I left a few replies in this thread, so it's a PITA to repeat the same thing over again. Distributed, cross checked lists, time stamped with expiration dates, hashed and keys distributed. Torrent like system to distribute list. Site operators checking existing lists for poison. There are many things that can be done by browsers to see if the self signed certificate indeed belongs to the issuer. Staying with the status quo is only acceptable to the CAs, not to users and over time the situation will get worse, as governments will want more and more access to your private data and CAs will be compelled to provide them with ways, so probably more and more CAs will be the points of security failure just like the ones in the stories as of late.
Well, in a marketplace of ideas any idea has the right to exist. I don't see why lists cannot be implemented, tried and tested if anybody cares to try of-course.
But you are not providing any reasoning to your statement. Why are distributed lists not a good idea? If the lists are distributed, time stamped and hash keys are created, hash keys are distributed and lists have expiration dates. The site operators would have to verify the lists out there periodically. Maybe torrent like way to distribute lists.
Come on, think outside of this box that we are in. There has to be a competing way to do identity authentication.
It's all about the UI - will you notice anything if UI does not tell you?
What if UI didn't tell you that the site is changing from HTTP to HTTPS, would you notice it? What if the browser decided not to show you the address bar at all? Do you know that they are playing with that genius idea? They are really thinking about it!
Now, what is needed is a good way to show that the site is HTTP or HTTPS with a self signed certificate, and have an easy way to see the fingerprint or it is an HTTPS with a CA (still show the fingerprint, why not?)
However I would like it to go further and I would like to see browsers using distributed lists of fingerprints/public certificates/hash keys for the lists, all of this done in a way that allows browser to load multiple lists from different unrelated sources, maybe even some form of 'torrent' for the fingerprint lists. Also maybe a standard to check for fingerprint for a site from the site as well.
Obviously the site operators have to manage their security actively, which includes actively checking the lists that are all over the web to make sure nobody is poisoning them (and this is what signature hash keys for lists are for, with time stamps and possibly with expiration dates).
How about expiration dates on fingerprint lists?
Any new ideas, as long as it's not relying on centralized signing authority.
I would rather have many distributed lists, all being cross checked, more like multiple DNS roots/entries rather than relying on somebody that is assumed to be trustworthy.
I want cross checking of multiple lists against one another, etc., You don't have to rely on my list.
Immiseration. Marx claimed that capitalism would immiserate workers..... (America's median wage has been stagnant for roughly 40 years.) In macro terms, labor's share of income has plummeted, while the lion's share of growth has accrued to those at the very top.
Obviously the author is not paying attention to what happened 40-45 years ago, namely defaulting on the promise to pay real money for federal reserve notes, destruction of currency, inflation, growth of government based on destruction of currency, capital flight and creation of more monopolies, due to increase of gov't size and thus regulations, which leads to creation of super-incomes for those on the very top of the ladder, but destroys competition and subsequently destroys the economy. Of-course wages are stagnant in this depression, which is combined with inflation.
This has nothing to do with anything Marx was talking about.
Crisis. As workers were paid less and less, capitalism would be prone to chronic, perpetual crises of overproduction
- ??:) OVERPRODUCTION?::))))) IN USA??:)))
OK, this is just ridiculous on its face. USA has 53 Billion/Month trade deficit. USA has overconsumption based on inflation and debt but it has no over-production at all. Once China stops subsidizing the US consumer, US consumer will stop consuming, as there will be nothing to consume.
for they wouldn't have the means to purchase or invest in enough goods to keep the economy humming.
- In 19 century USA, the production was growing immensely, while consumption was also growing even though there was actual deflation (contraction of money supply due to gold being money).
Stagnation. Here's Marx's most controversial â" and most curious â" prediction. That as economies stagnated, real rates of profit would fall.
- there is NOTHING controversial about this. This is true on its face value and if taken separately out of any context. As economy stagnates, profits must fall.
Of-course profits ARE falling, as all of the inflation is wiping out any real profits, and whatever profits are made by super-banks etc., that's all government propped up via further currency destruction.
Alienation. As workers were divorced from the output of their labor, Marx claimed, their sense of self-determination dwindled, alienating them from a sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
- it's called specialization, which eventually is replaced with automation. Free market capitalism solves this type of problem by automation, where people used to spend all the time doing the same manual or mental task over and over again, free market capitalism solves this by increased efficiency through investments into new types of tools, eventually automating all of the repetitive tasks away. As to feeling satisfaction with ones own work - this is best rewarded in capitalism and it's definitely shunned upon with unionized approach to work.
Unions do not like to reward performance, they reward seniority.
The other part of the problem is government making it increasingly difficult for anybody to start their own business that competes with established monopolies, that government creates, maintains, protects, bails out and stimulates and taxes for. Try and start your own business and see how that works out for you in this over-regulated, overtaxed market, which also will not let you have business credit due to the fact that gov't destroys value of money and savings and makes it impossible to get meaningful credit and all the money goes into government bonds - this is by design.
False consciousness. According to Marx, one of the most pernicious aspects of industrial age capitalism was that the proles wouldn't even know they were being exploited â" and might even celebrate the very factors behind thei
The only reason to do any any work, where you are not doing work for yourself or being charitable is profit.
What's the reason to go out there and do work if you are not making a profit and you are not doing it to satisfy some other feeling of yours, like maybe you are feeling charitable that day?
Profit is the feedback mechanism that tells you that your way of spending capital/land/labor and organization of these resources is a meaningful pursuit.
Without profit motive there is no feedback mechanism that you can use to figure out if you are doing something USEFUL in the market.
Without profit resources are spent wastefully and in fact they are spent destructively (when we talk about resources being spent by force, like in case of governments doing the spending.)
