Steam is less anti-competitive than say, The Pirate Bay?
What's stopping game developers from hosting their own pay-per-download site, instead of whining about Steam? Then they can keep ALL of the profit (less bandwidth and marketing costs).
Except the report does not say quite what you, or Martin Weiss says it does
OK. Now tell me, what is the price of gold telling you? What is the strength of the US dollar telling you, compared to say the yen, the yuan, or even the Canadian dollar?
I personally don't subscribe to any political philosophy. In fact I hate government of any kind, which is why I put myself in a situation where I legally never have to pay income tax. However what I believe in are the facts:
The US has been spending and printing money like mad for years.
The US has consistently lied to its population regarding real inflation, GDP and household income numbers (explain substitution and hedonics to me again?).
The US is underwater in debt at ALL levels, from the consumer to the municipalities to the states to the federal government.
For some reason US citizens expected the housing mega-bubble to last forever - to a point where many people were making vast sums just by "flipping" property.
For some reason US banks thought they could make money by lending it to people who are broke or otherwise not credit-worthy. Well, I guess they did because they offloaded that debt onto other people, in the form of CDO's. So everyone else got fucked. Even so, the banks took a hit and went crying to Washington for free money.
All of these things have had my family and I take a "bearish" outlook for YEARS. In 2008 we saw a small hiccup. But, to be quite honest, it wasn't enough, IMHO. I think this was just a tremor before the real earthquake. There hasn't been enough pain and suffering yet - even though 20% of the world's shipping capacity is PARKED off the coast of Singapore because instead of being full of Christmas goods being rushed to the US from China, there's no demand (you know freight costs are 1/10th of what they were a few years ago, right?).
Just like the 1929 crash - the REAL fun didn't begin until 1933 or so. I certainly am not holding any stocks, apart from my short positions. I need to see many more corporate and personal BANKRUPTCIES first. THIS is what causes "real" deflation - not people hoarding their stuff - people STARVING, desperate to do anything. It's like capitulation on the stock market, only on amongst the population. But instead I see a government that thinks it can solve the "crisis" by - tadaaa - printing (or whatever you want to call it) MORE money.
I don't enjoy being a doom-sayer. But thinking that the future is all roses in the current climate, and given the FACTS (gold at record highs, the Dow near 10k again without a correction, etc) if you don't smell a rat somewhere, well, I have an Eiffel Tower you might want to buy...
Oh I agree. Having a bomb-making capability is certainly a fringe benefit. However in today's energy-starved world, nuclear power makes sense for ANY nation, and ESPECIALLY for an oil exporting nation. Because if they end up consuming their own exports, what ELSE are they going to export? Sand? Dates?
There is a valid argument for a nuclear powered Iran without even considering nuclear weapons. But, as you said, having some would certainly be a bonus.
Better than the "we come 3 years late do very little then claim we're responsible for the victory" flag.
You know, I have both British and Canadian passports. And both of my parent countries did much more, per capita, than the US did in Europe. Give France a break. Had the Zimmerman note never been intercepted (by the British), you would have had Panzers in Washington DC before you knew it, and YOU WOULD BE SPEAKING GERMAN NOW TOO. The world just wasn't ready for that kind of warfare. The fact that the Germans lost the initiative in 1942 (Stalingrad) yet it took THREE MORE YEARS for Russia, the US, and the British Commonwealth to push Germany back speaks for itself. Americans would have surrendered too.
So take your blasé, naive attitude and shove it up your arse. I respect the French, and I respect the fight that the French resistance put up all throughout WW2. But I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about, since you obviously went to American "school". PS - make sure you paid your mortgage this month.
Having said that, I still think that Iran's program is to make a bomb...
Nahh, having a bomb is really a fringe benefit. Pakistan has bombs, North Korea has bombs, and it doesn't stop those countries from being shit-holes. Having a bomb does not immediately confer upon you God-like abilities. Though it does tend to make warmongering politicians pause a little.
Iran would rather have our wealth by maximizing sale of crude, and keep on exporting oil. Hell when oil was at $150/bbl I think every country in the world was seriously thinking about building a nuclear reactor. And the Iranians were probably crying at all the "lost profits" due to domestic consumption.
Of course, the American president has just won the peace prize. So if he says it's ok to attack Iran, that must make it ok.
Well you'd need a Mr. Fusion machine. Then it would be easy.
But since nuclear fusion is a dream unachievable outside mathematical formulas, billion dollar labs where they can produce a picogram or so of new stuff, and THE SUN, I doubt that it's going to happen anytime soon.
Well then here's the comment I sent to the Nobel Committee this morning:
Since the Nobel committee is apparently giving away Nobel Peace Prizes, I would like to be one of the first to ask to be nominated for 2010.
I don't understand how the leader of a country still involved in TWO wars (one of them in violation of the conventions of war), which has attacked targets in a third country (Pakistan), which STILL hasn't closed Guantanamo where it is detaining people illegally (not even permitting access by Red Cross members), how can such a person qualify for a "PEACE" prize? Did he get a prize for NOT attacking Iran? Why not give the prize to China for NOT invading Taiwan?
The Nobel committee has devalued and debased the Peace Prize with this action. Congratulations. My only hope remains that this was done to place a burden of conscience upon Mr. Obama to attempt to restrain his future actions. However it seems that the Peace Prize has fallen from being the noble and prestigious award that it once was, to a political bauble. I don't think that "calling for dialogue" should qualify a politician for this prize. THAT SHOULD BE THE NORMAL, SANE, RATIONAL CHOICE. Prizes should be given to a politician that has actually DONE something other than maintain the status quo, for all the rhetoric.
Certainly not a "yes we can"... you can do it too: comments@nobelprize.org
You didn't even read the report did you? Notice the.GOV tag? But of course not, you're an "enlightened" US citizen. You have a lot of NFL or NBA television to watch, and don't have time for those things.
Summary: I'm not shitting the US. But even your government KNOWS the US is up shit's creek without a paddle. Enjoy your plunging dollar.
Because I'm a fully qualified, board certified specialist who COULD practice medicine in the US, but refuses to because it's too much hassle. And what's worse is, I'm not the only one. There are many, many physicians who have opted out of medicine and into something less stressful (and potentially disastrous in financial terms). A country that encourages trained specialists to actually work in something less risky because of litigation or even worse, having insurance companies practice medicine by telling doctors what to do and what not to do, is a bit screwed up.
But then again I forget, this is the US we are talking about. A country that owes the world close to 12 trillion dollars (not counting social security and health care), is printing money like mad, has double digit unemployment (17% if you look at U-6), whose own government admits unavoidable financial armaggeddon, and yet has a stock market that rallies 40% with apparently no end in sight... Yeah, I guess anything could happen.
Perhaps I didn't make my point clear enough in my original post.
I cited KE = 1/2mv^2 because frankly, neither you or I will ever LIVE to see an object with real (kg or more) mass moving at relativistic speeds (without being torn apart). So although dreaming about relativity is fine, and great food for thought and PhD's, I can't see any practical applications outside a lab setting. So Newtonian physics is what we will ever observe when we're playing with our bigger toys. Now I'm not an all-seeing god dictating my Word, but I'm not stupid either. It's just common sense. You need too much energy, and it always comes down to that.
I do not doubt Einstein, and all the people who followed. Like I said, men smarter than me have spent their lives on it. But someone wants to build an engine for a spaceship on this? Good luck... They can't even get the LHC working right.
How about work for a living instead of patenting vague ideas and waiting for a company to make something that sort of resembles it?
Believe you me, I want to see more of these patent trolls. Keep them coming until the system breaks.
Just like medical predators and ambulance chasing lawyers, I congratulate them for driving health care costs to the point where litigation avoidance - not patient care or comfort, is the deciding factor in medical decisions. No one can afford to get sick without insurance in the US, and frankly not everyone can even afford the insurance. Thus, the health care system is broken, and thus - it HAS to get fixed NOW.
Hopefully the same thing will happen with patents.
Now don't get me started on copyrights... nah, you can download the torrent...
If they honestly think they have a claim, then it would be absurd not to go after it.
Read as: It doesn't cost all that much to file a patent, let's threaten to sue and see if Toyota will settle. Even if we only make a couple hundred thousand, Toyota will be happy to have the FTC off their back, and we'll have paid our costs for incorporation, and filing this (bogus) patent.
I wonder if this no-name company is owned by Exxon?
No, I'm sure that big oil wants you all to drive hybrids. After all, the price of oil is going to continue going up anyway just through sheer demand for all the OTHER applications of oil. Why burn up all that oil quickly today in internal combustion engines, when you can be charged an arm and a leg for it in a couple decades or so?
