Interestingly enough, most of the fluctuations in prices in the US comes from speculators gambling on the commodities markets.
If you want to see a real world example of what happens when speculators are driven out of a market, look at silver. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange pumped up margin prices 8 times last year and the price of silver plummeted as speculators had to get out. They've since cut margins twice, but silver prices have not rebounded, because the gamblers have moved on to less hostile commodities.
This is a good example of how to drive out speculations, but... A lot of traders are more or less accusing the CME of manipulating prices by fiddling with the margins (they increased silver margins 5 times in 2 weeks) and have been claiming the whole thing is a big scam.
If the price of oil is falling then it's because they've decided that is no longer of primary importance. You could guess their reasons: maybe they want to squash all this talk of wind and solar power, maybe they're trying to do something about Syria, etc. It's hard to say for sure.
Saudi Arabia is pumping like crazy in order to balance the supply disruption from the embargo on Iran. They're also pumping a bit more, which is causing the price of oil to go down because the Saudis are oversupplying the market.
Sooo... no need to guess their reasons. It's because the Europeans are trying to squeeze Iran.
The price drops have much more to do with demand destruction - less money, less gas. No speculator conspiracy, no Wall Street conspiracy, no oil company conspiracy.
[Citation needed] Even a cursory google search will give you two basic facts 1. Saudi Arabia is pumping the most oil in decades (~10 million bbl/day), over the protests of other OPEC members, in order to keep oil prices down. 2. Some refinery shutdowns/closures from the last year have been resolved, thus increasing capacity and lowering gasoline prices.
The real chokepoint these days is refining capacity and it's nearly impossible for them to make money with oil >$100/bbl.
Perhaps you should have a look at the historical record, and find out what happened in countries that claimed to be suppressing greed. They racked up a pretty hefty body count.
The USA has racked up a pretty hefty body count as well. The only difference is that we do it in countries that aren't agreeable to our greed.
Most of those countries have since had revolutions to throw the US out and now have governments which trend towards socialist or communist policies, even if the government is nominally democratic.
I think the problem comes from the fact that laws are being written by lobby groups. If the people sitting in congress can't figure it out, they should call on the public to read and react to it. Every Time.
What makes you think the public can read an understand most bills? Laws are written in codes of a sort. It's a combination of legalese and bureaucratese.
Some procurement laws are narrowly tailored so that only one company in a specific state would ever meet the requirements. If you're not aware of what's happenening, you'd never guess, and you'll probably never figure out which company even if you are aware.
Other laws are just a series of amendments to existing laws. Adding commas, removing periods, changing words. It might be something as simple as removing a critical "and" "must" or other trivial word that can change the entire meaning.
The members of the public who can really wade through this mess are either former government, think tanks, or the occassional educated citizen. Most of us, no matter how smart we are, cannot decipher the thicket of obfuscation embedded in the legal code.
"For theater owners their primary concern is always "How can i get more people to come to my theater?" With this better technology of surround sound and sound over the audiences that now gives them something to leverage bringing people back into the theater"
Like you said, a gimmick. IMAX branded screens didn't bring movie goers rushing back into theaters 3D hasn't brought movie goers rushing back into theaters. Digital projection hasn't brought movie goers rushing back into theaters. And a more immersive sound system isn't going to bring movie goers rushing back into theaters.
The movie industry has a problem: growing profits vs killing the market. They control ticket prices, so they control the way this story ends.
Matte screens have lower effective contrast, brightness, and sharpness than reflective screens. Hence the general market shift to shiny.
My laptop has a max brightness setting that is almost painfully bright anywhere expect direct sunlight. I'd kill to get that level of brightness behind a matte screen. It'd be perfect everywhere.
If you can't get what you want, you have to settle for a compromise... With the hope that you can ultimately make it to your final destination at some later point down the road.
Big Business has been asking for the universe and settling for the galaxy. Your (and the EFF's) compromise is very short sighted.
There's plenty of kid-focused Sci-Fi Anything with Janet Assimov's name on it is kid friendly. I loved the Lucky Starr series by Isaac Asimov (under the name "Paul French") Heinlen even wrote some kids books.
