Is a-ok. It's not as if anyone thin-skinned participates in Slashdot-discussions anyway, and I can safely be described as anything but.
Infact, having my english picked on tends to amuse me. Particularily when the picker is (typically the case) an American with a firm grasp of only -one- language.
Indeed. Ultimately -everything- is recyclable. Every atom in every product could, in principle, be used for a new product.
If that is -practical- or -cost-effective- or even environmentally friendly is a completely different question. (if the recycling requires lots of energy and nasty chemicals, it may be that it's a net loss to do it)
Sure I was generous. In reality speculation is a negative-sum game. The trades as such are zero-sum, but there are externalities:
trading-costs mean that, on the average, the harder you try, the more you lose.
there's a significant opportunity cost with using TIME for trading. Most people could use the same time for something with positive expectation (like working an hour longer)
There are cheaters in the trading-game. If you aren't one of them, you're financing their profit. (how many they are and how significant this effect is can be debated, but it's certainly not zero)
tax-rules mean that not only do you sligthly-underperform the market on the average, you also realize gains all the time, which means you lose out on the free tax-credit that longterm unrealized gain represents. (this disadvantage goes away if you incorporate and trade trough the corporation, but if you do it's pretty unlikely you use slashdot for advice.)
There's no loss to not performing "day-to-day research", like we just agreed, that research and the trades that result from it is a negative-sum-game. Not playing a negative-sum-game makes you, on the average, richer.
Comparing it to being the house in gambling is apt. That's precisely it. It -is- a random walk, but the average long-term direction is upwards.
The only adjustment you can make that really honestly makes a difference is adjusting risk. Taking higher risk, on the average, lets you get somewhat higher expected payoff. And besides this, if you're the gambling-type you may consider 0.1% chance of 10000% gain *preferable* to 100% chance of 10% gain.
You can also do your part to push the world in a direction you desire. This gives you no expected change in return, so is irrelevant in financial terms. But most of us care about more than just money. So you can choose to NOT buy arms-dealers and tobacco-farms and buy hydro-power and furniture instead, so to say. This -does- sligthly increase risk, but this can be counterbalanced by reducing OTHER risks you have.
For example, if you consume electricity and higher power-prices are thus a risk to you, you can reduce this risk by investing in aforementioned hydropower. If you invest the "correct" amount you reach a point where changes in electricity-prices make no difference to you -- your risk is reduced.
The silliest reason I have some hydropower ? It reduces the mental risk of rain. Really truly. It -does- blunt the impact of last summer having consisted of literally 2/3rds rainy days to see http://uk.ichart.yahoo.com/z?s=AFK.OL&t=5y&q=l&l=on&z=l&p=s&a=v&p=s no ? "Sure it's been raining all summer honey -- how do you feel about 2 weeks in the pacific in november?"
How will a fund that takes 0.2% or so in yearly fees save money over a solution that typically costs -zero- or at worst a low commision on every rare trade ?
Buying a single stock-post on OSE costs $2 in comissions in general, though it's not hard to find opportunities to get this for free, and the same on sale, so you're out $4. Average value of a stock-post is $2K, so the fees add up to 0.2% if you buy the smallest unit possible, and hold each stock for an average of 1 year. If you hold it longer, or buy larger quantities, or take advantage of one of the free-comission-offerings its even less.
Paying 0.2% for owning a stock for a decade beats paying 0.2% EVERY year for owning the same stock.
You are right that index-funds can diversify more than you can. But the expected deviation between 30-random-stocks-from-SP500 and all-stocks-from-SP500 over a long timeframe is essentially zero. (and can equally likely go in your favour and disfavour)
I do however agree with you that naked stocks are more dangerous for people who don't consider themselves immune to speculation. Me, I buy when I have money and sell when I -need- money, completely without even looking at market-conditions. I do however systematically sell the lowest-performing-stock when I do need money. As you point out, tax-rules makes this a gain, since you get (in effect) a interest-free loan on the tax on your gains as long as you don't realize them.
It's a bit like with driving -- surveys show that aproximately 80% of all motorists consider themselves "above average" drivers.
