There's an old Russian maxim to the effect that "mornings are wiser than evenings". But given the Russians' reputation, I just figured it had something to do with being less full of vodka...
I really dislike Google's stance, but I really hate the self-righteousness of the government (and by proxy, the people, of this country). We have decided that corporations need to stand on their principles and "take one for the team", in order to further American values. The people/government expect companies to "do the right thing" and protect our Bill of Rights abroad on philosophical grounds. Except it's not the private industries job to do that, that's the governments job, and the government has done nothing, ever, to discourage China from being the way they are. They are most-favored-nation, etc. They get a few strong words every year, and otherwise get yielded too constantly.
So what should the government do? Even if our economy wasn't dependent upon cheap Chinese imports, what good would isolating China do? We've isolated and punished Cuba with trade restrictions for years, but Cuba isn't any freer. Castro has probably been in power longer than any other leader in the Western Hemisphere, if not the world. Given that trade restrictions have failed to achieve freedom in Cuba, why would they do any good in China? Punitive actions would allow the U.S. to act principled, but it's unlikely they'd do any real good, and it might just strengthen the Chinese' government's grip over its people by delaying the rise of a strong middle class. So the U.S. Government is left in the same position as Google- it's evil to engage China, it's evil not to engage China.
People are being a bit hasty in expecting things to change in China. Freedom takes time. A functional Jeffersonian democracy is a hell of a lot more than the absence of a totalitarian state. It requires security, infrastructure, a market economy, the rule of law, a tradition of people taking charge of their own government. All that takes time. The slow change towards a freer China is frustrating, but the alternative- say, a sudden collapse of the state, as seen in Russia- is probably worse. There, the economy collapsed, the oligarchs ran off with everything, and organized crime filled the power vacuum left by the absence of the state. So for all these people agitating for freedom in China, what do you plan to replace it with? Do you naively expect China to become a model democracy overnight, as we blindly expected to happen in Iraq?
At any rate, China is changing. I met a Chinese student in a course of mine who was studying engineering; she said her goal in life was to get a good education here so she could go live in Shanghai, get a high-paying job, and buy lots of pretty clothes. Which speaks volumes. China is only communist by name, they are a totalitarian country with a market economy: a fascist state. As the Economist notes, however, that's a hopeful sign. Fascist states like Spain and Chile have good histories of making the transition to democracy, but it doesn't happen overnight.
They should make a fighting game where all the characters are religious figures. So you can be Jesus and beat the crap out of Mohammed, or vice versa. Other characters would include Satan, Buddha, Mary, an Orthodox rabbi, Vishnu, God, Santa, the Easter Bunny and Cthulhu. You wouldn't even have to make a profit off the game to get filthy rich- you'd just invest in defense contractors and then when screenshots of Mohammed and Satan tag-teaming the Easter Bunny and Buddha start circulating around the world, World War III starts and your defense stocks go through the roof.
You are actually only to fire between two and four of these per day, or else risk ripping the pericardium that surrounds your heart.
And, actually, that wouldn't be a great end to a happy Valentine's Day...
I'm sitting here with a bottle of nice wine and no one to share it with, a DVD and no one to watch it with, and fifty bucks worth of roses without the girl I wanted to give them to.
Exactly how would a ripped pericardium be worse than my current situation?
No shit. This is not an administration that has been kind to science. Last year they cut the National Science Foundation's budget (the NSF is a major soource of grant awards for facilities, researchers, postdocs, and graduate students in all areas of science). This year they increased it by 2.4%. On the surface that sounds great, but actually that's less than the rate of inflation- so it's effectively a cut, just not as large a cut. As the saying goes, watch what they do, not what they say. And if you watch what this administration actually does- cutting funding and trying to distort research to favor particular policies- you'll see why scientists are so overwhelmingly against Bush.
I think whether sanctions do/don't work is arguable, but Cuba seems to be a good example of how isolating countries has not worked. Despite our efforts to isolate him, Castro must be one of the longest-reigning government heads in the world. That raises the possibility that his regime has been stable precisely because we have isolated him. Perhaps with few outside influences to change Cuban society the regime has been relatively stable.
Yeah, well, I graduated to the Vic 20 from my Timex Sinclair ZX-81. Take that!