Most of the 'big' sci-fi authors have written stories for kids. You just have to go looking for it.
I don't know what the Iranians have done to you that makes you happy that the US and Israeli government is dangerously meddling with Nuclear power plants and risking the lives of Iranian citizens
Stuxnet only attacked specific hardware configurations known to exist in Iran's uranium enrichment facilities. Stuxnet infected other computers, but did nothing malicious to them. There was no risk to nuclear power plants or Iran's civilian population.
but the Iranians haven't done anything to me, and so I'd prefer to take an approach of innocent until proven guilty before instigating a war against them.
Innocent until proven guilty is a legal fiction created so that our system of justice can be fair. It does not mean you are innocent and outside the legal system no one has to abide by that standard.
That said, allowing Iran to go nuclear would lead to nuclear proliferation amongst its neighbors. At the same time, directly attacking Iran would cause them to lash out, in all directions, at once. It's a lose-lose situation that Stuxnet turned into a moderate win.
Maybe because we can't afford it, maybe because he doesn't think its necessary, maybe because his base would desert him, maybe because he just thinks that wars of aggression are bad.
None of the above. Report after report has been written explaining, in great detail, the stupidity of attacking Iran.
Iran is kind of like Cold War Russia: it has lots of proxies that can act independantly. Attacking Iran would spark a regional war against US allies and assets that would be nearly impossible to stop with military force. Even the Mossad's former chief thinks attacking Iran is a bad idea
http://www.google.com/search?q=attacking+iran+bad+idea Almost all the people saying "attacking Iran is a good idea" are from hard right think tanks &/or are neoconservative war hawks.br./And their record on foreign policy speaks for itself.
I wake up every day at 6 am and I go to the park. There's absolutely nobody there at that time, except for me and my wife. If I talk to my wife while I'm there, do you seriously expect me to assume that "somebody could have listened to us"?
As "good" people, we tend to see the world as "us," the good people vs "them," the bad people Cops see the world exactly the same way, except YOU are not included in the group called "us"
Stop thinking of yourself as a good law abiding citizen and pretend you're a member of organized crime. That should help recalibrate your expectation of privacy.
People do have an expectation of privacy at work, whether or not you think they should.
Wikipedia:
There are two types of expectations of privacy:
* A subjective expectation of privacy is an opinion of a person that a certain location or situation is private. These obviously vary greatly from person to person. * An objective, legitimate or reasonable expectation of privacy is an expectation of privacy generally recognized by society.
You're in their building, using their equipment and resources. People who expect privacy at work are generally wrong and the law generally will not support them.
The idea of a laptop only having one drive isn't set in stone either.
It's all about space. Anything Although if you really care, chances are that you are going to just go full SSD. This kind of lukewarm product is really the worst of both worlds: higher cost and lower performance.
There is a market niche for hybrid drives as an intermediate step between disks and SSDs, just like there is a market niche for hybrid cars as an intermediate step between gas and electric.
I imagine once SSDs and electric cars mature, those intermediate hardware solutions will fade away.
Quoting another slashdotter: "I know what happened in a lot of meetings I never personally attended. Participants talk, transcripts are shared, etc. I suspect this info came second or third-hand from the people under Panetta."
PhD 1: Hmmm... I have this ridiculously complicated physics stuff that I need crunched by ridiculously complicated machines PhD 2: Give it to the grad students and tell them they won't be fed until the ridiculously complicated machines are satisfied.
Grad Student: I can survive 2 weeks without food, but only 2 days without water. If I save my pee and distill it in the lab, I can stretch out my survival to 4 days. 4 days is just enough. Those PhDs won't kill me this time!
Anyone who actively develops bioweapons is a criminal. He or she is a direct hazard to humanity and needs to be removed from society as soon as possible.
Many Western countries still have offensive biochem programs, they just had to be rolled into the defensive programs in order to conform with international treaties.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the military has or is working on weaponized Ebola. Their logic is that they need to weaponize it so that they can anticipate threats and develop treatments.
"If you have nothing to hide, then why complain?" - That's what they said when I told them I refused to open my car for the police. They'll probably say the same when I say the police should not be recording our websurfing.
