If the US economy goes belly up a lot of that debt may very well become worthless paper, and at the same time China's primary purchaser of goods finds that it doesn't really have the money to purchase what it used to.
The thing is, the US will have to do everything it possibly can to prop its economy up - the real value of the US dollar is not in what it can buy & sell, but in the very fact that it's the de facto currency for buying & selling. Take that away, and the US dollar is at the mercy of its domestic economy - which, to be honest, unlike a lot of the rest of the world, is totally unprepared to stand isolated on its own strengths.
To the world, the US dollar is only important as a useful & fairly stable convenience to measure trade. To the US, that fact is fundamental to its huge economy. Take way that stability, and the US dies.
You only have to look at how the US government & markets react at the mere suggestion that some important part of world trade move to the euro to see this. Sure, the rest of the world would tremble - but only until it switched to trading in euros (or yuan, as an outside chance). And your huge money trading market will lead the exodus - the whole thing is based on having a reasonably solid and well understood reference point; when that disappears they'll jump to the next-best one.
Sure, it'll hurt China - but it's a huge economy in its own right, with solid physical fundamentals underpinning it all. They produce, or can produce, a respectable amount of the world's raw material demand and most of the world's processed product demand cheaper than anyone else. If I was a betting man, and thought the US was likely to cut its own throat to pull China down a peg or two, I'd be betting on China to come out on top...
I don't know if it was by accident or on purpose but we are using up china's steel.
You're using up China's steel, but not their iron ore. One of the criticisms of China is that they're barely touching their own reserves.
While keeping our own stockpiled natures way.
Last I looked, China's own ore situation was comparable to the US - slightly lower known reserves, slightly higher quality; the total amount of iron that could be produced from these reserves was about the same.
New, let me ask you this: who'd be in a better situation if the US stopped importing Chinese iron/steel? The US, with its high ramp-up time / costs & higher ongoing production costs, or China, with working iron refineries, steel mills, 6 months or more of ore stockpiles at current production rates, and similar ore reserves?
(Actually, the correct answer is probably "neither". Russia, Canada, Brazil, and Australia - as the world's largest iron ore exporters - would be the winners. At least 3 of those have long-term guaranteed price & supply contracts with China, and could effectively name their own price to the US.)
"The average Californian was not greatly worried by a rise of a couple of inches in the tide-level; he had been much more delicately stricken. Something was happening to his climate... He disapproved of that, and a large number of Californians disapproving makes quite a noise."
"I believe what you believe... blah blah blah... trust me, I'm good, not evil... blah blah blah... again, I believe what you believe... we're great, but we should be 10x better... blah blah blah... you need to work harder, focus more, and buy our stuff.. blah blah blah".
If this is "News For Nerds" to you, then you've been living under a rock for the last 30+ years...
He needs to have some way to make back at least most of the money he's spending.
No he doesn't, but it's a common mistake to make. He wants (or hopes, or chooses, or expects) to make back at least most of the money he's spending. And that's fine, but don't confuse the two. His desire to offset the cost != a "need" to see ads.
Apart from that, it's pointless. If ISPs are watching/throttling users who visit trackers, then they'll just start watching/throttling users who visit his proxy. I mean, it's not as if they can use his proxy for non-bittorrent purposes, is it?
You left out the Bavarian Illuminati, the Queen Mother (she's not really dead, you know...), and the shape-shifting blood-drinking reptile aliens. Not to mention the 100mpg carburettor, rods, and the Greys.
Please turn in your wingnut credentials at the door.
Can you answer me a question: why do you (and the other continental chaps) measure fuel consumption backwards?
You effectively answer your own question - l/100km is a measure of consumption ("how many litres are consumed per 100km?"); mpg is a measure of mileage ("How many miles can I go on 1 gallon?")
In other words, it's not backwards - but quoting l/100km as mileage is, as is quoting mpg as consumption.
The original ending of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove is available only on an old laserdisc; no subsequent DVD issue had it.
