They went after a couple executives at GS, and the prosecutors totally botched the case (being a bit of a tin-foil hatter, I believe the Powers That Be might have had a hand in the awful prosecution).
But GS is above such scrutiny anyway... why would they break the law when they can just make sure the law is changed to benefit them?
If you're going to prosecute GS, you'd be better off finding a way to prosecute the legislators and regulators who allow GS (and others) to skim the cream off the nation's collective labors.
(I apologize in advance for the lack of paragraph spacing. Slashdot appears not to recognize the carriage return/line feed from this browser/computer?)
Allowed html is displayed below the comment form when you write a comment. Only the the following are allowed on slashdot:
Anti-rush tactics consist of ringing the frigging alarm bell and watching your holed up peasants shoot the hell out your moron opponent's attackers
Meanwhile, your opponent wisely pulls his militia off to harass your workers whenever you try unringing the bell. So while his workers are busy gathering resources to get him to Feudal etc, you are left doing nothing... just awaiting your unavoidable death.
And depending on what race he is playing, he could just finish you off in the Dark Age. I've had it done to me, I've done it to other people. It's quite possible to be sending militia over to attack you faster than you can kill them from your TC.
Our hat [Canada] and our beard [South America] often take umbrage to being lumped in with us)
Silly, South America is not the beard. Mexico is the beard. South America is the torso and tail (you do know the Americas are a bearded mermaid, not a biped, right?)
To be fair, Canada's not really the hat, either. It's more like the hair, with an ugly growth of the skull sticking out (Alaska). The Caribbean islands are the spittle flecks on the side of our spitoon (the Atlantic).
Wait, couldn't we just do a car analogy? It would be a lot less confusing.
Two people scratch their new iPod screens and it's a story here, whereas it literally takes a Dell laptop battery exploding and starting on fire to even be mentioned.
Holy shit, that was years ago. I remember those articles... Do you always hold grudges this long?
Note to self: don't piss off Uberbah. He'll hunt me down in a decade or two to exact revenge upon me.
I'm not saying one should not take human behavior into account, but at least they should get the boundary conditions right, and one of those is that our resources are limited.
That does not mean that additional wealth cannot be created without infusion of additional resources.
I know it's counterintuitive for most people with a "hard science" background... I struggled with it as an undergrad. But economics is not a zero-sum game. I give you $150 and you give me an hour of labor. We've both benefited by the trade. If we are really acting freely, we've both benefited (or we wouldn't have engaged in the trade), so we are both wealthier than we were before. This is the fundamental basis of perpetual economic growth... given a free market* in which to pursue trades, wealth increases as trades are made.
* Free as in some-kind-of-approximation-of-an-ideal-free-market, not free as in no-legal-restrictions-on-activity.
You win the General Internet Douchebag Award for Excellence, in the category of Grammar Douchebaggery in a Tech Forum.
Here's your prize... happy now?
(Besides which, my first sentence is a complete sentence. The direct object is the blockquoted text, the subject is "the man who is too lazy...", the verb is "says".) Perhaps some remedial classwork would be of some benefit?
A centralized model can't react in real time to factors that change by the minute or by the second like human actors can.
That's false, I think. If you already have the algorithm, and the same access to data that the human actors have, then the model is faster than the human actors... provided you have the computational equipment. Humans need to execute decisions, which can take far longer than a sufficiently powerful computer.
The problem is that it'd take trillions or more years to arrive at the Nash equilibrium (which defines your model) for a system as complex as the economy.
What was desirable to us one minute ago may no longer be desirable to us.
What was desirable one minute ago to me may have never been desirable to you!
No formula can ever quantify that value. It's subjective.
And that's a completely different problem, one that is currently being tackled by a number of people. By the way, that's why its dangerous to use economic models developed for commodities when dealing with non-commodity goods, there are a ton of extra inputs into deriving something as "simple" as a demand curve for non-commodity goods.
In other words, Gartner are just trolling, like always.
It's not "just" trolling... some of their "analysis" is bought and paid for. You think companies get into their "leaders quadrant" without laying out the substantial subscription fees to Gartner?
If you can, ask them to pull a tile so you can see under the raised floor. Underfloor cabling (and suspended ceiling cabling for that matter) should be neat, tied, and labelled. Dead cables should be pulled, not left to rot. There has to be sufficient clearance for unrestricted airflow. Cages are better than lying on the floor.
Just want to add... Don't let them pick the tile. They probably get this request frequently enough that they have a "show" tile or two if they are a shoddy organization. Pick one on your tour, as an offhand request that you had "forgotten" until then. If they try to steer you to a specific tile, that tells you they have something to hide, and you need to question everything else they've shown you samples of.