For people who refuse to understand principles, sometimes making it personal will work. Stick a keylogger on their computer and, after a week, tell them what you've done. "If you have nothing to hide, then why complain?"
See, that's the great thing about capitalism. It doesn't attempt to change human nature, it allows human nature to work as is and get the same results as you would with super-moral people who care immensely about others.
Go read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. That was during a time of massive economic growth, industrialization, and the purest laissez faire capitalism you could ask for. Of course, all that laissez faire capitalism led to monopolies, child labor, rivers on fire, and a host of other social ills ultimately culminating in the Great Depression. So there's that.
Corporations dueling over whether or not to preserve your rights and privacy is not the kind of capitalism anyone should desire.
I simply can not imagine why anybody would intentionally buy a modern computer without these wonderful capabilities.
Ever since TPM was created, we're always just a few bits and bytes away from having it leveraged against us, by them. And by "us" I mean "the computer users." By "them" I mean "the hardware manufacturers and software/media companies."
Example: The newest motherboards don't need the ability to disable trusted boot. Heck, it'd have been easier to not include it! We're more or less at the mercy of a small number of companies and their design decisions. Worse, we have no real power other than social pressure.
so I refuse to listen to music through his headphones, 'lest some of his "golden ears" rub off and I find myself needing more expensive gear)
I made the mistake of shelling out a hundred bucks for a new pair of Shure headphones recently and now half my music is unlistenable. And I've also discovered that my laptop's headphone jack produces a steady hiss when it's powered on.
/And don't get me started on retention policies for dash cam footage. //Without any specific laws in place, most police departments more or less do what they want.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly enough, most of the fluctuations in prices in the US comes from speculators gambling on the commodities markets.
If you want to see a real world example of what happens when speculators are driven out of a market, look at silver.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange pumped up margin prices 8 times last year and the price of silver plummeted as speculators had to get out.
They've since cut margins twice, but silver prices have not rebounded, because the gamblers have moved on to less hostile commodities.
This is a good example of how to drive out speculations, but...
A lot of traders are more or less accusing the CME of manipulating prices by fiddling with the margins
(they increased silver margins 5 times in 2 weeks) and have been claiming the whole thing is a big scam.
If the price of oil is falling then it's because they've decided that is no longer of primary importance. You could guess their reasons: maybe they want to squash all this talk of wind and solar power, maybe they're trying to do something about Syria, etc. It's hard to say for sure.
Saudi Arabia is pumping like crazy in order to balance the supply disruption from the embargo on Iran.
They're also pumping a bit more, which is causing the price of oil to go down because the Saudis are oversupplying the market.
Sooo... no need to guess their reasons.
It's because the Europeans are trying to squeeze Iran.
The price drops have much more to do with demand destruction - less money, less gas. No speculator conspiracy, no Wall Street conspiracy, no oil company conspiracy.
[Citation needed]
Even a cursory google search will give you two basic facts
1. Saudi Arabia is pumping the most oil in decades (~10 million bbl/day), over the protests of other OPEC members, in order to keep oil prices down.
2. Some refinery shutdowns/closures from the last year have been resolved, thus increasing capacity and lowering gasoline prices.
The real chokepoint these days is refining capacity and it's nearly impossible for them to make money with oil >$100/bbl.
Perhaps you should have a look at the historical record, and find out what happened in countries that claimed to be suppressing greed. They racked up a pretty hefty body count.
The USA has racked up a pretty hefty body count as well.
The only difference is that we do it in countries that aren't agreeable to our greed.
Most of those countries have since had revolutions to throw the US out and now have governments which trend towards
socialist or communist policies, even if the government is nominally democratic.
I think the problem comes from the fact that laws are being written by lobby groups. If the people sitting in congress can't figure it out, they should call on the public to read and react to it. Every Time.
What makes you think the public can read an understand most bills?
Laws are written in codes of a sort. It's a combination of legalese and bureaucratese.
Some procurement laws are narrowly tailored so that only one company in a specific state would ever meet the requirements.
If you're not aware of what's happenening, you'd never guess, and you'll probably never figure out which company even if you are aware.
Other laws are just a series of amendments to existing laws. Adding commas, removing periods, changing words.
