Now, given that the government taking peoples money, dividing it up, and then funding enterprises with it... that's communism in action.
No. That's socialism in action, or perhaps even fascism, depending on the rest of the context.
In a communist system, the government can't take people's money, because the government is the people, and all money belongs to all people. Sure, this never worked out right in practice... but you've got to be very careful when discussing communism as an economic system, since improper use of the terminology really screws things up.
A rich municipality ultimately funds a poor one. That's communism
Again, you're confused on what communism is. That is socialism in a nutshell. Communism is defined by who makes economic decisions, not by how wealth is distributed/redistributed.
On the plus side, the GOOG example shows that eventually competition comes along... the downside is that two competitors are much better at locking out threats to their hegemony than one alone is.
What kind of geek are you? How can you not look at the sky and want to *go* there?
A political geek, an economics geek, or a geek of a different category of interest?
C'mon, there are more flavors of geek than there are flavors of Baskin Robbins. If I were the right kind of geek, I would even try to catalogue all the types.
Never mind that a geek might be claustrophobic or even agoraphobic, both of which might preclude space travel.
But then, maybe the Feds under a Democratic Admin will say "nuh uh!" and kill the deal...
I'm cynical today, but it bears thinking about the fact that the same money that elects Republicans elects Democrats. Yet another reason to support someone besides the ass and elephant.
And here's something to nibble on: anyone who supports Ron Paul supports letting this merger happen, consequences be damned. Because, y'know, the free market will fix the problem... a competitor will rise like Phoenix from the ashes of Yahoo. Not to get off too far on a tangent, but now it appears we're down to two main competitors in the IT world... how long will it be before we are always forced with choosing the lesser of two evils? Is this really the optimal situation? We have it in politics, we're getting it in major IT players.
The only thing I worry about here is if Yahoo just sort of "melts" under Microsoft's ownership, the same way Excite did when it got bought.
"melts"... or "is extinguished"?
Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but I can't shake the feeling that MS is more interested in narrowing the competitive field than in acquiring Yahoo properties -- though search is something they could use Yahoo's help with.
Controlling the rivers has been traditionally (as far as I recall, anyway) seen as evidence of controlling the land, and thus of being a legitimate government
Well, as far as I've read, vicious floods or droughts were seen as signs of disfavor from the powers-that-be.
So lack of floods or droughts is a sign of divine favor. Regardless of what good works an empire can achieve, a few years of horrible floods leads to revolution (or coup with popular support).
Of course, one could say that the real issue is the government's lack of response to the flooding/drought etc, or the lack of preparation for the same -- but typically the superstitious logic sells the best when trying to organize popular sentiment against the people in power. Or so I've read -- but who knows how accurate some of the "histories" I've read were.
Well, not exactly my toilet seat, but the little Eepc I have sellotaped to the bottom of it, so I can my family's fecal throughput throughout the summer.
So you can $VERB your family's fecal matter?
I'm intrigued. What is the missing word? This is the best Madlibs I've seen in a while.
monitor? record? upload? fileshare?
Please toss us a bone and let us know exactly *what* you have that Eepc do to your family's logjams. Thanks in advance.
Perhaps it says something in the article? Not that I can see... (Though it does say, 15 minute battery life! WTF is the point of it then?)
15 mins + magnifying glass + neighbor's dog crapping in my yard == win.
Except for the smell of burning fur.
Seriously, the purpose is to prevent youths from becoming sociopaths. My friend grew up burning ants on the stoop with a magnifying glass. My friend was severely disappointed that this did not work in the morning and evening, which is what drove him to torturing rats with a hacksaw in the basement during those hours. If I, er, my friend, had one of these flashlights, he could have burnt ants at any time -- thus he never would have entered the domain of mammalian limb removal, which never would have escalated to what he did to those hobos under the bridge that night.
In order to handle SMS it relies on capability in the network and the price is driven by the network capability, not by the system which uses it.
No, the price is driven by what people are willing to pay and by what the competitors are charging. Since it's an oligopoly, prices are "set" through a series of games the providers play, just like with airfare pricing.
The minimim thresholds are set by the network capability, but above that, the only factors are competition and the demand curve.
Shipping 80,000 units to 80,000 locations is also simple, though the volume is orders of magnitude higher.
The problem is that they did not appropriately plan and acquire/devote resources to distribution. Maybe they didn't think about the extra cost associated with tracking and distributing those orders.
There is no reason why distribution of pre-orders should present any kind of challenge to a company. This is not on-demand shipping, or just-in-time delivery. This is simply basic distribution scaled up.
Maybe I'm a bit harsh, but there is simply no excuse for someone to promise deliverables without a plan to deliver them. Did they not expect so many orders?
