My post on
the Colorado mass murder James Eagan Holmes was an unexpected SEO success. Maybe my blog has a high base PageRank now, and most other pages copy press releases? Normally, Saturday is a slow day, but that was my #1 day according to Piwik.
However, I was disturbed by one person who Googled "James Eagan Holmes My Hero".
SteveOC64 commented on
node.js Is VB6 - Does node.js Suck?.
I came here following a google search on node.js ... and stayed for the crazy :)
Awesome blogging work, every word of which resonantes 100% with this reader. A perfect description of the current state of affairs. I love the way you have managed to tie together banksters, cycling cheats, gold bugging, psychotic employment practices .. and coding conventions all into a single unified field theory of everything that is broken.
Great stuff!! Looking forward to reading future posts regularly. Ill order the book if you ever get it published too .. dont hold back.
On the subject of node .. its just another tool, and it does have its place. Its a good fit for some problem domains. Its not a good fit for builing big, stateless, monolithic things - thats where LAMP excels. Its a good fit for small, responsive things that hold a lot of state information and communicate with each other with low overhead. Recommend that you have another look, perhaps with a different problem set in mind that is a better fit for the tools. It starts to make more sense when you are working with other tools like SocketStream, Redis, NPM, etc, etc, etc.
If LAMP or ASP.NET was a Mack truck that hauls websites, Node and friends is a bucket of generic lego blocks that can also build some web apps .. or a robot ... or a light saber. Apples and oranges. Its not entirely a tool for building big web apps.
On the subject of tools in general .. I always like to keep in mind that a computer is a computer, machine code and IO is real ... everything else is an artificial construct. There is really no such thing as an object, a file, a registry entry, a Word document, a DLL, a thread, a domain, a socket, a process, etc.
If confronted by a fanboi of any of these artificial constructs, simply crack open a computer case and ask them to point out where these 'things' physically exist. They dont, of course. They only exist in people's heads.
Computer languages are just another layer of abstraction, and best used with that in mind. As long as you keep your head out of the hype, you can use any number of tools to get real work done. At the end of the day, machine code has to execute, and something gets output on the IO bus. Everything in between those events is an abstraction. Some abstractions are more appropriate to the problem domain than others, but it all comes down to machine code and IO in the end.
Node falls into this category, along with every other tool out there. Use it, enjoy it, go make some real things happen.
Jobs - I notice that a lot of job adverts these days dont even ask for qualifications - they want to see your github repo instead. That makes a tonne more sense to me.
The current layer of crap in the job market is a reflection of the evolution of tools and abstractions. We used to have C64's, AppleIIs, AtariSTs and Amigas that people cut their teeth on .. and these people gave us the PC, Linux, the Internet, Mars missions and everything that works. Now we have commerce graduates with a cert IV in MS-Office designing systems with no idea how they fit together.
Its fertile ground for idiots to thrive in.
It should be compuslory for every child to spend 10,000 hours writing apps on arduinos, or rasberry Pi's before being allowed anywhere near a computer system, let alone make decisions about system design.
According to piwik, most of the "node.js sucks!" traffic is bounces. I didn't know that any of them stuck around. I need to write some custom SQL that queries the piwik database.
I still don't see how node.js outperforms PHP or C/C++. In node.js, you're doing stuff that the OS normally handles for you.
If I was writing a serious web application, version 1.0 would be in PHP. If that wasn't fast enough, I'd go to C/C++.
I want a language that lets me utilize multiple cores effectively.
It may seem awesome to do work normally handled by the OS. It's a waste of time. I'm not going to manage thread priority better than a highly tuned OS.
If you want to maximize the number of "Hello world!" operations per second, that's one thing. It's another thing to write something with complicated business logic.
At the interview that motivated this post, they had a website with static content and a few forms. In that context, using node.js is wrong.
If I see a job ad that mentions Rails or node.js, I mentally translate to "We're a bunch of fruitcakes. Don't waste your time applying."
I don't have a github profile. Why should that be a requirement? When I see a doctor, I always ask how much surgery he performs for free in his spare time. I don't mention my blog on my resume, because clueless people would reject me based on my observations.
In my current job search, most job ads have a laundry list of languages listed as requirements. For example, "5 years Java" or "5 years PHP" or "5 years .NET". I don't get past the keyword screening phase, because most of my experience is in C/C++, which nobody uses anymore. If a job ad says "0-2 years Java required", then I get rejected because I'm "overqualified".
Node.js hype and banksters stealing trillions of dollars are two closely related ideas. Watch "American Greed" on the Communism Channel (CNBC), and watch the personality type of the people running Ponzi scams. The people who love Rails and node.js have the same personality type. I avoid working for scum. Therefore, I don't mind avoiding node.js and Rails jobs.
My favorite is when an interview prescreen demands you solve a puzzle or programming assignment. Most of the time, I do the assignment, I know I aced it, and I don't even get an interview. I should refuse out of principle, but I've got nothing better to do, and maybe there really are a lot of unqualified losers out there.
