It is pretty common knowledge I thought, that the financial industry was all smoke and mirrors. Remember the Great Depression?
I don't know if you know this, but when a bank loans you money, they are NOT loaning you money that others have deposited into their accounts. The bank simply creates a treasury note for the value of the loan, and gives you the money. They do this because when banking was legit, the profit the bank earned was the difference between the interest paid to the depositor, and the interest paid by the debtor. Usually this was only 1-2%.
Today, depositors don't matter at all. In fact, bank debt value is generally 20 to 30 times their hard currency assets.
Banks lend you money created out of nothing, it is a total fiction, a lie. It is a system designed to benefit a select few at the expense of the many.
The securities industry is not much better. The parent poster was discussing Merrill Lynch! They have been fined tens of millions of dollars for biased analysis of securities.
Come on, we have all read about the dangers of PageRank. Search Slashdot's archives to refresh...Quite frankly, google isn't as good as it once was. Its about as useful as Alta Vista was in 1996.
My only point is PageRank for the most part sucks, and there are better ways of organizing searches.Here is a good site which discusses why PageRank is not God's gift to mankind.
Its simple really. Wood as a construction component was outlawed in NYC in the 1860's. Thus most people live in brick buildings. Further, as most of these are small each was required for a heavy reinforced firewall (the original type) between them. These walls do not let through high frequency waves like those used by cell phones.
That being said, I used to live in a 110 year old apartment building in Chelsea and SprintPCS worked fine;) It all depends on if a tower is facing the front of your building. If it doesn't oh well.
Dude you have to be the most idiotic poster I have ever seen on slashdot.
Listen, if you need attention, try to be more creative than being a fucked up karma whore. All you are doing now is providing comic relief. Thats it. You need to actually write something remotely interesting to get people fired up.
They are destroying computers, not people (aka users). Yes, they will cease being users of their computers since their computer will no longer exist, but destruction applies to material existence not labels (user, policeman, dictator)
You would not say the users are destroyed simply because they are no longer users. A man is still a man, despite whatever label we attach to him. If he ceases to exist however, then we could label the act by which that occurs "destruction".
I'm especially sorry I have to take the hammer approach with you to get you to understand a reference that a learned person should be aware of.
Here you go again. Making the ridiculous assertion that these Randian truths are self evident. This is the sort of argument one would use if someone were disputing the existence of gravity.
Are you so ignorant in your beliefs you can do nothing but attack your detractors as being unlearned? This is behavior Randroids frequently engage in... but you are taking it over the top!
You are really coming accross as being a nutcase here. Its like the madman in the asylum who tries to speak in jibberish, and exclaims any learned person would understand the language of the Gods or some nonsense.
Also, I have news for you, if you read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, you would find he did not support international free markets. There is a whole chapter on using tariffs to protect domestic production. Rand tended to be very wrong about about almost every author she discussed, so I would take her short summaries with a grain of salt.
In fact, amongst learned circles her ignorance of other philosophers is almost comical. Her endless rantings against Kant are so insane they defy description. Her dismissals of Nietzsche are equally baffling, especially when it is clear she lifted so many of her aesthetic arguments from him. Beware.
Are you making the simplistic assertion that because these events are taking place without government involvement, something which Ayn Rand would seem to support, that therefore it follows Ayn Rand was correct? That is NOT an argument...
I have a hard time believing your analysis is that shallow. Why don't you point me to an essay/column of hers which directly relates to this issue?
You really seem to be pulling this Ayn Rand line out of your ass. Don't make yourself look like a Randroid here. Redeem yourself. Try to make a real argument here.
I doubt anyone has signed a contract yet regarding this so we won't see it. In fact, I would not be surprised if HP's lawyers haven't even finalized the contract yet. This is just a press release... announcing their intention to indemnify their customers.
You have to assume however that the indemnification will be reasonable otherwise whats the point? You better believe with these big contracts lawyers look over all the details, even before this SCO business showed its head.