Government can make you work, it can give you work to do and it can print currency to pay you a nominal salary for this work. But government cannot make your work useful in the sense that market would want to pay you for this work. Either this work will be too expensive due to all of the regulations and bureaucracy built around it, or it will be meaningless, like building and rebuilding roads that market cannot actually use for anything, and which cannot be used to trade with other people who are making something of value.
Marxism relies on people behaving like bees, which is fine for bees, it just doesn't work for people.
This is what I have been talking about for years and years now. Years and years, and I am on the topic of browsers treating self signed certificates worse than viruses and there are still people disagreeing.
Come on, browsers need to start treating self signed certificates like they are plain old HTTP, with an icon that can be used to view the fingerprint.
That would be a GOOD START. Then start distributing lists of sites to fingerprints, maybe even public certificates, have time stamps and have the site operators cross check the fingerprints in those lists. Have an architecture to verify one list against another dynamically. Have verified lists that are hash signed, have hash keys for lists being distributed. I don't know, there could be all sorts of things done, but instead we are still relying on the centralized signing authority that didn't actually earn any trust. I don't trust any CA, why does anybody trust any CA?
You don't think there is an issue with the common 86 architecture for real time processing? I put together an Atmel based 3d printer controller back in 2003. If the bus for that controller was shared with another processor somehow, then there would be conflicts created in resource sharing.
When I said architecture, I should have been saying: bus architecture. How do you have an RTOS running on the same bus with another OS without having to rely on messaging and sacrificing actual real time?
PostreSQL can use a separate process for separate SQL executions actually, but it cannot use parallel processing for one SQL execution.
I am using a connection pool, so this is not even the question.
The problem right now is that PostreSQL does not split one SQL request into parallel pthreads or processes, so one query executes on one processor sequentially.
PostgreSQL is wonderful, I am using it for all my projects, but to overcome this problem I have to do much more on the front to speed up execution for large requests by splitting the requests into sub-requests that can be ran in parallel and that make sense to run in parallel because the data that comes back can be merged back together meaningfully.
This would be less of an issue of the database itself had ability to split the query into multiple parallel processes. PostgreSQL actually used to have this feature long ago, it came from Ingres I think but then it was pulled out due to some patenting issue.
I am now using a lot of parallel programming for what I do in report generating (funny?), it's not an easy thing to do, because I am using aggregate functions upon data, so splitting data retrieval and then recombining it once it's back (and having to poll for all of the DB requests to return) is tricky to say the least.
The reports make dozens or even hundreds of calls to the DB (PostgreSQL), and that DB doesn't run SQLs in parallel on separate processors (maybe some day, but not now), so I split the data retrieval into multiple segments and then recombine the data. To me the advantage of multiple cores at this point is only found in having completely independent processes running in separate cores, and nothing else on the DB side. The project itself is in Java, so it's using pthreads, so I have more control on the front than in the DB.
So basically to be honest, until the software like databases, takes advantage of more cores, there is no value in paying to switch to the new CPUs. However I would be interested in having a CPU with multiple cores, where some of the cores could have different architecture, to guarantee real time processing.
Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to have one CPU with normal applications running, but also with an app or part of apps running in the same CPU that could do real time processing - guarantee real time response with a simpler OS running on that core?
Having more than one OS running on the same CPU, one being a real time OS, but this would require real changes to the environment around the CPU - at the minimum there would have to be a dedicated memory bus.
Of-course the same can be achieved with just separate computers, so maybe there is no point in it.
Maybe AMD needs to look into helping some projects to switch to their architecture, to fix existing code base to use multiple CPUs at the same time, maybe that would make some sense. There is definitely a need for tools that would help switching existing applications to multi-processor/multi-core environments actually to use this stuff.
The latest developments in stock market are such that too many people believe they need to buy a "social media" type of stock but they can't get their hands on FB.
We just had this story - Zynga Seeks $1 Billion In IPO. Well, everybody was trying to go IPO. LinkedIn is another example.
The point to recognize is that none of these companies are actually profitable, yet they are seeking billions of dollars in IPO sales, because the new model is such that you start a website, some form of 'social media' and then you spend a bunch of money to get revenue going. As long as you can show revenue, nobody is paying attention to your actual profits, and you have none. All of these valuations are based on cash flow, not on profits, which is ridiculous, don't buy into this hype.
A stamp? I am sorry, are you saying that all the people who are getting rid of fiat and holding metal money are all lucky stamp buyers?
OK, are central banks buying stamps by the ton? NO. Central banks are buying gold by tens and hundreds of tons. Clearly they understand that gold is money.
Is US Constitution saying anything about stamps being money? No. US Constitution says:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
What about US coinage act? It defines how much gold or silver is a in a dollar.
So central banks are holding gold, US Constitution and coinage act says money is gold, people have been using gold for thousands of years as money, people today hedge against inflation of fiat currencies in gold and silver and platinum, and you are saying all of this is like buying stamps?
OK, I am not going to argue with you. We are all just that freaking smart - we know what goes up in nominal price when governments print more and more fiat cash.
It's OK, dude, don't worry about gold and silver, you can go ahead and be free of worries. You can believe whatever you want to believe, it's a market of opinions, after all.
Just because YOUR coverage with T-Mobile is already better than YOUR coverage with AT&T doesn't mean anything, does it? Maybe you live right at the T-Mobile tower and AT&T is not there, doesn't mean this is everybody's experience. To say that the coverage of the 2 combined companies will be somehow worse than coverage of one of them and at the same time call me a "dumb ass, who is full of crap and living in fantasy world in my own head" is sort of telling something, but not about me.