The same thing applies to daytraders, only more so, *ALL* of them believe they are better than the average speculator. (If they didn't believe this, there would be no reason to DO daytrading!)
There is one more effect that makes it even worse; It is -known- that some people are cheating. I.e. some people trade because they really genuinely do have information that the market at large does not. They know the quarterly numbers a few days before the rest or whatever.
These will -really- do better than average. It follows mathemathically that the sum of non-cheating-traders will underperform the market. A bit like playing a game of dice with 20 people where you know that one of them is cheating, but have no way of telling which one it is. Unless you're the cheating one, the only sensible choice is not to play that game. The average effect of playing over time is afterall that all the non-cheaters get sligthly poorer, and the cheater get sligthly richer.
Why would they care if participation in elections is 70% or 7% ? It makes no difference to them, they're in power anyway.
The current US "democracy" is silly, and it's self-reinforcing because it can only change if atleast one of the two parties which would LOSE power if things changed voted in favor of change, which won't happen.
I think the best one could currently do would be to always vote for the strongest THIRD candidate. Offcourse this assumes that you don't really care who wins from the two major parties. If you do, any vote that isn't for one of them is a wasted vote, which is ONE of literally a dozen reasons the US democratic system is braindead.
This is very VERY true. Speculation is, afterall, a zero-sum-game. You can only beat the average of the market to precisely the same degree that someone else underperforms the market. The only sure winners are the brokers collecting transaction-fees.
Now -investment- is *not* a zero-sum game, over time most companies turn a profit (those who don't go bankrupt), and so buying random stock at random times and keeping it until you need the money will, on the average, give you precisely the same return as the market-average.
The Random Walk book gives good advice, except I personally prefer just naked stocks instead of index-funds. For the fairly simple reason that index-funds have -low- costs (typically 0.2%/year or thereabouts) whereas holding random stock has -zero- overhead-cost pro year.
4% pro year over 30 years give 324% (4% above inflation is a fair longterm guess for the stockmarket) 4.2% over the same period gives 344%. It's not a big deal though, either is sound advice.
index funds make sense if you ain't got enough money to invest to get an acceptable diversity yourself. Personally I change from index-funds to raw stocks when I can afford to hold 10+ different stock in a market. (which means for example for OSE, you'd need on the order of $20K)
Also in most funds, the fund-managers are technically the owners of the stock, and you own only a part of the fund. Which means, for example, that you don't get a vote on the general assembly. Instead the fund-managers get to vote -- even though it's YOUR money that bougth the stock.
Actually no. English is my third language, so it -is- possibly I'm mistaken, but I do believe that "patent nonsense" is commonly used in the meaning of "definitive nonsense" "total nonsense", "unquestionably pure nonsense", in this use it has nothing to do with patents as in monopolied inventions.
I really meant to say that using the fast-track for a "standard" that is so heavily critiqued, so HUGE, and so incomplete is "total nonsense".
Again, it's possible I'm mistaken, but Wikipedia and Google seems to agree with me that the phrase can be used this way.
There's no blame. A person that in good faith buys someone, only to discover lateron that the seller wasn't really the owner of the item did nothing bad. Unless he was being careless and really should have known that the item was stolen.
Infact I wasn't talking about blame at all. I was simply pointing out that EVERYONE who "owns" land today are in posession of it because someone, at some point, took control over that land by physical force. That's it. I don't have much practical problems with this, I'm just pointing out that that's the way the world works.
ISO is not set up to handle an aggressive, resourceful and abusive applicant. Which meant they ended up doing something which everyone sees is patently nonsense when confronted by such an applicant. Using the "fast-track" for a "standard" that is over 6000 pages, incomplete, with literally thousands of objections to it, and for which there exist -zero- implementations is patent nonsense, and everyone sees it. (possible exception if they've been paid handsomely to develop a blind spot for it)
Yes. MS is to blame for abusing a process. ISO is to blame for not having adequate defences against abuse.
