Except, the 16 year old hacker probably hasn't bribed any politicians, and you can't very well arrest The Sony Corporation, take a mugshot, and throw it in prison. But corporations are people, remember!
That's what I can't piece together. I've got my tinfoil hat firmly secured, but I can't understand how this gives the feds anything they don't already have (think Choicepoint, everyone's credit report in some database somewhere, down to the purchases at Albertson's). This obviously has nothing to do with terrorism, but I just can't figure out what this has to do with. Just another case of the man keepin me down?
Correct- a $3000 1991 computer would basically fetch $0.00 today, whereas a $3000 2006 computer would bear a price of $infinity in 1991 (the tech was unavailable then). My point isn't to say that we've experienced outright deflation at all. My point is that measuring inflation is very difficult. I think aggregate measures like CPI or PPI are worthless, because what gets included in the index at whatever weight will give you the answer you wanted going in.
BUT. . . I don't necessarily agree with monetarists or gold bugs either. I dont think you can't just look at the growth in the money supply as a guage of inflation, since the economy grows and people become more productive. So, if you're asking me what inflation has been over the last 15 years or so, I would say "I don't know"- some stuff has gotten more expensive, some stuff less so, a lot of stuff exists now that didn't exist then (e.g. iPods). This is why Harry Truman so badly wanted a one-handed economist.
Brings to mind the Zappa quote: "Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff."
Think back to around 1991- dialup access was absurdly slow and ridiculously expensive, a decent computer would cost ya more than 3 grand. Cars were about the same price, but had fewer gizmos and creature comforts. If you wanted a cd of music, you had to fork over the $10 or $15 (No cd burners or emusic or piracy). If people have less real money now then then, it isn't for stuff getting more expensive, it is for their own stupidity, unwillingness to live within their means, and appetite for massive amounts of debt.
Um, no. The first amendment entails religion, speech, press, assembly. The second amendment is the right to bear arms. The third amendment is the right to not have soldiers in your house.
That actually makes some sense to me. Sony's cheaper than Disney, and they'd be buying less debt. But isn't merging content and consumer electronics what got Sony into the mess that its in now? (well, that and its corporate culture)
It seems like business has this cyclicality where it goes back and forth between small is beautiful and bigger is better.
It seems to me like the bigger problem isn't scientists and engineers making 80K, rather, where I live, starting salary for a math or science teacher is under 30K. Not much of an incentive to enter the field.
I sort of remember a Bill Hicks quote about the War on Drugs that I'm thinking applies to the War on Terrah- "Its not a war on drugs, its a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times".
What this amounts to is tracking thought-crimes, how can you know someone is going to commit a terrorist act until they do it? People say lots of things, people think lots of things. Whither freedom.
There's probably no hope for Congress to do anything meaningful about this, but in Montana, we have a Constitutional right to privacy (whatever that's worth). It would be nice if we came up with a system like the one Iowa had for fining spammers north of $1000 per violation. Once these guys started seeing fines in the billions rather than the millions, maybe they'd begin to alter their actions.
With the black boxes, though, you can't even get an error rate, there are no ballots to verify! If the ballots were done by scantron, and there were some suspicion that the machines were not workiing properly, at least there would be the option of verifying whether the machinery were working or not by having actual people look at the bubbles.
Whatever happened to using a pencil and a piece of paper with little bubbles you could fill in by the name of whomever you wanted to run things? Why must it all be so complicated?
Putting federal funds into anything and you get higher prices and lower service
That's a pretty broad statement. What about public lands? Where I sit, I can drive an hour in any direction and be in a wilderness if I want to be, perfect isolation without trespassing or having to ask for permission or paying a fee or anything.
Riddle me this, where would you prefer to take your kids for vacation, Disneyland or Glacier National Park? Do you think Glacier Park would exist without the fiat of government keeping the coal miners and loggers out?
