Until we have things to keep the unregulated and under-regulated trading methods in check, this type of trading can be EXTREMELY dangerous because you could get lightning fast severe up and down pricing of hedge fund pricing, derivative pricing, credit default swap pricing, commodity pricing and stock futures pricing.
This is why I urge the Obama Administration to adopt these stops to clean up our financial system:
1. Tighten regulations on hedge funds, derivatives and credit default swaps by requiring actual liquidity backing to trade in these investment instruments. No controls on these investment instruments was a huge reason why the stock market crashed in September 2008.
2. Increase the minimum margin requirements for trading in stock futures and commodities from 5% to 15%, with as high as 25% on critical items like crude oil, certain refined petroleum products, natural gas, certain foodstuffs, certain industrial metals and precious metals. Higher minimum margin requirements will keep out the "make a fast buck" speculators and result in far more stable price changes.
3. Revamp the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to better balance new stock IPOs with accounting requirements. Sarbanes-Oxley as it is currently written has pretty much stopped all new IPO activity in the USA.
4. Reimpose the full provisions of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act to get the banks out of the equities business. If you look at the 1987 stock market crash, note that because banks couldn't directly trade in equities back then, they effectively became a de facto "economic backstop" that held up the US economy as the stock market recovered from that bad experience. If the Glass-Steagall was in place last fall our economy would likely have recovered a lot faster because the banks would still be standing, not be on the verge of collapse.
Actually, Internet Explorer 8.0 is a pretty good browser--I've seen a lot o stability improvements over IE 7.0 under Windows Vista Home Premium (SP2). I'd like it to be a tad faster, though.
In many ways, Windows 7 is essentially Windows Vista but with a lot of improved code optimization and some interface improvements. I've tried the public RC build and it is fast and impressively stable.
If I remember correctly, pagoda temples built in Japan are famous for their earthquake-proof designs because the design of the pagoda itself and the use of hardwood structural members meant the building would absorb the shock of an earthquake, which meant the building could even survive the occasional very strong earthquake that are common in Japan.
Indeed, the Taipei 101 skyscraper uses the same structural principle found in Japanese pagodas in order to withstand the earthquakes that happen on the island of Taiwan.
There has been some suggestions from the Obama Administration that the Ares I be dropped in favor of either the Delta IV Heavy (Delta 9250H) or Atlas V 551/552 launch vehicles instead. I believe both vehicles in their current designs can lift the Orion spacecraft to low Earth orbit.
That's why there has been a number of suggestions of shelving the Ares I rocket in favor of using either the Delta IV Heavy (Delta 9250H) or the Altas V 551/552 to launch the Orion spacecraft. I'd favor the Atlas V 551/552, though.
Of course, the problem with Apollo 1 was the combination of:
1) Too much exposed flammable materials in the pressurized portion of the capsule.
2) The inward-opening hatch.
3) The pressurized 100% oxygen atmosphere, which made any fire spread extremely rapidly.
That's why by the time the Apollo 7 capsule flew, it had the following changes:
1) Complete removal and/or replacement of flammable materials in the capsule.
2) Switch to a fast-opening outward-opening hatch.
3) Using standard air atmosphere on the ground with a phased switch to oxygen atmosphere after launch.
There has been a number of suggestions that the Orion capsule should use a modified Delta IV Heavy (Delta 9250H) rocket or an Altas V 551/552 launcher as a launch vehicle. I would not be surprised that the Obama Administration seriously considers using the Atlas V 551/552 as an alternative to the Ares I rocket.
I think in the end, since videogames have substantial online components nowadays, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and the biggest game companies like EA and the Japanese game companies should do one very simple thing: create a true unified online access standard for multiplayer games that works regardless of platform.
