While I'm not agreeing with the GP how did the Xoom die on the vine? Last I checked I could buy it (still), Android is still going strong though it is being challenged, and I know several people who love their Xoom. Just because it isn't as popular as the iPad doesn't mean it died on the vine.
There are significant conflicts of interest here and lots of fraud as well. My only issue was that it wasn't "blindingly obvious" especially back then. There were people who know it was bad and many of them were in the ratings agencies but there were lots of other people flogging these securities as the second coming. That said the ratings agencies shouldn't have had much credibility left at that point anyway. Enron and crew should have seen to that...
I don't disagree with a single thing you said, my comment was that it wasn't blindingly obvious, especially to outsiders, for the exact reasons you stated. That and who is going to listen to a few nay-sayers who were being mocked by "experts" when there were millions of dollars to be made?
Not at all, I think the S&P is a joke at this point and while I think a strong case can be made for the downgrade I think it was more as retribution for the government calling them out for being idiots than actual facts on hand. I'm saying that his statement calling it blindingly obvious was wrong. As others have pointed out there were people in the know but there were more people trying to hide it.
Actually mixing junk with non-junk can very frequently result in something of higher quality than any of the individual parts, it seems counter-intuitive but it isn't. I'm not saying that was the case here and it very obviously wasn't but simple math can show you that it is possible if the parts aren't perfectly correlated. The problem here is that housing in different markets was much more perfectly correlated than was being claimed, nobody thought a housing crash in Florida would be related to a housing crash in Las Vegas... For further reading the Wiki article on Modern Portfolio Theory is pretty good.
My only comment to this is hindsight is 20/20. The problem with statements like this is that they very obviously weren't at the time. Not just from the rating agency's point of view but many economists were feeling the same way. There were a few economists who cautioned against them and had them correctly evaluated but they were far from the majority and even then most of their opinions were hedged with speculative language.
In that case I agree with you. It does make some sense in context though when they were vehemently against 56.2 but support 54.5 a change of 1.7 or 3%.
However anyone with a scientific or engineering background would realize that there are diminishing returns in play here and that 3% may be prohibitively expensive. How much weight can you cut in a family sedan before it becomes a safety issue? Right now tires can cause a 10% swing in gas mileage (either way). You can achieve even greater gains than 10% but you start compromising handling and performance... I could honestly go on for a long time about this but I know you get the picture.
Just a point of note you might find interesting they are starting to make the terminal available again and making the GUI optional, though it all runs inside of Windows XP, frequently only on IE 6 (though that is starting to change), and will often insult your mother if you hit the wrong button.
All salient points but the biggest issue by far is the last one you pointed to. Getting to the point where you can make a difference in the military takes so long and requires so much focus that the knowledge you did have is now years out of date and no longer relevant. This is in part because those stars would grant authority much beyond the narrow security realm.
What the services need is the authority to go to a black hat conference and hire those experts and give them authority over security without the broad powers inherent with rank. If those that have stars on their shoulders take this issue seriously it could be done relatively easily and rapidly, though implementation would take time. Unfortunately getting those stars usually means you're more of a political animal than the president...
The problem with aluminum is you need 3 times the cross section to achieve the comparable strength piece of steel. Aluminum is also about 4 times as expensive and cannot handle the repeated stresses of driving nearly as well as steel can. In addition the manufacturing costs are significantly higher for aluminum than steel. Aluminum is great for race cars, show pieces, and statically loaded parts and not much else. So no, aluminum does not bed to differ in any meaningful way.
I'm not going to comment on the processors because I'll say something and they'll prove me wrong tomorrow. As for the rest these goals aren't that difficult for the car makers to achieve, to be quite honest with many of the new technologies coming into production now 100 MPG fleet average should be readily achievable by that point. The difficulties were mostly related to finding economical ways to produce new lighter materials for the vehicle chassis and other large steel parts, which for the most part have been overcome and just need to be refined and put into wide practice.
