Two loving, devoted people want to get married and spend their whole life together, but happen to not be of the same gender: "No! you'll destroy the insitution of marriage!!!!" Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie want to get married: "Okie dokie, Mr. Jackson!"
Just to be the devil's advocate, wouldn't eliminating the _no-fault_ divorce be a better way to protect marriage?
I mean, they want to change the consitution to talk about marriage, but thats the ONLY thing they want to say?? One man and one woman? You trivialize marriage even further if you do that. "We want to protect the initution of marriage to ensure that everyone has compatible genitalia". What a relief, I can sleep safer now. Thanks George. You would think that these people would be more concerned that you can usually just arbitrarily dump your spouse every couple of years for someone younger if they were so dedicated about protecting the insitution of marriage.
Oh and lets come back to earth for one second and talk about poligamy. The gay person is a biological fact (and it's not just people either). However, the woman who doesn't mind that her husband (if she loves him) nails some other woman every other night, is not. Laws against poligamy protect women, because you know men would try to get away with it, if they could. That is what you call a real theat to marriage. What is protected by laws against gay marriage? Nothing, execpt maybe the sensibilities of insecure bible-beaters.
Not even the republicans have a good argument against gay marriage, they just talk about what it will lead to (beastiality, poligamy). Thats like saying Evangelical Christians shouldn't be allowed to spank their kids because it will inevitably lead to an epidemic of children being beaten to death by their parents.
I have a real question for George: Why, with everything else that's going on in the world do you worry so much about what gay people do? Do you find yourself fixated on the activities of homosexuals often, even though you might try to think about other things instead? Is it just disgust you feel or is there a certain fascination you maybe just aren't admitting to yourself? Have you talked to a therapist about it, and if so what did he say?
Or a better one: Since this has nothing to do with protecting marriage and everything to do with making sure religious people don't have to deal with the fact that God makes gay people gay, why not just come right out and say it, if it's such a great thing? Either God is wrong or you are George, which is it?
Oh, but here is the best one yet: If you really (strictly for the sake of argument) want to defend marriage why not make the amendment "Every couple that marries shall be legally bound to love, honor and charish their spouse for as long as they both shall live"?
It's sad that some people looked at what happened in San Fransico and just saw two fags or dykes getting married. I saw people who really cared about each other. I saw families being made. It's hard for me to imagine how thats a bad thing.
Uhhh... not quite sure "impressive" is the best word to describe the accuracy of a paintball gun. Maybe I'm quibling but I think I would say "notably better than picking the ball up by hand and chucking it at someone" instead.
Seriously, airsoft is a nice alternative to paintball provided you have seriously honest people to play with. No mess, no broken balls in your barrel, super cheap ammo, no blown O-rings and no leaky hoses. Of course, they might break as much as paintball guns do, but it didn't happen when I played (once). Most times, though, you have to shoot people multiple times at close range until they say "ow!" and can't pretend you didn't hit them anymore.
And YES, the japanese ones are EXTREMELY realistic looking. In many places walking outside your apartment with one would probably get you shot by the police.
While they are cool, I don't why people build up these big collections of them. I know a couple people who have like a half dozen. I'm not a huge gun nut, but I think just taking the money for the five extras and buying a real AR-15 would be much cooler.
Lets not be silly here. The FCC crackdown was just a politcal showpiece. The standards for what is allowed over the airwaves have steadily grown more liberal ever since they were enacted- despite numerous crackdowns such as this along the way.
Even if the broadcast media went back to a 1950 'standard of decency' there are plenty of other mediums that are virtually uncensored (pay cable) and even totally uncensored (the internet). I think free speech is safer than it ever was. Think about it: instantaneous, worldwide communication is now available to just about anyone. Plus, it's very hard to stop- plenty of countries are trying, with very mixed success.
People int his country have often tried to restrict free speech in the past. It is safe to say that this is harder now than at any time in human history. Sometimes people think they are being censored just because no one listens to them. Free speech also means that if you think someone is a total crackpot, you don't have to put them on your TV show. You can still say anything you want to, but it doesn't mean anyone has an obligation to listen.
Michael Moore -- the left wing version of Rush Limbaugh
Amen. Remember the old saying- 'My mind is already made up- please don't confuse me with the facts'?
I don't trust anyone for whom politics is such an exhilerating experience. The more I find out about all of the tangled messes in our world, the more excruciating our choices seem. It must be nice feeling so self-rightous. I just can't anymore.
