So... no mortgages for anyone, then? Or small business loans? Or raising funds for large capital expenditures (say, building a new chip fab)?
- Don't do credit unless you absolutely have to
Wait... doesn't that fly in the face of your first "rule"?
Here's an interesting rule about absolutisms: they're rarely all that absolute.
As an aside, leveraged investment, which includes all the things I listed above, among many other things, is a very good thing. The problem is, your average bank in the US was leveraged 30:1, which is absolutely frickin' insane. Fortunately, this crisis will force businesses and people back down to more healthy leverage ratios.
Most people thought it would be a new president, but now we know that's not the case.
Don't be a tool. No one (well, maybe a few fanatics) believed that the election of Obama would magically turn the economy around. So, what are you? A republican hack takings digs where you can, or are you just a blind cynic?
An interesting article, for sure. The issue with the Gaussian Copula model for pools of mortgages in CDOs is how sensitive they are to the assumptions of the model. If, for example, the annual growth rate of home prices is 2% instead of 10%, things look tremendously different. If correlations between housing prices in different cities is 50% instead of 10% -- disaster.
Wait... what you've just told me is that the Gaussian Copula model is very *good* at predicting what will happen. Or: the problem wasn't the model, it was the assumptions. Clearly, the assumption that house price correlation is only 10% is terribly, terribly wrong. Similarly, the assumption that houses will have a constant YoY appreciation of 10% is simply ridiculous in the long run. Sounds like the model isn't to blame at all: it was the idiots who fed those models bad data.
Very good points - also, how do you "loan" a kindle book to a buddy that stopped by? You can't!
Actually, you can, sort of. You can connect your kindle account with your friend, at which point both of your libraries are available to each other. But, yeah, it ain't perfect. And, IMHO, the price for an e-book is still way out of whack (if I can buy a paper copy cheaper, I won't bother with the ebook. *shrug*)
Netbooks is where mass media is going. And once you have a netbook, who needs a Kindle.
You've *gotta* be joking. Netbooks and dedicated ebook readers have *completely* different usability requirements. The former needs a decent keyboard, a backlit display with fast refresh, etc, etc. The latter first and foremost needs to be small, light, and portable, with a decent battery life. I mean, who the hell would want to sit in bed with a fucking netbook propped open on their chest?
Sorry bub. You're either completely insane, or totally out of touch. Probably a bit of both.
Still, if you write "february 26th"? I have to ask - 26th of what?
Uhh... February. You know, like "day 42 - George and I are still stranded on this desert island, and each day, he looks tastier and tastier..." That isn't too terribly confusing for you, is it?:)
but that is still the wrong way round, nearly all UK residents will write 26th February 2009 (you insensitive clod!)
Hey, it ain't my fault you're weird, you limey bastard.:)
For the record, I'm Canadian, and AFAIK, we've never written the date that way. 'course, for all I know, that may be a little cultural inheritance from our 800lb gorilla neighbour to the south.
The date should be fully written as "the 26th day of February in the year of our lord, 2009"
Uh, no, it shouldn't. Your "lord" sure as hell isn't my "lord" (which is, of course, the Great Noodley One), so the phrase "year of our lord" is, at best, inaccurate.
Speaking as a conservative Christian who believes that same-sex sexual activity transgresses an objective moral principle:
Just to be clear, there's nothing "objective" about your beliefs. Believing any kind of relationship between two consenting adults of sound mind is immoral is *clearly* a subjective assessment. ie, there is nothing inherent about that belief that makes it logical outside the framework of your religion.
Well, you can hardly blame them for that one. When your average English speaker writes out a date, they'd write it as, for example, "February 26th, 2009"... which just so happens to be MM/DD/YYYY.
It's not. Thanks! I couldn't find the relevant section of the copyright code, nor an interpretation of it (all of Google's hits are about this exact story... not terribly useful), but I probably just wasn't looking hard enough...
If I have the right to hire someone to read a book to me (and I do)
You do? According to what law? I mean, at some point, reading out loud becomes a public performance that requires the appropriate rights to be secured from the copyright holder (ie, I can't just start up a stage show in which I read, out loud, Frank Herbert's Dune for all to hear without securing the rights to perform said work). So I assume you have some legal precedent or explicit law which states that one person reading to another doesn't cross that line? Or are you, perhaps, simply making an assumption based on your own expectations and biases?
