You, sir, are sounding very much clueless. But to give you the benefit of the doubt, please categorize the following financial vehicles as "savings" or "investments", and explain why.
* Stock market * Mutual funds * Treasury bonds * Fifty shares of GOOG * Fifty shares of SCO * Bank account * CD * Real Estate * Blackjack * Under the mattress/buried in the backyard * Paying down debt * Gold/Silver/Yttrium
As of now, you've done nothing to clarify the distinction between savings and investments, except to imply that any money you invest may as well be flushed down the toilet, from a financial planning perspective.
I really don't see the difference between Google Maps and Google Earth. The first is a small application that you download whenever you fire up local.google.com (or some other web page that uses their maps). The other is a large application that gets downloaded and installed once. Both of them have a UI that runs locally, and both of them present data that is fetched from Google's servers on an as-needed basis.
I don't think the differences are as profound as you seem to think, and contrasting the two applications to prove the futility of the entire Web 2.0 concept is profoundly misguided.
Yes, there is hype. But there are also loads of very useful apps that require no special installation, which can present the user with his or her unique data and customizations no matter what computer he/she is using, and which aggregate information and coordinate action in interesting ways.
The hype will eventually shake itself out, but when it does we'll be left with a bunch of users who expect all the best features of Web 2.0 from every application they use.
Read also: The best developers use assembly, and only assembly.
Python has been around since 1990, and back then there were certainly lots of jobs you wouldn't dare use it for, because the speed of C++ was absolutely necessary. Now programmers use it for all sorts of things that they never would have considered before. GUIs, graphics, scientific computation, etc. I'd call that "using a fast CPU as an excuse to write slow code". Which seems fine.
I would say that the importance of speedy code depends on many factors. If you're only going to run a program once a week, it doesn't much matter if it takes half a second or half a minute. But if you have a routine that is going to be called ten thousand times a second for hours on end, or a program that is going out to millions of impatient users, then it's probably worth the effort to optimize the fluff out of it.
Of course, we both agree that bubble sort is evil, always. But beyond that, I think it's best to just choose the proper algorithm, write the blasted thing, and only begin worrying about the speed of the code if it's proving to be a problem.
I'm not clear on this: What is to stop a teenager from filling out the "parent password" field? I mean, what would you have them do that would be any more effective than adding a checkbox saying "I agree to give my parents my password at all times?"
I think this proposal fits into the "technical solution to a social problem" box.
Is it just me, or do people like this seem to use the words "energy" and "vibrations" the way 24 uses the words "firewall" and "encryption"--which is to say, pretty much randomly.
Deaths by month. It all looks like statistical noise to me. Sure, it looks like there was a strong decreasing trend over the last six months, but it started from the fourth-highest monthly toll in the war's history.
The monthly toll alone says nothing about whether we're winning or losing in Iraq. A lot depends on what missions the generals think their troops should be undertaking, and a lot is just white noise.
I think 'arbitrage' in this sense is a misnomer, because the peak-hours energy really is more valuable. Arbitrage (for those just joining us) is the process of making a profit by moving something between two markets. For example, if a share of IBM was trading for $53 on the NYSE, but $55 in some other market, you could make yourself two dollars by buying the stock on the NYSE and selling it on the other market.*
I brushed up using the wikipedia article, and it pointed out that when the cost of storing a commodity is high, arbitrage becomes difficult to impossible.
* In reality, that magnitude of price difference is unlikely, because lots of people are already aware of the possibility, and automated systems try and take advantage of much, much smaller price differences.
I agree with the rest of your post, but this statement, set me thinking. Not that I disagree with it out of hand, but if certain types of utilities (say nuclear) had to maintain a certain output all day, the output equalling the peak demand, shouldn't offline hour electricity be higher, since that excess electricity isn't sold, but wasted (I'm assuming).
I don't think so. Imagine an idealized scenario, where a community runs on a single power source, that can change its power output once a month. There is a single moment (1PM) where the absolute maximum of power is used. It's that point that defines the supply that has to be produced for the entire month. Therefore, any change in use patterns that lowers consumption at 1PM (whether by reducing consumption or moving it to some off-peak time) lowers the overall amount of electricity that needs to be produced. Any other change in usage patterns is basically inconsequential.
Therefore, the goal of the utilities company would be to move demand away from that peak hour (by raising prices during that hour), which would be accomplished through higher prices.
Why not go a step further, and encode punctuation as simple sounds? For example, '"' could be 'ti-tick', '.' could be 'pop', '!' could be 'swiish-pop', ',' could be 'shoop', '(' could be 'vvvvvv' (going from high pitch to a low pitch), and ')' could be the opposite.
