Look, I'm sorry to be an asshole here, again, but I think it's important to remember that Steve Jobs wasn't a serious technologist. He was a genius at design and marketing, but not a technical man. I think it's insulting to the people who actually make the electrons flow to give him sole credit for the entire Apple product line the way so many people do. He was the very first and very last link in the design and quality control of many, many blockbuster products, which is absolutely huge, but he wasn't the only man in the builidng, and I get a little irritated when people even accidentally imply that he was. The guy was a visionary, an asshole, and a bunch of other things, but he was *never* a one-man company at Apple.
As a customer or stockholder wouldn't you be angry if the driving force behind your favorite company, one who had serious health concerns, ducked out of his job while giving literally not one word of concrete explanation? For many people that kind of job change was bigger than if President Obama suddenly said "Biden's in charge now, peace out!", and yet Apple and Jobs thought nothing of refusing to explain anything about it. It was ridiculous and insulting, and to me just another example of their controlling corporate culture saying "We know what you need and when you need it, now shut up and wait for us to tell you when we're damn well good and ready!".
That's only your opinion, and I don't agree with it. I believe that trolling is supposed to be reserved for people saying things exclusively to piss other people off and/or divert the discussion into a pointless, heated tanget; "being an ass" is not an acceptable reason to mod something troll. Something can be vitriolic, wrong, provocative, or just downright crazy without being trolling. The fact that slashdot has forgotten that explains a lot about the groupthink mentality that pervades this place sometimes.
It was pancreatic cancer. Without any knowledge of Jobs particular case I'd opine that he moved on to alternative medicine "bullshit" after he realized that hospitals had about as much help to offer him as a mountain of *actual* bullshit.
The disease has a 4% five-year survival rate. You can't fault the guy for concluding that, what the hell, he might as well try something unproven and crazy sounding rather than stake his life on treatment that *was* proven...to be almost hopeless.
Not to mention that there's some truth to alternative medicine. Not to crystals or vaccines-and-autism theories, but just because a field has a fuckton of loonies doesn't mean there aren't some correct (if anecdotal) notions there and some genius ideas that simply never get the funding to become proven.
Except that Jobs made computers while Kennedy successfully played nuclear chicken with the Russians and started the project that put a human being on the frickin moon. Jobs wasn't half the man Kennedy was, not in anything but charisma. Not to mention that Kennedy was kind in almost all circumstances, while Jobs was only nice in public and an internationally renowned asshole in private.
Uh...I think that's you. Since you're clearly implying that what I said is dramatically, pathetically wrong, why don't you refresh the class on what I missed?
We don't have the faintest idea, when you get down to it, what causes autism. There's a whole damn pile of candidate genes, but none of them have been linked to a mechanism or even definitively linked to a particular mutation or other defect within the gene itself.
We know about as much about autism, really, as alchemists knew about chemistry. Just because we understand genetics and ecology on a limited level doesn't mean we've made even one firm, proven conclusion about the source of autism.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that a moment of gloating amounted to pathological obsession. I am over it; that doesn't mean I can't ever remember it or be amused that I was right.
I point you to this angry post I made when Jobs retired without explanation very recently.
Didn't this already happen with his cancer sabatical? And by this, I mean dropping major announcements with no warning and no real explanation?
They've done everything they can to make the company a cult of Steve Jobs (I mean, have they ever had *anyone* else doing or even assisting with the product demos on that big, dark stage?), and then when Jobs is sick or changing roles or whatever they fuck around and won't tell people what's actually going on. It's complete fiduciary misconduct, in my opinion, consistently playing coy with or outright withholding the specifics of major changes like this. They're responsible to their stockholders and to their customers to tell people what the hell is really going on.
Plus, every time Steve gets a friggin head cold the stock price plunges; they know this by now, and yet they said exactly nothing about why he's moving on this time around. We're forced to wonder whether no news is in fact very, very bad news they're hoping to hide for as long as possible; what if Steve's cancer is back and he's going to die within 6 months, but they're shoving Tim Cook up to the firing squad and hoping he can prove his worth before it happens so that the stock price doesn't *completely* vaporize?
