"last stimulus was a failure" False - it stimulated, per CBO and other credible analysis.
"deficits that finance the stimulus destroy more jobs than the tax cuts create." False - not in a liquidity trap, there is no crowding out, and with a trade deficit private savings require government deficits.
"The 1 year cut in SS payroll tax will make SS that much more broke" False - SS contributions were replaced by Federal gov't contributions in the current payroll tax cut.
"it's broke now" False - once the Trust Fund runs out (which is smoothing out a demographic bulge that is currently passing through), it is an annual pay-what-is-collected system that, even with changing population demographics and with no changes to law, is expected to pay 80% of forecasted benefits for the rest of the century. With a shift of less than 1% of annual GDP into Social Security, that system will pay 100% of benefits for the rest of the century. That's not broke.
Summary - learn facts and basic national income accounting (macroeconomics) before speaking about which you do not know.
1. Fraud and other white-collar crimes are estimated to divert about 6% of gross revenue. That's more than $700 billion a year in the U.S. , or the equivalent of the U.S. Department of Defense's annual budget.
2. Economic damage is almost never 100% recoverable, particularly in criminal cases. Did Enron shareholders get made whole?
3. White-collar crimes affects people as much as violent crime, although conventional constructions tend to focus on violent crime. Would you rather be robbed once, or lose most of your life savings to a ponzi scheme? Has the recent financial crisis not caused direct harm to anyone?
4. The deterrence effect of criminally punishing white-collar criminals reduces occurrences, reducing future costs to society. Put a senior executive in prison, and it changes how corporate culture operates for the better (at least for that industry)
Turns out Fanta was created by the head of Coca-Cola Germany during WW2 after Coke syrup stopping being shipped to Germany, and was initially made with whatever fruit could be found. ('fanta' after the German word for fantasy or imagination.) The brand name was revived in the 1950's when Coke needed to complete with an expanding line of Pepsi flavors oversees, and gained traction everywhere else, but was never pushed much in the U.S.
You should have just stopped there, because to me that simultaneously explained and undercut everything else you subsequently wrote. If you were 30 years older, you'd like Frankie Vallie, hate rock'n'roll and think Elvis was destructive.
I have diverse musical tastes (rock, some metal, blues, some country, bluegrass, many types of electronica and produced music (techo, lounge, trip-hop, trance, DnB), some pop, classical, world). And I love a whole lot of hip-hop.
Try The Roots, or Talib Kweli, or old Fugees, Common, Oukast, Beatie Boys, Jurassic 5, Digable Planets, Nappy Roots, WuTang, Wylcef - that is all real music.
"all icons except this one (Recycle Bin) represent applications."
??? Maybe on your desktop. Icons on a Windows desktop can be, or be shortcuts to, applications, files, filesystem locations, URLs (smb, http, ftp). The Windows Desktop is simply a filesystem directory like any other.
I suppose in one sense those are all OPENED by applications, if by applications you mean passing the link to explorer.exe to handle - but in that case then the Recycle icon opens the explorer.exe application to a specific directory.
"I never have caused real damage by accidental deletions. Anything important has to be backed-up anyways, as disks do fail."
And what happens if a user hits delete before the next backup runs?
Incorrect. Real job growth comes from YOUNG businesses, many of whom happen to be small when they start. Older businesses, both large and small, don't generate much job growth.
So the public policy should be to encourage entrepreneurialsim, not necessarily small businesses. There is a difference.
And yet here you are telling us your thoughts, hoping that we'll read them and care. Is using the FB platform to communicate fundamentally different than Slashdot?
Not vain? Just keep telling yourself that.
The problem being, as we've recently seen in the May flash crash and similar smaller events in single names, is that HFT-based liquidity is not deep liquidity, and it dries up the second (or millisecond) that there's chaos in that market.
Don't be confused - HFT liquidity is not AT ALL the same kind of liquidity that market makers are obligated to supply.
You're going too far - MS doesn't need to define who is covered, and don't need to provide license keys or support, they simply need to be able to liberally grant requesting NGOs / any other person licenses when they are politically harassed using license non-compliance as a reason. If and only if volume becomes a problem do they need better processes & policies.
It's forgoing minimum incremental revenue in the pursuit of good corporate citizenship (apparently, and in this particular instance).
"So very naive. Do they think they are getting IP enforcement externalities for free?"
No, but they are solving / preventing one minor externality right now - so why complain that they haven't also solved all the world's IP problems? This was the right response to a specific set of circumstances.
"but why, when running just fine on that small bit of energy, would our bodies evolve to process carbon-rich complex fatty acids into methane and N2O and then slow-burn it metabolically? Especially when we can always acquire a hundred times more food than we need?!"
Life has NEVER been able to acquire a hundred times more food than we need, except for the last few seconds of history. Life evolved to metabolize anything it could find, because food was ALWAYS scarce.
Life doesn't decide to hide away excess energy in some mysterious spiritual source - sorry. I'm glad you feel more energetic and healthier because of your physical & mental habits, but it's not because you've accessed a hidden source of 'life energy' in the Tao.
There is a legal difference between puffery and deceptive advertising.
One shouldn't trust that "fantastic" means the same thing to both the buyer and seller, but one also shouldn't be allowed to deceptively mislead in commerce - that's called fraud.
