"the US military actively dismantled their anti-insurgency units and doctrines after Vietnam "
Were they really that good/effective though?
The US back then seemed just as good at making staunch enemies out of the local population as it is today. Doing that makes anti-insurgency a lot harder.
After WWII the USA seems better at toppling democracies than establishing them. Maybe Iraq will be a success.
But devaluation of the US dollars is fine as long as most oil (and grain, wheat, orange juice, CPUs, DRAM, etc) is still sold in US dollars.
Analogy: The world is Zimbabwe. The US Gov is Mugabe. The US citizens (or some of them at least) are Mugabe's cronies. The non US citizens are "rest of Zimbabwe". The US dollar = Zimbabwean dollar.
As long as all that stuff is traded in US dollars, the rest of the world will be hurt more when "Mugabe" prints more dollars.
Because it takes time before the rest of the world catches on and updates their prices. The US dollar has been devaluing for decades. When it inflates - everyone else inflates.
If you are a US citizen as long as "Mugabe" hands you your cut of the printed money, you are sitting pretty while the rest of the world has to buy their bread with wheelbarrows of cash.
Now the trouble is if the rest of the world catches on and switches to trading in Euro or something else (aka leaves "Zimbabwe").
Imagine the advantage of being able to buy oil from Saudi Arabia with money you print and handover to them.
Other countries can't do that. When they inflate, the rest of the world _outside_ laughs at them.
Possibly unrelated notes: Iraq switched to selling oil in Euros before they got invaded (then after that they switched back to selling it in USD:) ). Iran started a nonUSD oil bourse in 2008:
Quote wikipedia: The three current oil markets are all US dollar denominated: North America's West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI), North Sea Brent Crude, and the UAE Dubai Crude. The two major oil bourses are the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) in New York City and the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) in London & Atlanta. As the Oil Bourse in Kish is developed through successive stages, the plan is to establish a Petrobourse as a fourth oil market, denominated by the Iranian rial, the euro and other major currencies.
Oh yeah, I remember those Power Ranger wannabes alright... Good to hear you banned your kid from seeing it.
1) They definitely weren't just punching me in the leg. 2) They didn't even have to be your kids - random ones would just come up and "Power Ranger" on you.
At least with stuff like Ultraman/Superman the superpower beams are: 1) Usually the popular move (since they are often perceived as the most powerful) 2) Imaginary in play (don't hurt you). 3) Have to be imagined by both parties for max fun, so they learn a more cooperative play.
With power rangers, the popular moves appear to be kicks and punches.
If the buttons are pressed, the bonds become worth a lot less. So it hurts those holding the bonds. And who is holding all those bonds?
All the people/entities with savings (or are owed) in USD or in currencies linked to the USD will be negatively affected. Like China for example.
All those who have borrowed in USD or in currencies linked to the USD will be positively affected. The US Government for example.
"If the bank sells your debt to a hundred thousand people, you are fucked"
Sorry I don't get this part either.
If the bank sells my trillion dollar debt to a hundred thousand people, it's called a global financial crisis later when someone actually bothers to figure out that I'm never ever going to pay it back.
How am I (the debtor) fucked?
The thousands of people owning worthless stuff with fancy names like "High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund" are fucked.
Maybe in China it'll be called stuff like "Golden Prosperity Dragon and Phoenix Fortune Fund", but whatever it is, they're fucked not me.
I guess I'm too stupid, so it would be nice if you can explain things a bit better.
If the USA had a habit of punishing the people in charge when they screw up, instead of throwing more money at them, then I'd be more likely to believe that the military didn't detect the Chinese submarine.
As it is, how sure are you it's not another of those "throw more money at us!" ploys?
The US already has had a habit of overplaying the China bogeyman card. Anyone remember the "Oh No! The Chinese are attacking US military internet sites" propaganda? Seriously if the Chinese attacking US military sites is such a big deal, all the USA has to do is call in the Chinese ambassador and say - "stop this or else". I bet both Governments don't really care. And it's all a show just to keep their citizens attention elsewhere.
Re:There's just a lot of problems with that.
on
Inside Factory China
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· Score: 1
How does a slave economy retard technological innovation etc? Please explain your reasoning more and show more proof.
OK so I'm dense, it's not obvious to me.
So far all empires eventually collapse. Saying the Romans, etc collapsed because of slave labour seems a bit of a stretch.
Practically every empire back then had slave labour. Even the Americans and British had slaves and during the period they had slaves they sure didn't seem like they would be collapsing because of slavery.
