And somehow you managed to miss the creative ways that subprime mortgages were turned into high-quality investments.
No, I mentioned that regarding the using of the subprime mortgages as a "base" collateral underneath certain securities, which were then used as collateral on other securities, and so on. The idea (as I'm sure you'd know if you'd actually read the article or had a solid grounding in economics) was that the banks were, in fact, deliberately trying to hide the actual backing of the securities.
You should also include an SEC rule change that allowed Lehman and the rest of the gang to overleverage themselves.
It appears you are speaking of the 12:1 rule, also known as the "net capital rule" - which was not the real problem so much as the OTHER portion of the issue, which traces directly back to what I had mentioned: the fact that companies were managing to hide the subprime loans and other bad securities on their "tier 3" balance sheets with Mark-to-Model accounting.
Was this rule change a bad thing? Most definitely. But the problems already existed prior to the rule change, because the larger problem of the bad accounting existed before the rule change as well.
Amazingly, both of those happened on Bush's watch. No wonder you missed them.
Most people didn't notice the second because had it been a change made in a healthy market, without other accounting frauds already occurring in those companies, it probably wouldn't have mattered. It might have been more sensible to raise the cap a small amount (say, bump it from 12:1 to 14:1 or 15:1) but that still wouldn't have addressed the underlying problems of Bad Assets Backing Bad Assets.
Again, I don't care what happened under Bush's watch, or Clinton's watch, or Bush41's watch, or Carter's watch, because the President has little to no control over the economy. His authority is pretty much limited to appointing the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the various members of the SEC, and in both cases Bush's actions (confirmed by overwhelming majorities of the US Senate, which yes includes a vast amount of Democrats) were merely to rubber-stamp the handpicked successors of the previous occupants of the various positions. Technically, he can't even fire them (unlike Cabinet members) without Senate approval. That's how limited the President's role is.
And no, I don't think it would have been any different with John Kerry in office. Why would it have been? John Kerry has no better grasp of economics than George Bush (though both probably have a hell of a lot better grasp than either Barack Obama or John McCain do) and would likely have made the same appointments, because the "handpicked successor" route has been the way it's been for at least 3 decades.
I'll say it again: No, I didn't miss anything. I don't care about the politics of it. YOU, on the other hand, seem desperate to find some way in which you can scream "OMG It's Bush's Fault." Please stop, step back for a moment, realize that George Bush is not actually Lucifer B. Satan, and look again at the total situation.
The cure isn't getting Bush out of office. That'll happen whether he wants to go or not. The cure is, unfortunately, the equivalent of having your car in to the dealership to have sugar and water contamination removed from the fuel, power steering, and lubrication systems. It's going to suck for a while and there's no way around it but it has to happen, because too many sectors of the market have relations to the housing market or to other bubbles that (a) still need cleaning up or (b) haven't popped yet.
Five years from now, housing prices will likely be about where they are today (and more in line with what they should have been assuming a normal growth in the market pacing inflation, rather than the abnormal 200%+ spikes we saw for roughly the past decade or so). There will be a LOT less people actually on the market for a home, because a lot less people will be unable to get major
Further, most experts agree that the *actual* problem of this current market collapse stems to four things: #1 - The CRA expansion in 1995, which put 30% more people on the housing market than there should have been, creating an incredible sellers' market in which housing, which previously had roughly paced inflation, spiraled up until people were looking at "house value" increases of over 200%.
#2 - The change in the Fed's policy when Alan Greenspan was appointed chair, which changed from relatively aggressive use of the Fed Funds Rate to deflate economic bubbles and contain damage (the cause of the late-'80s "recession" for example) to allowing bubbles to grow and grow under the idea that lowering the Fed Funds Rate after the fact would "clean up the mess" and that there would be "better growth" under the bubble... unfortunately economic bubbles are more like cysts or abcesses than blisters.
#3 - The abrupt change between a far-too-liberal and far-too-conservative method of valuing a lot of mortgages. Prior to the Enron debacle and Sarbanes-Oxley reforms, the "valuation" of many of these loans (which were being used to back other securities which in turn backed more securities) was at 100% of the loan hidden in "tier 3" assets (e.g. "things we can't put a price on at this second so we'll estimate it and get back to you later) on most companies' balance sheets. This is called "mark-to-model."
Post-SOX (and coming to today because it takes years for large companies to bring everything in line with new reforms like that), the companies were required to mark the mortgages to their actual market worth (e.g. what they could get if someone bought the mortgage from them this minute). Unfortunately, since they were all being massively marked down as someone tried to PUT a market worth to them, there were suddenly MASSIVE amounts of these loans on the market, and as a result they were getting marked down to literally pennies on the dollar. This shift to "mark-to-market" accounting on the loans is what pulled the rug out from underneath a lot of other securities whose backing could be traced back to them, as well as requiring the banks (which had been using these loans as collateral on the balance sheets) to start holding back a lot more capital to service their existing accounts.
There needed to be a middle ground in this, but there wasn't.
#4 - The 1999 dissolution of the 1933 Glass-Steagall reforms, which had previously prevented investment banks from owning other financial institutions, caused much of the "piling-on" of securities backed by other securities backed by other securities backed by... well, it turned out, nearly-worthless (in the mark-to-market sense) loans.
The only part Bush plays in this is that he (a) signed SOX (which passed nearly damn unanimously from the Congress and could easily have been a Veto Override anyways) and (b) he let Greenspan, and then Greenspan's hand-picked successor, run the Fed.
P.S. I'm not a fan of Bush by any means, but fair's fair - he doesn't get the blame for this one and I'm a bit disappointed in the person who posted this and the person who posted an ill-considered, ill-thought, ill-informed rant on this contest.
