I remember doing all a manner of life-threatening things as a kid. There was the obligatory sledding down near-vertical slopes at a construction site (closed for the winter!), as well as the usual stick fighting, jumping off moving swings, playing chicken, and jumping your bike over creeks full of broken glass. One time my friends and I had the brilliant idea of having a brick fight, which I lost after taking one square to the head.
My point, aside from noting how incredibly stupid I was as a child, is that children are pretty durable. In retrospect, the brick fight was probably a bad idea, but children aren't really going to hurt themselves running full speed into each other playing tag.
Of course, in this day and age of 100 pound 8 year olds, is that even true anymore?
To make the distinction a little clearer, remember why were making the distinction in the first place. Just being a northern state doesn't imply that you're better off economically. Rather, the north/south distintion with regards to economy refers to a historical distinction, at a time when the east coast was really the only populous part of the country. Even though the population distributation has changed greatly since then, that basic economic distinction between the northern east coast and southern east coast remains, and it's still spoken of using the historical terms "the north" and "the south".
When talking about "the north" as opposed to "the south", one is typically speaking of the east coast. Iowa, for example, is at the same latitude as Pennsylvania, but the former is typically considered to be in the "midwest", not the "north". Texas is south of Georgia, but it's usually not considered to be a "southern" state.
If you're going to be pedantic, at least be accurate:)
Hydrocarbon + O2 -> H2O + CO2 is a simplification. In any real combustion process, even with pure substances, you won't just get H2O and CO2, but a whole spectrum of intermediate products composed of some combination of H, C, and O. Even ideally, the precise distribution of these combustion products will depend on the stoichiometric mixture of the fuel and oxidizer, and the combustion temperature and pressure. In pratice, it'll depend on things like the local stoichiometric mix, which depends on how well-mixed your fuel and oxidizer is, as well as the vagracies of the burning process itself.
What does "fully established standard" mean? Both DVD and Blu-Ray have official specifications that you can license on a non-discriminatory basis. DVD's standard is older than Blu-Ray's, but Blu-Ray is new technology, so that's trivially true. Neither Blu-Ray nor DVD have a single corporation behind them, both are backed by a consortium (the DVD Forum, and the Blu-Ray Disc Association, respectively). Both organizations have open membership with lots of members (230 for the DVD forum, and 170 for the BDA). Indeed, 7 of the 10 founders of the Blu-Ray Disc Association (Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, and Thomson), were founders of the DVD forum as well.
Yes, BD is a Sony-designed technology. In that sense, they've got a vested interest in the format. But then again, DVD is a Toshiba-design technology, and they had a vested interest in that format. So what's the big difference?
Not just that, but the rootkit was done by a subcontractor to BMG, which BMG had relied on for their copy protection for years. The only reason Sony ever got pulled into it is because by buying BMG, they became responsible for their problem.
But let's not let facts get in the way of a good bit of poo-slinging....
I don't see your point. Saying that the south has a higher birth-rate than the north doesn't imply that the south is the only place with a higher birth-rate than the north.
Carbon dioxide is hardly the only pollutant released by the burning of hydrocarbons. There's tons of waste products, including nitrogen and sulfer oxides that cause acid rain, and naturally occuring radioactive materials like uranium. While CO2 pollution my be reversible, the health and environmental damage caused by these other waste products certainly are not. Moreover, the waste products of nuclear plants are containable, while the waste products of coal plants are freely released into the biosphere. Because of this fact, coal plants actually release more radioactive material into their local environment than properly-maintained nuclear power stations. You receive more radiation living next to a coal plant, because its spewing uranium and thorium into the atmosphere, than you do living next to a nuclear plant, where the radiation is contained behind layers of shielding and safety protocols.
The south (defined as Virginia and below), does have a higher birth rate than the north (above Virginia). You can see a map here. Lower income people definitely have higher birth rates, and the south is definitely lower income than other places. Of course, as you can see, California has a pretty high birth rate too, but that's probably the result of the large number of latino immigrants.
Of course, immigration can't be discounted as a reason for growth either. That's also a very major trend that's happening in the south. It's just not the only trend.
The fucking hippies would never allow it. They'd rather take the 100% probability of breathing in harmful wastes released from burning coal than take the 1e-6% probability of being exposed to nuclear waste.
