What are they saying that in 10 years people will need satelite navigation, and will not now how to drive from point A to point B without computer telling them directions.
Included will be
* compulsory service fee (includes air pressure monitoring, electrolyte level check and top-up, anti-rust protection, seat protection from dirt) * satellite navigation * free calls * hardware insurance * Compulsory automatic emergency/911 service ( already a law in EU from 2018) * Streaming music service * all for a package of $399 per month (that is with the $4000 documentation and setup fees)
Just like current teenagers cannot imagine life without iphones, in ten years there will be a number of people who will never open the hood, will not check the air pressure themselves.
I almost forgot. You will be convinced to replace the car to a better model every two years.
Now they are working against Sanders. Same PAC will extend employment to these online opinion "influencers" to try to fight Trump.
Clearly Clinton does not have a following, for Sanders and Trump followers do not need to be hired and do the work out of sheer enthusiasm. Here is an interesting factoid about the number of users in Reddit.com
1. Clinton has 12 thousand subscribers 2. Trump has 100K, almost 9 times more than Clinton.
You cant make those numbers up. While Trump is rich, he only had approx $300M in cash (from his 2014 financial statements). Most of the value is frozen in real estate, plus he owns this funny intangible $3Billion "Trump" brand. Bottom line, Trump has spent least amount of money per voter. That also means he will still need to raise money, for general election will cost billions.
We will see if Trump can shine as a media person, businessman and a deal maker. (For the record I am not voting for Trump, nor I am voting Clinton)
This could be a clever way to pay launder money from FBI.
Here is how it works:
- FBI hacker finds a flaw, but does not tell the boss.
- You tell your boss that you have a cousin who can o stuff
- Your boss pays your cousin $1M. What you and your cousin do is between you two.
Quite frankly, FBI hack was useless. FBI said that they found something valuable, but they only said to justify the expense. They found that he did not communicate with anybody else. THAT, they already knew anyway.
You are writing this, because you were told so but you never did your research. Also you are missing the point that there are lot of wealthy people of color?
What makes you believe that serfs in Europe had different treatment? In Europe, most of the poor were also treated as the property of the state. Just look at conscription practices, naval military recruiting practices, and industrial labor practices. A lot of affluent families in Europe are descendants of the noblemen, of the serf/slave owners. However since there one race in Europe, there was nobody to blame. So they decided to blame rich.
If you have not noticed poor people are treated as a second class citizens irrespective of the race, sex, or national origin. Trying to pin everything on race is shortsighted and unwise.
Here is the link to Huffington Post, which details Top 10 countries where slavery is legal? Couch SJW are recommended to spend their energies and time to address existing issues to abolish slavery TODAY, rather than working on something what is an imaginary issue to get brownie points.
Proposed change is divisive. And offensive to people of color. If you really want to put a woman of color, a historic personality, I would recommend to put Madam C.J.Walker. Rather than celebrating stubborn personas such as Rosa Parks, or a busybody Harriet Tubman, I would recommend putting C.J.Walker, who was black, former slave, however managed to be inspiration to others, create business and wealth. I guess it is too late, as it is already decided.
What is this with America's obsession with slavery. In large part of the Europe there was an equivalent of slavery - Serfdom. Serfdom is not romanticized in anyway and a lot of Europeans, pretty much have serfs in their genealogical tree, including myself. Serfdom and Slavery are identical in nature.
World is full of conflicting personalities, Europe is full of them. On the notes of Euros, they have printed the pictures of the buildings, that took efforts of multiple people, both rich and poor, noble and not.
Jackson was a president of the United States. He was a slave owner, as it was a norm of that time. It is ok to change the face on the note, but to use the argument that the president was a slave owner is ridiculous.
Can you image that in 50 years, hypothetically, being wealth will be shameful. We will rename all the buildings that were funded by wealthy donors to something that is no longer offensive. Mr. Buffet, Mr. Soros, Mr. Bloomberg and others will be deleted from the history.
And the Treasury and the Fed: rather than tackling and being proactive on 20 trillion dollar deficit they want you to discuss on the appearance of $20 note bill.
So you are craving about tax credit on energy? I think there is a better way to deal with taxes, so that everyone wins, guaranteed.
A meter on vagina, somewhat similar to the odometer, needs to be installed. There is a plan to tax cars per mile traveled. Beer and wine are taxed with the sin tax. There is no reason not to install a mater on vagina based on the movement. A very fair tax. Transparent and democratic.
