"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." - President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." - Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." - Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry ( D-MA), and others Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." - Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"There is no doubt that... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." - Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL,) and others, December 5, 2001
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." - Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Sept. 19, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." - Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), Oct. 3, 2002
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA), Oct. 9, 2002
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and w! ill likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in devel
Craigslist has a "moral compass" when it has categories like "men seeking men", "women seek women", and "casual encounters"?
Is there something innately immoral about men seeking women online or vice versa? I can understand your contention that "casual encounters" is by its very name "sketchy", but the same is not true of the former two. Many normal, even "moral", people have met through online dating services. The pickings may be very slim to non-existant on Craigslist, but what's your beef....?
I buy/download the majority of my iTunes music at work. I'd really like to keep the music synchronized automatically somehow. Does anyone know of a way to either fool iTMS into allowing you to download music onto another computer (I've authorized both) or somehow automatically sync them with some 3rd party software. I suppose I could carry my work laptop home or copy them as FILES (not music) to my iPod...but that's a pain in the ass.
What you are arguing essentially is that NO human activity that involves risk or that does not return a profit immediately is worth investing in.
You said:
No I'm not... Not by a long shot. The fact that you think so just shows that this conversation is going nowhere.
As I've said, I think stocks are the equivalent of a pyramid scheme. I'm not saying they are over-valued, I'm saying they have no value themselves...
It's like currency without anybody backing it up. It has no value of it's own... You buy it depending on the idea that somebody else will believe it has value, and be willing to give you something that is valuable in exchange for it.
Stocks have this self-perpetuating value.
First and foremost, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but NO hard currency TODAY gives you any gauratanee of value. It, too, depends on other people finding your currency approximately as valuable as you did when you acquired it. The US government will NOT exchange your US dollars for gold, silver, or any other "valuable" asset at ANY fixed rate now (we stopped doing that many years ago). In other words, while 1000 USD may buy you X ounces of gold today, people may lose faith in US currency and that same 1000 dollars 10 years from now may not even buy you a fraction of an ounce [or even of bread, wheat, or other more practical essentials]. Conversely, that gold may drastically lose value relative to cash or any other asset so as to become essentially worthless. There is no automatic way to convert gold into food to feed your family, cloth yourself, and so on. The value is equally market driven, even if you might argue that it has some nominal utilitarian value in the event of a market crash. I believe your false perception of some absolute and constant value in ANY asset is the root of your false perception that stocks are somehow wholly different. Every asset you can think of to place your money in is ultimately valued on the market and CAN lose its relative value (or exchangability for any other asset on the market). Stocks may be amongst the riskiest or most volatile, but you also are compensated for this risk.
Second, stocks DO have some store of value outside of its secondary value on the markets. You are REALLY confused here; the entire market just doesn't exist "just because". If you own 10% of a stock in a company, then you own 10% of the company's equity (Assets - Liabilities) and its potential cash flows. If you own 10% of a company like MS (with negligible liabilities), then you do own at least 10% of 6 billion dollars in cash, plus the "value" of their intellectual property (its ability to earn cash in the near future), plus its other assets (e.g., property in Redmond), and so on. The fact is that certain wealthy business people have made whole careers out of acquiring enough shares of particular companies (for less than its "worth"), getting control, and then liquidating its assets for a very tidy profit. Now, of course, you can argue that, say, MS could get sued tomorrow and lose that money, or they could opt not to return that cash to investors and eventually lose it, and so on, but the same is really true of debt too. Even if you have a guarantee from the debtor that you'll be payed X dollars by date Y, that debtor could go bankrupt, could get hit by an asteroid, and so on. It may be true that more times than not you'll get more cash on secondary markets for that stock and that it is far more liquid on secondary markets, i.e., the stock market, but you'd be wrong to assume that this is the ONLY value.
Third, the fact is that SOME privately held companies exist without ANY viable secondary market to sell or exchange their shares to (or even the possiblity of this--witness the thousands of restaurants across the country). They make money with the equity value itself. In other words, the investors put up, say, 10 million dollars t
That's been exactly my point from the beginning. Stocks are a pyramid scheme. Money moves around, all to get a piece of paper that has nominal real value, because one person believes that there will always be somebody else that wants to do the same thing.
[snip]
Very well, but the stock prices have nothing to do with the value of a company. Growth or Drop, stocks are worth what you think other people will be willing to pay for them, and not based upon the ammount of cash reserves you think the company will have in the future.
I believe in dividend stocks, because they do have a very real value to them... Non-dividend stocks, however, have practically no value to them at all. It's purely a numbers game. You have to try to buy it when people think it's not worth much, but you think that they will think more of it in time. The price is related to the company, only in the buzz-word sense. If some expert says Microsoft's new filesystem is going to take over the world, stock price goes up. It's pure hype, everywhere.
I'm not arguing that Microsoft is properly priced TODAY or even that most of these stocks are. However, it is quite irrational to argue that the only way to value a stock is based on its dividends or that growth prospects cannot or should not be factored into valuation. Even those dividends aren't a gaurantee. No investment gives you any gaurantees; it's all relative. Even if you buy, say, gold (or a house), you're buying it at a MARKET price. That price can fall or rise based on demand or changes in supply (someone could discover a way to cheaply create gold at an atomic level, new vast mines, etc). Do not confuse the secondary market price with value. The real difference between stocks (particular tech stocks), bonds, and other forms of investment is the levels of risk and return offered. With stocks, you have much greater prospects of higher returns, so you have much higher valuations and you also have greater volatility in risk, so you have huge fluxations. ALL things are priced on the market perception of value.
What you are arguing essentially is that NO human activity that involves risk or that does not return a profit immediately is worth investing in. Microsoft clearly has made many times their initial investment; they clearly should have been worth over and above whatever they would would have been valued at, say, 10 years ago, because they have grown so much and are so profitable [that's not to say they shouldn't be paying dividends now...]. In other words, even if Microsoft were to be taken private (iliquid), you could have made your money back many times over with the amount of money they've made with their sales. If you know truly believed, in, say, 1990 that MSFT was going to grow as much as they did and be as profitable as they are today, then you can ignore the temporary fluxations in the market because you can be pretty sure the market price will return to its true value at some point in the future based on these facts.
The market price has lot to do with a stock's actual value over time. It's what the market percieves as value. Maybe it's widly wrong sometimes and tends over and under-react, but it aims towards the instruments actual value. The fact is that over time is that the system WORKS and it allocates resources more efficiently than any other system that we know of. The stock market has returned an average of roughly 12% a year over the past 50 years or so. In other words, the average participant in the market makes money and a significant percentage at that. If you're smart, you can even exceed this amount over time.