Another favorite is the multiple-choice prescreening test with errors. I know that C++ doesn't have closures, but this multiple choice question assumes that C++ does, and "WTF? C++ doesn't have closures!" isn't one of the choices. The person who wrote the question is obviously clueless, and I have to guess which error they made. I also love the questions on multiple inheritance and template specialization, which I never would use and would look it up if I did need it.
I have more than 10 years of experience, a CS degree from a highly ranked University, and every job screening asks me basic skills questions. Is your stupid programming assignment going to measure more than my 4 year CS degree and 10 years of experience?
The trolls on this post will say I'm not having career success because I'm a pathetic loser. I know I'm on the top end of the ability scale. We live in a society of inverted values. I'm really intelligent and honest and not a wimp. That's a liability and not an asset. No manager wants a highly skilled subordinate, because he's insecure about his own job. My long-term goal is to get my own business going. In the meantime, I'm sticking with the wage slave track.
The leaders are criminally insane. Intelligent and hardworking people struggle to find any job at all. That's the reason the economy is collapsing.
SteveOC64 commented on node.js Is VB6 - Does node.js Suck?.
Good stuff - thanks for the reply.
"I still don’t see how node.js outperforms PHP or C/C++. In node.js, you’re doing stuff that the OS normally handles for you."
Totally correct. It doesnt outperform either (esp C), and it cant. If you have a perfectly good system written in PHP (or anything else), then re-writing it in javascript is meaningless.
All the 'cool' factors in node - super fast async non-blocking blah blah blah ... well, you are right, thats what OS's do, and do really well. Its a pointless argument, directed at impressing the clueless. Thats not
Performance is one factor amongst many. Development time and agility is another factor I suppose. PHP on a LAMP stack suits me as the best all-round environment for getting things done 99% of the time. C will always be my preferred tool for doing things right. I am using node for an MMO game control system, because it fits the problem really well, and its fun to program in. Its all just code anyway. Code is a means to an end.
One thing that is rarely spoken out loud too - Coding is easy, and should be fun. For example - I often prefer to ride my bike everywhere, because its much more fun than driving. Its not always about being efficient, or safe, or sensible. I will code in any enviroment that is fun. If the environment needs to be fought, then I cant be f*&cjked trying to make a pig sing like a bird. Life is too short to be working with bad implementations of bad ideas.
The multi-core / multi-threaded scalability thing. It is not a good idea to put too much into a single threaded node program if scalability is a concern. I dont think its meant for that at all. If "the system" you were developing was divided up into dozens of small independent processes that all talked to each other, then node might be a good fit. Depends.
The async thing is relatively important. Its certainly not a new idea though.
I have written perfectly good async event-driven programs in C before ... its not about the language or performance so much, as the mode of thinking that it places you in. Coming at a problem from a completely different angle can sometimes shed light on more elegant solutions. Depends really. No silver bullets out there. Im sure you have been around the block a few times to see so-called "systems" that have been cobbled together ... where no amount of extra CPU cores will fix the fundamental mess that has been allowed to grow.
Choice of language and tools can, by themselves, destroy a project ... but they can never, by themselves, create good solutions. That, as you know, requires experience. There is no subsitute for experience.
And thats one of the factors that is royally f*^cking everything up at the moment. Experience is no longer valued. Buzzword compliance beats common sense.
Hype based economics that rewards stupidity and stifles anything honest and useful. Expressing honest opinions .. attempting to apply common sense and good engineering practices ... get pushed aside in favour of feel-good nonsense. The whole so-called "workplace" has turned into a putrid real life version of facebook - a massive popularity contest where everyone who plays by the rules is a winner.
Agree with everything the clueless bosses say, sweep problems under the carpet where they cant be seen, turn a blind eye to corruption .... and smile as you follow the herd off the cliff life a good little worker.
I love programming - I have been coding now for nearly 30 years in all sorts of projects. At least 6 days a week, every week for 30 years. Without a break. I am still learning, still loving it, and still further than ever from being bored. I find it ridiculously easy to program, and endlessly fascinating.
But I WONT do it for a living any more. Its not worth dealing with the unqualified idiots that have injected themselves into this industry, and completely corrupted this beautiful form or art.
What I see happening everywhere in corporate land now is so disheartening. This is NOT what I dedicated my life to. Its the complete opposite of everything I believe in. I willl NOT - EVER - write another single line of code to help out these liars and human filth ever again. I wont do it. I will only take on honest real work like working on bicycles, or harvesting crops, or cooking, or cleaning dishes, or personal training .. or whatever. I wont sell my time writing programs though. Fixing other people's problems that they are too stupid to see for themselves. Not worth it for any money.
'They' want me to go work on the derivatives trading desk ... ha ! I dont think so. Rather clean toilets for an honest dollar thank you.
Good engineering practices make dishonest and fraudulent activiities difficult .. and so are not welcome in this "brave new way of working".
