The odometer is meaningless other then car value. It doesnt say WHERE the car was driven. I could have a farm truck that i use to get out to my back forty and occasionally ride into town. Do i need to pay for all those miles, including the ones i put in on my own private 'roads'?
If you're driving your farm truck exclusively on private roads or off-road, then it is currently eligible to be registered as a farm vehicle, which could be exempt from a per-mile tax.
If the truck is used to ride into town on a public road, then even under the current system a use tax is supposed to be paid on those miles.
I would be all for a 'per-mile' system, as long as the current 'per-gallon' system went away, (we all know it won't). And for all of the examples of the "what if?" scenarios in this thread, the current per-gallon system is just as broken.
At best, it could be forced to allow self-reporting of non-taxable miles (much like many states rely on self-reporting of out-of-state purchases for use-tax purposes).
The difference is that paying use tax on out-of-state purchases is up to the resident. If they make self-reporting a requirement for refunds of a per-mile tax, I'm pretty sure the state won't need to force many people to self-report all their exempt mileage.
My guess is that when asked this question, the USB-IF has a standard response of "Please don't do that!" And then for people who do, they may follow up with another sternly-written letter.
I was going to post on here with some links to places I had seen before where PIDs used to be available. http://www.voti.nl was the one I was going to list. I went to their site, which now states that they have also received a similar nastygram from the USB-IF.
So it seems like the USB-IF is cracking down on what used to be allowed.
The fee to purchase a VID has also gone up in the last 5 years. Gee, I wonder if that's a coincidence?
If I'm not mistaken, you cannot buy or resell USB-based hardware if you're not certified. You can buy units like USB-Serial bridges and implement them but you can't solder a connector on yourself. It's basically buying a license to the patents of USB.
You are mistaken. There is no requirement for the hardware to be certified, but you cannot use the USB-IF's trade dress without agreeing to their licensing terms, which include certification. There is a big difference between purchasing a VID and being able to claim a product is "USB certified".
I'm surprised to read that "The USB-IF has long had a VID/PID process for hobbyists". The last time I looked, maybe three years ago, their "process" was to tell hobbyists to stuff it.
What if it's Bob that's been waiting for me to sell? What if Bob was already sitting there, with a limit order set at $11? Here I come with my $10 asking price, just what Bob was waiting for. But here comes HFT at light speed, cutting in front of Bob to buy my $10 share and offer it to Bob for a nice $11, just like he wanted.
Why is that preferable to Bob and I splitting the spread, with both of us getting/saving $0.50 more than we had expected?
How are Bob and I any worse off with the presence of the HFT middleman? If I was willing to sell at as low as $10, and Bob was willing to by as high as $11, that's exactly what happened. Sure, it would be nice to get another $0.50 on each side, but that doesn't change the price at which both parties were willing to settle.
I agree with the sentiment that HFT involves access that is out of reach of the normal trader, which does seem unfair. But arbitrage has been around for longer than fiber optic connections. If I wanted to sell at $10 but there was no Bob around with a buy offer, and some third party bought up my shares only to turn around and sell them to Bob for $11 a week later, should I feel cheated? A day later? An hour later? At what point does it become wrong? I got the $10 I was asking for, if that wasn't good enough, why didn't I put my offer at $10.50 to start with?
That being said, it does seem like the "fair" thing would be for the exchange to, in one instant, see Bob's buy offer at $11, see my sell at $10, and automatically make it happen at $10.50. I think that's what the argument for batching is trying to accomplish. But as long as the exchange makes its money by commissions paid per transaction, why would it settle for one "fair" sell/buy pair when it could have the commissions for the two (or more) available by allowing HFT?
If I'm willing to sell a share of ABCD for $10 and Bob is willing to buy a share of ABCD for $11, why is it better for HFT to pocket $1 rather than for me to sell for $10.50 and Bob to buy for $10.50, effectively splitting the $1 between the two of us?
I understand why it's better for the HFT. I'm asking why it's better for everyone else.
