Who cares? This is ostly for the parent to your post -- if you don't want idle stories on the front page, change your preferences to not show idle stories on the front page.
You have the power. You decide what your front page looks like. If you're too lazy to change your preferences, then why aren't you too lazy to bitch and complain?
Is the guaranteed environmental impact of manufacturing billions of solar panels less of an issue than the minuscule risk of a melt down?
No, but... dismissing the miniscule risk of a meltdown is big mistake. I recall Feynman's research after the Challenger explosion, and the kind of institutional issues at NASA that (wrongly, IMO) estimated the shuttle catastrophe risk of 1 in 100,000... and I wonder what kind of institutional issues at the DoE, or at private energy firms, might cause the same kind of problem with nuclear plants.
In short, I believe that nuclear power *can* be safe enough. But I sure as hell don't trust any bureaucratic entity to make it so.
To get back to your point, regarding the pollution caused by manufacture of solar panels... I think you'll agree that since it is a disseminated source pollution, it's much less noticeable than the impact of an uncontained nuclear meltdown. I don't know if we'll ever be able to overcome the power of spectacle wrt public opinion. What I do know is that the public is very dismissive of things like coal plant radioactive emissions, runoff contamination of our waterways, etc. For some reason most people want to be able to point their fingers at a single point-source of pollution or disaster, and feel that if they eliminate that one source, all will be well.
Good point. I'll add that it doesn't take pay cuts to motivate crime of this nature.
Employees who feel their jobs becoming less secure may decide to take out an insurance policy while they still have access to the important data.
Regardless of how you treat your employees, regardless of how secure their jobs are, in a crappy economy they may feel that their jobs are insecure, and that may lead them to the dark side.
Having good security standards and processes will lessen your exposure. Maintaining employee morale will lessen your exposure. In the end, though, as long as one person has access to critical data, there is risk of the data being misused.
0.993)^3 would suck actually, resulting in 0.979---but fortunately the error rate is 1-(1-0.993)^3), i.e. a pretty awesome.9999997 (assuming independent errors and such)
No, your formula results in an accuracy of.999, not.9999997. Sure, it's better than.993, but nowhere near as accurate as you wish.
Did you assume that.993 was accurate to.9930000?
Furthermore, this entire formulaic analysis is useless without considering statistical error margins.
That would be over 13 hours of TV a day, every day for a month. Right...
For a single user? It's a lot. For a family of 4 or 5?
I'll put it gently, since I don't know when my wife will do her annual "I wonder what hubby's writing on slashdot" foray... some people have the TV on damn near 'round the clock.
That alone is 12 hours. For one damn person. Add in what *I* watch; add in what *the kids* watch, and you're talking 13-14 hours per day. And most families have kids who watch much more TV than that.
What really happened is that some hacker wrote a virus that enables each infected Zune to "squirt" the virus to nearby Zunes. It's been propagating for some time now, and has finally gone active.
I hereby declare this virus to be the Squirting Brown Virus, and if that doesn't make your stomach turn from the imagery, then you have probable spent too much time on German porn websites.
Sarbox prevents large private businesses, startups, that aren't publicly traded from making the transition to being publicly traded, because of the incredible expense associated with getting into compliance.
Which is why it's better to be compliant long before you are required to be.
Maintaining compliant processes is easy and relatively cheap. Replacing non-compliant legacy processes is expensive. The lesson? Don't have non-compliant legacy processes, and you'll greatly reduce the cost of going public.
Well first off, if you're going to capitalize letters, it's SarbOx, not SarBox. Sorry to nitpick, but my OCD-ness was making it hard to read your post without addressing that.
As for acting on SOx reporting, I'm not so sure you're correct. I can think of several companies whose financial statements yielded results from investigation, that probably wouldn't have been caught without SOx (Rockstar Games being the one closest to the Slashdot crowd). And from a company's internal perspective, SOc compliance aligns well with process standardization and optimization... many (most?) companies out there are using internal SOx audits as a tool for improving efficiency and reducing costs.
As for ease of audit and standardization... have you ever done a SOx audit? And I don't mean been subject to one, I mean from the other side... have you ever conducted an audit? SOx makes good auditing far easier than it was before.
The NTSB will get involved in this crash, and if there's anything out of order, they'll likely find it.
And how are we to be certain that what they find won't be suppressed? Political futures rest on pleasing those who pull the strings, and people in the NTSB play politics.
It can be as simple as 'overlooking' evidence that supports a different version of events, or lending more credence to evidence that supports the desired sequence of events.