Pray tell, what the fuck does Ayn Rand have to do with any of this... Just because she advocated intellectual property does not mean she was at all familiar with the intricacies of interbusiness licensing and indemnification. If anything, her writings on intellectual property were incredibly shallow and exemplified little foresight.
is that children today have no real threat what so ever to their existence. It is pretty much guaranteed that if your child is born without birth defects, it will live at least to an age where it too can procreate.
These children who are the supposed victims of paeodphilia are either mentally deficient to a degree where it is questionable they should have been born, or they were raised by foolish parents and are in dire need of the intimacy the paedophile promises. In both instances, we see a failure of the state to ensure the proper upbringing of its future citizens. We believe that parents have the absolute right to reproduce, and yet we place no standards of responsibility upon their behavior. Rights are not innate, they are made possible by circumstances. In this case, their foolishness is allowed because millions worked and died to establish the bountiful civilization they enjoy. Do they respect this civilization and work to uphold it? No.
Let's not let democracy drown at the hands of a few.
This is what democracy does. It is mob mentality reactionism. No rational person can argue that the threat of paedophilia is so great that freedom restricting measures are necessary. As other posters have mentioned, a child has about the same risk of getting struck by lightning as getting abused by a paedophile. You of course mention the car accident statistics. An enlightened leader would be keenly aware of this fact. In our media dominated world of voter education however, we don't have enlightened leadership.
We have the masses, glued to the television caring nothing of the world or their nation besides what is presented to them in a 30 minute news program.
This is but one more example of the excesses of the mob we allowed to govern our existence.
Quite a few places still use it for television production. I just saw one of the public access channels in NYC get stuck at the AmigaDOS prompt for a whole afternoon.
I think the whole thing illustrates firstly that the obsession with invetors is a fallacy, and that airplanes, like all other technology is more about refinement than outright invention.
It wasn't a mystery that A) Flight was possible B) you needed wings to do it, and C) Engines will no doubt be a great asset. MANY people were trying to do it all over the civilized world. Kids had toy gliders for god's sake!
If eating and fucking is the only happiness you desire, by all means continue. There has to be more to human life than that though.
What if the only thing that makes you happy is learning? For that person, a longer life will have very tangible results. I mean, imagine all the technological advances which could occur in the next century! That lone is something to live for.
Its perfectly safe, as long as you buy it at the drug store and not illictly. Generally the appetite suppressing effects only last about six months however. Unfortunately, the human body builds a tolerance to all drugs, especially to hormones and hormone-like substances. Amphetamine works because it is structurally similar to adrenalin. In fact, some of an older generation might remember the only asthma inhalers they had were Benzedrine inhalers, aka benzoamphetamine. It wasn't until the 1970's they were able to use adrenalin safely in inhalers like Primatine Mist.
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts?
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: 1
Do you really think that because YOU are posing an argument it has any bearing upon national policy? I think not. We are discussing tax policy currently being put forth by both parties, none of them are claiming taxataion is and of itself, unjust.
Really? Huh. I suppose you think we should just wait for the poor to invest in the companies that employ us. Good plan!
The problem with plutocracies is that their motivations are generally not in the best interest of the people. Today, we have the unequal wealth distribution not because a few are more productive than others. They have gained their wealth through a corrupt system of money. Today, banks lend money which does not exist, and a select few become rich upon the interest derived from that lending. The greatest outrage is when they lend that money to the government, and collect further interest.
I am no egalitarian, and believe that there is the best of us should rule the rest of us. Today's system does not reward honest work, in fact it does just the opposite.
I am getting pretty sick of this lie. The notion that a tax cut for rich people will just get stuffed into their bed mattresses, instead of spent on soup or whatever.
I have never said that rich people will not invest. Do you really think the last Bush tax cut of $300 per person was intended to facillitate investment? Tax cuts intended to spur investment take time, and time is something most families right now do not have in abundance. Current tax policy debate is focusing on increasing spending by the average consumer, not on increasing future investment.