Using your example: if you're offering your share of ABCD for $10 and someone else buys it at $10.00 before Bob executes his buy (at any price), would you not be happy to sell?
How long does Bob need to hold onto his share of ABCD before he's allowed to sell it for $11.01?
This is one of the fundamental questions of genetic screening.
So what if you find out you have some future likelihood of ending up with a serious illness that you cannot prevent?
I don't think I would want to know.
You do already do have a likelihood of ending up with a serious illness that you cannot prevent. You will most likely die of a terminal illness late in life, unless you are unlucky enough to suffer a fatal accident before you contract whatever disease is waiting for you.
But, I do agree with you, I don't think I would want to know because I would not want that knowledge gnawing in the back of my mind for the rest of my life, and it would probably affect my choices in unwise ways. I'm approaching age 40 now, and planning for retirement is very much on my mind. If I knew that I was likely to die at age 50-55, would I start eating large slabs of red meat and taking extravagant vacations rather than save for retirement? What if I got lucky and didn't get the disease, or a cure was discovered in the meantime? Then I'm 55, obese, and broke.
Geez, all my replies in this thread are so fatalistic today...
It's not about scaring your kid for 65 years. It's about having 65 years of warning. Perhaps just a nudge in the right direction now, like a focus on cognitive endeavors rather than keeping up on the latest Disney drivel, can encourage a life of improvement to the brain. When Alzheimers' does come around, there's ample cognitive ability to spare, so the gradual decline toward incapability might just outlast your kid's life.
Well, shoot, if that's all we're waiting for, let me do everyone's kids a favor:
Hey parents! At some point in the future, all your children are going to die! It will come sooner for some than others, so please teach them to not waste their lives on pointless drivel!
We tried it. My co-worker sent me $15. After the initial email, we both tied our debit cards to our email addresses, and I had the funds in my account in less than 5 minutes. Since our cards are now linked I imagine it will be even quicker in the future.
So now can you spoof another e-mail from your co-worker to yourself, CC'ed to square and get more money from him in less than 5 minutes?
I don't understand why countries like Ireland or Bermuda or wherever don't all just charge a small tax of some kind (like say 5%) that keeps the companies coming there, but gets them tons of money.
And why don't we (the US) become that country? Many states and cities already sweetheart deals in the form of tax incentives for companies to set up shop in their jurisdiction, in the hope that property taxes, jobs, and increased economic activity will follow.
If we did that at a national level, would we be any worse off than the current situation? Rather than encourage the Apples, Googles, and Exxons of the world to do business here and leave the money overseas in a tax haven, why not become the next tax haven? 5% is better than the nothing we're getting now...
Fuck him. I hope he suffers. The Nazis building this data centre should face a Nuremberg trial if this country ever comes to its senses. "But I was only doing my job" is not a defence.
Installing drywall on a government contract is equal to running a prison camp and genocide operation in your mind, huh?
If they fast-tracked the project, they probably didn't have an electrical engineer do a load analysis.
In my experience, some engineer probably DID the analysis, but they ignored him/her because it would take too long to do it right. The revision 1 Blue prints where already under contract and it would take too long to process a change order. Of course, everybody KNEW that the design had a fatal flaw, at least until the program management started leaving like rats from a sinking ship and their replacements where not aware (or told) of the problems.
The original engineer is then tasked with fixing the problem with about 1/4 the resources necessary and no authority to actually make any changes to the project. Every time there is a power failure and equipment gets smoked, the engineer is blamed for not having the "problem" fixed. His performance rating takes a dive at the next performance review and he either quits in frustration or gets fired.
That's what happens in large government projects... At least in my experience...
Reading between the lines, I'd bet dollars-to-donuts that the design of this datacenter was compartmentalized to the point that no contractor pulling wires or doing power analysis was allowed to know the whole scope of the facility. The power draw would be a very good indicator of how much computing power is inside, and that's a detail that I'm sure is classified.
No one will actually cut spending. most of what the government spends money on isn't pork projects. It isn't entitlements. Sure the government might spend $50 billion on pork projects but out of trillions that is saying they went out to eat a lot.