How about food subsidies. I'll send your citizens free food. Would you accept it or would it be better for your citizens to grow their own food? Don't worry, I wouldn't cut off your food supplies and then declare war on you.
Ammunition? Tires? Steel?
You think that security is not accounted for as a cost?
The answer to the security issue is not tariffs. It's subsidization, which is non-directional. Tariffs have a host of problems, both economically and diplomatically.
Yes, when the wage difference is due to social engineering governmental policies. Tariffs balance those differences out, thus creating a free(-er) market.
No, tariffs exacerbate those problems. Sure, you'll see equivalently priced goods in the short run. But this puts even more downward pressure on wages in the poorer country. This also exerts pressure on the other country to NOT bring their manufacturing-related regulations up to snuff.
You don't create an even playing field via protectionist tariffs. That just creates a differently-lopsided playing field that can be taken advantage of.
Can't have a free market, when the players aren't equally free (or at least brought to mostly the same level by tariffs)
No, that is false. You are looking at it only from the importer's perspective. Even then, it is LESS of an even playing field, because that import tariff benefits the importing country. If you want to level the playing field via tariff, then the solution is an export tariff levied by the exporting country to bring prices into line.
Of course, we can't force other countries to raise their standard of living, to increase their indirect labor costs, to make it a true level playing field. So instead, you want to levy protectionist tariffs that will result in retaliatory tariffs? Bad idea. Then we no longer have access to cheaply produced goods, AND we lose export markets. Meanwhile the rest of the world gets to take advantage of more beneficial trade relationships, while we get left behind.
As far as a real answer, I don't think you'll like the only one that makes sense from an economic point of view: labor costs need to equalized across nations. This means we need a combination, in some proportion of:
1. Reduced labor costs in the US (i.e., reduced wages and other costs) and 2. Increased labor costs in the rest of the world.
#2 is going to take many generations to happen (and even then, the global labor market is competitive, and I don't think it will ever be equal everywhere). So we're left with #1, which is painful but necessary if we want any kind of manufacturing in the US.
Not to get into too much detail... but tariffs are not the answer. They weren't the answer when Hoover tried them with Smoot-Hawley, they weren't the answer when Bush instated them on shrimp, steel, and lumber (which, not incidentally, precipitated another decline in the value of the dollar, reducing our ability to import goods).
Tariffs are bad from an economic perspective, whether you're a Keynesian, Austrian, or otherwise. Even Krugman believes tariffs are good only if they are unidirectional -- and guess what? China does not ignore tariffs against China. The US tire tariff against China has been met with announcements of fewer Chinese imports of US chicken and auto parts.
To make a long post short, tariffs don't make economic sense. They have some short-term benefits, but in the long run, they result in a weaker home currency, fewer exports, and an inability to take advantage of economic growth in other countries.
That's another lazy-bastard mistake. Speaking of lazy bastards, I would not be the least bit surprised if the people who make these mistakes are more likely to be obese than the general population. Sloth is sloth, whether it's mental or physical.
Says the man who is too lazy to spell out "that is" and "it is".
Glass houses and all that.
You do know that when you write a grammar troll, you should ensure your own post is free from grammatical error?
(Of course, you also need to seed your post with one, and only one, intentional and blatant grammar error in order to confound other grammar nazi's.)
I have never seen an economist or "libertarian" give a convincing argument against protectionist tariffs.
Then you haven't bothered looking.
or ignores the reality that the reason tariffs exist is to protect a nation's industry against the predatory practices of potentially hostile nation-states.
Maybe you just like alliteration... but that statement is in no way true.
First, "predatory" is a loaded adjective, and is meaningless in terms of economic activity. Is it "predatory" for people in one country to work for lower wages than the people in another country? Because that's the kind of "predatory" situation that is stopped by tariffs.
Second, "potentially-hostile" is ridiculous. All states are potentially hostile.
At any rate, if you want reasons why protectionist tariffs are not the answer, try google. I'll get you started with this thought, however:
When one actor institutes tariffs, the typical reaction is for trading partners to assume retaliatory tariffs. In the end, everyone suffers because of reduced trade volume -- except for trading partners without tariffs against each other. They make out like bandits.
Up until the late 70s, the big 3 made craploads of money by shaping demand. They were able to do this again in the 90s and early 00s. This method had problems only when gas prices got high, and when inflation made interest rates very painful for borrowers.
Advertising takes up a trivial amount of bandwidth that is inconsequential to most users, even in a metered bandwidth situation.