Not that I know anything about this, but for at least a while, quake3 could be played online without a valid key. You would simply redirect connections to the authentication server back to localhost while running your own, personal authentication service. The real pain was that something in the hacked-up setup would always get broken every time a patch was released, so that would count you out of online play anyway.
Believe me, everything can get cracked, and if it's not in the client, then it's the server. It's always going to be a cat-and-mouse game. But, basically the copy protection works anyway, at least for me, because unless you're very very poor, you'll probably decide it's worth the money to have a version of a good game that actually WORKS consistently (Yes I baught quake3), however, I think that it's less true for non-online games where one doesn't care about patches of expansion packs.
They like the propriatary format more than anything.
Steve Jobs even said the other day in the WSJ that Apple hardly makes any money on the actual iTunes service (but sells a lot of high-margin iPods), and that he doesn't understand how anyone (like napster) without a side business could either.
You can cry about the poor businesses all you want, but I don't think you will hear anyone who shops there complain. A lot of working families are a heck of a lot better off because discount stores like walmart help them stretch their dollars farther. Forcing someone else to pay more than is necessary for something so someone else can make more isn't necessarily a noble thing. These cheaper goods mean a lower cost of living for a great many people and thats a big benefit you can't ignore.
They obviously forgot about MY patent (#101,936,345)
"A method of maximizing the returns of any large-scale finanical-enrichment scheme which utilizes courtroom-based justice-mediated settlements as a method for increasing cash flow, increasing the possiblities for success through the aquisition of patents for the most extremely fundamental and obvious aspects of every-day existence."
Parents don't punish children they give them time-outs (hey folks, it doesn't work).
Here's the deal on hitting kids: It works, it works great. They do exactly what you want them to do. It's effective.
Just remember you teach them that too. They learn real quickly that if some kid at school won't shut up one good smack might change his mind. You teach your kids that a thrown blow ends unwanted behavior fast.
Want to make your kids violent? Hit them. The more you do it the more likely they are to learn some very bad habits.
Libertarians are the only political group with a consistent message -- freedom from the tyranny of government.
Their consistent message seems to be a big immature temper tantrum to me. People need to realize that governments do certain things much better than the private sector and that rich people shouldn't bite the hand that fucking feeds them. An educated population, a stable and efficient financial system, a solid and reliable infrustructure, relatively safe streets- how the hell could you get rich without all of this?
There are still a lot of places in the world were the only way to get rich is to steal from others and kill anyone who tries to stop you. People who think they aren't being rewarded enough for their hard work and inteligence should try going somewhere where the world where the only thing that is rewarded is ruthlessness. Watch how long they manage to stay rich there.
There are lots of places in the world where you can pay lower taxes. Just remember, whereever you go you're going to have someone with a lot of guns asking you for money and not taking no for an answer. I personally think you could do far worse than Uncle Sam. The legally codified "ownership" of everything you have is made possible by this government, so give the tynanny rap a rest.
Exactly. If you are willing to work hard and are not a total moron, you will get a job. There is no degree you can get in the world that will let you no nothing and still get paid.
If you have been working for a while and get a Ph. D. it looks far better. The best situation is where your company requests that you get an advanced degree. It is a big complement that you should talk up. Education and expierience should complement each other. Your degree is simply a tool. Your hard work every day is what you really get paid for.
However, it doesn't necessarily follow that all derivative trading is "stupefyingly complex"
You are right, but then it isn't true either that options can't introduce substantial financial risk as well, which that quote seemed to ignore.
This is one of the reasons that make them attractive as financial instruments.
And terrible as assets. If you didn't really know what your assets were worth, how the hell would you know what kind of situtation you were in?
Others see the very same pile as an opportunity.
Like Enron.
If there is no risk, it's not an investment.
It's the best kind of investment.
True, you are unlikely to find an attactive investment without some percieved risk, but that doesn't mean you can't find one with little real risk. There's an old line that investing is like a poker game, if you don't know who the sucker is, it's you. Forunately, there are plenty of them. You just have to stop trying to read people's minds and be rational.
Risk and reward are not always correlated. Business schools still teach otherwise and it is loony. Markets, even large ones are NOT always efficient. Doesn't anyone else find a theory that relies on people always being so rational and logical pretty silly?
What he was talking about was not risk management however. He had absolutely no intention of even holding SCO's stock. He wanted to make money by watching SCO's stock go into the toilet. God bless him for it too, I just think it's risky for the reasons above.
By the way, since we're quoting people, Warren Buffet, the biggest player in some of the biggest and most sucessful insurance companies in the world- and who knows a thing or two about risk management, called options "financial weapons of mass destruction" in his latest annual report and detailed his plans to get out of the options business as fast as he posibly can. Read all about it at BerkshireHathaway's website.
