The information being acted on is published by the exchange to everyone, notifying everyone of a trade executed in its market. For it to be insider trading, it would have to be non-public information, which a trade published by the exchange definitely isn't.
It's not insider trading, because the information is public. He's not the only one getting it, dozens are getting that information at the same time. HFT is a very competitive space with hundreds of firms doing it and competing against each other. They all have access to that information at the same time.
Something is fairly priced if it's at the highest price a buyer is willing to buy at and the lowest price a seller is willing to sell at. In your example, how high are you willing to buy? From his point of view, he's willing to sell at 35.2 given current market conditions. You buying that much changes those conditions. I think it's fair for him to pull. When you see the market, you see a system before you affect it. Once you affect, I think it's fair for the system to change. You buying should raise the price, and it does. This is no different than what usually happens in the market, only at a more granular and faster scale.
You have no inherent right to that liquidity, just like he has no inherent right to your flow. If you sent a market order to take out 35.2, don't be surprised if you pay more for the liquidity. If you're sending a market order, you don't care about the price, is what you're telling the market, so in an efficient market you should get filled at the lowest price someone is willing to sell to you, and you should get the worst price the market has to offer. I think that's fair. If you care about the price and send a limit order, then yes, someone has to be willing to sell to you, with the caveat that now there's information in the market about a new buyer, so people should be willing to sell to you only with that information in mind.
What you want is the benefit of a dark pool in a public market, you want to be able to buy across exchanges atomically without any information being available to any seller before all your buying is done. That's not what a public market should do, in my opinion. It should show any new information available as quickly and as broadly as possible, and that's what HFTs are essentially doing. They are making money by removing the information inefficiency between markets.
I'll tell you what will happen if you add that rule: There will be no market for you to hit at 35.2 in the first place. The extra liquidity provided by the HFT let's you get part of the trade at that price. Why are they obligated to trade with you? If you really want to buy at 35.2, leave your order there. If someone else wants to trade with you, great, you'll get your fill. If not, then I don't see why anyone should.
In your scenario, you got part of your trade at 35.2. That's great. If the liquidity provider hadn't been there, the market would have been wider to begin with, and unless another big player like you wants to take the other side at 35.2 (lower probabililty than a market maker being there), you'll be paying more for both legs of your trade anyway.
Look at it this way: the guy you just bought from is now short, and knows there is someone out there willing to buy more than he got hit for. He's in a tougher spot than you (that's market making), he needs to buy back as well, and you can probably afford to pay an extra tick and still make money. If he pays an extra tick to close out of his position, he's out $1000. If he makes money, great for him, but it's no difference to you. You're taking advantage of the liquidity he's providing. If he wants to cancel to reduce his risk, fine. You still got a cheaper price on part of your trade than you would have without him being there. How do I know? Because he's the only one at that price in your example.
What you want is the same liquidity, but without the chance of that liquidity going away when you take an action in the market. In essence, you want public exchanges to act as dark pools, you want your buying interest to only be reflected in the market after all your buying is done. If you do that consistenly, there will be no point to market making, and watch the markets widen again, and you having to call brokers and pay through the nose for them to handle large volume for you. The current system is better.
This. I had a conversation with a libertarian, Ron Paul fan, friend of mine that was using the fact that the chairman of the Federal Reserve is appointed, not elected, as a dig against the whole monetary system. My replay was "Good." Essentially, you want the important people in government appointed, and not elected, since people don't vote for technocrats. Anyone good enough and knowledgeable enough about the field their getting appointed to is, generally, not very good at "identifying with the common man", or any of that crap that really isn't useful for setting policy, just for selling it.
In my view, a politician's job is to make experts' recommendations and policies palatable to the masses and democracy gets its value not by providing power to the people (who, if in total control, will probably end up with huge government handouts and unsustainably low taxes, ala California), but by providing the illusion of control by allowing the peaceful deposition of leaders and, therefore, providing social stability, since armed insurrection becomes less necessary, and less of the state needs to be applied in supressing rebellion. This, combined with a predictable and fairish legal system, is, in my opinion, the real value in democracy.
And the US is still first in nominal terms (which, considering the messed up exchange rate with the yuan and the import restrictions in China, might be as relevant as PPP). And with four times the US population. A wise man once said, if you don't produce more than another country when you have four times their population, you're doing something wrong.
