1) Contractually agree to sell $amount Bitcoins on $date for $price near the current price.
2) When the going rate drops, actually buy $amount and hold them.
3) Wait until $date, then fulfill the contract, and sell them at the agreed $price.
You know, like shorting any other stock or commodity. The only difference is that without as large market as most stocks and commodities have, finding a schmuck to take the other side of the contract isn't so easy.
The fundamental point of the economy is to let people get what they want. Ideally, if I want a product, I will be able to get it, and the person I got it from will be able to get whatever he wants, too. Volume is king.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether a loaf of bread costs $1 or $100, as long as people can get a loaf of bread when they want it without too much hassle. It doesn't matter that trillions of dollars got dumped into some particular accounts, as long as those trillions are quickly used for more trade. It is indeed what people feel that matters the most. If people are confident that they'll be able to buy groceries next month, they'll buy their kid a toy this month, sending money back around the economic machine for another round.
Dumping money into the economy postpones and spreads out the impact of a crash. Generally, when the stock market crashes and people see their money's numeric value decline rapidly, they stop buying goods, halting the all-important trade. By dumping money into the market, the government can keep those indicators from falling too far too fast, so while people may reduce their trade somewhat, there's no panic. Over time that money can be pulled out of the market again slowly (through taxes, indirect costs, etc.), but people won't notice the gradual change. They'll still know that they have enough money to get what they want, and that's all that matters.
If your 401(k) retirement savings are getting high return, they probably also have a high risk. Whether that's right for you or not depends on how close you are to retiring, but generally speaking, a modest return from a retirement plan is a safe idea. If you want to gamble on high-return stocks, use disposable money for that.
And DSL at #60, Tiny Core at #50, and PC-BSD at #40.
I did say it's unscientific, but my point stands. We don't get release notices for most of the more-popular distros, so the promotion of DragonFly seems suspicious.
Has anybody else noticed that over the last decade, almost all of the DragonFlyBSD release stories have been posted by timothy, and the majority of those were submitted anonymously?
It's not a particularly popular distro, coming in at #77 today, in an unscientific poll. I get that it's news for nerds, but I'm starting to suspect a wee bit of bias.
In long, paying a higher minimum wage increases the minimum cost of doing business, so in a globalized market, there's a strong incentive to simply not provide the service in that location, or to charge a significantly higher price for the same service. The usual result is localized inflation, where service providers raise prices consistently with cost increases, so even though the numeric value of the average income is rising, the purchasing power stays the same. In response to the "sticker shock" of rising prices, consumers may try to cut back on spending, which further impacts corporate profits, providing a further incentive to raise prices (or cut jobs). It's a vicious cycle.
...so somehow the AI knows what it's looking at before it triggers the camera?
The "smart" cameras we use today record constantly, then just discard anything that doesn't meet certain criteria. They do not have any particular intent for what they photograph, nor any understanding of the larger goal. A manufacturing line's barcode scanner has no interest in whether the product is good or not. That's still the job of the humans in charge.
Pulling a gun trigger is, from a technological standpoint, no different than snapping a camera's shutter.
Certainly true from a technological standpoint, but how many AI-driven artistic photographers are out there? Sure, there's plenty of automatic cameras, snapping away every few seconds for surveillance, but there's no decision-making process there.
We could build a robot to drive down the street firing a flamethrower in every direction, but we don't. We could build random-walking submarine mine-layers, but we don't. Drones are no different. We could wire up a glider to shoot anything that moves under it, but we don't. That's a waste of ammunition and not particularly likely to actually accomplish anything productive. Instead, the drones are used as extra air coverage without putting pilots at risk. They are capable of fully-autonomous takeoff and landing, where the latency to the pilot's controls could cause a crash, but during regular flight operations they are simply remote-controlled.
Agreed. The big reason why nukes are bad is that there really is no way to use them without harming civilians. Even the smallest nuclear weapon, suitable for destroying just an enemy base, is still very likely to produce fallout that will spread to civilian populations.
