And hypothetical complaints about a mysterious, nefarious "some entity" using the system to "back me into a corner" isn't pushing some sort of agenda?
Not all surrender of privacy and anonymity amounts to being treated like a criminal; not all systems will inevitably and automatically be used in most seditious, conspiracy-oriented ways.
The "complete truth" you want me to speak is not an objective, independent truth; it's a personal, hypothetical fear of yours, and every bit as much of an "agenda" as what I'm talking about.
Seriously. Cars, their registrations, and the license to drive them all involve no reasonable expectations or implicit rights to privacy whatsoever (the contents of cars are obviously a different issue).
Cars are extremely expensive in multiple ways, for the individual, the society, and the human race at large; they're statistically more dangerous than all weapons, wars, and natural disasters put together; they're a million different costs and dangers in addition to their many obvious conveniences.
Yet people persist in thinking cars are strictly personal possessions, which the state nor the public have any cause in tracking, taxing, or restricting in any way.
What? I'm not even sure that was an answer to my complaint, much less an applicable one.
Consider this a lesson to students- if you are basing your business model on word-for-word copying of copyrighted work-- you are going to suffer consequences in the business world just like you did in the classroom.
In no way did my "thought experiment" involve anyone who was actually cheating in any way, nor did it involve even the allusion to anyone basing a business model on stolen work. I seriously doubt whether you even read my post before responding to it. It involved the possibility of losing copyright on 100% original work, and the subsequent right to make a business out of one's own work, due to the process by which universities elect to search for cheating.
You took a serious question about the *side-effects* of punishing cheaters, that is the possibility of seriously harming students who *didn't* cheat, and simply ignored it in favor of more self-righteous blustering about Law and Order.
While I believe students do release their copyright to the work as part of this- I can't take seriously the idea anyone cares about the copyright on their intro biology lab report
That's a foolish, misleading example on which to dismiss the concern out of hand. How many business models or product designs have come to someone during their undergraduate years, leading the inventor to drop out and create global corporations or life-changing social innovations? Where would we be if Mark Zuckerberg or Shawn Fanning or Bill Gates had written about their ideas in their "intro" computer science classes and had some bullshit like this take away their opportunity to copyright or patent their ideas? And what if it wasn't even the university that got to steal it, but Turnitin.com?
Never, ever underestimate the seriousness of requiring someone to surrender intellectual ownership of things written or invented on their own time as a condition of getting an education or a job or anything else.
Funny how all nations have absurd policies on private behavior if you look hard enough. We're always hearing that Nordic countries are basically the pinnacle of human rights and an educated populace, yet when you read something like this you realize there's no true paradise.
And in most cases it's a damn fool who thinks he's "protected".
Do people really think blacklists and whitelists and other stupid filtering protocols are going to save them? As if the AA associations can't buy or borrow a billion IP addresses outside their corporate blocks?
Only extreme measures like a VPN through a foreign country give you *any* trustworthy protection, and never forget that absolutely nothing will *ever* protect you absolutely.
I don't actually believe any of those things you listed... to dismiss the obvious I understand quite well that HFT involves not holding positions, and I hope no one misunderstands the difference between a computer and a broker.
Most importantly I understood from the beginning of this conversation that long-term trading still dwarfs the total economic impact of HFT trades. I understand that HFT realizes a tiny fraction of the total profits earned on Wall Street, and I'm not concerned that they'll overtake real investing. I simply believe that the money earned by HFT is effectively skimmed from legitimate transactions rather than being legitimate unto itself: Paul Krugman likened it to a method for private entities to tax the market.
So I get that it's relatively insignificant, but I also think it serves no beneficial purpose whatsoever; a cancer need not be large or terminal to be worth removing.
We're tired of World War 2, we're tired of self-indulgent space opera and we're tired of cover-based action games
I believe I'm not part of this "we" you refer to.
I'm not going to buy a game because it's "WW2" or "Modern", but rather if I think the mechanics look good and the story looks good. People bag on the Call of Duty games quite a bit, but I've enjoyed every single one of them (single player) because of the story, of the way you participate in (virtual) heroic deeds. There were a lot of things I didn't like about World at War, and Black Ops, but I felt they did a really good job of making a compelling story. I was glad to have played them.
