I went with the numbers directly taken from (admittedly, rounded to nearest Gig, but it's not that far off) a Vista Vaio that did come from the factory (from ANOTHER employee who wasn't smart enough to ask for advice before buying a machine). I know of whence I speak.
Sony Vaio Laptop. Someone in my company almost bought one. Thankfully they came to me for advice before sinking money on their "new" personal machine.
I pointed out the following: the SSD drive was a mere 32 GB.
A standard installation (infection?) of Windows Vista (and no XP-downgrade option, Sony won't give you the drivers) eats up a good 12 of that. Office 2007 (yeah yeah I know, I work with what they use), another 6 easily. Miscellaneous preloads, drivers, "service" software, and of course the (ugh) "restore partition" eat up another 4-5. Swap file eats another 1-2.
Functionally, their "32 GB SSD drive" has about 7 GB of usable space before it maxes out in which they have to fit all their programs, utilities, miscellaneous pictures/video of the kids, games... or they can buy a normal laptop and we can get them a 500 GB internal drive and they're good to go for a decently long while.
And THAT is why the SSD's, even though OEM's would love to use them for marketroid reasons, are going to be a long time in making anything obsolete. I wouldn't use anything less than a 500GB drive for a machine today, whether laptop OR desktop, and the largest commercial SSD currently is a mere 128 GB.
Also, you attack National Journal without ever bothering to pay attention to facts (in fact, I doubt you've ever read it). IF you'd bothered to even look it up, you'd find it's nothing like you portray it as.
Countdown: 1 year to a nuclear Iran, 2 years to a nuclear strike inside the Middle East, because all Obama will do is "talk."
"Talking" without anything else is what got us here.
And which promises do you mean? Do you mean the military coup by "a civilian force equally equipped and funded like the US Military"? Do you mean "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution"?
For christ's sake, he's not even taken the oath of office and he's on record wanting to break it in order to push "redistribution of wealth."
I for one am scared shitless. Doctor King's Dream Indeed; the vote went by the color of a man's skin rather than the content of his character.:(
The Dems didnt get the magic 60, they WANT that filibuster proof margin and before they get it they have to cater to at least the fiscally conservative republicans to get them on their side.
Actually, all the Dems need is a few RINOs (that's "Republican In Name Only") to break a filibuster on their pet issues and there are still plenty out there. For example, John McCain's Senate seat (which he didn't bother to resign) isn't up for reelection for another two years, so that counts as at least one RINO right there.
Texas has legal disenfranchisement (at least regarding anything more "local" than either your County or Senate race, more details in a second) worked right into the system.
It works like this: IF you are a new resident to a county, or have never registered to vote, you can show up on voting day or "early voting" arrangements, present proof of ID, and cast a provisional ballot (which will be added to the tallies once your residency is verified) for your actual location.
IF on the other hand, your county's voter registrar is a fucktard and the voter registrar's office "forgets" or otherwise fails to update your registration when you mail it in, you will then only find out about this when (a) your voter registration card shows up at the wrong place (if you still hear from your former address) or (b) when you call them or show up at the polls to find out WHY it didn't show up.
At this point, you are "allowed" to vote with your proof of ID... but you are required to vote the ballot of your OLD precinct.
Move from one side of the county to the other, have a local fucktard like Paul Bettencourt (Harris County, TX) mess up your registration, and lo and behold, here's what on the ballot is still accurate:
- Presidential race - National Senate race - County Railroad Commissioner - County Sheriff - County Judge race - County (insert position here) - City Council ("at-large" positions, potentially)
Here's what is NOT still accurate: - House of Representatives race - City council district race (if you remained in the same city) - State Senate race - State Assembly race - All Municipal races (mayor, council, etc... if you moved from one city to another)
If you try to vote, and the fucktards in government didn't do their job so you're disenfranchised from half or more of the ballot... what do you suggest? Do I "lose" my right to complain about the asswipe who gets elected my Congressman because I tried to vote in the election but was disenfranchised from doing so?
Parents don't discipline their kids (OMG, you sent them to bed without supper? CHILD ABUSE THEY'RE DENYING NUTRITION!). Schools can't discipline kids, because "OMG YOU MADE MY LITTLE BOY FEEL BAD ABOUT HIMSELF AND STUNTED HIS SELF ESTEEM!"
I've seen it countless times - we even approved having our class (unknown to the kids) having a hidden video camera so that if some kid acted up and the teacher had to discipline them, the kid whining "wahh teacher was mean and hit me" could be checked on. Five kids - the BRATTIEST, WORST ones - tried exactly that. FIVE KIDS - and every one of them was a fucking liar, proven on tape, yet somehow four sets of parents saw the tape and STILL insisted that somehow their kid was telling the truth and the tape was "doctored."
That's where we stand. Parents are so worried about their kid getting written up (OMG that could keep my kid out of college!) that rather than discipline their brat and teach them how to behave, they will support trying to get the good teachers (that is the ones who actually try to use what few discipline tools they have left) fired anyways.
Now as far as the study goes, here's the usual debunking boilerplate necessary: #1 - Bad methodology (the researchers are finding what they want to find when they analyze "violence"; hitting/shooting each other with nerf weaponry is not violence, neither is playing cowboys and indians. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd do not encourage violence.) #2 - Crap sample size #3 - The usual reporting errors ("self-reporting" and "reporting from other students" where they have incentive to overinflate reports and can easily be coaxed into doing so by someone they view as an "authority").
#4 - Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. These idiot "researchers" can't imagine for a moment that the "most violent" kids will pick media suiting their temperament. Most rambunctious little boys don't want to play Barbie's Horsey Adventure or Barbie Picks Out Clothes And Does Her Hair, for example, but those sell pretty fucking well to little girls. The games don't "cause violence", they're simply as much of an expression of the kids' temperament (same thing for kids who pick non-contact sports like Tennis rather than medium-contact sports like Baseball or heavy-contact sports like Football).