But wait a moment. To pay taxes in US dollars you need to earn or make US dollars somehow, and you are getting hurt at the moment that you are getting paid (of-course you are also getting hurt when you pay taxes, but that's a different discussion). You are getting hurt by being paid in worthless currency.
How do I know it's worthless? I have in my hand right now a silver coin, it's a 10 ounce Perth Mint coin, it's large, it says: 10 dollars on it, but the denomination has no meaning. This coin is over 400 bucks. This was bought for about 60 bucks a number of years ago. If I go downstairs and open a safe, I'll have in my hands a small number of gold bars. Those were bought at 550 USD/ounce. You can figure this out, right?
The point is that you are getting hurt when you are getting paid in currency that is losing value because it's being debased. The fact that you are also forced to pay income taxes on that is just an insult added to that injury.
Are you sure that T-Mobile is going to survive at all if not bought out by somebody, anybody? You may have a wonderful deal, but if a company does too many deals and takes a loss on every deal, how is it going to stay in business?
As a T-Mobile customers, you are going to get more coverage, so better service, because you will have wider infrastructure, that is AT&T infrastructure. This will work out to be the economy of scale to you, and besides, it's not clear that T-Mobile was going to stay in business for that much longer, I heard that, but that may be wrong, so I am not going to push that point.
However there is a reason why Sprint is coming out with the statements they are coming out with: they clearly believe that this merger will hurt them financially. Well, the only way for Sprint to be hurt financially is by AT&T/T-Mobile to provide better quality/price than Sprint does.
This will automatically force Sprint into lower profits, they will have to survive, they are not going just to lay down and die, so they'll have to take some of the prices down at least or maybe they'll do something about their infrastructure. In any case, whatever Sprint does, if it becomes more competitive, this is more pressure on AT&T to be more competitive.
If, on the other hand, Sprint is successful at preventing this merger there will not be an economy of scale applied to your carrier, AT&T will have to pay a large amount in penalties, this is money that they won't be able to use for more infrastructure projects and thus eventually this leads to less competition.
If there is any problem with my logic (there may be), at the very least there is the huge question of why Sprint is coming out with the lawsuit if they don't feel that they will have to work harder to retain customers, and this is directly and indirectly to your benefit if the merger goes through anyway.
So we have government creating a monster and then 'fighting' it? (seems similar to everything else government does, from Iraq with Saddam, to Afghanistan with OBL, to Iran with the Shah).
Really, think about all the blow back that you get when gov't gets involved. But now I am going to ask you this question:
IF you believe that AT&T and T-Mobile will NOT bring prices down then answer this question: how does any of this hurt customers of Sprint and how does this hurt Sprint?
The ONLY way this could hurt Sprint if AT&T in fact did bring prices down and/or was able to hold off raising of prices longer given the levels of inflation that is created by Federal reserve money destruction.
So this is the continuation of that topic, that got me my "Terrible" moderation, and it's all really part the same discussion that even brought USPS to its knees.
I got many comments saying something like this: with fewer companies, others, like Sprint, will have too much competition in pricing and they'll have to shut down.
Then somebody in that thread noted: but we want low prices. And then the same person commented: we want Sprint to stay in business. And we want government to prevent this merger.
And now this:
With today's legal action, we are continuing that advocacy on behalf of consumers and competition, and expect to contribute our expertise and resources in proving that the proposed transaction is illegal.
Well let me propose to you that in fact this merger is an act of free market at work, if this merger goes through, then Sprint will have a formidable competitor, covering very large area, and this competitor will be able to bring prices down and hold off against inflation longer.
Will this hurt Sprint? It will force Sprint to compete, so Sprint just may bring down their prices. That same person, that commented in the old thread said: the SMSs are too expensive, but we must protect Sprint against competition.
Don't you see a problem with preventing powerful competition from arising? What is the incentive for Sprint to bring prices down? How about bringing prices down on things that don't actually cost anymore money, like the SMSs being sent around?
If AT&T and T-Mobile are not allowed to merge by government (so this is destruction of free market, which means it's prevention of individuals from making individual choices in the long run), then AT&T will have to pay around 7 billion in penalties. It's interesting to note, that there is a union at AT&T, that is on the side of the merger, because they see T-Mobile's workers as potential union members. Not that I am personally pro-union or anything, don't get me wrong, but the current administration in the White House supposedly is, aren't they?
So back to the real question:
WHO GETS HURT?
If Sprint gets hurt because they see more competition, that is GOOD for the customers.
Do customers get hurt? How do customers get hurt? Nobody forces customers to get out of Sprint and if what AT&T and T-Mobile merger creates is more expensive and worse quality, then it's just better for Sprint.
So Sprint believes that this action will hurt Sprint. No matter what they issue as statements there, don't believe a word of it, they are only thinking about themselves, which is fine, but this has nothing to do with the customers. Sprint sees a potential price/quality war. Customers WIN in a price/quality war.
I know that many of you will see this comment as some sort of a 'troll', but consider that I am posing legitimate questions and I am not on board of any of these companies, so to me the entire exercise is purely theoretical for this specific case. Of-course in reality all of this affects everybody in the world, because any such involvement of government into businesses destroys the free market, which by definition is made out of individual choices unrestricted by government power. Once the free market is destroyed, the power then takes over all businesses, creates monopolies, destroys choices and holds prices where it wants.
Without government involvement any market created monopoly only exists as long as it provides the best quality choices at lowest possible prices, once the quality is substandard and/or prices are too high, there is immediately space created for others to compete with the established business. This is not the case with government protected monopolies, which are always protected by regulations and free money.
