Engaging these idiots in discussions would just make your own IQ drop without affecting their worldview in the slightest.
I don't know. I know very intelligent and bright persons (some with PHDs) who have some irrational belief or fear.
It doesn't make them an idiot.
And I'm sure if we sat down and had you write a list of all the things you believe in, we'd be able to point out a few that have no logical reason to believe in.
Most people with decent hearing find TV aisles uncomfortable
Oddly enough I always find myself turning the CRT off the main TV in my house when I turn the cable box. We have a cable box so turning that off sometimes doesn't turn the TV off.
Now, my girlfriend doesn't notice but when I walk in the room, the sound off the CRT is quit annoying so I want to read a book, I'll walk up to the TV and turn it off.
My girlfriend will always ask me what I am doing turning off a TV that is already off...
As a legal immigrant in the States, I can state that (although I'm paying just as much tax as anyone else) : I have no vote, no free healthcare and no constitutional rights (let alone a TV show).
A a native born American citizen I have to say that:
1. My vote doesn't count in a first past the post two party system. 2. I don't get free health care either. 3. And my constitutional rights are trampled on anyways unless I can afford a good lawyer.
With all due respect, as much as I want mankind to go into space there's nothing to suggest earth will become uninhabitable in the next few million years.
Inhabitable for all life no. But a temporary loss of magnetic field around the earth could end us very quickly possibly in the next few thousand years.
Or an ice age... Or a super volcano... Or a comet...
I thought it over and perhaps this would be more clear and to the point:
With the stock market, everyone can pretend to have a lot more money than they currently really have. If everyone wants to spend it all at once, then we run into problems.
And it doesn't add value to society. If they generated 21 billion, then 21 billion was necessarily lost by others.
Actually, the stock market is not a zero sum system.
When people and mutual funds lost all their 401K value (billions even) in 2008, no one actually got that money.
Not the hedge funds. Not the short sellers. Not the government.
It simply vanished.
Which is why had major deflation.
The issue is that the stockmarket doesn't make money like say the Federal Reserve prints it, but in a sense it basically saying how much it is valued by what people would theoretically pay for it.
So when you have a $1 share that turns into $10 a share, you didn't actually earn that money. It is all theoretical until you sell your shares.
Now if it was at $10 and everyone sold their shares at once, not everyone is going to get $10 because the market has to queue everyone up for sell and buy orders so that theoretical money will not actually be delivered to everyone and someone will get the short end of the stick.
So no... By them creating theoretical money does not one else loose money (except of course shareholders who didn't sell their shares when the stock collapsed)
Can someone explain to me the benefit to society of this kind of activity?
Inflation sink, market efficiency, and liquidity.
Although it seems like a meta-game to most, the ability to do things like this makes pricing of shares more efficient to the actual value of the market (increasing the price of undervalued stocks and decreasing the price of overvalued stocks) and making money flow rather than stay stagnant.
It also pulls a lot of money out of the goods and services world making a natural force against inflation.
Traders make a profit on each trade. But the profit is always to the broker.
Depends on who your broker is and what kind of account you have with them.
A true blue day trader is going to have a setup for Direct Access Trading which isn't what you see on TV for those $9 dollar trades for the average Joe.
It requires you to have more than say $20,000 in the account and you must make a lot daily trades to be eligible, but the transaction fees are very low per trade so you won't be paying as much to your broker (like pennies on the dollar sometimes if volume is high enough).
This has been a common topic on the stocks news groups about FAZ and FAS using different methods because of inefficiency between the two funds.
They are support to inverses of each other (short and long) of the finacial markets with leverage, but a few people have noticed that during the first minute of trading they aren't exactly the same.
The basis of the what people are doing is complicated and usually involves buying both shares and dumping one in the first minute and then selling the other shortly thereafter.
But there are other methods people have talked about but I can't seem to find the newsgroups since they were buried in spam a month or so ago.
Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to keep my data in-house.
Unless you happen to be a one person government or business, "my data" doesn't apply.
A government or business has to either trust their employees or the persons they contract to deal with the data either way.
The question you have to ask is "Do you trust your employees or contractors?" and "Do they have deep enough pockets to sue when something goes wrong?"
On a personal level, I wouldn't put my private data on a cloud, but when you look at businesses where the owners or management isn't IT, they have little choice to let people do it for them.
In your case your employers trust you, but what if you left and they hired someone incompetent? Same difference as the outsource. They use the same hardware as you most likely so technically there is no advantage.
Seriously, just because it works for some types of data and/or applications, doesn't mean it'll work for everything.
What is the difference between an in-house datacenter and an outsourced one?
The person you write the checks to.
That's about it these days.
Chances are if they did do in house, the techs were still be outsourced contracts instead of state employees. If they outsource it to Amazon or Microsoft in the state they'll still be employing locals and hopefully save tax dollars in the process.
But I do agree about the whole "cloud computing" being BS as a hypeword. Its really a euphemism for "outsourced".