It means there will likely be less structural and cosmetic decay of the new vehicles but it will also be likely mean that causing enough damage in an accident to require vehicle replacement will also get easier due to the nature of the new materials. (For a demonstration try to bend and then straighten a piece of steel and then do the same with a piece of carbon fiber)
It does sound like you're trolling and I've read the summary. Could you clarify or expand upon your statements?
There IS an economic trade off (maybe impact would be a better word) with CAFE standards, the processes to reach those standards are currently expensive which, at least in the short term, will effectively raise vehicle costs. It also means there will be a generally lower cost of operation.
Your idea about raising the CAFE standards to 100 MPG by 2013 is a bit extreme but if VW's new car actually makes it to production I think that 100 MPG between 2015 and 2020 would be VERY doable. It takes time to develop and test new automotive technologies, then it takes more time and hundreds of millions of dollars to retool all of the assembly lines to produce the new cars. There is a reason most car models change slowly over time and even major redesigns use old parts or borrow many parts from other vehicles. The new vehicles would have to be a mostly ground up redesign that involves many new production techniques that are just starting to make it into mass production in a few experimental factories making those costs even greater, you're not just talking new parts, you're talking new processes too.
So yes, there are very real economic trade offs involved with the CAFE standards.
LotR was very much pop culture for a few years. Not quite so much these days but honestly if these people know the month much less the year it currently is without it being written in front of them I'd be impressed.
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While I'm not agreeing with the GP how did the Xoom die on the vine? Last I checked I could buy it (still), Android is still going strong though it is being challenged, and I know several people who love their Xoom. Just because it isn't as popular as the iPad doesn't mean it died on the vine.
Or they were looking for a headline something like "OSS Sues Apple" Very easily confused headline that could generate some publicity.
There are significant conflicts of interest here and lots of fraud as well. My only issue was that it wasn't "blindingly obvious" especially back then. There were people who know it was bad and many of them were in the ratings agencies but there were lots of other people flogging these securities as the second coming. That said the ratings agencies shouldn't have had much credibility left at that point anyway. Enron and crew should have seen to that...
I don't disagree with a single thing you said, my comment was that it wasn't blindingly obvious, especially to outsiders, for the exact reasons you stated. That and who is going to listen to a few nay-sayers who were being mocked by "experts" when there were millions of dollars to be made?
Not at all, I think the S&P is a joke at this point and while I think a strong case can be made for the downgrade I think it was more as retribution for the government calling them out for being idiots than actual facts on hand. I'm saying that his statement calling it blindingly obvious was wrong. As others have pointed out there were people in the know but there were more people trying to hide it.
Actually mixing junk with non-junk can very frequently result in something of higher quality than any of the individual parts, it seems counter-intuitive but it isn't. I'm not saying that was the case here and it very obviously wasn't but simple math can show you that it is possible if the parts aren't perfectly correlated. The problem here is that housing in different markets was much more perfectly correlated than was being claimed, nobody thought a housing crash in Florida would be related to a housing crash in Las Vegas... For further reading the Wiki article on Modern Portfolio Theory is pretty good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory
My only comment to this is hindsight is 20/20. The problem with statements like this is that they very obviously weren't at the time. Not just from the rating agency's point of view but many economists were feeling the same way. There were a few economists who cautioned against them and had them correctly evaluated but they were far from the majority and even then most of their opinions were hedged with speculative language.
Because the car frame is the only thing that determines the price of a vehicle of course!
Why not do the smart thing and REUSE all of that "waste"? It's actually decent fuel and if you reuse it it becomes significantly less hazardous...
So it's a wash as far as weight and costs 4 times as much...
Probably not, it was in the Marine Corps but it would certainly explain the existence of many things.
In that case I agree with you. It does make some sense in context though when they were vehemently against 56.2 but support 54.5 a change of 1.7 or 3%.