Okay, it sounds silly, and I'm basing the idea on Victor Borge's "phonetic punctuation" skit. But if you watch the skit, you'll realize that it would probably work really well.
I know what an externality is. Quit acting like I don't.
Your initial statement made it appear otherwise. Despite your original claim, sometimes a law is needed to make a valuable product marketable. For example, without government regulations to limit sulfur emissions, there would be little market demand for sulfur scrubbers, despite the fact that they make us better off overall.
I consider carbon credits to be the same sort of product. I can't envision a "pure free market" solution to CO2 emissions, because anyone who tried to sell them to a free market would be met with the question, "Why should I buy this when I can just keep creating CO2 for free?" The market for carbon credits doesn't even exist until the government steps in, mandating that "Only X tons of CO2 can be put into the atmosphere each year."
Anyhow, that's why I kept bitching about externalities. I just don't see a purely voluntary trading system working. I'll read up on the CCEx, but so far I'm suspicious.
You initially claimed that there were these huge markups for "administrative overhead". Now it sounds as though you're including everything but buying carbon credits as "overhead", including investment in windfarms and other CO2-reducing measures. If that's the case, then you're beating a non-horse: most of the people buying these things don't care whether the mechanism for removing CO2 is carbon credits or windpower investment. I must be misunderstanding.
I don't need to look up "moral hazard," though the application to carbon credits is intriguing. I figure the "this undoes all the damage I do while driving" meme is likely to be very weak, because part of the calculations you do when buying the product includes estimating how many miles you drive. So if nothing else, there is an upper limit on how much people feel entitled to drive. I just can't imagine a lot of people doubling the amount of driving they do just because they bought the magic pass.
As I(ANAL) understand it, foreign law isn't binding on U.S. courts, but a judge can use it as part of his reasoning when deciding a case, if relevant statutes and case law haven't been found.
The difference, I suppose, is that if a prosecuter presents a judge with a 9th Circuit ruling showing how the case should be handled, the judge is bound by it. If the prosecutor comes in with a French Court ruling, the judge can say, "Yeah, that makes sense," and rule accordingly. While the ruling itself would be binding on lower courts, they wouldn't be required to inject the French laws into the legal code.
1) I'd still like to see some indication that--despite your claim that "if laws are needed to create demand, then your product is worthless," you actually grasp what the word "externality" means. It's important.
2) The FAQ over at Terrapass.com explicitly states that they are a for-profit venture, and that they are looking for a long-term profit margin of about 10%. Hardly the 500% markup you're claiming, and well within my tolerance threshold.
No employer, but I get a year long bus pass with the purchase of tuition.
Life is moderately sweet.
All mass transit systems are subsidized, but I think that's to be expected when so many of the benefits of mass transit are going to the driving population rather than the people who pay the fares.
Does it strike you as funny that your insurance rates have squat all to do with the amount of driving you do?
If you split your driving between two cars, it doesn't make you twice as likely to get in an accident.
I guess it would just be a bother sending people out to look at those odometers. But what about having emissions places verify the mileage as part of their safety/emissions inspections? Can you even get insurance without those?
I've recently started using mass transit again, and it would be nice to get some sort of discount for it.
Good analysis. But I do think it misses his greater point: the U.S. doesn't have a carbon market at the moment. It would be nice if they did, and I'd fully support it. But the question remains: if you buy a carbon credit right now, what actually happens?
As to your painfully simplistic concept of the free market, I have one word for you: EXTERNALITY. Look it up, and if you don't see how it applies to your statement, then there's not much helping you.
1) It is much more fuel efficient to make a single large motor that can burn gas efficiently at a single operating speed than it is to make thousands of tiny motors that have to work at a variety of speeds and under a variety of loads. I would argue that a single, fixed plant can't help but be more efficient, and remarkably so.
2) True, we mostly use coal now. In the future, if we want to shift to cleaner sources, it's easier to replace one coal-fired plant with one windfarm than it is to convert an entire fleet of cars to cleaner technologies.
To me, you appear to be missing the crucial distinction between what you believe is moral and the standards of morality you (or society as a whole) should be able to inflict on the rest of society. The Golden Rule is a good maxim, as is the old Wiccan saying, "An it harm none, do as ye wilt."
If you wouldn't want to be murdered, imprisoned without cause, or have your property burgled, and the bulk of society agrees with your sentiments, then perhaps there is sufficient justification for laws against those things. The harm that occurs when I murder someone is pretty clear-cut. The harm that occurs when I look at boobies on the Internet is far less so.