If there had been, I suspect more than a couple wise men would've spotted it and thus there would be historical records. Yet, funny enough, no one's been able to identify such an event. Interesting, that...
It's kind of like the W3C coming out of the clockwork and saying "Hey! I invented the internet! Remember all those RFCs ?
Uhh, not to nitpick... wait, no, specifically to nitpick, the W3C doesn't generate RFCs. That'd be the IETF's job. Nevertheless, your point is a good one.:)
Except, of course, that water vapor has a fairly short timespan in the atmosphere, particularly at high concentrations, before it comes out in the former of that ever familiar phenomenon: rain.
But, yeah, I'm sure those thousands of climate scientists just missed the whole water vapor theory and you somehow managed to spot it for them. Nice work!
First, yes, because the laws say it's so. And we have a federal court system that actually upholds said laws. And any attempt to repeal said laws would result in some rather loud complaints by the opposition parties, who actually value said privacy laws, and were instrumental in getting them passed in the first place. Additionally, we have a populace who actually values said laws, which is, again, why they ever got enacted.
But, you're right, I'm sure some massive conspiracy would result in those laws quietly being repealed without anyone ever knowing...::rollseyes::
Oh, and if that weren't all enough, because healthcare is a provincial matter, there's no way they'd get roped into a nation-wide database-type system simply due to cost and overhead, without major complaints coming from said provinces.
For a government health care system to service your heath needs, it has access to the very same information that you wouldn't want to see in the hands of another branch of government, like say the police.
Bah, you're just a paranoid git. The government could just as easily force private institutions to divulge said information to them. Hell, they coiuld pass laws requiring exactly that. The only difference is, the corporations can *also* screw you in myriad other ways, including withholding or otherwise denying treatment if they feel it isn't cost effective for them to provide it.
The rest of your post betrays the same paranoia and biases. The only difference between corporations and the government is the former can't be voted out if you don't like 'em. I hope you enjoy your corporatism!
These constituents are the people who get upset about having a national biometric database for identification purposes, but demand nationalized health care.
I must be missing something. How are these things at odds with one another? I mean, last I checked, Canada doesn't have the former while at the same time having the latter (healthcare is a provincial-level issue... there is no nation-wide database for health information, nor will there ever be). And we have *much* stronger privacy legislation, too, which covers both the private *and* public sectors.
Methinks you're barking up the wrong tree, here...
True, but they don't know which news stories I am monitoring thru Google News Alerts, or what terms I am searching on, or which address I am asking directions for, nor can they combine that information. Google's ability to aggregate data is truly staggering.
Uhuh. So? Again, this is only a leveling up in what has been a constant effort to erode your privacy. The simple fact is, for decades now, your every purchase, what magazines, newspapers, and TV's you subscribe to, what charities you donate to, and so on, and so on, has been available to these data mining companies, and they use it every day to help advertisers target things to you.
The simple fact is, your privacy disappeared a *long* time ago. Your worries about Google are too little, too late. They're but one (currently small) fish in a pond of big players who've spent years learning about who you are and what you buy.
Microsoft was found under law in the United States and the EU to have abused its monopoly to unfairly exclude competition
Correct.
It is still doing so.
Speculation. Or are you privy to a recent trial outcome that's never been published?
Remedies are still being sought.
Correct.
The ongoing downside for the industry and consumers is huge. This is not personal opinion but adjudicated fact.
No, *that* is *specifically* opinion. Last I checked, there was no "adjudicated fact" that demonstrated that Microsoft's *current* actions, today, are resulting in an "ongoing downside for the industry and consumers". Only that their previous actions have done so.
GP already said "Either that, or she is one of the most clueless people the Obama administration has to offer."
Cluelessness and wrongly believing things are kinda the same thing here...
You *did* see the "perhaps" part of my statement, didn't you? It isn't "she is either a shill or she's stupid". It's, "she's either a shill, or she isn't, and if that's the case, she may or may not be wrong." Or are you suddenly an expert in determining the danger of nascent monopolies such that you can reliably second-guess her judgment?
