Thanks for the explanation. Of the explanations I've been given yours is the best. I hadn't even thought of the light frequencies not visible to humans.
Because, when using a color filter array, you throw away 2/3 of your light. Plus it's inflexible.
So use Silicon Film's tech which could have created 3 colors at each pixel using almost all of the light. This is because, as marine scientists, some film photographers, and scuba divers know, different colour frequencies penetrate to different depths. So the sensor developed by Silicon Film captured the 3 primary colours, at least I think the primary colours, at different depths. Through processing the colours are combined to create more colours. Blue combined with red creates purple, blue and yellow green, and red and yellow orange. Combine all 3 and it creates brown. Vary the amount of each to create more colours.
NASA wouldn't need good PR if it had a mission like the Apollo mission to land man on the moon, something a lot of people were able to get behind. Perhaps NASA has become oh ump, an everyday thing. No, I think people are more excited about commercial space flight.
As for myself I'd love to go up, and if offered a free seat would, but I am unwilling to spend millions of dollars to go when there are many other things that are more important to me that I think should be done.
Now onto the quote you provide,"There are no "natural color" cameras aboard the Hubble and never have been. The optical cameras on board have all been digital CCD cameras, which take images as grayscale pixels." My question is why is NASA using a sensor with greyscale pixels? Both CCD and CMOS sensors use color filter arrays to capture color information. There was also the technology Silicon Film created. Using CMOS tech they created a sensor that could capture the 3 primary colors at each pixel site. Silicon Film closed operations and went out of business, but I'm surprised someone else didn't buy it's patents and release their own products using them.
Perhaps you know something I don't that makes the Silicon Film tech unusable, but I don't see why NASA couldn't use color filters.
The fact that you're posting to/. rather than in the hospital, fighting smallpox.
That's the sum of your proof? That's no proof, at most it's evidence. Let's see... First, while the US government, specifically the military developed the internet it was not the first widely or generally used computer network. Throughout the 1970s people used bulletin board systems or BBSes that were setup and run by people doing it for themselves. Fidonet was developed to link the various BBSes up together in 1984, it was as the internet is now a network of networks. A year before the commercial Quantum Computer Services network, now called AOL, was founded. AOL eventually acquired CompuServe, which I used to be a member of, and which was started in 1969 as the Compu-Serv Network, Inc subsidiary of an insurance company. Starting in 1985 General Electric ran the GEnie network. There were other services like these also. It was just a matter of tyme before a network of networks as big as the internet was developed.
There have been innumerable nearly-free markets, and even today, in nearly-lawless countries like Somalia, there is nothing to stop the market from being free. Immigrate and enjoy!
As you say, Somalia is law-less. Therefore a free market does not exist there. What you and every other freemarket opponent do not or refuse to acknowledge is that free markets require voluntary exchanges. Nobody holds a firearm to another's head, threatens, or robs them. I can hear you saying next that laws are anti-freemarkets, that public law enforcement is needed to uphold those laws or some such. You're partially right but not one free market advocate I know of opposes these. Many proponents will actually tell you that that is a legitimate function of government. As is contract law enforcement.
Natural market forces, like economies of scale, do VASTLY MORE to restrict small players from entering the market than any regulations you can name.
BS. If natural market forces did as you say, I would not be a member of 2 of the dozens of co-ops in the upper midwest. Within the greater Minneapolis, St Paul, Twin Cities area there are more than a dozen. One of those co-ops I'm a member of has just one location, it's a few blocks away from me and in weather like today I can walk there in about 5 minutes. The other co-op has 3 stores now though when I joined it there was only one. With some members driving some distances to get to the store they asked that another store be opened close to them, so one was. The other store was a separate co-op that wanted to be acquired by mine, so it was put to a vote of member-owners and we approved. While those co-ops I'm a member of and others are member owned some are worker owned.
Also even co-ops can be big businesses, Horizon Organic is a nationwide co-op owned by farmers. In Spain some businesses are big worker owned co-ops. The Mondragón Cooperative Corporation in northern Spain, the Basque region, "employ more than 100,000 worker/owners and in 2007 generated revenues of more than $24 billion."
In fact it's the government PREVENTING those established players from becomming monop
Hrm, now you've got me wanting to go back and watch some more of the older ones (Moore / Connery). It's been at least 10 years since I've watched any of them. I've forgotten most of them.
Yea, whenever I go into a store and see a set of Bond movies I have to fight off the urge to buy it. I have 9 of them now, 8 of which are on tape. Thinking about it I think it's ironic that I have hundreds of DVDs but only one Bond movie on DVD.
Oh, thinking about it I wonder what a movie would be like with Antonio Banderas as Bond. He's Spanish so I'm not sure it would work with him playing an English spy, maybe a Spanish version?