This post from economist Dean Baker's blog at CEPR does some analysis that shows that extraction of $1 trillion in minerals over the next 40 years would add $300-$400 per capita per year. Current Afghanistan per-capita GDP is about $800 per year.
"The media have been highlighting projections produced by the military that show that Afghanistan may have $1 trillion of mineral wealth. It would be helpful to put this figure in some context. The NYT helpfully described this sum as being equal to $38,482.76 for every person in Afghanistan."
"It would be useful to note that this is a gross number, it does not subtract the cost of extracting the minerals nor does it consider that these resources would likely be extracted over many decades. If we assume that the cost of extracting the minerals (e.g. foreign produced equipment, foreign trained technicians, profits of foreignh companies and environmental damage -- not counting domestic Afghan labor) is between 25 and 50 percent of the value of the minerals, then the money going to Afghanis would be between $500 billion and $750 billion."
"If this money is earned over a 40-year period (Saudi Arabia has been producing oil for 80 years), then it comes to between $12.5 billion and $18.8 billion a year. Afghanistan's population is currently 29.1 million, but it is growing at the rate of 2.5 percent annually. Assuming the growth rate slows, Afghanistan's population will average about 40 million over this period. This means that the revenue from the minerals will average between $312.50 and $470 per person per year. This is still likely to have a substantial impact on Afghanistan's economy, since its current GDP per capita is just $800 on a purchasing power parity basis."
I'm an accountant, have read your post a few times, and still can't figure out what you're trying to say. (caveat: this post assumes U.S. tax law)
"If IBM writes off an ancient server and sends it to the scrapyard, they don't have to pay any property tax on it anymore and can deduct the value of the server off their profits and balance sheets."
(1) IBM probably doesn't pay much, if any, property taxes on server equipment. (state and local taxes on the current market value of installed equipment)
(2) IBM has already deducted the cost of the server equipment from their U.S. income tax return as a depreciation expense - for such small costs, it is immediate-to-very-quickly. Scraping equipment results in a tax benefit only when you have not already 'written off' the cost of the equipment on a tax return, which tax accountants do as quickly as allowable.
(3) Similarly, IBM shows server equipment on their balance sheet as 'equipment, net of depreciation', that is, the un-depreciated (or not-yet-'written-off' portion of acquisition cost). Scrapping already-expensed or fully-depreciated equipment generally doesn't change the balance sheet that much. (there are tax vs. book differences in depreciation and expensing equipment, but minor in the great scheme of things)
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As to the Sawmill example:
The entire plant is Revenues minus Costs = Profit. You bought the input wood, and produce wood products for sale. You deduct, as Cost of Goods Sold, all of the input wood as raw materials. If you previously threw away waste sawdust, that is your inefficiency, but doesn't change the fact that you would still deduct the full cost of the wood raw materials.
If you start selling the waste sawdust, then you still deduct the same amount for the cost of raw materials - you bought the same amount of wood. Only now, you are selling another product for additional revenue, which used to be thrown in the trash. That the sawdust used to be thrown in the trash isn't what caused those taxes to be lower - it's that you didn't have as much revenue (and profit) which caused the lower taxes. Now that you are selling the sawdust: More Revenue, same Costs = more Profit due to a better sales model. More income taxes are owed as a result of the increase profit, not because you sold product out of a loss center (profit and loss center are not tax terms; they are used in management/operational accounting), or used to record some deduction for throwing the sawdust away (you didn't record any such deduction, you simply didn't record any revenue from the (non-existent) sale of the sawdust).
There would be regulatory and special tax depreciation considerations if you are burning sawdust to generate electrical power for sale, and there might be a difference in how you would characterize and value a charitable contribution of sawdust in the two scenarios (due to differing evidence of value of the contribution), but those are both sidepoints to the main topic of characterizing the sawmill's economic transactions for tax purposes.
"people are too stupid to do [stop buying this type of software] because they do not understand their rights"
What 'rights' are you talking about? The customer bought a license to a software game, that included online play as long as the vendor hosted servers, which they never contracted to do forever The vendor no longer hosts servers. They haven't repossessed the game. Have they breached the license, or any other legally implied duties?
Then what 'rights' are you referring to with your aggrieved populist polemic about 'ignorant majority' and 'informed minority'? The Man keeping you down much?
XBRL is a good idea - a global, industry standard extensible XML schema for financial information presentation, including financial statements (income statement and balance sheet).
However, this proposal is encoding a scenario-based financial forecasting model developed by management and making a private entity (meaning not a governmental body, although perhaps a public company) publish that model. That's a bit too detailed, insidery and strategy-exposing for me, and I'm all about good transparency and governance.
This is asking public-company management to publish, on an near-realtime basis, it's business plan, current strategy, operational moves, future M&A activity, etc. Revealing the secret plans, as it were. A well-regulated free market, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep private certain financial information, shall not be infringed.
Will these be held to the same standards as current financial statement SEC filings (10K)? What if the scenarios, input variables, and model frameworks don't encompass all possible situations? What is an acceptable range of economic prevision? Can inaccuracy be the basis for shareholder or securities fraud lawsuits?
What the proposal covers is what financial analysts and corporate finance personnel do inside the company, and equity analysts do outside the company. You get (good) management's general operating philosophy and grand plans in the shareholder letter and the MD&A section of the annual report. Theoretically, at least, this is what the Board of Directors should assess as the shareholders' representatives (I'll save my comments about THAT for later), and with liquid markets you can vote with your feet, er, money.
