Can't resist stepping up to defend my university...
Although I dropped my compsci major (and have since graduated in a completely different discipline) I took some classes with one of these guys before doing so; I can assure you that they are for real, they are computer scientists, and although the paper itself may look more than a little ridiculous, they are good at what they do.
For all of you folks who are thinking about funnelling money to the South Carolina Republican Party as revenge for Hollings' perfidy - stop. Notice the name of the other sponsor on the bill.
Ted Stevens is a big-gun Republican, not an outcast on the moderate fringe. If he's working with Hollings on this, it's not just some kooky imperial-state Democrat's idea. Merely elbowing Hollings out of his seat won't make this bill go away. Take a longer view.
As far as lobbying goes, here are a few more useful people to lobby than merely your local Senator. Write McCain. Even if you aren't an Arizonian - he's ranking Republican on Commerce. Is your Senator on Commerce? Find out and harangue them about it, too. Write Ron Wyden [D-Ore.] and George Allen [R-Va.], who are respectively the ranking Democrat and Republican on the Commerce subcomittee that handles these matters. And don't forget Rep. Billy Tauzin [R-La.] and Rep. John Dingell [D-Mich.], who are the chair and ranking member of the Commerce committee on the other side of the Capitol, in the House, and who have demonstrated considerable clues on matters technical in the past.
If this bill makes a floor vote, the battle is already pretty much over. Fix it so it dies a quiet, neglected death in committee.
All Torch-boy did was introduce it. He dropped it in the Senate hopper, where it will keep company with the fifty-odd other bills introduced that day.
It has about as much chance of passing as the couple of dozen flag-burning amendment resolutions that pop up in the House every Congress. Tip-off number one: Torricelli didn't manage to attract even one cosponsor for it. Tip-off number two: Pat Leahy (chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, if you didn't know) is not a retard.
Sure, tear Torricelli a new one with your letter-writing. Maybe he'll catch a clue. But don't talk about this like it's five minutes away from becoming the next DMCA, because it isn't.
"This page contains information of a type (irritants/really-fucking-huge) that can only be viewed with the appropriate Plug-in.
Click OK to download Plugin.
"Advertisers are reluctant to be associated with anything that irritates consumers," [Charles Britton] said. "There's not many successful business models based on annoying people."
Would somebody please explain this to the inventors of popup ads?
Ok, here's a question - does anybody have a link or links to the actual text of the proposed amending bills? I'd like to see what we're actually dealing with here. I've looked, but the only place I can find that might have text wants to charge me NZ$25 for the privilege of finding out whether they have it or not.
(Besides, how can NZers attempt to dissuade our elected representatives from this if we can't tell them precisely why it's a crock of shit?)
...who finds it amusing, if somewhat sad, that what purports to be a thoughtful essay on corporatism and its evils is peppered with easily-memorable catchphrases that would do any marketing major proud, like the repetition ad nauseum of the words "Corporate Republic"?
I must confess, my first reaction to the subject matter of this book was "we need a $20 hardback to tell us this?". Ok, granted, opinions look ever-so-much more respectable when they're presented in twenty-buck bundles of chopped up dead tree with a shiny cover, but I can't help feeling the author is insulting the intelligence of his readership[1] by presuming that it's not already blindingly obvious to them[2].
Disclaimer: IANAE; my name doesn't have a nice shiny little "MEcon" after it, which is apparently required for you to have an opinion on the business world these days. Oh well. I'm going to have an opinion anyway. Damn The Man.
From my perspective, whilst there are some sharemarket players who do the logical thing, stick to the really high return blue chip stocks and "manage their money wisely" (whatever that means) this is not true of most people. A simple analysis of the market reveals this: if everybody share-shopped "rationally" (ack, I'm sounding like an economist!) the whole world would own stocks in IBM, Cisco, and a handful of others, Amazon.com would be bankrupt, and the "dot.com proliferation"[3] would never have happened.
Most market speculation[4] is about shopping with the gut and to a lesser extent with the ears. Shopping with the gut is just my fancy name for playing your instincts and intuition: buying into something you think will do well, no matter whether it has in the past or not.[5] Ditto shopping with the ears: most commentators I've observed agree that part of the impetus that pulled the NASDAQ out of its slump/correction/downturn/downward hurtle (pick your verb) was the fact that it was talked back up; "business confidence" is so important because a skittish marketplace won't engage in the volume of share-trading needed to keep prices from stagnating (or plummeting).
As for a "crash", booms and busts are inevitable in the market economy; especially in this circumstance, where tech stocks (as Cringely[6] points out best) are absurdly overvalued. The question is simply whether enough confidence can be retained that the adjustment of the overvalued stocks can be accomplished over a long period of time or if there will be a huge, sudden slump.
Actually, I wouldn't mind a sudden slump overly, except that it'd retard market confidence generally, rather than just dropping tech stocks down to what they should be at. I have no sympathy whatsoever for tech-stock speculator billionaires who will be reduced to impecuniary if the 'daq resets itself; can you tell?
I seem to have digressed a bit, but my point is this: if something like this is obvious to a Politics major like myself, why do we need a tarted-up twenty greenback thesis to explain it to us?
As a final note, given Jon Katz' propensity for tackling issues (whatever one may think of how he tackles them) I was rather disappointed that this article was not much more than a synopsis of the book and didn't attempt any critical evaluation.
Footnotes:
One presumes the target audience of this book could be more or less described as "us": the educated, media-savvy, market-watching upper-middle and upper classes. ICBW, but the idea of a book which is fundamentally about economics pitched at an audience which will probably never buy a share in their lives oddly fails to wash.
My economic experience consists of two Cs in first-year economics classes, and it seems blindingly obvious to me.