When your OS dishes out time slices, it typically uses a minimum of 20-50ms. When I was working on a Windows trading system, I found a way to configure the time slice to 1ms, which would slash any OS-caused delay, but 1ms was the minimum. On Linux, you probably can get any OS time slice interval you want.
The idea of "manually manage callback timing" goes back to the days when you didn't have an OS to do it for you.
"Threads and processes have overhead" is also false. Apache keeps a pool of idle threads and processes, so it doesn't need to create a new one for each request.
I've worked for derivatives traders. It was OK, but one of the bosses was a real Madoff type, leading to the obvious problem.
Financial software has zero real economic value. I would do it, because I have to get the best job I can for myself.
Traders say "We have a 'Type A' personality.", which is a code phrase for "We're abusive jerks."
I like computers and programming. My problem is working for scum.
It is frustrating looking for a job, because "# of years in X language" is more important than my actual ability. I know that in a few weeks or less, I'd be more productive than a mediocre person with 10 years of experience in that language. However, I don't make it past the keyword screening.
There's one "advantage" of filtering resumes by keywords and # of years experience in each language. That enables a clueless twit to filter resumes. Headhunters promote the idea that "# years in each language" matters, because it enables them to pretend to be adding value.
If node.js is a new "hot" buzzword, then all the early adopters get a huge career boost. When employers demand "2 years node.js experience", then all the early adopters are set.
This also encourages lying. If I lie and say I have the proper keywords, then I make it past the initial screen and may get hired. It was a silly requirement anyway, so it doesn't matter when I do get hired.
An honest person gets filtered out at the keyword screening phrase. A dishonest person submits a different resume for each job, one that's a perfect keyword match. Dishonest people have an advantage over honest people.
I won't get full value for my labor until I have my own business. Even if I have my own successful business, most of the taxes I pay support evil people. The only way fully out is agorism. Then, you minimize the amount your labor supports evil.
Pamela commented on
Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.
Using psychopaths and parasites makes for good television ratings. It's embarrassing even watching Australia's 'Master Chef' where the contestants are turned into sycophants and the chefs are hailed as gods. The judges get paid a fortune to make up the rules, eat, grow bigger jowls, judge and generally feel superior to others. But Gordon Ramsay is a true psychopath. I have studied psychology and criminal profiling. He ticks every box. Even down to his opinion of animals and their purpose for being. He also displays no respect at all for any other living being. It's not in what he tells us, it's in his actions.
Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.
Scientists are working to find the psychopath gene. They have discovered a gene they call the 'warrior' gene (for want of a less heroic sounding name), which is present in abusers. But they are still searching for the actual gene that causes a person to be born without a conscience; incapable of empathy or remorse. The Ted Bundys and the Ivan Milats of this world. A person can't outgrow this, or be rehabilitated, because this is how they're wired from birth.
My hope is that one day they will be able to isolate the psychopath gene so they can test early in pregnancy and nip it in the bud, so to speak.
It is interesting that there is a higher percentage of psychopaths among CEO's than in the general population. Four times as high. I'd be interested to find out how it compares between right and left wing politicians. Also the comparison of prison inmates to wardens.
Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.
FSK you say 'all taxation is theft'? Taxes pay for the building of roads and railways, they pay for our police service and armed forces. I think it would be a selfish and individualistic society if no one paid taxes. It also helps the poor and jobless.
It isn't genetic. A lot of personality type is learned from your parents. If the father is parasitic/psychopathic, then male children will emulate him.
In our society, the criminally insane evil person is held as the role model. One example is Bernard Madoff.
It isn't "4x higher". Nearly all the leaders are criminally insane, or are emotionally weak people that are easy to abuse.
All the leaders are criminally insane. That's the role model held out as the idea, so many people copy it. It's a serious problem.
The "psychopath problem" is the #1 reason the economy is falling apart. All the stupid laws and taxes and regulations benefit the evil insiders, at the expense of someone intelligent trying to grow a business.
Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.
From the university of Sydney: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/
Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.
We need to be careful not to wander too far into the land on conspiracy theories here. The numbers of people carrying the psychopath gene probably vary a lot, and they're not all serial killers but they are quite capable. The only thing that would stop them would be because they want to avoid prison. They're not stupid. Although, like the rest of society, some are more intelligent than others.
I believe it is genetic, but the behaviour of the individual depends on his upbringing. That is probably the thing that could push him (or her) to perpetrate real harm to other sentient beings.
There's only two reasons that evil people sometimes make "good" leaders. When all the current leaders are evil, an honest person won't fit in. They promote the myth "Evil people make the best leaders!" to suit their own agenda, and because evil people will ruin any honest person competing with them.
If the honest people are emotionally weak, then an evil person is needed to organize them. Evil people make sure that everyone else is easy to manipulate.
"Evil people make good leaders!" is not natural. It's a symptom of everyone being partially insane.