Drones are not fully-automated killing machines. They aren't just thrown in the sky to exterminate an area. They're still piloted by humans from a distance. Yes, there are still civilian casualties, but that's not because the weapon of choice is remote-controlled.
Shop, band, and home ec' classes are all general-knowledge classes, whose principles apply to many aspects of life later on, regardless of what career path you choose.
An MCSE certification is only useful in one particular field, under very particular circumstances. It looks good to parents, because every individual parent is going to be happy that their kid has a promising future in computers, but the reality is that most of those high-schoolers won't actually take a computer career, and most of those that eventually do will have another several years of college to learn other general skills before they'll (maybe) use that certified knowledge.
The problem with certifications is that they date so quickly as versions and products come and go.
Of course. A high-schooler getting a MS certification now will be ready to spend a hefty chunk of student-loan cash to get the up-to-date version as soon as their next graduation rolls around, just to avoid looking like they've been ignoring the real world while in that ivory tower.
Microsoft comes away profiting and looking like a hero.
If you like your lying troll, you can keep your lying troll.
Medical providers are not required to accept any particular insurance if they don't want to. Most do, out of the desire to help their customers (because, as you've so nicely illustrated, the customers expect it now), but there's no regulation I know of that requires it.
If your particular insurance isn't accepted by the hospital, you're still responsible for paying the bill, and the insurance company is still responsible for covering the cost, but it's just more difficult now. The patient has to make the claim to the insurer, and the insurer eventually writes a big check to the patient. The patient then pays the hospital.
So in other words, it's exactly like a commercial package, except the support staff are on your payroll rather than someone else's, so you actually get something set for your needs rather than whatever the salesman was pushing.
I have every bill and major receipt received since 2008. I keep them in a small filing cabinet, organized by category (current employment, old health insurance, car paperwork, etc.), and I cull the oldest crap when it gets too full.
I recently had to apply for a US security clearance, which involves filling out a nice big form detailing every residence you've had for the past decade, and in some cases they even want account numbers for utilities and such. I had mine accessible.
Or even if flagged for an audit, as I was, they're able to justify the deductions... Yes, I really did go to grad school, even though the university never filed their paperwork to show my tuition. The supplies and equipment I donated to my church could be deducted, but I just had to get my minister to write a quick signed letter. The investment income I had that year wasn't all taxable, so it didn't all need to be declared as taxable income like the IRS claimed.
Software's great for an estimate, and those estimates get closer every time I try my own hand at my taxes, but there's really no substitute for having a skilled professional look at your finances and figure out the correct arrangement. It's not even a matter of actually evading taxes, but legitimate deductions that the software could ask about, but the user won't understand.
He also warns against organizations justifying the shift to open source software on the grounds that it will save money, arguing this approach is always likely to fail.
Meh... maybe.
FLOSS changes the costs. You spend more in training, but save on material. If your organization already has significant training procedures to accommodate big processes (like, say, a government would have), you'll probably come out ahead on the deal. If you have an office of 50 people who were all hired already knowing Microsoft's products, you can expect significant retraining costs that might exceed what you'll save on licensing.
Of course, managers who are focused solely on the cost will decline any training investment, figuring that it's similar enough to older Microsoft offerings that there should be no problem. Then when the users complain that they don't know the software, they blame the software for the failure.
Exactly. Every supervisor I've had for the past decade has known that I read Slashdot on the job. They also know that I deliver good results on time, and work extra without hesitation if needed. It should always be the results that matter.
"Why were you in the alley for 45 minutes?"
"I had an informant who didn't want to be seen talking"
"Oh, okay."
I don't see the problem here. You're on the job, so you should be doing your job. If a supervisor wants to question the way you do it and monitor your movements, fine. Let them... then they have no excuse for any poor performance, because they've been watching it the whole time, right?
Your rephrasing is totally unrelated to my comment. How exactly is someone supposed to know what laws will affect them before they know what they're going to do for the rest of their life?
