You're assuming there that people don't get other jobs. In the UK in the 70s and 80s we outsourced all our coal mining. It hurt in the short term but in the long term now we have better, easier jobs.
You're assuming that the person with the higher income is working proportionally harder to get that money. If a CEO earns a hundred times as much money as a the receptionist, does that mean the CEO is a hundred times harder working, a hundred times more capable, or just a hundred times better connected?
Bone structure and facial features will stay the same though. There are women in their 40s who still look good, and women even in their 50s and 60s who look better than most women in their 40s.
Electing a socialist president was the first step to falling under communist influence? You mean how the UK, France, Norway, Sweden etc. all elected socialist governments at some point during the Cold War? Were they all destined to fall under Soviet influence?
I can't speak for the other countries, but the UK has never elected a socialist government. Taxes and public services are not socialism. In fact, over the last half century, the UK has become less and less socialist, with nearly all state industries, infrastructures and corporations being privatised. The closest thing was have to socialism is the NHS, and even that has private competition.
A few million subscriptions on a single game, hardly what you'd call 'healthy'. If anything, world of warcraft is a thorn in the side of PC gaming, as the few PC gamers left are obsessively playing a four year old game rather than trying anything new.
That's funny, because my motherboard didn't have IDE. And you still haven't included the cost of Windows, as well as all the anti-virus software you need.
This "illegal immigrants do jobs that americans won't take" rhetoric is fallacious. Americans won't take the jobs because they don't pay a living (or legal) wage. If you made them full-time, roughly minimum wage jobs then I'm sure Americans will flock to them.
Doubt it. In the UK, the natives would rather sit on the dole than pick fruit for £7 an hour (above minimum wage). So whilst we have hundreds of thousands unemployed, we have over half a million Poles coming here to pick fruit, pull pints, wait tables, clean toilets, and all sorts of other above minimum wage jobs that the locals won't do.
I think the main issue here is that Westerners are spoilt and lazy, and won't do anything if it involves getting their hands dirty, or doesn't pay a high wage, even if they're unskilled and uneducated. Far too easy to claim disability benefits for a 'bad back' or 'stress'. But like I said I can only speak for the British laybout underclass, not America.
You missed out Windows Vista, and try those prices without the promo codes. And there's no way you can get a DVD burner for £12, unless it's off the back of a lorry.
For RPGs like Neverwinter and MMORPGs like WoW, I just could never see anyone making a usable control layout without a full keyboard.
A keyboard offers at most eight ways to walk, and no gradients of speed, just on or off. A controller with an analogue stick allows you to walk in any direction at any pace.
As for RPGs, Final Fantasy seems to do OK on consoles.
And the health of PC gaming isn't defined by how much you like keyboards and mice, it's defined by sales, and in that respect, PC gaming is dying.
Maybe things are dirt-cheap in America but in the UK you're looking at close to double that. Plus you forgot the cost of Windows, the new SATA disks, and the cost of a controller (unless you're going to play nothing but MMO and FPS clones).
Furthermore, console makers have this tendency to lock you into their proprietary games networks, and unlike the PC it is not possible to get around this.
OK, so how do I play World of Warcraft on non-Blizzard servers?
All the non-gaming stuff you can do on a PC, you can do on a broken five year old PC that doesn't play games. So the cost of upgrading/replacing your entire PC is only for games.
Plus you've neglected the cost of the Microsoft tithes, i.e. XP, then Vista when Direct X10 becomes standard.
It's not dead, just dying. Even the FPS, once a PC mainstay, now sells more on consoles than on the PC.
To the GP, a $200 video card may have graphics better than a console, but what's the point if you have to upgrade your entire PC to use it. That graphics card is no doubt PCI-X, which means you need a new motherboard. Then you need a new processor, and new RAM. And of course it's SATA only so you need a new hard disk and DVD drive. And the video card is DVI only so you need a new monitor. And the whole thing needs a new PSU to actually drive the thing.
And if you want to play multiplayer, you need a whole other PC, and monitor.
Then in a couple of years you'll need to upgrade to Vista to play the latest games, which is yet more expense, and will probably require a RAM upgrade. Etc. Etc. Etc.
And your statement about it being "the only future proof" machine is wrong.
It's about the track record, Sony are still selling the PS2 8 years after it was released, and there are still new games for it. Meanwhile, Microsoft scuttled the Xbox after just four years and the less said about the Gamecube the better. As far as bluray players go, the PS3 can receive updates over the internet, how many other players can do that?
What can Microsoft, Apple etc. do? Even if they throw their weight around get net neutrality introduced, ISPs will just set really low caps and charge extortionate prices for anyone who wants to download HD content.
I can agree that a hard gold standard (which is not what Ron Paul believes in, it's a competing currency of which gold is a part of) is a can of worms but what is a bigger can of worms, our Fiat system now?
