I've been thinking about the market evolution a lot recently (from a very naive point of view).
Once upon a time, the goal of investing in a company was to gain profits (dividends). And you had a set price per share, say $10, that would earn you $1 per year. Well, as a company grew and paid dividends on their profits, that $1 per year might grow to $10/year. These companies became valuable for their ability to pay great dividends. Well, time goes on, shares change hands (inheritance, whatever), a company needs to raise capital for a new project or an acquisition - they offer more shares for sale, or the estate decides that Joe over there offering $30/share now is better than $10 or $5 per share over the next 3-10 years. So all of a sudden, there's a switch from paying dividends to your loyal stockholders to speculating on market price based on news, trends and hokey "analysis."
Most securities are not held for a very long time, some mutual funds actually proudly admit they turn over their entire portfolio every year.
Speculation - the value buy isn't seen as valuable as the ups and downs that can be seen by those who have access to the realtime data streams. I use mostly GOOG for my share price data, because I trade on timeframes of years. My father uses Ameritrades real-time data feed and sees market trends that I'll never see and he can make money on a daily timeframe simply by carefully positioning himself.
But no one can ever predict the random Maverick who ruins the whole house of cards (Countrywide?).
7. Poor wifi support - will not, by default, connect to a wireless LAN with a non-broadcasting SSID (XP SP2 inherited this poor behavior as well).
8. I never ONCE downgraded from WindowsXP to WindowsME or Windows98 or Windows 2000 Professional
The point is that Ebay's bidding system is completely backwards from the normal auction bidding process that has been in place for hundreds of years. Ebay's max bid process is a poor answer to the fact that they won't implement a 1 minute delay to their end-of-auction process. Even if I put in a bid for $75, and I get sniped by a bid for $75.51 with three seconds left to go in the auction.
There's pyschology that states that yes, $75 should have been the highest I was willing to pay, but at the same time, for a newbie, it's completely ass-backwards to what they normally expect.
Oh he saw it perfectly. Orwell's protagonist was caught by a complicit Human agent, the shopkeeper. Orwell's message wasn't about fearing machines and their overwatching, but fearing the culture that their use necessarily created. Who watches the watchers? Who prevents abuse?
I've read it (1984) a few times, and I don't think he missed the boat on that. I think the lesson to take away is that machines can be fooled, and avoided with care and planning, but the human element, the betrayal, the neighborhood watch, are where the real intelligence comes from. Beware your neighbors for they might become your enemies.
It's pretty sad, but it's fair reality, and it's replicated itself time and time again, first as the blacks started migrating out of the cities, now Indians and Muslims (can't have THOSE people living in MY town). Crap she's got a towel and a burqa, she must be stared at!!
Plain and simple, it's intolerance and hatred, and no machine has ever been able to detect that, and if there was one, we'd *ALL* fail. It's just a matter of degree.
Wait until next spring when the AT&T exclusivity deal is done and over with - you might see the iPhone everywhere then (except Verizon (fscking CDMA) grrrrrrr ).
I refuse to use Ebay anymore - they refuse to adjust their auction practices to eliminate the bid snipers. Any auction house who ran their shop the way ebay does would go bankrupt in a hurry. And it's giving preferential search results to it's ebay stores members? ugh.
Ebay stopped being a good place to find a good deal a long time ago unless you're looking for something weird and nowhere near mainstream. lol.
Linksys has been crap since Cisco bought them. I have three WRT54G's from just prior to the acquisition announcement. Not a single one of them gives me any issues at all (all running openwrt).
I outsourced some tree removal in my backyard. Some 20-30 trees, dead and dying, had to come down. They came in with some fancy-shmancy equipment, 100' cranes, bobcats and the like. But they tore up my yard, and have taken two weeks to perform a two day job. I could have rented a cherry picker and done the same job myself.
You get what you pay for, I suppose... never take the lowball bid.
Based on historical analysis of a similar situation, the S&L fiasco of the late 1980's. The S&L's started going tit's up between 1986 & 1988 (I've not been able to find a definitive causal date). My father picked up dirt cheap property at foreclosure auctions in late 1991. Coupled with economic collapse such that my town's bussing was suspended, the shut off half the fire hydrants in town, and about 80% of the street lights. Things didn't really start getting better until 1993 or so.
