future generations are a problem of future generations, here we can't even deal with the past, you think people can deal with the future?
There are 7 billion people on the planet, surviving another day takes all the energy that we are using today, what exactly do you think people should do 'for the future' that they are already not doing? Are you willing to kill yourself for example, today, for the future, to reduce the energy consumption?
There is no motivation in the public sector to do anything for the long term, the politicians are constantly battling in their own 'game of thrones', the sits are changed, the politicians want to stay in power, you think it's NOT a profit motive for them? Are you blind?
The public sector is much worse at handling what the market needs in the long term.
Again: what was phone service like while AT&T was still a gov't monopoly? You could rent a phone from them, sure, your pay always went up, it never went down, your services didn't improve, there was no consumer side innovation.
Then eventually AT&T lost its monopoly status and all of a sudden - from phone answering machines to fax machines to modems. All sorts of accessories appeared, the phones weren't rotary beige boxes anymore. Then mobile phones appeared, sure, expensive in the beginning, that's how it is. Today everybody who wants one has one. Or two, or more, and they can get them for free.
Long term? How long terms should it be, AT&T was a monopoly from early 19 hundreds, 3000 competitors were put out of business by government to do it.
Before Medicare came alone, the people paid for health care out of pocket, because it was cheap, because gov't wasn't in it (well, except for the inflationary money printing of-course and various regulations that always increased costs.)
Eventually with Medicare and then FDA, so gov't money and regulations, what the fuck happened to the health care and insurance costs you think?
Medicare was a long term gov't funded project, it's a complete disaster, it's bankrupt, it has no actual assets, no money. Sure sure, it has gov't bonds - much good will that do in the market.
What about FDA? Was it really needed? Were people dying left right and centre? No. But the pharma companies had too much competition and then Nixon came to town of-course.
What do you know, apparently with all gov't licenses competition can be completely wiped out and given the gov't system of patents, what do you know, prices can be arbitrarily high for any medication or a procedure. And what about insurance?
Well, people used to pay up to 2 bucks per month for a family of 2 before 1965, got excellent coverage (up to 50K per year), of-course the 500 bucks deductible still meant that most of the conditions and check ups were done by the person out of pocket, but they could actually afford it.
By the way, that audio, there is a pretty good prediction about the costs of insurance and health care going up due to ACA and the fact that the very concept of insurance has been destroyed by it, oh well, gov't does 'long term planning', right?
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In any case, AFAIC I am not here to convince you of anything, your mind is very much made up, I mean with gems like "greed is a terrible motivator", what's there to talk about?
What you call greed, I call basic desire of humans for better life. Individuals address that by working, that's what they do absent gov't. Gov't destroys the ability of people to be self-sustainable, self-respecting individuals, breaks their legs, hands them crutches and says: see, without me you wouldn't be able to walk. Vote for me.
By the way, this:
I'm arguing that I DO NOT need businessmen and women to decide what's best for me, and that corporations NEVER have our best intentions in mind, unless they can grab a quick buck out of it
- this is so stupid, it's beyond reproach, there is truly nothing to argue with you about. Yes, many corporations today are in cahoots with the gov't, but the reason of-course is that the individual freedoms of people who run the businesses are stolen by the gov't, by the mob, and they have to do something about it, so they make a good business decisions - jiujitsu, use the strength of the system against itself.
I am arguing that I DO NOT need gov't to tell me how to live my life, to tell me what is good, what is bad. I don't need gov't to pro
Let me give you an anecdotal story, let's say it's a friend, he has a company with about 250 employees. He hires people for positions that literally require these people to make everyday decisions about the business and these people end up making decisions that cost company an arm and a leg. He tries to teach them what to do, they can't learn or they don't care.
He replaces them, gets some new people, resumes are great, the interviews are wonderful. When the time comes to make decisions they screw up so badly, he is ripping his hair out when he finds out.
So what ends up happening is that a 250 people company is ran basically by one individual telling everybody what to do, the freaking people who are hired to make decisions about things that he really would like to delegate cannot make decisions, they don't understand how to make decisions, they don't see the difference between a good and a bad decision even when pointed out. They say they understand, the next time a decision needs to be made, they still don't do the right thing.
So eventually they end up coming to the owner and his day consists of telling people what to do about things that they are hired to do.
There are no good people, if you want something to work well, you have to do it yourself. Even when you PAY a huge premium you can't get good people.
I believe the Sun is so dangerous that I only use it at night. Of-course it's a small ball of light in the sky, it's what, about 2 meters across maybe? Could you really kill somebody by hitting them on the head with the Sun? It's pure light, so it weighs like nothing, so you probably can't kill anybody by hitting them with the Sun, but of-course if you bring it down to earth from the few miles that it is hanging above the heads, you'd probably get a stronger Sun burn. Why do they call it Sun burn anyway? It's a skin burn.
