AT&T continues to maintain it's Telephone Lease Program, but no longer maintains pay phones.
How absurd. Did I mention I hate those bastards? I decided to give them a try, especially given their "30-day money back guarantee". I'd heard they had improved, they were a new company, my slashdot posting history aside. I found out two days later that I would be getting the same, standard 6/768 DSL they give everyone, not some new 8meg/2meg package the sales rep sold me on.
Cancelled immediately. AT&T issued a bill for $100. Settled for $50. For 3 days of service, even with a "money back guarantee".
So much for giving them a second chance. I'll never, ever, ever, ever do business with AT&T again. For any reason. To the end of my days. Those bastards will never, ever change.
The Kindle can view mobipocket, txt, rtf, and Doc.
No PDF, which I agree does suck.
The mobipocket software supports conversion of PDF to Mobi, however, which seems easy enough.
And it similarly supports SD cards.
The coolest thing about the Kindle is the tie into Amazon, and the free EVDO connection. If Amazon can make purchasing and distributing content extremely easy, the Kindle will succeed, otherwise, the device is not that compelling.
Here's the meat: 1. Recovering your cost, and turning profit, after 2 years. 2. Carrying all your books around with you on one device (1000s of titles with a 2GB SD card, and you can carry multiple SD cards). 3. Free, wireless wikipedia. 4. Purchasing new books without having to travel to a book store, and with a 60-second delivery time. 5. Support for audio tracks and audio books. 6. Low/no publishing cost. $0.10 cents per file you transfer to your Kindle via EVDO, free transfers in Mobipocket, RTF, Doc, or Text format via USB, and integration with Amazon's Author-Self-Publishing service (ala Podcasts). 7. Support for Free Books, something which isn't possible on paperback (you pay for paper, ink, and printer maintenance. not to mention binding equipment).
There are all kinds of reasons why ebooks readers are cool, particularly one with a nifty new EVDO connection model.
Frankly, the free, wireless Wikipedia is worth $100, and the portability is worth at least another $100. I would love to be able to bring my library with me on a plane. Not just 2-3 books; the whole thing.
Any self-publishing through Amazon, something which will take some time to establish, seems ultra-cool. Not to mention that this device enables the possibility of other "online" book-like services in the same way that Wikipedia on a kindle is an "e-encyclopedia". Imagine text-books with interactivity, or the ability to submit homework and/or quiz answers directly through the device.
Hell, newspapers that update themselves are pretty cool, too. Not to mention that getting your books, news, and everything else electronically significantly reduces the amount of waste you discard.
1. $400 in your pocket Versus: 1. Recovering your cost, and turning profit, after 2 years. 2. Carrying all your books around with you on one device (1000s of titles with a 2GB SD card, and you can carry multiple SD cards). 3. Free, wireless wikipedia. 4. Purchasing new books without having to travel to a book store, and with a 60-second delivery time. 5. Support for audio tracks and audio books. 6. Low/no publishing cost. $0.10 cents per file you transfer to your Kindle via EVDO, free transfers in Mobipocket, RTF, Doc, or Text format via USB, and integration with Amazon's Author-Self-Publishing service (ala Podcasts). 7. Support for Free Books, something which isn't possible on paperback.
There are plenty of other benefits than the $10 per NYT bestseller savings. Now, given all that, would it be worth $400 to me? No, probably not, but it does get me excited. Were this device $300? Or $250? I'd consider it quite seriously.
Were it $200? Or avaliable at a B&M store? Or *gasp* $100-$150? I'd have one by now.
It really is a neat gizmo, particularly when combined with the Amazon Whispernet concept.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if Kindle users start buying far more books than the average Amazon user, mainly because it is so much easier (and impulsive). If eBooks really did become very widespread, I can imagine the prices dropping down to quite low levels.
The main issue or me is that I think all this content should be free. The true dream would be to reduce copyright terms down to a few years. We clearly have the technology to make all the world's written information avaliable wirelessly to a digital tablet for a price of $400 or less. Can you imagine a society where everything in the Library of Congress, plus everything online, was at your fingertips?
I think it would be something like a New Renaissance age. But that is neither here nor there, until the law changes, or a consortium of companies realizes that all-you-can-eat content libraries would be able to sustain very high subscription rates.
I find the load times in Half Life 2 unacceptable. I haven't finished the game, and I find the load points way too slow, even on my Core 2 Duo system with fast SATA drives, and 4 gb of ram.
The real possibility for an exodus from Windows is the following:
A) Windows->Console for gamers. B) Windows->OS X for professionals, and some going to a Windows-like linux (like SuSE). C) Windows->gOS type distributions for causal users.
A/C are the vast majority of Windows users, and the thing about those two segments is that they are very price conscious. Consoles are vastly cheaper than desktop pcs, particularly game worthy pcs, and systems capable of running gOS are both easier to use, and vastly cheaper, than Vista desktop PCs.
Well, he's sort of correct, in that it is still pegged, just China has been moving the peg at a decent clip. It hasn't moved as fast as, say, the Euro has. It probably needs to move faster, and I get the feeling China will do so when they are more confident that the dollar has started to rise in value again, whenever that may be (6 months? 20 years? I won't take sides on that.)