To be fair, that's not really the original ending - it was there in a pre-release screening, but Kubrick himself decided it was crap and cut it before release.
For the better, I might add. The pie-fight scene is a curio, nothing more - it's confusing, hard to follow, and turns the ending of a deeply sarcastic film into a farce. Which sort of works for Parker in Bugsy Malone, but wouldn't have for Kubrick in Dr Strangelove...
The problem is synchronizing the generated energy with the grid... This was not possible before.
Maybe not electronically, but asynchronous conversion is nothing new - it's been done using mechanical systems for the last century, with remarkably high efficiencies (e.g. >85%).
Really, it's no more difficult than converting the non-alternating output of e.g. steam boilers or pressurised water into synchronised AC power - something which has been done since the advent of AC power generation.
Actually, your Nano supports 640x480 resolution. True, it'll only display 320x240 on the internal screen - but will play the full 640x480 through the video out (though I'm not sure how it'll handle anamorphic widescreen, if at all).
Then they'll be able to get to more coal to run the power plant to run the cooling plant, silly!
(Really, the first link is way out there on the far edge of wingnut territory, with strong hints of Bavarian Illuminati and New World Order crackpotism. The only conspiracies that seem to be missing from it are ones about shape-shifting blood-drinking reptile aliens, Dick Cheney, and the Queen Mother...)
You're timeline's a bit out of whack - Murdoch gave up on the Wide Brown Land for the Land of Hope and Glory years before the cross-media laws were changed, and Packer's TV interests have been on the downward slide for years (propped up by their other media interests e.g. magazines, and gambling) - but otherwise, you're spot-on.
Really, I just dropped into this thread to watch people's heads explode from the "Big Media is Evil!" / "FCC is evil!" dichotomy;-)
Funnily enough, Australia started to avoid the worst stupidity of the American situation - where the FCC is both a technical and content standards regulator - with the divesting of roles between the ACMA / ACCC / ABA at various times during both the late Hawke and early Howard governments. Unfortunately, a lot of that good was undone in the later Howard years, to the point that nobody - not even the relevant organisations - really knows who's responsible for exactly what, except that even more of the content regulation role is now in the hands of the broadcasters themselves.
Still, we live in a land where televisual boobies aren't taboo, and free-to-air TV can broadcast the word "shit" at prime-time and "fuck" after 9:30pm...
Not trolling, but I can tell almost exactly the same story about installing WMP7 - install #1 seemed to go OK but resulted in a broken install that locked up Windows when trying to run it; install #2 was a nightmare fight against "you already have the latest version" even after uninstalling it through Control Panel; and install #3 seemed to work fine except left me with a user interface totally unlike Media Player (WMP6, that is), with none of the standard Windows GUI elements visible. Clicking around blindly trying to find a way of changing the UI just seemed to cycle through various themes of coloured vomit flying around on screen.
Stupid thing is, I wasn't even trying to update WMP in the first place - I was updating IE...
Maybe Nigeria can become known as a country of greedy patent trolls...
Who says they're patent trolls?
They might actually have a point. It's not like they've sat on this for years - the public release of OLPC laptops is so recent that it's entirely conceivable that it's taken this long to examine them, document any violations, and file suit. And who knows what behind-the-scene negotiations, which may have delayed filing, have taken place between them and OLPC?
Is it just that the OLPC, being "free" and "open" and using Linux and all, are considered by/. groupthink to automatically be in the right? Or are people suggesting that all patent owners are patent trolls? (A position with which I would largely agree, BTW.)
Sorry, not picking on you specifically - you're just the first in thread to mention the words "patent troll".
I will wager a bunch of cash that he is selling a product that will fix whatever he says is broke.
No, no - he's writing a story about it.
The hero is a neckbeard, it's set in a world where everything wants to be free, and the main part of the action takes place in Disneyland. Oddly and unbelievably, the author will not understand the ironic incongruity of that...
Just think of the innumerable products, services, and opportunities that you'd be missing out on if it wasn't for advertising. Not to mention FTA television and websites like this very one which wouldn't exist if they couldn't afford to bring you news of such important and innovative products.