Sure, a lot of development jobs have gone overseas, but those were jobs that were being done by Russian and Indian H1B workers during the fat years anyway.
The purpose of economic activity is benefit a group of people who live together. I don't really see how I am receiving a rant on the exportation of jobs, but I will make a response. The rules of supply and demand apply to people too. Technology has decreased the demand for human beings by those with money to a level never before seen in history. Prior to the twentieth century, a government had to in the very least keep the favor of a large percentage of the population so they would defend the society. From a productive standpoint, human beings are no longer require in any meaningful way. The issue facing future governments is going to be how to distribute wealth and prosperity when there really isn't anything important for the people to do.
The fact that the biggest holders of technology stocks in the world are finding themselves getting more rich, instead of less rich, once again is cause for those of us who work for tech companies to rejoice.
Look at the world around you. People perhaps do not want for the basics of survival, food, shelter, and what not. If this is your measure of success, then fine. We are at the pinnacle of human achievement. Some however walk around century old neighborhoods, and see how things used to be. Come to Brooklyn and walk around some of these neighborhoods for example. Factory workers used to be able to afford quality homes, made of stone, which still stand to this day. The average middle class family today can barely afford a house constructed of plywood, even wtih both parents working.
By any reasonable measurement, people are getting poorer, not richer.
Ultimately, if you are working in this industry, a multi-millionaire probably signs your paychecks. Only a die-hard marxist could thing that them having less money is a good thing for you.
Just because that is the case doesn't mean that its right, or ideal. I don't believe that having less many is good, but in order to fight International Finance, it is necessary to deprive its beneficiaries of the wealth they such from the people.
Also, I am not a marxist. I am a fascist. Capitalism and Communism fail for the same reason, they hold material gain as the measur
If I have 10,000 people who are paid $30,000 a year, 1000 people who are paid $50,000 a year, and 100 people who are paid $70,000 a year, the median would be $50,000 a year. The average however, would be $32,162.
Which do you think is the best representation?
Using the median is valid in some cases, like housing costs where a few extremely valuable properties can skew the average housing cost. But I highly doubt system administrators have such variance in their compensation... something to think about.
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts?
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The issue with these tax cuts is rather simple. No one is arguing that these tax cuts are an attempt to remedy the unjust taxing of people. The purpose behind these tax cuts as advocated by Republicans is that they will spur economic growth.
The problem is that by definition, rich people are rich because they can buy whatever they want. Reducing their taxes is thus NOT going to have any impact on the economy because these people have no real incentive to spend more, the extra little bit of money is not going to have any impact.
Also, the earned income tax credit was originally a Republican proposal if my memory serves me correctly. The idea behind it is also based on the above logic. Poor people are deemed poor because they DON'T have the money to purchase what they want. By giving them back money (or just giving them money) you are pretty much guaranteed they are going to spend it. If you give $1000 to a person who makes $20,000 a year, they will spend it. GIve $1000 to a person who makes $200,000 a year and has $1.5 million in assets, they might not even cash the check mailed to them by the government.
Now, I will be the first to admit that none of this solves the problem of a consumer driven economy. But, I am struggling as much as the next man. I would much rather improve our currently corrupt economy so I can pay the rent than plan for the future. Once we get things under control, then we can talk about changing the way our society works.
You may not make a killing recycling the shells, but farming Macadamia nuts or Avocados in Australia is perhaps one of the last ways you can make money in agriculture if you are so inclined.
Land is cheap in Australia, the country is huge, and there aren't too many people. Its really the last open frontier.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, where have you been the last century?
It is pretty common knowledge I thought, that the financial industry was all smoke and mirrors. Remember the Great Depression?
I don't know if you know this, but when a bank loans you money, they are NOT loaning you money that others have deposited into their accounts. The bank simply creates a treasury note for the value of the loan, and gives you the money. They do this because when banking was legit, the profit the bank earned was the difference between the interest paid to the depositor, and the interest paid by the debtor. Usually this was only 1-2%.
