The Bush administration cost America something like $15 Trillion in lost equity value in just its last 4 months. On top of that it cost America something that you cannot put a value on. Respect.
Obama is going to have to work very hard to top that record of misery.
One of the Changes was greater transparency. (cough)
What is it with the readers on Slashdot? A couple of weeks in office and Obama has already loosened several regulations and policies pertaining to transparency, including.
1. The Ashcroft directive to automatically deny FOIA applications. 2. Made changes to the Presidential Records Act. 3. Started work on an Open Government Directive.
Also as a Senator Obama has been instrumental in legislation fostering transpaency.
The US unionized? What a laugh. Obviously you have no clue about the US.
As far as intelligence, that is an innate human characteristic unlikely to vary from one nation to another despite the usual racist opinions to the contrary.
As far as productivity, the US is not the highest in the world. However the two countries that are significantly higher are very small (Luxembourg, Norway) and are much more homogeneous.
The article you cited shows higher tax rates for Canada and the UK than the US. Did you look at the table results for say Canada, rather than just the graph which shows only income tax?
Canada has a top 29% federal income tax, plus a 24% provincial top rate, plus 5% CPP plus a 5% GST plus a rate of up to 10% VAT.
The UK has a personal tax top rate of 40% + another 24% for national insurance and a 15% VAT.
Your 38% rate at 1300/week suggests an annual income of over $175,000 USD. I think you would find that in England or Canada your effective tax rate on that level of income would be well over 50%.
The US has about $100 trillion in capital, growing at a rate roughly of 3% or 3 trillion per year on average. Debt held in foreign hands as the result of 30 years of balance of trade deficits is on the order of 3 trillion.
Right now the trade deficit is running at a rate of about $400 billion/year, most of which due to oil imports which will end in the next 40 years or so.
None of these numbers indicate that foreign debt or trade deficits will lead to anything like hyperinflation in anyone's lifetime. Suggesting so is utter nonsense.
The US has the lowest effective tax rates in the world among developed countries, mostly because of the lack of nationalized health care.
The reason wages are higher in the US vs. other countries has much more to do with worker productivity and demand for labor than anything to do with tax rates.
The Supreme Court has been generally narrowing the scope of patent law over the past few years. My guess is that they won't take the case, and if they do the odds are that they will uphold Bilski, or possibly narrow the scope of patentable material even further.
No they haven't died out, the heydey of Analog was actually in the 60's. Analog went through a few years when it was published in a large format offset printed magazine with some very nice artwork. And the content was wonderful. Among other things Dune was serialized in Analog during those years.
There was some good stuff in the 70's too. Joe Haldeman's Forever War, which Ridley Scott is planning to make into a movie first appeared as a serial in Analog then.
I still have my old large format Analogs in a box in my garage. I've been a continuous subscriber for 43 years... since I was about 12. It is now quite painful to read knowing the former glory. I have about 3 years of back issues now that I haven't read.
The publication volume numbers are also painful to look at. They are less than 10% of what they were in the 60's.
Given the tough economy and the general trend away from the sciences and worse yet reading anything longer than a web page it would not surprise me to see Analog stop publication for a while. Or forever.
What do you do when your server, or your customer's service, is unavailable for a week or three?
Use the backup, Luke.
Seriously this is one of the best things about webapps. It is far easier to ensure redundancy and backup quality than if the data and apps were out on user machines.
Re:Sometimes it is good.
on
Less Is Moore
·
· Score: 1
Intel makes a lot more money than the GPU manufacturers.
If I had seen what they were doing beforehand I would have said 5:1 in favor. That place was a hell-hole.
Among other things the reactors had no containment vessels, was designed so badly that it required core cooling even after a shutdown. The control rods were so poorly designed that the core reaction rate actually increased while they were being inserted. The operators were performing a power failure test (on a live reactor!) where the steam turbines were to be used to generate electricity for the coolant pumps as they spun down. A previous similar test conducted under better conditions failed miserably. This previous failure was swept under the rug because it would have delayed commissioning the plant, meaning the plant's constructors would not get bonuses.
This new test was also planned in secret, without approval of the Soviet nuclear regulatory board.
During the run-up to this insane test a problem with the Kiev grid forced a delay in the test plan; rather than scrub and reschedule the plan was conducted with an unprepared night shift. The engineer in charge of operation of the control rods that night was a new employee with only 3 months of experience in that role. One of the documents associated with this disaster reads:
"One operator rings another and asks: What shall I do? In the programme there are instructions of what to do, and then a lot of things are crossed out. His interlocutor thought for a while and then replied: Follow the crossed out instructions."