China's economy is about 50% manufacturing, the US's it's more like 20%. But the US, per capita and in PPP terms, still produces 4 times as much as China does. China has a lot of catching up to do, especially in per capita terms, and needs to catch up before it's demographics start weighing on it, Japan style.
"the failures coming when each and every one of the industries you mentioned had heavy regulation induced and large government players involved (like Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac)"
Whoa, whoa, whoa.... Fannie and Freddie didn't cause the subprime mess. They were actually pretty late in coming into it. I was involved with that industry for three years, and I don't remember ever seeing a subprime loan bond issued by those agencies. The bonds I do remember seeing are a who's who of the banks and investment houses that closed down (with the notable exception of Goldman).
In fact, a big part of the failing in that industry is to do to the agencies that are the market's attempt at self-regulation: the rating agencies. The pain would not have been so widespread, and the flow of capital would have been much more limited, had the rating agencies correctly modelled stresses on the portfolios of these bonds. The entire industry CDO industry would have been nipped in the bud.
But they were making a mint with CDO issuance (accounting for a small part of their business but a much larger part of their fees) where they were paid by the issuer of the bonds, instead of investors! Imagine how comfortable you would feel buying medication from a company that has three different regulators to pick from and has to pay the regulator for the analysis done on their drug, and the regulators make more money the more drugs get released by these companies.
Some of the problem was caused by regulation, like the need to mark to market, but these regulations exacerbated a problem that was created entirely by the industry itself: it was a classic case of no one bothered doing the due diligence on the loans, because everyone figures someone else had done. The loan issuers figures no one would be buying the loans if they didn't want them, the securitizers were expecting some basic standards in the underwritings of the loans, and the investors were expecting the rating agencies and the issuing companies to ensure the loans were as expected by the product they were buying (the whole incentive, of course, being that the company wouldn't shoot itself in the foot by issuing securities backed by bad loans, the rating agencies were putting their reputations on the line, etc). Of course, in the end, none of these systems of internal checks worked, and companies were actually willing to risk everything they were supposed to be protecting for the money they were making for the simple reason that companies are run by people. As long as people can be irrational, measure risk incorrectly by favoring the potentially more profitable route (ask casinos why they are still in business when everyone knows they skew the odds in their own favor), markets will never be the efficient panacea some libertarians seem to think it is.
The market's role is to match demand with supply, and is best left on it's own when doing that, but "the market" isn't ephemeral, it's people. People always need to be regulated because with the market we're trying to channel their self-interest into common good (by having them provide goods and services others need/want), but that same self-interest can cause the system to break down if not managed. The government's self-interest in getting elected and always being blamed when something happens makes it the natural player in being that regulator.
Although I probably know the answer to the first one:<BR>
1) Is it strictly blasphemy against Christianity? Or any religion? So would, say, a certain book that refers to a particularly religion's verses as being satanic be outlawed in Ireland?
2) Kind of follows from the first one in a way. Does that mean the Irish judges will now be deciding what is blasphemy or what isn't? If they cast a wide net on affected religions, does that mean that they'll need to be theologians on several major religions for this law not be the so obviously biased for Christians?
3) Scary freedom of speech backpedaling and medieval thinking resurgeance aside (two dumb enough reasons not to do this), is this a monumentally stupid law to pass in a country that not so long ago and for the longest time had half of the country at the other half's throat based on to which Christian sect they belonged? The first Protestant judge that passes this judgement on a Catholic or vice versa will, I expect, be somewhat explosive.
You seem to be under the impression that the Russian retreat and drawing in of the Germans to Moscow was done on purpose. The massive encirclements of entire Russian armies would seem to contradict that assertion. They just have so much land and people that they can afford to lose more than most, and accidentally make the other "win himself to death".
That's exactly how I see it as well. I think the posters above can only calmly reach their conclusions by not really internalizing the fact that they're going to die. I did, and I wish I never had, because it's hard to think calmly about death after you've made that logically emotional leap (i.e., when you "realize" that what you've been thinking about this whole time is actually "real"). That's why I only go to bed when I'm really, really tired. I get to thinking about it when lying in bed, and it will keep me up all night.
And, you're right, the eternal afterlife is only slightly better, at least in a finite universe of slowly increasing entropy...
