The obvious question is "So what?" Apple right now could happily lose the touchscreen market entirely, and still be doing just fine with its laptops, iPods, iPhones, and iHippies.
More precisely, behold the power of geeks: We appear to have the power to decide which stocks will crash.
Think about it: 1. Short an otherwise good stock. 2. Have Google find an old article with news that would cause dumb investors to sell the stock. 3. Watch the price drop like a rock, as a few idiots sell causing limit sales to be triggered. 4. Sell back the stock to cover your short. 5. PROFIT! 6. ????
Seriously, one programmer at any news organization or trading house could probably make a mint like this.
No, the real reason that objects with mass have gravity is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushes down on them with his Noodly Appendages. Get it right!
The key to the difference in their foreign policies is the "(eventually)": For Obama, it's very clear that "eventually" means "within 16 months of taking office", whereas with McCain it appears that "eventually" means "as long as it takes for us to get what we want" (unclear what we're trying to get at this point). Obama's goal in Iraq is to get the troops out, McCain's goal in Iraq is to stay as long as necessary. That's a significant difference.
They don't. In large part because this is an issue that the geeks are winning on a political level, as demonstrated by all the states who now require voter-verifiable paper trails, the secretaries of state who have getting replaced, and some case law as well. As far as I can tell, they realize they are in trouble.
Well, there's always the theory that the 90% who have no clue will even out at roughly 45% on each side so that the election will be decided by the remaining 10%.
Unions don't need 100% participation to be effective: They just need a high enough participation that the workers who would walk out in the event of a strike cannot be easily replaced by scabs.
Look at it this way: What would happen to your employer if half the IT department was killed off in a plane crash? Yes, they could recover, but it would be exceedingly difficult. That's actually quite a similar effect to what would happen if half of the IT department walked out and refused to help from home.
A major difference in the USA is a mythology that says that anyone can pull themselves from rags to riches if they just try hard enough. And since people generally like to think they are above average, they don't want to give up their chance to be Andrew Carnegie to ensure that they don't end up working 80 hours a week for the equivalent of minimum wage.
In other words, Americans tend to prefer high-risk, high-reward over low-risk, medium-reward. This is in large part because the risk is often invisible: Thousands of parents think their 10-year-old son will be able to play basketball in the NBA, while only about 45 of those 10-year-olds will make it. The problem is that parents see the NBA stars all the time, they don't see the thousands who never made it to the NBA.
The tax acts as a correction to the negative externality of CO2 emissions. After that, the businesses affected have any options the market can produce. In other words, such a tax is the minimum amount of regulation available that still corrects the market failure that is necessarily involved when you're talking about pollution.
Requiring trading partners to have a similar tax works like this: If you want to export goods to the US, you have to have a tax of at least x% on carbon emissions. Since the US is the largest importer of goods at the moment, that puts the US in a strong position when it comes to dictating the terms. That would of course require trade negotiators that are more interested in protecting the environment than they are interested in lowering trade barriers, but it could be done.
It's definitely a simplification and generalization, because I'm not going to be able to fit the tons of books on the subject into the space of a/. post. Also, the generalizations are made to argue the point that polygamy and monogamy are both successful evolutionary strategies, hence both are present in the human genome.
Also note that this is strictly evolutionary stuff. Monogamy is great for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with perpetuating your genes.
No. It shouldn't have, because either strategy can lend itself to evolutionary success for men.
If you're a powerful man, polygamy is an excellent strategy. You want to be impregnating every woman you can get your hands on, and you can by force and/or intimidation (among other motivators). Genghis Khan is an exemplar of this (at least according to one study that something like 6% of the world's men are his descendants). With that many kids, you don't need to invest very much in making sure each kid survives long enough to reproduce.
If you're a powerless man, then your best strategy is monogamy: you aim to have one woman who you reproduce with, and devote lots of time and energy into making sure that those kids survive. This leads to the nerds who will love a woman forever and stick with her through sickness and health.
