I tend to browse the local library rather than the bookstore. My local library even has a coffee shop inside now. So I can browse at the library and if I decide I later want to own the book, I buy it at amazon. I tend to only use the local bookstore anymore for buying gifts.
There is quite a bit of those canned goods so maybe quickly means something like a year or so then.
Are you sure about this? Most industries now keep very little inventory. My guess is that the average house has 2-3 weeks while the average grocery store probably only has 2-3 days. Less than that if there is a run on the store. I've seen shelves almost bare in the store because of a small incoming storm. I doubt (locally at least) that the average town has enough canned good to make it a month. There are probably a few more canned goods if you can get to where it is grown and/or to a distribution center but even then I doubt they have much more than is required to make it to the next harvest.
I'm often an early adopter of technology, but I'm not interested in this type of product until it's far more unobtrusive and obvious.
I'm the exact opposite. I would be more likely to buy it if it was more obtrusive. More to the point, I see little function in a side monitor while on the other hand allowing sunglasses with full overlay I think has alot more potential. For instance being able to enhance the center line on the highway on dark rainy nights or show outlines of constellations at night. I can think of lots of cool uses for a full wraparound wearable HUD but that's not what google glasses is.
We actually had events happen that killed 40 to 50% of the population, its called a plague. These unrealistic scenarios happened every 500 years or so. Even in our modern society if a plague kills so many that medical infrastructure is overwhelmed you can have a vaccine available but lack the means to distribute it or the quantity necessary to vaccinate most of the population.
That's assuming they even have a vaccine. Ebola has no cure and has a 90%+ kill rate. Oh, and it's already in 3 countries and is continuing to spread: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/f...
Engineers may seem practical in a post-apocalypse situation but many engineers would also find their skills useless since the tech tree to apply their skill set may be disrupted or none existent.
I think the real problem is that it's highly likely that the tech tree takes more than a single generation to recover so how do we preserve this "useless" knowledge for multiple generations so that we have it available when the tech tree recovers to the point where it can be utilized again.
if a large portion of the population is killed, food won't be an immediate concern as the canned goods on the shelf of homes and super markets will last for years while production gets sorted out.
Rather than just dying, the more likely scenerio is that a large portion of the population quickly starves to death using up all those canned goods before doing so.
Gunpowder is ridiculously simple to make as are bullets for modern guns.
Blackpowder is easy to make but blackpowder would gum up a modern gun in seconds if it works at all. Casings and primer and smokeless powder are extremely difficult to make. They aren't something you are just going to be able to whip up in your backyard. Especially not safely.
No electricity means your failing at basic engineering. A coil and a moving magnet is not that hard to come by.
I would agree. Unless we end up with something like the show "Revolution" where the laws of physics are turned upside down then having electricity on a small scale isn't a problem. The most likely scenerio in a collapse would be no cleanrooms, no rare elements, and therefore no NEW computers so being able to cobble together existing technologies to help with irrigation systems, etc... would be a highly useful skill. Even in a collapse computers are going to be useful. There will be plenty of tasks that people will want done on computers and they will want someone to be able to repair them and repurpose them to more immediate needs.
If we end up in a scenerio where an EMP, nuclear blast, sun spot, etc... fries all the chips then repurposing old technologies becomes harder but we will still presumably have electricity but might have to rely alot more on crude relays, etc... rather than abandoned computers. In this scenerio a hardware engineer or electrical engineer would have an advantage but most computer programmers have at least been exposed to some of this at some point.
Some studies like medieval gymel are barely useful now. Can you even make a living at that now? Others like blacksmithing are nothing more than entertainment now but would be highly useful in a collapse. I don't think you can discount computer scientists though. Not counting my hobbies, my primary job as a computer programmer is repairing computers, fixing systems, and making stuff work. If we did suffer a total collapse, the problem solving and improvising skills used daily by computer programmers not to mention the broad knowledge base could prove to be useful. Most computer programmers I know are also geeks so they tend to dabble in stuff like bee keeping, appliance repair, blacksmithing, etc... which would also prove to be very useful.
Agree wholeheartedly. We "might" be saturated in physics but I doubt even that. We are no where close to being saturated in biology. We don't understand a single cell, we have yet to create a life from non-living matter, we are no where close on actually creating any type of artificial life and/or artificial intelligence. We have barely scratched the surface of the brain or conscienceness or dna. When we have artificial intelligence, can repair the spine, can repair the brain, understand what causes retardation and autism and can fix it, can cure cancer, can pick and chose dna attributes for children, cure aging, reverse aging, regrow limbs, etc... then we'll talk.