Much of Modern Warfare could have been "ported" to a World War II setting (whether realistic or alternate-universe) and have survived very well, I think. I could totally have seen a similar plot presented as an alternate-universe what-if WW2-era scenario, where we explore other ways the US might have entered the war.
Then again, I've loved Human Revolution so far, and haven't played Mass Effect (which I assume is what you're referring to as self-indulgent space opera). I'm very interested in the Star Wars MMO, and thought the Dead Space plot was really cool (even if I'm not keen on actually playing it, due to mechanics and not liking to be scared). In the last five years, I consider "masterpiece" games to include: Braid, Portal (!!), Human Revolution (sorry), and COD4. (MW2 probably was in my book also). I consider them masterpieces due to game mechanics, execution, plot, and pure creativity. Sorry that you disagree, I'm probably part of a minority among gamers.
It's ok, I liked Human Revolution, too. With that one it was only the ending that bothered me; it didn't bother me much as I finished it but when I started reading people's reactions I realized that yes, "press one of four buttons and watch a slideshow" is indeed the laziest fucking mechanism I could possibly imagine for implementing multiple endings to an epic and I shouldn't give them a pass for having decent story up until that point.
Well, I also hated the fact that the radio and TV background segments were all of 25 seconds long and looped the whole time you were in an area. That was inexcusable, and it sure kicked the shit out of any sense of immersion.
Very nice concept. We always hear that turning off the internet was effective suppression that protestors nevertheless overcame; this is a brilliant question to ask about another possible result.
Even pondering this kind of gently contrarion (as opposed to deliberately provocative or 'egdy') research demonstrates more curiousity and academic honesty than a lot of tenured people show in their entire lives.
Eh, there's really no need to go that far. I think it's worthwhile to reward investors with some tax incentives; the problem is the immensity of the tax advantage currently experienced, not it's existence.
You are absolutely right that it is empty short term speculation. In fact, that's why its so great! These strategies don't depend on being right about a stock. You should realize though, that these guys aren't moving the market to any real degree.
Are you simply an anarchist then? Excuse me, I guess economic anarchists prefer the term 'libertarian'.
That they don't move the market is part of my *point*. They don't do anything useful. Ever. They make millions of dollars without *ever* actually investing, and their actions aren't even visible until they fuck everything up. Not to mention that for all the talk of market making and minor movements I hear from defenders of this kind of trading, what they take when they cash out isn't mere pennies or good feelings about having quasi-stabilized something, it's cold hard cash that someone else put into the market. They got money for specifically *not* investing that other people, acting in good faith, put into a system supposedly designed and regulated to reward investment. You can complain that I don't understand it all you want; your explanation doesn't make me feel that there's anything good about these practices to understand.
I certainly realize that manipulating and speculating is always part of the game; I violently disagree with any policy or loophole that makes it a totally acceptable, formalized activity.
There have always been players in the market that use speed to trade and profit. Nobody started complaining about it until it was on computers and they didn't really understand it anymore.
I find it very hard to believe that no one disliked tedious, high-speed manipulations of the market before computers were involved. Parasites are such whether they use computers or not. It's certainly more *obvious* to people now, what with incidents like algorithmic trading systems literally destroying the world economy for a few hours at a time, and I think it's that kind of high-profile that makes people complain about it more now, not that it's suddenly different and scary with computers involved. Plenty of other people have skimmed profits and destroyed economies without computers; they weren't hated less for the fact of their technological transparency.
I meant, and said, era-appropriate, not minute-appropriate. I'm not talking about competing head-to-head with Call of Duty 14. I'm talking about getting the polygon count high enough for circles to look round and improving the textures enough that suspended disbelief isn't a conscious effort anymore. That's not unreasonable and it wouldn't single-handedly blow the budget. Some of the games I mentioned would require any change at all, in fact, other than getting them to look right at higher resolutions (and I mean scale issues, not improving or changing the art).
Less than five years? Try one year. I bought Left 4 Dead 2 last Christmas; that would have been barely over a single year since it's release, and it was already difficult to find a match of the map and difficulty setting you wanted. I tried to play a month ago and the user base is already basically gone.
The coming Thanksgiving week will be its second anniversary.
