Of course Apple is pocketing the extra profits; that's the benefit they reap from basing their company in the US, which has a weak currency... that's how exchange rates work. Besides, Apple isn't really getting a premium, because the dollar is worth so much less. If they want to invest 20 million ($AU) in new infrastructure in Australia, they need to pay out 30 million ($US).
Australians are paying the exact same price they always have; you just mistakenly think the price is higher because your currency has strengthened vs the US dollar. If your currency has increased 50% versus the US dollar, it means you can buy 50% more goods IN THE US. It in no way entitles you to the "right" to purchase 50% more goods in Australia.
Besides, nothing is preventing you from opening a bank account in the U.S., exchanging money, and then buying songs from the US store. Oh, but that's too inconvenient. Apple provides you with that convenient service, and they are free to charge whatever premium they want for it.
This whole deal also works both ways. Let's say the Australian Dollar plummeted in value, and was suddenly worth half as much as the US dollar. Are you saying Apple should then be forced by law to double the price of their offerings in Australia? They might consider doing it on their own, but they wouldn't be able to, because Australian wages hadn't risen that much; they would only raise it as much as they figure Australians would be willing to pay.
It used to be that $1USD ~= $1.50AUD so Australian iTunes prices were set accordingly, then when the exchange rate levelled, the US executives chortled over the extra 50% profits they were getting for zero extra cost. So long as people keep paying it, they'll keep charging it.
That's the way exchange rates work... That's how they HAVE to work.
Wages in Australia are not set in American dollars, so it's not like the price has gone up for Australians.
Wages in the US are set in dollars, so they have to keep prices constant relative to wages in the US for American consumers.
I guess I should have specified... I voted using paper ballots, but this was in the US, not Canada. The Canadian voting system is run far more efficiently, eh?
Yeah, and it used to be that Britain was in a hundred year long war as well, so such measures were needed. Besides, yeomen and their longbows were used to kill Frenchmen, not to maintain order within Britain.
I'm not saying that it wasn't a revolution, just that it's a poor example when discussing how threats to political figures work during a revolution, since it was really an independence movement / war of secession. The colonials did not need to kill/depose George III, or members of parliament, because they weren't trying to overthrow the British government.
If you're looking for examples of a revolution that overthrew the government by deposing the leader (as is the case in Egypt), the French or Spanish revolutions are better examples.
I agree, it's quite hypocritical. The one major difference is that police haven't started to fire live rounds into the crowds.
Of course, if you look at some of the comments posted on the Guardian's website, you'll find that there are plenty of people screaming that the police should do exactly that. "Just start shooting". Sometimes I really wonder about the human race...
Besides, I wasn't commenting so much on the difficulty of bombing, because yes, with enough money, security could be made virtually air-tight.
I was merely saying that it seems like it would only take one incident to bankrupt the park. The thought that you might be killed, or that others were murdered right where you are standing, really takes all the joy out of a theme-park.
How is that hard? Just blow the bomb up in the middle of the long lines of people waiting to go through security. I mean... if you've ever been to a theme park you know how the lines to get tickets (nevermind to get through tight security) can be massive...
the system doesn't have an understanding about what the data represents
Isn't the point that the system knows what the data represents, just not what the actual values are? So, for instance (as a trivial example), it could take your encrypted blood pressure, age, and weight and output an encrypted number corresponding to your risk of heart attack, without ever actually knowing the real value of the input or the output.
have real world capital assets and real world revenue streams that could be used to pay their bonds. The govt... umm no.
The government has the largest "real world revenue stream" on the planet... they're called taxes. They also have probably the largest "real world capital assets" on the planet, in the form of mineral rights to huge swathes of the US, not to mention ownership of huge amounts of land and buildings. They also have a fantastic amount of military hardware they could sell off.
The US has many different things it could do to pay off bonds besides just "printing more money". To suggest otherwise is just defeatist and counterproductive.
Do outputs on an external Thunderbolt graphics card require any additional bandwidth on the "root" Thunderbolt port?
That's kind of an odd question. If you didn't put the outputs on the external card then you would have to send your data for display back over the "root" port, which would consume a huge amount of bandwidth. So compared to that, using external ports consumes far less bandwidth.
Are you asking does it use more of the ports bandwidth than an external graphics card which has no external outputs and doesn't send output back to the host (ie it has no output)? In that case... presumably yes, external ports would require some small bandwidth overhead... but then your GPU would be a pretty useless coprocessor.
Any real high-end graphics card will probably starve.
Actually, afaik GPUs are very rarely limited by the bandwidth of a 4x PCIe slot, nevermind 8x or 16x. You have to be doing some very specific things to actually take advantage of a 16x PCIe slot.
You very rarely need to transfer data on the order of 8GB/s to/from the GPU... most of what goes across the PCIe bus is just commands, not data. That's why your DVI/HDMI/Displayport is on the back of the graphics card, and not on mainboard; your CPU doesn't need to know much about the results of the GPU calculations.
it's better because if yo commit to paying the bondholders you can still get access to credit markets and a lower interest rate.
