Amen. China's strategy was sell, don't buy. Brazil's strategy was don't buy, unless they manufacture here (and pay a large tax burden). US strategy has been borough, don't work. China and the USA are two sides of the same phenomena, and each need to become a little bit more like Brazil. China, consuming more. USA, buying less and much much less of whatever comes from abroad.
Not so easy. 5% inflation means the current real interest rates are negative. Who wants to lend to a secure loss? Interest would need to be much higher. And if lenders think that value of bonds is going to devalued by 40% in 10 years, they'd want reimbursements of that 40%. There are other issues, like private debt. Because Government bonds set the floor for corporate rates. So add 10% to all corp. bonds when renewing. If you are going to do this, you need to be able to replay without borrowing anything else. Else, you'll borrow at the new rate. And corps. as well.
Now, the problem is how to spend less than you earn every year? There are two ways. The stop lending you, or you print more money. If you raise taxes, you are mostly getting to chose who spends it, nothing more, but are killing opportunities along the way as well.
If you cut spending you buy less. If you buy less, most employers see fewer sales. So they have lower capital utilization, and employees with lots of idle time, so they will need to fire, an in some cases close doors. Into a vicious circle.
Unless. Unless someone else outside your economy wants to buy more from you. You can work for someone in another country, in exchange for their currency. This is why China has several trillions in US debt. It keeps their people busy, and as most are poor (regardless of the fact of China having more people with fortunes $1 million+) but can work in jobs that gets their employers dollars, they kept that strategy for several decades. They get the privilege of doing things and getting more investments for doing more things. And since they don't have as much welfare or real benefits nor any reasonable security, and they have hundreds of millions of people that must work to eat, then, the owners of China, keep accepting dollars and grow really really fast. If a worker doesn't like that, he can choose to starve.
But how to make the game last longer? Making the rich feel richer, and the poor feel richer at the same time. The poorer you are, the more that you'll need to satisfy immediate needs, or even spend on some luxury by being optimistic about the future, or careless. So with expanding credit to consumers (see start of this post), the employers still see more than enough demand to keep growing and investing. And the poor see that they can keep if they can keep borrowing. This gets even better if the single most price item you have keeps increasing. You bought a house on credit with $100,000 10 years ago and now it's $300,000. You feel worthy. So the poor and the rich are happy.
Today that game is over. Other countries not sure about collecting more dollars.in the future (bonds). Who do they lend to? If China stops exporting, they will collapse. So they have two choices, they keep lending the US (but a bit less each year, relatively), or they let their own population have those items. This means raising salaries, given them much more credit and cheaper, extracting more taxes from corporations and giving it back to people as retirement, healthcare, etc.
But for the USA, it means either exporting more (what?) or producing more internally (of the things it now imports). This brings back dilemmas of the '60s. Like increasing the taxes of things made in other countries (which today seems more blasphemous than it really amazes me), or subsidizing things that are bought by other nations (the same).
The problem is not capitalism. The problem is being naive at what capitalism is. Now the US in a situation that they need to stop the free trade agenda - it imports much more that it exports, it's not serving the country, and US firms had been forced to do most things elsewhere, to survive. Now it's time to raise taxes for imported goods, subsidize exported goods, and favor investments in things that are imported. In a transparent, capitalistic and competitive way (transparent incentives, and transparent and much higher import duties). Yes, prices will be higher until national industries pick up.
When will this happen? When a group of people with sufficient power and love for this country decides to do something patriotic and truly capitalistic for the first time in decades.
I'd argue the difference is that with Starcraft and Chess, you get to play. That's why I don't watch football, soccer or any other game. Watching is for the art or passion. For art, I have other preferences, and for passion, I prefer my family, photography, camping, etc.
I also don't like the way Google tries to become the only tool we'll ever need. It's even worst than embrace and extend. They go for the kill with no even temporary hugs. Google is becoming the most dangerous company in the world. They know more about anyone that their closest person to you. And they are never satisfied and look for ways to destroy other firms using the power of their integrated platform. The only thing that prevented them from doing more harm is probably Apple.
Because everyone is forgetting Android and how Google is doing the very assimilate and destroy that Microsoft did when Windows was the sole interface to internet for the vast population.
What about a secret gesture to unclock the device after every sleep (and strong disk encryption using that key), it can be a strong master password as well. Do it wrong once, and the system will forget that password. So unless it's a remote exploit, you'd need a very sophisticated hacker with proper hardware to compromise your system.