We push subatomic particles at relativistic speeds all the time and observe the mass change. Or maybe you think it works differently when it's lots of particles moving together?
No. But tell me what the electric bill was at Fermilab or wherever to move those subatomic particles? I sure don't want to pay it. Now multiply that by Avogadro's number to get the cost of moving just one mole of whatever you were moving. What's the exponent on the amount of Joules you'll need?
See the thing is we can argue all day about what happens at relativistic speeds. Smarter minds than you or I have solved the equations and staked out the territory. But there's AMAZINGLY HUGE difference between moving some neutrons, and moving something with REAL mass. This seems to be the communication problem I'm getting from all of you theorists. So you can shoot a neutron at almost the speed of light at nearby star for a billion bucks. SO WHAT?
Agreed - who knows in 100, or 500 years, what we'll be able to pack into a gram. So, you plan to shoot a beam at this thing to get it moving, I guess, since at just a gram it won't be able to carry a power supply with it or, conversely, be able to harness enough energy to power itself.
Now tell me, how were you planning on slowing it down again? Unless this were some sort of probe whose job was to merely zip by a neighboring star and send back whatever kind of information can be sent back by something weighing a gram or so, I frankly don't see much potential.
I understand everyone being excited by this. When I was younger, I was all for space exploration, disappointed by NASA's giving up the Apollo program, revolted by the thought of a space shuttle that at best could manage LEO, etc.
But now I'm older, and I remember the words of Douglas Adams. Space is big. REALLY big. The only way we will reach the stars is when our sun goes nova. But then our atoms won't remember what we were, or what we aspired to be. Who am I kidding, we can't even run our own planet.
Slashdot Mirror
Steam is less anti-competitive than say, The Pirate Bay?
What's stopping game developers from hosting their own pay-per-download site, instead of whining about Steam? Then they can keep ALL of the profit (less bandwidth and marketing costs).
Wall Street thinks it's true:
Wall street lives in its own inertial reference frame, and is only vaguely connected to reality.
PS: Keep buying those stocks, I need buyers for my shorts.
Posting Story Headlines As Questions Makes Them Look Less Retarded?
Except the report does not say quite what you, or Martin Weiss says it does
OK. Now tell me, what is the price of gold telling you? What is the strength of the US dollar telling you, compared to say the yen, the yuan, or even the Canadian dollar?
I personally don't subscribe to any political philosophy. In fact I hate government of any kind, which is why I put myself in a situation where I legally never have to pay income tax. However what I believe in are the facts:
The US has been spending and printing money like mad for years.
The US has consistently lied to its population regarding real inflation, GDP and household income numbers (explain substitution and hedonics to me again?).
The US is underwater in debt at ALL levels, from the consumer to the municipalities to the states to the federal government.
For some reason US citizens expected the housing mega-bubble to last forever - to a point where many people were making vast sums just by "flipping" property.
For some reason US banks thought they could make money by lending it to people who are broke or otherwise not credit-worthy. Well, I guess they did because they offloaded that debt onto other people, in the form of CDO's. So everyone else got fucked. Even so, the banks took a hit and went crying to Washington for free money.
All of these things have had my family and I take a "bearish" outlook for YEARS. In 2008 we saw a small hiccup. But, to be quite honest, it wasn't enough, IMHO. I think this was just a tremor before the real earthquake. There hasn't been enough pain and suffering yet - even though 20% of the world's shipping capacity is PARKED off the coast of Singapore because instead of being full of Christmas goods being rushed to the US from China, there's no demand (you know freight costs are 1/10th of what they were a few years ago, right?).
Just like the 1929 crash - the REAL fun didn't begin until 1933 or so. I certainly am not holding any stocks, apart from my short positions. I need to see many more corporate and personal BANKRUPTCIES first. THIS is what causes "real" deflation - not people hoarding their stuff - people STARVING, desperate to do anything. It's like capitulation on the stock market, only on amongst the population. But instead I see a government that thinks it can solve the "crisis" by - tadaaa - printing (or whatever you want to call it) MORE money.
I don't enjoy being a doom-sayer. But thinking that the future is all roses in the current climate, and given the FACTS (gold at record highs, the Dow near 10k again without a correction, etc) if you don't smell a rat somewhere, well, I have an Eiffel Tower you might want to buy...
Oh I agree. Having a bomb-making capability is certainly a fringe benefit. However in today's energy-starved world, nuclear power makes sense for ANY nation, and ESPECIALLY for an oil exporting nation. Because if they end up consuming their own exports, what ELSE are they going to export? Sand? Dates?