The Greeks had slave labour and because of that a lot of the Greeks could sit around all day and debate math and philosophy. Some Greeks even came up with technological advances.
"Why invest millions into building machinery..."
If it's not obvious enough for you, China has also invested millions (if not more) into building machinery. Humans (even slaves) have a cost - they don't come free. In many scenarios machines are better than humans.
It'll be good if you can back up your claims and reasoning with something more solid.
Quote: Almost as soon as he was caught, Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president, asked to be allowed to serve out his time awaiting trial in a Swedish jail. "Prisons in Sweden seem to be more comfortable than in other places,"
Re:This is just a stupid arrangement
on
Inside Factory China
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Say the USA borrows trillions of dollars from China and after a while goes bankrupt and can't repay them.
That seems more like a bigger problem for China than the USA.
To paraphrase the saying, if I borrow 100K from the bank, it's my worry. If I borrow 1 trillion from the bank, it's the bank's worry.
Worse for China - it's not like China can throw the USA into prison, or seize and liquidate the USA's assets.
Anyway if the USA wants to, it can ask the Federal Reserve to wave its magic wand and create USD out of nowhere to pay China. After all the loans are in US Dollars;).
If "creating out of nowhere" lacks style, they could do it by "borrowing" from the Federal Reserve or whatever scheme they want to come up with. Not much difference.
So why care if the trade is in balance or not?
What you should care about is whether you get your cut of the dollars the US Government is going to print.
And what the US Gov should care about is ensuring that trade and financing continues to be mainly done in US Dollars.
See that's the thing about cameras, they can be useful.
I'm personally OK with having cameras EVERYWHERE as long as:
0) They are maintained by a separate independent organization from the police, and council. 1) Everyone can watch each other, whenever they want. 2) You know who is looking at what (you have to sign up for an account). 3) An secure archive is kept (so if people fake footage, you can countercheck).
Currently the problem with "public" cameras is the public don't get to use them, only people claiming to work for the public get to use them.
There are too many cases where the police/authorities make a mistake, and for some reason the _all_ the cameras covering the incident weren't working at that time.
As for lowering the muscle power in an arm, people experience that all the time - it's called "the arm is getting tired". People don't have to always take time to adjust _after_ these things. After some practice with using their arm, they know that they need to send "higher" impulses as the arm gets more tired.
Of course when the arm is too tired then competency drops dramatically, but before that the competency curve is still going to be fairly flat.
What you need is a low latency feedback loop, then the brain can know where the arm is and keep adjusting.
You can be fairly sloppy when sitting down in most chairs/sofas - you won't usually cause kilobux of damage.
When there are no other cars around - just the parking bays, I can parallel park with only a bit more brain power as sitting down.
I suggest that you'd use as much brain power in parallel parking as you would use to sit between two highly electrified sheets of metal - with a gap of about 4 inches between you and the sheet on each side.
To me that's a fairer comparison.
If cars and parking bays were designed so that parking speed collisions won't cause any damage, then you'd use as much brain power to park as plonking yourself on a nice comfy sofa.
"Lots of kids get these vaccines and are OK. The percentage of kids who gets these vaccines and develop autism is the same percentage of kids who get autism just because it happens"
But if you have been giving everyone the vaccine, then naturally the percentage of kids who get vaccines and develop autism will be very similar to the percentage of kids who get autism!
The other thing, how many humans do they test vaccines with? And what condition were those humans in (e.g. were the humans having a cold, exhausted, lack of sleep)? No matter how much you try to avoid it, some child is probably going to come down with some contagious disease (cold/fly etc) before/during the vaccination.
Why? To me there is a big difference between tests for the normal drugs and tests for childhood vaccines.
With normal drugs: 1) Not everyone will take that drug 2) Even if the drug ends up giving you problems, it's more likely to be considered an acceptable risk.
Whereas with the childhood vacciness they want most/all children to take them.
So I suggest that treatment that is to be given to _all_, should be more rigorously tested. So even if you still have to force it on everyone, you have a far better idea of what could happen.
For example: paracetamol is considered a safe drug - and has passed various safety tests. But if you give every child paracetamol, don't be surprised if many have a bad reaction to it. Only now they are suspecting that use of paracetamol in the first year of life increases the risk of asthma developing by 6 or 7 years.
So imagine if paracetamol was a "compulsory for all" drug.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against vaccines (or mass vaccinations). I'm just pointing out a problem with the usual reasoning.
The sort of thing they were doing in this experiment is to use a different part of the brain to control stuff.
