The primary complaint will all of you arguments, mind you, is the expense of moving material in to orbit, and to the ground, safely.
We've already got the technology to do that; we've just stepped away from it. Project ORION is achievable using current technology, can move *vast* amount of material into space, and back onto the planet, and would release no more radiation that the various open-air nuclear tests of the previous century, and most likely a good deal less than the various coal burning power plants we have.
Low gravity for manufacturing? Okay. What exactly are we going to manufacture that will justify the cost required to ship it up and down the well?
I'd suggest that the combination of low gravity and virtually no prohibition against utilization of huge amounts of energy, and no risks of spreading contamination? One could possibly build some interesting things; a manufacturing plant on the dark side of the moon, using energy beamed down from solar satellites, as one would have to release a truly magnificent amount of radiation before it would negatively affect the earth.
2-3 asteroids might be sufficient to cover the development cost of a Project Orion powered mining program, while simultaneously flooding the world market with technologically useful minerals. New golden age? Who knows.
100+ asteroids, mined over a 30-50 year period, would be incalculable wealth to mankind.
Before flight, there were a great deal of naysayers who sounded a lot like you. Before deep-ocean capable vessels were developed, the entirety of the western world thought that venturing into the Atlantic was pure idiocy. When the Arabs first discovered oil beneath their sands, they couldn't think of what to do with it.
That being said, however, I agree with you, as long as we, the Human race, are restricting ourselves to chemical rockets there really isn't any reason for us to be exploring space, or wasting money on "Space Taxis". Chemical rockets will not be useful for anything but unmanned probes and communication satellites.
What will happen to our economy if both our trade deficit and federal budget deficit continue to grow to astronomical proportions?
Just how many trillions in treasury bonds do you think China, Japan, etc. . . are willing to buy? I don't think that we have an immediate 'debt' crises, in that our Debt to GDP ratio will not really be horrific until 2012-13 or so, but there is an issue of bond market saturation; you can really only sell so many hundreds of billions of bonds before you start to run out of buyers. We're going to bump into that in the next 12-18 months.
You know what is even worse? All these estimates (CBO, White House, otherwise), are old enough that they do not include the current unemployment calculations. Given that both payroll and income taxes are taking quite an unemployment hit, there is every reason to believe that the CBO deficit estimates are probably about 20%-30% better than reality. Oh, and of course, they don't include the costs of Obamacare, the increase in the capital gains tax (which, historically, actually *reduces* tax receipts), the Energy Cap-N-Trade bill, and other such regulatory nonsense.
Please describe to me how the structural "yearly trillion dollar deficits by 2015" is okay? Also, please describe to me how we the above named programs aren't going to make it worse? Also, given that both the SS and Medicare "Trust Funds" aren't "piles-o-cash", but are "piles-o-bonds", please describe to me how the liquidation and auction process for those bonds won't further worse out situation?
Exactly which one of these issues do you see being resolved after the current "6-month period"?
Capitalism is an economic philosophy, not a force of nature. The business cycle is a statistical phenomenon, not a natural law. Just because former downturns lasted for 12 months or so, doesn't mean that this one won't run for 24, or 36, or 60+.
Some see the previous administration as a repeat of what was going on in the Soviet Union prior to it's collapse.
I see the previous administration more akin to the gradual stagnation the Soviet Union experience in the late 60s-early 70s.
I see the *current* administration as to a source of rampant corruption, and very similar to what the Soviet Union was "done in by".
Gigantic budget deficits as far as the eye can see, centralization of economic, industrial, social, and financial policy, huge expenditures upon shady projects with little oversight, and bipartisan efforts to snatch as many crumbs as possible from the budget with little or no thought as to what that will to do the nation.
We are currently watching the socialization of all of our societies "little ills", including the failure of our major industrial sectors (Auto Industry and Large cutbacks in our military industrial complex), socialization of trillions of dollars of losses in the financial sector, and socialization of our escalating health care costs.
There are only so many economic guarantees that can be placed upon the Federal Government before it begins to loose credibility, and before the dollar collapses. While we aren't at that point yet (we are years away, even with trillion+ dollar deficits), there is nothing to suggest that our deficits won't continue to grow through at least 2020, and probably through 2050 (if we last that long). Worse, its not like this money is being spent on pressing concerns; an immediate war, an epidemic crises, or a massive natural disaster. This money isn't even being "invested" in future growth (ie industrial or financial policy). This is money being blown on "societal welfare", or "public goodies", also know as ways to game for votes.
$1 spent on road construction does not get you an additional $1 in economic growth; the same is true for medicare, social security, carbon credits, or bank bailouts.
I don't live in a very crowded area, but the UPS store I dropped the 360 off recognized the shipping label at a glance. "Xbox 360, huh? I get 3-4 of those a day."
Neither me, nor my friend, play on our 360 very much. Mine got used perhaps 2 hours a month. Some months it went with no use whatsoever. I had it sitting on the top shelf of a nearly empty stereo rack, on metal perforated shelves, with no walls. Virtual no heat from other equipment, and kept in a cool, air conditioned environment.
Quite clearly, there was a manufacturing error, as I cannot imagine *anyone* using a 360 less than myself.
That being said, MS has been quite reasonable with the warranty extension; they did the right thing, didn't try and charge me, and got the console back to me on time.
Given what I have experienced with the 360, and the failure rates reported in the media, I'd say it is pretty difficult to argue that most users "neglect or abuse" their consoles. The only environment I could imagine that would be more suitable for my console would be to put it in an equipment rack through which I pumped cold air, but clearly thats an unreasonable expectation, and its not like I'm a heavy user of the console anyway.
. . . crying out for a government investigation to figure out "new business" models for them.
For god sakes; provide a relevant service to consumers who are willing to pay for them, or *go out of business*!
The dot com bubble saw a million different companies that tried to sell things that nobody wanted, and each one of those companies cried a river of tears before it evaporated. Some of them even had a few promising ideas, just poor execution.
