Such Battlefield promotions [from enlisted to officer] are very rare outside of major theater combat wars. They generally occur when a unit has lost so many officers that it cannot function well.
Yep yep. Lots of them during WWII and Korea. The men who did so were called 'Mustangs'.
It just is not fair. Kids today aren't entitled, they are screwed over. The older generation didn't have to take bullshit like this. There were no trouble getting a job back then, especially not for college graduates. Things have gone quite a bit downhill since then.
Bull. There has never been trouble getting a job. There has always been trouble getting a job you want.
Meanwhile the advantage that college graduates once had has evaporated due to the change in supply/demand. Now that so many people are college graduates, being a college graduate is no longer special. Doubly so now that curricula and grade-inflation and such have taken their toll. When my father got his MBA, one of the requirements for graduating was to visit a real-world company and solve a random serious real-world problem it had.
At the same time, the self-esteem and all-must-have-prizes philosophies that now pervade much of education have convinced everybody that they deserve to walk right into their dream job, just because they've done nothing more than show up for class and turn in assignments most of the time. The entitlement mentality is right out on show in this story. I do a fair bit of recruitment for my employer and I see plenty more applicants who seem to feel the same way. They don't get very far.
Well said.
She probably also labors under the popular delusion that money = wealth. That is, she sees no difference between making money versus merely getting money. Hence she wants a job where she can go through the motions in order to siphon off enough wealth from her employer to buy a house, car, vacations, and so forth. If asked to explain how her actions during the work day were equivalent to the actions that others performed in order to build that house, that car, and that airplane, she would respond with a blank look.
Dynamic range compression is, to me, a microcosm of pretty much everything that is rotten about western capitalism.
Unless, of course, you are listening on headphones or in a car and there is any background noise. Then you'll appreciate the fact that you can hear the quiet parts without then BLASTING YOUR EARS during the loud part.
The introduction and spread of compression has tracked the spread of mobile music.
You mean to tell me the kind of shop that would charge $50 to install a stick of RAM might behave in a less than ethical manner? NO!
Unfair criticism. They are not charging for the act of snaping a DIMM in place, any more than that engineer in the famous story is charging to draw an X in white chalk. Rather, they are charging for the expertise to handle any issues that result from the memory change. (Windows Genuine Advantage rejection for the win!)
Except that they really don't need DRM. Sure in their perfect world, no one can listen to copyrighted music without paying something. But that is a fantasy land. They have to work in the real world, where their loyal customers want to pay for music, but not have to deal with any crap when they do. The other people who are getting it for free most likely wouldn't have bought the music anyway.
So what do you suppose would happen if Amazon.com's MP3 download store made it optional to pay for the songs? How many customers would stop paying, and just download for free? Zero?
So far, just lots of research dollars thrown at anyone who telegraphs a desire to produce results that blame human activity. And various minor amounts squandered by corporations looking to appear green-friendly. These are net social losses that I am not sensitive enough to feel, so far.
Going forward, carbon cap-and-trade is going to make everything expensive. People who love to control others, will be given authority to control all consumption of energy... and every act of control causes all downstream products to cost more. It's a bureaucrat's wet dream.
Cognitive dissonance prevents you from appropriately dreading the coming Carbon Czar . . .
I am aware of the "sunk cost fallacy", and maybe the ISS has taught us everything it set out to teach... but I could've sworn that we were originally sold a much larger bill of goods than NASA now intends to deliver. Remember all the talk about a permanent space station from which to stage lunar and martian missions?
The demand curve for fuel is relatively inelastic. The impact on increased efficiency on demand for fuel is smaller than the gains from increased fuel efficiency.
That is a true statement, but you do not see the reason why.
The reason why is: people want to drive big safe quiet comfortable cars, rather than small bumpy noisy ones that don't fare well in collisions. If net fuel efficiency doubled tomorrow, due to some magic additive or radical new engine or all-electric propulsion (with power centrally generated), then car size would increase in order to keep a constant $/mile rate.
Thus, changes in fuel economy over the years have not decreased the actual quantity demanded of gasoline.