Potential harm is nonsense as justification for law anyway. Just about EVERYTHING has the POTENTIAL to create harm. Particularily stuff that is really really useful. For the fairly obvious reason that useful stuff tends to be useful to criminals too.
Hammers, knifes, the written word, guns, fire, the wheel and chocolate-icecream are all very useful things. They all also have the POTENTIAL to create harm. (and indeed demonstrably regularily does), which is no reason at all to forbid them.
No need to "send" anything. In most countries you're old enough to be punished or jailed before you're old enough to be allowed to be in a nude photo.
Thus, all the average 17-year old needs to do to deserve jailtime is taking, and thereafter posessing, a sexual photo of him/her-self. No need to send it anywhere. "posession of child-porn" is illegal even if the producer AND child are both YOU.
In many places child-porn ain't limited to images either, a -text- can be child-porn. A 17-year-old writing in her diary about what she dreams of doing to [insert-male-of-dreams-here] could be convicted of posession of child-porn.
Certainly a sticky mess. Like it works today, you can typically produce something that will be labeled "child-porn" by doing nothing more than selective cutting and assembling of works that are -not- child-porn. And a machine can probably do it, without human intervention, and without filming a crime.
If a 16-year old has sex with his girlfriend somewhere with taped camera-surveilance in Norway, the owner of the camera is suddenly in posession of child-porn. Despite the fact that age of consent is 16, so the filmed acts are perfectly legal.
Thing is, porn with actors under 18 is "child-porn" despite the fact that age of consent is 16. Way to go, making a mess !
I don't think it's size actually. More likely it's homogenity. Up until reasonably recently Norway was culturally and historically pretty homogenous. This isn't true anymore, but it USED to be true.
There are small countries with very diverse populations, and they don't seem to do very well, with the possible exception of switzerland. (not that they're socialist or anything)
That does indeed get ridicolous. Atleast if read as per-the-letter of the law rather than as it's actually practiced.
In Norway, age-of-consent is 16. But childporn is still defined as porn depicting participants that are under 18.
The practical result is that at 16, I could legally have sex with my girlfriend. Where I to posess a nude photo of her though, I'd be guilty of posession of child-porn and could in principle be punished for it. I don't think that's -actually- happened to anyone, but thats what the letter of the law says.
Worse: The law makes no distinction for who you are. A 17-year-old that posess pictures they themselves have taken that depicts THEMSELVES in a sexual situation (say masturbating) could be put away for posession of child-porn. Which is just really REALLY ridicolous. It's very hard to see any "victim" in situations such as these.
I make it much simpler on telemarketers. Regardless of what they are pushing I reply "I'm terribly sorry, but I don't have a phone". Then I count the number of seconds that elapses until they regain their composure and continue their nonsense, at which point I hang up.
You just fail to read me is all. I -never- claimed to have the right to anyones land.
I -merely- pointed out that, infact, that land was not in any sense "created", but instead merely grabbed by force. That this grabbing happened a long time ago makes no principal difference.
Hi, I was mostly commenting on the "high odds of being rich" thing. Norway is in no way a paradise. For some it's a good place to live, for some it would suck utterly.
For example, we don't have any big cities. If you're the kind of person that appreciates having 10 broadway-shows and 20 theatres to choose from on a friday evening, that's just not possible anywhere in Norway.
Much of Norway has a wet and cool climate. The western parts are green and look pretty in postcards among other reasons because it tends to rain 1000 - 2000 mm a year. Offcourse it doesn't rain in the postcard-pictures. Bergen has 3 times the rainfall of Berlin in a year, for example. (this is true for many coastal regions though, in general the inland is dryer)
We've got midnight-sun in the nothern parts, and even in the south parts where most live, current sun is something like sunrise at 3am and sunset at 11pm. What the tourist-brochures -dont- tell you is that for the fairly simple reason that the earth is a sphere, 24 hours sunlight in midsummer means -0- hours of sunlight in the winther. And 20 hours of sunlight in midsummer means -4- hours with the sun above the horizon in winther. (which means that you're quite likely not to see it at all in practice since there's mountains and stuff that often shade a sun that is close to the horizon.) Not everyone is happy with a few short hours of light being all one gets in november-december-january.