Keeping the yuan pegged to the dollar doesn't hurt as much as GP suggested, however, since China, although a big import market, is hardly the largest, and there is plenty of room in this world for U.S. imports alongside Chinese imports. Also, China is enjoying this fall in the value of the dollar, since the yuan is effectively falling against other currencies as well.
What the fall in the value of the dollar/yuan means is: A)China will continue to grow exports to the U.S. B)The U.S. will now be able to compete better against the rest of Asia (Signapore, Taiwan, S. Korea, Japan), Europe, Latin America, and Africa. C)China will continue to grow more competitive against the regions listed in B as well.
Here's a quote or two for you: Europe's trade deficit with China jumped 22 percent to a record in the first half of this year. Euro-region officials published a statement late yesterday saying that ``it is desirable'' that ``effective exchange rates move'' in China and other emerging economies.
The U.S. government is showing little inclination to encourage an appreciation of the dollar. While Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may tell his G-7 counterparts that he continues to back a ``strong dollar,'' he may resist an explicit criticism of the currency's weakness because it is helping to support the U.S. economy.
``As far as the dollar is concerned, you'll see more of the same, with Paulson reiterating support for a strong dollar but that not being followed by any action,'' said Adam Boyton, a senior currency strategist in New York at Deutsche Bank AG.
On an aside, note that this sentiment by Paulson is *exactly* the sort of noise that comes out of China.
US: Criticize Chinese imports, while not really doing anything about it. Talk about a strong currency, but enjoy the benefits of a weak one. China: Criticize the U.S. dollar's fall, while not really doing about it. Talk about a strong currency to reduce exports, but enjoy the benefits of a weakening one.
Frankly, in terms of China and the U.S., what we are witnessing is two shrewdly run Central Reserve Banks dominating the world financial system without the world financial system having a clue about it.
None of this, of course, undermines what I said in my GGP post. But the Chinese/U.S. dynamic is incredibly complex, quite positive, and hardly a cause of concern for either superpower.
First; you're simply wrong about the debt. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt . Germany, Japan, Italy, France, Singapore, Canada, all maintain higher levels of public debt than the U.S. You probably don't point at these countries as economic failures, and with good reason. Either way, the issue is far more complex than oOo oOo TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DEBT! We're seeing a correction in the financial markets, mainly as a result of these stupid sub-prime mortgages which people took out. They are rightfully being buried under their debt, which is a necessary function of capitalist markets.
Second; you're simply wrong about the U.S. not being an export economy. We're the second largest exporter in the world, behind Germany (and sometimes largest, depending upon the way you calculate it, and aircraft sales in any given year.) We export more than China. Of course, we're still a net balance importer, but that's not the point. Anything that strengths our exports is excellent for the American economy.
In a nutshell, you're fear mongering. There are serious problems in the U.S. The current status of our economy is not one of them. Rather, our future commitments (and consequent future debt) are.
The primary issue here, IMHO, is that all you have to defend against is the random stray missile, which anti-missile technology can handle.
These things have a maximum range of around 70 miles. An aircraft carrier can easily maintain force superiority for a radius of 200-300 miles. The only thing that you have to be worried about is a random sub or aircraft trying to get into range and launch before the carrier group annihilates it.
Keep in mind that there are multiple levels of anti-missile coverage, including the picket ships. There will easily be 20-100 intercept attempts, as each modern system can launch around 11 intercepting missiles, and there are multiple systems per ship (8-12 on a carrier).
Confidence breaks down as the number of launches go up. If, say, a large battle group of surface ships, with air support, approached a carrier group and started launching salvos of missiles, the defense systems would fail. But that's not a realistic situation, since a carrier group carries an immense amount of long range firepower.
Slashdot is one step above a private journal. You're lucky if Slashdotters use proper grammar and punctuation. Get over it; it's a written form of informal discussion, in which the rules of language aren't a big deal.
I can write journal articles, too. But not on Slashdot.
It's a myth that our debt is large or crippling. Doubly so when you look at historical levels of the national debt.
Triply so when you consider that as the dollar looses value, so does our debt, while our cheaper currency drives exports and growth.
It's true that the U.S. economic situation is not perfect. We don't print money on trees, and our growth rate isn't good, there are class issues, and inefficiency is growing. However, our environmental situation is _pretty good_ these days, and for the most part (at least in terms of environmental contaminants, and deforestation) there is a good deal of substance (read "balls") to the U.S. economy. Watch the yuan continue to grow in value, and renewables continue to be ever more viable in the face of escalating oil prices, and you'll see that the U.S. shall continue as a strong economy for the forseeable future.
We're hardly pawning off our assets to pay our debts. The only thing that's happening now is that foreign countries no longer value our debt as AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, driving the value of the dollar down; which makes sense, as it was overvalued. Our purchasing power shall decline, however, our incentive to work hard, produce, and sell to the rest of the world grows. All we have to do is a)ride out the occasional correction, as we are doing now, and b)find politicians willing to exercise fiscal restraint and work towards budget surpluses, as well as a sustainable, cheap source of energy.
Hopefully, the market will take care of the second part, and the 2008 election will take resolve the first.
