In additional to Daskalakis' thesis that finding the Nash equilibrium for an economic system is a PPAD-complete problem, neoclassical economists have yet to acknowledge the other elephant in the room: the fact that economic systems are chaotic, which makes it impossible to build long-term models that in any way correspond to reality.
In fact, we can trivially prove that economic systems are chaotic, because weather greater affects economic systems (e.g., a drought that affects farmland productivity), and weather systems are famously chaotic.
There is an object lesson here. In 1948, U.S. secretary of state George C. Marshall infamously summarized the attitudes of scientists and other learned men when he asserted:
"The conquest of all infectious diseases is imminent." - U.S. secretary of state George C. Marshall, 1948
If there ever was a statement that scientists wished they could take back, it would probably be Marshall's. Because microbes have spent the last 60 years humiliating us for our hubris.
Unfortunately, only the Austrian economists have figured out that this statement is every bit as laughable and contemptible as Marshall's:
"An economy can be successfully planned." - neoclassical economics
Somewhere, Ludwig von Mises is still hoping that the rest of us will get it, too...
Here's a little exercise for you: calculate the markup on the soft drinks, candy bars, and chips in the vending machines in your place of work, versus what you'd pay for those same items if you bought a pack/case of them at the grocery store.
I bet you'll find the markup far exceeds 30%.
Why? Because the the business model of vending machines is to entice the consumer to pay a massive premium in order to have the product right now. It's all about enticing and encouraging the impulse buy. Thus, there's nothing unreasonable about what TG-Gold-Super-Markt is doing. Hell, for a vending machine, their markup is astoundingly low.
Moreover, these gold vending machines have another advantage working for them, in that most people don't know where or how to buy precious metals. If I don't want to pay a 30% markup on that soft drink, I can go to the grocery store and buy a case for a far less odious premium per bottle/can. But if I want to purchase gold or silver in small quantities (because let's face it: most people aren't wealthy enough to be able to purchase them in large quantities), where would I go? How would I do it? In that light, a 30% markup for the convenience of having to research the answers to those questions myself might not seem like such a bad deal.
If you anticipate widespread unrest and civil breakdown, you should be stockpiling lead, water, food, silver, and gold, in that order.
If you don't necessarily think that society is about to come unglued, but you'd like to protect the government from surreptitiously stealing your wealth (by inflating the currency and thus devaluing the currency you're holding), buy silver and gold, in that order.
(The Moneychanger has lots of useful information about buying gold and silver, and also offers a monthly allocation plan. The Northwest Territorial Mint sells gold and silver, and their bulk prices for silver rounds and bars are actually quite good (~8% over spot), because they mint them themselves. Finally, you can often find good deals on eBay, as long as your stick to common bullion coins with a low premium over spot, and purchase only from high-volume sellers with lots and lots of positive feedback.)
If passed, this could have the effect of a de-facto outlawing of Linux.
Not a chance. Believe it or not, the NSA and the DoD actually know
what Linux is. And a lot of their advice for securing
Unix and Linux systems is actually quite good.
And this without even considering the larger question of why the
government should have any control over the software private users
run on their own computers.
They shouldn't.
But they don't need to have that control. All they have to do is
say that any system that is owned by the federal government or
interoperates with federal government systems has to comply with the
security guidelines. They'll get the states to fall in line via the
usual mechanism: by withholding federal funding until they agree to
implement the federal guidelines at the state level.
And if you're thinking, "Well, that only affects people who are the
government, contract with the government, or work with the
government," ponder that thanks to Bush and Obama, that combined
class of people will shortly be the majority.
Do you think you "objectivist" types could actually try dealing with
reality once in awhile? Theory is nice, freedom is cool, but at some
point you've got to come to grips with the real problems...
As rohan pointed out, I touched upon one very real problem, but I'll
spell out the two biggest ones:
Fiat currency. Fiat currency allows the government
to counterfeit as much money as it wants. As the newly-created
money works its way through the economy, those who get it first (the
"imperial CEOs" Krugman laments) benefit at the expense of those who
get it last (Main Street USA). This "inflation tax" is the most
heinous of all taxes imposed by the government, because it is
regressive: it robs from the poor and gives to the rich.
Fractional reserve banking. When I place a $100
demand deposit into my local bank, and my bank then loans $1000
that it doesn't have to someone else based on the
"reserves" of my $100, that's fraud.
The only check on [the greedy corrupting the free market] is a wise
and informed leadership, and a committed, far-sighted electorate
that cares about the health of the common weal many years hence.
Now: what's the difference between that situation and a Social
Democracy.
There's no difference, as neither can ever be realized.
It's not that societies haven't tried, mind you. But what the
proponents of social democracy fail to understand is that the "wise
and informed" leaders have all the same foibles and predilections
towards greed as do their counterparts in the free market.
The free market isn't perfect. As you have noted, the greedy will
try to rig the system. But in the free market, there's at least
opportunity to combat the greedy. Once the greedy move into an
all-reaching, all-empowered government, the dream of social
democracy descends into the nightmare of dictatorship or oligarchy.
If you haven't already done so, I strongly suggest you read the
article I link to in my signature.
Whine all you want about the Nobel Committee having a political
agenda.
As others have pointed out, Krugman did NOT win a
Nobel prize; he won a different prize.
Right is right. And Krugman was right.
No, he wasn't. Krugman identified the symptom--a housing
bubble--but not the cause.
The Austrians were right.
And no matter how much Krugman calls them poopy-heads, they're still
right: Keynesian economics is one giant fraud.