Today, depositors don't matter at all. In fact, bank debt value is generally 20 to 30 times their hard currency assets.
Banks lend you money created out of nothing, it is a total fiction, a lie. It is a system designed to benefit a select few at the expense of the many.
The securities industry is not much better. The parent poster was discussing Merrill Lynch! They have been fined tens of millions of dollars for biased analysis of securities.
Wow you are quite an avid google supporter.
Come on, we have all read about the dangers of PageRank. Search Slashdot's archives to refresh...Quite frankly, google isn't as good as it once was. Its about as useful as Alta Vista was in 1996.
My only point is PageRank for the most part sucks, and there are better ways of organizing searches.Here is a good site which discusses why PageRank is not God's gift to mankind.
Why do I think this is more sad than funny.
Damn bitches keeping another man down... in a major recession no list.
Just wanted to know...
Its simple really. Wood as a construction component was outlawed in NYC in the 1860's. Thus most people live in brick buildings. Further, as most of these are small each was required for a heavy reinforced firewall (the original type) between them. These walls do not let through high frequency waves like those used by cell phones.
;) It all depends on if a tower is facing the front of your building. If it doesn't oh well.
That being said, I used to live in a 110 year old apartment building in Chelsea and SprintPCS worked fine
This is much less of a problem in the boroughss
Dude you have to be the most idiotic poster I have ever seen on slashdot.
Listen, if you need attention, try to be more creative than being a fucked up karma whore. All you are doing now is providing comic relief. Thats it. You need to actually write something remotely interesting to get people fired up.
This... this is just hillarious.
Anyway, enjoy your first world country. L8
So Great Britain is a third world country???
BBC=British Broadcasting Corporation
Huh?
They are destroying computers, not people (aka users). Yes, they will cease being users of their computers since their computer will no longer exist, but destruction applies to material existence not labels (user, policeman, dictator)
You would not say the users are destroyed simply because they are no longer users. A man is still a man, despite whatever label we attach to him. If he ceases to exist however, then we could label the act by which that occurs "destruction".
I'm a very.. avid Trillian user.
Had to think about that one did ya.
Now that I think about this, I guess you are right... Hopefully we will find out in these coming weeks.
I'm especially sorry I have to take the hammer approach with you to get you to understand a reference that a learned person should be aware of.
Here you go again. Making the ridiculous assertion that these Randian truths are self evident. This is the sort of argument one would use if someone were disputing the existence of gravity.
Are you so ignorant in your beliefs you can do nothing but attack your detractors as being unlearned? This is behavior Randroids frequently engage in... but you are taking it over the top!
You are really coming accross as being a nutcase here. Its like the madman in the asylum who tries to speak in jibberish, and exclaims any learned person would understand the language of the Gods or some nonsense.
Also, I have news for you, if you read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, you would find he did not support international free markets. There is a whole chapter on using tariffs to protect domestic production. Rand tended to be very wrong about about almost every author she discussed, so I would take her short summaries with a grain of salt.
In fact, amongst learned circles her ignorance of other philosophers is almost comical. Her endless rantings against Kant are so insane they defy description. Her dismissals of Nietzsche are equally baffling, especially when it is clear she lifted so many of her aesthetic arguments from him. Beware.
I really don't see where you are going with this.
Are you making the simplistic assertion that because these events are taking place without government involvement, something which Ayn Rand would seem to support, that therefore it follows Ayn Rand was correct? That is NOT an argument...
I have a hard time believing your analysis is that shallow. Why don't you point me to an essay/column of hers which directly relates to this issue?
You really seem to be pulling this Ayn Rand line out of your ass. Don't make yourself look like a Randroid here. Redeem yourself. Try to make a real argument here.
I doubt anyone has signed a contract yet regarding this so we won't see it. In fact, I would not be surprised if HP's lawyers haven't even finalized the contract yet. This is just a press release... announcing their intention to indemnify their customers.
