Is that the show about people who go around with a wrench and screwdriver and work on loosening nuts and screws, or what? Reality TV at it's finest. Loser.
And people actually sign this shit, that is the problem. It works against you because if you don't sign it, they throw you out. If EVERYONE refuses to sign it, the company is the one who is fucked.
A company letting their employees do what the want in their own free time.
You must have missed the "as long as that second job is writing apps for WP7-based devices" part. That is not "letting people do what they want". In fact, it places a fairly strict boundary.
It is, and was always, a case of research. Making up numbers for argument's sake, only 2% of products in a certain category are worthwhile. Usually they're no more (or not much more) expensive than the rest. But you have to sift through the other 98% of garbage (or relative garbage) to find them. Pricing cannot be counted on as a guide because marketing people are wise to the fact that people perceive a link between higher price and better quality, although this is not always the case. So most of the time you are "just paying for the label", as the saying goes.
Just what is it about somebody else having something nice that makes people want to ruin it?
I have no idea. Taking a guess, perhaps it has to do with the fact that the reason someone would want to own a $100,000+ car has nothing to do with comfort or driving (after all, the speed limit and traffic lights are exactly the same no matter what car you drive) but rather status. And some people have no respect for authority or status, and in fact resent it.
I have never keyed a car myself. I certainly can afford a luxury car, and not on installment plans either. However I've never seen the point in raising your head above the crowd and yelling "look at me!". Much better to blend in with my little Toyota and my reasonable low 6-figure house. Absolutely no one needs to know how much money I have "in the bank". But I can eat at any restaurant I want, when I want, and I can travel anywhere in the world I want, when I want. I have a few properties in different countries, etc.
I have friends with top-of-the-line Mercedes, and they get so damned nervous every time we go out - they park at the far end of the parking lot where there are no cars when they can, just to avoid people walking past their cars. There are some places they don't want to go to because they're afraid of getting their car stolen in that neighborhood. That's not my idea of fun - having to worry about your things all the time. Life is supposed to get easier, not more complicated.
Short term rates are near zero but not long-term rates, as you can see on google finance.
Yawn 3? 4? for 30 years? Give me a break. I remember when 5 years would get you 15% on tax free AAA municipal bonds. This is zero or as close to it as you're going to get.
The fees on mortgages and credit cards barely recover the costs banks have.
Yeah, credit cards are a real money loser, which is why every single store chain/restaurant/gas station wants to have their own credit card. Poor them, losing money like that. Funny, in 2008 I seem to remember it was subprime greed and credit default swaps that put the banks underwater, not consumer credit.
Oil prices going up may or may not be inflation
You're right - there's also the devaluation of the US dollar to take into account. Which is why all other commodities are through the roof and the US dollar is losing ground even against 3rd world currencies. Inflation and devaluation are not the same thing. Inflation is a measure of how easy it is to obtain credit. If money is easy to come by, people tend to make more and larger purchases, meaning there is more money chasing limited goods and services. Devaluation measures how much faith people have in the currency. Hence the word "value" in devaluation. This affects, among other things, the exchange rate of the currency.
Oil and other commodities do not have stable value.
No they don't. I invite you to look at a long term graph, though. 10 years should do it. And if you can't see the problem, then you need to learn to read a graph. The bubble wasn't fixed, merely postponed.
you can never go back to the old style of music. It will sound too little, too cheesy, too kitch, too unintelligent.
That's like saying you'll never go back to Vivaldi after hearing Mozart...
Music is all about taste, and even the Romans knew that you can't argue about taste. There's no point. Taste is entirely subjective. However in your first paragraph you mention free time. I argue that today's free time can be filled with so many things - from teenage girls taking pictures of themselves for facebook, to playing multiplayer online games, to browsing the internet, to blogging, etc. Back in the day free time was a) read a book b) listen to a record/cassette c) watch MASH reruns on TV or d) go to the movies. It's only logical to assume that strict music listening now occupies a much smaller share of our attention span today because our horizons have been expanded.
Music has been declining in sales in the internet era, yes. However this doesn't mean that everyone is pirating. Back in the 70's and 80's there was absolutely nothing to DO except either watch network television, or listen to music. Now there is so much more to do, and music has been relegated to a smaller share of the market. I refute your theory.
Except the big Wall St. banks. They're doing just fine. Cha-ching! Oh by the way oil is at $112, cha ching! We'll just get our friends at the Fed to keep interest rates at zero forever so you might as well stuff your money under your mattress since that way at least you will save on all the bank fees. You sure as hell aren't going to get any interest even on a CD. But remember to pay your 5-6% on your mortgage, plus all those other hidden fees, and pay your 20% on your credit card. Making money with interest is not for you, it's for us. Cha ching! Oh and we haven't told you what is going to happen to your savings with all this inflation we're not telling you about (believe the CPI because we take out energy and transport costs - hah, I mean, who uses THOSE THINGS anyway). Your house prices are not increasing though, so you're not even keeping up with this inflation. In 10 years or so you won't be able to afford a car, but we'll lend you one in exchange for your first born. After all it's your patriotic duty to save American car manufacturers! Cha ching!