I'm afraid were about to see a bailout bubble, with huge valuations applied to ancient, dying companies that have no real value except for a "Too Big to Fail" stamp.
Value means you contribute, and generate wealth, preferably for everyone (customers, employees, management, and owners). When Value is defined as, "I hold your economy hostage, you better keep me alive," something is dramatically wrong.
Inflation isn't like the seasons; it's an economic indicator, and is not necessarily a fact of life. Right now, the worry is *deflation*, not inflation. Inflation is low and controlled.
IIRC, pay increases *are* above the extremely low inflation rate, at least in the U.S. The main issue right now is unemployment, not inflation versus income.
Of course, I think that all the of the current debt spending by the Obama administration will blow inflation through the roof, but not yet.
What is a properly designed cluster of virtual machines? There is no reason that the daemons in the cluster cannot communicate/interact at extremely (read local) speeds. There is no reason that the various levels of hardware abstraction cannot be varied to different levels of virtualization.
One could easily imagine using a "storage" management v-appliance through a "database" management v-appliance, connected to a series of "HTTP server" v-appliances.
The "overhead" you speak of, that of OS security; there's no particular reason that it would be more efficient to build that into your OS; instead, the coarseness of putting it in a virtualization hypervisor may make the code more elegant, perhaps even with less overhead.
However, there is a way in which I agree with you; we need smarter OS's to interact with the hypervisor better. Take *out* the security stuff that's currently in there. That security model is broken, as the past 20 years of taught us. Heck, the unix-y approach, which empirically appears to be the correct one, is based upon simplifying your applications into separate sections as much as possible; and that's an endorsement for the virtualization model.
The issue is stripping out the crap in Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, or whatever operating system you are using. And by crap, I mean everything which is not relevant to the functions of that particular v-application.
I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here, however, in that I don't *really* know which model has overall better $$ of hardware efficiency. If I were going to bet on it, though, I'd bet on the virtualized model with well-written v-applications.
ATI/AMD has really done a tremendous about face Linux wise. I heartily recommend them. They've dramatically improved the quality and performance of the binary (non-oss) driver; it's equivalent to Windows performance wise, and very close feature wise, and it tends to be hassle free. They've also been releasing the binary drivers for new cards at the same time. On the oss side, they've been release specs like crazy, and the OSS driver is improving at a very rapid clip.
I'd still go with the binary driver for now, but in the not-so-distant future the in-kernel Linux support for the Radeon series will be fine for most purposes (i.e. every where you currently use an Intel chip).
Obama is that less of the money will go to the military-industrial complex and tax cuts for the rich, and more into infrastructure and services that benefit greater number of people. I think that's potentially good, but doesn't change the fact that the federal budget deficit is downright terrifying and unsustainable.
I have no argument that Bush (and both GOP/Democrat congresses) spent way too much, but the current "Stimulus/Recovery/Whatever-the-hell" bill is good money after bad. A significant portion of the money goes into Medicaid, Medicare, and "state-aid".
Cover state budget holes, and state legislatures will spend the money on something else. Meanwhile, the federal budget gets a new, higher, $1 trillion dollar deficit a year floor.
You want Keynesian Stimulus? Spend $200-400 billion on infrastructure. You want Reagan Stimulus? Spend $200-400 on infrastructure, and another $200-400 on pro-business tax cuts.
The current bill is neither of those things, pays a small amount towards national 'capital' assets, and borrows a vast amount of money to fill structural holes in state budgets.
*shrug*
I don't think you can stimulate the economy, or fix long-term structural budgetary problems, by kicking funding for schools, healthcare, and other transfer payments down the road 2 years (which is *exactly* what this bill does). So; Pell Grants get $20 billion for 2009-2010? What about 2011? Not only does the shortfall get bigger, but then we have to cope with the additional interest on the borrowed money to fill today's budgetary hole.
I'm all for targeted tax cuts that increase future tax revenue (capital gains taxes). I'm all for infrastructure funding that either reduces future budgetary needs (energy efficiency can do that), or increases economic activity (better ports, internet, and highways ->more business->bigger tax base).
But if we spend/borrow $1 trillion, and don't get a significant amount of long term growth out of it, we're just digging a deeper hole, and that's exactly what the big O is planning to do.
I've told other people, and I'll post it on Slashdot, for which I'll get ridiculed. Unless there are some dramatic sunset provisions in this bill, or the economy starts magically growing at 4-5% a year, people will remember the days of Bush as "The Good Old Days", when budget deficits were no more than a few hundred billion, and the national debt was under $20 trillion. When spending $600 billion on a war over 5 years was considered profligate waste.
We've pole-vaulted over the $1 trillion dollar per-year deficit level, and we don't even have anything cool to show for it (like, I dunno, space factors, a city on the moon, or Nuclear Fusion).
If I offer you $100,000,000 for a hamburger, is that coercion?
For that matter, just what exactly is your definition of coercion? Giving you a decision where the two outcomes are not equal? That's perverse; and it explains why you don't think freedom matters.
The cold hard math is that Capitalism has brought more people (might I even use the term "Billions") out of poverty than any other socioeconomic system; and we have tried others. Africa is stuck in sociostatism, and the eastern block tried 60+ years of "pure" socialism. Now, it may be true that these people brought out of poverty are not yet "well off", however, that just goes to show that you do not understand the magnitude of the task necessary to bring wealth and prosperity to the world.
You accuse us Libertarians of not understanding the mechanics of economic coercion, whatever that oxymoron maybe, however, I am certain that you either do not understand, or choose to ignore, the coercion implicit in statism. The red tape that small business owners must navigate through, the state bureaucrats that delight in making average blue collar workers miserable while waiting in line at the department of motor vehicles, or the tax burden carried by the working class.
P.S. If it is progressive "funding" for the government you are fighting for, that you should be happy that the Bush Administration has significantly increased the percentage of federal revenue from "the rich".
Coercion, huh?