I think you underestimate the firepower an aircraft carrier has. Modern conflicts have not really demonstrated it.
A current U.S. aircraft carrier carries approximately 65 aircraft, thousands of crew, and a huge pile of missiles.
In a combat situation, long-range bombers take too long to get into position, particularly over an extended period of time, and with varying intensities of combat. An aircraft carrier can supplement these bombers with craft that are a good deal cheaper, and a good deal quicker to respond.
In terms of surface superiority, an aircraft carrier outranges any other form of surface ship. It's an effective response to any sort of surface fleet. It is not, nor ever was, a response to missiles, bombs, mine fields, or aircraft. There are other naval craft for that (hence the battlegroup). In that sense, however, an aircraft carrier is no different than other form of military base. Missiles, and long-range bombers can attach anywhere on the globe, and penetration of enemy facilities on land by special operative is practically an art form, and much harder to defend against than submarines.
That being said, the art of weaponry is a continued point/counterpoint. We don't have all the data avaliable to us regarding anti-ship weapons, however, there's a good deal of evidence suggesting that our anti-missile programs are quite successful against the latest and greatest anti-ship missiles. In a hostile situation, surrounding a carrier group, our subs would play the same roll, and given proper ASW-air support, our subs would simply win. On the other hand, if we screwed up tactically (as in the way the article describes), or if technology is vastly inferior (which it isn't, yet), we would loose.
In my mind, the aircraft carrier is still king in the world of national warfare. However, as time goes on, it is growing clearer that we are in the age of economic and subversive warfare (meaning, terrorist). Currently, the bulk of this sort of economic/terrorist activity is occurring in the Middle East, however, there's nothing to suggest that it will not spread if conflicts spread.
I'd also like to ad that we (the U.S.) are no stranger to this sort of warfare. Neither is Russia, China, or Europe. Of course, these days MNCs (Blackwater) and political groups (Al-Qaeda, Islamic Front of Chechnya, hell, even Scientologists). Is this a worse form of warfare? I think so. Certainly, there's a great deal of collateral damage. But I believe that this sort of low level violence, present in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, Chechnya, Tibet, Sudan, Eritria, even Colombia, will dominate this century, leaving the days of open warfare in the past, and with them, expensive weaponry. There are very few places in the world where you can draw a clean line like the DMZ (N/S Korea). There is plenty of openwarfare, but it is all a mess.
No "bribery" here, just two companies making an agreement. Sure, Microsoft's motivation is to move more software over a competitor, but why is that a problem? If Microsoft wants to discount its software or given the company some other benefit, then whatever.
It's called "dumping", and in the U.S., is illegal when conducted by a monopolist. It also tend to violate a variety of world trade rules.
Furthermore, even if one can construe a scenario where it is legal (international run around the law?), it is extremely underhanded and a waste of government resources (they'd be paying for Windows and Linux).
As such, here are the issues: 1. It's probably illegal, and should be, but I'm not a lawyer. 2. Even if its not illegal, its shady business. And it demonstrates more and more than no sane company should get into bed with Microsoft, because Microsoft will do anything and everything to screw you.
(except for the sexbots, those will have to be pretty human-like)
Are sex toys human like?
Perhaps a "love" bot will have to be human-like, but a sexbot could be a flying toaster with a variety of appendages, and I don't think it would matter.
I pay $49.99 for 1250 voice minutes from Sprints, nights/weekends free (starting at 7 pm), and unlimited EVDO data, with no roaming fees, and unlimited text/picture messages.
You cannot beat that on AT&T. Ever. Not even close. The $59.99 iPhone plan comes with less than 1/2 the minutes. And the data isn't EVDO; plus nights/weekends are limited, and you get 200 text messages.
This is a Sprint SERO offer (go to www.sprint.com/sero , email savings@sprintemi.com), but even the regular Sprint EVDO phone/PDA data plans only run $20.00, and are all EVDO.
However, if you consider the cost of modern Flash, it wouldn't really be unrealistic to put in 512MB or 1GB on a Flash, in which you could then you could have a Live-CD kind of thing that is "permanently" hibernated, so it boots in a matter of seconds. Use a nice, light windowing system, and you could have a fairly full-featured Linux distribution with no moving parts, a very quick boot, and all the conveniences of home.
Not to say there isn't some merit in a 10MB ultra-slick, ultra-tight version, but you could easily take this concept in both directions without costing too much.
Well, for starters, its much faster on an Apple than on your Asus. Literally 1-2 seconds for resume.
Also, Apple's now simultaneously suspend to disk and ram. If your battery dies while your suspended to ram, the next time you boot you'll see a progress bar, and presto, your back into your session. No more than 10 seconds or so, which is comparable to the amount of time it takes Windows to S2RAM.
Is there some inherent limitation in UNIX's runlevel system that makes booting markedly slower than other systems?
No. The latest openSuSE's have gotten much, much faster (comparable to OS X or Windows).
The real issue, however, is not having to boot at all. Linux is getting there, but OS X has it spot-on. The new Intel mac's simultaneously suspend to ram and disk, so even if your battery dies, the resume only takes 10 or so seconds, at most (compared to 1-2 seconds for a ram resume).