Yes, yes, model rockets are very nice, but lets see you put one in orbit:)
They're a stepping stone. Which is why I find it ironic a high school an hour's drive from where the Space Shuttle as well as a lot of rockets are launched didn't have a model rocketry club but a high school thousands of miles from the nearest launch facility did.
What I really want to see is the manned version of Dragon.
What Dragon? I hadn't heard of it before. Is it the SpaceX Dragon? I found that by searching wiki for space dragon and it was on the first page.
Oh, space salvage reminds me of Andy Griffith's late '70s TV series "Salvage". If you don't know it he stars as a junkyard owner who builds a space ship, if I recall right the capsule was a cement mixer, to salvage space junk.
theres a real chicken and egg problem for investors (no demand for orbital flight, but no vehicles that allow the demand to develop)
Virgin Galactic, Russia. There is both demand and capability. If I recall right Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, paid Russia $20 million to ride to the ISS. I wouldn't pay that much myself but there are some who will, I think Virgin is requiring a $100,000 deposit and has almost booked the first flight full.
far too high an entry cost for somebody to build a spaceship in their basement or otherwise appear overnight.
Sure there are low cost rockets;-) As a member of a model rocketry club in one high school I went to we built, and launched, our own Estes and other model rockets.
What I found ironic was that the high school where the model rocketry club was was in MA but the high school I went to in FL didn't have such a club. There I was attending a school that was an hour's drive from the Cape yet students hadn't even heard of model rockets.
Although I do not exclude there is a minority of thugs which always take the occasion to riot, the intention of the crushing majority was only to protest agaisnt that law.
The rioters may of been a minority but there were some protesters who supported them and some rioters supported protesters. Perhaps I could have phrased what I wanted to say better though, so I'll try again. The government in France wanted to boost youth employment, even today France has a high unemployment rate for youth. But the youth protested against making it easier for businesses to fire bad employees who are youth, as if a job was an entitlement not something earned. If you want more employment of youth you want to make it easier to fire those youth who are poor workers. Even today Youth unemployment is high in almost all of Europe.
First, because you've clearly benefited GREATLY from the society in which you live, and all the government programs in place to provide you with those educated and healthy employees.
Oh, I have? Where's your proof?
Second, because you'll still be making much more money, there will just be another percent or two taken off to pay for government programs which benefit you, as well as everyone else.
Not if as a percentage taxes go up as income goes up. As I said earlier if I'm going to be heavily taxed I might as well do the minimum I need to live. And to me that means moving into the forest where I can fish, hunt, and gather my own food. I don't need or want anything from you, can you say the same? Or do you need to force me to live in your fantasy world?
Without government interference markets will improve employee pay and labor conditions.
Completely disproven by all of human history...
Bullshit!!! Because there has never been a free market freemarkets have not been disproved. Actually most of human history has been feudal where peons, serfs, and slaves worked for the nobility and slave owners. Hell even Marx said as much.
If you have a reason to start a business, you can bear a little regulation to get it going... It won't be a blip on the radar compared to the harder parts of starting a company...
You're mixing things up here. As you say starting a business is hard, and regulations make it harder. Of course large and established businesses like them because it reduces their competition. They have the resources to make sure they stay within regulations but someone who wants to start their own business may not unless they are already wealthy.
Why should individual employees always bear the brunt of a bad economy, or your own poor planning? How can you claim it's in society's interests that the business owner NOT have to bear the ups and downs instead?
You said before starting a business is hard, yet you want to make it harder. As I have repeatedly stated I would not take a risk in hiring someone if I could not fire them without going out of business. You and those like you would prefer businesses to be driven out of business before they can fire someone. If you want something like that, Cuba is 90 miles from Florida. When you ask why employers shouldn't bear ups and downs, you mustn't realize they in fact do bare the risks. They bare the risk of going out of business. Now I ask you is it better to allow a business who employee 10 people to fire or lay off 1 person or go out of business putting the owner as well as all ten employees out of work?
You've also got to realize that nothing about the shuttle makes it a good platform for any kind of debris control.
I specifically said "returnable space shuttle" not "the space shuttle". If law allowed private businesses could design and build their own returnable space shuttles.
Do you milk your own cows? Thresh your own grain? Forge your own steel? Gather herbs for your own medicine?
I voluntarily trade, trade, trade, and grow my own. Just today I willingly handed over $10 for supplies. And I'm getting ready to can tomatoes I grew in my garden. I plan on making sauce and salsa with the tomatoes. I also have both acorn and zucchini squash I plan to cook and can. For seasoning I'll use the garlic and onions I grew. Unfortunately because my basil didn't grow much I'll have to buy some. I'll also buy oregano and maybe some other herbs and spices. I'm not sure what I'll do with my rhubarb, being late in the year they're probably woody. I however shared some with the families on either side of me as well as shared lettuce and mustard greens with one of them. And I still have to pick more tomatoes, squash, and my radishes.