1. Government gets much needed revenue. On Sundays, for example, meter would not be working, just like we do not pay for public parking on Sundays. 2. Meters would allow introduction of the real statistics. Currently most of the men complain that they pay too much and get too little. Women complain that they get too little appreciation and not enough dollars for a bang. Also current statistic on the average daily mileage is so crooked, that you cannot believe any of the numbers that you find on the internet. Meter would solve this issue for good. 3. Meters would bring responsibility and accountability. Currently men do not know what kind of mileage they are getting. If you buy a car, and the seller is tampering with the odometer, the seller is going to jail (if the buyer discovers). If women misrepresents real mileage, and they usually do, and the buyer is not happy and expresses frustration and anger, it is the buyer who will be arrested.
Readers need to know the history of EmblemHealth. EmblemHealth receives serious money from the New York City. All of it is to subsidize low income health care plans insurance.
Their decision to outsource will, eventually, increase the number of low income people, in absolute terms, in relative terms or both. IT people will need to either move out, or accept lower pay, or be unpaid.
EmblemHealth is formally non-profit organization, yet they handle their profitability issues just as bad as for profit organization. This is another ding to those who say that "profit" needs to be removed from the healthcare.
As such, this is another evidence that once the bureaucracy is assigned to fix the problem, you can guarantee that the problem will never be fixed.
When they have banned incandescent bulbs, people were hoarding them. Later regular, old fashion, tungsten bulbs reappeared but were no longer called light bulbs, but rather heating elements.
We have to assume they will hoard cars.
And those who want will find a way to circumvent every nonsensical law: there will be a lot of exceptions. Some already pointed out that if Dutch wants to travel to Spain or France, will they be required to rent a car? There is a reason free market works best.
Had we listened to the horse cart manufacturers 100 years ago, we could have, by law, had 50% of the households to keep a horse. Imagine all the streets covered with the horse manure..
Obama clearly said that health insurance will be cheaper than the cable television bill (meaning less than $100). Is he trying to reduce the cable bill, expecting that healthcare insurance will just follow?
In reality, it is the healthcare system that needs real competition and deregulation. It looks like his teleprompter made an error.
P.S. I am biased. I have never had cable television service in my adult life. Internet has everything, even television streams
One barrel of oil has a price more or less equal everywhere around the world with the minor price differences attributable to transportation costs, quality and demand to this particular brand. However a guy flipping burgers in California making $15 per hour, or a truck driver making, let's say $70,000 per year, are not more and not less productive than Chinese cook making $3 per hour or some truck driver in a country XYZ, making $7,000 per year. Clearly, both of the workers in their mind are 100% productive and put 100% of their efforts.
First and foremost, readers must understand that US dollar is fiat currency and from the cook's and truck drivers point of view, productivity is equal. It is the pay in US dollars that is not equal. However the pay does not only reflect productivity, but also reflect other factors, such as prevailing salaries in the area and customers ability to pay prices for the services rendered. It is logical: business will continue and expand, as long as there is a profit to be made, irrespective of the salary level.
A Recap: we have found direct connection between productivity calculated in US Dollars to the customer's ability to pay. We have already determined, that individual efforts of the workers are equal in absolute terms (but not equal when calculated to the country's currency).
In USA customers have ability to pay those high prices, can afford to buy $40 steaks and $10 burgers, because there is enough wealth accumulated, people are not afraid to spend it and, as we all know, USA is does not blink for a second when there is a need to borrow another trillion dollars, mostly from Chinese. It is the wealth created by US people, allows USA to pay.
What exactly is "Wealth"? The answer is a) imperfect but predictable and relatively transparent legal system, b) obnoxious and annoying, but professed freedom of speech, c) civil liberties, d) absence of external military threats and e) adequate respect to the property rights. All those factors make USA a country, relatively attractive to many (but not all) immigrants, relatively attractive to investors to both US assets and to obligations. Capital availability allows development of risky ideas and creativity, which further fuel innovation. And it is innovation and creativity that is a driver of high added value products.
For those who are ignorant, it is a little secret that, for example, in China, you cannot do business, unless the inner party has an official stake in ownership. If you have a successful business in Russia, it will be taken from you (Yukos, VKontakte (Durov)). Mexico and Latin America is a cradle of corruption. When did you hear about last great global blockbuster, an invention created in islamic world (where would they be without oil/gas)?