#5 - "Massaging" the data to fit their sponsors' designs. And who sponsored this one? National Institute on Media and the Family - a known group who have the goal of killing off entertainment media in a variety of forms. When in doubt, follow the money.
Every time one of these studies comes up, the same crap is wrong with them. THAT is why the laws based on this crap "science" are thrown out in court, because even the local half-witted judges can see how nonscientific these "studies" are.
Where Nintendo screwed up on the N64/Gamecube were the storage media and their early treatment of third party game makers.
The N64 had some awesome games, but they screwed themselves by being so scared of "piracy" that they stuck it with consoles. This, compounded with flipping Sony/Phillips the middle finger on the proposed disc-based setup (which led directly to the Sony Playstation) meant that the N64 was competing with an equally-powerful console (PSX) that not only had more RAM (prior to the N64 RAM expansion) but also an order of magnitude more storage space on which to put levels, textures, FMV cutscenes, etc.
The second way Nintendo screwed themselves was with the draconian contract restrictions in the NES/SNES days, where game companies only got so many releases per year (causing Konami and others to create fake subsidiaries like "Ultra" to get around the restriction), game companies only got print runs of as many cartridges as Nintendo allowed through Nintendo's factories (making a real problem for "sleeper hit" innovative games that wound up in way-too-short supply because someone didn't predict they would be popular), and Nintendo's content restrictions (the US never got three of the Final Fantasy games because Square decided they didn't want to compromise the storyline to fit Nintendo's censorship).
In short: - Cartridges and "proprietary" mini-DVD discs lost out to mass-producible standard CD-Rom and DVD-Rom (and now Blu-Ray?) media. Commodity media is simply easier (and cheaper) to produce on and gave game companies a better profit margin that way. Nintendo chose the wrong side there. - Years of abusing the third-party game makers hurt Nintendo for a long while when they finally had a "real" alternative (Sony Playstation) in the next-generation media.
The Wii still suffers from this past behavior, too. Look seriously at the number of third-party games for N64/GC as opposed to the Playstation/Xbox line and what do you see? Yeah, there's plenty of shovelware (the whole industry has way too much) but there are a lot more "must have" games for those two platforms than the one or two Zelda/Mario/Pokemon titles that were Nintendo's only exclusives.
Now look at the industry today. Wii's doing better (somewhat solid) but if you've noticed, the main set of third-party guys coming back to Big N on the home console front have been the shovelware vendors. The Wii itself flies off the shelf for people who want Wii Sports/Wii Fit/Wii Play and Zelda/Mario, but anything not made by Nintendo rightly sits on the shelf virtually untouched and for good reason.
The main thing that kept Nintendo afloat during the N64/GC days were Pokemon games and the Gameboy line... and it's really odd that Sony has managed to fuck up the PSP so royally (in terms of having a decent software library) and allowed the hardware-inferior DS to remain in the lead.
Won't it be fun finding out you just bought a "banned" copy then? I'm sure they will start tying the bans to the game's activation serial number as well.
And of course, they'll ban anyone who complains about the constant bugs and shoddy coding in their games and wants to see a patch to make the game usable. Why should they care? They already got what they wanted (your money), you got screwed because they sold a crappy product that doesn't work and can't be returned to the store... they're happy, you're not, but they don't give a crap about the customer.
Welcome to soviet russ....er EA-Land, Where Game Plays You.
Yes, I realize I'm comparing computer systems to real-world ecology, but hey... it's actually not that different. Think of changing standards of common media storage, DRM, and the (unfortunately short) shelf-life of most storage components as your particular species' (software package) "home environment" and think about it.
It sounds like someone needs to take this transcript, build a very coherent response countering any points she screwed up on while congratulating the things she got right, and give her a counter to remind her that she has contributed to this problem by paying attention too much to the MafiAA side so far.
Glass-Steagall's repeal also allowed a TON more banks/lenders to start issuing "mortgage-backed securities", as prior to 1999 only certain GSE's (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) were allowed to do. And make no mistake, there were companies CLAMORING for this and there was an amazing amount of lobbyist money spent on it.
I'm not sure that Citi buying Travelers, BofA buying Merrill Lynch, or the Goldman and Morgan conversions were good things, either.
You make a nice try, but no one thing alone brought the market down - abuses after the dividing line that Glass-Steagall had created were still very much a part of the problem.
Not entirely true: the real trick with the "subprime" loans was in 1995, when the ACORN extortion racket (of which Obama was a happily willing participant in an attack-dog role) was set up. The gist of it was that it changed the CRA by halting all growth actions of a bank (mergers, acquisitions, etc) until all CRA-based complaints against them were resolved in the courts.
Enter ACORN (and attack-dog lawyers like Obama), who saw a gold mine, and began shaking down lenders for "donations" and the issuance of more and more "subprime loans" to people who couldn't possibly meet the Three C's (Capacity, Collateral, Consistency) standards for getting a loan. The conversation really does read like a mafia tactic; the lawyers would come in, have a "meeting" with bank officials, and if the officials didn't cooperate, the result was the filing of enough frivolous CRA complaints to throw the bank for a loop till it gave in.
Now, this isn't enough to cause big problems. What happened a few years later, though, is that Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (the GSE's who wound up buying a lot of these loans later) figured out a scam: to roll the mortgages into a bundle, sell a "security" based on them under ridiculously optimistic "mark-to-model" prices, and sell them out into the market. And of course, other banks and lending companies wanted to follow suit, and they got their chance to do it in 1999 when the Glass-Steagall reforms were repealed and the major lending institutions were allowed to slide into the market and start issuing all sorts of securities again.
Just one thing is never the problem. It's when you stack them up that they start to grow exponentially, and then you get everything going wrong at once. Think of it kind of like fat people: diet alone can help you gain weight but it can't make you "obese." Lack of exercise, if you eat relatively little, won't do it either.