Why, if you're not reading - and, more importantly, following - those ads, it's like your stealing!
At least, that's the normal kind of reply I get here every time I suggest ads are mental & social pollution, and that if you meet an advertising or marketing executive you should kick them hard in the nuts...
You no longer matter. A musician no longer needs an expensive studio and even more expensive factory, he can rent a studio even in a small city like Springfield, which has several. He can get his CD professionally mastered and copied with insert and jewell case for a couple thousand bucks, less than the price of a decent drum kit.
<SCENE: INSIDE a smoky, disreputable bar. BAND has just finished a gig>
EDDIE: But who's going to market it, kid? You?
LEAD SINGER: You bet I could. I'm not such a bad salesman myself! We don't have to sit here and listen...
BASSIST: We haven't that much with us. But we could pay you two thousand now, plus fifteen when we reach Top 40.
EDDIE: Seventeen, huh!
Eddie ponders this for a few moments.
EDDIE: Okay. You guys got yourself a record deal. We'll leave as soon as you're ready. Studio Ninety-four.
Actually, it's a rather crap book - the author is so wrapped up in Tesla that she keeps beating the reader over the head with her conceit that he was truly a "man out of time", a genius trapped in an age of idiots, and that the Evil Establishment stole his simple ideas while simultaneously deriding him for his more "advanced" ideas - ideas which, even now, we don't understand because he was such a genius!
Seriously, the thing veers wildly into kooky New-Age "there are things we don't understand, and other things being hidden from us - but Tesla knew them all!" territory at times, and suffers badly for it.
When, in truth, the story is much more pragmatic. Tesla was already a fairly well-respected engineer when he arrived in the US, and definitely had a knack for understanding his field. Yes he was screwed by Edison, and initially by Westinghouse, but ultimately he was well paid and publicly appreciated for his work. He got caught in the crossfire of a long-standing argument between the two forceful and overbearing public personalities of Edison and Westinghouse - no mean feat, because he was a famous man himself, and definitely something of a showman! And, in the end, he blew all of his fortune chasing his own kooky ideas which, given even the limited understanding of the time, were obviously wrong - and still are now.
Now, there's no denying that the man was a better engineer than Edison, and probably smarter scientifically than Westinghouse - but he was still a man, a product of his time, and not the new-agey "God amongst mere men" that book makes him out to be.
(Or, at least that's my recollection of when I read it 25-odd years ago. I read it once, and once again a year later, then gave it away because it was starry-eyed hagiographic crap.)
Pity I've already commented in this thread, because it means I can't give you a "-1, WTF?!" mod.
No, seriously, WTF are you trying to get at with your comment? The only thing I can guess is that you have no idea about the differences and relationships between peak, average, RMS, AC, DC, and the term "power".
I remain convinced that, notwithstanding their alleged "tech-cred", the average/.er has as much understanding of electricity as they do of women...
Slashdot Mirror
To the world, the US dollar is only important as a useful & fairly stable convenience to measure trade. To the US, that fact is fundamental to its huge economy. Take way that stability, and the US dies.
You only have to look at how the US government & markets react at the mere suggestion that some important part of world trade move to the euro to see this. Sure, the rest of the world would tremble - but only until it switched to trading in euros (or yuan, as an outside chance). And your huge money trading market will lead the exodus - the whole thing is based on having a reasonably solid and well understood reference point; when that disappears they'll jump to the next-best one.
Sure, it'll hurt China - but it's a huge economy in its own right, with solid physical fundamentals underpinning it all. They produce, or can produce, a respectable amount of the world's raw material demand and most of the world's processed product demand cheaper than anyone else. If I was a betting man, and thought the US was likely to cut its own throat to pull China down a peg or two, I'd be betting on China to come out on top...
New, let me ask you this: who'd be in a better situation if the US stopped importing Chinese iron/steel? The US, with its high ramp-up time / costs & higher ongoing production costs, or China, with working iron refineries, steel mills, 6 months or more of ore stockpiles at current production rates, and similar ore reserves?