Sucks to realize this is all real. I really envy (as much as slashdotters ridicule) people that can take comfort in religion on the matter. There's no prize at the end for realizing the awful truth, and at least they'll be happier, on average, than I'll be during my short (always too short!) life.
I second that. Federal involvement should be focused on correcting the market failure in pricing oil/coal/etc. The price of those commodities correctly accounts for their scarcity, but there's no scarcity of allowable emissions, so they are undervalued (of course, current subsidies further distort this, but even without them, our current lifestyles would still be too cheap). Essentially, by currently burning them at existing prices, we're borrowing money at an unknown rate (because we can't precisely value what the costs of our current activities are going to be, but presumably very high) and the government is really the only power that can force this correction on everybody.
I've managed to talk several people here at work to take the train, turn down the thermostat, plug appliances into surge protectors and turn them off when not using them, but the fact of the matter is that all this feel-good voluntary stuff won't make a dent. My thinking is to ease people into changing lifestyles to be more sustainable, since people generally take gradual steps much better than gigantic jolts. However, we need to start feeling the pain now to plan for the future correctly.
Considering the looming likely catastrophes the world is going to go through soon (catastrophic climate change mainly, and all the goodies associated with it) I'd be surprised if anyone will bother remembering these last few golden decades. Might just be a psychological reaction to reading so much bad news, and seeing so little action to mitigate the pending disasters, but that also makes me feel it's unlikely there will be much remembering of history centuries from now by those few of us left.
I only wish I had learned more about these future events before I helped bring two other lives into this world. I cherish every moment I have with my kids, they are fantastic and wonderful parts of my life, but thinking about the future that's in store for them is usually paralyzing terrifying.
On NPR today, a commentator (forgot what he was) said that Iraq was going to be Bush's legacy, and that he'd be remembered depending on how that turns out.
This will be his legacy. Iraq, the wiretaps and erosin of civil liberties, guantanamo,etc, are pretty big deals, but are tiny compared to the crap we'll be getting from climate change soon. His avoiding of the issue, his going out of the way to sabotage attempts at fighting it, and then his half-assed attempts to tackle it, will, hopefully, be what's remembered. Little consolation, of course, for those for those who'll suffer from his amazing ability to ignore the world around him.
Not all his fault, of course. The only serious Republican candidate that realizes the seriousness of the situation is McCain. The others, who have more of the traditional conservative base behind them, don't; rather, they would actually, like Bush, undo much of the hard work that had been done so far to keep environmental degradation under control.
It has never been so important for a Democrat to win, in my opinion. Our kids futures probably depend on it, and not just to ensure that they can collect a social security check.
After reading everyone's posts, I'm worried that policies to fight climate change aren't on most (not even many!) of the lists! And this on a site that caters to the theoretically better educated portion of the population.
I can think of no issue that is larger today than global warming. At least to me, everything else seems petty and moot, especially if climate change is just going to undo in a really big way the strides made in the areas the other posters seem to care about.
I'm consistently more concerned and depressed by our lemming-like walk to the climate catastrophe cliff, but I had hoped that at least our part of the general population was aware and worried and, given the opportunity, would act in anyway they could to prevent it. If I were president, I would scale down on all the wastes of money this government currently has enacted, devote much of the money currently spent on petty projects into research and infrastructure so we can leave something behind for our kids. I would fight tooth and nail to get the corn and coal lobbies off the government's back so progress can finally be made in constructive action.
Bush has wasted so much of our time to act, why aren't we feeling the sense of urgency more widely by now?
He doesn't meant they don't touch the toilet seat, he means that the rest of the day when you're not taking a dump, they aren't touching anything but your hopefully clean clothes. Your hands, however, touch everything around you, including everything other people touched with their own hands.
At least 24 or lost don't have dubious (ham handed attempts to deal with or to set forth, I couldn't figure out which) social agendas or try to appeal to the "enlightenment" crowd.
What?? You're ripping on my favorite show!! I'm so angry right now!
I was hearing a discussion about this topic on the BBC the other day, and one of the panel members made an excellent point: the same criticism ID'ers make about evolution can be made of a ton of other scientific theories (in all sciences, not just biology), so why aren't those theories criticized as well? They aren't because evolution is the typical battleground in the cultural war between religious and secular US, not Relativity or Gravity.