So extrapolating from nothing but a past event of similar magnitude, I'd wager the bottom won't hit until 2010. I was predicting this very scenario sometime around Y2K... I was expecting it much sooner than 2007. Oh well.
All else being equal, the libertarian ideal is probably better. But things are not equal. Some people are better positioned (trading desks) to make money on volatility (no one makes huge money on dividends and great fundamentals anymore). Once you have a class of have's and have not's, the libertarian ideal fails. You no longer have equal access.
Except how much of those assets are funny money anyway, money borrowed from the government and resold at higher interest rates (chop 3-5% off the top). Still a good deal, but how much of that is going to evaporate in the coming contraction?
OpenGL has NOT gone the way of the Dodo, and as far as I know, is still kingpin of the 3D visualization world outside the gaming community (CAD/CAM/Modelling).
OpenGL was never very big in the gaming world either. Quake/HL was a standout in this regard, but most 3D game engines have been very custom, or based on DirectX - DirectX was sort of mandatory once game authors lost direct access to hardware.
that virus scanners and backup software could use instead, then you can track last-access to eliminate files that haven't been opened by end-users in a particular time period for permanent offsiting or removal. Making today's complex HSM architectures easier to implement or not necessary at all.
I had a shit-ton of Dell Optiplexes assembled on 9/11 that to a man, all had their power-supplies go bad. 30/30.
I've had two PSU's catch fire on me. That's about it... well, dead hard drives, some dead fans (dirt can cake in some strange places and those little fans aren't high-torque).
Really really think hard, about who is benefiting with all this misery in Iraq... do the terrorists benefit at all ?.. do the various Iraqi sects benefit at all ?.. are all these people really this stupid ?.. this is the question.. Who benefits ?? think about it... if your thinking eventually leads to the price of oil.. then you have half a brain.. maybe with the other half you'll realize that there is quite a bit wrong with the whole Iraq thing. </quote>
Who benefits? About a dozen major military contractors, and whoever comes out on top in the eventual power struggle. If Obama wins and pulls out of Iraq, then Iran wins in the ensuing power struggle, and Saudi Arabia now has an Iranian neighbor that much closer. Which I'm sure makes Israel feel ALL the more secure.
I'll go on record that I was FOR deposing Saddam long before Bush decided to begin his campaign against WMD.
I predict that commercial will go down in history as the biggest Microsoft marketing blunder of all time. Even bigger than the fuckup that was Vista.
Mark my words. When you have to trot out Seinfeld and Bill "Pie-in-the-face" Gates to counter the awesome-ness that is the Jobs-inator, you're in trouble.
Their entire lives. Almost no one I know would choose to MOVE to Massachusetts to raise kids. Bleck. Babies AND snow? Fuck that.
As for it being PROVEN that cellphone's cause cancer? I'm skeptical. There's been lots of bitching and moaning back and forth for the better part of a decade; I'd say it's far from "proven."
<quote> It is also possible that some people are more susceptible then others. </quote>
You are certainly right about this. But if my geiger counter going off at the fence of the reactor site isn't any higher than it going off while I'm sitting in my backyard 50 miles away, is it really as dangerous as you say?
I'm choosing to argue with you, because this "radiation" obsession is about as rational as my friend who won't eat irradiated spinach (salmonella) or who's terrified of so-called Frankencorn.
Nuclear power plants present real concerns. Transport presents real risks. Deactivation is a concern. Reprocessing is a concern. Security is a concern. But this chicken-little syndrome about everything nuclear has to stop.
We have? Or the terror bombers have? While I'm not disputing the great number of people who've died in Iraq, I find it hard to believe that A) the military has killed all of them, and that B) of the ones shot or tankored by the US Armed Forces, that vast majority of them weren't already pointing guns or RPGs at aforementioned Armed Forces.
So, how many have the terror/suicide bombers killed? 10's of 1000's? It seems every day that's all I'm hearing about. 40 here, 100 there, 200 here. Every day. Who's killing who?
Slashdot Mirror
The technology is here, let everyone have their vote. Politicians can still get paid for writing laws, but all of America gets to vote for them.
I've been thinking about the market evolution a lot recently (from a very naive point of view).