Except that not paying social security, government workers, the military, or foodstamps/welfare could result in riots and/or armed insurrection. Remember, every society is only three meals away from a revolution.
Well you have to stop paying somebody to remain solvent. Assuming they paid back bond holders first, yes, the government would not have defaulted on bonds. They would have been unable to pay their other obligations though, such as social security, or military payrolls. I don't really see how that's better than defaulting on bonds. Most of US debt is held by Americans... so you either don't pay back Americans which hold treasuries, or you don't pay back Americans who are owed money through Social Security. One way you screw the rich, the other you screw the poor. Either way, you're screwing Americans over.
I know other countries have gone down the road of hyper inflation, but the US would never do it because the private sector, to a large extent, controls the printing presses. Since those holding most of the capital also hold the keys to the printing presses, it's highly unlikely they'd allow excessive inflation due to printing.
And, more damning for your post, the second you raise tax, that second number starts to dwindle - economic numbers aren't static and isolated - play with one and ten others drop which makes you overall worse off.
Unless, of course, you're still on the part of the curve where raising taxes still increases revenue. In which case, it's not such a bad idea.
Besides, this argument that raising taxes will simply cause everyone to leave the U.S. is just ridiculous. I see no evidence whatsoever of that being the case. Sure a company can move, but once they get to their new location, they'll need infrastructure, security, healthcare, education etc etc for their employees and business, and soon enough, the tax rate will rise to pay for them. Giving companies low tax rates to attract them works in the short run, but in the long run just bankrupts your country (for example, look what happened in Ireland).
You can't? How about S&P AAA rated mortgage backed securities, circa 2008?
Just because the government doesn't allocate capital as efficiently (strictly in terms of ROI, in dollars) as the private sector does, doesn't mean they don't allocate it in ways that are good for society. Schools, roads, healthcare, defense, etc... these are all things that the government does far better than the private sector, because their utility isn't measured by how much money they make.
How can you possibly believe that everything the private sector does is better than anything the government does?? They both have their place.
Yeah, but the new tax revenues probably had some silly requirement attached to them, like required passage of a "balanced budget amendment" in order for them to take effect.
But doesn't an "inflationary default" apply to all bonds? Yes, with significant inflation, the yield after inflation on treasuries would be negative... but the yield on every other bond valued in dollars would also be affected equally.
I don't believe the rating hit had anything to do with inflation, as U.S. inflation is in line with every other western economy. The US would never cause hyper-inflation to repay their debts... doing so would destroy their economy overnight.
Slashdot Mirror
Australians are paying the exact same price they always have; you just mistakenly think the price is higher because your currency has strengthened vs the US dollar. If your currency has increased 50% versus the US dollar, it means you can buy 50% more goods IN THE US. It in no way entitles you to the "right" to purchase 50% more goods in Australia.
Besides, nothing is preventing you from opening a bank account in the U.S., exchanging money, and then buying songs from the US store. Oh, but that's too inconvenient. Apple provides you with that convenient service, and they are free to charge whatever premium they want for it.
This whole deal also works both ways. Let's say the Australian Dollar plummeted in value, and was suddenly worth half as much as the US dollar. Are you saying Apple should then be forced by law to double the price of their offerings in Australia? They might consider doing it on their own, but they wouldn't be able to, because Australian wages hadn't risen that much; they would only raise it as much as they figure Australians would be willing to pay.
It used to be that $1USD ~= $1.50AUD so Australian iTunes prices were set accordingly, then when the exchange rate levelled, the US executives chortled over the extra 50% profits they were getting for zero extra cost. So long as people keep paying it, they'll keep charging it.
That's the way exchange rates work... That's how they HAVE to work.
Wages in Australia are not set in American dollars, so it's not like the price has gone up for Australians.
Wages in the US are set in dollars, so they have to keep prices constant relative to wages in the US for American consumers.
I guess I should have specified... I voted using paper ballots, but this was in the US, not Canada. The Canadian voting system is run far more efficiently, eh?
In 2008 I waited 6 hours in line to vote...
Yeah, and it used to be that Britain was in a hundred year long war as well, so such measures were needed. Besides, yeomen and their longbows were used to kill Frenchmen, not to maintain order within Britain.
Today, the showdown at OK Corral would barely make news
Maybe in the U.S., where gun murders are more common... but in most of Western Europe three deaths by shooting would definitely make headlines.
So instead of throwing rocks and burning cars, London could be the setting for a Wild West shootout. What an improvement!
If you're looking for examples of a revolution that overthrew the government by deposing the leader (as is the case in Egypt), the French or Spanish revolutions are better examples.
Of course, if you look at some of the comments posted on the Guardian's website, you'll find that there are plenty of people screaming that the police should do exactly that. "Just start shooting". Sometimes I really wonder about the human race...