Rich people pay high taxes. Poor people have decent salaries. The practical result is you're materially better off being rich in the USA than being rich in Norway. The lawyer or surgeon may in USA earn 10 times what a burgerflipper earns. In Norway he'd earn only 2-3 times. Services are thus expensive. (because those who perform them have a high salary) A BigMac menu is atleast $12, but on the other hand the 20-year-old doing the burgerflipping probaby earns upwards of $25/hour.
Compared to the US, focus is on good public service. There are fewer private options. If this appeals or not is a question of personal political views.
Indeed. They're a comercial company seeking your services. Which is perfectly fine. Tell them your rates and let them decide for themselves if they want to pay for your expertise or not.
Actually, the oil is a detail in the larger scheme of things. Sweden and Denmark are pretty similarish to Norway, despite having no oil. But yeah, I guess, when it comes to energy we've hit the jackpot. We've got it all -- except significant areas ideal for photovoltaics.
There's the abundant mountain-ranges with plentiful rainfall that lets us make 95%+ of our electricity completely renewable at a production-cost of aproximately 1cent/kwh (not -sold- at that price offcourse, we're part of the European power-market, so the things run like money-printing-presses basically, producing at 1 cent and selling at 15 cents or thereabouts)
If modern nuclear should come into fashion, we've got a large amount of easily accessible thorium (only India and Australia has more).
Wind ? Waves ? Are you kidding me ? Who else has a coastline of aprox 83000km for less than 5 million people ?
As for the chicks, we do indeed have wonderful women -- for the right man. It's a bit of an adjustment for some people though, because we're a pretty strong equal-rights society and so expectations are different than in some areas.
Very macho men that insist on very girly women are at the wrong place. On the other hand men who want an equal partner are at precisely the right place.
-Do- expect you'll have to change diapers and do the dishes. You -are- expected to carry your responsibility for any children even if you're a man, this includes being at home full-time for a period to take care of tiny ones. (the parents get 12 months of paid leave for this, it's quite common for couples to share equally 90%+ of all men take atleast a couple of months). On the other hand, don't expect to have to carry the burden of finance alone, and don't be surprised if a woman buys -you- flowers.
Me, I couldn't be happier. I happen to -like- women with an actual own opinion and not one who expects the man to take care of all that stuff.
The politics is the largest difference to an American. We've been socialist-democrat for most of the time after WW-II things are -different- than most Americans expect, though it tends to baffle some, because they assume socialist == bad or socialist == poor country with inefficient economy so Norway fails to fit their scheme of the world.
Yeah. Noticed that their geoip-base is FUBARed too. They put me in USA -- and I'm on a static IP that has universally been correctly recognized as in Norway in most other geo-ip things I've seen in the last 3-4 years. Yeah, it does belong to a organization with a.com domain -- not as if -those- are us only.
I don't believe you. People -do- infact care about relative wealth. And it's not completely irrational of them to do so.
I agree, if your chief worries are starvation, freezing or similar, then if you're well-fed and well-roofed, it makes no difference at all what the OTHERS have. But people have needs other than these.
Most people want to, for example, attract an attractive mate. This is harder if you are significantly poorer than most of those in your surroundings.
Who do you think "suffer" the most, a 10-year-old that can't afford to own his own bike attending a school where 99% of the kids do have bikes, or a similarily aged child attending a school where only a tiny minority can afford having bikes ? Being an "outsider", being "poor", not being able to participate in the stuff the -other- children are doing *does* influence people.
Sure physically there's no difference. If all we cared about was physically surviving, there'd be no difference. But most of us are social animals and care rather a LOT about more than that.
Exactly. Those "did not count". Today we recognize that infact they -DO- count and -SHOULD- have counted and what was done back then was GROSSLY UNFAIR.
Yeah, using land can be a net benefit for all involved, no question about it. But still, my point remains: the land was there long before there even existed humans. Nobody "created" it. It was taken by force from the previous user -- be that nature, indians or other people from your own culture.
