China will not care if it decides to bankrupt the US
What is the #1 thread to the PRC as perceived by their leadership? High unemployment and low growth. What is the single largest driver of Chinese growth and employment? The U.S. Import market.
What happens to unemployment in China if the U.S. dollar tanks? Chinese unemployment skyrockets and the PRC leadership shudders in terror.
Would somebody please tell me why the U.S. economy suffers as a result of a weak dollar? People constantly talk about this as if this is obviously a bad thing, but I just don't see it. There may be some inflation, but the past 25 years would seem to indicate that this is easy to control. The fed raises interest rates; exports surge, and China's economy stagnates. Oh noes.
Why do people equate a week dollar, or a badly weakened dollar with economic disaster? China does not have nearly enough U.S. currency on hand to cause hyper inflation. Who cares if the dollar goes to shit against the euro or the yen? It just means the U..S. will export more and maybe restore some equivalence to the trade balance. A weak dollar will also lead to an influx of Euros and Yens as the rest of the world seeks to invest in the U.S. on the cheap.
Of course China would be totally screwed if they dumped their dollars. If they are holding tons of dollars and using it as their primary reserve currency, then nuking the value of it would literally be suicidal. Also the U.S. is China's largest export market. China's greatest fear is unemployment and slow growth, what could be more harmful for China then to eliminate their largest market's ability to import?
China's dollar holdings are only a threat to China.
Re:Foie Gras is some nasty shit...
on
Chefs As Chemists
·
· Score: 1
6. Sheeple that regurgiate PETA bullshit should be thrown off a cliff, because their lack of ability to apply their own critical thinking to a situation is a big part of the reason common sense is being bred out of our gene pool.
7. I just got home from a 6-course foie gras dinner. It was orgasmic. Thanks. Carry on.
Rock on brother.
Re:How is this different than a food chemist?
on
Chefs As Chemists
·
· Score: 1
"Food scientist are the people who make sure that all the food or product come to you are the same."
They really do much much more then that. Think about Alton Brown, the nerdy chef on food network. His approach to cooking is very often driven by food science. Its not just baking or uniformity.
On one show for example he explained the folow, how does one make a traditionally cream based sauce with yogurt without curdling? Curdling occurs in yogurt because there is not sufficient fat to prevent proteins from getting close and binding together. His solution was to make a corn starch slury and mix that into the yogurt. The carbohydrates from the corn starch kept the proteins apart and prevented curdling.
The not so recent trend (it started in the late 80s in Spain) of chefs using techniques usually associated with chemistry for cooking is in fact mostly food science, but it adds to that techniques and technology that is traditionally not associated with food.
A favorite technique that has gained widespread use is using liquid nitrogen to flash freeze and create odd shapes like spheres. The science involved is nothing new, but the method certainly is. Using a torch to caramelize creme brulee is ancient; use a laser and you can create very precise designs, but is caramelization a new science?
You haven't flown much in the past few years have you? Delta, United, AA all got rid of meals in coach on domestic flights, including transcons. Delta offers a light snack on shuttle flights, and continental offers a horribly bad meal. Some Delta flights have a new program where you can buy a meal in coach.
Google is a private company. There is no 1st amendment issue here. Is there any reason why Google cant block ads defending/advocating people or organizations that Google considers to be objectionable? Its not like google is rigging search results against them, they just don't want to take the money of or do business with d*ckheads like Susan Collins.
I just dont see the problem here.
I disagree.
on
Lair Review
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I have to disagree with the reviews. I found the game really enjoyable, including the sixaxis controls. I was better able to handle the controls in this game then most console titles, as I find dual analog stick to be impossible.
I think that there has been an awful lot of band wagoning around this title.
Do we really think it is appropriate to allow health insurance companies another place where they can play doctor and dictate what is healthy?
BMI is an arbitrary metric that in simple chart form cant distinguish between fat and muscle. Muscle weighs twice as much as fat, so it doesnt take much for someone that lift weights regularly to score obese.
Lack of exercise, high blood pressure and fatty diets are often direct results of poorly managed projects and long work hours. However no one is suggesting that a company should have penalties in the form of greater benefits for employees as a penalty.