Imagine a few years from now you're playing a future version of Madden NFL Football from EA Sports. With a unified online access system, you can create an online account with all your game settings that would work regardless of platform. That means when you create an online profile for Madden NFL on an XBox machine, you can go to a friend's house that has a PlayStation machine and log in to play the game with all your original game settings completely intact, or go to another friend's house to do exactly the same thing with a network-connected future Nintendo Wii variant, or even do it on a PC or Mac with the appropriate hardware/software and broadband Internet connection.
Heck, why do we even need paper maps for many cases because with the Mapquest online service that uses Navteq maps that are easily updated even daily, I can find almost any place in the continental USA with amazing accuracy--and find new roads too!
Here's the thing: if you own a sat-nav unit with the latest maps loaded into the unit, try this, comparing the methods of finding the headquarters of Apple Computer at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, CA:
Conventional method:
1. Get a good map of the Cupertino area.
2. Look up on the map index "Infinite Loop"--it should you the specific grid box where "Infinite Loop" is located.
3. Find "Infinite Loop" inside that grid box.
4. Now manually figure out how to get to this point on the map.
Sat-Nav method
1. Punch in "1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California" into your sat-nav unit before you leave.
2. Follow the instructions--visual and audible--from the sat-nav unit to get there.
I prefer the latter method if I could afford a sat-nav unit.
I just recently got myself a LG W2053TQ-PF monitor with 1600x900 resolution. The colors are pretty bright, and the sharpenss is quite good too. I got it for US$149 at Fry's Electronics.
It should be noted the W2053TQ-PF has both 15-pin VGA and DVI-D inputs, and does support HDCP so you can use it with a computer that can play back [i]Blu-ray[/i] movies.
For now. But since we can build clustered LED's with multiple light spectrums, we could within a few years build a LED "bulb" that could be just as warm as an incandescent light bulb but it'll use only 1-2 watts of power compared to 40 watts of power for the incandescent equivalent.
No thanks, too. Since today's CFLs have far less of the bluish-white color temperature of early CFLs, I can use them to replace incandescent light bulbs with no problems.
Besides, with LED bulb technology rapidly maturing, at US$5 per bulb for this "improved" incandescent bulb I might as well spend just a little more and get an LED bulb that uses way less power than even CFLs for the same light output.
August 24, 1995, the day that Windows 95 became a retail product.
Why? Because it incorporated a built-in SLIP/PPP networking client that could connect to the Internet either by a network card that connected to a local area network with a gateway to the Internet or through a dial-up connection. Once that happened, people no longer needed proprietary online services such as CompuServe and America Online to access the Internet, and because of the sheer number of users switching to Window 95 by 1996, many users started to access through an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Indeed, that's how I got onto the Internet--I signed up for an local ISP account and they sent me the Windows 95 version of Netscape 2.0 customized for the ISP.
Don't laugh at my suggestion. Before Windows 95, if you wanted Internet access Microsoft DOS/Windows users needed to install a separate program called Winsock that provided the SLIP/PPP client to access the Internet--but given the penchant of new computer users most of them never did install Winsock and went the proprietary online service route instead. Windows 95 eliminated that problem, and it even opened the door for today's broadband access to the Internet, since most computer access the Internet through the RJ-45 network connection jack at download speeds as high as 100 megabits per second in a few countries like South Korea or parts of Japan.
With people migrating en masse to ISP's, both CompuServe and AOL declined, and by 2000 both were overtaken by ISP's, with names we recognize today: Comcast, EarthLink, Verizon, plus a host of smaller, more regional ISP's.
I will miss CompuServe. It served it purpose for its time, but it has become a relic of the old, pre-public Internet days of online access.
I remember all those flame wars on CIS back in the day. And it's still going on, but this time with online forums like the system here on/. and on forums running software like pHpBB and vBulletin.
I was on CompuServe for many years--and in fact used TAPCIS 5.3 and 6.0 as "front end" programs to read forums offline.
When I started, I used a 1200 bps modem; when I finally left at the end of 1999 I used a US Robotics V.90 modem to download messages at 28,800 bps (which was considered very fast for its day!).