I could see a new legal requirement to require the company to publish a standardized, general, 3-5 year strategic plan as part of the annual shareholder meeting proxy materials - maybe even allow the shareholders to vote on it (advisory or controlling vote). But we sort of have that now with the MD&A section.
Financial models are useful, and more public information about public companies is good, but I can see problems with something like this proposal. Smart blog discussions needed.
Be careful about absolutes. In this case, "Not a single dime of federal income tax goes to build/maintain roads" is demonstrably false.
Several billion dollars a year are funded out of federal general fund appropriations, which is significantly made up of federal income taxes. That is about 1% of total highway spending. ("Funding For Highways and Disposition of Highway-User Revenues, All Units of Government, 2007" http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/hf10.cfm)
In addition, in 2009-2010, $26 billion in federal general budget funds were obligated for National Highway projects as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, aka $700+ billion "Stimulus") http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ The ARRA is funded out of general appropriations, made significantly up of income tax receipts.
The federal funding for highway construction that was provided prior to 1955 (unknown percentage compared to state funding), was provided by the general fund of the U.S. Treasury (significantly made up of income taxes). In addition, "In September 2008 the Highway Trust Fund (funded by federal fuel taxes) was depleted of funds and required a transfer of $8 billion from federal general revenue funds, by act of Congress. Currently the fund is projected to run out in 2009." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Highway_Trust_Fund_%28United_States%29)
1950's - "The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1954 set aside $175 million for the construction of an interstate highway system. However, even more money was needed for the system that Eisenhower envisioned, and he continued to press for funds. Two years later, the expanded Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 authorized a budget of $25 billion, of which the federal share was to be 90%." (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/interstate1.html) The federal fuel tax was established in 1956 as well, to fund the Highway Trust Fund.
Currently - "About 70% of the construction and maintenance costs of highways in the U.S. are covered through user fees (net of collection costs), primarily gasoline taxes collected by the federal government and state and local governments, and to a much lesser extent tolls collected on toll roads and bridges. The rest of the costs are borne by general fund receipts, bond issues, and designated property and other taxes. The federal contribution is overwhelmingly from motor vehicle and fuel taxes (93.5% in 2007), as is about 60% of the state contribution. However, local contributions are overwhelmingly from sources other than user fees. The portion of the user fees spent on highways themselves covers about 57% of costs, as approximately one-sixth of the user fees are diverted to other programs, prominently including mass transit. In the eastern United States, large sections of some Interstate Highways planned or built prior to 1956 are operated as toll roads."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Financing)
It called a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO). In civil court cases, the Plaintiff can ask the judge to issue a TRO to prevent ongoing harmful conduct that later monetary damages after trial are insufficient to remedy. In other words: "Your Honor, this can't wait until the trial is over." The standards are high, and courts do not do this this without a very compelling set of alleged facts. Requesting Plaintiffs are often required to post a significant cash bond to cover damage to the enjoined party in case the TRO is not, in hindsight, the proper pre-trial remedy.
In most cases, a court won't issue a TRO without notice to the defendants and a hearing to allow the sought-to-be-enjoined party to response to the Motion for TRO. In some situations, like this, where mere notice might allow the Defendants to further the harm, the court orders the TRO without notice to the enjoined party. The Order allows the Plaintiffs to demand third parties to do or stop doing something for the enjoined party - the first notice to them is when they can't access bank accounts, or their vendor refuses to cooperate, etc.
The safeguards built into the system are (1) the cash bond, (2) a neutral judge that weighs the likelihood of irreversible damage and proof of the initial allegations against the harm from enjoining a party before a verdict, and most importantly, (3) that these are TEMPORARY. The judge will order a hearing with BOTH parties within (usually) 10 days of the TRO issuance, at which time the Defendants can object, rebut the Plaintiff's allegations, and ask the court to lift the injunction. At that point, it is a dispute between two noticed parties before a neutral court.
"Have we ever REALLY been 99.5% the way to destruction?" Total destruction - no. Nuclear conflict which could have easily gotten way out of control and ruined modern life and history - yes.
The Cuban Missle Crisis was close, very close. DEFCON 2, SAC planes loaded up with live nukes, a U2 shot down and pilot killed (which Kennedy had said would cause a US invastion of Cuba), a Soviet nuclear-armed sub hit with depth charges and almost striking back at NATO ships. A hurried U.S. plan for a contingency government in Cuba and worries about how the Soviets would inflict pain on Europe in the case of a U.S. invasion of Cuba.
Able Archer in 1983 was also very close - during very tense NATO war exercises, a Soviet orbital Early Missile Warning System reported a single intercontinental ballistic missile launch from the territory of the United States. This should have resulted in upstream warning and quite possibly a retalitory nuclear strike.
Able Archer (1983) - Stanislav Petrov, a retired Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel, deviated from standard Soviet doctrine by correctly identifying a missile attack warning as a false alarm on September 26, 1983. This decision most likely resulted in preventing an accidental retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its Western Allies.
On the night of October 23rd, the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed Strategic Air Command to go to DEFCON 2, for the only confirmed time in history....In response (to the missles in Cuba still being worked on), Kennedy issued Security Action Memorandum 199, authorizing the loading of nuclear weapons onto aircraft under the command of SACEUR (which had the duty of carrying out the first air strikes on the Soviet Union).
