Listen, the government does make poor decisions, financial and otherwise. No one here is going to argue that point. But the reason we have the Fed is to keep the government as honest as we can expect it to be. The government cannot print money for itself; if it wants to spend money it needs to either raise taxes or issue debt securities. The latter is borrowed money and it must be paid back, and it will be, and by us. This is a burden, there's no question. But let's not forget that we had a surplus under Clinton, after years of spending money we didn't have by Reagan. Bush and co have been spending our money like it's going out of style, there's no reason to believe that this time we won't be able to pay it back.
Of course I've heard about LTCM. I'm not sure why our government organizing a bail-out to prevent wider collapse of financial markets is such a bad thing. First of all, if the financial markets collapsed, you'd be pretty aversely affected -- as it is, you weren't. Second, it's not like "organizing" a bail-out means printing money: in actuality, it meant convincing 14 (private) investment banks to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars each to the cause. Not to mention that if I recall correctly, those banks actually came out on top in the long run. So I'm not sure why you bring up the whole LTCM debacle -- it's an example of the Fed doing its job and ensuring that the markets stay stable.
I don't see how the housing bubble is the fault of the Fed or how it would be helped by a gold standard. Likewise the failure of social security -- a system which depends on strong population growth to function -- seems unrelated to any failure of fiat currency conceptually or in practice.
Questioning the Fed chairman, telling him how to do his job, etc, is nothing new -- it was done in Volker's time, too. Luckily, it's all just petty posturing -- Senators can do absolutely nothing but beg, they have no power whatsoever over the Fed.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say the "money would adjust to match the amount of gold". Do you mean we'd see serious, steady deflation? I think I explained why that would be a colossally bad thing in my previous post. People would stop spending, trade would be impacted, wealth generation would slow to a standstill, and we'd sink into another depression.
The price of gold would not soar to any price -- a gold standard, by definition, backs paper currency with a commodity, so 1 dollar would be defined to be some amount of gold and that would be the end of it. The price of gold does not "adjust" under this system, so again, I'm not sure what you mean -- if you're advocating a return to the gold standard, it seems to me you should at least understand that the price of gold would be unable to fluctuate. That's sort of the point.
It's true that land is a limited resource and so it stands to reason that we will eventually run out of it, assuming our population growth continues unabated. But that turns out to be a big assumption -- population growth is slowing in most developed countries. Australia, for example, has negative population growth, and requires immigration to replenish its numbers. Singapore as well. The US hasn't gotten there yet, but it stands to reason that we will. If the rest of the world develops as we have, why wouldn't the same apply to them? At any rate, the price of land is not soaring across the board -- only in desirable places. This is how the market works -- things which have low supply and high demand tend to experience an upward pressure in prices.
Homes in the US are most likely overvalued, and everyone is concerned about this. But securities of any sort being overvalued is nothing new: it happens with all sorts of goods and there is always a reversion to the mean, eventually. This can sometimes be painful -- recession is often the result -- but it is fundamentally temporary.
The government's ability to issue effectively unlimited debt is not the fault of the Fed and abolishin
That goes without saying. A really good troll is by nature one that people don't notice and take seriously. I was being ironical. It seems a lot of other folks fell for it.
I have to say, this must be the best way to get people to pay attention to trolls that I've ever seen. First, write something sexually obscene and post it. Nothing new there, Slashdot has at least one of these in every story, sometimes more. "Unfortunately," thinks the troll, "these are immediately modded to -1, and no one pays attention to me -- I know! I'll create a user and respond to my own, anonymous post, expressing horror and outrage! Then all the Slashbots will be forced to read my ridiculous drivel when otherwise they would have just ignored it!"
Fucking brilliant. I hope this shows up on Trolltalk. This is why I read at -1.
The Fed is not a part of the government in the sense you seem to think it is. History has shown that when politicians are allowed to print money, they do, and in large quantities. Which is why modern central banks like the Fed and the ECB are not beholden to the interests of democratically elected politicians. Hell, if that had been the case, Paul Volker would have been in pretty deep shit. Thankfully, the prevailing attitudes of the day had no bearing on what he knew needed to be done and the result was that the stagflation from the Carter era did not persist, despite Reagan lampooning the Fed in Congress.
I'm also not sure why everyone is going on about inflation. Inflation is at a low, targeted rate and has been for some time. There was a period when inflation went out of control -- but that's because economists had a very skewed idea about what sane monetary policy was and the result was 1970 to about 1982. Since then, the Fed has tried to keep inflation at a low, positive, and predictable rate (roughly 3%).
Deflation (the opposite of inflation) is detrimental to the economy because it encourages people to hoard cash -- why spend it, when its value is going up? Hoarding cash is not the same as saving -- you can save your money in a bank, for example, which typically provides you with an interest rate which is slightly greater than the rate of inflation. Hoarding cash is putting it in your mattress and keeping it out of circulation. Look at interest rates in Japan in the 1990s for an example of what that sort of thing can do to an economy. Are you old enough to remember how afraid everyone in the US was of Japan in the 1980s? Now they're just a random Asian country known for hi-tech toys and weird game shows. But there was a time that Americans were worried they were going to buy us.
