This game company sells to Facebook, right? With the low barrier to entry, these companies really have nothing to offer beyond their current windfall. Facebook is a fad, just like Myspace was, and these so called 'social games' are a fad as well. The 1 billion dollar IPO is forward looking, it accounts for near 100% profitability, it basically means that the market cap of 1billion is true only if the company has the same revenue and profit from now on, which is unlikely.
It's unlikely, not impossible, but highly unlikely, especially given how they all of a sudden moved from negative 50 something million in 2009 to positive 90 million in 2010.
From negative 50, to positive 90 in a year, and then going IPO based on unlikely projections?
Sure, you can go ahead and buy the stock, but I wouldn't. Sure, maybe it's a profitable company, but would I pay the stock prices that are calculated based on this inflated market cap? Why? Well, if I turn masochistic I might, but for no other reason than that.
Linked In? You must be joking. Their valuation is 36 times their revenue I believe, isn't it right?
Do you know that it's very easy to have huge revenue but have no profit and then come up for an IPO nowadays if you are one of these newfangled 'Web2.0' companies?
Revenue is irrelevant. I can have all revenue all day, if I just buy a product and sell it cheaper than anybody else, I'll be bleeding red ink, but I can have more revenue than any competitor.
Then, based on today's 'reality', I can go for an IPO with a huge valuation based on nothing but revenue. Then I cash out and go drink moheetas on a white yacht somewhere in the Caribbean, and leave the schmucks holding the worthless coupons.
There are 36,400 post offices in the united states. There are 1,800 fedex offices, and 22 fedex hubs. There are a few hundred UPS distribution centers.
Do you for one second believe that UPS and Fedex would be profitable if they put offices in every small town?
- so what are you saying, exactly? Are you saying that USPS with its tens of thousands of post offices is profitable while a private company couldn't be?
What are you basing this on? USPS has unions and it has various pension obligations, it does not break even, it's in the red without the forever stamps and without the monopoly on first class mail delivery.
Should there be a physical post office hub in every town and city and village? I don't know, but if it can be done while at least breaking even, then a private company can do so, and if it cannot be done by a private company just to break even, what makes you think that a government bureaucracy figured out a way to have it done and break even or maybe generate some profit?
The reason any government agency or a department or a a program can exist, is because it does not have to break even. None of them have to break even. What private company can afford to have over 600 million taken from it for a piece of accounting software and break even or stay in business for that matter?
What is this protection against competition in mail delivery that you are talking about? There are hundreds of companies that exist and are solely dedicated to mail and package delivery. Are you saying they can't exist because of the monopoly the USPS has? Reality disagrees.
- I said the exact opposite, I said that without government subsidies and monopoly status in first class mail delivery it is the government USPS that could never stay in business, so reality agrees with me just fine, but you found a way to disagree with reality.
All aboard! The gravy train is leaving this station.
This is another bubble, which is being inflated now, and since people have short memories and no understanding of economics they are jumping right on it.
These new software service/product companies are going IPO now, while things are still moving. Wall Street wants to push these companies right now, one after the other, feeding the frenzy, as they know it won't last.
These insane valuations that Linked In and all these other new IPOs are going at are forward looking, they are assuming 100% profitability at current level. They have no space to go but DOWN.
Many winters ago I was in a similar position, had to tell my bosses what I thought was wrong and the result was of-course that my contract was prematurely terminated within days from the moment I opened my mouth. Would I have done the same thing over if I could go back in time?
- well, because in history of humanity there was never a government that didn't become evil or wasn't evil from the start? Because government provides people with ability to gather power over people, businesses and resources without too much effort? Because a place that provides such an ability is a magnet for people who want the power over people, businesses and resources? Because government power is used to control people's lives, tax people's work, mis-allocate resources? Because over time regardless of the government structure it eventually leads to huge government apparatus living in itself for itself, feeding off the productive part of the economy?
Because government even though 'non-profit' is highly profitable for politicians and others, who get near the cake.
Because government has the power to set winners and losers in the economy by taxes and subsidies and regulations and laws.
Because anything that government does is an expression of government force, based on its ability to hurt you, rather than expression of market forces, which require 2 parties to come to an agreement.
Because government corrupts the very society by offering all sorts of impossible in the long run 'solutions', which cannot be supported economically in the long run, but look very lucrative to the majority of voters in the short run.
