In fact it is quite possible, I do it on my laptop. One of the first things that I did when I configured my XP laptop was override the default MAC address on the wireless card to a different address (random) of my choosing to futher enhance my security and privacy when I connect to public WiFi networks (in the unlikely event that somebody, for whatever reason, would attempt to trace back that MAC address to the laptop and wireless card manufacturer who issued it and attempt to link it up with the purchase records). One does what one can these days to protect, futile though that may be, what little semblance of privacy that we still have left.
A very reasoned response...you make a convincing rebutal, but a few more questions if I may.
If the federal government issues securities (i.e. debt) and the Federal Reserve buys them to put money into circulation then isn't the Federal Government, even if it is indirect, printing money? The Federal Government is in that unique situation because their credit rating is effectively unlimited...you are right about that (i.e. if they fail then the country fails) and if that is the case then isn't that the same thing, effectively, as controlling the presses which actually print the money?
But let's not forget that we had a surplus under Clinton
Not to defend Bush or Reagan on the spending account, Bush especially has proven to be more spendy than just about any President in living memory, but was there really a surplus during the Clinton era or does that depend upon who does the accounting and what method they use? The federal government passes a budget before they know exactly how much tax revenue will actually be collected to support it (in fact this is not entirely the government's fault...if they waited for all of the taxes to be accounted for before formulating the budget then there would be large gaps of time when the government was operating on emergency funding, without a budget, while the taxes were collected and accounted for). For a hypothetical example, if I plan to spend 10,000 dollars in a given month but only spend 5,000 does that mean I have a 5,000 dollar surplus, because I spent less than I had planned, even though my income was only say 5,000 at the end of that month? The government accounts for their "surplus" in this way but most people wouldn't call that a surplus since there was no ability to spend 10,000 anyway without going into debt.
Of course I've heard about LTCM...it's an example of the Fed doing its job and ensuring that the markets stay stable.
Granted, but is it fair to allow frims, whether through use of asymetric information about assets or transactions or whatever other means, to put investors into a position where the entire economy could collapse because of mispriced risk? Should the fed buy government debt to make cash available for overnight loans to protect investors from risks that they willingly took? With high risk comes high reward yes, but also the downside of loss of principle. Did the taxpayer, where the government funds ultimately come from, receive the best rates for those Fed loans given the amount of risk (remember that there was a chance that the loan package might not have worked...it did but it could have failed to stem the tide under a more general collapse of confidence in the marketplace)? I know that LTCM paid the loans back (or rather the firms and governments in which LTCM had holdings paid the loans back), but it was all a very riksy thing in spite of it all.
I don't see how the housing bubble is the fault of the Fed or how it would be helped by a gold standard. Likewise the failure of social security -- a system which depends on strong population growth to function -- seems unrelated to any failure of fiat currency conceptually or in practice.
The fed kept interest rates low for a long time after the Dot Com bubble burst and 9/11 hit thereby encouraging and fueling speculation in the mortgage markets. Does anyone else see a problem when there are "do it yourself" mail order "kits" to help you get into the house flipping boom? Is there any real value to the economy in people buying and reselling properties on a weeks notice and pocketing $40,000+ on the transaction? Why should the Fed make it cheap for speculators to borrow money to do this? The Fed shares some part of the blame for the housing bubble. As for the gold standard it would be harder to issue new credit willy nilly if you had to back the new credit with fractional gold reserves (this could be both a good and a bad thing).
Questioning the Fed chairman, telling him how to do his job, etc, is nothing ne
What are you trying to say? That if money were backed by gold then everyone would be sitting on it instead of spending or investing it? Do people do that with their money right now? Are you only spending and investing your money because of inflation? Certainly not. The supply of gold is not fixed in any case and the supply has increased massively since 1910 with modern mining and refinement techniques. Nobody would do as you suggest, sit on their money and never lend it, when they could earn profits and more gold (in a gold backed money system) by loaning it out to a growing economy.
What about the tremendous current account defecit and the spiraling national debt? The social security system is full of IOUs (we need private accounts yesterday, but the AARP and the Democrats are standing in the way because they want to keep borrowing my money at a negative rate of interest...which means young people lose big time) and the projected medicare spending, as millions of overweight boomers with diabetes, high blood pressure, and a host of other expensive ongoing conditions begins to retire, is projected to spiral out of control. The fed may be independent, strictly speaking, from the government in that Congress and the President cannot sack the Fed Chairman for cutting the discount rate, but you cannot honestly believe that the actions of the Federal government have no effect whatsoever on the long term value and stability of the dollar. This country is heading for a financial trainwreck, even if it is happening at a glacial pace right now, and by the time most people realize how screwed up things really are it will be too late for anyone, even the Fed, to do anything about it.
You are right about inflation in terms of average yearly rate, but have you ever heard of debacles like Long-Term Capital Management and the attendant bailout policies undertaken by our government? I disagreed strongly with the latest interest rate cuts. There was inflationary pressure before from the housing bubble and now it has been unleashed and will increase. In fact, I would not be surprised by an increase to around 4-5% over the next five years, especially if the Fed cuts another 50 basis points because the spenders are screaming for relief. The Senate gets to question the Fed Chairman btw and you can tell that the Senators, some of them anyway, are making political kabuki theater out of the whole thing with the National Association of Realtors lobbying hard for the Senate to pressure Bernanke for more cuts.
