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iPhone 4 Reception Recall Ruckus Roundup
Readers today have been sending tons of stories about the iPhone 4, so here are a few of the highlights: Following the Consumers Reports announcement that the iPhone has antenna problems, Andy Patrizio asks if Apple can withstand the pressure to recall, while CNet estimates that a recall would cost them $1.5B. But that's just the latest on the iPhone 4 — the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.
>>>C64Love is not the right person to answer economics questions...
Perhaps not ("I'm a doctor damnit, not a number cruncher!"), but I still am better informed than you are. They will not be switching to the Euro or Yuan or any other currency. The UN is planning to switch to a basket of currencies called an SDR, and that will act as the universal denomination to which world products (like oil) will be pegged. So prices will read: SDR150 per barrel or something similar.
Interestingly this proposed basket will exclude the dollar. So it will have nothing backing its value except the US Government. Unfortunately the US Government is deep in debt (over 13 trillion) so its backing is almost as worthless as Greece's backing. The dollar will devalue fast, the stock market will crash, and the year 2011 will be worse than 1935 was.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The UN has no power to "switch to a basket of currencies" - the UN can recommend all it likes, but the markets still choose for themselves what reserve currencies to use.
Also, the SDR "basket" most certainly includes the dollar, and I've seen no discussion about excluding the dollar from the valuation of the SDR. Perhaps you'd care to share your sources of information, or are you just fearmongering?
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65S40620100629
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Drawing_Rights
Judging by the last $400 Toshiba a friend of mine purchased, it would have been 2" thick, have a whopping 2 hour battery life, and will inexplicably stop booting due to some mystery hardware flaw just outside the generous 90 day warranty window (not to mention it lacked a multitouch gesture-enabled trackpad, more solid case, and a few other things here and there... but since you couldn't be bothered to link your references I can't compare whatever it is you were really looking at). He ended up replacing it with a Macbook Pro and couldn't be happier.
That's not "equal function". The MacBook has a lot more function than the low-end Toshiba and Compaq you mentioned. The question is whether your former teacher's kid had a use for that particular functionality, or whether the kid had a legitimate requirement for a Mac (for all I know, some colleges may recommend or require them). CPU speed and memory are not the only important features about laptops; there's also things like display quality, keyboard quality, weight, battery life, and so forth, and the ability to run Mac OSX is important to some people. The last time I was involved in a $300 purchase, the display was small and the keyboard not as comfortable as I'm used to.
Apple stuff is not, in general, overpriced, at least not very much. You will find that if you do an honest feature-to-feature match. What Apple doesn't do is allow you to strip features out until you've got the price down, nor do they offer low-end systems.
For a lot of people, the extra functionality isn't really something they need, or even want, and those people would be better off buying something other than a Mac. Personally, for my last laptop I decided that getting a Mac wasn't worth the extra money, since a lot of what came with it I wouldn't use anyway, and it was cheaper to pay Dell to sell me what I really wanted. That isn't the case for everybody.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This is getting really off topic but the suggestion that US went into Iraq the first time because of currency concerns is interesting. The US went into Iraq in January 1991, almost eight years before the euro was first used as a currency (and a year before the Treaty of Maastricht was even signed). I've seen numerous opinions about why currency issues motivated the current Iraq war (such as this one) but nothing on the first gulf war (but I admitedly haven't been actively looking for such stuff).