Common sense, first of all. Does it harm someone or something? Could it easily harm someone or something if misused? Does it interrupt any other government function? Have you ever heard of someone getting in trouble for anything similar?
When the answer to any of those questions is "yes", it warrants further investigation. Go to a library. Ask the librarian for help. They actually do far more than just point out books. Often, they can help you with understanding the law in question (though note that they are not authoritative sources of legal advice... those are lawyers).
Don't just assume that laws are complicated. Here'sa fewexamplesof lawschosennearlyat random. They're all pretty simple to read, though a few of them require skipping over large definition sections or clarifying clauses. In fact, consider this a challenge: Find me an American law that can't be understood with high-school reading skills.
For perspective, $1 million is like having a $30K salary for 30 years* that you don't have to actually work for, while you can continue to work on other projects or more fun jobs. With a "regular" job that pays the bills, $1 million is a pretty luxurious two-week vacation every year for fifty years. With a healthy retirement plan already in place, $1 million is a decent second home on a lake somewhere, with a savings fund to cover the upkeep. As a point on a résumé, $1 million is a pretty bold statement that you have enough dedication and business sense to get an idea off the ground, and enough creativity to bring good ideas to a prospective employer.
I'll take the million, thanks.
* 20 years after taxes, if you won't spend the few thousand dollars to get a good accountant to avoid those.
...triggered in part by an 'unfavorable change in the Administration' clause in some contracts...
Perhaps not in contracts, but in my time working in finance, I have seen investment strategies planned heavily on the outcome of a single election, considering ramifications for a few years in advance.
While I never saw anything as ridiculous as "sell all of $SECURITY if $CANDIDATE wins", I did encounter plans like "if $CANDIDATE wins, move into $SECURITY until $PROMISE happens, then move out of $LOSER1 or $LOSER2 as appropriate".
Slashdot Mirror
One simple trick to short Bitcoins:
1) Contractually agree to sell $amount Bitcoins on $date for $price near the current price.
2) When the going rate drops, actually buy $amount and hold them.
3) Wait until $date, then fulfill the contract, and sell them at the agreed $price.
You know, like shorting any other stock or commodity. The only difference is that without as large market as most stocks and commodities have, finding a schmuck to take the other side of the contract isn't so easy.
This, so very much.
The fundamental point of the economy is to let people get what they want. Ideally, if I want a product, I will be able to get it, and the person I got it from will be able to get whatever he wants, too. Volume is king.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether a loaf of bread costs $1 or $100, as long as people can get a loaf of bread when they want it without too much hassle. It doesn't matter that trillions of dollars got dumped into some particular accounts, as long as those trillions are quickly used for more trade. It is indeed what people feel that matters the most. If people are confident that they'll be able to buy groceries next month, they'll buy their kid a toy this month, sending money back around the economic machine for another round.
Dumping money into the economy postpones and spreads out the impact of a crash. Generally, when the stock market crashes and people see their money's numeric value decline rapidly, they stop buying goods, halting the all-important trade. By dumping money into the market, the government can keep those indicators from falling too far too fast, so while people may reduce their trade somewhat, there's no panic. Over time that money can be pulled out of the market again slowly (through taxes, indirect costs, etc.), but people won't notice the gradual change. They'll still know that they have enough money to get what they want, and that's all that matters.
If your 401(k) retirement savings are getting high return, they probably also have a high risk. Whether that's right for you or not depends on how close you are to retiring, but generally speaking, a modest return from a retirement plan is a safe idea. If you want to gamble on high-return stocks, use disposable money for that.
And yet you commented only 16 minutes after the AC...
And DSL at #60, Tiny Core at #50, and PC-BSD at #40.
I did say it's unscientific, but my point stands. We don't get release notices for most of the more-popular distros, so the promotion of DragonFly seems suspicious.
Has anybody else noticed that over the last decade, almost all of the DragonFlyBSD release stories have been posted by timothy, and the majority of those were submitted anonymously?
It's not a particularly popular distro, coming in at #77 today, in an unscientific poll. I get that it's news for nerds, but I'm starting to suspect a wee bit of bias.