No, I've seen little parts of it, it's basically wrong in that it is not paying attention to the systematic problem related to government created moral hazard and destruction of monetary system by inflation and regulation that causes destruction of competition and creation and support of monopolies. They are not really getting to the meat of the matter, so to speak.
You are right, all fiat currencies are counterfeit. Japanese are printing, Europeans are printing, Russians are printing, Chinese are printing, etc.
Some are pegging their currency to the reserves they have in USD, because USD is said to be the 'reserve currency' (the 1944 conference at Bretton Woods concluded this.)
Do you not understand that all currencies printed by sovereign central banks are counterfeit if they have no reserves behind them? Then the joke is on you.
Swiss Franc is not redeemable for gold, however it is not printed out of existence, so for a decade now it has been going up steadily against all other currencies.
Just a few weeks ago there was a rumor that the Franc will be printed to push its value down and even an insane idea was floating around to peg the Franc to Euro. Now that would be really stupid, wouldn't it? Having a very successful currency in its own right be pegged to a monstrosity that Euro is. Basically losing the sovereignty in terms of fiscal policy and destroying the purchasing power of its own people.
A currency war is a kind of war where the objective is to hurt yourself, shoot yourself so bad, that you are worse off than your opponent. Of-course those who lose in this war win in reality, because they fail to destroy the purchasing power of their own nation more than others.
Gold is money, I see it as money, many people do. You may not see it as money, but it is market money, which means it's up to the individual to decide whether he wants to hold gold or anything else. AFAIC gold is better than anything else others use as money, holds its value unlike all of the paper notes.
Just figure out how many houses can be powered by hot air coming out of Sarah Palin, it's going to be an interesting project and definitely different from everybody else.
Maybe she can be used to power USPS in Alaska, she has the money, right? She is now one of them rich people. Use her to power USPS and the globe.
practical sense there isn't enough gold or silver in the world to match the value of the currencies in circulation
- common misconception.
There is a mechanism for it, it's called "price discovery".
and the price of gold and silver fluctuates anyway.
- I guess you'd be surprised to find out what the price of USD is doing then:
(I compiled the list with numbers from 2003 to 2010)
sugar Dec 2003: 20.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 36.97 cents/pound, price up by over 81% Beef Dec 2003: 105.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 193.00 cents/pound, price up by over 83% Barley Dec 2003: 100.77 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 208.70 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 107% Rice Dec 2003: 197.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 500.57 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 154% Cocoa Beans Dec 2003: 1,646.58 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 3,113.52 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 89% Tea Dec 2003: 205.22 cents/KG, Apr 2011: 325.33 cents/KG, price up by over 58% Rubber Dec 2003: 57.31cents/pound, Apr 2011: 265.49cents/pound, price up by over 363% Corn Dec 2003: 111.98 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 318.45 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 184% Bananas Dec 2003: 371.43 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 1,013.47 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 172% Propane Dec 2003: 0.63 USD/Gallon, Apr 2011: 1.45 USD/Gallon, price up by over 130% Wheat Dec 2003: 165.57 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 336.30 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 103% Oranges Dec 2003: 583.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 881.00 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 51% Salmon Dec 2003: 3.12 USD/Kg, Apr 2011: 7.86 USD/Kg, price up by over 151% Chicken Dec 2003: 68.98 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 86.42 cents/pound, price up by over 25% Pork Dec 2003: 48.68 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 92.06 cents/pound, price up by over 89% Silver Dec 2003: 565.33 cents/Troy ounce, Apr 2011: 4,279.79 cents/Troy ounce, price up by over 657% Alluminum Dec 2003: 1,557.78 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 2,667.44 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 71% Uranium Dec 2003: 13.35 USD/pound, Apr 2011: 57.84 USD/pound, price up by over 333% Iron Ore Dec 2003: 13.82 cents/dry Metric Ton, Apr 2011L: 179.26 cents/dry Metric Ton, price up by over 1197% (yeah, almost 1200%)
USA will default one way or another, I propose an honest default - debt restructuring, paying cents on the dollar in dollars that are still not totally destroyed, pushing interest rates up to double digits.
Deflation is contraction of money supply, and yes, it should happen. All of the banks that were bailed out are insolvent once interest rates go up above what the short term t-bills pay. Then all debts will have to be restructured and all banks will fail. It should be allowed.
You don't need to link me to a wiki, you should read my comment more carefully, it states plainly that USD hasn't been backed with anything for 40 years now (yes, that's today - 40 years and a couple of weeks I think). Federal reserve notes are notes, and now they will give you nothing for them, so they are worthless.
Precious metals are no longer a factor in the value of money.
- yeah, you can tell it to all the people who hold metals because they understand that economic reality of thousands of years cannot be changed by 100 years of bad policy. Well, 40 years actually. The age of fiat is coming to an end, people want real money - that's not paper.
Oh, come on. Federal reserve bank is about as independent as the SCOTUS.
When? When was the last time that the Fed did not do what the white house wanted from it and didn't print? In fact it's even worse than Congress, because Fed gave secret loans without any authorization of Congress all over the place since 2008 ( and likely before that time as well, we don't know, do we?)
Federal reserve bank is a front for all the banks and large monopolies/oligopolies in USA and other places, it does whatever it does to steal your purchasing power and to concentrate the wealth in the hands of selected few - those people are really the thieves.
The system is set up to "regulate" businesses, but in reality it only regulates competition out of business for those, who set it up - very large banking interests (military, agriculture, communications, energy, health, they are all in there, but the banks are running the place.)
