No, it didn't net Microsoft anything. The proper title should be "Restrictive socialism costs Microsoft competitors billions."
When I had my retail store, we moved literally 3 miles across a State line because of a sales tax differential of nearly 4%. That's significant, when many of our items were $500-$1000, meaning a savings to the consumer of $20-$40 in taxes. Even funnier, the county/state with the lower tax rate had BETTER public facilities and police attention (the store in the old State had regular robberies and theft), and my customers had a 5 minute longer hop to get there.
We've talked repeatedly about moving out of our State and leaving some customers behind if our State decides to start a labor sales tax. It's a terrible idea, as more taxes don't mean more income (and neither do less taxes necessarily) for the State. It's a VERY complicated "invisible hand" situation.
I appreciate when companies find loopholes, because it gives me hope that I can use them, too. I hate W2s, as 1099s offer many more tax benefits. I've seen many friends give up their stable W2 jobs to move into 1099 contracting, and see their income double, but their tax share not move up as much. When I heard Haliburton was moving offshore, I investigated it and found that there are tons of savings to do so, even if your primary business is still in the States. It makes sense.
Yeah, Microsoft will take heat for this, but the reality is that small and medium sized business owners should do everything in their power to find the least-regulated economies to operate out of. I love seeing companies move out of California, employees and all, and hitting States that so far have not shut down the engine of business, thinking that the State can help the poor when in fact it is jobs, not entitlements, that help the poor.
I've never understood how a programmer/direction manager/geek like Torvalds could raise so much interest over his opinion, but I do understand the draw to him. I rarely agree with what he says, but in this case it is truly spot on.
Microsoft is in trouble, and it has nothing to do with "anti-monopoly" legislation, or corporate badgering, or any of the sort. Microsoft is in trouble. This is defensive posturing in hopes of the market taking note and taking action by putting Microsoft ahead of the pack that has overtaken it.
For years we had geeks here call for Microsoft's abolishment, but lonely me with a few other market economy believers have said that Microsoft will fall from grace as IBM, Compaq, and GM had -- because they lost their competitive edge. The future is not in desktop software, that Microsoft heralded in with great accomplishment. Microsoft tore us out of the client-server picture, and now we're heading back there. They don't understand the situation, and their "Desktop first" mentality makes it near impossible to turn around.
Why they care about Linux is beyond me, though. The backend platform is slowly becoming useless as the protocols for integrating features-on-the-screen are quickly becoming irrelevant as the idea of hardware abstraction is truly coming to be. I remember when Microsoft's NT was released, with their first attempt at a hardware abstraction layer. I held out high hopes for it, but it was a failure, pure and simple. Today, though, we ARE hardware abstract in the processes most important to many of us: HTML, PHP, SQL, and the rest have become their own important entities, regardless of what is behind them.
Lately I am finding myself moving away from the desktop, more and more. Other than graphics design and CAD, I am almost entirely performing my computing duties in client-server mode. I've moved to Google Docs (buggy, but SO convenient since I have no need for a hard drive or memory stick), Google Mail for Domains, my blogs for newsletter dispersal (Wordpress) and phpBB for group comms. The underlying software and hardware is irrelevant to me as all my servers run different OS and hardware combos.
Microsoft is screwed, plain and simple, but I don't think any Linux providers are in better shape. The more I delve into relatively open source code (Wiki, WP, PHPBB, etc), the more I am amazed at what the masses can do to create better code for the reasons important to me. As I produce these low or no cost apps to my clients (not Linux, mind you), I am able to charge more for saving them the downtime and bugs and glitches and software costs. I can't wait for more server farms to become available as those costs will come down more, so my customers won't even need much of their own hardware.
In 1984, when I first connected my Hayes 300 baud modem, I would never have believed we'd return to the client-server days. I remember the reason for logging onto a BBS was to get stuff to my desktop; the idea of using it as a form of communication AND laboring was foreign to me, even when I ran my own BBS. Now, I can't imagine downloading anything when I can conveniently edit it, print it ("to PDF"), and distribute it almost entirely online.
Romney and Huckabee would be the best choice. They actually ran and lead an organization. McCain is just a puppet figure in congress who never had any leadership experience.
I'm still shocked that Republicans would call for a leader, when it is obvious that the President's job isn't to lead, it is to keep Congress in check by using the veto pen more often than not. Presidents should be FOLLOWERS (of the Constitution), and only be called to lead when Congress votes to Declare War and tell the President how to run it. The President follows the laws as generated by Congress in execution. The President has no power or need to lead.
Today's President has no connection to what would be the prior definition. Tyrant? Maybe. Dictator? Far-fetched, but possible.
I don't want to be lead. I don't need Papa President to tell me what is good for me, or my family, or my home, or my community, or my life in general. I need a President who looks over the vast bills on his/her desk, and starts signing the veto line whenever he/she finds something that is not within the power of the Congress to create, or the President to execute.
Actually, Kabloom, Paul is definitely NOT out of the running.
As of today, no major newspaper has correctly reviewed the process at which actual delegates to the actual national convention are chosen. Most of the time, they come up with "estimated" delegates based purely on voter percentages. What isn't seen is that many States currently don't offer actual delegates, or delegates remain unpledged/uncommitted, or the number of delegates is unknown because the public voted for delegates to choose delegates to choose delegates.
The power behind Paul as of right now is the hope that he can last out Super Tuesday with enough delegates to force the national convention to pick a candidate. This is truly an interesting perspective, solely because Paul is basing his campaign on two issues: the Iraq War and the Economy disturbed due to too many taxes, regulations, and restrictions. The rest of his policy (civil liberties, etc) aren't huge issues right now.
If Paul can last to the national convention, and a brokered convention is required, Paul is hoping that the Iraq war goes further south, and that the economy continues to plummet. In this case, he has many wildcards available to actively compete for delegates once the first round of the brokered convention is over.
Also remember that Paul is the only candidate other than Kucinich who still has the anti-war view. As more and more Americans start seeing the negatives of a trillion+ dollar war, people may start changing their minds, even this summer.
I'm not here to espouse Paul's views, just to provide WHY Paul is still important to vote for if you're a Paul supporter -- a brokered convention will be huge.
Also, if Paul supporters don't vote for Paul, and he runs third party, it can have an even worse effect on who will win. I love the chaos, so I support pushing the candidate selection to as late as possible. I think the national convention is in September, which could mean only 2 months to campaign against the Democrat. Nice!
Unfortunately I am on my cell phone PDA (where I browse and post to slashdot from regularly) so I can't do an easy Google search. Please double check my spelling here, but look up the report by Dr. Hardy Limeback regarding skeletal fluorosis. Limeback was a shill for the Canadian Dental Association (Canada's lobbying group) regarding fluoridation support, but has since changed his mind. I believe his changeover happened in the late 90s, but I stay on top of what he has been writing. Since he has "come out of the fluoro-closet," other researchers and scientists are starting to see the problems with fluoride.
Fluoride MAY make enamel in teeth stronger, but it is now seen to make bone structures (hips and limbs, as well as jaws and teeth) much weaker over time. Also, it seems that the toxic level of fluoride may now be actually much lower than what the ADA and AMA have specified since the 50s when the research was "confirmed."
One thing I don't necessarily agree with is the conspiracy advocates against fluoride. Here is their story, which I again don't really think is a correct theory: during WWII, fluoride was an excess waste chemical that was found to protect bones from nuclear pollutants. The idea was the add fluoride to water to protect people from a nuclear war, but also to pad the pockets of the chemical companies. Since then, the profits from adding this waste material to water have been high, so they've continued the conspiracy. Again, I don't think it holds water, but I have not discounted it completely.
As more and more medical experts refine their research into the long term effects of fluoride, it becomes obvious that it is a poison, detrimental to human growth and strength, and a major profit point for large State-enabled industry. I stopped drinking flouridated water 8 years ago (and stopped using fluoride-based toothpaste), and my lifetime problem with my teeth has turned around significantly. In the first 24 years of my life, I had over 30 cavities, including multiple in the same teeth. In the past 8 years, I've had 2. In the past 5 years, I've had zero, and there is are signs that some of my teeth may actually have partially healed themselves (somehow!).
My dentist has, for the past 5 years, been taking some patients off of fluoride consumption and he thinks it has helped more than 80% of those with severe dental problems.
Sidenote: I also stopped consuming sugar and many products which sugarize in the mouth (many wheat products, some corn products, etc). This may have something to do with having a healthier mouth!
The ADA is only one thing: a lobbying group. For years they've fought the amalgam reduction plans, saying mercury in teeth is safe. I've watched the pro-health group show case after case.
The ADA backs flouride in toothpastes -- the very chemical that weakens teeth. They back flouride in water, too.
Yes, they'll fight stem cells. We've seen successful trials in the UK to regrow teeth, why not here in the US?