(Actually, the correct answer is probably "neither". Russia, Canada, Brazil, and Australia - as the world's largest iron ore exporters - would be the winners. At least 3 of those have long-term guaranteed price & supply contracts with China, and could effectively name their own price to the US.)
"The average Californian was not greatly worried by a rise of a couple of inches in the tide-level; he had been much more delicately stricken. Something was happening to his climate ... He disapproved of that, and a large number of Californians disapproving makes quite a noise."
-- John Wyndham, 'The Kraken Wakes', 1953.
People, you're all overlooking the truly important and ground breaking part of this:
GM have rediscovered the missing step #2!
1: Use O/S software in inconsequential product &/or manner
2: Wait until Slashdot does your PR for you
3: Profit!
"I believe what you believe ... blah blah blah ... trust me, I'm good, not evil ... blah blah blah ... again, I believe what you believe ... we're great, but we should be 10x better ... blah blah blah ... you need to work harder, focus more, and buy our stuff .. blah blah blah".
If this is "News For Nerds" to you, then you've been living under a rock for the last 30+ years...
I don't know about you, but personally I hope the future doesn't include a Disco-fied New New York...
Apart from that, it's pointless. If ISPs are watching/throttling users who visit trackers, then they'll just start watching/throttling users who visit his proxy. I mean, it's not as if they can use his proxy for non-bittorrent purposes, is it?
You left out the Bavarian Illuminati, the Queen Mother (she's not really dead, you know...), and the shape-shifting blood-drinking reptile aliens. Not to mention the 100mpg carburettor, rods, and the Greys.
Please turn in your wingnut credentials at the door.
In other words, it's not backwards - but quoting l/100km as mileage is, as is quoting mpg as consumption.
For the better, I might add. The pie-fight scene is a curio, nothing more - it's confusing, hard to follow, and turns the ending of a deeply sarcastic film into a farce. Which sort of works for Parker in Bugsy Malone, but wouldn't have for Kubrick in Dr Strangelove...
Really, it's no more difficult than converting the non-alternating output of e.g. steam boilers or pressurised water into synchronised AC power - something which has been done since the advent of AC power generation.
Actually, your Nano supports 640x480 resolution. True, it'll only display 320x240 on the internal screen - but will play the full 640x480 through the video out (though I'm not sure how it'll handle anamorphic widescreen, if at all).
Then they'll be able to get to more coal to run the power plant to run the cooling plant, silly!
(Really, the first link is way out there on the far edge of wingnut territory, with strong hints of Bavarian Illuminati and New World Order crackpotism. The only conspiracies that seem to be missing from it are ones about shape-shifting blood-drinking reptile aliens, Dick Cheney, and the Queen Mother...)
You're timeline's a bit out of whack - Murdoch gave up on the Wide Brown Land for the Land of Hope and Glory years before the cross-media laws were changed, and Packer's TV interests have been on the downward slide for years (propped up by their other media interests e.g. magazines, and gambling) - but otherwise, you're spot-on.
;-)
Really, I just dropped into this thread to watch people's heads explode from the "Big Media is Evil!" / "FCC is evil!" dichotomy
Funnily enough, Australia started to avoid the worst stupidity of the American situation - where the FCC is both a technical and content standards regulator - with the divesting of roles between the ACMA / ACCC / ABA at various times during both the late Hawke and early Howard governments. Unfortunately, a lot of that good was undone in the later Howard years, to the point that nobody - not even the relevant organisations - really knows who's responsible for exactly what, except that even more of the content regulation role is now in the hands of the broadcasters themselves.
Still, we live in a land where televisual boobies aren't taboo, and free-to-air TV can broadcast the word "shit" at prime-time and "fuck" after 9:30pm...
