"Other scientists arenâ(TM)t so sure. ChrystÃle Sanloup, a geochemist at the University of Edinburgh, has studied other, shallower places in the Earth where xenon might be locked up. She says the new paper canâ(TM)t explain several aspects of xenon geochemistry, including how Mars could also be lacking xenon in its atmosphere when it has very little perovskite in its depths."
Wait until the first Chinese citizen wins a science Nobel.
Then you will experience the full scope of this phenomena, and realize how mild the US reaction to this sort of thing is.
Tomorrow the Nobel in Literature will be awarded. One of the favorites to win is a Japanese author Haruki Murakami who recently had his books banned in China.
You do what the SS Administration did. You account for demographics when setting the tax rates. It's why we have this nifty tool called mathematics.
Back in the 1980's there was a big hike in Social Security taxes plus an increase in retirement age. This was intended to give a surplus in SS payments that would accumulate for the baby boomer retirement. People of that age have been paying these higher taxes for their entire working lives.
From planning perspective this approach worked. The SS Trust Fund holds trillions in assets in the form of a specialized government bond. These assets are pretty close to being enough to pay for the boomer generation retirement.
The problem with our system is that the bonds are worthless because the US government is bankrupt - they don't have the funds to pay off these bonds. If it hadn't been spending the revenues from these tax revenues ignoring the long term obligations this wouldn't be a problem.
Where did this money go? Well I like to look at it this way. When the SS tax increase passed Reagan and Congress passed a income tax cut that benefited mostly rich people.
This is a problem with Congress and budgeting, not a problem with demographics which is eminently solvable.
Unfortunately the SEC is in a reactive mode - they can't keep up with the speed of technological developments nor do they have audit trails of what is happening so they are in a position of being clueless. This means they can't carry out their mission.
It seems to me at the very least there need to be changes made which will give the SEC the ability to determine if it needs to regulate this stuff. It's possible that HFT is benign or even positive. Or it may be harmful. It is probably a mix of all of the above.
But not having the ability to determine what the story is - that is very very bad.
Well, looking around the internets finds that the article and summary are in this case rather poor. Fortunately there are better sources, in this case a good Reuters article:
In Bowman's case, he planted Roundup Ready seeds as his first-crop in each growing season from 1999-2007 and did not save seed in compliance with licensing agreements. But he also purchased commodity seed from a local grain elevator for a late-season planting, or what is known as a "second-crop."
The farmer applied glyphosate to his second soybean crops and was able to identify herbicide-resistant plants, from which he then saved seed for subsequent years of second-crop planting, according to the court documents.
So this is really a case over both patent exhaustion and contract law. It's interesting that the seed selection step is the same process that got Percy Schmeiser in trouble.
Monsanto in the 1970's was a very different company than it is now. During the 1990's Monsanto, like a lot of large chemical companies split into two firms, one of these was Solutia which is the chemical arm of Monsanto, and Monsanto which was the life sciences operations of Monsanto which included GD Searle. This life sciences company merged with Pharmacia and Upjohn which became Pharmacia.
Late the same year Pharmacia spun off the agriculture business segment of their business which was mostly parts of the Monsanto life sciences operations.
Since the customers of this Ag business were used to the name Monsanto, that's the name they adopted.
So today's Monsanto is missing all of the old chemical business that is actually Solutia, and parts of the old life science business (drugs etc.) and is pretty narrowly focused in the ag business.
You see a lot of claims that Monsanto is a chemical company, well really that's not true any more and hasn't been true for about 15 years.
I would be very surprised if Clarence has any contacts at the current Monsanto.
The US has the strongest institution of free press in the world, China one of the weakest.
> but the US only has two
Baloney. The US has many political parties. The Greens, Socialists, Libertarians etc. and they all put candidates on the ballot. Some even get elected. For example there is a Socialist Party senator.
> and look what their bickering has turned your country into.
The freest country in human history? Sorry but bickering is the very essence of free expression and democracy. It's perhaps been THE core aspect of democracy in America for 240 years. Read the Federalist Paper #10 by James Madison.
No it's not dubious. It's a long established and very important financial principal that allows risk management that goes back as far as there have been stable markets. Babylon at least had records of forward contracts some thousands of years ago.
The first real markets that allowed trading of futures contracts are much more recent, 1850 or so. But that's a different mechanism which allows more liquidity.
As far as information, it certainly isn't misinformation. Airlines have to make their hedging situations known.
Yes, but some of the most robust futures markets are currency markets. Suppose you are doing business in the US, and have a lot of your income coming from Europe. You may buy Euro futures as a way of hedging against currency exchange rate fluctuations.
The same definitely applies to BC futures if you are a BC producer. You might decide to sell BC futures if you think the BC will be worth less in dollars in the future.
Except that some forms of software patents do exist in Europe.
From Wikipedia:
"One interpretation, which is followed by the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, is that an invention is patentable if it provides a new and non-obvious "technical" solution to a technical problem. The problem, and the solution, may be entirely resident within a computer such as a way of making a computer run faster or more efficiently in a novel and inventive way[citation needed]. Alternatively, the problem may be how to make the computer easier to use, such as in T928/03, Konami, Video Game System.'