The left-leaning, welfare capitalism (Happy Capitalism?) states of Europe are dominated by aristocrat-like families of wealth and power, dynasties who rule through the generations (not unlike the Kennedies), running empires which are built upon the notion of appearing to support the working class.
What I view as coercion is limits on economic mobility, both upwards and downwards. I do not like the idea that I cannot succeed through the fruits of my labor, and I really hate the idea that "my betters" (i.e. the people that run the banks and the automakers in this country) are too successful to fail, no matter how many mistakes they make, and no matter how stupid they are.
That's economic coercion. When the government medals to insure that success is not rewards (or even punished!), and failure is rewarded, and not punished.
I'm just asking you to agree that other people feel it does exist, and why it subsequently leads them to a different conclusion than your own.
This might be the stupidest thing I've ever read. I might agree that other people believe in a god who tells them not to receive medical treatment as it leaves their souls impure, but I'm sure as hell not going to permit them to ban medical research.
A lot of people believe a lot of stupid things. Your belief in the efficacy of the state is one of those things. I don't have to respect your beliefs just because you have them, and I feel a moral obligation to fight against the imposition of the state coercion, let alone the economic coercion, that you advocate.
Which must be why foreign governments are considering bailing out their automakers too, right?
Which countries are?
Canada? Which is bailing out the U.S. companies operating in Canada?
Or Sweden, which is bailing out Saab and Volvo, owned by GM and Ford, respectively?
Or Germany, which is bailing out Opel, another GM brand?
Or Britain, which is bailing out Ford and Vauxhall (Vauxhall is a GM brand)?
I guess there is France, which is bailing out its two automakers, Renault and Peugeot. But nothing suggests their either of those two are on the edge of collapse; rather, the government is throwing money at them to insure that plants are not closed, and jobs are not lost. Pure stupidity. But subsidies are not a new game for the French.
The American automakers brought this crisis on themselves. Most, if not all of the foreign manufacturers will stay alive because they have the resources to survive the lean times; the American companies look as if they decided to not generate *any* profits, and rely upon a government bailout to survive if needed.
Note also that you don't convert an SUV plant to making hybrids in "weeks", as you so blithely assert. Sure, you can shut the SUV plant down in weeks (at a cost in jobs), but you're not switching production so quickly as all that.
No, actually, Honda has a *5-minute* retool. While that's not the standard, both Toyota and Honda can do incredible restructuring of their production in a matter of weeks, not months/years.
*shrug*. I guess you can try and blame the customer. I'd say that it *is* the automakers fault that they were unable to compete with the foreign transplant operations, and it *is* the automakers fault that they were unable to flexibly adjust production to match customer demand, and it *is* the automakers fault that they did not have the financial wherewithal to plan for or survive a downturn.
This crisis is 100% the automakers fault. The market is a tough place, and you can't survive it if you make decade upon decade of bad decisions.
Then, a miracle happened - oil prices went through the ceiling, and Americans decided they didn't want SUV's anymore. Suddenly, the Americanautomakers were stuck with inventory and factories making things noone wanted to buy. Hence, the bailout.
I fixed that for you.
The "transplant" American automakers; Toyota and Honda first, but all the other Japanese and European companies; when they realized that SUVs weren't needed anymore, switched their production to smaller cars.
It didn't take 4 years; it took weeks. Also, since they decided that they were going to be highly profitable in the "good times" (unlike GM, Ford, and Chrysler, who prefer to lose money in the good times and bad), they were able to weather the storm so far. Oh, and they were able to liquidate their inventory and write it off.
Not to mention that when they have to close plants, they can actually "close" plants, rather than put "fired" workers into "job banks" at full salary.
The American Automakers are dying because they died 3 years ago, the wound just wasn't fatal since the economy was humming along. Disastrously managed companies sometimes manage to limp along during boom times, simply because any snake oil salesman can sell crap when there are many fools with money. Of course, when the economy makes a downward move, which *every* person should understand is a fairly regular occurrence (it's called the business cycle), the crap companies end up dead.
The American Automakers are badly managed, are not diversified, are completely inflexible, have broken labor models, and for some idiotic reason rely upon 5-year plans reminiscent of Soviet Industrialism. This just cannot work today. It was a fucked up model when the Soviets tried it, and its only got worse as economies have become more agile.
Who can you pin all this on? The management. Without a doubt. It's stupid to blame the consumer, and surprisingly, it's stupid to blame the government. Some blame could go on the Board of Directors, but the primary target belongs on the CEO and their management team. (Note that the Ford CEO has done dramatically better than GM or Chrysler).
I sincerely believe I could do a better job that Rick Wagoner managing GM. Honestly. The problems at that company are obvious, and for a long time they've blown billions of dollars on solutions that were obviously bad. Wagoner has been consistently, and obviously wrong on the direction of the market, and consistently and obviously wrong on how to fix GM. Wagoner has been in the upper management of GM since 1992, and since then, IIRC, the company has lost money equivalent to the ENTIRE MARKET VALUE of Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. When Toyota launched the Prius, he said the market wasn't ready for it. When various engineers pushed electric car development, he didn't think they would find much traction. When Congress tried to eliminate the huge tax deduction for large SUVs, he lobbied against it. When the UAW made unreasonable demands, he kowtowed to them. And now that the American consumer refuses to buy the shit his company produces, he intends to reach deep into our pockets to force it upon us.
Even now, Wagoner refuses to acknowledge that *at least* 1/2 of his labor force is unnecessary, and probably 80% of the GM dealership need to be shutdown.
The numbers are simple. This is American sales/American companies, only.
GM sales in 2007: 9,370,000 vehicles Toyota sales in 2007: 9,366,418 vehicles
GM profit/loss in 2007: -$38,730,000,000 (-$4,055 per car) Toyota profit in 2007: +$17,146,000,000 (+$1,874 per car)
GM has 310,000 employees. Toyota has 150,000. GM has 14,000 dealerships, Toyota has approximately 2,000.