"Yelling about it" is a part of people deciding on what to build. The GP just gave his opinion on what he wants to build.
- once the GP decides to actually invest some money, make a bet on his investment that he'll make a profit and put his money where his mouth is (because according to you that's what he wants to do) then he can simply do it. My point is that once somebody wants to make an investment, the government shouldn't be in a position to stop it.
Gov't spending IS bad regardless of outcome. ALL gov't spending is bad under ALL situations.
It is necessary to spend on government, but none of it is good. It is necessary to have military protection of some kind, of-course what USA has today is not for protection, it is for an attack, it's war spending, not protection spending.
The productive USA was built without income taxes, without corporate taxes, without payroll taxes, without FDIC, Fed, IRS, FDA, FHA, EPA, CIA, FBI, SS, Medicare, EI, Medicaid, welfare, without dep't of energy, education, agriculture, small business, commerce, interior, HUD, etc.
USA was a third world country before the 19th century, but during 19th century it became largest producer and exporter and thus largest creditor, yet nothing that I listed above existed. The time that parts of it were tried (like the Continental currency) it was a gigantic failure, leading to major recessions.
But how does a country become a productive exporter, creditor without gov't building infrastructure? Because it's not true that gov't is needed to build any of it, what IS true is that WEALTH is needed to build infrastructure.
There has to be a REASON to build infrastructure, there has to be wealth first, there has to be a promise of making a return - the profit motive is the driver, nothing else.
With the gov't, the profit motive is shifted, it's not to make a profit by producing the best product the market wants to buy, it's to make profit by growing the biggest department and by giving out the most free fake, borrowed or taxed money - that's how you grow power in government.
But a big gov't, is a powerful gov't, it's a huge spender and it needs things to do, so it gets its hands into everything.
It was the gov't that destroyed 3000 competitors to AT&T and turned AT&T into a monopoly. It was the gov't that broke apart a successful in the market Standard Oil corporation, which only had 4% of oil market in 1969 at 30 cents per gallon of refined oil and did enough investment and innovation to bring prices down to 5.9 cents by 1899. Of-course once Standard Oil was broken (and there were 150 competitors at the time), the prices for oil never went down again.
Infrastructure? How about the Keystone pipeline - the actual PRODUCTIVE infrastructure that private companies want to build, because they believe it's going to be profitable, it's going to make money. Is that the wrong thing today somehow - making money? USA was built by business, not by any government. USA was built by ABSENCE of gov't, people came to USA for freedoms from their totalitarian governments.
The countries today that do the best are those that removed the most government controls from their economy over time, and USA is moving in a completely wrong direction.
You want infrastructure? You can't have infrastructure, there is nothing to build it for, and if there is something to build it for (like an oil pipeline) you are arguing against it, and it's not even a government project.
You are not going to have infrastructure, because you don't have production. You are not going to have education and science, because you don't have manufacturing and engineering.
There has to be manufacturing and it has to be private - for profit, and gov't must stay out of it and that's how you will have wealth and infrastructure, because manufacturing will require it. That's how you'll have science - engineering done for manufacturing will require it and that's how you'll have education - all of the above will require it.
It's not enough to WANT something, you have to either do it yourself or step away and let those do it who want to do it, and their motivation is profit, and that's the best motivation. It's the best motivation, because absent gov't meddling, they'll be making profit by doing something that everybody wants (market wants to buy).
I'd far rather pay for another refinery and gas power stations (added capacity) AND a better power grid, than cough up the same amount for just another couple of pipelines (which, frankly, all they add is environmental disaster potential).
- you know what's funny, years of comments here, explaining that the real infrastructure cannot be built artificially by government, it has to come from the actual market need, and then a company wants to put down a freaking pipe and everybody is yelling about it.
A pipe is infrastructure, it's PRODUCTIVE infrastructure, unlike bridges and overpasses to nowhere. Environmentally speaking, the companies that are building the pipeline should have to buy or rent the land they are using from private owners, not from government, gov't is not an owner, it doesn't know what the real costs and prices are.
If the pipe runs through some public property - have an auction, sell that property to the private sector, let the companies figure out who own what and who rents from who, etc., don't get the gov't involved. The gov't should sell this asset (and all assets actually), pay down the debts and shut the fuck down everything that it started doing since about 1900.