I am not an economist, but, it seems like this would be related to the rate of consumption, as well as the efficiency. If we, as a nation, could squeeze twice as many miles per gallon out of petroleum, would we our daily commute double? Would we double our travel time, or speed? I'm sure there would be a few more road trips, but I can't see anyone saying "gas is cheap, let's drive twice as far", because they still have to commit twice as much of their day to do so.
Oh, I'd love it if they did it during "emmissions checking." I live in Indiana, where we don't such a "big brother" concept.
I'll bet in Indiana you also don't have such concepts as "multiple point source problem" or "tragedy of the commons". Must be nice to live there, as you must not have problems with fraud or litter.
On a more serious note, emissions controls are NOT a big brother issue at all. They become a necessity in dense cities where, for example in Houston, 5% of cars on the road were spewing out 90% of the pollution.
Right now we don't need anything to discourage moving toward electric / hybrid / high mileage vehicles. The environmental benefits and economic benefits of removing the need for foreign oil would far outweigh whatever revenue the government would receive.
*brrrring!*
Hello?
Ah, it's for you, fellow named William Jevons calling.
A good exemple that sometimes the market is unable to find the most optimal solution and someone has to regulate.
In the circumstance of a market unable to stabilize on an efficient solution, regulation may be jumping the gun, because it teaches consumers that they need not vote with their wallets... which means that eventually, all market inefficiencies will require regulation, with its attendant costs.
In any case, I think what really happened here is the total space of possible connector geometries and pinouts has finally been exhausted. MBAs have driven the engineers to invent ever different connectors, and this year they reached the point where every practical shape had been done and patented. So now they're signing up for standardization, professing their unwavering commitment to the welfare of their customers.
It reminds of the sudden change-of-heart that every pharma company has at the end of a patent, when they spontaneously decide that their medication is, after all, safe for OTC dispensation.
an investment of $38000 which pays $3000 per annum for much longer than 12 but after the first 12 years starts making you money
But it isn't making you money after the first 12 years. A $38,000 investment needs to make 4-8% per year just to pay for its own opportunity cost. This is because it must compensate you for what you didn't spend the $38,000 on. So his savings of $3000 per year is really a savings of $1000 per year, give or take depending on what other investments (CDs, stocks, land, etc.) he turned down.
Now add in the cost of periodic battery replacement. And panel breakage not covered by warranty. And inverter breakdowns after the first ten years. And hassle, which is potentially a very big but intangible expense. He'll be lucky to break even.
There will be no resale value either, because in 20 or 30 years, there will be much better panels available for much lower cost. This means that the system is paying for its TVM but demolishing its capital cost. What a fashionable, attention-whoring waste.
You laugh, but this invention is important. Video-phones cannot catch on without it, because humans require eye contact in order to trust each other. You can't have eye contact over a video-phone unless your camera is also your monitor.
The size of the prize -- $10,000 -- indicates that the company thought it reasonably possible that they'd get hacked, and/or desired to avoid motivating any serious hacking attempt. Neither explanation gives me much confidence in their product.
And wow did it ever backfire. Normally they do these kinds of promotions in the hopes that nobody will bother, so that the company can later say "We offered a wheelbarrow of cash, and still nobody hacked us!". As if that was equivalent to a real security audit.
Probably not, but Byron Dorgon Predicted this trouble in 1995 when teh derivatives markets starte to get noticed and again in 1998 when the "securities modernization act" was passed, deregulating the banks, insurance companies and investments firms.
As we say in Economics circles: "Yes, the man is a genius: he predicted 9 of the last 3 recessions!"
laugh every time I read this absurd argument. Patents are not about promoting innovation, they are about protecting intellectual property, even if that term is far younger than the patent concept. They are about creating a limited time micro-monopoly in order to stifle competition.
"creating a limited time micro-monopoly in order to stifle competition" is "promoting innovation". The micro-monopoly enables a researcher to monetize his or her data. This legality is necessary because data cannot otherwise be controlled -- not like, say, real estate can.
Well, data can always be kept secret... but that is almost certainly worse for society than the alternatives.
Not that it matters. For some reason everybody who thinks and writes seems to be perpetually concerned about what humanity ought to do about the state of humanity. The longer I live, the more I realize that the quest for societal justice is a fool's errand. Nobody can change anything no matter how hard they try, and the most amazing thing is that nobody realizes this astonishing truth. Change requires awareness, and machines are not aware. Almost all humans are machines. Even as I write this, I can hear the gears clicking in my skull, still on auto-pilot. And I've been working on this stuff.
