"Ingwi"? You mean men have been slaying dragons with electric guitars and playing over-long solos for that long? Incredible!
Malmsteen: I guess the name means "Really Old" in German.
I feel truly privileged to read a number of posts in a row which EACH had a chance to deviate from the apocalyptic vision of the others, but instead chose the easy path. So many different ways we'll all die, so little time!
For heaven's sake, sometimes I think that the reason we have so many problems around the world today is what appears to be an incredibly cynical, doomsday view of everything. I could blame it on pervasive media (negative headlines are the best headlines), but that feels cliche.
Let's be realistic. Man will not go back to being a caveman. Population may shrink, but unless something truly horrifying happens mankind will go on. We'll probably innovate in different ways but we'll go on.
THIS.
I've met a fair number of very smart people who are so overwhelmed by negative media that they simply don't do much work. They're convinced we're all screwed and the world will end. They just don't care anymore.
So pirate it, then. Build anyway.
Like what Andrew Jackson said: So Congress passed a law? Let them enforce it, then!
Just keep doing it. Be revolutionary, stop pandering to the law which is corrupt. Do business anyway. Enough people do it, and the law will change. Or go black market. Worked with prohibition, didn't it? Create new channels to distribute your products and ideas, people will pay for them.
Ignore the broken, sluggish behemoth of corporatism and do work anyway.
I know, easier said than done:)
ANybody think this is false? Anonymous Coward? Incorrect email address (no 'm' at the end of the url) and incorrect grammar on "We at Kotkin Enterprises know that it's our customers are"..... ? I mean, I don't know ANY professional who is dumb enough to send an email to the internet at large with such glaring errors.
I know, grammar nazi, but still....
This happened with Cholera! Read about how cholera's transmission was discovered. The british government at the time denied the science for decades before anything was put in place to stop hundreds/thousands of people from dying.
"John Snow and the Broad Street Pump" don't have the link sorry.
Politics, inertia, is definitely an enemy (if not always intentionally) of science.
and which one might that be?
Mine is one of the most efficient out there, and it's upper range is 450 mi when I drive 55 mph straight through on a full tank of gas.
Maybe some of us value our time more than money?
It doesn't take 2 hours to get where I want to go here in Chicago. I walk 2 blocks to the grocery store, 3 to public transit that gets me pretty much anywhere in the cityu I want to go (35 minute ride max, no traffic), and as far as schools go? yeah, 1 block away if I had kids (and pretty decent place from what I understand).
Prices are a bit high, but I don't waste 2.5-3 hours every day commuting, it's time I get to spend with the people I love and doing things that are fulfilling to me.
So please, stop trying to paint it like we're idiots for living in the city. Some people are (L.A. Yeah, you people ARE lead-headed dumbasses for that commute. You better be able to retire in a golden castle.) but many of us enjoy the convenience as well as the additional choices we have in a city: Bike to work, go to the farmer's market to get incredibly delicious, chemical-free foods/meats as opposed to Wal-Mart, and delicious dining experiences that I have never, ever been able to find outside of a city (and yes I've travelled the "flyover" states by car and seen my share).
I have the opposite problem: I look at the suburbs and the country and think,"You people are missing out on a wonderful lifestyle... why would you drive 150 miles one way to work? Are you insane?"
To each their own, I guess.
I'm pretty sure that we're talking about why so MANY people don't need a smartphone, not whether it's a useful device for people who actually, truly need it.
Personally, I'm glad for the rise of smartphones, just not for the douchebags who chumble around acting smug because they bought a piece of technology that they don't use to much effect anyway.
No, I don't. In fact, I can't find a DECENT phone on my carrier.
Upgraded from RAZR which finally fell apart. HTC Freestyle's interface takes more time to use and is more frustrating than the RAZR, and all I get is a camera for it, with a touch interface that is MORE DIFFICULT to use than my previous phone. Isn't technology supposed to make things easier?
I don't use data (I see too many idiots who pay $35 a month to get a couple pictures from friends). I don't use apps.
As a business owner I could probably use a smartphone that takes more time up to "use" than to simply go without. More technology isn't necessarily better, people!
I. Just. Want. A. Phone.
If you want to sell me something else, sell me something that is convenient, easy to use, USEFUL (NOT a consumption device like the iphone), and I will happily pay a nice chunk of money for that device.