Why, in my day we had to carry our ones and zeroes six miles uphill through the snow. And each bit weighed eight pounds so a byte weighed sixty-four pounds and it took you three hours to get it there. But dammit, it was good for you, kept you fit as a mule and taught you to be an efficient coder. Not like the kids these days, with the hair, and the clothes and the rock music. Everything's going to hell.
Re:Optimus, we hardly knew ye....
on
A Real Transformer?
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· Score: 4, Funny
That... that's just harsh man. Why do you have to have make jokes about things like that you insensitive clod?! Is there nothing sacred any more?His joke has insulted our prophet, Optimus Prime! Let's burn stuff and riot in the streets!
Does anyone else think it's a bit odd that it targets it's only _major_ competitor on the market; after all, there haven't been any reports about this happening to other A-V programs that I've seen.
In related news, the Microsoft program which controls the USAF's intercontinental ballistic missile targeting systems identifies Symantec's headquarters as the base of operations of a terrorist organization, and recommends obliteration with a 60 megaton hydrogen bomb to eliminate the threat.
Re:So it's basically fixed point math.
on
More iTunes Math
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· Score: 5, Funny
Wow. I don't see why this article is on slashdot, what am I missing?
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Games probably _aren't a violation because they're a reasonably accurite depiction.
Yes, very accurate. I've usually found that when I'm fighting off hordes of marauding space aliens and heavily armed androids with my rocket launcher, there are medical kits with red crosses strewn around conveniently.
Yeah but if I came up with a cure for aids or workable cold fusion I think I might mention it to a few people in the time it took for peer review.
You definitely would NOT mention it to the press if you wanted to get published in a top journal like Nature, Science, or Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They have strict restrictions against talking to the press before the work is accepted and published. If you feel like ignoring these restrictions, then these journals can and will yank your paper. See, for instance http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/policy/embarg o.html.
Lots of Mac folks now run Unix. Mind you, they may not know it (;-))
Nothin' wrong with that. I mean, maybe you ride an airplane, but could you discuss the Kutta condition and the bound vortices which keep the thing from falling 30,000 feet straight down? They're as fundamental to the operation of an aircraft as Unix is to OS X and most people have never heard of either.
Some people want to have a deep understanding of, and control over, how their computer work. And that's great. Many of us don't give a rat's ass, as long as it does what it does. We're not necessarily anti-intellectual, we just have other interests- graphics, writing, science or whatnot. Macintosh does a decent job of aiming for that segment of the computer-using population.
...it also illustrates the large and growing power of google, a power that may not always be used for optimal "goodness."
In related news, after being de-listed, the headquarters of BMW Germany ceased to exist. People coming to visit the headquarters found only a vast, dark vortex of nothingness, over which were visible huge glowing letters reading "Error 404: Page Not Found". The entire German management of BMW has disappeared as well, along with several nearby dairy farms and a brewery.
At a press conference, a reporter asked whether this sort of behavior fit with the company's "Do no evil" motto, or reflected a growing arrogance and malice on the part of Google. The Google spokesman declined to respond to the question. Instead his eyes briefly glowed red before the reporter spontaneously burst into flames and was consumed, leaving only a small pile of ashes on the floor.
It sounds like the connection to New Orleans levees is really premature to me.
The other issue is that the New Orleans floodwalls are thought to have failed because the soil beneath them became waterlogged and gave way. Is the model going to work in that kind of a situation?
When I go to the store and see a game that's based on a movie, I don't even give the box a second glance. There have been so many bad movie-licenced games (and it seems that every single movie has one) that it's just not worth trying them anymore.
I don't know about that. The "Passion of the Christ" first person shooter has some awesome graphics. Though the weapons are kind of limited. Actually, you don't really get any weapons, you just get beat up by Romans. But I thought the graphics made up for what it lacked in gameplay. Though I still haven't beat it- no matter what I do, I always die at the end. And I suppose, if you're really into the action games, "Bridge on the River Kwai" wasn't that exciting, but I thought the physics models involved in the bridge-building was quite sophisticated. Also there's some pretty good buzz about the upcoming "Brokeback Mountain" MMORPG.
You don't frighten us, American pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, son of a silly person! Ah blow my nose at you, so-called "RIAA"! You and all your silly American Record Industry Executives!!! Ay don' wanna talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food-trough wiper! Ay fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries! Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!