At the time I got modded troll, told to calm down, blah blah blah.
They turned an egg, a cell with only half the DNA of a regular cell, into a survivable cell line!
That's like turning Linux into Windows 7 using only BASIC. Or something. I just thought I'd toss out an analogy for those of you who understand computers but not biology to point out how fricking insane that is.
I very much understand and respect why he might want to be done. I'm not saying that I know his reason, but I know it's frustrating for a lot of actors, musical artists, etc. to be stuck with their most famous roles or a particular genre to the point where former devotees actually turn on them for trying something new or giving up the constant fan service. Their fans can grow up, try new things, experience different phases of life like anyone else, but many of those same fans won't allow their creative idols to change or be living people.
The only upside to this is that if they're licensing the OS rather than selling it, those that lose their discs or where the discs are damaged should be able to make new copies from a friend to replace their disc or back up their discs for safe keeping as they're licensed rather than bought.
Ha! That's a good one!
You didn't think logic and the good of the consumer mattered in intellectual property law, did you?
This is the oldest story in the multinationalist's book.
It happens with every industry. If it's not physically restricted to a particular chunk of land like mining or timber, corporations will shop jurisdictions, wringing tax and legal concessions out of every potential home. It's why banks incorporate in Delaware who don't even have branches or clients there, why Microsoft does a suspiciously large amount of business in Ireland, etc.
By the time they're done shopping their future home has agreed that they'll be exempt from environmental laws or that they'll never pay taxes if they'll please just give a few thousand people a job. It's just another problem with the kind of pathetic regulation that allows a corporation to declare their profit in one nation, their liabilities in another, their employees in a third, etc. to the effect that they're no longer just people (which is bad enough) but highly privileged citizens of a dozen countries at once. Yet with so few of those pesky liabilities other citizens must endure.
I know slashdot has a large contingent of social darwinists and let-it-all-burn libertarians and I'll get modded down for this, but I have to say that I'm sure Marx is laughing in his grave watching us fulfill his nightmares.
well then you surely would not mind me walking into your living room and calling your wife a whore would you?
The living room analogy again? I see this every time there's a mention of forum censorship. And it's a completely foolish response.
If we insist on some analogy to meatspace, a developer's user-forum is more like an open house. They've specifically invited anyone and everyone with an interest in their product, their brand, and their company to a central space for discussion and information dispersal. Tiptoeing around and only say positive things about the host may be polite in some ways, but it completely and utterly defeats the purpose of showing up at a place intended to directly connect the fans. Harsh opinions exist; don't pretend to make a cozy central gathering place for your customers to converse amongst themselves, and with you, then proceed to ruthlessly censor all critical or controversial comments.
If you don't plan on allowing negative viewpoints or serious discussions you can't call it a forum with a straight face.
Stock prices don't cost or make companies money directly, at least not to my knowledge. Once the shares are out there, why should Netflix care about the price afterwards: they already sold it, and they don't get money when it's re-sold.
There's certainly plenty to worry about with fiduciary responsibility and where the stock price will be if you ever want to offer shares again, but I'm not aware of any way in which stock price affects a companies finances in the moment.
I'm probably wrong somehow, but that's the way it looks to me so far.
Why do people that aren't rich defend people that are?
Because they've been fed so much plutocratic propaganda about class mobility and how highly likely they are to become rich themselves someday, that they don't want to rock the boat they're about to board. I'm dead serious.
I agree with your basic sentiment, but the economic statistics simply don't support your claim that purchasing power is so bad that yours has *dropped* while earning more than double your fathers wage. Relative purchasing power is shit for the middle class and has dropped since the mid-seventies, yes, but saying that even doubling your income doesn't let you stand still is ludicrous, especially when you're completely ignoring inflation as you are.