Not trolling, but I can tell almost exactly the same story about installing WMP7 - install #1 seemed to go OK but resulted in a broken install that locked up Windows when trying to run it; install #2 was a nightmare fight against "you already have the latest version" even after uninstalling it through Control Panel; and install #3 seemed to work fine except left me with a user interface totally unlike Media Player (WMP6, that is), with none of the standard Windows GUI elements visible. Clicking around blindly trying to find a way of changing the UI just seemed to cycle through various themes of coloured vomit flying around on screen.
Stupid thing is, I wasn't even trying to update WMP in the first place - I was updating IE...
They might actually have a point. It's not like they've sat on this for years - the public release of OLPC laptops is so recent that it's entirely conceivable that it's taken this long to examine them, document any violations, and file suit. And who knows what behind-the-scene negotiations, which may have delayed filing, have taken place between them and OLPC?
Is it just that the OLPC, being "free" and "open" and using Linux and all, are considered by
Sorry, not picking on you specifically - you're just the first in thread to mention the words "patent troll".
The hero is a neckbeard, it's set in a world where everything wants to be free, and the main part of the action takes place in Disneyland. Oddly and unbelievably, the author will not understand the ironic incongruity of that...
Since when are ads bad?
Just think of the innumerable products, services, and opportunities that you'd be missing out on if it wasn't for advertising. Not to mention FTA television and websites like this very one which wouldn't exist if they couldn't afford to bring you news of such important and innovative products.
Why, if you're not reading - and, more importantly, following - those ads, it's like your stealing !
At least, that's the normal kind of reply I get here every time I suggest ads are mental & social pollution, and that if you meet an advertising or marketing executive you should kick them hard in the nuts...
(or maybe 'Sorry - I tripped, and my lawyer went off accidentally...')
<SCENE: INSIDE a smoky, disreputable bar. BAND has just finished a gig>
EDDIE: But who's going to market it, kid? You?
LEAD SINGER: You bet I could. I'm not such a bad salesman myself! We don't have to sit here and listen...
BASSIST: We haven't that much with us. But we could pay you two thousand now, plus fifteen when we reach Top 40.
EDDIE: Seventeen, huh!
Eddie ponders this for a few moments.
EDDIE: Okay. You guys got yourself a record deal. We'll leave as soon as you're ready. Studio Ninety-four.
Actually, it's a rather crap book - the author is so wrapped up in Tesla that she keeps beating the reader over the head with her conceit that he was truly a "man out of time", a genius trapped in an age of idiots, and that the Evil Establishment stole his simple ideas while simultaneously deriding him for his more "advanced" ideas - ideas which, even now, we don't understand because he was such a genius!
Seriously, the thing veers wildly into kooky New-Age "there are things we don't understand, and other things being hidden from us - but Tesla knew them all!" territory at times, and suffers badly for it.
When, in truth, the story is much more pragmatic. Tesla was already a fairly well-respected engineer when he arrived in the US, and definitely had a knack for understanding his field. Yes he was screwed by Edison, and initially by Westinghouse, but ultimately he was well paid and publicly appreciated for his work. He got caught in the crossfire of a long-standing argument between the two forceful and overbearing public personalities of Edison and Westinghouse - no mean feat, because he was a famous man himself, and definitely something of a showman! And, in the end, he blew all of his fortune chasing his own kooky ideas which, given even the limited understanding of the time, were obviously wrong - and still are now.
Now, there's no denying that the man was a better engineer than Edison, and probably smarter scientifically than Westinghouse - but he was still a man, a product of his time, and not the new-agey "God amongst mere men" that book makes him out to be.
(Or, at least that's my recollection of when I read it 25-odd years ago. I read it once, and once again a year later, then gave it away because it was starry-eyed hagiographic crap.)
Which they do by converting to DC first...
Pity I've already commented in this thread, because it means I can't give you a "-1, WTF?!" mod.
/.er has as much understanding of electricity as they do of women...
No, seriously, WTF are you trying to get at with your comment? The only thing I can guess is that you have no idea about the differences and relationships between peak, average, RMS, AC, DC, and the term "power".
I remain convinced that, notwithstanding their alleged "tech-cred", the average