Well, I'd say that that is unlikely to occur in such a business for that long (based on its cash), but OK. What you have there is a liquidity problem. That stock would still have 6 billion dollars in the bank and a large and consistent revenue stream...
a) If enough of the shareholders got together they could always vote to liquidate it for at least the value of its cash holdings (some 6 billion dollars).
b) The only way such a fall is likely is if MS's growth prospects suddenly hit zero or worse. In this case, management would have to start issuing dividends and return that cash to investors anyways. In other words, even the dumbest investor could see that the shares are worth SOMETHING (Perhaps not the premium that YOU payed for it...)
c) A large intelligent buyer would likely make an offer on this stock....For the cash, for the revenue streams (Windows is unlikely to become worthless on store shelves tomorrow...), and so on, even if the equity markets were so retarded....
The point is that regardless, the company is a definite and substantial value that is as tangible as practically any other asset. What's not so tangible (or easy to estimate on terms that most people agree on) are the premiums paid for expected growth based on intellectual property and what not. Even there though, people may not agree on how much the company is going to grow, say, but there is going to be an eventual outcome that does have some worth.
The funny thing is that if you have a stable business with stable income, you don't need to rely on venture capital and therefore would have much more clout when it comes time to whore your business to America via Nasdaq.
When you raise venture capital, you sell your business to pimps, who in turn whore it out to the world. Thats what VCs do. If they had a legitimate business model, they wouldn't need to rely on VCs nearly as much.
I'll grant you that most VCs can't be trusted, but it's not as simple as just having a good business model. Many fundamentally good businesses rely on getting large infusions of capital to get off the ground or expand operations; in bigger businesses it's not always possible to grow organically entirely from the initial seed capital because the markets they sell in simply aren't structured like that.
If you had an truly novel patentable idea to, say, build a car with 40% more efficient engine design and the car manufacturers weren't willing to invest or buy the technology (or if you weren't willing), then your only other way to make it happen would be to get large amounts of capital to make the car yourself. You can't possibly hope to design a modern car that's price competitive without investing millions of dollars first in design, manufacturing facilities, etc. There's just no way you can do it incrementally in the modern world--you sometimes just have to go out quickly and be a fully competitive with the big-boys overnight. VCs and the IPO process, flawed though they may be, are often the only way to access this type of capital.
Sometimes, if you're a more-mature company, have a proven track record as an entrepreneur, and what not, you can delay and somewhat (or entirely) avoid the need for VC money (by getting private investment, hedge funds, direct corporate investment, etc) and get more leverage with the VCs, when and if you need to, to get more reasonable terms and pricing... but sometimes taking VC money is the best option, even for perfectly good companies.
Dude... That's all that stocks are in the first place. The have no intrinsic value. They are worth only what people think they are worth, and that is usually due to pure hype.
A company could be doing incredibly well, and have a good and solid business plan, and their stocks could be worth a fraction what the most popular company's stock are worth (with no business plan, and no profits).
For a good example, try Amazon.com. Their stock was through the roof, even though they had made no profit at all, and there was no sign of profit in the near future.
While I agree with you that Amazon, VA Linux, and others were and are still (insanely) overpriced, it is a bit of an overstatement to say that all stocks' actual WORTH is simply arbitrary, that they have no instrinsic worth. Certainly the current market price is determined by market forces, i.e., whatever the market is willing to pay at that moment, but at there is still at least some instrinsic value behind it. A stock isn't terribly different than, say, a bond. In both cases you have uncertain outcomes, the only real difference is that there is a lot more risk in stocks and greater variations in expected value. Consequently you also have wild differences in pricing according to how valuable it is percieved to be. However, you can also have a reasonable floor on a stock. For instance, a company like Microsoft is worth a couple billion dollars minimum, because we know they have 6 billion some dollars in cash and cash equivalents and little in the way of debt/liabilities.
Put differently, the market's price isn't necessarily the same as the actual worth. To say a stock is only worth what the market is willing to pay at any particular moment in time is foolish. Just as it can widly overprice stocks way out of proportion to reasonable growth, profitability, etc, it can price stocks wrong, particulartly in the short term. Just because the market does not realize its mistake, does not mean there is no longer any worth in the stock. For instance, the dividends or assets can easily exceed the financial worth of the price paid to acquire the stock. How is it that you think people like Warren Buffet manage to make money consistently over the long term? They don't simply get lucky. They simply act smarter than the market as a whole does.
I've heard MBA students spouting something about how all the "work" will be outsourced and people in the US will just "manage" everything. I fail to see how this is a viable model for a country. The foreigners will learn management too, and then those US managers that don't know anything about day to day operations in Singapore will be next to go. How can anyone claim a nation of upper managers is viable with a straight face?
First, it's truly not "millions" of jobs that we are talking about here. It's a couple hundred thousand at most. Do not make the mistake that all, most, or even a large percentage of displaced IT workers has anything to do with outsourcing (there there are not nearly enough dollars in offshoring industry to explain this "loss"). Most (but not all) of the lost jobs are better explained by cyclical factors in the industry that have nothing to do with offshoring (e.g., DotCom bombs, slumping IT spending, etc)
Second, I don't believe the argument is that they will be "managers" per se (at least not in the sense that you're thinking). The argument is that most of those displaced workers will ultimately find jobs that are less rote (less cookie cutter) and more creative oriented. The vast majority of outsourcing work (at least those where it's been proven to succeed) is rote work that has been done a zillion times before and can essentially staffed by a trained monkeys and can generally be put into very precise sets of requirements with few changes necessary.
In other words, the belief is that US programmers will become, say, domain experts in their fields and bridge the large gap in technical understanding between the needs of the business and needs of the programmers for proper instruction. Instead of spending hours with the mundane aspects of coding, the time is spent at a higher level. [This is NOT something foreigners can do well, because it requires very specific knowledge of the industry, excellent communication skills, and close proximity to the end users/managers.] The analogy that I might draw would be the difference in going from, say, assembler to a high level development environent (e.g., C#, Delphi, etc) with graphical IDE. These tools allowed a developer to produce orders of magnitude more for the end user, but they didn't result in job less because they made lots of development activities economically viable that were before cost prohibitive.
Third, there are a limited number of qualified individuals in the foreign workforces and these numbers in the larger markets will be over run with demand (pushing up wages and increasing the problems as they have to dip deeper into the barrel). Despite the fact that there are billions of people in places like China and India, only a tiny fraction of these are truly educated enough to perform the work they already have AND have good english skills. Fewer still have any sort related work experience. In other words, prices in foreign labor markets will rise and prices here will decline--which will help moderate the financial incentive to put work overseas.