Of course, ID is obviously (to us, at least) a euphemistic backdoor for the religious types, but his point, I think, is still a very, very good one. I know a lot of people who still waver in their opinion about the merits of ID (even non-religious people), mainly because they buy the attacks by the ID'ers. I've found that those people, however, accept their arguments thanks to ID's secular mask. Defending against every attack on evolution one at a time is a bad way to convince people, since you mostly just get them in that state where they stop discussing because they are tired of bringing up points they heard (or they don't remember any more) but aren't entirely convinced. Bring up a point (like the one the panel member made) that makes the ID'ers look like hypocrites, and any support for what they say quickly vanishes.
Parent poster already replied to the others, but in Full Metal Jacket, he was Animal Mother (the guy that carried the M60, I think), one of the members of Cowboy's squad (the squad Matthew Modine's joins as a correspondent in the second half of the movie).
Two problems with that: Notable is an actual word in English, Nova isn't a word in Spanish. Also, the pronunciation doesn't change in Nova by adding a space: the syllables sound exactly the same, so when spoken, space or no space, a Spanish speaker will hear "no va". When you add the space to notable, you change the sound from notahble to no tayble.
All that aside, snopes has debunked this myth (this link has been posted so many times before on Slashdot, figured people would give this story a rest already...).
I used to use Kazaa/Limewire to download my music before, but now I'm almost exclusively an iTunes man. I still use Kazaa for things I can't find on iTunes, but immediately buy it legally when they become available.
I can think of several factors. First, of course, the quality of the music is much better in AAC than the ripped mp3's you find online. Second, you don't get screwed by fake or misnamed files, truncated versions, or the whole other slew of crappy files you find through P2P. Third, the legality of it vs P2P is appealing, especially when you get older and you start worrying more about not making mistakes you'll regret later.
Fourth (and I think this one is very important, which is why I gave it its own paragraph) the interface to iTunes makes it so, so easy. Not only the iPod integration, but just the fact that making the actual purchase (after you login) is so smooth, you forget at the time you're actually spending $1 per song. You just click on the buy song button, the song is downloaded (and iTunes is still very useable while the song is being downloaded), and you don't even think that you will be billed for it later. The $1's add up, of course, but it took me a while to look at my collection and realize I had just spent $200 on music I could have gotten for free (had I really wanted to). On P2P it involves placing a search, looking through the hundreds of results you get back to find a version that looks legit and has the bitrate you want, hope that the file will still be available throughout the entire download, then wait while you're access to the song is limited by the slowest peer you're getting it from.
About the only reason, besides the cost savings, I can think of for still going to P2P for music is if you have a music player other than an iPod and don't want to go through the hassle of burning the song to a CD before you can rerip and transfer it to the player. Unless, of course, there are AAC to mp3/ogg/wmv converters out there than can convert Apple's DRMed version, and if there are, please tell me where, because I've looked and haven't been able to find any that work.
The word "evil" is biased in and of itself, because it is a judgement based on perspective.
Hitler thought that exterminating the Jews would remove an enemy that had weakened the German people and nation from the world (they actually believed the world would be grateful once it was completed). Stalin starved millions in the Ukraine in order to turn the Soviet Union into a modern, industrialized country. The US and Britain killed millions of Japanese and German civilians in an attempt to win the war. The first two are labeled as pure evil, the latter is excused and brushed aside as "well, war is hell, and they started it anyway."
Take it from an objective viewpoint. In all three cases, the men in power making the decisions (men that would be safely isolated from viewing directly the consequent suffering caused by the decisions they made, I might add) did a cold analysis between what they wanted to achieve and weighed that against killing millions of people, and in all cases, the millions of lives were deemed to be an acceptable price.
1) Grad student notices that book is held upside down and slashdotter's eyes are staring unblinkly at student's breasts, as in a vain attempt to use the Force to rip open shirt and unhook bra (act that said slashdotter is incapable of with two friends helping and a 200 page instruction book).
2) Mac dies a short-circuiting death after being drowned in 5 inches of said slashdotter's drool, and in an ironic twist wipes 5 years of carefully and selectively collected porn.
3) Ducks are seen swimming in coffehouse's newly created indoor lake.
Slashdot Mirror
The information being acted on is published by the exchange to everyone, notifying everyone of a trade executed in its market. For it to be insider trading, it would have to be non-public information, which a trade published by the exchange definitely isn't.
