Actually, this opinion owes a lot to Peter Lynch and his book "Beating The Street, who is not a great admirer of Wall Street professionals. Thus it's not exactly "off the cuff".
This opinion also comes from friends and family, who I notice
do not get all panicky when the market turns south. The tend to hold stocks for years, while institutional investors tend to hold for months.
If private investors are well diversified then there's no reason for them to get emotional. Even a number of bad decisions aren't going to cost them their retirement.
Institutional investors, on the other hand, have plenty of reason to get emotional. Their very job is at stake, which is much more immediate.
Google has a lot of institutional (Huge amounts of money controlled by very experienced and rational investors) investor support
I see little evidence that (in general) individual investors are emotional and institutional investors are rational. Quite often it's the opposite. This is particularly true when markets turn sour, and the insititional investors are yelling "sell, sell, sell" just when stocks are cheaper.
Individual investors have the luxury of being their own boss.
They can hold on to any stock they want for as long they want.
In the past I've bought stocks in steel and forestry that I knew were in a depressed industries. I knew I might have to wait 5 years of more before they turned around. I also knew that when they did they would double or more (thank you, IPSCO).
Institutional investors, on the other hand, are constantly having their decisions questioned. They know that even one bad year can mean the end of their job. Thus they can not afford to be too patient or too rational. They have to ride the trend.
You have quite a defeatist attitude. Contrary to Slashdot common belief, responding to challenges by quitting your job doesn't solve any problems...
Cow droppings. Quitting your job often solves problems. I don't recommend people leave their
job on a whim, but if it's intolerable and there is no realistic chance of improvement, then you would be stupid
not to. There's such a thing as being too loyal. You don't owe any company your sanity.
Beside which, what better way of making things better for
those who stay? If management loses good people because of some problem, they just might address that problem.
I've often wondered why a janitor is expected to be fully committed to his job on a minimum wage salary, but a senior executive with an MBA just can't expected to be committed unless we bribe him with a vast fortune.
Are senior executives so morally bankrupt they need to be bribed just to do their job?
Sorry, I don't buy your arguments.
If the U.S. had 10 voting regions, each region would have no
more difficulty than Canada in counting the votes.
Combining these 10 results into a single national result would be,
of course, trivial.
In other words, the difficulty of counting votes doesn't grow linearly. It may take 10 times the people, but it's only slightly
more complicated.
Canada had its results fairly well finalized within 40 minutes of most polls closing (B.C. closed 1/2 hour later). There's no reason the U.S. can't do the same.
What the U.S. should do is:
Keep voting simple, verifiable, and low tech.
Have a single national standard for voting. Don't leave it up
to each state.
Never allow the ballots to get too complicated.
But people are in love with their machines, aren't they?
Somewhat off topic, I was shocked to hear from an associate in Texas that some companies there only hire devout Christians (and presumably protestant, although I don't know that for sure).
In Alberta, and I expect all of Canada, such hiring practises are illegal. Is this practise common in the bible belt? And is it legal?
You never could patent code - you patent inventions.
Code is copyrighted.
In every discussion like this there is always somebody who don't know the difference between patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
Addressing your actual point, up till now the development of computer algorithms has progressed very nicely without much patent protection. It's a bit like saying, "without patent protection, where's the incentive to develop new physics?"
Not everything is supply and demand, tooth and claw. There is room for altruism, generosity and openness too. I find all these in many of my contacts with 'open source' folks. Or maybe I'm just and old hippy, past my sell-by date...
You appear to be suggesting that free enterprize is divorced from principals such as altruism and generosity. This is nonsense. It is possible to be successful in business without integrity - we all many examples - but on the whole it takes honesty and committment to make it. The longer I work in the business world the more I'm impressed by the quality of character I find. Those who are motivated purely by greed in everything they do often fail - people just don't want to do business with them.
Sure self intererst plays a major part - hell, self interest plays a major role in everything we do. But self interest and ethics are not mutually exclusive. In business it's often in your own self interest to be ethical and generous towards others.
SCOX, the SCO Group stock, has been hanging around $4 for quite some time now. Their (legitimate) Unix business is optimistically worth $.50 per share, and pessimistically worth nothing. Thus the stockmarket puts a value on their IP claims of over $3.50/share, or around $60 million dollars.
Now I've invested in stocks for two decades, and I say no vaguely rational investor would touch this stock. It is speculative beyond belief.
So what keeps this stock up? And why has the stock price been so steady over the last few months? Such a wild speculation should fluctuate madly.
Of course he/she does! In modern parlance, FUD is anything you disagree with. Yelling FUD is so much easier than forming an intelligent counter-argument.