10 seconds is not bad to wait for your system; particularly if you very rarely have to reboot.
Take a look at http://news.opensuse.org/?p=104 . SuSE is really working on this, and has seen great improvement, and will see greater improvements in the near future.
Perhaps, it could be true, but I'm not certain they would gain any benefit.
Let's say these milspec AMD/Intel chips are 4x as fast as consumer/commercial stuff. Let's say that AMD/Intel even sell them at a cheap price to the NSA (highly, highly, unlikely).
It wouldn't matter one bit; the NSA would gain nothing. All they might have to do is reduce the "chip count" of their supercomputer by a factor of 4. All the innovative stuff their doing isn't in the processors; its how they arrange them.
This would be different if AMD/Intel are producing milspec cryptograhpy chips which are 1-2+ orders of magnitude faster than commercial stuff, however, I think there would be more money in selling that stuff to the private sector; and given that they both have research/manufacturing facilities off-shore, I'd be very surprised if this escaped the notice of other governments (or, for that matter, other chipmakers).
I'd be fairly certain that the NSA uses some kind of off-the-shelf processors, whether that be Power, Itanium, or X86.
What the NSA does different, most likely, is scale. You put 1,000 of these in a supercomputer? They'll put 100,000.
Chip fabs are expensive, as is chip design. There's no reason not to leave that to the experts (AMD/Intel). It's a commodity process, and they'll do it better than the government ever can.
Supercomputer design is something else. That's not commodity; and it's a simple scaling problem. More $$ = Bigger computer.
See, this is what happens when you switch from Software as a Copyright Work to Software as a Service (i.e. Steam).
Steam does not guarantee your right to anything. When you rent/lease/license a game from Steam, you haven't actually bought it, and there are restrictions on whom you can transfer that right to.
DRM+Software-as-a-service. Yuck.
Don't buy from Steam, folks. I was thinking about Orange Box, but given Valve's attitude toward OS X/Linux, and this horrible piece of DRMware called Steam, and anti-consumer actions like this, they can go fuck themselves. There are plenty of other vendors that are pro-consumer, support all 3 major desktop platforms, and produce excellent games. (In terms of FPS, I'm going with id, Epic, and S2games. S2games released Savage1 as freeware once Savage2 went into preorder. How cool is that?)
Valve's management is simply a group of anti-consumer ass-clowns.
Cheap, easy to deal with. Moderate hold times, and the customer service is okay (not stellar, like T-mobile, but the service is excellent).
Also, Sprint has plenty of extra bandwidth, so they actually _encourage_ streaming video and gaming over their data network.
For example: "Mobile Broadband Capable With the evolution to EV-DO Revision A, users in markets where it is rolled out, will experience faster average download speeds of 600 kbps - 1.4 Mbps and average upload speeds of 350 - 500 kbps.
Wireless High-Speed Data Capable Mobile employees can access: E-mail with large attachments Corporate Intranet and Internet Digital Imaging Location-based applications Video/audio streaming Rich Messaging Bandwidth intensive applications for sales and customer service"
The only way that I liked T-mobile better is that they tended to try to make you happy, and Sprint customer service tends to aim for fairness, which I can accept. T-mobile CS was willing to go the extra mile (for example, issuing overage credits), while Sprint employees, although quite helpful, tend to be slightly more strict.
Can't beat the SERO pricing, though, and Sprint doesn't have the same dirty tricks mentality that Verizon does (I absolutely hate Verizon customer service. I've had to deal with them for friends several times, and they are a bunch of rude louts, and this sort of unlimited = very limited is typical for those bastards).
Sprint gets it right. They're fair, their network isn't badly oversubscribed, they're upgrading quickly, and the pricing can't be beat, at least with SERO.
Government secrecy will *always* be used to hide incompetence and evil.
There is *no* reason for secrecy within our government. There are *no* reasons for classified material at all. Not any more.
We live in a unipolar world. We are the "strong". There isn't any more reason for us to play cloak and dagger, all we have to do is sit back, have proper, up-front security measures, utilize common sense public surveillance (i.e. patrol officers in problem areas, surveillance inside airports, monitoring of known "bad guy" websites), and we'll be safe.
I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why any of the secrecy provisions pushed forth by the Bush administration contribute to our security.
For that matter, I don't believe that any of the other CIA/FBI "black ops" contribute either. Rendition might make some warhawks in the executive branch feel good, but it is nonsensical that it helps to protect our nation. Better XRAY machines, and locks on cockpit doors protect our nations. Paying our troops more money protects our nation, as would federal marshalls on planes, and a whole bunch of other measures.
But taking our suspected enemies to Libya and beating the crap out of them? What does that accomplish?
Slashdot Mirror
AT&T continues to maintain it's Telephone Lease Program, but no longer maintains pay phones.
How absurd. Did I mention I hate those bastards? I decided to give them a try, especially given their "30-day money back guarantee". I'd heard they had improved, they were a new company, my slashdot posting history aside. I found out two days later that I would be getting the same, standard 6/768 DSL they give everyone, not some new 8meg/2meg package the sales rep sold me on.