That's what's really at the core of the worldwide
economic meltdown: the fraud is unravelling. And it's looking
increasingly likely that world governments are going to nationalize
their entire banking systems to prevent it, rather than doing the
sane thing and returning to sound money.
(If any of you have any doubts as to what type of standard of living
nationalization leads to, take a good, hard at current and former
communist countries--say, North Korea.)
Our founding fathers are weeping in their graves, while Stalin is
laughing in his.
You dare to mention the ACLU and the Constitution in the same sentence?
The ACLU doesn't give two shits about the Constitution, and they never have. Thanks to the ACLU's reaction to the D.C. v. Heller decision, many more people are finally realizing that the ACLU's true purpose is to champion causes of the Left, and nothing more.
Yes, Heller was a 5-4 decision. But the important point is that all 9 Justices (in the opinion and the dissents) agreed that the Second Amendment protects an individual, not a collective right. In other words, the ACLU's position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right was unanimously refuted by the Supreme Court.
The ACLU could've excused themselves from the whole Heller debate by pointing out that many organizations exist to defend Second Amendment rights. In other words, they could've simply said that they were going to leave the task of defending Second Amendment rights to already-capable hands. But no; the ACLU just couldn't resist weighing in on Heller by taking a dump on the Constitution--the very document they claim to so stridently defend.
The ACLU is beyond contempt. It serves only to intercept donations that, if not for ACLU's hypocritical existence, might have actually gone to organizations that do defend civil liberties, instead of to a muckraking mouthpiece of the Left. They do not deserve respect (let alone support) in any form.
The dorm is U-shaped, (Men-> |_| <-Women from the Google satellite view) and the women never seem to close their shades.
I disbelieve. I request that you immediately set up a webcam pointed at the women's side of the dorm so that we can all see that your assertions are baseless.
They're not in this to help out the Internet or stop spam or
anything else admirable: they're in this to make money
Exactly.
While Trend Micro's patent shakedown is underhanded, Barracuda's
defense tactics are just as underhanded.
Up until they issued their press release, you could search in vain
for any mentioned of Clam AntiVirus or
ClamAV on their web site or in their product manuals.
(You could find hits on GPL, but only because they
mentioned that the source for GPL-licensed software was available.)
In short, Barracuda slaps a bunch of open-source products together,
resells them at a hefty mark-up, and then runs slick ads in airports
and trade rags to convince PHBs how great their products are. (Ads
which, surprisingly enough, have no mention of GPL
software or open source in them.) Is it any wonder Trend Micro
targeted them?
Barracuda isn't fighting the patent because it's the "right thing to
do". They're fighting the patent because they don't want to share
their nice fat margins with Trend Micro, and because their marketing
droids are gambling that open-source advocates will reflexively take
their side (thus casting Trend Micro as the moustache-twirling
villain).
I mean, look at the current headlines (as of 2008-01-29) on their web
site:
Barracuda Networks Defends Free and Open Source Software from
Patent Threat by Trend Micro
Barracuda Networks asks for help finding prior art to defend
ClamAV
Barracuda to fight Trend over open source patent
Barracuda defends open-source antivirus from patent
attack
Trend Micro sues Barracuda, potentially raises the cost of
security for all
About the only one that's missing is, Trend Micro threatens to
personally visit open source developers' homes and kick their cute,
helpless puppies.
Yes, we should be concerned that Trend Micro is shaking the sabre
patent at Clam AntiVirus (even by proxy). But the enemy of our
enemy is not necessarily our friend. Barracuda Networks has been
using open source products to line their pockets for years, with
nary even the slightest lip service in return. But now that someone
wants a slice of their pie, Barracuda would have us believe that
they've spent these past years singing kumbaya and holding hands
with Richard Stallman.
There are many companies more worthy of our support than Barracuda
Networks.
And have you ever stopped to think that the kinship ideal had more to do with Batty showing that he wasn't a machine but rather a conscious being?
That would be a reasonable interpretation--if the "kinship!" line appeared in a vacuum. But it doesn't. It appears in the context of many other clues (occurring throughout the entire movie) that Deckard might be a replicant.
I think the question about Decker being a replicant as having value but I'm one of the camp that doesn't think that the answer is clear.
In a 2000 documentary, Ridley Scott was asked what the unicorn scenes meant. He point-blank reply: "He [Deckard] is a replicant." (See Blade Runner riddle solved.)
For all editions of the movie save the original theatrical release (which the director, one of the lead actors, and most fans have disavowed), this is a closed issue.
"I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody's life, my life. All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die."
The best line in any film, ever? Not by a long shot. As another poster already pointed out, Roy's "time to die" speech is the entire point of that scene.
And the other irritating thing is, it is obvious why Roy saves Deckard: just as Deckard loses his grip and Roy grabs his arm, Roy exclaims, "kinship!". This strongly implies that Roy saved Deckard because he recognized Deckard for what he was--a fellow replicant. In fact, in the Director's Cut DVD, "kinship!" appears in at least one of the closed-captioning or English subtitles (I forget now which one has it, but I don't think they both do).
Rejecting a major theory with a century-and-a-half of observational
and experimental evidence behind it in favor of a ludicrous Biblical
interpretation is more than just a differing opinion, it's a sign of
a lack of sound judgement and rational powers.
Actually, it's a sign of perfectly sound judgement and rational
powers, if your goal is to be elected.
And that's the irony. Politics has its own form of natural
selection, which is: a politician whose viewpoints differ from
the voters he represents does not remain a politician for long.
Voters elect (and contribute money to) politicians who represent
their viewpoints and interests. A politician who asserts that he
does not believe in evolution does so because the people who
vote for him will not elect a candidate who asserts that he believes
otherwise.
