I believe the parent of your post is pointing out that the rules can change in the future. Sure, the current owners of the fossils may own them, but what's to stop the state from creating a new law: "All your fossils are belong to us"*? They already do this with sunken (pirate) treasure, and it would not surprise me if some interest group (paleontological lobby) was able to persuade congress that it is in the best interest of (us|them|the state|science) that they have access to all fossils, and not just the ones they can afford.
So even though the "descendants of dinosaurs" may not come looking for the fossils as a WWII descendant might look for their stolen painting, I fully believe the analogy was quite insightful.
*IANAL, but I believe this will be the exact legal jargon in the likely legislation
You mean that same USPS that is going to have a $7 BILLION deficit this year? Yeah, you can look really efficient and super cool if you can blow through $7B you don't have.
And look, I like the interstate system as much as the next guy, but our state won't stop construction on I-88 because then they'd have to take down the toll booths. And believe me the work is not necessary or helpful. I'm not saying we should let private companies build our roads, but regardless of what it is, IT SUCKS when the government does it. There's an interstate in Washington State that has an exit in DuPont (yes, the city and the company). The state was going to build the exit and charge DuPont for the privilege. DuPont said, 'if we can build it to your specs, can we do it ourselves?' The government said yes and DuPont built it for half the price the state was going to charge them.
As far as health care, there's a lot more to be said about it than just comparing the government's job of doing other things. I don't know what the answer is there. I think that we've lost the 'insurance' aspect of health care. People want their insurance company to pay for everything (why don't we have car insurance cover tuneups?). If people paid for all the little, routine things and had the insurance for catastrophic things (like cancer, or having a limb reattached), then there probably wouldn't be any "crisis". And I think the whole system would probably be in much better health if 64% of American's weren't overweight/obese. Perhaps you shouldn't get insurance if you've caused your own demise through negligence.
Except, I recall that he had made a bunch of predictions that would lead up to the civil war. And (since they weren't too hard to guess), those predictions were correct, but still no civil war. How could he get the reasons for the cause of the civil war correct but not the actual end result?
I have a plan from T-Mobile with unlimited minutes. It was $60 / month for my wife. I just upgraded to the family plan, and it's $90 / month, which includes two lines, and each additional line is $40 / month. I think that's very reasonable for unlimited minutes.
I think the only reason we can do this is because we made it through the initial two year contract, and this was their way of retaining us as customers.
You can't expect a company to take a huge hit on bandwidth with zero compensation from the customer
Zero Compensation?!
What's that $24.95 line item on my bill that says "Unlimited data"? I didn't realize I was supposed to be getting that FOR FREE! I'm calling up T-Mobile immediately to request a correction to my bill.
Wait, what? It's not zero compensation for a service they promised to provide?
By the way, the voice component of Google Voice doesn't use any bandwidth. You say what number you want to call, and Google Voice calls the number your at (home, work or cell)--which, by the way, you pay the phone company for (or should I not use that too?)--and when you answer call the other number. That way your Google Voice number shows on the caller ID of the person you're calling.
I would like to use Google Checkout for eBay transactions, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
However, eBay specifically forbids it. I don't know why. Well, I do, but then I don't know why the FTC doesn't smack them down hard for such anti-competitive behavior.
Tolls aren't solely about revenue generation, they can be about congestion control too. It actually sounds like the toll you pay is too cheap. It sounds like it needs to be $20.00, then you probably won't have to wait and you'll save 50% of your hourly wage.
Traditional textbooks are purchased because of the ancillary material that comes with them. This includes, support, Web sites for both students and instructors, assessment software, assessment preparation material, copious student assignments and solutions, automatic grading software, prepared lecture material, etc.
So for what do we pay those people who are supposed to instruct our children? What do you call them again? Oh, that's right, teachers. I thought they were supposed to have some responsibility in the instruction of the students.
If you think students are lazy these days, you should see the instructors. They demand new end-of-chapter problems, new quizzes, new tests. And they want it all automatically graded electronically. This can't be delivered by open textbooks.
Now everything makes sense. I would rather pay $100 for a book and fire the $50,000/year teacher if they're not going to do their job.