Fourth, where do you think all of this imagined off-shore produced IT goes? It goes back into US corporations, by and large, in the form of CHEAPER IT products and services (remember most of the country doesn't work in IT). This means more and better IT, which generally means higher productivity, which gives the US a competitive advantage on international markets. [Conversely, if we prevent our corps from offshoring, while most of the developed world does not, they WILL have a comparative advantage]
I know that's the conventional wisdom about NPR, but I just don't hear it. Perhaps it's the case on PHC or some of the other weekend fare, but as for ATC and morning edition (I commute 2 hours every day) it all sounds fairly balanced to me. I don't agree with every opinion expressed, and that's how it should be. And besides, whenever a story is not presented in a completely equal way, some listener is ready to write in explaining the inequity, and then they read the letter on the air.
Well I typically lean Republican (although I do for Dem from time to time) and I listen to NPR regularly (Fresh Air, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, Tavis Smiley, etc). I definitely detect a consistent, albeit subtle and not always evident, bias to the left. Sure, from time to time they'll bring in a conservative commentator, but they always make it very clear that they're a CONSERVATIVE (in so many words). Yet they'll bring in people, like say, Paul Krugman (a well known democrat) accomplished though he may be, give him wide and largely unchallenged freedom to bash Bush, and then introduce him as merely an economist. There are a lot of subtle ways that one can slant a story in a way that's clearly unfair to one side or the other. For instance, I've _often_ heard it repeated by various guests and even their regular hosts that the deficit is caused Bush's tax cuts (completely ignoring and failing to mention that the tax cut component is a SMALL component of the deficit). It's also been repeated that Bush rested his case for going into Iraq because he said we had firm evidence that there were massive WMD (when, again, this was never the backbone of the argument--quite to the the contrary. He presented his case on MULTIPLE points and, as far as WMD goes, it was largely based on what we could only GUESS).... I could go on (although I really don't write these thigns down, I have better things to do...)
I guess my point is, at least they try to be fair, and are ready to air criticism if they are less than fair.
The listenership is predominently liberal so they're not necessarily going to get an even balance in terms of complaints. Those conservative listeners tend to be older professionals who are busy with their careers and lives, so they don't have much time to do things like complain. Speaking for myself, as a young conservative/independent, even though I find something pretty objectionable at least once a week, the only time I do complain is when I take the trouble to contribute. What's more, they clearly don't read ALL complaints (no station has the time or funding to do that), they just pick a sample based on criteria that I can only guess at. To paraphrase Stalin, the only thing that matters is who counts the votes...and who do you think picks?
I imagine if they really were so liberal, Mr. Franken et al would not feel the need to start their own left-wing radio.
Oh come now. That'd be like arguing that because Rush Limbaugh exists there's no space for other conservative radio commentators; yet this is clearly NOT the case (at least if Mr. Franken is to be believed--I don't listen to that sort of radio myself). What's more, NPR is NOT liberal in the same way that Rush is conservative, NPR is more intelligent and more subtle than that. NPR (and their member stations) know that they'd lose a good part of their funding if they adopted that sort of screechy, brazen, and uninhibited tone. In my mind, Franken simply wants to be the liberal (windbag) counterpart to Rush, perhaps with a humorous twist.
Would you deny that the vast majority of NPR hosts or commentators are avowed liberals or members of the democratic party? Do you really believe that you can report the news day in and day out without revealing subtle biases when this is your position?
It's really hard to be "balanced" when you're passionate about an
First, these e-mail providers are all quite new to the spam-blocking game, so it's entirely possible that the SPAM will subside eventually. Perhaps it's just a matter that spam lists haven't been updated, or not everyone has gotten the news just yet.
Also, their attempts to block spam have been quite insuffecient at best. I know the yahoo mail spam handling system quite well, and it blocks perhaps 1/3rd of the spam I recieve. They need to do quite a bit better than that before they will make a decent example.
I disagree. I've been using Yahoo's mail for my personal email regularly and I've found the BULK mail filter blocks at least 95% of my SPAM (I get about.5 SPAMs a day in my actual inbox and at least 50 SPAMs in my BULK mail folder every day) and it has been this way for at least 6 months now. Maybe you have yet to train your filter properly. I can only assume that others have a similar experience. If the spammers are as cost sensitive as you imply (and they follow the pattern that I've observed), then you'd expect them to avoid Yahoo et.al because they generally know WHO responds to spam (most of their URLs have some kind of unique identifier in them to track the user). Anyways, give it some time if you don't believe me. I'm sure it'll be the same old problem. One major problem with these systems is that they depend on the user being able to review and open the suspected "SPAM" emails and I suspect that a good many users still click on products that appeal to them (it's not as if the user's don't know spam when they see it with their own eyes--with or without these systems in place).
Also, their attempts to block spam have been quite insuffecient at best. I know the yahoo mail spam handling system quite well, and it blocks perhaps 1/3rd of the spam I recieve. They need to do quite a bit better than that before they will make a decent example.
Yes, costs are low, but not as nominal as people seem to think. Spammers are not going to do the job for minimum wage, so a rather large and steady salary is necessary. The products spamers are advertising are usually ~$20 items, so you need quite a large number of users to respond. It's a tiny percentage compared to the number of e-mails they send out, but it still takes a lot of people buying to make a profit.
The Spammers' wage costs are really fixed costs, i.e., they correspond to the batch (e.g., finding relays/proxies, discovering new methods, crafting new websites, modify email bodies, and other occassional activities); they don't increase on a marginal basis with every additonal email. Once the spammers crafts the content the scripts handle the rest (e.g, check-sum busting programs). I've yet to see any SPAM blocking system that can be widely implimented that would change this that would fundamentally alter this equation for any substantial duration of time. Yes, individual admins might be able to hack their system to throw a spammer off for a short amount of time, but then they interfere with "compatibility" (so to speak) with other email providers. None of these technical solutions can withstand human ability to poke holes in the system.
This is kind of like the argument against, say, the missile defense program, i.e., SDI. Moderately wealthy rogue nations (spammers) can build and launch relatively cheap ICBMs against the US (ISPs) for a fraction of the cost that it costs the US to deploy the tracking system and launch the interceptor missiles. What's more, the costs rise nearly exponentially when it must defend agaisnt successive/simultaneous launches, whereas the costs remain largely linear for the attacker (the marginal cost of the missile and launch stations). It doens't take a genius to see that a moderately a wealthy nation can easily out launch us within their budget.
You forget that many of the items that the spammers "sell" have essentially zero cost (e.g., pirated software, fake pills, etc) so it'
European law has no effect on how Google run their operation within America. Only their offerings that can be used within Europe are affected.