This is just becoming more strict with regards to the phone lock mechanism. I am talking about the scenario of losing your phone, or having it stolen for the device by anyone but a very dedicated hacker with the right hardware.
This was a very fair point by point informative post. Thanks! I agree that if the attacker has root access (wish there was more granular permissions used) or has access physical to the device, little can be done to prevent harm. Except with a strong login password and full encryption (and still, the can probably brute force the password by different means).
All in all, I think that the more the user understands the risks, the better. And the harder it's for an average person (not the dedicated hacker) to get to one's stuff, the more secure one is on average. In most cases, one will just forget the phone or have it stolen for the device itself with hacking as second thought.
Do you think remote wipers add any layer of real protection? I am worried because of the risk of having my phone wiped (which I presumed better compared to not be able to have even a slight chance at wiping it remotely if I lose the device
I didn't study engineering and I don't program and have no security focus, yet....
>The article itself is pointless.
It's not. it made me aware how losing my device can be very dangerous, even if I am using a password. So I will take some precautions in case I lose it. This is just my personal "why". There may be a 100 others very valid reasons.
>There is no way around password-based authentication systems' passwords being recoverable from the device;
There is. If things are more complicated, you reduce the risk of massive, automated password grabbers. Suppose it's becomes easy to access data specific to an app, but not easy to impersonate the app (signed binaries, checking sizes, etc), then having the data encypted with some other data (like your PIN) can reduce the threat significantly, they will have access to anything not encrypted by the app itself. eg. It can also help in other cases, eg. you lose your SD but the data there is worthless to someone that finds (or steals it).
> plaintext or encrypted does not matter because as soon as you are not asking the user for the password every time email is going to be checked by using a password, an attacker can easily recover it.
That is only true if the attacker has access to they encryption key or app (vs hacing only access to the data of the app), which may mean a little bit more work or be non trivial at all.
>Even locking the data with the PIN is worthless because pins are just 4-digit numeric passwords 99.999% of the time.
This assumes brute force would always works. That's why banks look for number of failed attempts. If they don't have access to that encryption key (they only got to the app data) and they need to guess, something can happen when they guess too much. Also, if it's on an SD, then the PIN is still worthy. If plaintext (eg. user data for a bank account), in SD you can just grabb it. But if it's encrypted with a PIN, they need to test against the bank server. And after 5 failed attempts, it will lock the account. Some people also have notifications of all logins, or all failed logins.
So not, there are better things even if not perfect, that can save hundreds of millions of people thousands of dollar. I have an Android, and the mentality of the Android fanbase (here) is making me reconsider Apple.
>The difference between this and iOS is that location data on the latter was accessible from iTunes when you sync the phone. Thus your location data would end up on your PC, which is presumably much less secure (at least for a casual user).
Sorry, but right now I am more concerned about my bank and email accounts being stolen, than my location being on my PC. I bet you $100 USD that if we made a Poll in slashdot pools, my "worry" would outvote yours.
This is probably true. At least from what I read, I tend to see people that know databases very well like Postgre more than MySQL. Those that are very entepreneur or practical (and likely know DBs ewll but not as a core skill) are very happy with MySQL. I too would like to a research piece on large scale "scenarios", and try out the different solutions through a competition with sensible rules (like a standard hardware platform, etc).
To the one that rated my comment as Troll, don't forget it the moderation isn't the comment system. If you don't agree, you can comment your views.
This is what is happening: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1222-04.htm >The study's authors say their work is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken. They found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world's total.
Now, if you own a lot, and invest in just stock and bonds, your money growth more rapidly than the world GDP average. So what? So the obvious conclusion is that things will get worst.
With more automation coming, do you think everyone needs to be employed? How come, 85% of resources belong to the 10% wealthiest, which mostly own companies which in turn are run by people with the only goal of increasing shareholder value, and therefore can make more if they (individually) automate more. They aren't accountable for employment.
How is more concentration of wealth going to create employment opportunities for everyone? Also, poor people have more kids than richer ones. Helps with survival and they don't have anything important to legate. This further accelerates the concentration trend.
I have no interest whatsoever in advocating any change, I was just highlighting what can be done to fix the problem that kills capitalism, the same problem why the Monopoly board game is so appealing to play but most of the time leaves a bitter feeling to all losing player, and even the winning party.