A low, positive inflation rate does the opposite: it provides incentive to spend cash, and to keep it in circulation. This increases the liquidity of money markets and makes loans easier to obtain, which in turn stimulates wealth generation -- jobs, capital investment, etc.
Most people who start companies aren't independently wealthy -- they look for investors and they take out loans to finance their start-ups. In order to get the money they need, there has to be money around and available. It isn't around and available if it's hidden in your mattress. These people build products, employ workers, and generally keep the economy going.
Did you know that in inflation adjusted dollars, the yearly GDP of the US is greater than the worth of the world's entire gold supply? How exactly do you expect to reconcile that fact with a gold standard? How exactly can you have a currency based on gold when in a very real sense there simply isn't enough gold? Economics is not a zero-sum game, and the pie keeps on growing. The money supply needs to too, and having a supply-capped money supply may seem like a smart idea if you haven't thought much about it, but in reality it would effectively cap economic growth.
You're acting like there's anyway to avoid Long Yang Lu. You may not realize it because you weren't paying attention, or maybe because you can't read Chinese, but if you take a cab from the airport you go right by Long Yang Lu in any case. The only difference is it takes 5 times as long (literally) and costs you twice as much (or more) if you're alone to get to the same place.
Look, no one said you have to take the metro from Long Yang Lu -- there are lots of cabs lined up right outside the station, and because they're not waiting at the airport they don't need to add any sort of airport surcharge to the meter, either. The bus (there is a bus, you know) from the airport to the city goes through Long Yang Lu, too. If you think you can avoid Long Yang Lu, you are dreadfully mistaken.
If you want to go to Puxi, you can get in a cab at Long Yang Lu and it will cost you between 60 and 80 RMB to get to People's Square. Just don't go during rush hour, though, because not only will you not move, the bridge under the Huangpu Jiang that Shiji Dadao goes through is closed and the driver will have to take his sweet time going to one of the other bridges. There's also no guarantee that the cabbies in Pudong will know Puxi well or at all.
In comparison, the metro costs 3 to 5 yuan and comes frequently. If you can't speak Chinese, you can expect a cabbie to rip you off and take you for a long ride -- no such issue with the metro, which announces stops in English as well as Mandarin, and features English stop names.
At the very least, you can get to Puxi and then take a cab to where you want to go.
Here's how the math works out: 40 minutes by cab from Pudong International to the Long Yang Lu area, 30 to 40 minutes of you stuck in traffic with a cab driver who probably doesn't even speak Mandarin let alone English, and who won't think twice about driving far out of the way to drive the meter up if he thinks he can get away with it. Versus: 8 minutes to Long Yang Lu by maglev, 30 minutes to Central Shanghai by metro, followed by 5 minutes to your hotel. Let's be generous and say you have to wait the maximum for a metro, about 5 minutes, and that you just can't find a cab downtown easily and it takes you 10 minutes to get one. That's still under an hour. In fact, I can say with some certainty that it has never taken me more than an hour to get anywhere in the city doing it that way.
I used to work one metro stop from there, in Zhangjiang Gaoke Yuan. I lived in Puxi, and commuted from the Shimen Yi Lu stop every single day during rush hour. It takes like 30 minutes, if even, to get downtown -- but most business visitors to Shanghai stay in one of the nice hotels in Pudong anyway, so it's actually only 3 or 4 stops to Lujiazui. Not much of a hassle, really.
Plus, if you take a cab (or the bus) from Pudong International Airport you end up driving right past Long Yang Lu anyway -- it's on the way. Which means you can't avoid going through that part of Shanghai if you're coming from the airport.
You're far, far better off taking the maglev. Unless you have fellow travelers to share a cab with, it's much cheaper, and it's also far faster. There are always a million cabs sitting right outside the subway if you're metro averse (although why you would be is beyond me -- you're one stop from the end of the line and unless you show up during peak hours you're almost certain to be able to get a seat).
Not to mention that the tunnel between Pudong and Puxi at Lujiazui (the one that Shiji Dadao goes through) is closed during rush hour. So if you are unlucky enough to get into Shanghai around 6pm, taking a cab to Puxi is still a god cursed fool idea. The driver will have to route to one of the other bridges, taking hours of your time (which of course is on the meter). The traffic will be at a standstill. The city has 11 million people, for crying out loud.
Anyone who says take a taxi to and from the airport instead of the maglev has either completely lost their mind or hasn't spent more than a day in Shanghai.
As for "stealing" technology, are you one of these people who thinks reverse engineering should be illegal? Give me a break.
Informative? What a load of BS. Where exactly would you have the Maglev take you? To your hotel? You do realize that Shanghai is a huge city and that different people have different destinations, right? The Shanghai maglev takes you to the Long Yang Lu metro stop, and from there you can go anywhere you want, essentially, in the city.
Not to mention that the maglev costs 50 RMB and covers in 8 minutes a distance that a taxi costing 100 RMB would cover in 40. So especially if you're traveling alone, the maglev is by far the most convenient way to get in and out of Shanghai. If you're with your whole family and don't want to deal with public transportation, a taxi might be more convenient -- but it will most certainly be slower.
