All currencies are based on trust (that others will accept it). State backed currencies and financial institutions are trusted because the state has real power, it can force anyone in its jurisdiction to accept its currency, and only its currency. Ignoring speculators, "ordinary people" are unlikely to exchange state backed currency for something like BC, they are well aware the state can shut them down on a political whim.
Here in Oz we sold half of our state owned telephone company and introduced competition, the half they kept has control of the wholesale network. Telco's were split into wholesale and retail companies, wholesale prices were regulated. Wholesale companies have a "universal service" obligation, meaning they must supply and maintain communications infrastructure to remote areas at the same price they are supplied to everyone else. Retailers cannot charge more in remote areas but they have no obligation to cover them.
The (very successful) public stock float was a huge story here, many ordinary Aussies (including myself) bought into the generous small investor share packages by filling in a form at the post office, most of them doubled/tripled their money in a year or so. The phone network itself is a "natural monopoly" and is best managed as public infrastructure, ours is in the process of a major national upgrade and all the politics that goes with giving private companies tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to build and operate a "natural monopoly".
Note the universal service obligation was a central part of the government telco's mandate decades before it was privatised in the early 90's. Voters in general knew that the government telco took the universal service obligation seriously and did a reasonable job providing service in the bush, they were not going to let private owners quietly shirk that obligation.
That's a good point, however a bank is not a normal business, more like a public utility. At the end of the day every form of trade ever invented needs rules to exist, even barter requires property law. In fact that's what the term "economic market" means - a set of rules governing trade.
It's also an Aussie thing for both credit and debit cards. Electronically shifting money from my account to an account in a different bank takes at least a day to "process". Cheques take three business days to "clear". ATM machines charge $2-3 per transaction.
How the fuck are the cocksucker shitstains at Forbes detecting that I am running AdBlocker, and how can the motherfucking logic be defeated?
This^ is the reason for all the Ethan/Forbes hate, narcissistic nerds absolutely hate somebody who can slam the door shut on their hand crafted, ad-free, browser. Especially when that "somebody" is the marketing department of a mainstream financial rag.
The comments have been skeptical and informative (eg: "star wars" was not mentioned in the paper). I haven't read TFA, it's from the Telegraph so it's very doubtful it's an accurate report.
Government grants to institutions + the money available to speculators like Goldman Sachs through trading idiotic carbon credit schemes
And in the other corner we have the most powerful economic force on the planet, the fossil fuel industry, can anyone even think of another industry that can bring a superpower's military machine to it's knees?
However, political/economic muscle will never let the facts get in their way, so why adopt them? Forget political/financial arguments, they are aimed at your emotions and as such only have a 50/50 chance of being right. Find out HOW the scientists know what they claim to know.
BTW: Government grants to institutions have very little effect on the conclusions of researchers. If they did, the science would change whenever the government changed. (Hint:it doesn't).
[climatology] is yet to make a successful prediction.
1. Polar amplification.
2. Stratospheric cooling
You now have two well known examples of large scale natural phenomena first observed in climate models, there are many more, google is your friend, my community service is done.
I dumped steam not long after installing it a few years ago. Why game makers need a pile of buggy spyware to sell their games I don't know, but if it is exclusive to steam I ain't buying it. I strongly prefer the freemium model used in games like world of tanks. Those guys have received ~$1000 from my "wife" and I since we started playing 4-5 years ago.
I'm sure that some people want to connect their door knobs and white goods to the internet, I'm also sure they are a tiny minority within the general population. Way back in the 90's a friend on mine worked on a fluro lighting system for supermarkets that could be used to change shelf price displays, great idea, brilliant engineering, but it turns out college students with a pen are cheaper.
You don't use sniffer dogs at airports? They use them here in Oz all the time, not just for explosives, eg: there's a beagle at Hobart airport trained to sniff out apples in luggage (quarantine rules).
but the funding and resources are still among the best in the world
The US is a large wealthy country who often do things that are at odds with what their government is trying to accomplish, for example during the GWB era the US was the funding source for roughly 50% of all climate science on the planet (largely due to the cost of earth facing satellites). The vast bulk of that research was loudly contradicting everything the Bush administration said and did about AGW. Try as they did, they could not cut off the bulk of the funding or bully the scientists into silence.
The thing is, politicians are mainly sourced from the legal profession. Nothing wrong with the liberal arts except it teaches lawyers to prosecute/defend a POV despite the evidence, rather than because of it. This is an anathema to a scientific mind, but it seems to be the norm for a legal/political one.
Science reporting has always been crap. As a child in the 60's I used to go to the library with my parents where I read "science" books that talked about a jungles on Venus and canals on Mars. Walk into any newsagents, the science section in the magazine stand is overflowing with physics and ufo's. Politics doesn't change the behaviour it just changes the subject, open a conservative newspaper and it will be full of anti-science wacko's denying AGW, open a lefty rag and it will be full of anti-science wackos complaining about frankenfood.