I'm not doubting that, I'm just commenting on Varney's comment regarding the issue. The way she addressed the issue (For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem...) suggests to me that someone at Microsoft put her up to it.
Or that maybe, just maybe, she's an independent thinker who believes (perhaps wrongly) Microsoft isn't a problem.
But the conspiracy theory is ever so much more exciting, isn't it?
Dude, companies like Experian and Acxiom have been mining your every credit card and club card purchase, among many other things (they can even tell you if a given person's current vehicle lease is about to expire), for *years*. If you're really worried about Google, I hate to break it to you, but you're a little late to the game.
We are seeing a rise in atmospheric CO2 - but it is substantially less than the CO2 that humans put out. That means that we are also seeing a rise in the sink levels of CO2 - so I guess the fairies are working overtime.
Or "magical" things like, oh I dunno, the ocean are absorbing more CO2 as atmospheric concentrations increase. And I'm sure there are many other sinks (such as algae, whose growth would be enhanced by greater availability of CO2) that work the same way.
Or: the sinks may be increasing their absorption in the face of higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but they aren't keeping up with the pace at which we're putting out said CO2, and that's the *entire fucking problem in the first place*.
Why is it that people that view the AGW hypothesis with skepticism often get tossed in with the Young Earthers, ID crowd, and other religious zealots?
Because they both do the same things:
1) Posit already debunked hypothesis as alternatives to mainstream thinking (Sunspots! Cosmic rays! Magic unicorns!), 2) Rely on weak conspiracy theories to support their cause ("funding means all scientists lie!"), 3) Use even the tiniest "hole" as proof positive that their theory is correct (this article being an excellent example), 4) Lean heavily on the "rogue scientist" myth (that the establishment is wrong and it takes crazy wingnuts to further science... I fondly refer to this as Galileo Syndrome),
I'm sure there are many other similarities, but those are just the first few that come to mind.
Slashdot Mirror
- Don't spend the money you don't have
So... no mortgages for anyone, then? Or small business loans? Or raising funds for large capital expenditures (say, building a new chip fab)?
- Don't do credit unless you absolutely have to
Wait... doesn't that fly in the face of your first "rule"?
Here's an interesting rule about absolutisms: they're rarely all that absolute.
As an aside, leveraged investment, which includes all the things I listed above, among many other things, is a very good thing. The problem is, your average bank in the US was leveraged 30:1, which is absolutely frickin' insane. Fortunately, this crisis will force businesses and people back down to more healthy leverage ratios.
Most people thought it would be a new president, but now we know that's not the case.
Don't be a tool. No one (well, maybe a few fanatics) believed that the election of Obama would magically turn the economy around. So, what are you? A republican hack takings digs where you can, or are you just a blind cynic?
An interesting article, for sure. The issue with the Gaussian Copula model for pools of mortgages in CDOs is how sensitive they are to the assumptions of the model. If, for example, the annual growth rate of home prices is 2% instead of 10%, things look tremendously different. If correlations between housing prices in different cities is 50% instead of 10% -- disaster.
Wait... what you've just told me is that the Gaussian Copula model is very *good* at predicting what will happen. Or: the problem wasn't the model, it was the assumptions. Clearly, the assumption that house price correlation is only 10% is terribly, terribly wrong. Similarly, the assumption that houses will have a constant YoY appreciation of 10% is simply ridiculous in the long run. Sounds like the model isn't to blame at all: it was the idiots who fed those models bad data.
Very good points - also, how do you "loan" a kindle book to a buddy that stopped by? You can't!
Actually, you can, sort of. You can connect your kindle account with your friend, at which point both of your libraries are available to each other. But, yeah, it ain't perfect. And, IMHO, the price for an e-book is still way out of whack (if I can buy a paper copy cheaper, I won't bother with the ebook. *shrug*)
Netbooks is where mass media is going. And once you have a netbook, who needs a Kindle.
You've *gotta* be joking. Netbooks and dedicated ebook readers have *completely* different usability requirements. The former needs a decent keyboard, a backlit display with fast refresh, etc, etc. The latter first and foremost needs to be small, light, and portable, with a decent battery life. I mean, who the hell would want to sit in bed with a fucking netbook propped open on their chest?