It doesn't matter, though... the current administration wants the investigation to conclude that it was an accident; the incoming administration wants the same thing (do you really think they'd want press coverage of Obama's first 100 days to be usurped by some politically-motivated murder?). The only value of the NTSB discovering sabotage would be the press distraction from the economy... which could be a motive to let the NTSB publish any findings of potential sabotage.
At any rate, it's just plain naive to think that the NTSB is not influenced by politics, and people within it would publish accurate and truthful findings at the cost of their career.
Meh, you missed a golden opportunity to remain funny while pointing out some of the obvious contradictions in slashdot groupthink:
McCain sucks. Obama rules. Ron Paul is awesomer than Obama. We need to socialize everything. The free market will solve all problems. Taxes are bad. Government services are good. Monopolies are bad. Regulations are bad.
Anyway, while the posters on Slashdot tend to have some strongly shared opinions, there are still quite a few dissenting opinions. The nice thing about Slashdot is that dissenting opinions can still be read, and often there are great replies that will point out the holes in anyone's arguments.
That said... I'm in the slashdot mahjority on most topics (IP being one I'm not completely aligned with the herd on), and I am glad that the crackpots (including myself, at times) get refuted.
FWIW... if something is "balanced", that would mean the two sides[1] of the debate are assigned equal weights. That's how a balance works.
*Fair* is a different story. A *fair* assessment would assign accurate weights to the two sides, which would (gasp) leave an unbalanced situation[2]. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
[1] Assuming any issue is simple enough for a two-sided debate, which would be plane wrong.
[2] As shown by the Evolutionary Theory (ET) vs. Intelligent Design (ID) debate, as follows logically:
1. According to evolutionists, birds evolved from dinosaurs. 2. According to established truth (even ID'ers don't deny it), ducks are birds. 3. Logically then, it follows that ET can be represented by a duck. 4. Some "news" outlets claim to be fair and balanced, by assigning equal weight to ET and ID. 5. Picture a large scale, with ET and ID balanced equally. 6. Now visualize the same scale, with ET represented by a duck. 6. Obviously, since ID weighs the same or more than the duck, it is a witch. Burn it!
Now, Sir Gore, tell me again how sheep's bladders can be used to prevent global warming?
How many times have we IT people complained about unfair, ill-informed, hyped, or spun news articles about us? Why is this exact same tactic on the front page here? "Almost all the media coverage comes from the left and some of it is frankly conspiratorial." Marginalization and a thinly veiled ad-hominem attack? When did slashdot start culling from the mainstream?
FWIW... kdawson posted the article. He is often accused of pushing left-wing ideology. This marks a departure for him, in some ways... although, IMO, it's a way of introducing the idea of a potential conspiracy without seeming to be lending credence to it.
You've been around long enough to be aware of the bias kdawson is accused of, just as you should be aware of pudge's ultra-libertarian ideology.
If you think kdawson is marginalizing the left and making an ad hominem attack... well... mabe you should consider that he might be instead heading off the attacks on his editorial slant by posting the summary as it appears above.
At any rate, slashdot isn't really about the summary, or any perceived editorial slant, IMO, so it's pointless to complain so. Slashdot's value is in the discussion, where you're sure to find as many ideologies and biases as you can count, even if you take off your shoes to count to 10100. So, if you're pissed, why not find a non-troll right-winger in the comments to flame with your monologue, so that person has a chance to retort?
All that said... I agree with you 100% that 'balance' is for people who lack the ability to comprehend complex issues -- though I do believe that it's important to cover the major dissenting views when "reporting" on a topic, even if it is just to address those views and show why they are wrong.
But you're missing the point... America is the country of the free [market|people|beer|music].
People need to be free to wantonly misrepresent their publically-traded finances, how else can they mazimize their personal gain?
People need to be free to lose their retirement savings because they invested in a company with sham accounting.
Only by allowing people to be misled by the Captains of Industry can we expect them to learn to stand on their own two feet and get rich or die trying.
Why do you hate America, Mr.-I-don't-think-people-should-be-free?
...
[I agree with you 100%. But it's important to note that free-market idealogues really don't care about responsibility... or if they do (like Alan Greenspan) they eventually learn that companies will not self-regulate to act responsibly when the decision-makers in those companies benefit from acting irresponsibly.]
Malone is a boilerplate "Regulation is bad for business" guy who happens to be focused on the tech world.
He claims SOx has failed, he claims the costs are too high. Perhaps he forgets the cost of NOT having such regulation.