Because government punishes the productive part of the economy, by sacrificing it to its desire for power, since it basically directs the desires of the majority of the society to get things for free, things they didn't work for and to get those things, somebody must pay, and those are the people, who are in fact producers in the economy.
Because eventually governments spending and power grows beyond ability of the host society to maintain it, and then, government being what it is and corrupting the voters the way it does, destroys not only the economic ability to maintain this spending, but the very fabric of the economic stability - currency itself, by monetizing the insatiable thirst for debt, which is then used to 'pay' for all of the spending, which the voters are corrupted into believing is absolutely necessary and even indeed are their right.
--
The point is that government is a force outside of the rest of the market, and while the rest of the market is basically about 2 parties coming to an agreement over costs or value, etc., government does not have such silly limitations - it can impose its will upon the society, upon the economy, etc., regardless of any real economic outcomes and only based on the expedient desires to get more power and to stay in power further and indeed, to increase the power into infinity.
So yes, I cannot view the government in any other light but as the ultimate evil, and this conflicts with my understanding that the power vacuum will be filled with something, and this something better be set on purpose and be controlled than be something random.
The US Constitution was trying to impose the control upon the power of the government, but obviously there is perfect way to control it, and that's why governments always reset once they reach certain level of 'evil', and new governments are established.
It would be better if people understood these simple realities sooner rather than later.
It had seemed such a great idea. What if the police had sniffer dogs that could fly? Dogs do not have wings, they realised, but birds do.
- I have suspicions about these cops. How did they come up with this? Were they sitting in a circle, passing a bong around, when the usual conversation of "My hands are HUGE" was all of a sudden interrupted by a guy, who watched too much Discovery channel?
-Oooooh, guys, I have an idea! It's BRILLIANT. What if birds could be cops? -Holly shit, you are onto something there, man! But wouldn't it be better if cops were birds? -I like birds. -I want birds. -I am a bird. -No, you are not. -Yes, I am. -No, you are not. -Flap your wings then. (flap flap flap) -HOLY SHIT! You ARE a bird! -I knew a bird once. She was pretty, had this pretty blond hair. We went out a few times, but it didn't end well. -Did you eat her?... -Vultures.
Compare the cost of US military troops in Iraq vs contractor personnel in Iraq.
- excuse me? Since when is a for-profit war supposed to spend less money rather than more money on private contracts?
Are you suggesting that outfits like Blackwater are not enjoying very close government relations and are not treated like a monopoly and are not cycling the money back to various politicians' campaigns and private hands to be part of that racket?
If we can handle a moon landing, the invasion of Normandy, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Hoover Dam, and the Manhattan Project, I'm pretty sure we can handle putting together a payroll system.
- are you saying that all those things were cost-averse? I mean, 'invasion of Normandy' and Moon Landing (which was largely funded by SS money, BTW.)
The only reason to have government is to provide military protection and with wars that have a clear stated objective and that are supported largely by the entire nations, the cost-overruns are totally looked over.
As to things like 'payroll systems' - any government contract will be milked out of as much cash as that branch of government can shell out to the maximum by whoever gets the contract.
Here in Chicago, we had a public parking system that was hugely profitable, convenient and cheap.
- yeah, like post office and US military and Medicare are 'hugely profitable, convenient and cheap'.
Government doesn't have to report to you the real costs, the money that is spent on administration and maintenance and all other costs (never mind not having to pay actual taxes), are spread around multiple government offices, hiding the true costs, and the true costs are taxes and destruction of economy and currency.
Oh, and the private outfit that manages parking says they cannot make a profit even with the 1600% increase, so they're going to be raising parking prices yet again.
- I'd be looking into their ties to the government, that sold them the property.
Governments can certainly handle large, complex projects and do it more efficiently than the private sector. When you take out the 20-100% (minimum) profit margins that privateers add, it's not even close.
- nonsense. They can handle large complex projects simply because they have all the money in the world, which they can borrow and print and tax, not because they are more efficient magically. Efficiencies come out of search for more profit.
You see, to have efficiency you must be looking for profit. If you are not looking for profit, then the difference between your expense and your revenue is irrelevant, so why would you be looking for efficiencies? It makes no sense. And government accounting practices are not different from Enron and Madoff's accounting practices, as government can make all sorts of 'projections', making all sorts of assumptions about the future but it is never called out when all of those assumptions fail (and they do fail).