For that reason, challenging the politicians themselves to
abandon anti-evolution viewpoints is pointless; if they followed
your advice, they would be rewarded by promptly being voted out of
office.
If you want to see politicians who assert that they believe in
evolution elected to office, then your real task is to convince the
electorate to believe in evolution—which is a far, far more
difficult task than lobbing barbs at a politician during a debate.
To borrow an expression, you can't make the tail wag the dog.
Then why are you so reluctant to cite the data in question?
I provided some pointers for you (and for anyone else reading this
thread). Investigate it or dismiss it as you wish; I don't care
anymore.
(If what you really mean is, "Why don't you spend hours of your time
researching current data in this area and post a nice convenient
summary here?", then the reason is simple: you've made it clear that
your position is based on preconceived notions and bigotry and you
don't intend to budge from it no matter what data I refer to or
provide, so there's no point in wasting [any more of] my time.)
You do know how people used to (and in some cases still do) live,
right? Entire families in one room. This means that kids were
usually exposed directly to sex (of their parents) for their entire
childhoods.
Ah, what beautiful logic. "The parents didn't have a separate
bedroom.. therefore, in the evenings, they must have thrown
down and had sex right in the middle of the floor, while the
children gaped and watched! There's no other way it could
possibly have happened!"
Non sequitur. Parents have been finding creative ways to
have sex when the children aren't around for... well,
probably most of human civilization.
Claiming what humanity has done habitually for most of its existence
is abuse is plain wrong.
I claim no such thing. Read my exchanges with Man On Pink Corner if
you need further clarification.
The absolute reality is simple: no one, anywhere, can point to valid
scientific evidence that exposure of a child to a given form of
media causes quantifiable psychological harm. Human beings are not
as programmable as that. If your 8-year-old accidentally sees
Gangbang Girls #18, she'll wrinkle her nose and ask you, as her
parent, what the heck is up with that stuff. Your reaction to her
question is where any potential for psychological harm lies.
Ahhh... only on Slashdot do we see an insolent reply demanding data,
and then when data is provided, the poster conveniently ignores
it and continues to stubbornly cling to their own viewpoint.
By all means, be my guest. You go right on and believe that there's
nothing wrong with exposing prepubescent children to violent,
graphic pornography; that it couldn't possibly affect them
in any way. Don't let reality stop you.
Any attempt to limit the First Amendment's scope should require the
highest standard of evidence of imminent harm to society.
Ah, so you're completely ignorant of Constitutional law, too. This
just gets more and more entertaining. (For the record, SCOTUS
almost always applies the strict scrutiny test to First
Amendment challenges.)
It isn't reasonable to use studies about genuine child sexual abuse,
which involves everything from physical injury to gross violations
of trust, to push an anti-pornography agenda. When you equate these
things, you're helping groups like Morality in Media to pretend that
they're in possession of that "high standard of evidence."
The fuck I am. I was trained as a scientist; I base my decisions on
conclusions what the underlying data support, not on what will
provide me the childish satisfaction of pissing off groups with
which I might harbor a grudge.
15-year-old Billy sees Janet Jackson's [fake] boob during the
Superbowl commercial? Who cares; he's more than old enough to
handle that. (Hell, at 15, he's probably got a few Playboys stuffed
somewhere that I don't know about.)
10-year-old Jenny sees a few artistic nudes? Again, I don't care;
if I'm a good parent, I should be prepared for a light "birds and
bees" conversation at that point.
But if 8-year-old Billy or 8-year-old Jenny is exposed to graphic,
overt sexual content (violent pornography, adults attempting to
sexualize them), I do care, because the last time I checked
the data, the consensus was that said exposure could be
traumatizing.
Seeing a naked human body in a clinical or artistic setting is
completely different than seeing (e.g.) a woman being
penetrated violently in every orifice. Because Morality In Media
equates both as equally harmful (a position not supported by any
data of which I am aware), you react by equating both as equally
harmless (also a position not supported by the data).
The great irony here is that you are exactly like Morality In Media:
you both have viewpoints that are based on "faith" (and which ignore
scientific data), and you are both willing to accept collateral
damage in the battle against anyone who disagrees with you.
But, like I said, you go right on believing what you want. Don't
let reality stop you.
Sure. The Journal of Child Sexual Abuse is a good place to
start. Hell, even less specialized journals like the American
Journal of Psychiatry routinely publish papers along these
lines. There are also many books on this subject; search for "child
sexual abuse" on Amazon.com to start. (But skip books that don't
have an endnotes/bibliography section; you need that to chase
references through the literature.)
Again, don't confuse the desire to keep children ignorant of
sexuality and biology (e.g., protesting sex ed classes that contain
information about STDs and contraceptive technology) with the desire
to protect children from things they simply aren't,
developmentally-speaking, ready for (e.g., making sure you took the
Gangbang Girls #18 disc out of the DVD player and locked it
[back] up before your 8-year-old daughter and her friends have their
sleepover).
Groups like Morality in Media are offensive because they encourage
the "keep children ignorant about biology" behavior. It's natural
to want to want to disagree with them. But if you let that convince
you that there's nothing wrong with your 8-year-old daughter
watching hardcore porn, then you're a bad person (not to mention a
bad parent).
Okay. I'll grant that the Morality in Media's ObscenityCrimes
program is an idiotic waste of money. (First, the Internet is a
global medium; second, law enforcement already has its hands full
going after the stuff which really is harmful—child pornography.)
But I can't let this reply stand unchallenged...
On TV, children will see many thousands of simulated murders long
before they're old enough to buy porn.