In short, yes.
In not-so-short, it's complicated.
In long, paying a higher minimum wage increases the minimum cost of doing business, so in a globalized market, there's a strong incentive to simply not provide the service in that location, or to charge a significantly higher price for the same service. The usual result is localized inflation, where service providers raise prices consistently with cost increases, so even though the numeric value of the average income is rising, the purchasing power stays the same. In response to the "sticker shock" of rising prices, consumers may try to cut back on spending, which further impacts corporate profits, providing a further incentive to raise prices (or cut jobs). It's a vicious cycle.
...so somehow the AI knows what it's looking at before it triggers the camera?
The "smart" cameras we use today record constantly, then just discard anything that doesn't meet certain criteria. They do not have any particular intent for what they photograph, nor any understanding of the larger goal. A manufacturing line's barcode scanner has no interest in whether the product is good or not. That's still the job of the humans in charge.
Pulling a gun trigger is, from a technological standpoint, no different than snapping a camera's shutter.
Certainly true from a technological standpoint, but how many AI-driven artistic photographers are out there? Sure, there's plenty of automatic cameras, snapping away every few seconds for surveillance, but there's no decision-making process there.
We could build a robot to drive down the street firing a flamethrower in every direction, but we don't. We could build random-walking submarine mine-layers, but we don't. Drones are no different. We could wire up a glider to shoot anything that moves under it, but we don't. That's a waste of ammunition and not particularly likely to actually accomplish anything productive. Instead, the drones are used as extra air coverage without putting pilots at risk. They are capable of fully-autonomous takeoff and landing, where the latency to the pilot's controls could cause a crash, but during regular flight operations they are simply remote-controlled.
Agreed. The big reason why nukes are bad is that there really is no way to use them without harming civilians. Even the smallest nuclear weapon, suitable for destroying just an enemy base, is still very likely to produce fallout that will spread to civilian populations.
Drones are not fully-automated killing machines. They aren't just thrown in the sky to exterminate an area. They're still piloted by humans from a distance. Yes, there are still civilian casualties, but that's not because the weapon of choice is remote-controlled.
Shop, band, and home ec' classes are all general-knowledge classes, whose principles apply to many aspects of life later on, regardless of what career path you choose.
An MCSE certification is only useful in one particular field, under very particular circumstances. It looks good to parents, because every individual parent is going to be happy that their kid has a promising future in computers, but the reality is that most of those high-schoolers won't actually take a computer career, and most of those that eventually do will have another several years of college to learn other general skills before they'll (maybe) use that certified knowledge.
The problem with certifications is that they date so quickly as versions and products come and go.
Of course. A high-schooler getting a MS certification now will be ready to spend a hefty chunk of student-loan cash to get the up-to-date version as soon as their next graduation rolls around, just to avoid looking like they've been ignoring the real world while in that ivory tower.
Microsoft comes away profiting and looking like a hero.
If you like your lying troll, you can keep your lying troll.
Medical providers are not required to accept any particular insurance if they don't want to. Most do, out of the desire to help their customers (because, as you've so nicely illustrated, the customers expect it now), but there's no regulation I know of that requires it.
If your particular insurance isn't accepted by the hospital, you're still responsible for paying the bill, and the insurance company is still responsible for covering the cost, but it's just more difficult now. The patient has to make the claim to the insurer, and the insurer eventually writes a big check to the patient. The patient then pays the hospital.
You know... the way it's always been.
So in other words, it's exactly like a commercial package, except the support staff are on your payroll rather than someone else's, so you actually get something set for your needs rather than whatever the salesman was pushing.
Uh... I do?
I have every bill and major receipt received since 2008. I keep them in a small filing cabinet, organized by category (current employment, old health insurance, car paperwork, etc.), and I cull the oldest crap when it gets too full.
I recently had to apply for a US security clearance, which involves filling out a nice big form detailing every residence you've had for the past decade, and in some cases they even want account numbers for utilities and such. I had mine accessible.