Did you have the right indexes? You can even create combined indexes. I have used MySQL extensively from 2000 to 2003, and had thousands of complicated queries that asked in realtime. Having one single column index wrong could cause massive delays. The website had thousands of visits per hour (not much, but we ran it from a modest 1U server with one core), and was very DB intensive, so whenever something wasn't perfectly indexed (sometimes including combined indexes), the server would crawl as each query took longer and therefore queries would pile up and would have so many simultaneous queries killed the CPU, RAM and IO. After diagnosing a lot, and trying some different index strategies, a query that took 60s could take >0.01s. Also, the way to join things so as to minimize table size affected performance in a big way. I am not saying Postgre isn't faster here, only saying that it was very fun to learn how much fun it was to understand exactly what was happening and how to write the indexes depending on the kind of answers that we needed. Then again, just saying that maybe you didn't have as much fun as I had with that.
The only thing that needs to change is that inheritance should be limited. You and your brothers/sisters should only be able to inherit up to 20% dollars (in total, NOT each) of your parents/relatives wealth, and the rest go back to society as an endowment for young generations (like a grant for newborns that they can use part for education, and when they reach adulthood as capital for investing or having a relaxed but austere/more human life, as one example). It doesn't make the economy socialist, as all the rules of capitalism can still apply. But it solves the problem of endemic disadvantage of the citizens without capital. If the economy can be sustained with each person working once a week, the endowment will make it so for the vast majority, with some (the ones getting 25% of a larger sums via inheritance) can chose not to work at all.
So to fix capitalism, we need to fix inheritance which as it is today it's totally unfair. Society and all past generations gave you everything. Why should you not give back 75% to the new generations (and 25% to your kids?).
We also need to get rid of the NGO, which are structures that enable the rich to hide huge fortunes in ways that are hard to understand and detect. Look at Bill Gates foundation. Or the one from the owner of IKEA (non profit foundation with more than 10 billions?). The danger is all too evident.
You are right. At that point, pleople need to understand that capitalism is the perfect system to become slaves or to die by starvation. At which point capitalist states start to give more power to the government (they get a monopoly to "redistribute" according to vote galore), and head the way of monopolies combined with socialist goverments, which make governments big, corrupt and lead to communism in some way.
The only way around that I have though off is to level the field of play for new generations (endowment by the fact of being born), and to have smaller governments that provide what the constitution says and nothing more, enforcing competition in the economy, not the opposite. But it basically resorts to saying that when you die, a large percentage of your wealth will go back to newborns as their endowment for coming to the planet. Bill gates could leave 10% to his children, which is more than $2 billions each. And have the rest distributed to children between 1-10 years old (there needs to be clear consideration to prevent any missuse by parents or caregivers, and to work the details like not have an excess number of children just to get more from their sons in life - it can be worked but it needs clear consideration. eg. you could have 1 endowment per family descendants, so if you have 2 children, you divide the endowment by 2, if you have 3, by 3, so the more you have, the less each gets).
Strange that you say that, for some website say he was a Satanist.
Ferguson is accurate when she reports that the Fabian Society's H.G. Wells (World War I boss of British intelligence) is a key figure of the Aquarian Conspiracy. Also key are Wells' ally, Bertrand Russell, and such Russell cronies as Robert M. Hutchins (Chicago University, Ford Foundation, Fund for the Republic, Aspen Institute, and the project).
Both Margaret Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson were close collaborators of Russell and Hutchins from no later than 1938. The brothers, Aldous (Hollywood) and Julian (UNO) Huxley were collaborators of H. G. Wells, and were recruited to Crowley's Satanist cult during the late 1920s.
>If free stuff didn't result in better reviews, businesses wouldn't be giving away free stuff to reviewers.
Innaccurate. Companies with BAD products don't have much of an incentive to give away free stuff to top 1000 reviewers, because top 1000 reviewers are typically those that are accurate. Why not test the hypotesis? I can bes measured and interpreted.
1) Find the people that own the products, are not vine and measure their rating 2) Find people that are part of VINE and measure their rating 3) Measure the average difference in opinions
You could very easily detect if anyone is cheating, how many, and how much are they falling into the non top 1000 group. As they are not paid for doing positive reviews, they have no incentive to have positive reviews for free stuff that fall short of the promise. It'd only damage their reputation and produce negligible results.
Doctors are different. They are more akin to a journalist or review site. And they have long standing relationships based on earned trust. And demo material the reviewer might keep is very tailored. The manufacturer can send it only to the journalist they like. For VINE, they cannot get to say exactly who is to review. Just make an offer to the members. And all of them are identified.