Raspberry flavoured virtual chocolate fish for anybody who can tell me who coined that absurd name ("dot.com"), where they live, and where I can buy a good shotgun.
I don't have figures to prove this, but I'm going to posit that speculation makes up >50% of the sharemarket portfolios and almost all the share traffic. Anybody want to knock me down?
Slashdot Mirror
...said the man to Christopher Columbus.
Can't resist stepping up to defend my university...
Although I dropped my compsci major (and have since graduated in a completely different discipline) I took some classes with one of these guys before doing so; I can assure you that they are for real, they are computer scientists, and although the paper itself may look more than a little ridiculous, they are good at what they do.
For all of you folks who are thinking about funnelling money to the South Carolina Republican Party as revenge for Hollings' perfidy - stop. Notice the name of the other sponsor on the bill.
Ted Stevens is a big-gun Republican, not an outcast on the moderate fringe. If he's working with Hollings on this, it's not just some kooky imperial-state Democrat's idea. Merely elbowing Hollings out of his seat won't make this bill go away. Take a longer view.
As far as lobbying goes, here are a few more useful people to lobby than merely your local Senator. Write McCain. Even if you aren't an Arizonian - he's ranking Republican on Commerce. Is your Senator on Commerce? Find out and harangue them about it, too. Write Ron Wyden [D-Ore.] and George Allen [R-Va.], who are respectively the ranking Democrat and Republican on the Commerce subcomittee that handles these matters. And don't forget Rep. Billy Tauzin [R-La.] and Rep. John Dingell [D-Mich.], who are the chair and ranking member of the Commerce committee on the other side of the Capitol, in the House, and who have demonstrated considerable clues on matters technical in the past.
If this bill makes a floor vote, the battle is already pretty much over. Fix it so it dies a quiet, neglected death in committee.
It has about as much chance of passing as the couple of dozen flag-burning amendment resolutions that pop up in the House every Congress. Tip-off number one: Torricelli didn't manage to attract even one cosponsor for it. Tip-off number two: Pat Leahy (chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, if you didn't know) is not a retard.
Sure, tear Torricelli a new one with your letter-writing. Maybe he'll catch a clue. But don't talk about this like it's five minutes away from becoming the next DMCA, because it isn't.
Which is well and good, until...
"This page contains information of a type (irritants/really-fucking-huge) that can only be viewed with the appropriate Plug-in. Click OK to download Plugin.Popups spawning popups... someone kill me now.
...selling off whatever backstock of Cubes remains at remainder prices will probably wind up making it cheaper than the G4 tower after all.
The last paragraph of the article:
Would somebody please explain this to the inventors of popup ads?
Ok, here's a question - does anybody have a link or links to the actual text of the proposed amending bills? I'd like to see what we're actually dealing with here. I've looked, but the only place I can find that might have text wants to charge me NZ$25 for the privilege of finding out whether they have it or not.
(Besides, how can NZers attempt to dissuade our elected representatives from this if we can't tell them precisely why it's a crock of shit?)
Give me liberty. There is no "or". -- Unknown
...who finds it amusing, if somewhat sad, that what purports to be a thoughtful essay on corporatism and its evils is peppered with easily-memorable catchphrases that would do any marketing major proud, like the repetition ad nauseum of the words "Corporate Republic"?
#include "stdprofundity.h";
I must confess, my first reaction to the subject matter of this book was "we need a $20 hardback to tell us this?". Ok, granted, opinions look ever-so-much more respectable when they're presented in twenty-buck bundles of chopped up dead tree with a shiny cover, but I can't help feeling the author is insulting the intelligence of his readership[1] by presuming that it's not already blindingly obvious to them[2].
Disclaimer: IANAE; my name doesn't have a nice shiny little "MEcon" after it, which is apparently required for you to have an opinion on the business world these days. Oh well. I'm going to have an opinion anyway. Damn The Man.
From my perspective, whilst there are some sharemarket players who do the logical thing, stick to the really high return blue chip stocks and "manage their money wisely" (whatever that means) this is not true of most people. A simple analysis of the market reveals this: if everybody share-shopped "rationally" (ack, I'm sounding like an economist!) the whole world would own stocks in IBM, Cisco, and a handful of others, Amazon.com would be bankrupt, and the "dot.com proliferation"[3] would never have happened.
Most market speculation[4] is about shopping with the gut and to a lesser extent with the ears. Shopping with the gut is just my fancy name for playing your instincts and intuition: buying into something you think will do well, no matter whether it has in the past or not.[5] Ditto shopping with the ears: most commentators I've observed agree that part of the impetus that pulled the NASDAQ out of its slump/correction/downturn/downward hurtle (pick your verb) was the fact that it was talked back up; "business confidence" is so important because a skittish marketplace won't engage in the volume of share-trading needed to keep prices from stagnating (or plummeting).
As for a "crash", booms and busts are inevitable in the market economy; especially in this circumstance, where tech stocks (as Cringely[6] points out best) are absurdly overvalued. The question is simply whether enough confidence can be retained that the adjustment of the overvalued stocks can be accomplished over a long period of time or if there will be a huge, sudden slump.
Actually, I wouldn't mind a sudden slump overly, except that it'd retard market confidence generally, rather than just dropping tech stocks down to what they should be at. I have no sympathy whatsoever for tech-stock speculator billionaires who will be reduced to impecuniary if the 'daq resets itself; can you tell?
I seem to have digressed a bit, but my point is this: if something like this is obvious to a Politics major like myself, why do we need a tarted-up twenty greenback thesis to explain it to us?
As a final note, given Jon Katz' propensity for tackling issues (whatever one may think of how he tackles them) I was rather disappointed that this article was not much more than a synopsis of the book and didn't attempt any critical evaluation.
Footnotes: