You don't understand. It's free money. That's how it works. Free. Money. They print it on big printing presses and everything. You'd better get in line or you'll miss out.
Here's a novel idea. How about we create some sort of system whereby individuals choose for themselves which of those options is more beneficial to them. A market of some sort, perhaps.
And then, instead of endless hand-wringing over what might be the most efficient way to build things, government can stick to easy things like breaking up monopolies and eliminating negative externalities such as pollution, force, and fraud.
I would mod you up but I'm just going to agree strongly instead. I used to enjoy playing C&C games, and spent several hundred dollars on them. I always thought the licensing and pricing were fair, considering the amount of gameplay and expansion packs available.
But Red Alert 2 was the last I've played. Nowadays I want games that will at least theoretically work in Wine and I have no interest in 3D for a strategy/resource game or dealing with absurd system requirements or goofy FPS tie-ins.
It makes me think that the equal employment opportunity laws are likely hampering the US economy by encouraging women to work in fields in which they are not particularly interested or show particular aptitude.
But hey, it's not like rational analysis of statistical facts has anything to do with flag-waving issues such as these, or even the US economy for that matter.
Mortgage signed, packaged and re-sold to quasi-government agency == job done, commission paid
I am consistently amazed at the wholesale failure of the US capital markets to recognize and reward actual productive work. It's been going on for far too long now. I would say it simply is a case of the people who have money being complete idiots, but you'd think that would be a self-correcting problem. It probably has something to do with the people printing money and handing it out to idiots.
Travian is a free browser-based strategy/resource game that works fine on any OS. From what I gather, it's not as fast as most of the other MMORPGs, but it does require a bit of attention.
As I understand it, "making available" was a way for the RIAA to try to expand copyright to restrict acts other than distribution, and lower their burden of proof.
In this case it's different because the plaintiff can likely prove that the defendant actually distributed the copyright infringing code, rather than just offering it.
Middle managers only exist to facilitate communication between technical specialist workers and policy generalist upper management. If you can't manage to do that, blaming your subordinates will probably not get you very far.
On August 27th, starting at about 18:00 UTC an account used for automated backups for the ApacheCon website hosted on a 3rd party hosting provider was used to upload files to minotaur.apache.org.
Are you saying this initial (backup) server was compromised by a slow bruteforce attack?
Perhaps you should have used some of your free education to take an economics course, so that you might understand the effects of minimum wage, subsidies and other price controls.
Or, hell, take an English class for god's sake, so that you know what a run-on sentence is.
Anyone who believes in robbing from those capable of benefiting from higher education in order to fill schools and businesses with a bunch of worthless drooling morons in the name of progress deserves to be dispatched to the great socialist utopia in the sky. "I do believe" you're a wanker idiot whose socialist tripe is the reason we kicked your pasty, boot-kissing, state-subsidized asses back across the pond two hundred years ago.
Do you even understand what a slow brute-force attack is? It's like trying to invade a country by sending one soldier at a time across an ocean in a row-boat.
I am literally more worried about NSA agents sneaking into my house to install rootkits on my machines than I am concerned about this type of attack.
No one with a root password crappy enough to succumb to this could possibly believe their system is invulnerable.
Are you kidding me? This is a useful story to keep new *nix admins on their toes but it's nowhere near a threat. Not even Windows admins are incompetent enough to put a bunch of authentication keys on a system with a public-facing, root-login-permitted, weak-root-password ssh server.
Well, I'll have to give you points for originality, at least. I think that's the first time I've heard "we don't know what Judaism even is" as a defense of Israeli theocracy.
The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States...
Notice how the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over Constitutional questions, in addition to just being able to "interpret laws"?
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
And notice that the scope of patentability is a Constitutional issue?
35 USC 101 allows patenting of processes
US code doesn't allow patenting of business processes unless the US Constitution allows patenting of business processes.
I think it's typical, even human nature, to assume that "barriers to entry" in an industry with which you are not as familiar are necessarily much higher than those in your own industry.