In addition, study after study has found that there are many benefits to becoming SOx-compliant, from risk attenuation to more accurate financial reporting, to streamlining processes via standardization. Googling "Sox benefits" will bring up quite a few, though you might need to wade through some marketing muck from companies whose line of business rests with providing compliance tools.
I can personally attest that Sox compliance has saved a former employer of mine tens of millions... potentially more, if certain practices hadn't been discontinued and happened to be caught by the SEC.
I think the main reason IT professionals hate SOx is that some of their work becomes drudgery. They fail to see the big picture, and from the finance side, I do what I can to make sure they can see how much it helps the company. As for it being an unnecessary burden on companies... tell that to the people who had their retirement savings in Enron stock. Tell that to the people who pinned their ability to put their kids to college on Worldcom stock. It takes a short memory to forget that confidence in large public companies in 2001-2 was similar to the confidence people have in the banking industry now. Would Malone argue that the best thing we can do for the general public now would be to deregulate the banking system further?
I'd also note that the small companies he refers to have a much easier time with SOx compliance, such as a longer period in which to become SOx compliant. Further, it's been demonstrated that the high cost of SOx compliance is in implementation, not in maintenance of compliance. For a start-up, it's easy enough to begin compliant... then you never have to face a huge expense in becoming compliant, since your processes have been compliant all along. Since a lot of the benefits of compliance are "soft" benefits (they are hard to assign an accurate value to), it's difficult to determine whether compliance costs outweigh compliance benefits... but since start-ups do not have to bear the brunt of compliance expense (in converting legacy systems and processes), I feel it's probably beneficial to be compliant.
Of interest, the SEC will be conducting a CBA of SOx compliance for small public companies in 2009. I'm interested to see what their findings are.
Anyway, thanks for doing a mite of research and refuting his cherry-picked data.
But how can you guarantee the safety of workers when they're setting up the drill? That's no small drill and would need some time to set up properly, and while the workers are setting up the drill the volcano may explode.
Sigh. You're really just not cut out for this line of work. What is the meaning of a few lives lost when you're building your underground lair in the bowels of an active volcano to further your goal of world domination?
1. Tame volcano. 2. Build secret underground lair inside volcano. 3. ??? 4. Profit.
Note that the elusive step 3 is, in all likelihood, 'build doomsday device'. If you don't yet have plans for said doomsday device, or the means to force geniuses to produce one for you, I'd recommend against initiation of step 1.
Seriously, when did supervillains become so unimaginative and weak? Safety of the workers is meaningless. If you're smart, you'll be making sure they all experience a massive "accident" just after completing their work, anyway.
Look at the Iraq war - Between 1 and 2 million people took to the streets of London, which is a lot in a country with a population of 60M, and to get that many protesting takes some serious feeling amongst the population as a whole. What happened? We went to war.
And what happened to the people who sent the UK to war? Nothing bad.
People are meaningless in republics with millions of voters who are dependent on mass media for figuring out how they feel about something. Cash is king. And to the people holding the highest offices in the US and the UK, there's far more personal gain to be made in voting with the moneyed interests (oil companies, military-industrial companies) than there is in getting re-elected.
You think Tony Blair ever has to work again, aside from a few speaking engagements? How about George W Bush?
Modern democracy has disappeared, and has been replaced by patronage and cronyism.
I'm agreeing with you 100%, I'm just looking at what I think causes our systems to be so fucked up right now, aside from voter apathy and voter idiocy.
RF, you've been around slashdot for what... 2-3 years? Not that I'm an oldtimer, though I lurked AC for a couple years before registering...
Slashdot is not "News for Nerds, Stuff that is Limited to One Person's Opinion of Stuff that Matters". From all I've read and seen, Slashdot is "News for Nerds, Stuff We Think is Interesting".
Lately it seems it's also "Stuff the Corporate Overlord Thinks Will Draw Viewers", which is what you may be getting at.
At any rate, if you haven't noticed, data security has been a pretty big issue in IT. This article is simply a (slightly) humourous way that a data breach occurred. I know I worry about my data security... and this article highlights the fact that sometimes processes we rely on to be secure (such as courier services) are not secure at all.
Anyway, no one is forcing you to read slashdot. There are other places you can go. And no one is forcing you to read specific articles like this one. There are others to read. And if you don't bother reading this article, or posting a comment to it, that's fewer page hits, fewer ad impressions, and less money for the corporate overlord.
The #1 best thing to do with content that you don't like on Slashdot? Ignore it. Don't waste your energy. If there's nothing you like on Slashdot at a given time, you can go ahead and close the browser tab. It's not that hard. And best of all, it doesn;t reward 'bad' behavior.