Apple dumped IBM because IBM didn't have any good desktop chips. Mentioning IBM's great embedded chips isn't really useful. Apple isn't in the defense or aerospace markets, its in the desktop and laptop PC markets.
Syphon Filter for the PSP was awesome, for a handheld game, anyway. Most fun I've had playing an FPS since the original GoldenEye. What didn't you like about it?
I remember not putting my PS2 online because I had to pay $50 for a special 10/100 network adapter that fit the PS3, when a generic one cost $10.
Those generic ones are $10 because they're produced in enormous quantities for completely generic machines. After all, everything has a PCI slot, so the buyer market is huge. $50 for a custom adapter for a specific machine is really not in the realm of "overpriced".
Nintendo has everything going for them going into this generation.
Except the legacy of 10 years during which they couldn't put together a decent library of games...
The didn't sell as many units as their competitors last generation, but they made more money than either of their competitors on hardware sales, because they've never sold their hardware for a loss.
Yeah, but Sony still made more money overall. Who cares what the distribution of revenues is like when the bottom line is bigger?
Are there any good games for the PSP yet?
Funny, I keep asking myself that about my Gamecube. And yes, there are. Syphon Filter, Wipeout, Valkyrie Profile, among others.
Cuz I already have a dozen DS games, and I love them all.
Good for you. I just EBayed my DS because I couldn't find any games for it that I wanted to play.
Its also worth noting that the Wii will not be sold for a loss - unlike M$ and $ony, the big N will be making profit from every console sold from day one.
I love how you're putting the dollar signs on MS and Sony, when its Nintendo selling the warmed-over Gamecube for $250.
And exactly what countries do you think aren't amenable to raising lare numbers of cattle? I'll give you a hint- anyplace that has a climate temperate enough for human beings is temperate enough for cattle.
Hint: Any place that doesn't have a lot of grassland to spare. Raising cattle is tremendously land-intensive. Countries in eastern Europe often don't have a lot of grassland to begin with, and countries like Great Britain and Japan don't have a lot of unindustrialized land, period.
True, but up until 1960 or so, the method of doing so was by creating new States and Protected Territories- that is, by subverting new lands to American Law.
This is a crackpot theory.
It's when we started breaking down trade barriers *without* exporting our labor and industry regulations that we started having trade deficits- and since 1976 we haven't had a single trade surplus.
I don't think you really understand what a trade deficit implies. Grab an econ textbook and look up "balance of payments".
I personally think the last 30 years have pretty much proven that economists don't know what they're talking about with respect to free trade.
Yes, the people who spend their lives studying this topic should bow to your crackpot theories.
No it hasn't- pretty much all wealth generation in the first world is protected by regulations and tariffs of various sorts. Without regulation you can't even form a corporation.
Regulations, when used to maintain the existence of free market, are useful. Tarrifs are not. The history of economic development in Europe is correlated with the breaking down of tarrifs. Major growth came when countries like France and England broke down internal trade barriers. Another major spurt of growth came when these countries started industrializing and trading with each other. Yet another major spurt of growth has come recently with the move to a unified European economy.
Here's the difference: Human dignity. If the extra price is hidden, the worker feels useful. If the extra price is just charity, the worker feels worthless.
What dignity is there in living a lie?
However, that doesn't change the fact that the real numbers show that America has been tossing away approximately 10% of it's gross domestic product in trade imbalances for the past 30 years of so-called "breaking down trade barriers".
You can't "toss" anything out due to trade imbalances. Really, it's just as bad as saying "the 2nd law of thermodynamics precludes evolution". It's based on a misunderstanding of the theories involved.
Trade imbalances are cash imbalances, not value imbalances. When you have a $1tn trade deficit, you pay out $1tn more in cash than you take in. However, you're not any poorer, because you've $1tn worth of goods to offset that. It's just like if you had $1m, then bought a house with it. You're not any poorer, your net worth is still $1m.
Pretending to ignore the falling standard of living in the United States doesn't help either.
And where is this evidence of a falling standard of living in the US? Because standard indices don't agree with your characteriziation.
RTFA- we're already being regulated to middle of the road status.
TFA doesn't say anything along these lines, and its not a viewpoint that is bourne out by the statistics.
What does it matter if we're the fastest or slowest growing economy, as long as OUR citizens still have jobs and are able to raise their families?