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I left a few replies in this thread, so it's a PITA to repeat the same thing over again. Distributed, cross checked lists, time stamped with expiration dates, hashed and keys distributed. Torrent like system to distribute list. Site operators checking existing lists for poison. There are many things that can be done by browsers to see if the self signed certificate indeed belongs to the issuer. Staying with the status quo is only acceptable to the CAs, not to users and over time the situation will get worse, as governments will want more and more access to your private data and CAs will be compelled to provide them with ways, so probably more and more CAs will be the points of security failure just like the ones in the stories as of late.
Well, in a marketplace of ideas any idea has the right to exist. I don't see why lists cannot be implemented, tried and tested if anybody cares to try of-course.
But you are not providing any reasoning to your statement. Why are distributed lists not a good idea? If the lists are distributed, time stamped and hash keys are created, hash keys are distributed and lists have expiration dates. The site operators would have to verify the lists out there periodically. Maybe torrent like way to distribute lists.
Come on, think outside of this box that we are in. There has to be a competing way to do identity authentication.
It's all about the UI - will you notice anything if UI does not tell you?
What if UI didn't tell you that the site is changing from HTTP to HTTPS, would you notice it? What if the browser decided not to show you the address bar at all? Do you know that they are playing with that genius idea? They are really thinking about it!
Now, what is needed is a good way to show that the site is HTTP or HTTPS with a self signed certificate, and have an easy way to see the fingerprint or it is an HTTPS with a CA (still show the fingerprint, why not?)
However I would like it to go further and I would like to see browsers using distributed lists of fingerprints/public certificates/hash keys for the lists, all of this done in a way that allows browser to load multiple lists from different unrelated sources, maybe even some form of 'torrent' for the fingerprint lists. Also maybe a standard to check for fingerprint for a site from the site as well.
Obviously the site operators have to manage their security actively, which includes actively checking the lists that are all over the web to make sure nobody is poisoning them (and this is what signature hash keys for lists are for, with time stamps and possibly with expiration dates).
How about expiration dates on fingerprint lists?
Any new ideas, as long as it's not relying on centralized signing authority.
Did I say you have to trust my list?
I would rather have many distributed lists, all being cross checked, more like multiple DNS roots/entries rather than relying on somebody that is assumed to be trustworthy.
I want cross checking of multiple lists against one another, etc., You don't have to rely on my list.
Immiseration. Marx claimed that capitalism would immiserate workers..... (America's median wage has been stagnant for roughly 40 years.) In macro terms, labor's share of income has plummeted, while the lion's share of growth has accrued to those at the very top.
Obviously the author is not paying attention to what happened 40-45 years ago, namely defaulting on the promise to pay real money for federal reserve notes, destruction of currency, inflation, growth of government based on destruction of currency, capital flight and creation of more monopolies, due to increase of gov't size and thus regulations, which leads to creation of super-incomes for those on the very top of the ladder, but destroys competition and subsequently destroys the economy. Of-course wages are stagnant in this depression, which is combined with inflation.
This has nothing to do with anything Marx was talking about.
Crisis. As workers were paid less and less, capitalism would be prone to chronic, perpetual crises of overproduction
- ?? :) OVERPRODUCTION? ::))))) IN USA?? :)))
OK, this is just ridiculous on its face. USA has 53 Billion/Month trade deficit. USA has overconsumption based on inflation and debt but it has no over-production at all. Once China stops subsidizing the US consumer, US consumer will stop consuming, as there will be nothing to consume.
for they wouldn't have the means to purchase or invest in enough goods to keep the economy humming.
- In 19 century USA, the production was growing immensely, while consumption was also growing even though there was actual deflation (contraction of money supply due to gold being money).
Stagnation. Here's Marx's most controversial â" and most curious â" prediction. That as economies stagnated, real rates of profit would fall.
- there is NOTHING controversial about this. This is true on its face value and if taken separately out of any context. As economy stagnates, profits must fall.
Of-course profits ARE falling, as all of the inflation is wiping out any real profits, and whatever profits are made by super-banks etc., that's all government propped up via further currency destruction.
Alienation. As workers were divorced from the output of their labor, Marx claimed, their sense of self-determination dwindled, alienating them from a sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
- it's called specialization, which eventually is replaced with automation. Free market capitalism solves this type of problem by automation, where people used to spend all the time doing the same manual or mental task over and over again, free market capitalism solves this by increased efficiency through investments into new types of tools, eventually automating all of the repetitive tasks away. As to feeling satisfaction with ones own work - this is best rewarded in capitalism and it's definitely shunned upon with unionized approach to work.
Unions do not like to reward performance, they reward seniority.
The other part of the problem is government making it increasingly difficult for anybody to start their own business that competes with established monopolies, that government creates, maintains, protects, bails out and stimulates and taxes for. Try and start your own business and see how that works out for you in this over-regulated, overtaxed market, which also will not let you have business credit due to the fact that gov't destroys value of money and savings and makes it impossible to get meaningful credit and all the money goes into government bonds - this is by design.
False consciousness. According to Marx, one of the most pernicious aspects of industrial age capitalism was that the proles wouldn't even know they were being exploited â" and might even celebrate the very factors behind thei
The only reason to do any any work, where you are not doing work for yourself or being charitable is profit.
What's the reason to go out there and do work if you are not making a profit and you are not doing it to satisfy some other feeling of yours, like maybe you are feeling charitable that day?
Profit is the feedback mechanism that tells you that your way of spending capital/land/labor and organization of these resources is a meaningful pursuit.
Without profit motive there is no feedback mechanism that you can use to figure out if you are doing something USEFUL in the market.
Without profit resources are spent wastefully and in fact they are spent destructively (when we talk about resources being spent by force, like in case of governments doing the spending.)