The next morning, Kennedy informed the executive committee that he believed only an invasion would remove the missiles from Cuba. However, he was persuaded to give the matter time and continue with both military and diplomatic pressure. He agreed and ordered the low-level flights over the island to be increased from two per day to once every two hours. He also ordered a crash program to institute a new civil government in Cuba if an invasion went ahead.
At this point, the crisis was ostensibly at a stalemate. The USSR had shown no indication that they would back down and had made several comments to the contrary. The U.S. had no reason to believe otherwise and was in the early stages of preparing for an invasion, along with a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in case it responded militarily, which was assumed.
Castro, on the other hand, was convinced that an invasion was soon at hand, and he dictated a letter to Khrushchev which appeared to call for a preemptive strike on the U.S. He also ordered all anti-aircraft weapons in Cuba to fire on any U.S. aircraft.
A U.S. U2 reconnaissance plane was shot down (pilot killed) by a Soviet SAM emplacement. Anti-aircraft fire toward other U.S. planes continued. Kennedy has previous stated that if a U.S. plane was fired upon, he would order an attack against Cuba (a U.S. invasion).
Military preparations continued, and all active duty Air Force personnel were recalled to base for possible action. Robert Kennedy later recalled the mood, "We had not abandoned all hope, but what hope there was now rested with Khrushchev's revising his course within the next few hours. It was a hope, not an expectation. The expectation was military confrontation by Tuesday, and possibly tomorrow..."
Plans were drawn up for air strikes on the missile sites as well as other economic targets, notably petroleu
So we should purposely build houses with walls so thin that someone can run through them? How about a little cost-benefit perspective with relative probabilities in mind?
Why, we should build STRONGER houses to keep cars from busting through the walls - that might happen, too. It would prevent someone from getting rundown while sitting on the sofa. You can never be too safe...
[This post, like most others, is a mix of Domain and Hosting answers]
With some super-simple HTML, I created a semi-dynamic site by linking, nesting and including some Google-provided mojo and outside sites like LinkedIn, Picasa, etc.
Google Blogger - Setup a CNAME for your domain that will point blog.EXAMPLE.com to an account at Blogger (free). Then use some Google JS to include your blog RSS entries on your otherwise-static HTML home page (see left-hand side of my home page)
Pull in Outside webpages to your domain - create simple IFRAME html pages on your domain for easy access to your Flikcr, Picasa, gDocs, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. pages
-http://stevehamlin.org/pictures - shows my public Picasa gallery
-http://stevehamlin.org/linkedin - nests my LinkedIn page
-http://stevehamlin.org/investments - nests a dynamic Google Spreadsheet showing up-to-the minute current performance of some stocks I own
Google Reader - organize your feeds into folders, and then you can 'publish' a dynamic webpage that is made up of all RSS entries in a particular folder. (see all of the links on the right-hand side of my static-HTML home page)
Also, you can "star" items you read in Reader, and then you can publish a RSS feed of THOSE articles (see middle column of my home page)
Another poster mentioned a public-facing webpage that automatically forwards to a dynamic IP address (port22 passthru from cable modem to desktop at home). Better yet, do some Dyn-DNS work to make this work natively and automatically.
Quote: Now I say "If you want real change, learn to shoot."
I suspect you are only half-serious, which is why I'm half-joking when I note that you've just advocated for the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government.
Assuming you live in the U.S., such statements are (barely) your right. But you cannot hold such views and simultaneously swear oaths of public office, and don't be surprised if you are ever denied for a security clearance.
And why are drug addicts mugging little old ladies to get their fix? Because drugs are expensive, because they're illegal.
Drug addiction is a public health issue, not a criminal issue. People commit crimes on drugs to get money to buy more drugs to feed their dependency, not because they like to rob people. Break that cycle. Legalize, tax, regulate and use all that money to fund public-health style responses to the problem. Prison doesn't cure addicts, treatment does.
Take the massive profit out of the 'illegal drugs' business, and a lot problems associated with it go away - dime-bag dealers disappear, large amounts of gang revenue vanishes, petty crime committed by addicts drops significantly.
Some currently-illegal, dependency-causing drugs have little long-term physical harm. Heroin addicts, for instance, have been known to maintain heavy long-term use and a semi-productive life if money isn't an issue. Cannabis, same thing. Most psychotropics aren't physically addictive. Crack cocaine - different story - prohibition and treatment might be the best bet there.
Point being, people need to separate the intrinsic harm of an addiction, from the secondary harm that comes about from the prohibition of the activity. Make alcohol illegal again, and see how quickly Capone-style problems return.
My friends own a commercial concrete contractor, and current concretes are WAY more advanced than I'd ever have thought.
These days, concrete is like any other advanced man-made composite. The knowledge about cement, water, sand and aggregate types and mixes have been refined to the nth-degree. Then start add-mixing plasticizers, hardners, cure retarders / accelerators, humidity control agents, etc.
The really advanced stuff is like epoxy. Normal concrete is ~3,000psi. My friend was pouring 12,000+ psi concrete for a large structural member in a sub-foundation. The form blew out, and concrete flowed out the hole and setup - within a few hours, even jackhammers became ineffective - it was like drilling steel. They wound up bringing in heavy demo equipment to get out what should have only taken a few men.