Most businesses will be very very adverse to giving up control of their data, and somehow I don't see that ever changing, even when they claim the risk is almost 0%.
I really don't think you understand the average mindset of a PHB or MBA.
Most of them don't understand the concept or care enough to learn about it as long as they get their bonus.
These are the same people who outsourced positions that would be reviewing critical and confidential data overseas and these are the same people who are going to jump ship with a golden parachute when the ship sinks.
Maybe I'm being cynical, but most businesses will happily give up their data even though their IT dept is screaming bloody murder because its cheaper for them to do so or that the vendor salesperson bought them the best lunch.
I will not play a game that rewards, or give extra benefits to, those who give cash to the company. Charge everyone a small fee, but keep everyone equal.
Well that isn't the case even now. What is the difference between a lawyer who works 60 hours a week who buys a WoW character than his wealthy retired client that sit at home all day and grinds characters?
I doubt many wealthy retirees or busy lawyers play WoW, but my point is the same. Wealthy in the real world can get you a better character passively or actively.
but, if Godaddy and ICANN cannot sort out their differences, and with ICANN being the authority the Gov't put in charge, then, the Congress needs to take this matter up
Do you really want congress deciding who gets what web page?
I thought the DoD would forbid to run newer versions that haven't been ran and scrutinized enough by a lot of people.
Depends on who you work for and what you do.
Not everything various DoD employees do is related to a "super secret project".
A lot of stuff in the DoD doesn't really have the need or want to be super scrutinized. Some of the stuff that they do is as boring as public relations and kitchen supplies.
I can't even name one good film based from a game.
Resident Evil was pretty good and it actually one of the few video game movies that actually didn't just make random shit up for its own plot.
Beyond that I'm hard pressed to think of any movies based on games that were any good... There was the first Mortal Kombat movie, but it was about as good as a Van Dam movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?
Invest early?
Sell often?
No seriously, if you could have invested in Google's IPO you would have been a rich man today.
The problem with the tech boom is that people were investing in bad ideas, not good ideas with bad results. You know... Like Pets.com
People give away a lot of information (body language, facial expressions, etc) about certain situations that can be very valuable..
"It's called acting, children!"
The only electronics in it were, well, the LED to show it was "on"
Maybe they are allergic to LEDs?
Engaging these idiots in discussions would just make your own IQ drop without affecting their worldview in the slightest.
I don't know. I know very intelligent and bright persons (some with PHDs) who have some irrational belief or fear.
It doesn't make them an idiot.
And I'm sure if we sat down and had you write a list of all the things you believe in, we'd be able to point out a few that have no logical reason to believe in.
Most people with decent hearing find TV aisles uncomfortable
Oddly enough I always find myself turning the CRT off the main TV in my house when I turn the cable box. We have a cable box so turning that off sometimes doesn't turn the TV off.
Now, my girlfriend doesn't notice but when I walk in the room, the sound off the CRT is quit annoying so I want to read a book, I'll walk up to the TV and turn it off.
My girlfriend will always ask me what I am doing turning off a TV that is already off...
As a legal immigrant in the States, I can state that (although I'm paying just as much tax as anyone else) : I have no vote, no free healthcare and no constitutional rights (let alone a TV show).
A a native born American citizen I have to say that:
1. My vote doesn't count in a first past the post two party system.
2. I don't get free health care either.
3. And my constitutional rights are trampled on anyways unless I can afford a good lawyer.
But I do have plenty of TV shows!
With all due respect, as much as I want mankind to go into space there's nothing to suggest earth will become uninhabitable in the next few million years.
Inhabitable for all life no. But a temporary loss of magnetic field around the earth could end us very quickly possibly in the next few thousand years.
Or an ice age...
Or a super volcano...
Or a comet...
Something would survive, but not us.
I miss Windows ME.
What? Why is everyone looking at me like that?
When are we going to stop all this behavior by 2% of the population which is hurting the other 98%?
When you vote them out of office. That's when.
I thought it over and perhaps this would be more clear and to the point:
With the stock market, everyone can pretend to have a lot more money than they currently really have.
If everyone wants to spend it all at once, then we run into problems.
And it doesn't add value to society. If they generated 21 billion, then 21 billion was necessarily lost by others.
Actually, the stock market is not a zero sum system.
When people and mutual funds lost all their 401K value (billions even) in 2008, no one actually got that money.
Not the hedge funds.
Not the short sellers.
Not the government.
It simply vanished.
Which is why had major deflation.
The issue is that the stockmarket doesn't make money like say the Federal Reserve prints it, but in a sense it basically saying how much it is valued by what people would theoretically pay for it.
So when you have a $1 share that turns into $10 a share, you didn't actually earn that money. It is all theoretical until you sell your shares.
Now if it was at $10 and everyone sold their shares at once, not everyone is going to get $10 because the market has to queue everyone up for sell and buy orders so that theoretical money will not actually be delivered to everyone and someone will get the short end of the stick.
