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Lame Duck Challenge Ends With Free Codeweavers Software For All
gzipped_tar writes to tell us that The Codeweavers "Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge" has ended in surprise and free software all day Tuesday (October 28, 2008) at the Codeweavers site. A while back Codeweavers gave President Bush a challenge to meet one of several goals before he left office. One of these goals was to lower gas prices in the Twin Cities below $2.79 a gallon, which has since transpired. "How was I to know that President Bush would take my challenge so seriously? And, give the man credit, I didn't think there was *any* way he could pull it off. But engineering a total market meltdown - wow - that was pure genius. I clearly underestimated the man. I'm ashamed that I goaded him into this and take full responsibility for the collapse of any savings you might have. Please accept our free software as my way of apologizing for the global calamity we now find ourselves embroiled in."
I think that this was a good marketing ploy. I hope their servers can stand the strain.
I think that this was a good marketing ploy. I hope their servers can stand the strain.
They went to a low-bandwidth version to alleviate some of it.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Slow??!? It's dead Jim.
It's not slashdotted; they just turned the servers off until tomorrow.
It was down.codeweavers.com.
And of course, it's down.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Codeweavers is a respectable business. They sell a customized version of Wine which is tuned to run popular proprietary software (MS Office, Adobe stuff, etc...).
Codeweavers are nice. They do the cross-over office product which is built on WINE but smooths out any install issues amongst other things and they're a really friendly company (when my trial product expired, it told me a joke about men in black coming to inspect my PC). I think they contribute a fair bit back as well. And I don't mind the odd marketing ploy if it's as amusing as this one sounds. Sadly can't tell as I can't get onto the site, either.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Their main product is CrossOver - an easy-to-use installer and front-end for WINE (they also do a lot of the development on the WINE library itself and feed those updates back into the Open Source codebase).
Since I can't reach the site, I've no idea if this is the product they're actually giving away...
Well, crossover lets you run a non free runtime ontop of your free os and use it to run windows programs (free or otherwise)...
The alternative, is using a non free os and a non free runtime, so it's a small step forwards if nothing else.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
What kind of retard can't see the joking humor in what the Codeweavers folks are saying?
It's obviously a marketing ploy to get a whole hell of a lot of people to try their software.
They create software that allows Windows apps to run on Linux. Totally awesome. And it's just as well if you don't visit their site, which is being thrashed pretty hard. I mean, if you don't know what CodeWeavers do, you probably don't need to download their software.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Like said by previous posts, CodeWeavers is basically a company focused on Wine development. As far as I know, they frequently send their patches to the Wine project to the point of being considered major contributors.
If I remember correctly, those are the guys Google payed to improve Wine support for Photoshop CS2 and who also released the first Wine-compatible version of Google Chrome.
So you mean it was not free software, but rather software that was free? Got it.
P.S.: We knew that. Nobody's gonna append (Free as in beer) or (Free as in freedom) whenever they talk about something being free.
I am afraid you have failed the humorous irony detection test. As you leave Slashdot by the back entrance, please hand in your geek cred card and your Futurama and Simpsons DVDs.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Bush: Hank, we still need to get gas down below $2.79. The economies are tough. What can we do?
Palson: Mr. President, I'm with you on this. As you know, we are having severe margin calls with some of the investment banks. Rather than save a Wall Street's CEO's ass like we did with Bear Stearns and AIG we could just let them fry in the hot sun. The public hates them anyway. Let's see, overnight accounting data shows that Lehman Brothers is close to the edge. I won't do anything and let them slip into the beyond.
Bush: Hank, I knew I got the right man for the job. Bit what does this do with oil?
Paulson: This will be a real kick in the pants to the arabs. The commodities bubble will deflate like the Hindenburg. They won't be able to give the stuff away. All this "peak oil" talk will be shown for the scam that it is
Bush: Sounds great Hank. What could go wrong?