If I wrote a research paper saying "Evil people make great leaders!", then evil people will give me a big research grant.
Evil leaders cooperating leads to the same outcome as a massively coordinated evil conspiracy.
Also, all taxation is theft. When you learn to think clearly, you'll see that roads and police can be handled without a government violence monopoly forcing people to pay. In the present, most spending on roads and police is waste and pork. Roads and police are a tiny fraction of the government's budget. Most State spending is waste and corruption.
A tiny fraction of the government's budget is spent on useful things. That doesn't justify the massive taxation extortion racket.
The Dag commented on
Microsoft Sucks - XmlSerializer Exception.
Unfortunately I don't think the competition is any better.
I think Microsoft has done a lot of good work with the .net framework. It is by far the best framework I have worked with. But there are rotten bits, and the xml serialization is for me one of the worst.
Not just that it's buggy. I landed here because I needed to vent after XmlSerializer.Serialize completed without exceptions - but wrote INVALID XML! But really, xml serialization in .net is flawed from the design up.
If you use the standard serialization, all types involved must be public. They must all have parameterless constructors. If you have any abstract types you must statically describe which subclasses can occur (with XmlInclude attributes). So there went encapsulation and polymorphy out the window - but hey, it's only the 2 most important reasons why OOP is powerful!
What is good about it is that it's actually pretty fast. As far as I've understood the XmlSerializer is a facade and an implementation is generated (by Reflection.Emit) for the type you are working with. Then this is cached, so the next time your app creates a serializer for the same type it just instantiates the cached implementation and uses that behind the facade. Of course doing it this way is precisely why it can only ever work on public members.
The other serious limitation that makes .net xml serialization a no-go for me (when I get to decide) is that it cannot handle graphs correctly. Closed loops (a.other = b; b.other = a;) aren't even detected, it just hangs forever. And other graphs will serialize/deserialize, but be altered in the process (a.other = c; b.other = c; => a.other = c1; b.other = c2; i.e. two instances of c rather than an a and a b pointing to the same c).
There isn't even a good excuse for the latter shortcoming of the framework. Even I, who do not make a living making libraries that millions of others depend on, can keep track of a set of objects and figure out a way to represent a *reference* in XML. It's not even particularly difficult. Then they could of course use an attribute if they absolutely want to let people "inline" shared objects, even though that would lead to the deserialized graph being different from the one serialized. But BY DEFUALT it seems quite obvious that the deserialized graph ought to be the same as the one serialized, and Microsoft doesn't go out of it's way to warn developers about these serious limitations.
I made my own xml serializer once and did manage to handle loops and arbitrary graphs. Mine was based on private reflection and only serialized *fields*, since fields are the true state of an object. (A property is a pair of methods and if it isn't backed by a field, then it simply isn't part of the object state.) The type in question did have to have a default constructor, but this could at least be private so the bad consequences of this (not being able to ensure correct state of the object by testing ONLY that type) were controllable. Since it used reflection it was comparatively slow, but in every other aspect I think it was heaps better than what we get in the framework. If I could do that in under one week, why isn't the stuff we get better than it is?!?
You're always going to get the best results writing your own serialize/deserialize function.
In my case, I was using a DataTable with 100% text data. The library constructor was throwing an exception internally, which is lousy library design and shows that someone at Microsoft didn't QA properly.
Anonymous Coward commented on
Test Driven Development - How Stupidity Spreads.
It is a long time since I did any C or C++ programming.
I do vaguely remember static variables in C. I wonder if that has anything to do with that question.
So long ago I can't remember!
Anonymous Coward commented on
Who Does Citigroup Think They're Fooling?.
I don't think I have your email address anymore. So this is in lieu of sending you an email.
Some time ago, I was telling with a particularly aggressive and nasty group of people that were clearing about to steal from me. The law was very clear and against what they were doing. They wouldn't listen to me. They very wasting too much of my time.
So I thought it would be worth getting a lawyer to sort the matter out. The lawyer didn't have to look up any documents as I gave him the documentation and pointed out the relevant part. It took the lawyer all of 30 seconds to confirm the point of law.
The lawyer couldn't be bothered to take on board we were dealing with aggressive and nasty people. He padded he work and charged at least twice what he should have done. To make matters worse after we had sorted out the problem ourselves, he wanted a big chunk of cash just to "close the file". What a dishonest piece of work!
The lawyer wrote to the other side and pointed out what they were about to do was illegal.
So the other people then moved from out and out stealing to continuous harassment to get us to sign documents changing ownership for no or little money.
As the lawyer overcharged us we could hardly do back to him to finish sorting out the problem.
So we just got harassed more and harassed more until they finally decided to leave us alone.
If the lawyer was honest, didn't overcharge for a simple case and bothered to understand the problem, we would have been much better off.
Moral: Lawyers take vast sums of money and do a piss poor job. They only partially solve your problem.
I stopped reading my fsk2006@gmail.com address. I should set up the gmail @realfreemarket.org address.