I have a mandibular excess and a maxillary deficiency (meaning my jawbone is too big and my upper face area is too small), which leads me to grind my teeth, get some major TMJ pain, and end up with ruined and crooked teeth. I've looked at all the surgeries (major, like taking your jaw OUT of your mouth entirely), and they didn't seem worth the risk. The long term problem is I'll lose all my teeth. I was the freak with the toothbrush in school, who flossed and brushed and rinsed 3 times a day. Today I'm the root canal and filling king, because of the jaw issue.
When stem cells are available to regrow teeth, it will take off. The problem is that I expect the ADA (that's the lobbying group to keep dentists expensive and rare, like the AMA is a lobbying group to reduce the supply of doctors and rape the patients' wallets) will fight it tooth and nail. They'll do it under a mask of "religion" by a group controlled by them, but it will happen.
Here, again, we see a market phenomenon that will either be over-regulated by the government so that it takes too long and is too expensive to bring to market, or we'll see a complete destruction of a huge opportunity to fix problems. I am willing to take a risk to deal with the teeth issue today, and I'm probably going to have to do it in India or China because I know that we won't get any favor here if it competes with the strong lobbying cartels, like the crooked dentists (or the doctors, or the CPAs, or any number of groups who have "associations" to harm consumers with bad legislation).
So where are you getting your figures for inflation from? I really would like an answer, this is not a rhetorical question. How do your generate your figures for inflation, and what makes your figures better than the CPI?
I run a private microsite where about 8 dozen people for the past year have been helping me keep track of money inflation's attack on prices. The site may never go public, but it might. We were originally hoping to create a database site where registered users can submit prices of things they've bought (including sales taxes), and then allowing people to enter what they normally buy to see how prices have changed.
6 months into the deal, we noticed a problem: cereal prices had not gone up as they should have. After poking around various grocery stores, a store manager let me in on WHY prices didn't go up -- some cereal boxes were getting smaller. Instead of 32 oz for $2.99, the boxes were 28.9 ounces for $2.99. Oops. We missed that. So now we're plotting prices based on the standard box size, PER unit of measurement. Of course a 64oz box of Cheerios will be cheaper per ounce than the 32oz size, but if we call "32oz Box" standard, and it becomes "28.9oz Box" eventually, we call that standard, and continue to price it based on ounces per dollar.
It's VERY confusing, because it's only a few of us who are working together to get prices together. Yet just based on my own measurements, based on nearly 8 years of entering receipts into Quicken (now we scan the receipts in), my yearly dollar loss is equal to nearly 17%. That's right, over 8 years, my dollar has lost on average 17% of value based on what I use daily. I include gasoline, insurance, highway tolls, utilities (water, electricity, gas, garbage), landscaping, etc.
About a year ago I started actively hoarding money rather than spending it, saving it in the bank, or investing it. I am much happier for it. Of course, I hoard in a basket of currencies (USD, EUR, YEN, gold), but it has kept up better with price increases here in the States, yet still lost some value over that time. Thankfully, my gold has generally kept value, although in the past year it has appreciated more than what I would call inflationary price pressures.
Some day, maybe soon, I'll register a site dedicated to letting people enter prices of items and services they use, and make it public.
I believe there is a site called ShadowStats that has SOME inflation figures that are more realistic, but I haven't really spent time there.
Of course I'm passionate about my hatred of fraudulent policies. A man steals from you, he's a thief. I don't care what anyone calls it, taking from someone against their will is theft.
That being said, we are all bankrupt. What is the average person's net value in the United States? No, don't just count your property and 401Ks, also add in the government's debt (local, state, and federal). Now you're bankrupt, unless you're worth at least $800,000 or so above and beyond your debt.
Our buying power might be more, but that's merely a figment of the imagination, as the quality of what we can buy is surely less. Plus, we're indentured to that debt for many more years than previous generations, and it is hard to say if we are living better because such a subjective comparison is impossible to make without having lived in previous times. Medical opportunity is better, and the chance to eat a healthier diet is also better, so I think we've gained something, but that's notwithstanding the corruption of those who try to prevent such gains in living ability.
Personally I'd favour enforcing mandatory long-term valuations for any collateral; for example, a bank would only be able to use the (inflation adjusted) 10-30 year average value for a house as collateral; want to pay more than that and you'll have to pay for it yourself. You might still end up with bubbles, but at least they'd be much more long-term and easier for the rest of the economy to adjust to. And valuations would not be as susceptible to the ease of borrowing.
The problem with this is that housing values are very comparative to what is going on in the neighborhood/local economy. What is Google moved their base of operations to a small hamlet 60 miles out of Omaha, NE? Housing prices SHOULD go up if Google brings more money into the economy, increasing demand for housing.
My solution is a simple one, and yes, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich happen to like it, too: DUMP THE FED. If the banks need money, this is what they can do: increase the interest rates that CDs and savings accounts pay, and then guarantee the depositor that they will only loan out 100% of the money and lock the account for the fixed time-frame of the loan.
You have $100. A bank needs your 100% to stay in business. The bank offers you 12% on your deposit, and promises to loan the money out to only one person, for a period of 3 years, so you can't touch the money for 3 years without significant penalty. Now, the bank takes your $100, and loans it out at 15% or 18% for 3 years to John, who is happy to pay the interest rate because there is no easy way to get money cheap. John has your $100, you don't, the bank makes 3-5% a year, you make 12% a year.
Problem solved.
Now, let's say that I offered you this opportunity at the Full Reserve Bank of Dada. You'd probably LOVE the idea that you could earn 12% on your money, and that I wasn't creating price inflation in your economy by taking advantage of the money multiplier effect. Sounds good, right? Wrong, because as long as fraudulent fractional reserve banks exist, NO ONE would borrow from me at 18% if they could borrow at 4% from a bank that uses fake money created from low or negative reserves.
It is the Fed, and it's control of fake interest rates, that destroy YOUR chance to save money, and save the banks. The banks should never be loaning out money at 5% a year for 30 years fixed! What a ridiculous profit margin on money for 30 years, don't you think? Would you loan the man with an 850 FICO score $300,000 of your money for 5% a year for 30 years fixed? No freaking way. Neither do the banks, by the way, because they know that the loan will come back in part as a deposit (from the home seller, let's say), so they can now re-loan the same money back to another sucker. And over and over and over again.
While I appreciate "The Creature from Jekyll Island," I also think the book has numerous misthoughts. Yes, the SEC is "regulatory" and the FDIC is "insurance" but neither of them are correctly defined by either of these two words. The FDIC does not keep reserves like an insurance company should. If a bank fails, the FIRST step is the FDIC forcing member banks to attempt a bailout, using the member bank's funds. A very close friend of mine is the GM of a large bank in the Midwest, and he always talks about the fears that he'll have to bail out another national bank should they come up short on funds. Yes, this bailout is more of a loan, but fairly unsecured. The FDIC's only weapon against bankruptcy (bank runs) is monetary creation. Not much of a bailout when it destroys everyone's money to save a few.
The SEC's regulation is usually post-trauma, meaning it creates new regulations to try to fix previous errors that were likely caused by either their own previous regulation, or by the Federal Reserve's manipulations of the money supply, interest rates, or whatever else they believe they can control.
I do like Griffin's book, but I don't adhere to the conspiracy theories that most anti-Fed people have. The banks are not conspiring to destroy the middle class together in secret, they're just a legal cartel (monopoly) who are all independently trying to make a lot of money using the fraud allowed by government. The fact they they seem in lockstep is just a mirage, and the truth profiteers are not those who own the banks, but those who run the economic trading systems. It is far better to make 1/10% on trillions than try to make 5% on billions.
Generally, the economy works better when money circulates...When it has "velocity", which is another one of those words like "multiplier" which I'm going to assume you understand. By dumping surplus money into commodities rather than banks, you're effectively hiding your money under your bed, and dampening the flow of money through the economy. People did this for a long time until a smart guy named Adam Smith pointed out that hoarding gold didn't make anyone especially wealthy; it was trade that built wealth, and that meant the movement of money and goods.
Yes, Adam Smith was correct, that wealth is built on trade. The problem with what you said is that there is a hidden effect from almost every transaction in said trade -- the profit made by the cartelized banks from each and every dollar that they create through the money multiplier effect. They don't actively "give" money out that they've created through the fraudulent fractional reserve banking standard, they loan it out. In fact, they loan out money based on previously loaned out and deposited money, so they're making money on nearly every loan transaction, even though the money doesn't physically exist. This hidden tax that only occurs with fiat money in a fractional reserve banking and monetary system is a form of wealth transfer from the economy as a whole to the cartelized banking institutions, and it actually causes a lag on the economy?