Implied, maybe—although I still suspect your
"thousands" number is a wild exaggeration. Television (and movies)
do this frequently.
But simulated? Hardly. Very rarely do you see depictions
of murders in the same manner as which pornography depicts
sex... graphically, up-close, from start to finish. The best
example that springs to mind was the scene towards the end of
Saving Private Ryan when the German soldier killed the
American soldier by slowly forcing a knife into his abdomen. (That
particular scene was graphic and disturbing enough that when I saw
it in the theaters, a lot of the movie audience squirmed in
discomfort.)
Besides, even if your assertion were true, all it would
mean is that there are a lot of bad parents out there who don't
bother to use the V-chip settings on their TVs. Just because
some children are subjected to things they really shouldn't
be doesn't mean that it's ok for all children to get the
same treatment.
If they copy what they see on TV, it means death for someone and
jail for the kids.
The argument isn't that children who see murder will outright copy
it (that is, commit murder); the argument is that exposing a child
to simulated violence (particularly graphic violence) during certain
points of the brain development process can have adverse affects at
later stages of the development process, and in adulthood. Although
groups such as Morality in Media love to distort reports of the
(ongoing) research in this area to further their own agenda, this is
an ongoing area of legitimate scientific research.
It is illegal for children to see even just one simulated sex act
before they're of age. If they do manage to get their hands on some
and copy what they see, the worst thing that can happen is that they
pick up a couple STD's and have a kid.
Your ignorant dismissal of the "worst" effects is astounding.
Sexualizing children at an early age is outright abuse, and it is
profoundly harmful. (By "sexualizing children", I mean graphic
pornography, or direct sexual contact; not "birds and bees"
discussions.) There's no lack of evidence of this. Even worse,
the damage spreads like an infectious disease: children
abused in this manner tend to act out what they have seen and
experienced with other children, and grow up to become abusers
themselves. Recidivism rates for adults who sexually abuse children
is astoundingly high—because their brains were damaged by
sexual abuse during their own development, and are now "hardwired"
(compulsed) to repeat this behavior.
Children need to be protected from over overt sexual material,
sexualization, and graphic violence before their brains have
developed to the point where they can handle such material without
long-term consequences. But children also need frank, clinical,
information information about reproduction and other sexual
issues—before, during, and after puberty. In objecting to the
latter, groups such as Morality in Media deserve our scorn and
contempt, because they are doing children a disservice.
But there's a difference between scorn and bigotry. That you are
willing to trivialize harm to children because doing otherwise might
provide some wind to the sails of "religious nutjobs" and "bible
thumpers" (to use your words) says volumes about the type of person
you are.
Speaking as a non-Christian, non-bible-thumper... you should be
ashamed.
This article dances around the issue of DRM-enabled and proprietary technology so carefully that it must be deliberate:
Betamax
Sony refused to freely license Betamax technology. In fact, the creation of VHS was actually, in part, a retaliation on the part of other manufacturers that Sony had effectively locked out of the market. Furthermore, Sony refused to license Betamax to content providers they didn't care for, such as the PR0N industry.
High-definition audio
The industry created high-definition audio in attempt to supersede the highly-rippable CD with a locked-down, copy-protected, DRM-entangled format. Meanwhile, the majority of consumers (the ones ripping CDs to MP3s, or just downloading digital music directly) didn't give two shits. And the audiophiles who wanted the fidelity of high-def were more than balanced out by those who perceived that high-definition audio was attempt force DRM down the throats of consumers, and thus balked.
MiniDisc
Although the article mentions that it was proprietary, the article fails to mention that MiniDiscs included copy protection technology (SCMS) which could be used to prevent digital-to-digital copying.
I doubt that any of these products would have succeeded if they hadn't been proprietary and/or DRM-encumbered (Betamax's 1-hour limit was the main reason it died; high-definition audio was the answer to a question no one had asked; MiniDisc and DCC were too busy in their format war to release that CD-R and MP3 were obsoleting them), but deliberately failing to mention the critical role that DRM played in helping to sink the products that employed them isn't just corporate whoring, but outright bad journalism.
The organism he was speaking of is most likely the Varroa mite, Varroa jacobsoni.
The Varroa mite that's attacking North American honeybees (Apis mellifera) is
Varroa destructor, not Varroa jacobsoni. Varroa jacobsoni is a mild parasite of Asian honey bees (Apis cerana); it was only in 2000 that scientists realized the mites that were attacking Apis mellifera were actually a different species.
Few people understand just how important honeybees are for pollination of agricultural crops, and just how beleaguered beekeepers are. I haven't had any hives for several years now, but the last time I was at my local beekeeper's meeting, I was easily the only person under 50 there. (I'm 34 now; I was 29-30 or so back then.)
We don't have packed stadiums to watch 14 year olds toss a football around, etc.
Only because any place large enough to fit at least 50 spectators is already going to have about 2 inches of ice on it, and God help you if you were to blaspheme by proposing to melt it down. You'd be stoned to death with pucks.
The funny thing is, for a few weeks now, Adult Swim has been talking in their bumps about having no idea how to promote the upcoming ATHF movie.
Well, they certainly solved that problem, didn't they? I don't think they intentionally tried to create a scare, but man oh man, you can't buy publicity like this.
Following that logic, there can be no PROOF of global warming! There can only be theories and as we know, a theory is not proof. Thus, all the people screaming about how "The debate is over", "We have proof of Global Warming", and "Science has proven global warming" must be wrong because science can not produce proof of global warming.
If they expect science to prove that AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is true, then yes, they misunderstand science, because science cannot do this.