The BMI chart is really an absurd metric if they just go by height to weight ratio. Muscle weighs twice as much as fat, but the BMI treats all weight as equal. Its pretty easy for someone in good shape to receive a score of obese on the BMI.
I dont know what the laws in the UK are like, but in the U.S. pulling Prince from record store shelves in retaliation would probably be a violation of anti-trust law.
I have read many comments where people are characterizing this as a battle between the big evil corporations and the individual. Not only is that not the case here, but in this fight it is the individual photographers who are most closely aligned with the RIAA/MPAA copyright goals.
National Geographic and the NYT are arguing that once they have purchased the rights to produce/distribute content, then it doesnt matter if this content is displayed on a piece of paper, a computer screen or a rock. They are making our argument, that just because they switch the physical medium upon which they transmit the content they should not be forced to purchase an additional license to that content. The freelance artists here would like to see separate royalties for each medium, and to have the content locked up as tightly as possible. I see strong parallels here to fair use.
Now the the freelancer's argument is that by changing the medium one has created a new and seperate product deserving of additional royalties. This seems entirely unreasonable to me. National Geographic didn't take the photographs and create a new book or movie, they reproduced 1 to 1 the magazine issues on a CD. The medium is no more relevant then going from tape to cd to dvd with audio.
Should filmmakers get additional royalties because a TV station switched to HD broadcasting?
The National Geographic and NYT are fighting for greater freedom of information. Who's side are you on?
Dont knock Republican Communism. Any smart Marxist would vote Republican as concentrating wealth in the fewest possible hands is a prerequisite for the proliteriat revolution.
"There is a limited amount of wealth in our society. It is not an entirely zero-sum game, but it is true that the more wealth the richest have, the less the rest of us have."
Uhm, no. Money creates money, quite literaly. When you put $100 in the bank, the bank then lends $90 out to some new business, who deposits it in a bank account which then lends it out etc etc etc.
Now you have 6 companies/people building business and spending money. In a growing economy it means that money is never close to a zero sum game. Someone else having money directly increases my access to it. If someone else has a lot of money it means that I have even more access to money as the market ineffeciencies of getting large sums for loans are reduced for the bank, there costs go down and everyone else get cheaper loans or more interest on their account.
Also realize that this is an INVESTMENT BANK under discussion. They literally make their money by directly financing other companies. So when they have a lot of money, they are just going to reinvest it in the economy anyway.
One other thing, people often reference the income gap as a point proving some sort of inequality. It seems like a far more interesting point of comparison would be the ease of movement of people between rich and poor. The rich dont stay rich forever, usually one person makes it and their kids all spend it. I dont have the number, but movement between the classes in the U.S. is VERY high.
This is Goldman Sachs not some steel factory. Yeah the CEO got 53mil, but they also just inducted their largest class of new partners ever this year and everyone there (partner or not) gets significant bonuses based on company performance year end. Its an investment bank, they literally had sever hundred people get million dollar bonuses this year. Secretaries probably got 10-20K each minimum (with a base higher then my entry level coder friends in Austin TX).
"Average Peon". Lol. The peons at GS are far above average.
What annoys me about the apple remote is that it is a lame LOS infa red device.
My iMac is hooked into my plasma, and they are located in adjacent rooms without LOS from the viewing position of the plasma. This means that in order to use the iMac as a media server for my living room I need to use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse for input, as the apple remove doesnt work.
I think market share is a silly metric in some ways. Nintendo is the most profitable of all the game companies for the the last several years, despite market share. This is because they dont take a loss on hardware, have tons of highly profitable in house titles, and dont blow billions on marketing. Sony plans on loosing about $1 Billion dollars launching the PS3, and I think Microsoft lost more then that. Who cares about market share, isnt there end goal to turn a profit? Show me the breakdown on profits per system over the next 5 years please.
Just based on my own experience with a large number of gaming friends, the Wii will probably sell like crazy. The gamers I know fall into two groups (1) Plays tons of games for hours at a time (2) Casual gamers that just occassionally want to have fun.