The fact of the matter is that good education is expensive, competent programmers are few and far between, and the Mt. Dew and Cheetos required to support them for the period of time required to make truly significant breakthroughs in computer science don't come free.
And in saying this I by no means want to argue the philosophical implications of patenting abstract ideas. That's completely beside the point I want to make.
It's just that software may seem at the moment to be less deserving of patent protection due to lower capital requirements or lower barriers to entry. But I think if you take the time to really research some other industries, you would find that as a relatively nascent field, software is currently in pretty much the same position in which every other industry started out, in which the amount of knowledge required was high and the amount of capital required was low. And that even in many industries that today we think of as capital-intensive, such as pharmaceuticals or chemical refining or energy production, barriers to entry are not quite as high as you might think.
But they are probably right. It would result in a loss of jobs, almost without question. The problem is not the loss of jobs or the work performed by those who hold them. Greenspan's poor acting aside, no one actually believes any of the tripe recited by politicians about the American worker being "productive" or the US economy being "strong" or that the vast majority of workers couldn't be replaced with simple machines or tiny perl scripts at the drop of a hat. The problem is not loss of jobs. The problem is the loss of societal function that those jobs serve.
The problem is that the "powers that be" think that work is a virtue in and of itself and that subsidizing bullshit make-work "jobs" creates a beneficial societal structure and an effective method of inter-generational wealth transfer.
It is widely believed that jobs prevent criminals from committing crimes, prevent wives from cheating on their husbands, promote health and well-being, provide beneficial social activities, and instill good moral values, even aside from sometimes producing goods of economic value. Some of this may be true. Most of it is bullshit.
I would venture to guess that a large percentage of the US economy is inextricably linked to the broken-window fallacy writ large in the form of the full employment mandate of the federal reserve. Decades of economic pressure has selected for Americans who are completely dependent upon jobs, welfare, student loans or other hand-outs provided by a government and banking system predicated upon force and fraud.
The average American is expected to have children, work full-time for a corporation earning close to the median regional salary, have several credit cards and spend every dime she earns. And if you don't fall into this category, your well-being will be utterly crushed by the economic power of the federal government to seize your property, tax you into oblivion, subsidize your worthless neighbors, draft you into bullshit wars or mandatory "volunteerism", devalue your savings, destroy your health, and distort and regulate markets as large as 60% of the mortgages in the US and as small as a single bushel of corn grown and consumed by a single farmer.
Somehow I think George Berkeley would be somewhat disappointed to see his namesake directly manipulating living organisms for the purpose of spying on humans.
This is entirely correct. The people you can vote for are so far removed from even writing the legislation, let alone writing or enforcing the regulations, that the whole circus of government in the US has become completely pointless.
Legislation is written by lobbyists and special interests, introduced at the last minute by a few "party leaders" who have managed to wrangle themselves special privileges in what were originally egalitarian, democratic legislative bodies, and then rubber-stamped by ignorant "representatives" who didn't even have time to read what they are voting on.
That legislation goes through several other layers before it finally gets to those responsible for enforcing it: hand picked insiders who move seamlessly between government and private industry, raping the rest of us for their own interests.
All anyone really needs to know about this is that they subsidize corn syrup at the same time as they tax sodas.
It's not about the health or welfare of Americans. It's about control.
And those who benefit are exactly the people who comprise Hillary Clinton's base: bureaucrats, acting solely in their own self-interests, above the law and beyond democratic control. The Clintons are out front-and-center in the move to bureaucratize healthcare and wage war on "unhealthy" foods. The same Democrats now in charge spent the last eight years eagerly approving every new layer of pointless bureaucracy and handouts that that idiot Bush piled upon the Federal government. This is the hope and change you voted for.
So far, all these people have managed to do is make Americans less responsible and more dependent upon government, drag the country deeper into debt and ruin, pervert and demonize the free market and free choice, and pass the cost on to future generations. And at this point it looks like there may not ever be another Republican revolution or Newt Gingrich to threaten to shut down the government and bring balanced budgets back to Washington.