Let the people decide on their own what to build, how to build it, what infrastructure actually makes sense. Private companies wouldn't be building bridges to nowhere if there was no profit in it, and profit literally means that the market wants that bridge to exist, otherwise it's a waste.
absolutely agree with that, and using C to build data structures teaches people more about them than using much higher more abstract languages that already have all these various data structures implemented as parts of multiple libraries.
Well, I didn't even say that, but try and argue that extra understanding of what is going on below your abstracted point of view hurts you. I can easily argue that understanding the machine makes you a better developer, even if this understanding is just at the level of OS itself. Knowing the limitations of the machine is important for example, if you are threading your high level app, you better know something about the context switching that is taking place just below you, you may want to learn something about the scheduling procedure too. If you abstract everything, you will still be able to write a business app, but you won't use the available memory efficiently.
Your app may talk to a database, you better know something about the network interfaces, your app may read and write files, you better know how to be efficient about it even at your high level, you better be familiar with the file system and its constraints (and specifications).
You better know what 'headless' means and how your OS handles it if you are trying to do some graphics processing on the server.
Should you know what sockets are at a level lower than your abstract language you think? Should you know how your OS handles them, what if they leak, what happens, do you know? If your file handles leak? Do you understand what socket handles are vs file handles? How about descriptors, do you know the difference, is there a difference?
If you don't know your hardware, how do you know to optimise wear and tear on the drives? What you are mixing and matching HDs and SSDs? If you are using a database that writes logs ahead and commits once they logs are written, and if you use SSDs and HDs, what's a better strategy to place the logs? How about archiving, what about recovery?
Do you believe you shouldn't ever have to think about the PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS of what you are working with?
C is a very simple language and yet it allows operating memory directly in a way similar to assembler. C is portable (well, it can be compiled for different platforms), I rather enjoyed the language a while back, but since about 98 I use Java for most of big development and I am pretty sure that if I had to do everything in C that I did in Java, it would have taken me much more time.
C is nice in another way - it allows you and in some sense it forces you to understand the machine in a more intimate way, you end up using parts of the machine, registers, memory addresses, you are more physically connected to the hardware. Java is a high level abstraction, but then again, to write so much logic, it is just better to do it at higher level, where you don't have to think about the machine.
C is great tool to control the machine, Java is a great tool to build business applications (I am mostly talking about back end, but sometimes front end too).
So I like C, I used to code in it a lot, but I just to use it nowadays. What's to love about it? Applications written in it can be closely integrated into the specific OS, you can really use the underlying architecture, talk to the CPU but also the GPU (CUDA), if I wanted to use the GPU from a Java application, I'd probably end up compiling some C code and a JNI bridge to it.
C teaches you to think about the machine, I think it gives an important understanding and it's faster to develop in than in Assembler.
No plastic is the same, plastics have different composition, additives, melting points, all sorts of different properties that really makes it impossible to melt them together and expect any sort of consistency.
OTOH it instead of melting the plastics, your old bottles could be shredded somehow into powder and then mixed with something sticky, some glue or epoxy, but even then different behaviours of different plastics would be problematic.
"speculator tax" is nonsense, as again, there are speculators on both sides of the transaction. When you buy spot for delivery, to you what is important is that you are not overpaying, not that there are a bunch of speculators betting against each other. OTOH those who sell for delivery want speculation to occur today as they want to bet on the futures market themselves to hedge, it is basically insurance, so they can smooth out possible price spikes or price falls, they want to know more precisely what their costs will be, what they will be able to make from their sales, this information is what allows them to not have bad surprises and not go bankrupt basically because of an unforeseen event, like a terrorist strike or a bad weather event or maybe a serious economic hit, and the market wants the producers to survive, not to be destroyed.
Even in this early stage, three major factors about Google Cloud stood out for Crandell. First was the way Google leveraged the use of its own private network to make its cloud resources uniformly accessible across the globe.
"When you create a Google Compute Engine account and use their resources," he said, "they provide a private network, a LAN of sorts that spans different regions. For example, if you set up an architecture to replicate a database from region A to region B, in the Google cloud, you don't need to traverse the public Internet to do it. You're using their private network."
How precisely that network is implemented (as its own private fiber or simply a very efficiently-routed VPN) is not disclosed by Google. But the key thing is that the whole structure is seen as a single network from a programming point of view. "This makes it easier if you're building cross-regional architectures," Crandall says. It's expected that Google will eventually expand Compute Engine to territories outside the United States.
- I really wonder if Google built (or bought) larges swaths of private infrastructure that is otherwise outside of the Internet, does anybody know?
Here is why I am wondering about it - Google as an ISP would then avoid outside costs to move its data, it's all internal costs, this turns Google into its own 'Internet' of sorts, Google only Internet.
