Asimov also wrote a short story, "Alexander the God", which predicted algorithmic trading and its downfalls. It's not a particularly good story, in truth, and was only published posthumously, but it was rather insightful in its prediction. In it, a man develops a computer algorithm to predict shifts in the stock market, and uses it to become fabulously wealthy. However, it all comes crashing down, when the one thing his algorithmic trading cannot account for is algorithmic trading.
And whose right were we protecting on those occasions that we knocked off or destabilized democratically elected governments to put some thuggish warlord into power?
The fact that people who happened to be born in the same 3.5 million square mile area as us did bad things decades ago does not mean that we should never do anything ever again.
I'm against most wars for purely practical reasons: they're expensive, rarely work, and they kill lots of people. But intervening in other countries to stop atrocities can be a good thing, when done right. Suggesting we should never do so simply because we don't have a good way of deciding where to intervene is foolish. To use the requisite car analogy: I can't come up with a definitive method to make sure I always buy the right car, but that doesn't mean I should never buy a car, just that I should try my best to get it right.
Okay, technically, thanks to the recent financial reform, stockholders get a non-binding vote, but the execs can (an do) just ignore it and pay themselves whatever they want.
Furthermore, if you had any knowledge of how corporate votes work, you would never suggest something as moronic as democracy-through-share-purchasing. To get a significant portion of the vote, you'd need around 10 million people dropping $2000 each... except trying to buy 200M shares would send the price skyrocketing. So the people whose lives get toyed with by these companies need to pay the thieves hundreds of billions of dollars just to be able to vote on a non-binding resolution? I'd rather buy a torch and pitchfork.
And how do you propose people do that? Most people these days are given 401k's as their only retirement option, in which they are forced to pick from a short list of thieves who to trust with their money. You can try to invest for yourself with an IRA, but they'll steal from you all the same with HFT. Or you could try to trust entirely in Social Security, but that's not really enough to live on in many areas, and odds are they will have privatized (i.e. stolen) all of it within 20 years anyway.
What if we make the tablet out of some extremely toxic material? That should keep away the looters. Heck, you wouldn't even need to write anything on it. They'd get the idea.
Eureka! Just bury the waste in open containers! People in the future will figure out they should steer clear much quicker than they'll decode some sapphire disk.
With an armed populace the government fears the people. This is freedom. With an unarmed populace the people fear the government. This is tyranny.
You are a child. You may be 30, or 40, or 50 years old, but you are a child. Life is so much more complex than your simplistic little assertions. The government doesn't fear you because you're armed -- they have bigger guns, better guns, more guns. Nor does a gun give a sane man courage. A gun won't protect you from chemicals in your drinking water. It won't make the insurance company approve your claim, or stop your job from being sent overseas. The world can, and will, make you hurt and your pitiful little chunk of metal won't do anything to stop it. A rabbit's foot would be as effective.
Even if you had an army behind you, that won't give you utopia. It'll give you Somalia.
Vote no on almost every new law. Vote in every election. Vote for the nobody. Vote for the new guy. Never vote for the incumbent. Never vote for his most likely opponent.
Simplistic rules never work. What if the law is trying to help? Do you vote no because its not perfect? What if the incumbent is better than the alternatives? Do you vote against the better candidate just because? That's not a path to improvement. You know how when people are driving, and catch themselves slipping off the road, and start a cycle of overcorrection that makes things even worse? That's what you're doing.
The path to a better country is the obvious, pragmatic one. Do your homework, and vote for the best candidate in every election. Even if you hate him, if he's better than the alternative, he should get your vote. Local elections and primaries are the best targets, as the smaller pool of voters means that motivated, informed people can make a bigger difference. The people with the money and power are playing a long game. They want you to give up hope and stop fighting for progress, which is exactly what you're doing when you throw away a vote or put your trust in guns. You must never give up. It's not gonna get better next year, or five years from now, or ten. It took over thirty years to dig the hole we're in. It'll take at least that long to get out of it.
some of us hate what TF2 became (grind to unlock gear! buy stupid crap! deal with screaming 12 year olds! fun!)