Yeah seriously...the Web 2.0 crowd of websites should be emulating Ars, not worrying about them. Journalism with copious links and un-moderated (or actively moderated) comments beats two-inch, poorly-sourced summaries, coupled with user-moderation verging on group-think, any day of the week.
I come here because it links to interesting things without being RSS and because the nesting system makes comment conversations easier to follow, not because slashdot isn't my worst source for news or because the average user here is anything but a self-righteous, techno-libertarian looney.
First, I think the entire article applies only to AAA titles; Indie games are kicking more ass every day. Amnesia scared me more than all Silent Hill and Alone In The Dark games combined, and Bastion had more style in its intro screen than most mega-games have in total.
The same people who claim every game was 80 hours and a masterpiece 10 years ago are 10 years away from saying that today was the golden time, once they have the distance needed to scrub the bad games from memory
Second, only delusional twits could argue that every game was a masterpiece 10 years ago. Everyone will admit that shitty games come out in every era if you remind them of some random title names from their perceived Golden Age. I think today's jaded gamer is absolutely right, however, to argue that the number of truly great games coming out has taken a massive nose dive in the last 10 years.
Between 1997 and 2001 we got Fallout, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Half-Life, and countless other games I'm probably forgetting. All of them were, truly, masterpieces. And they're not just fond-memories masterpieces; you could release the same damn games today, with era-appropriate graphics, and they'd get a 9.8 out of 10 all over again.
In the last five years I can't think of any AAA title I'd call a masterpiece; I stopped within an hour of the endings of Mass Effect 2, Bulletstorm, and Crysis 2 because they just weren't compelling enough to bother with their endings (and I should have stopped about two hours before the ending of a lot of other games, particularly Human Revolution). Bioshock is probably the closest thing to a great game I can recall lately, and it's inferior in gameplay to System Shock 2 even though it's better in art direction and comparable in story.
That's the problem. Good AAA games have become slightly less common, and fantastic ones basically non-existent, despite the vast increase in the number of games published. So yes, games are worth complaining about until publishers get the ratio back up, and not just for the abstract reasons that constructive criticism is always good or whatever.
Oh, and on a second rant topic: maybe Ben Kuchera could tell developers to get some new ideas before anyone whines at us anymore about not being happy. We're tired of World War 2, we're tired of self-indulgent space opera and we're tired of cover-based action games. We're *really* tired of games that comprise more than one of those.
Maybe so. It's also possible that calling it "pure PR" is purely a conspiracy theory. I'm not saying that your statement is irrational or implausible in the least; I'm just saying that going directly against what the NIF itself claims to be doing obviously requires some sources.
if a company doesn't pay out a dividend, it keeps the cash. Investors can then adjust their valuation accordingly.
Which suggests that investors react rationally to the presence or absence of dividend; I think the truth is that all but the most conservative investors simply ignore dividend today, and it's a problem in more ways than I can count.
For one thing, stock ownership is supposed to translate to company ownership; in reality when you buy a stock without a dividend you have no way of making money unless you abandon the company you supposedly own at some future time. What kind of owner doesn't benefit from profits unless the company is not only growing but the owner also leaves the company in some proportion (i.e. sells shares)? That's completely, irreconcilably moronic if you ask me.
I've never been convinced that HFT is anything but a scam to make institutional investors more money without doing more research or making more socially responsible investment decisions.
The company worth truly investing in, in the sense that you hope it survives and hope it continues to grow as opposed to only making you lots of money, is the one that will treat the environment, their employees, their supply chain, and their customers with respect while paying investors and owners a respectable return.
HFT algorithms don't give a fuck about any of that, exactly like the stereotypical Wall Street broker doesn't care about any of that; in fact HFT algorithms were written when brokers realized they could make more money in corrupting and managing young mathematicians than in doing their own jobs.
HFT just further emphasizes empty, short-term speculation without regard to the product sold, the behavior of the company, or the future potential of the company. It enables the irresponsible greed of people who just want to make a dollar in the next day to become the irresponsible greed of people who just want to make a dollar in the next 0.0000000001 seconds.
By your own link the National Ignition Facility does nuclear weapons maintenance, not nuclear weapons testing.
Weapons maintenance has to do with ensuring that existing nuclear weapons don't leak, explode or otherwise freak out as the components age, and with more deeply understanding just how radioactive material behaves in situations like that of building and storing a bomb; it has little or nothing to do with making new weapons, at least not inherently.