Technically this may be correct, but this often isn't true in practice. These sorts of laws can have a chilling effect on commerce in foreign countries. Would the EU be happy with a mere checkbox during user registration to indicate whether or not the registering user is from a EU country (denying access if they are)? Would they demand some kind of IP block? Would they demand some kind of physical address verification (way above and beyond what google seems to want to do now)? Where do you draw the line? How much cost must Google incur before you recognize that such laws are burdensome?
Perhaps it is the case that google's plans are against European law (although they didn't really prove this point), but it's still a load of crap. Why shouldn't Europeans be allowed to decide for themselves how much of their privacy they want to retain (and worse yet, why should European law effectively prevent American's from doing what they will with their own private info)? As long as as google explicitly tells their customers what privacy they won't have and abides by it, I fail to see how this should involve lawmakers.
The fact is that this sort of capitalization of private information does benefit consumers by making a service commercially viable that would otherwise not be and furthermore adds value by making possible their thread tracking feature. Furthermore, I question whether this would really be this would be a meaningful intrusion into my privacy.
ALL email providers have the POTENTIAL to invade your privacy by definition. In fact, would not SPAM filters at Yahoo, MSN, et. al qualify in much the same way. They are looking for words in your email, many of which are commercially relevent (so as to prevent SPAM). Google is simply telling you up front that they're going to have scripts to scan through your email, just like countless other providers, the only difference is that they've admitted that this data is being used to serve up relevant ads instead of just block or categorize mail.
Or you could do what every other country on Earth does, and have the Government fund your public broadcasting.
Every other??? With exception of the BBC, who else has a QUALITY radio and news station? Damn few. Who says we need a "public" radio station in the first place? I don't listen to NPR because it's "public" or (relatively) ad-free. I listen to them because their quality tends to be a lot better than everything else on their air (I don't believe that the two correlate that well).
Anyways, that to me is all besides the point. I simply don't want my tax dollars going to fund something that is so far left of center with respect to my views or most of the country. I contribute generously to NPR, even today, but at least when I'm footing the bill voluntarily I can help moderate their behavior to some extent. If they get much worse and take too many liberties, then they'd find a good source of the funding that they depend on dries up. Furthermore, besides the whole political debate, I think having an organization that is responsive to the community's needs and wants over the long run is generally a good thing.
While I agree with much of what you're saying about NPR, namely that it's a far better newsource than anything else on radio or TV right now, its liberal bent is my biggest complaint about it. That, and those Fund Drives. I'm a generous supporter (despite the fact that I disagree with their political biases), but I find that the repetitive talking during the Fund Drives drives me to turn my radio off. It really drives me up the wall. I grant it's probably necessary the way they do business right now, but I'd think they could find some way at least to allow paying users such as myself to avoid it. Perhaps they could offer a two-tier service using satellite radio or something: one free with fund drives and another where you pay some fee to listen...
Hell, I think even regular old ads would be better. I find them far less disturbing for some reason.
Well, I can't agree there. First off, the less-bandwidth-utilizing solution is simply to do the filtering on the SMTP server end. A simple blacklist (perhaps one erring on the side of caution) would take care of the large majority of spam with practically no badwidth wasted.
However, even besides that, the solution can still be a technical one. All it takes is enough end-users blocking spam to start causing SPAM to be less profitable. Soon enough, the costs of bandwidth and pay checks are higher than the profits from idiots buying products through spam messages.
There are even more solutions I could go through. Blocking e-mails, based upon the lack of a key in the subject line, would also be very easy on bandwidth if done on the server end. (eg. before downloading the message)
My point being, there are lots of technical solutions to the spam problem. The only problem is the lack of adoption.
I disagree. While innovation can be made in the art and rate of SPAM blocking, the fundamental flaw is that the system admins of the world can NEVER keep pace with spammers. The spammers have a fundamentally easier job. They don't have to worry about false-positives, about the support issues, about keeping in-sync with other sites, and so on.
Your assertion that if enough users block SPAM that it will become unprofitable is theoretically possible, but highly improbable. First, empirically speaking, consider the examples of various huge ISPs that are, for the most part, blocking spam by default (e.g., AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc). The spammers are obviously still finding it profitable to send SPAM to them because they're clearly not stopping their barrages on such sites (consider that they must represent some 40% or more of their spam emails). Second, the costs of sending bulk email are phenominally LOW and the costs are only going to drop. It only takes a small percentage of people to respond to still make a viable business. Too many people can't afford to or won't risk the possibilties of false-positives (particularly without some system in place to double check--and then you still have users clicking those items that are tagged as spam). Third, these systems of trust can work to decrease the blocking of or promote non-spam from known-senders (even indirectly), but it seems to me that you're still ALWAYS going to run into the problem of allowing unknown senders in without an excessive amount of hassle. Trust can work in theory, like when you have a handful of parties (e.g., popular ISPs) that are well-known to each other, but the moment you allow hundreds, never mind thousands of individual servers into the equation the whole system (like what we have now) is pretty much shot.
While I agree that lack of true top-down organization is a major problem for standard open source development (that is to say, those that aren't getting PAID), I think you are kidding yourself that these things will get done merely for karma points or its ilk. I post to slashdot because I enjoy defending my point of view, by and large. While the addition of karma can alter people's behavior to some extent, I don't think it's a true motivator. In other words, when you're writing a comment you may put a little more thought into it, while you're at it, to gain or prevent the loss of karma, but you're not going to go out of your way for it (e.g., by waking up at 7 in the morning to post something).
Development is hard work and most developers have 9 to 5 jobs at least to go to. The last thing I want to do when I come home at night (or on the weekend) is do something related to my work that is BORING. However, I am willing and indeed *do* develop on my own time for either my own edication (e.g., something that **I** find fun and interesting) or for potential business ideas where I have the real possibility of making money off of them. What I've seen in open source, both in the specfic projects and in the parts of the respective projects that are reasonably mature (as in NOT utterly lacking) is in those things that I (or those like me) would find either:
a) Fun/Rewarding
b Small in scale enough so as to be a time saver of sorts for the original developer (at least on an incremental fashion--they may later put in more effort to package it up for other people). Something where the incremental and cumulative development effort is less than or at least reasonably proportional to the alternative means (e.g., using other programs, doing it manually, etc).... or some combination of both. I've yet to see anyone in open source though, say, spend countless hours producing documentation for free.
*****
Besides which, karma is abused on slashdot and I question if it could be well implemented for developers.
