The money of a deposit can not be simultaneously available to the depositor and a borrower
Yes it can, this is the "statistics and psychology" part of banking. The reason it can be available to both, is that people don't actually all take all of what's available to them at the same time.
If the money is still available to the depositors then the money the borrower has is not the deposited money
Dollars are dollars, and whether the money I take out of my bank account is the same money that I put in is not a question that makes sense. It's not like putting bills in a safety box, and you can't say "this is the original money" or "that is the newly created money".
If you take the view that they are not creating new money then they are lying about having the money available
You have it backwards. It's not that the money is available because they created it, it's that what they do counts as creating money because that money is available.
The Federal Reserve Bank says banks create new money, you say they don't
No.
Due to the way large groups of people behave, it is possible for money to effectively be in two (or more) places at once. This is what is meant by banks "creating" money, they set up the situations in which this can happen.
Most people think banks loan out money from deposits. In reality the money they loan out is newly created "checkbook money" as confirmed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago [pdf warning]
The money banks lend out does come from deposits, just like it always has (yes, even before the fed existed). The reason it counts as "creating" money, is that any individual depositor can still withdraw their entire deposit if they want to. The fed doesn't tell banks "you can do this new thing, and the result is called 'checkbook money'", rather, it says "we are calling the result of this longstanding practice 'checkbook money', and putting limits on how far you can take that practice".
If a company sells stock or bonds, they are also creating money in exactly the same way.
If I buy bonds from some company, beforehand I have money, and afterwords the company has money and I have something that I can treat like money because it's so easy to sell. If a company issues stock, it works exactly the same way.
Look at the different definitions of "money supply", perhaps this will help these things make sense.
The average person is deceived about how banking works and the banks make money through the practice of that deception.
If that's the case, then where exactly do people think that the interest they're getting paid comes from?
TFA says "thin film" cells, so I'd imagine they're fairly flexible.There's also a known pattern to how they'll be installed (overlapping horizontal rows that are each offset by about half the length of one shingle), which could probably be used to print wires on the upper part of the top side and the lower part of the back side such that they'll make fairly good contact.
It seems unlikely that these will weather very well, so we'll have to see how they cope with thermal cycling and storm stresses.
I'd think that people can be reasonably expected to be somewhat unhappy when their roof doesn't last as long as it should. So I'd think Dow would have put a bit of effort into making sure that these things don't break that easily.
That's great until some common library needs to be updated for a security hole, and you have download 20 updates from different vendors (assuming they even provide updates...) rather than 1 item in Windows Update.
Sure, but doesn't SxS suffer from the same problem? i.e. you download the new/patched library version, but SxS still magically ensures that all your apps still use the old one that they were compiled against (you know, for compatibility).
Or perhaps I am missing something here?
Assembly (set of DLLs) versions can indicate (lack of) backwards compatibility. I would assume that this means an application looking for FooLib 1.2.3.5 would find FooLib 1.2.3.6 if that was installed, but not FooLib 1.2.3.4 or the FooLib 1.3.x.x that might also be installed. But this is just an assumption since I don't write Win32 programs and the immediately available documentation seems to be rather sparse, I guess it's entirely possible that Microsoft didn't do the sane thing here.
If the Fed confirms that financial institutions create money through loans can I stop having this debate with people over whether this is actually so?
Um, I know they create money that way. But the amount of money created is the same as the amount of debt created, not less. So the question is where the initial money comes from... which I think is the government printing bills or the electronic equivalent, and I don't think these involve debt. They certainly don't involve more debt than the amount of money produced.
...looking at your earlier reply, "Debt is the basis for most of our currency supply, that's why loan defaults cause deflation.", I think we're saying the same thing: creating a certain amount of debt creates an equal amount of money, but there is a little bit more money than debt.
That's great until some common library needs to be updated for a security hole, and you have download 20 updates from different vendors (assuming they even provide updates...) rather than 1 item in Windows Update.
We have fiat currency instead of representative currency (an example of which is the gold standard).
The gold standard isn't actually different in this respect, because gold has very little nutritional value and sucks for building things.
Furthermore, the way fractional reserve banking in general and the Federal Reserve in particular is set up, there is always more debt built into the system than there are dollars in circulation. That's because debt is attached to money the moment it is created; i.e. for every X dollars in circulation there is always X+Y debt.
I thought it was actually that there was X-Y debt.
