"Can't there be some kind of injunction against SCO for making these premature claims?"
He's making public statements that consistently assert the position of the company in a pending court case, so until it is decided otherwise, there is no actionable damage caused by these statements, and no basis for any party to seek relief for any damage.
What kind of damages would you claim as consideration for the injuctive relief? "Everybody knows he's lying" won't do it.
Secure communication channels are one of the most valuable resources in any military campaign. I get the impression that one side of this conflict regrets its role in creating a communication system that provides another side the ability to operate in secrecy -- at least as far as the technology is concerned.
If the U-Boats had had 2048-bit DSA, do you think Bletchley Park would have broken it?
For photo printing, you cannot match the economy or the quality of the Fuji Frontier at your local lab.
If you need proofs right this minute, or if your material is going to be embarrassing or create liabilities if it's seen by another party, you have a strong argument for having your own color printer. The 6- and 8- ink Canon printers are outstanding, and very conservative with ink.
But I get my 4x6 prints for 20 from Ofoto, 8x10's for $4.00, and the occasional 20x30" for about $20. The quality is great.
"And some (my)laserjet printers do have pictbridge so you can print directly from the camera. (Without proofing, why?)"
If your application has a requirement where you need the pictures *NOW*, and it's not an artistic endeavor, it makes a lot of sense. Don't think like an artist or portrait photographer, think like a building inspector.
"i believe this is yet another way of increasing the level of fear the general public (at least in the US) already have."
They have a plateau, and it was reached several years back. I think the critical moment was about the time that government spokespeople were suggesting wrapping their houses in plastic. I think there's a capacity for fear, that once exceeded, has an effect where people stop caring.
Politically, people all over the spectrum are just going into a mode to endure the short remaining years of the Bush dynasty. The Republicans had better have someone good, because they've got some big clown shoes to fill.
So the powers that be, now that they realize they allowed it to happen, are beginning to regret the easy access to the kind of secure communication channels that every military commander and every espionage agent in history has ever dreamed of.
For all the widespread belief that the NSA has a backdoor into every known crypto algorithm, the truth is, secure commo exists and both your friends and your enemies have it. You may have the ability to take it away from your friends, but your enemies will still have it.
"Surely, if it is a crime, it is its own punishment, and getting bombed is just injury upon misfortune."
The natural consequence of such complete negligence and cowardice is annihilation. Wish I wave a magic wand and change the world. We're all one organism. Help is not on the way from anywhere else. And when you die, all that happens is breakdown into carbon compounds.
"I can tell you unequivocally that just about everyone involved in the business... is a slimeball looking to get rich quick."
I don't disagree, but the whole premise that they routinely falsify offers as a shill tactic, doesn't quite wash. There's not a title security company that would play that game, not a lender that would ever give the time of day to a broker who did that, no reputable agency that would employ them. Ethics are routinely bent, sure... But you're suggesting that an action that's a felony fraud -- one that's *easily* demonstrated -- is commonplace.
"A realtor, even without other bids, will, from what i've seen, tell people that there are higher bids, so that you will bid higher, therefore they make higher commissions."
Not only can you lose your broker's license for such a blatant fraud, you can be exposed to enormous civil liabilities and even risk prison time.
There's an executed contract and an escrow account open, or there's no bid, period. All this is documented and disclosed, above the table. If you're experiencing anything else, RUN away, and don't do business with that real estate company.
"And so they should. Its still sort of a free country, and Oracle has no right to control people speaking about their poor engineering."
More to the point, there are unlimited opportunities for anonymous public disclosure of this sort of information. The idea that the option exists to suppress it is based on a completely flawed premise.
I'm able to see affairs of the world from a separate point of view than any particular nationalism or culture, so I doubt that comment has the sting you meant it to when you directed it.
"Of course, it'd be better if you waited until after the value went down before you bought, but that's very risky."
Another couple of months, and I'd have been seriously facing prospects of being homeless. Oh, sure, I could probably have found an apartment or a rent house. But the stress of it all would not have had a positive impact on my job, etc.
Acting when I did, was compromise between purchasing on the high point of a demand curve, and borrowing at a very low rate, a sense of urgency, and the fact that a particular property had intangible location benefits.