America always seems to do best when there's gridlock due to different parties controlling Congress and the White House
It's not just appearances. Economic studies do indeed show that the economy has been best when Republicans control congress and Democrats control the White House, followed closely by the other way around.
Though with a third party, consisting entirely of people who can't do 4th grade math, dominating Republic votes that doesn't seem to be the case this time.
If he feels so bad, then why does he have his income structured in such a way that his statement is mildly true?
Because unlike the vast majority of other ultra-rich people, he does something as good or better than paying taxes with any money he saves in loopholes. He gives the Gates foundation ~1.5 billion a year, and save inheritances of roughly 0.03% for each of his children every penny of his fortune will end up in charities. I've heard many times of the rich and those who hope to be complaining that the government is inefficient and private ingenuity is better and they're giving away damn near all their fortune anyway so the government should just butt out and let them be the magnanimous gods that they are. Buffet and Gates seem to be the only ones putting the majority of their money where their mouth is.
Once family income exceeds 10x the poverty line, they rest is just gravy.
Try 2.5x.
I've read countless times that studies show little or no increase in happiness or health with increasing income past the $60,000 a year mark, which is only 30% more than the median and not even 3x the poverty line. $60,000 or $10 billion; an emotionally stable person is just as happy with either one. I certainly realize that said person might like to vacation more than they do presently or give larger gifts to their alma mater or larger inheritances or whatever, but that person won't be unhappy without more money; part of being emotionally stable involves recognizing limits to your desires. In almost all cases it's only people with a serious mental or social disease who *cannot* be completely happy with 60k. And I mean true contentment, not resignation.
I'm more worried that this taxes people on their way to becoming rich.
Considering it only taxes income in excess of a million dollars I'd say that's not a problem. A million dollars is already rich. It's already 22.2 times the median income. Already in the top 1% of Americans and the top 0.001% of the human race.
I realize that inflation catches up with everyone, and that a million dollars is no longer an inconceivably large amount of money, but to say that people making >$1 million a year are merely "on their way to becoming" rich is downright insane.
This doesn't even begin to approach fairness unless *ALL* forms of purchase are taxed. Land, homes, cars, investments, vacations, etc. All of it taxed just like a loaf of bread (and don't get me started on whether it's fair to tax a loaf of bread, but for your argument we're assuming that it is). The problem with sales taxes has always been that the ultra-rich spend an exceedingly small percentage of their money on the everyday items subject to sales tax. A tax can't possibly be universally, perfectly fair if luxury goods are exempt; it's utterly laughable when people claim that a national sales tax similar to the various state sales taxes could solve all of our problems.
I understand that the wealthy can afford to save large sums of money to avoid taxation, but the money will get spent eventually
I don't think you understand the magnitude that wealth can achieve, or the power of investments: if you hypothetically earned a billion dollars on the day you were born, and you (or your parents, while you're still drooling) could spend a thousand dollars an hour until the minute you croaked and you couldn't spend a billion dollars unless you lived to 113. That's quite a long "eventually" for all of your income to finally be taxed. Not to mention that earning even 0.9% interest on that sum could let you spend the $1000/hour and still very slightly increase your fortune every year; in which case your original sum will never pay a dime in tax.
It's absolutely possible to never spend a dime of a 7-10 figure fortune and still live in the top 5% of Americans (and the top 0.01% of humanity) on your interest alone. Even a lottery jackpot of $4 million (or 0.4% of that billion I mentioned before) invested at 1% can let you spend the median yearly income for the rest of your life without touching the principle. To say that great fortunes are "eventually" spent, and thus taxed, is only true if you define "eventually" as "before the sun explodes".
Highly misleading. It eliminates dangers to the dogs/handlers and simplifies logistics; the article doesn't even imply that the device is more effective than dogs. It also points out that dogs are more agile and will still be more useful in areas where the machine or its human operator can't easily go (which I imagine will be a lot of places, considering that they're *digging through rubble*).
There are dogs out there that can detect cancer, for Christ sake; don't be so quick to dismiss biology in favor of technology, especially considering that a merging of the two is probably our next great frontier.