Why yes, I lived and worked in Shanghai for almost 3 years, thank for asking.
Again, read my post (and the OP's, too, for context, while you're at it). It was not my point that the you need to sell everything to make a profit; that was the context of the original post, and I was responding to him. In fact, I even quoted the relevant bit in my post, to save you the trouble!
I'm sorry, I have no idea how what you're saying relates to what I said. Perhaps you didn't read my post? Maximizing profit is the goal of any business and understanding how to do that is not rocket science. I never suggested that anyone wanted "the most people to have their product". The GP suggested that if you have a good or service, sell all of it, and don't turn a profit, you have not picked the right price. The truth is, there are some things that you will be unable to turn a profit on, regardless of price -- they just aren't profitable. I explained why this was true in the context of "basic economics", since the GP seemed to misunderstand what basic economics entails.
I have a suggestion for you: in the future, when you respond to my posts — which I encourage you to do — do me (and yourself) the favor of reading and understanding what I say first. It saves me time and makes you look less like you lack basic reading comprehension skills.
Nice post — or at least, it seems like an informative post to me. I'll admit I don't know enough about the time period to comment at all. However, this:
(And for the record, as a basic economic fact, if all of the copies sold and you didn't make a profit, you didn't price it right.)
... is not the least bit correct, and someone with your apparent mental faculties should be able to see why. For any product for which demand exists and for which there is limited supply, there is a set of prices that are low enough (law of demand) that all items will sell. Of these, pick the highest: this represents the most money that you can make, while still selling all the items in your inventory.
Here is where you made an interesting (by which I mean, meritless) logical leap: that this maximum price covered the operational costs associated with the production and/or appropriation of the goods or services you are selling. Because profit is not revenue: profit is money you made in excess of the associated costs of production, labor, etc.
It is a "basic economic fact" that the laws of supply and demand work together to set an optimum price for a good. But profit does not follow from these basic economic facts. Whether or not a businessman can profit from his endeavors has everything to do with whether a market exists for his goods and services. If you take as a given that a market does in fact exist, then the difference between making a profit or not can be a question of pricing — but it seems fairly clear to me, despite my admitted ignorance of ancient greek and roman law, that the original poster was making rather the opposite assumption.
It is true that cited information that happens to be incorrect or misguided will often be difficult or impossible to remove due to the existence of a citation — this is clearly a problem. However, I do not see the other direction as being an issue.
The fact is, nearly everything that is correct and accurate can indeed be cited. Wikipedia has, for very good reasons, a policy of not allowing original research — so anything you determine yourself is not admissible. But everything else is.
I'm the sort of person that "knows" a lot of stuff. I have a lot of trivia and information stored in my brain; I'd wager many Slashdotters are similarly of the "know-it-all" variety. But I cannot tell you how many times I have sworn that some factoid or other was true only to discover in the course of research that I was either mistaken, or that the knowledge was somehow so obscure that no one else made any references to it whatsoever (which, let's face it, probably means I was mistaken).
Unlike you, apparently, when this happens I thank my lucky stars that WP encourages citation of sources. When something is correct, finding a cite is a trivial endeavor, as it only amounts to telling them where you read what you're saying. When something is incorrect, your inability to find a cite will prevent you from looking like a daft fool by insisting something is true when it's not.
Many people who think they are experts tend to assume that the "cite everything" policy that WP has adopted does not apply to them — but more often than not, these people are not actually experts. Real experts, who do research and read on their subject of expertise in an academic setting pretty much full time, are accustomed to citing their sources (although they are often not accustomed to WP's prohibition against original research — but that's something else entirely).
As a rule of thumb, if you can't find a citation for what you know to be true, it's probably not true, and so I cannot empathize with your distaste for the citation requirement. However, I think you are right in your assessment of the problem in the other direction: citations can be of poor quality and be incorrect themselves, and people can be very unreceptive (read: belligerent) when you suggest that citation or no, their statement is either incorrect or POV or whatever.
Unfortunately for me, I appear to have been mistaken about the character of the fourth amendment (although I stand by the thrust of my post -- I see it as how things ought to be). In United States v. Jacobsen, SCOTUS decided that the 4th amendment did not apply to private citizens -- not surprisingly in a case involving drugs.
For the record, this is the fourth amendment to the US constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Notice that this amendment does not in any way restrict only the activities of the state; it does not say "... shall not be violated by the state but may be violated by private citizens or corporations if the people stand on their private property..." or other such libertarian nonsense.
Once I (or anyone else) has purchased an item from a store, and paid for said item in full, the item belongs to me. It does not still belong to the store simply because I am still on the store's property, nor does the store magically have the right to search me or my belongings simply because I am still on their property.
Your property argument, to me, is a bit like saying "You knew you were going to be raped if you came to 808140's house; there is a sign on the door that indicates his depraved intentions clearly. If you didn't want to be raped, you shouldn't have gone to his house." The problem with this statement is that rape is illegal, no matter what I have posted on my front door. Private property or no, sign or no, I will (thankfully) be unable to justify my rape of you in court simply because you deigned to enter my home.