Sorry bub. You're either completely insane, or totally out of touch. Probably a bit of both.
Still, if you write "february 26th"? I have to ask - 26th of what?
Uhh... February. You know, like "day 42 - George and I are still stranded on this desert island, and each day, he looks tastier and tastier..." That isn't too terribly confusing for you, is it? :)
but that is still the wrong way round, nearly all UK residents will write 26th February 2009 (you insensitive clod!)
Hey, it ain't my fault you're weird, you limey bastard. :)
For the record, I'm Canadian, and AFAIK, we've never written the date that way. 'course, for all I know, that may be a little cultural inheritance from our 800lb gorilla neighbour to the south.
The date should be fully written as "the 26th day of February in the year of our lord, 2009"
Uh, no, it shouldn't. Your "lord" sure as hell isn't my "lord" (which is, of course, the Great Noodley One), so the phrase "year of our lord" is, at best, inaccurate.
Speaking as a conservative Christian who believes that same-sex sexual activity transgresses an objective moral principle:
Just to be clear, there's nothing "objective" about your beliefs. Believing any kind of relationship between two consenting adults of sound mind is immoral is *clearly* a subjective assessment. ie, there is nothing inherent about that belief that makes it logical outside the framework of your religion.
and I mean, MM/DD/YYYY? come on!
Well, you can hardly blame them for that one. When your average English speaker writes out a date, they'd write it as, for example, "February 26th, 2009"... which just so happens to be MM/DD/YYYY.
It's not. Thanks! I couldn't find the relevant section of the copyright code, nor an interpretation of it (all of Google's hits are about this exact story... not terribly useful), but I probably just wasn't looking hard enough...
If I have the right to hire someone to read a book to me (and I do)
You do? According to what law? I mean, at some point, reading out loud becomes a public performance that requires the appropriate rights to be secured from the copyright holder (ie, I can't just start up a stage show in which I read, out loud, Frank Herbert's Dune for all to hear without securing the rights to perform said work). So I assume you have some legal precedent or explicit law which states that one person reading to another doesn't cross that line? Or are you, perhaps, simply making an assumption based on your own expectations and biases?
I had never heard of this.
Jebus... time to turn in your geek card. The IOCCC has been operating off and on since *1984*, ffs.
"If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore."
Where, in this case, "computer" equals a sandboxed JS interpreter.
Yeah. *Scary*.
If there had been, I suspect more than a couple wise men would've spotted it and thus there would be historical records. Yet, funny enough, no one's been able to identify such an event. Interesting, that...
It's kind of like the W3C coming out of the clockwork and saying "Hey! I invented the internet! Remember all those RFCs ?
Uhh, not to nitpick... wait, no, specifically to nitpick, the W3C doesn't generate RFCs. That'd be the IETF's job. Nevertheless, your point is a good one. :)
Except, of course, that water vapor has a fairly short timespan in the atmosphere, particularly at high concentrations, before it comes out in the former of that ever familiar phenomenon: rain.
But, yeah, I'm sure those thousands of climate scientists just missed the whole water vapor theory and you somehow managed to spot it for them. Nice work!
Really? Why is that? Because the law says so?
First, yes, because the laws say it's so. And we have a federal court system that actually upholds said laws. And any attempt to repeal said laws would result in some rather loud complaints by the opposition parties, who actually value said privacy laws, and were instrumental in getting them passed in the first place. Additionally, we have a populace who actually values said laws, which is, again, why they ever got enacted.
But, you're right, I'm sure some massive conspiracy would result in those laws quietly being repealed without anyone ever knowing... ::rollseyes::
Oh, and if that weren't all enough, because healthcare is a provincial matter, there's no way they'd get roped into a nation-wide database-type system simply due to cost and overhead, without major complaints coming from said provinces.
For a government health care system to service your heath needs, it has access to the very same information that you wouldn't want to see in the hands of another branch of government, like say the police.
Bah, you're just a paranoid git. The government could just as easily force private institutions to divulge said information to them. Hell, they coiuld pass laws requiring exactly that. The only difference is, the corporations can *also* screw you in myriad other ways, including withholding or otherwise denying treatment if they feel it isn't cost effective for them to provide it.