To highlight the problem, he has no idea how long it will take for him to even be able to get out of it. The way options are used for risk management has led to arrangements that are stupifyingly complex. It's kind of like this- would you trust a billion line program not to crash? Of course not because you would never, realistically speaking, be able to figure it all out.
Look at LTCM and Enrons adventures with options. They all thaught they were pretty smart too. Because options deal with hypothetical situations, valuing them is extremely difficult. You have many situtations in which people have widely differing valuations and this can cause chaos for accounting. Fancy formulas can only take you so far. The more complex things get, the more chances there are for things to break.
This is a man with as close to an impeccable record as it gets and he wouldn't lose any sleep if options were outlawed. Beware, because some very savy people look at options and see a great big steaming pile of financial risk.
Everyone shoudl put an option-driven perfect-storm-style financial meltdown on their list of possible 21st century catastrophies.
Well, but the fact of the matter is that if you short a stock and the stock price goes up instead, you lose that much money per share. However, If you buy a put option and the price never goes low enough to excercise it, it is worthless when the time period is up. It also has to fall more than the cost of the option in order for you to make money. You don't put your life savings in a put option. In its most basic form, it's a high-risk, high-reward all or nothing bet. Kind of like buying SCO's stock right now;)
Personally, I'd avoid BOTH of them (in addtion to SCO's fscking stock). See, it isn't enough to be right, you also have to be right within a certain time period. With a normal long-buy, you can have a stock fall for years before finally going through the roof. Waiting until the tide turns your way is not a luxury you would have with these two. If you short a stock you can theoretically lose an infinite amount of money. If the stock more than doubles, not only have you lost your whole initial investment, but you are now in debt. It doesn't matter if the stock goes to $.01 a year from now, if the broker thinks you might not have the cash to return his stock if it goes up any more, he can ask for it back. You will be forced to buy back the stock at whatever price it happens to be at. You can have a perfect prediction long term and still be fscked. Thats why you never sell somebody else's stock.
Sound far-fetched? Imagine you baught SCO's stock at $.60 a while back (it's at $10 now). Sure, it's a shitty, two-bit company that's going to zero, and it probably sounded like a good idea at the time. But unfortunately, as we have seen, it isn't going to take a staight line there with this lawsuit bull and few people have pockets THAT deep. You would have almost certainly lost your shirt by now. Oh and by the way, you don't get unlimited profit potential like you get with a regular stock purchase either. For your unlimited loss risk you can expect to make absolutely no more than double.
Stay far far away from this stuff kids. Your plain old ordinary stock purchase offers endless profit potential, limited loss, and the ability hold on to the stock as long or as little as you want in order to get a good price. That's how the really rich get that way and stay that way, they find a good piece of a business and hold on. Shorts and Puts are not investments. Believe me, it's no harder to pick a good long stock than it is a short one. They're a gamble, and very very few people make money and actually keep it gambling. Sure, you can make tons of money, but only to have it all come tumbling down, Enron or LTCM style, some fateful day.
I had to cross off diamonds too. I wanted to get my fiance something that was truely timeless and precious, something that could never be made in a lab. Boy oh boy, it wasn't cheap, but finally found the perfect ring.
This doesn't mean they expect to lose. People sell stock all the time to do things like buy a house or invest elsewhere even if the stock is doing well. They could trying to diversify, anyone smart does so at least to some degree, especially if they have a family.
Yahoo lists 82k insider shares sold in the last 6 months. This is only 1.4 percent of insider holdings. Even if the number is much higher this is not a huge exodus yet. In fact it shows a bit of confidence. After all, this was a $2 stock in January.
This could be taken as SCO's officers hedging their bets, however its hard to say because no matter how lousy SCO's situation might be if it loses, these people may be already diversified well enough with outside holdings to risk it all. It's tough to say is really what this means. The CEO's cash salary was only $82k last year. We all know a CEO can't possibly live on that little. Maybe he needed a Bentley. Hard to say.
Now if they were buying shares, that would say a lot more about the case. People sell for many reasons, but there is only one reason to buy: you think the stock is going to go up and stay up until the next selling period for insiders.
I wonder what the various linux companies are doing?
Many of the framers of the constiution were in favor of the electorial college because it prevented a more direct democracy based strictly on the popular vote.
Remember, it isn't just a point system, electors were (and still technically are) the people that one would elect to do the 'real' voting for a particular candidate. In the past, electors could and have have voted against the will of the people in their states, though it has been extremely rare and even then hasn't really swayed an election.