It might be something as simple as removing a critical "and" "must" or other trivial word that can change the entire meaning.
The members of the public who can really wade through this mess are either former government, think tanks, or the occassional educated citizen.
Most of us, no matter how smart we are, cannot decipher the thicket of obfuscation embedded in the legal code.
to long-range-surveillance systems that magnify subtle motions, to contactless lie detection based on pulse rate.
This is the first thing they're going to do with it.
All the other applications might come afterwards.
6 minutes into the short video:
"For theater owners their primary concern is always "How can i get more people to come to my theater?"
With this better technology of surround sound and sound over the audiences that now gives them something to leverage bringing people back into the theater"
Like you said, a gimmick.
IMAX branded screens didn't bring movie goers rushing back into theaters
3D hasn't brought movie goers rushing back into theaters.
Digital projection hasn't brought movie goers rushing back into theaters.
And a more immersive sound system isn't going to bring movie goers rushing back into theaters.
The movie industry has a problem: growing profits vs killing the market.
They control ticket prices, so they control the way this story ends.
I have a friend who recently got a job at Accenture.
When I heard, I sent him a text with just one word: Accidenture
And since blackboxvoting seems to be /.ed
Here's the coral cache link:
http://www.bbvforums.org.nyud.net/forums/messages/7659/82111.html
You'll find a torrent of the files in the comments
Matte screens have lower effective contrast, brightness, and sharpness than reflective screens.
Hence the general market shift to shiny.
My laptop has a max brightness setting that is almost painfully bright anywhere expect direct sunlight.
I'd kill to get that level of brightness behind a matte screen. It'd be perfect everywhere.
If you can't get what you want, you have to settle for a compromise... With the hope that you can ultimately make it to your final destination at some later point down the road.
Big Business has been asking for the universe and settling for the galaxy.
Your (and the EFF's) compromise is very short sighted.
There's plenty of kid-focused Sci-Fi
Anything with Janet Assimov's name on it is kid friendly.
I loved the Lucky Starr series by Isaac Asimov (under the name "Paul French")
Heinlen even wrote some kids books.
Most of the 'big' sci-fi authors have written stories for kids.
You just have to go looking for it.
You'll probably have to wait until men can gestate, give birth to, and then nurse a baby.
Until then, sex will matter.
I don't know what the Iranians have done to you that makes you happy that the US and Israeli government is dangerously meddling with Nuclear power plants and risking the lives of Iranian citizens
Stuxnet only attacked specific hardware configurations known to exist in Iran's uranium enrichment facilities.
Stuxnet infected other computers, but did nothing malicious to them.
There was no risk to nuclear power plants or Iran's civilian population.
but the Iranians haven't done anything to me, and so I'd prefer to take an approach of innocent until proven guilty before instigating a war against them.
Innocent until proven guilty is a legal fiction created so that our system of justice can be fair.
It does not mean you are innocent and outside the legal system no one has to abide by that standard.
That said, allowing Iran to go nuclear would lead to nuclear proliferation amongst its neighbors.
At the same time, directly attacking Iran would cause them to lash out, in all directions, at once.
It's a lose-lose situation that Stuxnet turned into a moderate win.
Maybe because we can't afford it, maybe because he doesn't think its necessary, maybe because his base would desert him, maybe because he just thinks that wars of aggression are bad.
None of the above.
Report after report has been written explaining, in great detail, the stupidity of attacking Iran.
Iran is kind of like Cold War Russia: it has lots of proxies that can act independantly.
Attacking Iran would spark a regional war against US allies and assets that would be nearly impossible to stop with military force.
Even the Mossad's former chief thinks attacking Iran is a bad idea
http://www.google.com/search?q=attacking+iran+bad+idea
Almost all the people saying "attacking Iran is a good idea" are from hard right think tanks &/or are neoconservative war hawks.br./And their record on foreign policy speaks for itself.
I wake up every day at 6 am and I go to the park. There's absolutely nobody there at that time, except for me and my wife. If I talk to my wife while I'm there, do you seriously expect me to assume that "somebody could have listened to us"?