Robert Ferguson commented on Who Does Citigroup Think They're Fooling?.
Hey FSK, do you ever go to lewrockwell.com? Good site. Liberty-minded people should start setting the term "anarcho-capitalism" as a standard and wearing it proudly. Isn't it interesting that the State, at a very young age, inculcates an association between the word "anarchy" and "violence" or evil? I resent the notion that government protects people from evil. Government is not the purveyor of "good", in fact, in the entirety of human history, governments have been the greatest forces of evil, destruction and violence. I resent the assumption that any "good" one may possess comes only from the State. I believe that most people want to be productive, peaceful and free. I believe that those inclinations come from a natural order of human beings, not from State decree or force. I don't have the will to do my job and extend good will to others because the State "taught" me those values. The world is and always will be an imperfect place, bad people and bad things will always be a part of our world. The goal of human civilization has and never should been to have some authority defeat all evils, ithat is an absurd and unrealistic goal. State authority, given power under those auspices, always uses that authority in ways that contravene that very goal by enhancing evil and destruction!! Anarcho-capitalism or "agorism" is the only viable future of our species, it always has been. That is a society of free markets, and free lives.
I read lewrockwell.com once in awhile. I'm looking for more advanced freedom-oriented reading material.
Some of the authors on lewrockwell.com still are advocating "within the system" reform. When I website has lots of different authors, I tend to lose interest, because some of the articles are good but many are lousy.
I got into arguments with the moderators on mises.org regarding The Compound Interest Paradox and they started censoring me. I stopped reading after that.
Robert Ferguson commented on Who Does Citigroup Think They're Fooling?.
Yes, I too have had frustrating interactions with "intellectuals" on Mises.org. "minarchists" I believe you have called them. I recently had an unfortunate, long, and protracted email exchange with professor Noam Chomsky about economics. Mr. Chomsky is heralded by the "Left" as a dissident and freeinded thinker, when it my assertion, and our recent exchange only solidified it, that he is in fact an approved "Gatekeeper" of State political "debate".
Why bother writing to Noam Chomsky? He promotes the pro-State troll version of "anarchy".
Don't trust an anarchist who works for the State. (MIT gets most of its funding from the State.)
It would be nice if someone like Noam Chomsky understood market anarchism or agorism. I'm not holding my breath waiting.
If Noam Chomsky wasn't describing stupid ideas as "anarchism", the mainstream media wouldn't be promoting him.
I've learned the hard way that you can't convince a fool. It's a waste of time and banging your head against a wall. That applies to Noam Chomsky or mises.org. (In case you didn't know, lewrockwell.com and mises.org are owned by the same person.)
I don't mind when someone disagrees, but I get very offended when someone censors me. Once that happens, I stop contributing to a forum/blog/website.
Also, I watched some videos of Noam Chomsky. He had the attitude of someone who thought he was a super-genius, even though he really wasn't that smart. It's the usual "good at promoting yourself" vs. "actually having good ideas".
Here's an interesting video of Noam Chomsky refuting "Libertarianism and Anarcho-Capitalism". My reaction to that video is "Noam Chomsky is obviously a clueless twit." You can tell he's a clueless douchebag by the tone of his voice. Actually, Noam Chomsky seems to be an intelligent person tricked into promoting evil, rather than someone completely evil like Bernard Madoff or Chuck Schumer. However, it makes no difference if you're evil on purpose, or if you're so clueless that you don't know any better.
Justin commented on
Reader Mail - 07/08/2012 To 07/14/2012.
I think self publishing is a good idea, but everyone needs a good editor to make a quality book. I think the time it takes to get a book on the kindle or amazon website is much greater than it takes on lulu. Obviously the market on amazon is much bigger, so you could sell a book on lulu and try to market it yourself and use that seed money to try to get through the amazon process.
Based on what I read for Amazon Createspace, there's a very low barrier to getting on Amazon. You only have to give them a .doc/.pdf file.
Another advantage of Amazon Createspace is that you can simultaneously submit your book for print-on-demand and also Kindle. For Kindle, I can make the price $2 or $5 or something very low.
I'm going to edit it myself. There's no point paying $$ for another editor, unless someone wants to volunteer.
My goal is not "Make #1 on the bestseller list!" or even "Make enough that it can be my full-time job!" My goal would be "Earn enough to cover blog hosting costs, $20/month." That could be more viable than putting up ads.
Also on Kindle, I'd be available to people who search the Kindle store, but don't already read my blog.
Justin commented on
FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.
Perhaps you could use the adwords tools to find out what title would work best or what book topic would work best?
I'd be using the Amazon store and not Google, so that wouldn't be very relevant.
To be really cynical, the only point of the AdWords tool is to trick people into wasting money on Google ads.
I can see what Google keywords lead to people finding my blog. I'm disappointed that "node.js sucks!" is my most popular post, although that's mostly bounces.
gilliganscorner commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.