- Upgrading the installer channel to let other software bits be installed - Updating the firmware downgrader (SOMETHING Nintendo did causes their 3.3 firmware not to like my Cisco wi-fi router under any security option other than "none", but the previous versions ran just fine with WPA-PSK).
Here's hoping the homebrew community manages to get those done soon.
You seem to be surprisingly accepting of genuinely gestapo methodologies.
You have yet to provide any evidence of "gestapo methodologies."
And what's to stop them from walking around that one? Maybe another checkpoint further up the road? Perhaps we should just install checkpoints every 50 miles on every major road just in case.
The more hurdles you put in place, the harder it is for the smuggling to go on. Will it ever be perfect? I never claimed it would. You adjust your tactics to the situation at hand, you watch the data, and you keep tuning the system as best you can. The smugglers' current tactic is to walk people across the border in a non-checkpointed location, then hook up with a carrier to try to go to cities. If the smugglers change tactics, we have to adapt methods as well.
Two checkpoints beats the one static "at the border" checkpoint. Making the secondary checkpoints mobile makes it harder for the smugglers to plan swap-offs and march their cargo around the second point, and when you see someone come up to a checkpoint and turn around to route around it, you had better send someone to pull them over and search them.
And before you whine about them "not doing anything wrong" if they turn and flee the mobile checkpoint, remember: The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that flight from the police is, itself, sufficient Probable Cause for a search. (Terry v. Ohio, Illinois v. Wardlow).
Seriously though... you want to push for drug legalization, that's fine. But you CAN NOT tell me that drug gangs who commit all sorts of crimes (including kidnap and murder) and deliberately get people hooked on these things are somehow simply practicing "civil disobedience" by "not following the law."
There's a big difference between a 75-year-old granny with cancer who grows a couple marijuana plants so she can puff on the leaves and bake marijuana-butter brownies to keep her appetite up, and organized groups that engage in rape, murder, racketeering, smuggling, and turf wars with a side order of drug sales.
And you haven't addressed the damage caused by wage depression, theft of services, and damage to the school system caused by illegal immigration and human smuggling (which gets back to the rape/prostitution rings run by the gangs too) either.
Okay, so I could have a kilo of cocaine hidden under my floorboard, but don't they also CHECK FOR THIS STUFF AT THE BORDER?
Much of the time, the border check is circumvented - drug mules or human smugglers "walk" their cargo across the border a few miles and then meet up with a car or truck further into the country, past the on-the-border checkpoint. How would YOU respond to that? The second simplest way is a secondary, redundant checkpoint.
The actual simplest way would be a good solid fence, but there are people who hate that idea with a passion bordering on insanity for some reason (such as, they don't actually WANT the law enforced).
If they need checkpoints up to 100 miles inland, then it strongly implies that (a) they aren't doing their job right the first time, or(b) it's just an excuse for the county to earn a few bucks at the expense of recreational drug users, DUI's, and other low-hanging fruit.
No, it's a reaction to the smugglers who are trying to circumvent the at-the-border searches.
There was a story in last week's reader about common law-abiding suburban guy who happened to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU who refused one of those searches and they made him get the hell out of his vehicle and sit at the side of the highway while they tore his car apart.
Link Please. If he was really a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" I'm willing to bet he was trying to provoke a "story" and did something else, like start physically pushing the officers at the stop, to give police probable cause to detain him while they got a search warrant.
- Do you think the government has a real, and appropriate, interest in knowing who and what is coming in and out of the country?
- If so, why is it inappropriate to check at the borders (or at the nearest available transit points) that those crossing have their citizenship documentation or passport and visa documentation, as they are required to carry by law for all cross-border travel?
Yes, I want to live in a country where the laws are enforced. Being "randomly" stopped on the street in the middle of the day to check that I have ID papers on me? That is inappropriate. Being checked for my papers when I am doing something for which papers are required, such as traveling between two countries, is not.
And also may I point out: You are required by law in every state to carry your drivers' license, automobile registration and proof of insurance papers, if you are driving a vehicle (car, truck, minivan, etc). When such vehicles are crossing the border, the US government has a real and important interest in doublechecking that the driver is not either (a) entering or (b) leaving the country with a STOLEN vehicle.
- There are a large number of Mexican criminals (Mexican mafia, drug gang members, murderers, rapists, etc) who have slipped into the US to avoid prosecution in Mexico.
- Border checkpoints work both ways. We're responsible for our criminals slipping into Mexico trying to avoid prosecution too.
- The US has a large problem with drug importers on every border.
- What do YOU propose law enforcement officials do if they conduct a perfectly legal stop to verify documentation, and there is reasonable cause during the stop to suspect that other laws are being broken? Remember, under the law as decided by the Supreme Court, all that is required is reasonable suspicion.
Slashdot story should be reworded to read: "American Criminal Liberties Union Upset Over Nothing Again."
The PSP hackers (Dark Alex in particular) pretty much know every trick Sony has in their arsenal. The only unknown is which particular bit Sony is going to try in each time (what the particular decompression keys will be for example). Making a new PSP custom firmware for these guys is really pretty straightforward; they unpack the firmware, doublecheck their CFW code against the new code, doublecheck any newly-appearing functions, and release the patched version that pretty much patches the same bullcrap stuff that's just been in each official firmware release since 2.00.
It's the companies that are reacting - they "patch" for the repairs the "hackers" have made to restore proper function to their Defective-By-Design products. With this latest bit, I fully expect we're going to start to see PSP-style custom firmware installations for the Wii that begin to open the platform up more fully and allow it greater flexibility to be used to its fullest capability.