If you're somewhere in between on the power scale, then the strategy seems to be pretending monogamy while having at least one mistress on the side. The theory here is that you get the greater number of kids and genetic variation from having more partners, but a fallback position of the kids from your "monogamous" relationship. Hence middle-management types cheating on their wives.
Ok, so apparently people who are able to get themselves a well-paying job that has absolutely no requirement of doing any work are stupid. That's an inherent contradiction in your viewpoint.
A fundamental problem with private companies is that private companies' goals are often at exact cross purposes to their customers. In the case of financial management, an important factor here is that brokers and financial advisers are typically commissioned based on how much new investment money you let them manage, not on what returns you get. They have every reason to lie to you about how good the investment really is, while your goal as an investor is to get as much information on your investments as you possibly can in order to manage them intelligently.
Social Security was never intended to create the highest return on investment, it was aimed at setting a minimum retirement income higher than $0 so that elderly people weren't dying on the streets. That's a fundamentally different goal than maximizing your own portfolio. The current surplus in Social Security is invested in Treasury bonds in large part because anything else would be just asking for corruption in the management of that surplus (think about the prospect of the government employees managing an investment portfolio worth hundreds of billions of dollars).
How's this for a market-based solution: put a tax on activities (other than breathing) that cause CO2 output? This makes the extra costs involved in curbing CO2 output are now worth the price. And to deal with the international issue, you require trading partners to have a similar tax.
Those are the sort of mainstream proposals being floated for reducing CO2 output. The most shrill environmentalists don't speak for all Liberals, just like Ann Coulter does not speak for all Conservatives.
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Which is basically a form of command economy called socialism.
No it isn't: It's a form of command economy called fascism.
Hey, no making fun of furries! http://xkcd.com/471/
Enemies of the Republican Party?
Enemies of Richard Nixon?
The obvious question is "So what?" Apple right now could happily lose the touchscreen market entirely, and still be doing just fine with its laptops, iPods, iPhones, and iHippies.
More precisely, behold the power of geeks: We appear to have the power to decide which stocks will crash.
Think about it:
1. Short an otherwise good stock.
2. Have Google find an old article with news that would cause dumb investors to sell the stock.
3. Watch the price drop like a rock, as a few idiots sell causing limit sales to be triggered.
4. Sell back the stock to cover your short.
5. PROFIT!
6. ????
Seriously, one programmer at any news organization or trading house could probably make a mint like this.
No, the real reason that objects with mass have gravity is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushes down on them with his Noodly Appendages. Get it right!
What about the same think, only with Paul Verhoeven instead of Kubrick?
Well, if everything you say is true, then it will be.
The key to the difference in their foreign policies is the "(eventually)": For Obama, it's very clear that "eventually" means "within 16 months of taking office", whereas with McCain it appears that "eventually" means "as long as it takes for us to get what we want" (unclear what we're trying to get at this point). Obama's goal in Iraq is to get the troops out, McCain's goal in Iraq is to stay as long as necessary. That's a significant difference.
Surely they believe themselves unstoppable now.
They don't. In large part because this is an issue that the geeks are winning on a political level, as demonstrated by all the states who now require voter-verifiable paper trails, the secretaries of state who have getting replaced, and some case law as well. As far as I can tell, they realize they are in trouble.
And don't call me Shirley.
Well, there's always the theory that the 90% who have no clue will even out at roughly 45% on each side so that the election will be decided by the remaining 10%.
In other words:
In a free country, you can look up and watch satellites.
In Soviet Russia, satellites can look up and watch YOU.
Unions don't need 100% participation to be effective: They just need a high enough participation that the workers who would walk out in the event of a strike cannot be easily replaced by scabs.
Look at it this way: What would happen to your employer if half the IT department was killed off in a plane crash? Yes, they could recover, but it would be exceedingly difficult. That's actually quite a similar effect to what would happen if half of the IT department walked out and refused to help from home.
A major difference in the USA is a mythology that says that anyone can pull themselves from rags to riches if they just try hard enough. And since people generally like to think they are above average, they don't want to give up their chance to be Andrew Carnegie to ensure that they don't end up working 80 hours a week for the equivalent of minimum wage.