If you want the markets to price things correctly then you should want government not to interfere in them other than to eliminate fraud and force.
There is no guarantee of profit in markets.
Creditors and shareholders who invest poorly in speculative markets are not simply "unfortunate" and deserve no sympathy or bail-outs.
The causes of the financial meltdown are not "universal" to all humans or even to all Americans. Many of us didn't take out loans we couldn't afford or make poor investments or otherwise live beyond our means.
Sometimes growth should be limited rather than wasting natural resources on ill investments.
The end of "easy money" is the solution to the problem, not the problem itself.
So, you're saying we should abolish markets and give up on capitalism? Or are you saying there are a substantial number of investors who are not irrational? You're wrong either way, just wondering which style of craziness you subscribe to.
What is this? I didn't say either of these. It's easy to accuse someone of craziness when you only read the first 1 1/2 sentences of what I posted, make up some random bullshit and then try to attribute it to me.
You're the delusional one if you think what we have now is "free-market capitalism".
Wall Street is not trying to account for irrational behavior because "investors are just irrational" and they somehow need to account for this. I have said over and over again that literally no one cares whether investors are irrational as long as they are allowed to fail. The reason Wall Street is expanding their ridiculous computer models is because governments continue to prop up and protect irrational actors, distorting the markets.
This is just Wall Street routing around damage in the form of government regulation, like they have always done.
You're not aware that the tulip guild and Dutch parliament redefined tulip futures contracts to be options contracts, that the price increases corresponded with a lull in a major war, that the market collapsed when Dutch authorities stepped in and halted sales of the contracts, and that the Dutch government was promulgating an expansionary monetary policy at the time?
You don't consider lack of contractual enforcement, warfare, and monetary inflation to constitute "government intervention"?
Slashdot Mirror
You don't understand. It's free money. That's how it works. Free. Money. They print it on big printing presses and everything. You'd better get in line or you'll miss out.
Here's a novel idea. How about we create some sort of system whereby individuals choose for themselves which of those options is more beneficial to them. A market of some sort, perhaps.
And then, instead of endless hand-wringing over what might be the most efficient way to build things, government can stick to easy things like breaking up monopolies and eliminating negative externalities such as pollution, force, and fraud.
You can buy photovoltaic cells on ebay fairly cheaply, for about $1/watt. You have to assemble them yourself, though.
I would mod you up but I'm just going to agree strongly instead. I used to enjoy playing C&C games, and spent several hundred dollars on them. I always thought the licensing and pricing were fair, considering the amount of gameplay and expansion packs available.
But Red Alert 2 was the last I've played. Nowadays I want games that will at least theoretically work in Wine and I have no interest in 3D for a strategy/resource game or dealing with absurd system requirements or goofy FPS tie-ins.
Add me to the list of people who think this is a solution in search of a problem.
Oh, who the hell am I kidding. I'm sure the problem they have in mind has something to do with spying on people.
It makes me think that the equal employment opportunity laws are likely hampering the US economy by encouraging women to work in fields in which they are not particularly interested or show particular aptitude.
But hey, it's not like rational analysis of statistical facts has anything to do with flag-waving issues such as these, or even the US economy for that matter.
if Microsoft can't even build a robust cloud environment, that experiment is done.
The "experiment" that is Microsoft, you mean?
Tech job outsourced to "cloud" provider == job done, bonus paid
Mortgage signed, packaged and re-sold to quasi-government agency == job done, commission paid
I am consistently amazed at the wholesale failure of the US capital markets to recognize and reward actual productive work. It's been going on for far too long now. I would say it simply is a case of the people who have money being complete idiots, but you'd think that would be a self-correcting problem. It probably has something to do with the people printing money and handing it out to idiots.
Travian is a free browser-based strategy/resource game that works fine on any OS. From what I gather, it's not as fast as most of the other MMORPGs, but it does require a bit of attention.
As I understand it, "making available" was a way for the RIAA to try to expand copyright to restrict acts other than distribution, and lower their burden of proof.
In this case it's different because the plaintiff can likely prove that the defendant actually distributed the copyright infringing code, rather than just offering it.