TF2 hasn't really changed. The only reason to grind or buy things is if you really want to. I never buy anything, and if I want one of the unlockable weapons, I just wait for two random weapons to drop, craft them into a scrap, and trade the scrap for the weapon of my choice. There are enough people out there who do participate in the hat-grind that you can always find a buyer.
As for screaming twelve year olds, I have 300 hours logged in the game, and I can count the number of obnoxious twelve year olds I've encountered on my fingers. The player base seems to be more mature (or perhaps just less likely to talk) than you get in most shooters. The only time it was ever a problem was when I accidentally found myself in a 4chan server. The server blacklist solved that problem nicely.
The only real problems in the game are the ones that have always existed: No one plays medic, no one is smart enough to shoot the medic, and certain maps (*cough2fortcough*) devolve into a dozen snipers on each side taking pot shots. I'm pretty sure there are some 2fort matches that have been going continuously for years.
That article is nearly three years old, and bases it's conclusion on GM missing the "green wave". They've since introduced the Volt, among other fuel-efficient models. If the author's base assumption had been borne out, if GM had stuck their heads in the ground and continued to churn out Hummers, then he probably would have been right. But as it stands, I doubt even the author still stands by that article.
Absolutely. If the CEO wants to donate some of his salary, that's one thing. But donating corporate funds, which theoretically belong in part to every shareholder? He has no right to use their money against their interests. If they wanted some of their money donated to Campaign X, they could withdraw some funds and donate it themselves.
Like it or not, corporations have been given carte blanche to buy elections. That ship has already sailed. We're an oligarchy now, and will remain such until some SCOTUS judges die off while a Democrat is in office. And if we must have our country ruled by corporations, I'd prefer to be ruled by corporations that care about human equality, rather than a bunch of plundering banks and hedge funds.
You can hem and haw all you want about how awful it is that it's come to this, but it won't do a damn bit of good. Either we take what we can get, or we lay down and die.
Interesting that you call someone else a simpleton, and yet are so utterly convinced that no one would ever use a nuke. Speaking in such absolute terms seems very, well, simple. When we're talking about events that would kills tens of millions, it's very important to pay attention to the difference between "extremely unlikely" and "never gonna happen".
The flaw in that assumption is that it contains the underlying assumption that self-preservation will always lead rulers to not use nukes.
Look at Qaddafi in Libya. Look at Saddam in Iraq. Heck, look back to the ruling class in the French Revolution. When an oppressive autocracy falls, the leaders usually end up dead at the hands of their former subjects. If you are such a leader, and you believe that your fall is inevitable, might you not consider nuking the rebels?
It's not so outlandish. Dictators have employed mass mutilation, rape-as-a-weapon, chemical weapons, and even genocide in the past. Can we be so sure that such people would draw the line at nuclear weapons?
And even if nuking the rebels draws unwanted international attention, the dictator would still be better off, since the International Criminal Court does not employ capital punishment. Life in prison beats the heck out of being torn limb from limb by an angry mob.
Don't forget credit card reform that outlaws the old "change your due date at the last minute, and jack up your rates when you miss it" trick. My parents got hit hard by that scam when I was growing up, so I was very happy to see it banned.
Those are four people. Yes, they have a lot of money, but think of it this way:
Would you prefer a 1 in 10,000,000 chance to be a billionaire (and end up flipping burgers if you fail), or a 1 in 1000 chance to be a millionaire (and end up with a decent paying job if you fail)?
A college degree is both safer and has a higher probability of success. The rewards might be lower, but that cannot be concluded from such a small sample size, and at any rate they're still enough for any reasonable person to live comfortably.
Ease up on the tinfoil. The mean ole gubmint isn't instituting rolling blackouts just to fuck with you. Rolling blackouts are used to prevent overloading of power plants, since the alternative would be a full blackout. And they can shut off power to your house regardless of whether you're using a smart meter.