The biggest failures in the open competitive market are usualy companies that are given some monopoly status or public funding (Enron, etc)
What in the hell are you talking about? Enron failed because they got caught up in the capitalistic frenzy of the Internet Bubble days, borrowed massive amounts of money, spent it poorly on overseas projects and other bad business ideas, ended up with billions of dollars of debt, and then couldn't pay it back to the banks. They were able to get this deep in the hole because they pulled a bunch of shady deals and creative accounting schemes to shift their losses off their balance sheet and make their earnings look better. Last I checked, it didn't have anything to do with a monopoly or government funding. It was primarily the greed and stupidity of Corporate America at work.
I know the libertarian "corporations do everything better than government" sentiment is popular on/., but the truth is that corporations- like Enron- can often suffer from dysfunctional cultures and incompetency, just like Enron.
I do agree that government-run enterprises suffer much more from a lack of accountability than private ones, in general but private industry doesn't cure all evils. There's still bullshit, incompetency, bureaucracy, egotism and politics in the private sector.
Or... You can listen to the likes of Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett.
They both advocate that you TOTALLY IGNORE what the market is doing because it is impossible to predict. Buy stocks on their MERITS. If a stock meets your fundamental merits, and the crazy wiles of the market seem to have made it under priced because of some moronic panic or something similar... Then buy it.
Definitely, Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett all the way. There's also a book on Buffet's strategies called _Buffetology_ which I liked fairly well. But just to clarify, it's not just a matter of whether it's a good company. The best company in the world is still a bad investment if you pay too much for it. Google clearly has a hell of a lot going for it and a lot of potential, the big question is whether this justifies its price (I think it's still overpriced, personally). However, on the other hand, crappy companies can also be good investments if they're cheap enough (although in general you're much better off sticking with the good ones).
Well if you really want to make money in the stock market you have to have some insight beyond the average investor.
The way I look at it, the stock market is driven by three things: greed, fear, and information. To beat the market, you need to be more rational than the next guy (less subject to greed and fear) and/or have more information. Then you can recognize when the market has overpriced/underpriced and act accordingly. This isn't impossible, but it is difficult and it is risky. Unless you're good and disciplined, you're going to get burned bad at least once (speaking from experience). However, don't underestimate your advantages. If you're a college kid you probably have a much better sense of how Apple is doing with it's iPods, for instance, than some guy in a cubicle on Wall Street.
Now, ultimately, the value of a company is determined by its earnings, so the standard way to evaluate the price of a company's stock is the ratio of its stock price to earnings- the price/earnings (P/E) ratio. Google currently has a P/E ratio of 89, which means that its profits are about ninety times share price. That's really high, and the kind of overpricing seen in the Internet Bubble. For comparison, Microsoft has a P/E of 23, Yahoo has a P/E of about 27. Google obviously has a lot more potential for earnings growth than Microsoft, which justifies a higher P/E, but I think 89 is too high, and it would have to drop much more before I'd consider buying it. At this point, I think Microsoft and Yahoo are probably better bargains.
Incidentally, the whole P/E thing is Day One of Investing 101. If it isn't familiar to you, you're probably not ready to put your money in the stock market.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an old Russian maxim to the effect that "mornings are wiser than evenings". But given the Russians' reputation, I just figured it had something to do with being less full of vodka...
So what should the government do? Even if our economy wasn't dependent upon cheap Chinese imports, what good would isolating China do? We've isolated and punished Cuba with trade restrictions for years, but Cuba isn't any freer. Castro has probably been in power longer than any other leader in the Western Hemisphere, if not the world. Given that trade restrictions have failed to achieve freedom in Cuba, why would they do any good in China? Punitive actions would allow the U.S. to act principled, but it's unlikely they'd do any real good, and it might just strengthen the Chinese' government's grip over its people by delaying the rise of a strong middle class. So the U.S. Government is left in the same position as Google- it's evil to engage China, it's evil not to engage China.
People are being a bit hasty in expecting things to change in China. Freedom takes time. A functional Jeffersonian democracy is a hell of a lot more than the absence of a totalitarian state. It requires security, infrastructure, a market economy, the rule of law, a tradition of people taking charge of their own government. All that takes time. The slow change towards a freer China is frustrating, but the alternative- say, a sudden collapse of the state, as seen in Russia- is probably worse. There, the economy collapsed, the oligarchs ran off with everything, and organized crime filled the power vacuum left by the absence of the state. So for all these people agitating for freedom in China, what do you plan to replace it with? Do you naively expect China to become a model democracy overnight, as we blindly expected to happen in Iraq?