You, as a consumer; would you hire two landscaping companies if you needed one? If you had a construction job in your home that needed 3 workers, would you hire 6? Do you really want to carry the overhead of all those dealerships and employees when you really just want a car?
With the screwed up way they setup systems on their corporate networks, it wouldn't surprise me if some Fortune 500 companies' employees experienced 15+ minute boot time on some machines.
My uncle works at Allstate. I know that when he boots up his laptop with the intention of VPNing into his work network, it reboots *3* times on "bootup". And each bootup is slow-----. Boot->Forced Chkdsk->Update Virus Scanner/Other Security Software->Start VPN Client->Download Update->Reboot->Forced Chkdsk->Update VIrus Scanner/Other Security Software->Start VPN Client->Access Secondary Network->Login to Remote Access System->Reboot->.....
Honestly. It took forever. It shocked me that someone could design such a stupid system.
And the updates? They literally happened on *every* "bootup".
Are the trademark's IBM, or Pledge, or Clorox worthless?
The defining ability to sell products in those categories might actually be the name you sell them under! It could potentially be the *most* important factor, above and beyond support, product quality, even price!
GE claims $4.5 billion in "Licenses, Patents, and Trademarks". While the GP is correct that these values primarily arise as a function of acquisitions or sale of assets, the only time that corporate evaluations really matter is during acquisitions, sale of assets, and other forms of stock/ownership valuations.
Let me put it the way GE puts it (and GE is the *gold standard* when it comes to Goodwill, except for perhaps the Federal Reserve, who has a totally invented balance sheet.) There are 9 companies with triple A credit ratings, and GE's ability to manage accurately manage goodwill is one of the reasons it is a triple A rated company.
Upon closing an acquisition, we estimate the fair values of assets and liabilities acquired and consolidate the acquisition as quickly as possible. Given the time it takes to obtain pertinent information to finalize the acquired companyâ(TM)s balance sheet, then to adjust the acquired companyâ(TM)s accounting policies, procedures, books and records to our standards, it is often several quarters before we are able to finalize those initial fair value estimates. Accordingly, it is not uncommon for our initial estimates to be subsequently revised. Emphasis added for the benefit of readers.
You *do* just stick those things on your balance sheet; the issue is being able to justify them. If I put my good name on a financial statement to a bank, the bank probably won't take me seriously, unless my name is something like "Warren Buffet". If my name is "GE", and I "give" that name to some business effort, it is a very serious transaction with serious financial consequences, and I can potentially use that to either buy or sell assets, as well as finance offers, and issue debt.
The credibility of the "good will", and the managers who evaluate the relevant values is what determines the financial values of those intangibles. They're only intangible in that they are intellectual concepts, and in many ways are just as "real" as stock or other corporate paper holdings.
No necessarily to the parent, but the GP, there are places in the US where you can live very comfortable on $50-$75k per year. Mostly smaller towns 100-150 miles from major metropolitan areas. I'm thinking Chicago's Rockford, or Elgin. Or any of the various industrialized suburbs of Milwaukee, or Brookfield, WI, or similar towns.
Take out an FHA loan on a cheap property, something that needs a lot of love, and put in the work yourself (that way you *know* the value will go up; it's not appreciating, its sweat equity!).
$50-75k is a very good salary in some areas, particularly if you aren't keeping up the Jones, and don't mind doing work around the house (probably a lot).
You know, Aldi's is paying cashiers $12.50 an hour plus benefits at entry level. There's really no excuse to be making less than $25,000 a year, in the U.S., if you have no physical, psychological, or family barriers preventing you from working.
The plan is to "delay" the constellation program in order to fund education. The claim is this is a "temporary delay", however, the way government funding works it is fairly likely that allocation would become permanent.
The primary issue is that of the severity of the virus or bacteria, not keeping it clean. At best, you can disinfect the surfaces, not the interior. And although it sounds gross, you probably sneezed on, or near, the unit. Perhaps there was some moisture on your fingers when you touched the drive bay, or maybe you got your sickly hands on a CD before you inserted it, spraying fine droplets of moisture through out the unit.
As long as it is something normalish like the Flu, Cold, Chicken Pox, etc . . . just give it time. Most of that stuff dies in 24-36 hours without a host.
If its something horrifying, like Ebola? Stick your electronic item in the oven, put it on "Self-Clean", and get a new one. Discard the ash in a biohazard box;-)
You'll never, ever, ever, ever succeed at "disinfecting" consumer electronics, because they are never sealed well enough. About the best you can do is those Virtually Indestructible Keyboard&Mice. Anything else just isn't cleanable, and you should do your best to maintain good hygiene (wipe the keyboard and unit every now and then with a good alcohol wipe (or spray alcohol on a paper towel)), and get over the "scariness" of illness.
Furthermore, if its your family your worried about, you've already given them ample opportunity to get infected, if you shared utensils, a bed, skin contact (Hugs and Kisses, anyone?) or even an indoor environment.
Disease isn't that scary unless you or someone you know immune system's compromised, and in that case you should turn to a health care professional to figure out how to make your environment safe. Otherwise, get over it;-)
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The primary complaint will all of you arguments, mind you, is the expense of moving material in to orbit, and to the ground, safely.
We've already got the technology to do that; we've just stepped away from it. Project ORION is achievable using current technology, can move *vast* amount of material into space, and back onto the planet, and would release no more radiation that the various open-air nuclear tests of the previous century, and most likely a good deal less than the various coal burning power plants we have.
Estimates of the value of even a small number of space asteroids in terms of precious metals (techy ones, too) exceed hundreds of billions of dollars .
Low gravity for manufacturing? Okay. What exactly are we going to manufacture that will justify the cost required to ship it up and down the well?
I'd suggest that the combination of low gravity and virtually no prohibition against utilization of huge amounts of energy, and no risks of spreading contamination? One could possibly build some interesting things; a manufacturing plant on the dark side of the moon, using energy beamed down from solar satellites, as one would have to release a truly magnificent amount of radiation before it would negatively affect the earth.