But if (on the other hand) you're a slob who wolfs down 3500 calories a day and whose only exercise is lifting the TV remote and occasionally dragging your ponderous bulk to the bathroom to expel the inevitable results of eating and drinking into the porcelain throne...
Mark-to-model valuations have a risk of being wildly inaccurate, this is true. Unfortunately, the chosen replacement (mark-to-market) is vulnerable to major short-term fluctuations in the "valuation" of what are essentially long-term assets.
Take, for instance, subprime loans. Not all subprime loans were unpayable and doomed to forfeiture, and even for those that were, the vast majority would see some payback before they lapsed into insolvency. The problem came when dishonest companies (many of which were just given $$$ by the "bailout") created a false "model" that said 100% of the subprime loans would be paid back in full, created various securities backed by these loans or backed by other securities that turned out to be backed by these loans, and started selling off those securities.
When mark-to-model was replaced by mark-to-market, all of a sudden these base loans hit the market... flooding the market with them and causing their immediate-sale value (what someone on the market would actually pay for them right this minute in one lump sum) to plummet far below what a realistic model would value them at.
For example, if we take a large pool of subprime loans and assume that (pulling a round number for sake of argument, not following any actual model here) X% of them were doomed to failure, then we'd get a model roughly like this:
Now, obviously the only way this model equals 100% is if X is zero; however, even if we assume 50% of them are doomed to failure, we still have the average recoupment (payments made before defaulting) and the asset value (probably NOT equal to loanprice and well below saleprice, but still nonzero). In other words, the value of the "pool" if we assume 50% of the loans are "doomed" should still be above 50 cents on the dollar.
Note that the price on a lot of these loans and loan-backed securities got down to pennies on the dollar now. The only way we get there with a sensible model is if we assume (a) nearly 100% of the loans will fail and (b) all of them are going to go into default relatively "immediately", e.g. in the next couple months and (c) the value of every single one of these assets is going to plummet to pennies on the dollar, as well, overnight.
See what I mean? The idea of mark-to-model, if you have sensible models and regulations checking and verifying the models the financial institutions use and forcing them to readjust the models as new financial data comes in regarding them, is not itself inherently bad. The problem is when corrupt people, with no oversight, are allowed to create fake "models" that far overvalue things and then hide their fraud behind multiply stacked "mortgage-backed securities."
#1 - Fungible vs nonfungible commodities. Some commodities are priced relative to their availability on the open market, some not. For example, Oil is a fungible commodity; you can easily replace oil (and its derivatives) with those from another source. Saudi Arabia won't sell to you? Buy from Venezuela, and someone else will most likely make up the shortfall by buying from SA instead of Venezuela. You didn't buy your gasoline/diesel from a Shell station because you went to Citgo or Raceway instead? The place you did buy from will purchase that much more from the refinery (and most of the gas on the market comes from the same few refineries), so very little will change. This is why organized boycotts of a particular "chain" of gas stations don't work; their parent companies can (and do) simply sell their extra stock to one of the competitors. At best, you hurt the local station owners and that's all.
#2 - Supply/Demand. These don't mean what you think they mean, but relatively close; they don't always adjust exactly on schedule (because purchasers/suppliers may mis-read how much supply or demand there is in the market and price inappropriately). The idea is that over time, the price of a product will reach an equilibrium such that, if there are Y available units, then there will eventually be X available buyers. If there are less buyers than product, the price will decline until more buyers (enticed by the lower price) enter the system. If there are more buyers than product, either the price will (theoretically) rise, or else you will have a product shortage and someone will try to produce a competing product to fill the need until pricing equilibrium is reached. Compare, for example, the Sensio Grill to the Foreman Grill.
Now here's where we get a little more advanced:
#3 - Forms of investing. You've got direct investment in a company (Venture Capital or Stock), indirect investment (investment in a bank or lending company that in turn provides lending services to the company itself), and all manner of tertiary involvements such as membership in various investment funds where you, personally, have no control over what is done with your money.
#4 - "Stock Market" indexes. There are a ton of these out there, each of which averages the price of a predetermined set of stocks, weighted by some amount, to come up with some "average" monetary number. The most commonly referred to by the newsmedia is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is an average (weighted to dollar price of stock) of a mere 30 stocks. There are a whole slew of other stock averages, each telling a different story on the market; the more stocks they watch, the better an indicator they can be (but a lousier news story), which is why the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 doesn't get press while the DJIA does.
Now we get into the nitty-gritty:
#5 - There are three basic ways to make money in the stock market: you can buy stock and receive dividends when(if) the company makes a profit; you can buy stock and sell it later when it is worth more; OR you can "borrow" stock from someone, sell it, wait for the price to fall, and then buy it back at the lower price (pocketing the difference) and then return the "borrowed" (but now not as valuable) stock to the rightful owner.
The third way is called shorting. The "fourth" way is called naked shorting, and it's been one of wikipedia's biggest recent scandals. The gist of it is that with naked sho
I was talking about the "bailout". It was intended to give liquidity to failing banks, to help them continue their business of taking homes from people.
When did I say I was for the "bailout"? I am pretty sure I said numerous times it was a bad move - in fact, I believe I have directly compared any Congressional Representative / Senator who voted for it to a stupid monkey flinging federal monies around in lieu of poo.
Fortunately for us, the FIRST time through, some congresscritters with consciences voted against it. Unfortunately for us, they were bought off in the second round.
Let's start from the most recent history: 1) Helped Lehman Brothers to evade the bankruptcy.
How do you think he would have done that? Remember, the President has no control over the Fed and SEC beyond appointing their members. He can't even fire them without Senate approval and that takes months. Lehman Brothers had gotten itself into a horrible situation and probably rightly deserved to fail. I have a problem with the bailout, because it let a whole hose of companies that obviously were too far gone and too corrupt survive anyways.