Paulson: Nothing really. A week later everyone will forget Lehman Brothers even existed.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
On one hand, it blames the unreasonably high fuel prices on the administrations leadership. On the other hand, it also gets to bring up the recent market collapse, which the writer also likely attributes in part to the administration's leadership. It's not intended to say his job is to manipulate prices, it's intended to highlight the bad circumstances leading for a need for prices to come down, and the very negative context for it actually coming down.
Of course, it does seem interestingly strange that the gas prices have dropped so rapidly so close to election, moreso than other expenses. I know the market collapse was the last thing the currently in office politicians want, but one wonders if the market had held out, would we have, for some other 'inexplicable' reason, seen gas prices drop before election day?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Who cares why you're getting free Crossover, you're getting free Crossover! I can't wait to get my free Crossover!
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Just in case someone (like me) got interested in upgrading its PPC-iBook into an oldschool gaming machine. Won't work :-(
They also employ the WINE maintainer and ensure that their code is implemented up the tree.
I just downloaded the crossover-pro and crossover-games packages at over 600Kb/s each. Whoever's running those servers knows how to handle their traffic.
"What kind of retard thinks that one of the responsibilities of the president of the United States is to control the price of gasoline?"
The kind that is smarter than you?
The President of the US is supposed to make policy that positively impacts the economy, who doesn't have the dollar drop lower and lower every stupid mistake he makes and doesn't squander a sound financial market with instability by overextending our reach into areas of the world that have no effect on us. Doing almost exactly the opposite of what this idiot has done would have strengthened the dollar...gas prices might actually have gone up, but a strong dollar would have meant that we are paying less for what the rest of the world is paying more.
A good president is a figurehead...not a wannabe dictator. One that inspires markets and not one that destabilizes them. A good president doesn't need to actively do anything to the markets...he leads with sound policy and the markets react accordingly.
Personally, high gas prices affected me a little, but as you said, you make choices in what is important. Cable TV was less important than being able to travel (and in this time, I discovered Hulu which I formerly thought sucked...much cheaper than cable!) So many ways to live differently in this economy...but it still means we have to make choices we didn't a few years ago.
Downloading works ok. It's the free serial number that gives problems.
"Unable to find available serial number! Please go back and try your request again in a few minutes while the system generates more."
Um...free software...who cares why? It could be to celebrate terrorism for all I care. Probably be a less effective marketing ploy though.
*trips over own legs rushing to surrender liberties at mention of the T word*
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Hey, it worked on me.
a) Good software.
b) For free.
c) Because Bush is an idiot.
That's three for three, Jim.
I hate printers.
Who would have thought? "Free Software" in a Slashdot title, and all of a sudden codeweavers isn't responding.
The only way to tell the difference between a hamster and a gerbil is that the hamster has more white meat.
The serial number sign up is slashdotted even though the downloads come down just fine. The script keeps giving an error about being unable to get more serial numbers or it times out or resets. They know how to handle the bandwidth, but the GCI requests are killing them.
Since they are giving away the unlocked versions, I guess you only need a serial number if you want support.
What kind of retard thinks that one of the responsibilities of the president of the United States is to control the price of gasoline?
What kind of retard cannot recognise a joke?
This will probably kill my Karma, but...
It amazes me how many people get personally offended and go on flaming rampages every time Bush is labeled a scapegoat. Yet at the same time- these very same people likely (and rabidly) supported Bush's government while we were going to war against other scapegoats for other countries. How very hypocritical.
That said- Codeweavers is an excellent company that has done a lot to push Linux into the mainstream. Unfortunately it seems this marketing move of theirs has backfired- and their server isn't just slow, but completely down.
So you don't think the few hundred people running congress into the ground have anything to with our current situation? The actions of the president did not destabilize the markets. The actions of people - regular citizens, loan officers, accountants, etc. - are responsible to a far greater degree.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
According to the e-mail I just got:
*Alert* This serial code will have a short shelf life. The original plan was that it would be valid only today. But the response has been overwhelming for our server, so that site is not working.
Given that, we intend to honor the serial codes through the end of October, with the hope that our server will get time to recover.