That means intelligence is no longer being selected for, and on the whole dogs are becoming dumber by the minute - but occasionally you'll get a throwback and much more intelligent dog such as the ones described here.
That may be, among pet dogs. Note that this is not the case for working dogs.
I raised sheep, and had a sequence of sheepdogs... mostly border collies with some Australian shepherd thrown in. I'll tell you that breeders of border collies respect intelligence, and *will* selectively breed for it... even if that intelligence is manifested as the ability to be easily trained to herd animals.
Sure, there are a lot of characteristics that border collies are bred for (herding instinct, physical attributes, their 'look', among others) but intelligence is definitely one of them.
There was an article in National Geographic sometime in the past couple years discussing animal intelligence... border collies were a focal point of part of the article. There's a border collie somwhere (if she's not dead yet) with a comprehension vocabulary of over 700 words.
At any rate, it's important to note that while *some* breeds are not bred for intelligence, some are. I'm rather surprised that the dog mentioned in the GP's anecdote is a golden retriever, in my experience they are rather dumb. I've found black labs and border collies to be the smartest dogs I've worked with. Just goes to show, there is variability within breeds as well as within the species.
It's actually a legally binding contract, so if a firm breaks it policy and you suffer as a result, you do have legal recourse to sue.
Oh, I see. And when they change their privacy policy, they need to contact me so I can choose whether or not to allow them to continue holding my information? How can I be certain they have destroyed any record of any of my personal information?
And as for legal recourse... good luck with that. With the exception of a few very visible data breaches with traceable exploits of the data, it would be very hard to prove damages. What about the loss of privacy for privacy's sake? Good luck getting a worthwhile judgment on that one. And say you are awarded some kind of damages via class-action suit or what-have-you... have fun spending merchandise vouchers with the very company that caused the problem.
Legal recourse is meaningless in this situation, preventative measures are the key. There's no sense in closing the barn door after the horse is loose -- especially when that horse can replicate instantly without your knowledge.
Even catholics can pick other pulpits if they take exception to their current priest.
Technically, it requires a special dispensation to change your parish... parishes are defined geographically. While the Catholic Church won't force anyone to attend Mass at a particular parish, there are some restrictions (depending on the parish). For example, when I married my wife (who is Catholic - I'm atheist), she had to be a member of the parish we were married in. Maybe that's because that particular parish had very high demand, since the building is magnificent... I'm not sure if other parishes have the same restriction. We later moved, and when our daughter was baptized, the same restriction was in place... possibly also for the same reason (though it was a different parish).
First, sales tax is assessed based on delivery address, not billing address. This may be hard for NY to deal with, since online delivery means they'll need to map IP address (or customer account) to physical address.
Second, by doing that, you're committing tax evasion. You are responsible for use tax on those items you use that are taxable where you use them, but you bought them where they were untaxed, or taxed at a lower rate. Sure, this is often overlooked, and states (and cities) have a hard time enforcing it...
I just thought I'd mention those two items, since you were promoting tax evasion in your post... wanted to make sure that anyone choosing to follow your advice is aware that they would be committing a crime.
On a personal note, I think it's immoral to evade taxes anyway, since assuming you live in NYC, you're reaping the benefits of government services while freeloading off of those who actually pay their taxes.
The OP's statement was that financial houses are using Excel for statistical analysis and for transactional processing. This is false.
You're right that I over-reached in arguing that if any do, it's not enough to impact the economy... but considering that using Excel for transactional processing doesn't satisfy basic requirements as defined by law, I can stand by what I wrote.
WTF? Do you think the paper was magically converted into bricks? Was it burned to fire the ovens?. No it was deposited into another bank account.
No. Typically it was invested in other property, whether real, via a fund, or otherwise. Are you lumping in investment institutions with banks? Are you lumping in real property with banks? They are not the same thing. The GGP post was claiming that the funds received by the seller were held on to by the bank. In most cases, while this happened for the (very) short term, in the long term the funds were typically invested elsewhere -- whether in another property or in a fund of some sort.
And where does the money to pay the interest come from? It was never created, and when credit pays off debt, there is nothing left over.
Sigh. Do you really not understand investment? The GGP post had nothing to do with fractional reserve lending, so it'd be best if you leave your personal bugaboo out of the discussion, since it is immaterial. Regardless of whether the lending is based on a fractional reserve or not, the simple truth of the matter is that people and institutions will tend to lend capital if their expected return is greater than the return for investing elswhere. This happens more frequently when we are undergoing growth, since no one wants a negative return, but is not dependent completely upon growth, as even in a shrinking economy there are investments that may yield a positive return.