1. While the Democrats certainly encouraged affordable housing, no bank was required to make loans that placed it in financial risk. Many regional banks and all credit unions are coming through this unscathed because they maintained financial propriety. Nor does any of this explain the practice of issuing undocumented loans or interest only loans. These practices were simply a matter of pandering to speculators.
2. NONE of this explains the MBS and CDS fiasco which is what dragged down investment banks like Lehman and Merrill Lynch. Nor the looming disaster of the derivatives market. These problems are clearly due to failed regulatory institutions.
3. If the government regulators were doing their jobs where were they when Bernie Madoff was running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history?
4. Where were the financial checks on the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America? BofA was on sound footing until they were encouraged to buy Merrill, and now they are being dragged into insolvency.
5. Then there is the question of what the regulatory agencies were doing in the 7 years of 2001 to 2007 when Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were engaging in questionable loan practices. It was not merely a matter of Raines; he was responsible for Freddie Mac only. BOTH companies failed.
6. Democrats were not the majority party in Congress in 2003-2004. Any legislation or regulatory activities during that period of time could not possibly have been blocked by them. Any claims otherwise are ludicrous.
7. During the Bush administration the leverage of many large financial institutions increased from a factor of 10 to a factor of 20. This coupled with increased default rates was and still is a key factor in this debacle. There is no way any responsible regulation of a financial system should permit this level of leverage.
From Wikipedia:
A 2004 SEC ruling allowed USA investment banks to issue substantially more debt, which was then used to purchase MBS. Over 2004-07, the top five US investment banks each significantly increased their financial leverage (see diagram), which increased their vulnerability to the declining value of MBSs. These five institutions reported over $4.1 trillion in debt for fiscal year 2007, about 30% of USA nominal GDP for 2007. Further, the percentage of subprime mortgages originated to total originations increased from below 10% in 2001-2003 to between 18-20% from 2004-2006, due in-part to financing from investment banks.
8. Bush was President of the Unitied States for the past 8 years, and the Republican party had majorities in the House and Senate for 6 out of the last 8 years. They did NOTHING.
This graph from Wikipedia illustrates the explosion in fraud in the system during the past 8 years.
President George W. Bush stated in September 2008: "Once this crisis is resolved, there will be time to update our financial regulatory structures. Our 21st century global economy remains regulated largely by outdated 20th century laws."[97] The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has conceded that self-regulation of investment banks contributed to the crisis.[98][99]
Locking the barn door after the horses have left? Clearly so.
At least we can safely say that Democrats have no problem with corporate welfare either. Yep, all of these embryonic stem cells are miracle cures, but, god forbid, every biotech company feels the need to pony up to Washington so Obama can pay for the research.
Right and like 10 TRILLION in bailouts thanks to REPUBLICAN screwups isn't corporate welfare? At least R&D funding has a decent chance to make our lives better. The bailouts are just going to office redecoration, golf trips, spa trips and fat bonuses.
The fact that he didn't commit to following up on sweeping criminal prosecutions for people in the previous administration is not at all the same thing as saying he is in favor of continuing the same policies of Mr. Bush in this area.
In fact Obama has been one of the most severe critics of the Bush administration in this area.
So let's be a little more reasonable about the level of cynicism here. Yes, I don't expect miracles, but I do expect an big improvement over the Bush policies.
Bush has already stolen our economic freedom. The deficits, bailouts and crippled economy that are part of his legacy will haunt us for decades.
Obama may not do everything I would like to see in terms of restoring personal freedoms, but he is definitely working to close out some of the most egregious issues - like erosion of Habeas Corpus.
Slashdot Mirror
The Bush administration cost America something like $15 Trillion in lost equity value in just its last 4 months. On top of that it cost America something that you cannot put a value on. Respect.
Obama is going to have to work very hard to top that record of misery.
Thermodynamics is never irrelevant. In particular the thermodynamics of phase equilibria determine the efficiency of a separation process stage.
Hint: it is never 100%.
One of the Changes was greater transparency. (cough)
What is it with the readers on Slashdot? A couple of weeks in office and Obama has already loosened several regulations and policies pertaining to transparency, including.
1. The Ashcroft directive to automatically deny FOIA applications.
2. Made changes to the Presidential Records Act.
3. Started work on an Open Government Directive.
Also as a Senator Obama has been instrumental in legislation fostering transpaency.
http://www.propublica.org/article/obama-begins-rollback-of-bush-era-secrecy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability_and_Transparency_Act_of_2006
All you have done is revealed your complete lack of knowledge on the topic.