Why not become a financial advisor? There is a dearth of them who know:
1) The stock market is a scam.
2) Real interest rates are negative.
3) Taxation is theft.
4) A host of other analysis that suits your math background.
In addition, it is relatively cheap to start up. Have you tried your hand at building a dummy portfolio(s) on Yahoo finance to see how various strategies you come up with might work or not?
From sites like christmartenson.com and other "matrix breaking" sites, I have seen a real need for "real" financial advisors as opposed to the cookie cutter PFA's being cranked out.
Just two cents.
gilliganscorner commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.
I think an interesting title would be:
"Gutenberg V2.0: How the Internet Killed the State" and write it as "fiction" set 10-20 years into the future. You can explain how things were and posit fictional (read: real) solutions that worked to end the leviathan.
A financial adviser typically makes money by steering his client/victim into products that pay a commission. For example, if I trick you into buying a mutual fund with high fees, the fund manager gives me a big cut.
At some large banks, the salesmen are supposed to pressure clients into buying stock that the bank is trying to unload.
My honest investment advice is "buy gold and silver and take delivery". There isn't much commission to be earned doing that.
Actually, it isn't that easy to start an investment advice business. You need a State license to do it legally, which costs time and money.
There already was a book that does what you say. It's "Orwell's Revenge" by Peter Huber.
The Internet and cell phones give police an unprecedented power to spy on what people are doing. However, the Internet also gives individuals the unprecedented ability to share information outside of State media censorship. The "individuals share information" aspect is much more valuable than the spying aspect.
Your cell phone enables easy State spying. However, you don't have to carry your cell phone with you if you don't want to be tracked!
I'll stick with nonfiction for my first try. If I make at least $100 in sales I can try something else.
dionysusal commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.
I say do it. I’d definitely buy it. A suggestion: include plenty of interesting personal anecdotes to illustrate your points. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to have stuff about sexy, young vampires and werewolves. :P
It's good to include personal anecdotes, but I don't want to give away too much personal information.
Some of my personal anecdotes are totally bizarre. When I started taking Seroquel, it partially cured my color blindness! That's one reason I go along with taking it, even though I had a severe negative reaction to other drugs.
Cpt. Capitalism commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.
I would strongly recommend Createspace. Gives you the Amazon and Kindle platform to sell on. No reason to go elsewhere. I have two books through them and I've had no problems with the TOS or payment.
That's what I was planning. Any suggestions on price? I was planning to do both Kindle and print-on-demand. I was thinking of either $2 or $5 for the Kindle version, and aiming for a 25%-50% royalty rate on the hard copy.
Anonymous Coward commented on
NHL Owners Cancel Next Season.
Hey FSK, something strange happened to me a few days ago. I can't tell anybody I know in real life as they will think I'm stupid. Send me an email.
I still have my old Blogger E-Mail fsk2006@gmail.com. I meant to set up the ad-supported gmail here, but never got around to it.
You also could just leave a comment.
I've seen some crazy things, even stuff I didn't mention here.
Robert Ferguson commented on
Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
Great post FSK! You kicked banker ass today. People need to see the pro-state banker propaganda on precious metals dismantled piece by piece, as it is offered. Fancy statistics, bogus charts, and complex, euphemistic terms like "quantitative easing" are used to promote the State financial system, just as they are used to discourage using precious metals. It is always interesting to see the new tricks being used. The most important truths in life are straightforward and consistent, like sound math. It should be a red flag to people when the banksters constantly change their terms and change their analysis formulas. That should be a HUGE red flag that they are full of shit!!
I was offended by the flagrant statistics abuse on that Business Insider propaganda article. I know that gold crushed all other investments over the past 10-15 years.
Another example is the Black-Scholes formula and other derivatives calculations. A big lie is hidden by complex Mathematics.
However, it doesn't do much good, if I'm only educating my 200-500 regular readers.
Justin commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
For #1, people are confused because calling gold an inflation hedge means gold is a linear inflation hedge in their minds. So if they print 10% more currency then the price of gold should rise 10%, but that simply isn't the case. Gold's price is linearly correlated with "Currency Confidence." Its non linearly correlated with the number of dollars.
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
I will believe what FSK says about gold on the day he/she goes out with a big gold medallion around his/her neck.
And while we are talking about precious metals, I should mention the silver Mexican Libertad. It simply a very detailed beautiful coin. The mountains on the coin represent two lovers that killed themselves when they thought the other was killed. The man went off to fight a distant tribe.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertad_%28coin%29
The Royal Mint has produced some interesting new coins of late. It is a pity, I can't find images of the 2011 Britannia Masterpiece in gold anymore. Only the silver one is shown now.
Shame I can't afford any of them.
See
http://www.royalmint.com/discover/britannia/britannia-masterpiece
http://www.royalmint.com/shop/r/rmm12gp
If you do invest in gold, don't let other people know you have it. Otherwise, you risk being robbed.