Not only is their research critically important to responsibly storing or (hopefully) disposing of our existing bombs, there are also scientifically useful radioisotopes that can be extracted from the warhead cores as the uranium or plutonium decays (though for the life of me I can't recall which ones; I just remember reading it in other slashdot comments).
I do understand that part of the program goal involves keeping current on the technology and the staffing that could be used to make weapons, but I don't see any evidence that they are involved in weapons research at the moment.
Just because someone is a hypocrite doesn't mean what they're *saying* isn't valid; it means that what they're *doing* isn't valid.
If you believe someone gives good advice, then calling them a hypocrite isn't a free pass to spend more time criticizing their following of said advice than you do following it yourself.
I honestly don't care how much energy Sergey and Larry use: we'd get a thousand times farther if we reduced the energy footprint of the average American by a tenth of a percent than we will bitching at Google founders until they implement every green technology known to man. Just accept that they're flawed, self-righteous, and hypocritical and move on.
Only a fool could imagine that the internet uses more resources than the alternative - mailing or faxing all documents, visiting various libraries in person rather than using Wikipedia and Gutenberg where possible, assembling for all semi-important meetings in person rather than teleconferencing (admittedly most organizations still don't make good use of teleconference), rural folks visiting book stores and computer stores in person rather than getting it shipped, etc.
Why don't FedEx or the New York Public Library have to defend their energy usage, given that the alternative to Google is higher usage of *their* services? Are we trying to make valid, constructive comparisons or are we just fretting about big numbers and bashing every big company with a green-washing CEO to satisfy our own self-righteousness?
Have fun not understanding 95% of the population of the planet. Or even better, wasting your time trying to force them to think the way you do.
You desperately need to take a basic anthropology course. The belief in an absolute right and wrong, appropriate for all people in all places at all times, is completely laughable.
Japan has a culture of denial, in some ways. The fact that they're not talking more doesn't mean they're worse than a conspiratorial communist government or that they don't care about environmental or human impact.
I realize there are some serious downsides to being so reticent, but don't assume it's automatically and always better to be more open. That's just cultural imperialism talking.
Slashdot Mirror
And hypothetical complaints about a mysterious, nefarious "some entity" using the system to "back me into a corner" isn't pushing some sort of agenda?
Not all surrender of privacy and anonymity amounts to being treated like a criminal; not all systems will inevitably and automatically be used in most seditious, conspiracy-oriented ways.
The "complete truth" you want me to speak is not an objective, independent truth; it's a personal, hypothetical fear of yours, and every bit as much of an "agenda" as what I'm talking about.
Seriously. Cars, their registrations, and the license to drive them all involve no reasonable expectations or implicit rights to privacy whatsoever (the contents of cars are obviously a different issue).
Cars are extremely expensive in multiple ways, for the individual, the society, and the human race at large; they're statistically more dangerous than all weapons, wars, and natural disasters put together; they're a million different costs and dangers in addition to their many obvious conveniences.
Yet people persist in thinking cars are strictly personal possessions, which the state nor the public have any cause in tracking, taxing, or restricting in any way.
Consider this a lesson to students- if you are basing your business model on word-for-word copying of copyrighted work-- you are going to suffer consequences in the business world just like you did in the classroom.
In no way did my "thought experiment" involve anyone who was actually cheating in any way, nor did it involve even the allusion to anyone basing a business model on stolen work. I seriously doubt whether you even read my post before responding to it. It involved the possibility of losing copyright on 100% original work, and the subsequent right to make a business out of one's own work, due to the process by which universities elect to search for cheating.
You took a serious question about the *side-effects* of punishing cheaters, that is the possibility of seriously harming students who *didn't* cheat, and simply ignored it in favor of more self-righteous blustering about Law and Order.
While I believe students do release their copyright to the work as part of this- I can't take seriously the idea anyone cares about the copyright on their intro biology lab report
That's a foolish, misleading example on which to dismiss the concern out of hand. How many business models or product designs have come to someone during their undergraduate years, leading the inventor to drop out and create global corporations or life-changing social innovations? Where would we be if Mark Zuckerberg or Shawn Fanning or Bill Gates had written about their ideas in their "intro" computer science classes and had some bullshit like this take away their opportunity to copyright or patent their ideas? And what if it wasn't even the university that got to steal it, but Turnitin.com?