Slashdot Mirror
"last stimulus was a failure" False - it stimulated, per CBO and other credible analysis.
"deficits that finance the stimulus destroy more jobs than the tax cuts create." False - not in a liquidity trap, there is no crowding out, and with a trade deficit private savings require government deficits.
"The 1 year cut in SS payroll tax will make SS that much more broke" False - SS contributions were replaced by Federal gov't contributions in the current payroll tax cut.
"it's broke now" False - once the Trust Fund runs out (which is smoothing out a demographic bulge that is currently passing through), it is an annual pay-what-is-collected system that, even with changing population demographics and with no changes to law, is expected to pay 80% of forecasted benefits for the rest of the century. With a shift of less than 1% of annual GDP into Social Security, that system will pay 100% of benefits for the rest of the century. That's not broke.
Summary - learn facts and basic national income accounting (macroeconomics) before speaking about which you do not know.
1. Fraud and other white-collar crimes are estimated to divert about 6% of gross revenue. That's more than $700 billion a year in the U.S. , or the equivalent of the U.S. Department of Defense's annual budget.
2. Economic damage is almost never 100% recoverable, particularly in criminal cases. Did Enron shareholders get made whole?
3. White-collar crimes affects people as much as violent crime, although conventional constructions tend to focus on violent crime. Would you rather be robbed once, or lose most of your life savings to a ponzi scheme? Has the recent financial crisis not caused direct harm to anyone?
4. The deterrence effect of criminally punishing white-collar criminals reduces occurrences, reducing future costs to society. Put a senior executive in prison, and it changes how corporate culture operates for the better (at least for that industry)
For a great overview on whether white-collar criminal penalties are too hard or too soft, see this article from Fraud Magazine
Slate.com has an article about why Fanta is so popular around the globe.
Turns out Fanta was created by the head of Coca-Cola Germany during WW2 after Coke syrup stopping being shipped to Germany, and was initially made with whatever fruit could be found. ('fanta' after the German word for fantasy or imagination.) The brand name was revived in the 1950's when Coke needed to complete with an expanding line of Pepsi flavors oversees, and gained traction everywhere else, but was never pushed much in the U.S.
"Although I admit, it's not my generations music"
You should have just stopped there, because to me that simultaneously explained and undercut everything else you subsequently wrote. If you were 30 years older, you'd like Frankie Vallie, hate rock'n'roll and think Elvis was destructive.
I have diverse musical tastes (rock, some metal, blues, some country, bluegrass, many types of electronica and produced music (techo, lounge, trip-hop, trance, DnB), some pop, classical, world). And I love a whole lot of hip-hop.
Try The Roots, or Talib Kweli, or old Fugees, Common, Oukast, Beatie Boys, Jurassic 5, Digable Planets, Nappy Roots, WuTang, Wylcef - that is all real music.
I'll get off your lawn now.
"all icons except this one (Recycle Bin) represent applications."
??? Maybe on your desktop. Icons on a Windows desktop can be, or be shortcuts to, applications, files, filesystem locations, URLs (smb, http, ftp). The Windows Desktop is simply a filesystem directory like any other.
I suppose in one sense those are all OPENED by applications, if by applications you mean passing the link to explorer.exe to handle - but in that case then the Recycle icon opens the explorer.exe application to a specific directory.
"I never have caused real damage by accidental deletions. Anything important has to be backed-up anyways, as disks do fail."
And what happens if a user hits delete before the next backup runs?
"The real job growth comes with small business."
Incorrect. Real job growth comes from YOUNG businesses, many of whom happen to be small when they start. Older businesses, both large and small, don't generate much job growth.
So the public policy should be to encourage entrepreneurialsim, not necessarily small businesses. There is a difference.
And yet here you are telling us your thoughts, hoping that we'll read them and care. Is using the FB platform to communicate fundamentally different than Slashdot? Not vain? Just keep telling yourself that.
The problem being, as we've recently seen in the May flash crash and similar smaller events in single names, is that HFT-based liquidity is not deep liquidity, and it dries up the second (or millisecond) that there's chaos in that market. Don't be confused - HFT liquidity is not AT ALL the same kind of liquidity that market makers are obligated to supply.
"form contract in firetruck" - result: contract is void due to being signed under duress. Won't work.
You're going too far - MS doesn't need to define who is covered, and don't need to provide license keys or support, they simply need to be able to liberally grant requesting NGOs / any other person licenses when they are politically harassed using license non-compliance as a reason. If and only if volume becomes a problem do they need better processes & policies.
It's forgoing minimum incremental revenue in the pursuit of good corporate citizenship (apparently, and in this particular instance).
"So very naive. Do they think they are getting IP enforcement externalities for free?"
No, but they are solving / preventing one minor externality right now - so why complain that they haven't also solved all the world's IP problems? This was the right response to a specific set of circumstances.
"but why, when running just fine on that small bit of energy, would our bodies evolve to process carbon-rich complex fatty acids into methane and N2O and then slow-burn it metabolically? Especially when we can always acquire a hundred times more food than we need?!"
Life has NEVER been able to acquire a hundred times more food than we need, except for the last few seconds of history. Life evolved to metabolize anything it could find, because food was ALWAYS scarce.