I don't think this needs to be debated. Linux exists and there are tons of programmers working on the projects for little or no money. Whether the number is currently smaller than in all the private companies is irrelevant, we already have a critical mass and there's no reason to think that number is going to decline. Linux is only getting more exciting, and there are only more programmers as time goes on. Put the two together and I think it's a no brainer that people are going to be involved. Besides, who outside of big software companies doesn't want the ideal of Linux to be realized?
Why? Let's imagine Linux some how magically reaches the state of maturity of, say, Windows XP from a user's perspective. Where is the geek cred in being the guy that revises a chapter on how to, say, change your margins in the MS word equivalent? As Linux gets larger, not only are you, the developer, apt to get lost in the crowd of developers, but the utility of your enhancements will diminish. Where we know the allmighty dollar does motivate developers to make these incremental and near invisible enhancements (except when taken on the aggregate), I don't believe such motivation exists the way Open Source developers develop today (that is to say, without pay, to enhance their respect, "scratch an itch", or whatever). What's more, I believe that once Open Source has nominally "proven" itself (in the minds of its developers) whatever willingness to do some of the dull work that presently exists will likely disappear.
What many people seem to forget is that there is a lot of important stuff that needs to be done to develop a good product that's not necessarily challenging, exciting, or highly visible. I've yet to hear Open Source advocates describe how this is motivated on the large scale and over time; nor have there been ANY good examples of this empirically speaking.
Linux has the potential to be cumulatively better than any computer operating system because it has potential input from far more skilled people.
Give me one reason why anyone should believe this. I think the reason for this perception amongst a select few geeks [and the reason why Open Source as it is currently developed will ultimately fall well short] is that open source developers spend their time working for a different master (that of near-mastabatory self-gratification: "elegence") whereas, say, Microsoft developers ultimately work for what the users care most about (even if only to the extent that it deepens Microsoft's pocket books). Put differently, Microsoft probably hires some of the most skilled developers in the country, but they don't waste their time on things that are apt to impress you when you look at their code (presuming you've ever looked at it). Microsoft knows that a developer hour is better spent on something that will prevent users from getting "stuck" than spending countless hours reformatting the code for some ellusive elegence (which often isn't the same thing as maintainability, clean code, etc). Neither Microsoft nor Open Source has an infinite amount of resources to devote towards development. Not only does Open Source fritter away its collective "effort" on less beneficial activities, but it is questionable whether the fundamental motivating factors exist to deliver what the user truly wants (since the bulk of OSS developers generally aren't getting paid--why do something that truly BORES you when you can do something you find more rewarding?)
This is not to say that all Microsoft's products are great or even acceptable, but you can be reasonably sure that Microsoft is going to try to get the most bang for the buck out of whatever resources/time they do devote towards development.
Ever go to the mall and pass by the food court? They're giving out samples...for FREE! If you play your cards right, and the food court is big enough, you won't have to pay for your meal. There's always abuse, and this model doesn't work for everyone. But I guess you're right. It can't possibly work for anyone.
There is no comparision between a store handing out free samples and IP producers/owners handing out DRM-free music. If you go to a store, you can't very well fill yourself up without looking like a pig and quite possibly being asked to leave. What's more, this process of filling yourself up involves some effort on your part. Contrast with situation with the music industry giving away (or allowing the give away) of their music in DRM-free format. There is NOTHING to moderate your behavior. Not only can you take as many copies as you want, given the fundamental nature of the internet, but you can provide an infinite number of copies to your friends as well (and your friends' friends' friends'...).
As for a real comparison between food sampling and the music industry, I would argue that the industry has been doing this for YEARS. Amazon, iTunes, and others have been allowing you to get a taste of many songs before you buy them. To make it even more like the grocery store, they prevent you from giving an infinite number of copies out to your friends with DRM-like measures.
What you are asking for is more equivalent to asking the grocer for not only a complete steak with all the fixings, but the keys to their fridge, and a promise to keep it well stocked for anyone who might want some.
Before we get all excited about universal broadband, we should consider parts of the country that haven't even received narrow-band telephone lines.
What parts of the country would this be and why? Have you ever been to residence or business in the US that cannot get landline service if they want it? Extremely rural areas already have their telephone service effectively subsidized and almost any area that needs it has it. If there still are areas without landline access, then they are probably in the middle of no where and I think someone needs to ask if the presumed benefits are worth the cost.
The problem is that this guy is supporting spammers in the worst way: giving them money, which keeps them in business spamming millions of aggravated people
That is NOT the real root of the problem. People buy crap from junk SNAIL mail too. What prevents the average persons's mailbox from becoming overloaded with it is that it costs the sender a substantial amount of money to send it in the first place. This amount is high enough that they have to be pretty smart about who they send it to, i.e., they typically send it to particular demographics, to those people whom some sort of business relationship is already established, or with a product that's reasonably desirable. Whereas with email, the marginal cost to send an additional email is practically zero, so it makes sense to send email to any and everyone even if there's only a one in a ten thousand chance that a reader is interested. Even if you half the number of people who respond to spam by buying product, the spammers still have a business model in all likelyhood. Someone is always going to be interested and email is only going to get cheaper to send (unless we start getting smart and require small payments to deliver email from unknown/untrusted users/servers).
Well I'm no PhD in physics, but I (did stay at the holiday inn express last night^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H) do own a QuietComfort2 headphone set. I would agree that there is no discernible noise coming from outside the earphones. I suspect the explanation though is relatively very simple (or perhaps I'm just naive). The earphone cup is already quite muffled. The noise cancelling circuity only needs to "cancel out" a tiny amount of noise, that which would reach your ear by leaking through the insulation. Whatever noise is created by the cancellation speaker is quiet relative to outside background noise and will be further muffled by the headset before someone sitting next to you can hear it. In other words, whatever background noise you'd hear without the headphones is almost certainly (in real world applications) going to be orders of magnitude louder to a neighbooring passenger than the noise coming through your earphones.
PBS is a non-profit entity, unlike the aforementioned networks. Also, did the show do well? Even the major networks make mistakes fail to recoup their investments from time to time.
How many reality shows feature truly "normal" people, let alone what are most likely geeks? How many viewers are truly going to grok the complexity of the software and what not? People may enjoy watching the race itself for a little while, but the majority of the stuff the audience is unlikely to be able to appreciate.
Slashdot Mirror
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in devel
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry ( D-MA), and others Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"There is no doubt that
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL,) and others, December 5, 2001
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Sept. 19, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), Oct. 3, 2002
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA), Oct. 9, 2002
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and w! ill likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years
I buy/download the majority of my iTunes music at work. I'd really like to keep the music synchronized automatically somehow. Does anyone know of a way to either fool iTMS into allowing you to download music onto another computer (I've authorized both) or somehow automatically sync them with some 3rd party software. I suppose I could carry my work laptop home or copy them as FILES (not music) to my iPod...but that's a pain in the ass.
