"Forcing the banks" is bull. There are many banks that didn't get caught up in the greed and are doing fine, thank you. Why weren't they "forced" into making bad loans too? Have you heard of mass Credit Union failures? These are the banks that are more exposed to the mortgage market than any.
This is all about greed and lack of regulation; assuming unsafe amounts of leverage and risk to chase increased returns on assets and a complete failure of free markets to make the right decisions.
I've read my history. The gold standard places a dangerous deflationary bias in place on economies, often turning recessions into much more dangerous depressions. Anyone advocating such a policy has NOT read any history worth reading.
I'd suggest the following:
Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939 (NBER Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development), Barry Eichengreen, 1996, ISBN 0195101138
Bush may be a babbling chimpanzee, but that is still better than the European version which a committee of babbling chimpanzees trying to agree on a solution while have side feces throwing fights.
Huh? You mean ignore a restraining order? That would be totally suicidal. Coming out with the product in the first place is pretty ballsy, and I think Real should be congratulated for that move.
Most major financial institutions are undergoing a major deleveraging process which decreases the overall debt to equity ratio in the economy. This leads to a massive destruction of money supply and a crash in the value of assets in the economy, which we are seeing a start of with continuation of decreased real estate, equity and commodity prices, and unavailability of loans even to the largest and most stable entities in the US. This value destruction definitely exceeds 5,000,000,000,000 dollars over the last 12 months at this point in time.
It is getting to the point where some states are facing bond defaults because they cannot borrow at reasonable terms. Giant corporations like GE are facing a real prospect of bankruptcy because they cannot borrow working capital despite having a 22:1 asset to debt ratio. If the US Government were not trying to counter this by pumping money into the economy we would surely be looking at the stark reality of a depression.
The US dollar is appreciating greatly vs. the Euro, because at least the US realizes the problem and are acting with concerted vigor. The EU's economic policy is total shambles with individual countries acting unilaterally rather than in concert, and the refusal of central banks to lower interest rates. Some analysts think this may get bad enough to destroy the Euro as a currency. At the very least it has put an end to any talk of the dollar losing it's special place as the international reserve currency. Some small countries like Iceland, Ireland and Greece are on the edge right now. Iceland's problems are so bad that they are having difficulty importing food.
There is no practical limit to the ability of the US Treasury to pump money into the economy by loans against hard assets. The question is how much and how fast is needed to accomplish the desired effect, and can it be done without overshooting on the other side.
Unfortunately it is not always just the criminals who get prosecuted. Plenty of innocent people get prosecuted. Something like 25% of court cases end in a not guilty result. It's estimated that something like 5% of guilty verdicts are in error. If you take away these protections you are denying innocent people a chance to clear themselves.
As far as wanting to censor people, the only cases that I am in favor of with that is explicit child pornography and military secrets in time of war. Otherwise I can see no justification for censorship.
Cite please? I've make honest mistakes on my taxes several times, some quite major running into the thousands of dollars on the net result in my favor. The IRS caught these, and issued a notice that I owed them the difference. The worst penalty I've run into is a fine that totaled something like $50.
I see no reference to the unit "Atmosphere" in the article cited. A bar is 10^6 Pa, which is allowed as a convenience in the SI system and is in use in the metric system.
Personally I don't think there is anything immoral about selling your work for money. It's called making a living. The question is how much if anything was dependent on the work of others, and what promises you have made to others about this work.
A decision like this has to depend on how much the money means to you. If it will make a significant positive change to way you live I'd do it. If not, it probably isn't worth it.
Seriously, base 12 is very practical because it has more factors than 10. 2,3,4, and 6 vs 2 and 5. We really should be using a base 12 decimal system rather base 10.
The Sumerians used a base 60 system which can be represented using two hands while counting. On your left hand there are three parts on each of four fingers (excluding the thumb). The parts are divided from each other by the joints in the fingers. Now one can count up to 60 by pointing at one of the twelve parts of the fingers of the left hand with one of the five fingers of the right hand.
