Fortunately, existing drugs are effective enough against a wide range of conditions and regulation is effective enough that they are not able to sell cyanide pills for the treatment of anxiety (but you do have to get a doctors note to get your weed).
So in terms of shareholder votes, the executives only have as much control as they have shares in the company.
It is likely that the supply and demand effect you speak of is still present, but it is probably due more to the ownership of the company being well spread out (I would back this speculation up with the rather spectacular success of companies that are run by the people that founded them vs companies that are run by people that were hired in).
That analyst is an idiot. They have paid $54 billion in dividends during that period (which more than accounts for the 20% decline), and 10 years ago was the peak of the dot com bubble, hardly a period where the stock price of Microsoft reflected the actual value of the company.
I think it is rather obvious that they would just borrow the money.
More seriously, for someone that is not an active day trader but is managing their own money, if their portfolio is that tied to their emotions (or versa vice), they are already doing it wrong.
Deciding just how much they grew is sort of a difficult exercise, as both 2000 and 2009 had 'interesting' business events, but the low end argument is that they increased earnings by $5 billion, which is about 50% of their 2000 income. It is also about 80% of Google's earnings (which is an interesting comparison, because Google is widely hailed as a success, whereas people often say that Microsoft hasn't don much).
It wouldn't be insane to argue that they increased income by $7 billion, a 100% increase over their 1999 earnings, and it wouldn't be shocking to see them back near $18 billion for 2010 (they have already reported $14 billion of income), which is a $9 billion increase over 2000.
Of course, none of those numbers account for inflation.
So really, what happened is that Apple grew a whole bunch more.
And all it requires Apple to do is stop distributing the binary now that they know the developer does not have the rights that they told Apple they had (probably on some form or by implication, I don't mean that some human at Apple ever even checked into it).
The FSF, as the holder of the copyright, can take Apple to court to recover damages but the idea that the remedy would include Apple releasing any of their code borders on absurd.
The people who make combofix have raised the bar for gnarly batch files. The exe is just a launcher and compressed blob of files. Inside the blob, there is more than 1 megabyte of batch files (a lot of it is just lists of files to check, but still).
Uh-huh, it just doesn't work very well as an example, what, with there being a 10+ year gap between the selections of the formats and png not existing when Microsoft "created" bmp (it would be reasonable to say that they specified bmp, it is not very complex, it is basically a way of organizing raw bitmap data, with no support for any compression, so most of the bits in the file map directly to the display).
Especially considering that the paint.exe that shipped with Windows XP has (at least some) support for Jpeg, GIF, PNG and TIFF.
Using stupid examples doesn't really add any weight to your argument.
In theory both could be found to be infringing, but I doubt that any legal decision would be particularly harsh with Apple, unless it became clear they were doing it purposefully.
"Good" is rather overloaded, but I was using it to mean, to a voter, someone that did a reasonable job of representing their interests.
I would say you are arguing that term limits will change the entire culture of the people voting, something that I find unlikely, I expect that rather than individuals carrying the power of office around, you would end up with a bunch of mini-Putins.
I'd prefer to see algorithmic districting (this might happen, it is easy to explain and it appeals to most people's sense of fairness), a repeal of the 17th amendment (this probably won't happen), and a reform of the way the House and Senate organize themselves, placing much less emphasis on seniority (this will never happen).
(The internals of redistricting algorithms are not necessarily easy to explain, but the results are easy to display visually, and pretty clear cut)
I really don't see how a few tens of billions of dollars hooked up to fast moving trading programs can be responsible for 'a lot' of that valuation. Especially when the programs are all using basically similar strategies (so they are competing with each other for each little bit of advantage vs the rest of the market).
That isn't to say I think they are doing a whole lot of good, I just don't think they are particularly capable of doing much damage. If they are hugely harmful to other traders, some market maker will decide to make a market where they can't play, to attract the other traders.
So you are proposing a company will a payroll on the order of $5 billion and you propose they are basing their purchasing decisions on a few hundred thousand dollars of costs?
For something like that, $1 million is close enough to free that they are looking much closer at other factors.
Also, your timescales are off, South Carolina Electric & Gas doesn't even have a license yet and they figure they can have a 1.1 GW reactor online by 2016:
(Though they have completed much of the engineering, which probably speeds things up, I'm not sure how the licensing process interacts with the engineering).
I suppose the fact that they started it 35 years ago takes away from the fact that they brought it online 15 years ago. Never mind that attitudes have shifted enough that they are going to complete the other half in a few years.