You said:
First and foremost, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but NO hard currency TODAY gives you any gauratanee of value. It, too, depends on other people finding your currency approximately as valuable as you did when you acquired it. The US government will NOT exchange your US dollars for gold, silver, or any other "valuable" asset at ANY fixed rate now (we stopped doing that many years ago). In other words, while 1000 USD may buy you X ounces of gold today, people may lose faith in US currency and that same 1000 dollars 10 years from now may not even buy you a fraction of an ounce [or even of bread, wheat, or other more practical essentials]. Conversely, that gold may drastically lose value relative to cash or any other asset so as to become essentially worthless. There is no automatic way to convert gold into food to feed your family, cloth yourself, and so on. The value is equally market driven, even if you might argue that it has some nominal utilitarian value in the event of a market crash. I believe your false perception of some absolute and constant value in ANY asset is the root of your false perception that stocks are somehow wholly different. Every asset you can think of to place your money in is ultimately valued on the market and CAN lose its relative value (or exchangability for any other asset on the market). Stocks may be amongst the riskiest or most volatile, but you also are compensated for this risk.
Second, stocks DO have some store of value outside of its secondary value on the markets. You are REALLY confused here; the entire market just doesn't exist "just because". If you own 10% of a stock in a company, then you own 10% of the company's equity (Assets - Liabilities) and its potential cash flows. If you own 10% of a company like MS (with negligible liabilities), then you do own at least 10% of 6 billion dollars in cash, plus the "value" of their intellectual property (its ability to earn cash in the near future), plus its other assets (e.g., property in Redmond), and so on. The fact is that certain wealthy business people have made whole careers out of acquiring enough shares of particular companies (for less than its "worth"), getting control, and then liquidating its assets for a very tidy profit. Now, of course, you can argue that, say, MS could get sued tomorrow and lose that money, or they could opt not to return that cash to investors and eventually lose it, and so on, but the same is really true of debt too. Even if you have a guarantee from the debtor that you'll be payed X dollars by date Y, that debtor could go bankrupt, could get hit by an asteroid, and so on. It may be true that more times than not you'll get more cash on secondary markets for that stock and that it is far more liquid on secondary markets, i.e., the stock market, but you'd be wrong to assume that this is the ONLY value.
Third, the fact is that SOME privately held companies exist without ANY viable secondary market to sell or exchange their shares to (or even the possiblity of this--witness the thousands of restaurants across the country). They make money with the equity value itself. In other words, the investors put up, say, 10 million dollars t
What you are arguing essentially is that NO human activity that involves risk or that does not return a profit immediately is worth investing in. Microsoft clearly has made many times their initial investment; they clearly should have been worth over and above whatever they would would have been valued at, say, 10 years ago, because they have grown so much and are so profitable [that's not to say they shouldn't be paying dividends now...]. In other words, even if Microsoft were to be taken private (iliquid), you could have made your money back many times over with the amount of money they've made with their sales. If you know truly believed, in, say, 1990 that MSFT was going to grow as much as they did and be as profitable as they are today, then you can ignore the temporary fluxations in the market because you can be pretty sure the market price will return to its true value at some point in the future based on these facts.
The market price has lot to do with a stock's actual value over time. It's what the market percieves as value. Maybe it's widly wrong sometimes and tends over and under-react, but it aims towards the instruments actual value. The fact is that over time is that the system WORKS and it allocates resources more efficiently than any other system that we know of. The stock market has returned an average of roughly 12% a year over the past 50 years or so. In other words, the average participant in the market makes money and a significant percentage at that. If you're smart, you can even exceed this amount over time.
Well, I'd say that that is unlikely to occur in such a business for that long (based on its cash), but OK. What you have there is a liquidity problem. That stock would still have 6 billion dollars in the bank and a large and consistent revenue stream...
a) If enough of the shareholders got together they could always vote to liquidate it for at least the value of its cash holdings (some 6 billion dollars).
b) The only way such a fall is likely is if MS's growth prospects suddenly hit zero or worse. In this case, management would have to start issuing dividends and return that cash to investors anyways. In other words, even the dumbest investor could see that the shares are worth SOMETHING (Perhaps not the premium that YOU payed for it...)
c) A large intelligent buyer would likely make an offer on this stock....For the cash, for the revenue streams (Windows is unlikely to become worthless on store shelves tomorrow...), and so on, even if the equity markets were so retarded....
The point is that regardless, the company is a definite and substantial value that is as tangible as practically any other asset. What's not so tangible (or easy to estimate on terms that most people agree on) are the premiums paid for expected growth based on intellectual property and what not. Even there though, people may not agree on how much the company is going to grow, say, but there is going to be an eventual outcome that does have some worth.
If you had an truly novel patentable idea to, say, build a car with 40% more efficient engine design and the car manufacturers weren't willing to invest or buy the technology (or if you weren't willing), then your only other way to make it happen would be to get large amounts of capital to make the car yourself. You can't possibly hope to design a modern car that's price competitive without investing millions of dollars first in design, manufacturing facilities, etc. There's just no way you can do it incrementally in the modern world--you sometimes just have to go out quickly and be a fully competitive with the big-boys overnight. VCs and the IPO process, flawed though they may be, are often the only way to access this type of capital.
Sometimes, if you're a more-mature company, have a proven track record as an entrepreneur, and what not, you can delay and somewhat (or entirely) avoid the need for VC money (by getting private investment, hedge funds, direct corporate investment, etc) and get more leverage with the VCs, when and if you need to, to get more reasonable terms and pricing... but sometimes taking VC money is the best option, even for perfectly good companies.
Put differently, the market's price isn't necessarily the same as the actual worth. To say a stock is only worth what the market is willing to pay at any particular moment in time is foolish. Just as it can widly overprice stocks way out of proportion to reasonable growth, profitability, etc, it can price stocks wrong, particulartly in the short term. Just because the market does not realize its mistake, does not mean there is no longer any worth in the stock. For instance, the dividends or assets can easily exceed the financial worth of the price paid to acquire the stock. How is it that you think people like Warren Buffet manage to make money consistently over the long term? They don't simply get lucky. They simply act smarter than the market as a whole does.