The Federal Reserve and the Government are separate in theory, but political pressure always seems to factor into the Federal Reserve decisions lately, even if only indirectly. The Paul Volker Fed with its get tough message of responsible monetary policy come hell or high water seems to be a thing of the past. Alan Greenspan was pretty good, although sometimes too willing to turn up the credit spigot when it might have been better to simply tough it out, but Bernanke is starting to worry me.
Did you know that in inflation adjusted dollars, the yearly GDP of the US is greater than the worth of the world's entire gold supply?
The money would adjust to match the amount of gold and we would find out how much the currency has really been inflated over 36 years of government profligacy. Gold would probably soar to thousands of dollars or perhaps even tens of thousands of dollars per ounce. Or take land and real estate for example, the prices have skyrocketed in the last thirty years, doubling and tripling and even quadrupling in some places, outpacing inflation by a wide margin, especially here in California, and the supply of land is pretty much fixed or may even decline in the next 50-100 years if the global warming crowd turns out to be correct.
The point is that something has to be done about the ability of the Federal government to issue effectively unlimited debt. How else do you propose that we reign in spending? Surely not by issuing more easy credit to subprime borrowers at taxpayer expense or allowing entitlement spending and taxes to run out of control?
I dont know about you, but I am putting part of my spare money, what I manage to save once the government picks my pocket, into international commercial real estate investment trusts and gold...yes gold because I have very little confidence in the long term stability of the US dollar during my golden years (pun intended) and I am not the only one.
Pretty sure any quality wireless router won't actually let you do wireless administration of the device.
It is an option, but it is turned off by default. I actually turned it on for my WRT54G (running Thibor) so that I could access the admin pages from my laptop. However, since I am also using AES, HTTPS, MAC whitelist filtering, and strong (not default) admin password the extra risk is very minimal.
It would have to imprinted upon the router in such a way that the password could not be easily rubbed off or otherwise made illegible. It would also add more cost than you might think to manufacturing of the router. It would probably be better to place a temporary sticker on the router with the default password printed on it and something along the lines of, "name of company strongly recommends that you change the admin password to something other than the default after configuring this router"
The mass market "music" (if one can call it that) which is being produced by the record labels these days is so unoriginal, bad, and generally lacking in talent that it really doesn't matter how high quality the recording of crap is, crap is crap at any bitrate, one cannot polish a turd after all.
Gold has almost no real value. You can do very little with it other than make jewelry.
The difference is that fiat currency can be arbitrarily increased by politicians with ease whereas increasing the available gold supply requires more time and effort and thus tempers the ability of politicians to pull the inflation ripcord whenever it is politically expedient to do so. The essential qualities of a commodity that serves as a store of value are rarity, durability, easy divisibility, and the general ease of identification and gold meets all of these requirements. Are other forms of commodity backed money possible? Yes, but gold is eminently practical for this purpose and that is why it has historically been used as a primary store of value.
The problem with inflation is that, generally speaking, inflation causes expectation of further inflation in a self fulfilling prophecy that, if left unchecked and allowed to accelerate, will ultimately destroy the monetary system and force all back into barter and other more inefficient forms of exchange. If you don't believe that inflation hurts the poor or the middle class then why not ask the people of Argentina or Zimbabwe or Bolivia if they have been hurt by inflation? In fact inflation is among the most regressive of all taxes since it can effectively limit social mobility and reinforce existing disparities while not allowing for a reasonable chance of promotion beyond one's present economic circumstances.
in fact, since the Fed's creation in 1913, the US dollar is about 95-96% devalued
With almost all of that devaluation beginning with the closure of the gold window by Nixon in 1971 and the creation of political fiat money (money with no commodity backing) in its place. The problem with political money is that it creates a tremendous incentive for people to engage in risky behaviors because they believe that the government will use its power over the money supply to "ease the pain" or bail them out of tight financial situations by debasing the currency. This phenomenon is an example of what economists call the Moral Hazard problem. The result of the monetary policy of our nation has been nearly continuous punishment of savers through inflation (mild though it may be at times) while rewarding spenders and encouraging more reckless financial risk taking.
Take the recent interest rate cutes and promises of credit by government backed mortgage lenders to over-extended sub prime borrowers so that they wont "lose their homes", but why should the taxpayers take on risky mortgage obligations with "sweet heart" interest rates to sub prime borrowers with terrible credit? Taxpayers never share in gains, but somehow we are expected to "take one for the team" when there are loses? How many of these people knew that they wouldn't be able to make the payments when they took the loan several years ago (because prices were going up on homes and they had to "get into the market or be left out") counting on the government to rescue them from their financial predicament when the adjustable rate, no money down, voodoo loan kicked the payments into high gear. If the government bails these people out for political reasons then it once again makes the savers and financially prudent people (who didn't rush into an overheated housing market) look like schmucks while the prodigal sons are rewarded for their profligacy.
Is there no chance at an inside track when you begin your residency fresh out of medical school? What if you know someone who is trained in the field that you wish to enter, can he or she take you on as one of their residents, sort of like the Jedi master who chooses his apprentice? Or is the selection entirely random from the computer selection algorithm with no choice of who becomes resident in which program and to whom?