Maybe you should see a doctor for that cough.
The US unionized? What a laugh. Obviously you have no clue about the US.
As far as intelligence, that is an innate human characteristic unlikely to vary from one nation to another despite the usual racist opinions to the contrary.
As far as productivity, the US is not the highest in the world. However the two countries that are significantly higher are very small (Luxembourg, Norway) and are much more homogeneous.
The article you cited shows higher tax rates for Canada and the UK than the US. Did you look at the table results for say Canada, rather than just the graph which shows only income tax?
Canada has a top 29% federal income tax, plus a 24% provincial top rate, plus 5% CPP plus a 5% GST plus a rate of up to 10% VAT.
The UK has a personal tax top rate of 40% + another 24% for national insurance and a 15% VAT.
Your 38% rate at 1300/week suggests an annual income of over $175,000 USD. I think you would find that in England or Canada your effective tax rate on that level of income would be well over 50%.
There are always losses in any recycling process. You cannot cheat thermodynamics.
The US has about $100 trillion in capital, growing at a rate roughly of 3% or 3 trillion per year on average. Debt held in foreign hands as the result of 30 years of balance of trade deficits is on the order of 3 trillion.
Right now the trade deficit is running at a rate of about $400 billion/year, most of which due to oil imports which will end in the next 40 years or so.
None of these numbers indicate that foreign debt or trade deficits will lead to anything like hyperinflation in anyone's lifetime. Suggesting so is utter nonsense.
The US has the lowest effective tax rates in the world among developed countries, mostly because of the lack of nationalized health care.
The reason wages are higher in the US vs. other countries has much more to do with worker productivity and demand for labor than anything to do with tax rates.
There are a number of studies out that show decreasing the yellow light period does in fact increase the number of rear end collisions.
Don't get your free patent advice from Slashdot.
The Supreme Court has been generally narrowing the scope of patent law over the past few years. My guess is that they won't take the case, and if they do the odds are that they will uphold Bilski, or possibly narrow the scope of patentable material even further.
Psoriasis, Herpes, Halitosis, TineaPedis, Acne, etc.
No they haven't died out, the heydey of Analog was actually in the 60's. Analog went through a few years when it was published in a large format offset printed magazine with some very nice artwork. And the content was wonderful. Among other things Dune was serialized in Analog during those years.
There was some good stuff in the 70's too. Joe Haldeman's Forever War, which Ridley Scott is planning to make into a movie first appeared as a serial in Analog then.
I still have my old large format Analogs in a box in my garage. I've been a continuous subscriber for 43 years... since I was about 12. It is now quite painful to read knowing the former glory. I have about 3 years of back issues now that I haven't read.
The publication volume numbers are also painful to look at. They are less than 10% of what they were in the 60's.
Given the tough economy and the general trend away from the sciences and worse yet reading anything longer than a web page it would not surprise me to see Analog stop publication for a while. Or forever.
You are sure.... I'm not. I don't know of any place on the Internet where an author can get paid for a science fiction story.
It is very hard way to make a living. The only way Niven was able to get started was because he had the right parents. Asimov had a flexible day job.
The pulps dying is a bad sign.
What do you do when your server, or your customer's service, is unavailable for a week or three?
Use the backup, Luke.
Seriously this is one of the best things about webapps. It is far easier to ensure redundancy and backup quality than if the data and apps were out on user machines.
Intel makes a lot more money than the GPU manufacturers.
If I had seen what they were doing beforehand I would have said 5:1 in favor. That place was a hell-hole.
Among other things the reactors had no containment vessels, was designed so badly that it required core cooling even after a shutdown. The control rods were so poorly designed that the core reaction rate actually increased while they were being inserted. The operators were performing a power failure test (on a live reactor!) where the steam turbines were to be used to generate electricity for the coolant pumps as they spun down. A previous similar test conducted under better conditions failed miserably. This previous failure was swept under the rug because it would have delayed commissioning the plant, meaning the plant's constructors would not get bonuses.
This new test was also planned in secret, without approval of the Soviet nuclear regulatory board.
During the run-up to this insane test a problem with the Kiev grid forced a delay in the test plan; rather than scrub and reschedule the plan was conducted with an unprepared night shift. The engineer in charge of operation of the control rods that night was a new employee with only 3 months of experience in that role. One of the documents associated with this disaster reads:
"One operator rings another and asks: What shall I do? In the programme there are instructions of what to do, and then a lot of things are crossed out. His interlocutor thought for a while and then replied: Follow the crossed out instructions."