There is a valid argument for a nuclear powered Iran without even considering nuclear weapons. But, as you said, having some would certainly be a bonus.
No but the Germans would have had a very friendly Mexico.
host the waving white flag website?
Better than the "we come 3 years late do very little then claim we're responsible for the victory" flag.
You know, I have both British and Canadian passports. And both of my parent countries did much more, per capita, than the US did in Europe. Give France a break. Had the Zimmerman note never been intercepted (by the British), you would have had Panzers in Washington DC before you knew it, and YOU WOULD BE SPEAKING GERMAN NOW TOO. The world just wasn't ready for that kind of warfare. The fact that the Germans lost the initiative in 1942 (Stalingrad) yet it took THREE MORE YEARS for Russia, the US, and the British Commonwealth to push Germany back speaks for itself. Americans would have surrendered too.
So take your blasé, naive attitude and shove it up your arse. I respect the French, and I respect the fight that the French resistance put up all throughout WW2. But I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about, since you obviously went to American "school". PS - make sure you paid your mortgage this month.
Yeah, but it's mostly fission...
It's just an engineering problem.
I guess I must be more of an engineer than you are.
Philosopher: "I'd like to buy a lever of infinite length and an immovable place to stand"
Storekeeper: "Sorry I'm fresh out of axiomatic mechanisms today".
(Paraphrased from Terry Pratchett's 'Small Gods').
Having said that, I still think that Iran's program is to make a bomb...
Nahh, having a bomb is really a fringe benefit. Pakistan has bombs, North Korea has bombs, and it doesn't stop those countries from being shit-holes. Having a bomb does not immediately confer upon you God-like abilities. Though it does tend to make warmongering politicians pause a little.
Iran would rather have our wealth by maximizing sale of crude, and keep on exporting oil. Hell when oil was at $150/bbl I think every country in the world was seriously thinking about building a nuclear reactor. And the Iranians were probably crying at all the "lost profits" due to domestic consumption.
Of course, the American president has just won the peace prize. So if he says it's ok to attack Iran, that must make it ok.
Well you'd need a Mr. Fusion machine. Then it would be easy.
But since nuclear fusion is a dream unachievable outside mathematical formulas, billion dollar labs where they can produce a picogram or so of new stuff, and THE SUN, I doubt that it's going to happen anytime soon.
Already been done. Guess he was one of the first "researchers".
Yikes, I'd hate to have one of those batteries do a "China Syndrome" through my lap.
Then again, I could probably heat my greenhouse with one during winter.
Well then here's the comment I sent to the Nobel Committee this morning:
Since the Nobel committee is apparently giving away Nobel Peace Prizes, I would like to be one of the first to ask to be nominated for 2010.
I don't understand how the leader of a country still involved in TWO wars (one of them in violation of the conventions of war), which has attacked targets in a third country (Pakistan), which STILL hasn't closed Guantanamo where it is detaining people illegally (not even permitting access by Red Cross members), how can such a person qualify for a "PEACE" prize? Did he get a prize for NOT attacking Iran? Why not give the prize to China for NOT invading Taiwan?
The Nobel committee has devalued and debased the Peace Prize with this action. Congratulations. My only hope remains that this was done to place a burden of conscience upon Mr. Obama to attempt to restrain his future actions. However it seems that the Peace Prize has fallen from being the noble and prestigious award that it once was, to a political bauble. I don't think that "calling for dialogue" should qualify a politician for this prize. THAT SHOULD BE THE NORMAL, SANE, RATIONAL CHOICE. Prizes should be given to a politician that has actually DONE something other than maintain the status quo, for all the rhetoric.
Certainly not a "yes we can"... you can do it too: comments@nobelprize.org
This is not news for nerds. It's news for CNN, Fox, etc. Please stop trying to turn this site into Digg.
Translation: you're not good enough, and the malpractice insurance runs too much for your past transgressions.
Yeah you had better post anonymously, or I would have you for libel.
Keep shitting on the US
You didn't even read the report did you? Notice the .GOV tag? But of course not, you're an "enlightened" US citizen. You have a lot of NFL or NBA television to watch, and don't have time for those things.
Summary: I'm not shitting the US. But even your government KNOWS the US is up shit's creek without a paddle. Enjoy your plunging dollar.
What makes you assume that it will get fixed?