Just like their rosy assumptions that interest rates will stay low for years to come - total nonsense.
Say, how well are those private space exploration companies doing? I'm sure by now they must have mines set up on Mars.
- maybe, if government wasn't eating all the credit, wasn't mis-allocating all of the resources, wasn't taxing and regulating business out of business, maybe if governments wasn't subsidizing all sorts of large monopolies in energy and mining (and banking and insurance and manufacturing and agriculture and pharma and health and communications and war and education), if gov't wasn't doing all of that with money it steals from actual producers, then companies would find a case for such operations, which are clearly nonsense based on today's reality.
Government does things not because it's more efficient, it does things because it controls the money.
I guess you completely missed the part where they were allowed to see SOME time like other projects yet not other time, or where the project was supposed to show up in SOME overviews but not in others, sometimes in an anonymous form, or the costs should be real SOME places but not others.
- no, I didn't miss it. Those are the rules that shouldn't be in the app., that's my point. All those rules should be outside of the app. because of how ridiculous they are, all those rules should be about access control lists, and ACLs should be used not only to do binary 'show/not show', but they should be used dynamically at the point of data retrieval, evaluating every type of data against this user/this project.
This problem is a no-problem for an application to solve, it's a constantly shifting target that should not be solved by software business logic, but instead should be solved by constantly shifting ACL permissions, and so instead of constant fixes to the business logic + recompilation + re-installation + down time due to inherent problem of bugs, introduced during such adjustments, it should be a data-model driven ACL, which is used to evaluate data dynamically as it comes out of the storage and before presentation as well.
Well, this sounds like a complex solution to a no-problem, as the simple solution to this would have been access lists for specific projects and people's time, created on per-project basis. This way you don't need any logic to be in the app, you just allow them to have fine-grained security around pieces of information based on their sign-in credentials and they can screw around with the logic of who is allowed to see what IRL outside of the app itself.
No that is the problem with corruption. And the fault of corruption in a democracy are the people.
- government must exist only because if it does not, something will appear to occupy that roles, so it's better to have a known quantity of evil, than something that will just spur out of vacuum. But because it is a necessary evil, it must be controlled and only be allowed to do the bare minimum, so that it can only destroy very little of society by its mere fact of existence.
Ok, so are you prepared to get a gun and shoot everyone or get shot down?
- well, sure, but that's not the point. The point is that government should not be as big as it is, it must be very small and very controlled.
The functions the government is allowed to take today, should not be in the hands of government - a monopoly with no accountability and without competition.
I know you are most likely American and you are taught since you are a baby that American is the greatest country
- I was born in USSR, lived in a number of places, including North America, so you do not in fact know.
Corruption was always the reason why states fail and the fault of corruption in a democracy are the people which are not paying attention to their elected leaders. Did you inform yourself about the budged of your city? Did you hold the major accountable?
- pay attention to my sig. I make sure I know what's happening financially to align my interests with the most likely economic outcomes, this does include learning things about the surrounding environment.
The Solar Impulse airplane made its debut at the Paris Air Show with a 20 minute public voyage powered by nothing but solar cells
- well, it's powered by nothing but solar cells and an average size star, which is about 1,000,000 km/diameter, hanging above our heads. If the Sun could have and express feelings, would it be bothered to know, we think it's nothing? What if it felt it was unappreciated and decided to leave (or at least to leave France)? Let them try and power those planes by nothing and solar cells without the Sun:)
Remember that post office has a monopoly on first class mail delivery, which is protected by law.
SS never had a fund, it was a ponzi scam from the get-go, as the first people to enter got extreme benefits, while contributing basically nothing, and the last people to enter get to pay extreme contributions, and will get nothing in return. Government had to go all the way to the Supreme court with SS, as in lower courts it couldn't convince the judges that the SS taxes and SS payments were unrelated, otherwise it would not have passed the Constitutionality test. Supreme court proved to be just as much a political hand of the federal government as the Federal reserve, and so SS 'passed' the test.
The point is that SS never had any fund, it never was an investment and it is now paying out more than it takes in, the difference comes from IOUs, and the idiot AC above in this thread above is wrong about SS being 'solvent' for another quarter of a century, as SS is insolvent right now. Declaring that one is solvent by writing a check to oneself doesn't work in real life, and it will fail in government life as well.
Don't you wish you could just opt out of it now? Well, one way to do it is to skip US citizenship and move.
The government does a great many things efficiently, and substantially cheaper then private industry. Usually large infrastructure and big RnD projects.
- oh yeah, how well does this statement bode with this one exactly:
complex and you might not even KNOW you have a cost overrun until the company presents you with a bill with a lot of previous years add-ons suddenly appearing. usally right after the point where rolling back isn't practical anymore.
....
I've been through many of these projects on both sides of the fence.
Speaking from the both sides of your mouth, I see.
CityTime was launched in 2003 at a budget of $63 million, but costs swelled dramatically as the project stumbled along for nearly a decade.
- this is the problem with government programs: from the very beginning they are already deep in trouble. It makes no sense that a computer payroll system should start at 63 million, why did it start at that number from the beginning?
It makes no sense that government should be so large, as to require a computer payroll system that starts as a 63 million project, never mind that anybody getting that contract will make their best to prolong it as much as possible, simply because it IS government and it does not care about costs.
When somebody says that government can do things efficiently, and they use the postal office as an example, they should really go back to that premise and realize, that the US post office is out of cash - it's selling 'forever stamps' today, and assuming it doesn't just dissolve over the next few years, it won't be able to make any money at that time and it will be in a worse fiscal shape than it is today, because the stamps sold today are basically protection against the 10% (current level) of monetary inflation that US Fed and Treasury are incurring on US population. Today the postal office cannot function already and they sell the forever stamps, tomorrow, they'll have to raise the prices but people will use those forever stamps and the postal office will either have to default on that stamp or dissolve, or there will be another bail out, and people use that as one of 'better' examples of government 'efficiency'.
Another example they give is Medicare, while not realizing that Medicare costs are spread out among various parts of government that are not calculated into the costs directly, and just like SS, that program is bankrupt today, being the biggest pyramid scams of all times, making Madoff look like a preschooler.
Anyway, back to this topic - who was the NYC mayor at the time when this ridiculous project started I wonder? Oh wait, Bloomberg has been the mayor of NYC since 2002 and this project started in 2003. So where was he all the time when the costs overran by x2, by x3, by x5, is the magic number for a politician to look at some cost overruns only when they exceed the x10 estimate?
People blame corporations and businesses for waste and fraud, but at least corporations and businesses have to extract their money from customers (well, unless they are government protected monopolies of-course) by selling products that customers want.
When business overruns its costs and credits like that, it likely goes under. Shouldn't the same apply to governments? I think it should. And those, who are allowing the money of tax payers to be wasted like that do need to spend some time thinking about in jail. Same should be done on all levels - federal and state and municipal, maybe then the governments will stop bailing out failing businesses and causing massive economic collapses.
I don't really care to find out why, but youtube's CAPTCHA isn't working in FF for me (the text input box is not displaying), so between that, and various crashes during downloads and memory and speed problems I am now officially using Opera mostly (in the past it was FF mostly and Opera was doing what FF couldn't do at all), but now I finally got so sick of having to retype my replies every time I forget that FF isn't displaying that stupid CAPTCHA correctly, that I made a conscious effort to use Opera mostly.
Geek Shows were an act in traveling circuses of early America and were often part of a larger sideshow. The billed performer's act consisted of a single geek, who stood in center ring to chase live chickens. It ended with the performer biting the chickens' heads off and swallowing them.
Strictly speaking, a geek is a person that performs in a circus sideshow. Everyone else is a fake geek.
- wait, so what are you saying? You guys aren't chasing live chickens and you are not biting and eating their heads on daily basis? What kind of geeks are you?
Slashdot Mirror
So? They were 122.70 once. So anybody who entered on those terms lost quite a bit of money already.
This game company sells to Facebook, right? With the low barrier to entry, these companies really have nothing to offer beyond their current windfall. Facebook is a fad, just like Myspace was, and these so called 'social games' are a fad as well. The 1 billion dollar IPO is forward looking, it accounts for near 100% profitability, it basically means that the market cap of 1billion is true only if the company has the same revenue and profit from now on, which is unlikely.
It's unlikely, not impossible, but highly unlikely, especially given how they all of a sudden moved from negative 50 something million in 2009 to positive 90 million in 2010.
From negative 50, to positive 90 in a year, and then going IPO based on unlikely projections?
Sure, you can go ahead and buy the stock, but I wouldn't. Sure, maybe it's a profitable company, but would I pay the stock prices that are calculated based on this inflated market cap? Why? Well, if I turn masochistic I might, but for no other reason than that.
Linked In? You must be joking. Their valuation is 36 times their revenue I believe, isn't it right?
Do you know that it's very easy to have huge revenue but have no profit and then come up for an IPO nowadays if you are one of these newfangled 'Web2.0' companies?
Revenue is irrelevant. I can have all revenue all day, if I just buy a product and sell it cheaper than anybody else, I'll be bleeding red ink, but I can have more revenue than any competitor.
Then, based on today's 'reality', I can go for an IPO with a huge valuation based on nothing but revenue. Then I cash out and go drink moheetas on a white yacht somewhere in the Caribbean, and leave the schmucks holding the worthless coupons.
There are 36,400 post offices in the united states. There are 1,800 fedex offices, and 22 fedex hubs. There are a few hundred UPS distribution centers.
Do you for one second believe that UPS and Fedex would be profitable if they put offices in every small town?
- so what are you saying, exactly? Are you saying that USPS with its tens of thousands of post offices is profitable while a private company couldn't be?
What are you basing this on? USPS has unions and it has various pension obligations, it does not break even, it's in the red without the forever stamps and without the monopoly on first class mail delivery.
Should there be a physical post office hub in every town and city and village? I don't know, but if it can be done while at least breaking even, then a private company can do so, and if it cannot be done by a private company just to break even, what makes you think that a government bureaucracy figured out a way to have it done and break even or maybe generate some profit?
The reason any government agency or a department or a a program can exist, is because it does not have to break even. None of them have to break even. What private company can afford to have over 600 million taken from it for a piece of accounting software and break even or stay in business for that matter?
What is this protection against competition in mail delivery that you are talking about? There are hundreds of companies that exist and are solely dedicated to mail and package delivery. Are you saying they can't exist because of the monopoly the USPS has? Reality disagrees.
- I said the exact opposite, I said that without government subsidies and monopoly status in first class mail delivery it is the government USPS that could never stay in business, so reality agrees with me just fine, but you found a way to disagree with reality.
All aboard! The gravy train is leaving this station.
This is another bubble, which is being inflated now, and since people have short memories and no understanding of economics they are jumping right on it.
These new software service/product companies are going IPO now, while things are still moving. Wall Street wants to push these companies right now, one after the other, feeding the frenzy, as they know it won't last.
These insane valuations that Linked In and all these other new IPOs are going at are forward looking, they are assuming 100% profitability at current level. They have no space to go but DOWN.
Don't believe the hype.
Many winters ago I was in a similar position, had to tell my bosses what I thought was wrong and the result was of-course that my contract was prematurely terminated within days from the moment I opened my mouth. Would I have done the same thing over if I could go back in time?
absolutely.
Why does a government must be an evil?
- well, because in history of humanity there was never a government that didn't become evil or wasn't evil from the start? Because government provides people with ability to gather power over people, businesses and resources without too much effort? Because a place that provides such an ability is a magnet for people who want the power over people, businesses and resources? Because government power is used to control people's lives, tax people's work, mis-allocate resources? Because over time regardless of the government structure it eventually leads to huge government apparatus living in itself for itself, feeding off the productive part of the economy?
Because government even though 'non-profit' is highly profitable for politicians and others, who get near the cake.
Because government has the power to set winners and losers in the economy by taxes and subsidies and regulations and laws.
Because anything that government does is an expression of government force, based on its ability to hurt you, rather than expression of market forces, which require 2 parties to come to an agreement.
Because government corrupts the very society by offering all sorts of impossible in the long run 'solutions', which cannot be supported economically in the long run, but look very lucrative to the majority of voters in the short run.
Because government punishes the productive part of the economy, by sacrificing it to its desire for power, since it basically directs the desires of the majority of the society to get things for free, things they didn't work for and to get those things, somebody must pay, and those are the people, who are in fact producers in the economy.
Because eventually governments spending and power grows beyond ability of the host society to maintain it, and then, government being what it is and corrupting the voters the way it does, destroys not only the economic ability to maintain this spending, but the very fabric of the economic stability - currency itself, by monetizing the insatiable thirst for debt, which is then used to 'pay' for all of the spending, which the voters are corrupted into believing is absolutely necessary and even indeed are their right.