You're already paying this fee. The HFT are already scalping you probably more than this per trade. But you're also apparently a day-trader which is basically a similiar type position as a HFT though not quite as fast. Stocks are shares of a company's current assets and future profits. It makes no sense to have the amount of churn we do as companies assets and profits don't change that fast. In alot of ways we would be better off if there was a higher transaction fee and/or a minimum holding period of 1 hour/day/week. Day trading and HFT is calculated gambling and is a zero sum game. It should be discouraged.
I also wonder how the next generation will fair. It seems like things are getting more and more complex so if you aren't exposed to them early you will have a hard time keeping up. Are we going to get to a point where you need to have a degree just to use a computer. I thought they were suppose to be getting easier for the layman to use.
It seems like the "It Just Works" thing only works with older stuff.
Part of the issue is that people keep expecting things to do more and more. You mention a second monitor. I doubt OS/2 even supported a second monitor. I still marvel at dragging windows around. I remember when it used to be wire frames. Do you know how much more cpu/gpu expensive it is to keep the contents refreshed as you drag a window around the screen. This is extremely unnecessary eyecandy and there are hundreds of things like it that cause modern OSes to consume a huge amount of more resources each generation.
yes, but once it's been out for a while it's patched and/or recognized by virus scanners so you only have to really worry about new threats. If you have an old system that noone is targetting then there are not any new threats to worry about so there is no need for new security patches or virus definitions.
My father in law runs windows 98SE. He says he doesn't have problems with viruses anymore as all the viruses are written for the newer systems. It's not worth people's time to infect an OS with a small userbase.
I preferred Windows 3.11 workgroup edition. I skipped from that to windows 98SE and then to windows XP (with a short detour to OS/2 Warp) I still use windows 98SE in virtualbox and windows XP as dualboot. I've seen no reason to move to something newer yet.
How is it unfair? It's debt slavery. The technology prices everyone out of the market so the rich can own it and reap all the benefits for themselves, while allowing a tiny little bit of the increased productivity to trickle down to those whose roofs they are occupying. Fuck that.
How exactly is it debt slavery? They are paying you. It's no different than you signing a lease to let someone live in your attic.
Uhhh... it's unfair in that solarcity uses the tax benefit/subsidies due the homeowner
The homeowner still benefits by getting a cheaper rate than they would otherwise and although their rate isn't directly regulated, they stay below the price of the utility company that is. I think it is a win-win. As the average person only stays in their house 5-6 years, it doesn't make sense for them to make a 20 year investment in their house. It makes much more sense for a 3rd party to install/maintain the equipment and put a lien against the house. Then when you go to sell the house, the incoming buyer is still just looking at 2 fees (rent + utilties) where in this case the utilities might be on your roof and might eventually go to zero.
1 - 5 cents is the bread and butter of HFT. The fact that it's only < 10 cents that nobody thinks it's that big a deal.
So it sounds like the transaction fee might need to be closer to 10cents per share. HFT exists because the current (transaction fee + transaction cost) is too low. Just like with spam, trying to artificially increasing the transaction cost for an electronic transaction is bound to fail but unlike spam increasing the transaction fee is easy to implement. I don't think you want to eliminate all arbitrage as some can be good for the market. You just want to eliminate the fractional cent arbitrage that doesn't benefit the market but taxes it (both physically and financially) and a small fee would be a perfect solution to this.
This might work or just have the delay a random amount between 1 and 5 seconds but I think the better solution would be to just increase the transaction cost as presumably this is putting a fair amount of load on the system as well. A simple transaction cost of maybe 1cent per share wouldn't affect a normal buyer at all, would bring in money to the exchange but would put a huge damper on buying and selling thousands of shares per second. High Frequency Trading is kindof like email spam. The only do it because it is profitable. A transaction cost should make it unprofitable unless they are scalping. If they are scalping then the best solution is to maybe both increase the transaction cost and add a random delay of 1-5 seconds. The increased transaction cost could also help offset any loss that might come from the reduced volume of trading as presumably they already do get a little something per transaction.
I agree with this in principal but what about software that is still patented by themself or a 3rd party? Also, what about cloud services? Do you release the source of your cloud software too? Although I think the "right" thing to do is to release the source of a product once it is deemed "dead", I see problems with actually requiring this to be done.