So, ultimately, whoever owns land today owns it because it was taken by force from those previous in control of it. Not because they made it.
Slashdot Mirror
Is a-ok. It's not as if anyone thin-skinned participates in Slashdot-discussions anyway, and I can safely be described as anything but.
Infact, having my english picked on tends to amuse me. Particularily when the picker is (typically the case) an American with a firm grasp of only -one- language.
So. I didn't get your joke. Happens. Carry on !
Indeed. Ultimately -everything- is recyclable. Every atom in every product could, in principle, be used for a new product. If that is -practical- or -cost-effective- or even environmentally friendly is a completely different question. (if the recycling requires lots of energy and nasty chemicals, it may be that it's a net loss to do it)
There's no loss to not performing "day-to-day research", like we just agreed, that research and the trades that result from it is a negative-sum-game. Not playing a negative-sum-game makes you, on the average, richer.
Comparing it to being the house in gambling is apt. That's precisely it. It -is- a random walk, but the average long-term direction is upwards.
The only adjustment you can make that really honestly makes a difference is adjusting risk. Taking higher risk, on the average, lets you get somewhat higher expected payoff. And besides this, if you're the gambling-type you may consider 0.1% chance of 10000% gain *preferable* to 100% chance of 10% gain.
You can also do your part to push the world in a direction you desire. This gives you no expected change in return, so is irrelevant in financial terms. But most of us care about more than just money. So you can choose to NOT buy arms-dealers and tobacco-farms and buy hydro-power and furniture instead, so to say. This -does- sligthly increase risk, but this can be counterbalanced by reducing OTHER risks you have.
For example, if you consume electricity and higher power-prices are thus a risk to you, you can reduce this risk by investing in aforementioned hydropower. If you invest the "correct" amount you reach a point where changes in electricity-prices make no difference to you -- your risk is reduced.
The silliest reason I have some hydropower ? It reduces the mental risk of rain. Really truly. It -does- blunt the impact of last summer having consisted of literally 2/3rds rainy days to see http://uk.ichart.yahoo.com/z?s=AFK.OL&t=5y&q=l&l=on&z=l&p=s&a=v&p=s no ? "Sure it's been raining all summer honey -- how do you feel about 2 weeks in the pacific in november?"
I freely admit to being extremely silly.
How will a fund that takes 0.2% or so in yearly fees save money over a solution that typically costs -zero- or at worst a low commision on every rare trade ?
Buying a single stock-post on OSE costs $2 in comissions in general, though it's not hard to find opportunities to get this for free, and the same on sale, so you're out $4. Average value of a stock-post is $2K, so the fees add up to 0.2% if you buy the smallest unit possible, and hold each stock for an average of 1 year. If you hold it longer, or buy larger quantities, or take advantage of one of the free-comission-offerings its even less.
Paying 0.2% for owning a stock for a decade beats paying 0.2% EVERY year for owning the same stock.
You are right that index-funds can diversify more than you can. But the expected deviation between 30-random-stocks-from-SP500 and all-stocks-from-SP500 over a long timeframe is essentially zero. (and can equally likely go in your favour and disfavour)
I do however agree with you that naked stocks are more dangerous for people who don't consider themselves immune to speculation. Me, I buy when I have money and sell when I -need- money, completely without even looking at market-conditions. I do however systematically sell the lowest-performing-stock when I do need money. As you point out, tax-rules makes this a gain, since you get (in effect) a interest-free loan on the tax on your gains as long as you don't realize them.
It's a bit like with driving -- surveys show that aproximately 80% of all motorists consider themselves "above average" drivers.
The same thing applies to daytraders, only more so, *ALL* of them believe they are better than the average speculator. (If they didn't believe this, there would be no reason to DO daytrading!)
There is one more effect that makes it even worse; It is -known- that some people are cheating. I.e. some people trade because they really genuinely do have information that the market at large does not. They know the quarterly numbers a few days before the rest or whatever.