I am going to invest in physical someday, but not yet.
For #1, the main error of their chart was that CPI != inflation.
"Rate of money printing" does not equal "inflation", because the velocity of money can change. In a hyperinflationary spiral, the velocity of money goes to infinity, as people rush to spend money as soon as they get it.
Also, real growth in the economy can hide monetary inflation. If the real growth in the economy is 10% and 10% more money is printed, then prices will remain approximately the same. Insiders still stole 10% of the value of the economy by printing money, but real growth helps hide the theft. (If there was no inflation, people would have been rewarded with a 10% price decline. Instead, insiders stole the value represented by the growth.) In the present, the economy is crashing, exacerbating inflation.
Robert Ferguson commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
That last comment from "Justin" was clearly spam, complete with a link to a merchant web site. "wearing a gold medallion" around your neck is completely missing the point of both the post and my comments. I know you know that FSK, but I appreciate your humble, benefit of the doubt consistency with posters of comments. I have seen people leave very nasty comments but you never get flustered. Back to the issue of precious metals, storage and protecting them from criminals wearing a mask and criminals wearing a badge, with a strong emphasis on the latter in my opinion. Any new thoughts on that? Safe buried underground somewhere?
You mean "Anonymous Coward" and not "Justin", the link to the royalmint website. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. There is some really bad spam that I filter out.
If you want gold or silver, generic bullion/rounds/bars is best. Never pay a premium of more than 5%-10% to spot. There are some costs associated with minting and selling coins, so you never should expect to buy for spot.
The worst comments were on the node.js posts! The more hostile the comments, the more important the subject.
One possibility is buried underground somewhere. That isn't foolproof, if the criminals know you have it. Ordinary criminals can hold you or your wife and children at gunpoint, demanding you give up your stash. Police can search your home at their leisure, so they can find your stash. Police can demand you give up your stash, or hold you in prison indefinitely if you refuse to give it up.
I've heard stories of a guy who had his gold carefully hidden. Criminals threatened him and his wife at gunpoint, demanding he give up his stash. The criminals obviously knew about the stash, because they weren't satisfied when he gave them a little.
When you buy gold from a State-licensed dealer, records are kept and that information may be leaked.
Unfortunately, there's no safe investment. With State paper, you're guaranteed to be robbed. With physical gold and silver, you also are at risk for theft.
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
My last post was so clearly over-the-top that I hoped nobody would take it seriously.
When I was a teenager, there was a television comedy programme called "Three of a kind". One of the characters wore a gold medallion on top of a hairy chest and open shirt. He was called The Medallion Man. Obviously this character amused me and I wanted to resurrect something of him on this blog.
The links I gave are to the Royal Mint. Obviously I'm not associated with the Royal Mint. The coins I referenced are particularly beautiful gold and silver coins.
Although it is not the topic of this blog, colloidal silver is thought to be effective in killing bacteria, fungus (including yeasts) and viruses.
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
I hear China and Russia are buying up gold.
If there is ever a currency collapse and something new resurrected, Russia may have a strong hand. Russia, of course, has plenty of oil and gas as well.
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
If Robert looked at the last two links I gave, he would realize it is unlikely they are spam.
The coins referenced are too expensive to buy. They are very limited editions in gold and one of them has already sold out.
It is only millionaires that could buy these type of coins (at 25, 000 GBP) and I doubt millionaires would provide huge volume sales that warrant spam.
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
A SENSIBLE COMMENT FROM ME AT LAST
====================================
I should post a sensible comment, but now I guess FSK will be getting frayed by my multiple comments.
1) I believe that gold and silver are a store of value. Silver has many industrial uses as well. They have a place in a diversified portfolio. One Kitco poster recommends 1/3 cash, 1/3 gold/silver and 1/3 shares.
2) Gold as a currency never worked. There just isn't enough liquidity. Gold and silver stand a better chance of working as there is more silver.
3) The solution to our problems is to take banks out of the money creation business. Government should create debt-free money. The exponentially growing debt will never be paid off. There isn't enough money in the world to pay off the debt and even if you did pay off the debt, the loss of circulating money would crash the economy.
4) Governments should create money from thin air at a small amount every year.
5) Banks get a free ride on loaning money to government as it is created from thin air.
6) The real economy always grows slower than exponentially increasing payments on debt.
Robert Ferguson commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
Yes I just saw it was "anonymous coward" and not "Justin"! His post was actually meaningful, sorry Justin! Lol. :) In life there are always risks, but the impending collapse of the State is inevitable and it forces us, in my view, to make some kind of choice. There may be no "great" choice, only the "best" choice.
Government-issued gold and silver coins tend to be more expensive than generic bullion. Right now, American Eagles are a 5%-10% premium compared to generic bullion. When the State collapses, that premium may disappear.
Gold as money only failed due to State manipulation. That's an important lie, that "The free market discredited the gold standard".