Not a coincidence. I've discovered that I can live without "buying" music, and I will be damned if I give them another penny. Plus as many others have pointed out, the music sucks balls anyway. Who wants to listen to 90 year old "rock stars" cough up a lung, or pre-pubescent teenagers sing about the "angst" of a life they haven't even begun to live yet, or stupid "look at me being a gangsta is so cool but all my friends are dead or in jail" crap. They can keep it.
the most popular media player in the US (read: Apple's
That's a funny way to spell Windows Media Player. I mean, even after you discount the not insignificant amount of people who install a different player on their Windows boxes, Microsoft still wins through sheer market share. Keep trying, Apple. But $110/bbl oil is not conducive to lavish consumer spending.
Huh? I didn't mention global warming at all in my post.
However the human population explosion IS the cause of all of our problems. In the future we will reach a point where there simply are not enough resources (call it water, oxygen, copper, whatever) per unit (be it nation, city, family, individual) to maintain the function of that unit, at which point it will collapse just like the bacteria in the Petri dish. It is our destiny because this world is a closed system.
On the other hand a small human population could pollute as much as it likes and would never have an impact on the global ecosystem. Therefore our current drive towards "green" behavior is a function of our population size and nothing more. This doesn't mean that "green" laws try to limit human growth - as far as I know NOTHING (from contraceptives, to one child per family laws, to disease, to religion) limits human growth effectively.
Exactly. The net amount of water on the planet will pretty much always be the same, thanks to the law of conservation of matter. The problem is one of distribution, especially, gallons of fresh water available/day / capita. Municipalities keep allowing cities to expand at a rate that outpaces available local water supplies, and people keep breeding like rabbits. THAT is the problem, not that the "water is running out".
[citation needed]
The sun would not stop shining, and the earth's core would not stop radiating heat from all that radioactive potassium, just because all the CO2 was gone. While it might be a little cooler, I doubt very much that we'd see Martian temperatures here on Earth.
Yeah, but Aqua regia is some pretty nasty stuff. While you could argue that only Helium is truly non reactive (fluorides of Argon, Neon and Xenon have been made), as far as shiny metals go, gold is pretty darned stable...
Slashdot Mirror
Eventually however you will run out of doors that need doorstops, and THEN what will you do?
lol getting old is so much fun. I would never have made that mistake 10 years ago :)
Is that the show about people who go around with a wrench and screwdriver and work on loosening nuts and screws, or what? Reality TV at it's finest. Loser.
And people actually sign this shit, that is the problem. It works against you because if you don't sign it, they throw you out. If EVERYONE refuses to sign it, the company is the one who is fucked.
You must have missed the "as long as that second job is writing apps for WP7-based devices" part. That is not "letting people do what they want". In fact, it places a fairly strict boundary.
It is, and was always, a case of research. Making up numbers for argument's sake, only 2% of products in a certain category are worthwhile. Usually they're no more (or not much more) expensive than the rest. But you have to sift through the other 98% of garbage (or relative garbage) to find them. Pricing cannot be counted on as a guide because marketing people are wise to the fact that people perceive a link between higher price and better quality, although this is not always the case. So most of the time you are "just paying for the label", as the saying goes.
I have no idea. Taking a guess, perhaps it has to do with the fact that the reason someone would want to own a $100,000+ car has nothing to do with comfort or driving (after all, the speed limit and traffic lights are exactly the same no matter what car you drive) but rather status. And some people have no respect for authority or status, and in fact resent it.
I have never keyed a car myself. I certainly can afford a luxury car, and not on installment plans either. However I've never seen the point in raising your head above the crowd and yelling "look at me!". Much better to blend in with my little Toyota and my reasonable low 6-figure house. Absolutely no one needs to know how much money I have "in the bank". But I can eat at any restaurant I want, when I want, and I can travel anywhere in the world I want, when I want. I have a few properties in different countries, etc.
I have friends with top-of-the-line Mercedes, and they get so damned nervous every time we go out - they park at the far end of the parking lot where there are no cars when they can, just to avoid people walking past their cars. There are some places they don't want to go to because they're afraid of getting their car stolen in that neighborhood. That's not my idea of fun - having to worry about your things all the time. Life is supposed to get easier, not more complicated.
lol everquest - that explains a lot...
No, but don't complain when your fancy car gets keyed when you park it at Wal-mart.
Yawn 3? 4? for 30 years? Give me a break. I remember when 5 years would get you 15% on tax free AAA municipal bonds. This is zero or as close to it as you're going to get.
Yeah, credit cards are a real money loser, which is why every single store chain/restaurant/gas station wants to have their own credit card. Poor them, losing money like that. Funny, in 2008 I seem to remember it was subprime greed and credit default swaps that put the banks underwater, not consumer credit.
