You have nearly your wish. The children that you and your type drag into the world at a huge competitive disadvantage are eating bucketfuls of Christian hatred every sad day of their lives, however short or long they may live.
Isn't that good enough for you?
Whenever I see an ignorant fuckwad like yourself heaping pain and suffering on living beings such as the children that you and your ass hole "brethren" are forcing into existence, I become tempted to believe that evil does exist in this world, that there are some people who are truly possessed by it.
Yo ass hole. Those babies don't begin life suicidal. It takes years of pain delivered to them every fucking day by this "conservative" society's attitudes about the conditions of their birth.
You want a precious healthy baby? Wonderful. Raise him or her in a stable healthy environment. Don't forget the cash, though.
But all you "conservatives" who love birth but hold live human life in such contempt can just shut the fuck up about conception, embryos or gestation. Run you own life and leave others the hell alone.
Children born to unready parents (or parent) in this country defined by its individualism-at-ALL-costs culture begin life with a huge competitive disadvantage. The lucky ones have high IQs, are highly competitive, and are focused goal-setters: They aren't too bad at catching up.
For all the others, too fucking bad. They picked their mothers unwisely and it's up to them to pay the price.
My response to pro-birth anti-life fuckheads: Run your own life into the ground and keep your god-damned pain to your fucking selves.
A student teacher read a story aloud to a class that I attended (fifth grade, I think): From that moment until my mid-40's I was a voracious reader (too busy with work and fixing up houses since then...). I imagine a significant fraction of the other students in the class followed the same pattern.
Showing the kids that there's a whole world in there is a great way to get them into reading.
That student teacher did us all a giant favor. Fines? No, perhaps a bonus instead.
So to summarize, you lied about which party has historically oppressed minorities
Perhaps the party, but not the attitude. You are pretty clear about the party that oppressed minorities, but I don't see anything in your post that shows your understanding of the source of that horrific attitude. It was near the center of conservative thinking of the time, and it was the conservative southern democrats who spoke loudly and insistently for "segregation forever". In some cases they backed it with deadly force. I am old enough to remember southern democrats, and I remember some of the machine politics that went on then.
As far as I am concerned, the machine goes on. During the transitional period that began in the late 1970's and was basically complete by about 1987, the machine is now owned and operated by the Republicans.
People who vote Republican because they hate machine politics are using logic that is at least 25 years out of date.
I'm guessing that the study of the quakelets in the area will result in permission to go ahead and keep going at it. This is a temporary condition. In my opinion, when something happens that was not forecast, then it's a good time to check things out before going whole-hog.
I also lived in an area where there's well activity, and in fact my parents' well was fracked sometime in the late '70's.
Our well water SUCKED SHIT afterward. We had to give up on the well water entirely, and were very fortunate to have a slow and barely acceptable artesian spring that allowed us to continue living on the farm. My father was a software engineer and was (barely) able to afford the cost of all the digging, the cistern, and semi-big-deal plumbing that was needed to get non-shit water.
I've been there to watch the process in our neck of the woods and there is a whole FUCKLOAD of externalizing risk going on. The people it affects tend to live on relatively slim incomes as it is, and often the effects of nearby industrial processes take them from just making it to just not making it.
So there's no free lunch. Particularly if you don't have the money to buy a congressliar.
My parents had "free gas", because the oil well in the front 40 (acres) was a constant, if slow, producer of both oil and gas.
Eastern Ohio has had oil wells for at least the last century. They are typically slow producers, but the crude they produce is relatively highly prized because its impurities are less nasty than others. I don't know the terminology very well, but I recall that there was a lot of paraffin and other "nice" stuff in Ohio oil.
Throughout my childhood and youth, arriving home after a long trip always a pleasant experience, because I could recognize the whiff of oil in the air as we got closer to the area where we lived: North of Somerset, south of Brownsville, east of Glenford).
The gas got a whole lot less "free" when my father insisted that *I* be the one to empty the sumps where the white gas (liquid at room temperature) would condense out of the gas (mostly methane, which is the genuine article) in the middle of winter after the furnace stopped...
This demonstrates the problem Science and Religion have communicating with each other - Each is saying to the other "Prove to me I'm wrong"; and then standing there, with their arms folded, ignoring the other one.
Incorrect.
People who advocate a scientific approach to life are dedicated to the process: Investigate observed phenomena, formulate explanatory hypotheses, test them, and when those hypotheses match observed phenomena, they tend toward scientific acceptance as explanatory theories. Many theories are observed to be successful for explaining questions that did not even exist when they were originally formulated. Evolution (as a general concept), quantum theory, relativity, etc. are all successful theories.
The scientific process is hardly "standing there with their arms folded, ignoring the other one". People practicing hard basic science and people applying the lessons learned thereby are engaging in a constant process of observation, discovery, explanation and invention. That's why I wonder what's going in the minds of those who reject science as a way of informing their actions. Science works.