Citizens as a whole, or specific citizens? Because in this era of free trade, prosperity and unemployement are pretty much lower than they've ever been.
Why should we care what they do?
Because the standard of living to which Americans are accustomed is largely dependent on our being at the top. How long do you think we can get away with using 1/4 the world's energy when we don't have the intellectual, economic, and military capability to back it up?
Also, the EU isn't going to be anybody's competitor economically soon- they waste too much time with vacations and spend too much on socialized health care.
Are you trolling? The EU now has the largest economy in the world. Their GDP growth rate is generally lower than ours, but in the last few years has been nipping at our heels certain quarters. The Euro is very strong, and is looking increasingly attractive as a replacement for dollars in the international investment market. They've still got a long way to go in terms of technological competitiveness (in most respects, American research is still the best in the world), but that's the kind of thing that doesn't last forever.
Even if we don't slow down, your children might live in a world where the EU has replaced the US as top dog. If we do, they might even live in a world where China and the EU have both overshadowed the US.
However, if access to OUR market is protected, there still isn't any problem. It's only when we open up our market to outside competition, that a problem exists.
You're talking about harm to a small group of people offset against the benefit to a larger group of people. Consider the fact that with American farmers exporting cheap milk around the world, people in countries that aren't amenable to raising large numbers of cattle can now increase their consumption of milk. Wheras thousands of local dairy farmers in one place may lose jobs, potentially millions of children in other places may improve a critical part of their diet.
Your argument is illogical. Free trade promotes industrialization and economic development. Economic development discourages rapid population growth.
It's easy to see why. If you're a subsistence farmer, having more children is beneficial, because children can work on the farm and increase production. If you consider a country where most of the population is engaged in subsistence farming, then you can see the reasons for rapid population growth. On the other hand, if you work on a factory or in a service job, having more children is a liability. They can't contribute to your production, and you have to feed, cloathe, and care for them.
Ending international trade would have the effect of creating more farmers, not just in developing nations, but in developed nations. That would cause birth rates to increase world-wide.
But the real point is that it WAS working for us- protectionism was working for quite a large number of generations. Insisting that it suddenly wasn't working is quite a shock to the system.
Actually, if you look at American economic propsperity, it's highly correlated with the breaking down of trade barriers.
That free trade makes you wealthier overall is something that almost nobody who knows what they're talking about (economists) disagrees with. It's been blatently evident for literally hundreds of years in the history of Europe.
The concerns that are brought up regarding free trade are better targetted at social policy. Now, a lot of pro-protectionists don't like talking about social policy, because they see it as a hand-out. But the truth of the matter is that protectionism is just another hand-out. If our consumers pay several times as much for a product just to keep Americans employed, how is that different from just buying the product more cheaply and contributing the difference to job-retraining programs? Either way, society is burdened with the welfare of a particular worker, it's just that in the latter case, there is no pretense about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember doing all a manner of life-threatening things as a kid. There was the obligatory sledding down near-vertical slopes at a construction site (closed for the winter!), as well as the usual stick fighting, jumping off moving swings, playing chicken, and jumping your bike over creeks full of broken glass. One time my friends and I had the brilliant idea of having a brick fight, which I lost after taking one square to the head.
My point, aside from noting how incredibly stupid I was as a child, is that children are pretty durable. In retrospect, the brick fight was probably a bad idea, but children aren't really going to hurt themselves running full speed into each other playing tag.
Of course, in this day and age of 100 pound 8 year olds, is that even true anymore?
To make the distinction a little clearer, remember why were making the distinction in the first place. Just being a northern state doesn't imply that you're better off economically. Rather, the north/south distintion with regards to economy refers to a historical distinction, at a time when the east coast was really the only populous part of the country. Even though the population distributation has changed greatly since then, that basic economic distinction between the northern east coast and southern east coast remains, and it's still spoken of using the historical terms "the north" and "the south".
When talking about "the north" as opposed to "the south", one is typically speaking of the east coast. Iowa, for example, is at the same latitude as Pennsylvania, but the former is typically considered to be in the "midwest", not the "north". Texas is south of Georgia, but it's usually not considered to be a "southern" state.