I'm a fan of what this guy has done to debunk "psychics", but I think he's set up a prize that will never have to be paid out (my guess is on purpose). One of the rules is that the phenomenon has to be repeatable. Well, imagine the outcomes:
1. Paranormal activities are all fake: he never has to pay out the prize 2. Paranormal activities exist:
a. It's repeatable, so after showing the repeatability, it becomes science (by definition)*: he doesn't have to pay out the prize
b. The activity is not repeatable, so you can never prove to Randi that it's real: he doesn't have to pay out the prize
Am I missing something? If this guy can show Wifi sensitivity, and even if he's the first, then they'll be showing that there is a scientific basis for some people to be allergic to wifi (i.e. no $1M prize)
*The concept of gravity from a scientific point of view is pretty magical. We still don't really know how it works, but we can describe it (mathematically) and repeat experiments using gravity very well. We still don't know if there is a graviton--we don't know how two bodies of mass "communicate" the force between themselves.
I haven't bought any books from Amazon, and now I don't have any incentive too. However, I really like the Kindle DX and feel it was worth the purchase price. I don't know it would really punish them to return it, at least so much as to use the free wireless as much as I can.
On the one hand, you can call this 'perfect price discovery' OTOH, that specific set of behaviors fundamentally breaks the traditional way that the imperfect markets have worked. And just as importantly, it represents an unfair trading advantage that you or I will never have. Allowing this behavior doesn't further market activities, it just allows a few players to accumulate wealth at everyone's expense. Seems to me that the solution is to close the loophole that allows this to happen.
As an investor (which is the term the article is using--among whom are you and I), you had better not be trading like these traders. These traders are Market Makers, which are specialized traders that provide liquidity (a very important thing) to the market. If you don't have real market makers, then the stock market is going to look like what Mortgage Backed Securities look like right now: there will be periods of time when nobody wants to touch the stuff, and if you are an investor, you are truly screwed if you need to buy or sell your security.
These market markets are looking to capture a spread (the cost to buy or sell)-which by the way is much better for the investor than 5, 10 or 20 years ago--capturing a fraction of a penny a billion times a day. The key component to a market maker's success or failure is understanding supply and demand. This was true even before the computers came in. The computers can only detect it much faster, so you get what you mentioned first--better price discovery. It's not that the investor is getting screwed out of 20 cents, it's that they're not getting the 20 cent discount they used to when the market makers were humans standing in the pits.
As an investor, you really shouldn't care if you get Broadcom at $26.20 or $26.40. Yeah, it's nice if you get it for the cheaper price, but the reason you're buying Broadcom is because you think it's a good investment, and if $0.20 ruins that investment for you, then I guarantee it's not a good investment.
The $0.20 might ruin a day-trader's day, but day-traders are not investors nor market makers. You and I are not day traders. The only thing the electronic market makers ("high-frequency traders") ruin are slower, human-based market makers' profits and day-trader's profits. It's certainly not worth an article in the New York Times.
You touched on something that scares me and doesn't seem to scare anyone else. The accepted P/E ratios in the stock market are very much supply and demand based. There's a lot of demand for shares because baby boomers are investing in their 401ks. When they massively pull out of the market, demand is going to drop significantly. We'll run into the same problem everyone is talking about with Social Security, but it's going to be our 401ks. In this way, the stock market also behaves like a ponzi scheme. Maybe someone wiser can set me straight on how that won't happen.
Not all of them will pull out at once. It's not like the "Baby Boomer" is going to retire and say, "I'm going to pull my $2T out of the stock market now." They will draw on their retirements slowly as they age. Actually, if they had listened to their investment advisers, none of them would be in the stock market and they would have been in fixed income by now (but we can see from the past year they they all had all of their money in the stock market still and panicked when it lost half of its value--that's one of the reasons the drawdown was so exaggerated).
But that's not the end to the story. All of that money has to go somewhere. It goes into businesses. Banks that hold their mortgages (I can't believe any would still have mortgage payments, but they don't seem to be the most responsible group), auto manufactures, airlines, restaurants, etc. As those businesses profit from this expense, that will spur new investment in those businesses, and the profits and/or revenues from the baby boomers will go into the pockets of the people running the businesses, who will then want to invest it. If that place is still the stock market (bonds seem to be out of vogue but could come back, commodities seem to only be a safe haven), then the net sum is not bad--the stock market won't crash.