Here is the full chain:
Productivity equals Wealth equals Civil Liberties, Rights and Freedoms
Truth is pretty much every nation with ambitions is spying on US and other western military, industrial, technological secrets and stealing intellectual property. Key culprits include (but, of course, are not limited to) Russia, China, Israel, India, S.Korea. It is a long and time honored tradition.
Spying is an important business and there is competition, career, and money to be made. Spying is so prevailing, that, believe it or not,there are established MBA style, super competitive, high intensity, spying academies. Infiltration, psychology, strategic decision making, communication, surveillance evasion, recruiting are taught among many other skills. Profession is considered as highly competitive, prestigious and lucrative, plus the security of the government job, military rank, early pension and opportunity for additional high powered career after the service. Stolen technology is considered as one of the best investments, for thieving nation spends zero dollars in time, research and development, while the spy is considered more valuable with more experience under the belt. There are multiple known iconic examples, and multiple, literally, incalculable number of secrets that are being siphoned every day.
Countering such activities and catching spies is the direct function of NSA, CIA and other organizations. However spying on US is so prevailing, so ingrained, that I am sure that our intelligence officers are disillusioned and neutered, as they think they are "allowed" to work only on certain type spying which is perceived as direct threat to national security: nuclear, bio-weapons.
Somewhere in the time, focus of attention turned from surveillance of the spies and the agents of the spies, to terrorism, which is an easy hanging fruit, never ending, cheap way to ensure budgets are approved to fight terrorism. Few generations ago it was called banditism and was dealt by local sheriffs.
Commenting and fingerpointing to the actual profit is simply pointless.
Mr, Wernst, $12B is a lot of money, but this number is only relevant to the shareholders. Without making further analysis, I am making a guess that US based pension plans are among the largest shareholders. Basically it is the retired teachers, policemen, firemen, municipal workers... the average US retired person.
If you cut the profit in half for Verzion, you are immediately making a massive change to the pension plans, to the accounting and to future pension expenses, because pension expenses are already defined, however the Verizon stock price would plunge. I am betting that reduction of profit by 50% would collapse the stock price by 75%. Verizon would try to raise the prices, at the same time increasing CPI and adding an inflationary ripple to the economy
So, eventually, reduced profit will return as a boomerang one way or another.
Further, an interesting detail: VZ is citing healthcare costs. It is Obamacare, to be precise. Once you give "free insurance", somebody has to pay, and in this situation it will be primarily the Union workers getting the taste of the medicine.
There will be always a way to slow down growth. Here are the few trends:
1. Fantasy football (or online games) will be compulsory. To make sure those who proudly do not have cable TV, are using their time on the internets.
2. Everyone will need to get a PhD and compulsory post-doctoral studies just to get a job to maintain and service fast food robot servers. Many of the people get postdoc education at around 35 years.
3. Having a child will be so expensive (both in terms of time and money), that many will chose not to have it.
4. Masculine males will be stigmatized as "crude", and feminine women with maternal instincts will be viewed as "stupid".
Perhaps we will get bigger population. However, history shows, that once electricity, television and contraceptives are introduced, population growth slows down significantly. Once population becomes richer population growth turns negative.
Obstacles are way too high. Current calculation requires 60 Giga Watt laser beam. Largest nuclear plant in USA, Palo Verde, Arizona, has approx 1.25 Giga Watt power.
More: according to the plan, installations that generate power of 50 nuclear plants would need to be sent to space, for lasers are supposed to be above the atmosphere.
Finally, the power of 50 nuclear plants would be concentrated into the area more or less equal to handkerchief. I think that handkerchief will evaporate, maybe it will not. However there might be some interference at the interstellar probe. Technical difficulties are insurmountable so far.
Anyway, the last time I have checked approximately 50% of world's population did not have proper sewer, and approximately 15% do not have running water and electricity. Just a small fraction of interstellar travel project would bring these necessities to the fellow human beings. I would say, that we should build few nuclear power plants here on earth first.
I think that we will need 100 years to send a interstellar probe.
Women are lousier tippers, as a rule. Also, if you are a taxi driver, a professional, and you work in location where you have to wait for the taxi calls, you really want both men and women as your clients.
All women service will be either more expensive, or less profitable, or less available because there are fewer female drivers. Statistically, female drivers make more accidents in the city driving (men cause less accidents yet they are deadlier) and, in the long term, insurance premiums will go up.