When banks create the money that they loan out (and it is the creation of money which is what makes a bank a bank), they do not create the money required to pay the interest on the loan. Therefore more and larger loans must continually be created to pay the interest on the previous round of debt.
That's not necessarily true, it depends on what kind of terms the banks are borrowing by. If they borrow via short-term, or overnight loan, then they can get (and have gotten) into a mess. If they are borrowing on a long-term basis, it is not impossible for a bank to be cash-flow positive based on present debtors only.
The problem currently has a lot of causes, but the biggest one is not fractional reserve lending. The biggest problem is banks failed to properly assign risk to the loans they issued, thereby overvaluing the mortgage-backed securities they held.
Slashdot Mirror
Who cares? This is ostly for the parent to your post -- if you don't want idle stories on the front page, change your preferences to not show idle stories on the front page.
You have the power. You decide what your front page looks like. If you're too lazy to change your preferences, then why aren't you too lazy to bitch and complain?
No, but... dismissing the miniscule risk of a meltdown is big mistake. I recall Feynman's research after the Challenger explosion, and the kind of institutional issues at NASA that (wrongly, IMO) estimated the shuttle catastrophe risk of 1 in 100,000... and I wonder what kind of institutional issues at the DoE, or at private energy firms, might cause the same kind of problem with nuclear plants.
In short, I believe that nuclear power *can* be safe enough. But I sure as hell don't trust any bureaucratic entity to make it so.
To get back to your point, regarding the pollution caused by manufacture of solar panels... I think you'll agree that since it is a disseminated source pollution, it's much less noticeable than the impact of an uncontained nuclear meltdown. I don't know if we'll ever be able to overcome the power of spectacle wrt public opinion. What I do know is that the public is very dismissive of things like coal plant radioactive emissions, runoff contamination of our waterways, etc. For some reason most people want to be able to point their fingers at a single point-source of pollution or disaster, and feel that if they eliminate that one source, all will be well.
Good point. I'll add that it doesn't take pay cuts to motivate crime of this nature.
Employees who feel their jobs becoming less secure may decide to take out an insurance policy while they still have access to the important data.
Regardless of how you treat your employees, regardless of how secure their jobs are, in a crappy economy they may feel that their jobs are insecure, and that may lead them to the dark side.
Having good security standards and processes will lessen your exposure. Maintaining employee morale will lessen your exposure. In the end, though, as long as one person has access to critical data, there is risk of the data being misused.
No, your formula results in an accuracy of .999, not .9999997. Sure, it's better than .993, but nowhere near as accurate as you wish.
.993 was accurate to .9930000?
Did you assume that
Furthermore, this entire formulaic analysis is useless without considering statistical error margins.
In what alternate universe are you reading slashdot?
prograde (1425683)
Oh. You'll figure it out, given time.
For a single user? It's a lot. For a family of 4 or 5?
I'll put it gently, since I don't know when my wife will do her annual "I wonder what hubby's writing on slashdot" foray... some people have the TV on damn near 'round the clock.
Morning newsertainment -- 3-4 hours. Afternoon soaps -- 2+ hours. Evening news -- 1 hr. Evening crap shows -- 3 hours. Night news -- 1 hr. Late-night shows -- 2 hrs.
That alone is 12 hours. For one damn person. Add in what *I* watch; add in what *the kids* watch, and you're talking 13-14 hours per day. And most families have kids who watch much more TV than that.
That would be *Brown* Zune of Death.
Sheesh.
What really happened is that some hacker wrote a virus that enables each infected Zune to "squirt" the virus to nearby Zunes. It's been propagating for some time now, and has finally gone active.
I hereby declare this virus to be the Squirting Brown Virus, and if that doesn't make your stomach turn from the imagery, then you have probable spent too much time on German porn websites.
Which is why it's better to be compliant long before you are required to be.
Maintaining compliant processes is easy and relatively cheap. Replacing non-compliant legacy processes is expensive. The lesson? Don't have non-compliant legacy processes, and you'll greatly reduce the cost of going public.
Well first off, if you're going to capitalize letters, it's SarbOx, not SarBox. Sorry to nitpick, but my OCD-ness was making it hard to read your post without addressing that.
As for acting on SOx reporting, I'm not so sure you're correct. I can think of several companies whose financial statements yielded results from investigation, that probably wouldn't have been caught without SOx (Rockstar Games being the one closest to the Slashdot crowd). And from a company's internal perspective, SOc compliance aligns well with process standardization and optimization... many (most?) companies out there are using internal SOx audits as a tool for improving efficiency and reducing costs.