The Social security is a ponzi scheme where they stole money out of for decades and now the bill is due so the politicians are still losing money that way.
The problem is the government cut taxes several times but they can't cut spending.
I agree with you on the need to cut spending, and not a trivial amount like the $50billion that you mention. Percentage-wise, cutting $50billion from the federal budget is like a household making $50,000 figuring out how to spend $700 less next year.
So the wealthy got tax breaks but anyone earning less than $150,000 a year gets screwed.
Mit Rommeny pays less in taxes than someone earning $150,000 a year. the top 5% control something stupid like 90% of the income yet only pay taxes on 20% of that total. yet they bitch and moan they pay too much. but they only pay taxes on 20% of their income whereas if you are earning less than $250,000 then you are paying taxes on 100% of your income.
that is the problem. the trick is everyone in congress is in that group.
Back when Mitt Romney was running for President, his 2011 tax forms showed an effective tax rate of 14.6%. I just ran a tax estimator here: http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/tax-planning/1040-form-tax-calculator.aspx for a gross income of $150,000, Married filing jointly, with 2 dependents. Taking the standard deduction with no other credits, it estimated a tax of $22,408, or 14.94%.
Granted, 14.94% is larger than 14.6%, but not outrageously so. Our mythical family of 4 would also do much better if they could claim a 10% charitable donation like the Romneys, or the mortgage and/or student loan interest of a typical family.
That being said, I'm right there with you about your feelings of the social security ponzi and our Congress that's so lousy it has an approval rating teetering around 10%.
Ah yes, the dog and pony show, with super glued, hand-built prototypes and fake UI screens. The real danger is always in management, who must think, "hey, we saw it working last week, why do these eggheads say they need more time now? What's left to do?"
There's somethign to be said for keeping the founder at the helm but in the case of Microsoft I do believe Gates is part of the problem. I worked there from the mid-90's to the mid-2000's and a lot of the cultural problems started with Gates. They only became apparent with Ballmer because exponential growth came to a halt but they were there. Not to mention that without Gates' support Ballmer would never have lasted as long as he did.
It might be true that Gates lead the company into "cultural problems" as you saw them, but you gotta admit under his rein they made a metric buttload of money. I've also left companies because the culture didn't agree with what I thought it should be, but it seems like sour grapes to say he was a poor leader because the peer review process was broken, they worked their programmers too hard, or that they stopped free towel service at the gym. From an investor's perspective (that's what we're talking about, right?) all of that means diddly-squat as long as the company was printing money that looked like Office license keys.
[...] (when you buy 500K cars a year, car salesmen are your bitch - it was quite entertaining the one time I actually had contact with the salesman involved, he never knew what hit him [...]
If you have time, I would love to hear more about this experience. The idea of turning the tables, putting a car salesman at the mercy of the buyer, warms my heart.
I haven't been following their reliability as they are available on so few vehicles. My one experience with one was on a rental Jeep that had it and there was something very wrong with that vehicle and I am willing to attribute that to it being a rental beater.
I would attribute it instead to being a Jeep. I owned a Liberty for almost a year, and I wanted so badly to fall in love with it. Finally sold it at a loss to just be rid of the thing. Just Empty Every Pocket, indeed.
But the news originated in Washington DC, as they perceived 2PM.
No! It's easy to get this confused: the news originated in DC at 1:45pm; with instructions to journalists not to release the news until 2:00pm by the National Atomic Clock.
I see what you're saying, that maybe the trade in question was triggered by a news source in Chicago releasing the news at the correct time, and the trader watching that source instead of the "official" source from DC.
But what source would that be? I'm picturing "journalist" as reporters from the WSJ, USA Today, etc. Is there some trade group in the financials circle of Chicago authoritative enough that traders would trust to the point of executing $600 million trades on their opinion? Stranger things have happened...
It may have been legit (!). The rules* say "2pm by the National Atomic Clock", which is in Colorado. The distance from CO to Chicago is about 1019 miles, and to DC is 1681 miles. So Chicago can use the news 3.5ms earlier than DC.
