The first of the new 7-11 stores in Manhattan opened in the summer of 2005. As of January 2011 they were up to 10 stores, and there haven't been too many more built yet. They seem to be spaced about every 15 blocks right now. Compare to, say, Duane Reed, which is closer to every 5 blocks across the entire grid. 7-11's goal is to be closer to that, with more like 100 stores across the city.
The trade-off I've found when programming is that I find it easier to enter into a flow state when I have music playing. That seems to be from a mix of blocking out distractions along with being more upbeat when hearing things I like. Whether things are familiar is key too; music I've never heard before is distracting, it's old favorites that go into my "flow mix".
It's possible for what I'm describing to be true and all of these other results to be as well. I wouldn't expect a programming flow state to be the best thing for either concentration for optimum memory (what's tested in TFA) or for detecting unusual patterns (the Peopleware study).
At its peak in late 1999, Yahoo's market cap was over $100B. You don't just kill a hundred billion dollar company all at once; they have been doing a solid job of strangling it slowly for the last twelve years though. Shouldn't be too much longer.
Buffett was always interested in companies where he had inside information of some form, especially things that allowed him to push toward a "control situation" to improve the value of the stock once he owned enough of it. One of the major investments that built up his early trading cash pile was in GEICO. That came from personally interviewing someone at the company, rather than using the publicly available information about it.
If that happened today, it would have insider trading questions all around it, with the company principals involved compelled via Fair Disclosure to tell everyone the same information. in 1951, that idea wasn't fully formed yet, as well as being difficult to detect/enforce. By the time that sort of thing did get cracked down on, mainly through the 1984 through 1988 insider trading changes, Buffett had moved onto more complicated things.
Certainly most Buffett's wealth came from legitimate innovation in value estimation. It's mainly in the last ten years that's become shockingly blatant and abusive. But even from the beginning, it was clear Buffett didn't have a problem with using his private information or research as a competitive advantage--even though that sort of thing is discourged by public company Fair Disclosure rules.
When rich people give away excess money to charities, that does not absolve them of guilt for the actions that made them wealthy in the first place. Just because Bill Gates gives away a bunch of money, that doesn't excuse he got that money using illegal monopoly tactics. You can't get credit for giving away money that you stole from taxpayers in the first place.
In recent years in particular, Buffett's wealth has been acquired using insider information from his cronies in the White House, actions that would have resulted in jail time for a less connected investor. Here's the way the circle works:
When Goldman was in risk of going under, Buffett invests $5B in them to keep them going. It was a no risk bet because Buffett's buddies let him know before the general public that GS was getting a bailout. Notes on that at Trade With The Ultimate Insider.
Buffett publicly thanks the US government for bringing stability to the markets, by which he really means money in his company's pockets.
There's endless stories on this theme, including major trades around the US auto industry bailout too. I believe the most recent is the Keystone XL mess. Peter Schweizer's "Throw Them All Out" book has a whole section devoted to Warren Buffett's tricks where he abuses his political ties for profit. Here's a video segment from Schweizer summarizing that. Buffett's money is just as dirty as if he'd robbed you with a gun; don't like the kindly old man disguise fool you.
If the US were capable of prosecuting large companies for financial fraud, there'd be a jail full of executives from every major financial firm. Instead, the worst of the criminals got multiple rounds of bail out money and other "stimulus" that lined their pockets. You can't expect legal action against large companies to happen as long as they're allowed to pay off our elected officials to look the other way.
Of course the accounting practices are shady; that is the point. The Double Irish/Dutch Sandwich uses transfer pricing to move profits to wherever they will be taxed the least. So companies like Google get to benefit from local services for their employees--everything from public roads to local education to physical protection via the US military--while avoiding the taxation that pays for such things. It's tax fraud; if you or I were to try it, without millions of dollars to pump into top-notch accounting, legal help, and lobbyists, the IRS would throw us in jail.
Let's say a typical drive is 100GB and writes at 100MB/s. That will average over 15 minutes to write zeros to every sector on the drive. The destructive throughput of a hammer is pretty fast compared to that.
Apple exchanged access to PARC's ideas for rights on 100,000 shares of Apple stock. That's some distance from stealing, particularly given the whole world's most valuable company thing recently.