This is the root of our 60 seconds per minute / 60 seconds per hour.
I call bullshit. The metric unit for pressure isn't the atmosphere. It's the Pascal, aka N/m^2. Atmospheric pressure is 101325 Pa, or alternatively 1 Pa = 9.8692×106 atm. Very convenient? NOT PARTICULARLY.
SI is useful in calculations because it is self-consistent. You don't have weird factors like 32.2 lb-f/lb-m in calculations. But natural values like the atmospheric pressure at sea level are NOT metric values and are at exactly as difficult to work with in both systems.
Well, depends what you mean by 'trivial'. The players that I am familiar with all offer the ability to update the firmware from an optical disk as an alternative. So all you have to do is download a disk image and burn it. In fact this is often a good idea anyway because interrupting a firmware update due to loss of network connectivity can leave a player inoperable.
Firmware updates are important, but not for the reason you state. The BluRay standard is evolving, but in the sense new 'profiles' are constantly being added. These profiles generally correspond to different types of players. For example BluRay profile 3.0 corresponds to an audio-only music oriented BluRay player. Most people would not want to update their player to this.
The real reason updates are important is that players are often released prematurely with significant bugs, and firmware updates are needed to fix these bugs.
The answer is there are no circumstances under which a BD player truly needs to be hooked to the internet. In fact many BD players don't even have network connectivity. The only "advantage" to a player that does offer internet connectivity is that it offers a way for the studios to monitor what you are watching, and to deliver extra material to your player, and a way to obtain firmware updates for the player.
This is not only aimed at the used game market, but pirates as well. Personally I'd rather see this approach than a root kit and a limited number of installations.
Liberal policies that attempted to move everyone (read: the renting lower and lower-middle class) into homeownership en masse resulted in huge unsustainable upswings in real estate prices.
I'd call bullshit on this except that is far too mild a term. NOBODY was forcing banks to make interest only loans to speculators, or to give out loans to people without any sort of documentation whatsoever, or to buy bundles of loans from mortgage brokers who were originating loans from any breathing life form. Quite a few banks maintained sane loan origination practices during this time and are doing fine just thank you. Hear about any Credit Unions in trouble? They are closer to the mortgage market than anyone. There IS a reason Wells Fargo and Bank America are cleaning up now - they had good managers and had sound risk management processes and did not bite the poisoned apple of absurd leverage and the mirage of big profits.
Up until just a few months ago the architect of this bailout plan (total misnomer - it is neither a bailout or a plan) was issuing assurances that there was plenty of capital in the system and there would be no problem. Now there is a major panic with the possibility of the Last Trump at any second. Somehow he's sold Congress on a 700 billion crapshoot. My guess is that this will be completely and utterly useless and the private sector will work out a solution like they usually do. Will there be pain? Of course. But there is nothing that will stop it.
The fundamental problem is a looming lack of labor resources brought on be the desire of the baby-boomers to retire. Once someone retires, they began taking from the economy rather than giving to it. However, the ratio of those producing to those consuming is shrinking and continuing to shrink.
Us boomers have plenty of votes. Bend over and hope for lots of immigration to share the discomfort.
I think the point is that with 2.6, your old code will work but will tell you what to change. If you move to 3.0, unless you have those changes already, it just won't work.
So you are saying that if I fix all the warnings in 2.6, my code will work 100% unchanged in 3.0? If not, why wouldn't I just wait for 3.0 and then just fix everything ONCE?
And now there is a 2.7? Sounds like death by a thousand cuts.
Slashdot Mirror
"Forcing the banks" is bull. There are many banks that didn't get caught up in the greed and are doing fine, thank you. Why weren't they "forced" into making bad loans too? Have you heard of mass Credit Union failures? These are the banks that are more exposed to the mortgage market than any.
This is all about greed and lack of regulation; assuming unsafe amounts of leverage and risk to chase increased returns on assets and a complete failure of free markets to make the right decisions.