Life doesn't decide to hide away excess energy in some mysterious spiritual source - sorry. I'm glad you feel more energetic and healthier because of your physical & mental habits, but it's not because you've accessed a hidden source of 'life energy' in the Tao.
One shouldn't trust that "fantastic" means the same thing to both the buyer and seller, but one also shouldn't be allowed to deceptively mislead in commerce - that's called fraud.
---
"How Much Is $1 Trillion in Afghanistan?
Source: CEPR.net / Dean Baker's 'Beat the Press' blog
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-much-is-1-trillion-in-afghanistan/
"The media have been highlighting projections produced by the military that show that Afghanistan may have $1 trillion of mineral wealth. It would be helpful to put this figure in some context. The NYT helpfully described this sum as being equal to $38,482.76 for every person in Afghanistan."
"It would be useful to note that this is a gross number, it does not subtract the cost of extracting the minerals nor does it consider that these resources would likely be extracted over many decades. If we assume that the cost of extracting the minerals (e.g. foreign produced equipment, foreign trained technicians, profits of foreignh companies and environmental damage -- not counting domestic Afghan labor) is between 25 and 50 percent of the value of the minerals, then the money going to Afghanis would be between $500 billion and $750 billion."
"If this money is earned over a 40-year period (Saudi Arabia has been producing oil for 80 years), then it comes to between $12.5 billion and $18.8 billion a year. Afghanistan's population is currently 29.1 million, but it is growing at the rate of 2.5 percent annually. Assuming the growth rate slows, Afghanistan's population will average about 40 million over this period. This means that the revenue from the minerals will average between $312.50 and $470 per person per year. This is still likely to have a substantial impact on Afghanistan's economy, since its current GDP per capita is just $800 on a purchasing power parity basis."
"If IBM writes off an ancient server and sends it to the scrapyard, they don't have to pay any property tax on it anymore and can deduct the value of the server off their profits and balance sheets."
(1) IBM probably doesn't pay much, if any, property taxes on server equipment. (state and local taxes on the current market value of installed equipment)
(2) IBM has already deducted the cost of the server equipment from their U.S. income tax return as a depreciation expense - for such small costs, it is immediate-to-very-quickly. Scraping equipment results in a tax benefit only when you have not already 'written off' the cost of the equipment on a tax return, which tax accountants do as quickly as allowable.
(3) Similarly, IBM shows server equipment on their balance sheet as 'equipment, net of depreciation', that is, the un-depreciated (or not-yet-'written-off' portion of acquisition cost). Scrapping already-expensed or fully-depreciated equipment generally doesn't change the balance sheet that much. (there are tax vs. book differences in depreciation and expensing equipment, but minor in the great scheme of things)
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As to the Sawmill example:
The entire plant is Revenues minus Costs = Profit. You bought the input wood, and produce wood products for sale. You deduct, as Cost of Goods Sold, all of the input wood as raw materials. If you previously threw away waste sawdust, that is your inefficiency, but doesn't change the fact that you would still deduct the full cost of the wood raw materials.
If you start selling the waste sawdust, then you still deduct the same amount for the cost of raw materials - you bought the same amount of wood. Only now, you are selling another product for additional revenue, which used to be thrown in the trash. That the sawdust used to be thrown in the trash isn't what caused those taxes to be lower - it's that you didn't have as much revenue (and profit) which caused the lower taxes. Now that you are selling the sawdust: More Revenue, same Costs = more Profit due to a better sales model. More income taxes are owed as a result of the increase profit, not because you sold product out of a loss center (profit and loss center are not tax terms; they are used in management/operational accounting), or used to record some deduction for throwing the sawdust away (you didn't record any such deduction, you simply didn't record any revenue from the (non-existent) sale of the sawdust).
There would be regulatory and special tax depreciation considerations if you are burning sawdust to generate electrical power for sale, and there might be a difference in how you would characterize and value a charitable contribution of sawdust in the two scenarios (due to differing evidence of value of the contribution), but those are both sidepoints to the main topic of characterizing the sawmill's economic transactions for tax purposes.
"people are too stupid to do [stop buying this type of software] because they do not understand their rights"
What 'rights' are you talking about? The customer bought a license to a software game, that included online play as long as the vendor hosted servers, which they never contracted to do forever The vendor no longer hosts servers. They haven't repossessed the game. Have they breached the license, or any other legally implied duties?
Then what 'rights' are you referring to with your aggrieved populist polemic about 'ignorant majority' and 'informed minority'? The Man keeping you down much?
XBRL is a good idea - a global, industry standard extensible XML schema for financial information presentation, including financial statements (income statement and balance sheet).
However, this proposal is encoding a scenario-based financial forecasting model developed by management and making a private entity (meaning not a governmental body, although perhaps a public company) publish that model. That's a bit too detailed, insidery and strategy-exposing for me, and I'm all about good transparency and governance.
This is asking public-company management to publish, on an near-realtime basis, it's business plan, current strategy, operational moves, future M&A activity, etc. Revealing the secret plans, as it were. A well-regulated free market, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep private certain financial information, shall not be infringed.
Will these be held to the same standards as current financial statement SEC filings (10K)? What if the scenarios, input variables, and model frameworks don't encompass all possible situations? What is an acceptable range of economic prevision? Can inaccuracy be the basis for shareholder or securities fraud lawsuits?