None of this involves government.
In an industrialized world, nobody who's put 30 years into working for a company should be a pauper for the rest of his life if he happens to retire into a bear market. That's cruel.
You obviously did not read what I said an=bout investing, so I conclude you are trolling and I will not give more responses.
yes, but where do money originate. that is, who define the total amount?
Those who use, pay with or are paid with, the money. At least in freer markets. Of course because the Chinese government sets the exchange rate it's not compleatly free. Exchange rates are one measure of how the value of money is defined. Another way it is defined is when you, I, and others go out and do work for others or buy something from others.
thing is, if a branch of government is what puts money out there, potentially under the label of funding some government effort or other, the what is tax?
I do not know what you mean by this, can you clarify? For instance what does "put money out there" mean? Print and release money? Spend money? Or what? And what does "the what is tax?" mean?
Falcon
Oh BTW back to China. Though the government sets the official exchange rate, for those with the wherewithal and gumption it's relatively easy to start a private business.
Anyway, I don't know WTF you are talking about. You can go to France and start a business just like you can start a business in US.
I might be able to start a business in France, but I can not easily fire an employee there whereas i can in the US. If I did live in France, because I could not easily fire an employee I am not likely to start a business there. I will not risk my money, tyme, and effort if I can go bankrupt trying to fire an employee.
Income taxes, and taxes in general are there to reduce monetary supply.
Bull Shit!!! Taxes are there to pay politicians, bureaucrats, and government contractors.
If you earn $300k/year, you will not spend all of the money on necessities of life!
No but I can do what I want with it. If I wanted to I could donate money to the Shriners Hospitals for Children, who treat children for free. Or St. Jude Children's Research Hospital which also treats children for free. I could invest money in businesses creating jobs. Or I could spend money on things creating more jobs. And as employment rises so does pay.
Your salary is not an absolute gauge of your input labor! The $20k/year concrete worker or a farmer that manager to just stay afloat may be working 1000x more than a $2 million a year trust funder
I never, ever said it was. What I said was that more pay people get to keep creates an incentive to work. There is no incentive for me to work if you're going to take my money. I might as well only work enough to be able to pay my living expenses. Heck I can do that out in the middle of the forest. I grew up being able to go into the woods camping. I was able to gather food, hunt, and fish. And if I have to be someone else's slave, with is what involuntarily paying taxes is, to live in the modern world I might as well live a primitive life. Why do anything more? Because you dictate?
Oh and as far as that concrete worker, I used to be one. As a college student I worked for a concrete and masonry business. It had nothing to do with my major, Computer Engineering, but it was the best paying job I had. And physically the hardest but I loved it. Unfortunately I found it hard and was only able to take night classes once I started working for the company. The night classes didn't have the choices the day schedules did.
After working for the concrete contractor for 3 years I was laid off, after that I started working through a day labor pool. Though not well paying it allowed me to work when I wanted money and made it easier to take classes. This worked out until I was hit in an accident which left me with a disability.
but lighten up; it was a joke [ notice I used a:-) ].
I wish I could, but I find we're in hell of a mess now. Bush dropped the ball by turning his attention to the invasion of Iraq instead of making sure Afghanistan was stable. I don't know about you but I have a nephew who has served in Iraq twice and is being sent to Afghanistan as well.
Of course I can only blame him for Afghanistan, the Marines offered to pay him a $250,000 bonus for reenlisting and he took it. I didn't even know that until my brother-in-law told me later. Tell you what though, at my age I'd enlist if I was paid a bonus of $250,000. And I'm middle aged.
It just not so bad that theres any need for something as expensive as the shuttle yet. No immediate crisis for government action, and certainly no profitability for the private sector.
No crisis? So there was no problem when China used a "ballistic missile to destroy one of its defunct weather satellites"? And the experts are all wrong? It was just a mirage when an American commercial satellite and a Russian retired satellite collided? "Close calls in orbit happen all the time--scientists estimate that launch vehicles and other objects come within striking distance of one other over 1000 times a day." That article says how the collision of the two satellites created a cloud of debris that spread around the world in a few hours. Further it says "The junk was in the orbital path of the Hubble Space Telescope and just 250 miles higher than the orbit of the International Space Station."
there really isn't that much salvage value in most of the stuff floating around
There isn't? The Pop Mechanics article above says that best possible space-junk solution: salvage isn't allowed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It prevents businesses from salvaging defunct crafts. I don't know if without the treaty it would be profitable now or not, but when one or more critical crafts collides with space junk people will think differently. Personally I think those who put the junk in space should be responsible for it, but because the US put a lot of it there I doubt that will happen. Nor do I think Russia or China will agree.