Also, people currently spend more money driving to the damn grocery store than it costs to ship stuff thousands of miles, I wouldn't worry about getting stuff from the next state over (so, each pound of food consumes way more energy in your car than it consumes in the semi/cargo ship. For example, b-a--n-a--n-a-s are practically free at my grocer.).
And then there is the whole thing where petroleum prices over ~$120 are obviously unsustainable (We have real life experience of this, from a couple years ago. Also, much of the $10 a gallon that you are fear-mongering about would be going to the gub'mint, to subsidize other transportation options and such).
The worst thing you are doing is assuming that investors in power companies (which are generally regulated in a way that the return on investment is okay, but not great) would want to put massive amounts of capital into having a bunch of extra power generation sitting offline, rather than trying to maximize the return on the capital that they have already invested.
I mean, the United States barely tried to hide the fact that it went fascist/authoritarian during WWI (may require squinting), and Aldus Huxley's writings make much more sense when interpreted as a scathing criticism of actual government eugenics programs during his day than if it is interpreted as a 'warning' about the potential for government to try to control the populace (gee-willikers Batman, the Department of Education insists on a reasonable, factual curriculum, hopefully they don't start rounding people up and sterilizing them!).
Throw in the ever-dropping cost of energy, and we are bound to be back to sticks and stones in a generation or two.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever since the cyanobacteria poisoned the atmosphere, life has been the biggest evolutionary pressure that life has had to face.
I think you can rest assured that Motorola did their best when designing your phone.
Their motives are not suspect, they are obvious.
Fortunately, existing drugs are effective enough against a wide range of conditions and regulation is effective enough that they are not able to sell cyanide pills for the treatment of anxiety (but you do have to get a doctors note to get your weed).
Treasury stock (which is what the stock the company holds in itself is called) does not pay dividends and does not vote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasury_stock
So in terms of shareholder votes, the executives only have as much control as they have shares in the company.
It is likely that the supply and demand effect you speak of is still present, but it is probably due more to the ownership of the company being well spread out (I would back this speculation up with the rather spectacular success of companies that are run by the people that founded them vs companies that are run by people that were hired in).
They would like you to pay them money in exchange for some sort of medical treatment.
That analyst is an idiot. They have paid $54 billion in dividends during that period (which more than accounts for the 20% decline), and 10 years ago was the peak of the dot com bubble, hardly a period where the stock price of Microsoft reflected the actual value of the company.
I think it is rather obvious that they would just borrow the money.
More seriously, for someone that is not an active day trader but is managing their own money, if their portfolio is that tied to their emotions (or versa vice), they are already doing it wrong.
"Microsoft hasn't really been growing for a decade" is only true in the broader, "hahahahahaha" sense:
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/download/Yearly%20Income%20Statements.xls
Deciding just how much they grew is sort of a difficult exercise, as both 2000 and 2009 had 'interesting' business events, but the low end argument is that they increased earnings by $5 billion, which is about 50% of their 2000 income. It is also about 80% of Google's earnings (which is an interesting comparison, because Google is widely hailed as a success, whereas people often say that Microsoft hasn't don much).
It wouldn't be insane to argue that they increased income by $7 billion, a 100% increase over their 1999 earnings, and it wouldn't be shocking to see them back near $18 billion for 2010 (they have already reported $14 billion of income), which is a $9 billion increase over 2000.
Of course, none of those numbers account for inflation.
So really, what happened is that Apple grew a whole bunch more.
And all it requires Apple to do is stop distributing the binary now that they know the developer does not have the rights that they told Apple they had (probably on some form or by implication, I don't mean that some human at Apple ever even checked into it).
The FSF, as the holder of the copyright, can take Apple to court to recover damages but the idea that the remedy would include Apple releasing any of their code borders on absurd.
The people who make combofix have raised the bar for gnarly batch files. The exe is just a launcher and compressed blob of files. Inside the blob, there is more than 1 megabyte of batch files (a lot of it is just lists of files to check, but still).
Uh-huh, it just doesn't work very well as an example, what, with there being a 10+ year gap between the selections of the formats and png not existing when Microsoft "created" bmp (it would be reasonable to say that they specified bmp, it is not very complex, it is basically a way of organizing raw bitmap data, with no support for any compression, so most of the bits in the file map directly to the display).
Especially considering that the paint.exe that shipped with Windows XP has (at least some) support for Jpeg, GIF, PNG and TIFF.
