created by politicians who disliked the limitations put on them by other types of money).

@Wille and @cj, Yes Dan Brown is not much of a favorite, I did read most of his books, but only the Da Vinci Code held up to some extent, but it felt more like a movie script, and I think the movie was better than the book!
Michael Crichton as mentioned on the other hand was very good, although not all of his books have turned out as excellent movies (some have), but the books are good.

@Wille, I so agree with you, I absolutely suffered through Digital Fortress as well, D.B. did everything he could have done right wrong. I describe “Daemon” as “somewhat like Dan Brown style, except with excellent background research, I.e. fundamentally unlike Dan Brown”