What the proposal covers is what financial analysts and corporate finance personnel do inside the company, and equity analysts do outside the company. You get (good) management's general operating philosophy and grand plans in the shareholder letter and the MD&A section of the annual report. Theoretically, at least, this is what the Board of Directors should assess as the shareholders' representatives (I'll save my comments about THAT for later), and with liquid markets you can vote with your feet, er, money.
I could see a new legal requirement to require the company to publish a standardized, general, 3-5 year strategic plan as part of the annual shareholder meeting proxy materials - maybe even allow the shareholders to vote on it (advisory or controlling vote). But we sort of have that now with the MD&A section.
Financial models are useful, and more public information about public companies is good, but I can see problems with something like this proposal. Smart blog discussions needed.
Several billion dollars a year are funded out of federal general fund appropriations, which is significantly made up of federal income taxes. That is about 1% of total highway spending. ("Funding For Highways and Disposition of Highway-User Revenues, All Units of Government, 2007" http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/hf10.cfm)
In addition, in 2009-2010, $26 billion in federal general budget funds were obligated for National Highway projects as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, aka $700+ billion "Stimulus") http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ The ARRA is funded out of general appropriations, made significantly up of income tax receipts.
The federal funding for highway construction that was provided prior to 1955 (unknown percentage compared to state funding), was provided by the general fund of the U.S. Treasury (significantly made up of income taxes). In addition, "In September 2008 the Highway Trust Fund (funded by federal fuel taxes) was depleted of funds and required a transfer of $8 billion from federal general revenue funds, by act of Congress. Currently the fund is projected to run out in 2009." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Highway_Trust_Fund_%28United_States%29)
1950's - "The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1954 set aside $175 million for the construction of an interstate highway system. However, even more money was needed for the system that Eisenhower envisioned, and he continued to press for funds. Two years later, the expanded Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 authorized a budget of $25 billion, of which the federal share was to be 90%." (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/interstate1.html) The federal fuel tax was established in 1956 as well, to fund the Highway Trust Fund.
Currently - "About 70% of the construction and maintenance costs of highways in the U.S. are covered through user fees (net of collection costs), primarily gasoline taxes collected by the federal government and state and local governments, and to a much lesser extent tolls collected on toll roads and bridges. The rest of the costs are borne by general fund receipts, bond issues, and designated property and other taxes. The federal contribution is overwhelmingly from motor vehicle and fuel taxes (93.5% in 2007), as is about 60% of the state contribution. However, local contributions are overwhelmingly from sources other than user fees. The portion of the user fees spent on highways themselves covers about 57% of costs, as approximately one-sixth of the user fees are diverted to other programs, prominently including mass transit. In the eastern United States, large sections of some Interstate Highways planned or built prior to 1956 are operated as toll roads." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Financing)
In most cases, a court won't issue a TRO without notice to the defendants and a hearing to allow the sought-to-be-enjoined party to response to the Motion for TRO. In some situations, like this, where mere notice might allow the Defendants to further the harm, the court orders the TRO without notice to the enjoined party. The Order allows the Plaintiffs to demand third parties to do or stop doing something for the enjoined party - the first notice to them is when they can't access bank accounts, or their vendor refuses to cooperate, etc.
The safeguards built into the system are (1) the cash bond, (2) a neutral judge that weighs the likelihood of irreversible damage and proof of the initial allegations against the harm from enjoining a party before a verdict, and most importantly, (3) that these are TEMPORARY. The judge will order a hearing with BOTH parties within (usually) 10 days of the TRO issuance, at which time the Defendants can object, rebut the Plaintiff's allegations, and ask the court to lift the injunction. At that point, it is a dispute between two noticed parties before a neutral court.
"Have we ever REALLY been 99.5% the way to destruction?" Total destruction - no. Nuclear conflict which could have easily gotten way out of control and ruined modern life and history - yes.
The Cuban Missle Crisis was close, very close. DEFCON 2, SAC planes loaded up with live nukes, a U2 shot down and pilot killed (which Kennedy had said would cause a US invastion of Cuba), a Soviet nuclear-armed sub hit with depth charges and almost striking back at NATO ships. A hurried U.S. plan for a contingency government in Cuba and worries about how the Soviets would inflict pain on Europe in the case of a U.S. invasion of Cuba.
Able Archer in 1983 was also very close - during very tense NATO war exercises, a Soviet orbital Early Missile Warning System reported a single intercontinental ballistic missile launch from the territory of the United States. This should have resulted in upstream warning and quite possibly a retalitory nuclear strike.
--- A length collection from Wikipedia: ---
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Able Archer (1983) - Stanislav Petrov, a retired Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel, deviated from standard Soviet doctrine by correctly identifying a missile attack warning as a false alarm on September 26, 1983. This decision most likely resulted in preventing an accidental retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its Western Allies.
--- --- ---
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missle_Crisis
On the night of October 23rd, the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed Strategic Air Command to go to DEFCON 2, for the only confirmed time in history....In response (to the missles in Cuba still being worked on), Kennedy issued Security Action Memorandum 199, authorizing the loading of nuclear weapons onto aircraft under the command of SACEUR (which had the duty of carrying out the first air strikes on the Soviet Union).
The next morning, Kennedy informed the executive committee that he believed only an invasion would remove the missiles from Cuba. However, he was persuaded to give the matter time and continue with both military and diplomatic pressure. He agreed and ordered the low-level flights over the island to be increased from two per day to once every two hours. He also ordered a crash program to institute a new civil government in Cuba if an invasion went ahead.
