Nope. US Fed did what is required from the start, so the recession in the US turned out to be far more shallow than in Europe (where the ECB blundered for several years). In Japan it's the contrast is even more stark - after a decade of slow stagnation and deflation (or near-deflation) they started growing almost immediately after the central bank and the government decided to be 'irresponsible'.
Then there's China, its inflation rate skyrocketed into hyperinflation several times during the recent 30 years, yet they've had double-digit growth for about as long as that.
Oh, and inflation primarily hurts 1%-ers because they have to actually invest their capital in risky businesses (work!) rather than sit back and enjoy risk-free rent. For a general worker a mild inflation is a plus, because it erodes the debts (mortgage!) over time.
If you have an incandescent that lasted that long then either you're using it very infrequently or it's seriously under-voltaged. In the second case you're losing almost all of its energy as infrared light.
1) There's no problem with Fed. It does exactly what it should do, well within its mandate.
2) Solyndra funding was done through official channels and there is no evidence of kickbacks or anything similar. Yes, it had failed, but that happens.
3) What exactly is wrong with PPACA?
So at least a half of items on your list are crimes only in your mind.
So both parties A and B have to use the same ban... erm... "ledger". And of course, this ledger then would have to be regulated and policed - you don't want your money disappear if the ledger decides to pack stuff and move into a nice tropical country without extradition treaty with the US.
Oh, and of course this ledger would be able to "borrow" your money for a little while. Since you won't be able to access it while it's on the deposit account.
And at this point, there are no advantages to using bitcoins versus regular currencies.
You can't get transactions "off the chain" because then I can double-spent a bitcoin. And you'll have to add a "change of ownership" transaction in the global chain eventually.
Markup on actual salaries is not that large. Typically private hospitals have less than 15% of profit margin - it's healthy but definitely not something to write home about.
Now, medical equipment manufacturers are profiteers. For example, a 1L bag of sterile IV saline solution costs $300 - that's literally 100x markup. And I'm not kidding - I have it in my medical bill from my stay in a hospital a couple of months ago. Drugs are even worse: oral vancomycin costs $500 per one dose - it can be bought for $5 in Russia or India (I checked).
Why is it fair to inherit money? Because it's like any other inheritance
And that's why ANY inheritance is unfair.
Is it fair that people inherit good looks from their parents? Or athletic potential? Try getting to play in the NBA if you had two very short parents.
Ditto. Genetics are unfair, and hopefully we'll be able to do something about it in future. And for now we can only try to compensate for this unfairness.
If you think it would be fair to "equalize" the situation by taking away the money people inherit, then there are many other situations that should be equalized as well.
Yes, we should. It's not yet possible in practice, so we should start with something that IS possible.
Yeah, so the terrorists would just use person-to-person meetings and then launch the attacks with an email like: "I'm going to a movie at 11:30, anyone with me?"
If you see a TV on sale at $500 and you add that TV to your shopping cart, you should "expect" to pay $500, not $250.
Nope. There is no such expectation - the advertised price can be different from the actual sale price for a lot of reasons: sales taxes, special discounts, etc. For example, 20 minutes ago I bought an Audible audiobook for 10% of its normal price because I have its Kindle counterpart.
I have a story - 10 years ago we were supporting a website for a small online outlet. One smart-ass user tried to game the checkout by pasting 16384 spaces into the "Coupon code" field that caused the discount multiplier algorithm to malfunction and return zero. So the total checkout price for a large purchase became zero.
We canceled this order and threatened the "buyer" with a lawsuit after talking with our lawyer. It turns out that there were two significant factors:
1) Since the total price was zero, it couldn't be classified as a sale. So no consumer protection laws kick in. However, even if the buyer had paid $0.01 then it would be a different story.
2) The fact that the buyer entered a very long sequence of spaces can be classified as an attempt at wire fraud.
As I understand, none of this applies in this case. The Brick should shut up and pay up.
Read the "Neptune's Brood" - it's about as close to a treatise on interstellar economics as you can get in science fiction. He definitely knows what BTC is and he provides a rational critique of it. I happen to agree with him, btw.
I'm not talking about bland as in "no distinguishing features". I don't really care about sound quality, it's the emotions behind the sound - a song without a story is just not interesting.