I beat the first Big Daddy without dying. I realized that what I had to do was NOT try to go up against him in melee. Shoot, dodge, stay WELL away, and all was fine. If you run at him like a lemming, sure you're going to end up with a drill planted in your ass: that's what he does.
Take a moment and use that grey matter between your ears. YOUR solution was to be like a lemming because you could just respawn. Some of us prefer to play intelligently instead.
Ok, so fix that with better sources, that's how it's supposed to work. Nobody said it was perfect.
This is impossible when you have an organized "consensus" of people who coordinate their efforts to keep certain reliable sources that don't fit their particular bias out.
Well it's really easy to refute this since these types of things get fixed all the time.
Error: [Citation Needed]
Certainly one admin cannot proclaim a source isn't good enough and keep it out and you know that, but you're choosing to distort the situation. If one admin acts against the consensus then others can easily come in and reverse that admin.
But that's not the problem: the problem is when "consensus" is flawed and based on the same problems that were listed above, and "consensus" consists of an organized group of people (probably including an administrator) whose goal is to keep an article tilted in a particular fashion.
Not that that needs to happen much since there isn't much that admins can do to enforce certain content, but admins do reverse others regularly, so your point has no teeth to it.
Excuse me? Admins can quite easily, in sequence, (a) reverse an edit and (b) block or even ban whoever made the edit. Thanks to Wikipedia policy on "wheel warring", no sane admin who wants to stay an admin will ever actually reverse the action of another, meaning that abusive administrators can plop permanent blocks on people all day long and it'll be a cold day in hell before they get taken to task for it.
The history of Wikipedia's "administrators' noticeboard" is replete with people who have TRIED to report just this sort of behavior and were then further harassed and blocked and attacked for "personally attacking" the administrator by reporting their out-of-line actions. See also: Scarlet Letter Harassment.
Now a consensus of editors can decide that a source is not reliable and that's how it should work.
A "consensus" is a funny thing. You will get two different "Consensuses" if you start talking to people in a mortgage lender's office or a donut shop, in a political convention or an anime convention... further, "consensus" is defined by the people who are allowed into the discussion. The Wikipedians I've seen in action have been uniformly hostile and derogatory, reaching towards and often attaining the status of "abusive", towards any newcomers because once you get enough newcomers to a discussion you run the risk of "consensus" actually being changed.
"Consensus" (especially "consensus" defined by the Wikipedian model of organized edit-warring, abusive language, "I've got more admin friends than you do" fighting, and overlawyering of flawed and badly considered policy) is about the crappiest model for a repository of knowledge that I've ever seen.
If you're really finding so many situations where everyone else thinks your sources aren't reliable, then the problem becomes increasingly unlikely to be with everyone else.
Oh please. Plenty of noted academics find their works pooh-poohed by one side or the other of a debate because the "consensus" of a POV-filled group has decided the particular tilt of a page should go the other way.
The rest of your post is pretty amusing especially the claim of the user being an administrator. For one he wasn't, for another, what sudden authority would that give him that every other administrator you claim is destroying the shop isn't worthy of?
I don't know that the user was. I don't know that they weren't. I do know that everything I've read other than that claim is verifiable, that the sources match what is being said, that the situations and page histories match what is being said, and that you and your wikipedian buddies seem more interested in personally attacking anyone who would like to see wikipedia reformed and fixed than in actually reforming and fixing wikipedia's big problems.
Indeed... I took the time to read the blog he's pooh-poohing.
I don't care who wrote it and whether it's the same person or not, they have Gerard pegged - he knows his behavior is indefensible, so he's gone into [Personal Attack] mode right here on Slashdot.
The evidence is ample. Rather than this mythical "horde" of people who are trying to "ruin" wikipedia while "valiant defenders" like David Gerard stand in their way, wikipedia is simply full of psychopathic game-players who've ruined more articles than they've saved with petty game-playing, internal politics, and a destructive inability to do anything other than engage in edit-wars and ban-wars. The idea that it's an MMORPG, despite a tongue-in-cheek article penned by someone, is pretty apt - the difference being that if some nasty group of psychopaths decides to grief people and "hold territory" in a game like Everquest or World of Warcraft it just ruins someone's day, while when it happens on Wikipedia it has some shitty real-life implications... and not just when talking about biographies either, but on serious issues.
It makes me wonder... what else is David Gerard and the whole Wikipedia administration system trying to hide? How many people have they abused, lied about, and falsely accused of being "sockpuppets" for trying to fix the broken wikipedia system?
How many good contributors have been run off of the project because of people like David Gerard who see sockpuppets at every turn, whenever someone disagrees with certain "privileged" members?
Seeing him in action today has been like seeing some insane, paranoid night watchman who jumps at every shadow. Gerard, give it a rest, take a LONG wikibreak, and for god's sakes clear the names of all the people you have wrongly accused.
However, I read the posts and then compared the behavior of David Gerard (on here) with the behavior reported by Parker Peters and the behavior of wikipedia administrators in the cases cited.
As far as I can tell, Peters is right. David Gerard and the rest of Wikipedia's crowd behave as a small-minded individuals who cannot carry on a discussion, can't actually hold an argument, but simply argue by way of accusing people of being "trolls" and make ridiculous accusations of everyone being everyone else.
Case in point: Gerard is accusing someone here of having written the blogs referenced. I wonder why, and I further believe that whether that's the case or not, it's a red herring. Who wrote the blogs is not the point: whether or not the truth is being told is.
Gerard can't argue against the truth, so he has to go for character assassination and personal attacks. And that seems to be the MO for any wikipedian out there.
Obligatory Yoda Quote: "and that is why you fail."
You can't answer the questions that were posed, so instead you start accusing people of being trolls?