Look, I didn't need your exposition on the primacy of natural dimensions and quantities. We agree that the nature of the things being measured are reality-based, while the specific units are entirely arbitrary. I was simply trying to explore the same misleading analogy you began with. In my view, there are parts of morality that have objective components, and parts that rely on personal taste.
For example, mankind has a generally cooperative nature, and these tendencies toward cooperation and compromise can be studied in great detail. But when moral laws come into conflict--something that never happens in physics, which is why I say the analogy is ultimately misleading--the values which resolve the decision are often personal ones. For example, Christians have been given two orders: "Thou shalt not kill," and "be subject to the law of the land." So when the government orders Christians to go to war, are the ones who accept being more or less moral than those who refuse?
I'm sure you have an answer. I'm sure I could look and find other Christians who vehemently oppose your answer. I'm sure you could both bring evidence to support your views. All of which makes me sure that your shortcut to moral guidance (simply letting God decide) is a non-answer, and that the objective morality you offer is in no way objective. Those who find all their answers in Jesus may find comfort, but they also find a dangerous false certainty.
I think you're wrong, in that most attacks do rely on the injection of binary code. Every buffer overflow exploit I'm aware of involves overwriting the stack, replacing the OS's instructions with the exploiter's code, then having that code execute. That's the step you identify as "sending data to the service", which is correct. But it needs to be the right data: the code that will make the machine do what you want.
While the plaintext of the executable may be known (sometimes you get custom compile jobs), the encoded instructions aren't known to the attacker, and cannot be discovered without executing instructions on the machine to read the memory where the executable resides.
Finally, I'm not sure about malware detection, but it might not be a problem. If I'm understanding properly, the software publisher would send the plaintext instructions, and the destination computer would translate those instructions into ones that worked inside this particular system. So either the program could be translated back into plaintext for matching purposes, or the signatures could be translated into the obscured instruction set. After all, the instructions are simply being translated, not encrypted.
I'm fairly sure I'm right about... well, some of this. But if I'm not, I do look forward to being enlightened.
So, what you're saying is that the idea is useless because it can't protect a given machine from an attacker that knows its key?
Isn't that like saying an immune system is no good to you because it doesn't stop your neighbor from running you down with his car?
Or staying closer to the original analogy, it would be like saying you shouldn't get a booster shot, because someone can always create a virus hand-tailored to exploit your genetic makeup.
Slashdot Mirror
Banks take your money, loan it out at 8% or 9%, then use the profits to pay you 1-2% interest on that money.
:)
I think it's a misnomer to say that the banks are making loans on your behalf.
You, sir, are sounding very much clueless. But to give you the benefit of the doubt, please categorize the following financial vehicles as "savings" or "investments", and explain why.
* Stock market
* Mutual funds
* Treasury bonds
* Fifty shares of GOOG
* Fifty shares of SCO
* Bank account
* CD
* Real Estate
* Blackjack
* Under the mattress/buried in the backyard
* Paying down debt
* Gold/Silver/Yttrium
As of now, you've done nothing to clarify the distinction between savings and investments, except to imply that any money you invest may as well be flushed down the toilet, from a financial planning perspective.
I really don't see the difference between Google Maps and Google Earth. The first is a small application that you download whenever you fire up local.google.com (or some other web page that uses their maps). The other is a large application that gets downloaded and installed once. Both of them have a UI that runs locally, and both of them present data that is fetched from Google's servers on an as-needed basis.
I don't think the differences are as profound as you seem to think, and contrasting the two applications to prove the futility of the entire Web 2.0 concept is profoundly misguided.
Yes, there is hype. But there are also loads of very useful apps that require no special installation, which can present the user with his or her unique data and customizations no matter what computer he/she is using, and which aggregate information and coordinate action in interesting ways.
The hype will eventually shake itself out, but when it does we'll be left with a bunch of users who expect all the best features of Web 2.0 from every application they use.
Read: Good developers don't use Python.
Read also: The best developers use assembly, and only assembly.
Python has been around since 1990, and back then there were certainly lots of jobs you wouldn't dare use it for, because the speed of C++ was absolutely necessary. Now programmers use it for all sorts of things that they never would have considered before. GUIs, graphics, scientific computation, etc. I'd call that "using a fast CPU as an excuse to write slow code". Which seems fine.
I would say that the importance of speedy code depends on many factors. If you're only going to run a program once a week, it doesn't much matter if it takes half a second or half a minute. But if you have a routine that is going to be called ten thousand times a second for hours on end, or a program that is going out to millions of impatient users, then it's probably worth the effort to optimize the fluff out of it.