These will -really- do better than average. It follows mathemathically that the sum of non-cheating-traders will underperform the market. A bit like playing a game of dice with 20 people where you know that one of them is cheating, but have no way of telling which one it is. Unless you're the cheating one, the only sensible choice is not to play that game. The average effect of playing over time is afterall that all the non-cheaters get sligthly poorer, and the cheater get sligthly richer.
Why would they care if participation in elections is 70% or 7% ? It makes no difference to them, they're in power anyway.
The current US "democracy" is silly, and it's self-reinforcing because it can only change if atleast one of the two parties which would LOSE power if things changed voted in favor of change, which won't happen.
I think the best one could currently do would be to always vote for the strongest THIRD candidate. Offcourse this assumes that you don't really care who wins from the two major parties. If you do, any vote that isn't for one of them is a wasted vote, which is ONE of literally a dozen reasons the US democratic system is braindead.
This is very VERY true. Speculation is, afterall, a zero-sum-game. You can only beat the average of the market to precisely the same degree that someone else underperforms the market. The only sure winners are the brokers collecting transaction-fees.
Now -investment- is *not* a zero-sum game, over time most companies turn a profit (those who don't go bankrupt), and so buying random stock at random times and keeping it until you need the money will, on the average, give you precisely the same return as the market-average.
The Random Walk book gives good advice, except I personally prefer just naked stocks instead of index-funds. For the fairly simple reason that index-funds have -low- costs (typically 0.2%/year or thereabouts) whereas holding random stock has -zero- overhead-cost pro year.
4% pro year over 30 years give 324% (4% above inflation is a fair longterm guess for the stockmarket) 4.2% over the same period gives 344%. It's not a big deal though, either is sound advice.
index funds make sense if you ain't got enough money to invest to get an acceptable diversity yourself. Personally I change from index-funds to raw stocks when I can afford to hold 10+ different stock in a market. (which means for example for OSE, you'd need on the order of $20K)
Also in most funds, the fund-managers are technically the owners of the stock, and you own only a part of the fund. Which means, for example, that you don't get a vote on the general assembly. Instead the fund-managers get to vote -- even though it's YOUR money that bougth the stock.
Actually no. English is my third language, so it -is- possibly I'm mistaken, but I do believe that "patent nonsense" is commonly used in the meaning of "definitive nonsense" "total nonsense", "unquestionably pure nonsense", in this use it has nothing to do with patents as in monopolied inventions.
I really meant to say that using the fast-track for a "standard" that is so heavily critiqued, so HUGE, and so incomplete is "total nonsense".
Again, it's possible I'm mistaken, but Wikipedia and Google seems to agree with me that the phrase can be used this way.
There's no blame. A person that in good faith buys someone, only to discover lateron that the seller wasn't really the owner of the item did nothing bad. Unless he was being careless and really should have known that the item was stolen.
Infact I wasn't talking about blame at all. I was simply pointing out that EVERYONE who "owns" land today are in posession of it because someone, at some point, took control over that land by physical force. That's it. I don't have much practical problems with this, I'm just pointing out that that's the way the world works.
The problem is both.
ISO is not set up to handle an aggressive, resourceful and abusive applicant. Which meant they ended up doing something which everyone sees is patently nonsense when confronted by such an applicant. Using the "fast-track" for a "standard" that is over 6000 pages, incomplete, with literally thousands of objections to it, and for which there exist -zero- implementations is patent nonsense, and everyone sees it. (possible exception if they've been paid handsomely to develop a blind spot for it)
Yes. MS is to blame for abusing a process. ISO is to blame for not having adequate defences against abuse.
Sounds like a plan. Not that it'll work -- the police would simply choose not to investigate or not to press charges.
But it'd be fun anyway. If I where young enough to qualify, I'd be in.
Reference ? I don't really doubt it, but it's nice to be able to refer to the case in later similar discussions.
Potential harm is nonsense as justification for law anyway. Just about EVERYTHING has the POTENTIAL to create harm. Particularily stuff that is really really useful. For the fairly obvious reason that useful stuff tends to be useful to criminals too.