Further, as few already noticed. Discrimination on the basis of gender in unlawful. However, I don't think that men give a flying s**t about such all-female services.
Finally, if somebody needs an example, they should visit Hair Dresser - All Female service place. Prices are just obscene, from men's point of view.
They have re-invented monkey by the typewriter, and they are using computer power to stitch not separate letters, but words and phrases.
They have, however forgot several things.
It is the math. Some numbers, representing a possible number of combination of letters and words and ideas, are so high and so large, that there is not enough quarks in the universe to represent the number. If you have an infinitely large number and you use automation and software to reduce, you will still have a very large still unfathomable number of possible combination of ideas left.
Or put it the other way, you can employ not one but a trillion billion of monkeys and give each a super fast computer and the outcome will be exactly the same as having one monkey with the typewriter.
And so do I. Now, for the sake of the thought experimentation, let's imagine we have a second scenario. Same color, however exactly opposite academic and professional achievements. No achievements or accomplishments, to be precise.
All of the sudden, discussing about racism and underprivileged becomes acceptable. To me, that is the real racism.
As if women of color are not capable of making decisions. They are more than capable and there are a lot of inspiring examples, let's start from Madam C.J.Walker ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
If they will reduce CO2 output, it will come at significant cost, significant expense.
Significant expense for consumer is, at the same time, significant revenue to the counter party. Extracting revenues is the main point of all the initiatives.
That is a good one. To present a better statistical gymnastic, comparable to the one done at similar type of organizations as TSA, you better say the following:
there is approximately one billion (almost) travelers per year. 1.4 million divided by one billion, only makes less than 0.1 cent per passenger per year.
Keep dividing and you will always find a way to justify a waste.
The point is that such app was completely unnecessary to begin with. The second point is that this is just a tip of an iceberg.
He means precisely instances like that. One needs to find a more idiotic view: the app tells TSA person which way to show the finger. If anybody wants an example of fraud, waste and abuse: this is it. We could listen ad nauseum to TSA explanations, saying that app needs to be secure, or that they have to follow the procedures, or they needed many licenses.... blah blah blah
The point is that if airport security would be private that kind of nonsense would not exist by definition. Now it is public money that were spent.
This is not the only software that uses random function. There is another software that randomly selects passengers for additional screening. Here is how Israel does it, does it for free and very effectively: they let the screening agents to pick and choose any passenger that they want or have a hunch. So fare they are very effective in preventing bad dudes in boarding their planes.
I can guarantee that small molecule medication will patented in all countries. Medication containing non-sophisticated chemicals are an easy target and will be copied immediately (Viagra, Cialis, Prozac, statins, amoxicillin).
These are biologic drugs that really need no practical patent protection in third world countries. Here is why: an average biological drug, such as, for example, melanoma cancer drug Keytruda, uses intellectual property associated with literally several hundred patents.
More importantly, in order for the product to be manufactured on an industrial scale pharma companies are building factories that can cost up to one billion dollars.
To translate to layman's terms: GSK does not need to protect such products in third world countries, as there is simply not enough brainpower, scientists, technicians and experience even to replicate development of the manufacturing process. If somehow the product is magically be copied, it would not be economically feasible to sell in a small country.
Quantum computing can be described as a method, a technique, which allows for the computer for a given task to take a peak into the future and to read the answer from the future back to the present.
In my opinion, any real breakthrough or substantial achievements could and should be classified, because this matter is clearly a subject of the national security.
There is a lot to learn from the history. Did you know how Soviet military managed to spy and steal US nuclear secrets during WW2? Soviet military intelligence has been monitoring scientific journals. When Manhattan project has been started, all new scientific publications related to nuclear physics became classified and disappeared from scientific publications. Soviet military intelligence did notice disappearance, and accurately deduced that US has classified nuclear research, and started gigantic efforts to infiltrate and to obtain access to the nuclear secrets. True story.
For many years there were hardly any congruent discoveries published. Yes, quantum entanglement exists, nobody can explain why/how. Yes, quantum teleportation exists and has been proven scientifically. At the same time there is a consensus that Superluminal communication (faster-than-light) is considered impossible. Somehow I am sensing very similar trepidation as it relates to the flow of quantum computing news.
Slashdot Mirror
What are they saying that in 10 years people will need satelite navigation, and will not now how to drive from point A to point B without computer telling them directions.