This situation is much analogous, except the statute is the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. You may think I'm arguing in extremes, but you'll notice that the founding fathers did not think to decry rape in that highest document in the land -- but they did think to protect my right to be secure in my person.
I understand that receipt-checking makes it easier for the business to catch shoplifters; I empathize with their motives. I also understand implanting a tracking chip in every man woman and child in this country would make felons easier to apprehend. Thankfully, we Americans have, historically at least, been unwilling to sacrifice our civil liberties simply to make law enforcement easier for those tasked with enforcing it.
This practice of checking receipts and belongings when you leave the store is completely unacceptable. Furthermore, there is no reason to do it. Many stores are designed so that the only way to exit the store is by passing through checkout, and have an aisle specifically for people with no items to purchase. This aisle can be observed and if a shoplifter is suspected security can then detain him. The result is just as good as Circuit City's or Fry's policy, I'm sure. Better, perhaps, because the latter's only protects against shoplifters who clandestinely add an item they didn't purchase into their shopping bag, and does nothing against the shoplifter who simply places an item into his inside pocket, for example.
I'd get paid for doing almost nothing? What's the downside again?
Clearly, you've never had a job where you really have to do almost nothing. It's boring and depressing. At my last job, a change in management and restructuring resulted in our team being orphaned for two months -- we had nothing to do and spent most of the day surfing the web. It may have gone on longer than two months, even... I don't know, because I quit.
Thanks for the link. It seems that drinking urine if you are already dehydrated is a bad idea, which doesn't surprise me much, truth be told. It is not, however, anywhere near as bad as drinking sea water or (say) plutonium nitrate. Hopefully we can agree on that.
Regarding the "CAUTION" box in the manual: Yes, I had seen that. However, as much of the guide involves purifying sea water, another element on the list of things not to drink, it occurs to me that urine might benefit from similar treatment. But then again, perhaps not -- no amount of purification of alcohol or blood would render it drinkable, for example. But the high water content of urine might suggest otherwise... I'm thinking evaporation, here, for example.
Anyway, don't misunderstand me: you've successfully corrected me and in the future, if I find myself in an environment without water, I'll no longer consider drinking my own urine (unless, of course, I have some means to purify it, and no other source of water).
For the record, I'm not able to access your site, either: http://www.daughtersoftiresias.org/. Perhaps it's a problem on my side? I've looked at it before, though, as I typically enjoy reading your posts, spirited though they may sometimes be.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but the US army field manual you linked to only says that urine "contains harmful body wastes [and] is about 2% salt." The rest of the manual (which is very interesting, by the way, thank you for linking to it) has a lot of good ideas for getting water, but many of these assume you'll have materials that you might not on your person in an emergency, etc. There's also quite a bit of information devoted to the purification of sea water, which by the manual's own admission has higher salinity than urine (4%). Presumably these same techniques could be used to purify urine as well? At any rate, the intent of my original post was not "drink urine no matter what", but rather "drinking urine is better than drinking nothing." Also, comparing urine to plutonium nitrate is sort of silly, don't you think?
I'd love to comment on your other link, but it doesn't seem to work. Do you have one that does?
Regarding your "anti-evolution" comment: I realize it was meant to be a sort of ironic joke, but actually, we humans have a waste removal system that is relatively unoptimized for low-water environments. Many other animals (birds, in particular, but also a number of other creatures native to desert environments) do not urinate at all, instead vacating nitrogenous wastes in the form of water insoluble uric acid, usually with their feces. Metabolically this is relatively costly, but it is not as wasteful in a dry environment as systems like our own that use water soluble ammonia and urea to accomplish the same task.
This actually takes quite a while; for most people, urine is upwards of 98% water. Sure, if you drink nothing but urine for months you may develop problems -- but if you're stuck somewhere and water is in short supply, you should definitely drink your urine. It only takes the average human 3 or 4 days to die of thirst, and if you don't know when help will arrive, don't risk it.
Wasn't McCain tortured in Vietnam? He used to be quite outspokenly against torture, has he decided to toe the party line? I'm not fond of McCain's politics, but I always respected how he didn't take shit from anyone. If it's true that he's gone pro-torture that would definitely destroy any respect I had for him.
Or maybe, just maybe, he (like many Slashdotters, including myself) actually knew who Alex was, because a) he's famous and b) we have more varied interests than just whether Apple is going to release a new iPod or not.
Non-human intelligence is interesting for some of us, even if said non-humans don't come from another planet.
MS didn't produce Moonlight. The Mono guys did. MS may try some patent-fu, but at the very least the code is out there. I personally don't respect software patents enough to abide by them anyway.
Maybe, but you know -- something as annoying as the 6 character restriction probably didn't come about arbitrarily. They were using an old PDP here, lest we forget -- there may have been space constraints. (I have no idea, I'm just hazarding a guess).
Slashdot Mirror
Do I ever! My first dildo... sure brings back memories, doesn't it?
