Questions tagged [economics]
11 questions
17
votes
6 answers
What made BASIC profitable?
In the 1970s, a man called Bill Gates developed an interpreter for BASIC: the Altair BASIC. Per my understanding, he was able to persuade the guy in charge of a microcomputer company to include the interpreter program on every microcomputer he sold,…
user126589
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12
votes
10 answers
Do programmers possess the means of production?
I was listening to The Servile State by Hilare Belloc this morning and pondering whether or not I possessed the means of production, as did the peasant of the Middle Ages; as did not his descendants after the oligarchs of England forced him into…
Peter Turner
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6
votes
3 answers
Why is free software good for programmers?
When I say Free Software I mean it in the FSF terms. Free as in Free Speech, not as in Free Beer.
Why is it a good idea for programmers to use and write Free Software?
Juanjo Conti
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2
votes
2 answers
Most efficient way of allocating participants to conference tracks
I am redesigning a system by which conference participants can choose which track they want to attend. Participants express their track preferences arranging them in order and submitting them at a certain recorded time (which is useful for…
Federico B.
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2
votes
3 answers
How to code a one-sided virtual economy
I'm attempting to make an online game with a mini-economy in it. The challenge is that the only person selling anything will be the website itself, and hence the supply and demand curve doesn't apply (as it costs the website nothing to produce the…
Nathan Merrill
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2
votes
2 answers
Determinining "value" in multi-agent microeconomical simulation
I am trying to determine an objective way for a self-interested agent to calculate the optimal buying/selling price for goods in a multi-agent simulation not dissimilar to Sugarscape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarscape). The simulation is as…
Milton Manfried
- 31
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2
votes
1 answer
What are some important guidelines when starting a software cooperative?
We are a group of people who are about to start a software cooperative, which means all of us (and other future workers) will be the owners of the 'company' rather than having bosses and employees. We do this from ideological reasons but also…
Roy
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1
vote
1 answer
Frameworks for targetting multiple environments
What should drive the decision behind doing development upon one or more than one framework?
For instance, an ERP is (mostly) run on a Windows station. It leverages full access to device's resources, like printers, barcode readers, fingerprint…
André Werlang
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1
vote
2 answers
Determining game item prices based off of player trades/in-game economy
I've been working on a game the past few months and I'm finally starting to approach issues regarding the in-game economy. The game is sort of like an MMORTS, players create their own nations and they have cities all over the world map. I want…
X33
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1
vote
3 answers
Microeconomical simulation: coordination/planning between self-interested trading agents
In a typical perfect-information strategy game like Chess, an agent can calculate its best move by searching the state tree for the best possible move, while assuming that the opponent will also make the best possible move (i.e. Mini-max).
I would…
Milton Manfried
- 31
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1
vote
0 answers
Development of algorithmical concept for scheduling and allocation problem
I have to solve a problem in the field of operations research. I want to gather some general approaches to evaluate them to pick the most promising to design a problem-related program.
Problem definition
Company ACME that sells customized collages…
mike
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