Don't believe me? Look at the GDP figures for the past, oh, 20 years. Subtract TRUE price increases over that time (don't use the ignorant and embarassingly fake CPI figures) from that GDP. We've been in a recession for 20 years, maybe 30 years, even though we may seem to have been strong for a few segments in that time. At almost no time in 30 years have we truly had GDP growth after subtracting the loss of the value of the dollar from the previous time-frame of GDP analysis. This means we're in a permanent recession, and the recession comes from the loss in value of the dollar, which is multiplied many times over due to the hidden tax the banking cartels have created from their money multiplier profit drain.
So that's why banks exist, and why we allow things like the multiplier effect to run our economy. The granddaddy of all multipliers (the Fed) has been active for the past few weeks, trying to pump some money into the economy. Bush is hedging his bets, and backing Keynes at the same time with a stimulus package. Historically, these actions have added velocity to currency, and fast currency tends to stimulate the economy.
No, it doesn't. That's a false statement, and one that a Keynesian spews regularly. Just because the economy may show growth in pure dollar totals, the value of the dollar is decreasing over that time, over and beyond any economic growth shown by more dollars spinning around. If the GDP grows from $10.00 to $10.75 in a year, but the dollar has lost 10% of its value, the actual growth in the economy in dollar terms is 7.5%, but the actual growth in value terms is -3.25%. This is a fact that is readily ignored by Keynesians and other pseudo-economists since these United States have withdrawn from backing the monetary notes with anything of current value. We are in a recession, and we've likely been in a permanent recession since Nixon's time.
The reason for the FDIC, and SEC, and Social Security and Welfare, and every other similar system is to basically keep the money in people's pockets. This is important for the reasons above; cash circulating through the economy creates jobs and stimulates the economy. A bunch of people losing all their money (for example, when a bank fails) means you have a bunch of people who suddenly can't buy groceries. Grocery stores start laying people off, because they have to cut costs, which means MORE people can't afford groceries, and so forth. People like you pull their money in and convert it to commodities, instead of putting it into banks, which means banks can't make loans to support people who are trying t
The SocGen "scandal" scares me mostly because it seems, with consistency, the people calling foul in the media tend to be the very people who also want more regulation of banks in investment schemes. As the media calls for tighter controls over investments, I find more people willing to nod their heads in agreement, even though we need to see that it is CURRENT regulations that lead to these fiascos.
Why do we have ANY bailout protections for investments, including savings accounts? When you give someone your money and hope to make money in return, there is risk. Part of the chance for reward (profit) should be loss of your money. That's what investing is. Yet when we get MORE regulatory control, it gives people less fear in losing everything.
The FDIC (and the SEC) are both such organizations that increase regulations so people feel safe, even though they should NEVER feel safe about investments. That's risk, people! The FDIC has to "insure" deposits because of the fraudulent fractional reserve banking system. What we need is full reserve banking, with private regulatory audits, and greater knowledge that the money you put in isn't loaned 8X more than the bank has on your deposit record.
What SocGen did is not uncommon. First, the bank has the ability to create money out of thin air (see the money multiplier effect). Second, most investments today do not generate any profit or income (see dividends), they just grow in value because other sucks have more money in the future than the current sucker had to buy (see monetary inflation), so the price seems to go up even though the value stays on par or goes down.
For me, there is one investment: put money into my own business, which pays me dividends (profits) instead of just showing an inflationary-based stock value increase. If I need to "save" money, I put it into hard assets such as gold, land (not mortgaging it but for cash), or hoarding in a variety of currencies (physical hoarding, not sticking it into a bank to have it cause inflationary-effects via the money multiplier effect) like the Euro, the Rupee, the Yen and even the US Dollar.
It sickens me that people are going to call for more bank regulations, when it is obvious that regulations of any kind on investments only do one thing: make people feel safe when they should think twice about anything risky.
Honestly, I think The Pirate Bay is the best thing to happen. Because of it, we've gotten rid of cable TV. My wife and I will download a TV show or a movie before we buy it, watch a few episodes or minutes, and then go and buy the legit copy. The Pirate Bay is today's equivalent to reruns or syndication for television shows, or Blockbuster or NetFlix for the movie industry. The monopolists are just mad because they lose control over which productions to push and which to let fall by the wayside. Even better, torrent search sites also replace Nielsen for rating what is popular. I can find the latest popular movies just by sorting by seeds, and because of this I have purchased about 40 movies that I would NEVER have even heard of. Heck, the wife and I actually bought the Bourne trilogy because of The Pirate Bay -- the TV commercials and trailers were so bad that we would never have even thought of it.
Am I a pirate? In some ways, yes, but we own tens of thousands of dollars worth of music, TV DVDs, and movies, and I attribute it solely to being able to taste before I buy. I think in the past year we've had MAYBE ten torrents that I forgot to erase when I realized I didn't like what I saw.
Remember who these large production companies are: they're multi-tiered organizations where the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand. These companies do many things:
1. Raise money and invest in productions (i.e., producing) 2. Market finished productions (i.e., advertising) 3. Protect the industry insiders (actors, directors, producers, and crew) from competition by locking the distribution medium (i.e., monopolizing)
Now, the future is getting rid of them. Want to raise money for a money or a TV pilot? Invest in making a trailer. Put it out there. Get people interested to fund your production, maybe even sell bonds (of course the SEC and IRS will prevent you from doing this versus a market economy where people understand the risks inherent to investing). Once you've raised enough, you go and shoot the flick. Give it away online at low res, or evne at high res, and sell value added products to raise the funds. If people love the production, they'll pay for it. We do. Many of our friends do. Most of my family does.
I laugh when people try to get great shows back on the air, like Serenity. Joss Whedon is one of the most vile monopolists ever. It's his fault directly for the death of Firefly. He could get online, start a money raising campaign, and go back to business. But he wants to pander to his union/monopolist buddies. He loves the residuals he receives on the backs of others. He's part of the industry, and that's why I'm glad Firefly failed, even though we love the show and watch the legal DVDs regularly. Screw Joss, screw Hollywood, and screw the industry twice over -- they're not ready for a truly market-based economy of art, where people subsidize the FUTURE production of more content by purchasing the previously produced content.
The Internet will destroy these monopolists/mercantilists quicker and quicker every day. Their only option to "save themselves" and their grotesque profits is to use the laws that THEY created, prompt the pawns that THEY elected, and force people to pay money that the people earned through labors they actively did. The people behind the Pirate Bay spend an amazing amount of time keeping it running. The users may submit content, but the servers, Internet connections, software code and overall support need labor to keep it running. TPB deserves every penny, and then some. Maybe TPB should produce a high budget movie or TV series.
All my phones in recent years use a USB port to charge. My new iMate Ultimate 6150 does, my previous HTC Trinity did, my wife's Motorola phones do. I won't buy a phone without a USB port to charge with. We carry around a small AA charger that has a USB port on it to charge devices on the go, it works great for long flights or any sort of travel away from a USB port.
In my car I tossed the 12V "cigarette lighter" from the dash to the truck. I also increased its power from a small 5A fuse to a 10A fuse, so I can run a reasonably sized 120V inverter (also in the trunk) to power a few devices on-the-go.
In the place of the dash 12V adapter, I installed a nice custom panel with 3 USB ports. They're high power ports, so I can charge a phone, a GPS receiver, and a plethora of other devices that use USB to charge. In the future I'd like to connect one port to a radio so I can play music on-the-go without my iPod.
In the past, I've had relatively complicated small PCs to run my music system, but I'm seeing more and more options for in-vehicle PCs running Linux. Eventually I think we'll see a system that works well and is cheap. Since we only buy used cars, tossing the radio is one of the first things we do, and it's at most a loss of maybe $25 worth of electronics.
There are many things I wish were modernized, standardized, and more open. First, vehicle information is very proprietary. Why is it that cars can't report status information via a simple USB connection? All the information is either there, or could be generated VERY cheaply. I ran out of wiper fluid two days ago (lots of snow in Chicago lately), and I sat there thinking how lame it is that the wiper fluid reservoir doesn't have a simple sensor to detect low fluid (it's a 2001 vehicle, not THAT old). Even that could be transported across a USB chain with regular updates. Heck, a $2 sensor could even sense fluid at 3 levels. Simple enough.
At home, we have a DC run throughout the house wherever we upgraded our power, and I'm seriously thinking of changing it to USB charging. AC in the home is useful, but so many devices use DC (and the dreaded overheating wall-warts!) that I'm shocked that more devices aren't standardizing on DC. 18V, 5A+, not a big deal -- but so many devices could use it (charging tools, video games, cell phones, even some computer monitors). Simple, without needed ANOTHER heat-generating and wasting transformer. My laptop is DC, too, yet I need the darned transformer throughout the house.
But I still see more and more devices standardizing in many ways. Over time, manufacturers are seeing that power is a commodity, not a profit maker. I tell my friends and family to stop buying products that use proprietary charging hardware. With tools, the battery situation is frustrating, but I think we'll see some changes there. I like the idea of having a standard 6V pack, and just adding more if you need 12V or 18V. Even better would be a "serial/parallel" switch so you could go from 6V 1A to 6V 2A or 12V 1A with the flip of a switch. Ahh, to dream.