I'm not saying the stock market is the best place to be the rest of your life (as recent experience should relate to everybody), but I also don't think it's the doom and gloom that everyone thinks it's going to be.
Why would any of the followers of Islam fly to their deaths or blow themselves up if their religion was a lie?
They have been taught their religion and believe it to be true from something handed down.
Why would Christian American soldiers be ready to die for God and country (and oil) if it was a lie?
Lot's of people are willing to die for "lesser" causes than God, such as country, their family, their friends, etc. Even if the cause of war is a lie, many soldiers love their country enough to sacrifice their life for the cause of liberty, even if it isn't liberty they're fight for at the moment. That doesn't invalidate the deaths of the apostles.
Why do all the people in insane asylums believe they are Napoleon or Jesus if it's JUST A LIE?!
Because those individuals are insane.
Why do you lie?
Because I'm selfish and want to further my own cause.
-
However, I believe it can be shown that all of those things weren't the case with the apostles. The apostles were eye witnesses of Jesus' ministry. If they knew he was a lie, they would definitely be willing to see him die, but I don't think they would be so joyful about dying for Jesus themselves. All of them. If Jesus was crazy, if Jesus was a lie, the apostles would have known that, and I don't believe they would have all been willing to die for that cause. If they were going after political power or riches or something really tangible that would benefit them, then I could see them spreading that lie, but not at the cost of their very lives. That's not worth it. Not all dozen (plus) would believe that. They didn't hear it second hand and believe...they saw it first hand and knew.
Your questions, while trying to show the weakness of Darkness404's argument actually strengthen it. You can weed out all of the usual reasons that someone would be willing to die, and the only thing you're left with is that after spending three years with him, the disciples really, truly believed that Jesus was the Son of God.
You do know that just because all men are created equal does not mean that all men stay equal. The phrase 'all men are created equal' was stated to support the abolition of nobility. You aren't someone special just because you were born into a family with money and power. But it also doesn't mean we have to stay that way. Steve Jobs has done amazing work and has become worth every bit that he is. 'All men are created equal' is not about socialism/communism.
I would bet a large sum that the lower life expectancy has nothing to do with health care and everything to do with how fat we are. People in those other countries take better care of themselves to begin with and don't have all of the problems (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) that USians tend to have.
Slashdot Mirror
They could have made the reward $100,003 instead...
yeah, brilliant idea. next day's headline would be "Five Mathematicians Slain in Argument Over Division of Prize Money"
Why? It's not like the prize is in Yen.
Murder is easier to get away with than copyright infringement.
Okay, he's not a family, but I think Seinfeld meets your criteria.
I think I would like the sound of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
"Current studies show that killing gang members leads to lower gang violence."
I believe this is about as reliable as most "evolutionary stories" I hear.
I tried your advice, but I find it hard to get the urine in the toilet with the "BOTH seats down" configuration. Please advise.
I believe the parent of your post is pointing out that the rules can change in the future. Sure, the current owners of the fossils may own them, but what's to stop the state from creating a new law: "All your fossils are belong to us"*? They already do this with sunken (pirate) treasure, and it would not surprise me if some interest group (paleontological lobby) was able to persuade congress that it is in the best interest of (us|them|the state|science) that they have access to all fossils, and not just the ones they can afford.
So even though the "descendants of dinosaurs" may not come looking for the fossils as a WWII descendant might look for their stolen painting, I fully believe the analogy was quite insightful.
*IANAL, but I believe this will be the exact legal jargon in the likely legislation
+6, Best Comment Today
You mean that same USPS that is going to have a $7 BILLION deficit this year? Yeah, you can look really efficient and super cool if you can blow through $7B you don't have.
And look, I like the interstate system as much as the next guy, but our state won't stop construction on I-88 because then they'd have to take down the toll booths. And believe me the work is not necessary or helpful. I'm not saying we should let private companies build our roads, but regardless of what it is, IT SUCKS when the government does it. There's an interstate in Washington State that has an exit in DuPont (yes, the city and the company). The state was going to build the exit and charge DuPont for the privilege. DuPont said, 'if we can build it to your specs, can we do it ourselves?' The government said yes and DuPont built it for half the price the state was going to charge them.