Isaac
I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but where I went to school (for my BA and MA), the single largest source of revenue is from tuition:
http://www.umt.edu/plan/qfbudget.htm
As for student loans, I worked two jobs the whole way through and got out with about $2000 of debt, not to shabby. From what I understand about student loans, it is quite difficult to get any protection from that debt under bankruptcy, so it's pretty rare for anyone to just walk away from that debt.
I did hear a rumor about a pretty clever scam to get around that- as the rumor goes, some law students ran up as much student loan debt as they could, and when they graduated, put all the debt on their credit cards, declared bankruptcy, and voila, no more pesky student loan payments. Not my cup of tea, though, I hate debt.
Isaac
Agent Smith : You're going to help us, Mr. Anderson, whether you like
it or not.
Smith nods and the other two rip open his shirt.
From a case taken out of his suit coat, Smith removes a long, fiber-optic wire tap. Neo struggles helplessly as Smith dangles the wire over his exposed abdomen. Horrified, he watches as the electronic device animates, become an organic creature that resembles a hybrid of an insect and a fluke worm. Thin, whisker-like tendrils reach out and probe into Neo's navel. He bucks wildly as Smith drops the creature which looks for a moment like an uncut umbilical cord - Before it begins to burrow, its tail thrashing as it worms its way inside.
To your first point, I think you're right on- in economics lingo, supply is perfectly elastic: apple sets the price and can basically sell an unlimited amount of songs. The whole question is what is the demand elasticity of a song? It seems to me that demand is pretty elastic- if you lower the price by some percentage, you'll see the quantity demanded increase by a greater percentage, resulting in an increase in revenue. So Steve Jobs is really preventing the RIAA from shooting themselves in the foot.
Slashdot Mirror
A man can dream. . .
Except, the 16 year old hacker probably hasn't bribed any politicians, and you can't very well arrest The Sony Corporation, take a mugshot, and throw it in prison. But corporations are people, remember!
That's what I can't piece together. I've got my tinfoil hat firmly secured, but I can't understand how this gives the feds anything they don't already have (think Choicepoint, everyone's credit report in some database somewhere, down to the purchases at Albertson's). This obviously has nothing to do with terrorism, but I just can't figure out what this has to do with. Just another case of the man keepin me down?
Correct- a $3000 1991 computer would basically fetch $0.00 today, whereas a $3000 2006 computer would bear a price of $infinity in 1991 (the tech was unavailable then). My point isn't to say that we've experienced outright deflation at all. My point is that measuring inflation is very difficult. I think aggregate measures like CPI or PPI are worthless, because what gets included in the index at whatever weight will give you the answer you wanted going in.
BUT. . . I don't necessarily agree with monetarists or gold bugs either. I dont think you can't just look at the growth in the money supply as a guage of inflation, since the economy grows and people become more productive. So, if you're asking me what inflation has been over the last 15 years or so, I would say "I don't know"- some stuff has gotten more expensive, some stuff less so, a lot of stuff exists now that didn't exist then (e.g. iPods). This is why Harry Truman so badly wanted a one-handed economist.
Brings to mind the Zappa quote: "Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff."
Think back to around 1991- dialup access was absurdly slow and ridiculously expensive, a decent computer would cost ya more than 3 grand. Cars were about the same price, but had fewer gizmos and creature comforts. If you wanted a cd of music, you had to fork over the $10 or $15 (No cd burners or emusic or piracy). If people have less real money now then then, it isn't for stuff getting more expensive, it is for their own stupidity, unwillingness to live within their means, and appetite for massive amounts of debt.
Um, no. The first amendment entails religion, speech, press, assembly. The second amendment is the right to bear arms. The third amendment is the right to not have soldiers in your house.
That actually makes some sense to me. Sony's cheaper than Disney, and they'd be buying less debt. But isn't merging content and consumer electronics what got Sony into the mess that its in now? (well, that and its corporate culture)
It seems like business has this cyclicality where it goes back and forth between small is beautiful and bigger is better.