Included will be
* compulsory service fee (includes air pressure monitoring, electrolyte level check and top-up, anti-rust protection, seat protection from dirt)
* satellite navigation
* free calls
* hardware insurance
* Compulsory automatic emergency/911 service ( already a law in EU from 2018)
* Streaming music service
* all for a package of $399 per month (that is with the $4000 documentation and setup fees)
Just like current teenagers cannot imagine life without iphones, in ten years there will be a number of people who will never open the hood, will not check the air pressure themselves.
I almost forgot. You will be convinced to replace the car to a better model every two years.
Reddit is a much bigger bubble than Slashdot, the last time I have checked. I have at least two bubbles to choose from.
Now they are working against Sanders. Same PAC will extend employment to these online opinion "influencers" to try to fight Trump.
Clearly Clinton does not have a following, for Sanders and Trump followers do not need to be hired and do the work out of sheer enthusiasm. Here is an interesting factoid about the number of users in Reddit.com
1. Clinton has 12 thousand subscribers
2. Trump has 100K, almost 9 times more than Clinton.
You cant make those numbers up. While Trump is rich, he only had approx $300M in cash (from his 2014 financial statements). Most of the value is frozen in real estate, plus he owns this funny intangible $3Billion "Trump" brand. Bottom line, Trump has spent least amount of money per voter. That also means he will still need to raise money, for general election will cost billions.
We will see if Trump can shine as a media person, businessman and a deal maker. (For the record I am not voting for Trump, nor I am voting Clinton)
This could be a clever way to pay launder money from FBI.
Here is how it works:
- FBI hacker finds a flaw, but does not tell the boss.
- You tell your boss that you have a cousin who can o stuff
- Your boss pays your cousin $1M. What you and your cousin do is between you two.
Quite frankly, FBI hack was useless. FBI said that they found something valuable, but they only said to justify the expense. They found that he did not communicate with anybody else. THAT, they already knew anyway.
You are writing this, because you were told so but you never did your research. Also you are missing the point that there are lot of wealthy people of color?
What makes you believe that serfs in Europe had different treatment? In Europe, most of the poor were also treated as the property of the state. Just look at conscription practices, naval military recruiting practices, and industrial labor practices. A lot of affluent families in Europe are descendants of the noblemen, of the serf/slave owners. However since there one race in Europe, there was nobody to blame. So they decided to blame rich.
If you have not noticed poor people are treated as a second class citizens irrespective of the race, sex, or national origin. Trying to pin everything on race is shortsighted and unwise.
Here is the link to Huffington Post, which details Top 10 countries where slavery is legal? Couch SJW are recommended to spend their energies and time to address existing issues to abolish slavery TODAY, rather than working on something what is an imaginary issue to get brownie points.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2...
Proposed change is divisive. And offensive to people of color. If you really want to put a woman of color, a historic personality, I would recommend to put Madam C.J.Walker. Rather than celebrating stubborn personas such as Rosa Parks, or a busybody Harriet Tubman, I would recommend putting C.J.Walker, who was black, former slave, however managed to be inspiration to others, create business and wealth. I guess it is too late, as it is already decided.
What is this with America's obsession with slavery. In large part of the Europe there was an equivalent of slavery - Serfdom. Serfdom is not romanticized in anyway and a lot of Europeans, pretty much have serfs in their genealogical tree, including myself. Serfdom and Slavery are identical in nature.
World is full of conflicting personalities, Europe is full of them. On the notes of Euros, they have printed the pictures of the buildings, that took efforts of multiple people, both rich and poor, noble and not.
Jackson was a president of the United States. He was a slave owner, as it was a norm of that time. It is ok to change the face on the note, but to use the argument that the president was a slave owner is ridiculous.
Can you image that in 50 years, hypothetically, being wealth will be shameful. We will rename all the buildings that were funded by wealthy donors to something that is no longer offensive. Mr. Buffet, Mr. Soros, Mr. Bloomberg and others will be deleted from the history.
And the Treasury and the Fed: rather than tackling and being proactive on 20 trillion dollar deficit they want you to discuss on the appearance of $20 note bill.
So you are craving about tax credit on energy? I think there is a better way to deal with taxes, so that everyone wins, guaranteed.
A meter on vagina, somewhat similar to the odometer, needs to be installed. There is a plan to tax cars per mile traveled. Beer and wine are taxed with the sin tax. There is no reason not to install a mater on vagina based on the movement. A very fair tax. Transparent and democratic.
1. Government gets much needed revenue. On Sundays, for example, meter would not be working, just like we do not pay for public parking on Sundays.