As far as health care, there's a lot more to be said about it than just comparing the government's job of doing other things. I don't know what the answer is there. I think that we've lost the 'insurance' aspect of health care. People want their insurance company to pay for everything (why don't we have car insurance cover tuneups?). If people paid for all the little, routine things and had the insurance for catastrophic things (like cancer, or having a limb reattached), then there probably wouldn't be any "crisis". And I think the whole system would probably be in much better health if 64% of American's weren't overweight/obese. Perhaps you shouldn't get insurance if you've caused your own demise through negligence.
Except, I recall that he had made a bunch of predictions that would lead up to the civil war. And (since they weren't too hard to guess), those predictions were correct, but still no civil war. How could he get the reasons for the cause of the civil war correct but not the actual end result?
I have a plan from T-Mobile with unlimited minutes. It was $60 / month for my wife. I just upgraded to the family plan, and it's $90 / month, which includes two lines, and each additional line is $40 / month. I think that's very reasonable for unlimited minutes.
I think the only reason we can do this is because we made it through the initial two year contract, and this was their way of retaining us as customers.
Zero Compensation?!
What's that $24.95 line item on my bill that says "Unlimited data"? I didn't realize I was supposed to be getting that FOR FREE! I'm calling up T-Mobile immediately to request a correction to my bill.
Wait, what? It's not zero compensation for a service they promised to provide?
By the way, the voice component of Google Voice doesn't use any bandwidth. You say what number you want to call, and Google Voice calls the number your at (home, work or cell)--which, by the way, you pay the phone company for (or should I not use that too?)--and when you answer call the other number. That way your Google Voice number shows on the caller ID of the person you're calling.
I would like to use Google Checkout for eBay transactions, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
However, eBay specifically forbids it. I don't know why. Well, I do, but then I don't know why the FTC doesn't smack them down hard for such anti-competitive behavior.
Why can't people just DO WHAT'S RIGHT?
Why yes, how did you know my apples and oranges have traces of cocaine as well?
Tolls aren't solely about revenue generation, they can be about congestion control too. It actually sounds like the toll you pay is too cheap. It sounds like it needs to be $20.00, then you probably won't have to wait and you'll save 50% of your hourly wage.
So for what do we pay those people who are supposed to instruct our children? What do you call them again? Oh, that's right, teachers. I thought they were supposed to have some responsibility in the instruction of the students.
Now everything makes sense. I would rather pay $100 for a book and fire the $50,000/year teacher if they're not going to do their job.
That works until the end of the game where each move takes more than an hour, even when you have everything automated.
I'm a fan of what this guy has done to debunk "psychics", but I think he's set up a prize that will never have to be paid out (my guess is on purpose). One of the rules is that the phenomenon has to be repeatable. Well, imagine the outcomes:
1. Paranormal activities are all fake: he never has to pay out the prize
2. Paranormal activities exist:
a. It's repeatable, so after showing the repeatability, it becomes science (by definition)*: he doesn't have to pay out the prize
b. The activity is not repeatable, so you can never prove to Randi that it's real: he doesn't have to pay out the prize
Am I missing something? If this guy can show Wifi sensitivity, and even if he's the first, then they'll be showing that there is a scientific basis for some people to be allergic to wifi (i.e. no $1M prize)
*The concept of gravity from a scientific point of view is pretty magical. We still don't really know how it works, but we can describe it (mathematically) and repeat experiments using gravity very well. We still don't know if there is a graviton--we don't know how two bodies of mass "communicate" the force between themselves.
I haven't bought any books from Amazon, and now I don't have any incentive too. However, I really like the Kindle DX and feel it was worth the purchase price. I don't know it would really punish them to return it, at least so much as to use the free wireless as much as I can.
As an investor (which is the term the article is using--among whom are you and I), you had better not be trading like these traders. These traders are Market Makers, which are specialized traders that provide liquidity (a very important thing) to the market. If you don't have real market makers, then the stock market is going to look like what Mortgage Backed Securities look like right now: there will be periods of time when nobody wants to touch the stuff, and if you are an investor, you are truly screwed if you need to buy or sell your security.