Contrast the scientific process against Faith, whether it's deeply held and closely attended, or simply the acts of charlatans. Either way, the most common response to a challenge from anywhere outside the faith often boils down to "it's a test of faith! Resist it!" On rare occasions, the faithful actually try to discuss the question, but ultimately such discussions end up with believers standing with their arms folded, demanding proof. Or, more often, writing their demands while sitting in their air-conditioned houses, often having received medical treatments informed by evolutionary biology, typing on computers whose existence results from scientific study of quantum mechanics, information theory, and myriad other principles.
I am 54 yrs old, been studying electrical engineering and software development for 42+ years (both parents programmers; it was possible though not easy back then). I've had the opportunity to experience directly and first-hand, the many many orders of magnitude of increase in the power of the stuff we use so glibly every day. This is only one small part of the result of "scientific study".
The phrase "science stands there with arms folded" is diametrically opposed to the truth, which is that those who apply scientific principles to their life's actions are racing to meet an inevitable future as well prepared as possible.
"Rent" in common usage has come to mean "paying to use while not owning", a normal commercial provider/customer relationship.
"Monopoly rents" has the classical meaning:"you have no choice: 'rent' from me, or starve."
As one who bought, renovated, and leases a home to my customers, we *totally* had to add value. The alternative was to pay a bunch of money for a house, then lose a bit of the investment each month because we could only collect low "rent"....
Your statement is true, though. Everybody wants to collect "monopoly rents" which exist in a context that does not require the rentier to add value.
Every valuable real estate, market segment, marketplace, position, technology, system, etc etc etc will *ALWAYS* be regulated. The choice is whether it's regulated by the force of those who wield their power in secret, preserved by any means necessary including deadly force.... Or by an imperfect set of entities whose names are publicly known, are occasionally and inconsistently subjected to public scrutiny, and inconsistently removed from their positions of power.
As imperfect as "government regulation" is, regulation by thugs running the marketplace is consistently less competent, consistently more violent and consistently less productive.
Interesting point on thumb2. I've been working with a radio module running an Atmel AT91SAM3U, whose processor core is a Cortex-M3. Totally an embedded SOC, but its lack of tons of RAM and MMU is a function of its application market positioning, not the ISA. Upon beginning the project, I was doubtful about the thumb2 ISA, but it has surprised me:
The fact that it's not the original ARM ISA has never been an impediment. In fact I would say that its code density is likely a contributor to performance, as it either runs well with small cache, or runs really well with larger caches.
Our project has been implemented using a normal GCC 4.3 series compiler, and I have not hit any compiler/ISA strangeness at any time. This includes our use of some software floating-point arithmetic (not much, though).
The Raspberry Pi would be a *fabulous* micro-server. (I am not a gamer or media enthusiast, YMMV)
inter-racial relationships are almost always a white woman and a black man.
No.
Look about halfway down the page at a graph showing gender choices in interracial marriages. A smaller fraction of black women intermarry than black men, but the ratio is 22.0 % to 8.9 %. Not "almost always". Additionally, the fraction of mate selection (white, histpanic, asian, other) among those who do intermarry is nearly identical between the genders.
So in your stock investing process, do you tend more toward a "technical" or "fundamentalist" style?
It seems to me that the style embodied in HFT should be called "hypertechnical at warp speed". I've had a really hard time finding good quality investments in the classical retail investment world. It seems to be much more difficult to get ROI given standard trading time horizons. Consequently, I've moved to the "slow hard capital" route, buying and renting out homes. The basic investment is keeping up with inflation, and the rent (minus costs) is the return. Historically, real estate (not REITs, but the real thing) matches the core rate of inflation closely.
The physical work of managing the real estate would be OK (maintenance is usually good exercise:-) ), but it's getting difficult with my 70+ hour weeks.
Part of what pisses me off about the current financial sector is that it appears that they are skimming investment quality way faster than a normal investor or trader can, resulting in a much more difficult time finding investment opportunities.
The good folks in Goldman and lots of other high level "fiscally conservative" executives have made sure that all but the few who chose their parents very carefully are saddled with mountains of debt on graduation.
That way, the executives can wave a few jobs around that pay well enough to let the grads pay the debts off in ten years instead of 30. The grads compete their asses off for those few jobs.
The rest can fend for themselves in private enterprise where, unsurprisingly, other executives are managing the competitive job marketplace with great effectiveness... If by "effectiveness" we mean how well their offer works: "take what you get son and don't bitch about it or I'll move what remains of this company elsewhere." Now *that* an offer we can't refuse!
One could certainly turn this argument around and say we need *more* wise people doing finance, since the current crop of bozos keeps making messes the rest of society has to deal with.