First, it's truly not "millions" of jobs that we are talking about here. It's a couple hundred thousand at most. Do not make the mistake that all, most, or even a large percentage of displaced IT workers has anything to do with outsourcing (there there are not nearly enough dollars in offshoring industry to explain this "loss"). Most (but not all) of the lost jobs are better explained by cyclical factors in the industry that have nothing to do with offshoring (e.g., DotCom bombs, slumping IT spending, etc)
Second, I don't believe the argument is that they will be "managers" per se (at least not in the sense that you're thinking). The argument is that most of those displaced workers will ultimately find jobs that are less rote (less cookie cutter) and more creative oriented. The vast majority of outsourcing work (at least those where it's been proven to succeed) is rote work that has been done a zillion times before and can essentially staffed by a trained monkeys and can generally be put into very precise sets of requirements with few changes necessary.
In other words, the belief is that US programmers will become, say, domain experts in their fields and bridge the large gap in technical understanding between the needs of the business and needs of the programmers for proper instruction. Instead of spending hours with the mundane aspects of coding, the time is spent at a higher level. [This is NOT something foreigners can do well, because it requires very specific knowledge of the industry, excellent communication skills, and close proximity to the end users/managers.] The analogy that I might draw would be the difference in going from, say, assembler to a high level development environent (e.g., C#, Delphi, etc) with graphical IDE. These tools allowed a developer to produce orders of magnitude more for the end user, but they didn't result in job less because they made lots of development activities economically viable that were before cost prohibitive.
Third, there are a limited number of qualified individuals in the foreign workforces and these numbers in the larger markets will be over run with demand (pushing up wages and increasing the problems as they have to dip deeper into the barrel). Despite the fact that there are billions of people in places like China and India, only a tiny fraction of these are truly educated enough to perform the work they already have AND have good english skills. Fewer still have any sort related work experience. In other words, prices in foreign labor markets will rise and prices here will decline--which will help moderate the financial incentive to put work overseas.
Fourth, where do you think all of this imagined off-shore produced IT goes? It goes back into US corporations, by and large, in the form of CHEAPER IT products and services (remember most of the country doesn't work in IT). This means more and better IT, which generally means higher productivity, which gives the US a competitive advantage on international markets. [Conversely, if we prevent our corps from offshoring, while most of the developed world does not, they WILL have a comparative advantage]
Well I typically lean Republican (although I do for Dem from time to time) and I listen to NPR regularly (Fresh Air, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, Tavis Smiley, etc). I definitely detect a consistent, albeit subtle and not always evident, bias to the left. Sure, from time to time they'll bring in a conservative commentator, but they always make it very clear that they're a CONSERVATIVE (in so many words). Yet they'll bring in people, like say, Paul Krugman (a well known democrat) accomplished though he may be, give him wide and largely unchallenged freedom to bash Bush, and then introduce him as merely an economist. There are a lot of subtle ways that one can slant a story in a way that's clearly unfair to one side or the other. For instance, I've _often_ heard it repeated by various guests and even their regular hosts that the deficit is caused Bush's tax cuts (completely ignoring and failing to mention that the tax cut component is a SMALL component of the deficit). It's also been repeated that Bush rested his case for going into Iraq because he said we had firm evidence that there were massive WMD (when, again, this was never the backbone of the argument--quite to the the contrary. He presented his case on MULTIPLE points and, as far as WMD goes, it was largely based on what we could only GUESS). ... I could go on (although I really don't write these thigns down, I have better things to do...)
The listenership is predominently liberal so they're not necessarily going to get an even balance in terms of complaints. Those conservative listeners tend to be older professionals who are busy with their careers and lives, so they don't have much time to do things like complain. Speaking for myself, as a young conservative/independent, even though I find something pretty objectionable at least once a week, the only time I do complain is when I take the trouble to contribute. What's more, they clearly don't read ALL complaints (no station has the time or funding to do that), they just pick a sample based on criteria that I can only guess at. To paraphrase Stalin, the only thing that matters is who counts the votes...and who do you think picks?
Oh come now. That'd be like arguing that because Rush Limbaugh exists there's no space for other conservative radio commentators; yet this is clearly NOT the case (at least if Mr. Franken is to be believed--I don't listen to that sort of radio myself). What's more, NPR is NOT liberal in the same way that Rush is conservative, NPR is more intelligent and more subtle than that. NPR (and their member stations) know that they'd lose a good part of their funding if they adopted that sort of screechy, brazen, and uninhibited tone. In my mind, Franken simply wants to be the liberal (windbag) counterpart to Rush, perhaps with a humorous twist.
Would you deny that the vast majority of NPR hosts or commentators are avowed liberals or members of the democratic party? Do you really believe that you can report the news day in and day out without revealing subtle biases when this is your position?
It's really hard to be "balanced" when you're passionate about an
I disagree. I've been using Yahoo's mail for my personal email regularly and I've found the BULK mail filter blocks at least 95% of my SPAM (I get about .5 SPAMs a day in my actual inbox and at least 50 SPAMs in my BULK mail folder every day) and it has been this way for at least 6 months now. Maybe you have yet to train your filter properly. I can only assume that others have a similar experience. If the spammers are as cost sensitive as you imply (and they follow the pattern that I've observed), then you'd expect them to avoid Yahoo et.al because they generally know WHO responds to spam (most of their URLs have some kind of unique identifier in them to track the user). Anyways, give it some time if you don't believe me. I'm sure it'll be the same old problem. One major problem with these systems is that they depend on the user being able to review and open the suspected "SPAM" emails and I suspect that a good many users still click on products that appeal to them (it's not as if the user's don't know spam when they see it with their own eyes--with or without these systems in place).
The Spammers' wage costs are really fixed costs, i.e., they correspond to the batch (e.g., finding relays/proxies, discovering new methods, crafting new websites, modify email bodies, and other occassional activities); they don't increase on a marginal basis with every additonal email. Once the spammers crafts the content the scripts handle the rest (e.g, check-sum busting programs). I've yet to see any SPAM blocking system that can be widely implimented that would change this that would fundamentally alter this equation for any substantial duration of time. Yes, individual admins might be able to hack their system to throw a spammer off for a short amount of time, but then they interfere with "compatibility" (so to speak) with other email providers. None of these technical solutions can withstand human ability to poke holes in the system.
This is kind of like the argument against, say, the missile defense program, i.e., SDI. Moderately wealthy rogue nations (spammers) can build and launch relatively cheap ICBMs against the US (ISPs) for a fraction of the cost that it costs the US to deploy the tracking system and launch the interceptor missiles. What's more, the costs rise nearly exponentially when it must defend agaisnt successive/simultaneous launches, whereas the costs remain largely linear for the attacker (the marginal cost of the missile and launch stations). It doens't take a genius to see that a moderately a wealthy nation can easily out launch us within their budget.