I would have thought a high-ranking member of Wikipedia could behave in better fashion. This kind of behavior shows us that Peters was right all along about you.
(a) In the event of the use of force and in case of armed conflict, it is not permissible to kill non-belligerents such as old men, women and children. The wounded and the sick shall have the right to medical treatment; and prisoners of war shall have the right to be fed, sheltered and clothed. It is prohibited to mutilate dead bodies. It is a duty to exchange prisoners of war and to arrange visits or reunions of the families separated by the circumstances of war. (b) It is prohibited to fell trees, to damage crops or livestock, and to destroy the enemy's civilian buildings and installations by shelling, blasting or any other means.
Taking hostages under any form or for any purpose is expressly forbidden.
Muslims fighting jihad today regularly attack crops and livestock, civilian buildings (and civilian conveyances like buses), the elderly/infirm,children, houses, and keep prisoners of war without medical attention and in unfed, unsheltered, horrid locations while torturing them until they die.
Every human being is entitled to inviolability and the protection of his good name and honour during his life and after his death. The state and society shall protect his remains and burial place.
Muslims fighting jihad today do not follow this.
(a) The family is the foundation of society, and marriage is the basis of its formation. Men and women have the right to marriage, and no restrictions stemming from race, colour or nationality shall prevent them from enjoying this right. (b) Society and the State shall remove all obstacles to marriage and shall facilitate marital procedure. They shall ensure family protection and welfare.
Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men, but Muslim men are allowed (even encouraged) to marry non-Muslim women. In all but three Islamic states, intermarriage between "Muslims of Palestinian descent" and other Muslims is not permitted "for fear of diluting the people of Palestine" (quoting the Saudi law on the matter). So much for that one.
(a) Woman is equal to man in human dignity, and has rights to enjoy as well as duties to perform; she has her own civil entity and financial independence, and the right to retain her name and lineage. (b) The husband is responsible for the support and welfare of the family.
No Muslim nation follows this today. It is especially bad for women in Afghanistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia which most harshly enforce Shari'a laws regarding women not being allowed to leave the house without male familial escort.
Islam is the religion of unspoiled nature. It is prohibited to exercise any form of compulsion on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to convert him to another religion or to atheism.
You'll note they say nothing of exercising "forms of compulsion" to force people to convert to Islam.
Final point: look at all the "as long as it doesn't go against Shari'a listings in there. There's a reason for this: the document actually looks HALF usable until you actually have a good understanding of Shari'a, its provisions, its punishments, and the fact that it pretty much makes meaningless every sentence that ends "in accordance with Shari'a" or some similar phrasing.
They stop treating their women as if they were afraid of womens' sexuality (keeping in mind I've done PLENTY of study of Islam) and stop sticking their women in beekeepers' outfits, and I'll be more than happy to "appreciate" the fact that middle eastern women tend towards large-chested and friendly.
In all seriousness, though... "worrying" that your religion is "hijacked", and actually standing up en masse and saying so, are two different things. And by and large, Muslims seem just fine letting people "hijack" their religion all day long. That creates its own set of problems. Let's face it, the number of people at various "not in our name, you don't represent Islam" rallies is a mere fraction of those who rally for death and murder in Islam's name across the world.
I wish it weren't so. I wish your relatives the best, I really do. But there's a long road ahead and they are, sadly, VERY much in the minority concerning their interpretation of the Muslim faith.
1) No, it was on-topic. My response to 2) will explain why.
2) I highly doubt that, were it a quote from Torah, or Bible, or Bhagavad Gita, or Talmud, or from any other religious source or chant or scripture, anyone would have been "offended" or even worried about giving offense. Then why for a Muslim scripture quote was it removed? The answer is fairly obvious, they are deathly afraid of even risking that some cleric somewhere will raise a fuss and cause rioting or worse over the "offense" to Islam that someone might have stuck a Koranic quotation inside a song that got into a video game. And THAT, my willfully ignorant and gullible friend, directly relates to the numerous previous examples in which the followers of the supposed "religion of peace" have done precisely as feared.
Jesus, when the mob came for him, surrendered and said "do as you will."
Buddha preached peace after giving up the war he had been trained for and seeking enlightenment.
Joseph Smith, when the mob came for him, pulled a gun someone had smuggled him and went down shooting. To the Mormons, he "died a martyr's death." Whether you call him a martyr or not, he certainly didn't go down peacefully.
Krishna had his whole army fight for him, "personally" refused to raise a weapon, but DID serve as a warlord's charioteer (Bhagavad Gita). Interestingly, he was charioteer for the side fighting AGAINST his own army.
And for L. Ron Hubbard... do a quick search on "Fair Game" policy and "Auditing Process R2-45" (which, paraphrased, is "shoot them with a colt 45"). Hubbard ordered this personally on at least five different occasions including March 6, 1968 when he ordered 12 people to be killed.
Slashdot Mirror
And somehow you managed to miss the creative ways that subprime mortgages were turned into high-quality investments.
No, I mentioned that regarding the using of the subprime mortgages as a "base" collateral underneath certain securities, which were then used as collateral on other securities, and so on. The idea (as I'm sure you'd know if you'd actually read the article or had a solid grounding in economics) was that the banks were, in fact, deliberately trying to hide the actual backing of the securities.
You should also include an SEC rule change that allowed Lehman and the rest of the gang to overleverage themselves.
It appears you are speaking of the 12:1 rule, also known as the "net capital rule" - which was not the real problem so much as the OTHER portion of the issue, which traces directly back to what I had mentioned: the fact that companies were managing to hide the subprime loans and other bad securities on their "tier 3" balance sheets with Mark-to-Model accounting.