2-3 asteroids might be sufficient to cover the development cost of a Project Orion powered mining program, while simultaneously flooding the world market with technologically useful minerals. New golden age? Who knows.
100+ asteroids, mined over a 30-50 year period, would be incalculable wealth to mankind.
Before flight, there were a great deal of naysayers who sounded a lot like you. Before deep-ocean capable vessels were developed, the entirety of the western world thought that venturing into the Atlantic was pure idiocy. When the Arabs first discovered oil beneath their sands, they couldn't think of what to do with it.
That being said, however, I agree with you, as long as we, the Human race, are restricting ourselves to chemical rockets there really isn't any reason for us to be exploring space, or wasting money on "Space Taxis". Chemical rockets will not be useful for anything but unmanned probes and communication satellites.
Have you seen the CBOs estimates for future deficits?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/deficit.jpg
What will happen to our economy if both our trade deficit and federal budget deficit continue to grow to astronomical proportions?
Just how many trillions in treasury bonds do you think China, Japan, etc. . . are willing to buy? I don't think that we have an immediate 'debt' crises, in that our Debt to GDP ratio will not really be horrific until 2012-13 or so, but there is an issue of bond market saturation; you can really only sell so many hundreds of billions of bonds before you start to run out of buyers. We're going to bump into that in the next 12-18 months.
You know what is even worse? All these estimates (CBO, White House, otherwise), are old enough that they do not include the current unemployment calculations. Given that both payroll and income taxes are taking quite an unemployment hit, there is every reason to believe that the CBO deficit estimates are probably about 20%-30% better than reality. Oh, and of course, they don't include the costs of Obamacare, the increase in the capital gains tax (which, historically, actually *reduces* tax receipts), the Energy Cap-N-Trade bill, and other such regulatory nonsense.
Please describe to me how the structural "yearly trillion dollar deficits by 2015" is okay? Also, please describe to me how we the above named programs aren't going to make it worse? Also, given that both the SS and Medicare "Trust Funds" aren't "piles-o-cash", but are "piles-o-bonds", please describe to me how the liquidation and auction process for those bonds won't further worse out situation?
Exactly which one of these issues do you see being resolved after the current "6-month period"?
Capitalism is an economic philosophy, not a force of nature. The business cycle is a statistical phenomenon, not a natural law. Just because former downturns lasted for 12 months or so, doesn't mean that this one won't run for 24, or 36, or 60+.
Some see the previous
administration as a repeat of what was going on in the Soviet Union prior
to it's collapse.
I see the previous administration more akin to the gradual stagnation the Soviet Union experience in the late 60s-early 70s.
I see the *current* administration as to a source of rampant corruption, and very similar to what the Soviet Union was "done in by".
Gigantic budget deficits as far as the eye can see, centralization of economic, industrial, social, and financial policy, huge expenditures upon shady projects with little oversight, and bipartisan efforts to snatch as many crumbs as possible from the budget with little or no thought as to what that will to do the nation.
We are currently watching the socialization of all of our societies "little ills", including the failure of our major industrial sectors (Auto Industry and Large cutbacks in our military industrial complex), socialization of trillions of dollars of losses in the financial sector, and socialization of our escalating health care costs.
There are only so many economic guarantees that can be placed upon the Federal Government before it begins to loose credibility, and before the dollar collapses. While we aren't at that point yet (we are years away, even with trillion+ dollar deficits), there is nothing to suggest that our deficits won't continue to grow through at least 2020, and probably through 2050 (if we last that long). Worse, its not like this money is being spent on pressing concerns; an immediate war, an epidemic crises, or a massive natural disaster. This money isn't even being "invested" in future growth (ie industrial or financial policy). This is money being blown on "societal welfare", or "public goodies", also know as ways to game for votes.
$1 spent on road construction does not get you an additional $1 in economic growth; the same is true for medicare, social security, carbon credits, or bank bailouts.
My 360 RROD'd.
A good friend of mine's 360 RROD'd.
I don't live in a very crowded area, but the UPS store I dropped the 360 off recognized the shipping label at a glance. "Xbox 360, huh? I get 3-4 of those a day."
Neither me, nor my friend, play on our 360 very much. Mine got used perhaps 2 hours a month. Some months it went with no use whatsoever. I had it sitting on the top shelf of a nearly empty stereo rack, on metal perforated shelves, with no walls. Virtual no heat from other equipment, and kept in a cool, air conditioned environment.
Quite clearly, there was a manufacturing error, as I cannot imagine *anyone* using a 360 less than myself.
That being said, MS has been quite reasonable with the warranty extension; they did the right thing, didn't try and charge me, and got the console back to me on time.
Given what I have experienced with the 360, and the failure rates reported in the media, I'd say it is pretty difficult to argue that most users "neglect or abuse" their consoles. The only environment I could imagine that would be more suitable for my console would be to put it in an equipment rack through which I pumped cold air, but clearly thats an unreasonable expectation, and its not like I'm a heavy user of the console anyway.
*shrug* Just my 2 cents.
. . . crying out for a government investigation to figure out "new business" models for them.
For god sakes; provide a relevant service to consumers who are willing to pay for them, or *go out of business*!
The dot com bubble saw a million different companies that tried to sell things that nobody wanted, and each one of those companies cried a river of tears before it evaporated. Some of them even had a few promising ideas, just poor execution.
I'm afraid were about to see a bailout bubble, with huge valuations applied to ancient, dying companies that have no real value except for a "Too Big to Fail" stamp.
Value means you contribute, and generate wealth, preferably for everyone (customers, employees, management, and owners). When Value is defined as, "I hold your economy hostage, you better keep me alive," something is dramatically wrong.
Minor nitpick
raises aren't nearly tracking inflation.
Inflation isn't like the seasons; it's an economic indicator, and is not necessarily a fact of life. Right now, the worry is *deflation*, not inflation. Inflation is low and controlled.
IIRC, pay increases *are* above the extremely low inflation rate, at least in the U.S. The main issue right now is unemployment, not inflation versus income.
