The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXV

[bhsup]

On month 11, week 3 of Marudo's 12 month term of ruling by decree, can he just decree that he has another year of ruling by decree?

 

[Tee Kay]

I'm guessing that's the plan.

Oh, it's you VR. I thought bhsup was a newbie.

 

[_random_]

Wait, why did V make the change?

 

[Antilogic]

That's worth a thread.

 

[bhsup]

Nonono, no it's not. Explained quite satisfactorily in Comings and Goings

 

[Formaldehyde]

Didn't you know that 'sup is the latest VRWC?

 

[Synobun]

If I write my G1 (the written exam, not the driver's exam) in Ontario and then move to British Columbia a couple months later, is the G1 valid or will I have to rewrite it?

 

[Mise]

How do you infer current spot prices from futures contract prices?

I'm doing a google myself but if someone else's google fu is stronger than mine then that would be a great help too!

 

[Farm Boy]

I look up the local elevator, then look at the prices per month, they'll be like two dozen different prices, if the month isn't here yet, it's a futures contract. Then try and determine what the hidden costs are going to be, moisture dock, drying dock, storage fee, basis. Is this at all what you were asking? Most people aren't actually making futures contract with the intent to deliver or purchase the base good, but some are.

 

[Mise]

Well. Sort of. The problem is my specific problem isn't a standard future contract, but a special contract that I'm trying to value... From what I've read so far, the differences between a future price and a spot price is (a) quantity risk and (b) price risk. For example if the purchaser believes that there will be price increases they might want to pay extra to lock in the price today, or if they believe that there will be difficulties securing enough goods, they might pay extra to lock in a guaranteed supply. So the standard literature I've found tells me that the present price is the future price minus the quantity risk and price risk premium. Now, the application I'm looking at excludes price risk, because actually they're paying a premium over the future spot price. So say they buy a future contract for 100 units of goods in March 2014, under the contract I'm looking at, they will pay e.g. 1% above the spot price in March 2014. So that 1% represents the value of the quantity risk to the purchaser, and completely excludes the price risk premium. What I really want to be able to do is determine what future spot price they are expecting, based on that 1% premium they're paying. Unfortunately, the way the contract is structured prevents me from doing that I think...

 

[Farm Boy]

Pah, theory.Naw, j/k. Sorry I didn't read your question correctly, home with a little man with a sinus infection, attention mostly scattered. I totally don't have experience looking at it from that angle. Not sure I'll get the time to try and help out with any in-depth googling. Cutlass! You know everything.

 

[Mise]

Yeah I figured it was a Cutlass/Integral/Hygro/JH/Whomp question - sadly only a few of them are left! Perhaps there are young finance guys who can take up the torch...

 

[Symphony D.]

That would probably mean the ability to go out to the Ort cloud and grab millions of comets and send them to Mars, and somehow purify the composition of those comets to what we wanted to use. Or maybe some sort of scoop ships to scoop the air of Jupiter, and separate out what we want, and transfer that to Mars. Which is to say, with a Star Trek level of tech, it'd be a massive job. With tech much below that, it would be a staggeringly huge job. Too big to really contemplate.

The loss rate due to solar wind wouldn't be nearly high enough to require this; topping up would only be necessary every few hundred or thousand years. You could also start it with a few objects the size of 433 Eros or smaller, not millions. Even with this and many other methods combined, it would consume the entire global budget annually and be impossible with currently technology, but in the future that cost will necessarily go down. Logistically it's actually not that challenging if you have the money and the gear, but it's impossible to overstate the importance of both these.

 

[Cutlass]

Yeah I figured it was a Cutlass/Integral/Hygro/JH/Whomp question - sadly only a few of them are left! Perhaps there are young finance guys who can take up the torch...

Finance is really Whomp's specialty. But JerichoHill might be able to answer your question as well. You could try to PM or Email Whomp. Or you can find JH and Integral on Redit. I'm afraid I don't know finance well enough to answer specific questions.

 

[Cutlass]

The loss rate due to solar wind wouldn't be nearly high enough to require this; topping up would only be necessary every few hundred or thousand years. You could also start it with a few objects the size of 433 Eros or smaller, not millions. Even with this and many other methods combined, it would consume the entire global budget annually and be impossible with currently technology, but in the future that cost will necessarily go down. Logistically it's actually not that challenging if you have the money and the gear, but it's impossible to overstate the importance of both these.

It isn't even solar wind, so much as that just holding on to the air in a density sufficient to use requires gravity. And probably gravity more than Mars has.

 

[Symphony D.]

It isn't even solar wind, so much as that just holding on to the air in a density sufficient to use requires gravity. And probably gravity more than Mars has.

Not really. Nobody's really sure what the mechanism was, but the loss rate being strongly associated with early in Mars's history indicates it was probably one of the more catastrophic alternatives. While it's true that gravity probably plays a role in this (compare Venus with Mars given neither has a global magnetosphere), gravitational radiation of gases by itself is unlikely to be the key mechanism. (This tends to occur with say hydrogen even on Earth-massed bodies, but given CO2 is 44 times heavier, 1/3 the gravity is not going to make that large a difference by itself.)

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Anyone mind telling me how to pronounce "Guilin" properly?

 

[Mouthwash]

Is there any quick, efficient way to put up screenshots on here without going through all that photobucket business? I'm thinking about starting a new story in Civ IV S&T but I definitely am not going to waste all that time uploading images.

 

[Ajidica]

Is there any quick, efficient way to put up screenshots on here without going through all that photobucket business? I'm thinking about starting a new story in Civ IV S&T but I definitely am not going to waste all that time uploading images.

Last I checked CFC has an upload function you can use. It isn't massive, but I've used it for a couple AARs a loooong time ago.

 

[W|M]

I find it to be less of a hassle uploading images on imgur than using the CFC upload feature, and last time I checked, the upload feature made a series of small thumbnails that made it pretty inconvenient for the reader.