Are you *legally* prevented from setting up a private practice plastic surgery clinic? Is simply impossible to purchase the necessary training to do so? Thank you for indulging the questions of a layperson btw.
unless they're making drugs for a big-pharm company or doing boob jobs.
You'll forgive me for asking, but why aren't you doing those things instead of general residency at your local hospital if the pay (and the scenery) is so much better?
This sounds like the perfect problem to solve with a speech application server and a telephony card. The radiologists could dial into the system and voice prompt system combined with database queries could probably answer most of their questions. For example, Microsoft Speech Server, combined with IIS/ASP.NET and telephony card could be configured to do this without too much trouble and as a bonus the system could handle dozens of calls simultaneously or even hundreds if you are willing to spend more on the telephony board and the extra incoming POTs lines. Moreover, this could all be done on a relatively slim budget, perhaps $5,000 and certainly less than $10,000 for a solution designed to handle a pretty good call volume. Applications such as Speech Server, when combined with a powerful OO programming backend like.NET, can really do some heavy lifting for routine phone call type inquiries that are currently handled by IT help desks and support administrators (freeing you up to spend your time on more interesting tasks).
Re:Another shining example of failure to adapt
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Why AnywhereCD Failed
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To them, they want complete control of how I use it once it's in my hands.
I don't know about you, but I would *never* purchase anything under those terms. If I cannot have complete control to do whatever I want with the music or movies that I have purchased short of distribution then I will not buy. It is that simple. Public performance or public sharing is one thing, but dictating how a private user can and cannot use something after they purchase it is something else entirely. DRM == NO SALE.
I agree completely with the parent, this is most definitely a Bubble. There is no way that the underlying technology of facebook (CSS, HTML, PHP, Apache, and MySQL or Postgresql) or the ad profits that it generates has a present value greater than ten (10) billion dollars. The source code itself, which was leaked a couple months back, appears to be rather mundane stuff (not the best example of quality PHP coding, but then again not the worst either). The only things stopping a potential competitor are new and better features and the capital to fund the startup while the site builds users. In other words, there is seemingly nothing, or very little anyway, to prevent the emergence of a competitor(s) which is almost guaranteed to happen if facebook starts earning a mint on those billion dollar valuations. The entire social networking space is really a commodity business as far as I can see, unless one believes that branding (creating a distinction without a difference in most cases) is a strong defense against competitors, and not a franchise. What does facebook add that nobody or nothing else can? It has all the properties of a bubble company. Is facebook worth something? Probably, is it worth 10 billion? certainly not. Did people learn nothing from the dot bomb era?
Another question which is always in the back of my mind is this. Who in their right mind, after reading the TOS and Privacy Policies (assuming for a moment that one should trust a startup, no matter what they say, and especially when there is money at stake) for these sites, would willing create the sort of profile that governments once had to hire informants and file clerks to obtain? One might as well print a barcode on one's forehead and present oneself to the marketers for punishment as create a profile on one of these sites.
Evolution is like a simple hill-climbing algorithm in computer programming. It blindly heads in any upward direction without any way of knowing if it will get stuck at the top of a small hill when there is a much bigger hill right next to it. It is unnatural for it to go back downhill (to weaken itself) on purpose to look for bigger hills to climb.
Perhaps evolution should upgrade to simulated annealing instead of simple hill climbing and greedy algorithms.
sounds like your friend will be a skeleton sitting there next to those laptops collecting dust himself before they offer driver support for Windows XP. Is it possible to run the applications that he needs with Wine? If so then Ubuntu awaits, either that or he can eBay the vista laptops and bid on a used XP laptop (or at least one that has hardware with XP drivers available). Heck, the Vista debacle may even increase the value of good used XP laptops...hehe he better bid soon if that is what he decides to do.
probably not even feasible for the level of computer literacy they should expect from their clients.
So Joe Sixpack finally gets burned by DRM and realizes what we on Slashdot have been railing against all this time. Personally, I hope that there are more incidents with other music stores where the unsuspecting public gets burned by DRM. Perhaps then they will take the time to learn what DRM is and why it is a bad thing for them to be spending their money on. If enough average people get bitten by the DRM bug then maybe the content producers will have to give it up, but for now it is mostly just the nerds who are complaining.
TFA said nothing about specific prices, it only said that they wanted differentiated prices, but you are probably right that they would want to charge more than 99 cents for a new song even though they might let some of the 30 year old classics go for less than 99 cents. Anyway, music is a luxury good or service (depending upon whether you buy a recording or pay to hear a performance) and not a necessity that you cannot live without. You might say that they are greedy but that is not what is really important.
What is important is that iPod + iTunes controls a majority stake of the portable music player market and most consumers will look no further than iTunes for their music because that is what gives them the least amount of hassle. The iPod is not compatible (at least not directly) with any other online music store, so no potential competitor, even if they sold non-DRM MP3s (which we already know is something that the majors will never agree to), would be able to achieve the level of integration that iPod + iTunes does. Vivendi and the other labels are screwed unless and until they can find a way to unseat iPod and iPhone as the portable music hardware of choice (not likely) OR the labels might try legal action to *force* Apple to open up the iPod to integrate with other music stores (more likely). Either way it will be a long and expensive fight which the labels, with their declining revenues and slumping sales, may not be able to afford.