There are things called "Co-operatives" where the labor and capital are one and the same.
Do you think workers could have built Ford? Or Intel? General Electric?
Guess what... Because capitalism is and free markets require the voluntary exchange of goods and services co-ops, cooperatives, are allowed in capitalism and free markets. And not all co-ops are employee owned, I am a member or owner of 2 co-op. I joined them because I buy from them a lot and they support other local initiatives and businesses as well as organics.
BS! Pension plans are about planning for the future.
life is not about finance
Life is about personal responsibility. And it's each individuals responsibility to plan their own future. If that means they have to pay someone else to do the planning for them or learn to plan themselves then it's their responsibility. Heck I don't know what's so hard about that for most people. In jr high we were required to take a civics class. In it though only an intro we had to learn about investing, and this was a public school in a relatively poor area. One of the things the teacher had us do was pretend we had $25,000 to invest any way we wanted. Daily we'd decide what we wanted to buy and sell, sell X stocks and buy Y bonds or Z commodity. The following day we'd look in the newspaper's business section to look up the prices of what we bought and sold. We did that about 4 weeks after which I wanted to be an investor and trader. Today with the net it's so much easier.
If someone happens to retire during a bear market, then through no fault of his own, his standard of living is much reduced versus someone who has the good fortune to retire into a bull market.
Except it's the investor's own responsibility to adjust their investment strategies. As young and new investors people can afford to take risks investing in growth and maybe aggressive growth stocks. But as they age their investments should shift. By the tyme investors are about to retire their portfolio should be mostly if not only value stocks and bonds that generate income. Even in today's recession there are still businesses making money. BP with one exception has increased dividends every year since 1993. Altria, formerly Philip Morris, is a cash machine. BMS, Bristol Myers Squibb Co., which closed at $22 today, declared dividends of $0.31 for the quarter ending 30 June 2009. That was the same as paid out the past three quarters. Annually that's $1.24 a share, at today's closing price the rate of return is 5%. During a recession that's nothing to sneeze at.
Old-fashioned pensions are much better for normal people
Except those plans are Defined benefit pension plan and government has to pick up the tab if the company goes out of business. It was because of these plans that Detroit found itself in it's problems. Chrysler, Ford, and GM agreed to these types of plans with the unions but they were not able to service the debt.
And since pension payouts are guaranteed, this organization has every incentive to properly manage the account.
See above. Actually because they are guaranteed, by the government there isn't an incentive to properly manage the accounts. Let tax payers pick up the tab when business fails.
i would say that a lot of issues goes away ones one look at what money is supposed to represent...
Not really, at least not to me. To me money is meant to facilitate or make easier the exchange of goods and services.
Reminds me of a scene in the movie "Phenomenon" where John Travolta's character plays a garage owner and someone who drills wells comes into the garage to pick up his truck which was being repaired but says he doesn't have the money to pay for it. Travolta saying he needs solar panels he was given as a birthday present installed on his roof. The driller asks what's that got to do with his truck and Travolta says the installer needs a well drilled so if he drills the well the installer will install the panels and he'll fix the truck in return.
In these exchanges all three were voluntary, fixing the truck, drilling the well, and installing the panels. When government takes money people work to earn that is not voluntary. Related to that but applicable to today, today I heard a report on CNN about how because of the recession more people planted gardens this year than have in years. I wasn't impressed but the report said that 19% of those who planted gardens this year this year was the first year they planted a garden. What some are doing is exchanging produce, what one person doesn't grow someone else does and they trade what they have for what they want.
Unfortunately we haven't gotten as much rain this year and it's been cooler than previous years, I don't know if that's why but my garden didn't do so well this year. My garden did much better last year, I grew enough to eat one or two meals every day for about 3 months, but this year I had lettuce for salads and sandwiches but not what tomatoes I got have been small. So I haven't been able to share much, only about 1/4 what I shared last year. Of course I got some acorn squash, onions, and radishes I didn't grow last year. But my corn and carrots didn't sprout.
Slashdot Mirror
Like retiredtwice's reply above yours you bring up frequencies not visible by humans and I hadn't thought of that.
Falcon
If you haven't already see retiredtwice reply, above yours. As I replied to him, or her, I hadn't thought of light frequencies not visible to humans.
Falcon
Thanks for the explanation. Of the explanations I've been given yours is the best. I hadn't even thought of the light frequencies not visible to humans.
Falcon
Because, when using a color filter array, you throw away 2/3 of your light. Plus it's inflexible.