It's true that share price is arbitrary. That a share price is $20 or $200 really doesn't tell you anything.
I think the criticism of the $600 share price is that a hell of lot has to go right for a hell of a long time to justify it, given current revenue and earnings.
Google's market capitalization is now about 20 times annual revenue, based on last quarter's results. That's steep - most market cap's are between 1 and 3 times annual revenue. People must expect Google's revenue to increase by at least 10 times in fairly short order to justify the current price.
That's a tall order even for a great company. Judging from some of the comments by investors, Google has become more of a religion than an investment.
Maybe ID'ers have good questions. But schools are not the place to look for the answers.
Never said it was. There's no question that religion should stay out of the science room. People seem to confuse finding some positive aspects to the ID movement with defending it.
I'm not defending the common cold either, but it may serve to boost the immune system.
I disagree.
With most things in the universe, taking a copy of a copy of a copy results in severe loss of information, as the ID'ers have pointed out.
The question of just how the genetic code is passed on to subsequent generations with such fidelity is a superb one, whose answer encompasses both thermodynamics and specific biological mechanisms.
Saying that answers in this area, or in the area of the evolution of complex organs, is 98% complete is
a gross overstatement. I suspect research in these areas has barely begun.
The ID'ers have undoubtedly, and unwittingly, accelerated this research.
I never agreed with the ID'ers, nor claimed that what they were doing even rated as science. I said some of their questions were good, not their answers or their methods.
And I'm sorry, but the question of how complex organs, which depend on many different subsystems working together, evolve is an excellent field of study which I'm sure will yield many future results.
Go argue with someone who actually disagrees with you.
Moron.
I doubt the court decision had anything to do with how stupid ID is. The only real question for the courts is whether ID is religion.
In truth, the ID'ers raise some interesting questions for science. How do complex and allegedly "irreducible" organs and systems come about? How is information preserved across generations? What are the thermodynamics of open systems?
Although biologists already had some answers to these
questions, the ID'ers have forced biologists to study them more intensely.
The ID'ers have advanced science in spite of themselves. Their conclusions are mistaken, their motives are transparent, but some of the questions are interesting.
I guess, but it's far too easy to make common nOOb mistakes
in C++. I consider C++ to be a brilliant technical failure. It takes years to get really good at the language. Many C++ programmers never achieve a solid command of it.
I consider Scott Meyers' books (Effective C++, More Effective C++, perhaps Effective STL) pretty well essential for good C++. They don't teach you the language so much as how to use the language.
Scott's books might be called "how to get around the deficiencies of C++".
The same Canada that just voted their Congress out of office?
That's right. President Martin and his cronies in the Canadian House of Representatives in Ottawa, D.C., are back on the election trail. As soon as he wins the primaries, of course.
Yeah, I didn't get the point of that either. Doesn't really forgive anything, does it?
But if you are going to cite monopolies, I was surprized that three of the biggest - Getty Oil, AT&T, and IBM - weren't mentioned. During the 1960's and 70's, IBM was charged with many of the uncompetitive transgressions that MS is now accused of. General Motors and American Airlines, on the other hand, have always had decent competition.
People now think fondly of IBM now because they have strong competitors, are supporting Linux, and are fighting the terribly misunderstood (joke) SCO Group in the courts, but that warm fuzzy feeling wasn't always there.
Not really my place to answer for these guys, but...
That would require our society to run out of bullshit. Current levels appear adequate to satisfy "mythBusters" needs for
a very long time.
Re:A haven't heard anything about this!
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
How the hell did you get modded "Informative"? Is the "Informative" button right next to the "Funny" button, or something? Do moderators actually read the categories before selecting? And when the hell did chickens begin sneezing? And why do I keep asking questions that I know won't get a sensible answer?
Slashdot Mirror
This opinion also comes from friends and family, who I notice do not get all panicky when the market turns south. The tend to hold stocks for years, while institutional investors tend to hold for months.
If private investors are well diversified then there's no reason for them to get emotional. Even a number of bad decisions aren't going to cost them their retirement.
Institutional investors, on the other hand, have plenty of reason to get emotional. Their very job is at stake, which is much more immediate.
I see little evidence that (in general) individual investors are emotional and institutional investors are rational. Quite often it's the opposite. This is particularly true when markets turn sour, and the insititional investors are yelling "sell, sell, sell" just when stocks are cheaper.
Individual investors have the luxury of being their own boss. They can hold on to any stock they want for as long they want. In the past I've bought stocks in steel and forestry that I knew were in a depressed industries. I knew I might have to wait 5 years of more before they turned around. I also knew that when they did they would double or more (thank you, IPSCO).