My Group 1 friends own all systems. They have a PC, PSP, a DS Lite, a 360 and a PS2. Interestingly enough, the DS Lite gets the most play it seems (if you discount WOW on the PC that is).
Group 2 friends all universely have a PC, and an X-Box or a PS2 (not both), and most have a DS Lite. Withought exception they plan on getting a Wii, and remain uninterested in PS3 and Xbox 360.
When you consider the number of people who arent hardcore gamers, which system is going to be more popular? The system that appeals to only the hardcore, or the system with broadbased appeal? Maybe systems like the 360 and PS3 are destined to be niche devices for the hardcore gamer, and platforms with broadbased appeal will become more common? Unlikely, but certainly a strong argument against the skewed numbers in the article.
The story for PSO was pretty decent sci fi (as far as video games go) and it certainly was more "massive" then the standard multiplayer options. Also the gear you aquired (while stored locally and eminently hackable) persisted beyond the instances in which you aquired them. Im not saying it has all of the elements of traditional MMOs, but it certainly had many. More then enough to demonstrate the viability of Sci Fi in MMORPGs.
Yes its limited to 64 players per a lobby, but one could communicate and set up groups between lobbies.
The problem isnt that Sci Fi is il suited to MMOs, its that the Sci Fi MMOs of late have been really crappy.
Star Wars Galaxies? First off, there is the light saber, which throws his whole gun problem out the window. Second, has is there a better example of an MMO concept that should have worked brilliantly but failed because the developers where just dumb?
Phantasy Star Online. One of the best MMOs ever. Sure its a little dated and it is lacking in many things which define current MMOs, but in this game you can see just how well a PROPERLY done Sci Fi MMO can do.
Finally has this idiot never played Q3A? No its not an MMO; but who the hell can play this game and say a gun is impersonal?
In all fairness the rootkit fiasco probably made Sony ALOT more trustworthy. (1) The rootkit bit was really an accident on their part. It was part of a 3rd party vendor's drm software. The division that used this software is not one known for technical knowledge. I know firsthand that sony people were actually suprised when they found out about the rootkit. (2) Because the rootkit came from a 3rd party vendor, Sony has radically altered their approach to DRM. The contracts with DRM providers actually stipulate that they have to give Sony source code now, such that sony can make sure its clean. (3) The reaction to the rootkit was so intense that there are now elements within sony music considering abondoning drm all together.
Dont tell me that you havent contemplated what some of your friends would taste like? Im not saying I want to kill my friends, butcher them and eat them; Im just curious.
Of course if you live in NYC and have a halfway decent butcher, they make their own cuts and grind the meat themselves for ground beef. You are actually getting a sirloin cut that they have ground for you.
Its delicious. Its called steak tartare in europe, but Im just as happy eating raw hamburger meat with salt and a little vinegar. The traditionaly european recipe uses raw egg. Its awesome.
I have eaten live meat before. On several occasions I have had live shrimp at sushi restaurants. Take one out of the tank, bite it from the head down and enjoy the sweet, succulent squirmy taste.
Once while salmon fishing I ate some fish that had literally been out of the water for 20 seconds; FANTASTIC!
They, more often than not, have their hooves nailed to the tiny cages they'll spend the rest of their lives in,
Not true. Unless you are paying $22/lbs for your veal (or $25+ a plate at a restaurant), then what you are getting is simply baby cow meat raised in the same fashion as normal cattle. It is a very small percentage of veal that is raised in tight pens and physically constrained in order to ensure tendernss.
That said, the veal raised in this fashion is truly delicious; and yes, I have seen it and your everyday slaughterhouse first hand and all I could think was yum.
Exactly. The copyright holders cant be stopped from passing these laws. They have too much money and politicians are too easily bought.
On the flipside the development of copyright circumvention technology cant be stopped either. All we need is the perfection of a darknet, and this battle is over.
Sure the laws will seek to punish those who utilize the technology, but its pretty clear that critical mass and public opinion is overwhelmingly on our side. We will see how fast the politicians stay bought when enforcing the laws starts to cost them elections.