Middle managers only exist to facilitate communication between technical specialist workers and policy generalist upper management. If you can't manage to do that, blaming your subordinates will probably not get you very far.
On August 27th, starting at about 18:00 UTC an account used for automated backups for the ApacheCon website hosted on a 3rd party hosting provider was used to upload files to minotaur.apache.org.
Are you saying this initial (backup) server was compromised by a slow bruteforce attack?
Perhaps you should have used some of your free education to take an economics course, so that you might understand the effects of minimum wage, subsidies and other price controls.
Or, hell, take an English class for god's sake, so that you know what a run-on sentence is.
Anyone who believes in robbing from those capable of benefiting from higher education in order to fill schools and businesses with a bunch of worthless drooling morons in the name of progress deserves to be dispatched to the great socialist utopia in the sky. "I do believe" you're a wanker idiot whose socialist tripe is the reason we kicked your pasty, boot-kissing, state-subsidized asses back across the pond two hundred years ago.
Do you even understand what a slow brute-force attack is? It's like trying to invade a country by sending one soldier at a time across an ocean in a row-boat.
I am literally more worried about NSA agents sneaking into my house to install rootkits on my machines than I am concerned about this type of attack.
No one with a root password crappy enough to succumb to this could possibly believe their system is invulnerable.
Are you kidding me? This is a useful story to keep new *nix admins on their toes but it's nowhere near a threat. Not even Windows admins are incompetent enough to put a bunch of authentication keys on a system with a public-facing, root-login-permitted, weak-root-password ssh server.
Well, I'll have to give you points for originality, at least. I think that's the first time I've heard "we don't know what Judaism even is" as a defense of Israeli theocracy.
Home Depot "approves" reviews and failed to post a negative review I gave for an air conditioner recently.
The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States...
Notice how the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over Constitutional questions, in addition to just being able to "interpret laws"?
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
And notice that the scope of patentability is a Constitutional issue?
35 USC 101 allows patenting of processes
US code doesn't allow patenting of business processes unless the US Constitution allows patenting of business processes.
I think it's typical, even human nature, to assume that "barriers to entry" in an industry with which you are not as familiar are necessarily much higher than those in your own industry.
The fact of the matter is that good education is expensive, competent programmers are few and far between, and the Mt. Dew and Cheetos required to support them for the period of time required to make truly significant breakthroughs in computer science don't come free.
And in saying this I by no means want to argue the philosophical implications of patenting abstract ideas. That's completely beside the point I want to make.
It's just that software may seem at the moment to be less deserving of patent protection due to lower capital requirements or lower barriers to entry. But I think if you take the time to really research some other industries, you would find that as a relatively nascent field, software is currently in pretty much the same position in which every other industry started out, in which the amount of knowledge required was high and the amount of capital required was low. And that even in many industries that today we think of as capital-intensive, such as pharmaceuticals or chemical refining or energy production, barriers to entry are not quite as high as you might think.
But they are probably right. It would result in a loss of jobs, almost without question. The problem is not the loss of jobs or the work performed by those who hold them. Greenspan's poor acting aside, no one actually believes any of the tripe recited by politicians about the American worker being "productive" or the US economy being "strong" or that the vast majority of workers couldn't be replaced with simple machines or tiny perl scripts at the drop of a hat. The problem is not loss of jobs. The problem is the loss of societal function that those jobs serve.
The problem is that the "powers that be" think that work is a virtue in and of itself and that subsidizing bullshit make-work "jobs" creates a beneficial societal structure and an effective method of inter-generational wealth transfer.
It is widely believed that jobs prevent criminals from committing crimes, prevent wives from cheating on their husbands, promote health and well-being, provide beneficial social activities, and instill good moral values, even aside from sometimes producing goods of economic value. Some of this may be true. Most of it is bullshit.
I would venture to guess that a large percentage of the US economy is inextricably linked to the broken-window fallacy writ large in the form of the full employment mandate of the federal reserve. Decades of economic pressure has selected for Americans who are completely dependent upon jobs, welfare, student loans or other hand-outs provided by a government and banking system predicated upon force and fraud.