Cancelled immediately. AT&T issued a bill for $100. Settled for $50. For 3 days of service, even with a "money back guarantee".
So much for giving them a second chance. I'll never, ever, ever, ever do business with AT&T again. For any reason. To the end of my days. Those bastards will never, ever change.
The Kindle can view mobipocket, txt, rtf, and Doc.
No PDF, which I agree does suck.
The mobipocket software supports conversion of PDF to Mobi, however, which seems easy enough.
And it similarly supports SD cards.
The coolest thing about the Kindle is the tie into Amazon, and the free EVDO connection. If Amazon can make purchasing and distributing content extremely easy, the Kindle will succeed, otherwise, the device is not that compelling.
I'd like to point you to a post I made earlier.
Here's the meat:
1. Recovering your cost, and turning profit, after 2 years.
2. Carrying all your books around with you on one device (1000s of titles with a 2GB SD card, and you can carry multiple SD cards).
3. Free, wireless wikipedia.
4. Purchasing new books without having to travel to a book store, and with a 60-second delivery time.
5. Support for audio tracks and audio books.
6. Low/no publishing cost. $0.10 cents per file you transfer to your Kindle via EVDO, free transfers in Mobipocket, RTF, Doc, or Text format via USB, and integration with Amazon's Author-Self-Publishing service (ala Podcasts).
7. Support for Free Books, something which isn't possible on paperback (you pay for paper, ink, and printer maintenance. not to mention binding equipment).
There are all kinds of reasons why ebooks readers are cool, particularly one with a nifty new EVDO connection model.
Frankly, the free, wireless Wikipedia is worth $100, and the portability is worth at least another $100. I would love to be able to bring my library with me on a plane. Not just 2-3 books; the whole thing.
Any self-publishing through Amazon, something which will take some time to establish, seems ultra-cool. Not to mention that this device enables the possibility of other "online" book-like services in the same way that Wikipedia on a kindle is an "e-encyclopedia". Imagine text-books with interactivity, or the ability to submit homework and/or quiz answers directly through the device.
Hell, newspapers that update themselves are pretty cool, too. Not to mention that getting your books, news, and everything else electronically significantly reduces the amount of waste you discard.
There are other benefits:
The calculus is:
1. $400 in your pocket
Versus:
1. Recovering your cost, and turning profit, after 2 years.
2. Carrying all your books around with you on one device (1000s of titles with a 2GB SD card, and you can carry multiple SD cards).
3. Free, wireless wikipedia.
4. Purchasing new books without having to travel to a book store, and with a 60-second delivery time.
5. Support for audio tracks and audio books.
6. Low/no publishing cost. $0.10 cents per file you transfer to your Kindle via EVDO, free transfers in Mobipocket, RTF, Doc, or Text format via USB, and integration with Amazon's Author-Self-Publishing service (ala Podcasts).
7. Support for Free Books, something which isn't possible on paperback.
There are plenty of other benefits than the $10 per NYT bestseller savings. Now, given all that, would it be worth $400 to me? No, probably not, but it does get me excited. Were this device $300? Or $250? I'd consider it quite seriously.
Were it $200? Or avaliable at a B&M store? Or *gasp* $100-$150? I'd have one by now.
It really is a neat gizmo, particularly when combined with the Amazon Whispernet concept.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if Kindle users start buying far more books than the average Amazon user, mainly because it is so much easier (and impulsive). If eBooks really did become very widespread, I can imagine the prices dropping down to quite low levels.
The main issue or me is that I think all this content should be free. The true dream would be to reduce copyright terms down to a few years. We clearly have the technology to make all the world's written information avaliable wirelessly to a digital tablet for a price of $400 or less. Can you imagine a society where everything in the Library of Congress, plus everything online, was at your fingertips?
I think it would be something like a New Renaissance age. But that is neither here nor there, until the law changes, or a consortium of companies realizes that all-you-can-eat content libraries would be able to sustain very high subscription rates.
Kindle doesn't have Wifi. The connection is EVDO only. The only other form of data transfer is USB upload.
And there are plenty of examples of games like this.
World of Warcraft, or Dungeon Siege, or Morrowind, or (most of) Oblivion.
*shrug*
It bothers different people differently.
I find the load times in Half Life 2 unacceptable. I haven't finished the game, and I find the load points way too slow, even on my Core 2 Duo system with fast SATA drives, and 4 gb of ram.
The real possibility for an exodus from Windows is the following:
A) Windows->Console for gamers.
B) Windows->OS X for professionals, and some going to a Windows-like linux (like SuSE).
C) Windows->gOS type distributions for causal users.
A/C are the vast majority of Windows users, and the thing about those two segments is that they are very price conscious. Consoles are vastly cheaper than desktop pcs, particularly game worthy pcs, and systems capable of running gOS are both easier to use, and vastly cheaper, than Vista desktop PCs.
Well, he's sort of correct, in that it is still pegged, just China has been moving the peg at a decent clip. It hasn't moved as fast as, say, the Euro has. It probably needs to move faster, and I get the feeling China will do so when they are more confident that the dollar has started to rise in value again, whenever that may be (6 months? 20 years? I won't take sides on that.)