The sound-bite version of this idea is that, if the poorer 5/6-ths of the world's population became entrepreneurial, and found better, cheaper ways to use our limited supply of natural resources, those of us at the top of the pyramid would also benefit. In this respect, capitalism (as we know it at least) would seek to do good and do well at the same time.
Soo... "trickle-up" economics. That's gonna be a hard sell to all the Reaganites who hold power in the US.
That's a nice theory, but analysis shows that most people continue to use the toll roads during peak hours, since convenience is more important to commuters than avoiding the expense.
So the toll makes out even, or slightly ahead at best. While the tax payers have to pick up the tab to repair the surface streets that are now getting heavier traffic because of increased pricing on toll roads.
This has been studied extensively in NJ, and while NJ may be unique (I don't think it is), past toll hikes have had a very small impact on secondary road usage during peak hours in the short term, and almost no impact in the long term. Toll revenues do increase, not by the ratio of the new toll to the old, but close to it. In the long run, the revenue increase approaches that ratio during peak hours. Off-peak is a different story, but then drivers can choose to avoid tolls without much inconvenience.
Note, however, that even at minimum wage, it would take a far higher than proposed toll increase to make the increase in tolls larger than the value of the time lost by taking secondary roads at peak times.
I've seen SOX implemented well, and I've seen it implemented poorly. It's possible to be SOX compliant without bogging down the dev teams, but as you alluded to, there were definitely some companies that over-reacted in a knee-jerk fashion and thought they'd better document every little thing six ways to Sunday in order to avoid the appearance of potential non-compliance.
It's not just hardware, BTW -- software is|can be a financial asset as well, and that's where you're most likely to lose track of $$$ of assets. Particularly for IP of companies, since cost of production of software is one method of valuation prior to release. As you rack up the dev hours on a project, those are deferred costs that don't get realized until you start stating revenue (sales) for the product -- and that doesn't get recognized until you begin to deliver product. Basically, poor track of dev costs means that companies can easily misstate their assets, deferred costs, and, eventually, P&L.
A pretty well-known game software co. made this mistake, and didn't allocate expenses across projects properly. When the relevant project were released in different quarters, those deferred expenses were stated in incorrect periods, thus understating expenses one quarter and overstating them the next. This led to investigation by the SEC, delisting from NASDAQ, and a trial for the exec(s) -- particularly since one of the execs in question dumped shares during the quarter where expenses were understated (thus profits overstated).
The only way to ensure that expenses are allocated properly across projects is to document them properly so there is an auditable trail. There are multiple ways of doing this that are SOX compliant, and I'm sorry you had to work under an inefficient way.
This doesn't even touch the implications of different types of dev costs -- bug fixes of deployed projects are handled differently than bugfixes in projects still under development, both are handled differently depending on whether the software is for internal use or for sale.
In summary, yeah, compliance can be a bitch. But it's there for a reason, and it doesn't always have to be backbreaking.
Heh. From the beancounting side, IT departments are notorious for lack of controls over financial assets, which impact legal filings, taxes, etc. From experience in mutliple organizations (none of whom were retailers, I should mention), the greatest source of preventable loss was IT.
I, for one, am grateful for SOX for giving me the backup I need to get IT departments in compliance. It's unacceptable when an IT department "loses track of" assets valued more than their annual salaries, and it's even more unacceptable when IT departments lack the controls to ensure that they don't have those problems.
Also, SOX does include provisions for making individuals liable for corporate malfeasance -- those who sign off on the published financials have more than their career at stake now. This is important because their salaries are so high -- so what if they get fired when they are sitting on $100 million for five years work? Threaten them with jail time, and it's a different story.
Sorry, but that's the rules I've learned to play by on Slashdot. Particularly since you listed a couple sources that don't support what you were saying...
I can't comment much on my understanding of the situation for a couple reasons, but if you can't source something as vague and negative as that, I can't put any trust in it.
Try reading those articles again. The one from 2005 I didn't bother reading, as it's old. The one from Nov 2007 is just a collection of quotes, basically, from clients of Oracle who are saying "We don't know how they're going to do it, and it would be good to know since it affects our business plans. It's probably pretty complex". It's just a fluff piece from Forbes to fill whitespace.
In other words, you didn't recently read that they're having trouble. You recently read that some people have speculated that it will be difficult.
Such a pity that so many people think Hitch-Hikers guide is just a book, and don't know about the Radio show from which it came.
Heh. Classic. My favorite is Fit the Fifth, the Christmas episode -- not that it has anything to do with Christmas.
All of the radio shows (including the later seasons which were based on the novels, not the other way around) are now available on CD. Well worth the purchase, particularly if you can find them used.
Evolution has been proven time after time, from Darwin's finches over selective breeding, resistant strains of diseases all the way to artificial intelligence programs.
s/proven/demonstrated
Because, otherwise, you're asking to fall into a trap when discussing this with an ID freak. Evidence of != proof of, and to say that your examples "prove" evolution is true is akin to saying that the complexity of life "proves" ID.