Of course, I think that all the of the current debt spending by the Obama administration will blow inflation through the roof, but not yet.
I'm not sure that I totally agree with that.
What is a properly designed cluster of virtual machines? There is no reason that the daemons in the cluster cannot communicate/interact at extremely (read local) speeds. There is no reason that the various levels of hardware abstraction cannot be varied to different levels of virtualization.
One could easily imagine using a "storage" management v-appliance through a "database" management v-appliance, connected to a series of "HTTP server" v-appliances.
The "overhead" you speak of, that of OS security; there's no particular reason that it would be more efficient to build that into your OS; instead, the coarseness of putting it in a virtualization hypervisor may make the code more elegant, perhaps even with less overhead.
However, there is a way in which I agree with you; we need smarter OS's to interact with the hypervisor better. Take *out* the security stuff that's currently in there. That security model is broken, as the past 20 years of taught us. Heck, the unix-y approach, which empirically appears to be the correct one, is based upon simplifying your applications into separate sections as much as possible; and that's an endorsement for the virtualization model.
The issue is stripping out the crap in Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, or whatever operating system you are using. And by crap, I mean everything which is not relevant to the functions of that particular v-application.
I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here, however, in that I don't *really* know which model has overall better $$ of hardware efficiency. If I were going to bet on it, though, I'd bet on the virtualized model with well-written v-applications.
Could you please direct me to the Windows Mobile official development platform for OS X?
Or, could you direct me to Visual Studio for Linux or OS X?
How about the XBL Arcade SDK for Linux? or OS X?
For that matter, have you ever tried to even sync a Windows Mobile device with a non-MS OS? It's a huge PITA.
Ballmer's in Glass Houses should not throw Stones.
ATI/AMD has really done a tremendous about face Linux wise. I heartily recommend them. They've dramatically improved the quality and performance of the binary (non-oss) driver; it's equivalent to Windows performance wise, and very close feature wise, and it tends to be hassle free. They've also been releasing the binary drivers for new cards at the same time. On the oss side, they've been release specs like crazy, and the OSS driver is improving at a very rapid clip.
I'd still go with the binary driver for now, but in the not-so-distant future the in-kernel Linux support for the Radeon series will be fine for most purposes (i.e. every where you currently use an Intel chip).
Obama is that less of the money will go to the military-industrial complex and tax cuts for the rich, and more into infrastructure and services that benefit greater number of people. I think that's potentially good, but doesn't change the fact that the federal budget deficit is downright terrifying and unsustainable.
I have no argument that Bush (and both GOP/Democrat congresses) spent way too much, but the current "Stimulus/Recovery/Whatever-the-hell" bill is good money after bad. A significant portion of the money goes into Medicaid, Medicare, and "state-aid".
Cover state budget holes, and state legislatures will spend the money on something else. Meanwhile, the federal budget gets a new, higher, $1 trillion dollar deficit a year floor.
You want Keynesian Stimulus? Spend $200-400 billion on infrastructure. You want Reagan Stimulus? Spend $200-400 on infrastructure, and another $200-400 on pro-business tax cuts.
The current bill is neither of those things, pays a small amount towards national 'capital' assets, and borrows a vast amount of money to fill structural holes in state budgets.
*shrug*
I don't think you can stimulate the economy, or fix long-term structural budgetary problems, by kicking funding for schools, healthcare, and other transfer payments down the road 2 years (which is *exactly* what this bill does). So; Pell Grants get $20 billion for 2009-2010? What about 2011? Not only does the shortfall get bigger, but then we have to cope with the additional interest on the borrowed money to fill today's budgetary hole.
I'm all for targeted tax cuts that increase future tax revenue (capital gains taxes). I'm all for infrastructure funding that either reduces future budgetary needs (energy efficiency can do that), or increases economic activity (better ports, internet, and highways ->more business->bigger tax base).
But if we spend/borrow $1 trillion, and don't get a significant amount of long term growth out of it, we're just digging a deeper hole, and that's exactly what the big O is planning to do.
I've told other people, and I'll post it on Slashdot, for which I'll get ridiculed. Unless there are some dramatic sunset provisions in this bill, or the economy starts magically growing at 4-5% a year, people will remember the days of Bush as "The Good Old Days", when budget deficits were no more than a few hundred billion, and the national debt was under $20 trillion. When spending $600 billion on a war over 5 years was considered profligate waste.
We've pole-vaulted over the $1 trillion dollar per-year deficit level, and we don't even have anything cool to show for it (like, I dunno, space factors, a city on the moon, or Nuclear Fusion).
That's idiotic.
If I offer you $100,000,000 for a hamburger, is that coercion?
For that matter, just what exactly is your definition of coercion? Giving you a decision where the two outcomes are not equal? That's perverse; and it explains why you don't think freedom matters.
The cold hard math is that Capitalism has brought more people (might I even use the term "Billions") out of poverty than any other socioeconomic system; and we have tried others. Africa is stuck in sociostatism, and the eastern block tried 60+ years of "pure" socialism. Now, it may be true that these people brought out of poverty are not yet "well off", however, that just goes to show that you do not understand the magnitude of the task necessary to bring wealth and prosperity to the world.
You accuse us Libertarians of not understanding the mechanics of economic coercion, whatever that oxymoron maybe, however, I am certain that you either do not understand, or choose to ignore, the coercion implicit in statism. The red tape that small business owners must navigate through, the state bureaucrats that delight in making average blue collar workers miserable while waiting in line at the department of motor vehicles, or the tax burden carried by the working class.
P.S. If it is progressive "funding" for the government you are fighting for, that you should be happy that the Bush Administration has significantly increased the percentage of federal revenue from "the rich".
Coercion, huh?
The left-leaning, welfare capitalism (Happy Capitalism?) states of Europe are dominated by aristocrat-like families of wealth and power, dynasties who rule through the generations (not unlike the Kennedies), running empires which are built upon the notion of appearing to support the working class.