2) Persuaded the Congress and Senate to pass a 'care package' earlier this year before the panic.
A "care package" of what nature? One that repealed the ass-backwards "bankruptcy reforms" carried out during Clinton's remaining days and Bush's early term? One that would have implemented reforms to prevent the backing of securities with other securities? Ooh, I know... how about one that issued some way for people to renegotiate their loan amounts due to the fraudulently inflated home prices most of the market had been paying due to having to compete for homes on the market with people who were getting loans they should never have been issued?
Please. I'd love to hear your thoughts. What form of a "care package" do you mean? Or do you mean yet another Rethuglican/Democrap package where they just fling your tax revenue around like poo and expect it to make things better?
3) More aggressive interest rate cuts earlier last year.
That is the LAST possible thing that should be done. Interest rates are far lower than they ought to be, because of economically bad policy that kept reacting to every "crisis" by pushing them further. If you've noticed, the Fed Funds Rate is now at 1.5% and it quite literally has almost nowhere to go. Ever seen one of those piece-of-shit cars that come across the Mexican border blowing down the highway, with a plume of smoke coming out the back and getting slower and slower every second even though the driver obviously has the gas pedal down all the way? Guess what - that gas pedal is the interest rate and it doesn't matter where it is when your engine is slowly destroying itself; in fact, keeping it that far down will hurt it more because you're literally choking the engine.
4) Force more regulation in banking.
Again, since you seem to have never had Civics 101, this is not within the power of the President. Congress can pass a bill and ask the President to sign it into law. If he's really feeling lucky, the President can send Congress a bill and ask that they consider it. That is the extent of his power.
5) Fire Greenspan. After all, it worked with 8 US attorneys....
As I mentioned in a previous posting, there are two problems with this: #1 - To fire the Fed Chairman, he has to get Senate approval. The President does not have the power to unilaterally fire him. #2 - At the time before Greenspan retired, any President or Congresscritter who voted to fire him would have been committing economic and political suicide. He was wildly popular in Wall Street, wildly popular with the major banking firms, he was being hailed in all the newsmedia as being the "Architect" of "vast economic growth" from 1993 through 2005... in short, firing him (even if you could get the Senate to go along with it) would likely have given the market one hell of a shock anyways.
Since you obviously have NO grasp of simple realities (or of what is actually within the powers of the office of President of the United States) I invite you once more to come up with an intelligent response. Do some research this time, please.
Hmm... so because he didn't ignore Greenspan (who had been Fed chair since 1987, through Reagan and Bush41 and Clinton), when Greenspan was the primary advisor, he is to blame for problems that started long before he was elected?
I agree - GREENSPAN screwed up. It was under Greenspan that the whole "accelerating economy" and change in how we managed economic bubbles happened. But what was Bush's alternative? He'd already been painted into a no-win situation. If he'd canned Greenspan on the say-so of the other economists' warnings, it would have been both political and economic suicide; the press would have raked him over the coals, and probably the firing of Greenspan alone would have caused one hell of a market crash.
Remember, right after 2000, how the press and financial companies and congress were openly demanding Bush retain Greenspan and a lot of the financial advisors from the Clinton regime? Well, he did. And they kept on advising the same things they'd advised under Clinton.
As for the other warning signs... are you perhaps referring to hearings like this when the financial fraud at Fannie Mae came under scrutiny, conscientious representatives from both sides of the aisle were calling for much-needed reform, and the mainline Democrat response (specifically racists like Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus) was to scream "racism"?
You can bookmark my "latest posts" list, that'd help you look when I post. It's at http://slashdot.org/~Moryath/ (you can do this for anyone, btw).
You'll see a few things modded "troll" from the other day... that's what I get for speaking uncomfortable truth when people were on one of their ACLU "OMG loss of freedom bush is a nazi" insanity kicks. I'm as libertarian as the next person (more actually) but I'm a sane libertarian and tend to apply a little common sense to situations. "Common sense" being a highly uncommon commodity in this day and age, you get what you get.
What Bush HAS done is ensured these banks that they have government support as they do their dirty deeds, so that they themselves don't go bankrupt as they take homes from individuals who can't afford their homes.
Hmm... so the nearly-unanimous Senate votes approving these various people (Fed Chair, SEC members, including two under Democrat control of the Senate and two more during a "power-sharing" agreement) somehow mean nothing?
The one thing I hold Bush accountable for is asking for, and then signing, the shit-flinging piece of crap known as the "bailout." But that was a knee-jerk reaction by the Congressional Democrap/Rethuglican monkeys whose only response to any problem is to fling Federal money around as if it were poo.
Please tell me ONE thing that Bush could have done.
Take your time.
Firing the SEC members or Fed Chair is not on the table, either - you need Senate approval for that and then you have to find replacements for them.
Well? I'm waiting... I know you've got nothing but I'll still wait for your "OMG BUSH IS SATAN" frothing-mouthed rant, because you can't accept that the President simply is NOT in charge of the economy.
Slashdot Mirror
about 10 minutes ago, all of their hard drives started making those "bad bearing" noises.
Then they realized they'd been slashdotted and the servers were melting.
Think we can get them to record the sound of a server dying to Slashdot Effect?
I went with the numbers directly taken from (admittedly, rounded to nearest Gig, but it's not that far off) a Vista Vaio that did come from the factory (from ANOTHER employee who wasn't smart enough to ask for advice before buying a machine). I know of whence I speak.
Sony Vaio Laptop. Someone in my company almost bought one. Thankfully they came to me for advice before sinking money on their "new" personal machine.
I pointed out the following: the SSD drive was a mere 32 GB.