* As gleaned from a handful of secondary articles on the story.
But the news originated in Washington DC, as they perceived 2PM. Either DC's clock was running fast or the trade was executed before the news was received. Either it was a gutsy $600 million gamble, or someone was in the know.
Keep anything you think might sell. Track by acquisition date. If it's not gone in X months, throw it on the free cart. Another month, toss it. "X" depends on your turnover, space, and how many books are coming in. Since you're space limited, get rid of the oldest ones first.
This is the right answer. From the OP, the only options to him were:
save it for sale (fifty cents soft cover, one dollar hardback)
pack it, e.g. for another library's bookstore
put it on the free cart
toss it in the recycle bin
One thing not explained: is there any financial consideration given by other libraries that they might send books to? I would take that option right off the list, or as a last option just before recycling. Other libraries probably have the same problem, and your unsellable books are most-likely destined to recycling at those other libraries.
The OP also said that shelf space was at a premium, and none of those options involved keeping the books to be put into circulation in the library, so the goal is not to act as preserver of mankind's accumulated knowledge, but to maximize the donation to the library by selling as many books as possible.
My opinion is that patrons of the library should have the chance to purchase first, just as a service to them. Give every book a chance to sell and make the library a buck (or 50 cents).
After (or during) the time that it's offered for sale to the library's patrons, check what the going rate on Amazon or Bookfinder.com is. If it looks likely to sell for a price worth bothering over, and you don't mind the additional work of maintaining listings and a small shipping department, they could be listed on Amazon or half.com or similar.
Another option would be to work out a relationship with a book wholesaler who might be interested in purchasing boxes/pallets of your used books. You would virtually give them away, but at this point they are only one step from the recycle bin, so even 5 or 10 cents is better than nothing.
Give it another round on the free cart, then recycle.
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The odometer is meaningless other then car value. It doesnt say WHERE the car was driven. I could have a farm truck that i use to get out to my back forty and occasionally ride into town. Do i need to pay for all those miles, including the ones i put in on my own private 'roads'?
If you're driving your farm truck exclusively on private roads or off-road, then it is currently eligible to be registered as a farm vehicle, which could be exempt from a per-mile tax.
If the truck is used to ride into town on a public road, then even under the current system a use tax is supposed to be paid on those miles.
I would be all for a 'per-mile' system, as long as the current 'per-gallon' system went away, (we all know it won't). And for all of the examples of the "what if?" scenarios in this thread, the current per-gallon system is just as broken.
At best, it could be forced to allow self-reporting of non-taxable miles (much like many states rely on self-reporting of out-of-state purchases for use-tax purposes).
The difference is that paying use tax on out-of-state purchases is up to the resident. If they make self-reporting a requirement for refunds of a per-mile tax, I'm pretty sure the state won't need to force many people to self-report all their exempt mileage.
My guess is that when asked this question, the USB-IF has a standard response of "Please don't do that!" And then for people who do, they may follow up with another sternly-written letter.
I was going to post on here with some links to places I had seen before where PIDs used to be available. http://www.voti.nl was the one I was going to list. I went to their site, which now states that they have also received a similar nastygram from the USB-IF.
So it seems like the USB-IF is cracking down on what used to be allowed.
The fee to purchase a VID has also gone up in the last 5 years. Gee, I wonder if that's a coincidence?
If I'm not mistaken, you cannot buy or resell USB-based hardware if you're not certified. You can buy units like USB-Serial bridges and implement them but you can't solder a connector on yourself. It's basically buying a license to the patents of USB.
You are mistaken. There is no requirement for the hardware to be certified, but you cannot use the USB-IF's trade dress without agreeing to their licensing terms, which include certification. There is a big difference between purchasing a VID and being able to claim a product is "USB certified".
I'm surprised to read that "The USB-IF has long had a VID/PID process for hobbyists". The last time I looked, maybe three years ago, their "process" was to tell hobbyists to stuff it.