P.S. If any suspicious or sardonic person out there wants to argue that cancer dogs are some stupid myth, read the studies cited in this wikipedia article: they may be small studies, but I'm not inclined to doubt a study of a diagnostic tool showing a specificity >90% until I see a directly contrary scientific result or a damn good argument about the design of the original study.
I remember a highly compelling thought experiment published in the New York Times editorial page, back when the economy was first going south - a though experiment which, the authors later revealed, was more real-world practice than experiment.
The way big risks and 'trendy' trades often work is this: if a certain method of investing your pool looks good and other traders in the firm are making big money on it, you have two choices. You can go against the prevailing wisdom, but should you lose then you're the idiot who lost $10 million and you're fired. You can also go with the trend, in which case either you all win together or the entire company (or entire economy) goes down in flames and you're no worse off - in reputation or employment - than anybody else.
My point for bringing this up is that it's not about random idiots going nuts; even if that happens it's just one idiot or one company that dies, and at least they're all the 'rogue' idiots are effectively sociopathic, conflicting entities. The real damage comes when every trader agrees on things; sooner or later it's all coming down, and the rest of us go down with them.
So frankly I think it's *great* news that this guy lost $2 billion; at least it means UBS isn't so locked-down that individual traders can't take risks. Better they learn from giving traders too much freedom than we all learn from them being given or being taught too little.
If you read what I've written I'm not actually justifying this system at all; my point all along has been more general than that. I simply believe that cars aren't a strictly private, strictly personal possession and I'm tired of people pretending that they are. Cars physically interconnect all our lives and, with their massive fiscal and environmental costs, they directly connect all of our destinies, as well. Our entire lives, at least in the US, are designed around then. I'm not arguing for the abolition of cars, and I don't actually care one way or another about this particular issue; I'm just tired of ignorant individualists, many of whom border on anarchists, who believe they have a right to unlimited, unrestricted use of automobiles. They're a public good, not a private right.
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Look, I'm sorry to be an asshole here, again, but I think it's important to remember that Steve Jobs wasn't a serious technologist. He was a genius at design and marketing, but not a technical man. I think it's insulting to the people who actually make the electrons flow to give him sole credit for the entire Apple product line the way so many people do. He was the very first and very last link in the design and quality control of many, many blockbuster products, which is absolutely huge, but he wasn't the only man in the builidng, and I get a little irritated when people even accidentally imply that he was. The guy was a visionary, an asshole, and a bunch of other things, but he was *never* a one-man company at Apple.
As a customer or stockholder wouldn't you be angry if the driving force behind your favorite company, one who had serious health concerns, ducked out of his job while giving literally not one word of concrete explanation? For many people that kind of job change was bigger than if President Obama suddenly said "Biden's in charge now, peace out!", and yet Apple and Jobs thought nothing of refusing to explain anything about it. It was ridiculous and insulting, and to me just another example of their controlling corporate culture saying "We know what you need and when you need it, now shut up and wait for us to tell you when we're damn well good and ready!".
That's only your opinion, and I don't agree with it. I believe that trolling is supposed to be reserved for people saying things exclusively to piss other people off and/or divert the discussion into a pointless, heated tanget; "being an ass" is not an acceptable reason to mod something troll. Something can be vitriolic, wrong, provocative, or just downright crazy without being trolling. The fact that slashdot has forgotten that explains a lot about the groupthink mentality that pervades this place sometimes.
It was pancreatic cancer. Without any knowledge of Jobs particular case I'd opine that he moved on to alternative medicine "bullshit" after he realized that hospitals had about as much help to offer him as a mountain of *actual* bullshit.
The disease has a 4% five-year survival rate. You can't fault the guy for concluding that, what the hell, he might as well try something unproven and crazy sounding rather than stake his life on treatment that *was* proven...to be almost hopeless.
Not to mention that there's some truth to alternative medicine. Not to crystals or vaccines-and-autism theories, but just because a field has a fuckton of loonies doesn't mean there aren't some correct (if anecdotal) notions there and some genius ideas that simply never get the funding to become proven.
