So how long will it take before someone complains about being taxed to provide free porn and hate speech to children? Will the government be forced to censor the service it provides?
Not so sure about London, but this would definitely come up in Alexandria. I can just hear the professionally outraged journalists on News at Eleven now...
Check again. He said 'in 2005 dollars', meaning adjusted for inflation. In any case, IMO, and as your source seems to suggest, it's next to impossible to get an accurate read on prices from that far back. How can you compare a basket of goods in 1932 to a basket of goods in 2005?
In particular, cars, computers, etc. can't be compared, because what passed for a car or computer in 1932 doesn't exactly relate to what passes for cars and computers now (didn't they have electric typewriters that could do basic sums back then? Huxley mentions one in Point, Counterpoint).
You might also consider that the Model T was revolutionary for being 'the people's car', a cheap, simple model, available in only one color, but affordable. If it cost $30K - $100K in today's money, it could hardly be considered the people's car, could it?
The Dalai Lama's not a particularly violent guy, or he has a great pr team...
To digress, I heard a truly bizarre story in college. I was taking "Mongols in History" (senior year and my requirements were fulfilled), and one of the students told us this:
After Tiannemen Square, the Chinese decided to be more discreet about suppressing protesters. During an independence protest in Lhasa in the mid-90's, they infiltrated the crowd, and at a prearranged signal stabbed hundreds of demonstrators in the back. Anyone who subsequently went to the hospital with a stab wound was earmarked as an inssurectionist and quietly executed.
This story is a totally uncorroborated rumor, but I think I believe it. It's genius in its own way-- brutal, effective, and discreet.
I'm probably too buried for anyone to read this, but if you do, has anyone else ever heard something similar?
A link would be helpful, but that makes economic sense anyway, assuming you're talking about a generic "Developer"-type classification.
As the lower-end programming jobs migrate overseas, incrasingly the only "Developer" positions available will be further up the salary chain. The guys managing the outsourced programmers, for example.
So US programmers' salaries could be moving up even as demand for US programming falls. If you''ll pardon the analogy, it's a lot like the effects of industrialization: a 'loom technician' who supervises a single machine would make more money than the average wage of the ten weavers the automatic loom replaced.
In other words, rising salaries don't mean that IT workers will soon be pampered and paid as they were 5 years ago. It's symptomatic of the loss of lower-skilled programmers in the US.
That's what I was talking about, it can. Go to Data_Import External Data if you have Excel handy. You can also use their ADO library in VBA, which is pretty much necessary unless you have a pretty simple request.
I'm using Excel and Access with a SQL Server back-end (obviously, I'm not a professional developer) now.
I don't understand. Excel can be linked natively via the web or ODBC. You don't even have to write any VBA to do it. Data services like Bloomberg provide extensions to Excel to link their stuff up, but it's all done in compiled vb, so I'd imagine they do it that way to control our access to their system rather than as a necessity.
Have you ever tried using myODBC? The current iteration is completely worthless. It has all kinds of compatibility problems and behaves unpredictably. Date/Time compatibility with Access is probably the worst.
I'm no professional, but I'm not entirely inexperienced in these systems. After a week of knocking around on mySQL with an Access front-end, I had to give up and go with MSDE. I'll upgrade to SQL Server once the system's important enough that I don't have justify the cost.
Ever wonder why the IRS takes your money automatically and invisibly?
Withholding for income tax is both voluntary and visible-- take a look at your pay stub. Sales tax is also visible, which is actually pretty rare in the world at large. Finally, you actually have to fill out a tax return, which again isn't the norm globally, though not exactly uncommon.
Corporate taxes are invisible to the consumer despite their impact on the economy, but I'd say relatively speaking the US tax system is one of the more explicit available.
Don't get me wrong, though, I just paid my taxes, too, so I'm also pissed off about them. Damn farmers...
The French are famous for being mean to the Quebecois. From what I've been told, it has to do with their obsession with the purity of their language. In their eyes, it's okay for a foreigner to speak with incorrect grammar, but provincial grammar is just unacceptable.
Most French-canadians I've met will correct anyone who calls them French. I think people in the countryside, especialy Normandy, are pretty nice. Just know a enough french to make a polite effort.
Re:before you react
on
Contrabandwidth
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think they just stamp a piece of paper that you keep with your passport. It's not really in Cuba's intererst to keep tourists out, after all.
At Chase Manhattan it has to be a valid banking card (CIRRUS or something, I suppose). Our UNI id cards, which could optionally function as ATM cards as well (but only if you chose hated Citibank), would work if you had a bank account linked up, but not if you were just using it for university stuff.
Yeah, well my driver's ed teacher told us that people who take LSD will cook babies. He wasn't the brightest bulb... I mean if you're going to scare us at least make it plausible.
The 'sips from a flask' thing happens all the time, and is the best way to get out of a DUI if it's a single-car accident. You just abandon the car, and stumble to the nearest place with alcohol. I guy I knew did this in college- he was close enough to home that he just walked back. When the cops knocked on his door he had a drink in his hand. He was 'shaken up' by the accident, so needed a drink. The cops have seen this tons of times before, so they'll get pissed, but you won't get worse than reckless driving.