I've been saying it for years here and on a variety of sites and print publications: anything that can be copied easily should be given away from the start: recorded music, e-books, stock photography, whatever.
I've also been doing it for years: I've declined to copyright anything I've written, designed, or produced digitally, for about 10 years. In that time, I've made "pots of money" because of it. Why? It's a marketing tool. Give it away, have people use it or reference it, and build your reputation to sell your labors for future projects.
I can't believe others don't do it. I helped a few local bands reach national prominence (magazines, MTV2, etc) by giving away their recorded music in exchange for building a fan-base who would buy their not-so-easily-copied dookie at shows. It works.
I've maintained blogs that have driven people to my subscription-only print newsletter, which I then tell people to give away when they're done reading it. Guess what? That, too, has brought more subscribers.
The future is not about piracy, it's about marketability. You should NEVER hope to make money on something you've already done, but on what you can do. When people see your ability, they'll be more captive in hiring you for a future need. That's where you make your money. If you're an author, give away that e-book: people hate reading things electronically still, and will probably decide to just buy that $10 printed novel or how-to book. Books are cheap to produce now, even one-offs. My print-on-demand supplier has been offering me paperbacks for under $4 printed, so I can sell it for $11 and make a reasonable profit. What's the problem with understanding that?
I'm still shocked at how many content-creators and artists don't want to give away their old works to build future profits. They're too protective of their intellectual property, and unwilling to accept that we're all whores for profit but usually unwilling to actually work hard to earn that profit. I can't begin to count how many "artists" work their rears off to try to become that one hit wonder rather than embracing the idea that working for your entire life is a better end-goal. It's a risk versus reward belief that I stumbled across when I was much younger: why risk putting everything into the hope that you'll be the lucky one out of a million to hit it big on a single item?
Since the money is fiat, i.e. not backed by a fixed standard in the game, have people seen monetary inflation causing price increases in the game, or has the population of players offset any growth in money?
I don't play WoW (played it a few times and have watched some addicts^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfriends play it), so I'm not familiar with how pricing works.
I would assume, though, that if money growth exceeds population/player growth, prices would tend to rise. Is this the case?
Are there any online games that have a relatively fixed amount of money in the game?
...I actually dreamed about teleportation theory a few weeks ago. That's odd that this comes up.
I woke up to thinking about it. If you teleport a la Star Trek, you're probably going to die just because pieces of your organs are seperated. Maybe if you could be placed in a true time-temporal state, it might work in chunks.
I'd guess the best way to teleport would be to map your atomic structure, and use some sort of carbon/hydrogen/oxygen builder to rebuild you piece by piece exactly using the atoms at the other end. Impossible today, yes. Probably a bit too scary for things living.
The thoughts moved to faster-than-light travel, and the same problems came up. If you could accelerate to "warp speed", would all your atoms accelerate at the same time or would you be stretched to oblivion?
I'm curious.. what would you say if they did rebuild the temple and began the animal offerings again?
It would shake my faith, that's for sure. And yet, I really have faith that it won't happen.
Hmm, very interesting way of thinking. The only problem would seem to ascribe a flaw to god, that he could not love man because man was imperfect. Since that is a trait man values, I would think it would not show up in a perfect being.
That's the impossibility of understand God, who I do believe doesn't deal with time considerations. Man happened, as I believe God always knows. Man needed a lesson as to God's grace, so the Old Testament proved man was fallible and imperfect. God still is grace and love, so God provided that love permanently for all by finishing the process around 70AD.
Note that I'm not saying I'm right, but the "prove it" person in me is very comfortable with the comparisons in history (63AD-70AD as the "Second Coming") verses taking Revelation literally. For me, Matthew 24:32-34 puts Christ in an uncomfortable position as a liar if I accept the Futurist Evangelical perspective. "Generation" always meant "these people for 40 years." If Christ lied about the timing of His Second Coming, then everything else is a lie, and useless. I hold to believe that Christ was the Savior, was telling the truth, and did come to complete things forever and ever in that very generation. For everyone, believer or atheist or Muslim or Hindu or Flying Spaghetti Monsterites.
Sorry, but I thought after the second coming, the world was supposed to be free of war and poverty and such. What makes you think the second coming already happened?
Actually, Christ's own teachings don't promise any of this. I believe, and my research into the Hebrew texts seems to support, that much of what Christ spoke of had little to do with man and man, but with God and man. I believe (and have studied greatly) that even the text on marriage/divorce or homosexuality is not about man and man, but about God ("The Bridegroom") and the Church ("The Bride"). Christ's teachings from a mortal perspective make little sense sometimes, and can seem confusing, but when you look at His words from a "God and Man" perspective, they take a completely understandable meaning if you accept the view that God wants to love man, and only man's inability to be perfect got in the way. It sets up exactly why Christ was needed for all men, and why Christ did exactly what He needed to do, for all men, believers or not.
Over and over, especially in Revelation, the New Testament words of Christ speak of amazing things that He said would occur. Matthew 24:32-34 show that Christ meant them to happen in the generation He was living in, Biblically a generation was within 40 years. 70AD happened at the end of the 40 year period from the beginning of the call of Christ's mission (starting with John the Baptist before Christ's birth).
Many of those promises made, when compared to the exact same-style promises made in the Old Testament that were later to come true within the OT, were covenantal in nature, not physical. God's plan was to bring God's love to the world, but the world couldn't handle what was needed to be done. The Old Covenant (the Judaic Age or the Mosaic Age) was about what man could do to make God happy. The New Covenant was brought to man by Christ, not by man. It was fulfilled in the destruction of Israel, which to this day has not come back into being. Note that I don't believe that modern day Israel has anything to do with the Jews of Christ's time. Where is the slaughter/offering of animals at the Temple? The Temple was destroyed in 70AD ("Heaven and Earth"), and was never rebuilt. Ever. Even today, more than a generation after the birth of modern Israel, there is no Temple for the Jews to worship God in the way the Old Testament demands of it.
It's a deep, and time-consuming lesson to go through why Revelation was fulfilled. There are billions of websites that have decent information, if not a little off. My recommendations for Christians who want to know more is to read "The Jewish War" by Flavius Josephus, a Jew, and see how it connects with Revelation point by point. It's very eye opening.
So what you're saying is that these people are so morally bankrupt that if they didn't have a book telling them what to believe they would go around robbing, stealing, and murdering? That's the exact conclusion one gets when they say that's what atheists do...
Where did I say that? I definitely don't believe that, because I don't believe the Bible is the only source for moral teaching. In fact, I believe that much of the Bible has stuff in it that doesn't pertain to modern man (in what I call the New Covenant with God) and can be terrible to follow. Much of what I see as "law" in the lives of my Evangelical friends I believe holds them back from performing as they've been created to perform. I feel it is really sad when people take Old Testament laws and try to use them in the modern day, because they weren't written for us, and they don't often work for us.
For me, the ultimate truth of God is what Christ professed as "His" commandments: Love God, love others. That's it. That's the entire Bible story in 4 words. It doesn't get more complicated than that, but many people learn this truth without ever opening a Bible. As I often say, whever there is love there is God. To me they're one and the same.
Murdering someone is not loving them. Stealing from them (as a criminal, or as a taxing government) is not loving them. Forcing them into slavery (as a slave-owner, or as a military draft) is not loving them. Bombing someone to the Middle Ages is not loving someone. That's why I laugh when I hear Bush or Obama or Sean Hannity profess faith in Christ, because it is obvious that they haven't actually read what Christ said.
Thank you for your insightful contribution, which I rather suspect stands ready to be cut and pasted into any discussion featuring the words "science", "religion" or "bat shit insane cultists who view everything in relation to their paranoid schizophrenia about a huge beardy man who will torture them for ever unless they flatter him".
I'm sorry you didn't have time to read my contribution, which was definitely not a cut and paste job. From my irregular faith-based posts here, I've gained new friends and had some decent discussions, even with atheists, about why my view of the Bible ("Preterist") has a very becoming feel to it for non-believers, rather than the mainstream Evangelical view of the Bible.
I'm not here to convince you to believe anything. If anything, I want to show those engaged in Christian cultism that Christianity has other branches from the same roots as their branch, and that there is a lot of what they believe that may not connect to the Bible.
Even if you're not interested in becoming a Christian, or believing in God, I do feel that "my" Preterist perspective can make your life easier in dealing with psycho cult Christians in the future. A little food for thought, at least.
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No, it didn't net Microsoft anything. The proper title should be "Restrictive socialism costs Microsoft competitors billions."
When I had my retail store, we moved literally 3 miles across a State line because of a sales tax differential of nearly 4%. That's significant, when many of our items were $500-$1000, meaning a savings to the consumer of $20-$40 in taxes. Even funnier, the county/state with the lower tax rate had BETTER public facilities and police attention (the store in the old State had regular robberies and theft), and my customers had a 5 minute longer hop to get there.