Slashdot Mirror
China will not care if it decides to bankrupt the US
What is the #1 thread to the PRC as perceived by their leadership? High unemployment and low growth.
What is the single largest driver of Chinese growth and employment? The U.S. Import market.
What happens to unemployment in China if the U.S. dollar tanks? Chinese unemployment skyrockets and the PRC leadership shudders in terror.
Would somebody please tell me why the U.S. economy suffers as a result of a weak dollar? People constantly talk about this as if this is obviously a bad thing, but I just don't see it. There may be some inflation, but the past 25 years would seem to indicate that this is easy to control. The fed raises interest rates; exports surge, and China's economy stagnates. Oh noes.
Why do people equate a week dollar, or a badly weakened dollar with economic disaster? China does not have nearly enough U.S. currency on hand to cause hyper inflation. Who cares if the dollar goes to shit against the euro or the yen? It just means the U..S. will export more and maybe restore some equivalence to the trade balance. A weak dollar will also lead to an influx of Euros and Yens as the rest of the world seeks to invest in the U.S. on the cheap.
Of course China would be totally screwed if they dumped their dollars. If they are holding tons of dollars and using it as their primary reserve currency, then nuking the value of it would literally be suicidal. Also the U.S. is China's largest export market. China's greatest fear is unemployment and slow growth, what could be more harmful for China then to eliminate their largest market's ability to import?
China's dollar holdings are only a threat to China.
6. Sheeple that regurgiate PETA bullshit should be thrown off a cliff, because their lack of ability to apply their own critical thinking to a situation is a big part of the reason common sense is being bred out of our gene pool.
7. I just got home from a 6-course foie gras dinner. It was orgasmic. Thanks. Carry on.
Rock on brother.
"Food scientist are the people who make sure that all the food or product come to you are the same."
They really do much much more then that. Think about Alton Brown, the nerdy chef on food network. His approach to cooking is very often driven by food science. Its not just baking or uniformity.
On one show for example he explained the folow, how does one make a traditionally cream based sauce with yogurt without curdling? Curdling occurs in yogurt because there is not sufficient fat to prevent proteins from getting close and binding together. His solution was to make a corn starch slury and mix that into the yogurt. The carbohydrates from the corn starch kept the proteins apart and prevented curdling.
The not so recent trend (it started in the late 80s in Spain) of chefs using techniques usually associated with chemistry for cooking is in fact mostly food science, but it adds to that techniques and technology that is traditionally not associated with food.
A favorite technique that has gained widespread use is using liquid nitrogen to flash freeze and create odd shapes like spheres. The science involved is nothing new, but the method certainly is. Using a torch to caramelize creme brulee is ancient; use a laser and you can create very precise designs, but is caramelization a new science?
You haven't flown much in the past few years have you? Delta, United, AA all got rid of meals in coach on domestic flights, including transcons. Delta offers a light snack on shuttle flights, and continental offers a horribly bad meal. Some Delta flights have a new program where you can buy a meal in coach.
Google is a private company. There is no 1st amendment issue here. Is there any reason why Google cant block ads defending/advocating people or organizations that Google considers to be objectionable? Its not like google is rigging search results against them, they just don't want to take the money of or do business with d*ckheads like Susan Collins.
I just dont see the problem here.
I have to disagree with the reviews. I found the game really enjoyable, including the sixaxis controls. I was better able to handle the controls in this game then most console titles, as I find dual analog stick to be impossible.
I think that there has been an awful lot of band wagoning around this title.
Do we really think it is appropriate to allow health insurance companies another place where they can play doctor and dictate what is healthy?
BMI is an arbitrary metric that in simple chart form cant distinguish between fat and muscle. Muscle weighs twice as much as fat, so it doesnt take much for someone that lift weights regularly to score obese.
Lack of exercise, high blood pressure and fatty diets are often direct results of poorly managed projects and long work hours. However no one is suggesting that a company should have penalties in the form of greater benefits for employees as a penalty.
The BMI chart is really an absurd metric if they just go by height to weight ratio. Muscle weighs twice as much as fat, but the BMI treats all weight as equal. Its pretty easy for someone in good shape to receive a score of obese on the BMI.