Like learning to drive a car, this is learning to drive your prosthetic hand with your chest muscles.
You can use a mouse with either hand, and you can use it to control a gun/character that's not real in some game. If you have to, you could learn to use the mouse with your foot.
So using some other part of your body to control a prosthetic hand isn't far fetched.
We already control more limbs than we're born with.
Try using a mouse to control a pointer in a GUI. Next, use a mouse to control a character in an FPS game. Next, use a mouse to control little creatures in an RTS game.
After enough practice, when you do all of that do you actually think of where you move your arm, hands and fingers?
You don't. You just think of controlling some extension of yourself.
Same for typing, using a screwdriver, etc.
Same goes for driving car. If you drive a car, next time observe that your hands move near subconsciously to turn the steering wheel so as to satisfy your intention that your car stays in its lane (well that is if you're one of those drivers who can stick to one lane;) ).
Why do you think most people have handedness? For most people learning to use a tool with the "other" hand is almost like learning to use a new tool all over again. It's not really a matter of "right" or "left", it's a matter of "different". Most people can't "flip" the "learnt mapping" to the other hand easily (which is what being ambidextrous is).
The dominant hand usually gets first choice in learning to use a tool. It doesn't necessarily mean your your "nondominant" hand is less "skilled", it is likely to be better at some things than your dominant hand (like using the other side of the keyboard;) ).
On the other hand, there are some people like Nadal who is righthanded but learnt to play tennis with his left hand just to have an advantage:).
Slashdot Mirror
If it's going to keep emitting electromagnetic waves, that might make soldiers equipped with it easier to spot from far away.
"the US military actively dismantled their anti-insurgency units and doctrines after Vietnam "
Were they really that good/effective though?
The US back then seemed just as good at making staunch enemies out of the local population as it is today. Doing that makes anti-insurgency a lot harder.
After WWII the USA seems better at toppling democracies than establishing them. Maybe Iraq will be a success.
"They want the internet to work like cable TV"
That's easy enough.
Just stay with IPv4 and don't move to IPv6.
Once you run out of IPv4 addresses, put everyone behind NATs, and say bye bye to P2P.
But devaluation of the US dollars is fine as long as most oil (and grain, wheat, orange juice, CPUs, DRAM, etc) is still sold in US dollars.
:) ).
Analogy:
The world is Zimbabwe.
The US Gov is Mugabe.
The US citizens (or some of them at least) are Mugabe's cronies.
The non US citizens are "rest of Zimbabwe".
The US dollar = Zimbabwean dollar.
As long as all that stuff is traded in US dollars, the rest of the world will be hurt more when "Mugabe" prints more dollars.
Because it takes time before the rest of the world catches on and updates their prices. The US dollar has been devaluing for decades. When it inflates - everyone else inflates.
If you are a US citizen as long as "Mugabe" hands you your cut of the printed money, you are sitting pretty while the rest of the world has to buy their bread with wheelbarrows of cash.
Now the trouble is if the rest of the world catches on and switches to trading in Euro or something else (aka leaves "Zimbabwe").
Imagine the advantage of being able to buy oil from Saudi Arabia with money you print and handover to them.
Other countries can't do that. When they inflate, the rest of the world _outside_ laughs at them.
Possibly unrelated notes:
Iraq switched to selling oil in Euros before they got invaded (then after that they switched back to selling it in USD
Iran started a nonUSD oil bourse in 2008:
Quote wikipedia:
The three current oil markets are all US dollar denominated: North America's West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI), North Sea Brent Crude, and the UAE Dubai Crude. The two major oil bourses are the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) in New York City and the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) in London & Atlanta. As the Oil Bourse in Kish is developed through successive stages, the plan is to establish a Petrobourse as a fourth oil market, denominated by the Iranian rial, the euro and other major currencies.
Will Iran be "regime changed"? Who knows.
Oh yeah, I remember those Power Ranger wannabes alright... Good to hear you banned your kid from seeing it.
1) They definitely weren't just punching me in the leg.
2) They didn't even have to be your kids - random ones would just come up and "Power Ranger" on you.
At least with stuff like Ultraman/Superman the superpower beams are:
1) Usually the popular move (since they are often perceived as the most powerful)
2) Imaginary in play (don't hurt you).
3) Have to be imagined by both parties for max fun, so they learn a more cooperative play.
With power rangers, the popular moves appear to be kicks and punches.
What am I missing?
If the buttons are pressed, the bonds become worth a lot less. So it hurts those holding the bonds. And who is holding all those bonds?