At any rate, China is changing. I met a Chinese student in a course of mine who was studying engineering; she said her goal in life was to get a good education here so she could go live in Shanghai, get a high-paying job, and buy lots of pretty clothes. Which speaks volumes. China is only communist by name, they are a totalitarian country with a market economy: a fascist state. As the Economist notes, however, that's a hopeful sign. Fascist states like Spain and Chile have good histories of making the transition to democracy, but it doesn't happen overnight.
They should make a fighting game where all the characters are religious figures. So you can be Jesus and beat the crap out of Mohammed, or vice versa. Other characters would include Satan, Buddha, Mary, an Orthodox rabbi, Vishnu, God, Santa, the Easter Bunny and Cthulhu. You wouldn't even have to make a profit off the game to get filthy rich- you'd just invest in defense contractors and then when screenshots of Mohammed and Satan tag-teaming the Easter Bunny and Buddha start circulating around the world, World War III starts and your defense stocks go through the roof.
I'm sitting here with a bottle of nice wine and no one to share it with, a DVD and no one to watch it with, and fifty bucks worth of roses without the girl I wanted to give them to.
Exactly how would a ripped pericardium be worse than my current situation?
No shit. This is not an administration that has been kind to science. Last year they cut the National Science Foundation's budget (the NSF is a major soource of grant awards for facilities, researchers, postdocs, and graduate students in all areas of science). This year they increased it by 2.4%. On the surface that sounds great, but actually that's less than the rate of inflation- so it's effectively a cut, just not as large a cut. As the saying goes, watch what they do, not what they say. And if you watch what this administration actually does- cutting funding and trying to distort research to favor particular policies- you'll see why scientists are so overwhelmingly against Bush.
I think whether sanctions do/don't work is arguable, but Cuba seems to be a good example of how isolating countries has not worked. Despite our efforts to isolate him, Castro must be one of the longest-reigning government heads in the world. That raises the possibility that his regime has been stable precisely because we have isolated him. Perhaps with few outside influences to change Cuban society the regime has been relatively stable.
Why, in my day we had to carry our ones and zeroes six miles uphill through the snow. And each bit weighed eight pounds so a byte weighed sixty-four pounds and it took you three hours to get it there. But dammit, it was good for you, kept you fit as a mule and taught you to be an efficient coder. Not like the kids these days, with the hair, and the clothes and the rock music. Everything's going to hell.
That... that's just harsh man. Why do you have to have make jokes about things like that you insensitive clod?! Is there nothing sacred any more?His joke has insulted our prophet, Optimus Prime! Let's burn stuff and riot in the streets!
In related news, the Microsoft program which controls the USAF's intercontinental ballistic missile targeting systems identifies Symantec's headquarters as the base of operations of a terrorist organization, and recommends obliteration with a 60 megaton hydrogen bomb to eliminate the threat.
Whatever it is the editors were smoking.
I think that currently, the only way to bring dignity to that office would be to escort its current occupant out.
That sounds like the thought processes of freedom-hating, terrorist-supporting, troop-undermining Democrat to me.
Yes, very accurate. I've usually found that when I'm fighting off hordes of marauding space aliens and heavily armed androids with my rocket launcher, there are medical kits with red crosses strewn around conveniently.
You definitely would NOT mention it to the press if you wanted to get published in a top journal like Nature, Science, or Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They have strict restrictions against talking to the press before the work is accepted and published. If you feel like ignoring these restrictions, then these journals can and will yank your paper. See, for instance http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/policy/embarg o.html.
What, if anything, is Wikipedia doing to encourage academics and scientists to contribute their knowledge and expertise?
A long-term decrease in the number of pirates.
Nothin' wrong with that. I mean, maybe you ride an airplane, but could you discuss the Kutta condition and the bound vortices which keep the thing from falling 30,000 feet straight down? They're as fundamental to the operation of an aircraft as Unix is to OS X and most people have never heard of either.
Some people want to have a deep understanding of, and control over, how their computer work. And that's great. Many of us don't give a rat's ass, as long as it does what it does. We're not necessarily anti-intellectual, we just have other interests- graphics, writing, science or whatnot. Macintosh does a decent job of aiming for that segment of the computer-using population.