I've read my history. The gold standard places a dangerous deflationary bias in place on economies, often turning recessions into much more dangerous depressions. Anyone advocating such a policy has NOT read any history worth reading.
I'd suggest the following:
Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939 (NBER Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development), Barry Eichengreen, 1996, ISBN 0195101138
It sounds like we have a candidate for a solution to our overly litigious society - underfunding of the courts.
There goes my strategy for recovering my stock market losses!
You missed some of the better ones:
terrorism-reads-slashdot
terrorism-votes-democratic
Bush may be a babbling chimpanzee, but that is still better than the European version which a committee of babbling chimpanzees trying to agree on a solution while have side feces throwing fights.
Huh? You mean ignore a restraining order? That would be totally suicidal. Coming out with the product in the first place is pretty ballsy, and I think Real should be congratulated for that move.
Most major financial institutions are undergoing a major deleveraging process which decreases the overall debt to equity ratio in the economy. This leads to a massive destruction of money supply and a crash in the value of assets in the economy, which we are seeing a start of with continuation of decreased real estate, equity and commodity prices, and unavailability of loans even to the largest and most stable entities in the US. This value destruction definitely exceeds 5,000,000,000,000 dollars over the last 12 months at this point in time.
It is getting to the point where some states are facing bond defaults because they cannot borrow at reasonable terms. Giant corporations like GE are facing a real prospect of bankruptcy because they cannot borrow working capital despite having a 22:1 asset to debt ratio. If the US Government were not trying to counter this by pumping money into the economy we would surely be looking at the stark reality of a depression.
The US dollar is appreciating greatly vs. the Euro, because at least the US realizes the problem and are acting with concerted vigor. The EU's economic policy is total shambles with individual countries acting unilaterally rather than in concert, and the refusal of central banks to lower interest rates. Some analysts think this may get bad enough to destroy the Euro as a currency. At the very least it has put an end to any talk of the dollar losing it's special place as the international reserve currency. Some small countries like Iceland, Ireland and Greece are on the edge right now. Iceland's problems are so bad that they are having difficulty importing food.
There is no practical limit to the ability of the US Treasury to pump money into the economy by loans against hard assets. The question is how much and how fast is needed to accomplish the desired effect, and can it be done without overshooting on the other side.
Re-read the GP. The statement referred to severe penalties including jail time for a mistake made while filing taxes.
Unfortunately it is not always just the criminals who get prosecuted. Plenty of innocent people get prosecuted. Something like 25% of court cases end in a not guilty result. It's estimated that something like 5% of guilty verdicts are in error. If you take away these protections you are denying innocent people a chance to clear themselves.
As far as wanting to censor people, the only cases that I am in favor of with that is explicit child pornography and military secrets in time of war. Otherwise I can see no justification for censorship.
Cite please? I've make honest mistakes on my taxes several times, some quite major running into the thousands of dollars on the net result in my favor. The IRS caught these, and issued a notice that I owed them the difference. The worst penalty I've run into is a fine that totaled something like $50.
I see no reference to the unit "Atmosphere" in the article cited. A bar is 10^6 Pa, which is allowed as a convenience in the SI system and is in use in the metric system.
Personally I don't think there is anything immoral about selling your work for money. It's called making a living. The question is how much if anything was dependent on the work of others, and what promises you have made to others about this work.
A decision like this has to depend on how much the money means to you. If it will make a significant positive change to way you live I'd do it. If not, it probably isn't worth it.
Yar. I can count to 21 if I pull down my pants.
Seriously, base 12 is very practical because it has more factors than 10. 2,3,4, and 6 vs 2 and 5. We really should be using a base 12 decimal system rather base 10.
The Sumerians used a base 60 system which can be represented using two hands while counting. On your left hand there are three parts on each of four fingers (excluding the thumb). The parts are divided from each other by the joints in the fingers. Now one can count up to 60 by pointing at one of the twelve parts of the fingers of the left hand with one of the five fingers of the right hand.