Listen up guys: the founding fathers feared that, if given the direct (aka popular) vote, the people might do something 'silly' like socialize or redistribute the nations land and wealth (remember the initial property ownership requirements as well?). Electors were supposed to be educated gentlemen who would know better and thus would not allow people to elect despots who would undermine democracy (as they understood it).
Remember folks, America was the first western democracy, but it sure as hell didn't start off as modern as it is today. What you are talking about is more of a modern argument for not abolishing the electoral college. It is also suspiciously slanted, given when I started hearing it (Nov. 2000), and also given who rural voters tend to vote for.
It's just a funny little anachronism, which we've MAYBE kept around for such reasons- but remember folks, when this country was founded, it was nearly ALL farmers. The idea that most of the people would someday be clustered in industrialized cities was something very few people would have been worrying about. Most people, like Thomas Jefferson saw the vastness of America and saw a nation of small, self sufficient farmers.
Establishing the rights of property owners was clearly an issue that would have overwhelmed any concern such as that. But I'm not bashing America by any means. In 1795, with the exception of slavery, this was a much more free country than many are today. Make no mistake though, it would be revisonist to see the electorial college any other way. Just my two American History 101 cents.
Since I've ADD, I think I've gotten to be an expert on motivation without really trying. I'd obsess over it. But so often I'd feel bad because it was so easy to forget all my plans and just do whatever.
The right motivation definitely made all the difference for me. It was about my values when it worked . I just had to decide the value of the kinds of things i found myself doing. When I started realizing all the missed oportunities I was creating by bouncing from thing to thing it straightened me out a bit. It was too easy to spend all afternoon playing quake (I didnt have the attention span for command and conquer:) )or whatever instead of doing homework... but when I realized what those activities were costing me in terms of missed opportunity it stuck with me more, not just with school but also with 'fun' stuff. It was much more rewarding for me to have a hobby than a tv or computer game habit.
That being said, medication helps. You might be hesitant to use amphetamines but I feel far more focused than if i had a cup of coffee. In fact, the coffee sometimes hurts more than it helps. There's two parts to it, which im sure healthy people feel to a lesser degree too- part one is getting excited enough to do anything other than space out(caffine helps) but part two is actually getting something done efficiently- i.e. reading a book and not having my eye bounce from paragraph to paragraph or skip around like crazy (caffine doesn't help much at all.) When i read for fun I'd almost never be able to read a book from begining to end. I'd hop around until the whole thing got read. Needless to say, I didnt read much fiction.
To the guy asking the question, theres only one guaranteed way to focus on college that I know of, and I've tried a lot of different things. Quit right now and get a job (probably a lousy one, but not for a lack of trying). Pay all of your own bills. Work 40 a week and try to be independant. Don't take any help from your parents. Just try it. Work retail or landscaping or something entry level. Try to picture your future. It will suck. If you were having problems deciding what you wanted to go into, you'll have less. You'll get the old-man-now-what-the-hell-did-i-do-with-my-life-sy ndrome at 19. It's priceless. You'll want out of such a crappy life and you'll learn whats important- you'll think a lot less of playing quake instead of studying.
It will light a fire under you. Look around in class and look whos always there, sitting in the front, arriving early and taking immaculate notes. You'll see a lot of thirty somethings and first-generation students, at least if you go to the right kind of school. You might have lived a comfortable middle-class existence up till now and you want to keep living it. Nothing wrong with that, but you can't forever, and some people never get a chance at all. The only risk is you'll never go back to school if you quit. Just make sure you have a plan for going back...loans whatever, savings. When you pay for it yourself you'll do better too.
Basically, life doesn't suck enough, or you haven't found a passion. It makes all the difference in the world. No mind tricks, just a nice reality check. You don't get a second chance at life so you better start deciding how to live it.
It's the only real thing that ever worked for me (my life sucking).
You should be automatically found a compliance and be forced to stand trial along with your murderous buddy.
I suppose that would go for attempted murder too. It would sure be nice to have a law like that pass... and then have someone break into my house and nearly kill me with my own gun.
Slashdot Mirror
What I want to know is how we got here:
Two loving, devoted people want to get married and spend their whole life together, but happen to not be of the same gender: "No! you'll destroy the insitution of marriage!!!!"
Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie want to get married: "Okie dokie, Mr. Jackson!"