If anything, smart meters will prevent rolling blackouts by helping utilities better forecast power demand.
Bnetd was used by pirates to play multiplayer games without paying. It's entirely understandable that Blizzard wouldn't be too happy about that. They might not have handled the situation perfectly, but refusing to forgive them over ten years later? Typical nerd rage. Get angry, get the blood pumping, hate, hate, hate. It makes one feel alive.
Do you really think that the TSA wage-slaves are designing multi-million dollar scanners in between confiscating toothpaste and groping tourists? You do know that they have actual scientists and engineers and doctors inventing this stuff... right? I'll trust their judgement over that of a random poster in an internet forum.
Out of curiosity, what sort of equipment are you using that it can't be controlled using VISA/SCPI commands? Such interfaces are ubiquitous in the electronics test industry, and are indeed very flexible, scriptable, powerful, etc. Is that standard really not used in scientific instruments?
And who are these H1B workers on absurdly low wages? It costs Microsoft 30% more to hire foreigners on H1Bs because there aren't enough Americans graduating with master's and PhDs in STEM fields. MSFT would gladly hire Americans to do these jobs, if they could.
According to who, Microsoft? Gee, I can't think of any reason they might want to lie about this.
H1B workers are easily abused because changing jobs is far more difficult. The upfront costs of hiring them may be higher, but they end up working longer hours for less pay. That is why Microsoft, along with all the other tech giants, go before Congress every year and lie and beg.
I remember seeing stories about the anti-vehicle/IED lightning gun back in 2007, maybe earlier. Every single time it comes up, it gets shot down as being utterly impractical. It can't stop vehicles reliably enough to warrant use in a life-or-death situation, and it's a laughably inefficient means of IED detonation (they need to be within arms reach of the bomb to do anything).
And yet the story keeps coming back. I suspect some congressmen just feel that, like the laser plane, this weapon is too cool to give up on.
If I thought you'd done something so bad that your head should be removed and put on a stake, I'd cut your god damn head off an put in on a stake.
No, you wouldn't, because you're an angry little coward spitting venom from behind the safety of a computer screen. Tough talk like that always comes from the cowards.
Bush was a terrible president. He may very well have dealt the death blow to this country. We're still shambling along for now, but the harm he did... in racking up deficits, undermining civil rights, making enemies, deregulating everything, stacking the court with activists... I don't think it's really survivable. It's pretty clear from how offended you are that you voted for him. So did I. The difference is, I'm brave enough to face my mistake. You're a coward who runs from his mistakes and insists that it's everyone else who is wrong.
The directors are probably rational human beings, and thought to themselves, "Hey, here's a funny coincidence, let's share it with the world!"
Sadly, they forgot that the media exists only to stir up hatred (it brings in the big bucks!) and there are millions of idiots in the world who eat that shit up. As soon as the media catches wind of a story like this, they'll be out for blood, and they will get it.
Some get rich by good ole fashioned buy-and-hold strategies, which are entirely legitimate and good for the economy.
Some get rich through facilitating, for example noting that a stock is priced too low and buy it, then sell it when someone who actually wants it comes along. Again, this serves a valuable role in the economy, as it means that someone who wants to sell their stock now can do so, and doesn't need to wait to find a long term buyer.
Some get rich through dumb luck, which they mistake for their own skill. If enough people gamble, some are bound to win. No one likes to think that they got rich by dumb luck, so they tell themselves it was because they're just that awesome.
Some get rich by skimming the retirement accounts of regular folks. These are your mutual fund managers, for example, who provide no apparent benefit over randomly picking stocks from the index, and yet charge a nice hefty fee for their services.