This may perhaps explain why the finance industry seems to be run by spoiled teenage boys with the keys to the family corvette.
I've *never* worked a week as small as 50 hours in the 34 years I've been in industry, and worked with motivated people, the best and brightest all along. It's just that in a bygone era, we could make a good honest income doing it, without having so many bright and motivated people poached by the finance industry.
With the finance industry raking in the cream of every reasonable investment vehicle (check returns available to retail investors these days), it's no wonder they can make young and bright people offers that they can't refuse.
Real capitalism would be great. A real free market would be great. In the meantime, the people running large and influential piles of concentrated "capital" are bitching constantly about "freedom" while limiting everyone else's freedom as fast as they can.
AT&T buying up the only other provider of GSM service in the country is a perfect example. For another example, note the generally available ROI on retail "capital investments".
Capitalism my ass. This is plutocracy.
Until the word "capitalism" is used properly, I plan to stand by every crucifixion of the lie that is modern american "capitalism" whenever possible.
I work in an industry that works with power companies, allowing them to "shed" load essentially on command, and those commands tend to be issued during peak air-conditioning periods.
Sheds are usually scheduled to begin shortly after lunch and last until just before dinnertime, usually around 500PM. That's when businesses ordinarily reduce air-conditioning costs by allowing indoor temperatures to fluctuate naturally until morning.
I've been in this industry for several years and have never heard of lunch/dinner peaks.
Back to the topic of PV, though: Glossing over many important details, many of us in the emerging load-leveling industry believe PV might work pretty well where peak loads are caused by air-conditioning. FWIW, peak load is extremely expensive, so any technology that reduces the effects of peak load has a higher $/kW value than in typical usage.
I finally bought a Mac a few years ago when I found that 10.4 had most of my favorite utilities, scripting languages and a reasonable compiler, all either built-in or easily installed. I've been very satisfied with its basic openness and developer-friendliness. The hardware is excellent, and I've been completely happy with subsequent Mac purchases.
That said, I hope it keeps going that way, but I am hearing distant rumblings of trouble in Mac-land: The Mac-app store.
If the Mac goes the way of iPod and iPad, then it's over for me because I can afford the price premium for excellent hardware as long as the basic platform allows me to work the way I need to, which is (at the workstation level) cross-platform utility applications to support my day job. The day job is deeply embedded firmware and the Mac supports that work wonderfully.
I don't need to do kernel or major infrastructure development on the Mac; my opinion might differ if I ever ran up against some form of Apple-specified limit to flexibility.
Two houses and counting... It's a good thing that my wife and I are OK with tools, plumbing and home maintenance.:-)
We have *nothing* in pension funds or anything else, since such mechanisms are so "yesterday", except for those who have the right connections. We are moving our savings out of all that jazz.
I see plenty of complaints about "government", but no suggestions other than returning to a time when the boom/bust cycle was so deep and harsh that those cycles took out entire generations of families.
Unsurprisingly, there *were* families that did just fine manipulating gold in its time, or other investment vehicles in theirs. Whether the Fed and its related concept of fiat money is a good idea or bad, its invention came along as an attempt to soften the booms and depressions of the time. The time before big government that you report so fondly was killing so many people, and the depressions were setting the economy back so seriously that the people of the period felt they had to try something.
So the question remains: This "democracy" (which really should be described as a democratic republic) appears not to be ideal. What should happen then?
Call it socialist if you want, the more important question is that I am tired of busting ass only to have a few plutocrats pull 30-50% of my savings when they feel like it. I advocate for openness, honest reporting, and a simple policy of public scrutiny in proportion to influence.
So come up with a credible idea that doesn't give yet more power to the plutocrats or the mob.I am all ears.
In an important way I think you are right, "government" is the problem.
The problem though is the fact that what we have now is a fake "government" rather than the real thing.
(having read your comments) Could it be said that you don't favor *any* entity having influence over the direction of society, and the attendant economic impacts?
You seem like a smart guy, so I have to believe that you already know a sad truth: Nature abhors a vacuum, and a power vacuum is the most abhorrent of all.
Somebody or a group WILL wield that power. The only question is whether it will be managed inadequately, and with much error, by people whose names are known and can be fired at the next election, or whether the power will be wielded by those who have absolutely zero accountability.
Lately, we're headed down the "zero accountability" path way too fast. I am 54, and I had hoped the fall wouldn't come until a bit later in my life. Unfortunately it's thundering down upon us way faster than I expected. My wife and I are wondering whether our lifetime of savings will be stolen by the plutocrats who have grabbed the power when we will most need those resources as our competitive strength wanes through the natural effects of our aging.