Listen, the government does make poor decisions, financial and otherwise. No one here is going to argue that point. But the reason we have the Fed is to keep the government as honest as we can expect it to be. The government cannot print money for itself; if it wants to spend money it needs to either raise taxes or issue debt securities. The latter is borrowed money and it must be paid back, and it will be, and by us. This is a burden, there's no question. But let's not forget that we had a surplus under Clinton, after years of spending money we didn't have by Reagan. Bush and co have been spending our money like it's going out of style, there's no reason to believe that this time we won't be able to pay it back.
Of course I've heard about LTCM. I'm not sure why our government organizing a bail-out to prevent wider collapse of financial markets is such a bad thing. First of all, if the financial markets collapsed, you'd be pretty aversely affected -- as it is, you weren't. Second, it's not like "organizing" a bail-out means printing money: in actuality, it meant convincing 14 (private) investment banks to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars each to the cause. Not to mention that if I recall correctly, those banks actually came out on top in the long run. So I'm not sure why you bring up the whole LTCM debacle -- it's an example of the Fed doing its job and ensuring that the markets stay stable.
I don't see how the housing bubble is the fault of the Fed or how it would be helped by a gold standard. Likewise the failure of social security -- a system which depends on strong population growth to function -- seems unrelated to any failure of fiat currency conceptually or in practice.
Questioning the Fed chairman, telling him how to do his job, etc, is nothing new -- it was done in Volker's time, too. Luckily, it's all just petty posturing -- Senators can do absolutely nothing but beg, they have no power whatsoever over the Fed.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say the "money would adjust to match the amount of gold". Do you mean we'd see serious, steady deflation? I think I explained why that would be a colossally bad thing in my previous post. People would stop spending, trade would be impacted, wealth generation would slow to a standstill, and we'd sink into another depression.
The price of gold would not soar to any price -- a gold standard, by definition, backs paper currency with a commodity, so 1 dollar would be defined to be some amount of gold and that would be the end of it. The price of gold does not "adjust" under this system, so again, I'm not sure what you mean -- if you're advocating a return to the gold standard, it seems to me you should at least understand that the price of gold would be unable to fluctuate. That's sort of the point.
It's true that land is a limited resource and so it stands to reason that we will eventually run out of it, assuming our population growth continues unabated. But that turns out to be a big assumption -- population growth is slowing in most developed countries. Australia, for example, has negative population growth, and requires immigration to replenish its numbers. Singapore as well. The US hasn't gotten there yet, but it stands to reason that we will. If the rest of the world develops as we have, why wouldn't the same apply to them? At any rate, the price of land is not soaring across the board -- only in desirable places. This is how the market works -- things which have low supply and high demand tend to experience an upward pressure in prices.
Homes in the US are most likely overvalued, and everyone is concerned about this. But securities of any sort being overvalued is nothing new: it happens with all sorts of goods and there is always a reversion to the mean, eventually. This can sometimes be painful -- recession is often the result -- but it is fundamentally temporary.
The government's ability to issue effectively unlimited debt is not the fault of the Fed and abolishin
That goes without saying. A really good troll is by nature one that people don't notice and take seriously. I was being ironical. It seems a lot of other folks fell for it.
I have to say, this must be the best way to get people to pay attention to trolls that I've ever seen. First, write something sexually obscene and post it. Nothing new there, Slashdot has at least one of these in every story, sometimes more. "Unfortunately," thinks the troll, "these are immediately modded to -1, and no one pays attention to me -- I know! I'll create a user and respond to my own, anonymous post, expressing horror and outrage! Then all the Slashbots will be forced to read my ridiculous drivel when otherwise they would have just ignored it!"
Fucking brilliant. I hope this shows up on Trolltalk. This is why I read at -1.
Keep on trollin'!
The Fed is not a part of the government in the sense you seem to think it is. History has shown that when politicians are allowed to print money, they do, and in large quantities. Which is why modern central banks like the Fed and the ECB are not beholden to the interests of democratically elected politicians. Hell, if that had been the case, Paul Volker would have been in pretty deep shit. Thankfully, the prevailing attitudes of the day had no bearing on what he knew needed to be done and the result was that the stagflation from the Carter era did not persist, despite Reagan lampooning the Fed in Congress.
I'm also not sure why everyone is going on about inflation. Inflation is at a low, targeted rate and has been for some time. There was a period when inflation went out of control -- but that's because economists had a very skewed idea about what sane monetary policy was and the result was 1970 to about 1982. Since then, the Fed has tried to keep inflation at a low, positive, and predictable rate (roughly 3%).
Deflation (the opposite of inflation) is detrimental to the economy because it encourages people to hoard cash -- why spend it, when its value is going up? Hoarding cash is not the same as saving -- you can save your money in a bank, for example, which typically provides you with an interest rate which is slightly greater than the rate of inflation. Hoarding cash is putting it in your mattress and keeping it out of circulation. Look at interest rates in Japan in the 1990s for an example of what that sort of thing can do to an economy. Are you old enough to remember how afraid everyone in the US was of Japan in the 1980s? Now they're just a random Asian country known for hi-tech toys and weird game shows. But there was a time that Americans were worried they were going to buy us.