Except that Jobs made computers while Kennedy successfully played nuclear chicken with the Russians and started the project that put a human being on the frickin moon. Jobs wasn't half the man Kennedy was, not in anything but charisma. Not to mention that Kennedy was kind in almost all circumstances, while Jobs was only nice in public and an internationally renowned asshole in private.
Uh...I think that's you. Since you're clearly implying that what I said is dramatically, pathetically wrong, why don't you refresh the class on what I missed?
We don't have the faintest idea, when you get down to it, what causes autism. There's a whole damn pile of candidate genes, but none of them have been linked to a mechanism or even definitively linked to a particular mutation or other defect within the gene itself.
We know about as much about autism, really, as alchemists knew about chemistry. Just because we understand genetics and ecology on a limited level doesn't mean we've made even one firm, proven conclusion about the source of autism.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that a moment of gloating amounted to pathological obsession. I am over it; that doesn't mean I can't ever remember it or be amused that I was right.
Didn't this already happen with his cancer sabatical? And by this, I mean dropping major announcements with no warning and no real explanation? They've done everything they can to make the company a cult of Steve Jobs (I mean, have they ever had *anyone* else doing or even assisting with the product demos on that big, dark stage?), and then when Jobs is sick or changing roles or whatever they fuck around and won't tell people what's actually going on. It's complete fiduciary misconduct, in my opinion, consistently playing coy with or outright withholding the specifics of major changes like this. They're responsible to their stockholders and to their customers to tell people what the hell is really going on. Plus, every time Steve gets a friggin head cold the stock price plunges; they know this by now, and yet they said exactly nothing about why he's moving on this time around. We're forced to wonder whether no news is in fact very, very bad news they're hoping to hide for as long as possible; what if Steve's cancer is back and he's going to die within 6 months, but they're shoving Tim Cook up to the firing squad and hoping he can prove his worth before it happens so that the stock price doesn't *completely* vaporize?
At the time I got modded troll, told to calm down, blah blah blah.
And I was absolutely, 100% right.
They turned an egg, a cell with only half the DNA of a regular cell, into a survivable cell line!
That's like turning Linux into Windows 7 using only BASIC. Or something. I just thought I'd toss out an analogy for those of you who understand computers but not biology to point out how fricking insane that is.
I very much understand and respect why he might want to be done. I'm not saying that I know his reason, but I know it's frustrating for a lot of actors, musical artists, etc. to be stuck with their most famous roles or a particular genre to the point where former devotees actually turn on them for trying something new or giving up the constant fan service. Their fans can grow up, try new things, experience different phases of life like anyone else, but many of those same fans won't allow their creative idols to change or be living people.
The only upside to this is that if they're licensing the OS rather than selling it, those that lose their discs or where the discs are damaged should be able to make new copies from a friend to replace their disc or back up their discs for safe keeping as they're licensed rather than bought.
Ha! That's a good one!
You didn't think logic and the good of the consumer mattered in intellectual property law, did you?
This is the oldest story in the multinationalist's book.
It happens with every industry. If it's not physically restricted to a particular chunk of land like mining or timber, corporations will shop jurisdictions, wringing tax and legal concessions out of every potential home. It's why banks incorporate in Delaware who don't even have branches or clients there, why Microsoft does a suspiciously large amount of business in Ireland, etc.
By the time they're done shopping their future home has agreed that they'll be exempt from environmental laws or that they'll never pay taxes if they'll please just give a few thousand people a job. It's just another problem with the kind of pathetic regulation that allows a corporation to declare their profit in one nation, their liabilities in another, their employees in a third, etc. to the effect that they're no longer just people (which is bad enough) but highly privileged citizens of a dozen countries at once. Yet with so few of those pesky liabilities other citizens must endure.