If you're going to be pedantic, at least be accurate :)
Hydrocarbon + O2 -> H2O + CO2 is a simplification. In any real combustion process, even with pure substances, you won't just get H2O and CO2, but a whole spectrum of intermediate products composed of some combination of H, C, and O. Even ideally, the precise distribution of these combustion products will depend on the stoichiometric mixture of the fuel and oxidizer, and the combustion temperature and pressure. In pratice, it'll depend on things like the local stoichiometric mix, which depends on how well-mixed your fuel and oxidizer is, as well as the vagracies of the burning process itself.
What does "fully established standard" mean? Both DVD and Blu-Ray have official specifications that you can license on a non-discriminatory basis. DVD's standard is older than Blu-Ray's, but Blu-Ray is new technology, so that's trivially true. Neither Blu-Ray nor DVD have a single corporation behind them, both are backed by a consortium (the DVD Forum, and the Blu-Ray Disc Association, respectively). Both organizations have open membership with lots of members (230 for the DVD forum, and 170 for the BDA). Indeed, 7 of the 10 founders of the Blu-Ray Disc Association (Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, and Thomson), were founders of the DVD forum as well.
Yes, BD is a Sony-designed technology. In that sense, they've got a vested interest in the format. But then again, DVD is a Toshiba-design technology, and they had a vested interest in that format. So what's the big difference?
Not just that, but the rootkit was done by a subcontractor to BMG, which BMG had relied on for their copy protection for years. The only reason Sony ever got pulled into it is because by buying BMG, they became responsible for their problem.
But let's not let facts get in the way of a good bit of poo-slinging....
Blu-Ray isn't any more proprietary than DVD. Both are patented, and both require a license to implement.
Do you, by any chance, use DVDs? Because by your reasoning, they're just as proprietary as Blu-Ray.
I don't see your point. Saying that the south has a higher birth-rate than the north doesn't imply that the south is the only place with a higher birth-rate than the north.
My statement doesn't imply that all hippies hate nuclear power. Think it through...
Carbon dioxide is hardly the only pollutant released by the burning of hydrocarbons. There's tons of waste products, including nitrogen and sulfer oxides that cause acid rain, and naturally occuring radioactive materials like uranium. While CO2 pollution my be reversible, the health and environmental damage caused by these other waste products certainly are not. Moreover, the waste products of nuclear plants are containable, while the waste products of coal plants are freely released into the biosphere. Because of this fact, coal plants actually release more radioactive material into their local environment than properly-maintained nuclear power stations. You receive more radiation living next to a coal plant, because its spewing uranium and thorium into the atmosphere, than you do living next to a nuclear plant, where the radiation is contained behind layers of shielding and safety protocols.
The south (defined as Virginia and below), does have a higher birth rate than the north (above Virginia). You can see a map here. Lower income people definitely have higher birth rates, and the south is definitely lower income than other places. Of course, as you can see, California has a pretty high birth rate too, but that's probably the result of the large number of latino immigrants.
Of course, immigration can't be discounted as a reason for growth either. That's also a very major trend that's happening in the south. It's just not the only trend.
The fucking hippies would never allow it. They'd rather take the 100% probability of breathing in harmful wastes released from burning coal than take the 1e-6% probability of being exposed to nuclear waste.
Apple dumped IBM because IBM didn't have any good desktop chips. Mentioning IBM's great embedded chips isn't really useful. Apple isn't in the defense or aerospace markets, its in the desktop and laptop PC markets.
Syphon Filter for the PSP was awesome, for a handheld game, anyway. Most fun I've had playing an FPS since the original GoldenEye. What didn't you like about it?
I remember not putting my PS2 online because I had to pay $50 for a special 10/100 network adapter that fit the PS3, when a generic one cost $10.
Those generic ones are $10 because they're produced in enormous quantities for completely generic machines. After all, everything has a PCI slot, so the buyer market is huge. $50 for a custom adapter for a specific machine is really not in the realm of "overpriced".
See, that's why you gotta work 70 hour weeks. So you can buy lots of toys :)
Nintendo has everything going for them going into this generation.
Except the legacy of 10 years during which they couldn't put together a decent library of games...
The didn't sell as many units as their competitors last generation, but they made more money than either of their competitors on hardware sales, because they've never sold their hardware for a loss.
Yeah, but Sony still made more money overall. Who cares what the distribution of revenues is like when the bottom line is bigger?
Are there any good games for the PSP yet?