Please try the registration again tomorrow. We will be putting direct download links to the full version live on our site shortly, please check our main page to get a full download.
Limit 1 copy per customer. Download only.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Unless GWB was in the office of every bank in America that gave a mortgage to someone who could not afford it, don't blame him. The President really has little effect on an overall economy. Most of us work for CEOs who have much more impact.
Their low-bandwidth page also contained direct download links for unlocked versions of their products. The page is down, but the downloads still work (they come from a different server). So if you're only interested in having an unlocked version, you can help keep the load on their registration page down. Here are the links:
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
That's the magic of P2P - no need for massive bandwidth on the part of the original source.
This challenge has been up on their page for months. They clearly had several posted goals, unlikely ones, and that if any of them were completed during Bush's term then they would give away copies of their software to celebrate.
Replace that whole mess with "We said we would do this if X happened. X happened, so here's your free copy!" and I fail to see how this is a troll or classical advertisement.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Multicast, sir. Like SureWest is already doing.
I clearly misunderestimated the man
Fixed.
You just got troll'd!
Trolling slashdot has long been an amusing, if somewhat frowned-upon passtime here, but this summary (sorry, can't RTFA even if I wanted to) raises the humble "troll" from amusement to art form by combining a) a FOSS-friendly entity, b) a free software giveaway, and c) gratuitously sarcastic, if somewhat tired, political rhetoric. The result is an article that is causing people from both the left and right to froth at the mouth in an almost Pavlovian fashion. However, by placing the troll in the article itself rather than in a response, they have essentially created an uber-troll.
My hat is off to you. I shall raise a toast to you as soon as I start drinking today.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
"How does a President take the blame for all of the bad things ... but can't take credit for any of the good things"
Just a wild-ass guess here, but I'd say it's because most people are idiots.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
And, what kind of retard actually believes that it's a good thing for the government to try to artificially alter the price of a commodity like gasoline, probably the commodity with the most negative impact on the environment and the world in general, rather than letting market forces dictate the price?
Market Forces? That's a euphemism for the troops in Iraq, right?
One thing you can always count on is the ineptitude of government.
That being said... The President of the US actually has very little to do with the economic health of the nation. See below:
SeekingAlpha
American Spectator
Mackinac Center
Further, most experts agree that the *actual* problem of this current market collapse stems to four things:
#1 - The CRA expansion in 1995, which put 30% more people on the housing market than there should have been, creating an incredible sellers' market in which housing, which previously had roughly paced inflation, spiraled up until people were looking at "house value" increases of over 200%.
#2 - The change in the Fed's policy when Alan Greenspan was appointed chair, which changed from relatively aggressive use of the Fed Funds Rate to deflate economic bubbles and contain damage (the cause of the late-'80s "recession" for example) to allowing bubbles to grow and grow under the idea that lowering the Fed Funds Rate after the fact would "clean up the mess" and that there would be "better growth" under the bubble... unfortunately economic bubbles are more like cysts or abcesses than blisters.
#3 - The abrupt change between a far-too-liberal and far-too-conservative method of valuing a lot of mortgages. Prior to the Enron debacle and Sarbanes-Oxley reforms, the "valuation" of many of these loans (which were being used to back other securities which in turn backed more securities) was at 100% of the loan hidden in "tier 3" assets (e.g. "things we can't put a price on at this second so we'll estimate it and get back to you later) on most companies' balance sheets. This is called "mark-to-model."
Post-SOX (and coming to today because it takes years for large companies to bring everything in line with new reforms like that), the companies were required to mark the mortgages to their actual market worth (e.g. what they could get if someone bought the mortgage from them this minute). Unfortunately, since they were all being massively marked down as someone tried to PUT a market worth to them, there were suddenly MASSIVE amounts of these loans on the market, and as a result they were getting marked down to literally pennies on the dollar. This shift to "mark-to-market" accounting on the loans is what pulled the rug out from underneath a lot of other securities whose backing could be traced back to them, as well as requiring the banks (which had been using these loans as collateral on the balance sheets) to start holding back a lot more capital to service their existing accounts.