The internet has continued the tradition of using scientifically illiterate people to report on science, however for those who are scientifically literate the internet has made it much easier to bypass the media and go straight to the scientists work.
The AC is just plain old wrong. You cannot sublet the entire property in Oz without the owner's consent. However the number of rooms you rent to third parties (flatmates, paying guests, desperate relatives) is none of their business. OTOH the tax office will be interested in paying guests that book a stay via the internet. At the end of the day the overall intent of the law is quite simple, whoever's name is on the lease is responsible for what happens on and to the property, doesn't matter what agreements they make with anybody else, bankruptcy is the only way to absolve themselves of that contractual responsibility. Something to ponder if you're thinking about signing on to airbnb over the holidays.
Where do you live? - I have never seen a lease that does not forbid subletting. I doubt any of this is about the owners "getting a cut", as an Aussie landlord I would be especially concerned about the effect of subletting on my insurance policy. If the place is trashed will I don't want to be personally chasing some penniless college students with the bill. Accidents and drunken parties happen every second of the day, I want my insurance company to organise and pay for any repairs with the minimum amount of paperwork and haggling.
Aside for being one of the greatest scientific mind to have ever lived, Newton was also a respected theologian and closet alchemist. Most of his writings are about philosophy and religion (eg: he wrote almost a million words on the numerology of 666). Nobody remembers him for his eccentric philosophical/religious speculation, we remember him for his scientific and mathematical contributions.
This is a terrible example. The scientific method is entirely unnecessary to decide whether to step off of a tall building. People knew not do do that before the scientific method was codified.
"Science" is a branch of philosophy, natural philosophy to be precise. The "scientific method" is a process. Refusing to jump off a building is common-sense, the scientific method is formalised common-sense. They are very much the same thing at a philosophical level.
As for TFA, any competent physicists/cosmologist should be able to rattle off a handful of completely different theories that predict the same result (eg: string theory and the standard model). Until such time that one of them correctly predicts something that the others don't they are all equally valid
Slashdot Mirror
"Anarchy is mental masterbation for the middle classes." - Johnny Rotten.
At least my credit card works just fine
All currencies are based on trust (that others will accept it). State backed currencies and financial institutions are trusted because the state has real power, it can force anyone in its jurisdiction to accept its currency, and only its currency. Ignoring speculators, "ordinary people" are unlikely to exchange state backed currency for something like BC, they are well aware the state can shut them down on a political whim.
Here in Oz we sold half of our state owned telephone company and introduced competition, the half they kept has control of the wholesale network. Telco's were split into wholesale and retail companies, wholesale prices were regulated. Wholesale companies have a "universal service" obligation, meaning they must supply and maintain communications infrastructure to remote areas at the same price they are supplied to everyone else. Retailers cannot charge more in remote areas but they have no obligation to cover them.
The (very successful) public stock float was a huge story here, many ordinary Aussies (including myself) bought into the generous small investor share packages by filling in a form at the post office, most of them doubled/tripled their money in a year or so. The phone network itself is a "natural monopoly" and is best managed as public infrastructure, ours is in the process of a major national upgrade and all the politics that goes with giving private companies tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to build and operate a "natural monopoly".
Note the universal service obligation was a central part of the government telco's mandate decades before it was privatised in the early 90's. Voters in general knew that the government telco took the universal service obligation seriously and did a reasonable job providing service in the bush, they were not going to let private owners quietly shirk that obligation.
That's a good point, however a bank is not a normal business, more like a public utility. At the end of the day every form of trade ever invented needs rules to exist, even barter requires property law. In fact that's what the term "economic market" means - a set of rules governing trade.
It's also an Aussie thing for both credit and debit cards. Electronically shifting money from my account to an account in a different bank takes at least a day to "process". Cheques take three business days to "clear". ATM machines charge $2-3 per transaction.
Businesses that don't pass on their costs to the customer are called "charities".
How the fuck are the cocksucker shitstains at Forbes detecting that I am running AdBlocker, and how can the motherfucking logic be defeated?
This^ is the reason for all the Ethan/Forbes hate, narcissistic nerds absolutely hate somebody who can slam the door shut on their hand crafted, ad-free, browser. Especially when that "somebody" is the marketing department of a mainstream financial rag.
The comments have been skeptical and informative (eg: "star wars" was not mentioned in the paper). I haven't read TFA, it's from the Telegraph so it's very doubtful it's an accurate report.
Government grants to institutions + the money available to speculators like Goldman Sachs through trading idiotic carbon credit schemes
And in the other corner we have the most powerful economic force on the planet, the fossil fuel industry, can anyone even think of another industry that can bring a superpower's military machine to it's knees?