Because I'm a fully qualified, board certified specialist who COULD practice medicine in the US, but refuses to because it's too much hassle. And what's worse is, I'm not the only one. There are many, many physicians who have opted out of medicine and into something less stressful (and potentially disastrous in financial terms). A country that encourages trained specialists to actually work in something less risky because of litigation or even worse, having insurance companies practice medicine by telling doctors what to do and what not to do, is a bit screwed up.
But then again I forget, this is the US we are talking about. A country that owes the world close to 12 trillion dollars (not counting social security and health care), is printing money like mad, has double digit unemployment (17% if you look at U-6), whose own government admits unavoidable financial armaggeddon, and yet has a stock market that rallies 40% with apparently no end in sight... Yeah, I guess anything could happen.
Perhaps I didn't make my point clear enough in my original post.
I cited KE = 1/2mv^2 because frankly, neither you or I will ever LIVE to see an object with real (kg or more) mass moving at relativistic speeds (without being torn apart). So although dreaming about relativity is fine, and great food for thought and PhD's, I can't see any practical applications outside a lab setting. So Newtonian physics is what we will ever observe when we're playing with our bigger toys. Now I'm not an all-seeing god dictating my Word, but I'm not stupid either. It's just common sense. You need too much energy, and it always comes down to that.
I do not doubt Einstein, and all the people who followed. Like I said, men smarter than me have spent their lives on it. But someone wants to build an engine for a spaceship on this? Good luck... They can't even get the LHC working right.
How about work for a living instead of patenting vague ideas and waiting for a company to make something that sort of resembles it?
Believe you me, I want to see more of these patent trolls. Keep them coming until the system breaks.
Just like medical predators and ambulance chasing lawyers, I congratulate them for driving health care costs to the point where litigation avoidance - not patient care or comfort, is the deciding factor in medical decisions. No one can afford to get sick without insurance in the US, and frankly not everyone can even afford the insurance. Thus, the health care system is broken, and thus - it HAS to get fixed NOW.
Hopefully the same thing will happen with patents.
Now don't get me started on copyrights... nah, you can download the torrent...
If they honestly think they have a claim, then it would be absurd not to go after it.
Read as: It doesn't cost all that much to file a patent, let's threaten to sue and see if Toyota will settle. Even if we only make a couple hundred thousand, Toyota will be happy to have the FTC off their back, and we'll have paid our costs for incorporation, and filing this (bogus) patent.
I wonder if this no-name company is owned by Exxon?
No, I'm sure that big oil wants you all to drive hybrids. After all, the price of oil is going to continue going up anyway just through sheer demand for all the OTHER applications of oil. Why burn up all that oil quickly today in internal combustion engines, when you can be charged an arm and a leg for it in a couple decades or so?
But, Toyota makes cars in the US...
We push subatomic particles at relativistic speeds all the time and observe the mass change. Or maybe you think it works differently when it's lots of particles moving together?
No. But tell me what the electric bill was at Fermilab or wherever to move those subatomic particles? I sure don't want to pay it. Now multiply that by Avogadro's number to get the cost of moving just one mole of whatever you were moving. What's the exponent on the amount of Joules you'll need?
See the thing is we can argue all day about what happens at relativistic speeds. Smarter minds than you or I have solved the equations and staked out the territory. But there's AMAZINGLY HUGE difference between moving some neutrons, and moving something with REAL mass. This seems to be the communication problem I'm getting from all of you theorists. So you can shoot a neutron at almost the speed of light at nearby star for a billion bucks. SO WHAT?
Agreed - who knows in 100, or 500 years, what we'll be able to pack into a gram. So, you plan to shoot a beam at this thing to get it moving, I guess, since at just a gram it won't be able to carry a power supply with it or, conversely, be able to harness enough energy to power itself.
Now tell me, how were you planning on slowing it down again? Unless this were some sort of probe whose job was to merely zip by a neighboring star and send back whatever kind of information can be sent back by something weighing a gram or so, I frankly don't see much potential.
I understand everyone being excited by this. When I was younger, I was all for space exploration, disappointed by NASA's giving up the Apollo program, revolted by the thought of a space shuttle that at best could manage LEO, etc.
But now I'm older, and I remember the words of Douglas Adams. Space is big. REALLY big. The only way we will reach the stars is when our sun goes nova. But then our atoms won't remember what we were, or what we aspired to be. Who am I kidding, we can't even run our own planet.