Just to be the devil's advocate, wouldn't eliminating the _no-fault_ divorce be a better way to protect marriage? I mean, they want to change the consitution to talk about marriage, but thats the ONLY thing they want to say?? One man and one woman? You trivialize marriage even further if you do that. "We want to protect the initution of marriage to ensure that everyone has compatible genitalia". What a relief, I can sleep safer now. Thanks George. You would think that these people would be more concerned that you can usually just arbitrarily dump your spouse every couple of years for someone younger if they were so dedicated about protecting the insitution of marriage.
Oh and lets come back to earth for one second and talk about poligamy. The gay person is a biological fact (and it's not just people either). However, the woman who doesn't mind that her husband (if she loves him) nails some other woman every other night, is not. Laws against poligamy protect women, because you know men would try to get away with it, if they could. That is what you call a real theat to marriage. What is protected by laws against gay marriage? Nothing, execpt maybe the sensibilities of insecure bible-beaters.
Not even the republicans have a good argument against gay marriage, they just talk about what it will lead to (beastiality, poligamy). Thats like saying Evangelical Christians shouldn't be allowed to spank their kids because it will inevitably lead to an epidemic of children being beaten to death by their parents.
I have a real question for George: Why, with everything else that's going on in the world do you worry so much about what gay people do? Do you find yourself fixated on the activities of homosexuals often, even though you might try to think about other things instead? Is it just disgust you feel or is there a certain fascination you maybe just aren't admitting to yourself? Have you talked to a therapist about it, and if so what did he say?
Or a better one: Since this has nothing to do with protecting marriage and everything to do with making sure religious people don't have to deal with the fact that God makes gay people gay, why not just come right out and say it, if it's such a great thing? Either God is wrong or you are George, which is it?
Oh, but here is the best one yet: If you really (strictly for the sake of argument) want to defend marriage why not make the amendment "Every couple that marries shall be legally bound to love, honor and charish their spouse for as long as they both shall live"?
It's sad that some people looked at what happened in San Fransico and just saw two fags or dykes getting married. I saw people who really cared about each other. I saw families being made. It's hard for me to imagine how thats a bad thing.
While not as impressive as paintball accuracy
Uhhh... not quite sure "impressive" is the best word to describe the accuracy of a paintball gun. Maybe I'm quibling but I think I would say "notably better than picking the ball up by hand and chucking it at someone" instead.
Seriously, airsoft is a nice alternative to paintball provided you have seriously honest people to play with. No mess, no broken balls in your barrel, super cheap ammo, no blown O-rings and no leaky hoses. Of course, they might break as much as paintball guns do, but it didn't happen when I played (once). Most times, though, you have to shoot people multiple times at close range until they say "ow!" and can't pretend you didn't hit them anymore.
And YES, the japanese ones are EXTREMELY realistic looking. In many places walking outside your apartment with one would probably get you shot by the police.
While they are cool, I don't why people build up these big collections of them. I know a couple people who have like a half dozen. I'm not a huge gun nut, but I think just taking the money for the five extras and buying a real AR-15 would be much cooler.
Lets not be silly here. The FCC crackdown was just a politcal showpiece. The standards for what is allowed over the airwaves have steadily grown more liberal ever since they were enacted- despite numerous crackdowns such as this along the way.
Even if the broadcast media went back to a 1950 'standard of decency' there are plenty of other mediums that are virtually uncensored (pay cable) and even totally uncensored (the internet). I think free speech is safer than it ever was. Think about it: instantaneous, worldwide communication is now available to just about anyone. Plus, it's very hard to stop- plenty of countries are trying, with very mixed success.
People int his country have often tried to restrict free speech in the past. It is safe to say that this is harder now than at any time in human history. Sometimes people think they are being censored just because no one listens to them. Free speech also means that if you think someone is a total crackpot, you don't have to put them on your TV show. You can still say anything you want to, but it doesn't mean anyone has an obligation to listen.
Michael Moore -- the left wing version of Rush Limbaugh
Amen. Remember the old saying- 'My mind is already made up- please don't confuse me with the facts'?
I don't trust anyone for whom politics is such an exhilerating experience. The more I find out about all of the tangled messes in our world, the more excruciating our choices seem. It must be nice feeling so self-rightous. I just can't anymore.
Not that I know anything about this, but for at least a while, quake3 could be played online without a valid key. You would simply redirect connections to the authentication server back to localhost while running your own, personal authentication service. The real pain was that something in the hacked-up setup would always get broken every time a patch was released, so that would count you out of online play anyway.
Believe me, everything can get cracked, and if it's not in the client, then it's the server. It's always going to be a cat-and-mouse game. But, basically the copy protection works anyway, at least for me, because unless you're very very poor, you'll probably decide it's worth the money to have a version of a good game that actually WORKS consistently (Yes I baught quake3), however, I think that it's less true for non-online games where one doesn't care about patches of expansion packs.