So use Silicon Film's tech which could have created 3 colors at each pixel using almost all of the light. This is because, as marine scientists, some film photographers, and scuba divers know, different colour frequencies penetrate to different depths. So the sensor developed by Silicon Film captured the 3 primary colours, at least I think the primary colours, at different depths. Through processing the colours are combined to create more colours. Blue combined with red creates purple, blue and yellow green, and red and yellow orange. Combine all 3 and it creates brown. Vary the amount of each to create more colours.
Falcon
That's the saddest part of all.
NASA wouldn't need good PR if it had a mission like the Apollo mission to land man on the moon, something a lot of people were able to get behind. Perhaps NASA has become oh ump, an everyday thing. No, I think people are more excited about commercial space flight.
As for myself I'd love to go up, and if offered a free seat would, but I am unwilling to spend millions of dollars to go when there are many other things that are more important to me that I think should be done.
Falcon
"Most of us humans will never travel to some of the exotic places physically that we see in these images," reflected Nasa's chief scientist, Ed Weiler
Most of us won't?
Perhaps they would if they rode in a Firefly.
Falcon
Related: does anyone know if this filter is removable (and by extension who offers that service?)
There should be, there are services that convert digital cameras to infrared
Falcon
First, thanks for the link to the faq.
Now onto the quote you provide,"There are no "natural color" cameras aboard the Hubble and never have been. The optical cameras on board have all been digital CCD cameras, which take images as grayscale pixels." My question is why is NASA using a sensor with greyscale pixels? Both CCD and CMOS sensors use color filter arrays to capture color information. There was also the technology Silicon Film created. Using CMOS tech they created a sensor that could capture the 3 primary colors at each pixel site. Silicon Film closed operations and went out of business, but I'm surprised someone else didn't buy it's patents and release their own products using them.
Perhaps you know something I don't that makes the Silicon Film tech unusable, but I don't see why NASA couldn't use color filters.
Falcon
Oh, I have? Where's your proof?
The fact that you're posting to /. rather than in the hospital, fighting smallpox.
That's the sum of your proof? That's no proof, at most it's evidence. Let's see... First, while the US government, specifically the military developed the internet it was not the first widely or generally used computer network. Throughout the 1970s people used bulletin board systems or BBSes that were setup and run by people doing it for themselves. Fidonet was developed to link the various BBSes up together in 1984, it was as the internet is now a network of networks. A year before the commercial Quantum Computer Services network, now called AOL, was founded. AOL eventually acquired CompuServe, which I used to be a member of, and which was started in 1969 as the Compu-Serv Network, Inc subsidiary of an insurance company. Starting in 1985 General Electric ran the GEnie network. There were other services like these also. It was just a matter of tyme before a network of networks as big as the internet was developed.
Next the Smallpox vaccine was Edward Jenner, an English scientist who did not work for government.
There have been innumerable nearly-free markets, and even today, in nearly-lawless countries like Somalia, there is nothing to stop the market from being free. Immigrate and enjoy!
As you say, Somalia is law-less. Therefore a free market does not exist there. What you and every other freemarket opponent do not or refuse to acknowledge is that free markets require voluntary exchanges. Nobody holds a firearm to another's head, threatens, or robs them. I can hear you saying next that laws are anti-freemarkets, that public law enforcement is needed to uphold those laws or some such. You're partially right but not one free market advocate I know of opposes these. Many proponents will actually tell you that that is a legitimate function of government. As is contract law enforcement.
Natural market forces, like economies of scale, do VASTLY MORE to restrict small players from entering the market than any regulations you can name.
BS. If natural market forces did as you say, I would not be a member of 2 of the dozens of co-ops in the upper midwest. Within the greater Minneapolis, St Paul, Twin Cities area there are more than a dozen. One of those co-ops I'm a member of has just one location, it's a few blocks away from me and in weather like today I can walk there in about 5 minutes. The other co-op has 3 stores now though when I joined it there was only one. With some members driving some distances to get to the store they asked that another store be opened close to them, so one was. The other store was a separate co-op that wanted to be acquired by mine, so it was put to a vote of member-owners and we approved. While those co-ops I'm a member of and others are member owned some are worker owned.
Also even co-ops can be big businesses, Horizon Organic is a nationwide co-op owned by farmers. In Spain some businesses are big worker owned co-ops. The Mondragón Cooperative Corporation in northern Spain, the Basque region, "employ more than 100,000 worker/owners and in 2007 generated revenues of more than $24 billion."
In fact it's the government PREVENTING those established players from becomming monop
Hrm, now you've got me wanting to go back and watch some more of the older ones (Moore / Connery). It's been at least 10 years since I've watched any of them. I've forgotten most of them.
Yea, whenever I go into a store and see a set of Bond movies I have to fight off the urge to buy it. I have 9 of them now, 8 of which are on tape. Thinking about it I think it's ironic that I have hundreds of DVDs but only one Bond movie on DVD.