It's not insider trading, because the information is public. He's not the only one getting it, dozens are getting that information at the same time. HFT is a very competitive space with hundreds of firms doing it and competing against each other. They all have access to that information at the same time.
Something is fairly priced if it's at the highest price a buyer is willing to buy at and the lowest price a seller is willing to sell at. In your example, how high are you willing to buy? From his point of view, he's willing to sell at 35.2 given current market conditions. You buying that much changes those conditions. I think it's fair for him to pull. When you see the market, you see a system before you affect it. Once you affect, I think it's fair for the system to change. You buying should raise the price, and it does. This is no different than what usually happens in the market, only at a more granular and faster scale.
You have no inherent right to that liquidity, just like he has no inherent right to your flow. If you sent a market order to take out 35.2, don't be surprised if you pay more for the liquidity. If you're sending a market order, you don't care about the price, is what you're telling the market, so in an efficient market you should get filled at the lowest price someone is willing to sell to you, and you should get the worst price the market has to offer. I think that's fair. If you care about the price and send a limit order, then yes, someone has to be willing to sell to you, with the caveat that now there's information in the market about a new buyer, so people should be willing to sell to you only with that information in mind.
What you want is the benefit of a dark pool in a public market, you want to be able to buy across exchanges atomically without any information being available to any seller before all your buying is done. That's not what a public market should do, in my opinion. It should show any new information available as quickly and as broadly as possible, and that's what HFTs are essentially doing. They are making money by removing the information inefficiency between markets.
Why is it not fair?
I'll tell you what will happen if you add that rule: There will be no market for you to hit at 35.2 in the first place. The extra liquidity provided by the HFT let's you get part of the trade at that price. Why are they obligated to trade with you? If you really want to buy at 35.2, leave your order there. If someone else wants to trade with you, great, you'll get your fill. If not, then I don't see why anyone should.
In your scenario, you got part of your trade at 35.2. That's great. If the liquidity provider hadn't been there, the market would have been wider to begin with, and unless another big player like you wants to take the other side at 35.2 (lower probabililty than a market maker being there), you'll be paying more for both legs of your trade anyway.
Look at it this way: the guy you just bought from is now short, and knows there is someone out there willing to buy more than he got hit for. He's in a tougher spot than you (that's market making), he needs to buy back as well, and you can probably afford to pay an extra tick and still make money. If he pays an extra tick to close out of his position, he's out $1000. If he makes money, great for him, but it's no difference to you. You're taking advantage of the liquidity he's providing. If he wants to cancel to reduce his risk, fine. You still got a cheaper price on part of your trade than you would have without him being there. How do I know? Because he's the only one at that price in your example.
What you want is the same liquidity, but without the chance of that liquidity going away when you take an action in the market. In essence, you want public exchanges to act as dark pools, you want your buying interest to only be reflected in the market after all your buying is done. If you do that consistenly, there will be no point to market making, and watch the markets widen again, and you having to call brokers and pay through the nose for them to handle large volume for you. The current system is better.
This. I had a conversation with a libertarian, Ron Paul fan, friend of mine that was using the fact that the chairman of the Federal Reserve is appointed, not elected, as a dig against the whole monetary system. My replay was "Good." Essentially, you want the important people in government appointed, and not elected, since people don't vote for technocrats. Anyone good enough and knowledgeable enough about the field their getting appointed to is, generally, not very good at "identifying with the common man", or any of that crap that really isn't useful for setting policy, just for selling it.
In my view, a politician's job is to make experts' recommendations and policies palatable to the masses and democracy gets its value not by providing power to the people (who, if in total control, will probably end up with huge government handouts and unsustainably low taxes, ala California), but by providing the illusion of control by allowing the peaceful deposition of leaders and, therefore, providing social stability, since armed insurrection becomes less necessary, and less of the state needs to be applied in supressing rebellion. This, combined with a predictable and fairish legal system, is, in my opinion, the real value in democracy.
And the US is still first in nominal terms (which, considering the messed up exchange rate with the yuan and the import restrictions in China, might be as relevant as PPP). And with four times the US population. A wise man once said, if you don't produce more than another country when you have four times their population, you're doing something wrong.
China's economy is about 50% manufacturing, the US's it's more like 20%. But the US, per capita and in PPP terms, still produces 4 times as much as China does. China has a lot of catching up to do, especially in per capita terms, and needs to catch up before it's demographics start weighing on it, Japan style.