They like the propriatary format more than anything.
Steve Jobs even said the other day in the WSJ that Apple hardly makes any money on the actual iTunes service (but sells a lot of high-margin iPods), and that he doesn't understand how anyone (like napster) without a side business could either.
You can cry about the poor businesses all you want, but I don't think you will hear anyone who shops there complain. A lot of working families are a heck of a lot better off because discount stores like walmart help them stretch their dollars farther. Forcing someone else to pay more than is necessary for something so someone else can make more isn't necessarily a noble thing. These cheaper goods mean a lower cost of living for a great many people and thats a big benefit you can't ignore.
They obviously forgot about MY patent (#101,936,345)
"A method of maximizing the returns of any large-scale finanical-enrichment scheme which utilizes courtroom-based justice-mediated settlements as a method for increasing cash flow, increasing the possiblities for success through the aquisition of patents for the most extremely fundamental and obvious aspects of every-day existence."
Nice try though.
Parents don't punish children they give them time-outs (hey folks, it doesn't work).
Here's the deal on hitting kids: It works, it works great. They do exactly what you want them to do. It's effective.
Just remember you teach them that too. They learn real quickly that if some kid at school won't shut up one good smack might change his mind. You teach your kids that a thrown blow ends unwanted behavior fast.
Want to make your kids violent? Hit them. The more you do it the more likely they are to learn some very bad habits.
Libertarians are the only political group with a consistent message -- freedom from the tyranny of government.
Their consistent message seems to be a big immature temper tantrum to me. People need to realize that governments do certain things much better than the private sector and that rich people shouldn't bite the hand that fucking feeds them. An educated population, a stable and efficient financial system, a solid and reliable infrustructure, relatively safe streets- how the hell could you get rich without all of this?
There are still a lot of places in the world were the only way to get rich is to steal from others and kill anyone who tries to stop you. People who think they aren't being rewarded enough for their hard work and inteligence should try going somewhere where the world where the only thing that is rewarded is ruthlessness. Watch how long they manage to stay rich there.
There are lots of places in the world where you can pay lower taxes. Just remember, whereever you go you're going to have someone with a lot of guns asking you for money and not taking no for an answer. I personally think you could do far worse than Uncle Sam. The legally codified "ownership" of everything you have is made possible by this government, so give the tynanny rap a rest.
Equally economically except for the the $24,000 price difference, of course :)
If I know Dell, their brilliant move will be making their's a hell of a lot cheaper without sacrificing quality- even if it is less sexy.
I'll take the ugly one, thanks. It's just a damn box that plays music anyway.
Exactly. If you are willing to work hard and are not a total moron, you will get a job. There is no degree you can get in the world that will let you no nothing and still get paid.
If you have been working for a while and get a Ph. D. it looks far better. The best situation is where your company requests that you get an advanced degree. It is a big complement that you should talk up. Education and expierience should complement each other. Your degree is simply a tool. Your hard work every day is what you really get paid for.
Yeah, I love that show...I thaught people would remember the line
using my legs like a sucker.
However, it doesn't necessarily follow that all derivative trading is "stupefyingly complex"
You are right, but then it isn't true either that options can't introduce substantial financial risk as well, which that quote seemed to ignore.
This is one of the reasons that make them attractive as financial instruments.
And terrible as assets. If you didn't really know what your assets were worth, how the hell would you know what kind of situtation you were in?
Others see the very same pile as an opportunity.
Like Enron.
If there is no risk, it's not an investment.
It's the best kind of investment.
True, you are unlikely to find an attactive investment without some percieved risk, but that doesn't mean you can't find one with little real risk. There's an old line that investing is like a poker game, if you don't know who the sucker is, it's you. Forunately, there are plenty of them. You just have to stop trying to read people's minds and be rational.
Risk and reward are not always correlated. Business schools still teach otherwise and it is loony. Markets, even large ones are NOT always efficient. Doesn't anyone else find a theory that relies on people always being so rational and logical pretty silly?
What he was talking about was not risk management however. He had absolutely no intention of even holding SCO's stock. He wanted to make money by watching SCO's stock go into the toilet. God bless him for it too, I just think it's risky for the reasons above.
By the way, since we're quoting people, Warren Buffet, the biggest player in some of the biggest and most sucessful insurance companies in the world- and who knows a thing or two about risk management, called options "financial weapons of mass destruction" in his latest annual report and detailed his plans to get out of the options business as fast as he posibly can. Read all about it at BerkshireHathaway's website.