However, political/economic muscle will never let the facts get in their way, so why adopt them? Forget political/financial arguments, they are aimed at your emotions and as such only have a 50/50 chance of being right. Find out HOW the scientists know what they claim to know.
BTW: Government grants to institutions have very little effect on the conclusions of researchers. If they did, the science would change whenever the government changed. (Hint:it doesn't).
[climatology] is yet to make a successful prediction.
1. Polar amplification.
2. Stratospheric cooling
You now have two well known examples of large scale natural phenomena first observed in climate models, there are many more, google is your friend, my community service is done.
I dumped steam not long after installing it a few years ago. Why game makers need a pile of buggy spyware to sell their games I don't know, but if it is exclusive to steam I ain't buying it. I strongly prefer the freemium model used in games like world of tanks. Those guys have received ~$1000 from my "wife" and I since we started playing 4-5 years ago.
I'm sure that some people want to connect their door knobs and white goods to the internet, I'm also sure they are a tiny minority within the general population. Way back in the 90's a friend on mine worked on a fluro lighting system for supermarkets that could be used to change shelf price displays, great idea, brilliant engineering, but it turns out college students with a pen are cheaper.
You don't use sniffer dogs at airports? They use them here in Oz all the time, not just for explosives, eg: there's a beagle at Hobart airport trained to sniff out apples in luggage (quarantine rules).
wanker
There are more and more voices demanding the UN move its HQ to some more neutral place, like Austria, Sweden or Switzerland.
Jerusalem - seems a suitable place to enshrine endless bickering.
You haven't read the fine print on an airline ticket have you?
but the funding and resources are still among the best in the world
The US is a large wealthy country who often do things that are at odds with what their government is trying to accomplish, for example during the GWB era the US was the funding source for roughly 50% of all climate science on the planet (largely due to the cost of earth facing satellites). The vast bulk of that research was loudly contradicting everything the Bush administration said and did about AGW. Try as they did, they could not cut off the bulk of the funding or bully the scientists into silence.
The thing is, politicians are mainly sourced from the legal profession. Nothing wrong with the liberal arts except it teaches lawyers to prosecute/defend a POV despite the evidence, rather than because of it. This is an anathema to a scientific mind, but it seems to be the norm for a legal/political one.
Science reporting has always been crap. As a child in the 60's I used to go to the library with my parents where I read "science" books that talked about a jungles on Venus and canals on Mars. Walk into any newsagents, the science section in the magazine stand is overflowing with physics and ufo's. Politics doesn't change the behaviour it just changes the subject, open a conservative newspaper and it will be full of anti-science wacko's denying AGW, open a lefty rag and it will be full of anti-science wackos complaining about frankenfood.
The internet has continued the tradition of using scientifically illiterate people to report on science, however for those who are scientifically literate the internet has made it much easier to bypass the media and go straight to the scientists work.
without proof, how would they plan on doing that?
Why risk the consequences of truth, when there are none for a lie.
They didn't predict that a supernova was about to happen
...did anyone claim that?
Time wounds all heels.
The AC is just plain old wrong. You cannot sublet the entire property in Oz without the owner's consent. However the number of rooms you rent to third parties (flatmates, paying guests, desperate relatives) is none of their business. OTOH the tax office will be interested in paying guests that book a stay via the internet. At the end of the day the overall intent of the law is quite simple, whoever's name is on the lease is responsible for what happens on and to the property, doesn't matter what agreements they make with anybody else, bankruptcy is the only way to absolve themselves of that contractual responsibility. Something to ponder if you're thinking about signing on to airbnb over the holidays.
Where do you live? - I have never seen a lease that does not forbid subletting. I doubt any of this is about the owners "getting a cut", as an Aussie landlord I would be especially concerned about the effect of subletting on my insurance policy. If the place is trashed will I don't want to be personally chasing some penniless college students with the bill. Accidents and drunken parties happen every second of the day, I want my insurance company to organise and pay for any repairs with the minimum amount of paperwork and haggling.
Aside for being one of the greatest scientific mind to have ever lived, Newton was also a respected theologian and closet alchemist. Most of his writings are about philosophy and religion (eg: he wrote almost a million words on the numerology of 666). Nobody remembers him for his eccentric philosophical/religious speculation, we remember him for his scientific and mathematical contributions.
This is a terrible example. The scientific method is entirely unnecessary to decide whether to step off of a tall building. People knew not do do that before the scientific method was codified.
"Science" is a branch of philosophy, natural philosophy to be precise. The "scientific method" is a process. Refusing to jump off a building is common-sense, the scientific method is formalised common-sense. They are very much the same thing at a philosophical level.
As for TFA, any competent physicists/cosmologist should be able to rattle off a handful of completely different theories that predict the same result (eg: string theory and the standard model). Until such time that one of them correctly predicts something that the others don't they are all equally valid