That's another thing that I don't see reflected in national trends, or even local trends, and that's *location*. When they talk in aggregate terms of homes on the market, a whole lot of them are developer houses in burbclaves. That's interesting to a lot of people, but it's decidedly not the kind of housing I'm into, at all.
To me, the single most valuable aspect of a property location, is privacy. Next is "quiet" (I need my house to be quiet enough to record classical piano and flute; I'm a serious musician). Third is, walking distance to cultural resources of a town (that can be a whole range of things, as simple as a used bookstore or an independent coffee shop, or as significant as "Lincoln Center"). Conflicting values, to be sure, but if found, they mean the difference between a $250,000 house in town, versus a $250,000 new construction 12 miles away from town.
Location is everything. And that's not being reflected in the overall statistics that everyone is basing their life decisions on.
I get the impression that a lot of people are simply buying the next house that's built on the next available flat spot outside of town.
Here's the thing: The realtor doesn't enter into the pricing scenario if you're being outbid on every property you make an offer on. The realtor would be *right* in suggesting that you make an offer that is sufficient to be competitive in a given market, or else you're wasting your time (plus opportunity cost) because if you aren't willing to make a competitive bid, you lose.
I went through this quite a few times, and the cost of the frustration of being shut out of the market had a cost also.
Let me get this straight -- your... "roommate"... is in the mortgate biz? How successful do you have to be before you can afford to live on your own?
If you can persuade Congress to accept the view that their authority has been subverted by an agency rule, they can fix it -- and they would be highly motivated to do so.
"You could short the companies that are involved in housing like the home builders and institutions that provide mortgage financing."
I think it would be wiser to invest in them straight. Mortgage brokers typically sell the paper within hours of the closing. There are lots of clearinghouses that will take the hit, but not the big lenders.
I'd expect many areas of real estate to remain strong. If the bottom falls out of a housing market, there may be a few ghost towns, sure, but it will be more common for the sudden flood of cheap property to stimulate a buyer's market. Realtors will benefit. Renovators, inspectors, people in the appraisal biz, plumbers, roofers, masons, insurers, termite guys, pool installers, you name it, these folks will suddenly have more requests for contracts than they can fulfill.
I worry a bit, because I'm taking a pessimistic view on my own house deal. I'm prepared for $15,000 (6.1%) annual depreciation, since that's the amount by which I'd be upside-down if I was renting. Any worse than that, and I'd be facing really significant losses due to "owning" a home rather than renting.
I tried to buy earlier, but it was impossible. I tried, and failed, to compete with people who were coming in fast and heavy with cash offers at or above asking prices, the very first day any listing would hit the market. This went on for *years*. Finally, I managed to win that same game, by being the guy with the cash offer on the table the night before a property hit MLS.
If the doosayers are right, it's the same to me -- I would not have had a positive equity position by now *anyway*, even if I'd bought in back in the days when the price was much less than what it is today on the same property.
Like I said, I'm a little pessimistic -- I expect the value to decrease quite a bit, and my strategy is based on a preference against renting. Other people are speculating, expecting to flip property for a 5% per month gain. That's been working for a couple of years, but I'm betting the model follows a logistics growth curve with an upper bound related to carrying capacity, not some kind of ever-increasing hockey stick. And on the other end of the spectrum, I don't think places like mine (desirable location, established hood), will decline *that* much in value, because if they did, there'd be so many people jumping on the low-priced deal that the demand curve would shift again.
Now, if we're talking about a widespread total failure of the economy, 75% unemployment, ghost towns, that sort of thing, well, real estate is going to be the least of our worries.
"Does anyone know of a way to 'short' the housing market? Seems like a good thing to do - if it can be done..."
Of course it can be done. First, consider who benefits when there's an inventory surplus in the housing market. Invest there. Also, there are ways to speculate on foreclosures and defaulted loans.
There are pros who specialize in giving investment advice. Ask a broker, you'll get better advice there than on slashdot.
There are tons of people waiting to jump on low-cost housing if and when it comes around. People like inspectors, roofers, remodelers, big-box home improvement stores, their business will likely *increase* when the market floods.
You'd probably also be wise to invest in a title security company, or anyone who underwrites homeowner's insurance.
Let's see... when your dot-com stock tanked, you had nothing. When your house value tanks, you still have a house -- albeit with an upside down equity position -- but you don't lose the asset.
If you believe the real estate market is headed for a dive, invest in a company that does home renovations. There are probably easy ways to speculate on foreclosures and defaults too.
