Now enjoying my status as a sage of the industry, which is to say I am older than 20, but alas, not a billionaire, God fuck-it; people are all the time asking me for nuggets of wisdom from my vast experience at the top. Quickies from marcf #3: What IP is there to protect in OSS? B.D asks: "marcf, my open source project is starting to enjoy a measure of success, I am thinking of going professional with it, I am thinking about business models. How much thought should I put in protecting my Intellectual Property?" Answer: B.D. protecting IP in OSS is extremelly important. The only "private" property that exists in OSS are 1- brand 2- URL. Both are obviously related but really you need to protect your brand name, in other words REGISTER your trademarks, use them, declare they are yours and enforce the trademark, meaning protect against infringement. Other products, specifically based on your product should not include your name. Consultancies will be able to say the
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No speculation involved, right?
Other great financial non-sense theories: decoupling. How's that working out now?
thank you for the post. Yes, I believe the commodities bubble was the result of hot-money movement.
Where is it going next. It can hide in Treasuries for a while? We are talking about a 5T thing? Bring it on...
I was surprised too but there was a debate. I have to read up on how price is set in oil markets. I think it does involve a part of expectations which makes it a futures market. Futures are speculative, by definition.
Over the last 18 years the oil gold ratio has been between 6.2 and 27.9 (1:4.5) while the price in dollar has been between 10.7 and 145.3 (1:13.6)
A big part of the volatility is volatility of the dollar, not the oil. True, gold supply depends on the price of oil, still.
Remember that famous tobacco hearing where all the tobacco CEOs pledged that tobacco was not addictive? They did that for these economists. The question was, "If we put in the proposed limits on oil speculation, how much will the price go down?" The most conservative estimate, even from the oil lackeys, was 40%.
"And if we enact this legislation, how long will it take that price to go down?" Answer: "About 30 days."
The congress passed legislation to let Exxon drill for oil on your kid's sand castle, but they never passed the speculation limits. However, the economists were right. As soon as the speculators were scared out of the market, oil dropped like a rock.