I am certainly not a friend of the music industry, but in this case I would have to say that it is probably not greed (they want to be able to charge less for old songs and 99 cents for new ones). However, they certainly were incompetent to wait so long to get on the digital music train and now they are paying the price for their lack of vision while Apple is garnering a larger share of the profits than they might otherwise have gotten had circumstances been different and the music industry hadn't dragged their feet. There probably is a market for older music at less than the 99 cents per track price and more than 99 cents per track for newer music. The problem that the music companies have is that prices are not optimal (i.e. they are not the profit maximizing prices) and since Apple effectively controls the distribution the music companies really have no recourse other than "I am taking my ball and going home"...and it may still come to that provided that someone else can break the iPod + iTunes hegemony (which is becoming more difficult with each new iPod sold). Another possible route for the music companies is to dump DRM and sell MP3s directly to the consumer, which could then be loaded into iTunes allowing them to compete with Apple directly, but that would be tantamount to giving up on the piracy problem, at least in their eyes, and the music industry is not ready to do that...yet, but who knows...desperate times can call for drastic measures.
Do they announce to innocent (called) parties that they're invading your privacy at the beginning of a call?
In some states, California for instance, if the call is not being monitored or recorded by law enforcement under warrant then both parties must be informed and give their consent to the call being recorded. Usually it is one party or another to the call who is doing the recording, in which case they must notify the other party and receive their consent, but in this case the third party monitoring service would be required to inform the party being called (presumably the caller using the service already knows that he is being recorded) of the recording. This would not be too difficult, there would simply be a message played to the receiver before the call was connected informing them of the recording and receiving their consent. In fact, with modern call handling and speech recognition software this could be accomplished quite easily.
How do you begin doing this beyond simple string comparisons?
It is also useful to realize that just because one can does not mean that one should, especially when the cost of an error is high. There is a tendency, sometimes, among the computer scientists towards too much cleverness, particularly in algorithms, when something much simpler and more reliable would have been better. I cannot tell you how many times bad assumptions about automated processes and the algorithms which control them have lead to inappropriate behavior and blown user expectations under the worst possible conditions. The real world is not the same as the CS labs in your algorithms course and the simpler solution often has much to recommend itself over the efficient and elegant, but hopelessly complex and slightly unreliable algorithm that one learns in the AI courses during their university CS education.
For example, suppose that your online banking application assumes that you really do want that regular payment upon receipt to go through automatically, because that is how it has happened before, when in fact you, the user, know that a one time payment for an unrelated expense, which has not yet been posted but will be shortly, must be made first. The automated agent makes the deduction for the regular payment automatically while the one time payment, which goes through several days later, is unexpected and overdraws the account. The user curses the system for being too "clever" instead of just carrying out his instructions. Cancel or allow?
But would you rather that if someone who was unable to afford medical treatment got sick they were left to die rather than receive the care they need?
That is precisely what did happen throughout the bulk of recorded human history. The notion of social welfare and protecting the weak from the rigors of natural selection (i.e. only the strong survive to reproduce) is a relatively recent idea in the grand scheme of things. The real world can be a harsh mistress after all.
Maybe if that person was the sole bread winner then the rest of the family (say 1 wife and two kids under 5) would be in trouble
Perhaps, but that does not mean that we shouldn't lift a finger. It is possible, indeed likely, that the two children are worth the investment required to develop them into productive adult members of society and the Mum is needed to take care of the children in the meantime (hopefully she is productive as well but this is not always the case). It is always better to have more productive citizens, who produce more goods and services for all of us to consume more cheaply, when possible (there is a limit of course, but then again it could be argued that additional population beyond that limit is not productive). The problem is that many people who are "on the dole" so to speak are not only not productive but are a complete drain on the system (i.e. they produce exactly squat...not even some inefficient production).
Mum would surely have difficulty finding a job that would fit in with caring for those children and so any social security would be vital to keep them alive?
The children should be in school for most of the day and Mum could be working during that time. The kids can return home and do their homework, chores, etc in preparation for the return of their parents in the evening. Why should this be a problem?
Should in this case the whole family just be left to die because dad never got health or life insurance?
Certainly not. There is no reason to waste resources (i.e. a family that is salvageable) that could, with some initial investment, be put to productive use. There is some value in government assistance programs, but they should really be run more along the lines of a counseling service / boot camp that is meant to help people get their affairs back in order rather than a dispensary for monthly cheques to anyone that can fill out the paperwork.
And that also explains why the RIAA isn't going after the Harvard kids.
It would be interesting to know how many of the RIAA lawyers have their law degrees from Harvard? Perhaps they are avoiding Harvard because they do not wish to become persona non grata at their own alma mater? Where do their own children (yes even Dr. Evil and lawyers have children) attend university? Perhaps Harvard is a popular choice among the rich lawyer with children set (and Harvard might be more inclined to mysteriously deny junior's application following legal actions against Harvard students by his father)? The rich and the powerful, and those institutions which cater to them, receive special treatment and this is simply another proof, as if any more were needed, that only "the little people" need fear the RIAA and their attorneys.
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MAC address spoofing isn't impossible either.