I'm with you on this.
Society is a fragile pattern, a very very complicated synergy of incentives that are woven together to control our behavior. Laws, religion, taxes, mor'es... and the strength of the pattern does seem overwhelming. But like all synergies, a very small change can redound to have a very large effect.
(That's why it worries me when a passing recession has everybody talking about "change". When your society's pattern has produced more wealth than the world has ever known, and when one barely even understands the interplay of incentives that produced that outcome, then the word 'change' should not even be considered except in times of terrible protracted crisis.)
Anyway, there are probably some very small levels that even an individual could pull to set off changes . . .
They set out to test these hypotheses on human subjects consisting of Cornell undergraduates who were registered in various psychology courses. In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning examined self-assessment of logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills, and humor. After being shown their test scores, the subjects were again asked to estimate their own rank, whereupon the competent group accurately estimated their rank, while the incompetent group still overestimated their own rank.
Emphasis mine. There is a small chance that the Dunning-Kruger effect is not generalizable to the overall population. It may be limited to influencers (e.g. psychologists, teachers, politicians, counsellors, etc.). Nobody tested whether producers demonstrate the same behavior.
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Yep yep. Lots of them during WWII and Korea. The men who did so were called 'Mustangs'.
Bull. There has never been trouble getting a job. There has always been trouble getting a job you want.
Meanwhile the advantage that college graduates once had has evaporated due to the change in supply/demand. Now that so many people are college graduates, being a college graduate is no longer special. Doubly so now that curricula and grade-inflation and such have taken their toll. When my father got his MBA, one of the requirements for graduating was to visit a real-world company and solve a random serious real-world problem it had.
Well said.
She probably also labors under the popular delusion that money = wealth. That is, she sees no difference between making money versus merely getting money. Hence she wants a job where she can go through the motions in order to siphon off enough wealth from her employer to buy a house, car, vacations, and so forth. If asked to explain how her actions during the work day were equivalent to the actions that others performed in order to build that house, that car, and that airplane, she would respond with a blank look.
Unless, of course, you are listening on headphones or in a car and there is any background noise. Then you'll appreciate the fact that you can hear the quiet parts without then BLASTING YOUR EARS during the loud part.
The introduction and spread of compression has tracked the spread of mobile music.
You forgot 5) Unmanned. Computer-controlled aircraft, autonomous even, will shortly outperform humans in every dimension.
Unfair criticism. They are not charging for the act of snaping a DIMM in place, any more than that engineer in the famous story is charging to draw an X in white chalk. Rather, they are charging for the expertise to handle any issues that result from the memory change. (Windows Genuine Advantage rejection for the win!)
So what do you suppose would happen if Amazon.com's MP3 download store made it optional to pay for the songs? How many customers would stop paying, and just download for free? Zero?
I don't know where you got your figures to begin with, but I'll bet you haven't factored in inflation. 120,000 is equal to about 300,000 today.
So far, just lots of research dollars thrown at anyone who telegraphs a desire to produce results that blame human activity. And various minor amounts squandered by corporations looking to appear green-friendly. These are net social losses that I am not sensitive enough to feel, so far.
Going forward, carbon cap-and-trade is going to make everything expensive. People who love to control others, will be given authority to control all consumption of energy... and every act of control causes all downstream products to cost more. It's a bureaucrat's wet dream.
Cognitive dissonance prevents you from appropriately dreading the coming Carbon Czar . . .
How much was invested in this thing, I wonder?
I am aware of the "sunk cost fallacy", and maybe the ISS has taught us everything it set out to teach... but I could've sworn that we were originally sold a much larger bill of goods than NASA now intends to deliver. Remember all the talk about a permanent space station from which to stage lunar and martian missions?
Here, I'll save you a mouseclick and entirely too much reading to find the plaintext.
The actual plaintext was the text of the declaration of independence. The cryptologist who wrote the letter was just showing off his new cipher.
That is a true statement, but you do not see the reason why.