As "good" people, we tend to see the world as "us," the good people vs "them," the bad people
Cops see the world exactly the same way, except YOU are not included in the group called "us"
Stop thinking of yourself as a good law abiding citizen and pretend you're a member of organized crime.
That should help recalibrate your expectation of privacy.
People do have an expectation of privacy at work, whether or not you think they should.
Wikipedia:
There are two types of expectations of privacy:
* A subjective expectation of privacy is an opinion of a person that a certain location or situation is private. These obviously vary greatly from person to person.
* An objective, legitimate or reasonable expectation of privacy is an expectation of privacy generally recognized by society.
You're in their building, using their equipment and resources.
People who expect privacy at work are generally wrong and the law generally will not support them.
The idea of a laptop only having one drive isn't set in stone either.
It's all about space.
Anything Although if you really care, chances are that you are going to just go full SSD. This kind of lukewarm product is really the worst of both worlds: higher cost and lower performance.
There is a market niche for hybrid drives as an intermediate step between disks and SSDs,
just like there is a market niche for hybrid cars as an intermediate step between gas and electric.
I imagine once SSDs and electric cars mature, those intermediate hardware solutions will fade away.
Quoting another slashdotter: "I know what happened in a lot of meetings I never personally attended. Participants talk, transcripts are shared, etc. I suspect this info came second or third-hand from the people under Panetta."
PhD 1: Hmmm... I have this ridiculously complicated physics stuff that I need crunched by ridiculously complicated machines
PhD 2: Give it to the grad students and tell them they won't be fed until the ridiculously complicated machines are satisfied.
Grad Student: I can survive 2 weeks without food, but only 2 days without water. If I save my pee and distill it in the lab, I can stretch out my survival to 4 days. 4 days is just enough. Those PhDs won't kill me this time!
Anyone who actively develops bioweapons is a criminal. He or she is a direct hazard to humanity and needs to be removed from society as soon as possible.
Many Western countries still have offensive biochem programs, they just had to be rolled into the defensive programs in order to conform with international treaties.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the military has or is working on weaponized Ebola.
Their logic is that they need to weaponize it so that they can anticipate threats and develop treatments.
"If you have nothing to hide, then why complain?" - That's what they said when I told them I refused to open my car for the police. They'll probably say the same when I say the police should not be recording our websurfing.
For people who refuse to understand principles, sometimes making it personal will work.
Stick a keylogger on their computer and, after a week, tell them what you've done.
"If you have nothing to hide, then why complain?"
See, that's the great thing about capitalism. It doesn't attempt to change human nature, it allows human nature to work as is and get the same results as you would with super-moral people who care immensely about others.
Go read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
That was during a time of massive economic growth, industrialization, and the purest laissez faire capitalism you could ask for.
Of course, all that laissez faire capitalism led to monopolies, child labor, rivers on fire,
and a host of other social ills ultimately culminating in the Great Depression. So there's that.
Corporations dueling over whether or not to preserve your rights and privacy is not the kind of capitalism anyone should desire.
I simply can not imagine why anybody would intentionally buy a modern computer without these wonderful capabilities.
Ever since TPM was created, we're always just a few bits and bytes away from having it leveraged against us, by them.
And by "us" I mean "the computer users."
By "them" I mean "the hardware manufacturers and software/media companies."
Example: The newest motherboards don't need the ability to disable trusted boot. Heck, it'd have been easier to not include it!
We're more or less at the mercy of a small number of companies and their design decisions.
Worse, we have no real power other than social pressure.
so I refuse to listen to music through his headphones, 'lest some of his "golden ears" rub off and I find myself needing more expensive gear)
I made the mistake of shelling out a hundred bucks for a new pair of Shure headphones recently and now half my music is unlistenable.
And I've also discovered that my laptop's headphone jack produces a steady hiss when it's powered on.
Good headphones are a blessing and a curse.
Police Unions are resistant to reviews of dash cam footage
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlines/20120422-officers-complaints-prompt-dallas-police-to-suspend-units-reviews-of-squad-car-video.ece
http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-police-union-opposes-random-reviews-of-officers-dash-cam-videos-20120105,0,451142.story
/And don't get me started on retention policies for dash cam footage.
//Without any specific laws in place, most police departments more or less do what they want.