Not that I'm recommending drinking and driving, but the limits are ridiculously low in some states (like Virginia), so I think there is a gray area.
Angry or not, the Judge refused to make an early ruling. This means SCO still has a chance. Slashdot just chose to word the story in the most negative light possible for SCO; the headline on my news ticker says "Judge Rejects IBM Request for Early Ruling in SCO Case".
The short interest (number of borrowed shares being sold in the expectation of buying back at a lower price) is now almost half the total float now, so I'd say Slashdotters aren't the only ones that doubt the merits of SCO's case.
You're modded funny, but in finance, at least, we are not allowed to inform a suspicious person if he is being investigated under the Patriot act.
In other words, if one of our clients (i.e. investors) is being investigated for possible connections to terrorists, we can't tell him he's a suspect, even if he asks us directly.
This isn't to say I think this is necessarily a bad thing; I don't know if it's normal in other investigations.
They could do it by recognizing expenses late (or early), or failing to account for inter-division expenses in the console segment's books, or by cross-ownership of other businesses (eg. like Circuit City does with CarMax). All of these, incidentally, are pretty obvious. The SEC's pretty strict, so it's hard to cook the books legally.
However, they're not doing anything of the kind. Their press release says this is a blip because of Halo 2, and that they don't expect sustained profitability in consoles until 2007.
Why would they 'throw a bone to xbox supporters', anyway? You can't just buy the console group; you have to buy the whole company.
US Public Companies are the most transparent
on
The Naked Corporation
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Thanks to the SEC, you can find out a huge amount of information about any firm publicly traded on an American exchange. For example, American firms must report their income and balance sheets quarterly, twice to four times as frequently as European firms. It's emerging markets and some developed markets that need to loosen up and show their books. There's a reason American firms can't get away with the cross-ownership and favorable terms that are routine in Japanese keiretsu and Korean chaebol's.
If you want to really know about a company's practices, read the management footnotes as well as the full income statements and balance sheets in the 10-Ks and 10-Qs. Don't just look at their pro forma earnings statement. Obviously you won't catch outright fraud, but there are plenty of clues that something shady is going on.
I think that people's demand for corporate transparency is inversely related to the money the corporation is making them. Accounting scandals usually happen just after a bust, rarely during a boom. While the returns are attractive, investors simply won't ask questions.
I know a girl who graduated last year with a Masters in electrical engineering (5 yr. program). She couldn't find anything in the field, but ended working for patent lawyers who specialize in her area of expertise (something about optics, maybe? it's all Greek to me).
She kind of stumbled into it, but maybe you should check for that kind of job. Based on the salary figures IT people are posting, it pays a lot better, too.
If any of you non-finance geeks are reading this, omega is basically the betting odds that you'll do as well or better than a given threshold return. You usually look at the logarithm of the entire function of thresholds.
But wtf do you do with that? It doesn't make much intuitive sense once you have it as a logarithm, but you can't graph the function without transforming it.
Moreover, you can't use it as a quick rule of thumb, as you can with Sharpe ratios. Since its whole point is to show the variations of a distribution, it's pointless simply, say, to set it at the risk free rate and use that as a comparison.
I was playing around with showing the residuals between the omega of a given hedge fund and with a normal distribution, or between two hedge funds, but again it doesn't really make any intuitive sense to me.
Maybe in a few years when I have some more experience and math under my belt I'll find something useful to do with it, but for now I haven't seen anything useful.
Mandlebrot's book is next on my list though. It's nice to see I'm not the only finance geek on this site. Gets frustrating resisting the urge to reply to some of the crap that passes as economics around here:).
Hehe. I do a bunch of monte carlos myself. I have to keep reminding my less financially-literate boss that past performance is not indicative of future results when I show him the analysis.
"You mean we could have a Sharpe ratio of 5 if we create this portfolio!!?!"
"No, you would have done if you'd created it five years ago."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a lawyer either but in the US, entrapment is something only policemen can be guilty of.
Not so sure about London, but this would definitely come up in Alexandria. I can just hear the professionally outraged journalists on News at Eleven now...
In particular, cars, computers, etc. can't be compared, because what passed for a car or computer in 1932 doesn't exactly relate to what passes for cars and computers now (didn't they have electric typewriters that could do basic sums back then? Huxley mentions one in Point, Counterpoint).
You might also consider that the Model T was revolutionary for being 'the people's car', a cheap, simple model, available in only one color, but affordable. If it cost $30K - $100K in today's money, it could hardly be considered the people's car, could it?
To digress, I heard a truly bizarre story in college. I was taking "Mongols in History" (senior year and my requirements were fulfilled), and one of the students told us this:
This story is a totally uncorroborated rumor, but I think I believe it. It's genius in its own way-- brutal, effective, and discreet.