The FCC's power has grown far beyond it's original intention (regulating airwaves frequencies in the U.S.). Apparently they only do things in response to complaints. Or at least that's how it once was. But the really fucked up thing is 99% of complaints come from one organization.
So let's start a drive to file complaints with the FCC that we don't hear enough profanity during dinnertime, and that we don't see enough T&A over the breakfast table during the morning news.
Maybe if we get enough complaints in, they'll have to take action to force the networks to comply with our demands.
I'm out to dinner with a State Trooper buddy of mine & our wives & kids, and some kids try to run out on their bill.
My buddy sees it, sees how the restaurant staff handles it, and then intervenes just to give the kids a scare so maybe they won't do it again. Flashes the badge, gives them some crap, makes them pay up and promise never to do it again, gets their home addresses and phone numbers, etc... the kids (ages around 17-18) were practically crying.
Anyway, the point is that he was acting in an official capacity even when he was just sitting there observing, before he intervened. If people have the right to record him whenever he's acting in an official capacity, then that pretty much covers his entire waking time.
Just playing a bit of devil's advocate, since I think I've made it clear where I stand...
Slashdot Mirror
In a communist system, the government can't take people's money, because the government is the people, and all money belongs to all people. Sure, this never worked out right in practice... but you've got to be very careful when discussing communism as an economic system, since improper use of the terminology really screws things up.
Again, you're confused on what communism is. That is socialism in a nutshell. Communism is defined by who makes economic decisions, not by how wealth is distributed/redistributed.
Market price != assessed value for taxes.
Assessed value tends to be much lower than market price.
Ron Jeremy Jameson, is that you?
The big question is how many carat-watts his Pièce de résistance (or perhaps Pièce de impedance?) can carry.
On the plus side, the GOOG example shows that eventually competition comes along... the downside is that two competitors are much better at locking out threats to their hegemony than one alone is.
A political geek, an economics geek, or a geek of a different category of interest?
C'mon, there are more flavors of geek than there are flavors of Baskin Robbins. If I were the right kind of geek, I would even try to catalogue all the types.
Never mind that a geek might be claustrophobic or even agoraphobic, both of which might preclude space travel.
/Today I'm an *argumentative* geek.
And here's something to nibble on: anyone who supports Ron Paul supports letting this merger happen, consequences be damned. Because, y'know, the free market will fix the problem... a competitor will rise like Phoenix from the ashes of Yahoo. Not to get off too far on a tangent, but now it appears we're down to two main competitors in the IT world... how long will it be before we are always forced with choosing the lesser of two evils? Is this really the optimal situation? We have it in politics, we're getting it in major IT players.
Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but I can't shake the feeling that MS is more interested in narrowing the competitive field than in acquiring Yahoo properties -- though search is something they could use Yahoo's help with.
So lack of floods or droughts is a sign of divine favor. Regardless of what good works an empire can achieve, a few years of horrible floods leads to revolution (or coup with popular support).
Of course, one could say that the real issue is the government's lack of response to the flooding/drought etc, or the lack of preparation for the same -- but typically the superstitious logic sells the best when trying to organize popular sentiment against the people in power. Or so I've read -- but who knows how accurate some of the "histories" I've read were.
I'm intrigued. What is the missing word? This is the best Madlibs I've seen in a while.
monitor?
record?
upload?
fileshare?
Please toss us a bone and let us know exactly *what* you have that Eepc do to your family's logjams. Thanks in advance.
Except for the smell of burning fur.
Seriously, the purpose is to prevent youths from becoming sociopaths. My friend grew up burning ants on the stoop with a magnifying glass. My friend was severely disappointed that this did not work in the morning and evening, which is what drove him to torturing rats with a hacksaw in the basement during those hours. If I, er, my friend, had one of these flashlights, he could have burnt ants at any time -- thus he never would have entered the domain of mammalian limb removal, which never would have escalated to what he did to those hobos under the bridge that night.
/channeling Tim Burton
The minimim thresholds are set by the network capability, but above that, the only factors are competition and the demand curve.
Shipping one unit to one location is simple.
Shipping 100 units to 100 locations is simple.
Shipping 80,000 units to 80,000 locations is also simple, though the volume is orders of magnitude higher.
The problem is that they did not appropriately plan and acquire/devote resources to distribution. Maybe they didn't think about the extra cost associated with tracking and distributing those orders.
There is no reason why distribution of pre-orders should present any kind of challenge to a company. This is not on-demand shipping, or just-in-time delivery. This is simply basic distribution scaled up.
Maybe I'm a bit harsh, but there is simply no excuse for someone to promise deliverables without a plan to deliver them. Did they not expect so many orders?