These market markets are looking to capture a spread (the cost to buy or sell)-which by the way is much better for the investor than 5, 10 or 20 years ago--capturing a fraction of a penny a billion times a day. The key component to a market maker's success or failure is understanding supply and demand. This was true even before the computers came in. The computers can only detect it much faster, so you get what you mentioned first--better price discovery. It's not that the investor is getting screwed out of 20 cents, it's that they're not getting the 20 cent discount they used to when the market makers were humans standing in the pits.
As an investor, you really shouldn't care if you get Broadcom at $26.20 or $26.40. Yeah, it's nice if you get it for the cheaper price, but the reason you're buying Broadcom is because you think it's a good investment, and if $0.20 ruins that investment for you, then I guarantee it's not a good investment.
The $0.20 might ruin a day-trader's day, but day-traders are not investors nor market makers. You and I are not day traders. The only thing the electronic market makers ("high-frequency traders") ruin are slower, human-based market makers' profits and day-trader's profits. It's certainly not worth an article in the New York Times.
Not all of them will pull out at once. It's not like the "Baby Boomer" is going to retire and say, "I'm going to pull my $2T out of the stock market now." They will draw on their retirements slowly as they age. Actually, if they had listened to their investment advisers, none of them would be in the stock market and they would have been in fixed income by now (but we can see from the past year they they all had all of their money in the stock market still and panicked when it lost half of its value--that's one of the reasons the drawdown was so exaggerated).
But that's not the end to the story. All of that money has to go somewhere. It goes into businesses. Banks that hold their mortgages (I can't believe any would still have mortgage payments, but they don't seem to be the most responsible group), auto manufactures, airlines, restaurants, etc. As those businesses profit from this expense, that will spur new investment in those businesses, and the profits and/or revenues from the baby boomers will go into the pockets of the people running the businesses, who will then want to invest it. If that place is still the stock market (bonds seem to be out of vogue but could come back, commodities seem to only be a safe haven), then the net sum is not bad--the stock market won't crash.
I'm not saying the stock market is the best place to be the rest of your life (as recent experience should relate to everybody), but I also don't think it's the doom and gloom that everyone thinks it's going to be.
Easy:
They have been taught their religion and believe it to be true from something handed down.
Lot's of people are willing to die for "lesser" causes than God, such as country, their family, their friends, etc. Even if the cause of war is a lie, many soldiers love their country enough to sacrifice their life for the cause of liberty, even if it isn't liberty they're fight for at the moment. That doesn't invalidate the deaths of the apostles.
Because those individuals are insane.
Because I'm selfish and want to further my own cause.
-
However, I believe it can be shown that all of those things weren't the case with the apostles. The apostles were eye witnesses of Jesus' ministry. If they knew he was a lie, they would definitely be willing to see him die, but I don't think they would be so joyful about dying for Jesus themselves. All of them. If Jesus was crazy, if Jesus was a lie, the apostles would have known that, and I don't believe they would have all been willing to die for that cause. If they were going after political power or riches or something really tangible that would benefit them, then I could see them spreading that lie, but not at the cost of their very lives. That's not worth it. Not all dozen (plus) would believe that. They didn't hear it second hand and believe...they saw it first hand and knew.
Your questions, while trying to show the weakness of Darkness404's argument actually strengthen it. You can weed out all of the usual reasons that someone would be willing to die, and the only thing you're left with is that after spending three years with him, the disciples really, truly believed that Jesus was the Son of God.
You do know that just because all men are created equal does not mean that all men stay equal. The phrase 'all men are created equal' was stated to support the abolition of nobility. You aren't someone special just because you were born into a family with money and power. But it also doesn't mean we have to stay that way. Steve Jobs has done amazing work and has become worth every bit that he is. 'All men are created equal' is not about socialism/communism.
I would bet a large sum that the lower life expectancy has nothing to do with health care and everything to do with how fat we are. People in those other countries take better care of themselves to begin with and don't have all of the problems (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) that USians tend to have.