To highlight the problem, he has no idea how long it will take for him to even be able to get out of it. The way options are used for risk management has led to arrangements that are stupifyingly complex. It's kind of like this- would you trust a billion line program not to crash? Of course not because you would never, realistically speaking, be able to figure it all out.
Look at LTCM and Enrons adventures with options. They all thaught they were pretty smart too. Because options deal with hypothetical situations, valuing them is extremely difficult. You have many situtations in which people have widely differing valuations and this can cause chaos for accounting. Fancy formulas can only take you so far. The more complex things get, the more chances there are for things to break.
This is a man with as close to an impeccable record as it gets and he wouldn't lose any sleep if options were outlawed. Beware, because some very savy people look at options and see a great big steaming pile of financial risk.
Everyone shoudl put an option-driven perfect-storm-style financial meltdown on their list of possible 21st century catastrophies.
Well, but the fact of the matter is that if you short a stock and the stock price goes up instead, you lose that much money per share. However, If you buy a put option and the price never goes low enough to excercise it, it is worthless when the time period is up. It also has to fall more than the cost of the option in order for you to make money. You don't put your life savings in a put option. In its most basic form, it's a high-risk, high-reward all or nothing bet. Kind of like buying SCO's stock right now ;)
Personally, I'd avoid BOTH of them (in addtion to SCO's fscking stock). See, it isn't enough to be right, you also have to be right within a certain time period. With a normal long-buy, you can have a stock fall for years before finally going through the roof. Waiting until the tide turns your way is not a luxury you would have with these two. If you short a stock you can theoretically lose an infinite amount of money. If the stock more than doubles, not only have you lost your whole initial investment, but you are now in debt. It doesn't matter if the stock goes to $.01 a year from now, if the broker thinks you might not have the cash to return his stock if it goes up any more, he can ask for it back. You will be forced to buy back the stock at whatever price it happens to be at. You can have a perfect prediction long term and still be fscked. Thats why you never sell somebody else's stock.
Sound far-fetched? Imagine you baught SCO's stock at $.60 a while back (it's at $10 now). Sure, it's a shitty, two-bit company that's going to zero, and it probably sounded like a good idea at the time. But unfortunately, as we have seen, it isn't going to take a staight line there with this lawsuit bull and few people have pockets THAT deep. You would have almost certainly lost your shirt by now. Oh and by the way, you don't get unlimited profit potential like you get with a regular stock purchase either. For your unlimited loss risk you can expect to make absolutely no more than double.
Stay far far away from this stuff kids. Your plain old ordinary stock purchase offers endless profit potential, limited loss, and the ability hold on to the stock as long or as little as you want in order to get a good price. That's how the really rich get that way and stay that way, they find a good piece of a business and hold on. Shorts and Puts are not investments. Believe me, it's no harder to pick a good long stock than it is a short one. They're a gamble, and very very few people make money and actually keep it gambling. Sure, you can make tons of money, but only to have it all come tumbling down, Enron or LTCM style, some fateful day.
Cashing in when your stock goes up 500% in 6 months = diversifying. What the hell country do you live in that this is hard to believe?
One good thing I can say after that though, is that you are definitely NOT a Karma Whore. Kudos for keeping it real dude.
I had to cross off diamonds too. I wanted to get my fiance something that was truely timeless and precious, something that could never be made in a lab. Boy oh boy, it wasn't cheap, but finally found the perfect ring.
.985 West-African Uranium.
7 ounces of glorious
This doesn't mean they expect to lose. People sell stock all the time to do things like buy a house or invest elsewhere even if the stock is doing well. They could trying to diversify, anyone smart does so at least to some degree, especially if they have a family.
Yahoo lists 82k insider shares sold in the last 6 months. This is only 1.4 percent of insider holdings. Even if the number is much higher this is not a huge exodus yet. In fact it shows a bit of confidence. After all, this was a $2 stock in January.
This could be taken as SCO's officers hedging their bets, however its hard to say because no matter how lousy SCO's situation might be if it loses, these people may be already diversified well enough with outside holdings to risk it all. It's tough to say is really what this means. The CEO's cash salary was only $82k last year. We all know a CEO can't possibly live on that little. Maybe he needed a Bentley. Hard to say.
Now if they were buying shares, that would say a lot more about the case. People sell for many reasons, but there is only one reason to buy: you think the stock is going to go up and stay up until the next selling period for insiders.
I wonder what the various linux companies are doing?