I dont know what the laws in the UK are like, but in the U.S. pulling Prince from record store shelves in retaliation would probably be a violation of anti-trust law.
I have read many comments where people are characterizing this as a battle between the big evil corporations and the individual. Not only is that not the case here, but in this fight it is the individual photographers who are most closely aligned with the RIAA/MPAA copyright goals.
National Geographic and the NYT are arguing that once they have purchased the rights to produce/distribute content, then it doesnt matter if this content is displayed on a piece of paper, a computer screen or a rock. They are making our argument, that just because they switch the physical medium upon which they transmit the content they should not be forced to purchase an additional license to that content. The freelance artists here would like to see separate royalties for each medium, and to have the content locked up as tightly as possible. I see strong parallels here to fair use.
Now the the freelancer's argument is that by changing the medium one has created a new and seperate product deserving of additional royalties. This seems entirely unreasonable to me. National Geographic didn't take the photographs and create a new book or movie, they reproduced 1 to 1 the magazine issues on a CD. The medium is no more relevant then going from tape to cd to dvd with audio.
Should filmmakers get additional royalties because a TV station switched to HD broadcasting?
The National Geographic and NYT are fighting for greater freedom of information. Who's side are you on?
Dont knock Republican Communism. Any smart Marxist would vote Republican as concentrating wealth in the fewest possible hands is a prerequisite for the proliteriat revolution.
"There is a limited amount of wealth in our society. It is not an entirely zero-sum game, but it is true that the more wealth the richest have, the less the rest of us have."
Uhm, no. Money creates money, quite literaly. When you put $100 in the bank, the bank then lends $90 out to some new business, who deposits it in a bank account which then lends it out etc etc etc.
Now you have 6 companies/people building business and spending money. In a growing economy it means that money is never close to a zero sum game. Someone else having money directly increases my access to it. If someone else has a lot of money it means that I have even more access to money as the market ineffeciencies of getting large sums for loans are reduced for the bank, there costs go down and everyone else get cheaper loans or more interest on their account.
Also realize that this is an INVESTMENT BANK under discussion. They literally make their money by directly financing other companies. So when they have a lot of money, they are just going to reinvest it in the economy anyway.
One other thing, people often reference the income gap as a point proving some sort of inequality. It seems like a far more interesting point of comparison would be the ease of movement of people between rich and poor. The rich dont stay rich forever, usually one person makes it and their kids all spend it. I dont have the number, but movement between the classes in the U.S. is VERY high.
This is Goldman Sachs not some steel factory. Yeah the CEO got 53mil, but they also just inducted their largest class of new partners ever this year and everyone there (partner or not) gets significant bonuses based on company performance year end. Its an investment bank, they literally had sever hundred people get million dollar bonuses this year. Secretaries probably got 10-20K each minimum (with a base higher then my entry level coder friends in Austin TX).
"Average Peon". Lol. The peons at GS are far above average.
What annoys me about the apple remote is that it is a lame LOS infa red device.
My iMac is hooked into my plasma, and they are located in adjacent rooms without LOS from the viewing position of the plasma. This means that in order to use the iMac as a media server for my living room I need to use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse for input, as the apple remove doesnt work.
very lame.
I think market share is a silly metric in some ways. Nintendo is the most profitable of all the game companies for the the last several years, despite market share. This is because they dont take a loss on hardware, have tons of highly profitable in house titles, and dont blow billions on marketing. Sony plans on loosing about $1 Billion dollars launching the PS3, and I think Microsoft lost more then that. Who cares about market share, isnt there end goal to turn a profit? Show me the breakdown on profits per system over the next 5 years please.
Just based on my own experience with a large number of gaming friends, the Wii will probably sell like crazy. The gamers I know fall into two groups (1) Plays tons of games for hours at a time (2) Casual gamers that just occassionally want to have fun.
My Group 1 friends own all systems. They have a PC, PSP, a DS Lite, a 360 and a PS2. Interestingly enough, the DS Lite gets the most play it seems (if you discount WOW on the PC that is).