For worse or better, we're no longer "Dagny Taggart" or "John Galt". Sometime in the next 10-30 years, we will need to depend on the services of others, paid for by our savings. And the way things seems to be headed, just when we won't have the strength to fight back, we won't even be able to fall back on the resources that we've saved. My wife and I have never saved less than 40% of our incomes as an engineer (me) and clinical psychologist (her), and the last few years have been *brutal* for people who don't have government support (meaning, for example, the favorable tax treatment given to people who don't make a goddamned thing).
No one can make a decision in almost any sector of the economy without the government interfering.
Wrong.
My wife and I have been making capital deployment decisions involving significant fractions of our life savings without any government interference at all. Then we've worked long and had on those assets, still without government interference. Where safety issues could be involved, we always hired professionals, and made sure that the resulting work passed inspection. Among adults, this is commonly referred to as "being responsible".
Of course, when the "decision in almost any sector of the economy" affects millions, we see a little bit of interest on the part of "government", the group of people charged with enforcing policies and regulations that essentially represent the aggregate will of the population paying the bills. This little bit of interest on the part of "government" is often violently opposed by the decisionmakers. Entirely too frequently, these decisionmakers try to externalize risks and costs onto others who have insufficient influence to participate fully in the process. Increasingly, the decisionmakers win the argument, particularly with the help of uninformed people who haven't bothered to study history.
Double fail.
There are inevitably situations where "government" harbors control-freaks, incomptetent assholes, and people who have been bought and paid for to scarf up influence in order to enrich themselves or their asshole buddies. This phenomenon is seriously problematic and also needs to be corrected.
In my opinion, China's economy is being managed for better or worse by about the same number of people as in America's largest and most influential corporations. Neither situation is any good, and neither situation should be considered to be "healthy capitalism".
Capitalism requires full recognition of individual liberty, the right to own property including the rights to work that property for personal gain, and the ability to trust that that property won't be stolen, or the product of the individual's efforts.
The most important property a human being has is his or her time. Corporations, unlike humans, don't have that constraint, and the difference is subtle. But the integral of "subtle" over extended periods of time can be huge. The market power of the top 3-6 corporations in any given economic sector is increasingly concentrated. Soon that concentration of capital/power/influence will rival that of government.
Fascism is simply the linking of government and corporate power; it can arrive from government taking over private enterprise (totalitarian "socialism"), or from "private enterprise" taking over government (totalitarian fascism). But the result is the same: Too few hands manipulating the levers of power for their own benefit, unaccountable to the people who pay the bills.
Didn't like it then, and didn't like being called "an America hater" for being pissed off about the way a few executives were fucking over other countries' workers for short term gain.
Don't like it now, and don't like being called "an America hater" for being pissed off about the way a few executives are fucking over their own country's workers for short term gain.
I had to write "C library" code to emulate the stdio interface under RSX emulation in RSTS/E for an 11/23 and later 11/73, starting in 1984. The project replaced a DIBOL application written under RT-11.
In a fit of respect for my employer's "intellectual property", I failed to preserve personal copies of the ISAM database manager that I wrote for that project. It would be very interesting to look over that code to see a "that was then, this is now" comparison.
1) The ironkey password is one. In 35 years of computing Followed by correct recollection in about a half hour of thinking about it. (7? interesting counting technique there. I assume you are not a technical worker.)
2) I said "I choose not to depend on equipment that is remotely lockable". Why have you not commented on the GM "Onstar" which has the same feature? It's a car and should fit within your analogy. And there is no way in hell I have such a thing.
3) I said I often don't lock my OLD car. I have a nice new car that I lock consistently, wtth the key of course.
4) My wife locked herself out of a car once in 1988.
5) You don't know about stretching logic way past breaking points do you? I totally GAF about remotely disabled equipment which is why I won't depend on it.
In general, data security is well known to be far more important than whether a CPU is temporarily disabled. Cost of losing a laptop: $600. Financial responsibility for lost private data: rarely less than $100,000. Perhaps I should apologize to you for not being clear enough for you to understand. I can imagine an organization wanting to prevent big bucks worth of financial responsibility in exchange for occasional hacking inconvenience. That would not be my choice, but I believe it's above my pay grade to prevent others from having that choice.
I'm also guessing that a solution that is broken by script-kiddies would not get too far into the marketplace, and even if it id, I'm guessing that it would be short-lived, and I don't need to buy that solution.
In the general area of risk assessment, I am not nearly as concerned about the NSA and CIA as the random anonymous coward on the freeway. I imagine that if either the NSA or CIA wanted information that I have, there are too many much more interesting ways of extracting it from me than hacking a computer.
Slashdot Mirror
You have nearly your wish. The children that you and your type drag into the world at a huge competitive disadvantage are eating bucketfuls of Christian hatred every sad day of their lives, however short or long they may live.
Isn't that good enough for you?