I see the value in asking for a review for a free product. The challenge is that people filter by stars and typically only want stuff that's been reviewed and passes certain score. So a great product might sell very poorly because during the first weeks they will have reviews. Moreover, sometimes the first reviewers sometimes complain about shipping, or about the description. Or the seller and associate it with the product. And the product may be good, and there's a place to review a particular seller. So when bad luck happens a good product may stall unfairly. After it has more reviews, things will level up to the true number.
I am more concerned with the normal users that could be relatives, or paid people under the radar than anything else. And also worried about the companies that introduce 10 versions that are the same, as different products, when they are the same. So one of those might have several 4 start reviews just because of statistical flukes (or fake reviews) misleading buyers. When they rate it down, there are several apparently new or different versions, thus the scheme continues.
Sometimes, the limiting factor is not time, but the ability to solve something regardless of time. I say this from experience. I'd have liked more challenging puzzles where I could debate for days, and come to a solutions - if at all possible - in about a day, or a week. But exams where about instant solutions. Yes, you need quick response sometimes. But some other, you need eurekas more than low hanging fruits. Especially so, when the answer is much more challenging and new terrain.
Compare this with chess. Yes, you can become good at blitz. But that doesn't mean you'll be equally good at normal chess. I know this because I can win a lot at blitz. I can come up with plausible moves in little time. If given more time, I could do it sometimes if my mind wanted to try really hard. But if given 100 the time, I'd suck at it (relatively). I cannot solve problems that are x numbers of ply ahead. Which is why I hated exams as they forced me to constantly play blitz mentally, and could only pose problems that are simple enough for everyone to spot in the equivalent of blitz "depth".
I think it's not just marketing. People are not stupid and I see very FEW people complain or totally regret having bought an iPad. And that includes the ones that just use it for email, web and movies. Those that look at bit deeper find an amazing number of application, from music creation, star gazing apps, scanners, video editors, social media apps that are a breeze to use, map apps, games that mimic real life phenomena (how hard yo press, what diretion the pad is, how it is tilted, etc.).
I mean, 90% of the thing that I like to do in an ipad/iPhone, I'd never do in a PC with a standard keyboard. I think that the thing that will go away is the standard keyboard as a physical device. It'll be as outdated as the abacus is in a few years.
YOU are to judge, because it's YOUR world as well, and if somebody else is going to increase the tax on YOUR planet, it's going to affect us all. You should very well ask your worldmates what they think they are doing, or how this is going to be sustainable not just for us, but for the balance the earth seems to need to be a nice place for all.
Look at it with a Club analogy. If there are too many members beyond what was the potential ideal, the experience is ruined for everyone. They have all the right to stop accepting members until they find ways to add more Tennis courts, ping pong tables and chairs at the bar.
What we are doing today is akin of having people sit on the floor to eat, play ping pong where the garden is and take turns to use the pool with no chances of having some space to enjoy it. Likewise, 80% of the clubs are oversaturated (lots of natural resources, lots of overpopulated cities, etc). A few are undersaturated...but that doesn't mean you should not question what's happening.
You don't need to prevent anyone from living. It's not as if the world is about to end in a century...unless we destroy our planet (which is what's happening at overpopulated places, the ocean and wildlife). But in order to for more people to live, you need to treat the earth as something that has to last several billion years, not one or two centuries. Your point of view is so myopic that it hurts the eye. Humans have caused more damage to earth in two centuries that in the past million years. Go travel around the world and see for yourself. You might learn that you ideals weren't wrong, but that you were not looking at the right places. Additionally, habits don't change unless we have no choice...so we will change no sooner than when things are unsustainable (and when the world has already turned into a dull, ugly and harsh place).
Maltus was wrong and we know we CAN support exponential growth...but exponentially ruin the world as we go along...When was the last time you drank potable water from a river? Did it have a large population around? Was a place were you could allow humans to do what they wanted like build houses, install factories, etc?
He rebutted your "solution", so it's your turn to answer your question. He's just saying that giving them help is not making things worst, and actually pointing that you need to slow down the birth rate of people that will not care for their childs education, well being and economic needs.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. China's strategy was sell, don't buy. Brazil's strategy was don't buy, unless they manufacture here (and pay a large tax burden). US strategy has been borough, don't work. China and the USA are two sides of the same phenomena, and each need to become a little bit more like Brazil. China, consuming more. USA, buying less and much much less of whatever comes from abroad.