How about we stop abusing the countries they live in, and start helping their economies? Or, barring that, leave well enough alone and disentangle ourselves from their insane, thousands-of-years-long holy war?
How about the corporations and government impinging on MY right to picket, protest, speak, search my person, invade my privacy.... huh? You self-righteous assclown.
Yes, I know I get modded down and he'll never see, but what a shitlicker.
Ass someone who has known FBI agents before, they were also self-righteous chunderheads who could see what was right, but not what might be *good*.
What gets me is that you say you accepted their friend requests. Um........ what about being in touch with them? Did anything come of that?
That's what gets me about FB: Just friending someone is supposed to hold some sort of significance.
I had the same thing happen to me, btw, and when they wrote to me asking how I'd been over the last 10 years, I wrote back, asked what was up and how they were, and never got a response from a single one. So I unfriended the hundred or so people who seemed to WANT to seem interested, but actually weren't enough to type a simple email.
Our high school reunion was ANNOUNCED on facebook.
Very few people showed up compared to our total class from 1998, chiefly because I know a lot of those people don't bother with facebook.
Personally, I think it's a way for people to get out of holding a proper one and being held accountable, "Oh, you mean you didn't hear? It was announced on facebook!" Bollux.
I didn't go. All the comments I read were a bunch of self-important wankers who were still self-important wankers. All the people I actually wanted to meet again don't book face.
The casualty is NOT that it isn't necessary, the casualty is that it gives the illusion that it isn't necessary.
They want people to think that something has changed. Let people think they can stop supporting those trying to alter the system, that they can go home.
Sorry, but the cover of Time is a worthless gauge of change and while it's a good headline... that's all it is.
Yes, it has. And just look at the beautiful track record it has had!
There's a reason it was exempted from the Safe Water Act by Halliburton: Cleaning the shit out of that water is damn expensive, and the waste water has about 750 chemicals in it.
Why don't you be the first to have a nice big glass of the stuff and tell us how it tastes?
1) The actual components, the vitamins, minerals, carbs, fat, etc are all explicitly tested and listed, so you have an idea of what you're puting in your body.
2) those ingredients are also monitored closely by the FDA for safety
Call me a little cynical, but wouldn't something like this be gravy for lawyers? release bills that will be locked up in litigation for a decade? That's some tasty dollars they have there.
So you're willing to express that they're "not shills", but not willing to say who you are? That's.... brilliant. Just brilliant. Way to convince us that you're not just trying to cover up because you happen to be on that list.
Why not add a third house of Congress? Randomly select citizens, like jury duty, who serve a certain number of years, with pay and job security of some sort.
?
I am sick of hearing this. "In the long run"? Show us numbers. Frankly, those are manipulated statistics. They don't take into account 1) The fact that a fund changes managers a number of times over its lifetime. 2) Most funds haven't been in existence long enough to have an "in the long run" track record. 3) You CANNOT (and this is my business, so I know) repeat CANNOT buy a pure index. There is no way to do it without a fee or without some rather questionable strategies for the fund.
Don't parrot Barron's or Money or WSJ or Kramer or whatever "money guru" is writing a book this week. They're just selling you a line, a culture that keep fees rolling into wire houses and (more importantly to them) investors on edge to keep watching their show/reading their books/magazines, trading on emotion.
Funds have a place, a fantastic place, in risk reduction (you just need to know a fair amount/be plugged into enough info to have a good chance at choosing the better ones, and that includes finding the correct fund strategies [and YES, I know retail strategies are bollux compared to the high end market, but hey that's what we've got to work with]). Stocks have a place, too, as risky investments in an individual company. Annuities (insurance), Closed ends, bonds, commodities, gold bullion, arbitrage, whatever.... they all have their place for diversification and strategy.
Sometimes it doesn't even matter if a fund doesn't perform "as well as the index." (by the way, WHICH index?)
Often, it's more about people staying calm and invested (or was until the most recent set of bubble-icious crazy markets, cross fingers there) and not making large, costly mistakes due to emotion. Funds help dampen volatility and help keep emotions in check to a certain extent.