I know slashdot has a large contingent of social darwinists and let-it-all-burn libertarians and I'll get modded down for this, but I have to say that I'm sure Marx is laughing in his grave watching us fulfill his nightmares.
well then you surely would not mind me walking into your living room and calling your wife a whore would you?
The living room analogy again? I see this every time there's a mention of forum censorship. And it's a completely foolish response.
If we insist on some analogy to meatspace, a developer's user-forum is more like an open house. They've specifically invited anyone and everyone with an interest in their product, their brand, and their company to a central space for discussion and information dispersal. Tiptoeing around and only say positive things about the host may be polite in some ways, but it completely and utterly defeats the purpose of showing up at a place intended to directly connect the fans. Harsh opinions exist; don't pretend to make a cozy central gathering place for your customers to converse amongst themselves, and with you, then proceed to ruthlessly censor all critical or controversial comments.
If you don't plan on allowing negative viewpoints or serious discussions you can't call it a forum with a straight face.
Stock prices don't cost or make companies money directly, at least not to my knowledge. Once the shares are out there, why should Netflix care about the price afterwards: they already sold it, and they don't get money when it's re-sold.
There's certainly plenty to worry about with fiduciary responsibility and where the stock price will be if you ever want to offer shares again, but I'm not aware of any way in which stock price affects a companies finances in the moment.
I'm probably wrong somehow, but that's the way it looks to me so far.
Why do people that aren't rich defend people that are?
Because they've been fed so much plutocratic propaganda about class mobility and how highly likely they are to become rich themselves someday, that they don't want to rock the boat they're about to board. I'm dead serious.
I agree with your basic sentiment, but the economic statistics simply don't support your claim that purchasing power is so bad that yours has *dropped* while earning more than double your fathers wage. Relative purchasing power is shit for the middle class and has dropped since the mid-seventies, yes, but saying that even doubling your income doesn't let you stand still is ludicrous, especially when you're completely ignoring inflation as you are.
America always seems to do best when there's gridlock due to different parties controlling Congress and the White House
It's not just appearances. Economic studies do indeed show that the economy has been best when Republicans control congress and Democrats control the White House, followed closely by the other way around.
Though with a third party, consisting entirely of people who can't do 4th grade math, dominating Republic votes that doesn't seem to be the case this time.
If he feels so bad, then why does he have his income structured in such a way that his statement is mildly true?
Because unlike the vast majority of other ultra-rich people, he does something as good or better than paying taxes with any money he saves in loopholes. He gives the Gates foundation ~1.5 billion a year, and save inheritances of roughly 0.03% for each of his children every penny of his fortune will end up in charities. I've heard many times of the rich and those who hope to be complaining that the government is inefficient and private ingenuity is better and they're giving away damn near all their fortune anyway so the government should just butt out and let them be the magnanimous gods that they are. Buffet and Gates seem to be the only ones putting the majority of their money where their mouth is.
Once family income exceeds 10x the poverty line, they rest is just gravy.
Try 2.5x.
I've read countless times that studies show little or no increase in happiness or health with increasing income past the $60,000 a year mark, which is only 30% more than the median and not even 3x the poverty line. $60,000 or $10 billion; an emotionally stable person is just as happy with either one. I certainly realize that said person might like to vacation more than they do presently or give larger gifts to their alma mater or larger inheritances or whatever, but that person won't be unhappy without more money; part of being emotionally stable involves recognizing limits to your desires. In almost all cases it's only people with a serious mental or social disease who *cannot* be completely happy with 60k. And I mean true contentment, not resignation.
I'm more worried that this taxes people on their way to becoming rich.
Considering it only taxes income in excess of a million dollars I'd say that's not a problem. A million dollars is already rich. It's already 22.2 times the median income. Already in the top 1% of Americans and the top 0.001% of the human race.
I realize that inflation catches up with everyone, and that a million dollars is no longer an inconceivably large amount of money, but to say that people making >$1 million a year are merely "on their way to becoming" rich is downright insane.
a sales tax is the only fair tax.