What I view as coercion is limits on economic mobility, both upwards and downwards. I do not like the idea that I cannot succeed through the fruits of my labor, and I really hate the idea that "my betters" (i.e. the people that run the banks and the automakers in this country) are too successful to fail, no matter how many mistakes they make, and no matter how stupid they are.
That's economic coercion. When the government medals to insure that success is not rewards (or even punished!), and failure is rewarded, and not punished.
I'm just asking you to agree that other people feel it does exist, and why it subsequently leads them to a different conclusion than your own.
This might be the stupidest thing I've ever read. I might agree that other people believe in a god who tells them not to receive medical treatment as it leaves their souls impure, but I'm sure as hell not going to permit them to ban medical research.
A lot of people believe a lot of stupid things. Your belief in the efficacy of the state is one of those things. I don't have to respect your beliefs just because you have them, and I feel a moral obligation to fight against the imposition of the state coercion, let alone the economic coercion, that you advocate.
Which must be why foreign governments are considering bailing out their automakers too, right?
Which countries are?
Canada? Which is bailing out the U.S. companies operating in Canada?
Or Sweden, which is bailing out Saab and Volvo, owned by GM and Ford, respectively?
Or Germany, which is bailing out Opel, another GM brand?
Or Britain, which is bailing out Ford and Vauxhall (Vauxhall is a GM brand)?
I guess there is France, which is bailing out its two automakers, Renault and Peugeot. But nothing suggests their either of those two are on the edge of collapse; rather, the government is throwing money at them to insure that plants are not closed, and jobs are not lost. Pure stupidity. But subsidies are not a new game for the French.
The American automakers brought this crisis on themselves. Most, if not all of the foreign manufacturers will stay alive because they have the resources to survive the lean times; the American companies look as if they decided to not generate *any* profits, and rely upon a government bailout to survive if needed.
Note also that you don't convert an SUV plant to making hybrids in "weeks", as you so blithely assert. Sure, you can shut the SUV plant down in weeks (at a cost in jobs), but you're not switching production so quickly as all that.
No, actually, Honda has a *5-minute* retool. While that's not the standard, both Toyota and Honda can do incredible restructuring of their production in a matter of weeks, not months/years.
*shrug*. I guess you can try and blame the customer. I'd say that it *is* the automakers fault that they were unable to compete with the foreign transplant operations, and it *is* the automakers fault that they were unable to flexibly adjust production to match customer demand, and it *is* the automakers fault that they did not have the financial wherewithal to plan for or survive a downturn.
This crisis is 100% the automakers fault. The market is a tough place, and you can't survive it if you make decade upon decade of bad decisions.
Hear Hear!
That, of course, would be too painful.
You would never hear a congress-critter utter such a logical, and commonsensicle statement.
I nominate DinDaddy for the open Illinois senate seat.
Then, a miracle happened - oil prices went through the ceiling, and Americans decided they didn't want SUV's anymore. Suddenly, the Americanautomakers were stuck with inventory and factories making things noone wanted to buy. Hence, the bailout.
I fixed that for you.
The "transplant" American automakers; Toyota and Honda first, but all the other Japanese and European companies; when they realized that SUVs weren't needed anymore, switched their production to smaller cars.
It didn't take 4 years; it took weeks. Also, since they decided that they were going to be highly profitable in the "good times" (unlike GM, Ford, and Chrysler, who prefer to lose money in the good times and bad), they were able to weather the storm so far. Oh, and they were able to liquidate their inventory and write it off.
Not to mention that when they have to close plants, they can actually "close" plants, rather than put "fired" workers into "job banks" at full salary.
The American Automakers are dying because they died 3 years ago, the wound just wasn't fatal since the economy was humming along. Disastrously managed companies sometimes manage to limp along during boom times, simply because any snake oil salesman can sell crap when there are many fools with money. Of course, when the economy makes a downward move, which *every* person should understand is a fairly regular occurrence (it's called the business cycle), the crap companies end up dead.
The American Automakers are badly managed, are not diversified, are completely inflexible, have broken labor models, and for some idiotic reason rely upon 5-year plans reminiscent of Soviet Industrialism. This just cannot work today. It was a fucked up model when the Soviets tried it, and its only got worse as economies have become more agile.
Who can you pin all this on? The management. Without a doubt. It's stupid to blame the consumer, and surprisingly, it's stupid to blame the government. Some blame could go on the Board of Directors, but the primary target belongs on the CEO and their management team. (Note that the Ford CEO has done dramatically better than GM or Chrysler).
I sincerely believe I could do a better job that Rick Wagoner managing GM. Honestly. The problems at that company are obvious, and for a long time they've blown billions of dollars on solutions that were obviously bad. Wagoner has been consistently, and obviously wrong on the direction of the market, and consistently and obviously wrong on how to fix GM. Wagoner has been in the upper management of GM since 1992, and since then, IIRC, the company has lost money equivalent to the ENTIRE MARKET VALUE of Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. When Toyota launched the Prius, he said the market wasn't ready for it. When various engineers pushed electric car development, he didn't think they would find much traction. When Congress tried to eliminate the huge tax deduction for large SUVs, he lobbied against it. When the UAW made unreasonable demands, he kowtowed to them. And now that the American consumer refuses to buy the shit his company produces, he intends to reach deep into our pockets to force it upon us.
Even now, Wagoner refuses to acknowledge that *at least* 1/2 of his labor force is unnecessary, and probably 80% of the GM dealership need to be shutdown.
The numbers are simple. This is American sales/American companies, only.
GM sales in 2007: 9,370,000 vehicles
Toyota sales in 2007: 9,366,418 vehicles
GM profit/loss in 2007: -$38,730,000,000 (-$4,055 per car)
Toyota profit in 2007: +$17,146,000,000 (+$1,874 per car)
GM has 310,000 employees. Toyota has 150,000. GM has 14,000 dealerships, Toyota has approximately 2,000.