And then, of course, some get rich through straight-up crime. Insider trading, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Asimov also wrote a short story, "Alexander the God", which predicted algorithmic trading and its downfalls. It's not a particularly good story, in truth, and was only published posthumously, but it was rather insightful in its prediction. In it, a man develops a computer algorithm to predict shifts in the stock market, and uses it to become fabulously wealthy. However, it all comes crashing down, when the one thing his algorithmic trading cannot account for is algorithmic trading.
And whose right were we protecting on those occasions that we knocked off or destabilized democratically elected governments to put some thuggish warlord into power?
The fact that people who happened to be born in the same 3.5 million square mile area as us did bad things decades ago does not mean that we should never do anything ever again.
I'm against most wars for purely practical reasons: they're expensive, rarely work, and they kill lots of people. But intervening in other countries to stop atrocities can be a good thing, when done right. Suggesting we should never do so simply because we don't have a good way of deciding where to intervene is foolish. To use the requisite car analogy: I can't come up with a definitive method to make sure I always buy the right car, but that doesn't mean I should never buy a car, just that I should try my best to get it right.
The shareholders don't get a vote.
Okay, technically, thanks to the recent financial reform, stockholders get a non-binding vote, but the execs can (an do) just ignore it and pay themselves whatever they want.
Furthermore, if you had any knowledge of how corporate votes work, you would never suggest something as moronic as democracy-through-share-purchasing. To get a significant portion of the vote, you'd need around 10 million people dropping $2000 each... except trying to buy 200M shares would send the price skyrocketing. So the people whose lives get toyed with by these companies need to pay the thieves hundreds of billions of dollars just to be able to vote on a non-binding resolution? I'd rather buy a torch and pitchfork.
And how do you propose people do that? Most people these days are given 401k's as their only retirement option, in which they are forced to pick from a short list of thieves who to trust with their money. You can try to invest for yourself with an IRA, but they'll steal from you all the same with HFT. Or you could try to trust entirely in Social Security, but that's not really enough to live on in many areas, and odds are they will have privatized (i.e. stolen) all of it within 20 years anyway.
Two wrongs don't make a right. As I recall, Google did get in trouble for that in various countries, and has since started obscuring some images.
What if we make the tablet out of some extremely toxic material? That should keep away the looters. Heck, you wouldn't even need to write anything on it. They'd get the idea.
Eureka! Just bury the waste in open containers! People in the future will figure out they should steer clear much quicker than they'll decode some sapphire disk.
With an armed populace the government fears the people. This is freedom.
With an unarmed populace the people fear the government. This is tyranny.
You are a child. You may be 30, or 40, or 50 years old, but you are a child. Life is so much more complex than your simplistic little assertions. The government doesn't fear you because you're armed -- they have bigger guns, better guns, more guns. Nor does a gun give a sane man courage. A gun won't protect you from chemicals in your drinking water. It won't make the insurance company approve your claim, or stop your job from being sent overseas. The world can, and will, make you hurt and your pitiful little chunk of metal won't do anything to stop it. A rabbit's foot would be as effective.
Even if you had an army behind you, that won't give you utopia. It'll give you Somalia.
Vote no on almost every new law. Vote in every election. Vote for the nobody. Vote for the new guy.
Never vote for the incumbent. Never vote for his most likely opponent.
Simplistic rules never work. What if the law is trying to help? Do you vote no because its not perfect? What if the incumbent is better than the alternatives? Do you vote against the better candidate just because? That's not a path to improvement. You know how when people are driving, and catch themselves slipping off the road, and start a cycle of overcorrection that makes things even worse? That's what you're doing.
The path to a better country is the obvious, pragmatic one. Do your homework, and vote for the best candidate in every election. Even if you hate him, if he's better than the alternative, he should get your vote. Local elections and primaries are the best targets, as the smaller pool of voters means that motivated, informed people can make a bigger difference. The people with the money and power are playing a long game. They want you to give up hope and stop fighting for progress, which is exactly what you're doing when you throw away a vote or put your trust in guns. You must never give up. It's not gonna get better next year, or five years from now, or ten. It took over thirty years to dig the hole we're in. It'll take at least that long to get out of it.
some of us hate what TF2 became (grind to unlock gear! buy stupid crap! deal with screaming 12 year olds! fun!)