As for ease of audit and standardization... have you ever done a SOx audit? And I don't mean been subject to one, I mean from the other side... have you ever conducted an audit? SOx makes good auditing far easier than it was before.
And how are we to be certain that what they find won't be suppressed? Political futures rest on pleasing those who pull the strings, and people in the NTSB play politics.
It can be as simple as 'overlooking' evidence that supports a different version of events, or lending more credence to evidence that supports the desired sequence of events.
It doesn't matter, though... the current administration wants the investigation to conclude that it was an accident; the incoming administration wants the same thing (do you really think they'd want press coverage of Obama's first 100 days to be usurped by some politically-motivated murder?). The only value of the NTSB discovering sabotage would be the press distraction from the economy... which could be a motive to let the NTSB publish any findings of potential sabotage.
At any rate, it's just plain naive to think that the NTSB is not influenced by politics, and people within it would publish accurate and truthful findings at the cost of their career.
Meh, you missed a golden opportunity to remain funny while pointing out some of the obvious contradictions in slashdot groupthink:
McCain sucks.
Obama rules.
Ron Paul is awesomer than Obama.
We need to socialize everything.
The free market will solve all problems.
Taxes are bad.
Government services are good.
Monopolies are bad.
Regulations are bad.
Anyway, while the posters on Slashdot tend to have some strongly shared opinions, there are still quite a few dissenting opinions. The nice thing about Slashdot is that dissenting opinions can still be read, and often there are great replies that will point out the holes in anyone's arguments.
That said... I'm in the slashdot mahjority on most topics (IP being one I'm not completely aligned with the herd on), and I am glad that the crackpots (including myself, at times) get refuted.
FWIW... if something is "balanced", that would mean the two sides[1] of the debate are assigned equal weights. That's how a balance works.
*Fair* is a different story. A *fair* assessment would assign accurate weights to the two sides, which would (gasp) leave an unbalanced situation[2]. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
[1] Assuming any issue is simple enough for a two-sided debate, which would be plane wrong.
[2] As shown by the Evolutionary Theory (ET) vs. Intelligent Design (ID) debate, as follows logically:
1. According to evolutionists, birds evolved from dinosaurs.
2. According to established truth (even ID'ers don't deny it), ducks are birds.
3. Logically then, it follows that ET can be represented by a duck.
4. Some "news" outlets claim to be fair and balanced, by assigning equal weight to ET and ID.
5. Picture a large scale, with ET and ID balanced equally.
6. Now visualize the same scale, with ET represented by a duck.
6. Obviously, since ID weighs the same or more than the duck, it is a witch. Burn it!
Now, Sir Gore, tell me again how sheep's bladders can be used to prevent global warming?
FWIW... kdawson posted the article. He is often accused of pushing left-wing ideology. This marks a departure for him, in some ways... although, IMO, it's a way of introducing the idea of a potential conspiracy without seeming to be lending credence to it.
You've been around long enough to be aware of the bias kdawson is accused of, just as you should be aware of pudge's ultra-libertarian ideology.
If you think kdawson is marginalizing the left and making an ad hominem attack... well... mabe you should consider that he might be instead heading off the attacks on his editorial slant by posting the summary as it appears above.
At any rate, slashdot isn't really about the summary, or any perceived editorial slant, IMO, so it's pointless to complain so. Slashdot's value is in the discussion, where you're sure to find as many ideologies and biases as you can count, even if you take off your shoes to count to 10100. So, if you're pissed, why not find a non-troll right-winger in the comments to flame with your monologue, so that person has a chance to retort?
All that said... I agree with you 100% that 'balance' is for people who lack the ability to comprehend complex issues -- though I do believe that it's important to cover the major dissenting views when "reporting" on a topic, even if it is just to address those views and show why they are wrong.
But you're missing the point... America is the country of the free [market|people|beer|music].
People need to be free to wantonly misrepresent their publically-traded finances, how else can they mazimize their personal gain?
People need to be free to lose their retirement savings because they invested in a company with sham accounting.
Only by allowing people to be misled by the Captains of Industry can we expect them to learn to stand on their own two feet and get rich or die trying.
Why do you hate America, Mr.-I-don't-think-people-should-be-free?
...
[I agree with you 100%. But it's important to note that free-market idealogues really don't care about responsibility... or if they do (like Alan Greenspan) they eventually learn that companies will not self-regulate to act responsibly when the decision-makers in those companies benefit from acting irresponsibly.]
Malone is a boilerplate "Regulation is bad for business" guy who happens to be focused on the tech world.