The real joke, though it's not a funny joke, is that this system as we know it came from the Great Depression. Its purpose was to ensure that such depressions would not happen again. By that I mean, this is how it was sold to the public. Isn't this typical, that an undesirable system that would not otherwise be accepted is proposed during a time of crisis and becomes entrenched? It's not like we have never seen that pattern before...
Which parts exactly came from the great depression? I seem to recall fractional-reserve banking being a bit older than that.
Now they can't use harsh interrogation methods, and are threatened with prosecution for past practices. I don't blame them for failures; I blame Congress.
Silly me, I thought there were actual scientific studies showing that those methods don't work.
While the basic data on nuclear weapons is widely available, so is the basic data on how to build the Saturn V booster. But there's a great deal of engineering, testing, and development between that basic data and a functional strategic weapon. Sure, practically anyone can design and build a crude device by piling sufficient fissionables and explosives... But what Iran seeks something a bit more refined, a reliable and deliverable design (what in the trade is known as 'weaponized') that provides a credible deterrent. This is a somewhat harder problem.
Well, if they started from the publicly available crude plans, hopefully they'll remember to give back and post their refined plans on mininova or something.
Hmm. If they started with GPL-licensed plans, and then nuked people without giving them copies of the plans, how would you go about enforcing the GPL on them?
The last part, which starts at "II. For Many Software Developers, The Patent System Is Unjust.", deals with how software patents have proved to hinder, rather than promote, the progress of the useful arts - which means they have no valid constitutional basis.
Will this section be worth anything if neither party is actually asking for software patents as a whole to be thrown out? (And why would they ask for that? My understanding is that the patent they're arguing about is about business methods rather than software, and that business method patents as a category are quite a bit hokier than even software patents.)
...it remembers what key goes with what server, rather than unconditionally giving each of a few dozen outside groups the ability to tell it that yes, your secure server really did just get a new key (so that new Russian IP address must be correct).
I guess now would be a good time to use ECC RAM in consumer PCs and not just servers anymore.
Note that Intel are a bunch of $^@#! and try to segment the market by disabling this on their desktop processors. I've been trying to decide whether getting ECC might just be worth taking the 30% (or whatever it is at your favored price point) performance hit of going with AMD.
Actually just in normal driving I don't use two hands to do turn signals. I drive with my left hand. When I need to turn on the signal I just extend the fingers on the left hand and one little flick puts on the signal. Doing it any other way wouldn't even feel natural.
I do that a lot too, but my hand seems to naturally end up a few inches too low to hit the signal lever easily (probably because I'm fairly tall and have the wheel tilted up so it doesn't block my view of the speedometer, but the armrest ledge on the door can't be adjusted up like that). Which isn't a problem on straight roads, but going to work and back most of the roads are slightly curved and I have to hold the wheel at whatever angle to adjust my hand.
I think (1) makes a lot of sense, and I'd buy into the idea of the behind-the-wheel test involving a drive on real streets and highways for an extended distance (20 miles?). And why not it a re-test every 7 years after age 55?
It should be every 5 years (mostly because that's how often licenses have to be renewed anyway here in TN), and be required for all drivers. Old people don't have a monopoly on bad driving (and might even be better drivers, if they never got involved in that newfangled "texting" and "cellphone" nonsense).
Actually the most recent studies are showing that holding the phone versus using a hands-free device has virtually zero difference in accident rates. The research indicates that merely talking on the cell phone - not holding it - is the main contributor to accidents, which seems pretty obvious to me anyways (it seems pretty obvious that holding a phone to your ear requires a fraction of the attention and concentration that the conversation itself does).
It surprises me somewhat, since it seems it would be harder to use your turn signals when the other hand is holding a phone instead of the wheel and harder to glance around at where other nearby cars are when you're holding something against your ear. I suppose it could just be that nobody does those things anyway, or maybe that they don't actually help...
This should be handled by insurance, not Big Brother. If you wreck, you pay higher premium.
Which doesn't work, because nobody thinks they're going to wreck (probably they just don't think, period). Which would be fine if they were the only people affected by their own carelessness, but they're not.
Wait, you actually use focus-follows-mouse?
You're a better man than I.
Heh. Focus-follows-mouse and virtual desktops are actually one of the main reasons I run Linux (Debian/XFCE) at home, followed somewhat closely by apt-get/aptitude and less closely by the great command-line support (which if I ran Windows I could always get with Cygwin/MinGW or these days maybe powershell).
What karma? You're already posting at +0, even with being a subscriber...
When there's something you need to do that can't be done with Windows but can be done with Lunix, keep in mind that you can do an even better job with Mac OS X.