Not so easy. 5% inflation means the current real interest rates are negative. Who wants to lend to a secure loss? Interest would need to be much higher. And if lenders think that value of bonds is going to devalued by 40% in 10 years, they'd want reimbursements of that 40%. There are other issues, like private debt. Because Government bonds set the floor for corporate rates. So add 10% to all corp. bonds when renewing. If you are going to do this, you need to be able to replay without borrowing anything else. Else, you'll borrow at the new rate. And corps. as well.
Now, the problem is how to spend less than you earn every year? There are two ways. The stop lending you, or you print more money. If you raise taxes, you are mostly getting to chose who spends it, nothing more, but are killing opportunities along the way as well.
If you cut spending you buy less. If you buy less, most employers see fewer sales. So they have lower capital utilization, and employees with lots of idle time, so they will need to fire, an in some cases close doors. Into a vicious circle.
Unless. Unless someone else outside your economy wants to buy more from you. You can work for someone in another country, in exchange for their currency. This is why China has several trillions in US debt. It keeps their people busy, and as most are poor (regardless of the fact of China having more people with fortunes $1 million+) but can work in jobs that gets their employers dollars, they kept that strategy for several decades. They get the privilege of doing things and getting more investments for doing more things. And since they don't have as much welfare or real benefits nor any reasonable security, and they have hundreds of millions of people that must work to eat, then, the owners of China, keep accepting dollars and grow really really fast. If a worker doesn't like that, he can choose to starve.
But how to make the game last longer? Making the rich feel richer, and the poor feel richer at the same time. The poorer you are, the more that you'll need to satisfy immediate needs, or even spend on some luxury by being optimistic about the future, or careless. So with expanding credit to consumers (see start of this post), the employers still see more than enough demand to keep growing and investing. And the poor see that they can keep if they can keep borrowing. This gets even better if the single most price item you have keeps increasing. You bought a house on credit with $100,000 10 years ago and now it's $300,000. You feel worthy. So the poor and the rich are happy.
Today that game is over. Other countries not sure about collecting more dollars.in the future (bonds). Who do they lend to? If China stops exporting, they will collapse. So they have two choices, they keep lending the US (but a bit less each year, relatively), or they let their own population have those items. This means raising salaries, given them much more credit and cheaper, extracting more taxes from corporations and giving it back to people as retirement, healthcare, etc.
But for the USA, it means either exporting more (what?) or producing more internally (of the things it now imports). This brings back dilemmas of the '60s. Like increasing the taxes of things made in other countries (which today seems more blasphemous than it really amazes me), or subsidizing things that are bought by other nations (the same).
The problem is not capitalism. The problem is being naive at what capitalism is. Now the US in a situation that they need to stop the free trade agenda - it imports much more that it exports, it's not serving the country, and US firms had been forced to do most things elsewhere, to survive. Now it's time to raise taxes for imported goods, subsidize exported goods, and favor investments in things that are imported. In a transparent, capitalistic and competitive way (transparent incentives, and transparent and much higher import duties). Yes, prices will be higher until national industries pick up.
When will this happen? When a group of people with sufficient power and love for this country decides to do something patriotic and truly capitalistic for the first time in decades.
I'd argue the difference is that with Starcraft and Chess, you get to play. That's why I don't watch football, soccer or any other game. Watching is for the art or passion. For art, I have other preferences, and for passion, I prefer my family, photography, camping, etc.
I also don't like the way Google tries to become the only tool we'll ever need. It's even worst than embrace and extend. They go for the kill with no even temporary hugs. Google is becoming the most dangerous company in the world. They know more about anyone that their closest person to you. And they are never satisfied and look for ways to destroy other firms using the power of their integrated platform. The only thing that prevented them from doing more harm is probably Apple.
Because everyone is forgetting Android and how Google is doing the very assimilate and destroy that Microsoft did when Windows was the sole interface to internet for the vast population.
What about a secret gesture to unclock the device after every sleep (and strong disk encryption using that key), it can be a strong master password as well. Do it wrong once, and the system will forget that password. So unless it's a remote exploit, you'd need a very sophisticated hacker with proper hardware to compromise your system.
This is just becoming more strict with regards to the phone lock mechanism. I am talking about the scenario of losing your phone, or having it stolen for the device by anyone but a very dedicated hacker with the right hardware.