Oh, thinking about it I wonder what a movie would be like with Antonio Banderas as Bond. He's Spanish so I'm not sure it would work with him playing an English spy, maybe a Spanish version?
Falcon
Yes, yes, model rockets are very nice, but lets see you put one in orbit :)
They're a stepping stone. Which is why I find it ironic a high school an hour's drive from where the Space Shuttle as well as a lot of rockets are launched didn't have a model rocketry club but a high school thousands of miles from the nearest launch facility did.
What I really want to see is the manned version of Dragon.
What Dragon? I hadn't heard of it before. Is it the SpaceX Dragon? I found that by searching wiki for space dragon and it was on the first page.
Oh, space salvage reminds me of Andy Griffith's late '70s TV series "Salvage". If you don't know it he stars as a junkyard owner who builds a space ship, if I recall right the capsule was a cement mixer, to salvage space junk.
Falcon
theres a real chicken and egg problem for investors (no demand for orbital flight, but no vehicles that allow the demand to develop)
Virgin Galactic, Russia. There is both demand and capability. If I recall right Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, paid Russia $20 million to ride to the ISS. I wouldn't pay that much myself but there are some who will, I think Virgin is requiring a $100,000 deposit and has almost booked the first flight full.
far too high an entry cost for somebody to build a spaceship in their basement or otherwise appear overnight.
Sure there are low cost rockets ;-) As a member of a model rocketry club in one high school I went to we built, and launched, our own Estes and other model rockets.
What I found ironic was that the high school where the model rocketry club was was in MA but the high school I went to in FL didn't have such a club. There I was attending a school that was an hour's drive from the Cape yet students hadn't even heard of model rockets.
Falcon
See subject.
Falcon
Did what we call a "manif" (manifestation/protest march). That is quite different from rioting (going in the street to steal and make damage).
There weren't any deaths, burned cars, or other violence?
Although I do not exclude there is a minority of thugs which always take the occasion to riot, the intention of the crushing majority was only to protest agaisnt that law.
The rioters may of been a minority but there were some protesters who supported them and some rioters supported protesters. Perhaps I could have phrased what I wanted to say better though, so I'll try again. The government in France wanted to boost youth employment, even today France has a high unemployment rate for youth. But the youth protested against making it easier for businesses to fire bad employees who are youth, as if a job was an entitlement not something earned. If you want more employment of youth you want to make it easier to fire those youth who are poor workers. Even today Youth unemployment is high in almost all of Europe.
Falcon
First, because you've clearly benefited GREATLY from the society in which you live, and all the government programs in place to provide you with those educated and healthy employees.
Oh, I have? Where's your proof?
Second, because you'll still be making much more money, there will just be another percent or two taken off to pay for government programs which benefit you, as well as everyone else.
Not if as a percentage taxes go up as income goes up. As I said earlier if I'm going to be heavily taxed I might as well do the minimum I need to live. And to me that means moving into the forest where I can fish, hunt, and gather my own food. I don't need or want anything from you, can you say the same? Or do you need to force me to live in your fantasy world?
Without government interference markets will improve employee pay and labor conditions.
Completely disproven by all of human history...
Bullshit!!! Because there has never been a free market freemarkets have not been disproved. Actually most of human history has been feudal where peons, serfs, and slaves worked for the nobility and slave owners. Hell even Marx said as much.
If you have a reason to start a business, you can bear a little regulation to get it going... It won't be a blip on the radar compared to the harder parts of starting a company...
You're mixing things up here. As you say starting a business is hard, and regulations make it harder. Of course large and established businesses like them because it reduces their competition. They have the resources to make sure they stay within regulations but someone who wants to start their own business may not unless they are already wealthy.
Why should individual employees always bear the brunt of a bad economy, or your own poor planning? How can you claim it's in society's interests that the business owner NOT have to bear the ups and downs instead?
You said before starting a business is hard, yet you want to make it harder. As I have repeatedly stated I would not take a risk in hiring someone if I could not fire them without going out of business. You and those like you would prefer businesses to be driven out of business before they can fire someone. If you want something like that, Cuba is 90 miles from Florida. When you ask why employers shouldn't bear ups and downs, you mustn't realize they in fact do bare the risks. They bare the risk of going out of business. Now I ask you is it better to allow a business who employee 10 people to fire or lay off 1 person or go out of business putting the owner as well as all ten employees out of work?
Falcon
You've also got to realize that nothing about the shuttle makes it a good platform for any kind of debris control.
I specifically said "returnable space shuttle" not "the space shuttle". If law allowed private businesses could design and build their own returnable space shuttles.
Falcon
You're living in a fantasy world
And you want to force others to live in your fantasy world.