Never, ever underestimate the seriousness of requiring someone to surrender intellectual ownership of things written or invented on their own time as a condition of getting an education or a job or anything else.
Funny how all nations have absurd policies on private behavior if you look hard enough. We're always hearing that Nordic countries are basically the pinnacle of human rights and an educated populace, yet when you read something like this you realize there's no true paradise.
And in most cases it's a damn fool who thinks he's "protected".
Do people really think blacklists and whitelists and other stupid filtering protocols are going to save them? As if the AA associations can't buy or borrow a billion IP addresses outside their corporate blocks?
Only extreme measures like a VPN through a foreign country give you *any* trustworthy protection, and never forget that absolutely nothing will *ever* protect you absolutely.
I don't actually believe any of those things you listed... to dismiss the obvious I understand quite well that HFT involves not holding positions, and I hope no one misunderstands the difference between a computer and a broker.
Most importantly I understood from the beginning of this conversation that long-term trading still dwarfs the total economic impact of HFT trades. I understand that HFT realizes a tiny fraction of the total profits earned on Wall Street, and I'm not concerned that they'll overtake real investing. I simply believe that the money earned by HFT is effectively skimmed from legitimate transactions rather than being legitimate unto itself: Paul Krugman likened it to a method for private entities to tax the market.
So I get that it's relatively insignificant, but I also think it serves no beneficial purpose whatsoever; a cancer need not be large or terminal to be worth removing.
We're tired of World War 2, we're tired of self-indulgent space opera and we're tired of cover-based action games
I believe I'm not part of this "we" you refer to.
I'm not going to buy a game because it's "WW2" or "Modern", but rather if I think the mechanics look good and the story looks good. People bag on the Call of Duty games quite a bit, but I've enjoyed every single one of them (single player) because of the story, of the way you participate in (virtual) heroic deeds. There were a lot of things I didn't like about World at War, and Black Ops, but I felt they did a really good job of making a compelling story. I was glad to have played them.
Much of Modern Warfare could have been "ported" to a World War II setting (whether realistic or alternate-universe) and have survived very well, I think. I could totally have seen a similar plot presented as an alternate-universe what-if WW2-era scenario, where we explore other ways the US might have entered the war.
Then again, I've loved Human Revolution so far, and haven't played Mass Effect (which I assume is what you're referring to as self-indulgent space opera). I'm very interested in the Star Wars MMO, and thought the Dead Space plot was really cool (even if I'm not keen on actually playing it, due to mechanics and not liking to be scared). In the last five years, I consider "masterpiece" games to include: Braid, Portal (!!), Human Revolution (sorry), and COD4. (MW2 probably was in my book also). I consider them masterpieces due to game mechanics, execution, plot, and pure creativity. Sorry that you disagree, I'm probably part of a minority among gamers.
It's ok, I liked Human Revolution, too. With that one it was only the ending that bothered me; it didn't bother me much as I finished it but when I started reading people's reactions I realized that yes, "press one of four buttons and watch a slideshow" is indeed the laziest fucking mechanism I could possibly imagine for implementing multiple endings to an epic and I shouldn't give them a pass for having decent story up until that point.
Well, I also hated the fact that the radio and TV background segments were all of 25 seconds long and looped the whole time you were in an area. That was inexcusable, and it sure kicked the shit out of any sense of immersion.
A story about hearing aids that links to the glorified blog of a company that makes...hearing aids?
I'm about ready to join the throng of sardonic malcontents who greet every new story with "This is what we get now that Taco's gone?"
Very nice concept. We always hear that turning off the internet was effective suppression that protestors nevertheless overcame; this is a brilliant question to ask about another possible result.
Even pondering this kind of gently contrarion (as opposed to deliberately provocative or 'egdy') research demonstrates more curiousity and academic honesty than a lot of tenured people show in their entire lives.
Eh, there's really no need to go that far. I think it's worthwhile to reward investors with some tax incentives; the problem is the immensity of the tax advantage currently experienced, not it's existence.
You are absolutely right that it is empty short term speculation. In fact, that's why its so great! These strategies don't depend on being right about a stock. You should realize though, that these guys aren't moving the market to any real degree.