Government can make you work, it can give you work to do and it can print currency to pay you a nominal salary for this work. But government cannot make your work useful in the sense that market would want to pay you for this work. Either this work will be too expensive due to all of the regulations and bureaucracy built around it, or it will be meaningless, like building and rebuilding roads that market cannot actually use for anything, and which cannot be used to trade with other people who are making something of value.
Marxism relies on people behaving like bees, which is fine for bees, it just doesn't work for people.
Self Signed Certificates.
This is what I have been talking about for years and years now. Years and years, and I am on the topic of browsers treating self signed certificates worse than viruses and there are still people disagreeing.
Come on, browsers need to start treating self signed certificates like they are plain old HTTP, with an icon that can be used to view the fingerprint.
That would be a GOOD START. Then start distributing lists of sites to fingerprints, maybe even public certificates, have time stamps and have the site operators cross check the fingerprints in those lists. Have an architecture to verify one list against another dynamically. Have verified lists that are hash signed, have hash keys for lists being distributed. I don't know, there could be all sorts of things done, but instead we are still relying on the centralized signing authority that didn't actually earn any trust. I don't trust any CA, why does anybody trust any CA?
You don't think there is an issue with the common 86 architecture for real time processing? I put together an Atmel based 3d printer controller back in 2003. If the bus for that controller was shared with another processor somehow, then there would be conflicts created in resource sharing.
When I said architecture, I should have been saying: bus architecture. How do you have an RTOS running on the same bus with another OS without having to rely on messaging and sacrificing actual real time?
PostreSQL can use a separate process for separate SQL executions actually, but it cannot use parallel processing for one SQL execution.
I am using a connection pool, so this is not even the question.
The problem right now is that PostreSQL does not split one SQL request into parallel pthreads or processes, so one query executes on one processor sequentially.
PostgreSQL is wonderful, I am using it for all my projects, but to overcome this problem I have to do much more on the front to speed up execution for large requests by splitting the requests into sub-requests that can be ran in parallel and that make sense to run in parallel because the data that comes back can be merged back together meaningfully.
This would be less of an issue of the database itself had ability to split the query into multiple parallel processes. PostgreSQL actually used to have this feature long ago, it came from Ingres I think but then it was pulled out due to some patenting issue.
I am now using a lot of parallel programming for what I do in report generating (funny?), it's not an easy thing to do, because I am using aggregate functions upon data, so splitting data retrieval and then recombining it once it's back (and having to poll for all of the DB requests to return) is tricky to say the least.
The reports make dozens or even hundreds of calls to the DB (PostgreSQL), and that DB doesn't run SQLs in parallel on separate processors (maybe some day, but not now), so I split the data retrieval into multiple segments and then recombine the data. To me the advantage of multiple cores at this point is only found in having completely independent processes running in separate cores, and nothing else on the DB side. The project itself is in Java, so it's using pthreads, so I have more control on the front than in the DB.
So basically to be honest, until the software like databases, takes advantage of more cores, there is no value in paying to switch to the new CPUs. However I would be interested in having a CPU with multiple cores, where some of the cores could have different architecture, to guarantee real time processing.
Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to have one CPU with normal applications running, but also with an app or part of apps running in the same CPU that could do real time processing - guarantee real time response with a simpler OS running on that core?
Having more than one OS running on the same CPU, one being a real time OS, but this would require real changes to the environment around the CPU - at the minimum there would have to be a dedicated memory bus.
Of-course the same can be achieved with just separate computers, so maybe there is no point in it.
Maybe AMD needs to look into helping some projects to switch to their architecture, to fix existing code base to use multiple CPUs at the same time, maybe that would make some sense. There is definitely a need for tools that would help switching existing applications to multi-processor/multi-core environments actually to use this stuff.
The latest developments in stock market are such that too many people believe they need to buy a "social media" type of stock but they can't get their hands on FB.
We just had this story - Zynga Seeks $1 Billion In IPO. Well, everybody was trying to go IPO. LinkedIn is another example.
The point to recognize is that none of these companies are actually profitable, yet they are seeking billions of dollars in IPO sales, because the new model is such that you start a website, some form of 'social media' and then you spend a bunch of money to get revenue going. As long as you can show revenue, nobody is paying attention to your actual profits, and you have none. All of these valuations are based on cash flow, not on profits, which is ridiculous, don't buy into this hype.
A stamp? I am sorry, are you saying that all the people who are getting rid of fiat and holding metal money are all lucky stamp buyers?
OK, are central banks buying stamps by the ton? NO. Central banks are buying gold by tens and hundreds of tons. Clearly they understand that gold is money.
Is US Constitution saying anything about stamps being money? No. US Constitution says:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
What about US coinage act? It defines how much gold or silver is a in a dollar.
So central banks are holding gold, US Constitution and coinage act says money is gold, people have been using gold for thousands of years as money, people today hedge against inflation of fiat currencies in gold and silver and platinum, and you are saying all of this is like buying stamps?
OK, I am not going to argue with you. We are all just that freaking smart - we know what goes up in nominal price when governments print more and more fiat cash.
It's OK, dude, don't worry about gold and silver, you can go ahead and be free of worries. You can believe whatever you want to believe, it's a market of opinions, after all.
Just because YOUR coverage with T-Mobile is already better than YOUR coverage with AT&T doesn't mean anything, does it? Maybe you live right at the T-Mobile tower and AT&T is not there, doesn't mean this is everybody's experience. To say that the coverage of the 2 combined companies will be somehow worse than coverage of one of them and at the same time call me a "dumb ass, who is full of crap and living in fantasy world in my own head" is sort of telling something, but not about me.