Good luck with that. You may be right. I hope not. I close on a house this coming Friday. I got sick and tired of having asking-price offers outbid, or of every property having offers AND backup offers before it had even been listed, or, if you aren't one of the first few people to look at a property, and I mean within HOURS of the listing going active, forget it.
I got tired of that. Bubble or no bubble, I'd rather not be homeless when it comes, and I was starting to seriously face that. A mid-career professional, unable to purchase an entry-level home, or hesitating because they are supposedly 20% overpriced.
"Suppose the bomb had blown the top off the mountain. Impressive in terms of explosive power, but it would not have had the horrible effects of human destruction - burning skin, instant vaporization - that served to shock the nation into surrender."
How much drinking water would it have poisoned, and how long would it have stayed poisoned?
It may be hard to understand, but there was a spirit of retailation that was barely met by the atomic bombs. Japan crossed one line when it attacked the US. It crossed other lines when it *continued* fighting the US. The US finally, after years of trying alternatives, escalated to a level where there was no mistaking "enough is enough."
ONLY Japan could have stopped the course that led to the bombings. The Japanese people share this burden because they failed to put economic, social, and political pressure on their government to prevent or stop the war with the US.
And how would having a dog tag have altered McVeigh's behavior? My dog has a Verichip. The thing is, the chip itself is nothing but a serial number. In order for it to be meaningful, it must be registered with one of several competing database vendors, which means a vet or animal control agency must be looking where your pet is registered. The chip itself doesn't contain any information about the animal, just a PK into some database, one that if you don't pay a monthly fee, it gets erased, so your pet just has a meaningless microchip in his neck.
Slashdot Mirror
"All it does is irritate me having to deal with resetting clocks."
Set your clocks to UCT, and learn to do addition.
"How many people actually have watches that change there timezones automatically anyway?"
I just set mine to UTC, and wonder why people lack the ability to add a single digit offset to a time.
"Can't there be some kind of injunction against SCO for making these premature claims?"
He's making public statements that consistently assert the position of the company in a pending court case, so until it is decided otherwise, there is no actionable damage caused by these statements, and no basis for any party to seek relief for any damage.
What kind of damages would you claim as consideration for the injuctive relief? "Everybody knows he's lying" won't do it.
"You know, like giving normal users the ability to shutdown the computer or turn on/off the ethernet interface."
Sudo doesn't work for you?
>Technology never enters into it.
Secure communication channels are one of the most valuable resources in any military campaign. I get the impression that one side of this conflict regrets its role in creating a communication system that provides another side the ability to operate in secrecy -- at least as far as the technology is concerned.
If the U-Boats had had 2048-bit DSA, do you think Bletchley Park would have broken it?
For photo printing, you cannot match the economy or the quality of the Fuji Frontier at your local lab.
If you need proofs right this minute, or if your material is going to be embarrassing or create liabilities if it's seen by another party, you have a strong argument for having your own color printer.
The 6- and 8- ink Canon printers are outstanding, and very conservative with ink.
But I get my 4x6 prints for 20 from Ofoto, 8x10's for $4.00, and the occasional 20x30" for about $20. The quality is great.
"And some (my)laserjet printers do have pictbridge so you can print directly from the camera. (Without proofing, why?)"
If your application has a requirement where you need the pictures *NOW*, and it's not an artistic endeavor, it makes a lot of sense. Don't think like an artist or portrait photographer, think like a building inspector.
"i believe this is yet another way of increasing the level of fear the general public (at least in the US) already have."
They have a plateau, and it was reached several years back. I think the critical moment was about the time that government spokespeople were suggesting wrapping their houses in plastic. I think there's a capacity for fear, that once exceeded, has an effect where people stop caring.
Politically, people all over the spectrum are just going into a mode to endure the short remaining years of the Bush dynasty. The Republicans had better have someone good, because they've got some big clown shoes to fill.
So the powers that be, now that they realize they allowed it to happen, are beginning to regret the easy access to the kind of secure communication channels that every military commander and every espionage agent in history has ever dreamed of.
For all the widespread belief that the NSA has a backdoor into every known crypto algorithm, the truth is, secure commo exists and both your friends and your enemies have it. You may have the ability to take it away from your friends, but your enemies will still have it.