--
The point is that government is a force outside of the rest of the market, and while the rest of the market is basically about 2 parties coming to an agreement over costs or value, etc., government does not have such silly limitations - it can impose its will upon the society, upon the economy, etc., regardless of any real economic outcomes and only based on the expedient desires to get more power and to stay in power further and indeed, to increase the power into infinity.
So yes, I cannot view the government in any other light but as the ultimate evil, and this conflicts with my understanding that the power vacuum will be filled with something, and this something better be set on purpose and be controlled than be something random.
The US Constitution was trying to impose the control upon the power of the government, but obviously there is perfect way to control it, and that's why governments always reset once they reach certain level of 'evil', and new governments are established.
It would be better if people understood these simple realities sooner rather than later.
subtle, I meant subtle. I didn't have a good night rest and am still slippy....
What is ironic is that this story precedes the one, that gives the actual reason for this one.
It's not too saddle, is it:
'Federal Wiretaps On The Rise'
'Hard Drive Overclocking Competition from Secau'
FTFA:
It had seemed such a great idea. What if the police had sniffer dogs that could fly? Dogs do not have wings, they realised, but birds do.
- I have suspicions about these cops. How did they come up with this? Were they sitting in a circle, passing a bong around, when the usual conversation of "My hands are HUGE" was all of a sudden interrupted by a guy, who watched too much Discovery channel?
-Oooooh, guys, I have an idea! It's BRILLIANT. What if birds could be cops? ...
-Holly shit, you are onto something there, man! But wouldn't it be better if cops were birds?
-I like birds.
-I want birds.
-I am a bird.
-No, you are not.
-Yes, I am.
-No, you are not.
-Flap your wings then.
(flap flap flap)
-HOLY SHIT! You ARE a bird!
-I knew a bird once. She was pretty, had this pretty blond hair. We went out a few times, but it didn't end well.
-Did you eat her?
-Vultures.
I am not sure it's brilliant enough.
Compare the cost of US military troops in Iraq vs contractor personnel in Iraq.
- excuse me? Since when is a for-profit war supposed to spend less money rather than more money on private contracts?
Are you suggesting that outfits like Blackwater are not enjoying very close government relations and are not treated like a monopoly and are not cycling the money back to various politicians' campaigns and private hands to be part of that racket?
If we can handle a moon landing, the invasion of Normandy, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Hoover Dam, and the Manhattan Project, I'm pretty sure we can handle putting together a payroll system.
- are you saying that all those things were cost-averse? I mean, 'invasion of Normandy' and Moon Landing (which was largely funded by SS money, BTW.)
The only reason to have government is to provide military protection and with wars that have a clear stated objective and that are supported largely by the entire nations, the cost-overruns are totally looked over.
As to things like 'payroll systems' - any government contract will be milked out of as much cash as that branch of government can shell out to the maximum by whoever gets the contract.
Here in Chicago, we had a public parking system that was hugely profitable, convenient and cheap.
- yeah, like post office and US military and Medicare are 'hugely profitable, convenient and cheap'.
Government doesn't have to report to you the real costs, the money that is spent on administration and maintenance and all other costs (never mind not having to pay actual taxes), are spread around multiple government offices, hiding the true costs, and the true costs are taxes and destruction of economy and currency.
Oh, and the private outfit that manages parking says they cannot make a profit even with the 1600% increase, so they're going to be raising parking prices yet again.
- I'd be looking into their ties to the government, that sold them the property.
Governments can certainly handle large, complex projects and do it more efficiently than the private sector. When you take out the 20-100% (minimum) profit margins that privateers add, it's not even close.
- nonsense. They can handle large complex projects simply because they have all the money in the world, which they can borrow and print and tax, not because they are more efficient magically. Efficiencies come out of search for more profit.
You see, to have efficiency you must be looking for profit. If you are not looking for profit, then the difference between your expense and your revenue is irrelevant, so why would you be looking for efficiencies? It makes no sense. And government accounting practices are not different from Enron and Madoff's accounting practices, as government can make all sorts of 'projections', making all sorts of assumptions about the future but it is never called out when all of those assumptions fail (and they do fail).
Just like their rosy assumptions that interest rates will stay low for years to come - total nonsense.
Say, how well are those private space exploration companies doing? I'm sure by now they must have mines set up on Mars.