On that note, it would also indicate that when some one finds instances where the data does not match the theory and uses these instances to show that the theory is wrong, it is not "Cherry picking" as any instance where the data does not match the theory means that the theory has been disproved and should be adjusted to take the new data into account.
Pretty much, although the process is rarely that simple. (Not only do you have to make sure the new observations aren't themselves erroneous, but often there are multiple competing theories that the new observations affect.)
True science is actually pretty exciting stuff, but it's not for the faint-hearted. A theory of yours that you've relied on for half of your life could be shattered beyond reconciliation by some dork on the other side of the planet that you've never even heard of. Such is the life of a scientist.
Although there is much we still do not understand, the theory of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has currently withstood all serious attempts to disprove it.
There currently is no competing theory that better fits the available data. (The case for solar forcing, which seems to be a popular in mainstream media right now, is currently quite weak.)
This is why the vast majority of climate scientists believe that the
theory of AGW is correct—in fact, most climate scientists are
spending their time trying to figure out what the
effects of AGW will be.
Re:Models, Theories & Proof
on
New Ice Age Theory
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There may be 50 models and theories, but it will likely be a stew of dozens of researchers that finally get a theory that is solid enough to be verified and called a Proof, or tentative Proof.
You are making the classic mistake: you are assuming that science is about trying to prove that something is true. It's not. Science cannot prove anything; science can only disprove.
If you want a concise definition of science, it is this: science is the methodology by which we identify and discard beliefs and theories that are false. This process does not produce facts; it does not produce proof. At best, it produces theories that have withstood enough attempts to knock them down that for now, we tentatively assume that they are accurate. But we're still standing on quicksand.
People who look to science to give them facts and absolute truths are inevitably frustrated, because science can't give them what they want.
Slashdot Mirror
In additional to Daskalakis' thesis that finding the Nash equilibrium for an economic system is a PPAD-complete problem, neoclassical economists have yet to acknowledge the other elephant in the room: the fact that economic systems are chaotic, which makes it impossible to build long-term models that in any way correspond to reality.
In fact, we can trivially prove that economic systems are chaotic, because weather greater affects economic systems (e.g., a drought that affects farmland productivity), and weather systems are famously chaotic.
There is an object lesson here. In 1948, U.S. secretary of state George C. Marshall infamously summarized the attitudes of scientists and other learned men when he asserted:
If there ever was a statement that scientists wished they could take back, it would probably be Marshall's. Because microbes have spent the last 60 years humiliating us for our hubris.
Unfortunately, only the Austrian economists have figured out that this statement is every bit as laughable and contemptible as Marshall's:
Somewhere, Ludwig von Mises is still hoping that the rest of us will get it, too...
Here's a little exercise for you: calculate the markup on the soft drinks, candy bars, and chips in the vending machines in your place of work, versus what you'd pay for those same items if you bought a pack/case of them at the grocery store.
I bet you'll find the markup far exceeds 30%.
Why? Because the the business model of vending machines is to entice the consumer to pay a massive premium in order to have the product right now. It's all about enticing and encouraging the impulse buy. Thus, there's nothing unreasonable about what TG-Gold-Super-Markt is doing. Hell, for a vending machine, their markup is astoundingly low.
Moreover, these gold vending machines have another advantage working for them, in that most people don't know where or how to buy precious metals. If I don't want to pay a 30% markup on that soft drink, I can go to the grocery store and buy a case for a far less odious premium per bottle/can. But if I want to purchase gold or silver in small quantities (because let's face it: most people aren't wealthy enough to be able to purchase them in large quantities), where would I go? How would I do it? In that light, a 30% markup for the convenience of having to research the answers to those questions myself might not seem like such a bad deal.
If you anticipate widespread unrest and civil breakdown, you should be stockpiling lead, water, food, silver, and gold, in that order.
If you don't necessarily think that society is about to come unglued, but you'd like to protect the government from surreptitiously stealing your wealth (by inflating the currency and thus devaluing the currency you're holding), buy silver and gold, in that order.
(The Moneychanger has lots of useful information about buying gold and silver, and also offers a monthly allocation plan. The Northwest Territorial Mint sells gold and silver, and their bulk prices for silver rounds and bars are actually quite good (~8% over spot), because they mint them themselves. Finally, you can often find good deals on eBay, as long as your stick to common bullion coins with a low premium over spot, and purchase only from high-volume sellers with lots and lots of positive feedback.)
Not a chance. Believe it or not, the NSA and the DoD actually know what Linux is. And a lot of their advice for securing Unix and Linux systems is actually quite good.
They shouldn't.
But they don't need to have that control. All they have to do is say that any system that is owned by the federal government or interoperates with federal government systems has to comply with the security guidelines. They'll get the states to fall in line via the usual mechanism: by withholding federal funding until they agree to implement the federal guidelines at the state level.
And if you're thinking, "Well, that only affects people who are the government, contract with the government, or work with the government," ponder that thanks to Bush and Obama, that combined class of people will shortly be the majority.
As rohan pointed out, I touched upon one very real problem, but I'll spell out the two biggest ones:
Fiat currency. Fiat currency allows the government to counterfeit as much money as it wants. As the newly-created money works its way through the economy, those who get it first (the "imperial CEOs" Krugman laments) benefit at the expense of those who get it last (Main Street USA). This "inflation tax" is the most heinous of all taxes imposed by the government, because it is regressive: it robs from the poor and gives to the rich.
Fractional reserve banking. When I place a $100 demand deposit into my local bank, and my bank then loans $1000 that it doesn't have to someone else based on the "reserves" of my $100, that's fraud.