In related news, after being de-listed, the headquarters of BMW Germany ceased to exist. People coming to visit the headquarters found only a vast, dark vortex of nothingness, over which were visible huge glowing letters reading "Error 404: Page Not Found". The entire German management of BMW has disappeared as well, along with several nearby dairy farms and a brewery.
At a press conference, a reporter asked whether this sort of behavior fit with the company's "Do no evil" motto, or reflected a growing arrogance and malice on the part of Google. The Google spokesman declined to respond to the question. Instead his eyes briefly glowed red before the reporter spontaneously burst into flames and was consumed, leaving only a small pile of ashes on the floor.
The remaining reporters had no further questions.
The other issue is that the New Orleans floodwalls are thought to have failed because the soil beneath them became waterlogged and gave way. Is the model going to work in that kind of a situation?
Oh yeah, well suck it yourself, buddy. -The New York roaches
I don't know about that. The "Passion of the Christ" first person shooter has some awesome graphics. Though the weapons are kind of limited. Actually, you don't really get any weapons, you just get beat up by Romans. But I thought the graphics made up for what it lacked in gameplay. Though I still haven't beat it- no matter what I do, I always die at the end. And I suppose, if you're really into the action games, "Bridge on the River Kwai" wasn't that exciting, but I thought the physics models involved in the bridge-building was quite sophisticated. Also there's some pretty good buzz about the upcoming "Brokeback Mountain" MMORPG.
You don't frighten us, American pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, son of a silly person! Ah blow my nose at you, so-called "RIAA"! You and all your silly American Record Industry Executives!!! Ay don' wanna talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food-trough wiper! Ay fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries! Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!
What in the hell are you talking about? Enron failed because they got caught up in the capitalistic frenzy of the Internet Bubble days, borrowed massive amounts of money, spent it poorly on overseas projects and other bad business ideas, ended up with billions of dollars of debt, and then couldn't pay it back to the banks. They were able to get this deep in the hole because they pulled a bunch of shady deals and creative accounting schemes to shift their losses off their balance sheet and make their earnings look better. Last I checked, it didn't have anything to do with a monopoly or government funding. It was primarily the greed and stupidity of Corporate America at work.
I know the libertarian "corporations do everything better than government" sentiment is popular on /., but the truth is that corporations- like Enron- can often suffer from dysfunctional cultures and incompetency, just like Enron.
I do agree that government-run enterprises suffer much more from a lack of accountability than private ones, in general but private industry doesn't cure all evils. There's still bullshit, incompetency, bureaucracy, egotism and politics in the private sector.
Definitely, Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett all the way. There's also a book on Buffet's strategies called _Buffetology_ which I liked fairly well. But just to clarify, it's not just a matter of whether it's a good company. The best company in the world is still a bad investment if you pay too much for it. Google clearly has a hell of a lot going for it and a lot of potential, the big question is whether this justifies its price (I think it's still overpriced, personally). However, on the other hand, crappy companies can also be good investments if they're cheap enough (although in general you're much better off sticking with the good ones).
The way I look at it, the stock market is driven by three things: greed, fear, and information. To beat the market, you need to be more rational than the next guy (less subject to greed and fear) and/or have more information. Then you can recognize when the market has overpriced/underpriced and act accordingly. This isn't impossible, but it is difficult and it is risky. Unless you're good and disciplined, you're going to get burned bad at least once (speaking from experience). However, don't underestimate your advantages. If you're a college kid you probably have a much better sense of how Apple is doing with it's iPods, for instance, than some guy in a cubicle on Wall Street.
Now, ultimately, the value of a company is determined by its earnings, so the standard way to evaluate the price of a company's stock is the ratio of its stock price to earnings- the price/earnings (P/E) ratio. Google currently has a P/E ratio of 89, which means that its profits are about ninety times share price. That's really high, and the kind of overpricing seen in the Internet Bubble. For comparison, Microsoft has a P/E of 23, Yahoo has a P/E of about 27. Google obviously has a lot more potential for earnings growth than Microsoft, which justifies a higher P/E, but I think 89 is too high, and it would have to drop much more before I'd consider buying it. At this point, I think Microsoft and Yahoo are probably better bargains.
Incidentally, the whole P/E thing is Day One of Investing 101. If it isn't familiar to you, you're probably not ready to put your money in the stock market.