So no... By them creating theoretical money does not one else loose money (except of course shareholders who didn't sell their shares when the stock collapsed)
Can someone explain to me the benefit to society of this kind of activity?
Inflation sink, market efficiency, and liquidity.
Although it seems like a meta-game to most, the ability to do things like this makes pricing of shares more efficient to the actual value of the market (increasing the price of undervalued stocks and decreasing the price of overvalued stocks) and making money flow rather than stay stagnant.
It also pulls a lot of money out of the goods and services world making a natural force against inflation.
Traders make a profit on each trade. But the profit is always to the broker.
Depends on who your broker is and what kind of account you have with them.
A true blue day trader is going to have a setup for Direct Access Trading which isn't what you see on TV for those $9 dollar trades for the average Joe.
It requires you to have more than say $20,000 in the account and you must make a lot daily trades to be eligible, but the transaction fees are very low per trade so you won't be paying as much to your broker (like pennies on the dollar sometimes if volume is high enough).
This has been a common topic on the stocks news groups about FAZ and FAS using different methods because of inefficiency between the two funds.
They are support to inverses of each other (short and long) of the finacial markets with leverage, but a few people have noticed that during the first minute of trading they aren't exactly the same.
The basis of the what people are doing is complicated and usually involves buying both shares and dumping one in the first minute and then selling the other shortly thereafter.
But there are other methods people have talked about but I can't seem to find the newsgroups since they were buried in spam a month or so ago.
Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to keep my data in-house.
Unless you happen to be a one person government or business, "my data" doesn't apply.
A government or business has to either trust their employees or the persons they contract to deal with the data either way.
The question you have to ask is "Do you trust your employees or contractors?" and "Do they have deep enough pockets to sue when something goes wrong?"
On a personal level, I wouldn't put my private data on a cloud, but when you look at businesses where the owners or management isn't IT, they have little choice to let people do it for them.
In your case your employers trust you, but what if you left and they hired someone incompetent? Same difference as the outsource. They use the same hardware as you most likely so technically there is no advantage.
It is simply a matter of trust.
Seriously, just because it works for some types of data and/or applications, doesn't mean it'll work for everything.
What is the difference between an in-house datacenter and an outsourced one?
The person you write the checks to.
That's about it these days.
Chances are if they did do in house, the techs were still be outsourced contracts instead of state employees. If they outsource it to Amazon or Microsoft in the state they'll still be employing locals and hopefully save tax dollars in the process.
But I do agree about the whole "cloud computing" being BS as a hypeword. Its really a euphemism for "outsourced".
Most businesses will be very very adverse to giving up control of their data, and somehow I don't see that ever changing, even when they claim the risk is almost 0%.
I really don't think you understand the average mindset of a PHB or MBA.
Most of them don't understand the concept or care enough to learn about it as long as they get their bonus.
These are the same people who outsourced positions that would be reviewing critical and confidential data overseas and these are the same people who are going to jump ship with a golden parachute when the ship sinks.
Maybe I'm being cynical, but most businesses will happily give up their data even though their IT dept is screaming bloody murder because its cheaper for them to do so or that the vendor salesperson bought them the best lunch.
It's one of the rags that CIOs like to have up front to show they are "in touch".
I thought it was because it was free and it feels like a waste just to throw it away.
I will not play a game that rewards, or give extra benefits to, those who give cash to the company. Charge everyone a small fee, but keep everyone equal.
Well that isn't the case even now. What is the difference between a lawyer who works 60 hours a week who buys a WoW character than his wealthy retired client that sit at home all day and grinds characters?
I doubt many wealthy retirees or busy lawyers play WoW, but my point is the same. Wealthy in the real world can get you a better character passively or actively.
but, if Godaddy and ICANN cannot sort out their differences, and with ICANN being the authority the Gov't put in charge, then, the Congress needs to take this matter up
Do you really want congress deciding who gets what web page?
Laws, less so.
Unless you have good lawyers, lobbyists, or happen to be the person enforcing the law.
I thought the DoD would forbid to run newer versions that haven't been ran and scrutinized enough by a lot of people.
Depends on who you work for and what you do.
Not everything various DoD employees do is related to a "super secret project".
A lot of stuff in the DoD doesn't really have the need or want to be super scrutinized. Some of the stuff that they do is as boring as public relations and kitchen supplies.
When will people realise than having more data often makes it more difficult to find the needle in the haystack.
The goal of government data collection isn't to find a needle in the haystack.
The goal is to turn more hay into needles.
Now how many crimes have you uknowlingly broke today, citizen?
Or the TV series based on Super Mario and Zelda?
Hey! That cartoons series was pretty damn good if you ask me.
I can't even name one good film based from a game.
Resident Evil was pretty good and it actually one of the few video game movies that actually didn't just make random shit up for its own plot.
Beyond that I'm hard pressed to think of any movies based on games that were any good... There was the first Mortal Kombat movie, but it was about as good as a Van Dam movie.