Hammers, knifes, the written word, guns, fire, the wheel and chocolate-icecream are all very useful things. They all also have the POTENTIAL to create harm. (and indeed demonstrably regularily does), which is no reason at all to forbid them.
No need to "send" anything. In most countries you're old enough to be punished or jailed before you're old enough to be allowed to be in a nude photo.
Thus, all the average 17-year old needs to do to deserve jailtime is taking, and thereafter posessing, a sexual photo of him/her-self. No need to send it anywhere. "posession of child-porn" is illegal even if the producer AND child are both YOU.
In many places child-porn ain't limited to images either, a -text- can be child-porn. A 17-year-old writing in her diary about what she dreams of doing to [insert-male-of-dreams-here] could be convicted of posession of child-porn.
Welcome to the world of ThoughtCrime.
Certainly a sticky mess. Like it works today, you can typically produce something that will be labeled "child-porn" by doing nothing more than selective cutting and assembling of works that are -not- child-porn. And a machine can probably do it, without human intervention, and without filming a crime.
If a 16-year old has sex with his girlfriend somewhere with taped camera-surveilance in Norway, the owner of the camera is suddenly in posession of child-porn. Despite the fact that age of consent is 16, so the filmed acts are perfectly legal.
Thing is, porn with actors under 18 is "child-porn" despite the fact that age of consent is 16. Way to go, making a mess !
I don't think it's size actually. More likely it's homogenity. Up until reasonably recently Norway was culturally and historically pretty homogenous. This isn't true anymore, but it USED to be true.
There are small countries with very diverse populations, and they don't seem to do very well, with the possible exception of switzerland. (not that they're socialist or anything)
That does indeed get ridicolous. Atleast if read as per-the-letter of the law rather than as it's actually practiced.
In Norway, age-of-consent is 16. But childporn is still defined as porn depicting participants that are under 18.
The practical result is that at 16, I could legally have sex with my girlfriend. Where I to posess a nude photo of her though, I'd be guilty of posession of child-porn and could in principle be punished for it. I don't think that's -actually- happened to anyone, but thats what the letter of the law says.
Worse: The law makes no distinction for who you are. A 17-year-old that posess pictures they themselves have taken that depicts THEMSELVES in a sexual situation (say masturbating) could be put away for posession of child-porn. Which is just really REALLY ridicolous. It's very hard to see any "victim" in situations such as these.
I make it much simpler on telemarketers. Regardless of what they are pushing I reply "I'm terribly sorry, but I don't have a phone". Then I count the number of seconds that elapses until they regain their composure and continue their nonsense, at which point I hang up.
The record is at 17 seconds !
You just fail to read me is all. I -never- claimed to have the right to anyones land.
I -merely- pointed out that, infact, that land was not in any sense "created", but instead merely grabbed by force. That this grabbing happened a long time ago makes no principal difference.
Hi, I was mostly commenting on the "high odds of being rich" thing. Norway is in no way a paradise. For some it's a good place to live, for some it would suck utterly.
For example, we don't have any big cities. If you're the kind of person that appreciates having 10 broadway-shows and 20 theatres to choose from on a friday evening, that's just not possible anywhere in Norway.
Much of Norway has a wet and cool climate. The western parts are green and look pretty in postcards among other reasons because it tends to rain 1000 - 2000 mm a year. Offcourse it doesn't rain in the postcard-pictures. Bergen has 3 times the rainfall of Berlin in a year, for example. (this is true for many coastal regions though, in general the inland is dryer)
We've got midnight-sun in the nothern parts, and even in the south parts where most live, current sun is something like sunrise at 3am and sunset at 11pm. What the tourist-brochures -dont- tell you is that for the fairly simple reason that the earth is a sphere, 24 hours sunlight in midsummer means -0- hours of sunlight in the winther. And 20 hours of sunlight in midsummer means -4- hours with the sun above the horizon in winther. (which means that you're quite likely not to see it at all in practice since there's mountains and stuff that often shade a sun that is close to the horizon.) Not everyone is happy with a few short hours of light being all one gets in november-december-january.