Was this rule change a bad thing? Most definitely. But the problems already existed prior to the rule change, because the larger problem of the bad accounting existed before the rule change as well.
Amazingly, both of those happened on Bush's watch. No wonder you missed them.
Most people didn't notice the second because had it been a change made in a healthy market, without other accounting frauds already occurring in those companies, it probably wouldn't have mattered. It might have been more sensible to raise the cap a small amount (say, bump it from 12:1 to 14:1 or 15:1) but that still wouldn't have addressed the underlying problems of Bad Assets Backing Bad Assets.
Again, I don't care what happened under Bush's watch, or Clinton's watch, or Bush41's watch, or Carter's watch, because the President has little to no control over the economy. His authority is pretty much limited to appointing the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the various members of the SEC, and in both cases Bush's actions (confirmed by overwhelming majorities of the US Senate, which yes includes a vast amount of Democrats) were merely to rubber-stamp the handpicked successors of the previous occupants of the various positions. Technically, he can't even fire them (unlike Cabinet members) without Senate approval. That's how limited the President's role is.
And no, I don't think it would have been any different with John Kerry in office. Why would it have been? John Kerry has no better grasp of economics than George Bush (though both probably have a hell of a lot better grasp than either Barack Obama or John McCain do) and would likely have made the same appointments, because the "handpicked successor" route has been the way it's been for at least 3 decades.
I'll say it again: No, I didn't miss anything. I don't care about the politics of it. YOU, on the other hand, seem desperate to find some way in which you can scream "OMG It's Bush's Fault." Please stop, step back for a moment, realize that George Bush is not actually Lucifer B. Satan, and look again at the total situation.
The cure isn't getting Bush out of office. That'll happen whether he wants to go or not. The cure is, unfortunately, the equivalent of having your car in to the dealership to have sugar and water contamination removed from the fuel, power steering, and lubrication systems. It's going to suck for a while and there's no way around it but it has to happen, because too many sectors of the market have relations to the housing market or to other bubbles that (a) still need cleaning up or (b) haven't popped yet.
Five years from now, housing prices will likely be about where they are today (and more in line with what they should have been assuming a normal growth in the market pacing inflation, rather than the abnormal 200%+ spikes we saw for roughly the past decade or so). There will be a LOT less people actually on the market for a home, because a lot less people will be unable to get major
One thing you can always count on is the ineptitude of government.
That being said... The President of the US actually has very little to do with the economic health of the nation. See below:
SeekingAlpha
American Spectator
Mackinac Center
Further, most experts agree that the *actual* problem of this current market collapse stems to four things:
#1 - The CRA expansion in 1995, which put 30% more people on the housing market than there should have been, creating an incredible sellers' market in which housing, which previously had roughly paced inflation, spiraled up until people were looking at "house value" increases of over 200%.
#2 - The change in the Fed's policy when Alan Greenspan was appointed chair, which changed from relatively aggressive use of the Fed Funds Rate to deflate economic bubbles and contain damage (the cause of the late-'80s "recession" for example) to allowing bubbles to grow and grow under the idea that lowering the Fed Funds Rate after the fact would "clean up the mess" and that there would be "better growth" under the bubble... unfortunately economic bubbles are more like cysts or abcesses than blisters.
#3 - The abrupt change between a far-too-liberal and far-too-conservative method of valuing a lot of mortgages. Prior to the Enron debacle and Sarbanes-Oxley reforms, the "valuation" of many of these loans (which were being used to back other securities which in turn backed more securities) was at 100% of the loan hidden in "tier 3" assets (e.g. "things we can't put a price on at this second so we'll estimate it and get back to you later) on most companies' balance sheets. This is called "mark-to-model."
Post-SOX (and coming to today because it takes years for large companies to bring everything in line with new reforms like that), the companies were required to mark the mortgages to their actual market worth (e.g. what they could get if someone bought the mortgage from them this minute). Unfortunately, since they were all being massively marked down as someone tried to PUT a market worth to them, there were suddenly MASSIVE amounts of these loans on the market, and as a result they were getting marked down to literally pennies on the dollar. This shift to "mark-to-market" accounting on the loans is what pulled the rug out from underneath a lot of other securities whose backing could be traced back to them, as well as requiring the banks (which had been using these loans as collateral on the balance sheets) to start holding back a lot more capital to service their existing accounts.
There needed to be a middle ground in this, but there wasn't.
#4 - The 1999 dissolution of the 1933 Glass-Steagall reforms, which had previously prevented investment banks from owning other financial institutions, caused much of the "piling-on" of securities backed by other securities backed by other securities backed by... well, it turned out, nearly-worthless (in the mark-to-market sense) loans.
The only part Bush plays in this is that he (a) signed SOX (which passed nearly damn unanimously from the Congress and could easily have been a Veto Override anyways) and (b) he let Greenspan, and then Greenspan's hand-picked successor, run the Fed.
P.S. I'm not a fan of Bush by any means, but fair's fair - he doesn't get the blame for this one and I'm a bit disappointed in the person who posted this and the person who posted an ill-considered, ill-thought, ill-informed rant on this contest.
Now the remaining things that need to be done:
- Upgrading the installer channel to let other software bits be installed
- Updating the firmware downgrader (SOMETHING Nintendo did causes their 3.3 firmware not to like my Cisco wi-fi router under any security option other than "none", but the previous versions ran just fine with WPA-PSK).
Here's hoping the homebrew community manages to get those done soon.
You seem to be surprisingly accepting of genuinely gestapo methodologies.
You have yet to provide any evidence of "gestapo methodologies."