Whenever I see an ignorant fuckwad like yourself heaping pain and suffering on living beings such as the children that you and your ass hole "brethren" are forcing into existence, I become tempted to believe that evil does exist in this world, that there are some people who are truly possessed by it.
Yo ass hole. Those babies don't begin life suicidal. It takes years of pain delivered to them every fucking day by this "conservative" society's attitudes about the conditions of their birth.
You want a precious healthy baby? Wonderful. Raise him or her in a stable healthy environment. Don't forget the cash, though.
But all you "conservatives" who love birth but hold live human life in such contempt can just shut the fuck up about conception, embryos or gestation. Run you own life and leave others the hell alone.
Children born to unready parents (or parent) in this country defined by its individualism-at-ALL-costs culture begin life with a huge competitive disadvantage. The lucky ones have high IQs, are highly competitive, and are focused goal-setters: They aren't too bad at catching up.
For all the others, too fucking bad. They picked their mothers unwisely and it's up to them to pay the price.
My response to pro-birth anti-life fuckheads: Run your own life into the ground and keep your god-damned pain to your fucking selves.
Get'em hooked, and watch them go.
A student teacher read a story aloud to a class that I attended (fifth grade, I think): From that moment until my mid-40's I was a voracious reader (too busy with work and fixing up houses since then...). I imagine a significant fraction of the other students in the class followed the same pattern.
Showing the kids that there's a whole world in there is a great way to get them into reading.
That student teacher did us all a giant favor. Fines? No, perhaps a bonus instead.
So to summarize, you lied about which party has historically oppressed minorities
Perhaps the party, but not the attitude. You are pretty clear about the party that oppressed minorities, but I don't see anything in your post that shows your understanding of the source of that horrific attitude. It was near the center of conservative thinking of the time, and it was the conservative southern democrats who spoke loudly and insistently for "segregation forever". In some cases they backed it with deadly force. I am old enough to remember southern democrats, and I remember some of the machine politics that went on then.
As far as I am concerned, the machine goes on. During the transitional period that began in the late 1970's and was basically complete by about 1987, the machine is now owned and operated by the Republicans.
People who vote Republican because they hate machine politics are using logic that is at least 25 years out of date.
I'm guessing that the study of the quakelets in the area will result in permission to go ahead and keep going at it. This is a temporary condition. In my opinion, when something happens that was not forecast, then it's a good time to check things out before going whole-hog.
I also lived in an area where there's well activity, and in fact my parents' well was fracked sometime in the late '70's.
Our well water SUCKED SHIT afterward. We had to give up on the well water entirely, and were very fortunate to have a slow and barely acceptable artesian spring that allowed us to continue living on the farm. My father was a software engineer and was (barely) able to afford the cost of all the digging, the cistern, and semi-big-deal plumbing that was needed to get non-shit water.
I've been there to watch the process in our neck of the woods and there is a whole FUCKLOAD of externalizing risk going on. The people it affects tend to live on relatively slim incomes as it is, and often the effects of nearby industrial processes take them from just making it to just not making it.
So there's no free lunch. Particularly if you don't have the money to buy a congressliar.
My parents had "free gas", because the oil well in the front 40 (acres) was a constant, if slow, producer of both oil and gas.
Eastern Ohio has had oil wells for at least the last century. They are typically slow producers, but the crude they produce is relatively highly prized because its impurities are less nasty than others. I don't know the terminology very well, but I recall that there was a lot of paraffin and other "nice" stuff in Ohio oil.
Throughout my childhood and youth, arriving home after a long trip always a pleasant experience, because I could recognize the whiff of oil in the air as we got closer to the area where we lived: North of Somerset, south of Brownsville, east of Glenford).
The gas got a whole lot less "free" when my father insisted that *I* be the one to empty the sumps where the white gas (liquid at room temperature) would condense out of the gas (mostly methane, which is the genuine article) in the middle of winter after the furnace stopped...
This demonstrates the problem Science and Religion have communicating with each other - Each is saying to the other "Prove to me I'm wrong"; and then standing there, with their arms folded, ignoring the other one.
Incorrect.
People who advocate a scientific approach to life are dedicated to the process: Investigate observed phenomena, formulate explanatory hypotheses, test them, and when those hypotheses match observed phenomena, they tend toward scientific acceptance as explanatory theories. Many theories are observed to be successful for explaining questions that did not even exist when they were originally formulated. Evolution (as a general concept), quantum theory, relativity, etc. are all successful theories.
The scientific process is hardly "standing there with their arms folded, ignoring the other one". People practicing hard basic science and people applying the lessons learned thereby are engaging in a constant process of observation, discovery, explanation and invention. That's why I wonder what's going in the minds of those who reject science as a way of informing their actions. Science works.