In fact it is quite possible, I do it on my laptop. One of the first things that I did when I configured my XP laptop was override the default MAC address on the wireless card to a different address (random) of my choosing to futher enhance my security and privacy when I connect to public WiFi networks (in the unlikely event that somebody, for whatever reason, would attempt to trace back that MAC address to the laptop and wireless card manufacturer who issued it and attempt to link it up with the purchase records). One does what one can these days to protect, futile though that may be, what little semblance of privacy that we still have left.
A very reasoned response...you make a convincing rebutal, but a few more questions if I may.
If the federal government issues securities (i.e. debt) and the Federal Reserve buys them to put money into circulation then isn't the Federal Government, even if it is indirect, printing money? The Federal Government is in that unique situation because their credit rating is effectively unlimited...you are right about that (i.e. if they fail then the country fails) and if that is the case then isn't that the same thing, effectively, as controlling the presses which actually print the money?
But let's not forget that we had a surplus under Clinton
Not to defend Bush or Reagan on the spending account, Bush especially has proven to be more spendy than just about any President in living memory, but was there really a surplus during the Clinton era or does that depend upon who does the accounting and what method they use? The federal government passes a budget before they know exactly how much tax revenue will actually be collected to support it (in fact this is not entirely the government's fault...if they waited for all of the taxes to be accounted for before formulating the budget then there would be large gaps of time when the government was operating on emergency funding, without a budget, while the taxes were collected and accounted for). For a hypothetical example, if I plan to spend 10,000 dollars in a given month but only spend 5,000 does that mean I have a 5,000 dollar surplus, because I spent less than I had planned, even though my income was only say 5,000 at the end of that month? The government accounts for their "surplus" in this way but most people wouldn't call that a surplus since there was no ability to spend 10,000 anyway without going into debt.
Of course I've heard about LTCM...it's an example of the Fed doing its job and ensuring that the markets stay stable.
Granted, but is it fair to allow frims, whether through use of asymetric information about assets or transactions or whatever other means, to put investors into a position where the entire economy could collapse because of mispriced risk? Should the fed buy government debt to make cash available for overnight loans to protect investors from risks that they willingly took? With high risk comes high reward yes, but also the downside of loss of principle. Did the taxpayer, where the government funds ultimately come from, receive the best rates for those Fed loans given the amount of risk (remember that there was a chance that the loan package might not have worked...it did but it could have failed to stem the tide under a more general collapse of confidence in the marketplace)? I know that LTCM paid the loans back (or rather the firms and governments in which LTCM had holdings paid the loans back), but it was all a very riksy thing in spite of it all.
I don't see how the housing bubble is the fault of the Fed or how it would be helped by a gold standard. Likewise the failure of social security -- a system which depends on strong population growth to function -- seems unrelated to any failure of fiat currency conceptually or in practice.
The fed kept interest rates low for a long time after the Dot Com bubble burst and 9/11 hit thereby encouraging and fueling speculation in the mortgage markets. Does anyone else see a problem when there are "do it yourself" mail order "kits" to help you get into the house flipping boom? Is there any real value to the economy in people buying and reselling properties on a weeks notice and pocketing $40,000+ on the transaction? Why should the Fed make it cheap for speculators to borrow money to do this? The Fed shares some part of the blame for the housing bubble. As for the gold standard it would be harder to issue new credit willy nilly if you had to back the new credit with fractional gold reserves (this could be both a good and a bad thing).
Questioning the Fed chairman, telling him how to do his job, etc, is nothing ne
What are you trying to say? That if money were backed by gold then everyone would be sitting on it instead of spending or investing it? Do people do that with their money right now? Are you only spending and investing your money because of inflation? Certainly not. The supply of gold is not fixed in any case and the supply has increased massively since 1910 with modern mining and refinement techniques. Nobody would do as you suggest, sit on their money and never lend it, when they could earn profits and more gold (in a gold backed money system) by loaning it out to a growing economy.
What about the tremendous current account defecit and the spiraling national debt? The social security system is full of IOUs (we need private accounts yesterday, but the AARP and the Democrats are standing in the way because they want to keep borrowing my money at a negative rate of interest...which means young people lose big time) and the projected medicare spending, as millions of overweight boomers with diabetes, high blood pressure, and a host of other expensive ongoing conditions begins to retire, is projected to spiral out of control. The fed may be independent, strictly speaking, from the government in that Congress and the President cannot sack the Fed Chairman for cutting the discount rate, but you cannot honestly believe that the actions of the Federal government have no effect whatsoever on the long term value and stability of the dollar. This country is heading for a financial trainwreck, even if it is happening at a glacial pace right now, and by the time most people realize how screwed up things really are it will be too late for anyone, even the Fed, to do anything about it.
You are right about inflation in terms of average yearly rate, but have you ever heard of debacles like Long-Term Capital Management and the attendant bailout policies undertaken by our government? I disagreed strongly with the latest interest rate cuts. There was inflationary pressure before from the housing bubble and now it has been unleashed and will increase. In fact, I would not be surprised by an increase to around 4-5% over the next five years, especially if the Fed cuts another 50 basis points because the spenders are screaming for relief. The Senate gets to question the Fed Chairman btw and you can tell that the Senators, some of them anyway, are making political kabuki theater out of the whole thing with the National Association of Realtors lobbying hard for the Senate to pressure Bernanke for more cuts.