"Surely, if it is a crime, it is its own punishment, and getting bombed is just injury upon misfortune."
The natural consequence of such complete negligence and cowardice is annihilation. Wish I wave a magic wand and change the world. We're all one organism. Help is not on the way from anywhere else. And when you die, all that happens is breakdown into carbon compounds.
"I can tell you unequivocally that just about everyone involved in the business ... is a slimeball looking to get rich quick."
I don't disagree, but the whole premise that they routinely falsify offers as a shill tactic, doesn't quite wash. There's not a title security company that would play that game, not a lender that would ever give the time of day to a broker who did that, no reputable agency that would employ them. Ethics are routinely bent, sure... But you're suggesting that an action that's a felony fraud -- one that's *easily* demonstrated -- is commonplace.
"A realtor, even without other bids, will, from what i've seen, tell people that there are higher bids, so that you will bid higher, therefore they make higher commissions."
Not only can you lose your broker's license for such a blatant fraud, you can be exposed to enormous civil liabilities and even risk prison time.
There's an executed contract and an escrow account open, or there's no bid, period. All this is documented and disclosed, above the table. If you're experiencing anything else, RUN away, and don't do business with that real estate company.
"And so they should. Its still sort of a free country, and Oracle has no right to control people speaking about their poor engineering."
More to the point, there are unlimited opportunities for anonymous public disclosure of this sort of information. The idea that the option exists to suppress it is based on a completely flawed premise.
>I'm not sure, but I think that Osama agrees.
I'm able to see affairs of the world from a separate point of view than any particular nationalism or culture, so I doubt that comment has the sting you meant it to when you directed it.
Another way of saying "the government operates with the express consent of the people."
"Of course, it'd be better if you waited until after the value went down before you bought, but that's very risky."
Another couple of months, and I'd have been seriously facing prospects of being homeless. Oh, sure, I could probably have found an apartment or a rent house. But the stress of it all would not have had a positive impact on my job, etc.
Acting when I did, was compromise between purchasing on the high point of a demand curve, and borrowing at a very low rate, a sense of urgency, and the fact that a particular property had intangible location benefits.
That's another thing that I don't see reflected in national trends, or even local trends, and that's *location*. When they talk in aggregate terms of homes on the market, a whole lot of them are developer houses in burbclaves. That's interesting to a lot of people, but it's decidedly not the kind of housing I'm into, at all.
To me, the single most valuable aspect of a property location, is privacy. Next is "quiet" (I need my house to be quiet enough to record classical piano and flute; I'm a serious musician). Third is, walking distance to cultural resources of a town (that can be a whole range of things, as simple as a used bookstore or an independent coffee shop, or as significant as "Lincoln Center"). Conflicting values, to be sure, but if found, they mean the difference between a $250,000 house in town, versus a $250,000 new construction 12 miles away from town.
Location is everything. And that's not being reflected in the overall statistics that everyone is basing their life decisions on.
I get the impression that a lot of people are simply buying the next house that's built on the next available flat spot outside of town.
Here's the thing: The realtor doesn't enter into the pricing scenario if you're being outbid on every property you make an offer on. The realtor would be *right* in suggesting that you make an offer that is sufficient to be competitive in a given market, or else you're wasting your time (plus opportunity cost) because if you aren't willing to make a competitive bid, you lose.
... is in the mortgate biz? How successful do you have to be before you can afford to live on your own?
I went through this quite a few times, and the cost of the frustration of being shut out of the market had a cost also.
Let me get this straight -- your... "roommate"
> * It's the FCC wantonly overriding Congress
You've taken this to your Congressman?
If you can persuade Congress to accept the view that their authority has been subverted by an agency rule, they can fix it -- and they would be highly motivated to do so.
"You could short the companies that are involved in housing like the home builders and institutions that provide mortgage financing."
I think it would be wiser to invest in them straight. Mortgage brokers typically sell the paper within hours of the closing. There are lots of clearinghouses that will take the hit, but not the big lenders.
I'd expect many areas of real estate to remain strong. If the bottom falls out of a housing market, there may be a few ghost towns, sure, but it will be more common for the sudden flood of cheap property to stimulate a buyer's market. Realtors will benefit. Renovators, inspectors, people in the appraisal biz, plumbers, roofers, masons, insurers, termite guys, pool installers, you name it, these folks will suddenly have more requests for contracts than they can fulfill.