Institutional investors, on the other hand, are constantly having their decisions questioned. They know that even one bad year can mean the end of their job. Thus they can not afford to be too patient or too rational. They have to ride the trend.
I can see why you would have problems finding another job. I wouldn't hire you either.
Beside which, what better way of making things better for those who stay? If management loses good people because of some problem, they just might address that problem.
The new Taurus will have seat belts only as part of the optional FE (Family Edition).
"54-inch Plasma HDTV"...
Are senior executives so morally bankrupt they need to be bribed just to do their job?
In other words, the difficulty of counting votes doesn't grow linearly. It may take 10 times the people, but it's only slightly more complicated.
Canada had its results fairly well finalized within 40 minutes of most polls closing (B.C. closed 1/2 hour later). There's no reason the U.S. can't do the same.
What the U.S. should do is:
But people are in love with their machines, aren't they?
In Alberta, and I expect all of Canada, such hiring practises are illegal. Is this practise common in the bible belt? And is it legal?
In every discussion like this there is always somebody who don't know the difference between patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
Addressing your actual point, up till now the development of computer algorithms has progressed very nicely without much patent protection. It's a bit like saying, "without patent protection, where's the incentive to develop new physics?"
Sure self intererst plays a major part - hell, self interest plays a major role in everything we do. But self interest and ethics are not mutually exclusive. In business it's often in your own self interest to be ethical and generous towards others.
As Keynes said, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay liquid. Trying to predict the actions of lunatics is not my type of game.
Now I've invested in stocks for two decades, and I say no vaguely rational investor would touch this stock. It is speculative beyond belief.
So what keeps this stock up? And why has the stock price been so steady over the last few months? Such a wild speculation should fluctuate madly.
Queue the conspiracy theories.
Of course he/she does! In modern parlance, FUD is anything you disagree with. Yelling FUD is so much easier than forming an intelligent counter-argument.
I think the criticism of the $600 share price is that a hell of lot has to go right for a hell of a long time to justify it, given current revenue and earnings.
Google's market capitalization is now about 20 times annual revenue, based on last quarter's results. That's steep - most market cap's are between 1 and 3 times annual revenue. People must expect Google's revenue to increase by at least 10 times in fairly short order to justify the current price.
That's a tall order even for a great company. Judging from some of the comments by investors, Google has become more of a religion than an investment.
Never said it was. There's no question that religion should stay out of the science room. People seem to confuse finding some positive aspects to the ID movement with defending it.
I'm not defending the common cold either, but it may serve to boost the immune system.
Saying that answers in this area, or in the area of the evolution of complex organs, is 98% complete is a gross overstatement. I suspect research in these areas has barely begun.
The ID'ers have undoubtedly, and unwittingly, accelerated this research.
I never agreed with the ID'ers, nor claimed that what they were doing even rated as science. I said some of their questions were good, not their answers or their methods.
And I'm sorry, but the question of how complex organs, which depend on many different subsystems working together, evolve is an excellent field of study which I'm sure will yield many future results.
Go argue with someone who actually disagrees with you. Moron.
In truth, the ID'ers raise some interesting questions for science. How do complex and allegedly "irreducible" organs and systems come about? How is information preserved across generations? What are the thermodynamics of open systems?
Although biologists already had some answers to these questions, the ID'ers have forced biologists to study them more intensely.
The ID'ers have advanced science in spite of themselves. Their conclusions are mistaken, their motives are transparent, but some of the questions are interesting.
I guess, but it's far too easy to make common nOOb mistakes in C++. I consider C++ to be a brilliant technical failure. It takes years to get really good at the language. Many C++ programmers never achieve a solid command of it.
Scott's books might be called "how to get around the deficiencies of C++".
Something like that.
But if you are going to cite monopolies, I was surprized that three of the biggest - Getty Oil, AT&T, and IBM - weren't mentioned. During the 1960's and 70's, IBM was charged with many of the uncompetitive transgressions that MS is now accused of. General Motors and American Airlines, on the other hand, have always had decent competition.
People now think fondly of IBM now because they have strong competitors, are supporting Linux, and are fighting the terribly misunderstood (joke) SCO Group in the courts, but that warm fuzzy feeling wasn't always there.
That would require our society to run out of bullshit. Current levels appear adequate to satisfy "mythBusters" needs for a very long time.
How the hell did you get modded "Informative"? Is the "Informative" button right next to the "Funny" button, or something? Do moderators actually read the categories before selecting? And when the hell did chickens begin sneezing? And why do I keep asking questions that I know won't get a sensible answer?