China is certainly not democratic. No elections above the village level are open to private citizens. The only people elected to authority above the village level are members of the Chinese Communist Party.
As far as capitalistic, something like 50% of their economy is state-owned.
Well, futures markets in general are quite useful because they help provide economic stability if you have an economic interest in the underlying commodity.
For example if you are an airline you can buy futures in oil. If the price of oil goes up you make a profit in the oil futures that helps offset the cost of your fuel.
If you are a farmer you buy futures in the crop you produce. So if your crop fails due to weather you will likely make a profit in your futures because the price of your crop futures has gone up.
So if I were a producer or buyer of bitcoins, a solid futures market would be of great interest.
Sorry you are rather wrong. Very FEW products are approved by government agencies.
Yes there are a lot of regulations that have to be met, but that is different. You don't need to submit the product so long as it meets those regulations.
I used to work in the chemical industry. The *only* new products we had to submit for regulatory approval were those that involved an entirely new chemical which had never been sold previously. Everything other product that was new just had to adhere to existing regulations. Since there are hundreds of thousands of known compounds the need for something really new is pretty rare.
Similar logic applies to foods. If you want to introduce a new type of food into the market, you can do so so long as it follows the existing guidelines on what additives etc. are allowed. Only if you use a new additive do you need FDA approval.
Your statement about the FCC is also in error. Devices that are not intentional RF radiators only need testing by a certified lab and certification by the lab before they can be sold. They don't need specific approval by a government agency. Only devices that intentionally emit RF need explicit regulatory approval. This is only a small minority of such devices.
Slashdot Mirror
So this is a heavy noble gas band?
Interesting. Most of chemistry bands are metals.
I agree with the critics of this model.
"Other scientists arenâ(TM)t so sure. ChrystÃle Sanloup, a geochemist at the University of Edinburgh, has studied other, shallower places in the Earth where xenon might be locked up. She says the new paper canâ(TM)t explain several aspects of xenon geochemistry, including how Mars could also be lacking xenon in its atmosphere when it has very little perovskite in its depths."
Wait until the first Chinese citizen wins a science Nobel.
Then you will experience the full scope of this phenomena, and realize how mild the US reaction to this sort of thing is.
Tomorrow the Nobel in Literature will be awarded. One of the favorites to win is a Japanese author Haruki Murakami who recently had his books banned in China.
It's mostly like poker. If you play stupid it's gambling. If you play smart you can eliminate the luck factor and reliably win.
> cash out my 401K
Hmm well I've had 401K's since 1978. Looking at the aggregate balance of my retirement accounts (7 figures in front of the decimal) I think I won.
I say it's one of 3. Chinese, Republicans or the Boogeymen.
You do what the SS Administration did. You account for demographics when setting the tax rates. It's why we have this nifty tool called mathematics.
Back in the 1980's there was a big hike in Social Security taxes plus an increase in retirement age. This was intended to give a surplus in SS payments that would accumulate for the baby boomer retirement. People of that age have been paying these higher taxes for their entire working lives.
From planning perspective this approach worked. The SS Trust Fund holds trillions in assets in the form of a specialized government bond. These assets are pretty close to being enough to pay for the boomer generation retirement.
The problem with our system is that the bonds are worthless because the US government is bankrupt - they don't have the funds to pay off these bonds. If it hadn't been spending the revenues from these tax revenues ignoring the long term obligations this wouldn't be a problem.
Where did this money go? Well I like to look at it this way. When the SS tax increase passed Reagan and Congress passed a income tax cut that benefited mostly rich people.
This is a problem with Congress and budgeting, not a problem with demographics which is eminently solvable.
Uh no please. I'm a small investor and automated trading is a great boon to me. Low transaction prices and quick execution are very helpful.
HFT? Who knows? What I do know is that nobody knows if it's good or bad for fairness in the market . That in itself is scary.
Unfortunately the SEC is in a reactive mode - they can't keep up with the speed of technological developments nor do they have audit trails of what is happening so they are in a position of being clueless. This means they can't carry out their mission.
It seems to me at the very least there need to be changes made which will give the SEC the ability to determine if it needs to regulate this stuff. It's possible that HFT is benign or even positive. Or it may be harmful. It is probably a mix of all of the above.
But not having the ability to determine what the story is - that is very very bad.
Never get past EU regulators.
Well, looking around the internets finds that the article and summary are in this case rather poor. Fortunately there are better sources, in this case a good Reuters article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/21/us-monsanto-lawsuit-idUSTRE78K79O20110921
In Bowman's case, he planted Roundup Ready seeds as his first-crop in each growing season from 1999-2007 and did not save seed in compliance with licensing agreements. But he also purchased commodity seed from a local grain elevator for a late-season planting, or what is known as a "second-crop."
The farmer applied glyphosate to his second soybean crops and was able to identify herbicide-resistant plants, from which he then saved seed for subsequent years of second-crop planting, according to the court documents.