Keeping the yuan pegged to the dollar doesn't hurt as much as GP suggested, however, since China, although a big import market, is hardly the largest, and there is plenty of room in this world for U.S. imports alongside Chinese imports. Also, China is enjoying this fall in the value of the dollar, since the yuan is effectively falling against other currencies as well.
What the fall in the value of the dollar/yuan means is:
A)China will continue to grow exports to the U.S.
B)The U.S. will now be able to compete better against the rest of Asia (Signapore, Taiwan, S. Korea, Japan), Europe, Latin America, and Africa.
C)China will continue to grow more competitive against the regions listed in B as well.
Here's a quote or two for you:
Europe's trade deficit with China jumped 22 percent to a record in the first half of this year. Euro-region officials published a statement late yesterday saying that ``it is desirable'' that ``effective exchange rates move'' in China and other emerging economies.
The U.S. government is showing little inclination to encourage an appreciation of the dollar. While Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may tell his G-7 counterparts that he continues to back a ``strong dollar,'' he may resist an explicit criticism of the currency's weakness because it is helping to support the U.S. economy.
``As far as the dollar is concerned, you'll see more of the same, with Paulson reiterating support for a strong dollar but that not being followed by any action,'' said Adam Boyton, a senior currency strategist in New York at Deutsche Bank AG.
On an aside, note that this sentiment by Paulson is *exactly* the sort of noise that comes out of China.
US: Criticize Chinese imports, while not really doing anything about it. Talk about a strong currency, but enjoy the benefits of a weak one.
China: Criticize the U.S. dollar's fall, while not really doing about it. Talk about a strong currency to reduce exports, but enjoy the benefits of a weakening one.
Frankly, in terms of China and the U.S., what we are witnessing is two shrewdly run Central Reserve Banks dominating the world financial system without the world financial system having a clue about it.
None of this, of course, undermines what I said in my GGP post. But the Chinese/U.S. dynamic is incredibly complex, quite positive, and hardly a cause of concern for either superpower.
Now for the substantive portion.
First; you're simply wrong about the debt. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt . Germany, Japan, Italy, France, Singapore, Canada, all maintain higher levels of public debt than the U.S. You probably don't point at these countries as economic failures, and with good reason. Either way, the issue is far more complex than oOo oOo TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DEBT! We're seeing a correction in the financial markets, mainly as a result of these stupid sub-prime mortgages which people took out. They are rightfully being buried under their debt, which is a necessary function of capitalist markets.
Second; you're simply wrong about the U.S. not being an export economy. We're the second largest exporter in the world, behind Germany (and sometimes largest, depending upon the way you calculate it, and aircraft sales in any given year.) We export more than China. Of course, we're still a net balance importer, but that's not the point. Anything that strengths our exports is excellent for the American economy.
In a nutshell, you're fear mongering. There are serious problems in the U.S. The current status of our economy is not one of them. Rather, our future commitments (and consequent future debt) are.
The primary issue here, IMHO, is that all you have to defend against is the random stray missile, which anti-missile technology can handle.
These things have a maximum range of around 70 miles. An aircraft carrier can easily maintain force superiority for a radius of 200-300 miles. The only thing that you have to be worried about is a random sub or aircraft trying to get into range and launch before the carrier group annihilates it.
Keep in mind that there are multiple levels of anti-missile coverage, including the picket ships. There will easily be 20-100 intercept attempts, as each modern system can launch around 11 intercepting missiles, and there are multiple systems per ship (8-12 on a carrier).
Confidence breaks down as the number of launches go up. If, say, a large battle group of surface ships, with air support, approached a carrier group and started launching salvos of missiles, the defense systems would fail. But that's not a realistic situation, since a carrier group carries an immense amount of long range firepower.
*shrug*.
Slashdot is one step above a private journal. You're lucky if Slashdotters use proper grammar and punctuation. Get over it; it's a written form of informal discussion, in which the rules of language aren't a big deal.
I can write journal articles, too. But not on Slashdot.
Enjoy.
It's a myth that our debt is large or crippling. Doubly so when you look at historical levels of the national debt.
Triply so when you consider that as the dollar looses value, so does our debt, while our cheaper currency drives exports and growth.
It's true that the U.S. economic situation is not perfect. We don't print money on trees, and our growth rate isn't good, there are class issues, and inefficiency is growing. However, our environmental situation is _pretty good_ these days, and for the most part (at least in terms of environmental contaminants, and deforestation) there is a good deal of substance (read "balls") to the U.S. economy. Watch the yuan continue to grow in value, and renewables continue to be ever more viable in the face of escalating oil prices, and you'll see that the U.S. shall continue as a strong economy for the forseeable future.
We're hardly pawning off our assets to pay our debts. The only thing that's happening now is that foreign countries no longer value our debt as AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, driving the value of the dollar down; which makes sense, as it was overvalued. Our purchasing power shall decline, however, our incentive to work hard, produce, and sell to the rest of the world grows. All we have to do is a)ride out the occasional correction, as we are doing now, and b)find politicians willing to exercise fiscal restraint and work towards budget surpluses, as well as a sustainable, cheap source of energy.
Hopefully, the market will take care of the second part, and the 2008 election will take resolve the first.