Oops I fed the troll...heh no one is going to know what the hell im talking about now that hes modded into the basement. My appologies.
Ummm actually...
Many of the framers of the constiution were in favor of the electorial college because it prevented a more direct democracy based strictly on the popular vote.
Remember, it isn't just a point system, electors were (and still technically are) the people that one would elect to do the 'real' voting for a particular candidate. In the past, electors could and have have voted against the will of the people in their states, though it has been extremely rare and even then hasn't really swayed an election.
Listen up guys: the founding fathers feared that, if given the direct (aka popular) vote, the people might do something 'silly' like socialize or redistribute the nations land and wealth (remember the initial property ownership requirements as well?). Electors were supposed to be educated gentlemen who would know better and thus would not allow people to elect despots who would undermine democracy (as they understood it).
Remember folks, America was the first western democracy, but it sure as hell didn't start off as modern as it is today. What you are talking about is more of a modern argument for not abolishing the electoral college. It is also suspiciously slanted, given when I started hearing it (Nov. 2000), and also given who rural voters tend to vote for.
It's just a funny little anachronism, which we've MAYBE kept around for such reasons- but remember folks, when this country was founded, it was nearly ALL farmers. The idea that most of the people would someday be clustered in industrialized cities was something very few people would have been worrying about. Most people, like Thomas Jefferson saw the vastness of America and saw a nation of small, self sufficient farmers.
Establishing the rights of property owners was clearly an issue that would have overwhelmed any concern such as that. But I'm not bashing America by any means. In 1795, with the exception of slavery, this was a much more free country than many are today. Make no mistake though, it would be revisonist to see the electorial college any other way. Just my two American History 101 cents.
Since I've ADD, I think I've gotten to be an expert on motivation without really trying. I'd obsess over it. But so often I'd feel bad because it was so easy to forget all my plans and just do whatever.
:) )or whatever instead of doing homework... but when I realized what those activities were costing me in terms of missed opportunity it stuck with me more, not just with school but also with 'fun' stuff. It was much more rewarding for me to have a hobby than a tv or computer game habit.
y ndrome at 19. It's priceless. You'll want out of such a crappy life and you'll learn whats important- you'll think a lot less of playing quake instead of studying.
The right motivation definitely made all the difference for me. It was about my values when it worked . I just had to decide the value of the kinds of things i found myself doing. When I started realizing all the missed oportunities I was creating by bouncing from thing to thing it straightened me out a bit. It was too easy to spend all afternoon playing quake (I didnt have the attention span for command and conquer
That being said, medication helps. You might be hesitant to use amphetamines but I feel far more focused than if i had a cup of coffee. In fact, the coffee sometimes hurts more than it helps. There's two parts to it, which im sure healthy people feel to a lesser degree too- part one is getting excited enough to do anything other than space out(caffine helps) but part two is actually getting something done efficiently- i.e. reading a book and not having my eye bounce from paragraph to paragraph or skip around like crazy (caffine doesn't help much at all.) When i read for fun I'd almost never be able to read a book from begining to end. I'd hop around until the whole thing got read. Needless to say, I didnt read much fiction.
To the guy asking the question, theres only one guaranteed way to focus on college that I know of, and I've tried a lot of different things. Quit right now and get a job (probably a lousy one, but not for a lack of trying). Pay all of your own bills. Work 40 a week and try to be independant. Don't take any help from your parents. Just try it. Work retail or landscaping or something entry level. Try to picture your future. It will suck. If you were having problems deciding what you wanted to go into, you'll have less. You'll get the old-man-now-what-the-hell-did-i-do-with-my-life-s
It will light a fire under you. Look around in class and look whos always there, sitting in the front, arriving early and taking immaculate notes. You'll see a lot of thirty somethings and first-generation students, at least if you go to the right kind of school. You might have lived a comfortable middle-class existence up till now and you want to keep living it. Nothing wrong with that, but you can't forever, and some people never get a chance at all. The only risk is you'll never go back to school if you quit. Just make sure you have a plan for going back...loans whatever, savings. When you pay for it yourself you'll do better too.
Basically, life doesn't suck enough, or you haven't found a passion. It makes all the difference in the world. No mind tricks, just a nice reality check. You don't get a second chance at life so you better start deciding how to live it.
It's the only real thing that ever worked for me (my life sucking).
You should be automatically found a compliance and be forced to stand trial along with your murderous buddy.
I suppose that would go for attempted murder too. It would sure be nice to have a law like that pass... and then have someone break into my house and nearly kill me with my own gun.
That would just be my luck.