So this is really a case over both patent exhaustion and contract law. It's interesting that the seed selection step is the same process that got Percy Schmeiser in trouble.
Monsanto in the 1970's was a very different company than it is now. During the 1990's Monsanto, like a lot of large chemical companies split into two firms, one of these was Solutia which is the chemical arm of Monsanto, and Monsanto which was the life sciences operations of Monsanto which included GD Searle. This life sciences company merged with Pharmacia and Upjohn which became Pharmacia.
Late the same year Pharmacia spun off the agriculture business segment of their business which was mostly parts of the Monsanto life sciences operations.
Since the customers of this Ag business were used to the name Monsanto, that's the name they adopted.
So today's Monsanto is missing all of the old chemical business that is actually Solutia, and parts of the old life science business (drugs etc.) and is pretty narrowly focused in the ag business.
You see a lot of claims that Monsanto is a chemical company, well really that's not true any more and hasn't been true for about 15 years.
I would be very surprised if Clarence has any contacts at the current Monsanto.
WIreless NAS.
Why the gov will give you a tax credit for it of course.
What I'm worried about is when they start implanting them at birth.
Any movie with Hillary Swank in it is at least 3.5 stars.
> But more similar to the US, China has shown a willingness and ability to go after activists and journalists who dislike how things are run
China has the largest number of journalists in the world in prison. The US at present has no journalists in its jails except perhaps transiently.
http://chartsbin.com/view/1679
The US has the strongest institution of free press in the world, China one of the weakest.
> but the US only has two
Baloney. The US has many political parties. The Greens, Socialists, Libertarians etc. and they all put candidates on the ballot. Some even get elected. For example there is a Socialist Party senator.
> and look what their bickering has turned your country into.
The freest country in human history? Sorry but bickering is the very essence of free expression and democracy. It's perhaps been THE core aspect of democracy in America for 240 years. Read the Federalist Paper #10 by James Madison.
China of course doesn't have bickering.
No it's not dubious. It's a long established and very important financial principal that allows risk management that goes back as far as there have been stable markets. Babylon at least had records of forward contracts some thousands of years ago.
The first real markets that allowed trading of futures contracts are much more recent, 1850 or so. But that's a different mechanism which allows more liquidity.
As far as information, it certainly isn't misinformation. Airlines have to make their hedging situations known.
Yes, but some of the most robust futures markets are currency markets. Suppose you are doing business in the US, and have a lot of your income coming from Europe. You may buy Euro futures as a way of hedging against currency exchange rate fluctuations.
The same definitely applies to BC futures if you are a BC producer. You might decide to sell BC futures if you think the BC will be worth less in dollars in the future.
Nooooo. Arkansas I don't care either way but damn Louisiana is where I go to get the best food in the world.
Except that some forms of software patents do exist in Europe.
From Wikipedia:
"One interpretation, which is followed by the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, is that an invention is patentable if it provides a new and non-obvious "technical" solution to a technical problem. The problem, and the solution, may be entirely resident within a computer such as a way of making a computer run faster or more efficiently in a novel and inventive way[citation needed]. Alternatively, the problem may be how to make the computer easier to use, such as in T928/03, Konami, Video Game System.'
Uh read what I wrote. The airline makes a profit in the OIL FUTURE.....
China is certainly not democratic. No elections above the village level are open to private citizens. The only people elected to authority above the village level are members of the Chinese Communist Party.
As far as capitalistic, something like 50% of their economy is state-owned.
That's VERY different from the US.
Well, futures markets in general are quite useful because they help provide economic stability if you have an economic interest in the underlying commodity.
For example if you are an airline you can buy futures in oil. If the price of oil goes up you make a profit in the oil futures that helps offset the cost of your fuel.
If you are a farmer you buy futures in the crop you produce. So if your crop fails due to weather you will likely make a profit in your futures because the price of your crop futures has gone up.
So if I were a producer or buyer of bitcoins, a solid futures market would be of great interest.
The US military would go up in a puff of smoke if it came down to fighting it's own population.
It's a volunteer force with no cultural difference whatsoever from the general population.
Sorry you are rather wrong. Very FEW products are approved by government agencies.
Yes there are a lot of regulations that have to be met, but that is different. You don't need to submit the product so long as it meets those regulations.
I used to work in the chemical industry. The *only* new products we had to submit for regulatory approval were those that involved an entirely new chemical which had never been sold previously. Everything other product that was new just had to adhere to existing regulations. Since there are hundreds of thousands of known compounds the need for something really new is pretty rare.
Similar logic applies to foods. If you want to introduce a new type of food into the market, you can do so so long as it follows the existing guidelines on what additives etc. are allowed. Only if you use a new additive do you need FDA approval.
Your statement about the FCC is also in error. Devices that are not intentional RF radiators only need testing by a certified lab and certification by the lab before they can be sold. They don't need specific approval by a government agency. Only devices that intentionally emit RF need explicit regulatory approval. This is only a small minority of such devices.