TF2 hasn't really changed. The only reason to grind or buy things is if you really want to. I never buy anything, and if I want one of the unlockable weapons, I just wait for two random weapons to drop, craft them into a scrap, and trade the scrap for the weapon of my choice. There are enough people out there who do participate in the hat-grind that you can always find a buyer.
As for screaming twelve year olds, I have 300 hours logged in the game, and I can count the number of obnoxious twelve year olds I've encountered on my fingers. The player base seems to be more mature (or perhaps just less likely to talk) than you get in most shooters. The only time it was ever a problem was when I accidentally found myself in a 4chan server. The server blacklist solved that problem nicely.
The only real problems in the game are the ones that have always existed: No one plays medic, no one is smart enough to shoot the medic, and certain maps (*cough2fortcough*) devolve into a dozen snipers on each side taking pot shots. I'm pretty sure there are some 2fort matches that have been going continuously for years.
That article is nearly three years old, and bases it's conclusion on GM missing the "green wave". They've since introduced the Volt, among other fuel-efficient models. If the author's base assumption had been borne out, if GM had stuck their heads in the ground and continued to churn out Hummers, then he probably would have been right. But as it stands, I doubt even the author still stands by that article.
Absolutely. If the CEO wants to donate some of his salary, that's one thing. But donating corporate funds, which theoretically belong in part to every shareholder? He has no right to use their money against their interests. If they wanted some of their money donated to Campaign X, they could withdraw some funds and donate it themselves.
Like it or not, corporations have been given carte blanche to buy elections. That ship has already sailed. We're an oligarchy now, and will remain such until some SCOTUS judges die off while a Democrat is in office. And if we must have our country ruled by corporations, I'd prefer to be ruled by corporations that care about human equality, rather than a bunch of plundering banks and hedge funds.
You can hem and haw all you want about how awful it is that it's come to this, but it won't do a damn bit of good. Either we take what we can get, or we lay down and die.
Interesting that you call someone else a simpleton, and yet are so utterly convinced that no one would ever use a nuke. Speaking in such absolute terms seems very, well, simple. When we're talking about events that would kills tens of millions, it's very important to pay attention to the difference between "extremely unlikely" and "never gonna happen".
The flaw in that assumption is that it contains the underlying assumption that self-preservation will always lead rulers to not use nukes.
Look at Qaddafi in Libya. Look at Saddam in Iraq. Heck, look back to the ruling class in the French Revolution. When an oppressive autocracy falls, the leaders usually end up dead at the hands of their former subjects. If you are such a leader, and you believe that your fall is inevitable, might you not consider nuking the rebels?
It's not so outlandish. Dictators have employed mass mutilation, rape-as-a-weapon, chemical weapons, and even genocide in the past. Can we be so sure that such people would draw the line at nuclear weapons?
And even if nuking the rebels draws unwanted international attention, the dictator would still be better off, since the International Criminal Court does not employ capital punishment. Life in prison beats the heck out of being torn limb from limb by an angry mob.
Don't forget credit card reform that outlaws the old "change your due date at the last minute, and jack up your rates when you miss it" trick. My parents got hit hard by that scam when I was growing up, so I was very happy to see it banned.
Those are four people. Yes, they have a lot of money, but think of it this way:
Would you prefer a 1 in 10,000,000 chance to be a billionaire (and end up flipping burgers if you fail), or a 1 in 1000 chance to be a millionaire (and end up with a decent paying job if you fail)?
A college degree is both safer and has a higher probability of success. The rewards might be lower, but that cannot be concluded from such a small sample size, and at any rate they're still enough for any reasonable person to live comfortably.
Ease up on the tinfoil. The mean ole gubmint isn't instituting rolling blackouts just to fuck with you. Rolling blackouts are used to prevent overloading of power plants, since the alternative would be a full blackout. And they can shut off power to your house regardless of whether you're using a smart meter.