All the people/entities with savings (or are owed) in USD or in currencies linked to the USD will be negatively affected. Like China for example.
All those who have borrowed in USD or in currencies linked to the USD will be positively affected. The US Government for example.
"If the bank sells your debt to a hundred thousand people, you are fucked"
Sorry I don't get this part either.
If the bank sells my trillion dollar debt to a hundred thousand people, it's called a global financial crisis later when someone actually bothers to figure out that I'm never ever going to pay it back.
How am I (the debtor) fucked?
The thousands of people owning worthless stuff with fancy names like "High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund" are fucked.
Maybe in China it'll be called stuff like "Golden Prosperity Dragon and Phoenix Fortune Fund", but whatever it is, they're fucked not me.
I guess I'm too stupid, so it would be nice if you can explain things a bit better.
If the USA had a habit of punishing the people in charge when they screw up, instead of throwing more money at them, then I'd be more likely to believe that the military didn't detect the Chinese submarine.
As it is, how sure are you it's not another of those "throw more money at us!" ploys?
The US already has had a habit of overplaying the China bogeyman card. Anyone remember the "Oh No! The Chinese are attacking US military internet sites" propaganda? Seriously if the Chinese attacking US military sites is such a big deal, all the USA has to do is call in the Chinese ambassador and say - "stop this or else". I bet both Governments don't really care. And it's all a show just to keep their citizens attention elsewhere.
How does a slave economy retard technological innovation etc? Please explain your reasoning more and show more proof.
OK so I'm dense, it's not obvious to me.
So far all empires eventually collapse. Saying the Romans, etc collapsed because of slave labour seems a bit of a stretch.
Practically every empire back then had slave labour. Even the Americans and British had slaves and during the period they had slaves they sure didn't seem like they would be collapsing because of slavery.
The Greeks had slave labour and because of that a lot of the Greeks could sit around all day and debate math and philosophy. Some Greeks even came up with technological advances.
"Why invest millions into building machinery..."
If it's not obvious enough for you, China has also invested millions (if not more) into building machinery. Humans (even slaves) have a cost - they don't come free. In many scenarios machines are better than humans.
It'll be good if you can back up your claims and reasoning with something more solid.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/1476548/Swedens-jail-reforms-are-put-on-hold.html
Quote: Almost as soon as he was caught, Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president, asked to be allowed to serve out his time awaiting trial in a Swedish jail. "Prisons in Sweden seem to be more comfortable than in other places,"
I live near the equator, you insensitive clods!
Say the USA borrows trillions of dollars from China and after a while goes bankrupt and can't repay them.
;).
That seems more like a bigger problem for China than the USA.
To paraphrase the saying, if I borrow 100K from the bank, it's my worry. If I borrow 1 trillion from the bank, it's the bank's worry.
Worse for China - it's not like China can throw the USA into prison, or seize and liquidate the USA's assets.
Anyway if the USA wants to, it can ask the Federal Reserve to wave its magic wand and create USD out of nowhere to pay China. After all the loans are in US Dollars
If "creating out of nowhere" lacks style, they could do it by "borrowing" from the Federal Reserve or whatever scheme they want to come up with. Not much difference.
So why care if the trade is in balance or not?
What you should care about is whether you get your cut of the dollars the US Government is going to print.
And what the US Gov should care about is ensuring that trade and financing continues to be mainly done in US Dollars.
Well in many scenarios the browser downloads and executes stuff even before you click the link.
;).
For some reason they called those security issues.
People are never satisfied
Infinity extends in all directions even the nonbanned ones.
Maybe game developers should think a bit harder for a change.
No wonder we just keep getting the same rehashes- most game makers lack imagination.
Well, look at it this way, back then his parents could let him cycle around and buy comics.
:)
Whereas nowadays, perhaps he'd be kept at home most times - where his internet access can be filtered and monitored.
See that's the thing about cameras, they can be useful.
I'm personally OK with having cameras EVERYWHERE as long as:
0) They are maintained by a separate independent organization from the police, and council.
1) Everyone can watch each other, whenever they want.
2) You know who is looking at what (you have to sign up for an account).
3) An secure archive is kept (so if people fake footage, you can countercheck).
Currently the problem with "public" cameras is the public don't get to use them, only people claiming to work for the public get to use them.
There are too many cases where the police/authorities make a mistake, and for some reason the _all_ the cameras covering the incident weren't working at that time.
And claim all the cameras covering the incident weren't working too :).