Continually making the same thing for less money is not a very good business model.
Pretty soon the customers will be asking for the same performance, free.
Reminds me of the old quote, "We have being doing so much with so little for so long we are now qualified to do anything with nothing at all".
1. While the Democrats certainly encouraged affordable housing, no bank was required to make loans that placed it in financial risk. Many regional banks and all credit unions are coming through this unscathed because they maintained financial propriety. Nor does any of this explain the practice of issuing undocumented loans or interest only loans. These practices were simply a matter of pandering to speculators.
2. NONE of this explains the MBS and CDS fiasco which is what dragged down investment banks like Lehman and Merrill Lynch. Nor the looming disaster of the derivatives market. These problems are clearly due to failed regulatory institutions.
3. If the government regulators were doing their jobs where were they when Bernie Madoff was running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history?
4. Where were the financial checks on the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America? BofA was on sound footing until they were encouraged to buy Merrill, and now they are being dragged into insolvency.
5. Then there is the question of what the regulatory agencies were doing in the 7 years of 2001 to 2007 when Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were engaging in questionable loan practices. It was not merely a matter of Raines; he was responsible for Freddie Mac only. BOTH companies failed.
6. Democrats were not the majority party in Congress in 2003-2004. Any legislation or regulatory activities during that period of time could not possibly have been blocked by them. Any claims otherwise are ludicrous.
7. During the Bush administration the leverage of many large financial institutions increased from a factor of 10 to a factor of 20. This coupled with increased default rates was and still is a key factor in this debacle. There is no way any responsible regulation of a financial system should permit this level of leverage.
From Wikipedia:
A 2004 SEC ruling allowed USA investment banks to issue substantially more debt, which was then used to purchase MBS. Over 2004-07, the top five US investment banks each significantly increased their financial leverage (see diagram), which increased their vulnerability to the declining value of MBSs. These five institutions reported over $4.1 trillion in debt for fiscal year 2007, about 30% of USA nominal GDP for 2007. Further, the percentage of subprime mortgages originated to total originations increased from below 10% in 2001-2003 to between 18-20% from 2004-2006, due in-part to financing from investment banks.
8. Bush was President of the Unitied States for the past 8 years, and the Republican party had majorities in the House and Senate for 6 out of the last 8 years. They did NOTHING.
This graph from Wikipedia illustrates the explosion in fraud in the system during the past 8 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mortgage_loan_fraud.svg
MBS credit rating downgrades coming home to roost:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MBS_Downgrades_Chart.png
President George W. Bush stated in September 2008: "Once this crisis is resolved, there will be time to update our financial regulatory structures. Our 21st century global economy remains regulated largely by outdated 20th century laws."[97] The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has conceded that self-regulation of investment banks contributed to the crisis.[98][99]
Locking the barn door after the horses have left? Clearly so.
At least we can safely say that Democrats have no problem with corporate welfare either. Yep, all of these embryonic stem cells are miracle cures, but, god forbid, every biotech company feels the need to pony up to Washington so Obama can pay for the research.
Right and like 10 TRILLION in bailouts thanks to REPUBLICAN screwups isn't corporate welfare? At least R&D funding has a decent chance to make our lives better. The bailouts are just going to office redecoration, golf trips, spa trips and fat bonuses.
Count me out of text services. All I get there is "where ru" and spam.
I for one welcome our new Linux Overlords
You mean this statement?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/179530?from=rss
The fact that he didn't commit to following up on sweeping criminal prosecutions for people in the previous administration is not at all the same thing as saying he is in favor of continuing the same policies of Mr. Bush in this area.
In fact Obama has been one of the most severe critics of the Bush administration in this area.
http://usliberals.about.com/od/extraordinaryspeeches/a/ObamaTorture.htm
http://www.barackobama.com/2007/10/04/obama_torture_and_secrecy_betr.php
So let's be a little more reasonable about the level of cynicism here. Yes, I don't expect miracles, but I do expect an big improvement over the Bush policies.
I have a watch that is solar powered. It keeps time in the night, thanks to a small energy storage device coupled to the PV.
As far as the rest of it? I have an ATSC TV. It doesn't do anything when it is off that I need.
There is no reason whatsoever that a TV should draw current from a power source when it is off.
Bush has already stolen our economic freedom. The deficits, bailouts and crippled economy that are part of his legacy will haunt us for decades.
Obama may not do everything I would like to see in terms of restoring personal freedoms, but he is definitely working to close out some of the most egregious issues - like erosion of Habeas Corpus.