"the failures coming when each and every one of the industries you mentioned had heavy regulation induced and large government players involved (like Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac)"
Whoa, whoa, whoa.... Fannie and Freddie didn't cause the subprime mess. They were actually pretty late in coming into it. I was involved with that industry for three years, and I don't remember ever seeing a subprime loan bond issued by those agencies. The bonds I do remember seeing are a who's who of the banks and investment houses that closed down (with the notable exception of Goldman).
In fact, a big part of the failing in that industry is to do to the agencies that are the market's attempt at self-regulation: the rating agencies. The pain would not have been so widespread, and the flow of capital would have been much more limited, had the rating agencies correctly modelled stresses on the portfolios of these bonds. The entire industry CDO industry would have been nipped in the bud.
But they were making a mint with CDO issuance (accounting for a small part of their business but a much larger part of their fees) where they were paid by the issuer of the bonds, instead of investors! Imagine how comfortable you would feel buying medication from a company that has three different regulators to pick from and has to pay the regulator for the analysis done on their drug, and the regulators make more money the more drugs get released by these companies.
Some of the problem was caused by regulation, like the need to mark to market, but these regulations exacerbated a problem that was created entirely by the industry itself: it was a classic case of no one bothered doing the due diligence on the loans, because everyone figures someone else had done. The loan issuers figures no one would be buying the loans if they didn't want them, the securitizers were expecting some basic standards in the underwritings of the loans, and the investors were expecting the rating agencies and the issuing companies to ensure the loans were as expected by the product they were buying (the whole incentive, of course, being that the company wouldn't shoot itself in the foot by issuing securities backed by bad loans, the rating agencies were putting their reputations on the line, etc). Of course, in the end, none of these systems of internal checks worked, and companies were actually willing to risk everything they were supposed to be protecting for the money they were making for the simple reason that companies are run by people. As long as people can be irrational, measure risk incorrectly by favoring the potentially more profitable route (ask casinos why they are still in business when everyone knows they skew the odds in their own favor), markets will never be the efficient panacea some libertarians seem to think it is.
The market's role is to match demand with supply, and is best left on it's own when doing that, but "the market" isn't ephemeral, it's people. People always need to be regulated because with the market we're trying to channel their self-interest into common good (by having them provide goods and services others need/want), but that same self-interest can cause the system to break down if not managed. The government's self-interest in getting elected and always being blamed when something happens makes it the natural player in being that regulator.
Although I probably know the answer to the first one:<BR>
1) Is it strictly blasphemy against Christianity? Or any religion? So would, say, a certain book that refers to a particularly religion's verses as being satanic be outlawed in Ireland?
2) Kind of follows from the first one in a way. Does that mean the Irish judges will now be deciding what is blasphemy or what isn't? If they cast a wide net on affected religions, does that mean that they'll need to be theologians on several major religions for this law not be the so obviously biased for Christians?
3) Scary freedom of speech backpedaling and medieval thinking resurgeance aside (two dumb enough reasons not to do this), is this a monumentally stupid law to pass in a country that not so long ago and for the longest time had half of the country at the other half's throat based on to which Christian sect they belonged? The first Protestant judge that passes this judgement on a Catholic or vice versa will, I expect, be somewhat explosive.
You seem to be under the impression that the Russian retreat and drawing in of the Germans to Moscow was done on purpose. The massive encirclements of entire Russian armies would seem to contradict that assertion. They just have so much land and people that they can afford to lose more than most, and accidentally make the other "win himself to death".
That's exactly how I see it as well. I think the posters above can only calmly reach their conclusions by not really internalizing the fact that they're going to die. I did, and I wish I never had, because it's hard to think calmly about death after you've made that logically emotional leap (i.e., when you "realize" that what you've been thinking about this whole time is actually "real"). That's why I only go to bed when I'm really, really tired. I get to thinking about it when lying in bed, and it will keep me up all night.
And, you're right, the eternal afterlife is only slightly better, at least in a finite universe of slowly increasing entropy...
Sucks to realize this is all real. I really envy (as much as slashdotters ridicule) people that can take comfort in religion on the matter. There's no prize at the end for realizing the awful truth, and at least they'll be happier, on average, than I'll be during my short (always too short!) life.