You have to assume however that the indemnification will be reasonable otherwise whats the point? You better believe with these big contracts lawyers look over all the details, even before this SCO business showed its head.
Yet again, Ayn Rand is shown to be correct.
Pray tell, what the fuck does Ayn Rand have to do with any of this... Just because she advocated intellectual property does not mean she was at all familiar with the intricacies of interbusiness licensing and indemnification. If anything, her writings on intellectual property were incredibly shallow and exemplified little foresight.
is that children today have no real threat what so ever to their existence. It is pretty much guaranteed that if your child is born without birth defects, it will live at least to an age where it too can procreate.
These children who are the supposed victims of paeodphilia are either mentally deficient to a degree where it is questionable they should have been born, or they were raised by foolish parents and are in dire need of the intimacy the paedophile promises. In both instances, we see a failure of the state to ensure the proper upbringing of its future citizens. We believe that parents have the absolute right to reproduce, and yet we place no standards of responsibility upon their behavior. Rights are not innate, they are made possible by circumstances. In this case, their foolishness is allowed because millions worked and died to establish the bountiful civilization they enjoy. Do they respect this civilization and work to uphold it? No.
Let's not let democracy drown at the hands of a few.
This is what democracy does. It is mob mentality reactionism. No rational person can argue that the threat of paedophilia is so great that freedom restricting measures are necessary. As other posters have mentioned, a child has about the same risk of getting struck by lightning as getting abused by a paedophile. You of course mention the car accident statistics. An enlightened leader would be keenly aware of this fact. In our media dominated world of voter education however, we don't have enlightened leadership.
We have the masses, glued to the television caring nothing of the world or their nation besides what is presented to them in a 30 minute news program.
This is but one more example of the excesses of the mob we allowed to govern our existence.
Quite a few places still use it for television production. I just saw one of the public access channels in NYC get stuck at the AmigaDOS prompt for a whole afternoon.
I think the whole thing illustrates firstly that the obsession with invetors is a fallacy, and that airplanes, like all other technology is more about refinement than outright invention.
It wasn't a mystery that A) Flight was possible B) you needed wings to do it, and C) Engines will no doubt be a great asset. MANY people were trying to do it all over the civilized world. Kids had toy gliders for god's sake!
A very nihilistic view.
If eating and fucking is the only happiness you desire, by all means continue. There has to be more to human life than that though.
What if the only thing that makes you happy is learning? For that person, a longer life will have very tangible results. I mean, imagine all the technological advances which could occur in the next century! That lone is something to live for.
Umm, they have had one for about 80 years.
Its called Amphetamine
Its perfectly safe, as long as you buy it at the drug store and not illictly. Generally the appetite suppressing effects only last about six months however. Unfortunately, the human body builds a tolerance to all drugs, especially to hormones and hormone-like substances. Amphetamine works because it is structurally similar to adrenalin. In fact, some of an older generation might remember the only asthma inhalers they had were Benzedrine inhalers, aka benzoamphetamine. It wasn't until the 1970's they were able to use adrenalin safely in inhalers like Primatine Mist.
You did your research.
Good post.
Do you really think that because YOU are posing an argument it has any bearing upon national policy? I think not. We are discussing tax policy currently being put forth by both parties, none of them are claiming taxataion is and of itself, unjust.
Really? Huh. I suppose you think we should just wait for the poor to invest in the companies that employ us. Good plan!
The problem with plutocracies is that their motivations are generally not in the best interest of the people. Today, we have the unequal wealth distribution not because a few are more productive than others. They have gained their wealth through a corrupt system of money. Today, banks lend money which does not exist, and a select few become rich upon the interest derived from that lending. The greatest outrage is when they lend that money to the government, and collect further interest.
I am no egalitarian, and believe that there is the best of us should rule the rest of us. Today's system does not reward honest work, in fact it does just the opposite.