I worry a bit, because I'm taking a pessimistic view on my own house deal. I'm prepared for $15,000 (6.1%) annual depreciation, since that's the amount by which I'd be upside-down if I was renting. Any worse than that, and I'd be facing really significant losses due to "owning" a home rather than renting.
I tried to buy earlier, but it was impossible. I tried, and failed, to compete with people who were coming in fast and heavy with cash offers at or above asking prices, the very first day any listing would hit the market. This went on for *years*. Finally, I managed to win that same game, by being the guy with the cash offer on the table the night before a property hit MLS.
If the doosayers are right, it's the same to me -- I would not have had a positive equity position by now *anyway*, even if I'd bought in back in the days when the price was much less than what it is today on the same property.
Like I said, I'm a little pessimistic -- I expect the value to decrease quite a bit, and my strategy is based on a preference against renting. Other people are speculating, expecting to flip property for a 5% per month gain. That's been working for a couple of years, but I'm betting the model follows a logistics growth curve with an upper bound related to carrying capacity, not some kind of ever-increasing hockey stick. And on the other end of the spectrum, I don't think places like mine (desirable location, established hood), will decline *that* much in value, because if they did, there'd be so many people jumping on the low-priced deal that the demand curve would shift again.
Now, if we're talking about a widespread total failure of the economy, 75% unemployment, ghost towns, that sort of thing, well, real estate is going to be the least of our worries.
"Does anyone know of a way to 'short' the housing market? Seems like a good thing to do - if it can be done..."
Of course it can be done. First, consider who benefits when there's an inventory surplus in the housing market. Invest there. Also, there are ways to speculate on foreclosures and defaulted loans.
There are pros who specialize in giving investment advice. Ask a broker, you'll get better advice there than on slashdot.
There are tons of people waiting to jump on low-cost housing if and when it comes around. People like inspectors, roofers, remodelers, big-box home improvement stores, their business will likely *increase* when the market floods.
You'd probably also be wise to invest in a title security company, or anyone who underwrites homeowner's insurance.
Let's see... when your dot-com stock tanked, you had nothing. When your house value tanks, you still have a house -- albeit with an upside down equity position -- but you don't lose the asset.
If you believe the real estate market is headed for a dive, invest in a company that does home renovations. There are probably easy ways to speculate on foreclosures and defaults too.
Good luck with that. You may be right. I hope not. I close on a house this coming Friday. I got sick and tired of having asking-price offers outbid, or of every property having offers AND backup offers before it had even been listed, or, if you aren't one of the first few people to look at a property, and I mean within HOURS of the listing going active, forget it.
I got tired of that. Bubble or no bubble, I'd rather not be homeless when it comes, and I was starting to seriously face that. A mid-career professional, unable to purchase an entry-level home, or hesitating because they are supposedly 20% overpriced.
"Suppose the bomb had blown the top off the mountain. Impressive in terms of explosive power, but it would not have had the horrible effects of human destruction - burning skin, instant vaporization - that served to shock the nation into surrender."
How much drinking water would it have poisoned, and how long would it have stayed poisoned?
"[M]ost of the people killed by the nukes were civilians who had committed no crime."
Failure to reign in a tyrannical government is itself a crime, and such are the consequences.
>JUST STOP FIGHTING.
That was not going to happen, given the spirit of the people at the time, on any side of the conflict, full stop.
>What's the logic in that?
It may be hard to understand, but there was a spirit of retailation that was barely met by the atomic bombs. Japan crossed one line when it attacked the US. It crossed other lines when it *continued* fighting the US. The US finally, after years of trying alternatives, escalated to a level where there was no mistaking "enough is enough."
ONLY Japan could have stopped the course that led to the bombings. The Japanese people share this burden because they failed to put economic, social, and political pressure on their government to prevent or stop the war with the US.
>You mean, like Tim McVeigh?
And how would having a dog tag have altered McVeigh's behavior? My dog has a Verichip. The thing is, the chip itself is nothing but a serial number. In order for it to be meaningful, it must be registered with one of several competing database vendors, which means a vet or animal control agency must be looking where your pet is registered. The chip itself doesn't contain any information about the animal, just a PK into some database, one that if you don't pay a monthly fee, it gets erased, so your pet just has a meaningless microchip in his neck.