What if it's Bob that's been waiting for me to sell? What if Bob was already sitting there, with a limit order set at $11? Here I come with my $10 asking price, just what Bob was waiting for. But here comes HFT at light speed, cutting in front of Bob to buy my $10 share and offer it to Bob for a nice $11, just like he wanted. Why is that preferable to Bob and I splitting the spread, with both of us getting/saving $0.50 more than we had expected?
How are Bob and I any worse off with the presence of the HFT middleman? If I was willing to sell at as low as $10, and Bob was willing to by as high as $11, that's exactly what happened. Sure, it would be nice to get another $0.50 on each side, but that doesn't change the price at which both parties were willing to settle.
I agree with the sentiment that HFT involves access that is out of reach of the normal trader, which does seem unfair. But arbitrage has been around for longer than fiber optic connections. If I wanted to sell at $10 but there was no Bob around with a buy offer, and some third party bought up my shares only to turn around and sell them to Bob for $11 a week later, should I feel cheated? A day later? An hour later? At what point does it become wrong? I got the $10 I was asking for, if that wasn't good enough, why didn't I put my offer at $10.50 to start with?
That being said, it does seem like the "fair" thing would be for the exchange to, in one instant, see Bob's buy offer at $11, see my sell at $10, and automatically make it happen at $10.50. I think that's what the argument for batching is trying to accomplish. But as long as the exchange makes its money by commissions paid per transaction, why would it settle for one "fair" sell/buy pair when it could have the commissions for the two (or more) available by allowing HFT?
If I'm willing to sell a share of ABCD for $10 and Bob is willing to buy a share of ABCD for $11, why is it better for HFT to pocket $1 rather than for me to sell for $10.50 and Bob to buy for $10.50, effectively splitting the $1 between the two of us? I understand why it's better for the HFT. I'm asking why it's better for everyone else.
Using your example: if you're offering your share of ABCD for $10 and someone else buys it at $10.00 before Bob executes his buy (at any price), would you not be happy to sell?
How long does Bob need to hold onto his share of ABCD before he's allowed to sell it for $11.01?
Amen. If I could start over again, same circumstances, I'd be a fucking lawyer in a heartbeat.
You may be on to something there... a prostitute that also does estate planning? That's gold, Jerry!
This is one of the fundamental questions of genetic screening.
So what if you find out you have some future likelihood of ending up with a serious illness that you cannot prevent?
I don't think I would want to know.
You do already do have a likelihood of ending up with a serious illness that you cannot prevent. You will most likely die of a terminal illness late in life, unless you are unlucky enough to suffer a fatal accident before you contract whatever disease is waiting for you. But, I do agree with you, I don't think I would want to know because I would not want that knowledge gnawing in the back of my mind for the rest of my life, and it would probably affect my choices in unwise ways. I'm approaching age 40 now, and planning for retirement is very much on my mind. If I knew that I was likely to die at age 50-55, would I start eating large slabs of red meat and taking extravagant vacations rather than save for retirement? What if I got lucky and didn't get the disease, or a cure was discovered in the meantime? Then I'm 55, obese, and broke. Geez, all my replies in this thread are so fatalistic today...
It's not about scaring your kid for 65 years. It's about having 65 years of warning. Perhaps just a nudge in the right direction now, like a focus on cognitive endeavors rather than keeping up on the latest Disney drivel, can encourage a life of improvement to the brain. When Alzheimers' does come around, there's ample cognitive ability to spare, so the gradual decline toward incapability might just outlast your kid's life.
Well, shoot, if that's all we're waiting for, let me do everyone's kids a favor:
Hey parents! At some point in the future, all your children are going to die! It will come sooner for some than others, so please teach them to not waste their lives on pointless drivel!
How's that?
You download a script from the internet and run it as root? WTF.
I don't see "su -" or "sudo ./install_chome.sh" as any of the three steps...
We tried it. My co-worker sent me $15. After the initial email, we both tied our debit cards to our email addresses, and I had the funds in my account in less than 5 minutes. Since our cards are now linked I imagine it will be even quicker in the future.
So now can you spoof another e-mail from your co-worker to yourself, CC'ed to square and get more money from him in less than 5 minutes?
I don't understand why countries like Ireland or Bermuda or wherever don't all just charge a small tax of some kind (like say 5%) that keeps the companies coming there, but gets them tons of money.
And why don't we (the US) become that country? Many states and cities already sweetheart deals in the form of tax incentives for companies to set up shop in their jurisdiction, in the hope that property taxes, jobs, and increased economic activity will follow.
If we did that at a national level, would we be any worse off than the current situation? Rather than encourage the Apples, Googles, and Exxons of the world to do business here and leave the money overseas in a tax haven, why not become the next tax haven? 5% is better than the nothing we're getting now...
Fuck him. I hope he suffers. The Nazis building this data centre should face a Nuremberg trial if this country ever comes to its senses. "But I was only doing my job" is not a defence.
Installing drywall on a government contract is equal to running a prison camp and genocide operation in your mind, huh?
If they fast-tracked the project, they probably didn't have an electrical engineer do a load analysis.
In my experience, some engineer probably DID the analysis, but they ignored him/her because it would take too long to do it right. The revision 1 Blue prints where already under contract and it would take too long to process a change order. Of course, everybody KNEW that the design had a fatal flaw, at least until the program management started leaving like rats from a sinking ship and their replacements where not aware (or told) of the problems.
The original engineer is then tasked with fixing the problem with about 1/4 the resources necessary and no authority to actually make any changes to the project. Every time there is a power failure and equipment gets smoked, the engineer is blamed for not having the "problem" fixed. His performance rating takes a dive at the next performance review and he either quits in frustration or gets fired.
That's what happens in large government projects... At least in my experience...
Reading between the lines, I'd bet dollars-to-donuts that the design of this datacenter was compartmentalized to the point that no contractor pulling wires or doing power analysis was allowed to know the whole scope of the facility. The power draw would be a very good indicator of how much computing power is inside, and that's a detail that I'm sure is classified.
This is the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my suit against the film The Neverending Story.
No one will actually cut spending. most of what the government spends money on isn't pork projects. It isn't entitlements. Sure the government might spend $50 billion on pork projects but out of trillions that is saying they went out to eat a lot.
The Social security is a ponzi scheme where they stole money out of for decades and now the bill is due so the politicians are still losing money that way.
The problem is the government cut taxes several times but they can't cut spending.
I agree with you on the need to cut spending, and not a trivial amount like the $50billion that you mention. Percentage-wise, cutting $50billion from the federal budget is like a household making $50,000 figuring out how to spend $700 less next year.
So the wealthy got tax breaks but anyone earning less than $150,000 a year gets screwed.
Mit Rommeny pays less in taxes than someone earning $150,000 a year. the top 5% control something stupid like 90% of the income yet only pay taxes on 20% of that total. yet they bitch and moan they pay too much. but they only pay taxes on 20% of their income whereas if you are earning less than $250,000 then you are paying taxes on 100% of your income.
that is the problem. the trick is everyone in congress is in that group.
Back when Mitt Romney was running for President, his 2011 tax forms showed an effective tax rate of 14.6%. I just ran a tax estimator here: http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/tax-planning/1040-form-tax-calculator.aspx for a gross income of $150,000, Married filing jointly, with 2 dependents. Taking the standard deduction with no other credits, it estimated a tax of $22,408, or 14.94%.
Granted, 14.94% is larger than 14.6%, but not outrageously so. Our mythical family of 4 would also do much better if they could claim a 10% charitable donation like the Romneys, or the mortgage and/or student loan interest of a typical family.
That being said, I'm right there with you about your feelings of the social security ponzi and our Congress that's so lousy it has an approval rating teetering around 10%.
Ah yes, the dog and pony show, with super glued, hand-built prototypes and fake UI screens. The real danger is always in management, who must think, "hey, we saw it working last week, why do these eggheads say they need more time now? What's left to do?"
There's somethign to be said for keeping the founder at the helm but in the case of Microsoft I do believe Gates is part of the problem. I worked there from the mid-90's to the mid-2000's and a lot of the cultural problems started with Gates. They only became apparent with Ballmer because exponential growth came to a halt but they were there. Not to mention that without Gates' support Ballmer would never have lasted as long as he did.
It might be true that Gates lead the company into "cultural problems" as you saw them, but you gotta admit under his rein they made a metric buttload of money. I've also left companies because the culture didn't agree with what I thought it should be, but it seems like sour grapes to say he was a poor leader because the peer review process was broken, they worked their programmers too hard, or that they stopped free towel service at the gym. From an investor's perspective (that's what we're talking about, right?) all of that means diddly-squat as long as the company was printing money that looked like Office license keys.
[...] (when you buy 500K cars a year, car salesmen are your bitch - it was quite entertaining the one time I actually had contact with the salesman involved, he never knew what hit him [...]
If you have time, I would love to hear more about this experience. The idea of turning the tables, putting a car salesman at the mercy of the buyer, warms my heart.
I haven't been following their reliability as they are available on so few vehicles. My one experience with one was on a rental Jeep that had it and there was something very wrong with that vehicle and I am willing to attribute that to it being a rental beater.
I would attribute it instead to being a Jeep. I owned a Liberty for almost a year, and I wanted so badly to fall in love with it. Finally sold it at a loss to just be rid of the thing. Just Empty Every Pocket, indeed.
But the news originated in Washington DC, as they perceived 2PM.
No! It's easy to get this confused: the news originated in DC at 1:45pm; with instructions to journalists not to release the news until 2:00pm by the National Atomic Clock.
I see what you're saying, that maybe the trade in question was triggered by a news source in Chicago releasing the news at the correct time, and the trader watching that source instead of the "official" source from DC.
But what source would that be? I'm picturing "journalist" as reporters from the WSJ, USA Today, etc. Is there some trade group in the financials circle of Chicago authoritative enough that traders would trust to the point of executing $600 million trades on their opinion? Stranger things have happened...
It may have been legit (!). The rules* say "2pm by the National Atomic Clock", which is in Colorado. The distance from CO to Chicago is about 1019 miles, and to DC is 1681 miles. So Chicago can use the news 3.5ms earlier than DC.
* As gleaned from a handful of secondary articles on the story.
But the news originated in Washington DC, as they perceived 2PM. Either DC's clock was running fast or the trade was executed before the news was received. Either it was a gutsy $600 million gamble, or someone was in the know.
The perfect key to be assigned as the Host Key in Virtualbox...
Keep anything you think might sell. Track by acquisition date. If it's not gone in X months, throw it on the free cart. Another month, toss it.
"X" depends on your turnover, space, and how many books are coming in. Since you're space limited, get rid of the oldest ones first.
This is the right answer. From the OP, the only options to him were:
One thing not explained: is there any financial consideration given by other libraries that they might send books to? I would take that option right off the list, or as a last option just before recycling. Other libraries probably have the same problem, and your unsellable books are most-likely destined to recycling at those other libraries.
The OP also said that shelf space was at a premium, and none of those options involved keeping the books to be put into circulation in the library, so the goal is not to act as preserver of mankind's accumulated knowledge, but to maximize the donation to the library by selling as many books as possible.
My opinion is that patrons of the library should have the chance to purchase first, just as a service to them. Give every book a chance to sell and make the library a buck (or 50 cents).
After (or during) the time that it's offered for sale to the library's patrons, check what the going rate on Amazon or Bookfinder.com is. If it looks likely to sell for a price worth bothering over, and you don't mind the additional work of maintaining listings and a small shipping department, they could be listed on Amazon or half.com or similar.
Another option would be to work out a relationship with a book wholesaler who might be interested in purchasing boxes/pallets of your used books. You would virtually give them away, but at this point they are only one step from the recycle bin, so even 5 or 10 cents is better than nothing.
Give it another round on the free cart, then recycle.
One household for a month, or one trip anytime into the past or future with your hovering time machine!