Ah, well, just shake it off.
Oh I dont know, I seem to find the US population extremely dense, I mean they voted for Bush.....
Twice...
I second that. Federal involvement should be focused on correcting the market failure in pricing oil/coal/etc. The price of those commodities correctly accounts for their scarcity, but there's no scarcity of allowable emissions, so they are undervalued (of course, current subsidies further distort this, but even without them, our current lifestyles would still be too cheap). Essentially, by currently burning them at existing prices, we're borrowing money at an unknown rate (because we can't precisely value what the costs of our current activities are going to be, but presumably very high) and the government is really the only power that can force this correction on everybody.
I've managed to talk several people here at work to take the train, turn down the thermostat, plug appliances into surge protectors and turn them off when not using them, but the fact of the matter is that all this feel-good voluntary stuff won't make a dent. My thinking is to ease people into changing lifestyles to be more sustainable, since people generally take gradual steps much better than gigantic jolts. However, we need to start feeling the pain now to plan for the future correctly.
Considering the looming likely catastrophes the world is going to go through soon (catastrophic climate change mainly, and all the goodies associated with it) I'd be surprised if anyone will bother remembering these last few golden decades. Might just be a psychological reaction to reading so much bad news, and seeing so little action to mitigate the pending disasters, but that also makes me feel it's unlikely there will be much remembering of history centuries from now by those few of us left.
I only wish I had learned more about these future events before I helped bring two other lives into this world. I cherish every moment I have with my kids, they are fantastic and wonderful parts of my life, but thinking about the future that's in store for them is usually paralyzing terrifying.
On NPR today, a commentator (forgot what he was) said that Iraq was going to be Bush's legacy, and that he'd be remembered depending on how that turns out.
This will be his legacy. Iraq, the wiretaps and erosin of civil liberties, guantanamo,etc, are pretty big deals, but are tiny compared to the crap we'll be getting from climate change soon. His avoiding of the issue, his going out of the way to sabotage attempts at fighting it, and then his half-assed attempts to tackle it, will, hopefully, be what's remembered. Little consolation, of course, for those for those who'll suffer from his amazing ability to ignore the world around him.
Not all his fault, of course. The only serious Republican candidate that realizes the seriousness of the situation is McCain. The others, who have more of the traditional conservative base behind them, don't; rather, they would actually, like Bush, undo much of the hard work that had been done so far to keep environmental degradation under control.
It has never been so important for a Democrat to win, in my opinion. Our kids futures probably depend on it, and not just to ensure that they can collect a social security check.
After reading everyone's posts, I'm worried that policies to fight climate change aren't on most (not even many!) of the lists! And this on a site that caters to the theoretically better educated portion of the population.
I can think of no issue that is larger today than global warming. At least to me, everything else seems petty and moot, especially if climate change is just going to undo in a really big way the strides made in the areas the other posters seem to care about.
I'm consistently more concerned and depressed by our lemming-like walk to the climate catastrophe cliff, but I had hoped that at least our part of the general population was aware and worried and, given the opportunity, would act in anyway they could to prevent it. If I were president, I would scale down on all the wastes of money this government currently has enacted, devote much of the money currently spent on petty projects into research and infrastructure so we can leave something behind for our kids. I would fight tooth and nail to get the corn and coal lobbies off the government's back so progress can finally be made in constructive action.
Bush has wasted so much of our time to act, why aren't we feeling the sense of urgency more widely by now?
Had a public list of all the projects they had started that fizzled/died/been abandoned. How long would that list be?
He doesn't meant they don't touch the toilet seat, he means that the rest of the day when you're not taking a dump, they aren't touching anything but your hopefully clean clothes. Your hands, however, touch everything around you, including everything other people touched with their own hands.
At least 24 or lost don't have dubious (ham handed attempts to deal with or to set forth, I couldn't figure out which) social agendas or try to appeal to the "enlightenment" crowd.
What?? You're ripping on my favorite show!! I'm so angry right now!
Heres the penthouse pic for those with a pulse.
I can't stay mad at you... Thank you.
I was hearing a discussion about this topic on the BBC the other day, and one of the panel members made an excellent point: the same criticism ID'ers make about evolution can be made of a ton of other scientific theories (in all sciences, not just biology), so why aren't those theories criticized as well? They aren't because evolution is the typical battleground in the cultural war between religious and secular US, not Relativity or Gravity.