We've talked repeatedly about moving out of our State and leaving some customers behind if our State decides to start a labor sales tax. It's a terrible idea, as more taxes don't mean more income (and neither do less taxes necessarily) for the State. It's a VERY complicated "invisible hand" situation.
I appreciate when companies find loopholes, because it gives me hope that I can use them, too. I hate W2s, as 1099s offer many more tax benefits. I've seen many friends give up their stable W2 jobs to move into 1099 contracting, and see their income double, but their tax share not move up as much. When I heard Haliburton was moving offshore, I investigated it and found that there are tons of savings to do so, even if your primary business is still in the States. It makes sense.
Yeah, Microsoft will take heat for this, but the reality is that small and medium sized business owners should do everything in their power to find the least-regulated economies to operate out of. I love seeing companies move out of California, employees and all, and hitting States that so far have not shut down the engine of business, thinking that the State can help the poor when in fact it is jobs, not entitlements, that help the poor.
I've never understood how a programmer/direction manager/geek like Torvalds could raise so much interest over his opinion, but I do understand the draw to him. I rarely agree with what he says, but in this case it is truly spot on.
Microsoft is in trouble, and it has nothing to do with "anti-monopoly" legislation, or corporate badgering, or any of the sort. Microsoft is in trouble. This is defensive posturing in hopes of the market taking note and taking action by putting Microsoft ahead of the pack that has overtaken it.
For years we had geeks here call for Microsoft's abolishment, but lonely me with a few other market economy believers have said that Microsoft will fall from grace as IBM, Compaq, and GM had -- because they lost their competitive edge. The future is not in desktop software, that Microsoft heralded in with great accomplishment. Microsoft tore us out of the client-server picture, and now we're heading back there. They don't understand the situation, and their "Desktop first" mentality makes it near impossible to turn around.
Why they care about Linux is beyond me, though. The backend platform is slowly becoming useless as the protocols for integrating features-on-the-screen are quickly becoming irrelevant as the idea of hardware abstraction is truly coming to be. I remember when Microsoft's NT was released, with their first attempt at a hardware abstraction layer. I held out high hopes for it, but it was a failure, pure and simple. Today, though, we ARE hardware abstract in the processes most important to many of us: HTML, PHP, SQL, and the rest have become their own important entities, regardless of what is behind them.
Lately I am finding myself moving away from the desktop, more and more. Other than graphics design and CAD, I am almost entirely performing my computing duties in client-server mode. I've moved to Google Docs (buggy, but SO convenient since I have no need for a hard drive or memory stick), Google Mail for Domains, my blogs for newsletter dispersal (Wordpress) and phpBB for group comms. The underlying software and hardware is irrelevant to me as all my servers run different OS and hardware combos.
Microsoft is screwed, plain and simple, but I don't think any Linux providers are in better shape. The more I delve into relatively open source code (Wiki, WP, PHPBB, etc), the more I am amazed at what the masses can do to create better code for the reasons important to me. As I produce these low or no cost apps to my clients (not Linux, mind you), I am able to charge more for saving them the downtime and bugs and glitches and software costs. I can't wait for more server farms to become available as those costs will come down more, so my customers won't even need much of their own hardware.
In 1984, when I first connected my Hayes 300 baud modem, I would never have believed we'd return to the client-server days. I remember the reason for logging onto a BBS was to get stuff to my desktop; the idea of using it as a form of communication AND laboring was foreign to me, even when I ran my own BBS. Now, I can't imagine downloading anything when I can conveniently edit it, print it ("to PDF"), and distribute it almost entirely online.
Romney and Huckabee would be the best choice. They actually ran and lead an organization. McCain is just a puppet figure in congress who never had any leadership experience.
I'm still shocked that Republicans would call for a leader, when it is obvious that the President's job isn't to lead, it is to keep Congress in check by using the veto pen more often than not. Presidents should be FOLLOWERS (of the Constitution), and only be called to lead when Congress votes to Declare War and tell the President how to run it. The President follows the laws as generated by Congress in execution. The President has no power or need to lead.
Today's President has no connection to what would be the prior definition. Tyrant? Maybe. Dictator? Far-fetched, but possible.
I don't want to be lead. I don't need Papa President to tell me what is good for me, or my family, or my home, or my community, or my life in general. I need a President who looks over the vast bills on his/her desk, and starts signing the veto line whenever he/she finds something that is not within the power of the Congress to create, or the President to execute.
Actually, Kabloom, Paul is definitely NOT out of the running.
As of today, no major newspaper has correctly reviewed the process at which actual delegates to the actual national convention are chosen. Most of the time, they come up with "estimated" delegates based purely on voter percentages. What isn't seen is that many States currently don't offer actual delegates, or delegates remain unpledged/uncommitted, or the number of delegates is unknown because the public voted for delegates to choose delegates to choose delegates.
The power behind Paul as of right now is the hope that he can last out Super Tuesday with enough delegates to force the national convention to pick a candidate. This is truly an interesting perspective, solely because Paul is basing his campaign on two issues: the Iraq War and the Economy disturbed due to too many taxes, regulations, and restrictions. The rest of his policy (civil liberties, etc) aren't huge issues right now.
If Paul can last to the national convention, and a brokered convention is required, Paul is hoping that the Iraq war goes further south, and that the economy continues to plummet. In this case, he has many wildcards available to actively compete for delegates once the first round of the brokered convention is over.
Also remember that Paul is the only candidate other than Kucinich who still has the anti-war view. As more and more Americans start seeing the negatives of a trillion+ dollar war, people may start changing their minds, even this summer.
I'm not here to espouse Paul's views, just to provide WHY Paul is still important to vote for if you're a Paul supporter -- a brokered convention will be huge.
Also, if Paul supporters don't vote for Paul, and he runs third party, it can have an even worse effect on who will win. I love the chaos, so I support pushing the candidate selection to as late as possible. I think the national convention is in September, which could mean only 2 months to campaign against the Democrat. Nice!
Unfortunately I am on my cell phone PDA (where I browse and post to slashdot from regularly) so I can't do an easy Google search. Please double check my spelling here, but look up the report by Dr. Hardy Limeback regarding skeletal fluorosis. Limeback was a shill for the Canadian Dental Association (Canada's lobbying group) regarding fluoridation support, but has since changed his mind. I believe his changeover happened in the late 90s, but I stay on top of what he has been writing. Since he has "come out of the fluoro-closet," other researchers and scientists are starting to see the problems with fluoride.
Fluoride MAY make enamel in teeth stronger, but it is now seen to make bone structures (hips and limbs, as well as jaws and teeth) much weaker over time. Also, it seems that the toxic level of fluoride may now be actually much lower than what the ADA and AMA have specified since the 50s when the research was "confirmed."
One thing I don't necessarily agree with is the conspiracy advocates against fluoride. Here is their story, which I again don't really think is a correct theory: during WWII, fluoride was an excess waste chemical that was found to protect bones from nuclear pollutants. The idea was the add fluoride to water to protect people from a nuclear war, but also to pad the pockets of the chemical companies. Since then, the profits from adding this waste material to water have been high, so they've continued the conspiracy. Again, I don't think it holds water, but I have not discounted it completely.
As more and more medical experts refine their research into the long term effects of fluoride, it becomes obvious that it is a poison, detrimental to human growth and strength, and a major profit point for large State-enabled industry. I stopped drinking flouridated water 8 years ago (and stopped using fluoride-based toothpaste), and my lifetime problem with my teeth has turned around significantly. In the first 24 years of my life, I had over 30 cavities, including multiple in the same teeth. In the past 8 years, I've had 2. In the past 5 years, I've had zero, and there is are signs that some of my teeth may actually have partially healed themselves (somehow!).
My dentist has, for the past 5 years, been taking some patients off of fluoride consumption and he thinks it has helped more than 80% of those with severe dental problems.
Sidenote: I also stopped consuming sugar and many products which sugarize in the mouth (many wheat products, some corn products, etc). This may have something to do with having a healthier mouth!
The ADA is only one thing: a lobbying group. For years they've fought the amalgam reduction plans, saying mercury in teeth is safe. I've watched the pro-health group show case after case.
The ADA backs flouride in toothpastes -- the very chemical that weakens teeth. They back flouride in water, too.
Yes, they'll fight stem cells. We've seen successful trials in the UK to regrow teeth, why not here in the US?
I have a mandibular excess and a maxillary deficiency (meaning my jawbone is too big and my upper face area is too small), which leads me to grind my teeth, get some major TMJ pain, and end up with ruined and crooked teeth. I've looked at all the surgeries (major, like taking your jaw OUT of your mouth entirely), and they didn't seem worth the risk. The long term problem is I'll lose all my teeth. I was the freak with the toothbrush in school, who flossed and brushed and rinsed 3 times a day. Today I'm the root canal and filling king, because of the jaw issue.