Rich people pay high taxes. Poor people have decent salaries. The practical result is you're materially better off being rich in the USA than being rich in Norway. The lawyer or surgeon may in USA earn 10 times what a burgerflipper earns. In Norway he'd earn only 2-3 times. Services are thus expensive. (because those who perform them have a high salary) A BigMac menu is atleast $12, but on the other hand the 20-year-old doing the burgerflipping probaby earns upwards of $25/hour.
Compared to the US, focus is on good public service. There are fewer private options. If this appeals or not is a question of personal political views.
Indeed. They're a comercial company seeking your services. Which is perfectly fine. Tell them your rates and let them decide for themselves if they want to pay for your expertise or not.
Actually, the oil is a detail in the larger scheme of things. Sweden and Denmark are pretty similarish to Norway, despite having no oil. But yeah, I guess, when it comes to energy we've hit the jackpot. We've got it all -- except significant areas ideal for photovoltaics.
There's the abundant mountain-ranges with plentiful rainfall that lets us make 95%+ of our electricity completely renewable at a production-cost of aproximately 1cent/kwh (not -sold- at that price offcourse, we're part of the European power-market, so the things run like money-printing-presses basically, producing at 1 cent and selling at 15 cents or thereabouts)
If modern nuclear should come into fashion, we've got a large amount of easily accessible thorium (only India and Australia has more).
Wind ? Waves ? Are you kidding me ? Who else has a coastline of aprox 83000km for less than 5 million people ?
As for the chicks, we do indeed have wonderful women -- for the right man. It's a bit of an adjustment for some people though, because we're a pretty strong equal-rights society and so expectations are different than in some areas.
Very macho men that insist on very girly women are at the wrong place. On the other hand men who want an equal partner are at precisely the right place.
-Do- expect you'll have to change diapers and do the dishes. You -are- expected to carry your responsibility for any children even if you're a man, this includes being at home full-time for a period to take care of tiny ones. (the parents get 12 months of paid leave for this, it's quite common for couples to share equally 90%+ of all men take atleast a couple of months). On the other hand, don't expect to have to carry the burden of finance alone, and don't be surprised if a woman buys -you- flowers.
Me, I couldn't be happier. I happen to -like- women with an actual own opinion and not one who expects the man to take care of all that stuff.
The politics is the largest difference to an American. We've been socialist-democrat for most of the time after WW-II things are -different- than most Americans expect, though it tends to baffle some, because they assume socialist == bad or socialist == poor country with inefficient economy so Norway fails to fit their scheme of the world.
Yeah. Noticed that their geoip-base is FUBARed too. They put me in USA -- and I'm on a static IP that has universally been correctly recognized as in Norway in most other geo-ip things I've seen in the last 3-4 years. Yeah, it does belong to a organization with a .com domain -- not as if -those- are us only.
I don't believe you. People -do- infact care about relative wealth. And it's not completely irrational of them to do so.
I agree, if your chief worries are starvation, freezing or similar, then if you're well-fed and well-roofed, it makes no difference at all what the OTHERS have. But people have needs other than these.
Most people want to, for example, attract an attractive mate. This is harder if you are significantly poorer than most of those in your surroundings.
Who do you think "suffer" the most, a 10-year-old that can't afford to own his own bike attending a school where 99% of the kids do have bikes, or a similarily aged child attending a school where only a tiny minority can afford having bikes ? Being an "outsider", being "poor", not being able to participate in the stuff the -other- children are doing *does* influence people.
Sure physically there's no difference. If all we cared about was physically surviving, there'd be no difference. But most of us are social animals and care rather a LOT about more than that.
Exactly. Those "did not count". Today we recognize that infact they -DO- count and -SHOULD- have counted and what was done back then was GROSSLY UNFAIR.
Yeah, using land can be a net benefit for all involved, no question about it. But still, my point remains: the land was there long before there even existed humans. Nobody "created" it. It was taken by force from the previous user -- be that nature, indians or other people from your own culture.
So, ultimately, whoever owns land today owns it because it was taken by force from those previous in control of it. Not because they made it.