Of course, ID is obviously (to us, at least) a euphemistic backdoor for the religious types, but his point, I think, is still a very, very good one. I know a lot of people who still waver in their opinion about the merits of ID (even non-religious people), mainly because they buy the attacks by the ID'ers. I've found that those people, however, accept their arguments thanks to ID's secular mask. Defending against every attack on evolution one at a time is a bad way to convince people, since you mostly just get them in that state where they stop discussing because they are tired of bringing up points they heard (or they don't remember any more) but aren't entirely convinced. Bring up a point (like the one the panel member made) that makes the ID'ers look like hypocrites, and any support for what they say quickly vanishes.
Parent poster already replied to the others, but in Full Metal Jacket, he was Animal Mother (the guy that carried the M60, I think), one of the members of Cowboy's squad (the squad Matthew Modine's joins as a correspondent in the second half of the movie).
Two problems with that: Notable is an actual word in English, Nova isn't a word in Spanish. Also, the pronunciation doesn't change in Nova by adding a space: the syllables sound exactly the same, so when spoken, space or no space, a Spanish speaker will hear "no va". When you add the space to notable, you change the sound from notahble to no tayble.
All that aside, snopes has debunked this myth (this link has been posted so many times before on Slashdot, figured people would give this story a rest already...).
I used to use Kazaa/Limewire to download my music before, but now I'm almost exclusively an iTunes man. I still use Kazaa for things I can't find on iTunes, but immediately buy it legally when they become available.
I can think of several factors. First, of course, the quality of the music is much better in AAC than the ripped mp3's you find online. Second, you don't get screwed by fake or misnamed files, truncated versions, or the whole other slew of crappy files you find through P2P. Third, the legality of it vs P2P is appealing, especially when you get older and you start worrying more about not making mistakes you'll regret later.
Fourth (and I think this one is very important, which is why I gave it its own paragraph) the interface to iTunes makes it so, so easy. Not only the iPod integration, but just the fact that making the actual purchase (after you login) is so smooth, you forget at the time you're actually spending $1 per song. You just click on the buy song button, the song is downloaded (and iTunes is still very useable while the song is being downloaded), and you don't even think that you will be billed for it later. The $1's add up, of course, but it took me a while to look at my collection and realize I had just spent $200 on music I could have gotten for free (had I really wanted to). On P2P it involves placing a search, looking through the hundreds of results you get back to find a version that looks legit and has the bitrate you want, hope that the file will still be available throughout the entire download, then wait while you're access to the song is limited by the slowest peer you're getting it from.
About the only reason, besides the cost savings, I can think of for still going to P2P for music is if you have a music player other than an iPod and don't want to go through the hassle of burning the song to a CD before you can rerip and transfer it to the player. Unless, of course, there are AAC to mp3/ogg/wmv converters out there than can convert Apple's DRMed version, and if there are, please tell me where, because I've looked and haven't been able to find any that work.
The word "evil" is biased in and of itself, because it is a judgement based on perspective.
Hitler thought that exterminating the Jews would remove an enemy that had weakened the German people and nation from the world (they actually believed the world would be grateful once it was completed). Stalin starved millions in the Ukraine in order to turn the Soviet Union into a modern, industrialized country. The US and Britain killed millions of Japanese and German civilians in an attempt to win the war. The first two are labeled as pure evil, the latter is excused and brushed aside as "well, war is hell, and they started it anyway."
Take it from an objective viewpoint. In all three cases, the men in power making the decisions (men that would be safely isolated from viewing directly the consequent suffering caused by the decisions they made, I might add) did a cold analysis between what they wanted to achieve and weighed that against killing millions of people, and in all cases, the millions of lives were deemed to be an acceptable price.
How that will actually go with a Slashdotter:
1) Grad student notices that book is held upside down and slashdotter's eyes are staring unblinkly at student's breasts, as in a vain attempt to use the Force to rip open shirt and unhook bra (act that said slashdotter is incapable of with two friends helping and a 200 page instruction book).
2) Mac dies a short-circuiting death after being drowned in 5 inches of said slashdotter's drool, and in an ironic twist wipes 5 years of carefully and selectively collected porn.
3) Ducks are seen swimming in coffehouse's newly created indoor lake.