But wait a moment. To pay taxes in US dollars you need to earn or make US dollars somehow, and you are getting hurt at the moment that you are getting paid (of-course you are also getting hurt when you pay taxes, but that's a different discussion). You are getting hurt by being paid in worthless currency.
How do I know it's worthless? I have in my hand right now a silver coin, it's a 10 ounce Perth Mint coin, it's large, it says: 10 dollars on it, but the denomination has no meaning. This coin is over 400 bucks. This was bought for about 60 bucks a number of years ago. If I go downstairs and open a safe, I'll have in my hands a small number of gold bars. Those were bought at 550 USD/ounce. You can figure this out, right?
The point is that you are getting hurt when you are getting paid in currency that is losing value because it's being debased. The fact that you are also forced to pay income taxes on that is just an insult added to that injury.
Are you sure that T-Mobile is going to survive at all if not bought out by somebody, anybody? You may have a wonderful deal, but if a company does too many deals and takes a loss on every deal, how is it going to stay in business?
As a T-Mobile customers, you are going to get more coverage, so better service, because you will have wider infrastructure, that is AT&T infrastructure. This will work out to be the economy of scale to you, and besides, it's not clear that T-Mobile was going to stay in business for that much longer, I heard that, but that may be wrong, so I am not going to push that point.
However there is a reason why Sprint is coming out with the statements they are coming out with: they clearly believe that this merger will hurt them financially. Well, the only way for Sprint to be hurt financially is by AT&T/T-Mobile to provide better quality/price than Sprint does.
This will automatically force Sprint into lower profits, they will have to survive, they are not going just to lay down and die, so they'll have to take some of the prices down at least or maybe they'll do something about their infrastructure. In any case, whatever Sprint does, if it becomes more competitive, this is more pressure on AT&T to be more competitive.
If, on the other hand, Sprint is successful at preventing this merger there will not be an economy of scale applied to your carrier, AT&T will have to pay a large amount in penalties, this is money that they won't be able to use for more infrastructure projects and thus eventually this leads to less competition.
If there is any problem with my logic (there may be), at the very least there is the huge question of why Sprint is coming out with the lawsuit if they don't feel that they will have to work harder to retain customers, and this is directly and indirectly to your benefit if the merger goes through anyway.
But wait a moment. AT&T's monopoly was established by the government, which killed a few thousand competitors in the process.
So we have government creating a monster and then 'fighting' it? (seems similar to everything else government does, from Iraq with Saddam, to Afghanistan with OBL, to Iran with the Shah).
Really, think about all the blow back that you get when gov't gets involved. But now I am going to ask you this question:
IF you believe that AT&T and T-Mobile will NOT bring prices down then answer this question: how does any of this hurt customers of Sprint and how does this hurt Sprint?
The ONLY way this could hurt Sprint if AT&T in fact did bring prices down and/or was able to hold off raising of prices longer given the levels of inflation that is created by Federal reserve money destruction.
Come on, at least be consistent.
So this is the continuation of that topic, that got me my "Terrible" moderation, and it's all really part the same discussion that even brought USPS to its knees.
I got many comments saying something like this: with fewer companies, others, like Sprint, will have too much competition in pricing and they'll have to shut down.
Then somebody in that thread noted: but we want low prices. And then the same person commented: we want Sprint to stay in business. And we want government to prevent this merger.
And now this:
With today's legal action, we are continuing that advocacy on behalf of consumers and competition, and expect to contribute our expertise and resources in proving that the proposed transaction is illegal.
Well let me propose to you that in fact this merger is an act of free market at work, if this merger goes through, then Sprint will have a formidable competitor, covering very large area, and this competitor will be able to bring prices down and hold off against inflation longer.
Will this hurt Sprint? It will force Sprint to compete, so Sprint just may bring down their prices. That same person, that commented in the old thread said: the SMSs are too expensive, but we must protect Sprint against competition.
Don't you see a problem with preventing powerful competition from arising? What is the incentive for Sprint to bring prices down? How about bringing prices down on things that don't actually cost anymore money, like the SMSs being sent around?
If AT&T and T-Mobile are not allowed to merge by government (so this is destruction of free market, which means it's prevention of individuals from making individual choices in the long run), then AT&T will have to pay around 7 billion in penalties. It's interesting to note, that there is a union at AT&T, that is on the side of the merger, because they see T-Mobile's workers as potential union members. Not that I am personally pro-union or anything, don't get me wrong, but the current administration in the White House supposedly is, aren't they?
So back to the real question:
WHO GETS HURT?
If Sprint gets hurt because they see more competition, that is GOOD for the customers.
Do customers get hurt? How do customers get hurt? Nobody forces customers to get out of Sprint and if what AT&T and T-Mobile merger creates is more expensive and worse quality, then it's just better for Sprint.
So Sprint believes that this action will hurt Sprint. No matter what they issue as statements there, don't believe a word of it, they are only thinking about themselves, which is fine, but this has nothing to do with the customers. Sprint sees a potential price/quality war. Customers WIN in a price/quality war.
I know that many of you will see this comment as some sort of a 'troll', but consider that I am posing legitimate questions and I am not on board of any of these companies, so to me the entire exercise is purely theoretical for this specific case. Of-course in reality all of this affects everybody in the world, because any such involvement of government into businesses destroys the free market, which by definition is made out of individual choices unrestricted by government power. Once the free market is destroyed, the power then takes over all businesses, creates monopolies, destroys choices and holds prices where it wants.
Without government involvement any market created monopoly only exists as long as it provides the best quality choices at lowest possible prices, once the quality is substandard and/or prices are too high, there is immediately space created for others to compete with the established business. This is not the case with government protected monopolies, which are always protected by regulations and free money.