And what's to stop them from walking around that one? Maybe another checkpoint further up the road? Perhaps we should just install checkpoints every 50 miles on every major road just in case.
The more hurdles you put in place, the harder it is for the smuggling to go on. Will it ever be perfect? I never claimed it would. You adjust your tactics to the situation at hand, you watch the data, and you keep tuning the system as best you can. The smugglers' current tactic is to walk people across the border in a non-checkpointed location, then hook up with a carrier to try to go to cities. If the smugglers change tactics, we have to adapt methods as well.
Two checkpoints beats the one static "at the border" checkpoint. Making the secondary checkpoints mobile makes it harder for the smugglers to plan swap-offs and march their cargo around the second point, and when you see someone come up to a checkpoint and turn around to route around it, you had better send someone to pull them over and search them.
And before you whine about them "not doing anything wrong" if they turn and flee the mobile checkpoint, remember: The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that flight from the police is, itself, sufficient Probable Cause for a search. (Terry v. Ohio, Illinois v. Wardlow).
I think we have a Ron Paul supporter.
Seriously though... you want to push for drug legalization, that's fine. But you CAN NOT tell me that drug gangs who commit all sorts of crimes (including kidnap and murder) and deliberately get people hooked on these things are somehow simply practicing "civil disobedience" by "not following the law."
There's a big difference between a 75-year-old granny with cancer who grows a couple marijuana plants so she can puff on the leaves and bake marijuana-butter brownies to keep her appetite up, and organized groups that engage in rape, murder, racketeering, smuggling, and turf wars with a side order of drug sales.
And you haven't addressed the damage caused by wage depression, theft of services, and damage to the school system caused by illegal immigration and human smuggling (which gets back to the rape/prostitution rings run by the gangs too) either.
Okay, so I could have a kilo of cocaine hidden under my floorboard, but don't they also CHECK FOR THIS STUFF AT THE BORDER?
Much of the time, the border check is circumvented - drug mules or human smugglers "walk" their cargo across the border a few miles and then meet up with a car or truck further into the country, past the on-the-border checkpoint. How would YOU respond to that? The second simplest way is a secondary, redundant checkpoint.
The actual simplest way would be a good solid fence, but there are people who hate that idea with a passion bordering on insanity for some reason (such as, they don't actually WANT the law enforced).
If they need checkpoints up to 100 miles inland, then it strongly implies that (a) they aren't doing their job right the first time, or(b) it's just an excuse for the county to earn a few bucks at the expense of recreational drug users, DUI's, and other low-hanging fruit.
No, it's a reaction to the smugglers who are trying to circumvent the at-the-border searches.
There was a story in last week's reader about common law-abiding suburban guy who happened to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU who refused one of those searches and they made him get the hell out of his vehicle and sit at the side of the highway while they tore his car apart.
Link Please. If he was really a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" I'm willing to bet he was trying to provoke a "story" and did something else, like start physically pushing the officers at the stop, to give police probable cause to detain him while they got a search warrant.
- Do you think the government has a real, and appropriate, interest in knowing who and what is coming in and out of the country?
- If so, why is it inappropriate to check at the borders (or at the nearest available transit points) that those crossing have their citizenship documentation or passport and visa documentation, as they are required to carry by law for all cross-border travel?
Yes, I want to live in a country where the laws are enforced. Being "randomly" stopped on the street in the middle of the day to check that I have ID papers on me? That is inappropriate. Being checked for my papers when I am doing something for which papers are required, such as traveling between two countries, is not.
And also may I point out: You are required by law in every state to carry your drivers' license, automobile registration and proof of insurance papers, if you are driving a vehicle (car, truck, minivan, etc). When such vehicles are crossing the border, the US government has a real and important interest in doublechecking that the driver is not either (a) entering or (b) leaving the country with a STOLEN vehicle.
- There are a large number of Mexican criminals (Mexican mafia, drug gang members, murderers, rapists, etc) who have slipped into the US to avoid prosecution in Mexico.
- Border checkpoints work both ways. We're responsible for our criminals slipping into Mexico trying to avoid prosecution too.
- The US has a large problem with drug importers on every border.
- What do YOU propose law enforcement officials do if they conduct a perfectly legal stop to verify documentation, and there is reasonable cause during the stop to suspect that other laws are being broken? Remember, under the law as decided by the Supreme Court, all that is required is reasonable suspicion.
Slashdot story should be reworded to read: "American Criminal Liberties Union Upset Over Nothing Again."
A flavor of "linux" that doesn't have proper access to the RAM and the video board isn't really "linux."
Give me REAL linux, that can natively run the linux port of XBMC and can run Wine, and we'll talk.
Fine, patch *bugs*. Patch all the *bugs* you want.
Meanwhile, leave my ability to run open-source software (like the Wii port of Quake or a better, less stripped-down web browser) alone.
That's essentially what happens.
The PSP hackers (Dark Alex in particular) pretty much know every trick Sony has in their arsenal. The only unknown is which particular bit Sony is going to try in each time (what the particular decompression keys will be for example). Making a new PSP custom firmware for these guys is really pretty straightforward; they unpack the firmware, doublecheck their CFW code against the new code, doublecheck any newly-appearing functions, and release the patched version that pretty much patches the same bullcrap stuff that's just been in each official firmware release since 2.00.
It's the companies that are reacting - they "patch" for the repairs the "hackers" have made to restore proper function to their Defective-By-Design products. With this latest bit, I fully expect we're going to start to see PSP-style custom firmware installations for the Wii that begin to open the platform up more fully and allow it greater flexibility to be used to its fullest capability.
I like Wii Quake. The Wiimote is a near-perfect way to play the game on my humongous living room TV screen.