Of course, we both agree that bubble sort is evil, always. But beyond that, I think it's best to just choose the proper algorithm, write the blasted thing, and only begin worrying about the speed of the code if it's proving to be a problem.
I'm not clear on this: What is to stop a teenager from filling out the "parent password" field? I mean, what would you have them do that would be any more effective than adding a checkbox saying "I agree to give my parents my password at all times?"
I think this proposal fits into the "technical solution to a social problem" box.
Is it just me, or do people like this seem to use the words "energy" and "vibrations" the way 24 uses the words "firewall" and "encryption"--which is to say, pretty much randomly.
Deaths by month. It all looks like statistical noise to me. Sure, it looks like there was a strong decreasing trend over the last six months, but it started from the fourth-highest monthly toll in the war's history.
The monthly toll alone says nothing about whether we're winning or losing in Iraq. A lot depends on what missions the generals think their troops should be undertaking, and a lot is just white noise.
I think 'arbitrage' in this sense is a misnomer, because the peak-hours energy really is more valuable. Arbitrage (for those just joining us) is the process of making a profit by moving something between two markets. For example, if a share of IBM was trading for $53 on the NYSE, but $55 in some other market, you could make yourself two dollars by buying the stock on the NYSE and selling it on the other market.*
I brushed up using the wikipedia article, and it pointed out that when the cost of storing a commodity is high, arbitrage becomes difficult to impossible.
* In reality, that magnitude of price difference is unlikely, because lots of people are already aware of the possibility, and automated systems try and take advantage of much, much smaller price differences.
I don't think so. Imagine an idealized scenario, where a community runs on a single power source, that can change its power output once a month. There is a single moment (1PM) where the absolute maximum of power is used. It's that point that defines the supply that has to be produced for the entire month. Therefore, any change in use patterns that lowers consumption at 1PM (whether by reducing consumption or moving it to some off-peak time) lowers the overall amount of electricity that needs to be produced. Any other change in usage patterns is basically inconsequential.
Therefore, the goal of the utilities company would be to move demand away from that peak hour (by raising prices during that hour), which would be accomplished through higher prices.
I did. But I live in Utah, so my vote doesn't count.
Why not go a step further, and encode punctuation as simple sounds? For example, '"' could be 'ti-tick', '.' could be 'pop', '!' could be 'swiish-pop', ',' could be 'shoop', '(' could be 'vvvvvv' (going from high pitch to a low pitch), and ')' could be the opposite.
Okay, it sounds silly, and I'm basing the idea on Victor Borge's "phonetic punctuation" skit. But if you watch the skit, you'll realize that it would probably work really well.
I consider carbon credits to be the same sort of product. I can't envision a "pure free market" solution to CO2 emissions, because anyone who tried to sell them to a free market would be met with the question, "Why should I buy this when I can just keep creating CO2 for free?" The market for carbon credits doesn't even exist until the government steps in, mandating that "Only X tons of CO2 can be put into the atmosphere each year."
Anyhow, that's why I kept bitching about externalities. I just don't see a purely voluntary trading system working. I'll read up on the CCEx, but so far I'm suspicious.
You initially claimed that there were these huge markups for "administrative overhead". Now it sounds as though you're including everything but buying carbon credits as "overhead", including investment in windfarms and other CO2-reducing measures. If that's the case, then you're beating a non-horse: most of the people buying these things don't care whether the mechanism for removing CO2 is carbon credits or windpower investment. I must be misunderstanding.
I don't need to look up "moral hazard," though the application to carbon credits is intriguing. I figure the "this undoes all the damage I do while driving" meme is likely to be very weak, because part of the calculations you do when buying the product includes estimating how many miles you drive. So if nothing else, there is an upper limit on how much people feel entitled to drive. I just can't imagine a lot of people doubling the amount of driving they do just because they bought the magic pass.
As I(ANAL) understand it, foreign law isn't binding on U.S. courts, but a judge can use it as part of his reasoning when deciding a case, if relevant statutes and case law haven't been found.
The difference, I suppose, is that if a prosecuter presents a judge with a 9th Circuit ruling showing how the case should be handled, the judge is bound by it. If the prosecutor comes in with a French Court ruling, the judge can say, "Yeah, that makes sense," and rule accordingly. While the ruling itself would be binding on lower courts, they wouldn't be required to inject the French laws into the legal code.
1) I'd still like to see some indication that--despite your claim that "if laws are needed to create demand, then your product is worthless," you actually grasp what the word "externality" means. It's important.
2) The FAQ over at Terrapass.com explicitly states that they are a for-profit venture, and that they are looking for a long-term profit margin of about 10%. Hardly the 500% markup you're claiming, and well within my tolerance threshold.