Are you sure about that? Have you seen the amount of video in ads on major sites when adblocking isn't used? It's getting worse, not better. More videos. Longer videos. Higher definition videos.
Also keep in mind that ads can be text-only
Those are trivial, and thus immaterial to the discussion. Let's stick to discussing ads that have an impact on usage volume.
My browsing habits may be atypical (and are definitely anecdotal)... but far more video is served to me by ad servers than is viewed by me in the normal course of my browsing (when I'm not using ad block -- when I use my wife's PC).
I'm curious if there are any sources to check how much traffic as ad-related, and how much not. I'd be willing to bet that volume due to ads is not insignificant... and I'd also be willing to bet that as time goes on, it will become worse. Combined with metered usage, I see the utility of ad blocking services increasing.
Unless there's something seriously wrong with the system, this capping and metering situation will get better, not worse for consumers.
There is something seriously wrong with the system. Telcos and major ISPs get to buy legislation. A metered usage system is probably the best situation for consumers, though. It allows people to pay for the service they use. Good for the telcos (since then revenues respond to increased usage), good for most consumers (who won't need to subsidize heavy users as much).
This feeds into my point. If people pay for usage, then ad blocking becomes very similar to P2P. One is avoiding paying for unwanted services, the other is avoiding paying for wanted services.
At any rate, I think tiered or metered pricing based on usage is where we'll end up in the next decade or two. This is why I think ad blocking will become more prevalent.
Seriously, if you seriously think ad blocking has any significant effect on the advertising industry's bottom line, you need to get some perspective.
And if you think ad blocking doesn't have a significant effect on certain content provider's bottom lines, you need to get some perspective.
Hell, look at slashdot. It's a special case, because so many of its viewers use ad blocking... but you can't tell me with a straight face that ad blocking doesn't have *some* impact on its bottom line.
And just like p2p filesharing (which was originally only big in the tech crowd), ad blocking will continue to grow into the maintstream. Especially if usage caps by ISPs get more draconian (and even more so if we see metered usage popping up again).
Hey! Anything involving tentacles is seen as a win by the Slashdot crowd, imo.
A giant win for the Slashdot crowd, a giant loss for mankind.
Then [slashdotkind] would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.
Like it or not, if you don't do things our way, we'll take our money elsewhere.
And yet... people don't. I remember how many people said they'd only pay for cable TV if it had no commercials. Now most of those people are paying for cable TV, and watching commercials.
The truth of the matter? If you're not a major pain in the ass, we'll pay out the nose.
The difference here is that it's not about taking money elsewhere... it's about getting the same thing, usually even better (no DRM, no unskippable crap), for free.
For-pay content providers need to add value if they expect people to pay them. For me, having 250 channels available for passive browsing, with the sporting events I want to watch live, is enough. Others have different criteria.
I'm kind of rambling here, but my point is that people are stupid and resistant to change. The content providers screwed up when they didn't find a way to make a couple generations used to the idea of getting all their content from them. Now they're up the creek without a paddle, trying to survive off of the people who are accustomed to paying their cable bill no matter what.
Slashdot Mirror
They went after a couple executives at GS, and the prosecutors totally botched the case (being a bit of a tin-foil hatter, I believe the Powers That Be might have had a hand in the awful prosecution).
But GS is above such scrutiny anyway... why would they break the law when they can just make sure the law is changed to benefit them?
If you're going to prosecute GS, you'd be better off finding a way to prosecute the legislators and regulators who allow GS (and others) to skim the cream off the nation's collective labors.
Allowed html is displayed below the comment form when you write a comment. Only the the following are allowed on slashdot:
Meanwhile, your opponent wisely pulls his militia off to harass your workers whenever you try unringing the bell. So while his workers are busy gathering resources to get him to Feudal etc, you are left doing nothing... just awaiting your unavoidable death.
And depending on what race he is playing, he could just finish you off in the Dark Age. I've had it done to me, I've done it to other people. It's quite possible to be sending militia over to attack you faster than you can kill them from your TC.
Silly, South America is not the beard. Mexico is the beard. South America is the torso and tail (you do know the Americas are a bearded mermaid, not a biped, right?)
To be fair, Canada's not really the hat, either. It's more like the hair, with an ugly growth of the skull sticking out (Alaska). The Caribbean islands are the spittle flecks on the side of our spitoon (the Atlantic).
Wait, couldn't we just do a car analogy? It would be a lot less confusing.
Wow, that's an awfully prickly bug you've got up your ass, how do you manage it?
I got your point. I felt it to be way off base.