The Federal Reserve printed more gold-redeemable paper than gold they had, guaranteeing an eventual default.
In 1929-1932, the Federal Reserve tried inflating to bail out the banksters. The gold standard limited their ability to inflate, so it was abandoned. That probably was the goal from the beginning, via the usual "Problem! Reaction! Solution!"
On a gold standard, politicians rack up government debt, which cannot be repaid if gold delivery is required.
With gold as money, people can vote "no confidence" in the banking system, by holding physical gold. If you hold State paper money under your mattress, you still get robbed via inflation. Even if every single person in the USA cashed out their bank savings into paper money, banksters could still inflate and steal.
With metal as money, gold is used for large transactions, silver for medium transactions, and copper for change. You can get 1/10 or 1/4 or 1/2 oz silver coins from APMEX, which is good if you're using silver as barter money. APMEX fractional silver is a better deal than Shire Silver.
People who say "WTF? The economy is much large than the gold supply!" miss an important point. That assumes each ounce of gold changes hands once per year. One ounce of gold can support much more economic activity. Gold is a benchmark for price. As long as people have the right to convert to gold, that enforces honesty. People can always use other metals, based on supply and demand.
Silverware used to be made of silver, precisely because of its antibacterial properties. If you drink powdered silver dissolved in water, that always seemed pretty silly to me.
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
Martin Armstrong has written an essay on gold. I'm just about to read it.
http://armstrongeconomics.com/693-2/2012-2/the-truth-about-gold-why-you-should-buy-it/
P.S. FSK you should watch Bill Still's documentary called "The Secret of Oz". It is on YouTube. It is very well made and starts off with tally sticks, the Roman Empire and the American civil wars over the right to print paper currency.
There was lots of pro-State trolling on that article.
Hyperinflation is the cause and not the effect. You buy gold to protect yourself from inflation and hyperinflation. However, in a SHTF scenario, food and lead may be more valuable than gold. Depending on how hard the crash is, gold helps you preserve your purchasing power.
Presumably, total chaos would only last for a few weeks. If you can hang on and you have gold and you don't get robbed, then you preserve most of your purchasing power.
You shouldn't try to time the market, buying high and selling low. It's better to gradually accumulate gold, minimizing your exposure to price volatility.
Gold also is useful to use as barter money.
In the late 19th century, the banksters made a ton of money off of adopting/abandoning the bimetallic standard. Before it was adopted, banksters bought a ton of silver. They sold all their silver just before it was abandoned. The bimetallic standard was a failure, because the gold:silver exchange rate was set artificially low. In a real free market bimetallic standard, the gold:silver ratio is allowed to float. Any contract must specify if payment is in gold or silver or other.
The State gold standards fail due to government manipulation, and not any other reason. A government gold standard fails due to the inevitable fraud, printing more gold-redeemable paper than available gold.
That article was a horrible bit of pro-State trolling. It sort of advocates buying gold, but is mostly nonsense.
I'm getting very good at glancing at a post, and telling if its useful or nonsense. I read a lot of blogs, and it really helps to be able to instantly evaluate if something's worth reading. That was pretty obviously nonsense.
The original Wizard of Oz was advocating for a bimetallic standard. The "ruby slippers" were originally silver slippers. The yellow brick road is an obvious reference to gold.
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
Thank you for replying to my comment.
It is always interesting to have another viewpoint on an article I've (mostly) read.
I try to stock up on long lasting food at the supermarket, but over the past 6 months most of them have been consumed at a very slow rate. Actually some canned food at our supermarket was selling at dirt cheap rates.
If you live near open water or a river, investing in a water filter is a good idea (for the SHTF scenario). Water filters get rid of the pond life. I think a drop of bleach is needed to make sure all the water-borne viruses are killed off.
It all seems good here in my country at the moment, apart from the news items about Libor and unemployment. Do you think when things go bad, it will happen quickly or will it happen slowly?
When do you think the State will break down?
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
I've just read Hugo Salinas Price's article called "The Matrix of Power".
http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/articlesFilt.asp?fiidarticulo=191
In it he says fiat paper money is part of the way the Elites retain control. He called the Welfare state "Socialism Lite" and says it depends on fiat paper money.
Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
It seems the Central Banks agree with FSK's thesis on the value of gold.
The article below points out that the creators of paper fiat money are selling their own product to buy gold!
http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/component/content/article/42-rokstories/24080-central-bank-gold-buying-increases-by-500
Very Uncool commented on
Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.
Evidence negating the case against Mr Assange was destroyed. See
http://radsoft.net/news/20101001,01.shtml
Read and weep.
http://radsoft.net/rants/20111121,00.shtml
Anonymous Coward commented on
Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.
The Daily Mail has mentioned he was taking prescription drugs - in fact the same ones Heath Ledger took.
Sse
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2176377/Gunman-massacred-12-movie-premiere-used-drugs-killed-Batman-star-Heath-Ledger-messaged-web-lovers-ask--Will-visit-prison.html