There needed to be a middle ground in this, but there wasn't.
#4 - The 1999 dissolution of the 1933 Glass-Steagall reforms, which had previously prevented investment banks from owning other financial institutions, caused much of the "piling-on" of securities backed by other securities backed by other securities backed by... well, it turned out, nearly-worthless (in the mark-to-market sense) loans.
The only part Bush plays in this is that he (a) signed SOX (which passed nearly damn unanimously from the Congress and could easily have been a Veto Override anyways) and (b) he let Greenspan, and then Greenspan's hand-picked successor, run the Fed.
P.S. I'm not a fan of Bush by any means, but fair's fair - he doesn't get the blame for this one and I'm a bit disappointed in the person who posted this and the person who posted an ill-considered, ill-thought, ill-informed rant on this contest.
I don't want to give them ad revenue if they're just lamely pulling off a marketing ploy, with Slashdot acting as a typically willing partner in the charade ...
Well apparently its a pretty effective "lame ploy" being you seem to want to click on the link despite your deeply held principled objects.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
I am having a problem believing that a Slashdot user ,with a UID of 893, does not know what Codeweaver is.
> Technically they ALL have 15 Mbit/s connections
Much greater than that actually, but the vast majority is used up by inefficient television signals.
A normal analog TV channel uses 6 MHz of bandwidth, in that same space DOCSIS 2 can send 28 Mbps up and 38 Mbps down. That's more than enough to feed all of the televisions in your house with with its own HD signal (which is about 6 Mbps). DOCSIS 3 can bond up to 10 channels, offering about 500 Mbps. If analog is completely turned off, 1 Gbps are a very real possibility.
So the problem here is bandwidth allocation, not theoretical performance. If the cable carriers would be willing -- and they aren't -- you could have multi-Gbps feeds into your house right now.
Maury
Download CrossOver Mac Pro
Download CrossOver Games Mac
Download CrossOver Linux Pro
Download CrossOver Games Linux
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
Another factor which contributed was the Basle-1 and -2 capital adequacy requirements - particularly the latter. This is another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. These rules were intended to force the assorted banks to have enough capital, in order to forestall exactly the liquidity crisis which has happened. But Basle-2 particularly allowed the riskiness of loans to be weighted so that less risky loans required less capital. So when the front line mortgage lenders reached their Basle limits, they invented the Securitised Investment Vehicles with weighted riskiness, and sold them on, thus recapitalising themselves for more lending. But the SIVs were badly designed and didn't pass the risk where everybody thought they did, leading to the melt-down. So a standard pit in to prevent the liquidity crisis actually contributed to it.
Another bad side effect of SIVs is making it much more difficult to be lenient on mortgages. When a lender forecloses, they typically only get about 50% of the original value of the home. Often the borrower trashes the house before they leave (a factor of US "limited recourse" mortgages"), and they they are selling in a saturated market. Much better, therefore, to write off, say, 25% of the mortgage without foreclosing and leave the borrower in possession. But if you have sold off the mortgage in many slices to several other investors, this becomes effectively impossible.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
You should also include an SEC rule change that allowed Lehman and the rest of the gang to overleverage themselves. See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html.
And somehow you managed to miss the creative ways that subprime mortgages were turned into high-quality investments. See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27Credit-t.html.
Amazingly, both of those happened on Bush's watch. No wonder you missed them.
Thank you Codeweavers. You deserve a huge round of applause.
*** Don't be dull.***
Actually, the download is the demo version
I think they've changed the site. Earlier they only had the demo versions, now the site says:
"For today only, we are putting up fully unlocked builds."
I've downloaded it, but haven't tried to install yet. I was able to get a serial early this morning, though.
the no
Can someone tell me the difference between "Linux Pro" and "Games Linux"?
You should be able to re-compile WINE on a PowerPC-based system and then have it run programs written for Windows NT 3.51 PowerPC Edition.
Since WINE Is Not an Emulator, it's an implementation of the Win32 ABI, it's probably not what you're after....