Isn't it in a flat desert? couldn't everyone leave by driving in an expanding circle and then at some radius turn toward the nearest road?
They are only allowed to let 1000 cars per hour leave. This seems like a simple solution. The license plate is about as good as any but a drivers license, etc.. might also work. If there are 26k cars and only 1000 cars can leave an hour then letting random letter X go the first hour, etc... seems like a good solution. If there are 13k cars, then letting 2 letters go per hour would work, etc... Basically the same as airlines do. with group 1, group 2, etc... For people who need to catch a flight, etc... and didn't get a good slot you could also allow line jumping for a fee.
Yes, that's exactly what the US wants. Control of all the means of communication, so they can decide who is allowed to talk to whom.
This is the exact reason that we need as many channels controlled by as many different people as possible. I see the USA adding a second channel to Cuba as a good thing even if they have other motives. I would likewise see it as a good thing if Cuba, China, etc, added another communicaton channel in the USA. When I want to know what's really happening I typically try to cross check the US media with the BBC or countries hostile to the US to see the rest of the story.
I don't think we should be sending "suicide missions" to mars. I think the first step is to send (or presend) enough equipment to offer them a reasonable chance of surviving. We can put those same life insurance underwriters to good use. We would need to define what a "reasonable chance" would be but something like "an 80% chance of living for 5 years" or "a 60% chance of living for 10 years" That's probably well outside of NASA's safety range but probably still lower than certain frontline military operations which we unfortunately do all the time.
It's not a debatable issue. If you find debate in the granting of equal and human rights ( love? ) then you are a bad person.
Gay marriage is not a human rights issue. It's a civil rights issue. A human rights issue would be if they were going to jail. They are just not being allowed to collect the extra money government gives married people.
Furthermore, unlike a human right, it's an arbitrary right with more than one correct solution.
My preferred solution would be to treat all people the same regardless of marriage status or living arrangement. It seems silly to treat married couples, unmarried couples living together, married couples not living together, siblings living together, someone taking care of an elderly relative, etc... each differently. It should be none of the government's business. They shouldn't even ask about your marital status or your living arrangements. The only question they should possibly ask might be number of dependents.
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I tend to browse the local library rather than the bookstore. My local library even
has a coffee shop inside now. So I can browse at the library and if I decide I later
want to own the book, I buy it at amazon. I tend to only use the local bookstore
anymore for buying gifts.
There is quite a bit of those canned goods so maybe quickly means something like a year or so then.
Are you sure about this? Most industries now keep very little inventory.
My guess is that the average house has 2-3 weeks while the average grocery store probably only has
2-3 days. Less than that if there is a run on the store. I've seen shelves almost bare in the store
because of a small incoming storm. I doubt (locally at least) that the average town has enough canned
good to make it a month. There are probably a few more canned goods if you can get to where it is grown
and/or to a distribution center but even then I doubt they have much more than is required to make it to
the next harvest.
I'm often an early adopter of technology, but I'm not interested in this type of product until it's far more unobtrusive and obvious.
I'm the exact opposite. I would be more likely to buy it if it was more obtrusive. More to the point, I see little function in a side monitor
while on the other hand allowing sunglasses with full overlay I think has alot more potential. For instance being able to enhance the
center line on the highway on dark rainy nights or show outlines of constellations at night. I can think of lots of cool uses for a full
wraparound wearable HUD but that's not what google glasses is.
We actually had events happen that killed 40 to 50% of the population, its called a plague. These unrealistic scenarios happened every 500 years or so. Even in our modern society if a plague kills so many that medical infrastructure is overwhelmed you can have a vaccine available but lack the means to distribute it or the quantity necessary to vaccinate most of the population.
That's assuming they even have a vaccine. Ebola has no cure and has a 90%+ kill rate.
Oh, and it's already in 3 countries and is continuing to spread: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/f...
Engineers may seem practical in a post-apocalypse situation but many engineers would also find their skills useless since the tech tree to apply their skill set may be disrupted or none existent.
I think the real problem is that it's highly likely that the tech tree takes more than a single generation to recover so
how do we preserve this "useless" knowledge for multiple generations so that we have it available when the tech
tree recovers to the point where it can be utilized again.
if a large portion of the population is killed, food won't be an immediate concern as the canned goods on the shelf of homes and super markets will last for years while production gets sorted out.
Rather than just dying, the more likely scenerio is that a large portion of the population quickly starves to death
using up all those canned goods before doing so.
Gunpowder is ridiculously simple to make as are bullets for modern guns.