When stem cells are available to regrow teeth, it will take off. The problem is that I expect the ADA (that's the lobbying group to keep dentists expensive and rare, like the AMA is a lobbying group to reduce the supply of doctors and rape the patients' wallets) will fight it tooth and nail. They'll do it under a mask of "religion" by a group controlled by them, but it will happen.
Here, again, we see a market phenomenon that will either be over-regulated by the government so that it takes too long and is too expensive to bring to market, or we'll see a complete destruction of a huge opportunity to fix problems. I am willing to take a risk to deal with the teeth issue today, and I'm probably going to have to do it in India or China because I know that we won't get any favor here if it competes with the strong lobbying cartels, like the crooked dentists (or the doctors, or the CPAs, or any number of groups who have "associations" to harm consumers with bad legislation).
So where are you getting your figures for inflation from? I really would like an answer, this is not a rhetorical question. How do your generate your figures for inflation, and what makes your figures better than the CPI?
I run a private microsite where about 8 dozen people for the past year have been helping me keep track of money inflation's attack on prices. The site may never go public, but it might. We were originally hoping to create a database site where registered users can submit prices of things they've bought (including sales taxes), and then allowing people to enter what they normally buy to see how prices have changed.
6 months into the deal, we noticed a problem: cereal prices had not gone up as they should have. After poking around various grocery stores, a store manager let me in on WHY prices didn't go up -- some cereal boxes were getting smaller. Instead of 32 oz for $2.99, the boxes were 28.9 ounces for $2.99. Oops. We missed that. So now we're plotting prices based on the standard box size, PER unit of measurement. Of course a 64oz box of Cheerios will be cheaper per ounce than the 32oz size, but if we call "32oz Box" standard, and it becomes "28.9oz Box" eventually, we call that standard, and continue to price it based on ounces per dollar.
It's VERY confusing, because it's only a few of us who are working together to get prices together. Yet just based on my own measurements, based on nearly 8 years of entering receipts into Quicken (now we scan the receipts in), my yearly dollar loss is equal to nearly 17%. That's right, over 8 years, my dollar has lost on average 17% of value based on what I use daily. I include gasoline, insurance, highway tolls, utilities (water, electricity, gas, garbage), landscaping, etc.
About a year ago I started actively hoarding money rather than spending it, saving it in the bank, or investing it. I am much happier for it. Of course, I hoard in a basket of currencies (USD, EUR, YEN, gold), but it has kept up better with price increases here in the States, yet still lost some value over that time. Thankfully, my gold has generally kept value, although in the past year it has appreciated more than what I would call inflationary price pressures.
Some day, maybe soon, I'll register a site dedicated to letting people enter prices of items and services they use, and make it public.
I believe there is a site called ShadowStats that has SOME inflation figures that are more realistic, but I haven't really spent time there.
Of course I'm passionate about my hatred of fraudulent policies. A man steals from you, he's a thief. I don't care what anyone calls it, taking from someone against their will is theft.
That being said, we are all bankrupt. What is the average person's net value in the United States? No, don't just count your property and 401Ks, also add in the government's debt (local, state, and federal). Now you're bankrupt, unless you're worth at least $800,000 or so above and beyond your debt.
Our buying power might be more, but that's merely a figment of the imagination, as the quality of what we can buy is surely less. Plus, we're indentured to that debt for many more years than previous generations, and it is hard to say if we are living better because such a subjective comparison is impossible to make without having lived in previous times. Medical opportunity is better, and the chance to eat a healthier diet is also better, so I think we've gained something, but that's notwithstanding the corruption of those who try to prevent such gains in living ability.
Personally I'd favour enforcing mandatory long-term valuations for any collateral; for example, a bank would only be able to use the (inflation adjusted) 10-30 year average value for a house as collateral; want to pay more than that and you'll have to pay for it yourself. You might still end up with bubbles, but at least they'd be much more long-term and easier for the rest of the economy to adjust to. And valuations would not be as susceptible to the ease of borrowing.
The problem with this is that housing values are very comparative to what is going on in the neighborhood/local economy. What is Google moved their base of operations to a small hamlet 60 miles out of Omaha, NE? Housing prices SHOULD go up if Google brings more money into the economy, increasing demand for housing.
My solution is a simple one, and yes, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich happen to like it, too: DUMP THE FED. If the banks need money, this is what they can do: increase the interest rates that CDs and savings accounts pay, and then guarantee the depositor that they will only loan out 100% of the money and lock the account for the fixed time-frame of the loan.
You have $100. A bank needs your 100% to stay in business. The bank offers you 12% on your deposit, and promises to loan the money out to only one person, for a period of 3 years, so you can't touch the money for 3 years without significant penalty. Now, the bank takes your $100, and loans it out at 15% or 18% for 3 years to John, who is happy to pay the interest rate because there is no easy way to get money cheap. John has your $100, you don't, the bank makes 3-5% a year, you make 12% a year.
Problem solved.
Now, let's say that I offered you this opportunity at the Full Reserve Bank of Dada. You'd probably LOVE the idea that you could earn 12% on your money, and that I wasn't creating price inflation in your economy by taking advantage of the money multiplier effect. Sounds good, right? Wrong, because as long as fraudulent fractional reserve banks exist, NO ONE would borrow from me at 18% if they could borrow at 4% from a bank that uses fake money created from low or negative reserves.
It is the Fed, and it's control of fake interest rates, that destroy YOUR chance to save money, and save the banks. The banks should never be loaning out money at 5% a year for 30 years fixed! What a ridiculous profit margin on money for 30 years, don't you think? Would you loan the man with an 850 FICO score $300,000 of your money for 5% a year for 30 years fixed? No freaking way. Neither do the banks, by the way, because they know that the loan will come back in part as a deposit (from the home seller, let's say), so they can now re-loan the same money back to another sucker. And over and over and over again.
It's fraud.
While I appreciate "The Creature from Jekyll Island," I also think the book has numerous misthoughts. Yes, the SEC is "regulatory" and the FDIC is "insurance" but neither of them are correctly defined by either of these two words. The FDIC does not keep reserves like an insurance company should. If a bank fails, the FIRST step is the FDIC forcing member banks to attempt a bailout, using the member bank's funds. A very close friend of mine is the GM of a large bank in the Midwest, and he always talks about the fears that he'll have to bail out another national bank should they come up short on funds. Yes, this bailout is more of a loan, but fairly unsecured. The FDIC's only weapon against bankruptcy (bank runs) is monetary creation. Not much of a bailout when it destroys everyone's money to save a few.
The SEC's regulation is usually post-trauma, meaning it creates new regulations to try to fix previous errors that were likely caused by either their own previous regulation, or by the Federal Reserve's manipulations of the money supply, interest rates, or whatever else they believe they can control.
I do like Griffin's book, but I don't adhere to the conspiracy theories that most anti-Fed people have. The banks are not conspiring to destroy the middle class together in secret, they're just a legal cartel (monopoly) who are all independently trying to make a lot of money using the fraud allowed by government. The fact they they seem in lockstep is just a mirage, and the truth profiteers are not those who own the banks, but those who run the economic trading systems. It is far better to make 1/10% on trillions than try to make 5% on billions.
Generally, the economy works better when money circulates...When it has "velocity", which is another one of those words like "multiplier" which I'm going to assume you understand. By dumping surplus money into commodities rather than banks, you're effectively hiding your money under your bed, and dampening the flow of money through the economy. People did this for a long time until a smart guy named Adam Smith pointed out that hoarding gold didn't make anyone especially wealthy; it was trade that built wealth, and that meant the movement of money and goods.
Yes, Adam Smith was correct, that wealth is built on trade. The problem with what you said is that there is a hidden effect from almost every transaction in said trade -- the profit made by the cartelized banks from each and every dollar that they create through the money multiplier effect. They don't actively "give" money out that they've created through the fraudulent fractional reserve banking standard, they loan it out. In fact, they loan out money based on previously loaned out and deposited money, so they're making money on nearly every loan transaction, even though the money doesn't physically exist. This hidden tax that only occurs with fiat money in a fractional reserve banking and monetary system is a form of wealth transfer from the economy as a whole to the cartelized banking institutions, and it actually causes a lag on the economy?
Don't believe me? Look at the GDP figures for the past, oh, 20 years. Subtract TRUE price increases over that time (don't use the ignorant and embarassingly fake CPI figures) from that GDP. We've been in a recession for 20 years, maybe 30 years, even though we may seem to have been strong for a few segments in that time. At almost no time in 30 years have we truly had GDP growth after subtracting the loss of the value of the dollar from the previous time-frame of GDP analysis. This means we're in a permanent recession, and the recession comes from the loss in value of the dollar, which is multiplied many times over due to the hidden tax the banking cartels have created from their money multiplier profit drain.