Except true multitasking? That shared menubar seems to assume you're only doing one thing at a time, and Windows' lack of proper focus-follows-mouse (ie, without raise-on-click) likewise.
Some argue that BSD can do it better but no one makes software for BSD since no one gives a flying fuck.
I was under the impression that the BSDs could generally run Linux binaries (some sort of compatibility mode thing)?
With all seriousness in mind, BSD isn't useful for anything really.
What about as an embedded OS for consumer electronics?
Actually, being an attentive and skilled operator of your vehicle can and will reduce the chances of an accident drastically. I have several horror stories about coming within inches of a major accident, only to dodge it. Mainly because I take my cars to track day and know exactly how far they can be pushed.
Whereas I have only minimal training (almost didn't pass the driver test as a kid, never did donuts in empty parking lots, etc), and yet haven't even come close to a "major" accident (and only a single minor incident shortly after barely passing the test, went half off the outside of a curve at maybe 5-10mph the first time I drove in snow (very wet snow that was coming down rather quickly... and when I tried to get back on the road the car slid sideways and got a minor dent from a tree).).
Perhaps if you weren't certain you're above average, you'd pay more attention to avoiding situations where that matters?
Personally, what I got the biggest laugh at is that, just like Fog Creek's other software, they're wanting ridiculous amounts of money for this code. Hosted? On a shared server? 10 million page views a month (Random page on Stack Overflow, 20KB, so in other words, about 200GB)? How much would you pay? For this forum / QA software?
With Stack Exchange? A THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH.
Wow. Just wow. Really, Joel? You think your software is worth that much?
Or hey, you could use it on your own server. If you're willing to pay TWO AND A HALF THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH...
Slashdot Mirror
The money of a deposit can not be simultaneously available to the depositor and a borrower
Yes it can, this is the "statistics and psychology" part of banking. The reason it can be available to both, is that people don't actually all take all of what's available to them at the same time.
If the money is still available to the depositors then the money the borrower has is not the deposited money
Dollars are dollars, and whether the money I take out of my bank account is the same money that I put in is not a question that makes sense. It's not like putting bills in a safety box, and you can't say "this is the original money" or "that is the newly created money".
If you take the view that they are not creating new money then they are lying about having the money available
You have it backwards. It's not that the money is available because they created it, it's that what they do counts as creating money because that money is available.
The Federal Reserve Bank says banks create new money, you say they don't
No.
Due to the way large groups of people behave, it is possible for money to effectively be in two (or more) places at once. This is what is meant by banks "creating" money, they set up the situations in which this can happen.
Most people think banks loan out money from deposits. In reality the money they loan out is newly created "checkbook money" as confirmed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago [pdf warning]
The money banks lend out does come from deposits, just like it always has (yes, even before the fed existed). The reason it counts as "creating" money, is that any individual depositor can still withdraw their entire deposit if they want to. The fed doesn't tell banks "you can do this new thing, and the result is called 'checkbook money'", rather, it says "we are calling the result of this longstanding practice 'checkbook money', and putting limits on how far you can take that practice".
If a company sells stock or bonds, they are also creating money in exactly the same way.
If I buy bonds from some company, beforehand I have money, and afterwords the company has money and I have something that I can treat like money because it's so easy to sell. If a company issues stock, it works exactly the same way.
Look at the different definitions of "money supply", perhaps this will help these things make sense.
The average person is deceived about how banking works and the banks make money through the practice of that deception.
If that's the case, then where exactly do people think that the interest they're getting paid comes from?
Fractional reserve banking IS fraud!
No, it's statistics and psychology (and nowadays, also a bit of government assistance).
TFA says "thin film" cells, so I'd imagine they're fairly flexible.There's also a known pattern to how they'll be installed (overlapping horizontal rows that are each offset by about half the length of one shingle), which could probably be used to print wires on the upper part of the top side and the lower part of the back side such that they'll make fairly good contact.
It seems unlikely that these will weather very well, so we'll have to see how they cope with thermal cycling and storm stresses.
I'd think that people can be reasonably expected to be somewhat unhappy when their roof doesn't last as long as it should. So I'd think Dow would have put a bit of effort into making sure that these things don't break that easily.
That's great until some common library needs to be updated for a security hole, and you have download 20 updates from different vendors (assuming they even provide updates...) rather than 1 item in Windows Update.
Sure, but doesn't SxS suffer from the same problem? i.e. you download the new/patched library version, but SxS still magically ensures that all your apps still use the old one that they were compiled against (you know, for compatibility).