Blackpowder is easy to make but blackpowder would gum up a modern gun in seconds if it works at all.
Casings and primer and smokeless powder are extremely difficult to make. They aren't something
you are just going to be able to whip up in your backyard. Especially not safely.
No electricity means your failing at basic engineering. A coil and a moving magnet is not that hard to come by.
I would agree. Unless we end up with something like the show "Revolution" where the laws of physics are turned upside down
then having electricity on a small scale isn't a problem. The most likely scenerio in a collapse would be no cleanrooms, no
rare elements, and therefore no NEW computers so being able to cobble together existing technologies to help with irrigation
systems, etc... would be a highly useful skill. Even in a collapse computers are going to be useful. There will be plenty of tasks
that people will want done on computers and they will want someone to be able to repair them and repurpose them to more
immediate needs.
If we end up in a scenerio where an EMP, nuclear blast, sun spot, etc... fries all the chips then repurposing old technologies
becomes harder but we will still presumably have electricity but might have to rely alot more on crude relays, etc... rather
than abandoned computers. In this scenerio a hardware engineer or electrical engineer would have an advantage but most
computer programmers have at least been exposed to some of this at some point.
Some studies like medieval gymel are barely useful now. Can you even make a living at that now?
Others like blacksmithing are nothing more than entertainment now but would be highly useful in a collapse.
I don't think you can discount computer scientists though. Not counting my hobbies, my primary job as
a computer programmer is repairing computers, fixing systems, and making stuff work.
If we did suffer a total collapse, the problem solving and improvising skills used daily by computer
programmers not to mention the broad knowledge base could prove to be useful.
Most computer programmers I know are also geeks so they tend to dabble in stuff like bee keeping,
appliance repair, blacksmithing, etc... which would also prove to be very useful.
Agree wholeheartedly. We "might" be saturated in physics but I doubt even that.
We are no where close to being saturated in biology. We don't understand a single
cell, we have yet to create a life from non-living matter, we are no where close on
actually creating any type of artificial life and/or artificial intelligence. We have
barely scratched the surface of the brain or conscienceness or dna. When we have
artificial intelligence, can repair the spine, can repair the brain, understand what
causes retardation and autism and can fix it, can cure cancer, can pick and chose
dna attributes for children, cure aging, reverse aging, regrow limbs, etc... then we'll talk.
You're already paying this fee. The HFT are already scalping you probably more than this per trade.
But you're also apparently a day-trader which is basically a similiar type position as a HFT though
not quite as fast. Stocks are shares of a company's current assets and future profits. It makes no
sense to have the amount of churn we do as companies assets and profits don't change that fast.
In alot of ways we would be better off if there was a higher transaction fee and/or a minimum holding
period of 1 hour/day/week. Day trading and HFT is calculated gambling and is a zero sum game.
It should be discouraged.
I also wonder how the next generation will fair. It seems like things are getting more and more complex
so if you aren't exposed to them early you will have a hard time keeping up. Are we going to get to a
point where you need to have a degree just to use a computer. I thought they were suppose to be
getting easier for the layman to use.
It seems like the "It Just Works" thing only works with older stuff.
Part of the issue is that people keep expecting things to do more and more. You mention a second monitor.
I doubt OS/2 even supported a second monitor. I still marvel at dragging windows around. I remember when
it used to be wire frames. Do you know how much more cpu/gpu expensive it is to keep the contents refreshed
as you drag a window around the screen. This is extremely unnecessary eyecandy and there are hundreds
of things like it that cause modern OSes to consume a huge amount of more resources each generation.
yes, but once it's been out for a while it's patched and/or recognized by virus scanners so you only
have to really worry about new threats. If you have an old system that noone is targetting then there
are not any new threats to worry about so there is no need for new security patches or virus definitions.
My father in law runs windows 98SE. He says he doesn't have problems with viruses anymore
as all the viruses are written for the newer systems. It's not worth people's time to infect an OS
with a small userbase.
I preferred Windows 3.11 workgroup edition.
I skipped from that to windows 98SE
and then to windows XP (with a short detour to OS/2 Warp)
I still use windows 98SE in virtualbox and windows XP as dualboot.
I've seen no reason to move to something newer yet.
How is it unfair? It's debt slavery. The technology prices everyone out of the market so the rich can own it and reap all the benefits for themselves, while allowing a tiny little bit of the increased productivity to trickle down to those whose roofs they are occupying. Fuck that.
How exactly is it debt slavery? They are paying you.