And somehow you managed to miss the creative ways that subprime mortgages were turned into high-quality investments.
No, I mentioned that regarding the using of the subprime mortgages as a "base" collateral underneath certain securities, which were then used as collateral on other securities, and so on. The idea (as I'm sure you'd know if you'd actually read the article or had a solid grounding in economics) was that the banks were, in fact, deliberately trying to hide the actual backing of the securities.
You should also include an SEC rule change that allowed Lehman and the rest of the gang to overleverage themselves.
It appears you are speaking of the 12:1 rule, also known as the "net capital rule" - which was not the real problem so much as the OTHER portion of the issue, which traces directly back to what I had mentioned: the fact that companies were managing to hide the subprime loans and other bad securities on their "tier 3" balance sheets with Mark-to-Model accounting.
Was this rule change a bad thing? Most definitely. But the problems already existed prior to the rule change, because the larger problem of the bad accounting existed before the rule change as well.
Amazingly, both of those happened on Bush's watch. No wonder you missed them.
Most people didn't notice the second because had it been a change made in a healthy market, without other accounting frauds already occurring in those companies, it probably wouldn't have mattered. It might have been more sensible to raise the cap a small amount (say, bump it from 12:1 to 14:1 or 15:1) but that still wouldn't have addressed the underlying problems of Bad Assets Backing Bad Assets.
Again, I don't care what happened under Bush's watch, or Clinton's watch, or Bush41's watch, or Carter's watch, because the President has little to no control over the economy. His authority is pretty much limited to appointing the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the various members of the SEC, and in both cases Bush's actions (confirmed by overwhelming majorities of the US Senate, which yes includes a vast amount of Democrats) were merely to rubber-stamp the handpicked successors of the previous occupants of the various positions. Technically, he can't even fire them (unlike Cabinet members) without Senate approval. That's how limited the President's role is.
And no, I don't think it would have been any different with John Kerry in office. Why would it have been? John Kerry has no better grasp of economics than George Bush (though both probably have a hell of a lot better grasp than either Barack Obama or John McCain do) and would likely have made the same appointments, because the "handpicked successor" route has been the way it's been for at least 3 decades.
I'll say it again: No, I didn't miss anything. I don't care about the politics of it. YOU, on the other hand, seem desperate to find some way in which you can scream "OMG It's Bush's Fault." Please stop, step back for a moment, realize that George Bush is not actually Lucifer B. Satan, and look again at the total situation.
The cure isn't getting Bush out of office. That'll happen whether he wants to go or not. The cure is, unfortunately, the equivalent of having your car in to the dealership to have sugar and water contamination removed from the fuel, power steering, and lubrication systems. It's going to suck for a while and there's no way around it but it has to happen, because too many sectors of the market have relations to the housing market or to other bubbles that (a) still need cleaning up or (b) haven't popped yet.
Five years from now, housing prices will likely be about where they are today (and more in line with what they should have been assuming a normal growth in the market pacing inflation, rather than the abnormal 200%+ spikes we saw for roughly the past decade or so). There will be a LOT less people actually on the market for a home, because a lot less people will be unable to get major
P2P could not be used to send a 15 Mbps Heroes (5 gigabytes total) live video to 30 million people. Almost nobody has that kind of upload connection (mine is only 0.13M), which means it could take days to send just 1 complete copy from the original seeder.
Broadcast from 200 stations to 30,000,000 people at the same time is the most-efficient method. And no waiting time required.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
[...] undeserved ad revenue for them [...] I don't want to give them ad revenue if they're just lamely pulling off a marketing ploy [...]
At the moment their site isn't up to serving ads. I don't know if it normally has any ads on.
Their site is currently one page, with the only image being their logo. There are links to the different downloads, and a form submitting to a simple cgi to request a serial number (with a warning that it could take a few days for the email containing it to be sent). The previous version made you go to a second page to get to the serial request form, which had two email boxes on, now it's just the one box and it's on the main page.