To some people performance takes priority (usually analytics, who would tend to read this site), but I can't tell you how many clients have come to us who care less about that extra few percent we squeeze out above our fees and the market, they care more about that number on their statement going down. People have been shown to have a higher emotional reaction to a negative event than to a similarly positive event (-50K vs +50K). It makes most people risk averse in terms of the market, whatever they may tell you (cultural, social issues here, beyond he scope of this). In the end, it's sad to say, but people are driven by either greed or fear.
Also, fund fees are justified if you're finding the right funds. We have a fund that charges 3.5% annual management fee, and you know what? It beats the fucking pants off of EVERY SINGLE ONE of its peers in their entire morningstar category. Hands down, without question. Look at returns minus fees over the long run, and you'll easily screen out the lion's share of all the yahoos who can't tell their profit/loss statements from a hole in the ground.
Of course, each of these can be debated, and I welcome that, but these blanket assumptions that average investors make (sorry, I'm making an assumption there about you) are so wildly half-informed that it's no wonder we have so many retirement funds that have been "decimated by the market crash!"
They weren't decimated by the market. They were decimated by a lack of prudent financial habits, a lack of planning, and the uninformed investor who didn't seek enough financial education or hire a solid professional to advise them, not fees or IPOs or HFT or any of the other scapegoats out there.
Also, this "race to the bottom" idea is also evident in the whole "fees" argument, of which Vanguard is an absurd champion (look at their funds, they suck almost universally over the long term, except for a handful of their bond funds). I find it hilarious that we talk about the race to the bottom on Slashdot, how it's terrible, and yet when it saves one of us a dollar we're all for it. Kind of hypocritical (addressing the group, not you exactly).
People have to get paid something for their advice and their insight, their education and hard work about
Not necessarily true. As a financial adviser who sees all sorts of retail investor strategies I can tell you that buying on dips isn't necessarily bad. It's timing the market, which probably isn't the very best idea, but if he's buying on dips with a consistent strategy then he might be doing alright if he's got a method for selling on the upside too.
Also, index funds.... seriously? Dirty word....
Slashdot Mirror
"Ingwi"? You mean men have been slaying dragons with electric guitars and playing over-long solos for that long? Incredible! Malmsteen: I guess the name means "Really Old" in German.
I feel truly privileged to read a number of posts in a row which EACH had a chance to deviate from the apocalyptic vision of the others, but instead chose the easy path. So many different ways we'll all die, so little time!
For heaven's sake, sometimes I think that the reason we have so many problems around the world today is what appears to be an incredibly cynical, doomsday view of everything. I could blame it on pervasive media (negative headlines are the best headlines), but that feels cliche.
Let's be realistic. Man will not go back to being a caveman. Population may shrink, but unless something truly horrifying happens mankind will go on. We'll probably innovate in different ways but we'll go on.
THIS. I've met a fair number of very smart people who are so overwhelmed by negative media that they simply don't do much work. They're convinced we're all screwed and the world will end. They just don't care anymore.
So pirate it, then. Build anyway. Like what Andrew Jackson said: So Congress passed a law? Let them enforce it, then! Just keep doing it. Be revolutionary, stop pandering to the law which is corrupt. Do business anyway. Enough people do it, and the law will change. Or go black market. Worked with prohibition, didn't it? Create new channels to distribute your products and ideas, people will pay for them. Ignore the broken, sluggish behemoth of corporatism and do work anyway. I know, easier said than done :)
ANybody think this is false? Anonymous Coward? Incorrect email address (no 'm' at the end of the url) and incorrect grammar on "We at Kotkin Enterprises know that it's our customers are"..... ? I mean, I don't know ANY professional who is dumb enough to send an email to the internet at large with such glaring errors. I know, grammar nazi, but still....
This happened with Cholera! Read about how cholera's transmission was discovered. The british government at the time denied the science for decades before anything was put in place to stop hundreds/thousands of people from dying.
"John Snow and the Broad Street Pump" don't have the link sorry.
Politics, inertia, is definitely an enemy (if not always intentionally) of science.
and which one might that be? Mine is one of the most efficient out there, and it's upper range is 450 mi when I drive 55 mph straight through on a full tank of gas.
Maybe some of us value our time more than money?