But I DID find it amusing that you picked two examples from a few years ago. Sorry you lack the capacity to understand MY point.
XBox 360 became profitable in 2006. Not sure if they've maintained profitability since then with the price drop... but I'd wager they have.
Holy shit, that was years ago. I remember those articles... Do you always hold grudges this long?
Note to self: don't piss off Uberbah. He'll hunt me down in a decade or two to exact revenge upon me.
FWIW... just because someone was awarded a Nobel Prize doesn't make their ideas inviolate.
Even Rothbard heavily criticized Friedman (not to mention Krugman et al).
That does not mean that additional wealth cannot be created without infusion of additional resources.
I know it's counterintuitive for most people with a "hard science" background... I struggled with it as an undergrad. But economics is not a zero-sum game. I give you $150 and you give me an hour of labor. We've both benefited by the trade. If we are really acting freely, we've both benefited (or we wouldn't have engaged in the trade), so we are both wealthier than we were before. This is the fundamental basis of perpetual economic growth... given a free market* in which to pursue trades, wealth increases as trades are made.
* Free as in some-kind-of-approximation-of-an-ideal-free-market, not free as in no-legal-restrictions-on-activity.
OK, I give up, anonymous coward. You win.
You win the General Internet Douchebag Award for Excellence, in the category of Grammar Douchebaggery in a Tech Forum.
Here's your prize... happy now?
(Besides which, my first sentence is a complete sentence. The direct object is the blockquoted text, the subject is "the man who is too lazy...", the verb is "says".) Perhaps some remedial classwork would be of some benefit?
That's false, I think. If you already have the algorithm, and the same access to data that the human actors have, then the model is faster than the human actors... provided you have the computational equipment. Humans need to execute decisions, which can take far longer than a sufficiently powerful computer.
The problem is that it'd take trillions or more years to arrive at the Nash equilibrium (which defines your model) for a system as complex as the economy.
And that's a completely different problem, one that is currently being tackled by a number of people. By the way, that's why its dangerous to use economic models developed for commodities when dealing with non-commodity goods, there are a ton of extra inputs into deriving something as "simple" as a demand curve for non-commodity goods.
It's not "just" trolling... some of their "analysis" is bought and paid for. You think companies get into their "leaders quadrant" without laying out the substantial subscription fees to Gartner?
Just want to add... Don't let them pick the tile. They probably get this request frequently enough that they have a "show" tile or two if they are a shoddy organization. Pick one on your tour, as an offhand request that you had "forgotten" until then. If they try to steer you to a specific tile, that tells you they have something to hide, and you need to question everything else they've shown you samples of.
[paranoid and loving it]
You think that security is not accounted for as a cost?
The answer to the security issue is not tariffs. It's subsidization, which is non-directional. Tariffs have a host of problems, both economically and diplomatically.
No, tariffs exacerbate those problems. Sure, you'll see equivalently priced goods in the short run. But this puts even more downward pressure on wages in the poorer country. This also exerts pressure on the other country to NOT bring their manufacturing-related regulations up to snuff.
You don't create an even playing field via protectionist tariffs. That just creates a differently-lopsided playing field that can be taken advantage of.
No, that is false. You are looking at it only from the importer's perspective. Even then, it is LESS of an even playing field, because that import tariff benefits the importing country. If you want to level the playing field via tariff, then the solution is an export tariff levied by the exporting country to bring prices into line.
Of course, we can't force other countries to raise their standard of living, to increase their indirect labor costs, to make it a true level playing field. So instead, you want to levy protectionist tariffs that will result in retaliatory tariffs? Bad idea. Then we no longer have access to cheaply produced goods, AND we lose export markets. Meanwhile the rest of the world gets to take advantage of more beneficial trade relationships, while we get left behind.
As far as a real answer, I don't think you'll like the only one that makes sense from an economic point of view: labor costs need to equalized across nations. This means we need a combination, in some proportion of:
1. Reduced labor costs in the US (i.e., reduced wages and other costs) and
2. Increased labor costs in the rest of the world.
#2 is going to take many generations to happen (and even then, the global labor market is competitive, and I don't think it will ever be equal everywhere). So we're left with #1, which is painful but necessary if we want any kind of manufacturing in the US.
Not to get into too much detail... but tariffs are not the answer. They weren't the answer when Hoover tried them with Smoot-Hawley, they weren't the answer when Bush instated them on shrimp, steel, and lumber (which, not incidentally, precipitated another decline in the value of the dollar, reducing our ability to import goods).