However, Windows XP has one REALLY bad problem: its very ungraceful recovery from anytime you have an EXPLORER.EXE crash. If it weren't for that Windows XP would still be a lot more popular. The best thing about Windows Vista is that whenever you have a program crash the recovery is far more graceful and doesn't bring the entire system down.
Thanks to much-improved code optimization, Windows 7 will run actually fairly well on older machines, and as such could become a hugely popular upgrade option.
mark my words: the 1950s trend of everyone moving west will be replaced in 2025 by stories of everyone out west moving to the midwest belt
Never happen for one reason: weather. Even if the city is "rightsized" who'd want to go out with the frigid winters of the Midwest?
The new "rightsized" cities will be mostly in the southern and western USA, where at least much of the year going outdoors is actually a pleasant experience.
However, today's Windows XP (with Service Pack 3) and Windows Vista (with Service Pack 2) aren't as vulnerable as you think. This is because both operating systems gives you a LOT of security warnings about:
1) Keeping Windows Update at least in Notify mode, which at least warns you about the availability of the latest security patches from Microsoft.
2) Installing at least an antivirus and firewall security programs.
As such, most XP and Vista users have at least Windows Update warning about installing the latest patches and usually run a full Internet security suite (or its free equivalents) from Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, Panda Software, etc.
With the increasing use of Macs (Mac Minis, iMacs, Mac Pros and the MacBook series of notebooks) to connect to the Internet, the ignorance of Mac users to a potential major malware attack is something that Apple needs to address soon, because many Mac users think that they don't need malware protection. One major malware attack directed specifically against Macs will finally convince Mac users to address this issue very quickly, that's to be sure.
Windows since Windows XP Service Pack 2 forces you to practice safe computing because the OS gives you warning about at least installing an antivirus program and firewall programs. As such, today's machines running Windows XP and Windows Vista mandates you have Windows Update at least in Notify mode and users have a full Internet security suite (or its free equivalents) installed. My current home computer (an HP Pavilion a6400f running Windows Vista Home Premium Edition)--because of these security mandates from the operating system itself--has Windows Update already patched to the latest security level (including Service Pack 2) and runs Norton Internet Security 2008; as a result, I don't see any issues with malware affecting my system.:-)
Given what we know about the geology of the area around Mt. Saint Helens, it's definitely not a candidate for a supercaldera. Otherwise, you would see something akin to the Long Valley Caldera in eastern California with its gigantic lava flows measuring many kilometers in every direction--something you see at the Toba and Yellowstone supercaldera sites.
I think what could really change things the possibility of people legally downloading music in true lossless formats such as Apple Lossless or FLAC formats. Since Apple Lossless or FLAC don't compromise music quality like you get even with 256 kbps variable bit rate AAC, MP3 or WMA formats, it means you can download fairly soon whole albums with the type of sound quality that would do even a multi-thousand dollar stereo system proud.
Interestingly enough, I think if the likes of Amazon.com offers lossless format downloads, it may pick the Apple Lossless format. Before I get run off this forum,:-) understand this: most iPods manufactured since 2004 support the Apple Lossless format, and as such given the gigantic marketshare of the iPod the potential market for Apple Lossless format music downloads is going to be quite large indeed.
Freight trains are slow for moving things since there's lots of load/unload time, and you don't get to chose the routing as precisely as by truck.
However, for large-scale movement on long-distance point-to-point operations, nothing beats a train. Especially now with improvements in RoadRailer trailers, where truck trailers can be quickly assembled into a train with 80-100 connected trailers pulled by three locomotives. RoadRailer trains are potentially VERY fuel-efficient because you no longer need the deadweight of a flat car or spline car to carry the trailers around, which saves even more on fuel consumption.
