I caught a few minutes of a press conference on CNN. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security started it by saying something to the effect of 'this makes things sound worse than they are, but it allows us to activate public health resources'.
So perhaps the vocabulary is poor, but the reaction doesn't really resemble crying wolf.
Others have mentioned the rather high (apparent) mortality rate (the numbers are quite thin at this point). Another factor increasing the attention is that the flu season is usually over by now.
It doesn't sound like it adds that much difficulty. After the first round, you know how many ballots you have, so you know how many ballots you need for a winner. If you don't have a winner, you take the smallest pile and distribute those votes into new piles (I mean, I would use math, but I suppose you could re-count every single ballot), so as a practical matter, I doubt that more than ~30% of the ballots get looked at more than once (I wonder if they publish such a thing?).
It scares you because you think of it as identity theft. If you think of it as banks and other institutions falsely issuing credit in your name (based on fraudulent information that they failed to sufficiently verify), it will just piss you off.
As far as using the social networking sights to get friends and relatives to send money, what fraction of people are actually that credulous? My immediate family wouldn't send me money based only on a Facebook message, let alone friends and acquaintances.
It probably wouldn't be that big a pain in the ass, but most people want sunglasses that they think look good, not sunglasses that can be switched between clear and dark on demand, so it better not cost a lot extra (lots of sunglasses charge for the logo, so those would be easy to compete with on price, but you would be doing so at the cost of quite a bit of margin).
I was actually being wildly sarcastic, I doubt that someone unwilling to price risk would be able to compete with someone willing to price risk (that there is a tendency to overdue it doesn't make the model worthless--there are plenty of banks that came through the recent crisis with perfectly reasonable loan portfolios).
If they were truly little more than a breath away from bankruptcy, they wouldn't be spending the equivalent of 1/3 of their debt on those things in each year.
He believes that they are inevitable and uses strategies that work well during them and are mediocre the rest of the time. That doesn't mean he knows when they are going to happen, or what they are going to look like.
It's probably already too late for this one. Strong public health measures and research into treatments are a more reasonable approach than any sort of meaningful flight quarantine (can you imagine 2 or 3 days on either side of every flight? Longer would probably be better...).
I imagine Apple would be able to make a few million sales to Verizon customers, so they could probably do the radio for ~$10 a phone (I can see where it could cost more than $10 million, but it seems likely that it wouldn't).
So Apple might think they are better off spending their dollars elsewhere, but I can't see developing a Verizon only phone as that big of an impediment. As another reply noted, the networks are all converging on one standard, so the issue is going to (slowly) go away.
AT&T and Verizon are arguably "most" of the telecom players in the U.S., and they both pay nice dividends. Comcast pays a smaller dividend, but it is there:
Charter recently declared bankruptcy, which is pretty much the exact opposite of providing shareholders with value. Time Warner cable does not pay a dividend:
One really nice thing about that video is that it shows how cool actual amputees think this technology is, as opposed to how lame (a surprising amount of) people with 2 functional hands seem to think it is.
Except it is quite clear that excess leverage and dishonesty where huge contributors to this particular meltdown. There isn't really anything pernicious about regulating the leverage ratio of a deposit backed institution (they are only ever technically solvent anyway), and the meltdown itself eliminated much of the credibility that made dishonesty so profitable.
So given that much of the government action is focused on decreasing the leverage at the big financial institutions, that particular aspect of the problem isn't very likely to get worse (there are two ways to fix the leverage problem: have them sell leveraged assets or increase the amount of capital they have (i.e., give them money). The government is doing some of both.).
Going forward, it is quite likely that Citigroup will be allowed to fall apart (most of it won't go bankrupt, but parts of it might, and it seems unlikely that it will continue to exist in its current form), and Merrill, Lehman and Bear Stearns have already been allowed to fail (in various ways), so it isn't as if the government is trying to preserve everything in 2008 form.
I think it is largely logistical; moving the nerves to the chest makes it easier to reliably and comfortably interface with them (from what I have seen, strapping something to the stump is hard enough on the skin without having whatever else adding pressure points and whatnot).
As a practical matter, it is the other way around (because the costs to battle Apple are roughly on par with the costs to not battle them i.e., a new iPhone), and a user can't actually prove that the jailbreak didn't break the phone.
It's kind of odd that you are mixing a discussion of an anachronism like marriage (special government treatment of marriages deemed acceptable by society is the anachronism, not the part where a couple decides to commit to each other) with your enthusiasm for the future.
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I caught a few minutes of a press conference on CNN. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security started it by saying something to the effect of 'this makes things sound worse than they are, but it allows us to activate public health resources'.
So perhaps the vocabulary is poor, but the reaction doesn't really resemble crying wolf.
Herpes will last longer.
I dream of Jeannie.
Do these things actually drive an appreciable amount of traffic?