So that's why banks exist, and why we allow things like the multiplier effect to run our economy. The granddaddy of all multipliers (the Fed) has been active for the past few weeks, trying to pump some money into the economy. Bush is hedging his bets, and backing Keynes at the same time with a stimulus package. Historically, these actions have added velocity to currency, and fast currency tends to stimulate the economy.
No, it doesn't. That's a false statement, and one that a Keynesian spews regularly. Just because the economy may show growth in pure dollar totals, the value of the dollar is decreasing over that time, over and beyond any economic growth shown by more dollars spinning around. If the GDP grows from $10.00 to $10.75 in a year, but the dollar has lost 10% of its value, the actual growth in the economy in dollar terms is 7.5%, but the actual growth in value terms is -3.25%. This is a fact that is readily ignored by Keynesians and other pseudo-economists since these United States have withdrawn from backing the monetary notes with anything of current value. We are in a recession, and we've likely been in a permanent recession since Nixon's time.
The reason for the FDIC, and SEC, and Social Security and Welfare, and every other similar system is to basically keep the money in people's pockets. This is important for the reasons above; cash circulating through the economy creates jobs and stimulates the economy. A bunch of people losing all their money (for example, when a bank fails) means you have a bunch of people who suddenly can't buy groceries. Grocery stores start laying people off, because they have to cut costs, which means MORE people can't afford groceries, and so forth. People like you pull their money in and convert it to commodities, instead of putting it into banks, which means banks can't make loans to support people who are trying t
The SocGen "scandal" scares me mostly because it seems, with consistency, the people calling foul in the media tend to be the very people who also want more regulation of banks in investment schemes. As the media calls for tighter controls over investments, I find more people willing to nod their heads in agreement, even though we need to see that it is CURRENT regulations that lead to these fiascos.
Why do we have ANY bailout protections for investments, including savings accounts? When you give someone your money and hope to make money in return, there is risk. Part of the chance for reward (profit) should be loss of your money. That's what investing is. Yet when we get MORE regulatory control, it gives people less fear in losing everything.
The FDIC (and the SEC) are both such organizations that increase regulations so people feel safe, even though they should NEVER feel safe about investments. That's risk, people! The FDIC has to "insure" deposits because of the fraudulent fractional reserve banking system. What we need is full reserve banking, with private regulatory audits, and greater knowledge that the money you put in isn't loaned 8X more than the bank has on your deposit record.
What SocGen did is not uncommon. First, the bank has the ability to create money out of thin air (see the money multiplier effect). Second, most investments today do not generate any profit or income (see dividends), they just grow in value because other sucks have more money in the future than the current sucker had to buy (see monetary inflation), so the price seems to go up even though the value stays on par or goes down.
For me, there is one investment: put money into my own business, which pays me dividends (profits) instead of just showing an inflationary-based stock value increase. If I need to "save" money, I put it into hard assets such as gold, land (not mortgaging it but for cash), or hoarding in a variety of currencies (physical hoarding, not sticking it into a bank to have it cause inflationary-effects via the money multiplier effect) like the Euro, the Rupee, the Yen and even the US Dollar.
It sickens me that people are going to call for more bank regulations, when it is obvious that regulations of any kind on investments only do one thing: make people feel safe when they should think twice about anything risky.
...but by lawsuits?
Honestly, I think The Pirate Bay is the best thing to happen. Because of it, we've gotten rid of cable TV. My wife and I will download a TV show or a movie before we buy it, watch a few episodes or minutes, and then go and buy the legit copy. The Pirate Bay is today's equivalent to reruns or syndication for television shows, or Blockbuster or NetFlix for the movie industry. The monopolists are just mad because they lose control over which productions to push and which to let fall by the wayside. Even better, torrent search sites also replace Nielsen for rating what is popular. I can find the latest popular movies just by sorting by seeds, and because of this I have purchased about 40 movies that I would NEVER have even heard of. Heck, the wife and I actually bought the Bourne trilogy because of The Pirate Bay -- the TV commercials and trailers were so bad that we would never have even thought of it.
Am I a pirate? In some ways, yes, but we own tens of thousands of dollars worth of music, TV DVDs, and movies, and I attribute it solely to being able to taste before I buy. I think in the past year we've had MAYBE ten torrents that I forgot to erase when I realized I didn't like what I saw.
Remember who these large production companies are: they're multi-tiered organizations where the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand. These companies do many things:
1. Raise money and invest in productions (i.e., producing)
2. Market finished productions (i.e., advertising)
3. Protect the industry insiders (actors, directors, producers, and crew) from competition by locking the distribution medium (i.e., monopolizing)
Now, the future is getting rid of them. Want to raise money for a money or a TV pilot? Invest in making a trailer. Put it out there. Get people interested to fund your production, maybe even sell bonds (of course the SEC and IRS will prevent you from doing this versus a market economy where people understand the risks inherent to investing). Once you've raised enough, you go and shoot the flick. Give it away online at low res, or evne at high res, and sell value added products to raise the funds. If people love the production, they'll pay for it. We do. Many of our friends do. Most of my family does.
I laugh when people try to get great shows back on the air, like Serenity. Joss Whedon is one of the most vile monopolists ever. It's his fault directly for the death of Firefly. He could get online, start a money raising campaign, and go back to business. But he wants to pander to his union/monopolist buddies. He loves the residuals he receives on the backs of others. He's part of the industry, and that's why I'm glad Firefly failed, even though we love the show and watch the legal DVDs regularly. Screw Joss, screw Hollywood, and screw the industry twice over -- they're not ready for a truly market-based economy of art, where people subsidize the FUTURE production of more content by purchasing the previously produced content.
The Internet will destroy these monopolists/mercantilists quicker and quicker every day. Their only option to "save themselves" and their grotesque profits is to use the laws that THEY created, prompt the pawns that THEY elected, and force people to pay money that the people earned through labors they actively did. The people behind the Pirate Bay spend an amazing amount of time keeping it running. The users may submit content, but the servers, Internet connections, software code and overall support need labor to keep it running. TPB deserves every penny, and then some. Maybe TPB should produce a high budget movie or TV series.
All my phones in recent years use a USB port to charge. My new iMate Ultimate 6150 does, my previous HTC Trinity did, my wife's Motorola phones do. I won't buy a phone without a USB port to charge with. We carry around a small AA charger that has a USB port on it to charge devices on the go, it works great for long flights or any sort of travel away from a USB port.
In my car I tossed the 12V "cigarette lighter" from the dash to the truck. I also increased its power from a small 5A fuse to a 10A fuse, so I can run a reasonably sized 120V inverter (also in the trunk) to power a few devices on-the-go.
In the place of the dash 12V adapter, I installed a nice custom panel with 3 USB ports. They're high power ports, so I can charge a phone, a GPS receiver, and a plethora of other devices that use USB to charge. In the future I'd like to connect one port to a radio so I can play music on-the-go without my iPod.
In the past, I've had relatively complicated small PCs to run my music system, but I'm seeing more and more options for in-vehicle PCs running Linux. Eventually I think we'll see a system that works well and is cheap. Since we only buy used cars, tossing the radio is one of the first things we do, and it's at most a loss of maybe $25 worth of electronics.
There are many things I wish were modernized, standardized, and more open. First, vehicle information is very proprietary. Why is it that cars can't report status information via a simple USB connection? All the information is either there, or could be generated VERY cheaply. I ran out of wiper fluid two days ago (lots of snow in Chicago lately), and I sat there thinking how lame it is that the wiper fluid reservoir doesn't have a simple sensor to detect low fluid (it's a 2001 vehicle, not THAT old). Even that could be transported across a USB chain with regular updates. Heck, a $2 sensor could even sense fluid at 3 levels. Simple enough.
At home, we have a DC run throughout the house wherever we upgraded our power, and I'm seriously thinking of changing it to USB charging. AC in the home is useful, but so many devices use DC (and the dreaded overheating wall-warts!) that I'm shocked that more devices aren't standardizing on DC. 18V, 5A+, not a big deal -- but so many devices could use it (charging tools, video games, cell phones, even some computer monitors). Simple, without needed ANOTHER heat-generating and wasting transformer. My laptop is DC, too, yet I need the darned transformer throughout the house.
But I still see more and more devices standardizing in many ways. Over time, manufacturers are seeing that power is a commodity, not a profit maker. I tell my friends and family to stop buying products that use proprietary charging hardware. With tools, the battery situation is frustrating, but I think we'll see some changes there. I like the idea of having a standard 6V pack, and just adding more if you need 12V or 18V. Even better would be a "serial/parallel" switch so you could go from 6V 1A to 6V 2A or 12V 1A with the flip of a switch. Ahh, to dream.
I've been saying it for years here and on a variety of sites and print publications: anything that can be copied easily should be given away from the start: recorded music, e-books, stock photography, whatever.