This has been studied extensively in NJ, and while NJ may be unique (I don't think it is), past toll hikes have had a very small impact on secondary road usage during peak hours in the short term, and almost no impact in the long term. Toll revenues do increase, not by the ratio of the new toll to the old, but close to it. In the long run, the revenue increase approaches that ratio during peak hours. Off-peak is a different story, but then drivers can choose to avoid tolls without much inconvenience.
Note, however, that even at minimum wage, it would take a far higher than proposed toll increase to make the increase in tolls larger than the value of the time lost by taking secondary roads at peak times.
I've seen SOX implemented well, and I've seen it implemented poorly. It's possible to be SOX compliant without bogging down the dev teams, but as you alluded to, there were definitely some companies that over-reacted in a knee-jerk fashion and thought they'd better document every little thing six ways to Sunday in order to avoid the appearance of potential non-compliance.
It's not just hardware, BTW -- software is|can be a financial asset as well, and that's where you're most likely to lose track of $$$ of assets. Particularly for IP of companies, since cost of production of software is one method of valuation prior to release. As you rack up the dev hours on a project, those are deferred costs that don't get realized until you start stating revenue (sales) for the product -- and that doesn't get recognized until you begin to deliver product. Basically, poor track of dev costs means that companies can easily misstate their assets, deferred costs, and, eventually, P&L.
A pretty well-known game software co. made this mistake, and didn't allocate expenses across projects properly. When the relevant project were released in different quarters, those deferred expenses were stated in incorrect periods, thus understating expenses one quarter and overstating them the next. This led to investigation by the SEC, delisting from NASDAQ, and a trial for the exec(s) -- particularly since one of the execs in question dumped shares during the quarter where expenses were understated (thus profits overstated).
The only way to ensure that expenses are allocated properly across projects is to document them properly so there is an auditable trail. There are multiple ways of doing this that are SOX compliant, and I'm sorry you had to work under an inefficient way.
This doesn't even touch the implications of different types of dev costs -- bug fixes of deployed projects are handled differently than bugfixes in projects still under development, both are handled differently depending on whether the software is for internal use or for sale.
In summary, yeah, compliance can be a bitch. But it's there for a reason, and it doesn't always have to be backbreaking.
Heh. From the beancounting side, IT departments are notorious for lack of controls over financial assets, which impact legal filings, taxes, etc. From experience in mutliple organizations (none of whom were retailers, I should mention), the greatest source of preventable loss was IT.
I, for one, am grateful for SOX for giving me the backup I need to get IT departments in compliance. It's unacceptable when an IT department "loses track of" assets valued more than their annual salaries, and it's even more unacceptable when IT departments lack the controls to ensure that they don't have those problems.
Also, SOX does include provisions for making individuals liable for corporate malfeasance -- those who sign off on the published financials have more than their career at stake now. This is important because their salaries are so high -- so what if they get fired when they are sitting on $100 million for five years work? Threaten them with jail time, and it's a different story.
No source no trust.
Sorry, but that's the rules I've learned to play by on Slashdot. Particularly since you listed a couple sources that don't support what you were saying...
I can't comment much on my understanding of the situation for a couple reasons, but if you can't source something as vague and negative as that, I can't put any trust in it.
Try reading those articles again. The one from 2005 I didn't bother reading, as it's old. The one from Nov 2007 is just a collection of quotes, basically, from clients of Oracle who are saying "We don't know how they're going to do it, and it would be good to know since it affects our business plans. It's probably pretty complex". It's just a fluff piece from Forbes to fill whitespace.
In other words, you didn't recently read that they're having trouble. You recently read that some people have speculated that it will be difficult.
All of the radio shows (including the later seasons which were based on the novels, not the other way around) are now available on CD. Well worth the purchase, particularly if you can find them used.
Then I re-read it... you wrote 10, not ten.
Nice.
Because, otherwise, you're asking to fall into a trap when discussing this with an ID freak. Evidence of != proof of, and to say that your examples "prove" evolution is true is akin to saying that the complexity of life "proves" ID.
Maybe if we get enough complaints in, they'll have to take action to force the networks to comply with our demands.
Anarchy == capitalism.
Government is in the only restriction on capitalism we have.
I'll agree, but it's a fine line.
I'm out to dinner with a State Trooper buddy of mine & our wives & kids, and some kids try to run out on their bill.
My buddy sees it, sees how the restaurant staff handles it, and then intervenes just to give the kids a scare so maybe they won't do it again. Flashes the badge, gives them some crap, makes them pay up and promise never to do it again, gets their home addresses and phone numbers, etc... the kids (ages around 17-18) were practically crying.
Anyway, the point is that he was acting in an official capacity even when he was just sitting there observing, before he intervened. If people have the right to record him whenever he's acting in an official capacity, then that pretty much covers his entire waking time.
Just playing a bit of devil's advocate, since I think I've made it clear where I stand...