That's why web neutrality is a nonsense concept from my perspective - if companies can build their own infrastructure, they can compete with each other and offer their own content at better speeds, but then Google could be an ISP that uses both, Google 'Internet' and external backend, but then on its own 'Internet', the content available from Google could be delivered at a higher priority and faster (and cheaper, because its internal costs, that can be managed easier).
By the way, there was a question in the story, asking why didn't Google provide this earlier. Well, maybe it tech wasn't ready or the business model wasn't there or maybe it's something to do with the government that wants to listen in on everything.
BTW., this is why such information should be made available, the speculation about the reasons for things like that could be worse than whatever the truth is.
Oh, and since the question was: are resellers capitalists, the answer (based on my previous response to your question) is yes.
Of-course resellers are capitalists. Distribution channels, suppliers, storage, shipping, handling, logistics, stores, all of this requires using savings and building up the tools needed for production (in their case the production means services) they have tools - from storage facilities and trucks, to shelf space and stores, shipment lanes, and knowledge.
Knowledge and means to organise knowledge is an important tool when providing such services, it takes investment to build up knowledge and tools to organise it, be it computer systems, understanding of processes or even just having the right people working for you in the right places, all of this are tools of production.
Investors and speculators in the financial markets are also capitalists, they provide services and their tools are mostly knowledge and people based.
A reseller has his own means of production, reseller is part of the distribution channel, do you think it is more efficient for every company that produces widgets (or whatever, food, energy, etc) to take care of all of the logistics and distribution channels, to set up their own stores, or can you understand that specialisation allows for best results (as long as this specialisation is something that market values)?
Clearly the market proves that having separate companies that handle logistics, delivery, shipping, handling, storage, etc., is better for the economy, it creates competition in all of these functions and creates economies of scale.
As to pure speculation - this is an important market function, it discovers true prices for things. What I mean is - when the gov't says: speculators are causing oil prices to go up, what they are not telling you is this:
1. Oil prices are not going up, it's inflation that destroys value of money, more fiat cash is chasing the same resources. In case of oil there is more production than ever and lowest consumption levels in 11 years, so it's not normal supply/demand curve at play.
2. Speculators keep prices LOWER than they would otherwise be. The alternative is that there are no speculators and instead somebody buys the oil as a long term investment and holds it and eventually prices go higher and higher because of it. Speculators are on BOTH sides of every futures deal, so they bet that prices will go down as well as betting that prices will go up. Speculators create a much more efficient market, where prices are much closer to what the market really believes they should be.
This means the following outcome: those who need to buy the oil will not get the WRONG signal about oil prices, they will KNOW what the prices are and will not make WRONG decisions based on WRONG oil prices at that very moment (the more speculation, the closer to the real prices the current prices are).
Second: the producers do not get the WRONG signals about consumption patterns, so it's possible to grow or slow down the production capacity.
In an economy it's important to have all the CORRECT signals about prices. With the wrong signals the resources in the economy get mis-allocated.
Now look at it from the perspective of money - interest rates are price for money, price of having savings or not saving and spending as quick as possible on consumables.
Artificially set by government low interest rates give market the WRONG signal that there are huge savings in the economy (this is normal supply / demand, if the supply levels are too high, it means the demand is much lower than what is produced).
With artificial wrong interest rates, with very low ones the economy prevents real savings from being accumulated.
With artificially wrong high interest rates, the economy creates too much savings and doesn't allow the people to enjoy some fruits of their labour.
Thus here lies a huge problem of government meddling with the economy by fixing prices, and interest rates are price for money, and misallocation of resources is what creates all of the economic failures, the asset bubbles that are created, the destruction of savings and thus destruction and driving away of the investment capital, which means reduction in production capacity, loss of productivity (and loss of jobs and also of tax revenues, by the way).
Well, I had him as a prof back in 96, he was just as weird then as he is today on that picture, so what is your question in terms of what I am supposed to 'realise'?
'capitalis' means somebody who uses savings as investments to build up private means of production and increase his production capacity. Only in a ass backwards society somebody can think that a 'capitalist' means a consumer.
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future generations are a problem of future generations, here we can't even deal with the past, you think people can deal with the future?
There are 7 billion people on the planet, surviving another day takes all the energy that we are using today, what exactly do you think people should do 'for the future' that they are already not doing? Are you willing to kill yourself for example, today, for the future, to reduce the energy consumption?
You are wrong on all accounts.
There is no motivation in the public sector to do anything for the long term, the politicians are constantly battling in their own 'game of thrones', the sits are changed, the politicians want to stay in power, you think it's NOT a profit motive for them? Are you blind?