Tariffs are bad from an economic perspective, whether you're a Keynesian, Austrian, or otherwise. Even Krugman believes tariffs are good only if they are unidirectional -- and guess what? China does not ignore tariffs against China. The US tire tariff against China has been met with announcements of fewer Chinese imports of US chicken and auto parts.
To make a long post short, tariffs don't make economic sense. They have some short-term benefits, but in the long run, they result in a weaker home currency, fewer exports, and an inability to take advantage of economic growth in other countries.
Says the man who is too lazy to spell out "that is" and "it is".
Glass houses and all that.
You do know that when you write a grammar troll, you should ensure your own post is free from grammatical error?
(Of course, you also need to seed your post with one, and only one, intentional and blatant grammar error in order to confound other grammar nazi's.)
Then you haven't bothered looking.
Maybe you just like alliteration... but that statement is in no way true.
First, "predatory" is a loaded adjective, and is meaningless in terms of economic activity. Is it "predatory" for people in one country to work for lower wages than the people in another country? Because that's the kind of "predatory" situation that is stopped by tariffs.
Second, "potentially-hostile" is ridiculous. All states are potentially hostile.
At any rate, if you want reasons why protectionist tariffs are not the answer, try google. I'll get you started with this thought, however:
When one actor institutes tariffs, the typical reaction is for trading partners to assume retaliatory tariffs. In the end, everyone suffers because of reduced trade volume -- except for trading partners without tariffs against each other. They make out like bandits.
Up until the late 70s, the big 3 made craploads of money by shaping demand. They were able to do this again in the 90s and early 00s. This method had problems only when gas prices got high, and when inflation made interest rates very painful for borrowers.
Some guesses:
An insane bicyclist
An insane paraplegic
An insane clown posse (they are all riding in one small car)
Catatonia
Now that the snark is done:
Running amok is characterized by rage. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off isn't the same as running amok.
The more you know....
Are you sure about that? Have you seen the amount of video in ads on major sites when adblocking isn't used? It's getting worse, not better. More videos. Longer videos. Higher definition videos.
Those are trivial, and thus immaterial to the discussion. Let's stick to discussing ads that have an impact on usage volume.
My browsing habits may be atypical (and are definitely anecdotal)... but far more video is served to me by ad servers than is viewed by me in the normal course of my browsing (when I'm not using ad block -- when I use my wife's PC).
I'm curious if there are any sources to check how much traffic as ad-related, and how much not. I'd be willing to bet that volume due to ads is not insignificant... and I'd also be willing to bet that as time goes on, it will become worse. Combined with metered usage, I see the utility of ad blocking services increasing.
Thanks for correcting me. Obviously, I did not recall clearly.
There is something seriously wrong with the system. Telcos and major ISPs get to buy legislation. A metered usage system is probably the best situation for consumers, though. It allows people to pay for the service they use. Good for the telcos (since then revenues respond to increased usage), good for most consumers (who won't need to subsidize heavy users as much).
This feeds into my point. If people pay for usage, then ad blocking becomes very similar to P2P. One is avoiding paying for unwanted services, the other is avoiding paying for wanted services.
At any rate, I think tiered or metered pricing based on usage is where we'll end up in the next decade or two. This is why I think ad blocking will become more prevalent.
And if you think ad blocking doesn't have a significant effect on certain content provider's bottom lines, you need to get some perspective.
Hell, look at slashdot. It's a special case, because so many of its viewers use ad blocking... but you can't tell me with a straight face that ad blocking doesn't have *some* impact on its bottom line.
And just like p2p filesharing (which was originally only big in the tech crowd), ad blocking will continue to grow into the maintstream. Especially if usage caps by ISPs get more draconian (and even more so if we see metered usage popping up again).
A giant win for the Slashdot crowd, a giant loss for mankind.
Cthulhu fhtagn!
And yet... people don't. I remember how many people said they'd only pay for cable TV if it had no commercials. Now most of those people are paying for cable TV, and watching commercials.
The truth of the matter? If you're not a major pain in the ass, we'll pay out the nose.
The difference here is that it's not about taking money elsewhere... it's about getting the same thing, usually even better (no DRM, no unskippable crap), for free.
For-pay content providers need to add value if they expect people to pay them. For me, having 250 channels available for passive browsing, with the sporting events I want to watch live, is enough. Others have different criteria.
I'm kind of rambling here, but my point is that people are stupid and resistant to change. The content providers screwed up when they didn't find a way to make a couple generations used to the idea of getting all their content from them. Now they're up the creek without a paddle, trying to survive off of the people who are accustomed to paying their cable bill no matter what.