It doesn't take 2 hours to get where I want to go here in Chicago. I walk 2 blocks to the grocery store, 3 to public transit that gets me pretty much anywhere in the cityu I want to go (35 minute ride max, no traffic), and as far as schools go? yeah, 1 block away if I had kids (and pretty decent place from what I understand).
Prices are a bit high, but I don't waste 2.5-3 hours every day commuting, it's time I get to spend with the people I love and doing things that are fulfilling to me.
So please, stop trying to paint it like we're idiots for living in the city. Some people are (L.A. Yeah, you people ARE lead-headed dumbasses for that commute. You better be able to retire in a golden castle.) but many of us enjoy the convenience as well as the additional choices we have in a city: Bike to work, go to the farmer's market to get incredibly delicious, chemical-free foods/meats as opposed to Wal-Mart, and delicious dining experiences that I have never, ever been able to find outside of a city (and yes I've travelled the "flyover" states by car and seen my share). I have the opposite problem: I look at the suburbs and the country and think,"You people are missing out on a wonderful lifestyle... why would you drive 150 miles one way to work? Are you insane?" To each their own, I guess.
I'm pretty sure that we're talking about why so MANY people don't need a smartphone, not whether it's a useful device for people who actually, truly need it. Personally, I'm glad for the rise of smartphones, just not for the douchebags who chumble around acting smug because they bought a piece of technology that they don't use to much effect anyway.
No, I don't. In fact, I can't find a DECENT phone on my carrier.
Upgraded from RAZR which finally fell apart. HTC Freestyle's interface takes more time to use and is more frustrating than the RAZR, and all I get is a camera for it, with a touch interface that is MORE DIFFICULT to use than my previous phone. Isn't technology supposed to make things easier?
I don't use data (I see too many idiots who pay $35 a month to get a couple pictures from friends). I don't use apps.
As a business owner I could probably use a smartphone that takes more time up to "use" than to simply go without. More technology isn't necessarily better, people!
I. Just. Want. A. Phone.
If you want to sell me something else, sell me something that is convenient, easy to use, USEFUL (NOT a consumption device like the iphone), and I will happily pay a nice chunk of money for that device.
How about we stop abusing the countries they live in, and start helping their economies? Or, barring that, leave well enough alone and disentangle ourselves from their insane, thousands-of-years-long holy war?
How about the corporations and government impinging on MY right to picket, protest, speak, search my person, invade my privacy.... huh? You self-righteous assclown.
Yes, I know I get modded down and he'll never see, but what a shitlicker.
Ass someone who has known FBI agents before, they were also self-righteous chunderheads who could see what was right, but not what might be *good*.
What gets me is that you say you accepted their friend requests. Um........ what about being in touch with them? Did anything come of that?
That's what gets me about FB: Just friending someone is supposed to hold some sort of significance.
I had the same thing happen to me, btw, and when they wrote to me asking how I'd been over the last 10 years, I wrote back, asked what was up and how they were, and never got a response from a single one. So I unfriended the hundred or so people who seemed to WANT to seem interested, but actually weren't enough to type a simple email.
And so goes Facebook.
Our high school reunion was ANNOUNCED on facebook. Very few people showed up compared to our total class from 1998, chiefly because I know a lot of those people don't bother with facebook. Personally, I think it's a way for people to get out of holding a proper one and being held accountable, "Oh, you mean you didn't hear? It was announced on facebook!" Bollux. I didn't go. All the comments I read were a bunch of self-important wankers who were still self-important wankers. All the people I actually wanted to meet again don't book face. The casualty is NOT that it isn't necessary, the casualty is that it gives the illusion that it isn't necessary.
They want people to think that something has changed. Let people think they can stop supporting those trying to alter the system, that they can go home. Sorry, but the cover of Time is a worthless gauge of change and while it's a good headline... that's all it is.
Yes, it has. And just look at the beautiful track record it has had! There's a reason it was exempted from the Safe Water Act by Halliburton: Cleaning the shit out of that water is damn expensive, and the waste water has about 750 chemicals in it. Why don't you be the first to have a nice big glass of the stuff and tell us how it tastes?
1) The actual components, the vitamins, minerals, carbs, fat, etc are all explicitly tested and listed, so you have an idea of what you're puting in your body. 2) those ingredients are also monitored closely by the FDA for safety
Call me a little cynical, but wouldn't something like this be gravy for lawyers? release bills that will be locked up in litigation for a decade? That's some tasty dollars they have there.