2. Meters would allow introduction of the real statistics. Currently most of the men complain that they pay too much and get too little. Women complain that they get too little appreciation and not enough dollars for a bang. Also current statistic on the average daily mileage is so crooked, that you cannot believe any of the numbers that you find on the internet. Meter would solve this issue for good.
3. Meters would bring responsibility and accountability. Currently men do not know what kind of mileage they are getting. If you buy a car, and the seller is tampering with the odometer, the seller is going to jail (if the buyer discovers). If women misrepresents real mileage, and they usually do, and the buyer is not happy and expresses frustration and anger, it is the buyer who will be arrested.
Win, win, win. 360 degree win to everyone.
Readers need to know the history of EmblemHealth. EmblemHealth receives serious money from the New York City. All of it is to subsidize low income health care plans insurance.
Their decision to outsource will, eventually, increase the number of low income people, in absolute terms, in relative terms or both. IT people will need to either move out, or accept lower pay, or be unpaid.
EmblemHealth is formally non-profit organization, yet they handle their profitability issues just as bad as for profit organization. This is another ding to those who say that "profit" needs to be removed from the healthcare.
As such, this is another evidence that once the bureaucracy is assigned to fix the problem, you can guarantee that the problem will never be fixed.
When they have banned incandescent bulbs, people were hoarding them. Later regular, old fashion, tungsten bulbs reappeared but were no longer called light bulbs, but rather heating elements.
We have to assume they will hoard cars.
And those who want will find a way to circumvent every nonsensical law: there will be a lot of exceptions. Some already pointed out that if Dutch wants to travel to Spain or France, will they be required to rent a car? There is a reason free market works best.
Had we listened to the horse cart manufacturers 100 years ago, we could have, by law, had 50% of the households to keep a horse. Imagine all the streets covered with the horse manure..
Obama clearly said that health insurance will be cheaper than the cable television bill (meaning less than $100). Is he trying to reduce the cable bill, expecting that healthcare insurance will just follow?
In reality, it is the healthcare system that needs real competition and deregulation. It looks like his teleprompter made an error.
P.S. I am biased. I have never had cable television service in my adult life. Internet has everything, even television streams
One barrel of oil has a price more or less equal everywhere around the world with the minor price differences attributable to transportation costs, quality and demand to this particular brand. However a guy flipping burgers in California making $15 per hour, or a truck driver making, let's say $70,000 per year, are not more and not less productive than Chinese cook making $3 per hour or some truck driver in a country XYZ, making $7,000 per year. Clearly, both of the workers in their mind are 100% productive and put 100% of their efforts.
First and foremost, readers must understand that US dollar is fiat currency and from the cook's and truck drivers point of view, productivity is equal. It is the pay in US dollars that is not equal. However the pay does not only reflect productivity, but also reflect other factors, such as prevailing salaries in the area and customers ability to pay prices for the services rendered. It is logical: business will continue and expand, as long as there is a profit to be made, irrespective of the salary level.
A Recap: we have found direct connection between productivity calculated in US Dollars to the customer's ability to pay. We have already determined, that individual efforts of the workers are equal in absolute terms (but not equal when calculated to the country's currency).
In USA customers have ability to pay those high prices, can afford to buy $40 steaks and $10 burgers, because there is enough wealth accumulated, people are not afraid to spend it and, as we all know, USA is does not blink for a second when there is a need to borrow another trillion dollars, mostly from Chinese. It is the wealth created by US people, allows USA to pay.
What exactly is "Wealth"? The answer is a) imperfect but predictable and relatively transparent legal system, b) obnoxious and annoying, but professed freedom of speech, c) civil liberties, d) absence of external military threats and e) adequate respect to the property rights. All those factors make USA a country, relatively attractive to many (but not all) immigrants, relatively attractive to investors to both US assets and to obligations. Capital availability allows development of risky ideas and creativity, which further fuel innovation. And it is innovation and creativity that is a driver of high added value products.
For those who are ignorant, it is a little secret that, for example, in China, you cannot do business, unless the inner party has an official stake in ownership. If you have a successful business in Russia, it will be taken from you (Yukos, VKontakte (Durov)). Mexico and Latin America is a cradle of corruption. When did you hear about last great global blockbuster, an invention created in islamic world (where would they be without oil/gas)?