I am getting pretty sick of this lie. The notion that a tax cut for rich people will just get stuffed into their bed mattresses, instead of spent on soup or whatever.
I have never said that rich people will not invest. Do you really think the last Bush tax cut of $300 per person was intended to facillitate investment? Tax cuts intended to spur investment take time, and time is something most families right now do not have in abundance. Current tax policy debate is focusing on increasing spending by the average consumer, not on increasing future investment.
Sure, a lot of development jobs have gone overseas, but those were jobs that were being done by Russian and Indian H1B workers during the fat years anyway.
The purpose of economic activity is benefit a group of people who live together. I don't really see how I am receiving a rant on the exportation of jobs, but I will make a response. The rules of supply and demand apply to people too. Technology has decreased the demand for human beings by those with money to a level never before seen in history. Prior to the twentieth century, a government had to in the very least keep the favor of a large percentage of the population so they would defend the society. From a productive standpoint, human beings are no longer require in any meaningful way. The issue facing future governments is going to be how to distribute wealth and prosperity when there really isn't anything important for the people to do.
The fact that the biggest holders of technology stocks in the world are finding themselves getting more rich, instead of less rich, once again is cause for those of us who work for tech companies to rejoice.
Look at the world around you. People perhaps do not want for the basics of survival, food, shelter, and what not. If this is your measure of success, then fine. We are at the pinnacle of human achievement. Some however walk around century old neighborhoods, and see how things used to be. Come to Brooklyn and walk around some of these neighborhoods for example. Factory workers used to be able to afford quality homes, made of stone, which still stand to this day. The average middle class family today can barely afford a house constructed of plywood, even wtih both parents working.
By any reasonable measurement, people are getting poorer, not richer.
Ultimately, if you are working in this industry, a multi-millionaire probably signs your paychecks. Only a die-hard marxist could thing that them having less money is a good thing for you.
Just because that is the case doesn't mean that its right, or ideal. I don't believe that having less many is good, but in order to fight International Finance, it is necessary to deprive its beneficiaries of the wealth they such from the people.
Also, I am not a marxist. I am a fascist. Capitalism and Communism fail for the same reason, they hold material gain as the measur
If I have 10,000 people who are paid $30,000 a year, 1000 people who are paid $50,000 a year, and 100 people who are paid $70,000 a year, the median would be $50,000 a year. The average however, would be $32,162.
Which do you think is the best representation?
Using the median is valid in some cases, like housing costs where a few extremely valuable properties can skew the average housing cost. But I highly doubt system administrators have such variance in their compensation... something to think about.
The issue with these tax cuts is rather simple. No one is arguing that these tax cuts are an attempt to remedy the unjust taxing of people. The purpose behind these tax cuts as advocated by Republicans is that they will spur economic growth.
The problem is that by definition, rich people are rich because they can buy whatever they want. Reducing their taxes is thus NOT going to have any impact on the economy because these people have no real incentive to spend more, the extra little bit of money is not going to have any impact.
Also, the earned income tax credit was originally a Republican proposal if my memory serves me correctly. The idea behind it is also based on the above logic. Poor people are deemed poor because they DON'T have the money to purchase what they want. By giving them back money (or just giving them money) you are pretty much guaranteed they are going to spend it. If you give $1000 to a person who makes $20,000 a year, they will spend it. GIve $1000 to a person who makes $200,000 a year and has $1.5 million in assets, they might not even cash the check mailed to them by the government.
Now, I will be the first to admit that none of this solves the problem of a consumer driven economy. But, I am struggling as much as the next man. I would much rather improve our currently corrupt economy so I can pay the rent than plan for the future. Once we get things under control, then we can talk about changing the way our society works.
You may not make a killing recycling the shells, but farming Macadamia nuts or Avocados in Australia is perhaps one of the last ways you can make money in agriculture if you are so inclined.
Land is cheap in Australia, the country is huge, and there aren't too many people. Its really the last open frontier.
Are they a public company? What is their symbol? which exchange?