No employer, but I get a year long bus pass with the purchase of tuition.
Life is moderately sweet.
All mass transit systems are subsidized, but I think that's to be expected when so many of the benefits of mass transit are going to the driving population rather than the people who pay the fares.
I used to have a Ford Festiva. Careful driving let me get 45-50 MPG. We called it "Drop Kick" for a reason.
God, I miss that car. Fuel efficient, puntable, what more can you want?
Does it strike you as funny that your insurance rates have squat all to do with the amount of driving you do?
If you split your driving between two cars, it doesn't make you twice as likely to get in an accident.
I guess it would just be a bother sending people out to look at those odometers. But what about having emissions places verify the mileage as part of their safety/emissions inspections? Can you even get insurance without those?
I've recently started using mass transit again, and it would be nice to get some sort of discount for it.
Good analysis. But I do think it misses his greater point: the U.S. doesn't have a carbon market at the moment. It would be nice if they did, and I'd fully support it. But the question remains: if you buy a carbon credit right now, what actually happens?
500% markup? Prove it.
As to your painfully simplistic concept of the free market, I have one word for you: EXTERNALITY. Look it up, and if you don't see how it applies to your statement, then there's not much helping you.
Continuation
1) It is much more fuel efficient to make a single large motor that can burn gas efficiently at a single operating speed than it is to make thousands of tiny motors that have to work at a variety of speeds and under a variety of loads. I would argue that a single, fixed plant can't help but be more efficient, and remarkably so.
2) True, we mostly use coal now. In the future, if we want to shift to cleaner sources, it's easier to replace one coal-fired plant with one windfarm than it is to convert an entire fleet of cars to cleaner technologies.
To me, you appear to be missing the crucial distinction between what you believe is moral and the standards of morality you (or society as a whole) should be able to inflict on the rest of society. The Golden Rule is a good maxim, as is the old Wiccan saying, "An it harm none, do as ye wilt."
If you wouldn't want to be murdered, imprisoned without cause, or have your property burgled, and the bulk of society agrees with your sentiments, then perhaps there is sufficient justification for laws against those things. The harm that occurs when I murder someone is pretty clear-cut. The harm that occurs when I look at boobies on the Internet is far less so.
Look, I didn't need your exposition on the primacy of natural dimensions and quantities. We agree that the nature of the things being measured are reality-based, while the specific units are entirely arbitrary. I was simply trying to explore the same misleading analogy you began with. In my view, there are parts of morality that have objective components, and parts that rely on personal taste.
For example, mankind has a generally cooperative nature, and these tendencies toward cooperation and compromise can be studied in great detail. But when moral laws come into conflict--something that never happens in physics, which is why I say the analogy is ultimately misleading--the values which resolve the decision are often personal ones. For example, Christians have been given two orders: "Thou shalt not kill," and "be subject to the law of the land." So when the government orders Christians to go to war, are the ones who accept being more or less moral than those who refuse?
I'm sure you have an answer. I'm sure I could look and find other Christians who vehemently oppose your answer. I'm sure you could both bring evidence to support your views. All of which makes me sure that your shortcut to moral guidance (simply letting God decide) is a non-answer, and that the objective morality you offer is in no way objective. Those who find all their answers in Jesus may find comfort, but they also find a dangerous false certainty.
I think you're wrong, in that most attacks do rely on the injection of binary code. Every buffer overflow exploit I'm aware of involves overwriting the stack, replacing the OS's instructions with the exploiter's code, then having that code execute. That's the step you identify as "sending data to the service", which is correct. But it needs to be the right data: the code that will make the machine do what you want.
While the plaintext of the executable may be known (sometimes you get custom compile jobs), the encoded instructions aren't known to the attacker, and cannot be discovered without executing instructions on the machine to read the memory where the executable resides.
Finally, I'm not sure about malware detection, but it might not be a problem. If I'm understanding properly, the software publisher would send the plaintext instructions, and the destination computer would translate those instructions into ones that worked inside this particular system. So either the program could be translated back into plaintext for matching purposes, or the signatures could be translated into the obscured instruction set. After all, the instructions are simply being translated, not encrypted.
I'm fairly sure I'm right about... well, some of this. But if I'm not, I do look forward to being enlightened.
So, what you're saying is that the idea is useless because it can't protect a given machine from an attacker that knows its key?
Isn't that like saying an immune system is no good to you because it doesn't stop your neighbor from running you down with his car?
Or staying closer to the original analogy, it would be like saying you shouldn't get a booster shot, because someone can always create a virus hand-tailored to exploit your genetic makeup.