Here is the full chain:
Productivity equals Wealth equals Civil Liberties, Rights and Freedoms
Truth is pretty much every nation with ambitions is spying on US and other western military, industrial, technological secrets and stealing intellectual property. Key culprits include (but, of course, are not limited to) Russia, China, Israel, India, S.Korea. It is a long and time honored tradition.
Spying is an important business and there is competition, career, and money to be made. Spying is so prevailing, that, believe it or not,there are established MBA style, super competitive, high intensity, spying academies. Infiltration, psychology, strategic decision making, communication, surveillance evasion, recruiting are taught among many other skills. Profession is considered as highly competitive, prestigious and lucrative, plus the security of the government job, military rank, early pension and opportunity for additional high powered career after the service. Stolen technology is considered as one of the best investments, for thieving nation spends zero dollars in time, research and development, while the spy is considered more valuable with more experience under the belt. There are multiple known iconic examples, and multiple, literally, incalculable number of secrets that are being siphoned every day.
Countering such activities and catching spies is the direct function of NSA, CIA and other organizations. However spying on US is so prevailing, so ingrained, that I am sure that our intelligence officers are disillusioned and neutered, as they think they are "allowed" to work only on certain type spying which is perceived as direct threat to national security: nuclear, bio-weapons.
Somewhere in the time, focus of attention turned from surveillance of the spies and the agents of the spies, to terrorism, which is an easy hanging fruit, never ending, cheap way to ensure budgets are approved to fight terrorism. Few generations ago it was called banditism and was dealt by local sheriffs.
America is not winning anymore.
Commenting and fingerpointing to the actual profit is simply pointless.
Mr, Wernst, $12B is a lot of money, but this number is only relevant to the shareholders. Without making further analysis, I am making a guess that US based pension plans are among the largest shareholders. Basically it is the retired teachers, policemen, firemen, municipal workers... the average US retired person.
If you cut the profit in half for Verzion, you are immediately making a massive change to the pension plans, to the accounting and to future pension expenses, because pension expenses are already defined, however the Verizon stock price would plunge. I am betting that reduction of profit by 50% would collapse the stock price by 75%. Verizon would try to raise the prices, at the same time increasing CPI and adding an inflationary ripple to the economy
So, eventually, reduced profit will return as a boomerang one way or another.
Further, an interesting detail: VZ is citing healthcare costs. It is Obamacare, to be precise. Once you give "free insurance", somebody has to pay, and in this situation it will be primarily the Union workers getting the taste of the medicine.
There will be always a way to slow down growth. Here are the few trends:
1. Fantasy football (or online games) will be compulsory. To make sure those who proudly do not have cable TV, are using their time on the internets.
2. Everyone will need to get a PhD and compulsory post-doctoral studies just to get a job to maintain and service fast food robot servers. Many of the people get postdoc education at around 35 years.
3. Having a child will be so expensive (both in terms of time and money), that many will chose not to have it.
4. Masculine males will be stigmatized as "crude", and feminine women with maternal instincts will be viewed as "stupid".
Perhaps we will get bigger population. However, history shows, that once electricity, television and contraceptives are introduced, population growth slows down significantly. Once population becomes richer population growth turns negative.
Obstacles are way too high. Current calculation requires 60 Giga Watt laser beam. Largest nuclear plant in USA, Palo Verde, Arizona, has approx 1.25 Giga Watt power.
More: according to the plan, installations that generate power of 50 nuclear plants would need to be sent to space, for lasers are supposed to be above the atmosphere.
Finally, the power of 50 nuclear plants would be concentrated into the area more or less equal to handkerchief. I think that handkerchief will evaporate, maybe it will not. However there might be some interference at the interstellar probe. Technical difficulties are insurmountable so far.
Anyway, the last time I have checked approximately 50% of world's population did not have proper sewer, and approximately 15% do not have running water and electricity. Just a small fraction of interstellar travel project would bring these necessities to the fellow human beings. I would say, that we should build few nuclear power plants here on earth first.
I think that we will need 100 years to send a interstellar probe.
Women are lousier tippers, as a rule. Also, if you are a taxi driver, a professional, and you work in location where you have to wait for the taxi calls, you really want both men and women as your clients.
All women service will be either more expensive, or less profitable, or less available because there are fewer female drivers. Statistically, female drivers make more accidents in the city driving (men cause less accidents yet they are deadlier) and, in the long term, insurance premiums will go up.
Further, as few already noticed. Discrimination on the basis of gender in unlawful. However, I don't think that men give a flying s**t about such all-female services.