If anything, smart meters will prevent rolling blackouts by helping utilities better forecast power demand.
Bnetd was used by pirates to play multiplayer games without paying. It's entirely understandable that Blizzard wouldn't be too happy about that. They might not have handled the situation perfectly, but refusing to forgive them over ten years later? Typical nerd rage. Get angry, get the blood pumping, hate, hate, hate. It makes one feel alive.
Do you really think that the TSA wage-slaves are designing multi-million dollar scanners in between confiscating toothpaste and groping tourists? You do know that they have actual scientists and engineers and doctors inventing this stuff... right? I'll trust their judgement over that of a random poster in an internet forum.
Out of curiosity, what sort of equipment are you using that it can't be controlled using VISA/SCPI commands? Such interfaces are ubiquitous in the electronics test industry, and are indeed very flexible, scriptable, powerful, etc. Is that standard really not used in scientific instruments?
And who are these H1B workers on absurdly low wages? It costs Microsoft 30% more to hire foreigners on H1Bs because there aren't enough Americans graduating with master's and PhDs in STEM fields. MSFT would gladly hire Americans to do these jobs, if they could.
According to who, Microsoft? Gee, I can't think of any reason they might want to lie about this.
H1B workers are easily abused because changing jobs is far more difficult. The upfront costs of hiring them may be higher, but they end up working longer hours for less pay. That is why Microsoft, along with all the other tech giants, go before Congress every year and lie and beg.
Of course, the amount is so miniscule that if they were to give it to subscribers, it would come out to about three and a half cents per household.
I remember seeing stories about the anti-vehicle/IED lightning gun back in 2007, maybe earlier. Every single time it comes up, it gets shot down as being utterly impractical. It can't stop vehicles reliably enough to warrant use in a life-or-death situation, and it's a laughably inefficient means of IED detonation (they need to be within arms reach of the bomb to do anything).
And yet the story keeps coming back. I suspect some congressmen just feel that, like the laser plane, this weapon is too cool to give up on.
If I thought you'd done something so bad that your head should be removed and put on a stake, I'd cut your god damn head off an put in on a stake.
No, you wouldn't, because you're an angry little coward spitting venom from behind the safety of a computer screen. Tough talk like that always comes from the cowards.
Bush was a terrible president. He may very well have dealt the death blow to this country. We're still shambling along for now, but the harm he did... in racking up deficits, undermining civil rights, making enemies, deregulating everything, stacking the court with activists... I don't think it's really survivable. It's pretty clear from how offended you are that you voted for him. So did I. The difference is, I'm brave enough to face my mistake. You're a coward who runs from his mistakes and insists that it's everyone else who is wrong.
The directors are probably rational human beings, and thought to themselves, "Hey, here's a funny coincidence, let's share it with the world!"
Sadly, they forgot that the media exists only to stir up hatred (it brings in the big bucks!) and there are millions of idiots in the world who eat that shit up. As soon as the media catches wind of a story like this, they'll be out for blood, and they will get it.
Depends on the millionaire:
Some get rich by good ole fashioned buy-and-hold strategies, which are entirely legitimate and good for the economy.
Some get rich through facilitating, for example noting that a stock is priced too low and buy it, then sell it when someone who actually wants it comes along. Again, this serves a valuable role in the economy, as it means that someone who wants to sell their stock now can do so, and doesn't need to wait to find a long term buyer.
Some get rich through dumb luck, which they mistake for their own skill. If enough people gamble, some are bound to win. No one likes to think that they got rich by dumb luck, so they tell themselves it was because they're just that awesome.
Some get rich by skimming the retirement accounts of regular folks. These are your mutual fund managers, for example, who provide no apparent benefit over randomly picking stocks from the index, and yet charge a nice hefty fee for their services.
And then, of course, some get rich through straight-up crime. Insider trading, for example.