Contrast the scientific process against Faith, whether it's deeply held and closely attended, or simply the acts of charlatans. Either way, the most common response to a challenge from anywhere outside the faith often boils down to "it's a test of faith! Resist it!" On rare occasions, the faithful actually try to discuss the question, but ultimately such discussions end up with believers standing with their arms folded, demanding proof. Or, more often, writing their demands while sitting in their air-conditioned houses, often having received medical treatments informed by evolutionary biology, typing on computers whose existence results from scientific study of quantum mechanics, information theory, and myriad other principles.
I am 54 yrs old, been studying electrical engineering and software development for 42+ years (both parents programmers; it was possible though not easy back then). I've had the opportunity to experience directly and first-hand, the many many orders of magnitude of increase in the power of the stuff we use so glibly every day. This is only one small part of the result of "scientific study".
The phrase "science stands there with arms folded" is diametrically opposed to the truth, which is that those who apply scientific principles to their life's actions are racing to meet an inevitable future as well prepared as possible.
"Rent" in common usage has come to mean "paying to use while not owning", a normal commercial provider/customer relationship.
"Monopoly rents" has the classical meaning:"you have no choice: 'rent' from me, or starve."
As one who bought, renovated, and leases a home to my customers, we *totally* had to add value. The alternative was to pay a bunch of money for a house, then lose a bit of the investment each month because we could only collect low "rent"....
Your statement is true, though. Everybody wants to collect "monopoly rents" which exist in a context that does not require the rentier to add value.
Every valuable real estate, market segment, marketplace, position, technology, system, etc etc etc will *ALWAYS* be regulated. The choice is whether it's regulated by the force of those who wield their power in secret, preserved by any means necessary including deadly force.... Or by an imperfect set of entities whose names are publicly known, are occasionally and inconsistently subjected to public scrutiny, and inconsistently removed from their positions of power.
As imperfect as "government regulation" is, regulation by thugs running the marketplace is consistently less competent, consistently more violent and consistently less productive.
Interesting point on thumb2. I've been working with a radio module running an Atmel AT91SAM3U, whose processor core is a Cortex-M3. Totally an embedded SOC, but its lack of tons of RAM and MMU is a function of its application market positioning, not the ISA. Upon beginning the project, I was doubtful about the thumb2 ISA, but it has surprised me:
The fact that it's not the original ARM ISA has never been an impediment. In fact I would say that its code density is likely a contributor to performance, as it either runs well with small cache, or runs really well with larger caches.
Our project has been implemented using a normal GCC 4.3 series compiler, and I have not hit any compiler/ISA strangeness at any time. This includes our use of some software floating-point arithmetic (not much, though).
The Raspberry Pi would be a *fabulous* micro-server. (I am not a gamer or media enthusiast, YMMV)
inter-racial relationships are almost always a white woman and a black man.
No.
Look about halfway down the page at a graph showing gender choices in interracial marriages. A smaller fraction of black women intermarry than black men, but the ratio is 22.0 % to 8.9 %. Not "almost always". Additionally, the fraction of mate selection (white, histpanic, asian, other) among those who do intermarry is nearly identical between the genders.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1616/american-marriage-interracial-interethnic?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress
I should know better.. Don't feed trolls, especially cowards... But this whole race thing needs to be stomped where ever and whenever it appears.
So in your stock investing process, do you tend more toward a "technical" or "fundamentalist" style?
It seems to me that the style embodied in HFT should be called "hypertechnical at warp speed". I've had a really hard time finding good quality investments in the classical retail investment world. It seems to be much more difficult to get ROI given standard trading time horizons. Consequently, I've moved to the "slow hard capital" route, buying and renting out homes. The basic investment is keeping up with inflation, and the rent (minus costs) is the return. Historically, real estate (not REITs, but the real thing) matches the core rate of inflation closely.
The physical work of managing the real estate would be OK (maintenance is usually good exercise :-) ), but it's getting difficult with my 70+ hour weeks.
Part of what pisses me off about the current financial sector is that it appears that they are skimming investment quality way faster than a normal investor or trader can, resulting in a much more difficult time finding investment opportunities.
Good point W.R.T. college loans.
The good folks in Goldman and lots of other high level "fiscally conservative" executives have made sure that all but the few who chose their parents very carefully are saddled with mountains of debt on graduation.
That way, the executives can wave a few jobs around that pay well enough to let the grads pay the debts off in ten years instead of 30. The grads compete their asses off for those few jobs.
The rest can fend for themselves in private enterprise where, unsurprisingly, other executives are managing the competitive job marketplace with great effectiveness... If by "effectiveness" we mean how well their offer works: "take what you get son and don't bitch about it or I'll move what remains of this company elsewhere." Now *that* an offer we can't refuse!