A standard installation (infection?) of Windows Vista (and no XP-downgrade option, Sony won't give you the drivers) eats up a good 12 of that. Office 2007 (yeah yeah I know, I work with what they use), another 6 easily. Miscellaneous preloads, drivers, "service" software, and of course the (ugh) "restore partition" eat up another 4-5. Swap file eats another 1-2.
Functionally, their "32 GB SSD drive" has about 7 GB of usable space before it maxes out in which they have to fit all their programs, utilities, miscellaneous pictures/video of the kids, games... or they can buy a normal laptop and we can get them a 500 GB internal drive and they're good to go for a decently long while.
And THAT is why the SSD's, even though OEM's would love to use them for marketroid reasons, are going to be a long time in making anything obsolete. I wouldn't use anything less than a 500GB drive for a machine today, whether laptop OR desktop, and the largest commercial SSD currently is a mere 128 GB.
Norton Ghost is fairly cheap and Ghost Explorer will allow you to "browse" the images. I'm not entirely sure on the comparisons angle.
Trying to make an "alternative system rollback/savestate" program are we?
I'm not "insane" or "clueless" and I read both sides of the issues.
Obama is a leftist, bordering on marxist (in fact, if you had read his autobiography, you'd know he sought out marxist friends quite frequently).
But since you can't be bothered to pay attention to facts, here's a few more places on his record:
Votesmart
Washington Post
Also, you attack National Journal without ever bothering to pay attention to facts (in fact, I doubt you've ever read it). IF you'd bothered to even look it up, you'd find it's nothing like you portray it as.
Countdown: 1 year to a nuclear Iran, 2 years to a nuclear strike inside the Middle East, because all Obama will do is "talk."
"Talking" without anything else is what got us here.
And which promises do you mean? Do you mean the military coup by "a civilian force equally equipped and funded like the US Military"? Do you mean "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution"?
For christ's sake, he's not even taken the oath of office and he's on record wanting to break it in order to push "redistribution of wealth."
I for one am scared shitless. Doctor King's Dream Indeed; the vote went by the color of a man's skin rather than the content of his character. :(
Obama is not a normal Dem, he is a moderate in many ways
Uhm... are you insane or just clueless?
The Dems didnt get the magic 60, they WANT that filibuster proof margin and before they get it they have to cater to at least the fiscally conservative republicans to get them on their side.
Actually, all the Dems need is a few RINOs (that's "Republican In Name Only") to break a filibuster on their pet issues and there are still plenty out there. For example, John McCain's Senate seat (which he didn't bother to resign) isn't up for reelection for another two years, so that counts as at least one RINO right there.
Texas has legal disenfranchisement (at least regarding anything more "local" than either your County or Senate race, more details in a second) worked right into the system.
It works like this: IF you are a new resident to a county, or have never registered to vote, you can show up on voting day or "early voting" arrangements, present proof of ID, and cast a provisional ballot (which will be added to the tallies once your residency is verified) for your actual location.
IF on the other hand, your county's voter registrar is a fucktard and the voter registrar's office "forgets" or otherwise fails to update your registration when you mail it in, you will then only find out about this when (a) your voter registration card shows up at the wrong place (if you still hear from your former address) or (b) when you call them or show up at the polls to find out WHY it didn't show up.
At this point, you are "allowed" to vote with your proof of ID... but you are required to vote the ballot of your OLD precinct.
Move from one side of the county to the other, have a local fucktard like Paul Bettencourt (Harris County, TX) mess up your registration, and lo and behold, here's what on the ballot is still accurate:
- Presidential race
- National Senate race
- County Railroad Commissioner
- County Sheriff
- County Judge race
- County (insert position here)
- City Council ("at-large" positions, potentially)
Here's what is NOT still accurate:
- House of Representatives race
- City council district race (if you remained in the same city)
- State Senate race
- State Assembly race
- All Municipal races (mayor, council, etc... if you moved from one city to another)
If you try to vote, and the fucktards in government didn't do their job so you're disenfranchised from half or more of the ballot... what do you suggest? Do I "lose" my right to complain about the asswipe who gets elected my Congressman because I tried to vote in the election but was disenfranchised from doing so?
No kidding.
Parents don't discipline their kids (OMG, you sent them to bed without supper? CHILD ABUSE THEY'RE DENYING NUTRITION!). Schools can't discipline kids, because "OMG YOU MADE MY LITTLE BOY FEEL BAD ABOUT HIMSELF AND STUNTED HIS SELF ESTEEM!"
I've seen it countless times - we even approved having our class (unknown to the kids) having a hidden video camera so that if some kid acted up and the teacher had to discipline them, the kid whining "wahh teacher was mean and hit me" could be checked on. Five kids - the BRATTIEST, WORST ones - tried exactly that. FIVE KIDS - and every one of them was a fucking liar, proven on tape, yet somehow four sets of parents saw the tape and STILL insisted that somehow their kid was telling the truth and the tape was "doctored."
That's where we stand. Parents are so worried about their kid getting written up (OMG that could keep my kid out of college!) that rather than discipline their brat and teach them how to behave, they will support trying to get the good teachers (that is the ones who actually try to use what few discipline tools they have left) fired anyways.
Now as far as the study goes, here's the usual debunking boilerplate necessary:
#1 - Bad methodology (the researchers are finding what they want to find when they analyze "violence"; hitting/shooting each other with nerf weaponry is not violence, neither is playing cowboys and indians. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd do not encourage violence.)
#2 - Crap sample size
#3 - The usual reporting errors ("self-reporting" and "reporting from other students" where they have incentive to overinflate reports and can easily be coaxed into doing so by someone they view as an "authority").
#4 - Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. These idiot "researchers" can't imagine for a moment that the "most violent" kids will pick media suiting their temperament. Most rambunctious little boys don't want to play Barbie's Horsey Adventure or Barbie Picks Out Clothes And Does Her Hair, for example, but those sell pretty fucking well to little girls. The games don't "cause violence", they're simply as much of an expression of the kids' temperament (same thing for kids who pick non-contact sports like Tennis rather than medium-contact sports like Baseball or heavy-contact sports like Football).