Or perhaps I am missing something here?
Assembly (set of DLLs) versions can indicate (lack of) backwards compatibility. I would assume that this means an application looking for FooLib 1.2.3.5 would find FooLib 1.2.3.6 if that was installed, but not FooLib 1.2.3.4 or the FooLib 1.3.x.x that might also be installed. But this is just an assumption since I don't write Win32 programs and the immediately available documentation seems to be rather sparse, I guess it's entirely possible that Microsoft didn't do the sane thing here.
If the Fed confirms that financial institutions create money through loans can I stop having this debate with people over whether this is actually so?
Um, I know they create money that way. But the amount of money created is the same as the amount of debt created, not less. So the question is where the initial money comes from... which I think is the government printing bills or the electronic equivalent, and I don't think these involve debt. They certainly don't involve more debt than the amount of money produced.
...looking at your earlier reply, "Debt is the basis for most of our currency supply, that's why loan defaults cause deflation.", I think we're saying the same thing: creating a certain amount of debt creates an equal amount of money, but there is a little bit more money than debt.
for every X dollars in circulation there is always X+Y debt.
I thought it was actually that there was X-Y debt.
A common misconception. Debt is the basis for most of our currency supply, that's why loan defaults cause deflation. When a loan is made by the commercial bank (which keeps only a fraction of the central bank money as reserves), using the central bank money from the commercial bank's reserves, the money supply expands by the size of the loan.
But if everyone defaulted on all their loans, you're saying we'd end up with a negative money supply, rather than just a very small positive one?
That's great until some common library needs to be updated for a security hole, and you have download 20 updates from different vendors (assuming they even provide updates...) rather than 1 item in Windows Update.
We have fiat currency instead of representative currency (an example of which is the gold standard).
The gold standard isn't actually different in this respect, because gold has very little nutritional value and sucks for building things.
Furthermore, the way fractional reserve banking in general and the Federal Reserve in particular is set up, there is always more debt built into the system than there are dollars in circulation. That's because debt is attached to money the moment it is created; i.e. for every X dollars in circulation there is always X+Y debt.
I thought it was actually that there was X-Y debt.
The real joke, though it's not a funny joke, is that this system as we know it came from the Great Depression. Its purpose was to ensure that such depressions would not happen again. By that I mean, this is how it was sold to the public. Isn't this typical, that an undesirable system that would not otherwise be accepted is proposed during a time of crisis and becomes entrenched? It's not like we have never seen that pattern before...
Which parts exactly came from the great depression? I seem to recall fractional-reserve banking being a bit older than that.
Now they can't use harsh interrogation methods, and are threatened with prosecution for past practices. I don't blame them for failures; I blame Congress.
Silly me, I thought there were actual scientific studies showing that those methods don't work.
While the basic data on nuclear weapons is widely available, so is the basic data on how to build the Saturn V booster. But there's a great deal of engineering, testing, and development between that basic data and a functional strategic weapon. Sure, practically anyone can design and build a crude device by piling sufficient fissionables and explosives... But what Iran seeks something a bit more refined, a reliable and deliverable design (what in the trade is known as 'weaponized') that provides a credible deterrent. This is a somewhat harder problem.
Well, if they started from the publicly available crude plans, hopefully they'll remember to give back and post their refined plans on mininova or something.
Hmm. If they started with GPL-licensed plans, and then nuked people without giving them copies of the plans, how would you go about enforcing the GPL on them?
The last part, which starts at "II. For Many Software Developers, The Patent System Is Unjust.", deals with how software patents have proved to hinder, rather than promote, the progress of the useful arts - which means they have no valid constitutional basis.
Will this section be worth anything if neither party is actually asking for software patents as a whole to be thrown out? (And why would they ask for that? My understanding is that the patent they're arguing about is about business methods rather than software, and that business method patents as a category are quite a bit hokier than even software patents.)
...it remembers what key goes with what server, rather than unconditionally giving each of a few dozen outside groups the ability to tell it that yes, your secure server really did just get a new key (so that new Russian IP address must be correct).
I guess now would be a good time to use ECC RAM in consumer PCs and not just servers anymore.
Note that Intel are a bunch of $^@#! and try to segment the market by disabling this on their desktop processors. I've been trying to decide whether getting ECC might just be worth taking the 30% (or whatever it is at your favored price point) performance hit of going with AMD.
Actually just in normal driving I don't use two hands to do turn signals. I drive with my left hand. When I need to turn on the signal I just extend the fingers on the left hand and one little flick puts on the signal. Doing it any other way wouldn't even feel natural.