You forget that many of the items that the spammers "sell" have essentially zero cost (e.g., pirated software, fake pills, etc) so it'
Perhaps it is the case that google's plans are against European law (although they didn't really prove this point), but it's still a load of crap. Why shouldn't Europeans be allowed to decide for themselves how much of their privacy they want to retain (and worse yet, why should European law effectively prevent American's from doing what they will with their own private info)? As long as as google explicitly tells their customers what privacy they won't have and abides by it, I fail to see how this should involve lawmakers.
The fact is that this sort of capitalization of private information does benefit consumers by making a service commercially viable that would otherwise not be and furthermore adds value by making possible their thread tracking feature. Furthermore, I question whether this would really be this would be a meaningful intrusion into my privacy.
ALL email providers have the POTENTIAL to invade your privacy by definition. In fact, would not SPAM filters at Yahoo, MSN, et. al qualify in much the same way. They are looking for words in your email, many of which are commercially relevent (so as to prevent SPAM). Google is simply telling you up front that they're going to have scripts to scan through your email, just like countless other providers, the only difference is that they've admitted that this data is being used to serve up relevant ads instead of just block or categorize mail.
Anyways, that to me is all besides the point. I simply don't want my tax dollars going to fund something that is so far left of center with respect to my views or most of the country. I contribute generously to NPR, even today, but at least when I'm footing the bill voluntarily I can help moderate their behavior to some extent. If they get much worse and take too many liberties, then they'd find a good source of the funding that they depend on dries up. Furthermore, besides the whole political debate, I think having an organization that is responsive to the community's needs and wants over the long run is generally a good thing.
While I agree with much of what you're saying about NPR, namely that it's a far better newsource than anything else on radio or TV right now, its liberal bent is my biggest complaint about it. That, and those Fund Drives. I'm a generous supporter (despite the fact that I disagree with their political biases), but I find that the repetitive talking during the Fund Drives drives me to turn my radio off. It really drives me up the wall. I grant it's probably necessary the way they do business right now, but I'd think they could find some way at least to allow paying users such as myself to avoid it. Perhaps they could offer a two-tier service using satellite radio or something: one free with fund drives and another where you pay some fee to listen...
Hell, I think even regular old ads would be better. I find them far less disturbing for some reason.
Your assertion that if enough users block SPAM that it will become unprofitable is theoretically possible, but highly improbable. First, empirically speaking, consider the examples of various huge ISPs that are, for the most part, blocking spam by default (e.g., AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc). The spammers are obviously still finding it profitable to send SPAM to them because they're clearly not stopping their barrages on such sites (consider that they must represent some 40% or more of their spam emails). Second, the costs of sending bulk email are phenominally LOW and the costs are only going to drop. It only takes a small percentage of people to respond to still make a viable business. Too many people can't afford to or won't risk the possibilties of false-positives (particularly without some system in place to double check--and then you still have users clicking those items that are tagged as spam). Third, these systems of trust can work to decrease the blocking of or promote non-spam from known-senders (even indirectly), but it seems to me that you're still ALWAYS going to run into the problem of allowing unknown senders in without an excessive amount of hassle. Trust can work in theory, like when you have a handful of parties (e.g., popular ISPs) that are well-known to each other, but the moment you allow hundreds, never mind thousands of individual servers into the equation the whole system (like what we have now) is pretty much shot.
While I agree that lack of true top-down organization is a major problem for standard open source development (that is to say, those that aren't getting PAID), I think you are kidding yourself that these things will get done merely for karma points or its ilk. I post to slashdot because I enjoy defending my point of view, by and large. While the addition of karma can alter people's behavior to some extent, I don't think it's a true motivator. In other words, when you're writing a comment you may put a little more thought into it, while you're at it, to gain or prevent the loss of karma, but you're not going to go out of your way for it (e.g., by waking up at 7 in the morning to post something).
/Rewarding
... or some combination of both. I've yet to see anyone in open source though, say, spend countless hours producing documentation for free.
Development is hard work and most developers have 9 to 5 jobs at least to go to. The last thing I want to do when I come home at night (or on the weekend) is do something related to my work that is BORING. However, I am willing and indeed *do* develop on my own time for either my own edication (e.g., something that **I** find fun and interesting) or for potential business ideas where I have the real possibility of making money off of them. What I've seen in open source, both in the specfic projects and in the parts of the respective projects that are reasonably mature (as in NOT utterly lacking) is in those things that I (or those like me) would find either:
a) Fun
b Small in scale enough so as to be a time saver of sorts for the original developer (at least on an incremental fashion--they may later put in more effort to package it up for other people). Something where the incremental and cumulative development effort is less than or at least reasonably proportional to the alternative means (e.g., using other programs, doing it manually, etc).
*****
Besides which, karma is abused on slashdot and I question if it could be well implemented for developers.
What many people seem to forget is that there is a lot of important stuff that needs to be done to develop a good product that's not necessarily challenging, exciting, or highly visible. I've yet to hear Open Source advocates describe how this is motivated on the large scale and over time; nor have there been ANY good examples of this empirically speaking.
This is not to say that all Microsoft's products are great or even acceptable, but you can be reasonably sure that Microsoft is going to try to get the most bang for the buck out of whatever resources/time they do devote towards development.
As for a real comparison between food sampling and the music industry, I would argue that the industry has been doing this for YEARS. Amazon, iTunes, and others have been allowing you to get a taste of many songs before you buy them. To make it even more like the grocery store, they prevent you from giving an infinite number of copies out to your friends with DRM-like measures.
What you are asking for is more equivalent to asking the grocer for not only a complete steak with all the fixings, but the keys to their fridge, and a promise to keep it well stocked for anyone who might want some.
Well I'm no PhD in physics, but I (did stay at the holiday inn express last night^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H) do own a QuietComfort2 headphone set. I would agree that there is no discernible noise coming from outside the earphones. I suspect the explanation though is relatively very simple (or perhaps I'm just naive). The earphone cup is already quite muffled. The noise cancelling circuity only needs to "cancel out" a tiny amount of noise, that which would reach your ear by leaking through the insulation. Whatever noise is created by the cancellation speaker is quiet relative to outside background noise and will be further muffled by the headset before someone sitting next to you can hear it. In other words, whatever background noise you'd hear without the headphones is almost certainly (in real world applications) going to be orders of magnitude louder to a neighbooring passenger than the noise coming through your earphones.
PBS is a non-profit entity, unlike the aforementioned networks. Also, did the show do well? Even the major networks make mistakes fail to recoup their investments from time to time.
How many reality shows feature truly "normal" people, let alone what are most likely geeks? How many viewers are truly going to grok the complexity of the software and what not? People may enjoy watching the race itself for a little while, but the majority of the stuff the audience is unlikely to be able to appreciate.