#5 - "Massaging" the data to fit their sponsors' designs. And who sponsored this one? National Institute on Media and the Family - a known group who have the goal of killing off entertainment media in a variety of forms. When in doubt, follow the money.
Every time one of these studies comes up, the same crap is wrong with them. THAT is why the laws based on this crap "science" are thrown out in court, because even the local half-witted judges can see how nonscientific these "studies" are.
Where Nintendo screwed up on the N64/Gamecube were the storage media and their early treatment of third party game makers.
The N64 had some awesome games, but they screwed themselves by being so scared of "piracy" that they stuck it with consoles. This, compounded with flipping Sony/Phillips the middle finger on the proposed disc-based setup (which led directly to the Sony Playstation) meant that the N64 was competing with an equally-powerful console (PSX) that not only had more RAM (prior to the N64 RAM expansion) but also an order of magnitude more storage space on which to put levels, textures, FMV cutscenes, etc.
The second way Nintendo screwed themselves was with the draconian contract restrictions in the NES/SNES days, where game companies only got so many releases per year (causing Konami and others to create fake subsidiaries like "Ultra" to get around the restriction), game companies only got print runs of as many cartridges as Nintendo allowed through Nintendo's factories (making a real problem for "sleeper hit" innovative games that wound up in way-too-short supply because someone didn't predict they would be popular), and Nintendo's content restrictions (the US never got three of the Final Fantasy games because Square decided they didn't want to compromise the storyline to fit Nintendo's censorship).
In short:
- Cartridges and "proprietary" mini-DVD discs lost out to mass-producible standard CD-Rom and DVD-Rom (and now Blu-Ray?) media. Commodity media is simply easier (and cheaper) to produce on and gave game companies a better profit margin that way. Nintendo chose the wrong side there.
- Years of abusing the third-party game makers hurt Nintendo for a long while when they finally had a "real" alternative (Sony Playstation) in the next-generation media.
The Wii still suffers from this past behavior, too. Look seriously at the number of third-party games for N64/GC as opposed to the Playstation/Xbox line and what do you see? Yeah, there's plenty of shovelware (the whole industry has way too much) but there are a lot more "must have" games for those two platforms than the one or two Zelda/Mario/Pokemon titles that were Nintendo's only exclusives.
Now look at the industry today. Wii's doing better (somewhat solid) but if you've noticed, the main set of third-party guys coming back to Big N on the home console front have been the shovelware vendors. The Wii itself flies off the shelf for people who want Wii Sports/Wii Fit/Wii Play and Zelda/Mario, but anything not made by Nintendo rightly sits on the shelf virtually untouched and for good reason.
The main thing that kept Nintendo afloat during the N64/GC days were Pokemon games and the Gameboy line... and it's really odd that Sony has managed to fuck up the PSP so royally (in terms of having a decent software library) and allowed the hardware-inferior DS to remain in the lead.
Won't it be fun finding out you just bought a "banned" copy then? I'm sure they will start tying the bans to the game's activation serial number as well.
And of course, they'll ban anyone who complains about the constant bugs and shoddy coding in their games and wants to see a patch to make the game usable. Why should they care? They already got what they wanted (your money), you got screwed because they sold a crappy product that doesn't work and can't be returned to the store... they're happy, you're not, but they don't give a crap about the customer.
Welcome to soviet russ....er EA-Land, Where Game Plays You.
You could ask the Once-ler... I hear he knows a thing or two about stuff becoming extinct because people don't take care of it properly.
Yes, I realize I'm comparing computer systems to real-world ecology, but hey... it's actually not that different. Think of changing standards of common media storage, DRM, and the (unfortunately short) shelf-life of most storage components as your particular species' (software package) "home environment" and think about it.
Trusting in wikipedia is your FIRST mistake.
It sounds like someone needs to take this transcript, build a very coherent response countering any points she screwed up on while congratulating the things she got right, and give her a counter to remind her that she has contributed to this problem by paying attention too much to the MafiAA side so far.
Glass-Steagall's repeal also allowed a TON more banks/lenders to start issuing "mortgage-backed securities", as prior to 1999 only certain GSE's (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) were allowed to do. And make no mistake, there were companies CLAMORING for this and there was an amazing amount of lobbyist money spent on it.
I'm not sure that Citi buying Travelers, BofA buying Merrill Lynch, or the Goldman and Morgan conversions were good things, either.
You make a nice try, but no one thing alone brought the market down - abuses after the dividing line that Glass-Steagall had created were still very much a part of the problem.
Not entirely true: the real trick with the "subprime" loans was in 1995, when the ACORN extortion racket (of which Obama was a happily willing participant in an attack-dog role) was set up. The gist of it was that it changed the CRA by halting all growth actions of a bank (mergers, acquisitions, etc) until all CRA-based complaints against them were resolved in the courts.
Enter ACORN (and attack-dog lawyers like Obama), who saw a gold mine, and began shaking down lenders for "donations" and the issuance of more and more "subprime loans" to people who couldn't possibly meet the Three C's (Capacity, Collateral, Consistency) standards for getting a loan. The conversation really does read like a mafia tactic; the lawyers would come in, have a "meeting" with bank officials, and if the officials didn't cooperate, the result was the filing of enough frivolous CRA complaints to throw the bank for a loop till it gave in.
A few links, if I may:
Link 1
Link 2: Obama's name on a frivolous ACORN extortion suit
Link 3: New York Post
Link 4
Now, this isn't enough to cause big problems. What happened a few years later, though, is that Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (the GSE's who wound up buying a lot of these loans later) figured out a scam: to roll the mortgages into a bundle, sell a "security" based on them under ridiculously optimistic "mark-to-model" prices, and sell them out into the market. And of course, other banks and lending companies wanted to follow suit, and they got their chance to do it in 1999 when the Glass-Steagall reforms were repealed and the major lending institutions were allowed to slide into the market and start issuing all sorts of securities again.