The Federal Reserve and the Government are separate in theory, but political pressure always seems to factor into the Federal Reserve decisions lately, even if only indirectly. The Paul Volker Fed with its get tough message of responsible monetary policy come hell or high water seems to be a thing of the past. Alan Greenspan was pretty good, although sometimes too willing to turn up the credit spigot when it might have been better to simply tough it out, but Bernanke is starting to worry me.
Did you know that in inflation adjusted dollars, the yearly GDP of the US is greater than the worth of the world's entire gold supply?
The money would adjust to match the amount of gold and we would find out how much the currency has really been inflated over 36 years of government profligacy. Gold would probably soar to thousands of dollars or perhaps even tens of thousands of dollars per ounce. Or take land and real estate for example, the prices have skyrocketed in the last thirty years, doubling and tripling and even quadrupling in some places, outpacing inflation by a wide margin, especially here in California, and the supply of land is pretty much fixed or may even decline in the next 50-100 years if the global warming crowd turns out to be correct.
The point is that something has to be done about the ability of the Federal government to issue effectively unlimited debt. How else do you propose that we reign in spending? Surely not by issuing more easy credit to subprime borrowers at taxpayer expense or allowing entitlement spending and taxes to run out of control?
I dont know about you, but I am putting part of my spare money, what I manage to save once the government picks my pocket, into international commercial real estate investment trusts and gold...yes gold because I have very little confidence in the long term stability of the US dollar during my golden years (pun intended) and I am not the only one.
Pretty sure any quality wireless router won't actually let you do wireless administration of the device.
It is an option, but it is turned off by default. I actually turned it on for my WRT54G (running Thibor) so that I could access the admin pages from my laptop. However, since I am also using AES, HTTPS, MAC whitelist filtering, and strong (not default) admin password the extra risk is very minimal.
It would have to imprinted upon the router in such a way that the password could not be easily rubbed off or otherwise made illegible. It would also add more cost than you might think to manufacturing of the router. It would probably be better to place a temporary sticker on the router with the default password printed on it and something along the lines of, "name of company strongly recommends that you change the admin password to something other than the default after configuring this router"
The mass market "music" (if one can call it that) which is being produced by the record labels these days is so unoriginal, bad, and generally lacking in talent that it really doesn't matter how high quality the recording of crap is, crap is crap at any bitrate, one cannot polish a turd after all.
Gold has almost no real value. You can do very little with it other than make jewelry.
The difference is that fiat currency can be arbitrarily increased by politicians with ease whereas increasing the available gold supply requires more time and effort and thus tempers the ability of politicians to pull the inflation ripcord whenever it is politically expedient to do so. The essential qualities of a commodity that serves as a store of value are rarity, durability, easy divisibility, and the general ease of identification and gold meets all of these requirements. Are other forms of commodity backed money possible? Yes, but gold is eminently practical for this purpose and that is why it has historically been used as a primary store of value.
The problem with inflation is that, generally speaking, inflation causes expectation of further inflation in a self fulfilling prophecy that, if left unchecked and allowed to accelerate, will ultimately destroy the monetary system and force all back into barter and other more inefficient forms of exchange. If you don't believe that inflation hurts the poor or the middle class then why not ask the people of Argentina or Zimbabwe or Bolivia if they have been hurt by inflation? In fact inflation is among the most regressive of all taxes since it can effectively limit social mobility and reinforce existing disparities while not allowing for a reasonable chance of promotion beyond one's present economic circumstances.
in fact, since the Fed's creation in 1913, the US dollar is about 95-96% devalued
With almost all of that devaluation beginning with the closure of the gold window by Nixon in 1971 and the creation of political fiat money (money with no commodity backing) in its place. The problem with political money is that it creates a tremendous incentive for people to engage in risky behaviors because they believe that the government will use its power over the money supply to "ease the pain" or bail them out of tight financial situations by debasing the currency. This phenomenon is an example of what economists call the Moral Hazard problem. The result of the monetary policy of our nation has been nearly continuous punishment of savers through inflation (mild though it may be at times) while rewarding spenders and encouraging more reckless financial risk taking.
Take the recent interest rate cutes and promises of credit by government backed mortgage lenders to over-extended sub prime borrowers so that they wont "lose their homes", but why should the taxpayers take on risky mortgage obligations with "sweet heart" interest rates to sub prime borrowers with terrible credit? Taxpayers never share in gains, but somehow we are expected to "take one for the team" when there are loses? How many of these people knew that they wouldn't be able to make the payments when they took the loan several years ago (because prices were going up on homes and they had to "get into the market or be left out") counting on the government to rescue them from their financial predicament when the adjustable rate, no money down, voodoo loan kicked the payments into high gear. If the government bails these people out for political reasons then it once again makes the savers and financially prudent people (who didn't rush into an overheated housing market) look like schmucks while the prodigal sons are rewarded for their profligacy.
Is there no chance at an inside track when you begin your residency fresh out of medical school? What if you know someone who is trained in the field that you wish to enter, can he or she take you on as one of their residents, sort of like the Jedi master who chooses his apprentice? Or is the selection entirely random from the computer selection algorithm with no choice of who becomes resident in which program and to whom?