It's no different than you signing a lease to let someone live in your attic.
Uhhh... it's unfair in that solarcity uses the tax benefit/subsidies due the homeowner
The homeowner still benefits by getting a cheaper rate than they would otherwise and although their rate isn't directly
regulated, they stay below the price of the utility company that is. I think it is a win-win.
As the average person only stays in their house 5-6 years, it doesn't make sense for them to make a 20 year investment
in their house. It makes much more sense for a 3rd party to install/maintain the equipment and put a lien against the house.
Then when you go to sell the house, the incoming buyer is still just looking at 2 fees (rent + utilties) where in this case
the utilities might be on your roof and might eventually go to zero.
1 - 5 cents is the bread and butter of HFT. The fact that it's only < 10 cents that nobody thinks it's that big a deal.
So it sounds like the transaction fee might need to be closer to 10cents per share.
HFT exists because the current (transaction fee + transaction cost) is too low. Just like with spam, trying to
artificially increasing the transaction cost for an electronic transaction is bound to fail but unlike spam
increasing the transaction fee is easy to implement.
I don't think you want to eliminate all arbitrage as some can be good for the market. You just want to
eliminate the fractional cent arbitrage that doesn't benefit the market but taxes it (both physically and financially)
and a small fee would be a perfect solution to this.
This might work or just have the delay a random amount between 1 and 5 seconds but I
think the better solution would be to just increase the transaction cost as presumably this
is putting a fair amount of load on the system as well.
A simple transaction cost of maybe 1cent per share wouldn't affect a normal buyer at all,
would bring in money to the exchange but would put a huge damper on buying and selling
thousands of shares per second.
High Frequency Trading is kindof like email spam. The only do it because it is profitable.
A transaction cost should make it unprofitable unless they are scalping. If they are
scalping then the best solution is to maybe both increase the transaction cost and
add a random delay of 1-5 seconds. The increased transaction cost could also help
offset any loss that might come from the reduced volume of trading as presumably they
already do get a little something per transaction.
I agree with this in principal but what about software that is still patented by themself or a 3rd party?
Also, what about cloud services? Do you release the source of your cloud software too?
Although I think the "right" thing to do is to release the source of a product once it is deemed "dead", I see
problems with actually requiring this to be done.
Isn't it in a flat desert? couldn't everyone leave by driving in an expanding circle and then at some radius turn toward the nearest road?
They are only allowed to let 1000 cars per hour leave. This seems like a simple solution. The license plate is about as good as any
but a drivers license, etc.. might also work. If there are 26k cars and only 1000 cars can leave an hour then letting random letter X
go the first hour, etc... seems like a good solution. If there are 13k cars, then letting 2 letters go per hour would work, etc...
Basically the same as airlines do. with group 1, group 2, etc...
For people who need to catch a flight, etc... and didn't get a good slot you could also allow line jumping for a fee.
Yes, that's exactly what the US wants. Control of all the means of communication, so they can decide who is allowed to talk to whom.
This is the exact reason that we need as many channels controlled by as many different people as possible.
I see the USA adding a second channel to Cuba as a good thing even if they have other motives.
I would likewise see it as a good thing if Cuba, China, etc, added another communicaton channel in the USA.
When I want to know what's really happening I typically try to cross check the US media with the BBC or
countries hostile to the US to see the rest of the story.
I don't think we should be sending "suicide missions" to mars.
I think the first step is to send (or presend) enough equipment to offer them a reasonable chance of surviving.
We can put those same life insurance underwriters to good use.
We would need to define what a "reasonable chance" would be but something like
"an 80% chance of living for 5 years" or "a 60% chance of living for 10 years"
That's probably well outside of NASA's safety range but probably still lower than
certain frontline military operations which we unfortunately do all the time.
It's not a debatable issue. If you find debate in the granting of equal and human rights ( love? ) then you are a bad person.
Gay marriage is not a human rights issue. It's a civil rights issue. A human rights issue would be if they were going to jail.
They are just not being allowed to collect the extra money government gives married people.
Furthermore, unlike a human right, it's an arbitrary right with more than one correct solution.
My preferred solution would be to treat all people the same regardless of marriage status or living arrangement.
It seems silly to treat married couples, unmarried couples living together, married couples not living together,
siblings living together, someone taking care of an elderly relative, etc... each differently.
It should be none of the government's business.
They shouldn't even ask about your marital status or your living arrangements.
The only question they should possibly ask might be number of dependents.