I'm totally opposite. I tried to enjoy classical music but it always seems to be too bland for me. I might listen to a classical music track once or twice, but I never really want to keep listening to it.
But if somebody takes a good instrumental track, adds nice vocals (choir singing is super-good) and at least somewhat decent lyrics then I won't be able to stop listening to it. Alas, I probably have almost all of the bands that do this:(
Also, I like to listen to some movie soundtracks even though they might not have lyrics or vocals. I guess that the memory of the story from the movie is enough.
Many older vehicles don't have ESP or ABS at all... Should these vehicles be made illegal?
Ideally, yes. Practically, old vehicles get grandfathered into these laws to avoid too much backlash. Besides, the number of old vehicles decreases pretty fast.
Lower end vehicles often don't have such features either
Not anymore. ABS brakes are mandatory in EU for new cars as well as tire pressure sensors and lots of other systems. ETC is going to become mandatory very soon.
And it makes sense. Once a safety system shows that it's effective in reducing casualties and it's not excessively expensive then it should become mandatory.
When I lived in Europe I used to eat meals consisting of 3-4 different courses (salad, soup, main course and maybe a dessert). In the US very often I can't even finish the "appetizer" and soup - portion sizes are WAY too large. Junk food is also an issue.
Glyphosate itself is harmless, the problem is in surfactants - they are much more dangerous. It's like drinking concentrated detergent (which is also lethal at about 200ml dose).
We have a product in development that does just this - it can spin up spot nodes with the best price/performance ratio, dispatch tasks and restart them if a spot node fails. With lots of other goodies.
Drop me a note if you're interested: alex.besogonov@gmail.com
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. US Fed did what is required from the start, so the recession in the US turned out to be far more shallow than in Europe (where the ECB blundered for several years). In Japan it's the contrast is even more stark - after a decade of slow stagnation and deflation (or near-deflation) they started growing almost immediately after the central bank and the government decided to be 'irresponsible'.
Then there's China, its inflation rate skyrocketed into hyperinflation several times during the recent 30 years, yet they've had double-digit growth for about as long as that.
Oh, and inflation primarily hurts 1%-ers because they have to actually invest their capital in risky businesses (work!) rather than sit back and enjoy risk-free rent. For a general worker a mild inflation is a plus, because it erodes the debts (mortgage!) over time.
US in 1933, Japan right now.
If you have an incandescent that lasted that long then either you're using it very infrequently or it's seriously under-voltaged. In the second case you're losing almost all of its energy as infrared light.
Let's see:
1) There's no problem with Fed. It does exactly what it should do, well within its mandate.
2) Solyndra funding was done through official channels and there is no evidence of kickbacks or anything similar. Yes, it had failed, but that happens.
3) What exactly is wrong with PPACA?
So at least a half of items on your list are crimes only in your mind.
So both parties A and B have to use the same ban... erm... "ledger". And of course, this ledger then would have to be regulated and policed - you don't want your money disappear if the ledger decides to pack stuff and move into a nice tropical country without extradition treaty with the US.
Oh, and of course this ledger would be able to "borrow" your money for a little while. Since you won't be able to access it while it's on the deposit account.
And at this point, there are no advantages to using bitcoins versus regular currencies.
You can't get transactions "off the chain" because then I can double-spent a bitcoin. And you'll have to add a "change of ownership" transaction in the global chain eventually.
Markup on actual salaries is not that large. Typically private hospitals have less than 15% of profit margin - it's healthy but definitely not something to write home about.
Now, medical equipment manufacturers are profiteers. For example, a 1L bag of sterile IV saline solution costs $300 - that's literally 100x markup. And I'm not kidding - I have it in my medical bill from my stay in a hospital a couple of months ago. Drugs are even worse: oral vancomycin costs $500 per one dose - it can be bought for $5 in Russia or India (I checked).
Unfortunately, Anti-Grain's author had died recently so it's unlikely Antigrain is going to be developed fast enough to be standardized.
Why is it fair to inherit money? Because it's like any other inheritance
And that's why ANY inheritance is unfair.
Is it fair that people inherit good looks from their parents? Or athletic potential? Try getting to play in the NBA if you had two very short parents.
Ditto. Genetics are unfair, and hopefully we'll be able to do something about it in future. And for now we can only try to compensate for this unfairness.
If you think it would be fair to "equalize" the situation by taking away the money people inherit, then there are many other situations that should be equalized as well.
Yes, we should. It's not yet possible in practice, so we should start with something that IS possible.
Yeah, so the terrorists would just use person-to-person meetings and then launch the attacks with an email like: "I'm going to a movie at 11:30, anyone with me?"
If you see a TV on sale at $500 and you add that TV to your shopping cart, you should "expect" to pay $500, not $250.
Nope. There is no such expectation - the advertised price can be different from the actual sale price for a lot of reasons: sales taxes, special discounts, etc. For example, 20 minutes ago I bought an Audible audiobook for 10% of its normal price because I have its Kindle counterpart.
I have a story - 10 years ago we were supporting a website for a small online outlet. One smart-ass user tried to game the checkout by pasting 16384 spaces into the "Coupon code" field that caused the discount multiplier algorithm to malfunction and return zero. So the total checkout price for a large purchase became zero.
We canceled this order and threatened the "buyer" with a lawsuit after talking with our lawyer. It turns out that there were two significant factors:
1) Since the total price was zero, it couldn't be classified as a sale. So no consumer protection laws kick in. However, even if the buyer had paid $0.01 then it would be a different story.
2) The fact that the buyer entered a very long sequence of spaces can be classified as an attempt at wire fraud.
As I understand, none of this applies in this case. The Brick should shut up and pay up.
Name a single person saved by domestic NSA data collection.
Read the "Neptune's Brood" - it's about as close to a treatise on interstellar economics as you can get in science fiction. He definitely knows what BTC is and he provides a rational critique of it. I happen to agree with him, btw.
I'm not talking about bland as in "no distinguishing features". I don't really care about sound quality, it's the emotions behind the sound - a song without a story is just not interesting.
I'm totally opposite. I tried to enjoy classical music but it always seems to be too bland for me. I might listen to a classical music track once or twice, but I never really want to keep listening to it.
:(
But if somebody takes a good instrumental track, adds nice vocals (choir singing is super-good) and at least somewhat decent lyrics then I won't be able to stop listening to it. Alas, I probably have almost all of the bands that do this
Also, I like to listen to some movie soundtracks even though they might not have lyrics or vocals. I guess that the memory of the story from the movie is enough.
Many older vehicles don't have ESP or ABS at all... Should these vehicles be made illegal?
Ideally, yes. Practically, old vehicles get grandfathered into these laws to avoid too much backlash. Besides, the number of old vehicles decreases pretty fast.
Lower end vehicles often don't have such features either
Not anymore. ABS brakes are mandatory in EU for new cars as well as tire pressure sensors and lots of other systems. ETC is going to become mandatory very soon.
And it makes sense. Once a safety system shows that it's effective in reducing casualties and it's not excessively expensive then it should become mandatory.
Murder rates went down, rapes rarely involve guns at all so they were not directly affected.
Gun crime in Australia rose after the ban, but then fell rapidly as illegal guns slowly became more and more inaccessible.
When I lived in Europe I used to eat meals consisting of 3-4 different courses (salad, soup, main course and maybe a dessert). In the US very often I can't even finish the "appetizer" and soup - portion sizes are WAY too large. Junk food is also an issue.
they need to find a nice uninhabited planet to do it on
Don't worry, they're working on the 'uninhabited' part.
And there's a reason we use space telescopes to watch the sky in X-rays and gamma-rays. That's because they don't travel far in the atmosphere.
That's ok. But then you should be forced to pay for prostate cancer treatment, and not freeload on poor old ladies.
Except that this study has been replicated. With the null result, as expected.
Glyphosate itself is harmless, the problem is in surfactants - they are much more dangerous. It's like drinking concentrated detergent (which is also lethal at about 200ml dose).
We have a product in development that does just this - it can spin up spot nodes with the best price/performance ratio, dispatch tasks and restart them if a spot node fails. With lots of other goodies.
Drop me a note if you're interested: alex.besogonov@gmail.com