The rest of your post betrays the same paranoia and biases. The only difference between corporations and the government is the former can't be voted out if you don't like 'em. I hope you enjoy your corporatism!
These constituents are the people who get upset about having a national biometric database for identification purposes, but demand nationalized health care.
I must be missing something. How are these things at odds with one another? I mean, last I checked, Canada doesn't have the former while at the same time having the latter (healthcare is a provincial-level issue... there is no nation-wide database for health information, nor will there ever be). And we have *much* stronger privacy legislation, too, which covers both the private *and* public sectors.
Methinks you're barking up the wrong tree, here...
True, but they don't know which news stories I am monitoring thru Google News Alerts, or what terms I am searching on, or which address I am asking directions for, nor can they combine that information. Google's ability to aggregate data is truly staggering.
Uhuh. So? Again, this is only a leveling up in what has been a constant effort to erode your privacy. The simple fact is, for decades now, your every purchase, what magazines, newspapers, and TV's you subscribe to, what charities you donate to, and so on, and so on, has been available to these data mining companies, and they use it every day to help advertisers target things to you.
The simple fact is, your privacy disappeared a *long* time ago. Your worries about Google are too little, too late. They're but one (currently small) fish in a pond of big players who've spent years learning about who you are and what you buy.
Microsoft was found under law in the United States and the EU to have abused its monopoly to unfairly exclude competition
Correct.
It is still doing so.
Speculation. Or are you privy to a recent trial outcome that's never been published?
Remedies are still being sought.
Correct.
The ongoing downside for the industry and consumers is huge. This is not personal opinion but adjudicated fact.
No, *that* is *specifically* opinion. Last I checked, there was no "adjudicated fact" that demonstrated that Microsoft's *current* actions, today, are resulting in an "ongoing downside for the industry and consumers". Only that their previous actions have done so.
Nice axe, though. How's the grinding going?
You *did* see the "perhaps" part of my statement, didn't you? It isn't "she is either a shill or she's stupid". It's, "she's either a shill, or she isn't, and if that's the case, she may or may not be wrong." Or are you suddenly an expert in determining the danger of nascent monopolies such that you can reliably second-guess her judgment?
I'm not doubting that, I'm just commenting on Varney's comment regarding the issue. The way she addressed the issue (For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem...) suggests to me that someone at Microsoft put her up to it.
Or that maybe, just maybe, she's an independent thinker who believes (perhaps wrongly) Microsoft isn't a problem.
But the conspiracy theory is ever so much more exciting, isn't it?
Dude, companies like Experian and Acxiom have been mining your every credit card and club card purchase, among many other things (they can even tell you if a given person's current vehicle lease is about to expire), for *years*. If you're really worried about Google, I hate to break it to you, but you're a little late to the game.
We are seeing a rise in atmospheric CO2 - but it is substantially less than the CO2 that humans put out. That means that we are also seeing a rise in the sink levels of CO2 - so I guess the fairies are working overtime.
Or "magical" things like, oh I dunno, the ocean are absorbing more CO2 as atmospheric concentrations increase. And I'm sure there are many other sinks (such as algae, whose growth would be enhanced by greater availability of CO2) that work the same way.
Or: the sinks may be increasing their absorption in the face of higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but they aren't keeping up with the pace at which we're putting out said CO2, and that's the *entire fucking problem in the first place*.
Why is it that people that view the AGW hypothesis with skepticism often get tossed in with the Young Earthers, ID crowd, and other religious zealots?
Because they both do the same things:
1) Posit already debunked hypothesis as alternatives to mainstream thinking (Sunspots! Cosmic rays! Magic unicorns!),
2) Rely on weak conspiracy theories to support their cause ("funding means all scientists lie!"),
3) Use even the tiniest "hole" as proof positive that their theory is correct (this article being an excellent example),
4) Lean heavily on the "rogue scientist" myth (that the establishment is wrong and it takes crazy wingnuts to further science... I fondly refer to this as Galileo Syndrome),
I'm sure there are many other similarities, but those are just the first few that come to mind.