I beat the first Big Daddy without dying. I realized that what I had to do was NOT try to go up against him in melee. Shoot, dodge, stay WELL away, and all was fine. If you run at him like a lemming, sure you're going to end up with a drill planted in your ass: that's what he does.
Take a moment and use that grey matter between your ears. YOUR solution was to be like a lemming because you could just respawn. Some of us prefer to play intelligently instead.
Ok, so fix that with better sources, that's how it's supposed to work. Nobody said it was perfect.
This is impossible when you have an organized "consensus" of people who coordinate their efforts to keep certain reliable sources that don't fit their particular bias out.
Well it's really easy to refute this since these types of things get fixed all the time.
Error: [Citation Needed]
Certainly one admin cannot proclaim a source isn't good enough and keep it out and you know that, but you're choosing to distort the situation. If one admin acts against the consensus then others can easily come in and reverse that admin.
But that's not the problem: the problem is when "consensus" is flawed and based on the same problems that were listed above, and "consensus" consists of an organized group of people (probably including an administrator) whose goal is to keep an article tilted in a particular fashion.
Not that that needs to happen much since there isn't much that admins can do to enforce certain content, but admins do reverse others regularly, so your point has no teeth to it.
Excuse me? Admins can quite easily, in sequence, (a) reverse an edit and (b) block or even ban whoever made the edit. Thanks to Wikipedia policy on "wheel warring", no sane admin who wants to stay an admin will ever actually reverse the action of another, meaning that abusive administrators can plop permanent blocks on people all day long and it'll be a cold day in hell before they get taken to task for it.
The history of Wikipedia's "administrators' noticeboard" is replete with people who have TRIED to report just this sort of behavior and were then further harassed and blocked and attacked for "personally attacking" the administrator by reporting their out-of-line actions. See also: Scarlet Letter Harassment.
Now a consensus of editors can decide that a source is not reliable and that's how it should work.
A "consensus" is a funny thing. You will get two different "Consensuses" if you start talking to people in a mortgage lender's office or a donut shop, in a political convention or an anime convention... further, "consensus" is defined by the people who are allowed into the discussion. The Wikipedians I've seen in action have been uniformly hostile and derogatory, reaching towards and often attaining the status of "abusive", towards any newcomers because once you get enough newcomers to a discussion you run the risk of "consensus" actually being changed.
"Consensus" (especially "consensus" defined by the Wikipedian model of organized edit-warring, abusive language, "I've got more admin friends than you do" fighting, and overlawyering of flawed and badly considered policy) is about the crappiest model for a repository of knowledge that I've ever seen.
If you're really finding so many situations where everyone else thinks your sources aren't reliable, then the problem becomes increasingly unlikely to be with everyone else.
Oh please. Plenty of noted academics find their works pooh-poohed by one side or the other of a debate because the "consensus" of a POV-filled group has decided the particular tilt of a page should go the other way.
The rest of your post is pretty amusing especially the claim of the user being an administrator. For one he wasn't, for another, what sudden authority would that give him that every other administrator you claim is destroying the shop isn't worthy of?
I don't know that the user was. I don't know that they weren't. I do know that everything I've read other than that claim is verifiable, that the sources match what is being said, that the situations and page histories match what is being said, and that you and your wikipedian buddies seem more interested in personally attacking anyone who would like to see wikipedia reformed and fixed than in actually reforming and fixing wikipedia's big problems.
Ok. Who mismodded this post? It points out some real faults in Wikipedia that give severe concern for the quality of the product being produced.
[citation needed]
Indeed... I took the time to read the blog he's pooh-poohing.
I don't care who wrote it and whether it's the same person or not, they have Gerard pegged - he knows his behavior is indefensible, so he's gone into [Personal Attack] mode right here on Slashdot.
This is of course the same David Gerard who's so "nice" that he regularly cusses people out... even when they were right all along.
The evidence is ample. Rather than this mythical "horde" of people who are trying to "ruin" wikipedia while "valiant defenders" like David Gerard stand in their way, wikipedia is simply full of psychopathic game-players who've ruined more articles than they've saved with petty game-playing, internal politics, and a destructive inability to do anything other than engage in edit-wars and ban-wars. The idea that it's an MMORPG, despite a tongue-in-cheek article penned by someone, is pretty apt - the difference being that if some nasty group of psychopaths decides to grief people and "hold territory" in a game like Everquest or World of Warcraft it just ruins someone's day, while when it happens on Wikipedia it has some shitty real-life implications... and not just when talking about biographies either, but on serious issues.
It makes me wonder... what else is David Gerard and the whole Wikipedia administration system trying to hide? How many people have they abused, lied about, and falsely accused of being "sockpuppets" for trying to fix the broken wikipedia system?
How many good contributors have been run off of the project because of people like David Gerard who see sockpuppets at every turn, whenever someone disagrees with certain "privileged" members?
Seeing him in action today has been like seeing some insane, paranoid night watchman who jumps at every shadow. Gerard, give it a rest, take a LONG wikibreak, and for god's sakes clear the names of all the people you have wrongly accused.
Moore's law... hell this is going to extend the calculation of the user's home heating/cooling costs past what will fit on a single page.
On the upside, calculating that kind of cost may lead to the finding of a new prime number or two.
Ordinarily I wouldn't bother with some of this.
However, I read the posts and then compared the behavior of David Gerard (on here) with the behavior reported by Parker Peters and the behavior of wikipedia administrators in the cases cited.
As far as I can tell, Peters is right. David Gerard and the rest of Wikipedia's crowd behave as a small-minded individuals who cannot carry on a discussion, can't actually hold an argument, but simply argue by way of accusing people of being "trolls" and make ridiculous accusations of everyone being everyone else.