The average American is expected to have children, work full-time for a corporation earning close to the median regional salary, have several credit cards and spend every dime she earns. And if you don't fall into this category, your well-being will be utterly crushed by the economic power of the federal government to seize your property, tax you into oblivion, subsidize your worthless neighbors, draft you into bullshit wars or mandatory "volunteerism", devalue your savings, destroy your health, and distort and regulate markets as large as 60% of the mortgages in the US and as small as a single bushel of corn grown and consumed by a single farmer.
Somehow I think George Berkeley would be somewhat disappointed to see his namesake directly manipulating living organisms for the purpose of spying on humans.
This is entirely correct. The people you can vote for are so far removed from even writing the legislation, let alone writing or enforcing the regulations, that the whole circus of government in the US has become completely pointless.
Legislation is written by lobbyists and special interests, introduced at the last minute by a few "party leaders" who have managed to wrangle themselves special privileges in what were originally egalitarian, democratic legislative bodies, and then rubber-stamped by ignorant "representatives" who didn't even have time to read what they are voting on.
That legislation goes through several other layers before it finally gets to those responsible for enforcing it: hand picked insiders who move seamlessly between government and private industry, raping the rest of us for their own interests.
All anyone really needs to know about this is that they subsidize corn syrup at the same time as they tax sodas.
It's not about the health or welfare of Americans. It's about control.
And those who benefit are exactly the people who comprise Hillary Clinton's base: bureaucrats, acting solely in their own self-interests, above the law and beyond democratic control. The Clintons are out front-and-center in the move to bureaucratize healthcare and wage war on "unhealthy" foods. The same Democrats now in charge spent the last eight years eagerly approving every new layer of pointless bureaucracy and handouts that that idiot Bush piled upon the Federal government. This is the hope and change you voted for.
So far, all these people have managed to do is make Americans less responsible and more dependent upon government, drag the country deeper into debt and ruin, pervert and demonize the free market and free choice, and pass the cost on to future generations. And at this point it looks like there may not ever be another Republican revolution or Newt Gingrich to threaten to shut down the government and bring balanced budgets back to Washington.
Blah blah same old bullshit.
If you want the markets to price things correctly then you should want government not to interfere in them other than to eliminate fraud and force.
There is no guarantee of profit in markets.
Creditors and shareholders who invest poorly in speculative markets are not simply "unfortunate" and deserve no sympathy or bail-outs.
The causes of the financial meltdown are not "universal" to all humans or even to all Americans. Many of us didn't take out loans we couldn't afford or make poor investments or otherwise live beyond our means.
Sometimes growth should be limited rather than wasting natural resources on ill investments.
The end of "easy money" is the solution to the problem, not the problem itself.
So, you're saying we should abolish markets and give up on capitalism? Or are you saying there are a substantial number of investors who are not irrational? You're wrong either way, just wondering which style of craziness you subscribe to.
What is this? I didn't say either of these. It's easy to accuse someone of craziness when you only read the first 1 1/2 sentences of what I posted, make up some random bullshit and then try to attribute it to me.
You're the delusional one if you think what we have now is "free-market capitalism".
Wall Street is not trying to account for irrational behavior because "investors are just irrational" and they somehow need to account for this. I have said over and over again that literally no one cares whether investors are irrational as long as they are allowed to fail. The reason Wall Street is expanding their ridiculous computer models is because governments continue to prop up and protect irrational actors, distorting the markets.
This is just Wall Street routing around damage in the form of government regulation, like they have always done.
You're not aware that the tulip guild and Dutch parliament redefined tulip futures contracts to be options contracts, that the price increases corresponded with a lull in a major war, that the market collapsed when Dutch authorities stepped in and halted sales of the contracts, and that the Dutch government was promulgating an expansionary monetary policy at the time?
You don't consider lack of contractual enforcement, warfare, and monetary inflation to constitute "government intervention"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania#Legal_changes