A low, positive inflation rate does the opposite: it provides incentive to spend cash, and to keep it in circulation. This increases the liquidity of money markets and makes loans easier to obtain, which in turn stimulates wealth generation -- jobs, capital investment, etc.
Most people who start companies aren't independently wealthy -- they look for investors and they take out loans to finance their start-ups. In order to get the money they need, there has to be money around and available. It isn't around and available if it's hidden in your mattress. These people build products, employ workers, and generally keep the economy going.
Did you know that in inflation adjusted dollars, the yearly GDP of the US is greater than the worth of the world's entire gold supply? How exactly do you expect to reconcile that fact with a gold standard? How exactly can you have a currency based on gold when in a very real sense there simply isn't enough gold? Economics is not a zero-sum game, and the pie keeps on growing. The money supply needs to too, and having a supply-capped money supply may seem like a smart idea if you haven't thought much about it, but in reality it would effectively cap economic growth.
For this reason alone I would never, ever vote for Ron Paul.
You're acting like there's anyway to avoid Long Yang Lu. You may not realize it because you weren't paying attention, or maybe because you can't read Chinese, but if you take a cab from the airport you go right by Long Yang Lu in any case. The only difference is it takes 5 times as long (literally) and costs you twice as much (or more) if you're alone to get to the same place.
Look, no one said you have to take the metro from Long Yang Lu -- there are lots of cabs lined up right outside the station, and because they're not waiting at the airport they don't need to add any sort of airport surcharge to the meter, either. The bus (there is a bus, you know) from the airport to the city goes through Long Yang Lu, too. If you think you can avoid Long Yang Lu, you are dreadfully mistaken.
If you want to go to Puxi, you can get in a cab at Long Yang Lu and it will cost you between 60 and 80 RMB to get to People's Square. Just don't go during rush hour, though, because not only will you not move, the bridge under the Huangpu Jiang that Shiji Dadao goes through is closed and the driver will have to take his sweet time going to one of the other bridges. There's also no guarantee that the cabbies in Pudong will know Puxi well or at all.
In comparison, the metro costs 3 to 5 yuan and comes frequently. If you can't speak Chinese, you can expect a cabbie to rip you off and take you for a long ride -- no such issue with the metro, which announces stops in English as well as Mandarin, and features English stop names.
At the very least, you can get to Puxi and then take a cab to where you want to go.
Here's how the math works out: 40 minutes by cab from Pudong International to the Long Yang Lu area, 30 to 40 minutes of you stuck in traffic with a cab driver who probably doesn't even speak Mandarin let alone English, and who won't think twice about driving far out of the way to drive the meter up if he thinks he can get away with it. Versus: 8 minutes to Long Yang Lu by maglev, 30 minutes to Central Shanghai by metro, followed by 5 minutes to your hotel. Let's be generous and say you have to wait the maximum for a metro, about 5 minutes, and that you just can't find a cab downtown easily and it takes you 10 minutes to get one. That's still under an hour. In fact, I can say with some certainty that it has never taken me more than an hour to get anywhere in the city doing it that way.
But to each his own, I guess.
I used to work one metro stop from there, in Zhangjiang Gaoke Yuan. I lived in Puxi, and commuted from the Shimen Yi Lu stop every single day during rush hour. It takes like 30 minutes, if even, to get downtown -- but most business visitors to Shanghai stay in one of the nice hotels in Pudong anyway, so it's actually only 3 or 4 stops to Lujiazui. Not much of a hassle, really.
Plus, if you take a cab (or the bus) from Pudong International Airport you end up driving right past Long Yang Lu anyway -- it's on the way. Which means you can't avoid going through that part of Shanghai if you're coming from the airport.
You're far, far better off taking the maglev. Unless you have fellow travelers to share a cab with, it's much cheaper, and it's also far faster. There are always a million cabs sitting right outside the subway if you're metro averse (although why you would be is beyond me -- you're one stop from the end of the line and unless you show up during peak hours you're almost certain to be able to get a seat).
Not to mention that the tunnel between Pudong and Puxi at Lujiazui (the one that Shiji Dadao goes through) is closed during rush hour. So if you are unlucky enough to get into Shanghai around 6pm, taking a cab to Puxi is still a god cursed fool idea. The driver will have to route to one of the other bridges, taking hours of your time (which of course is on the meter). The traffic will be at a standstill. The city has 11 million people, for crying out loud.
Anyone who says take a taxi to and from the airport instead of the maglev has either completely lost their mind or hasn't spent more than a day in Shanghai.
As for "stealing" technology, are you one of these people who thinks reverse engineering should be illegal? Give me a break.
Informative? What a load of BS. Where exactly would you have the Maglev take you? To your hotel? You do realize that Shanghai is a huge city and that different people have different destinations, right? The Shanghai maglev takes you to the Long Yang Lu metro stop, and from there you can go anywhere you want, essentially, in the city.