- maybe, if government wasn't eating all the credit, wasn't mis-allocating all of the resources, wasn't taxing and regulating business out of business, maybe if governments wasn't subsidizing all sorts of large monopolies in energy and mining (and banking and insurance and manufacturing and agriculture and pharma and health and communications and war and education), if gov't wasn't doing all of that with money it steals from actual producers, then companies would find a case for such operations, which are clearly nonsense based on today's reality.
Government does things not because it's more efficient, it does things because it controls the money.
Right, I guess TFA itself is not good enough for you, with its
CityTime was launched in 2003 at a budget of $63 million, but costs swelled dramatically as the project stumbled along for nearly a decade.
?
I guess you completely missed the part where they were allowed to see SOME time like other projects yet not other time, or where the project was supposed to show up in SOME overviews but not in others, sometimes in an anonymous form, or the costs should be real SOME places but not others.
- no, I didn't miss it. Those are the rules that shouldn't be in the app., that's my point. All those rules should be outside of the app. because of how ridiculous they are, all those rules should be about access control lists, and ACLs should be used not only to do binary 'show/not show', but they should be used dynamically at the point of data retrieval, evaluating every type of data against this user/this project.
This problem is a no-problem for an application to solve, it's a constantly shifting target that should not be solved by software business logic, but instead should be solved by constantly shifting ACL permissions, and so instead of constant fixes to the business logic + recompilation + re-installation + down time due to inherent problem of bugs, introduced during such adjustments, it should be a data-model driven ACL, which is used to evaluate data dynamically as it comes out of the storage and before presentation as well.
Well, this sounds like a complex solution to a no-problem, as the simple solution to this would have been access lists for specific projects and people's time, created on per-project basis. This way you don't need any logic to be in the app, you just allow them to have fine-grained security around pieces of information based on their sign-in credentials and they can screw around with the logic of who is allowed to see what IRL outside of the app itself.
The post office ran effectively for hundreds of years
- not without government subsidies, explicit or implicit.
Or do you not consider a monopoly that US post office has upon first class mail delivery a subsidy and a government guaranteed protection of income?
If turning a profit was the most important aspect of the post office, then small town america wouldn't have post offices at all.
- again, not true. If that was the case there wouldn't have been a need for government protection against competition in mail delivery, wouldn't it?
The point is that a market need and a market supply will find a way to meet, but in presence of overwhelming government power they do not.
No that is the problem with corruption. And the fault of corruption in a democracy are the people.
- government must exist only because if it does not, something will appear to occupy that roles, so it's better to have a known quantity of evil, than something that will just spur out of vacuum. But because it is a necessary evil, it must be controlled and only be allowed to do the bare minimum, so that it can only destroy very little of society by its mere fact of existence.
Ok, so are you prepared to get a gun and shoot everyone or get shot down?
- well, sure, but that's not the point. The point is that government should not be as big as it is, it must be very small and very controlled.
The functions the government is allowed to take today, should not be in the hands of government - a monopoly with no accountability and without competition.
I know you are most likely American and you are taught since you are a baby that American is the greatest country
- I was born in USSR, lived in a number of places, including North America, so you do not in fact know.
Corruption was always the reason why states fail and the fault of corruption in a democracy are the people which are not paying attention to their elected leaders. Did you inform yourself about the budged of your city? Did you hold the major accountable?
- pay attention to my sig. I make sure I know what's happening financially to align my interests with the most likely economic outcomes, this does include learning things about the surrounding environment.
The Solar Impulse airplane made its debut at the Paris Air Show with a 20 minute public voyage powered by nothing but solar cells
- well, it's powered by nothing but solar cells and an average size star, which is about 1,000,000 km/diameter, hanging above our heads. If the Sun could have and express feelings, would it be bothered to know, we think it's nothing? What if it felt it was unappreciated and decided to leave (or at least to leave France)? Let them try and power those planes by nothing and solar cells without the Sun :)
Remember that post office has a monopoly on first class mail delivery, which is protected by law.
SS never had a fund, it was a ponzi scam from the get-go, as the first people to enter got extreme benefits, while contributing basically nothing, and the last people to enter get to pay extreme contributions, and will get nothing in return. Government had to go all the way to the Supreme court with SS, as in lower courts it couldn't convince the judges that the SS taxes and SS payments were unrelated, otherwise it would not have passed the Constitutionality test. Supreme court proved to be just as much a political hand of the federal government as the Federal reserve, and so SS 'passed' the test.