There's no difference, as neither can ever be realized.
It's not that societies haven't tried, mind you. But what the proponents of social democracy fail to understand is that the "wise and informed" leaders have all the same foibles and predilections towards greed as do their counterparts in the free market.
The free market isn't perfect. As you have noted, the greedy will try to rig the system. But in the free market, there's at least opportunity to combat the greedy. Once the greedy move into an all-reaching, all-empowered government, the dream of social democracy descends into the nightmare of dictatorship or oligarchy.
If you haven't already done so, I strongly suggest you read the article I link to in my signature.
As others have pointed out, Krugman did NOT win a Nobel prize; he won a different prize.
No, he wasn't. Krugman identified the symptom--a housing bubble--but not the cause.
The Austrians were right. And no matter how much Krugman calls them poopy-heads, they're still right: Keynesian economics is one giant fraud.
That's what's really at the core of the worldwide economic meltdown: the fraud is unravelling. And it's looking increasingly likely that world governments are going to nationalize their entire banking systems to prevent it, rather than doing the sane thing and returning to sound money.
(If any of you have any doubts as to what type of standard of living nationalization leads to, take a good, hard at current and former communist countries--say, North Korea.)
Our founding fathers are weeping in their graves, while Stalin is laughing in his.
You dare to mention the ACLU and the Constitution in the same sentence?
The ACLU doesn't give two shits about the Constitution, and they never have. Thanks to the ACLU's reaction to the D.C. v. Heller decision, many more people are finally realizing that the ACLU's true purpose is to champion causes of the Left, and nothing more.
Yes, Heller was a 5-4 decision. But the important point is that all 9 Justices (in the opinion and the dissents) agreed that the Second Amendment protects an individual, not a collective right. In other words, the ACLU's position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right was unanimously refuted by the Supreme Court.
The ACLU could've excused themselves from the whole Heller debate by pointing out that many organizations exist to defend Second Amendment rights. In other words, they could've simply said that they were going to leave the task of defending Second Amendment rights to already-capable hands. But no; the ACLU just couldn't resist weighing in on Heller by taking a dump on the Constitution--the very document they claim to so stridently defend.
The ACLU is beyond contempt. It serves only to intercept donations that, if not for ACLU's hypocritical existence, might have actually gone to organizations that do defend civil liberties, instead of to a muckraking mouthpiece of the Left. They do not deserve respect (let alone support) in any form.
I disbelieve. I request that you immediately set up a webcam pointed at the women's side of the dorm so that we can all see that your assertions are baseless.
Exactly.
While Trend Micro's patent shakedown is underhanded, Barracuda's defense tactics are just as underhanded.
Up until they issued their press release, you could search in vain for any mentioned of Clam AntiVirus or ClamAV on their web site or in their product manuals. (You could find hits on GPL, but only because they mentioned that the source for GPL-licensed software was available.)
In short, Barracuda slaps a bunch of open-source products together, resells them at a hefty mark-up, and then runs slick ads in airports and trade rags to convince PHBs how great their products are. (Ads which, surprisingly enough, have no mention of GPL software or open source in them.) Is it any wonder Trend Micro targeted them?
Barracuda isn't fighting the patent because it's the "right thing to do". They're fighting the patent because they don't want to share their nice fat margins with Trend Micro, and because their marketing droids are gambling that open-source advocates will reflexively take their side (thus casting Trend Micro as the moustache-twirling villain).
I mean, look at the current headlines (as of 2008-01-29) on their web site:
Barracuda Networks Defends Free and Open Source Software from Patent Threat by Trend Micro
Barracuda Networks asks for help finding prior art to defend ClamAV
Barracuda to fight Trend over open source patent
Barracuda defends open-source antivirus from patent attack
Trend Micro sues Barracuda, potentially raises the cost of security for all
About the only one that's missing is, Trend Micro threatens to personally visit open source developers' homes and kick their cute, helpless puppies.
Yes, we should be concerned that Trend Micro is shaking the sabre patent at Clam AntiVirus (even by proxy). But the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend. Barracuda Networks has been using open source products to line their pockets for years, with nary even the slightest lip service in return. But now that someone wants a slice of their pie, Barracuda would have us believe that they've spent these past years singing kumbaya and holding hands with Richard Stallman.
There are many companies more worthy of our support than Barracuda Networks.
There, fixed it for you.
Crime up Down Under
That would be a reasonable interpretation--if the "kinship!" line appeared in a vacuum. But it doesn't. It appears in the context of many other clues (occurring throughout the entire movie) that Deckard might be a replicant.
In a 2000 documentary, Ridley Scott was asked what the unicorn scenes meant. He point-blank reply: "He [Deckard] is a replicant." (See Blade Runner riddle solved .)
For all editions of the movie save the original theatrical release (which the director, one of the lead actors, and most fans have disavowed), this is a closed issue.
The best line in any film, ever? Not by a long shot. As another poster already pointed out, Roy's "time to die" speech is the entire point of that scene.
And the other irritating thing is, it is obvious why Roy saves Deckard: just as Deckard loses his grip and Roy grabs his arm, Roy exclaims, "kinship!". This strongly implies that Roy saved Deckard because he recognized Deckard for what he was--a fellow replicant. In fact, in the Director's Cut DVD, "kinship!" appears in at least one of the closed-captioning or English subtitles (I forget now which one has it, but I don't think they both do).
Plus, you can eat kudzu. Makes a tasty salad, from what I've heard.
(Just make damn sure that it wasn't sprayed with an herbicide first.)
Actually, it's a sign of perfectly sound judgement and rational powers, if your goal is to be elected.