Oh Melville, you'd be so proud!
Well, try War of the Robots. It was supposed to be a "Star Wars killer". It might just kill you instead :)
So you're willing to express that they're "not shills", but not willing to say who you are? That's.... brilliant. Just brilliant. Way to convince us that you're not just trying to cover up because you happen to be on that list.
Why not add a third house of Congress? Randomly select citizens, like jury duty, who serve a certain number of years, with pay and job security of some sort. ?
I am sick of hearing this. "In the long run"? Show us numbers. Frankly, those are manipulated statistics. They don't take into account 1) The fact that a fund changes managers a number of times over its lifetime. 2) Most funds haven't been in existence long enough to have an "in the long run" track record. 3) You CANNOT (and this is my business, so I know) repeat CANNOT buy a pure index. There is no way to do it without a fee or without some rather questionable strategies for the fund.
Don't parrot Barron's or Money or WSJ or Kramer or whatever "money guru" is writing a book this week. They're just selling you a line, a culture that keep fees rolling into wire houses and (more importantly to them) investors on edge to keep watching their show/reading their books/magazines, trading on emotion.
Funds have a place, a fantastic place, in risk reduction (you just need to know a fair amount/be plugged into enough info to have a good chance at choosing the better ones, and that includes finding the correct fund strategies [and YES, I know retail strategies are bollux compared to the high end market, but hey that's what we've got to work with]). Stocks have a place, too, as risky investments in an individual company. Annuities (insurance), Closed ends, bonds, commodities, gold bullion, arbitrage, whatever.... they all have their place for diversification and strategy.
Sometimes it doesn't even matter if a fund doesn't perform "as well as the index." (by the way, WHICH index?) Often, it's more about people staying calm and invested (or was until the most recent set of bubble-icious crazy markets, cross fingers there) and not making large, costly mistakes due to emotion. Funds help dampen volatility and help keep emotions in check to a certain extent.
To some people performance takes priority (usually analytics, who would tend to read this site), but I can't tell you how many clients have come to us who care less about that extra few percent we squeeze out above our fees and the market, they care more about that number on their statement going down. People have been shown to have a higher emotional reaction to a negative event than to a similarly positive event (-50K vs +50K). It makes most people risk averse in terms of the market, whatever they may tell you (cultural, social issues here, beyond he scope of this). In the end, it's sad to say, but people are driven by either greed or fear.
Also, fund fees are justified if you're finding the right funds. We have a fund that charges 3.5% annual management fee, and you know what? It beats the fucking pants off of EVERY SINGLE ONE of its peers in their entire morningstar category. Hands down, without question. Look at returns minus fees over the long run, and you'll easily screen out the lion's share of all the yahoos who can't tell their profit/loss statements from a hole in the ground. Of course, each of these can be debated, and I welcome that, but these blanket assumptions that average investors make (sorry, I'm making an assumption there about you) are so wildly half-informed that it's no wonder we have so many retirement funds that have been "decimated by the market crash!" They weren't decimated by the market. They were decimated by a lack of prudent financial habits, a lack of planning, and the uninformed investor who didn't seek enough financial education or hire a solid professional to advise them, not fees or IPOs or HFT or any of the other scapegoats out there. Also, this "race to the bottom" idea is also evident in the whole "fees" argument, of which Vanguard is an absurd champion (look at their funds, they suck almost universally over the long term, except for a handful of their bond funds). I find it hilarious that we talk about the race to the bottom on Slashdot, how it's terrible, and yet when it saves one of us a dollar we're all for it. Kind of hypocritical (addressing the group, not you exactly).
People have to get paid something for their advice and their insight, their education and hard work about
Not necessarily true. As a financial adviser who sees all sorts of retail investor strategies I can tell you that buying on dips isn't necessarily bad. It's timing the market, which probably isn't the very best idea, but if he's buying on dips with a consistent strategy then he might be doing alright if he's got a method for selling on the upside too. Also, index funds.... seriously? Dirty word....
The people in China are engineers by name only. This came up some months ago in another thread. I'm sorry, I do not have a citation for that.