Falcon
Do you milk your own cows? Thresh your own grain? Forge your own steel? Gather herbs for your own medicine?
I voluntarily trade, trade, trade, and grow my own. Just today I willingly handed over $10 for supplies. And I'm getting ready to can tomatoes I grew in my garden. I plan on making sauce and salsa with the tomatoes. I also have both acorn and zucchini squash I plan to cook and can. For seasoning I'll use the garlic and onions I grew. Unfortunately because my basil didn't grow much I'll have to buy some. I'll also buy oregano and maybe some other herbs and spices. I'm not sure what I'll do with my rhubarb, being late in the year they're probably woody. I however shared some with the families on either side of me as well as shared lettuce and mustard greens with one of them. And I still have to pick more tomatoes, squash, and my radishes.
None of this involves government.
In an industrialized world, nobody who's put 30 years into working for a company should be a pauper for the rest of his life if he happens to retire into a bear market. That's cruel.
You obviously did not read what I said an=bout investing, so I conclude you are trolling and I will not give more responses.
Falcon
yes, but where do money originate. that is, who define the total amount?
Those who use, pay with or are paid with, the money. At least in freer markets. Of course because the Chinese government sets the exchange rate it's not compleatly free. Exchange rates are one measure of how the value of money is defined. Another way it is defined is when you, I, and others go out and do work for others or buy something from others.
thing is, if a branch of government is what puts money out there, potentially under the label of funding some government effort or other, the what is tax?
I do not know what you mean by this, can you clarify? For instance what does "put money out there" mean? Print and release money? Spend money? Or what? And what does "the what is tax?" mean?
Falcon
Oh BTW back to China. Though the government sets the official exchange rate, for those with the wherewithal and gumption it's relatively easy to start a private business.
Anyway, I don't know WTF you are talking about. You can go to France and start a business just like you can start a business in US.
I might be able to start a business in France, but I can not easily fire an employee there whereas i can in the US. If I did live in France, because I could not easily fire an employee I am not likely to start a business there. I will not risk my money, tyme, and effort if I can go bankrupt trying to fire an employee.
Income taxes, and taxes in general are there to reduce monetary supply.
Bull Shit!!! Taxes are there to pay politicians, bureaucrats, and government contractors.
If you earn $300k/year, you will not spend all of the money on necessities of life!
No but I can do what I want with it. If I wanted to I could donate money to the Shriners Hospitals for Children, who treat children for free. Or St. Jude Children's Research Hospital which also treats children for free. I could invest money in businesses creating jobs. Or I could spend money on things creating more jobs. And as employment rises so does pay.
Your salary is not an absolute gauge of your input labor! The $20k/year concrete worker or a farmer that manager to just stay afloat may be working 1000x more than a $2 million a year trust funder
I never, ever said it was. What I said was that more pay people get to keep creates an incentive to work. There is no incentive for me to work if you're going to take my money. I might as well only work enough to be able to pay my living expenses. Heck I can do that out in the middle of the forest. I grew up being able to go into the woods camping. I was able to gather food, hunt, and fish. And if I have to be someone else's slave, with is what involuntarily paying taxes is, to live in the modern world I might as well live a primitive life. Why do anything more? Because you dictate?
Oh and as far as that concrete worker, I used to be one. As a college student I worked for a concrete and masonry business. It had nothing to do with my major, Computer Engineering, but it was the best paying job I had. And physically the hardest but I loved it. Unfortunately I found it hard and was only able to take night classes once I started working for the company. The night classes didn't have the choices the day schedules did.
After working for the concrete contractor for 3 years I was laid off, after that I started working through a day labor pool. Though not well paying it allowed me to work when I wanted money and made it easier to take classes. This worked out until I was hit in an accident which left me with a disability.
Falcon
but lighten up; it was a joke [ notice I used a :-) ].
I wish I could, but I find we're in hell of a mess now. Bush dropped the ball by turning his attention to the invasion of Iraq instead of making sure Afghanistan was stable. I don't know about you but I have a nephew who has served in Iraq twice and is being sent to Afghanistan as well.
Of course I can only blame him for Afghanistan, the Marines offered to pay him a $250,000 bonus for reenlisting and he took it. I didn't even know that until my brother-in-law told me later. Tell you what though, at my age I'd enlist if I was paid a bonus of $250,000. And I'm middle aged.
Falcon
It just not so bad that theres any need for something as expensive as the shuttle yet. No immediate crisis for government action, and certainly no profitability for the private sector.