Others have mentioned the rather high (apparent) mortality rate (the numbers are quite thin at this point). Another factor increasing the attention is that the flu season is usually over by now.
You aren't thinking deep enough. Clearly the guy also has interests in companies that sell survival gear.
Credit does not require growth to function.
It doesn't sound like it adds that much difficulty. After the first round, you know how many ballots you have, so you know how many ballots you need for a winner. If you don't have a winner, you take the smallest pile and distribute those votes into new piles (I mean, I would use math, but I suppose you could re-count every single ballot), so as a practical matter, I doubt that more than ~30% of the ballots get looked at more than once (I wonder if they publish such a thing?).
It scares you because you think of it as identity theft. If you think of it as banks and other institutions falsely issuing credit in your name (based on fraudulent information that they failed to sufficiently verify), it will just piss you off.
As far as using the social networking sights to get friends and relatives to send money, what fraction of people are actually that credulous? My immediate family wouldn't send me money based only on a Facebook message, let alone friends and acquaintances.
It probably wouldn't be that big a pain in the ass, but most people want sunglasses that they think look good, not sunglasses that can be switched between clear and dark on demand, so it better not cost a lot extra (lots of sunglasses charge for the logo, so those would be easy to compete with on price, but you would be doing so at the cost of quite a bit of margin).
There is some chance they consulted with a real actual lawyer, or went so far as to contact Paramount directly.
Damn it, overdo it. Not a bad pun though (I guess it doesn't really count as a pun, as it wasn't intentional).
I was actually being wildly sarcastic, I doubt that someone unwilling to price risk would be able to compete with someone willing to price risk (that there is a tendency to overdue it doesn't make the model worthless--there are plenty of banks that came through the recent crisis with perfectly reasonable loan portfolios).
The beauty of the capitalist system is that you can use this superior model to drive traditional companies out of business.
Your statement about Walmart doesn't make any sense. They have ~ $42 billion in debt:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WMT
But they have spent more than $60 billion in the last 3 years (Cap. Ex., Stock purchases and dividends):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=WMT&annual
If they were truly little more than a breath away from bankruptcy, they wouldn't be spending the equivalent of 1/3 of their debt on those things in each year.
He believes that they are inevitable and uses strategies that work well during them and are mediocre the rest of the time. That doesn't mean he knows when they are going to happen, or what they are going to look like.
The only way to be sure you are safe is a total body condom.
It's probably already too late for this one. Strong public health measures and research into treatments are a more reasonable approach than any sort of meaningful flight quarantine (can you imagine 2 or 3 days on either side of every flight? Longer would probably be better...).
I imagine Apple would be able to make a few million sales to Verizon customers, so they could probably do the radio for ~$10 a phone (I can see where it could cost more than $10 million, but it seems likely that it wouldn't).
So Apple might think they are better off spending their dollars elsewhere, but I can't see developing a Verizon only phone as that big of an impediment. As another reply noted, the networks are all converging on one standard, so the issue is going to (slowly) go away.
AT&T and Verizon are arguably "most" of the telecom players in the U.S., and they both pay nice dividends. Comcast pays a smaller dividend, but it is there:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=T
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=VZ
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=CMCSA
Charter recently declared bankruptcy, which is pretty much the exact opposite of providing shareholders with value. Time Warner cable does not pay a dividend:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=TWC
One really nice thing about that video is that it shows how cool actual amputees think this technology is, as opposed to how lame (a surprising amount of) people with 2 functional hands seem to think it is.
Except it is quite clear that excess leverage and dishonesty where huge contributors to this particular meltdown. There isn't really anything pernicious about regulating the leverage ratio of a deposit backed institution (they are only ever technically solvent anyway), and the meltdown itself eliminated much of the credibility that made dishonesty so profitable.
So given that much of the government action is focused on decreasing the leverage at the big financial institutions, that particular aspect of the problem isn't very likely to get worse (there are two ways to fix the leverage problem: have them sell leveraged assets or increase the amount of capital they have (i.e., give them money). The government is doing some of both.).
Going forward, it is quite likely that Citigroup will be allowed to fall apart (most of it won't go bankrupt, but parts of it might, and it seems unlikely that it will continue to exist in its current form), and Merrill, Lehman and Bear Stearns have already been allowed to fail (in various ways), so it isn't as if the government is trying to preserve everything in 2008 form.
I think it is largely logistical; moving the nerves to the chest makes it easier to reliably and comfortably interface with them (from what I have seen, strapping something to the stump is hard enough on the skin without having whatever else adding pressure points and whatnot).
As a practical matter, it is the other way around (because the costs to battle Apple are roughly on par with the costs to not battle them i.e., a new iPhone), and a user can't actually prove that the jailbreak didn't break the phone.
It's kind of odd that you are mixing a discussion of an anachronism like marriage (special government treatment of marriages deemed acceptable by society is the anachronism, not the part where a couple decides to commit to each other) with your enthusiasm for the future.