The public sector is much worse at handling what the market needs in the long term.
Again: what was phone service like while AT&T was still a gov't monopoly? You could rent a phone from them, sure, your pay always went up, it never went down, your services didn't improve, there was no consumer side innovation.
Then eventually AT&T lost its monopoly status and all of a sudden - from phone answering machines to fax machines to modems. All sorts of accessories appeared, the phones weren't rotary beige boxes anymore. Then mobile phones appeared, sure, expensive in the beginning, that's how it is. Today everybody who wants one has one. Or two, or more, and they can get them for free.
Long term? How long terms should it be, AT&T was a monopoly from early 19 hundreds, 3000 competitors were put out of business by government to do it.
Before Medicare came alone, the people paid for health care out of pocket, because it was cheap, because gov't wasn't in it (well, except for the inflationary money printing of-course and various regulations that always increased costs.)
Eventually with Medicare and then FDA, so gov't money and regulations, what the fuck happened to the health care and insurance costs you think?
Medicare was a long term gov't funded project, it's a complete disaster, it's bankrupt, it has no actual assets, no money. Sure sure, it has gov't bonds - much good will that do in the market.
What about FDA? Was it really needed? Were people dying left right and centre? No. But the pharma companies had too much competition and then Nixon came to town of-course.
What do you know, apparently with all gov't licenses competition can be completely wiped out and given the gov't system of patents, what do you know, prices can be arbitrarily high for any medication or a procedure. And what about insurance?
Well, people used to pay up to 2 bucks per month for a family of 2 before 1965, got excellent coverage (up to 50K per year), of-course the 500 bucks deductible still meant that most of the conditions and check ups were done by the person out of pocket, but they could actually afford it.
By the way, that audio, there is a pretty good prediction about the costs of insurance and health care going up due to ACA and the fact that the very concept of insurance has been destroyed by it, oh well, gov't does 'long term planning', right?
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In any case, AFAIC I am not here to convince you of anything, your mind is very much made up, I mean with gems like "greed is a terrible motivator", what's there to talk about?
What you call greed, I call basic desire of humans for better life. Individuals address that by working, that's what they do absent gov't. Gov't destroys the ability of people to be self-sustainable, self-respecting individuals, breaks their legs, hands them crutches and says: see, without me you wouldn't be able to walk. Vote for me.
By the way, this:
I'm arguing that I DO NOT need businessmen and women to decide what's best for me, and that corporations NEVER have our best intentions in mind, unless they can grab a quick buck out of it
- this is so stupid, it's beyond reproach, there is truly nothing to argue with you about. Yes, many corporations today are in cahoots with the gov't, but the reason of-course is that the individual freedoms of people who run the businesses are stolen by the gov't, by the mob, and they have to do something about it, so they make a good business decisions - jiujitsu, use the strength of the system against itself.
I am arguing that I DO NOT need gov't to tell me how to live my life, to tell me what is good, what is bad. I don't need gov't to pro
Irish, not Iris. Now the IRA will be coming for me.
She was also the 'Iris mom' in Titanic.
There are no good people to give the company to.
Let me give you an anecdotal story, let's say it's a friend, he has a company with about 250 employees. He hires people for positions that literally require these people to make everyday decisions about the business and these people end up making decisions that cost company an arm and a leg. He tries to teach them what to do, they can't learn or they don't care.
He replaces them, gets some new people, resumes are great, the interviews are wonderful. When the time comes to make decisions they screw up so badly, he is ripping his hair out when he finds out.
So what ends up happening is that a 250 people company is ran basically by one individual telling everybody what to do, the freaking people who are hired to make decisions about things that he really would like to delegate cannot make decisions, they don't understand how to make decisions, they don't see the difference between a good and a bad decision even when pointed out. They say they understand, the next time a decision needs to be made, they still don't do the right thing.
So eventually they end up coming to the owner and his day consists of telling people what to do about things that they are hired to do.
There are no good people, if you want something to work well, you have to do it yourself. Even when you PAY a huge premium you can't get good people.
Good people run their own companies.
I believe the Sun is so dangerous that I only use it at night. Of-course it's a small ball of light in the sky, it's what, about 2 meters across maybe? Could you really kill somebody by hitting them on the head with the Sun? It's pure light, so it weighs like nothing, so you probably can't kill anybody by hitting them with the Sun, but of-course if you bring it down to earth from the few miles that it is hanging above the heads, you'd probably get a stronger Sun burn. Why do they call it Sun burn anyway? It's a skin burn.