I'm bothered by how the SpiderOak team is confident to the level of foolishness. "margin of error of 0.0000%"? Really? Anyone who believes that needs a serious reality check, and their sloppy thinking about failures is surely a business issue. I would wager that a single judge in Northbrook, IL could obliterate access to any backups I placed there. It takes more than redundant power, network connectivity, and servers to make a reliable backup platform.
A Frogger based on the NJTP traffic around the Manhattan exits--14 toward the Holland, 17 toward the Lincoln--would be exciting. Ditto for one around the lead-in to the George Washington Bridge. Those all have the fun property that cars are either bumper to bumper, leaving few holes, or are going at >55MPH. Within Manhattan, there's a harder level possible trying to cross the East or West Side highways with the same properties.
I don't know of a good way to rank them objectively, but the worst traffic messes I've even been--with spots I've spent stuck for multiple hours before just due to regular traffic (not a accident etc.)--are:
This has nothing to do with things like offets for favored industries. Large companies now move the various parts of their business to whatever location gives the best net tax situation. Multinationals construct structures like the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich to place sub-companies for minimal tax. Techniques like Transfer pricing are aggressively used to move the profit to the right place to tax it minimally. Games are played with repatriation too.
If none of the options are good, they lobby for the specific incentives they need. US companies operate in Delaware because the state legislature there passes whatever the companies ask for in return for the business. Been that way since the 80's. The Cayman Islands and the Bailiwick of Jersey are popular offshore locations because they bend laws to whatever companies ask them to. Even a low rate on a lot of money is still a lot of money relative to a small country or state.
Yes, this is all legal, but it's only legal because the companies have gotten the laws they lobbied and or bullied for. The result is that we're in a race to the bottom on taxation, where business flows to whoever is running the lowest margin government--which unsurprisingly is usually with the most favorable legislative kickbacks too.
Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole The World takes 350 pages to outline just how that happened over the last hundred years, it's a great read for those interested what I'd call "financial tech". The minute you allow companies to influence lawmakers by things like lobbyists and campaign contributions, the inevitable result is making what those companies want legal. The corporate side is unsurprising given that corporations are by definition immoral. The fact that voters are ignorant to how they are being conned is really the problem here. The lawmakers who are complicit and benefitting in all of these schemes shouldn't just be voted out, they should be prosecuted as traitors for hire.
What makes you think there is a place anywhere that can do the repairs? Look carefully at the iPad "battery replacement" service, and it becomes clear you're not getting your unit repaired--it's being swapped for another one. It's questionable whether any units really are repaired there.
Speaking as someone who contributes to PostgreSQL, one of the projects mentioned in TFA, the easiest way to contribute something useful to that project while having some fun too is to test out new features. Reviewing a patch that hasn't been committed yet is part of the community process for validating what features get committed. And testing recently committed features is useful too, to help flush out bugs in them before release. Working on new features seems to be more attractive to new contributors than trying to fix old problems, and good reviewing skills flow naturally into becoming a code contributor too.
Larry Niven's short story The Jigsaw Man extrapolated an organ donation slippery slope back in 1967, introducing the term "organlegging" to the world. The main story follows someone convicted for death and subsequent disassembly as they try to escape that fate. Interleaved with it is a future history of increasingly minor crimes that result in a death/donation sentence, as society's ability to use and therefore demand for organ transplants grows. The twist at the end involves how minor the convict's offense was, relative to current laws.
Rather than musicians, I use album names here. Most "cute" name schemes people use draw from a limited pool that isn't growing. But there are a large number of new albums released every year. Also, I can set the desktop background to the album cover, which makes them easy to identify if there's a GUI console up.
Investments in lobbyists and campaign donations have the highest return rate of anything companies can buy. Check out How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests? for some numbers to consider. I also like their suggestion that the required uniform for all lobbyists should be a clown suit.
If we start testing candidates for those qualities, then we'll have smart, physically fit politicians who are still corporate shills. Frankly, I'd rather have the feebleminded, old and infirm ones we have now. I'd hate to think how much trouble energetic versions of them could cause.
