This is a short, concise memo that summarizes problems and solutions like so:
Dear Congressman Jerry Mander,
I'd really like you to do something about/., it has many problems such as:
Crappy editing
Tub Girl
Goatse.cx
The problems outlined here affect a large portion of our district, and I'd like to suggest that your office propose legislation enacting the following:
Certification of/. Editors
Filters built into the comment system for known offensive content
First the short-seller sells the stock in question, without actually having any in their portfolio. Typically in looking at your brokerage account the position would be listed as -X shares of the stock. The actual shares in question are "borrowed" from other accounts temporarily. This selling activity initially places downward pressure on the share price, which can become significant if short-selling becomes intense. If you look here, for example, you can see that about 5.5% of the existing float for SCOX has been sold short. That's significantly higher than the figures for MSFT, IBM, and SUNW, which are all around 1%.
Once the stock in question has fallen, the short seller then buys back the shares at the lower price. Their profit, minus transaction fees, is the difference between the initial sell and the final purchase. Usually the short-seller has control over when they'd like to buy back the shares, but sometimes in rare circumstances they can have their positions called in, or more commonly, an unexpected upturn in the company's outlook causes a rise in the share price. In order to minimize their losses, the short sellers rush in to cover their positions, which puts additional upward pressure on the stock, which becomes a "short squeeze."
Interesting indeed. Insiders have sold ~125,000 shares since late June (with no purchases), when it poked through the $10 mark for the first time in over two years. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of SCO's future from their own leadership!
I'm really glad to see the Old Dominion Soccer League (ODSL) taking a kick at this. Hopefully they'll have the balls hang tough with SCO and score one for Linux lovers everywhere!
I was tempted to blow this off as the product of one's own personal perspective, but I did find a recent example of what you're talking about here.
What would be appropriate would be to have some editorial standards (guffaw!) here that whenever an officeholder is mentioned in an article, their party affiliation and district (i.e., R-MA) is listed alongside.
Purchasing a business-class or first-class ticket isn't price discrimination, but charging more for the same ticket on a same-day round trip as opposed to a "leave Friday, return Sunday" is.
Utilitarians would also argue along those lines for a massive reduction in trade barriers, and in large part they'd be right (IMHO). The decision on such matters, however, does extend beyond dollars and cents. There are other factors (social stability, national security, cultural tradition, etc.) that don't fit into the economic model yet play a role in setting policy.
I can't recall the user, but someone here at/. has the sig along the lines of, "all models are wrong, some are useful." A very good thing to keep in mind...
The air travel example is one where the airlines don't have to know anything about the traveller. They use the travel dates for the round trip. If the trip crosses over a weekend, it's more likely to be a vacationer. If both flights are occuring within the same work week, it's more likely to be business travel.
Price fixing is when multiple suppliers get together and artificially raise the price of an item to the market as a whole. Price descrimination is a different animal entirely.
I suspect that this field will become increasingly important in the years ahead. One problem (from the supplier side) in the current economy is the lack of pricing power available to boost earnings. Partly due to influences like the availability of product information on the web, consumers are more willing and able to find the best deal on a given item, rather than just march down to the store and pay MSRP.
People also have to realize that price descrimination is and has been all around us for a very long time. Coupons, "daily specials", business-class travel, etc. are all examples of this. There should be plenty of opportunities to increase price descrimination without impacting customer privacy (i.e. the temperature-sensitive drink machine in the article).
Basically this looks like they're beefing up their data controls, and centralizing existing data - as opposed to invasively gathering more data and infringing on privacy. What exactly is the problem, then???
A similarly incompetent information regime already exists today - the credit reporting agencies. Considering how much private information they store, and how pervasively it's used, I'm amazed at how poor the data quality is. Basically they pushed the data integrity issue off to the consumer, who usually discovers the problem only after getting turned down for a loan....
An open standard could open up a huge market for 3rd-party products and accessories, much like the PC standard did for computer components. This is exactly the sort of thing that could really boost cell phone technology, by allowing smaller, more nimble companies to roll out new products into a broad market.
Of course, it's so good to think of, I can't imagine that it would actually happen!
Exactly - the old 90's mantra of trying to capture an emerging internet market in the early stages actually seems to hold some value here. Apple is the only service to show success with the mass market, and the opportunity in the Windows arena is gigantic compared to their existing business...
Exactly - next thing you know, they'll want us to go metric, too.
Hey, there's an idea - why don't they just go metric with IP addresses? Rather than just go up to 255.255.255.255, try 999.999.999.999. Problem solved!
Consider also that now that the issue has been raised, you know somebody is going to do this. Any two-bit offshore gambling house could set something like this and get major publicity. Personally, I'd rather have the Pentagon running it instead.
That's the amazing thing - the majority of guys don't really wear shirts that fit correctly. Either they just don't have the time/care to make sure, or vanity (this used to fit) gets in the way...
It would be interesting to find out what portion of/. readers where ties regularly. I'd guess the figure would be very low, somewhere under 5%. When I got my first office job back in 1986, wearing ties every day was the norm. In my case, that changed around 1994 (thank goodness)...
Slashdot Mirror
There is one great exception, of course. Nethack has to be the king of the indie games....
Dear Congressman Jerry Mander,
I'd really like you to do something about
Crappy editing
Tub Girl
Goatse.cx
The problems outlined here affect a large portion of our district, and I'd like to suggest that your office propose legislation enacting the following:
Certification of /. Editors
Filters built into the comment system for known offensive content
A chicken in every pot
Sincerely,
Conn Stituent
Bzzzzzttt!!! Wrong answer...