I do that a lot too, but my hand seems to naturally end up a few inches too low to hit the signal lever easily (probably because I'm fairly tall and have the wheel tilted up so it doesn't block my view of the speedometer, but the armrest ledge on the door can't be adjusted up like that). Which isn't a problem on straight roads, but going to work and back most of the roads are slightly curved and I have to hold the wheel at whatever angle to adjust my hand.
I think (1) makes a lot of sense, and I'd buy into the idea of the behind-the-wheel test involving a drive on real streets and highways for an extended distance (20 miles?). And why not it a re-test every 7 years after age 55?
It should be every 5 years (mostly because that's how often licenses have to be renewed anyway here in TN), and be required for all drivers. Old people don't have a monopoly on bad driving (and might even be better drivers, if they never got involved in that newfangled "texting" and "cellphone" nonsense).
Actually the most recent studies are showing that holding the phone versus using a hands-free device has virtually zero difference in accident rates. The research indicates that merely talking on the cell phone - not holding it - is the main contributor to accidents, which seems pretty obvious to me anyways (it seems pretty obvious that holding a phone to your ear requires a fraction of the attention and concentration that the conversation itself does).
It surprises me somewhat, since it seems it would be harder to use your turn signals when the other hand is holding a phone instead of the wheel and harder to glance around at where other nearby cars are when you're holding something against your ear. I suppose it could just be that nobody does those things anyway, or maybe that they don't actually help...
This should be handled by insurance, not Big Brother. If you wreck, you pay higher premium.
Which doesn't work, because nobody thinks they're going to wreck (probably they just don't think, period). Which would be fine if they were the only people affected by their own carelessness, but they're not.
Focus follows mouse is available as an option in Windows. It has been since the first release of PowerToys for Win2k.
I've tried that (well, the XP version), and last I checked there was no way to turn off raise-on-click. Which makes it mostly useless.
Wait, you actually use focus-follows-mouse? You're a better man than I.
Heh. Focus-follows-mouse and virtual desktops are actually one of the main reasons I run Linux (Debian/XFCE) at home, followed somewhat closely by apt-get/aptitude and less closely by the great command-line support (which if I ran Windows I could always get with Cygwin/MinGW or these days maybe powershell).
My Karma is going to take a hit for this
What karma? You're already posting at +0, even with being a subscriber...
When there's something you need to do that can't be done with Windows but can be done with Lunix, keep in mind that you can do an even better job with Mac OS X.
Except true multitasking? That shared menubar seems to assume you're only doing one thing at a time, and Windows' lack of proper focus-follows-mouse (ie, without raise-on-click) likewise.
Some argue that BSD can do it better but no one makes software for BSD since no one gives a flying fuck.
I was under the impression that the BSDs could generally run Linux binaries (some sort of compatibility mode thing)?
With all seriousness in mind, BSD isn't useful for anything really.
What about as an embedded OS for consumer electronics?
Actually, being an attentive and skilled operator of your vehicle can and will reduce the chances of an accident drastically. I have several horror stories about coming within inches of a major accident, only to dodge it. Mainly because I take my cars to track day and know exactly how far they can be pushed.
Whereas I have only minimal training (almost didn't pass the driver test as a kid, never did donuts in empty parking lots, etc), and yet haven't even come close to a "major" accident (and only a single minor incident shortly after barely passing the test, went half off the outside of a curve at maybe 5-10mph the first time I drove in snow (very wet snow that was coming down rather quickly... and when I tried to get back on the road the car slid sideways and got a minor dent from a tree).).
Perhaps if you weren't certain you're above average, you'd pay more attention to avoiding situations where that matters?
Personally, what I got the biggest laugh at is that, just like Fog Creek's other software, they're wanting ridiculous amounts of money for this code. Hosted? On a shared server? 10 million page views a month (Random page on Stack Overflow, 20KB, so in other words, about 200GB)? How much would you pay? For this forum / QA software?
With Stack Exchange? A THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH.
Wow. Just wow. Really, Joel? You think your software is worth that much?
Or hey, you could use it on your own server. If you're willing to pay TWO AND A HALF THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH...
Wow, that is rediculous. Why, it's almost as much as a single MSDN subscription or an Oracle license (assuming I actually read that mess properly).
Slightly offtopic, but does anyone else read expertsexchange as Expert Sex Change?
Yes, that's why they hyphenated the name. They did that was a while ago, I think slightly after Pen Island sprang up.