They've really done a good job of optimizing it so that it still works under this kind of crazy pressure. They're actually surviving a slashdotting!
Actually, I would give President Bush more credit than that, anyways.
What we are seeing right now is the fulfillment of Jefferson's prophecy: "If the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered."
What Bush HAS done is ensured these banks that they have government support as they do their dirty deeds, so that they themselves don't go bankrupt as they take homes from individuals who can't afford their homes.
So thanks, Bush, for empowering the banks to further the exploitation of the American people.
Does anyone realize yet that this is class warfare?
Slashdotted? We wish. Right now on the low bandwidth page they are blaming the meltdown on digg. Oh for the good old days when they automatically would have assumed it was us. Let's rally around and hit their site a couple of times to show that our dentures still have bite and a slashdotting is to be feared!
P2P is worthless for live broadcasts because those should be handled by multicasting. There's absolutely no reason to have multiple people separately downloading the same thing at the same time. It's when people want to download the same thing at different times that P2P is useful: multicasting won't work, and a standard HTTP server would have to re-send the same thing.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The name of wine stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator", not "WINdows Emulator". See Wine Myths for more information.
Ergo, your analogy is flawed. And it's not about cars, so it's doubly flawed.
Well, he gets points for comparing Bush to a monkey
No sig for the moment.
15 Mbps? Holy crap. Talk about overkill.
The problem is not that the video is live, it's that you're sending it massively undercompressed. Make your video smaller, use better techniques. Then you don't need to have redonkulous bandwidth needs.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Wrong again.
Roosevelt knew almost nothing about nuclear physics, but it hadn't stopped him from initiating the Manhattan Project. Because he had good advisors who understood physics and explained to him why it was necessary.
There were plenty of warning signs back in 2003-2004 and lots of economists warned about the impending crisis. But he and Greenspan choose to ignore them.
Well, and if Bush failed to find good advisors - then he failed his job.
Today they're running a low-bandwidth version of their webpage; it doesn't have any ads on it. And yeah, as others have already said, CodeWeavers are the good guys. They're St. Paul MN based; they actually hosted a TCLUG installfest at their office last year.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Actually the new version of Azureus does live streaming bittorrent pretty well.
I think they just ensure that the first part is sent, calculate the bandwidth of the rest, start as soon as you've spooled enough to avoid interruptions.
There is no reason I can imagine that the bittorrent protocol HAS to be worse than any other one as long as the packet order is chosen correctly. You could even add a variable to the torrent to indicate when the last packet will be delivered to the cloud (so that a late-starter can more accurately calculate a start time).
Basic economic principles:
#1 - Fungible vs nonfungible commodities. Some commodities are priced relative to their availability on the open market, some not. For example, Oil is a fungible commodity; you can easily replace oil (and its derivatives) with those from another source. Saudi Arabia won't sell to you? Buy from Venezuela, and someone else will most likely make up the shortfall by buying from SA instead of Venezuela. You didn't buy your gasoline/diesel from a Shell station because you went to Citgo or Raceway instead? The place you did buy from will purchase that much more from the refinery (and most of the gas on the market comes from the same few refineries), so very little will change. This is why organized boycotts of a particular "chain" of gas stations don't work; their parent companies can (and do) simply sell their extra stock to one of the competitors. At best, you hurt the local station owners and that's all.
#2 - Supply/Demand. These don't mean what you think they mean, but relatively close; they don't always adjust exactly on schedule (because purchasers/suppliers may mis-read how much supply or demand there is in the market and price inappropriately). The idea is that over time, the price of a product will reach an equilibrium such that, if there are Y available units, then there will eventually be X available buyers. If there are less buyers than product, the price will decline until more buyers (enticed by the lower price) enter the system. If there are more buyers than product, either the price will (theoretically) rise, or else you will have a product shortage and someone will try to produce a competing product to fill the need until pricing equilibrium is reached. Compare, for example, the Sensio Grill to the Foreman Grill.