He claims SOx has failed, he claims the costs are too high. Perhaps he forgets the cost of NOT having such regulation.
In addition, study after study has found that there are many benefits to becoming SOx-compliant, from risk attenuation to more accurate financial reporting, to streamlining processes via standardization. Googling "Sox benefits" will bring up quite a few, though you might need to wade through some marketing muck from companies whose line of business rests with providing compliance tools.
I can personally attest that Sox compliance has saved a former employer of mine tens of millions... potentially more, if certain practices hadn't been discontinued and happened to be caught by the SEC.
I think the main reason IT professionals hate SOx is that some of their work becomes drudgery. They fail to see the big picture, and from the finance side, I do what I can to make sure they can see how much it helps the company. As for it being an unnecessary burden on companies... tell that to the people who had their retirement savings in Enron stock. Tell that to the people who pinned their ability to put their kids to college on Worldcom stock. It takes a short memory to forget that confidence in large public companies in 2001-2 was similar to the confidence people have in the banking industry now. Would Malone argue that the best thing we can do for the general public now would be to deregulate the banking system further?
I'd also note that the small companies he refers to have a much easier time with SOx compliance, such as a longer period in which to become SOx compliant. Further, it's been demonstrated that the high cost of SOx compliance is in implementation, not in maintenance of compliance. For a start-up, it's easy enough to begin compliant... then you never have to face a huge expense in becoming compliant, since your processes have been compliant all along. Since a lot of the benefits of compliance are "soft" benefits (they are hard to assign an accurate value to), it's difficult to determine whether compliance costs outweigh compliance benefits... but since start-ups do not have to bear the brunt of compliance expense (in converting legacy systems and processes), I feel it's probably beneficial to be compliant.
Of interest, the SEC will be conducting a CBA of SOx compliance for small public companies in 2009. I'm interested to see what their findings are.
Anyway, thanks for doing a mite of research and refuting his cherry-picked data.
Sigh. You're really just not cut out for this line of work. What is the meaning of a few lives lost when you're building your underground lair in the bowels of an active volcano to further your goal of world domination?
1. Tame volcano.
2. Build secret underground lair inside volcano.
3. ???
4. Profit.
Note that the elusive step 3 is, in all likelihood, 'build doomsday device'. If you don't yet have plans for said doomsday device, or the means to force geniuses to produce one for you, I'd recommend against initiation of step 1.
Seriously, when did supervillains become so unimaginative and weak? Safety of the workers is meaningless. If you're smart, you'll be making sure they all experience a massive "accident" just after completing their work, anyway.
And what happened to the people who sent the UK to war? Nothing bad.
People are meaningless in republics with millions of voters who are dependent on mass media for figuring out how they feel about something. Cash is king. And to the people holding the highest offices in the US and the UK, there's far more personal gain to be made in voting with the moneyed interests (oil companies, military-industrial companies) than there is in getting re-elected.
You think Tony Blair ever has to work again, aside from a few speaking engagements? How about George W Bush?
Modern democracy has disappeared, and has been replaced by patronage and cronyism.
I'm agreeing with you 100%, I'm just looking at what I think causes our systems to be so fucked up right now, aside from voter apathy and voter idiocy.
RF, you've been around slashdot for what... 2-3 years? Not that I'm an oldtimer, though I lurked AC for a couple years before registering...
Slashdot is not "News for Nerds, Stuff that is Limited to One Person's Opinion of Stuff that Matters". From all I've read and seen, Slashdot is "News for Nerds, Stuff We Think is Interesting".
Lately it seems it's also "Stuff the Corporate Overlord Thinks Will Draw Viewers", which is what you may be getting at.
At any rate, if you haven't noticed, data security has been a pretty big issue in IT. This article is simply a (slightly) humourous way that a data breach occurred. I know I worry about my data security... and this article highlights the fact that sometimes processes we rely on to be secure (such as courier services) are not secure at all.
Anyway, no one is forcing you to read slashdot. There are other places you can go. And no one is forcing you to read specific articles like this one. There are others to read. And if you don't bother reading this article, or posting a comment to it, that's fewer page hits, fewer ad impressions, and less money for the corporate overlord.
The #1 best thing to do with content that you don't like on Slashdot? Ignore it. Don't waste your energy. If there's nothing you like on Slashdot at a given time, you can go ahead and close the browser tab. It's not that hard. And best of all, it doesn;t reward 'bad' behavior.
That may be, among pet dogs. Note that this is not the case for working dogs.