Are you simply an anarchist then? Excuse me, I guess economic anarchists prefer the term 'libertarian'.
That they don't move the market is part of my *point*. They don't do anything useful. Ever. They make millions of dollars without *ever* actually investing, and their actions aren't even visible until they fuck everything up. Not to mention that for all the talk of market making and minor movements I hear from defenders of this kind of trading, what they take when they cash out isn't mere pennies or good feelings about having quasi-stabilized something, it's cold hard cash that someone else put into the market. They got money for specifically *not* investing that other people, acting in good faith, put into a system supposedly designed and regulated to reward investment. You can complain that I don't understand it all you want; your explanation doesn't make me feel that there's anything good about these practices to understand.
I certainly realize that manipulating and speculating is always part of the game; I violently disagree with any policy or loophole that makes it a totally acceptable, formalized activity.
There have always been players in the market that use speed to trade and profit. Nobody started complaining about it until it was on computers and they didn't really understand it anymore.
I find it very hard to believe that no one disliked tedious, high-speed manipulations of the market before computers were involved. Parasites are such whether they use computers or not. It's certainly more *obvious* to people now, what with incidents like algorithmic trading systems literally destroying the world economy for a few hours at a time, and I think it's that kind of high-profile that makes people complain about it more now, not that it's suddenly different and scary with computers involved. Plenty of other people have skimmed profits and destroyed economies without computers; they weren't hated less for the fact of their technological transparency.
I meant, and said, era-appropriate, not minute-appropriate. I'm not talking about competing head-to-head with Call of Duty 14. I'm talking about getting the polygon count high enough for circles to look round and improving the textures enough that suspended disbelief isn't a conscious effort anymore. That's not unreasonable and it wouldn't single-handedly blow the budget. Some of the games I mentioned would require any change at all, in fact, other than getting them to look right at higher resolutions (and I mean scale issues, not improving or changing the art).
Less than five years? Try one year. I bought Left 4 Dead 2 last Christmas; that would have been barely over a single year since it's release, and it was already difficult to find a match of the map and difficulty setting you wanted. I tried to play a month ago and the user base is already basically gone.
The coming Thanksgiving week will be its second anniversary.
Yeah seriously...the Web 2.0 crowd of websites should be emulating Ars, not worrying about them. Journalism with copious links and un-moderated (or actively moderated) comments beats two-inch, poorly-sourced summaries, coupled with user-moderation verging on group-think, any day of the week.
I come here because it links to interesting things without being RSS and because the nesting system makes comment conversations easier to follow, not because slashdot isn't my worst source for news or because the average user here is anything but a self-righteous, techno-libertarian looney.
Ha!
I wonder how many people won't get it.
The same people who claim every game was 80 hours and a masterpiece 10 years ago are 10 years away from saying that today was the golden time, once they have the distance needed to scrub the bad games from memory
Second, only delusional twits could argue that every game was a masterpiece 10 years ago. Everyone will admit that shitty games come out in every era if you remind them of some random title names from their perceived Golden Age. I think today's jaded gamer is absolutely right, however, to argue that the number of truly great games coming out has taken a massive nose dive in the last 10 years.
Between 1997 and 2001 we got Fallout, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Half-Life, and countless other games I'm probably forgetting. All of them were, truly, masterpieces. And they're not just fond-memories masterpieces; you could release the same damn games today, with era-appropriate graphics, and they'd get a 9.8 out of 10 all over again.
In the last five years I can't think of any AAA title I'd call a masterpiece; I stopped within an hour of the endings of Mass Effect 2, Bulletstorm, and Crysis 2 because they just weren't compelling enough to bother with their endings (and I should have stopped about two hours before the ending of a lot of other games, particularly Human Revolution). Bioshock is probably the closest thing to a great game I can recall lately, and it's inferior in gameplay to System Shock 2 even though it's better in art direction and comparable in story.
That's the problem. Good AAA games have become slightly less common, and fantastic ones basically non-existent, despite the vast increase in the number of games published. So yes, games are worth complaining about until publishers get the ratio back up, and not just for the abstract reasons that constructive criticism is always good or whatever.
Oh, and on a second rant topic: maybe Ben Kuchera could tell developers to get some new ideas before anyone whines at us anymore about not being happy. We're tired of World War 2, we're tired of self-indulgent space opera and we're tired of cover-based action games. We're *really* tired of games that comprise more than one of those.