Short selling works as follows:
First the short-seller sells the stock in question, without actually having any in their portfolio. Typically in looking at your brokerage account the position would be listed as -X shares of the stock. The actual shares in question are "borrowed" from other accounts temporarily. This selling activity initially places downward pressure on the share price, which can become significant if short-selling becomes intense. If you look here, for example, you can see that about 5.5% of the existing float for SCOX has been sold short. That's significantly higher than the figures for MSFT, IBM, and SUNW, which are all around 1%.
Once the stock in question has fallen, the short seller then buys back the shares at the lower price. Their profit, minus transaction fees, is the difference between the initial sell and the final purchase. Usually the short-seller has control over when they'd like to buy back the shares, but sometimes in rare circumstances they can have their positions called in, or more commonly, an unexpected upturn in the company's outlook causes a rise in the share price. In order to minimize their losses, the short sellers rush in to cover their positions, which puts additional upward pressure on the stock, which becomes a "short squeeze."
Interesting indeed. Insiders have sold ~125,000 shares since late June (with no purchases), when it poked through the $10 mark for the first time in over two years. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of SCO's future from their own leadership!
The ODSL has released a position paper...
I'm really glad to see the Old Dominion Soccer League (ODSL) taking a kick at this. Hopefully they'll have the balls hang tough with SCO and score one for Linux lovers everywhere!
I was tempted to blow this off as the product of one's own personal perspective, but I did find a recent example of what you're talking about here.
What would be appropriate would be to have some editorial standards (guffaw!) here that whenever an officeholder is mentioned in an article, their party affiliation and district (i.e., R-MA) is listed alongside.
Exactly, right after cheap gasoline and guns, guns, guns!
I just hope you're not expecting a *rimshot* - ewwwww....
err... aesthetic, that is.
No, you need something eye-catching, that would grab the attention of passers-by and instantly give them a dose of what /. is all about:
Tub Girl on the front,
Goatse.cx on the back.
You could always do it in ASCII art, for an ascetic touch.
Purchasing a business-class or first-class ticket isn't price discrimination, but charging more for the same ticket on a same-day round trip as opposed to a "leave Friday, return Sunday" is.
Utilitarians would also argue along those lines for a massive reduction in trade barriers, and in large part they'd be right (IMHO). The decision on such matters, however, does extend beyond dollars and cents. There are other factors (social stability, national security, cultural tradition, etc.) that don't fit into the economic model yet play a role in setting policy.
/. has the sig along the lines of, "all models are wrong, some are useful." A very good thing to keep in mind...
I can't recall the user, but someone here at
The air travel example is one where the airlines don't have to know anything about the traveller. They use the travel dates for the round trip. If the trip crosses over a weekend, it's more likely to be a vacationer. If both flights are occuring within the same work week, it's more likely to be business travel.
Price fixing is when multiple suppliers get together and artificially raise the price of an item to the market as a whole. Price descrimination is a different animal entirely.
I suspect that this field will become increasingly important in the years ahead. One problem (from the supplier side) in the current economy is the lack of pricing power available to boost earnings. Partly due to influences like the availability of product information on the web, consumers are more willing and able to find the best deal on a given item, rather than just march down to the store and pay MSRP.
People also have to realize that price descrimination is and has been all around us for a very long time. Coupons, "daily specials", business-class travel, etc. are all examples of this. There should be plenty of opportunities to increase price descrimination without impacting customer privacy (i.e. the temperature-sensitive drink machine in the article).
Basically this looks like they're beefing up their data controls, and centralizing existing data - as opposed to invasively gathering more data and infringing on privacy. What exactly is the problem, then???
jobless rates are at an all time high
I don't think so, o ye of short memory. Check here and you'll see that things have been much worse just in the last 30 years.
A similarly incompetent information regime already exists today - the credit reporting agencies. Considering how much private information they store, and how pervasively it's used, I'm amazed at how poor the data quality is. Basically they pushed the data integrity issue off to the consumer, who usually discovers the problem only after getting turned down for a loan....
An open standard could open up a huge market for 3rd-party products and accessories, much like the PC standard did for computer components. This is exactly the sort of thing that could really boost cell phone technology, by allowing smaller, more nimble companies to roll out new products into a broad market.
Of course, it's so good to think of, I can't imagine that it would actually happen!
Exactly - the old 90's mantra of trying to capture an emerging internet market in the early stages actually seems to hold some value here. Apple is the only service to show success with the mass market, and the opportunity in the Windows arena is gigantic compared to their existing business...
Repeat after me:
Hunt them down, hunt them all down...
Exactly - next thing you know, they'll want us to go metric, too.
Hey, there's an idea - why don't they just go metric with IP addresses? Rather than just go up to 255.255.255.255, try 999.999.999.999. Problem solved!
Consider also that now that the issue has been raised, you know somebody is going to do this. Any two-bit offshore gambling house could set something like this and get major publicity. Personally, I'd rather have the Pentagon running it instead.
That's the amazing thing - the majority of guys don't really wear shirts that fit correctly. Either they just don't have the time/care to make sure, or vanity (this used to fit) gets in the way...
It would be interesting to find out what portion of /. readers where ties regularly. I'd guess the figure would be very low, somewhere under 5%. When I got my first office job back in 1986, wearing ties every day was the norm. In my case, that changed around 1994 (thank goodness)...