This doesn't even begin to approach fairness unless *ALL* forms of purchase are taxed. Land, homes, cars, investments, vacations, etc. All of it taxed just like a loaf of bread (and don't get me started on whether it's fair to tax a loaf of bread, but for your argument we're assuming that it is). The problem with sales taxes has always been that the ultra-rich spend an exceedingly small percentage of their money on the everyday items subject to sales tax. A tax can't possibly be universally, perfectly fair if luxury goods are exempt; it's utterly laughable when people claim that a national sales tax similar to the various state sales taxes could solve all of our problems.
I understand that the wealthy can afford to save large sums of money to avoid taxation, but the money will get spent eventually
I don't think you understand the magnitude that wealth can achieve, or the power of investments: if you hypothetically earned a billion dollars on the day you were born, and you (or your parents, while you're still drooling) could spend a thousand dollars an hour until the minute you croaked and you couldn't spend a billion dollars unless you lived to 113. That's quite a long "eventually" for all of your income to finally be taxed. Not to mention that earning even 0.9% interest on that sum could let you spend the $1000/hour and still very slightly increase your fortune every year; in which case your original sum will never pay a dime in tax.
It's absolutely possible to never spend a dime of a 7-10 figure fortune and still live in the top 5% of Americans (and the top 0.01% of humanity) on your interest alone. Even a lottery jackpot of $4 million (or 0.4% of that billion I mentioned before) invested at 1% can let you spend the median yearly income for the rest of your life without touching the principle. To say that great fortunes are "eventually" spent, and thus taxed, is only true if you define "eventually" as "before the sun explodes".
It's better than sniffer dogs
Highly misleading. It eliminates dangers to the dogs/handlers and simplifies logistics; the article doesn't even imply that the device is more effective than dogs. It also points out that dogs are more agile and will still be more useful in areas where the machine or its human operator can't easily go (which I imagine will be a lot of places, considering that they're *digging through rubble*).
There are dogs out there that can detect cancer, for Christ sake; don't be so quick to dismiss biology in favor of technology, especially considering that a merging of the two is probably our next great frontier.
P.S. If any suspicious or sardonic person out there wants to argue that cancer dogs are some stupid myth, read the studies cited in this wikipedia article: they may be small studies, but I'm not inclined to doubt a study of a diagnostic tool showing a specificity >90% until I see a directly contrary scientific result or a damn good argument about the design of the original study.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_cancer_detection
I remember a highly compelling thought experiment published in the New York Times editorial page, back when the economy was first going south - a though experiment which, the authors later revealed, was more real-world practice than experiment.
The way big risks and 'trendy' trades often work is this: if a certain method of investing your pool looks good and other traders in the firm are making big money on it, you have two choices. You can go against the prevailing wisdom, but should you lose then you're the idiot who lost $10 million and you're fired. You can also go with the trend, in which case either you all win together or the entire company (or entire economy) goes down in flames and you're no worse off - in reputation or employment - than anybody else.
My point for bringing this up is that it's not about random idiots going nuts; even if that happens it's just one idiot or one company that dies, and at least they're all the 'rogue' idiots are effectively sociopathic, conflicting entities. The real damage comes when every trader agrees on things; sooner or later it's all coming down, and the rest of us go down with them.
So frankly I think it's *great* news that this guy lost $2 billion; at least it means UBS isn't so locked-down that individual traders can't take risks. Better they learn from giving traders too much freedom than we all learn from them being given or being taught too little.
If you read what I've written I'm not actually justifying this system at all; my point all along has been more general than that. I simply believe that cars aren't a strictly private, strictly personal possession and I'm tired of people pretending that they are. Cars physically interconnect all our lives and, with their massive fiscal and environmental costs, they directly connect all of our destinies, as well. Our entire lives, at least in the US, are designed around then. I'm not arguing for the abolition of cars, and I don't actually care one way or another about this particular issue; I'm just tired of ignorant individualists, many of whom border on anarchists, who believe they have a right to unlimited, unrestricted use of automobiles. They're a public good, not a private right.