And that's the irony. Politics has its own form of natural selection, which is: a politician whose viewpoints differ from the voters he represents does not remain a politician for long.
Voters elect (and contribute money to) politicians who represent their viewpoints and interests. A politician who asserts that he does not believe in evolution does so because the people who vote for him will not elect a candidate who asserts that he believes otherwise.
For that reason, challenging the politicians themselves to abandon anti-evolution viewpoints is pointless; if they followed your advice, they would be rewarded by promptly being voted out of office.
If you want to see politicians who assert that they believe in evolution elected to office, then your real task is to convince the electorate to believe in evolution—which is a far, far more difficult task than lobbing barbs at a politician during a debate.
To borrow an expression, you can't make the tail wag the dog.
I provided some pointers for you (and for anyone else reading this thread). Investigate it or dismiss it as you wish; I don't care anymore.
(If what you really mean is, "Why don't you spend hours of your time researching current data in this area and post a nice convenient summary here?", then the reason is simple: you've made it clear that your position is based on preconceived notions and bigotry and you don't intend to budge from it no matter what data I refer to or provide, so there's no point in wasting [any more of] my time.)
Ah, what beautiful logic. "The parents didn't have a separate bedroom.. therefore, in the evenings, they must have thrown down and had sex right in the middle of the floor, while the children gaped and watched! There's no other way it could possibly have happened!"
Non sequitur. Parents have been finding creative ways to have sex when the children aren't around for... well, probably most of human civilization.
I claim no such thing. Read my exchanges with Man On Pink Corner if you need further clarification.
Ahhh... only on Slashdot do we see an insolent reply demanding data, and then when data is provided, the poster conveniently ignores it and continues to stubbornly cling to their own viewpoint.
By all means, be my guest. You go right on and believe that there's nothing wrong with exposing prepubescent children to violent, graphic pornography; that it couldn't possibly affect them in any way. Don't let reality stop you.
Ah, so you're completely ignorant of Constitutional law, too. This just gets more and more entertaining. (For the record, SCOTUS almost always applies the strict scrutiny test to First Amendment challenges.)
The fuck I am. I was trained as a scientist; I base my decisions on conclusions what the underlying data support, not on what will provide me the childish satisfaction of pissing off groups with which I might harbor a grudge.
15-year-old Billy sees Janet Jackson's [fake] boob during the Superbowl commercial? Who cares; he's more than old enough to handle that. (Hell, at 15, he's probably got a few Playboys stuffed somewhere that I don't know about.)
10-year-old Jenny sees a few artistic nudes? Again, I don't care; if I'm a good parent, I should be prepared for a light "birds and bees" conversation at that point.
But if 8-year-old Billy or 8-year-old Jenny is exposed to graphic, overt sexual content (violent pornography, adults attempting to sexualize them), I do care, because the last time I checked the data, the consensus was that said exposure could be traumatizing.
Seeing a naked human body in a clinical or artistic setting is completely different than seeing (e.g.) a woman being penetrated violently in every orifice. Because Morality In Media equates both as equally harmful (a position not supported by any data of which I am aware), you react by equating both as equally harmless (also a position not supported by the data).
The great irony here is that you are exactly like Morality In Media: you both have viewpoints that are based on "faith" (and which ignore scientific data), and you are both willing to accept collateral damage in the battle against anyone who disagrees with you.
But, like I said, you go right on believing what you want. Don't let reality stop you.
Sure. The Journal of Child Sexual Abuse is a good place to start. Hell, even less specialized journals like the American Journal of Psychiatry routinely publish papers along these lines. There are also many books on this subject; search for "child sexual abuse" on Amazon.com to start. (But skip books that don't have an endnotes/bibliography section; you need that to chase references through the literature.)
Again, don't confuse the desire to keep children ignorant of sexuality and biology (e.g., protesting sex ed classes that contain information about STDs and contraceptive technology) with the desire to protect children from things they simply aren't, developmentally-speaking, ready for (e.g., making sure you took the Gangbang Girls #18 disc out of the DVD player and locked it [back] up before your 8-year-old daughter and her friends have their sleepover).
Groups like Morality in Media are offensive because they encourage the "keep children ignorant about biology" behavior. It's natural to want to want to disagree with them. But if you let that convince you that there's nothing wrong with your 8-year-old daughter watching hardcore porn, then you're a bad person (not to mention a bad parent).
Okay. I'll grant that the Morality in Media's ObscenityCrimes program is an idiotic waste of money. (First, the Internet is a global medium; second, law enforcement already has its hands full going after the stuff which really is harmful—child pornography.)
But I can't let this reply stand unchallenged...
Implied, maybe—although I still suspect your "thousands" number is a wild exaggeration. Television (and movies) do this frequently.
But simulated? Hardly. Very rarely do you see depictions of murders in the same manner as which pornography depicts sex... graphically, up-close, from start to finish. The best example that springs to mind was the scene towards the end of Saving Private Ryan when the German soldier killed the American soldier by slowly forcing a knife into his abdomen. (That particular scene was graphic and disturbing enough that when I saw it in the theaters, a lot of the movie audience squirmed in discomfort.)
Besides, even if your assertion were true, all it would mean is that there are a lot of bad parents out there who don't bother to use the V-chip settings on their TVs. Just because some children are subjected to things they really shouldn't be doesn't mean that it's ok for all children to get the same treatment.
The argument isn't that children who see murder will outright copy it (that is, commit murder); the argument is that exposing a child to simulated violence (particularly graphic violence) during certain points of the brain development process can have adverse affects at later stages of the development process, and in adulthood. Although groups such as Morality in Media love to distort reports of the (ongoing) research in this area to further their own agenda, this is an ongoing area of legitimate scientific research.