This was a very fair point by point informative post. Thanks! I agree that if the attacker has root access (wish there was more granular permissions used) or has access physical to the device, little can be done to prevent harm. Except with a strong login password and full encryption (and still, the can probably brute force the password by different means).
All in all, I think that the more the user understands the risks, the better. And the harder it's for an average person (not the dedicated hacker) to get to one's stuff, the more secure one is on average. In most cases, one will just forget the phone or have it stolen for the device itself with hacking as second thought.
Do you think remote wipers add any layer of real protection? I am worried because of the risk of having my phone wiped (which I presumed better compared to not be able to have even a slight chance at wiping it remotely if I lose the device
I didn't study engineering and I don't program and have no security focus, yet....
>The article itself is pointless.
It's not. it made me aware how losing my device can be very dangerous, even if I am using a password. So I will take some precautions in case I lose it. This is just my personal "why". There may be a 100 others very valid reasons.
>There is no way around password-based authentication systems' passwords being recoverable from the device;
There is. If things are more complicated, you reduce the risk of massive, automated password grabbers. Suppose it's becomes easy to access data specific to an app, but not easy to impersonate the app (signed binaries, checking sizes, etc), then having the data encypted with some other data (like your PIN) can reduce the threat significantly, they will have access to anything not encrypted by the app itself. eg. It can also help in other cases, eg. you lose your SD but the data there is worthless to someone that finds (or steals it).
> plaintext or encrypted does not matter because as soon as you are not asking the user for the password every time email is going to be checked by using a password, an attacker can easily recover it.
That is only true if the attacker has access to they encryption key or app (vs hacing only access to the data of the app), which may mean a little bit more work or be non trivial at all.
>Even locking the data with the PIN is worthless because pins are just 4-digit numeric passwords 99.999% of the time.
This assumes brute force would always works. That's why banks look for number of failed attempts. If they don't have access to that encryption key (they only got to the app data) and they need to guess, something can happen when they guess too much. Also, if it's on an SD, then the PIN is still worthy. If plaintext (eg. user data for a bank account), in SD you can just grabb it. But if it's encrypted with a PIN, they need to test against the bank server. And after 5 failed attempts, it will lock the account. Some people also have notifications of all logins, or all failed logins.
So not, there are better things even if not perfect, that can save hundreds of millions of people thousands of dollar. I have an Android, and the mentality of the Android fanbase (here) is making me reconsider Apple.
>The difference between this and iOS is that location data on the latter was accessible from iTunes when you sync the phone. Thus your location data would end up on your PC, which is presumably much less secure (at least for a casual user).
Sorry, but right now I am more concerned about my bank and email accounts being stolen, than my location being on my PC. I bet you $100 USD that if we made a Poll in slashdot pools, my "worry" would outvote yours.
This is probably true. At least from what I read, I tend to see people that know databases very well like Postgre more than MySQL. Those that are very entepreneur or practical (and likely know DBs ewll but not as a core skill) are very happy with MySQL. I too would like to a research piece on large scale "scenarios", and try out the different solutions through a competition with sensible rules (like a standard hardware platform, etc).
To the one that rated my comment as Troll, don't forget it the moderation isn't the comment system. If you don't agree, you can comment your views.
This is what is happening:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1222-04.htm
>The study's authors say their work is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken. They found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world's total.
Now, if you own a lot, and invest in just stock and bonds, your money growth more rapidly than the world GDP average. So what? So the obvious conclusion is that things will get worst.
With more automation coming, do you think everyone needs to be employed? How come, 85% of resources belong to the 10% wealthiest, which mostly own companies which in turn are run by people with the only goal of increasing shareholder value, and therefore can make more if they (individually) automate more. They aren't accountable for employment.
How is more concentration of wealth going to create employment opportunities for everyone? Also, poor people have more kids than richer ones. Helps with survival and they don't have anything important to legate. This further accelerates the concentration trend.
I have no interest whatsoever in advocating any change, I was just highlighting what can be done to fix the problem that kills capitalism, the same problem why the Monopoly board game is so appealing to play but most of the time leaves a bitter feeling to all losing player, and even the winning party.