One could certainly turn this argument around and say we need *more* wise people doing finance, since the current crop of bozos keeps making messes the rest of society has to deal with.
A small but important improvement.
This may perhaps explain why the finance industry seems to be run by spoiled teenage boys with the keys to the family corvette.
I've *never* worked a week as small as 50 hours in the 34 years I've been in industry, and worked with motivated people, the best and brightest all along. It's just that in a bygone era, we could make a good honest income doing it, without having so many bright and motivated people poached by the finance industry.
With the finance industry raking in the cream of every reasonable investment vehicle (check returns available to retail investors these days), it's no wonder they can make young and bright people offers that they can't refuse.
Real capitalism would be great. A real free market would be great. In the meantime, the people running large and influential piles of concentrated "capital" are bitching constantly about "freedom" while limiting everyone else's freedom as fast as they can.
AT&T buying up the only other provider of GSM service in the country is a perfect example. For another example, note the generally available ROI on retail "capital investments".
Capitalism my ass. This is plutocracy.
Until the word "capitalism" is used properly, I plan to stand by every crucifixion of the lie that is modern american "capitalism" whenever possible.
I work in an industry that works with power companies, allowing them to "shed" load essentially on command, and those commands tend to be issued during peak air-conditioning periods.
Sheds are usually scheduled to begin shortly after lunch and last until just before dinnertime, usually around 500PM. That's when businesses ordinarily reduce air-conditioning costs by allowing indoor temperatures to fluctuate naturally until morning.
I've been in this industry for several years and have never heard of lunch/dinner peaks.
Back to the topic of PV, though: Glossing over many important details, many of us in the emerging load-leveling industry believe PV might work pretty well where peak loads are caused by air-conditioning. FWIW, peak load is extremely expensive, so any technology that reduces the effects of peak load has a higher $/kW value than in typical usage.
I finally bought a Mac a few years ago when I found that 10.4 had most of my favorite utilities, scripting languages and a reasonable compiler, all either built-in or easily installed. I've been very satisfied with its basic openness and developer-friendliness. The hardware is excellent, and I've been completely happy with subsequent Mac purchases.
That said, I hope it keeps going that way, but I am hearing distant rumblings of trouble in Mac-land: The Mac-app store.
If the Mac goes the way of iPod and iPad, then it's over for me because I can afford the price premium for excellent hardware as long as the basic platform allows me to work the way I need to, which is (at the workstation level) cross-platform utility applications to support my day job. The day job is deeply embedded firmware and the Mac supports that work wonderfully.
I don't need to do kernel or major infrastructure development on the Mac; my opinion might differ if I ever ran up against some form of Apple-specified limit to flexibility.
Two houses and counting... It's a good thing that my wife and I are OK with tools, plumbing and home maintenance. :-)
We have *nothing* in pension funds or anything else, since such mechanisms are so "yesterday", except for those who have the right connections. We are moving our savings out of all that jazz.
I see plenty of complaints about "government", but no suggestions other than returning to a time when the boom/bust cycle was so deep and harsh that those cycles took out entire generations of families.
Unsurprisingly, there *were* families that did just fine manipulating gold in its time, or other investment vehicles in theirs. Whether the Fed and its related concept of fiat money is a good idea or bad, its invention came along as an attempt to soften the booms and depressions of the time. The time before big government that you report so fondly was killing so many people, and the depressions were setting the economy back so seriously that the people of the period felt they had to try something.
So the question remains: This "democracy" (which really should be described as a democratic republic) appears not to be ideal. What should happen then?
Call it socialist if you want, the more important question is that I am tired of busting ass only to have a few plutocrats pull 30-50% of my savings when they feel like it. I advocate for openness, honest reporting, and a simple policy of public scrutiny in proportion to influence.
So come up with a credible idea that doesn't give yet more power to the plutocrats or the mob.I am all ears.
Regulatory capture on steroids.
In an important way I think you are right, "government" is the problem.
The problem though is the fact that what we have now is a fake "government" rather than the real thing.
(having read your comments) Could it be said that you don't favor *any* entity having influence over the direction of society, and the attendant economic impacts?
You seem like a smart guy, so I have to believe that you already know a sad truth: Nature abhors a vacuum, and a power vacuum is the most abhorrent of all.
Somebody or a group WILL wield that power. The only question is whether it will be managed inadequately, and with much error, by people whose names are known and can be fired at the next election, or whether the power will be wielded by those who have absolutely zero accountability.
Lately, we're headed down the "zero accountability" path way too fast. I am 54, and I had hoped the fall wouldn't come until a bit later in my life. Unfortunately it's thundering down upon us way faster than I expected. My wife and I are wondering whether our lifetime of savings will be stolen by the plutocrats who have grabbed the power when we will most need those resources as our competitive strength wanes through the natural effects of our aging.