Fiat currency works fine, the gold standard caused all sorts of problems all over the world. The gold standard is backed by all sorts of conspiracy theorists, gold investors and other whackos.
But while this evil is transpiring, the simple fact that corporations need customers with money to spend seems to elude everyone. If your population is unemployed and unable to purchase your products, how can you continue to post increasing profits and make your shareholders happy?
A H1B worker in America gets paid the same, and is just as likely to buy products as an American worker. So there is no loss.
Sure, it's cheaper to produce it in China or support it in India. But who is going to buy it? Those American workers you laid off were the customers you were selling your products to.
By that logic, no-one should import anything, ever, as it's putting a local out of work. So turn off your Taiwan-made computer, unplug your Chinese TV, and take them to the garbage dump in your German car, which you can scrap and replace by a 10mpg Detroit monstrosity.
These corporations are very short-sighted. When their market contracts (due to fewer customers) their profits will decrease. Will they try to make up the difference by hiring even more cheap foreign labor and further erode their customer base? Will our corporate masters continue to believe that their actions have no repercussions? Sometimes I wonder...
Or, the American workers could realise they're not entitled to a job, and they could retrain, lower their wage demands, learn new skills, or work harder. Or they could sit about whining about them foreigners who 'tuk errrrrr jerrrbss'.
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You're assuming there that people don't get other jobs. In the UK in the 70s and 80s we outsourced all our coal mining. It hurt in the short term but in the long term now we have better, easier jobs.
If I had a computer that could predict sports results, I wouldn't tell anyone about it. I'd take a briefcase full of cash down to the bookmakers.
You're assuming that the person with the higher income is working proportionally harder to get that money. If a CEO earns a hundred times as much money as a the receptionist, does that mean the CEO is a hundred times harder working, a hundred times more capable, or just a hundred times better connected?
Bone structure and facial features will stay the same though. There are women in their 40s who still look good, and women even in their 50s and 60s who look better than most women in their 40s.
Because everyone's set-top boxes and digital TVs only know Mpeg-2. Unless you're expected everyone to replace their TVs...
I don't see US bombers heading to North Korea, India, Israel or Pakistan.
A few million subscriptions on a single game, hardly what you'd call 'healthy'. If anything, world of warcraft is a thorn in the side of PC gaming, as the few PC gamers left are obsessively playing a four year old game rather than trying anything new.
That's funny, because my motherboard didn't have IDE. And you still haven't included the cost of Windows, as well as all the anti-virus software you need.
I think the main issue here is that Westerners are spoilt and lazy, and won't do anything if it involves getting their hands dirty, or doesn't pay a high wage, even if they're unskilled and uneducated. Far too easy to claim disability benefits for a 'bad back' or 'stress'. But like I said I can only speak for the British laybout underclass, not America.
You missed out Windows Vista, and try those prices without the promo codes. And there's no way you can get a DVD burner for £12, unless it's off the back of a lorry.
As for RPGs, Final Fantasy seems to do OK on consoles.
And the health of PC gaming isn't defined by how much you like keyboards and mice, it's defined by sales, and in that respect, PC gaming is dying.
Maybe things are dirt-cheap in America but in the UK you're looking at close to double that. Plus you forgot the cost of Windows, the new SATA disks, and the cost of a controller (unless you're going to play nothing but MMO and FPS clones).
All the non-gaming stuff you can do on a PC, you can do on a broken five year old PC that doesn't play games. So the cost of upgrading/replacing your entire PC is only for games.
Plus you've neglected the cost of the Microsoft tithes, i.e. XP, then Vista when Direct X10 becomes standard.
It's not dead, just dying. Even the FPS, once a PC mainstay, now sells more on consoles than on the PC.
To the GP, a $200 video card may have graphics better than a console, but what's the point if you have to upgrade your entire PC to use it. That graphics card is no doubt PCI-X, which means you need a new motherboard. Then you need a new processor, and new RAM. And of course it's SATA only so you need a new hard disk and DVD drive. And the video card is DVI only so you need a new monitor. And the whole thing needs a new PSU to actually drive the thing.
And if you want to play multiplayer, you need a whole other PC, and monitor.
Then in a couple of years you'll need to upgrade to Vista to play the latest games, which is yet more expense, and will probably require a RAM upgrade. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Amarok may, after wrestling with the interface, get mp3s on it. But it's a hack, apple had put something in to stop the old programs working.
And good luck putting videos on it.
Somehow I don't see Nintendo selling any films, either downloaded or on disks.
What can Microsoft, Apple etc. do? Even if they throw their weight around get net neutrality introduced, ISPs will just set really low caps and charge extortionate prices for anyone who wants to download HD content.
Good luck getting your ipod touch or classic to work properly on Linux. Apple hates competition, they only support Windows because they have to.
OK: James Joyce's work is rubbish. He's a complete twat as well.