Slashdot Mirror
Until we have things to keep the unregulated and under-regulated trading methods in check, this type of trading can be EXTREMELY dangerous because you could get lightning fast severe up and down pricing of hedge fund pricing, derivative pricing, credit default swap pricing, commodity pricing and stock futures pricing.
This is why I urge the Obama Administration to adopt these stops to clean up our financial system:
1. Tighten regulations on hedge funds, derivatives and credit default swaps by requiring actual liquidity backing to trade in these investment instruments. No controls on these investment instruments was a huge reason why the stock market crashed in September 2008.
2. Increase the minimum margin requirements for trading in stock futures and commodities from 5% to 15%, with as high as 25% on critical items like crude oil, certain refined petroleum products, natural gas, certain foodstuffs, certain industrial metals and precious metals. Higher minimum margin requirements will keep out the "make a fast buck" speculators and result in far more stable price changes.
3. Revamp the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to better balance new stock IPOs with accounting requirements. Sarbanes-Oxley as it is currently written has pretty much stopped all new IPO activity in the USA.
4. Reimpose the full provisions of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act to get the banks out of the equities business. If you look at the 1987 stock market crash, note that because banks couldn't directly trade in equities back then, they effectively became a de facto "economic backstop" that held up the US economy as the stock market recovered from that bad experience. If the Glass-Steagall was in place last fall our economy would likely have recovered a lot faster because the banks would still be standing, not be on the verge of collapse.
Actually, Internet Explorer 8.0 is a pretty good browser--I've seen a lot o stability improvements over IE 7.0 under Windows Vista Home Premium (SP2). I'd like it to be a tad faster, though.
In many ways, Windows 7 is essentially Windows Vista but with a lot of improved code optimization and some interface improvements. I've tried the public RC build and it is fast and impressively stable.
If I remember correctly, pagoda temples built in Japan are famous for their earthquake-proof designs because the design of the pagoda itself and the use of hardwood structural members meant the building would absorb the shock of an earthquake, which meant the building could even survive the occasional very strong earthquake that are common in Japan.
Indeed, the Taipei 101 skyscraper uses the same structural principle found in Japanese pagodas in order to withstand the earthquakes that happen on the island of Taiwan.
There has been some suggestions from the Obama Administration that the Ares I be dropped in favor of either the Delta IV Heavy (Delta 9250H) or Atlas V 551/552 launch vehicles instead. I believe both vehicles in their current designs can lift the Orion spacecraft to low Earth orbit.
That's why there has been a number of suggestions of shelving the Ares I rocket in favor of using either the Delta IV Heavy (Delta 9250H) or the Altas V 551/552 to launch the Orion spacecraft. I'd favor the Atlas V 551/552, though.
Of course, the problem with Apollo 1 was the combination of:
1) Too much exposed flammable materials in the pressurized portion of the capsule.
2) The inward-opening hatch.
3) The pressurized 100% oxygen atmosphere, which made any fire spread extremely rapidly.
That's why by the time the Apollo 7 capsule flew, it had the following changes:
1) Complete removal and/or replacement of flammable materials in the capsule.
2) Switch to a fast-opening outward-opening hatch.
3) Using standard air atmosphere on the ground with a phased switch to oxygen atmosphere after launch.
There has been a number of suggestions that the Orion capsule should use a modified Delta IV Heavy (Delta 9250H) rocket or an Altas V 551/552 launcher as a launch vehicle. I would not be surprised that the Obama Administration seriously considers using the Atlas V 551/552 as an alternative to the Ares I rocket.
I think in the end, since videogames have substantial online components nowadays, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and the biggest game companies like EA and the Japanese game companies should do one very simple thing: create a true unified online access standard for multiplayer games that works regardless of platform.
Imagine a few years from now you're playing a future version of Madden NFL Football from EA Sports. With a unified online access system, you can create an online account with all your game settings that would work regardless of platform. That means when you create an online profile for Madden NFL on an XBox machine, you can go to a friend's house that has a PlayStation machine and log in to play the game with all your original game settings completely intact, or go to another friend's house to do exactly the same thing with a network-connected future Nintendo Wii variant, or even do it on a PC or Mac with the appropriate hardware/software and broadband Internet connection.