Once upon a time, the goal of investing in a company was to gain profits (dividends). And you had a set price per share, say $10, that would earn you $1 per year. Well, as a company grew and paid dividends on their profits, that $1 per year might grow to $10/year. These companies became valuable for their ability to pay great dividends. Well, time goes on, shares change hands (inheritance, whatever), a company needs to raise capital for a new project or an acquisition - they offer more shares for sale, or the estate decides that Joe over there offering $30/share now is better than $10 or $5 per share over the next 3-10 years. So all of a sudden, there's a switch from paying dividends to your loyal stockholders to speculating on market price based on news, trends and hokey "analysis."
Most securities are not held for a very long time, some mutual funds actually proudly admit they turn over their entire portfolio every year.
Speculation - the value buy isn't seen as valuable as the ups and downs that can be seen by those who have access to the realtime data streams. I use mostly GOOG for my share price data, because I trade on timeframes of years. My father uses Ameritrades real-time data feed and sees market trends that I'll never see and he can make money on a daily timeframe simply by carefully positioning himself.
But no one can ever predict the random Maverick who ruins the whole house of cards (Countrywide?).
I will also like to add:
7. Poor wifi support - will not, by default, connect to a wireless LAN with a non-broadcasting SSID (XP SP2 inherited this poor behavior as well).
8. I never ONCE downgraded from WindowsXP to WindowsME or Windows98 or Windows 2000 Professional
The point is that Ebay's bidding system is completely backwards from the normal auction bidding process that has been in place for hundreds of years. Ebay's max bid process is a poor answer to the fact that they won't implement a 1 minute delay to their end-of-auction process. Even if I put in a bid for $75, and I get sniped by a bid for $75.51 with three seconds left to go in the auction.
There's pyschology that states that yes, $75 should have been the highest I was willing to pay, but at the same time, for a newbie, it's completely ass-backwards to what they normally expect.
He said many, not all, and as a New Englander, I happen to agree with him.
Oh he saw it perfectly. Orwell's protagonist was caught by a complicit Human agent, the shopkeeper. Orwell's message wasn't about fearing machines and their overwatching, but fearing the culture that their use necessarily created. Who watches the watchers? Who prevents abuse?
I've read it (1984) a few times, and I don't think he missed the boat on that. I think the lesson to take away is that machines can be fooled, and avoided with care and planning, but the human element, the betrayal, the neighborhood watch, are where the real intelligence comes from. Beware your neighbors for they might become your enemies.
It's pretty sad, but it's fair reality, and it's replicated itself time and time again, first as the blacks started migrating out of the cities, now Indians and Muslims (can't have THOSE people living in MY town). Crap she's got a towel and a burqa, she must be stared at!!
Plain and simple, it's intolerance and hatred, and no machine has ever been able to detect that, and if there was one, we'd *ALL* fail. It's just a matter of degree.
I *AM* a one person company, have my own domain, and STILL use my free Gmail account as my primary email account.
It's pretty simple to do actually, it just requires you to already *HAVE* an email provider to send a verification code to.
Is that the program where they're building the GE-90 engines in a plant with 1 manager?
I like that program, and I want to subscribe to it's newsletter.
I love tethering through my Treo on Verizon. Mobile web is a pain, but it's usable. The real value for me was tethering, though.
Wait until next spring when the AT&T exclusivity deal is done and over with - you might see the iPhone everywhere then (except Verizon (fscking CDMA) grrrrrrr ).
I refuse to use Ebay anymore - they refuse to adjust their auction practices to eliminate the bid snipers. Any auction house who ran their shop the way ebay does would go bankrupt in a hurry. And it's giving preferential search results to it's ebay stores members? ugh.
Ebay stopped being a good place to find a good deal a long time ago unless you're looking for something weird and nowhere near mainstream. lol.
Linksys has been crap since Cisco bought them. I have three WRT54G's from just prior to the acquisition announcement. Not a single one of them gives me any issues at all (all running openwrt).
To use an analogy:
I outsourced some tree removal in my backyard. Some 20-30 trees, dead and dying, had to come down. They came in with some fancy-shmancy equipment, 100' cranes, bobcats and the like. But they tore up my yard, and have taken two weeks to perform a two day job. I could have rented a cherry picker and done the same job myself.
You get what you pay for, I suppose... never take the lowball bid.