If I have time maybe I'll reply to you later, but right now I'll give you a good source to listen to for a few minutes that explains why the personal income tax in USA is unconstitutional and is collected unconstitutionally, the only constitutional 'income tax' is not an income tax but is a tax on corporate profits.
This is an argument similar that I made a while back.
"Yelling about it" is a part of people deciding on what to build. The GP just gave his opinion on what he wants to build.
- once the GP decides to actually invest some money, make a bet on his investment that he'll make a profit and put his money where his mouth is (because according to you that's what he wants to do) then he can simply do it. My point is that once somebody wants to make an investment, the government shouldn't be in a position to stop it.
Gov't spending IS bad regardless of outcome. ALL gov't spending is bad under ALL situations.
It is necessary to spend on government, but none of it is good. It is necessary to have military protection of some kind, of-course what USA has today is not for protection, it is for an attack, it's war spending, not protection spending.
The productive USA was built without income taxes, without corporate taxes, without payroll taxes, without FDIC, Fed, IRS, FDA, FHA, EPA, CIA, FBI, SS, Medicare, EI, Medicaid, welfare, without dep't of energy, education, agriculture, small business, commerce, interior, HUD, etc.
USA was a third world country before the 19th century, but during 19th century it became largest producer and exporter and thus largest creditor, yet nothing that I listed above existed. The time that parts of it were tried (like the Continental currency) it was a gigantic failure, leading to major recessions.
But how does a country become a productive exporter, creditor without gov't building infrastructure? Because it's not true that gov't is needed to build any of it, what IS true is that WEALTH is needed to build infrastructure.
There has to be a REASON to build infrastructure, there has to be wealth first, there has to be a promise of making a return - the profit motive is the driver, nothing else.
With the gov't, the profit motive is shifted, it's not to make a profit by producing the best product the market wants to buy, it's to make profit by growing the biggest department and by giving out the most free fake, borrowed or taxed money - that's how you grow power in government.
But a big gov't, is a powerful gov't, it's a huge spender and it needs things to do, so it gets its hands into everything.
It was the gov't that destroyed 3000 competitors to AT&T and turned AT&T into a monopoly. It was the gov't that broke apart a successful in the market Standard Oil corporation, which only had 4% of oil market in 1969 at 30 cents per gallon of refined oil and did enough investment and innovation to bring prices down to 5.9 cents by 1899. Of-course once Standard Oil was broken (and there were 150 competitors at the time), the prices for oil never went down again.
Infrastructure? How about the Keystone pipeline - the actual PRODUCTIVE infrastructure that private companies want to build, because they believe it's going to be profitable, it's going to make money. Is that the wrong thing today somehow - making money? USA was built by business, not by any government. USA was built by ABSENCE of gov't, people came to USA for freedoms from their totalitarian governments.
The countries today that do the best are those that removed the most government controls from their economy over time, and USA is moving in a completely wrong direction.
You want infrastructure? You can't have infrastructure, there is nothing to build it for, and if there is something to build it for (like an oil pipeline) you are arguing against it, and it's not even a government project.
You are not going to have infrastructure, because you don't have production. You are not going to have education and science, because you don't have manufacturing and engineering.
There has to be manufacturing and it has to be private - for profit, and gov't must stay out of it and that's how you will have wealth and infrastructure, because manufacturing will require it. That's how you'll have science - engineering done for manufacturing will require it and that's how you'll have education - all of the above will require it.
It's not enough to WANT something, you have to either do it yourself or step away and let those do it who want to do it, and their motivation is profit, and that's the best motivation. It's the best motivation, because absent gov't meddling, they'll be making profit by doing something that everybody wants (market wants to buy).
that's how I drink it, the mouth is not enough, I drink it with every square millimetre of skin already ..s.d.zzzzzdr..RRRRR.wwdDDDD
I'd far rather pay for another refinery and gas power stations (added capacity) AND a better power grid, than cough up the same amount for just another couple of pipelines (which, frankly, all they add is environmental disaster potential).
- you know what's funny, years of comments here, explaining that the real infrastructure cannot be built artificially by government, it has to come from the actual market need, and then a company wants to put down a freaking pipe and everybody is yelling about it.
A pipe is infrastructure, it's PRODUCTIVE infrastructure, unlike bridges and overpasses to nowhere. Environmentally speaking, the companies that are building the pipeline should have to buy or rent the land they are using from private owners, not from government, gov't is not an owner, it doesn't know what the real costs and prices are.
If the pipe runs through some public property - have an auction, sell that property to the private sector, let the companies figure out who own what and who rents from who, etc., don't get the gov't involved. The gov't should sell this asset (and all assets actually), pay down the debts and shut the fuck down everything that it started doing since about 1900.