(Kisses Thomas Brothers map atlas)
Sure these atlases are not cheap, but I use them a lot because they're a nice backup to a sat-nav unit at least for local travel.
Heck, why do we even need paper maps for many cases because with the Mapquest online service that uses Navteq maps that are easily updated even daily, I can find almost any place in the continental USA with amazing accuracy--and find new roads too!
Here's the thing: if you own a sat-nav unit with the latest maps loaded into the unit, try this, comparing the methods of finding the headquarters of Apple Computer at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, CA:
Conventional method:
1. Get a good map of the Cupertino area.
2. Look up on the map index "Infinite Loop"--it should you the specific grid box where "Infinite Loop" is located.
3. Find "Infinite Loop" inside that grid box.
4. Now manually figure out how to get to this point on the map.
Sat-Nav method
1. Punch in "1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California" into your sat-nav unit before you leave.
2. Follow the instructions--visual and audible--from the sat-nav unit to get there.
I prefer the latter method if I could afford a sat-nav unit.
I just recently got myself a LG W2053TQ-PF monitor with 1600x900 resolution. The colors are pretty bright, and the sharpenss is quite good too. I got it for US$149 at Fry's Electronics.
It should be noted the W2053TQ-PF has both 15-pin VGA and DVI-D inputs, and does support HDCP so you can use it with a computer that can play back [i]Blu-ray[/i] movies.
For now. But since we can build clustered LED's with multiple light spectrums, we could within a few years build a LED "bulb" that could be just as warm as an incandescent light bulb but it'll use only 1-2 watts of power compared to 40 watts of power for the incandescent equivalent.
No thanks, too. Since today's CFLs have far less of the bluish-white color temperature of early CFLs, I can use them to replace incandescent light bulbs with no problems.
Besides, with LED bulb technology rapidly maturing, at US$5 per bulb for this "improved" incandescent bulb I might as well spend just a little more and get an LED bulb that uses way less power than even CFLs for the same light output.
August 24, 1995, the day that Windows 95 became a retail product.
Why? Because it incorporated a built-in SLIP/PPP networking client that could connect to the Internet either by a network card that connected to a local area network with a gateway to the Internet or through a dial-up connection. Once that happened, people no longer needed proprietary online services such as CompuServe and America Online to access the Internet, and because of the sheer number of users switching to Window 95 by 1996, many users started to access through an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Indeed, that's how I got onto the Internet--I signed up for an local ISP account and they sent me the Windows 95 version of Netscape 2.0 customized for the ISP.
Don't laugh at my suggestion. Before Windows 95, if you wanted Internet access Microsoft DOS/Windows users needed to install a separate program called Winsock that provided the SLIP/PPP client to access the Internet--but given the penchant of new computer users most of them never did install Winsock and went the proprietary online service route instead. Windows 95 eliminated that problem, and it even opened the door for today's broadband access to the Internet, since most computer access the Internet through the RJ-45 network connection jack at download speeds as high as 100 megabits per second in a few countries like South Korea or parts of Japan.
With people migrating en masse to ISP's, both CompuServe and AOL declined, and by 2000 both were overtaken by ISP's, with names we recognize today: Comcast, EarthLink, Verizon, plus a host of smaller, more regional ISP's.
I will miss CompuServe. It served it purpose for its time, but it has become a relic of the old, pre-public Internet days of online access.
I remember all those flame wars on CIS back in the day. And it's still going on, but this time with online forums like the system here on /. and on forums running software like pHpBB and vBulletin.
The Canopus Research forum had some of the most heated debates about technology back in its heyday in the middle 1990's.
I was on CompuServe for many years--and in fact used TAPCIS 5.3 and 6.0 as "front end" programs to read forums offline.