Did you have the right indexes? You can even create combined indexes. I have used MySQL extensively from 2000 to 2003, and had thousands of complicated queries that asked in realtime. Having one single column index wrong could cause massive delays. The website had thousands of visits per hour (not much, but we ran it from a modest 1U server with one core), and was very DB intensive, so whenever something wasn't perfectly indexed (sometimes including combined indexes), the server would crawl as each query took longer and therefore queries would pile up and would have so many simultaneous queries killed the CPU, RAM and IO. After diagnosing a lot, and trying some different index strategies, a query that took 60s could take >0.01s. Also, the way to join things so as to minimize table size affected performance in a big way. I am not saying Postgre isn't faster here, only saying that it was very fun to learn how much fun it was to understand exactly what was happening and how to write the indexes depending on the kind of answers that we needed. Then again, just saying that maybe you didn't have as much fun as I had with that.
I probably earn more than you, but that's ok, I am not offended. It's likely you weren't one of those that didn't get an education in the first place.
The only thing that needs to change is that inheritance should be limited. You and your brothers/sisters should only be able to inherit up to 20% dollars (in total, NOT each) of your parents/relatives wealth, and the rest go back to society as an endowment for young generations (like a grant for newborns that they can use part for education, and when they reach adulthood as capital for investing or having a relaxed but austere/more human life, as one example). It doesn't make the economy socialist, as all the rules of capitalism can still apply. But it solves the problem of endemic disadvantage of the citizens without capital. If the economy can be sustained with each person working once a week, the endowment will make it so for the vast majority, with some (the ones getting 25% of a larger sums via inheritance) can chose not to work at all.
So to fix capitalism, we need to fix inheritance which as it is today it's totally unfair. Society and all past generations gave you everything. Why should you not give back 75% to the new generations (and 25% to your kids?).
We also need to get rid of the NGO, which are structures that enable the rich to hide huge fortunes in ways that are hard to understand and detect. Look at Bill Gates foundation. Or the one from the owner of IKEA (non profit foundation with more than 10 billions?). The danger is all too evident.
You are right. At that point, pleople need to understand that capitalism is the perfect system to become slaves or to die by starvation. At which point capitalist states start to give more power to the government (they get a monopoly to "redistribute" according to vote galore), and head the way of monopolies combined with socialist goverments, which make governments big, corrupt and lead to communism in some way.
The only way around that I have though off is to level the field of play for new generations (endowment by the fact of being born), and to have smaller governments that provide what the constitution says and nothing more, enforcing competition in the economy, not the opposite. But it basically resorts to saying that when you die, a large percentage of your wealth will go back to newborns as their endowment for coming to the planet. Bill gates could leave 10% to his children, which is more than $2 billions each. And have the rest distributed to children between 1-10 years old (there needs to be clear consideration to prevent any missuse by parents or caregivers, and to work the details like not have an excess number of children just to get more from their sons in life - it can be worked but it needs clear consideration. eg. you could have 1 endowment per family descendants, so if you have 2 children, you divide the endowment by 2, if you have 3, by 3, so the more you have, the less each gets).
Strange that you say that, for some website say he was a Satanist.
Ferguson is accurate when she reports that the Fabian Society's H.G. Wells (World War I boss of British intelligence) is a key figure of the Aquarian Conspiracy. Also key are Wells' ally, Bertrand Russell, and such Russell cronies as Robert M. Hutchins (Chicago University, Ford Foundation, Fund for the Republic, Aspen Institute, and the project).
Both Margaret Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson were close collaborators of Russell and Hutchins from no later than 1938. The brothers, Aldous (Hollywood) and Julian (UNO) Huxley were collaborators of H. G. Wells, and were recruited to Crowley's Satanist cult during the late 1920s.
http://www.rense.com/general61/satanism.htm
Not that I care much, but found it funny.
>If free stuff didn't result in better reviews, businesses wouldn't be giving away free stuff to reviewers.
Innaccurate. Companies with BAD products don't have much of an incentive to give away free stuff to top 1000 reviewers, because top 1000 reviewers are typically those that are accurate. Why not test the hypotesis? I can bes measured and interpreted.
1) Find the people that own the products, are not vine and measure their rating
2) Find people that are part of VINE and measure their rating
3) Measure the average difference in opinions
You could very easily detect if anyone is cheating, how many, and how much are they falling into the non top 1000 group. As they are not paid for doing positive reviews, they have no incentive to have positive reviews for free stuff that fall short of the promise. It'd only damage their reputation and produce negligible results.
Doctors are different. They are more akin to a journalist or review site. And they have long standing relationships based on earned trust. And demo material the reviewer might keep is very tailored. The manufacturer can send it only to the journalist they like. For VINE, they cannot get to say exactly who is to review. Just make an offer to the members. And all of them are identified.