The reason why is: people want to drive big safe quiet comfortable cars, rather than small bumpy noisy ones that don't fare well in collisions. If net fuel efficiency doubled tomorrow, due to some magic additive or radical new engine or all-electric propulsion (with power centrally generated), then car size would increase in order to keep a constant $/mile rate.
Thus, changes in fuel economy over the years have not decreased the actual quantity demanded of gasoline.
We'd switch back to big cars. Duh.
I'll bet in Indiana you also don't have such concepts as "multiple point source problem" or "tragedy of the commons". Must be nice to live there, as you must not have problems with fraud or litter.
On a more serious note, emissions controls are NOT a big brother issue at all. They become a necessity in dense cities where, for example in Houston, 5% of cars on the road were spewing out 90% of the pollution.
*brrrring!*
Hello?
Ah, it's for you, fellow named William Jevons calling.
In the circumstance of a market unable to stabilize on an efficient solution, regulation may be jumping the gun, because it teaches consumers that they need not vote with their wallets... which means that eventually, all market inefficiencies will require regulation, with its attendant costs.
In any case, I think what really happened here is the total space of possible connector geometries and pinouts has finally been exhausted. MBAs have driven the engineers to invent ever different connectors, and this year they reached the point where every practical shape had been done and patented. So now they're signing up for standardization, professing their unwavering commitment to the welfare of their customers.
It reminds of the sudden change-of-heart that every pharma company has at the end of a patent, when they spontaneously decide that their medication is, after all, safe for OTC dispensation.
But it isn't making you money after the first 12 years. A $38,000 investment needs to make 4-8% per year just to pay for its own opportunity cost. This is because it must compensate you for what you didn't spend the $38,000 on. So his savings of $3000 per year is really a savings of $1000 per year, give or take depending on what other investments (CDs, stocks, land, etc.) he turned down.
Now add in the cost of periodic battery replacement. And panel breakage not covered by warranty. And inverter breakdowns after the first ten years. And hassle, which is potentially a very big but intangible expense. He'll be lucky to break even.
There will be no resale value either, because in 20 or 30 years, there will be much better panels available for much lower cost. This means that the system is paying for its TVM but demolishing its capital cost. What a fashionable, attention-whoring waste.
May I present the Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000. I have them at all of my workstations now, and there's no going back.
Very very very few commercial aircraft carry their own radars.
And the approach radar, usually located at the airport, will probably be tuned to ignore bird flocks.
You laugh, but this invention is important. Video-phones cannot catch on without it, because humans require eye contact in order to trust each other. You can't have eye contact over a video-phone unless your camera is also your monitor.
The size of the prize -- $10,000 -- indicates that the company thought it reasonably possible that they'd get hacked, and/or desired to avoid motivating any serious hacking attempt. Neither explanation gives me much confidence in their product.
And wow did it ever backfire. Normally they do these kinds of promotions in the hopes that nobody will bother, so that the company can later say "We offered a wheelbarrow of cash, and still nobody hacked us!". As if that was equivalent to a real security audit.
As we say in Economics circles: "Yes, the man is a genius: he predicted 9 of the last 3 recessions!"
"creating a limited time micro-monopoly in order to stifle competition" is "promoting innovation". The micro-monopoly enables a researcher to monetize his or her data. This legality is necessary because data cannot otherwise be controlled -- not like, say, real estate can.
Well, data can always be kept secret... but that is almost certainly worse for society than the alternatives.
I'm with you on this.
Society is a fragile pattern, a very very complicated synergy of incentives that are woven together to control our behavior. Laws, religion, taxes, mor'es... and the strength of the pattern does seem overwhelming. But like all synergies, a very small change can redound to have a very large effect.
(That's why it worries me when a passing recession has everybody talking about "change". When your society's pattern has produced more wealth than the world has ever known, and when one barely even understands the interplay of incentives that produced that outcome, then the word 'change' should not even be considered except in times of terrible protracted crisis.)
Anyway, there are probably some very small levels that even an individual could pull to set off changes . . .
Emphasis mine. There is a small chance that the Dunning-Kruger effect is not generalizable to the overall population. It may be limited to influencers (e.g. psychologists, teachers, politicians, counsellors, etc.). Nobody tested whether producers demonstrate the same behavior.