Or even if flagged for an audit, as I was, they're able to justify the deductions... Yes, I really did go to grad school, even though the university never filed their paperwork to show my tuition. The supplies and equipment I donated to my church could be deducted, but I just had to get my minister to write a quick signed letter. The investment income I had that year wasn't all taxable, so it didn't all need to be declared as taxable income like the IRS claimed.
Software's great for an estimate, and those estimates get closer every time I try my own hand at my taxes, but there's really no substitute for having a skilled professional look at your finances and figure out the correct arrangement. It's not even a matter of actually evading taxes, but legitimate deductions that the software could ask about, but the user won't understand.
He also warns against organizations justifying the shift to open source software on the grounds that it will save money, arguing this approach is always likely to fail.
Meh... maybe.
FLOSS changes the costs. You spend more in training, but save on material. If your organization already has significant training procedures to accommodate big processes (like, say, a government would have), you'll probably come out ahead on the deal. If you have an office of 50 people who were all hired already knowing Microsoft's products, you can expect significant retraining costs that might exceed what you'll save on licensing.
Of course, managers who are focused solely on the cost will decline any training investment, figuring that it's similar enough to older Microsoft offerings that there should be no problem. Then when the users complain that they don't know the software, they blame the software for the failure.
Violent crime is a growing problem.
The perpetrators often have had problems growing to maturity as members of civilized society.
Exactly. Every supervisor I've had for the past decade has known that I read Slashdot on the job. They also know that I deliver good results on time, and work extra without hesitation if needed. It should always be the results that matter.
"Why were you in the alley for 45 minutes?"
"I had an informant who didn't want to be seen talking"
"Oh, okay."
I don't see the problem here. You're on the job, so you should be doing your job. If a supervisor wants to question the way you do it and monitor your movements, fine. Let them... then they have no excuse for any poor performance, because they've been watching it the whole time, right?
"How it applies to the facts" is case law, and that's a completely separate matter to how the text of the law itself is written.
Again, step 1: Take a civics course.
Your rephrasing is totally unrelated to my comment. How exactly is someone supposed to know what laws will affect them before they know what they're going to do for the rest of their life?
Common sense, first of all. Does it harm someone or something? Could it easily harm someone or something if misused? Does it interrupt any other government function? Have you ever heard of someone getting in trouble for anything similar?
When the answer to any of those questions is "yes", it warrants further investigation. Go to a library. Ask the librarian for help. They actually do far more than just point out books. Often, they can help you with understanding the law in question (though note that they are not authoritative sources of legal advice... those are lawyers).
Don't just assume that laws are complicated. Here's a few examples of laws chosen nearly at random. They're all pretty simple to read, though a few of them require skipping over large definition sections or clarifying clauses. In fact, consider this a challenge: Find me an American law that can't be understood with high-school reading skills.
For perspective, $1 million is like having a $30K salary for 30 years* that you don't have to actually work for, while you can continue to work on other projects or more fun jobs. With a "regular" job that pays the bills, $1 million is a pretty luxurious two-week vacation every year for fifty years. With a healthy retirement plan already in place, $1 million is a decent second home on a lake somewhere, with a savings fund to cover the upkeep. As a point on a résumé, $1 million is a pretty bold statement that you have enough dedication and business sense to get an idea off the ground, and enough creativity to bring good ideas to a prospective employer.
I'll take the million, thanks.
* 20 years after taxes, if you won't spend the few thousand dollars to get a good accountant to avoid those.
...triggered in part by an 'unfavorable change in the Administration' clause in some contracts...
Perhaps not in contracts, but in my time working in finance, I have seen investment strategies planned heavily on the outcome of a single election, considering ramifications for a few years in advance.
While I never saw anything as ridiculous as "sell all of $SECURITY if $CANDIDATE wins", I did encounter plans like "if $CANDIDATE wins, move into $SECURITY until $PROMISE happens, then move out of $LOSER1 or $LOSER2 as appropriate".