Case in point: Gerard is accusing someone here of having written the blogs referenced. I wonder why, and I further believe that whether that's the case or not, it's a red herring. Who wrote the blogs is not the point: whether or not the truth is being told is.
Gerard can't argue against the truth, so he has to go for character assassination and personal attacks. And that seems to be the MO for any wikipedian out there.
Obligatory Yoda Quote: "and that is why you fail."
This is your best defense?
You can't answer the questions that were posed, so instead you start accusing people of being trolls?
I would have thought a high-ranking member of Wikipedia could behave in better fashion. This kind of behavior shows us that Peters was right all along about you.
Who said I follow a "western" religion?
Or any religion at all, for that matter?
Really, I'm very much of the "they've all got it wrong, just some wronger than others" school.
Interesting points from your source:
(a) In the event of the use of force and in case of armed conflict, it is not permissible to kill non-belligerents such as old men, women and children. The wounded and the sick shall have the right to medical treatment; and prisoners of war shall have the right to be fed, sheltered and clothed. It is prohibited to mutilate dead bodies. It is a duty to exchange prisoners of war and to arrange visits or reunions of the families separated by the circumstances of war. (b) It is prohibited to fell trees, to damage crops or livestock, and to destroy the enemy's civilian buildings and installations by shelling, blasting or any other means.
Taking hostages under any form or for any purpose is expressly forbidden.
Muslims fighting jihad today regularly attack crops and livestock, civilian buildings (and civilian conveyances like buses), the elderly/infirm,children, houses, and keep prisoners of war without medical attention and in unfed, unsheltered, horrid locations while torturing them until they die.
Every human being is entitled to inviolability and the protection of his good name and honour during his life and after his death. The state and society shall protect his remains and burial place.
Muslims fighting jihad today do not follow this.
(a) The family is the foundation of society, and marriage is the basis of its formation. Men and women have the right to marriage, and no restrictions stemming from race, colour or nationality shall prevent them from enjoying this right. (b) Society and the State shall remove all obstacles to marriage and shall facilitate marital procedure. They shall ensure family protection and welfare.
Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men, but Muslim men are allowed (even encouraged) to marry non-Muslim women. In all but three Islamic states, intermarriage between "Muslims of Palestinian descent" and other Muslims is not permitted "for fear of diluting the people of Palestine" (quoting the Saudi law on the matter). So much for that one.
(a) Woman is equal to man in human dignity, and has rights to enjoy as well as duties to perform; she has her own civil entity and financial independence, and the right to retain her name and lineage. (b) The husband is responsible for the support and welfare of the family.
No Muslim nation follows this today. It is especially bad for women in Afghanistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia which most harshly enforce Shari'a laws regarding women not being allowed to leave the house without male familial escort.
Islam is the religion of unspoiled nature. It is prohibited to exercise any form of compulsion on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to convert him to another religion or to atheism.
You'll note they say nothing of exercising "forms of compulsion" to force people to convert to Islam.
Final point: look at all the "as long as it doesn't go against Shari'a listings in there. There's a reason for this: the document actually looks HALF usable until you actually have a good understanding of Shari'a, its provisions, its punishments, and the fact that it pretty much makes meaningless every sentence that ends "in accordance with Shari'a" or some similar phrasing.
I'll make you a deal.
They stop treating their women as if they were afraid of womens' sexuality (keeping in mind I've done PLENTY of study of Islam) and stop sticking their women in beekeepers' outfits, and I'll be more than happy to "appreciate" the fact that middle eastern women tend towards large-chested and friendly.
In all seriousness, though... "worrying" that your religion is "hijacked", and actually standing up en masse and saying so, are two different things. And by and large, Muslims seem just fine letting people "hijack" their religion all day long. That creates its own set of problems. Let's face it, the number of people at various "not in our name, you don't represent Islam" rallies is a mere fraction of those who rally for death and murder in Islam's name across the world.
I wish it weren't so. I wish your relatives the best, I really do. But there's a long road ahead and they are, sadly, VERY much in the minority concerning their interpretation of the Muslim faith.
1) No, it was on-topic. My response to 2) will explain why.
2) I highly doubt that, were it a quote from Torah, or Bible, or Bhagavad Gita, or Talmud, or from any other religious source or chant or scripture, anyone would have been "offended" or even worried about giving offense. Then why for a Muslim scripture quote was it removed? The answer is fairly obvious, they are deathly afraid of even risking that some cleric somewhere will raise a fuss and cause rioting or worse over the "offense" to Islam that someone might have stuck a Koranic quotation inside a song that got into a video game. And THAT, my willfully ignorant and gullible friend, directly relates to the numerous previous examples in which the followers of the supposed "religion of peace" have done precisely as feared.
Mohammed... well, you know about him. :P
Jesus, when the mob came for him, surrendered and said "do as you will."
Buddha preached peace after giving up the war he had been trained for and seeking enlightenment.
Joseph Smith, when the mob came for him, pulled a gun someone had smuggled him and went down shooting. To the Mormons, he "died a martyr's death." Whether you call him a martyr or not, he certainly didn't go down peacefully.
Krishna had his whole army fight for him, "personally" refused to raise a weapon, but DID serve as a warlord's charioteer (Bhagavad Gita). Interestingly, he was charioteer for the side fighting AGAINST his own army.
And for L. Ron Hubbard... do a quick search on "Fair Game" policy and "Auditing Process R2-45" (which, paraphrased, is "shoot them with a colt 45"). Hubbard ordered this personally on at least five different occasions including March 6, 1968 when he ordered 12 people to be killed.
Buddha says I should forgive you, and remind you that two wrongs don't make a right.