In other words, Americans tend to prefer high-risk, high-reward over low-risk, medium-reward. This is in large part because the risk is often invisible: Thousands of parents think their 10-year-old son will be able to play basketball in the NBA, while only about 45 of those 10-year-olds will make it. The problem is that parents see the NBA stars all the time, they don't see the thousands who never made it to the NBA.
... except the private company.
Which just happens to be owned by the building code commission chairs' brother-in-law.
No, queue the jokes. I'll process them as quickly as a feel like, thank you.
The tax acts as a correction to the negative externality of CO2 emissions. After that, the businesses affected have any options the market can produce. In other words, such a tax is the minimum amount of regulation available that still corrects the market failure that is necessarily involved when you're talking about pollution.
Requiring trading partners to have a similar tax works like this: If you want to export goods to the US, you have to have a tax of at least x% on carbon emissions. Since the US is the largest importer of goods at the moment, that puts the US in a strong position when it comes to dictating the terms. That would of course require trade negotiators that are more interested in protecting the environment than they are interested in lowering trade barriers, but it could be done.
It's definitely a simplification and generalization, because I'm not going to be able to fit the tons of books on the subject into the space of a /. post. Also, the generalizations are made to argue the point that polygamy and monogamy are both successful evolutionary strategies, hence both are present in the human genome.
Also note that this is strictly evolutionary stuff. Monogamy is great for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with perpetuating your genes.
No, I (like most /.ers) am at the powerless end of the scale.
No. It shouldn't have, because either strategy can lend itself to evolutionary success for men.
If you're a powerful man, polygamy is an excellent strategy. You want to be impregnating every woman you can get your hands on, and you can by force and/or intimidation (among other motivators). Genghis Khan is an exemplar of this (at least according to one study that something like 6% of the world's men are his descendants). With that many kids, you don't need to invest very much in making sure each kid survives long enough to reproduce.
If you're a powerless man, then your best strategy is monogamy: you aim to have one woman who you reproduce with, and devote lots of time and energy into making sure that those kids survive. This leads to the nerds who will love a woman forever and stick with her through sickness and health.
If you're somewhere in between on the power scale, then the strategy seems to be pretending monogamy while having at least one mistress on the side. The theory here is that you get the greater number of kids and genetic variation from having more partners, but a fallback position of the kids from your "monogamous" relationship. Hence middle-management types cheating on their wives.
Ok, so apparently people who are able to get themselves a well-paying job that has absolutely no requirement of doing any work are stupid. That's an inherent contradiction in your viewpoint.
A fundamental problem with private companies is that private companies' goals are often at exact cross purposes to their customers. In the case of financial management, an important factor here is that brokers and financial advisers are typically commissioned based on how much new investment money you let them manage, not on what returns you get. They have every reason to lie to you about how good the investment really is, while your goal as an investor is to get as much information on your investments as you possibly can in order to manage them intelligently.
Social Security was never intended to create the highest return on investment, it was aimed at setting a minimum retirement income higher than $0 so that elderly people weren't dying on the streets. That's a fundamentally different goal than maximizing your own portfolio. The current surplus in Social Security is invested in Treasury bonds in large part because anything else would be just asking for corruption in the management of that surplus (think about the prospect of the government employees managing an investment portfolio worth hundreds of billions of dollars).
How's this for a market-based solution: put a tax on activities (other than breathing) that cause CO2 output? This makes the extra costs involved in curbing CO2 output are now worth the price. And to deal with the international issue, you require trading partners to have a similar tax.
Those are the sort of mainstream proposals being floated for reducing CO2 output. The most shrill environmentalists don't speak for all Liberals, just like Ann Coulter does not speak for all Conservatives.
Government employees have, on average, lower IQs and less motivation to get anything accomplished than private sector employees.
[Citation needed]
The sun has discovered the best acne medication in the universe.
And this leads to Diogenes' Law of Taxation: The more someone should be taxed, the more power they have to avoid being taxed.