Now here's where we get a little more advanced:
#3 - Forms of investing. You've got direct investment in a company (Venture Capital or Stock), indirect investment (investment in a bank or lending company that in turn provides lending services to the company itself), and all manner of tertiary involvements such as membership in various investment funds where you, personally, have no control over what is done with your money.
#4 - "Stock Market" indexes. There are a ton of these out there, each of which averages the price of a predetermined set of stocks, weighted by some amount, to come up with some "average" monetary number. The most commonly referred to by the newsmedia is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is an average (weighted to dollar price of stock) of a mere 30 stocks. There are a whole slew of other stock averages, each telling a different story on the market; the more stocks they watch, the better an indicator they can be (but a lousier news story), which is why the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 doesn't get press while the DJIA does.
Now we get into the nitty-gritty:
#5 - There are three basic ways to make money in the stock market: you can buy stock and receive dividends when(if) the company makes a profit; you can buy stock and sell it later when it is worth more; OR you can "borrow" stock from someone, sell it, wait for the price to fall, and then buy it back at the lower price (pocketing the difference) and then return the "borrowed" (but now not as valuable) stock to the rightful owner.
The third way is called shorting. The "fourth" way is called naked shorting, and it's been one of wikipedia's biggest recent scandals. The gist of it is that with naked sho
Mark-to-model valuations have a risk of being wildly inaccurate, this is true. Unfortunately, the chosen replacement (mark-to-market) is vulnerable to major short-term fluctuations in the "valuation" of what are essentially long-term assets.
Take, for instance, subprime loans. Not all subprime loans were unpayable and doomed to forfeiture, and even for those that were, the vast majority would see some payback before they lapsed into insolvency. The problem came when dishonest companies (many of which were just given $$$ by the "bailout") created a false "model" that said 100% of the subprime loans would be paid back in full, created various securities backed by these loans or backed by other securities that turned out to be backed by these loans, and started selling off those securities.
When mark-to-model was replaced by mark-to-market, all of a sudden these base loans hit the market... flooding the market with them and causing their immediate-sale value (what someone on the market would actually pay for them right this minute in one lump sum) to plummet far below what a realistic model would value them at.
For example, if we take a large pool of subprime loans and assume that (pulling a round number for sake of argument, not following any actual model here) X% of them were doomed to failure, then we'd get a model roughly like this:
(Model Price) = (100-X% * loanprice) + (X% * loanprice * averagepaidbeforedefault) + (X% * actualassetvalue)
Now, obviously the only way this model equals 100% is if X is zero; however, even if we assume 50% of them are doomed to failure, we still have the average recoupment (payments made before defaulting) and the asset value (probably NOT equal to loanprice and well below saleprice, but still nonzero). In other words, the value of the "pool" if we assume 50% of the loans are "doomed" should still be above 50 cents on the dollar.
Note that the price on a lot of these loans and loan-backed securities got down to pennies on the dollar now. The only way we get there with a sensible model is if we assume (a) nearly 100% of the loans will fail and (b) all of them are going to go into default relatively "immediately", e.g. in the next couple months and (c) the value of every single one of these assets is going to plummet to pennies on the dollar, as well, overnight.
See what I mean? The idea of mark-to-model, if you have sensible models and regulations checking and verifying the models the financial institutions use and forcing them to readjust the models as new financial data comes in regarding them, is not itself inherently bad. The problem is when corrupt people, with no oversight, are allowed to create fake "models" that far overvalue things and then hide their fraud behind multiply stacked "mortgage-backed securities."
Left-wing? Ha! All US politicians are so far to the right it's truly frightening. You think Obama, who wholeheartedly supported the trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Streat, and who has been beating the war drums to attack Pakistan for *ages* is left-wing? Sure, he's left-wing compared to Bush. But we're splitting hairs here. They're both waaaaaaaaaaaaay to the right.
And as for dictatorship, I think that's what you've got right now, isn't it? You know, Commander-In-Chief, blanket-immunity-from-illegal-activities, we'll-torture-if-we-want-to Dubya?
Jesus Christ, you need some perspective.