Are you *legally* prevented from setting up a private practice plastic surgery clinic? Is simply impossible to purchase the necessary training to do so? Thank you for indulging the questions of a layperson btw.
How about JFK to LAX?
Because it would not be competitive with jet travel over long haul routes like that. The maglev competes with short hop flights not long haul trips.
unless they're making drugs for a big-pharm company or doing boob jobs.
You'll forgive me for asking, but why aren't you doing those things instead of general residency at your local hospital if the pay (and the scenery) is so much better?
This sounds like the perfect problem to solve with a speech application server and a telephony card. The radiologists could dial into the system and voice prompt system combined with database queries could probably answer most of their questions. For example, Microsoft Speech Server, combined with IIS/ASP.NET and telephony card could be configured to do this without too much trouble and as a bonus the system could handle dozens of calls simultaneously or even hundreds if you are willing to spend more on the telephony board and the extra incoming POTs lines. Moreover, this could all be done on a relatively slim budget, perhaps $5,000 and certainly less than $10,000 for a solution designed to handle a pretty good call volume. Applications such as Speech Server, when combined with a powerful OO programming backend like .NET, can really do some heavy lifting for routine phone call type inquiries that are currently handled by IT help desks and support administrators (freeing you up to spend your time on more interesting tasks).
To them, they want complete control of how I use it once it's in my hands.
I don't know about you, but I would *never* purchase anything under those terms. If I cannot have complete control to do whatever I want with the music or movies that I have purchased short of distribution then I will not buy. It is that simple. Public performance or public sharing is one thing, but dictating how a private user can and cannot use something after they purchase it is something else entirely. DRM == NO SALE.
I agree completely with the parent, this is most definitely a Bubble. There is no way that the underlying technology of facebook (CSS, HTML, PHP, Apache, and MySQL or Postgresql) or the ad profits that it generates has a present value greater than ten (10) billion dollars. The source code itself, which was leaked a couple months back, appears to be rather mundane stuff (not the best example of quality PHP coding, but then again not the worst either). The only things stopping a potential competitor are new and better features and the capital to fund the startup while the site builds users. In other words, there is seemingly nothing, or very little anyway, to prevent the emergence of a competitor(s) which is almost guaranteed to happen if facebook starts earning a mint on those billion dollar valuations. The entire social networking space is really a commodity business as far as I can see, unless one believes that branding (creating a distinction without a difference in most cases) is a strong defense against competitors, and not a franchise. What does facebook add that nobody or nothing else can? It has all the properties of a bubble company. Is facebook worth something? Probably, is it worth 10 billion? certainly not. Did people learn nothing from the dot bomb era?
Another question which is always in the back of my mind is this. Who in their right mind, after reading the TOS and Privacy Policies (assuming for a moment that one should trust a startup, no matter what they say, and especially when there is money at stake) for these sites, would willing create the sort of profile that governments once had to hire informants and file clerks to obtain? One might as well print a barcode on one's forehead and present oneself to the marketers for punishment as create a profile on one of these sites.
Evolution is like a simple hill-climbing algorithm in computer programming. It blindly heads in any upward direction without any way of knowing if it will get stuck at the top of a small hill when there is a much bigger hill right next to it. It is unnatural for it to go back downhill (to weaken itself) on purpose to look for bigger hills to climb.
Perhaps evolution should upgrade to simulated annealing instead of simple hill climbing and greedy algorithms.
sounds like your friend will be a skeleton sitting there next to those laptops collecting dust himself before they offer driver support for Windows XP. Is it possible to run the applications that he needs with Wine? If so then Ubuntu awaits, either that or he can eBay the vista laptops and bid on a used XP laptop (or at least one that has hardware with XP drivers available). Heck, the Vista debacle may even increase the value of good used XP laptops...hehe he better bid soon if that is what he decides to do.
probably not even feasible for the level of computer literacy they should expect from their clients.
So Joe Sixpack finally gets burned by DRM and realizes what we on Slashdot have been railing against all this time. Personally, I hope that there are more incidents with other music stores where the unsuspecting public gets burned by DRM. Perhaps then they will take the time to learn what DRM is and why it is a bad thing for them to be spending their money on. If enough average people get bitten by the DRM bug then maybe the content producers will have to give it up, but for now it is mostly just the nerds who are complaining.
TFA said nothing about specific prices, it only said that they wanted differentiated prices, but you are probably right that they would want to charge more than 99 cents for a new song even though they might let some of the 30 year old classics go for less than 99 cents. Anyway, music is a luxury good or service (depending upon whether you buy a recording or pay to hear a performance) and not a necessity that you cannot live without. You might say that they are greedy but that is not what is really important.
What is important is that iPod + iTunes controls a majority stake of the portable music player market and most consumers will look no further than iTunes for their music because that is what gives them the least amount of hassle. The iPod is not compatible (at least not directly) with any other online music store, so no potential competitor, even if they sold non-DRM MP3s (which we already know is something that the majors will never agree to), would be able to achieve the level of integration that iPod + iTunes does. Vivendi and the other labels are screwed unless and until they can find a way to unseat iPod and iPhone as the portable music hardware of choice (not likely) OR the labels might try legal action to *force* Apple to open up the iPod to integrate with other music stores (more likely). Either way it will be a long and expensive fight which the labels, with their declining revenues and slumping sales, may not be able to afford.