I raised sheep, and had a sequence of sheepdogs... mostly border collies with some Australian shepherd thrown in. I'll tell you that breeders of border collies respect intelligence, and *will* selectively breed for it... even if that intelligence is manifested as the ability to be easily trained to herd animals.
Sure, there are a lot of characteristics that border collies are bred for (herding instinct, physical attributes, their 'look', among others) but intelligence is definitely one of them.
There was an article in National Geographic sometime in the past couple years discussing animal intelligence... border collies were a focal point of part of the article. There's a border collie somwhere (if she's not dead yet) with a comprehension vocabulary of over 700 words.
At any rate, it's important to note that while *some* breeds are not bred for intelligence, some are. I'm rather surprised that the dog mentioned in the GP's anecdote is a golden retriever, in my experience they are rather dumb. I've found black labs and border collies to be the smartest dogs I've worked with. Just goes to show, there is variability within breeds as well as within the species.
Oh, I see. And when they change their privacy policy, they need to contact me so I can choose whether or not to allow them to continue holding my information? How can I be certain they have destroyed any record of any of my personal information?
And as for legal recourse... good luck with that. With the exception of a few very visible data breaches with traceable exploits of the data, it would be very hard to prove damages. What about the loss of privacy for privacy's sake? Good luck getting a worthwhile judgment on that one. And say you are awarded some kind of damages via class-action suit or what-have-you... have fun spending merchandise vouchers with the very company that caused the problem.
Legal recourse is meaningless in this situation, preventative measures are the key. There's no sense in closing the barn door after the horse is loose -- especially when that horse can replicate instantly without your knowledge.
Technically, it requires a special dispensation to change your parish... parishes are defined geographically. While the Catholic Church won't force anyone to attend Mass at a particular parish, there are some restrictions (depending on the parish). For example, when I married my wife (who is Catholic - I'm atheist), she had to be a member of the parish we were married in. Maybe that's because that particular parish had very high demand, since the building is magnificent... I'm not sure if other parishes have the same restriction. We later moved, and when our daughter was baptized, the same restriction was in place... possibly also for the same reason (though it was a different parish).
Hruh?
I think you misspoke, I believe the correct term is vertically-challenged proprietor class.
But it's hard to tell... perhaps it would help if term used wasn't such so exactingly indeterminant.
Hmm... have you tried this?
First, sales tax is assessed based on delivery address, not billing address. This may be hard for NY to deal with, since online delivery means they'll need to map IP address (or customer account) to physical address.
Second, by doing that, you're committing tax evasion. You are responsible for use tax on those items you use that are taxable where you use them, but you bought them where they were untaxed, or taxed at a lower rate. Sure, this is often overlooked, and states (and cities) have a hard time enforcing it...
I just thought I'd mention those two items, since you were promoting tax evasion in your post... wanted to make sure that anyone choosing to follow your advice is aware that they would be committing a crime.
On a personal note, I think it's immoral to evade taxes anyway, since assuming you live in NYC, you're reaping the benefits of government services while freeloading off of those who actually pay their taxes.
The OP's statement was that financial houses are using Excel for statistical analysis and for transactional processing. This is false.
You're right that I over-reached in arguing that if any do, it's not enough to impact the economy... but considering that using Excel for transactional processing doesn't satisfy basic requirements as defined by law, I can stand by what I wrote.
No. Typically it was invested in other property, whether real, via a fund, or otherwise. Are you lumping in investment institutions with banks? Are you lumping in real property with banks? They are not the same thing. The GGP post was claiming that the funds received by the seller were held on to by the bank. In most cases, while this happened for the (very) short term, in the long term the funds were typically invested elsewhere -- whether in another property or in a fund of some sort.
Sigh. Do you really not understand investment? The GGP post had nothing to do with fractional reserve lending, so it'd be best if you leave your personal bugaboo out of the discussion, since it is immaterial. Regardless of whether the lending is based on a fractional reserve or not, the simple truth of the matter is that people and institutions will tend to lend capital if their expected return is greater than the return for investing elswhere. This happens more frequently when we are undergoing growth, since no one wants a negative return, but is not dependent completely upon growth, as even in a shrinking economy there are investments that may yield a positive return.
That's not necessarily true, it depends on what kind of terms the banks are borrowing by. If they borrow via short-term, or overnight loan, then they can get (and have gotten) into a mess. If they are borrowing on a long-term basis, it is not impossible for a bank to be cash-flow positive based on present debtors only.
The problem currently has a lot of causes, but the biggest one is not fractional reserve lending. The biggest problem is banks failed to properly assign risk to the loans they issued, thereby overvaluing the mortgage-backed securities they held.