I've also been doing it for years: I've declined to copyright anything I've written, designed, or produced digitally, for about 10 years. In that time, I've made "pots of money" because of it. Why? It's a marketing tool. Give it away, have people use it or reference it, and build your reputation to sell your labors for future projects.
I can't believe others don't do it. I helped a few local bands reach national prominence (magazines, MTV2, etc) by giving away their recorded music in exchange for building a fan-base who would buy their not-so-easily-copied dookie at shows. It works.
I've maintained blogs that have driven people to my subscription-only print newsletter, which I then tell people to give away when they're done reading it. Guess what? That, too, has brought more subscribers.
The future is not about piracy, it's about marketability. You should NEVER hope to make money on something you've already done, but on what you can do. When people see your ability, they'll be more captive in hiring you for a future need. That's where you make your money. If you're an author, give away that e-book: people hate reading things electronically still, and will probably decide to just buy that $10 printed novel or how-to book. Books are cheap to produce now, even one-offs. My print-on-demand supplier has been offering me paperbacks for under $4 printed, so I can sell it for $11 and make a reasonable profit. What's the problem with understanding that?
I'm still shocked at how many content-creators and artists don't want to give away their old works to build future profits. They're too protective of their intellectual property, and unwilling to accept that we're all whores for profit but usually unwilling to actually work hard to earn that profit. I can't begin to count how many "artists" work their rears off to try to become that one hit wonder rather than embracing the idea that working for your entire life is a better end-goal. It's a risk versus reward belief that I stumbled across when I was much younger: why risk putting everything into the hope that you'll be the lucky one out of a million to hit it big on a single item?
I guess I'm less of an idiot than some.
We use a crossover 100baseT cable between the network and the router. Our notebook connects to our router and gets DHCP from the network.
Duh.
As for approval, it's in our contract. We handle all IT, including security, for 95% of our clients.
You're kidding, right?
Most of the current EPA cronies were Clinton hires. The Democrats do as much damage in "Federalize Everything."
Disband the EPA, and let the States enact their own policies. It'll put to rest a lot of political cronyism.
My IT employees carry around a tiny WiFi router to all clients. It's secure, easy to use, and works great. Ethernet for us is now unnecessary.
If someone made a decent battery-operated router, I'd be even happier.
Since the money is fiat, i.e. not backed by a fixed standard in the game, have people seen monetary inflation causing price increases in the game, or has the population of players offset any growth in money?
I don't play WoW (played it a few times and have watched some addicts^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfriends play it), so I'm not familiar with how pricing works.
I would assume, though, that if money growth exceeds population/player growth, prices would tend to rise. Is this the case?
Are there any online games that have a relatively fixed amount of money in the game?
...I actually dreamed about teleportation theory a few weeks ago. That's odd that this comes up.
I woke up to thinking about it. If you teleport a la Star Trek, you're probably going to die just because pieces of your organs are seperated. Maybe if you could be placed in a true time-temporal state, it might work in chunks.
I'd guess the best way to teleport would be to map your atomic structure, and use some sort of carbon/hydrogen/oxygen builder to rebuild you piece by piece exactly using the atoms at the other end. Impossible today, yes. Probably a bit too scary for things living.
The thoughts moved to faster-than-light travel, and the same problems came up. If you could accelerate to "warp speed", would all your atoms accelerate at the same time or would you be stretched to oblivion?
I'm curious.. what would you say if they did rebuild the temple and began the animal offerings again?
It would shake my faith, that's for sure. And yet, I really have faith that it won't happen.
Hmm, very interesting way of thinking. The only problem would seem to ascribe a flaw to god, that he could not love man because man was imperfect. Since that is a trait man values, I would think it would not show up in a perfect being.
That's the impossibility of understand God, who I do believe doesn't deal with time considerations. Man happened, as I believe God always knows. Man needed a lesson as to God's grace, so the Old Testament proved man was fallible and imperfect. God still is grace and love, so God provided that love permanently for all by finishing the process around 70AD.
Note that I'm not saying I'm right, but the "prove it" person in me is very comfortable with the comparisons in history (63AD-70AD as the "Second Coming") verses taking Revelation literally. For me, Matthew 24:32-34 puts Christ in an uncomfortable position as a liar if I accept the Futurist Evangelical perspective. "Generation" always meant "these people for 40 years." If Christ lied about the timing of His Second Coming, then everything else is a lie, and useless. I hold to believe that Christ was the Savior, was telling the truth, and did come to complete things forever and ever in that very generation. For everyone, believer or atheist or Muslim or Hindu or Flying Spaghetti Monsterites.
Sorry, but I thought after the second coming, the world was supposed to be free of war and poverty and such. What makes you think the second coming already happened?
Actually, Christ's own teachings don't promise any of this. I believe, and my research into the Hebrew texts seems to support, that much of what Christ spoke of had little to do with man and man, but with God and man. I believe (and have studied greatly) that even the text on marriage/divorce or homosexuality is not about man and man, but about God ("The Bridegroom") and the Church ("The Bride"). Christ's teachings from a mortal perspective make little sense sometimes, and can seem confusing, but when you look at His words from a "God and Man" perspective, they take a completely understandable meaning if you accept the view that God wants to love man, and only man's inability to be perfect got in the way. It sets up exactly why Christ was needed for all men, and why Christ did exactly what He needed to do, for all men, believers or not.
Over and over, especially in Revelation, the New Testament words of Christ speak of amazing things that He said would occur. Matthew 24:32-34 show that Christ meant them to happen in the generation He was living in, Biblically a generation was within 40 years. 70AD happened at the end of the 40 year period from the beginning of the call of Christ's mission (starting with John the Baptist before Christ's birth).
Many of those promises made, when compared to the exact same-style promises made in the Old Testament that were later to come true within the OT, were covenantal in nature, not physical. God's plan was to bring God's love to the world, but the world couldn't handle what was needed to be done. The Old Covenant (the Judaic Age or the Mosaic Age) was about what man could do to make God happy. The New Covenant was brought to man by Christ, not by man. It was fulfilled in the destruction of Israel, which to this day has not come back into being. Note that I don't believe that modern day Israel has anything to do with the Jews of Christ's time. Where is the slaughter/offering of animals at the Temple? The Temple was destroyed in 70AD ("Heaven and Earth"), and was never rebuilt. Ever. Even today, more than a generation after the birth of modern Israel, there is no Temple for the Jews to worship God in the way the Old Testament demands of it.
It's a deep, and time-consuming lesson to go through why Revelation was fulfilled. There are billions of websites that have decent information, if not a little off. My recommendations for Christians who want to know more is to read "The Jewish War" by Flavius Josephus, a Jew, and see how it connects with Revelation point by point. It's very eye opening.
So what you're saying is that these people are so morally bankrupt that if they didn't have a book telling them what to believe they would go around robbing, stealing, and murdering? That's the exact conclusion one gets when they say that's what atheists do...
Where did I say that? I definitely don't believe that, because I don't believe the Bible is the only source for moral teaching. In fact, I believe that much of the Bible has stuff in it that doesn't pertain to modern man (in what I call the New Covenant with God) and can be terrible to follow. Much of what I see as "law" in the lives of my Evangelical friends I believe holds them back from performing as they've been created to perform. I feel it is really sad when people take Old Testament laws and try to use them in the modern day, because they weren't written for us, and they don't often work for us.
For me, the ultimate truth of God is what Christ professed as "His" commandments: Love God, love others. That's it. That's the entire Bible story in 4 words. It doesn't get more complicated than that, but many people learn this truth without ever opening a Bible. As I often say, whever there is love there is God. To me they're one and the same.
Murdering someone is not loving them. Stealing from them (as a criminal, or as a taxing government) is not loving them. Forcing them into slavery (as a slave-owner, or as a military draft) is not loving them. Bombing someone to the Middle Ages is not loving someone. That's why I laugh when I hear Bush or Obama or Sean Hannity profess faith in Christ, because it is obvious that they haven't actually read what Christ said.
Thank you for your insightful contribution, which I rather suspect stands ready to be cut and pasted into any discussion featuring the words "science", "religion" or "bat shit insane cultists who view everything in relation to their paranoid schizophrenia about a huge beardy man who will torture them for ever unless they flatter him".
I'm sorry you didn't have time to read my contribution, which was definitely not a cut and paste job. From my irregular faith-based posts here, I've gained new friends and had some decent discussions, even with atheists, about why my view of the Bible ("Preterist") has a very becoming feel to it for non-believers, rather than the mainstream Evangelical view of the Bible.
I'm not here to convince you to believe anything. If anything, I want to show those engaged in Christian cultism that Christianity has other branches from the same roots as their branch, and that there is a lot of what they believe that may not connect to the Bible.
Even if you're not interested in becoming a Christian, or believing in God, I do feel that "my" Preterist perspective can make your life easier in dealing with psycho cult Christians in the future. A little food for thought, at least.