Slashdot Mirror
The first of the new 7-11 stores in Manhattan opened in the summer of 2005. As of January 2011 they were up to 10 stores, and there haven't been too many more built yet. They seem to be spaced about every 15 blocks right now. Compare to, say, Duane Reed, which is closer to every 5 blocks across the entire grid. 7-11's goal is to be closer to that, with more like 100 stores across the city.
The trade-off I've found when programming is that I find it easier to enter into a flow state when I have music playing. That seems to be from a mix of blocking out distractions along with being more upbeat when hearing things I like. Whether things are familiar is key too; music I've never heard before is distracting, it's old favorites that go into my "flow mix".
It's possible for what I'm describing to be true and all of these other results to be as well. I wouldn't expect a programming flow state to be the best thing for either concentration for optimum memory (what's tested in TFA) or for detecting unusual patterns (the Peopleware study).
At its peak in late 1999, Yahoo's market cap was over $100B. You don't just kill a hundred billion dollar company all at once; they have been doing a solid job of strangling it slowly for the last twelve years though. Shouldn't be too much longer.
Buffett was always interested in companies where he had inside information of some form, especially things that allowed him to push toward a "control situation" to improve the value of the stock once he owned enough of it. One of the major investments that built up his early trading cash pile was in GEICO. That came from personally interviewing someone at the company, rather than using the publicly available information about it.
If that happened today, it would have insider trading questions all around it, with the company principals involved compelled via Fair Disclosure to tell everyone the same information. in 1951, that idea wasn't fully formed yet, as well as being difficult to detect/enforce. By the time that sort of thing did get cracked down on, mainly through the 1984 through 1988 insider trading changes, Buffett had moved onto more complicated things.
Certainly most Buffett's wealth came from legitimate innovation in value estimation. It's mainly in the last ten years that's become shockingly blatant and abusive. But even from the beginning, it was clear Buffett didn't have a problem with using his private information or research as a competitive advantage--even though that sort of thing is discourged by public company Fair Disclosure rules.
When rich people give away excess money to charities, that does not absolve them of guilt for the actions that made them wealthy in the first place. Just because Bill Gates gives away a bunch of money, that doesn't excuse he got that money using illegal monopoly tactics. You can't get credit for giving away money that you stole from taxpayers in the first place.
In recent years in particular, Buffett's wealth has been acquired using insider information from his cronies in the White House, actions that would have resulted in jail time for a less connected investor. Here's the way the circle works:
There's endless stories on this theme, including major trades around the US auto industry bailout too. I believe the most recent is the Keystone XL mess. Peter Schweizer's "Throw Them All Out" book has a whole section devoted to Warren Buffett's tricks where he abuses his political ties for profit. Here's a video segment from Schweizer summarizing that. Buffett's money is just as dirty as if he'd robbed you with a gun; don't like the kindly old man disguise fool you.
Killing everyone with illegally downloaded software? You're really taking this Blue Screen of Death thing seriously.
Lies! That urban legend was really about Tesla. You must also be part of the conspiracy to discredit him.
If the US were capable of prosecuting large companies for financial fraud, there'd be a jail full of executives from every major financial firm. Instead, the worst of the criminals got multiple rounds of bail out money and other "stimulus" that lined their pockets. You can't expect legal action against large companies to happen as long as they're allowed to pay off our elected officials to look the other way.
Of course the accounting practices are shady; that is the point. The Double Irish/Dutch Sandwich uses transfer pricing to move profits to wherever they will be taxed the least. So companies like Google get to benefit from local services for their employees--everything from public roads to local education to physical protection via the US military--while avoiding the taxation that pays for such things. It's tax fraud; if you or I were to try it, without millions of dollars to pump into top-notch accounting, legal help, and lobbyists, the IRS would throw us in jail.
Yup, see How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests? as a worked out example. I would like to see paid lobbyists wearing clown suits as their required uniform too.
Won't save you, the goggles do nothing.
Reminds me more of the South Park Circle of Poo
Let's say a typical drive is 100GB and writes at 100MB/s. That will average over 15 minutes to write zeros to every sector on the drive. The destructive throughput of a hammer is pretty fast compared to that.
I tried running an in-home computer cleanup firm under the name of the Red Shirt Guys, but every time one of the consultants went on-site they died.
Apple exchanged access to PARC's ideas for rights on 100,000 shares of Apple stock. That's some distance from stealing, particularly given the whole world's most valuable company thing recently.