No crisis? So there was no problem when China used a "ballistic missile to destroy one of its defunct weather satellites"? And the experts are all wrong? It was just a mirage when an American commercial satellite and a Russian retired satellite collided? " Close calls in orbit happen all the time--scientists estimate that launch vehicles and other objects come within striking distance of one other over 1000 times a day." That article says how the collision of the two satellites created a cloud of debris that spread around the world in a few hours. Further it says "The junk was in the orbital path of the Hubble Space Telescope and just 250 miles higher than the orbit of the International Space Station."
there really isn't that much salvage value in most of the stuff floating around
There isn't? The Pop Mechanics article above says that best possible space-junk solution: salvage isn't allowed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It prevents businesses from salvaging defunct crafts. I don't know if without the treaty it would be profitable now or not, but when one or more critical crafts collides with space junk people will think differently. Personally I think those who put the junk in space should be responsible for it, but because the US put a lot of it there I doubt that will happen. Nor do I think Russia or China will agree.
Falcon
There are things called "Co-operatives" where the labor and capital are one and the same.
Do you think workers could have built Ford? Or Intel? General Electric?
Guess what... Because capitalism is and free markets require the voluntary exchange of goods and services co-ops, cooperatives, are allowed in capitalism and free markets. And not all co-ops are employee owned, I am a member or owner of 2 co-op. I joined them because I buy from them a lot and they support other local initiatives and businesses as well as organics.
Falcon
BS! Pension plans are about planning for the future.
life is not about finance
Life is about personal responsibility. And it's each individuals responsibility to plan their own future. If that means they have to pay someone else to do the planning for them or learn to plan themselves then it's their responsibility. Heck I don't know what's so hard about that for most people. In jr high we were required to take a civics class. In it though only an intro we had to learn about investing, and this was a public school in a relatively poor area. One of the things the teacher had us do was pretend we had $25,000 to invest any way we wanted. Daily we'd decide what we wanted to buy and sell, sell X stocks and buy Y bonds or Z commodity. The following day we'd look in the newspaper's business section to look up the prices of what we bought and sold. We did that about 4 weeks after which I wanted to be an investor and trader. Today with the net it's so much easier.
If someone happens to retire during a bear market, then through no fault of his own, his standard of living is much reduced versus someone who has the good fortune to retire into a bull market.
Except it's the investor's own responsibility to adjust their investment strategies. As young and new investors people can afford to take risks investing in growth and maybe aggressive growth stocks. But as they age their investments should shift. By the tyme investors are about to retire their portfolio should be mostly if not only value stocks and bonds that generate income. Even in today's recession there are still businesses making money. BP with one exception has increased dividends every year since 1993. Altria, formerly Philip Morris, is a cash machine. BMS, Bristol Myers Squibb Co., which closed at $22 today, declared dividends of $0.31 for the quarter ending 30 June 2009. That was the same as paid out the past three quarters. Annually that's $1.24 a share, at today's closing price the rate of return is 5%. During a recession that's nothing to sneeze at.
Old-fashioned pensions are much better for normal people
Except those plans are Defined benefit pension plan and government has to pick up the tab if the company goes out of business. It was because of these plans that Detroit found itself in it's problems. Chrysler, Ford, and GM agreed to these types of plans with the unions but they were not able to service the debt.
And since pension payouts are guaranteed, this organization has every incentive to properly manage the account.
See above. Actually because they are guaranteed, by the government there isn't an incentive to properly manage the accounts. Let tax payers pick up the tab when business fails.
Falcon
i would say that a lot of issues goes away ones one look at what money is supposed to represent...
Not really, at least not to me. To me money is meant to facilitate or make easier the exchange of goods and services.
Reminds me of a scene in the movie "Phenomenon" where John Travolta's character plays a garage owner and someone who drills wells comes into the garage to pick up his truck which was being repaired but says he doesn't have the money to pay for it. Travolta saying he needs solar panels he was given as a birthday present installed on his roof. The driller asks what's that got to do with his truck and Travolta says the installer needs a well drilled so if he drills the well the installer will install the panels and he'll fix the truck in return.
In these exchanges all three were voluntary, fixing the truck, drilling the well, and installing the panels. When government takes money people work to earn that is not voluntary. Related to that but applicable to today, today I heard a report on CNN about how because of the recession more people planted gardens this year than have in years. I wasn't impressed but the report said that 19% of those who planted gardens this year this year was the first year they planted a garden. What some are doing is exchanging produce, what one person doesn't grow someone else does and they trade what they have for what they want.
Unfortunately we haven't gotten as much rain this year and it's been cooler than previous years, I don't know if that's why but my garden didn't do so well this year. My garden did much better last year, I grew enough to eat one or two meals every day for about 3 months, but this year I had lettuce for salads and sandwiches but not what tomatoes I got have been small. So I haven't been able to share much, only about 1/4 what I shared last year. Of course I got some acorn squash, onions, and radishes I didn't grow last year. But my corn and carrots didn't sprout.
Falcon