You, as a consumer; would you hire two landscaping companies if you needed one? If you had a construction job in your home that needed 3 workers, would you hire 6? Do you really want to carry the overhead of all those dealerships and employees when you really just want a car?
This downsizing is going to be painf
*shrug*
With the screwed up way they setup systems on their corporate networks, it wouldn't surprise me if some Fortune 500 companies' employees experienced 15+ minute boot time on some machines.
My uncle works at Allstate. I know that when he boots up his laptop with the intention of VPNing into his work network, it reboots *3* times on "bootup". And each bootup is slow-----. Boot->Forced Chkdsk->Update Virus Scanner/Other Security Software->Start VPN Client->Download Update->Reboot->Forced Chkdsk->Update VIrus Scanner/Other Security Software->Start VPN Client->Access Secondary Network->Login to Remote Access System->Reboot->.....
Honestly. It took forever. It shocked me that someone could design such a stupid system.
And the updates? They literally happened on *every* "bootup".
Obama has already committed to significantly slowing down the development of new military technologies.
Barney Frank suggests this means a 25% cut in the entire defense budget.
This stuff will never happen. Research on it will be cut in a matter of months.
Why shouldn't it be used on an accounting sheet?
Are the trademark's IBM, or Pledge, or Clorox worthless?
The defining ability to sell products in those categories might actually be the name you sell them under! It could potentially be the *most* important factor, above and beyond support, product quality, even price!
This is *very* *real*.
Uh, Goodwill is the correct term.
Has GP looked at GE's balance sheet?
GE claims $4.5 billion in "Licenses, Patents, and Trademarks". While the GP is correct that these values primarily arise as a function of acquisitions or sale of assets, the only time that corporate evaluations really matter is during acquisitions, sale of assets, and other forms of stock/ownership valuations.
Let me put it the way GE puts it (and GE is the *gold standard* when it comes to Goodwill, except for perhaps the Federal Reserve, who has a totally invented balance sheet.) There are 9 companies with triple A credit ratings, and GE's ability to manage accurately manage goodwill is one of the reasons it is a triple A rated company.
Upon closing an acquisition, we estimate the fair values of assets and liabilities acquired and consolidate the acquisition as quickly as possible. Given the time it takes to obtain pertinent information to finalize the acquired companyâ(TM)s balance sheet, then to adjust the acquired companyâ(TM)s accounting policies, procedures, books and records to our standards, it is often several quarters before we are able to finalize those initial fair value estimates. Accordingly, it is not uncommon for our initial estimates to be subsequently revised.
Emphasis added for the benefit of readers.
You *do* just stick those things on your balance sheet; the issue is being able to justify them. If I put my good name on a financial statement to a bank, the bank probably won't take me seriously, unless my name is something like "Warren Buffet". If my name is "GE", and I "give" that name to some business effort, it is a very serious transaction with serious financial consequences, and I can potentially use that to either buy or sell assets, as well as finance offers, and issue debt.
The credibility of the "good will", and the managers who evaluate the relevant values is what determines the financial values of those intangibles. They're only intangible in that they are intellectual concepts, and in many ways are just as "real" as stock or other corporate paper holdings.
No necessarily to the parent, but the GP, there are places in the US where you can live very comfortable on $50-$75k per year. Mostly smaller towns 100-150 miles from major metropolitan areas. I'm thinking Chicago's Rockford, or Elgin. Or any of the various industrialized suburbs of Milwaukee, or Brookfield, WI, or similar towns.
Take out an FHA loan on a cheap property, something that needs a lot of love, and put in the work yourself (that way you *know* the value will go up; it's not appreciating, its sweat equity!).
$50-75k is a very good salary in some areas, particularly if you aren't keeping up the Jones, and don't mind doing work around the house (probably a lot).
You make $7,566.20 a year?
In the U.S.?
You know, Aldi's is paying cashiers $12.50 an hour plus benefits at entry level. There's really no excuse to be making less than $25,000 a year, in the U.S., if you have no physical, psychological, or family barriers preventing you from working.
That might be the case if you are in Verizon territory, but the majority of the country is in AT&T or Qwest territory, and they have no FTTP plans.
This includes many major metropolitan areas, like Chicago.
Seconding Tokbox.
Use it through Meebo.com
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2007/11/20/obama-cut-constellation-to-pay-for-education/
The plan is to "delay" the constellation program in order to fund education. The claim is this is a "temporary delay", however, the way government funding works it is fairly likely that allocation would become permanent.
We have that now in Illinois.
http://www.exeloncorp.com/ComedCare_Main/ComedCare/learn/RealTimePricingPrg/
It's pretty cool.
Please take a look
The primary issue is that of the severity of the virus or bacteria, not keeping it clean. At best, you can disinfect the surfaces, not the interior. And although it sounds gross, you probably sneezed on, or near, the unit. Perhaps there was some moisture on your fingers when you touched the drive bay, or maybe you got your sickly hands on a CD before you inserted it, spraying fine droplets of moisture through out the unit.
As long as it is something normalish like the Flu, Cold, Chicken Pox, etc . . . just give it time. Most of that stuff dies in 24-36 hours without a host.
If its something horrifying, like Ebola? Stick your electronic item in the oven, put it on "Self-Clean", and get a new one. Discard the ash in a biohazard box ;-)
You'll never, ever, ever, ever succeed at "disinfecting" consumer electronics, because they are never sealed well enough. About the best you can do is those Virtually Indestructible Keyboard&Mice. Anything else just isn't cleanable, and you should do your best to maintain good hygiene (wipe the keyboard and unit every now and then with a good alcohol wipe (or spray alcohol on a paper towel)), and get over the "scariness" of illness.
Furthermore, if its your family your worried about, you've already given them ample opportunity to get infected, if you shared utensils, a bed, skin contact (Hugs and Kisses, anyone?) or even an indoor environment.
Disease isn't that scary unless you or someone you know immune system's compromised, and in that case you should turn to a health care professional to figure out how to make your environment safe. Otherwise, get over it ;-)