Group 2 friends all universely have a PC, and an X-Box or a PS2 (not both), and most have a DS Lite. Withought exception they plan on getting a Wii, and remain uninterested in PS3 and Xbox 360.
When you consider the number of people who arent hardcore gamers, which system is going to be more popular? The system that appeals to only the hardcore, or the system with broadbased appeal? Maybe systems like the 360 and PS3 are destined to be niche devices for the hardcore gamer, and platforms with broadbased appeal will become more common? Unlikely, but certainly a strong argument against the skewed numbers in the article.
The story for PSO was pretty decent sci fi (as far as video games go) and it certainly was more "massive" then the standard multiplayer options. Also the gear you aquired (while stored locally and eminently hackable) persisted beyond the instances in which you aquired them. Im not saying it has all of the elements of traditional MMOs, but it certainly had many. More then enough to demonstrate the viability of Sci Fi in MMORPGs.
Yes its limited to 64 players per a lobby, but one could communicate and set up groups between lobbies.
The problem isnt that Sci Fi is il suited to MMOs, its that the Sci Fi MMOs of late have been really crappy.
Star Wars Galaxies? First off, there is the light saber, which throws his whole gun problem out the window. Second, has is there a better example of an MMO concept that should have worked brilliantly but failed because the developers where just dumb?
Phantasy Star Online. One of the best MMOs ever. Sure its a little dated and it is lacking in many things which define current MMOs, but in this game you can see just how well a PROPERLY done Sci Fi MMO can do.
Finally has this idiot never played Q3A? No its not an MMO; but who the hell can play this game and say a gun is impersonal?
In all fairness the rootkit fiasco probably made Sony ALOT more trustworthy.
(1) The rootkit bit was really an accident on their part. It was part of a 3rd party vendor's drm software. The division that used this software is not one known for technical knowledge. I know firsthand that sony people were actually suprised when they found out about the rootkit.
(2) Because the rootkit came from a 3rd party vendor, Sony has radically altered their approach to DRM. The contracts with DRM providers actually stipulate that they have to give Sony source code now, such that sony can make sure its clean.
(3) The reaction to the rootkit was so intense that there are now elements within sony music considering abondoning drm all together.
Dont tell me that you havent contemplated what some of your friends would taste like? Im not saying I want to kill my friends, butcher them and eat them; Im just curious.
Of course if you live in NYC and have a halfway decent butcher, they make their own cuts and grind the meat themselves for ground beef. You are actually getting a sirloin cut that they have ground for you.
Its delicious. Its called steak tartare in europe, but Im just as happy eating raw hamburger meat with salt and a little vinegar. The traditionaly european recipe uses raw egg. Its awesome.
I have eaten live meat before. On several occasions I have had live shrimp at sushi restaurants. Take one out of the tank, bite it from the head down and enjoy the sweet, succulent squirmy taste.
Once while salmon fishing I ate some fish that had literally been out of the water for 20 seconds; FANTASTIC!
They, more often than not, have their hooves nailed to the tiny cages they'll spend the rest of their lives in,
Not true. Unless you are paying $22/lbs for your veal (or $25+ a plate at a restaurant), then what you are getting is simply baby cow meat raised in the same fashion as normal cattle. It is a very small percentage of veal that is raised in tight pens and physically constrained in order to ensure tendernss.
That said, the veal raised in this fashion is truly delicious; and yes, I have seen it and your everyday slaughterhouse first hand and all I could think was yum.
Im fairly certain that each realm is divided into three servers, one for kalimindor, one for that other continent, and one for instnaces and bg.
There are what, 60 realms for the US? You do the math.
Exactly. The copyright holders cant be stopped from passing these laws. They have too much money and politicians are too easily bought.
On the flipside the development of copyright circumvention technology cant be stopped either. All we need is the perfection of a darknet, and this battle is over.
Sure the laws will seek to punish those who utilize the technology, but its pretty clear that critical mass and public opinion is overwhelmingly on our side. We will see how fast the politicians stay bought when enforcing the laws starts to cost them elections.