When I started, I used a 1200 bps modem; when I finally left at the end of 1999 I used a US Robotics V.90 modem to download messages at 28,800 bps (which was considered very fast for its day!).
However, Windows XP has one REALLY bad problem: its very ungraceful recovery from anytime you have an EXPLORER.EXE crash. If it weren't for that Windows XP would still be a lot more popular. The best thing about Windows Vista is that whenever you have a program crash the recovery is far more graceful and doesn't bring the entire system down.
Thanks to much-improved code optimization, Windows 7 will run actually fairly well on older machines, and as such could become a hugely popular upgrade option.
mark my words: the 1950s trend of everyone moving west will be replaced in 2025 by stories of everyone out west moving to the midwest belt
Never happen for one reason: weather. Even if the city is "rightsized" who'd want to go out with the frigid winters of the Midwest?
The new "rightsized" cities will be mostly in the southern and western USA, where at least much of the year going outdoors is actually a pleasant experience.
However, today's Windows XP (with Service Pack 3) and Windows Vista (with Service Pack 2) aren't as vulnerable as you think. This is because both operating systems gives you a LOT of security warnings about:
1) Keeping Windows Update at least in Notify mode, which at least warns you about the availability of the latest security patches from Microsoft.
2) Installing at least an antivirus and firewall security programs.
As such, most XP and Vista users have at least Windows Update warning about installing the latest patches and usually run a full Internet security suite (or its free equivalents) from Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, Panda Software, etc.
With the increasing use of Macs (Mac Minis, iMacs, Mac Pros and the MacBook series of notebooks) to connect to the Internet, the ignorance of Mac users to a potential major malware attack is something that Apple needs to address soon, because many Mac users think that they don't need malware protection. One major malware attack directed specifically against Macs will finally convince Mac users to address this issue very quickly, that's to be sure.
Windows since Windows XP Service Pack 2 forces you to practice safe computing because the OS gives you warning about at least installing an antivirus program and firewall programs. As such, today's machines running Windows XP and Windows Vista mandates you have Windows Update at least in Notify mode and users have a full Internet security suite (or its free equivalents) installed. My current home computer (an HP Pavilion a6400f running Windows Vista Home Premium Edition)--because of these security mandates from the operating system itself--has Windows Update already patched to the latest security level (including Service Pack 2) and runs Norton Internet Security 2008; as a result, I don't see any issues with malware affecting my system. :-)
Given what we know about the geology of the area around Mt. Saint Helens, it's definitely not a candidate for a supercaldera. Otherwise, you would see something akin to the Long Valley Caldera in eastern California with its gigantic lava flows measuring many kilometers in every direction--something you see at the Toba and Yellowstone supercaldera sites.
I think what could really change things the possibility of people legally downloading music in true lossless formats such as Apple Lossless or FLAC formats. Since Apple Lossless or FLAC don't compromise music quality like you get even with 256 kbps variable bit rate AAC, MP3 or WMA formats, it means you can download fairly soon whole albums with the type of sound quality that would do even a multi-thousand dollar stereo system proud.
Interestingly enough, I think if the likes of Amazon.com offers lossless format downloads, it may pick the Apple Lossless format. Before I get run off this forum, :-) understand this: most iPods manufactured since 2004 support the Apple Lossless format, and as such given the gigantic marketshare of the iPod the potential market for Apple Lossless format music downloads is going to be quite large indeed.
Freight trains are slow for moving things since there's lots of load/unload time, and you don't get to chose the routing as precisely as by truck.
However, for large-scale movement on long-distance point-to-point operations, nothing beats a train. Especially now with improvements in RoadRailer trailers, where truck trailers can be quickly assembled into a train with 80-100 connected trailers pulled by three locomotives. RoadRailer trains are potentially VERY fuel-efficient because you no longer need the deadweight of a flat car or spline car to carry the trailers around, which saves even more on fuel consumption.