And the fact that it's not a GNU/Pangolin means the Church of Emacs is pissed, too.
I'm bothered by how the SpiderOak team is confident to the level of foolishness. "margin of error of 0.0000%"? Really? Anyone who believes that needs a serious reality check, and their sloppy thinking about failures is surely a business issue. I would wager that a single judge in Northbrook, IL could obliterate access to any backups I placed there. It takes more than redundant power, network connectivity, and servers to make a reliable backup platform.
A Frogger based on the NJTP traffic around the Manhattan exits--14 toward the Holland, 17 toward the Lincoln--would be exciting. Ditto for one around the lead-in to the George Washington Bridge. Those all have the fun property that cars are either bumper to bumper, leaving few holes, or are going at >55MPH. Within Manhattan, there's a harder level possible trying to cross the East or West Side highways with the same properties.
I don't know of a good way to rank them objectively, but the worst traffic messes I've even been--with spots I've spent stuck for multiple hours before just due to regular traffic (not a accident etc.)--are:
This has nothing to do with things like offets for favored industries. Large companies now move the various parts of their business to whatever location gives the best net tax situation. Multinationals construct structures like the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich to place sub-companies for minimal tax. Techniques like Transfer pricing are aggressively used to move the profit to the right place to tax it minimally. Games are played with repatriation too.
If none of the options are good, they lobby for the specific incentives they need. US companies operate in Delaware because the state legislature there passes whatever the companies ask for in return for the business. Been that way since the 80's. The Cayman Islands and the Bailiwick of Jersey are popular offshore locations because they bend laws to whatever companies ask them to. Even a low rate on a lot of money is still a lot of money relative to a small country or state.
Yes, this is all legal, but it's only legal because the companies have gotten the laws they lobbied and or bullied for. The result is that we're in a race to the bottom on taxation, where business flows to whoever is running the lowest margin government--which unsurprisingly is usually with the most favorable legislative kickbacks too.
Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole The World takes 350 pages to outline just how that happened over the last hundred years, it's a great read for those interested what I'd call "financial tech". The minute you allow companies to influence lawmakers by things like lobbyists and campaign contributions, the inevitable result is making what those companies want legal. The corporate side is unsurprising given that corporations are by definition immoral. The fact that voters are ignorant to how they are being conned is really the problem here. The lawmakers who are complicit and benefitting in all of these schemes shouldn't just be voted out, they should be prosecuted as traitors for hire.
What makes you think there is a place anywhere that can do the repairs? Look carefully at the iPad "battery replacement" service, and it becomes clear you're not getting your unit repaired--it's being swapped for another one. It's questionable whether any units really are repaired there.
Speaking as someone who contributes to PostgreSQL, one of the projects mentioned in TFA, the easiest way to contribute something useful to that project while having some fun too is to test out new features. Reviewing a patch that hasn't been committed yet is part of the community process for validating what features get committed. And testing recently committed features is useful too, to help flush out bugs in them before release. Working on new features seems to be more attractive to new contributors than trying to fix old problems, and good reviewing skills flow naturally into becoming a code contributor too.
Larry Niven's short story The Jigsaw Man extrapolated an organ donation slippery slope back in 1967, introducing the term "organlegging" to the world. The main story follows someone convicted for death and subsequent disassembly as they try to escape that fate. Interleaved with it is a future history of increasingly minor crimes that result in a death/donation sentence, as society's ability to use and therefore demand for organ transplants grows. The twist at the end involves how minor the convict's offense was, relative to current laws.
Rather than musicians, I use album names here. Most "cute" name schemes people use draw from a limited pool that isn't growing. But there are a large number of new albums released every year. Also, I can set the desktop background to the album cover, which makes them easy to identify if there's a GUI console up.
Investments in lobbyists and campaign donations have the highest return rate of anything companies can buy. Check out How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests? for some numbers to consider. I also like their suggestion that the required uniform for all lobbyists should be a clown suit.
If we start testing candidates for those qualities, then we'll have smart, physically fit politicians who are still corporate shills. Frankly, I'd rather have the feebleminded, old and infirm ones we have now. I'd hate to think how much trouble energetic versions of them could cause.