Let the people decide on their own what to build, how to build it, what infrastructure actually makes sense. Private companies wouldn't be building bridges to nowhere if there was no profit in it, and profit literally means that the market wants that bridge to exist, otherwise it's a waste.
I am still holding strong, me and the other guy too.
Well, the actual statement is: Donuts. Is there anything they canâ(TM)t do?
Abstract, as in running in a VM, not dealing with the physical machine resources directly.
absolutely agree with that, and using C to build data structures teaches people more about them than using much higher more abstract languages that already have all these various data structures implemented as parts of multiple libraries.
Well, I didn't even say that, but try and argue that extra understanding of what is going on below your abstracted point of view hurts you. I can easily argue that understanding the machine makes you a better developer, even if this understanding is just at the level of OS itself. Knowing the limitations of the machine is important for example, if you are threading your high level app, you better know something about the context switching that is taking place just below you, you may want to learn something about the scheduling procedure too. If you abstract everything, you will still be able to write a business app, but you won't use the available memory efficiently.
Your app may talk to a database, you better know something about the network interfaces, your app may read and write files, you better know how to be efficient about it even at your high level, you better be familiar with the file system and its constraints (and specifications).
You better know what 'headless' means and how your OS handles it if you are trying to do some graphics processing on the server.
Should you know what sockets are at a level lower than your abstract language you think? Should you know how your OS handles them, what if they leak, what happens, do you know? If your file handles leak? Do you understand what socket handles are vs file handles? How about descriptors, do you know the difference, is there a difference?
If you don't know your hardware, how do you know to optimise wear and tear on the drives? What you are mixing and matching HDs and SSDs? If you are using a database that writes logs ahead and commits once they logs are written, and if you use SSDs and HDs, what's a better strategy to place the logs? How about archiving, what about recovery?
Do you believe you shouldn't ever have to think about the PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS of what you are working with?
C is a very simple language and yet it allows operating memory directly in a way similar to assembler. C is portable (well, it can be compiled for different platforms), I rather enjoyed the language a while back, but since about 98 I use Java for most of big development and I am pretty sure that if I had to do everything in C that I did in Java, it would have taken me much more time.
C is nice in another way - it allows you and in some sense it forces you to understand the machine in a more intimate way, you end up using parts of the machine, registers, memory addresses, you are more physically connected to the hardware. Java is a high level abstraction, but then again, to write so much logic, it is just better to do it at higher level, where you don't have to think about the machine.
C is great tool to control the machine, Java is a great tool to build business applications (I am mostly talking about back end, but sometimes front end too).
So I like C, I used to code in it a lot, but I just to use it nowadays. What's to love about it? Applications written in it can be closely integrated into the specific OS, you can really use the underlying architecture, talk to the CPU but also the GPU (CUDA), if I wanted to use the GPU from a Java application, I'd probably end up compiling some C code and a JNI bridge to it.
C teaches you to think about the machine, I think it gives an important understanding and it's faster to develop in than in Assembler.
Unfortunately all plastics are different.
No plastic is the same, plastics have different composition, additives, melting points, all sorts of different properties that really makes it impossible to melt them together and expect any sort of consistency.
OTOH it instead of melting the plastics, your old bottles could be shredded somehow into powder and then mixed with something sticky, some glue or epoxy, but even then different behaviours of different plastics would be problematic.
"speculator tax" is nonsense, as again, there are speculators on both sides of the transaction. When you buy spot for delivery, to you what is important is that you are not overpaying, not that there are a bunch of speculators betting against each other. OTOH those who sell for delivery want speculation to occur today as they want to bet on the futures market themselves to hedge, it is basically insurance, so they can smooth out possible price spikes or price falls, they want to know more precisely what their costs will be, what they will be able to make from their sales, this information is what allows them to not have bad surprises and not go bankrupt basically because of an unforeseen event, like a terrorist strike or a bad weather event or maybe a serious economic hit, and the market wants the producers to survive, not to be destroyed.
I found this to be an interesting piece of info
Even in this early stage, three major factors about Google Cloud stood out for Crandell. First was the way Google leveraged the use of its own private network to make its cloud resources uniformly accessible across the globe.
"When you create a Google Compute Engine account and use their resources," he said, "they provide a private network, a LAN of sorts that spans different regions. For example, if you set up an architecture to replicate a database from region A to region B, in the Google cloud, you don't need to traverse the public Internet to do it. You're using their private network."
How precisely that network is implemented (as its own private fiber or simply a very efficiently-routed VPN) is not disclosed by Google. But the key thing is that the whole structure is seen as a single network from a programming point of view. "This makes it easier if you're building cross-regional architectures," Crandall says. It's expected that Google will eventually expand Compute Engine to territories outside the United States.