Just one thing is never the problem. It's when you stack them up that they start to grow exponentially, and then you get everything going wrong at once. Think of it kind of like fat people: diet alone can help you gain weight but it can't make you "obese." Lack of exercise, if you eat relatively little, won't do it either.
But if (on the other hand) you're a slob who wolfs down 3500 calories a day and whose only exercise is lifting the TV remote and occasionally dragging your ponderous bulk to the bathroom to expel the inevitable results of eating and drinking into the porcelain throne...
Catching my own tpyo: that model should be as follows.
(Model Price) = (100-X% * loanprice) + (X% * averagepaidbeforedefault) + (X% * actualassetvalue)
Sorry if I created any confusion. CTRL-V at the wrong time.
Mark-to-model valuations have a risk of being wildly inaccurate, this is true. Unfortunately, the chosen replacement (mark-to-market) is vulnerable to major short-term fluctuations in the "valuation" of what are essentially long-term assets.
Take, for instance, subprime loans. Not all subprime loans were unpayable and doomed to forfeiture, and even for those that were, the vast majority would see some payback before they lapsed into insolvency. The problem came when dishonest companies (many of which were just given $$$ by the "bailout") created a false "model" that said 100% of the subprime loans would be paid back in full, created various securities backed by these loans or backed by other securities that turned out to be backed by these loans, and started selling off those securities.
When mark-to-model was replaced by mark-to-market, all of a sudden these base loans hit the market... flooding the market with them and causing their immediate-sale value (what someone on the market would actually pay for them right this minute in one lump sum) to plummet far below what a realistic model would value them at.
For example, if we take a large pool of subprime loans and assume that (pulling a round number for sake of argument, not following any actual model here) X% of them were doomed to failure, then we'd get a model roughly like this:
(Model Price) = (100-X% * loanprice) + (X% * loanprice * averagepaidbeforedefault) + (X% * actualassetvalue)
Now, obviously the only way this model equals 100% is if X is zero; however, even if we assume 50% of them are doomed to failure, we still have the average recoupment (payments made before defaulting) and the asset value (probably NOT equal to loanprice and well below saleprice, but still nonzero). In other words, the value of the "pool" if we assume 50% of the loans are "doomed" should still be above 50 cents on the dollar.
Note that the price on a lot of these loans and loan-backed securities got down to pennies on the dollar now. The only way we get there with a sensible model is if we assume (a) nearly 100% of the loans will fail and (b) all of them are going to go into default relatively "immediately", e.g. in the next couple months and (c) the value of every single one of these assets is going to plummet to pennies on the dollar, as well, overnight.
See what I mean? The idea of mark-to-model, if you have sensible models and regulations checking and verifying the models the financial institutions use and forcing them to readjust the models as new financial data comes in regarding them, is not itself inherently bad. The problem is when corrupt people, with no oversight, are allowed to create fake "models" that far overvalue things and then hide their fraud behind multiply stacked "mortgage-backed securities."
Basic economic principles:
#1 - Fungible vs nonfungible commodities. Some commodities are priced relative to their availability on the open market, some not. For example, Oil is a fungible commodity; you can easily replace oil (and its derivatives) with those from another source. Saudi Arabia won't sell to you? Buy from Venezuela, and someone else will most likely make up the shortfall by buying from SA instead of Venezuela. You didn't buy your gasoline/diesel from a Shell station because you went to Citgo or Raceway instead? The place you did buy from will purchase that much more from the refinery (and most of the gas on the market comes from the same few refineries), so very little will change. This is why organized boycotts of a particular "chain" of gas stations don't work; their parent companies can (and do) simply sell their extra stock to one of the competitors. At best, you hurt the local station owners and that's all.
#2 - Supply/Demand. These don't mean what you think they mean, but relatively close; they don't always adjust exactly on schedule (because purchasers/suppliers may mis-read how much supply or demand there is in the market and price inappropriately). The idea is that over time, the price of a product will reach an equilibrium such that, if there are Y available units, then there will eventually be X available buyers. If there are less buyers than product, the price will decline until more buyers (enticed by the lower price) enter the system. If there are more buyers than product, either the price will (theoretically) rise, or else you will have a product shortage and someone will try to produce a competing product to fill the need until pricing equilibrium is reached. Compare, for example, the Sensio Grill to the Foreman Grill.
Now here's where we get a little more advanced:
#3 - Forms of investing. You've got direct investment in a company (Venture Capital or Stock), indirect investment (investment in a bank or lending company that in turn provides lending services to the company itself), and all manner of tertiary involvements such as membership in various investment funds where you, personally, have no control over what is done with your money.
#4 - "Stock Market" indexes. There are a ton of these out there, each of which averages the price of a predetermined set of stocks, weighted by some amount, to come up with some "average" monetary number. The most commonly referred to by the newsmedia is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is an average (weighted to dollar price of stock) of a mere 30 stocks. There are a whole slew of other stock averages, each telling a different story on the market; the more stocks they watch, the better an indicator they can be (but a lousier news story), which is why the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 doesn't get press while the DJIA does.
Now we get into the nitty-gritty:
#5 - There are three basic ways to make money in the stock market: you can buy stock and receive dividends when(if) the company makes a profit; you can buy stock and sell it later when it is worth more; OR you can "borrow" stock from someone, sell it, wait for the price to fall, and then buy it back at the lower price (pocketing the difference) and then return the "borrowed" (but now not as valuable) stock to the rightful owner.
The third way is called shorting. The "fourth" way is called naked shorting, and it's been one of wikipedia's biggest recent scandals. The gist of it is that with naked sho
I was talking about the "bailout". It was intended to give liquidity to failing banks, to help them continue their business of taking homes from people.