The point is that SS never had any fund, it never was an investment and it is now paying out more than it takes in, the difference comes from IOUs, and the idiot AC above in this thread above is wrong about SS being 'solvent' for another quarter of a century, as SS is insolvent right now. Declaring that one is solvent by writing a check to oneself doesn't work in real life, and it will fail in government life as well.
Don't you wish you could just opt out of it now? Well, one way to do it is to skip US citizenship and move.
The government does a great many things efficiently, and substantially cheaper then private industry. Usually large infrastructure and big RnD projects.
- oh yeah, how well does this statement bode with this one exactly:
complex and you might not even KNOW you have a cost overrun until the company presents you with a bill with a lot of previous years add-ons suddenly appearing. usally right after the point where rolling back isn't practical anymore.
....
I've been through many of these projects on both sides of the fence.
Speaking from the both sides of your mouth, I see.
I said: they are selling 'forever stamps' today, that's their 'net profit'.
CityTime was launched in 2003 at a budget of $63 million, but costs swelled dramatically as the project stumbled along for nearly a decade.
- this is the problem with government programs: from the very beginning they are already deep in trouble. It makes no sense that a computer payroll system should start at 63 million, why did it start at that number from the beginning?
It makes no sense that government should be so large, as to require a computer payroll system that starts as a 63 million project, never mind that anybody getting that contract will make their best to prolong it as much as possible, simply because it IS government and it does not care about costs.
When somebody says that government can do things efficiently, and they use the postal office as an example, they should really go back to that premise and realize, that the US post office is out of cash - it's selling 'forever stamps' today, and assuming it doesn't just dissolve over the next few years, it won't be able to make any money at that time and it will be in a worse fiscal shape than it is today, because the stamps sold today are basically protection against the 10% (current level) of monetary inflation that US Fed and Treasury are incurring on US population. Today the postal office cannot function already and they sell the forever stamps, tomorrow, they'll have to raise the prices but people will use those forever stamps and the postal office will either have to default on that stamp or dissolve, or there will be another bail out, and people use that as one of 'better' examples of government 'efficiency'.
Another example they give is Medicare, while not realizing that Medicare costs are spread out among various parts of government that are not calculated into the costs directly, and just like SS, that program is bankrupt today, being the biggest pyramid scams of all times, making Madoff look like a preschooler.
Anyway, back to this topic - who was the NYC mayor at the time when this ridiculous project started I wonder? Oh wait, Bloomberg has been the mayor of NYC since 2002 and this project started in 2003. So where was he all the time when the costs overran by x2, by x3, by x5, is the magic number for a politician to look at some cost overruns only when they exceed the x10 estimate?
People blame corporations and businesses for waste and fraud, but at least corporations and businesses have to extract their money from customers (well, unless they are government protected monopolies of-course) by selling products that customers want.
When business overruns its costs and credits like that, it likely goes under. Shouldn't the same apply to governments? I think it should. And those, who are allowing the money of tax payers to be wasted like that do need to spend some time thinking about in jail. Same should be done on all levels - federal and state and municipal, maybe then the governments will stop bailing out failing businesses and causing massive economic collapses.
I don't really care to find out why, but youtube's CAPTCHA isn't working in FF for me (the text input box is not displaying), so between that, and various crashes during downloads and memory and speed problems I am now officially using Opera mostly (in the past it was FF mostly and Opera was doing what FF couldn't do at all), but now I finally got so sick of having to retype my replies every time I forget that FF isn't displaying that stupid CAPTCHA correctly, that I made a conscious effort to use Opera mostly.
FTF wiki
Geek Shows were an act in traveling circuses of early America and were often part of a larger sideshow. The billed performer's act consisted of a single geek, who stood in center ring to chase live chickens. It ended with the performer biting the chickens' heads off and swallowing them.
Strictly speaking, a geek is a person that performs in a circus sideshow. Everyone else is a fake geek.
- wait, so what are you saying? You guys aren't chasing live chickens and you are not biting and eating their heads on daily basis? What kind of geeks are you?
Or as ripley said - nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure.
- You are technically wrong and on /. that is the WORST kind of wrong!
(also you really should capitalize proper names) .