For worse or better, we're no longer "Dagny Taggart" or "John Galt". Sometime in the next 10-30 years, we will need to depend on the services of others, paid for by our savings. And the way things seems to be headed, just when we won't have the strength to fight back, we won't even be able to fall back on the resources that we've saved. My wife and I have never saved less than 40% of our incomes as an engineer (me) and clinical psychologist (her), and the last few years have been *brutal* for people who don't have government support (meaning, for example, the favorable tax treatment given to people who don't make a goddamned thing).
Regulatory capture carried to an extreme.
No one can make a decision in almost any sector of the economy without the government interfering.
Wrong.
My wife and I have been making capital deployment decisions involving significant fractions of our life savings without any government interference at all. Then we've worked long and had on those assets, still without government interference. Where safety issues could be involved, we always hired professionals, and made sure that the resulting work passed inspection. Among adults, this is commonly referred to as "being responsible".
Of course, when the "decision in almost any sector of the economy" affects millions, we see a little bit of interest on the part of "government", the group of people charged with enforcing policies and regulations that essentially represent the aggregate will of the population paying the bills. This little bit of interest on the part of "government" is often violently opposed by the decisionmakers. Entirely too frequently, these decisionmakers try to externalize risks and costs onto others who have insufficient influence to participate fully in the process. Increasingly, the decisionmakers win the argument, particularly with the help of uninformed people who haven't bothered to study history.
Double fail.
There are inevitably situations where "government" harbors control-freaks, incomptetent assholes, and people who have been bought and paid for to scarf up influence in order to enrich themselves or their asshole buddies. This phenomenon is seriously problematic and also needs to be corrected.
In my opinion, China's economy is being managed for better or worse by about the same number of people as in America's largest and most influential corporations. Neither situation is any good, and neither situation should be considered to be "healthy capitalism".
Capitalism requires full recognition of individual liberty, the right to own property including the rights to work that property for personal gain, and the ability to trust that that property won't be stolen, or the product of the individual's efforts.
The most important property a human being has is his or her time. Corporations, unlike humans, don't have that constraint, and the difference is subtle. But the integral of "subtle" over extended periods of time can be huge. The market power of the top 3-6 corporations in any given economic sector is increasingly concentrated. Soon that concentration of capital/power/influence will rival that of government.
Fascism is simply the linking of government and corporate power; it can arrive from government taking over private enterprise (totalitarian "socialism"), or from "private enterprise" taking over government (totalitarian fascism). But the result is the same: Too few hands manipulating the levers of power for their own benefit, unaccountable to the people who pay the bills.
Didn't like it then, and didn't like being called "an America hater" for being pissed off about the way a few executives were fucking over other countries' workers for short term gain.
Don't like it now, and don't like being called "an America hater" for being pissed off about the way a few executives are fucking over their own country's workers for short term gain.
Same shit, different decade.
How about RT-11?
Or my old favorite, RSX-11M?
I had to write "C library" code to emulate the stdio interface under RSX emulation in RSTS/E for an 11/23 and later 11/73, starting in 1984. The project replaced a DIBOL application written under RT-11.
In a fit of respect for my employer's "intellectual property", I failed to preserve personal copies of the ISAM database manager that I wrote for that project. It would be very interesting to look over that code to see a "that was then, this is now" comparison.
Hi anonymous(e):
1) The ironkey password is one. In 35 years of computing Followed by correct recollection in about a half hour of thinking about it. (7? interesting counting technique there. I assume you are not a technical worker.)
2) I said "I choose not to depend on equipment that is remotely lockable". Why have you not commented on the GM "Onstar" which has the same feature? It's a car and should fit within your analogy. And there is no way in hell I have such a thing.
3) I said I often don't lock my OLD car. I have a nice new car that I lock consistently, wtth the key of course.
4) My wife locked herself out of a car once in 1988.
5) You don't know about stretching logic way past breaking points do you? I totally GAF about remotely disabled equipment which is why I won't depend on it.
In general, data security is well known to be far more important than whether a CPU is temporarily disabled. Cost of losing a laptop: $600. Financial responsibility for lost private data: rarely less than $100,000. Perhaps I should apologize to you for not being clear enough for you to understand. I can imagine an organization wanting to prevent big bucks worth of financial responsibility in exchange for occasional hacking inconvenience. That would not be my choice, but I believe it's above my pay grade to prevent others from having that choice.
I'm also guessing that a solution that is broken by script-kiddies would not get too far into the marketplace, and even if it id, I'm guessing that it would be short-lived, and I don't need to buy that solution.
In the general area of risk assessment, I am not nearly as concerned about the NSA and CIA as the random anonymous coward on the freeway. I imagine that if either the NSA or CIA wanted information that I have, there are too many much more interesting ways of extracting it from me than hacking a computer.