When did I say I was for the "bailout"? I am pretty sure I said numerous times it was a bad move - in fact, I believe I have directly compared any Congressional Representative / Senator who voted for it to a stupid monkey flinging federal monies around in lieu of poo.
Fortunately for us, the FIRST time through, some congresscritters with consciences voted against it. Unfortunately for us, they were bought off in the second round.
Are you incredibly ill-informed, or just insane?
Let's start from the most recent history:
1) Helped Lehman Brothers to evade the bankruptcy.
How do you think he would have done that? Remember, the President has no control over the Fed and SEC beyond appointing their members. He can't even fire them without Senate approval and that takes months. Lehman Brothers had gotten itself into a horrible situation and probably rightly deserved to fail. I have a problem with the bailout, because it let a whole hose of companies that obviously were too far gone and too corrupt survive anyways.
2) Persuaded the Congress and Senate to pass a 'care package' earlier this year before the panic.
A "care package" of what nature? One that repealed the ass-backwards "bankruptcy reforms" carried out during Clinton's remaining days and Bush's early term? One that would have implemented reforms to prevent the backing of securities with other securities? Ooh, I know... how about one that issued some way for people to renegotiate their loan amounts due to the fraudulently inflated home prices most of the market had been paying due to having to compete for homes on the market with people who were getting loans they should never have been issued?
Please. I'd love to hear your thoughts. What form of a "care package" do you mean? Or do you mean yet another Rethuglican/Democrap package where they just fling your tax revenue around like poo and expect it to make things better?
3) More aggressive interest rate cuts earlier last year.
That is the LAST possible thing that should be done. Interest rates are far lower than they ought to be, because of economically bad policy that kept reacting to every "crisis" by pushing them further. If you've noticed, the Fed Funds Rate is now at 1.5% and it quite literally has almost nowhere to go. Ever seen one of those piece-of-shit cars that come across the Mexican border blowing down the highway, with a plume of smoke coming out the back and getting slower and slower every second even though the driver obviously has the gas pedal down all the way? Guess what - that gas pedal is the interest rate and it doesn't matter where it is when your engine is slowly destroying itself; in fact, keeping it that far down will hurt it more because you're literally choking the engine.
4) Force more regulation in banking.
Again, since you seem to have never had Civics 101, this is not within the power of the President. Congress can pass a bill and ask the President to sign it into law. If he's really feeling lucky, the President can send Congress a bill and ask that they consider it. That is the extent of his power.
5) Fire Greenspan. After all, it worked with 8 US attorneys. ...
As I mentioned in a previous posting, there are two problems with this:
#1 - To fire the Fed Chairman, he has to get Senate approval. The President does not have the power to unilaterally fire him.
#2 - At the time before Greenspan retired, any President or Congresscritter who voted to fire him would have been committing economic and political suicide. He was wildly popular in Wall Street, wildly popular with the major banking firms, he was being hailed in all the newsmedia as being the "Architect" of "vast economic growth" from 1993 through 2005... in short, firing him (even if you could get the Senate to go along with it) would likely have given the market one hell of a shock anyways.
Since you obviously have NO grasp of simple realities (or of what is actually within the powers of the office of President of the United States) I invite you once more to come up with an intelligent response. Do some research this time, please.
Hmm... so because he didn't ignore Greenspan (who had been Fed chair since 1987, through Reagan and Bush41 and Clinton), when Greenspan was the primary advisor, he is to blame for problems that started long before he was elected?
I agree - GREENSPAN screwed up. It was under Greenspan that the whole "accelerating economy" and change in how we managed economic bubbles happened. But what was Bush's alternative? He'd already been painted into a no-win situation. If he'd canned Greenspan on the say-so of the other economists' warnings, it would have been both political and economic suicide; the press would have raked him over the coals, and probably the firing of Greenspan alone would have caused one hell of a market crash.
Remember, right after 2000, how the press and financial companies and congress were openly demanding Bush retain Greenspan and a lot of the financial advisors from the Clinton regime? Well, he did. And they kept on advising the same things they'd advised under Clinton.
As for the other warning signs... are you perhaps referring to hearings like this when the financial fraud at Fannie Mae came under scrutiny, conscientious representatives from both sides of the aisle were calling for much-needed reform, and the mainline Democrat response (specifically racists like Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus) was to scream "racism"?
Well?
You can bookmark my "latest posts" list, that'd help you look when I post. It's at http://slashdot.org/~Moryath/ (you can do this for anyone, btw).
You'll see a few things modded "troll" from the other day... that's what I get for speaking uncomfortable truth when people were on one of their ACLU "OMG loss of freedom bush is a nazi" insanity kicks. I'm as libertarian as the next person (more actually) but I'm a sane libertarian and tend to apply a little common sense to situations. "Common sense" being a highly uncommon commodity in this day and age, you get what you get.
What Bush HAS done is ensured these banks that they have government support as they do their dirty deeds, so that they themselves don't go bankrupt as they take homes from individuals who can't afford their homes.
Hmm... so the nearly-unanimous Senate votes approving these various people (Fed Chair, SEC members, including two under Democrat control of the Senate and two more during a "power-sharing" agreement) somehow mean nothing?
The one thing I hold Bush accountable for is asking for, and then signing, the shit-flinging piece of crap known as the "bailout." But that was a knee-jerk reaction by the Congressional Democrap/Rethuglican monkeys whose only response to any problem is to fling Federal money around as if it were poo.
Please tell me ONE thing that Bush could have done.
Take your time.
Firing the SEC members or Fed Chair is not on the table, either - you need Senate approval for that and then you have to find replacements for them.
Well? I'm waiting... I know you've got nothing but I'll still wait for your "OMG BUSH IS SATAN" frothing-mouthed rant, because you can't accept that the President simply is NOT in charge of the economy.