This is the root of our 60 seconds per minute / 60 seconds per hour.
I call bullshit. The metric unit for pressure isn't the atmosphere. It's the Pascal, aka N/m^2. Atmospheric pressure is 101325 Pa, or alternatively 1 Pa = 9.8692×106 atm. Very convenient? NOT PARTICULARLY.
SI is useful in calculations because it is self-consistent. You don't have weird factors like 32.2 lb-f/lb-m in calculations. But natural values like the atmospheric pressure at sea level are NOT metric values and are at exactly as difficult to work with in both systems.
Well, depends what you mean by 'trivial'. The players that I am familiar with all offer the ability to update the firmware from an optical disk as an alternative. So all you have to do is download a disk image and burn it. In fact this is often a good idea anyway because interrupting a firmware update due to loss of network connectivity can leave a player inoperable.
Firmware updates are important, but not for the reason you state. The BluRay standard is evolving, but in the sense new 'profiles' are constantly being added. These profiles generally correspond to different types of players. For example BluRay profile 3.0 corresponds to an audio-only music oriented BluRay player. Most people would not want to update their player to this.
The real reason updates are important is that players are often released prematurely with significant bugs, and firmware updates are needed to fix these bugs.
The answer is there are no circumstances under which a BD player truly needs to be hooked to the internet. In fact many BD players don't even have network connectivity. The only "advantage" to a player that does offer internet connectivity is that it offers a way for the studios to monitor what you are watching, and to deliver extra material to your player, and a way to obtain firmware updates for the player.
This is not only aimed at the used game market, but pirates as well. Personally I'd rather see this approach than a root kit and a limited number of installations.
That's called insanity.
Liberal policies that attempted to move everyone (read: the renting lower and lower-middle class) into homeownership en masse resulted in huge unsustainable upswings in real estate prices.
I'd call bullshit on this except that is far too mild a term. NOBODY was forcing banks to make interest only loans to speculators, or to give out loans to people without any sort of documentation whatsoever, or to buy bundles of loans from mortgage brokers who were originating loans from any breathing life form. Quite a few banks maintained sane loan origination practices during this time and are doing fine just thank you. Hear about any Credit Unions in trouble? They are closer to the mortgage market than anyone. There IS a reason Wells Fargo and Bank America are cleaning up now - they had good managers and had sound risk management processes and did not bite the poisoned apple of absurd leverage and the mirage of big profits.
Up until just a few months ago the architect of this bailout plan (total misnomer - it is neither a bailout or a plan) was issuing assurances that there was plenty of capital in the system and there would be no problem. Now there is a major panic with the possibility of the Last Trump at any second. Somehow he's sold Congress on a 700 billion crapshoot. My guess is that this will be completely and utterly useless and the private sector will work out a solution like they usually do. Will there be pain? Of course. But there is nothing that will stop it.
The fundamental problem is a looming lack of labor resources brought on be the desire of the baby-boomers to retire. Once someone retires, they began taking from the economy rather than giving to it. However, the ratio of those producing to those consuming is shrinking and continuing to shrink.
Us boomers have plenty of votes. Bend over and hope for lots of immigration to share the discomfort.
I think the point is that with 2.6, your old code will work but will tell you what to change. If you move to 3.0, unless you have those changes already, it just won't work.
So you are saying that if I fix all the warnings in 2.6, my code will work 100% unchanged in 3.0? If not, why wouldn't I just wait for 3.0 and then just fix everything ONCE?
And now there is a 2.7? Sounds like death by a thousand cuts.
Why not just wait for 3.0 to make the changes? That way you'll only have to test everything once.
And if it's like some other languages you might have a long time to wait before 3.0.
So you are saying that this may charge 90% in 10 minutes, but in my new quad core dual SLI 20" laptop it will be fully discharged in 10 minutes?
1. Lipstick on a pig
2. Silk purse, sows ear
3. With sufficient thrust they can be made to fly
4. Polished Turds