You're right - there's also the devaluation of the US dollar to take into account. Which is why all other commodities are through the roof and the US dollar is losing ground even against 3rd world currencies. Inflation and devaluation are not the same thing. Inflation is a measure of how easy it is to obtain credit. If money is easy to come by, people tend to make more and larger purchases, meaning there is more money chasing limited goods and services. Devaluation measures how much faith people have in the currency. Hence the word "value" in devaluation. This affects, among other things, the exchange rate of the currency.
No they don't. I invite you to look at a long term graph, though. 10 years should do it. And if you can't see the problem, then you need to learn to read a graph. The bubble wasn't fixed, merely postponed.
That's like saying you'll never go back to Vivaldi after hearing Mozart... Music is all about taste, and even the Romans knew that you can't argue about taste. There's no point. Taste is entirely subjective. However in your first paragraph you mention free time. I argue that today's free time can be filled with so many things - from teenage girls taking pictures of themselves for facebook, to playing multiplayer online games, to browsing the internet, to blogging, etc. Back in the day free time was a) read a book b) listen to a record/cassette c) watch MASH reruns on TV or d) go to the movies. It's only logical to assume that strict music listening now occupies a much smaller share of our attention span today because our horizons have been expanded.
Music has been declining in sales in the internet era, yes. However this doesn't mean that everyone is pirating. Back in the 70's and 80's there was absolutely nothing to DO except either watch network television, or listen to music. Now there is so much more to do, and music has been relegated to a smaller share of the market. I refute your theory.
Except the big Wall St. banks. They're doing just fine. Cha-ching! Oh by the way oil is at $112, cha ching! We'll just get our friends at the Fed to keep interest rates at zero forever so you might as well stuff your money under your mattress since that way at least you will save on all the bank fees. You sure as hell aren't going to get any interest even on a CD. But remember to pay your 5-6% on your mortgage, plus all those other hidden fees, and pay your 20% on your credit card. Making money with interest is not for you, it's for us. Cha ching! Oh and we haven't told you what is going to happen to your savings with all this inflation we're not telling you about (believe the CPI because we take out energy and transport costs - hah, I mean, who uses THOSE THINGS anyway). Your house prices are not increasing though, so you're not even keeping up with this inflation. In 10 years or so you won't be able to afford a car, but we'll lend you one in exchange for your first born. After all it's your patriotic duty to save American car manufacturers! Cha ching!
Not a coincidence. I've discovered that I can live without "buying" music, and I will be damned if I give them another penny. Plus as many others have pointed out, the music sucks balls anyway. Who wants to listen to 90 year old "rock stars" cough up a lung, or pre-pubescent teenagers sing about the "angst" of a life they haven't even begun to live yet, or stupid "look at me being a gangsta is so cool but all my friends are dead or in jail" crap. They can keep it.
Is it bad if I want Harper-Collins to self destruct right now?
That's a funny way to spell Windows Media Player. I mean, even after you discount the not insignificant amount of people who install a different player on their Windows boxes, Microsoft still wins through sheer market share. Keep trying, Apple. But $110/bbl oil is not conducive to lavish consumer spending.
Huh? I didn't mention global warming at all in my post.
However the human population explosion IS the cause of all of our problems. In the future we will reach a point where there simply are not enough resources (call it water, oxygen, copper, whatever) per unit (be it nation, city, family, individual) to maintain the function of that unit, at which point it will collapse just like the bacteria in the Petri dish. It is our destiny because this world is a closed system.
On the other hand a small human population could pollute as much as it likes and would never have an impact on the global ecosystem. Therefore our current drive towards "green" behavior is a function of our population size and nothing more. This doesn't mean that "green" laws try to limit human growth - as far as I know NOTHING (from contraceptives, to one child per family laws, to disease, to religion) limits human growth effectively.
Exactly. The net amount of water on the planet will pretty much always be the same, thanks to the law of conservation of matter. The problem is one of distribution, especially, gallons of fresh water available /day / capita. Municipalities keep allowing cities to expand at a rate that outpaces available local water supplies, and people keep breeding like rabbits. THAT is the problem, not that the "water is running out".
[citation needed] The sun would not stop shining, and the earth's core would not stop radiating heat from all that radioactive potassium, just because all the CO2 was gone. While it might be a little cooler, I doubt very much that we'd see Martian temperatures here on Earth.
Are you aware that he was joking?
Yeah, but Aqua regia is some pretty nasty stuff. While you could argue that only Helium is truly non reactive (fluorides of Argon, Neon and Xenon have been made), as far as shiny metals go, gold is pretty darned stable...
Sure - blame the hatch. I mean, had this same fault occurred in space and the hatch been opened in time, they would have been safe, right?
World governments should take note of just how effective this is (ie, it's not).
Funny, since I'm a Canadian living in Costa Rica. Typical internet tough guy, jumping to conclusions.
Yeah because your post really improves it.