However anyone with a scientific or engineering background would realize that there are diminishing returns in play here and that 3% may be prohibitively expensive. How much weight can you cut in a family sedan before it becomes a safety issue? Right now tires can cause a 10% swing in gas mileage (either way). You can achieve even greater gains than 10% but you start compromising handling and performance... I could honestly go on for a long time about this but I know you get the picture.
True. I actually know quite a few people who attend but don't typically talk or would be considered a top hacker...
I've tried that a few times. Every time I succeed the Earth gets upset and comes rushing at my head like an angry hippo.
Just a point of note you might find interesting they are starting to make the terminal available again and making the GUI optional, though it all runs inside of Windows XP, frequently only on IE 6 (though that is starting to change), and will often insult your mother if you hit the wrong button.
All salient points but the biggest issue by far is the last one you pointed to. Getting to the point where you can make a difference in the military takes so long and requires so much focus that the knowledge you did have is now years out of date and no longer relevant. This is in part because those stars would grant authority much beyond the narrow security realm.
What the services need is the authority to go to a black hat conference and hire those experts and give them authority over security without the broad powers inherent with rank. If those that have stars on their shoulders take this issue seriously it could be done relatively easily and rapidly, though implementation would take time. Unfortunately getting those stars usually means you're more of a political animal than the president...
The problem with aluminum is you need 3 times the cross section to achieve the comparable strength piece of steel. Aluminum is also about 4 times as expensive and cannot handle the repeated stresses of driving nearly as well as steel can. In addition the manufacturing costs are significantly higher for aluminum than steel. Aluminum is great for race cars, show pieces, and statically loaded parts and not much else. So no, aluminum does not bed to differ in any meaningful way.
I'm not going to comment on the processors because I'll say something and they'll prove me wrong tomorrow. As for the rest these goals aren't that difficult for the car makers to achieve, to be quite honest with many of the new technologies coming into production now 100 MPG fleet average should be readily achievable by that point. The difficulties were mostly related to finding economical ways to produce new lighter materials for the vehicle chassis and other large steel parts, which for the most part have been overcome and just need to be refined and put into wide practice.
It means there will likely be less structural and cosmetic decay of the new vehicles but it will also be likely mean that causing enough damage in an accident to require vehicle replacement will also get easier due to the nature of the new materials. (For a demonstration try to bend and then straighten a piece of steel and then do the same with a piece of carbon fiber)
It does sound like you're trolling and I've read the summary. Could you clarify or expand upon your statements?
There IS an economic trade off (maybe impact would be a better word) with CAFE standards, the processes to reach those standards are currently expensive which, at least in the short term, will effectively raise vehicle costs. It also means there will be a generally lower cost of operation.
Your idea about raising the CAFE standards to 100 MPG by 2013 is a bit extreme but if VW's new car actually makes it to production I think that 100 MPG between 2015 and 2020 would be VERY doable. It takes time to develop and test new automotive technologies, then it takes more time and hundreds of millions of dollars to retool all of the assembly lines to produce the new cars. There is a reason most car models change slowly over time and even major redesigns use old parts or borrow many parts from other vehicles. The new vehicles would have to be a mostly ground up redesign that involves many new production techniques that are just starting to make it into mass production in a few experimental factories making those costs even greater, you're not just talking new parts, you're talking new processes too.
So yes, there are very real economic trade offs involved with the CAFE standards.
LotR was very much pop culture for a few years. Not quite so much these days but honestly if these people know the month much less the year it currently is without it being written in front of them I'd be impressed.
Apparently this is changing finally. http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/11/07/22/1831229/The-Loudness-Wars-May-Be-Ending
The rise of cloud music seems to be a major factor.
Something tells me there is youtube gold in that idea...
I shall use that darker ink next time. It was supposed to be a comment about old people trying to be cool by using things from pop culture.
It was so bad that my mind auto-corrected it inline... Thank you for pointing it out.
Tolkien is officially no longer cool. When stuffed up pretentious windbags are using his works to insult each other it's time to move on.
So with Tolkien done and Superheros on the way out what's next?