Maybe so. It's also possible that calling it "pure PR" is purely a conspiracy theory. I'm not saying that your statement is irrational or implausible in the least; I'm just saying that going directly against what the NIF itself claims to be doing obviously requires some sources.
if a company doesn't pay out a dividend, it keeps the cash. Investors can then adjust their valuation accordingly.
Which suggests that investors react rationally to the presence or absence of dividend; I think the truth is that all but the most conservative investors simply ignore dividend today, and it's a problem in more ways than I can count.
For one thing, stock ownership is supposed to translate to company ownership; in reality when you buy a stock without a dividend you have no way of making money unless you abandon the company you supposedly own at some future time. What kind of owner doesn't benefit from profits unless the company is not only growing but the owner also leaves the company in some proportion (i.e. sells shares)? That's completely, irreconcilably moronic if you ask me.
I've never been convinced that HFT is anything but a scam to make institutional investors more money without doing more research or making more socially responsible investment decisions.
The company worth truly investing in, in the sense that you hope it survives and hope it continues to grow as opposed to only making you lots of money, is the one that will treat the environment, their employees, their supply chain, and their customers with respect while paying investors and owners a respectable return.
HFT algorithms don't give a fuck about any of that, exactly like the stereotypical Wall Street broker doesn't care about any of that; in fact HFT algorithms were written when brokers realized they could make more money in corrupting and managing young mathematicians than in doing their own jobs. HFT just further emphasizes empty, short-term speculation without regard to the product sold, the behavior of the company, or the future potential of the company. It enables the irresponsible greed of people who just want to make a dollar in the next day to become the irresponsible greed of people who just want to make a dollar in the next 0.0000000001 seconds.
By your own link the National Ignition Facility does nuclear weapons maintenance, not nuclear weapons testing.
Weapons maintenance has to do with ensuring that existing nuclear weapons don't leak, explode or otherwise freak out as the components age, and with more deeply understanding just how radioactive material behaves in situations like that of building and storing a bomb; it has little or nothing to do with making new weapons, at least not inherently.
Not only is their research critically important to responsibly storing or (hopefully) disposing of our existing bombs, there are also scientifically useful radioisotopes that can be extracted from the warhead cores as the uranium or plutonium decays (though for the life of me I can't recall which ones; I just remember reading it in other slashdot comments).
I do understand that part of the program goal involves keeping current on the technology and the staffing that could be used to make weapons, but I don't see any evidence that they are involved in weapons research at the moment.
Just because someone is a hypocrite doesn't mean what they're *saying* isn't valid; it means that what they're *doing* isn't valid.
If you believe someone gives good advice, then calling them a hypocrite isn't a free pass to spend more time criticizing their following of said advice than you do following it yourself.
I honestly don't care how much energy Sergey and Larry use: we'd get a thousand times farther if we reduced the energy footprint of the average American by a tenth of a percent than we will bitching at Google founders until they implement every green technology known to man. Just accept that they're flawed, self-righteous, and hypocritical and move on.
Only a fool could imagine that the internet uses more resources than the alternative - mailing or faxing all documents, visiting various libraries in person rather than using Wikipedia and Gutenberg where possible, assembling for all semi-important meetings in person rather than teleconferencing (admittedly most organizations still don't make good use of teleconference), rural folks visiting book stores and computer stores in person rather than getting it shipped, etc.
Why don't FedEx or the New York Public Library have to defend their energy usage, given that the alternative to Google is higher usage of *their* services? Are we trying to make valid, constructive comparisons or are we just fretting about big numbers and bashing every big company with a green-washing CEO to satisfy our own self-righteousness?
Have fun not understanding 95% of the population of the planet. Or even better, wasting your time trying to force them to think the way you do.
You desperately need to take a basic anthropology course. The belief in an absolute right and wrong, appropriate for all people in all places at all times, is completely laughable.
Japan has a culture of denial, in some ways. The fact that they're not talking more doesn't mean they're worse than a conspiratorial communist government or that they don't care about environmental or human impact.
I realize there are some serious downsides to being so reticent, but don't assume it's automatically and always better to be more open. That's just cultural imperialism talking.