I think you underestimate the firepower an aircraft carrier has. Modern conflicts have not really demonstrated it.
A current U.S. aircraft carrier carries approximately 65 aircraft, thousands of crew, and a huge pile of missiles.
In a combat situation, long-range bombers take too long to get into position, particularly over an extended period of time, and with varying intensities of combat. An aircraft carrier can supplement these bombers with craft that are a good deal cheaper, and a good deal quicker to respond.
In terms of surface superiority, an aircraft carrier outranges any other form of surface ship. It's an effective response to any sort of surface fleet. It is not, nor ever was, a response to missiles, bombs, mine fields, or aircraft. There are other naval craft for that (hence the battlegroup). In that sense, however, an aircraft carrier is no different than other form of military base. Missiles, and long-range bombers can attach anywhere on the globe, and penetration of enemy facilities on land by special operative is practically an art form, and much harder to defend against than submarines.
That being said, the art of weaponry is a continued point/counterpoint. We don't have all the data avaliable to us regarding anti-ship weapons, however, there's a good deal of evidence suggesting that our anti-missile programs are quite successful against the latest and greatest anti-ship missiles. In a hostile situation, surrounding a carrier group, our subs would play the same roll, and given proper ASW-air support, our subs would simply win. On the other hand, if we screwed up tactically (as in the way the article describes), or if technology is vastly inferior (which it isn't, yet), we would loose.
In my mind, the aircraft carrier is still king in the world of national warfare. However, as time goes on, it is growing clearer that we are in the age of economic and subversive warfare (meaning, terrorist). Currently, the bulk of this sort of economic/terrorist activity is occurring in the Middle East, however, there's nothing to suggest that it will not spread if conflicts spread.
I'd also like to ad that we (the U.S.) are no stranger to this sort of warfare. Neither is Russia, China, or Europe. Of course, these days MNCs (Blackwater) and political groups (Al-Qaeda, Islamic Front of Chechnya, hell, even Scientologists). Is this a worse form of warfare? I think so. Certainly, there's a great deal of collateral damage. But I believe that this sort of low level violence, present in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, Chechnya, Tibet, Sudan, Eritria, even Colombia, will dominate this century, leaving the days of open warfare in the past, and with them, expensive weaponry. There are very few places in the world where you can draw a clean line like the DMZ (N/S Korea). There is plenty of openwarfare, but it is all a mess.
No "bribery" here, just two companies making an agreement. Sure, Microsoft's motivation is to move more software over a competitor, but why is that a problem? If Microsoft wants to discount its software or given the company some other benefit, then whatever.
It's called "dumping", and in the U.S., is illegal when conducted by a monopolist. It also tend to violate a variety of world trade rules.
Furthermore, even if one can construe a scenario where it is legal (international run around the law?), it is extremely underhanded and a waste of government resources (they'd be paying for Windows and Linux).
As such, here are the issues:
1. It's probably illegal, and should be, but I'm not a lawyer.
2. Even if its not illegal, its shady business. And it demonstrates more and more than no sane company should get into bed with Microsoft, because Microsoft will do anything and everything to screw you.
(except for the sexbots, those will have to be pretty human-like)
Are sex toys human like?
Perhaps a "love" bot will have to be human-like, but a sexbot could be a flying toaster with a variety of appendages, and I don't think it would matter.
I hope you like paying $60/month for your data.
I pay $49.99 for 1250 voice minutes from Sprints, nights/weekends free (starting at 7 pm), and unlimited EVDO data, with no roaming fees, and unlimited text/picture messages.
You cannot beat that on AT&T. Ever. Not even close. The $59.99 iPhone plan comes with less than 1/2 the minutes. And the data isn't EVDO; plus nights/weekends are limited, and you get 200 text messages.
This is a Sprint SERO offer (go to www.sprint.com/sero , email savings@sprintemi.com), but even the regular Sprint EVDO phone/PDA data plans only run $20.00, and are all EVDO.
However, if you consider the cost of modern Flash, it wouldn't really be unrealistic to put in 512MB or 1GB on a Flash, in which you could then you could have a Live-CD kind of thing that is "permanently" hibernated, so it boots in a matter of seconds. Use a nice, light windowing system, and you could have a fairly full-featured Linux distribution with no moving parts, a very quick boot, and all the conveniences of home.
Not to say there isn't some merit in a 10MB ultra-slick, ultra-tight version, but you could easily take this concept in both directions without costing too much.
Well, for starters, its much faster on an Apple than on your Asus. Literally 1-2 seconds for resume.
Also, Apple's now simultaneously suspend to disk and ram. If your battery dies while your suspended to ram, the next time you boot you'll see a progress bar, and presto, your back into your session. No more than 10 seconds or so, which is comparable to the amount of time it takes Windows to S2RAM.
Is there some inherent limitation in UNIX's runlevel system that makes booting markedly slower than other systems?
No. The latest openSuSE's have gotten much, much faster (comparable to OS X or Windows).
The real issue, however, is not having to boot at all. Linux is getting there, but OS X has it spot-on. The new Intel mac's simultaneously suspend to ram and disk, so even if your battery dies, the resume only takes 10 or so seconds, at most (compared to 1-2 seconds for a ram resume).