Your ignorant dismissal of the "worst" effects is astounding.
Sexualizing children at an early age is outright abuse, and it is profoundly harmful. (By "sexualizing children", I mean graphic pornography, or direct sexual contact; not "birds and bees" discussions.) There's no lack of evidence of this. Even worse, the damage spreads like an infectious disease: children abused in this manner tend to act out what they have seen and experienced with other children, and grow up to become abusers themselves. Recidivism rates for adults who sexually abuse children is astoundingly high—because their brains were damaged by sexual abuse during their own development, and are now "hardwired" (compulsed) to repeat this behavior.
Children need to be protected from over overt sexual material, sexualization, and graphic violence before their brains have developed to the point where they can handle such material without long-term consequences. But children also need frank, clinical, information information about reproduction and other sexual issues—before, during, and after puberty. In objecting to the latter, groups such as Morality in Media deserve our scorn and contempt, because they are doing children a disservice.
But there's a difference between scorn and bigotry. That you are willing to trivialize harm to children because doing otherwise might provide some wind to the sails of "religious nutjobs" and "bible thumpers" (to use your words) says volumes about the type of person you are.
Speaking as a non-Christian, non-bible-thumper... you should be ashamed.
This article dances around the issue of DRM-enabled and proprietary technology so carefully that it must be deliberate:
Betamax
Sony refused to freely license Betamax technology. In fact, the creation of VHS was actually, in part, a retaliation on the part of other manufacturers that Sony had effectively locked out of the market. Furthermore, Sony refused to license Betamax to content providers they didn't care for, such as the PR0N industry.
High-definition audio
The industry created high-definition audio in attempt to supersede the highly-rippable CD with a locked-down, copy-protected, DRM-entangled format. Meanwhile, the majority of consumers (the ones ripping CDs to MP3s, or just downloading digital music directly) didn't give two shits. And the audiophiles who wanted the fidelity of high-def were more than balanced out by those who perceived that high-definition audio was attempt force DRM down the throats of consumers, and thus balked.
MiniDisc
Although the article mentions that it was proprietary, the article fails to mention that MiniDiscs included copy protection technology (SCMS) which could be used to prevent digital-to-digital copying.
I doubt that any of these products would have succeeded if they hadn't been proprietary and/or DRM-encumbered (Betamax's 1-hour limit was the main reason it died; high-definition audio was the answer to a question no one had asked; MiniDisc and DCC were too busy in their format war to release that CD-R and MP3 were obsoleting them), but deliberately failing to mention the critical role that DRM played in helping to sink the products that employed them isn't just corporate whoring, but outright bad journalism.
The Varroa mite that's attacking North American honeybees (Apis mellifera) is Varroa destructor, not Varroa jacobsoni. Varroa jacobsoni is a mild parasite of Asian honey bees (Apis cerana); it was only in 2000 that scientists realized the mites that were attacking Apis mellifera were actually a different species.
Few people understand just how important honeybees are for pollination of agricultural crops, and just how beleaguered beekeepers are. I haven't had any hives for several years now, but the last time I was at my local beekeeper's meeting, I was easily the only person under 50 there. (I'm 34 now; I was 29-30 or so back then.)
Only because any place large enough to fit at least 50 spectators is already going to have about 2 inches of ice on it, and God help you if you were to blaspheme by proposing to melt it down. You'd be stoned to death with pucks.
The funny thing is, for a few weeks now, Adult Swim has been talking in their bumps about having no idea how to promote the upcoming ATHF movie.
Well, they certainly solved that problem, didn't they? I don't think they intentionally tried to create a scare, but man oh man, you can't buy publicity like this.
As of this moment, the Drudge Report main page has an image of Err flying the bird.
Brit Hume said "Meatwad".
If I had actually been watching TV live when this story broke, I think I actually might have passed out from laughing.
If they expect science to prove that AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is true, then yes, they misunderstand science, because science cannot do this.
On that note, it would also indicate that when some one finds instances where the data does not match the theory and uses these instances to show that the theory is wrong, it is not "Cherry picking" as any instance where the data does not match the theory means that the theory has been disproved and should be adjusted to take the new data into account.Pretty much, although the process is rarely that simple. (Not only do you have to make sure the new observations aren't themselves erroneous, but often there are multiple competing theories that the new observations affect.)
True science is actually pretty exciting stuff, but it's not for the faint-hearted. A theory of yours that you've relied on for half of your life could be shattered beyond reconciliation by some dork on the other side of the planet that you've never even heard of. Such is the life of a scientist.
For the record, I am not a climatologist, which is why I listen to what people who are climatologists are saying. In a nutshell, this is what they are saying:
This is why the vast majority of climate scientists believe that the theory of AGW is correct—in fact, most climate scientists are spending their time trying to figure out what the effects of AGW will be.
You are making the classic mistake: you are assuming that science is about trying to prove that something is true. It's not. Science cannot prove anything; science can only disprove.
If you want a concise definition of science, it is this: science is the methodology by which we identify and discard beliefs and theories that are false. This process does not produce facts; it does not produce proof. At best, it produces theories that have withstood enough attempts to knock them down that for now, we tentatively assume that they are accurate. But we're still standing on quicksand.
People who look to science to give them facts and absolute truths are inevitably frustrated, because science can't give them what they want.
This strikes me as a good design—after all, if the rail gun had a quick recharge time, it'd be far too easy to respawn camp.
"Waaa! UN! The US won't even let us get out of our docks! Ban them!"