I'm probably too buried for anyone to read this, but if you do, has anyone else ever heard something similar?
Really? I know how to manufacture a quiche, but I don't think I could get just the eggs back out of it.
You mean like if you put this into Google:
?
I don't know about Canada, but what about the Better Business Bureau?
As the lower-end programming jobs migrate overseas, incrasingly the only "Developer" positions available will be further up the salary chain. The guys managing the outsourced programmers, for example.
So US programmers' salaries could be moving up even as demand for US programming falls. If you''ll pardon the analogy, it's a lot like the effects of industrialization: a 'loom technician' who supervises a single machine would make more money than the average wage of the ten weavers the automatic loom replaced.
In other words, rising salaries don't mean that IT workers will soon be pampered and paid as they were 5 years ago. It's symptomatic of the loss of lower-skilled programmers in the US.
I'm using Excel and Access with a SQL Server back-end (obviously, I'm not a professional developer) now.
What am I missing?
I'm no professional, but I'm not entirely inexperienced in these systems. After a week of knocking around on mySQL with an Access front-end, I had to give up and go with MSDE. I'll upgrade to SQL Server once the system's important enough that I don't have justify the cost.
Withholding for income tax is both voluntary and visible-- take a look at your pay stub. Sales tax is also visible, which is actually pretty rare in the world at large. Finally, you actually have to fill out a tax return, which again isn't the norm globally, though not exactly uncommon.
Corporate taxes are invisible to the consumer despite their impact on the economy, but I'd say relatively speaking the US tax system is one of the more explicit available.
Don't get me wrong, though, I just paid my taxes, too, so I'm also pissed off about them. Damn farmers...
Most French-canadians I've met will correct anyone who calls them French. I think people in the countryside, especialy Normandy, are pretty nice. Just know a enough french to make a polite effort.
At Chase Manhattan it has to be a valid banking card (CIRRUS or something, I suppose). Our UNI id cards, which could optionally function as ATM cards as well (but only if you chose hated Citibank), would work if you had a bank account linked up, but not if you were just using it for university stuff.
The 'sips from a flask' thing happens all the time, and is the best way to get out of a DUI if it's a single-car accident. You just abandon the car, and stumble to the nearest place with alcohol. I guy I knew did this in college- he was close enough to home that he just walked back. When the cops knocked on his door he had a drink in his hand. He was 'shaken up' by the accident, so needed a drink. The cops have seen this tons of times before, so they'll get pissed, but you won't get worse than reckless driving.
Not that I'm recommending drinking and driving, but the limits are ridiculously low in some states (like Virginia), so I think there is a gray area.
The short interest (number of borrowed shares being sold in the expectation of buying back at a lower price) is now almost half the total float now, so I'd say Slashdotters aren't the only ones that doubt the merits of SCO's case.
Environmentalists can be just as wacky as fundamentalists.
In other words, if one of our clients (i.e. investors) is being investigated for possible connections to terrorists, we can't tell him he's a suspect, even if he asks us directly.
This isn't to say I think this is necessarily a bad thing; I don't know if it's normal in other investigations.
However, they're not doing anything of the kind. Their press release says this is a blip because of Halo 2, and that they don't expect sustained profitability in consoles until 2007.
Why would they 'throw a bone to xbox supporters', anyway? You can't just buy the console group; you have to buy the whole company.
If you want to really know about a company's practices, read the management footnotes as well as the full income statements and balance sheets in the 10-Ks and 10-Qs. Don't just look at their pro forma earnings statement. Obviously you won't catch outright fraud, but there are plenty of clues that something shady is going on.
I think that people's demand for corporate transparency is inversely related to the money the corporation is making them. Accounting scandals usually happen just after a bust, rarely during a boom. While the returns are attractive, investors simply won't ask questions.
She kind of stumbled into it, but maybe you should check for that kind of job. Based on the salary figures IT people are posting, it pays a lot better, too.
If any of you non-finance geeks are reading this, omega is basically the betting odds that you'll do as well or better than a given threshold return. You usually look at the logarithm of the entire function of thresholds.
But wtf do you do with that? It doesn't make much intuitive sense once you have it as a logarithm, but you can't graph the function without transforming it.
Moreover, you can't use it as a quick rule of thumb, as you can with Sharpe ratios. Since its whole point is to show the variations of a distribution, it's pointless simply, say, to set it at the risk free rate and use that as a comparison.
I was playing around with showing the residuals between the omega of a given hedge fund and with a normal distribution, or between two hedge funds, but again it doesn't really make any intuitive sense to me.
Maybe in a few years when I have some more experience and math under my belt I'll find something useful to do with it, but for now I haven't seen anything useful.
Mandlebrot's book is next on my list though. It's nice to see I'm not the only finance geek on this site. Gets frustrating resisting the urge to reply to some of the crap that passes as economics around here :).
"You mean we could have a Sharpe ratio of 5 if we create this portfolio!!?!"
"No, you would have done if you'd created it five years ago."
Big...freaking...difference.