I was merely saying that it seems like it would only take one incident to bankrupt the park. The thought that you might be killed, or that others were murdered right where you are standing, really takes all the joy out of a theme-park.
How is that hard? Just blow the bomb up in the middle of the long lines of people waiting to go through security. I mean... if you've ever been to a theme park you know how the lines to get tickets (nevermind to get through tight security) can be massive...
With luck and really good security, they might be able to get a lot of tourists from Israel.
That's the thing... it only takes one idiot with a vest filled with C4 and ball bearings to forever ruin the magic of a theme park.
Literacy in the U.S. is defined as whether you can tell the difference between the signs for McDonalds, Burger King, Walmart, and KFC.
Woosh!
the system doesn't have an understanding about what the data represents
Isn't the point that the system knows what the data represents, just not what the actual values are? So, for instance (as a trivial example), it could take your encrypted blood pressure, age, and weight and output an encrypted number corresponding to your risk of heart attack, without ever actually knowing the real value of the input or the output.
have real world capital assets and real world revenue streams that could be used to pay their bonds. The govt... umm no.
The government has the largest "real world revenue stream" on the planet... they're called taxes. They also have probably the largest "real world capital assets" on the planet, in the form of mineral rights to huge swathes of the US, not to mention ownership of huge amounts of land and buildings. They also have a fantastic amount of military hardware they could sell off.
The US has many different things it could do to pay off bonds besides just "printing more money". To suggest otherwise is just defeatist and counterproductive.
Do outputs on an external Thunderbolt graphics card require any additional bandwidth on the "root" Thunderbolt port?
That's kind of an odd question. If you didn't put the outputs on the external card then you would have to send your data for display back over the "root" port, which would consume a huge amount of bandwidth. So compared to that, using external ports consumes far less bandwidth.
Are you asking does it use more of the ports bandwidth than an external graphics card which has no external outputs and doesn't send output back to the host (ie it has no output)? In that case... presumably yes, external ports would require some small bandwidth overhead... but then your GPU would be a pretty useless coprocessor.
Any real high-end graphics card will probably starve.
Actually, afaik GPUs are very rarely limited by the bandwidth of a 4x PCIe slot, nevermind 8x or 16x. You have to be doing some very specific things to actually take advantage of a 16x PCIe slot.
You very rarely need to transfer data on the order of 8GB/s to/from the GPU... most of what goes across the PCIe bus is just commands, not data. That's why your DVI/HDMI/Displayport is on the back of the graphics card, and not on mainboard; your CPU doesn't need to know much about the results of the GPU calculations.
it's better because if yo commit to paying the bondholders you can still get access to credit markets and a lower interest rate.
Except that not paying social security, government workers, the military, or foodstamps/welfare could result in riots and/or armed insurrection. Remember, every society is only three meals away from a revolution.
Well you have to stop paying somebody to remain solvent. Assuming they paid back bond holders first, yes, the government would not have defaulted on bonds. They would have been unable to pay their other obligations though, such as social security, or military payrolls. I don't really see how that's better than defaulting on bonds. Most of US debt is held by Americans... so you either don't pay back Americans which hold treasuries, or you don't pay back Americans who are owed money through Social Security. One way you screw the rich, the other you screw the poor. Either way, you're screwing Americans over.
I know other countries have gone down the road of hyper inflation, but the US would never do it because the private sector, to a large extent, controls the printing presses. Since those holding most of the capital also hold the keys to the printing presses, it's highly unlikely they'd allow excessive inflation due to printing.
And, more damning for your post, the second you raise tax, that second number starts to dwindle - economic numbers aren't static and isolated - play with one and ten others drop which makes you overall worse off.
Unless, of course, you're still on the part of the curve where raising taxes still increases revenue. In which case, it's not such a bad idea.
Besides, this argument that raising taxes will simply cause everyone to leave the U.S. is just ridiculous. I see no evidence whatsoever of that being the case. Sure a company can move, but once they get to their new location, they'll need infrastructure, security, healthcare, education etc etc for their employees and business, and soon enough, the tax rate will rise to pay for them. Giving companies low tax rates to attract them works in the short run, but in the long run just bankrupts your country (for example, look what happened in Ireland).
Just because the government doesn't allocate capital as efficiently (strictly in terms of ROI, in dollars) as the private sector does, doesn't mean they don't allocate it in ways that are good for society. Schools, roads, healthcare, defense, etc... these are all things that the government does far better than the private sector, because their utility isn't measured by how much money they make.
How can you possibly believe that everything the private sector does is better than anything the government does?? They both have their place.
Yeah, but the new tax revenues probably had some silly requirement attached to them, like required passage of a "balanced budget amendment" in order for them to take effect.
I don't believe the rating hit had anything to do with inflation, as U.S. inflation is in line with every other western economy. The US would never cause hyper-inflation to repay their debts... doing so would destroy their economy overnight.