- I really wonder if Google built (or bought) larges swaths of private infrastructure that is otherwise outside of the Internet, does anybody know?
Here is why I am wondering about it - Google as an ISP would then avoid outside costs to move its data, it's all internal costs, this turns Google into its own 'Internet' of sorts, Google only Internet.
That's why web neutrality is a nonsense concept from my perspective - if companies can build their own infrastructure, they can compete with each other and offer their own content at better speeds, but then Google could be an ISP that uses both, Google 'Internet' and external backend, but then on its own 'Internet', the content available from Google could be delivered at a higher priority and faster (and cheaper, because its internal costs, that can be managed easier).
By the way, there was a question in the story, asking why didn't Google provide this earlier. Well, maybe it tech wasn't ready or the business model wasn't there or maybe it's something to do with the government that wants to listen in on everything.
BTW., this is why such information should be made available, the speculation about the reasons for things like that could be worse than whatever the truth is.
Oh, and since the question was: are resellers capitalists, the answer (based on my previous response to your question) is yes.
Of-course resellers are capitalists. Distribution channels, suppliers, storage, shipping, handling, logistics, stores, all of this requires using savings and building up the tools needed for production (in their case the production means services) they have tools - from storage facilities and trucks, to shelf space and stores, shipment lanes, and knowledge.
Knowledge and means to organise knowledge is an important tool when providing such services, it takes investment to build up knowledge and tools to organise it, be it computer systems, understanding of processes or even just having the right people working for you in the right places, all of this are tools of production.
Investors and speculators in the financial markets are also capitalists, they provide services and their tools are mostly knowledge and people based.
A reseller has his own means of production, reseller is part of the distribution channel, do you think it is more efficient for every company that produces widgets (or whatever, food, energy, etc) to take care of all of the logistics and distribution channels, to set up their own stores, or can you understand that specialisation allows for best results (as long as this specialisation is something that market values)?
Clearly the market proves that having separate companies that handle logistics, delivery, shipping, handling, storage, etc., is better for the economy, it creates competition in all of these functions and creates economies of scale.
As to pure speculation - this is an important market function, it discovers true prices for things. What I mean is - when the gov't says: speculators are causing oil prices to go up, what they are not telling you is this:
1. Oil prices are not going up, it's inflation that destroys value of money, more fiat cash is chasing the same resources. In case of oil there is more production than ever and lowest consumption levels in 11 years, so it's not normal supply/demand curve at play.
2. Speculators keep prices LOWER than they would otherwise be. The alternative is that there are no speculators and instead somebody buys the oil as a long term investment and holds it and eventually prices go higher and higher because of it. Speculators are on BOTH sides of every futures deal, so they bet that prices will go down as well as betting that prices will go up. Speculators create a much more efficient market, where prices are much closer to what the market really believes they should be.
This means the following outcome: those who need to buy the oil will not get the WRONG signal about oil prices, they will KNOW what the prices are and will not make WRONG decisions based on WRONG oil prices at that very moment (the more speculation, the closer to the real prices the current prices are).
Second: the producers do not get the WRONG signals about consumption patterns, so it's possible to grow or slow down the production capacity.
In an economy it's important to have all the CORRECT signals about prices. With the wrong signals the resources in the economy get mis-allocated.
Now look at it from the perspective of money - interest rates are price for money, price of having savings or not saving and spending as quick as possible on consumables.
Artificially set by government low interest rates give market the WRONG signal that there are huge savings in the economy (this is normal supply / demand, if the supply levels are too high, it means the demand is much lower than what is produced).
With artificial wrong interest rates, with very low ones the economy prevents real savings from being accumulated.
With artificially wrong high interest rates, the economy creates too much savings and doesn't allow the people to enjoy some fruits of their labour.
Thus here lies a huge problem of government meddling with the economy by fixing prices, and interest rates are price for money, and misallocation of resources is what creates all of the economic failures, the asset bubbles that are created, the destruction of savings and thus destruction and driving away of the investment capital, which means reduction in production capacity, loss of productivity (and loss of jobs and also of tax revenues, by the way).
Well, I had him as a prof back in 96, he was just as weird then as he is today on that picture, so what is your question in terms of what I am supposed to 'realise'?
'capitalis' means somebody who uses savings as investments to build up private means of production and increase his production capacity. Only in a ass backwards society somebody can think that a 'capitalist' means a consumer.
All these 'smartphones' are computers and they are worn on people. Some have computers in their watches, they are worn.