Using stupid examples doesn't really add any weight to your argument.
A key aspect of this situation is that it is hard for the FSF to claim huge damages when they are willing to give the source to anyone for $0.
Why would you even bring up BMP in this context?
It is barely a format. It is not encumbered by patents.
Those terms don't attempt to bind third parties to anything, they limit what third parties can do with the code released under the GPL.
In theory both could be found to be infringing, but I doubt that any legal decision would be particularly harsh with Apple, unless it became clear they were doing it purposefully.
Apparently it is pretty common:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonatal_jaundice
(first paragraph says 70% of the time. Other reading says 50% of the time for full term newborns.)
"Good" is rather overloaded, but I was using it to mean, to a voter, someone that did a reasonable job of representing their interests.
I would say you are arguing that term limits will change the entire culture of the people voting, something that I find unlikely, I expect that rather than individuals carrying the power of office around, you would end up with a bunch of mini-Putins.
I'd prefer to see algorithmic districting (this might happen, it is easy to explain and it appeals to most people's sense of fairness), a repeal of the 17th amendment (this probably won't happen), and a reform of the way the House and Senate organize themselves, placing much less emphasis on seniority (this will never happen).
(The internals of redistricting algorithms are not necessarily easy to explain, but the results are easy to display visually, and pretty clear cut)
The combined market capitalization of the stocks list on the NYSE is ~ $16 trillion:
http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/1170350259411.html
I really don't see how a few tens of billions of dollars hooked up to fast moving trading programs can be responsible for 'a lot' of that valuation. Especially when the programs are all using basically similar strategies (so they are competing with each other for each little bit of advantage vs the rest of the market).
That isn't to say I think they are doing a whole lot of good, I just don't think they are particularly capable of doing much damage. If they are hugely harmful to other traders, some market maker will decide to make a market where they can't play, to attract the other traders.
Voters do, on occasion, eliminate bad representatives.
They also tend to continue electing the good ones.
So the theory would be that term limits disproportionately impact the good ones.
So you are proposing a company will a payroll on the order of $5 billion and you propose they are basing their purchasing decisions on a few hundred thousand dollars of costs?
For something like that, $1 million is close enough to free that they are looking much closer at other factors.
Term limits probably eliminate at least as many good representatives as they do bad.
You really think a slower market would be less susceptible to speculative pressures?
Also, your timescales are off, South Carolina Electric & Gas doesn't even have a license yet and they figure they can have a 1.1 GW reactor online by 2016:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_Generating_Station
(Though they have completed much of the engineering, which probably speeds things up, I'm not sure how the licensing process interacts with the engineering).
If a tariff makes coal triple in cost, wind and nuclear start looking pretty okay.
And if you think that rationing and massive price increases will not put a damper on NIMBY, you're nuts.
As for the rest of your 'analysis', Watts Bar seems to count as major:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Generating_Station
I suppose the fact that they started it 35 years ago takes away from the fact that they brought it online 15 years ago. Never mind that attitudes have shifted enough that they are going to complete the other half in a few years.
Also, people currently spend more money driving to the damn grocery store than it costs to ship stuff thousands of miles, I wouldn't worry about getting stuff from the next state over (so, each pound of food consumes way more energy in your car than it consumes in the semi/cargo ship. For example, b-a--n-a--n-a-s are practically free at my grocer.).
And then there is the whole thing where petroleum prices over ~$120 are obviously unsustainable (We have real life experience of this, from a couple years ago. Also, much of the $10 a gallon that you are fear-mongering about would be going to the gub'mint, to subsidize other transportation options and such).
The worst thing you are doing is assuming that investors in power companies (which are generally regulated in a way that the return on investment is okay, but not great) would want to put massive amounts of capital into having a bunch of extra power generation sitting offline, rather than trying to maximize the return on the capital that they have already invested.
Good news: The dystopian future is not coming.
I mean, the United States barely tried to hide the fact that it went fascist/authoritarian during WWI (may require squinting), and Aldus Huxley's writings make much more sense when interpreted as a scathing criticism of actual government eugenics programs during his day than if it is interpreted as a 'warning' about the potential for government to try to control the populace (gee-willikers Batman, the Department of Education insists on a reasonable, factual curriculum, hopefully they don't start rounding people up and sterilizing them!).
Throw in the ever-dropping cost of energy, and we are bound to be back to sticks and stones in a generation or two.