mcdougle

Depending on OP's needs, this is probably the best. If he's trying to trade, he can open an account and (I believe) there is no minimum balance for buying/selling. I think $3k is the minimum for margin trades (and you get super-low commissions if you fund that much).

But you don't even need an account to use it. Just create a paper-trading account and you have access to the application, plus you can play around with trading without actually spending any real money.

Furthermore, dough.com is (kind of) a branch off of ToS - less functionality, but a much prettier interface. You can sign up on dough and get full access (without being able to actually trade, of course) without a brokerage account or paper account at all.

The best way I've been able to describe it:

When I'm out socializing, I'm often the life of the party. I was called a "social butterfly" over the weekend at a tailgate. I'm usually the guy at the party or whatever being loud, having a good time, talking to everyone and getting all of them to have a good time too.

I also have no trouble talking to people. I often just strike up conversations with strangers in lines, elevators, just walking down the street, etc. I can approach the pretty girl and talk to her, and not be nervous about it. I can speak in public, and I've been essentially a "door-to-door salesman" (cold calls instead of doors, but you get what I mean).

But, at the end of the day, I need to have my "anti-social" time. I get burnt out on all of the stuff above, and if I do it too much, I'll get annoyed and tired, and end up not being very fun to be around. After too much partying, I need a few nights to just chill at home and relax, maybe with the people closest to me (at most).

I'm outgoing. But I'm also introverted.

Introversion is a quality that can't be (easily) changed. Being outgoing is a skill that one can learn.

That's anti-immersive, too. When you fire a shotgun in real life, you don't have to do the recoil motion yourself -- you just pull the trigger, and the recoil occurs on its own.

He's also the creator/founder of Soylent, and even if he were a good cook, he'd likely continue to live off of his creation if only to say "look, I do this!" which will probably get more people to buy his product.

Even though the founder does that, he has explained many times that he doesn't expect most people to replace their entire diet with Soylent.

They expect you to do just as you said -- replace one or two meals, specifically the ones where you're in a rush or in the middle of something (work, etc.) and you would've otherwise grabbed a reheatable lunch or some kind of unhealthy fast food.

I didn't even see the 77 CE part at first. I clicked on the title, read a bit into it, and was very confused for a minute.

> It isn't illegal, but does that mean they should still do it?

Exactly. They're a private company, they're free to do whatever they want within the legal limits. The argument isn't whether they're allowed to do it (whether the first amendment applies here), but rather, should they do it?

I say probably not. In many cases, morals/ethics are subjective and should not be enforced upon others. The key word is enforced -- I'm all for them contacting the user and saying "Listen, man, this isn't cool -- please change it."

In general, I'm against the enforcement of personal morals upon others, except in obvious circumstances (we probably shouldn't hurt/kill/steal from/etc. each other). Discussion and debate is cool, enforcement is not.

And just as the company itself has the right to censor whatever it pleases, its users have the right to stop using their services when they feel that the company is infringing on their rights -- which is what a lot of people here are saying (they're not saying "this is bad, the company should get in trouble for it," they're saying "this is bad, I refuse to do business with a bad company").

I love coffee, particularly darker roasts. I tend to drink my coffee black, I usually buy better-quality coffee (pretty much all big-brand store-bought coffee, e.g. Folger's, is bland and weak).

That said, I hate Starbucks coffee. I'm sure their fancy, sugary drinks are better (and the reason people prefer them to another coffee place) but as far as just black coffee goes, Starbucks is terrible.

Dunkin Donuts is better (particularly the dark roast) and I also enjoy the new McDonald's coffee (although it seems to depend on location, some McDonald's seem to be better than others).

Unless their technology developed along a completely different path, and the concept of radio waves is too foreign to them because they use an altogether different method of communication that we can't even begin to imagine.

That's probably the next logical step, though, honestly. Not necessarily oil specifically, but resources in general and even colonization of any nearby planets/etc. that will allow it.

How did we discover (and begin actually using) the Americas? Christopher Columbus was sent on a trip to retrieve resources from India. It was a financial trip, supposed to enrich the government, not an exploratory one.

That's kind of how it's always been. Societies have discovered new people, lands, and resources by accident while trying to expand their empires (generally).

Furthermore, as we continue to consume resources and grow our population, we should probably strive to expand our society to other locations before we overconsume and overpopulate to the point that it starts to cause problems.

The assumption is that with a "family owned business," you're still running the business, right?

The OP is actually saying that's one of the viable options -- to keep the business and stay at the helm.

What he's arguing is that you're not likely to ever successfully be able to keep the business (not sell), hire someone else to run it for you, and never have to work again -- the obvious exception being e.g. Bill Gates (and the difference being that Microsoft was so huge and firmly rooted that he could hand it off).

Yep. Generally, as the advice goes, when you're looking for a rental property to purchase, anticipate property management fees and include those fees in your profitability calculations -- regardless of whether you're going to hire a property manager or do it yourself. If the purchase does not make financial/business sense when including those management fees, then it doesn't make business sense at all, and you shouldn't buy it.

This is exactly what I want to do eventually

Sure. And we definitely need some kind of motivation to focus our efforts on space exploration (it's very noticeably become an afterthought ever since we stopped trying to compete).

But if we could somehow find that motivation, it would be far more productive to work together -- we'd have a lot more manpower and a higher budget that way.

Better yet, why does it have to be an "individual nation" thing? Why can't all (or even just some) of the developed nations collaborate and pool funding and have a bigger team to work on the problem?