I see the value in asking for a review for a free product. The challenge is that people filter by stars and typically only want stuff that's been reviewed and passes certain score. So a great product might sell very poorly because during the first weeks they will have reviews. Moreover, sometimes the first reviewers sometimes complain about shipping, or about the description. Or the seller and associate it with the product. And the product may be good, and there's a place to review a particular seller. So when bad luck happens a good product may stall unfairly. After it has more reviews, things will level up to the true number.
I am more concerned with the normal users that could be relatives, or paid people under the radar than anything else. And also worried about the companies that introduce 10 versions that are the same, as different products, when they are the same. So one of those might have several 4 start reviews just because of statistical flukes (or fake reviews) misleading buyers. When they rate it down, there are several apparently new or different versions, thus the scheme continues.
>Then make the limiting factor is simply TIME
Sometimes, the limiting factor is not time, but the ability to solve something regardless of time. I say this from experience. I'd have liked more challenging puzzles where I could debate for days, and come to a solutions - if at all possible - in about a day, or a week. But exams where about instant solutions. Yes, you need quick response sometimes. But some other, you need eurekas more than low hanging fruits. Especially so, when the answer is much more challenging and new terrain.
Compare this with chess. Yes, you can become good at blitz. But that doesn't mean you'll be equally good at normal chess. I know this because I can win a lot at blitz. I can come up with plausible moves in little time. If given more time, I could do it sometimes if my mind wanted to try really hard. But if given 100 the time, I'd suck at it (relatively). I cannot solve problems that are x numbers of ply ahead. Which is why I hated exams as they forced me to constantly play blitz mentally, and could only pose problems that are simple enough for everyone to spot in the equivalent of blitz "depth".
I think it's not just marketing. People are not stupid and I see very FEW people complain or totally regret having bought an iPad. And that includes the ones that just use it for email, web and movies. Those that look at bit deeper find an amazing number of application, from music creation, star gazing apps, scanners, video editors, social media apps that are a breeze to use, map apps, games that mimic real life phenomena (how hard yo press, what diretion the pad is, how it is tilted, etc.).
I mean, 90% of the thing that I like to do in an ipad/iPhone, I'd never do in a PC with a standard keyboard. I think that the thing that will go away is the standard keyboard as a physical device. It'll be as outdated as the abacus is in a few years.
It'd been first post in any other thread.
YOU are to judge, because it's YOUR world as well, and if somebody else is going to increase the tax on YOUR planet, it's going to affect us all. You should very well ask your worldmates what they think they are doing, or how this is going to be sustainable not just for us, but for the balance the earth seems to need to be a nice place for all.
Look at it with a Club analogy. If there are too many members beyond what was the potential ideal, the experience is ruined for everyone. They have all the right to stop accepting members until they find ways to add more Tennis courts, ping pong tables and chairs at the bar.
What we are doing today is akin of having people sit on the floor to eat, play ping pong where the garden is and take turns to use the pool with no chances of having some space to enjoy it. Likewise, 80% of the clubs are oversaturated (lots of natural resources, lots of overpopulated cities, etc). A few are undersaturated...but that doesn't mean you should not question what's happening.
You don't need to prevent anyone from living. It's not as if the world is about to end in a century...unless we destroy our planet (which is what's happening at overpopulated places, the ocean and wildlife). But in order to for more people to live, you need to treat the earth as something that has to last several billion years, not one or two centuries. Your point of view is so myopic that it hurts the eye. Humans have caused more damage to earth in two centuries that in the past million years. Go travel around the world and see for yourself. You might learn that you ideals weren't wrong, but that you were not looking at the right places. Additionally, habits don't change unless we have no choice...so we will change no sooner than when things are unsustainable (and when the world has already turned into a dull, ugly and harsh place).
Maltus was wrong and we know we CAN support exponential growth...but exponentially ruin the world as we go along...When was the last time you drank potable water from a river? Did it have a large population around? Was a place were you could allow humans to do what they wanted like build houses, install factories, etc?
He rebutted your "solution", so it's your turn to answer your question. He's just saying that giving them help is not making things worst, and actually pointing that you need to slow down the birth rate of people that will not care for their childs education, well being and economic needs.
Disbelief does not make something true either. And we are more than centuries away before the question can be answered. So yes..you have to choose.
SO the truth is one. Yes. So place your bet.