Not to mention that the maglev costs 50 RMB and covers in 8 minutes a distance that a taxi costing 100 RMB would cover in 40. So especially if you're traveling alone, the maglev is by far the most convenient way to get in and out of Shanghai. If you're with your whole family and don't want to deal with public transportation, a taxi might be more convenient -- but it will most certainly be slower.
Why yes, I lived and worked in Shanghai for almost 3 years, thank for asking.
What about FLAC?
Again, read my post (and the OP's, too, for context, while you're at it). It was not my point that the you need to sell everything to make a profit; that was the context of the original post, and I was responding to him. In fact, I even quoted the relevant bit in my post, to save you the trouble!
I'm sorry, I have no idea how what you're saying relates to what I said. Perhaps you didn't read my post? Maximizing profit is the goal of any business and understanding how to do that is not rocket science. I never suggested that anyone wanted "the most people to have their product". The GP suggested that if you have a good or service, sell all of it, and don't turn a profit, you have not picked the right price. The truth is, there are some things that you will be unable to turn a profit on, regardless of price -- they just aren't profitable. I explained why this was true in the context of "basic economics", since the GP seemed to misunderstand what basic economics entails.
I have a suggestion for you: in the future, when you respond to my posts — which I encourage you to do — do me (and yourself) the favor of reading and understanding what I say first. It saves me time and makes you look less like you lack basic reading comprehension skills.
Thanks.
Nice post — or at least, it seems like an informative post to me. I'll admit I don't know enough about the time period to comment at all. However, this:
... is not the least bit correct, and someone with your apparent mental faculties should be able to see why. For any product for which demand exists and for which there is limited supply, there is a set of prices that are low enough (law of demand) that all items will sell. Of these, pick the highest: this represents the most money that you can make, while still selling all the items in your inventory.
Here is where you made an interesting (by which I mean, meritless) logical leap: that this maximum price covered the operational costs associated with the production and/or appropriation of the goods or services you are selling. Because profit is not revenue: profit is money you made in excess of the associated costs of production, labor, etc.
It is a "basic economic fact" that the laws of supply and demand work together to set an optimum price for a good. But profit does not follow from these basic economic facts. Whether or not a businessman can profit from his endeavors has everything to do with whether a market exists for his goods and services. If you take as a given that a market does in fact exist, then the difference between making a profit or not can be a question of pricing — but it seems fairly clear to me, despite my admitted ignorance of ancient greek and roman law, that the original poster was making rather the opposite assumption.
It is true that cited information that happens to be incorrect or misguided will often be difficult or impossible to remove due to the existence of a citation — this is clearly a problem. However, I do not see the other direction as being an issue.
The fact is, nearly everything that is correct and accurate can indeed be cited. Wikipedia has, for very good reasons, a policy of not allowing original research — so anything you determine yourself is not admissible. But everything else is.
I'm the sort of person that "knows" a lot of stuff. I have a lot of trivia and information stored in my brain; I'd wager many Slashdotters are similarly of the "know-it-all" variety. But I cannot tell you how many times I have sworn that some factoid or other was true only to discover in the course of research that I was either mistaken, or that the knowledge was somehow so obscure that no one else made any references to it whatsoever (which, let's face it, probably means I was mistaken).
Unlike you, apparently, when this happens I thank my lucky stars that WP encourages citation of sources. When something is correct, finding a cite is a trivial endeavor, as it only amounts to telling them where you read what you're saying. When something is incorrect, your inability to find a cite will prevent you from looking like a daft fool by insisting something is true when it's not.
Many people who think they are experts tend to assume that the "cite everything" policy that WP has adopted does not apply to them — but more often than not, these people are not actually experts. Real experts, who do research and read on their subject of expertise in an academic setting pretty much full time, are accustomed to citing their sources (although they are often not accustomed to WP's prohibition against original research — but that's something else entirely).
As a rule of thumb, if you can't find a citation for what you know to be true, it's probably not true, and so I cannot empathize with your distaste for the citation requirement. However, I think you are right in your assessment of the problem in the other direction: citations can be of poor quality and be incorrect themselves, and people can be very unreceptive (read: belligerent) when you suggest that citation or no, their statement is either incorrect or POV or whatever.
Unfortunately for me, I appear to have been mistaken about the character of the fourth amendment (although I stand by the thrust of my post -- I see it as how things ought to be). In United States v. Jacobsen, SCOTUS decided that the 4th amendment did not apply to private citizens -- not surprisingly in a case involving drugs.
What a sham.
For the record, this is the fourth amendment to the US constitution:
Notice that this amendment does not in any way restrict only the activities of the state; it does not say "... shall not be violated by the state but may be violated by private citizens or corporations if the people stand on their private property ..." or other such libertarian nonsense.
Once I (or anyone else) has purchased an item from a store, and paid for said item in full, the item belongs to me. It does not still belong to the store simply because I am still on the store's property, nor does the store magically have the right to search me or my belongings simply because I am still on their property.