It seems to me like the bigger problem isn't scientists and engineers making 80K, rather, where I live, starting salary for a math or science teacher is under 30K. Not much of an incentive to enter the field.
not Americans, just the religious fanatics
Would the correct acronymn be "GOOSE" or "GOOGOO APPLE SAUCE" ?
How quaint that when you hit "Take Action" you get a "Page not found" message.
I sort of remember a Bill Hicks quote about the War on Drugs that I'm thinking applies to the War on Terrah- "Its not a war on drugs, its a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times".
What this amounts to is tracking thought-crimes, how can you know someone is going to commit a terrorist act until they do it? People say lots of things, people think lots of things. Whither freedom.
I would temper the laughter until we find out who replaces the toadie. How easily tears of joy turn to tears of agony. . .
silly goose,
evil is whatever larry and sergeii say is evil. moral relativism at its finest.
There's probably no hope for Congress to do anything meaningful about this, but in Montana, we have a Constitutional right to privacy (whatever that's worth). It would be nice if we came up with a system like the one Iowa had for fining spammers north of $1000 per violation. Once these guys started seeing fines in the billions rather than the millions, maybe they'd begin to alter their actions.
With the black boxes, though, you can't even get an error rate, there are no ballots to verify! If the ballots were done by scantron, and there were some suspicion that the machines were not workiing properly, at least there would be the option of verifying whether the machinery were working or not by having actual people look at the bubbles.
Whatever happened to using a pencil and a piece of paper with little bubbles you could fill in by the name of whomever you wanted to run things? Why must it all be so complicated?
Putting federal funds into anything and you get higher prices and lower service
That's a pretty broad statement. What about public lands? Where I sit, I can drive an hour in any direction and be in a wilderness if I want to be, perfect isolation without trespassing or having to ask for permission or paying a fee or anything.
Riddle me this, where would you prefer to take your kids for vacation, Disneyland or Glacier National Park? Do you think Glacier Park would exist without the fiat of government keeping the coal miners and loggers out?
Isaac
I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but where I went to school (for my BA and MA), the single largest source of revenue is from tuition:
http://www.umt.edu/plan/qfbudget.htm
As for student loans, I worked two jobs the whole way through and got out with about $2000 of debt, not to shabby. From what I understand about student loans, it is quite difficult to get any protection from that debt under bankruptcy, so it's pretty rare for anyone to just walk away from that debt.
I did hear a rumor about a pretty clever scam to get around that- as the rumor goes, some law students ran up as much student loan debt as they could, and when they graduated, put all the debt on their credit cards, declared bankruptcy, and voila, no more pesky student loan payments. Not my cup of tea, though, I hate debt.
Isaac
That's it, I'm moving to Finland!
My guess is that what they'll do is keep the threshold at $5 mill and just let inflation do the work for them (see the AMT).
Agent Smith : You're going to help us, Mr. Anderson, whether you like it or not. Smith nods and the other two rip open his shirt. From a case taken out of his suit coat, Smith removes a long, fiber-optic wire tap. Neo struggles helplessly as Smith dangles the wire over his exposed abdomen. Horrified, he watches as the electronic device animates, become an organic creature that resembles a hybrid of an insect and a fluke worm. Thin, whisker-like tendrils reach out and probe into Neo's navel. He bucks wildly as Smith drops the creature which looks for a moment like an uncut umbilical cord - Before it begins to burrow, its tail thrashing as it worms its way inside.
Don't forget building cleanliness engineer!
Fair enough, but how long do you think that will last before the XM shareholders demand that that revenue stream be cracked open?
To your first point, I think you're right on- in economics lingo, supply is perfectly elastic: apple sets the price and can basically sell an unlimited amount of songs. The whole question is what is the demand elasticity of a song? It seems to me that demand is pretty elastic- if you lower the price by some percentage, you'll see the quantity demanded increase by a greater percentage, resulting in an increase in revenue. So Steve Jobs is really preventing the RIAA from shooting themselves in the foot.