At this point, the crisis was ostensibly at a stalemate. The USSR had shown no indication that they would back down and had made several comments to the contrary. The U.S. had no reason to believe otherwise and was in the early stages of preparing for an invasion, along with a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in case it responded militarily, which was assumed.
Castro, on the other hand, was convinced that an invasion was soon at hand, and he dictated a letter to Khrushchev which appeared to call for a preemptive strike on the U.S. He also ordered all anti-aircraft weapons in Cuba to fire on any U.S. aircraft.
A U.S. U2 reconnaissance plane was shot down (pilot killed) by a Soviet SAM emplacement. Anti-aircraft fire toward other U.S. planes continued. Kennedy has previous stated that if a U.S. plane was fired upon, he would order an attack against Cuba (a U.S. invasion).
Military preparations continued, and all active duty Air Force personnel were recalled to base for possible action. Robert Kennedy later recalled the mood, "We had not abandoned all hope, but what hope there was now rested with Khrushchev's revising his course within the next few hours. It was a hope, not an expectation. The expectation was military confrontation by Tuesday, and possibly tomorrow..."
Plans were drawn up for air strikes on the missile sites as well as other economic targets, notably petroleu
Why, we should build STRONGER houses to keep cars from busting through the walls - that might happen, too. It would prevent someone from getting rundown while sitting on the sofa. You can never be too safe...
Molecular gastronomy - it's been around for years.
With some super-simple HTML, I created a semi-dynamic site by linking, nesting and including some Google-provided mojo and outside sites like LinkedIn, Picasa, etc.
Google Blogger - Setup a CNAME for your domain that will point blog.EXAMPLE.com to an account at Blogger (free). Then use some Google JS to include your blog RSS entries on your otherwise-static HTML home page (see left-hand side of my home page)
Pull in Outside webpages to your domain - create simple IFRAME html pages on your domain for easy access to your Flikcr, Picasa, gDocs, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. pages
-http://stevehamlin.org/pictures - shows my public Picasa gallery
-http://stevehamlin.org/linkedin - nests my LinkedIn page
-http://stevehamlin.org/investments - nests a dynamic Google Spreadsheet showing up-to-the minute current performance of some stocks I own
Google Reader - organize your feeds into folders, and then you can 'publish' a dynamic webpage that is made up of all RSS entries in a particular folder. (see all of the links on the right-hand side of my static-HTML home page)
Also, you can "star" items you read in Reader, and then you can publish a RSS feed of THOSE articles (see middle column of my home page)
Also, you can create a dynamic list of links to all feeds you follow (this static HTML code lists all currently-subscribed feeds, by folder, from my Reader account)
Professional - Resume, of course. A full page of links to professional resources. Also included in that page is a dynamic list of RSS posts from various professional blogs I follow, by category.
I followed the 2008 Election polling data in by creating this: http://stevehamlin.org/election.html
Another poster mentioned a public-facing webpage that automatically forwards to a dynamic IP address (port22 passthru from cable modem to desktop at home). Better yet, do some Dyn-DNS work to make this work natively and automatically.
Quote: Now I say "If you want real change, learn to shoot."
I suspect you are only half-serious, which is why I'm half-joking when I note that you've just advocated for the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government.
Assuming you live in the U.S., such statements are (barely) your right. But you cannot hold such views and simultaneously swear oaths of public office, and don't be surprised if you are ever denied for a security clearance.
Civil disobedience is one thing...
And why are drug addicts mugging little old ladies to get their fix? Because drugs are expensive, because they're illegal.
Drug addiction is a public health issue, not a criminal issue. People commit crimes on drugs to get money to buy more drugs to feed their dependency, not because they like to rob people. Break that cycle. Legalize, tax, regulate and use all that money to fund public-health style responses to the problem. Prison doesn't cure addicts, treatment does.
Take the massive profit out of the 'illegal drugs' business, and a lot problems associated with it go away - dime-bag dealers disappear, large amounts of gang revenue vanishes, petty crime committed by addicts drops significantly.
Some currently-illegal, dependency-causing drugs have little long-term physical harm. Heroin addicts, for instance, have been known to maintain heavy long-term use and a semi-productive life if money isn't an issue. Cannabis, same thing. Most psychotropics aren't physically addictive. Crack cocaine - different story - prohibition and treatment might be the best bet there.
Point being, people need to separate the intrinsic harm of an addiction, from the secondary harm that comes about from the prohibition of the activity. Make alcohol illegal again, and see how quickly Capone-style problems return.
My friends own a commercial concrete contractor, and current concretes are WAY more advanced than I'd ever have thought.
These days, concrete is like any other advanced man-made composite. The knowledge about cement, water, sand and aggregate types and mixes have been refined to the nth-degree. Then start add-mixing plasticizers, hardners, cure retarders / accelerators, humidity control agents, etc.
The really advanced stuff is like epoxy. Normal concrete is ~3,000psi. My friend was pouring 12,000+ psi concrete for a large structural member in a sub-foundation. The form blew out, and concrete flowed out the hole and setup - within a few hours, even jackhammers became ineffective - it was like drilling steel. They wound up bringing in heavy demo equipment to get out what should have only taken a few men.