Your property argument, to me, is a bit like saying "You knew you were going to be raped if you came to 808140's house; there is a sign on the door that indicates his depraved intentions clearly. If you didn't want to be raped, you shouldn't have gone to his house." The problem with this statement is that rape is illegal, no matter what I have posted on my front door. Private property or no, sign or no, I will (thankfully) be unable to justify my rape of you in court simply because you deigned to enter my home.
This situation is much analogous, except the statute is the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. You may think I'm arguing in extremes, but you'll notice that the founding fathers did not think to decry rape in that highest document in the land -- but they did think to protect my right to be secure in my person.
I understand that receipt-checking makes it easier for the business to catch shoplifters; I empathize with their motives. I also understand implanting a tracking chip in every man woman and child in this country would make felons easier to apprehend. Thankfully, we Americans have, historically at least, been unwilling to sacrifice our civil liberties simply to make law enforcement easier for those tasked with enforcing it.
This practice of checking receipts and belongings when you leave the store is completely unacceptable. Furthermore, there is no reason to do it. Many stores are designed so that the only way to exit the store is by passing through checkout, and have an aisle specifically for people with no items to purchase. This aisle can be observed and if a shoplifter is suspected security can then detain him. The result is just as good as Circuit City's or Fry's policy, I'm sure. Better, perhaps, because the latter's only protects against shoplifters who clandestinely add an item they didn't purchase into their shopping bag, and does nothing against the shoplifter who simply places an item into his inside pocket, for example.
Clearly, you've never had a job where you really have to do almost nothing. It's boring and depressing. At my last job, a change in management and restructuring resulted in our team being orphaned for two months -- we had nothing to do and spent most of the day surfing the web. It may have gone on longer than two months, even... I don't know, because I quit.
Thanks for the link. It seems that drinking urine if you are already dehydrated is a bad idea, which doesn't surprise me much, truth be told. It is not, however, anywhere near as bad as drinking sea water or (say) plutonium nitrate. Hopefully we can agree on that.
Regarding the "CAUTION" box in the manual: Yes, I had seen that. However, as much of the guide involves purifying sea water, another element on the list of things not to drink, it occurs to me that urine might benefit from similar treatment. But then again, perhaps not -- no amount of purification of alcohol or blood would render it drinkable, for example. But the high water content of urine might suggest otherwise... I'm thinking evaporation, here, for example.
Anyway, don't misunderstand me: you've successfully corrected me and in the future, if I find myself in an environment without water, I'll no longer consider drinking my own urine (unless, of course, I have some means to purify it, and no other source of water).
For the record, I'm not able to access your site, either: http://www.daughtersoftiresias.org/. Perhaps it's a problem on my side? I've looked at it before, though, as I typically enjoy reading your posts, spirited though they may sometimes be.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but the US army field manual you linked to only says that urine "contains harmful body wastes [and] is about 2% salt." The rest of the manual (which is very interesting, by the way, thank you for linking to it) has a lot of good ideas for getting water, but many of these assume you'll have materials that you might not on your person in an emergency, etc. There's also quite a bit of information devoted to the purification of sea water, which by the manual's own admission has higher salinity than urine (4%). Presumably these same techniques could be used to purify urine as well? At any rate, the intent of my original post was not "drink urine no matter what", but rather "drinking urine is better than drinking nothing." Also, comparing urine to plutonium nitrate is sort of silly, don't you think?
I'd love to comment on your other link, but it doesn't seem to work. Do you have one that does?
Regarding your "anti-evolution" comment: I realize it was meant to be a sort of ironic joke, but actually, we humans have a waste removal system that is relatively unoptimized for low-water environments. Many other animals (birds, in particular, but also a number of other creatures native to desert environments) do not urinate at all, instead vacating nitrogenous wastes in the form of water insoluble uric acid, usually with their feces. Metabolically this is relatively costly, but it is not as wasteful in a dry environment as systems like our own that use water soluble ammonia and urea to accomplish the same task.
This actually takes quite a while; for most people, urine is upwards of 98% water. Sure, if you drink nothing but urine for months you may develop problems -- but if you're stuck somewhere and water is in short supply, you should definitely drink your urine. It only takes the average human 3 or 4 days to die of thirst, and if you don't know when help will arrive, don't risk it.
Wasn't McCain tortured in Vietnam? He used to be quite outspokenly against torture, has he decided to toe the party line? I'm not fond of McCain's politics, but I always respected how he didn't take shit from anyone. If it's true that he's gone pro-torture that would definitely destroy any respect I had for him.
Or maybe, just maybe, he (like many Slashdotters, including myself) actually knew who Alex was, because a) he's famous and b) we have more varied interests than just whether Apple is going to release a new iPod or not.
Non-human intelligence is interesting for some of us, even if said non-humans don't come from another planet.
Man, if you think MS's problem is lack of developer talent, you clearly haven't met anyone who works for MS.
MS didn't produce Moonlight. The Mono guys did. MS may try some patent-fu, but at the very least the code is out there. I personally don't respect software patents enough to abide by them anyway.
Maybe, but you know -- something as annoying as the 6 character restriction probably didn't come about arbitrarily. They were using an old PDP here, lest we forget -- there may have been space constraints. (I have no idea, I'm just hazarding a guess).