Finally, if somebody needs an example, they should visit Hair Dresser - All Female service place. Prices are just obscene, from men's point of view.
They have re-invented monkey by the typewriter, and they are using computer power to stitch not separate letters, but words and phrases.
They have, however forgot several things.
It is the math. Some numbers, representing a possible number of combination of letters and words and ideas, are so high and so large, that there is not enough quarks in the universe to represent the number. If you have an infinitely large number and you use automation and software to reduce, you will still have a very large still unfathomable number of possible combination of ideas left.
Or put it the other way, you can employ not one but a trillion billion of monkeys and give each a super fast computer and the outcome will be exactly the same as having one monkey with the typewriter.
And so do I. Now, for the sake of the thought experimentation, let's imagine we have a second scenario. Same color, however exactly opposite academic and professional achievements. No achievements or accomplishments, to be precise.
All of the sudden, discussing about racism and underprivileged becomes acceptable. To me, that is the real racism.
As if women of color are not capable of making decisions. They are more than capable and there are a lot of inspiring examples, let's start from Madam C.J.Walker ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
If they will reduce CO2 output, it will come at significant cost, significant expense.
Significant expense for consumer is, at the same time, significant revenue to the counter party. Extracting revenues is the main point of all the initiatives.
That is a good one. To present a better statistical gymnastic, comparable to the one done at similar type of organizations as TSA, you better say the following:
there is approximately one billion (almost) travelers per year. 1.4 million divided by one billion, only makes less than 0.1 cent per passenger per year.
Keep dividing and you will always find a way to justify a waste.
The point is that such app was completely unnecessary to begin with. The second point is that this is just a tip of an iceberg.
He means precisely instances like that. One needs to find a more idiotic view: the app tells TSA person which way to show the finger. If anybody wants an example of fraud, waste and abuse: this is it. We could listen ad nauseum to TSA explanations, saying that app needs to be secure, or that they have to follow the procedures, or they needed many licenses.... blah blah blah
The point is that if airport security would be private that kind of nonsense would not exist by definition. Now it is public money that were spent.
This is not the only software that uses random function. There is another software that randomly selects passengers for additional screening. Here is how Israel does it, does it for free and very effectively: they let the screening agents to pick and choose any passenger that they want or have a hunch. So fare they are very effective in preventing bad dudes in boarding their planes.
1. Download the list of users.
2. Sort by the usage
3. Select the top user
For the selected user publicly start shaming, start puffing cheeks and rolling eyes.
Well, that is statistics... You will always have a percentile that uses more service than others. The question is why this is a surprise.
Mr Vilfredo Pareto discovered this phenomena 120 years ago.
I can guarantee that small molecule medication will patented in all countries. Medication containing non-sophisticated chemicals are an easy target and will be copied immediately (Viagra, Cialis, Prozac, statins, amoxicillin).
These are biologic drugs that really need no practical patent protection in third world countries. Here is why: an average biological drug, such as, for example, melanoma cancer drug Keytruda, uses intellectual property associated with literally several hundred patents.
More importantly, in order for the product to be manufactured on an industrial scale pharma companies are building factories that can cost up to one billion dollars.
To translate to layman's terms: GSK does not need to protect such products in third world countries, as there is simply not enough brainpower, scientists, technicians and experience even to replicate development of the manufacturing process. If somehow the product is magically be copied, it would not be economically feasible to sell in a small country.
Quantum computing can be described as a method, a technique, which allows for the computer for a given task to take a peak into the future and to read the answer from the future back to the present.
In my opinion, any real breakthrough or substantial achievements could and should be classified, because this matter is clearly a subject of the national security.
There is a lot to learn from the history. Did you know how Soviet military managed to spy and steal US nuclear secrets during WW2? Soviet military intelligence has been monitoring scientific journals. When Manhattan project has been started, all new scientific publications related to nuclear physics became classified and disappeared from scientific publications. Soviet military intelligence did notice disappearance, and accurately deduced that US has classified nuclear research, and started gigantic efforts to infiltrate and to obtain access to the nuclear secrets. True story.
For many years there were hardly any congruent discoveries published. Yes, quantum entanglement exists, nobody can explain why/how. Yes, quantum teleportation exists and has been proven scientifically. At the same time there is a consensus that Superluminal communication (faster-than-light) is considered impossible. Somehow I am sensing very similar trepidation as it relates to the flow of quantum computing news.