No, I've seen little parts of it, it's basically wrong in that it is not paying attention to the systematic problem related to government created moral hazard and destruction of monetary system by inflation and regulation that causes destruction of competition and creation and support of monopolies. They are not really getting to the meat of the matter, so to speak.
Beamers always looked nice, now with the optional tiny sharks inside the headlamps they'll be simply irresistible.
What would PETA say?
You are right, all fiat currencies are counterfeit. Japanese are printing, Europeans are printing, Russians are printing, Chinese are printing, etc.
Some are pegging their currency to the reserves they have in USD, because USD is said to be the 'reserve currency' (the 1944 conference at Bretton Woods concluded this.)
Do you not understand that all currencies printed by sovereign central banks are counterfeit if they have no reserves behind them? Then the joke is on you.
Swiss Franc is not redeemable for gold, however it is not printed out of existence, so for a decade now it has been going up steadily against all other currencies.
Just a few weeks ago there was a rumor that the Franc will be printed to push its value down and even an insane idea was floating around to peg the Franc to Euro. Now that would be really stupid, wouldn't it? Having a very successful currency in its own right be pegged to a monstrosity that Euro is. Basically losing the sovereignty in terms of fiscal policy and destroying the purchasing power of its own people.
A currency war is a kind of war where the objective is to hurt yourself, shoot yourself so bad, that you are worse off than your opponent. Of-course those who lose in this war win in reality, because they fail to destroy the purchasing power of their own nation more than others.
Gold is money, I see it as money, many people do. You may not see it as money, but it is market money, which means it's up to the individual to decide whether he wants to hold gold or anything else. AFAIC gold is better than anything else others use as money, holds its value unlike all of the paper notes.
see, that's easy.
Just figure out how many houses can be powered by hot air coming out of Sarah Palin, it's going to be an interesting project and definitely different from everybody else.
Maybe she can be used to power USPS in Alaska, she has the money, right? She is now one of them rich people. Use her to power USPS and the globe.
practical sense there isn't enough gold or silver in the world to match the value of the currencies in circulation
- common misconception.
There is a mechanism for it, it's called "price discovery".
and the price of gold and silver fluctuates anyway.
- I guess you'd be surprised to find out what the price of USD is doing then:
(I compiled the list with numbers from 2003 to 2010)
sugar Dec 2003: 20.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 36.97 cents/pound, price up by over 81%
Beef Dec 2003: 105.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 193.00 cents/pound, price up by over 83%
Barley Dec 2003: 100.77 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 208.70 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 107%
Rice Dec 2003: 197.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 500.57 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 154%
Cocoa Beans Dec 2003: 1,646.58 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 3,113.52 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 89%
Tea Dec 2003: 205.22 cents/KG, Apr 2011: 325.33 cents/KG, price up by over 58%
Rubber Dec 2003: 57.31cents/pound, Apr 2011: 265.49cents/pound, price up by over 363%
Corn Dec 2003: 111.98 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 318.45 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 184%
Bananas Dec 2003: 371.43 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 1,013.47 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 172%
Propane Dec 2003: 0.63 USD/Gallon, Apr 2011: 1.45 USD/Gallon, price up by over 130%
Wheat Dec 2003: 165.57 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 336.30 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 103%
Oranges Dec 2003: 583.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 881.00 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 51%
Salmon Dec 2003: 3.12 USD/Kg, Apr 2011: 7.86 USD/Kg, price up by over 151%
Chicken Dec 2003: 68.98 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 86.42 cents/pound, price up by over 25%
Pork Dec 2003: 48.68 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 92.06 cents/pound, price up by over 89%
Silver Dec 2003: 565.33 cents/Troy ounce, Apr 2011: 4,279.79 cents/Troy ounce, price up by over 657%
Alluminum Dec 2003: 1,557.78 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 2,667.44 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 71%
Uranium Dec 2003: 13.35 USD/pound, Apr 2011: 57.84 USD/pound, price up by over 333%
Iron Ore Dec 2003: 13.82 cents/dry Metric Ton, Apr 2011L: 179.26 cents/dry Metric Ton, price up by over 1197% (yeah, almost 1200%)
USA will default one way or another, I propose an honest default - debt restructuring, paying cents on the dollar in dollars that are still not totally destroyed, pushing interest rates up to double digits.
Deflation is contraction of money supply, and yes, it should happen. All of the banks that were bailed out are insolvent once interest rates go up above what the short term t-bills pay. Then all debts will have to be restructured and all banks will fail. It should be allowed.
You don't need to link me to a wiki, you should read my comment more carefully, it states plainly that USD hasn't been backed with anything for 40 years now (yes, that's today - 40 years and a couple of weeks I think). Federal reserve notes are notes, and now they will give you nothing for them, so they are worthless.
Precious metals are no longer a factor in the value of money.
- yeah, you can tell it to all the people who hold metals because they understand that economic reality of thousands of years cannot be changed by 100 years of bad policy. Well, 40 years actually. The age of fiat is coming to an end, people want real money - that's not paper.
Oh, come on. Federal reserve bank is about as independent as the SCOTUS.
When? When was the last time that the Fed did not do what the white house wanted from it and didn't print? In fact it's even worse than Congress, because Fed gave secret loans without any authorization of Congress all over the place since 2008 ( and likely before that time as well, we don't know, do we?)
Federal reserve bank is a front for all the banks and large monopolies/oligopolies in USA and other places, it does whatever it does to steal your purchasing power and to concentrate the wealth in the hands of selected few - those people are really the thieves.
The system is set up to "regulate" businesses, but in reality it only regulates competition out of business for those, who set it up - very large banking interests (military, agriculture, communications, energy, health, they are all in there, but the banks are running the place.)