I am certainly not a friend of the music industry, but in this case I would have to say that it is probably not greed (they want to be able to charge less for old songs and 99 cents for new ones). However, they certainly were incompetent to wait so long to get on the digital music train and now they are paying the price for their lack of vision while Apple is garnering a larger share of the profits than they might otherwise have gotten had circumstances been different and the music industry hadn't dragged their feet. There probably is a market for older music at less than the 99 cents per track price and more than 99 cents per track for newer music. The problem that the music companies have is that prices are not optimal (i.e. they are not the profit maximizing prices) and since Apple effectively controls the distribution the music companies really have no recourse other than "I am taking my ball and going home"...and it may still come to that provided that someone else can break the iPod + iTunes hegemony (which is becoming more difficult with each new iPod sold). Another possible route for the music companies is to dump DRM and sell MP3s directly to the consumer, which could then be loaded into iTunes allowing them to compete with Apple directly, but that would be tantamount to giving up on the piracy problem, at least in their eyes, and the music industry is not ready to do that...yet, but who knows...desperate times can call for drastic measures.
Do they announce to innocent (called) parties that they're invading your privacy at the beginning of a call?
In some states, California for instance, if the call is not being monitored or recorded by law enforcement under warrant then both parties must be informed and give their consent to the call being recorded. Usually it is one party or another to the call who is doing the recording, in which case they must notify the other party and receive their consent, but in this case the third party monitoring service would be required to inform the party being called (presumably the caller using the service already knows that he is being recorded) of the recording. This would not be too difficult, there would simply be a message played to the receiver before the call was connected informing them of the recording and receiving their consent. In fact, with modern call handling and speech recognition software this could be accomplished quite easily.
How do you begin doing this beyond simple string comparisons?
It is also useful to realize that just because one can does not mean that one should, especially when the cost of an error is high. There is a tendency, sometimes, among the computer scientists towards too much cleverness, particularly in algorithms, when something much simpler and more reliable would have been better. I cannot tell you how many times bad assumptions about automated processes and the algorithms which control them have lead to inappropriate behavior and blown user expectations under the worst possible conditions. The real world is not the same as the CS labs in your algorithms course and the simpler solution often has much to recommend itself over the efficient and elegant, but hopelessly complex and slightly unreliable algorithm that one learns in the AI courses during their university CS education.
For example, suppose that your online banking application assumes that you really do want that regular payment upon receipt to go through automatically, because that is how it has happened before, when in fact you, the user, know that a one time payment for an unrelated expense, which has not yet been posted but will be shortly, must be made first. The automated agent makes the deduction for the regular payment automatically while the one time payment, which goes through several days later, is unexpected and overdraws the account. The user curses the system for being too "clever" instead of just carrying out his instructions. Cancel or allow?
But would you rather that if someone who was unable to afford medical treatment got sick they were left to die rather than receive the care they need?
That is precisely what did happen throughout the bulk of recorded human history. The notion of social welfare and protecting the weak from the rigors of natural selection (i.e. only the strong survive to reproduce) is a relatively recent idea in the grand scheme of things. The real world can be a harsh mistress after all.
Maybe if that person was the sole bread winner then the rest of the family (say 1 wife and two kids under 5) would be in trouble
Perhaps, but that does not mean that we shouldn't lift a finger. It is possible, indeed likely, that the two children are worth the investment required to develop them into productive adult members of society and the Mum is needed to take care of the children in the meantime (hopefully she is productive as well but this is not always the case). It is always better to have more productive citizens, who produce more goods and services for all of us to consume more cheaply, when possible (there is a limit of course, but then again it could be argued that additional population beyond that limit is not productive). The problem is that many people who are "on the dole" so to speak are not only not productive but are a complete drain on the system (i.e. they produce exactly squat...not even some inefficient production).
Mum would surely have difficulty finding a job that would fit in with caring for those children and so any social security would be vital to keep them alive?
The children should be in school for most of the day and Mum could be working during that time. The kids can return home and do their homework, chores, etc in preparation for the return of their parents in the evening. Why should this be a problem?
Should in this case the whole family just be left to die because dad never got health or life insurance?
Certainly not. There is no reason to waste resources (i.e. a family that is salvageable) that could, with some initial investment, be put to productive use. There is some value in government assistance programs, but they should really be run more along the lines of a counseling service / boot camp that is meant to help people get their affairs back in order rather than a dispensary for monthly cheques to anyone that can fill out the paperwork.
And that also explains why the RIAA isn't going after the Harvard kids.
It would be interesting to know how many of the RIAA lawyers have their law degrees from Harvard? Perhaps they are avoiding Harvard because they do not wish to become persona non grata at their own alma mater? Where do their own children (yes even Dr. Evil and lawyers have children) attend university? Perhaps Harvard is a popular choice among the rich lawyer with children set (and Harvard might be more inclined to mysteriously deny junior's application following legal actions against Harvard students by his father)? The rich and the powerful, and those institutions which cater to them, receive special treatment and this is simply another proof, as if any more were needed, that only "the little people" need fear the RIAA and their attorneys.