Four on the platform and one in the carriage...
Over here, most small business do post min limits.
I don't know of customers who complain. I think most people understand.
If you like doing business with a place, you don't want it to go bust. They make money, you can keep getting what you want from there.
Many people can't type well with their fingers either. They never have to.
Whereas some people can change a nappy, type etc with their toes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybgRS6832so
Well the brain can adapt to see with a tongue, so given a connection with suitable latency and bandwidth, I think it's not going to be that bad.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=seeing+tongue
As for lowering the muscle power in an arm, people experience that all the time - it's called "the arm is getting tired". People don't have to always take time to adjust _after_ these things. After some practice with using their arm, they know that they need to send "higher" impulses as the arm gets more tired.
Of course when the arm is too tired then competency drops dramatically, but before that the competency curve is still going to be fairly flat.
What you need is a low latency feedback loop, then the brain can know where the arm is and keep adjusting.
You can be fairly sloppy when sitting down in most chairs/sofas - you won't usually cause kilobux of damage.
When there are no other cars around - just the parking bays, I can parallel park with only a bit more brain power as sitting down.
I suggest that you'd use as much brain power in parallel parking as you would use to sit between two highly electrified sheets of metal - with a gap of about 4 inches between you and the sheet on each side.
To me that's a fairer comparison.
If cars and parking bays were designed so that parking speed collisions won't cause any damage, then you'd use as much brain power to park as plonking yourself on a nice comfy sofa.
"Lots of kids get these vaccines and are OK. The percentage of kids who gets these vaccines and develop autism is the same percentage of kids who get autism just because it happens"
But if you have been giving everyone the vaccine, then naturally the percentage of kids who get vaccines and develop autism will be very similar to the percentage of kids who get autism!
The other thing, how many humans do they test vaccines with? And what condition were those humans in (e.g. were the humans having a cold, exhausted, lack of sleep)? No matter how much you try to avoid it, some child is probably going to come down with some contagious disease (cold/fly etc) before/during the vaccination.
Why? To me there is a big difference between tests for the normal drugs and tests for childhood vaccines.
With normal drugs:
1) Not everyone will take that drug
2) Even if the drug ends up giving you problems, it's more likely to be considered an acceptable risk.
Whereas with the childhood vacciness they want most/all children to take them.
So I suggest that treatment that is to be given to _all_, should be more rigorously tested. So even if you still have to force it on everyone, you have a far better idea of what could happen.
For example: paracetamol is considered a safe drug - and has passed various safety tests. But if you give every child paracetamol, don't be surprised if many have a bad reaction to it. Only now they are suspecting that use of paracetamol in the first year of life increases the risk of asthma developing by 6 or 7 years.
So imagine if paracetamol was a "compulsory for all" drug.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against vaccines (or mass vaccinations). I'm just pointing out a problem with the usual reasoning.
He's probably just pretending to be as dense as Iridium.
Even if you can track the debris, if there's too much of it you can't avoid it.
It will.
The sort of thing they were doing in this experiment is to use a different part of the brain to control stuff.
Like learning to drive a car, this is learning to drive your prosthetic hand with your chest muscles.
You can use a mouse with either hand, and you can use it to control a gun/character that's not real in some game. If you have to, you could learn to use the mouse with your foot.
So using some other part of your body to control a prosthetic hand isn't far fetched.
We already control more limbs than we're born with.
;) ).
;) ).
:).
Try using a mouse to control a pointer in a GUI.
Next, use a mouse to control a character in an FPS game.
Next, use a mouse to control little creatures in an RTS game.
After enough practice, when you do all of that do you actually think of where you move your arm, hands and fingers?
You don't. You just think of controlling some extension of yourself.
Same for typing, using a screwdriver, etc.
Same goes for driving car. If you drive a car, next time observe that your hands move near subconsciously to turn the steering wheel so as to satisfy your intention that your car stays in its lane (well that is if you're one of those drivers who can stick to one lane
Why do you think most people have handedness? For most people learning to use a tool with the "other" hand is almost like learning to use a new tool all over again. It's not really a matter of "right" or "left", it's a matter of "different". Most people can't "flip" the "learnt mapping" to the other hand easily (which is what being ambidextrous is).
The dominant hand usually gets first choice in learning to use a tool. It doesn't necessarily mean your your "nondominant" hand is less "skilled", it is likely to be better at some things than your dominant hand (like using the other side of the keyboard
On the other hand, there are some people like Nadal who is righthanded but learnt to play tennis with his left hand just to have an advantage