10 seconds is not bad to wait for your system; particularly if you very rarely have to reboot.
Take a look at http://news.opensuse.org/?p=104 . SuSE is really working on this, and has seen great improvement, and will see greater improvements in the near future.
*shrug*
Perhaps, it could be true, but I'm not certain they would gain any benefit.
Let's say these milspec AMD/Intel chips are 4x as fast as consumer/commercial stuff. Let's say that AMD/Intel even sell them at a cheap price to the NSA (highly, highly, unlikely).
It wouldn't matter one bit; the NSA would gain nothing. All they might have to do is reduce the "chip count" of their supercomputer by a factor of 4. All the innovative stuff their doing isn't in the processors; its how they arrange them.
This would be different if AMD/Intel are producing milspec cryptograhpy chips which are 1-2+ orders of magnitude faster than commercial stuff, however, I think there would be more money in selling that stuff to the private sector; and given that they both have research/manufacturing facilities off-shore, I'd be very surprised if this escaped the notice of other governments (or, for that matter, other chipmakers).
I'm skeptical about that.
I'd be fairly certain that the NSA uses some kind of off-the-shelf processors, whether that be Power, Itanium, or X86.
What the NSA does different, most likely, is scale. You put 1,000 of these in a supercomputer? They'll put 100,000.
Chip fabs are expensive, as is chip design. There's no reason not to leave that to the experts (AMD/Intel). It's a commodity process, and they'll do it better than the government ever can.
Supercomputer design is something else. That's not commodity; and it's a simple scaling problem. More $$ = Bigger computer.
Why should they bother reinventing the wheel?
Whatever happened to the Doctrine of First Sale?
See, this is what happens when you switch from Software as a Copyright Work to Software as a Service (i.e. Steam).
Steam does not guarantee your right to anything. When you rent/lease/license a game from Steam, you haven't actually bought it, and there are restrictions on whom you can transfer that right to.
DRM+Software-as-a-service. Yuck.
Don't buy from Steam, folks. I was thinking about Orange Box, but given Valve's attitude toward OS X/Linux, and this horrible piece of DRMware called Steam, and anti-consumer actions like this, they can go fuck themselves. There are plenty of other vendors that are pro-consumer, support all 3 major desktop platforms, and produce excellent games. (In terms of FPS, I'm going with id, Epic, and S2games. S2games released Savage1 as freeware once Savage2 went into preorder. How cool is that?)
Valve's management is simply a group of anti-consumer ass-clowns.
Want cell phone service?
Go to www.sprint.com/sero
Enter "savings@sprintemi.com" for the e-mail address.
Enjoy!
$30/month, 500 minutes, unlimited data, EVDO RevA speeds, unlimited text/picture messaging, no roaming fees.
Cheap, easy to deal with. Moderate hold times, and the customer service is okay (not stellar, like T-mobile, but the service is excellent).
Also, Sprint has plenty of extra bandwidth, so they actually _encourage_ streaming video and gaming over their data network.
For example:
"Mobile Broadband Capable
With the evolution to EV-DO Revision A, users in markets where it is rolled out, will experience faster average download speeds of 600 kbps - 1.4 Mbps and average upload speeds of 350 - 500 kbps.
Wireless High-Speed Data Capable
Mobile employees can access:
E-mail with large attachments
Corporate Intranet and Internet
Digital Imaging
Location-based applications
Video/audio streaming
Rich Messaging
Bandwidth intensive applications for sales and customer service"
The only way that I liked T-mobile better is that they tended to try to make you happy, and Sprint customer service tends to aim for fairness, which I can accept. T-mobile CS was willing to go the extra mile (for example, issuing overage credits), while Sprint employees, although quite helpful, tend to be slightly more strict.
Can't beat the SERO pricing, though, and Sprint doesn't have the same dirty tricks mentality that Verizon does (I absolutely hate Verizon customer service. I've had to deal with them for friends several times, and they are a bunch of rude louts, and this sort of unlimited = very limited is typical for those bastards).
Sprint gets it right. They're fair, their network isn't badly oversubscribed, they're upgrading quickly, and the pricing can't be beat, at least with SERO.
Government secrecy will *always* be used to hide incompetence and evil.
There is *no* reason for secrecy within our government. There are *no* reasons for classified material at all. Not any more.
We live in a unipolar world. We are the "strong". There isn't any more reason for us to play cloak and dagger, all we have to do is sit back, have proper, up-front security measures, utilize common sense public surveillance (i.e. patrol officers in problem areas, surveillance inside airports, monitoring of known "bad guy" websites), and we'll be safe.
I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why any of the secrecy provisions pushed forth by the Bush administration contribute to our security.
For that matter, I don't believe that any of the other CIA/FBI "black ops" contribute either. Rendition might make some warhawks in the executive branch feel good, but it is nonsensical that it helps to protect our nation. Better XRAY machines, and locks on cockpit doors protect our nations. Paying our troops more money protects our nation, as would federal marshalls on planes, and a whole bunch of other measures.
But taking our suspected enemies to Libya and beating the crap out of them? What does that accomplish?