Based on historical analysis of a similar situation, the S&L fiasco of the late 1980's. The S&L's started going tit's up between 1986 & 1988 (I've not been able to find a definitive causal date). My father picked up dirt cheap property at foreclosure auctions in late 1991. Coupled with economic collapse such that my town's bussing was suspended, the shut off half the fire hydrants in town, and about 80% of the street lights. Things didn't really start getting better until 1993 or so.
So extrapolating from nothing but a past event of similar magnitude, I'd wager the bottom won't hit until 2010. I was predicting this very scenario sometime around Y2K... I was expecting it much sooner than 2007. Oh well.
All else being equal, the libertarian ideal is probably better. But things are not equal. Some people are better positioned (trading desks) to make money on volatility (no one makes huge money on dividends and great fundamentals anymore). Once you have a class of have's and have not's, the libertarian ideal fails. You no longer have equal access.
Except how much of those assets are funny money anyway, money borrowed from the government and resold at higher interest rates (chop 3-5% off the top). Still a good deal, but how much of that is going to evaporate in the coming contraction?
OpenGL has NOT gone the way of the Dodo, and as far as I know, is still kingpin of the 3D visualization world outside the gaming community (CAD/CAM/Modelling).
OpenGL was never very big in the gaming world either. Quake/HL was a standout in this regard, but most 3D game engines have been very custom, or based on DirectX - DirectX was sort of mandatory once game authors lost direct access to hardware.
Currently filesystems track the following:
Creation time
Last Access Time
Last Modified Time
If we also had a
Last backed up time/scanned time
that virus scanners and backup software could use instead, then you can track last-access to eliminate files that haven't been opened by end-users in a particular time period for permanent offsiting or removal. Making today's complex HSM architectures easier to implement or not necessary at all.
What do you use to MBOX your outlook data, if I may ask?
I had a shit-ton of Dell Optiplexes assembled on 9/11 that to a man, all had their power-supplies go bad. 30/30.
I've had two PSU's catch fire on me. That's about it... well, dead hard drives, some dead fans (dirt can cake in some strange places and those little fans aren't high-torque).
Really really think hard, about who is benefiting with all this misery in Iraq... do the terrorists benefit at all ?
</quote>
Who benefits? About a dozen major military contractors, and whoever comes out on top in the eventual power struggle. If Obama wins and pulls out of Iraq, then Iran wins in the ensuing power struggle, and Saudi Arabia now has an Iranian neighbor that much closer. Which I'm sure makes Israel feel ALL the more secure.
I'll go on record that I was FOR deposing Saddam long before Bush decided to begin his campaign against WMD.
I predict that commercial will go down in history as the biggest Microsoft marketing blunder of all time. Even bigger than the fuckup that was Vista.
Mark my words. When you have to trot out Seinfeld and Bill "Pie-in-the-face" Gates to counter the awesome-ness that is the Jobs-inator, you're in trouble.
Their entire lives. Almost no one I know would choose to MOVE to Massachusetts to raise kids. Bleck. Babies AND snow? Fuck that.
As for it being PROVEN that cellphone's cause cancer? I'm skeptical. There's been lots of bitching and moaning back and forth for the better part of a decade; I'd say it's far from "proven."
<quote>
It is also possible that some people are more susceptible then others.
</quote>
You are certainly right about this. But if my geiger counter going off at the fence of the reactor site isn't any higher than it going off while I'm sitting in my backyard 50 miles away, is it really as dangerous as you say?
I'm choosing to argue with you, because this "radiation" obsession is about as rational as my friend who won't eat irradiated spinach (salmonella) or who's terrified of so-called Frankencorn.
Nuclear power plants present real concerns. Transport presents real risks. Deactivation is a concern. Reprocessing is a concern. Security is a concern. But this chicken-little syndrome about everything nuclear has to stop.
We have? Or the terror bombers have? While I'm not disputing the great number of people who've died in Iraq, I find it hard to believe that A) the military has killed all of them, and that B) of the ones shot or tankored by the US Armed Forces, that vast majority of them weren't already pointing guns or RPGs at aforementioned Armed Forces.
So, how many have the terror/suicide bombers killed? 10's of 1000's? It seems every day that's all I'm hearing about. 40 here, 100 there, 200 here. Every day. Who's killing who?