Funny, I keep asking myself that about my Gamecube. And yes, there are. Syphon Filter, Wipeout, Valkyrie Profile, among others.
Cuz I already have a dozen DS games, and I love them all.
Good for you. I just EBayed my DS because I couldn't find any games for it that I wanted to play.
Its also worth noting that the Wii will not be sold for a loss - unlike M$ and $ony, the big N will be making profit from every console sold from day one.
I love how you're putting the dollar signs on MS and Sony, when its Nintendo selling the warmed-over Gamecube for $250.
And exactly what countries do you think aren't amenable to raising lare numbers of cattle? I'll give you a hint- anyplace that has a climate temperate enough for human beings is temperate enough for cattle.
Hint: Any place that doesn't have a lot of grassland to spare. Raising cattle is tremendously land-intensive. Countries in eastern Europe often don't have a lot of grassland to begin with, and countries like Great Britain and Japan don't have a lot of unindustrialized land, period.
True, but up until 1960 or so, the method of doing so was by creating new States and Protected Territories- that is, by subverting new lands to American Law.
This is a crackpot theory.
It's when we started breaking down trade barriers *without* exporting our labor and industry regulations that we started having trade deficits- and since 1976 we haven't had a single trade surplus.
I don't think you really understand what a trade deficit implies. Grab an econ textbook and look up "balance of payments".
I personally think the last 30 years have pretty much proven that economists don't know what they're talking about with respect to free trade.
Yes, the people who spend their lives studying this topic should bow to your crackpot theories.
No it hasn't- pretty much all wealth generation in the first world is protected by regulations and tariffs of various sorts. Without regulation you can't even form a corporation.
Regulations, when used to maintain the existence of free market, are useful. Tarrifs are not. The history of economic development in Europe is correlated with the breaking down of tarrifs. Major growth came when countries like France and England broke down internal trade barriers. Another major spurt of growth came when these countries started industrializing and trading with each other. Yet another major spurt of growth has come recently with the move to a unified European economy.
Here's the difference: Human dignity. If the extra price is hidden, the worker feels useful. If the extra price is just charity, the worker feels worthless.
What dignity is there in living a lie?
However, that doesn't change the fact that the real numbers show that America has been tossing away approximately 10% of it's gross domestic product in trade imbalances for the past 30 years of so-called "breaking down trade barriers".
You can't "toss" anything out due to trade imbalances. Really, it's just as bad as saying "the 2nd law of thermodynamics precludes evolution". It's based on a misunderstanding of the theories involved.
Trade imbalances are cash imbalances, not value imbalances. When you have a $1tn trade deficit, you pay out $1tn more in cash than you take in. However, you're not any poorer, because you've $1tn worth of goods to offset that. It's just like if you had $1m, then bought a house with it. You're not any poorer, your net worth is still $1m.
Pretending to ignore the falling standard of living in the United States doesn't help either.
And where is this evidence of a falling standard of living in the US? Because standard indices don't agree with your characteriziation.
RTFA- we're already being regulated to middle of the road status.
TFA doesn't say anything along these lines, and its not a viewpoint that is bourne out by the statistics.
What does it matter if we're the fastest or slowest growing economy, as long as OUR citizens still have jobs and are able to raise their families?
Citizens as a whole, or specific citizens? Because in this era of free trade, prosperity and unemployement are pretty much lower than they've ever been.
Why should we care what they do?
Because the standard of living to which Americans are accustomed is largely dependent on our being at the top. How long do you think we can get away with using 1/4 the world's energy when we don't have the intellectual, economic, and military capability to back it up?
Also, the EU isn't going to be anybody's competitor economically soon- they waste too much time with vacations and spend too much on socialized health care.
Are you trolling? The EU now has the largest economy in the world. Their GDP growth rate is generally lower than ours, but in the last few years has been nipping at our heels certain quarters. The Euro is very strong, and is looking increasingly attractive as a replacement for dollars in the international investment market. They've still got a long way to go in terms of technological competitiveness (in most respects, American research is still the best in the world), but that's the kind of thing that doesn't last forever.
Even if we don't slow down, your children might live in a world where the EU has replaced the US as top dog. If we do, they might even live in a world where China and the EU have both overshadowed the US.
However, if access to OUR market is protected, there still isn't any problem. It's only when we open up our market to outside competition, that a problem exists.
What research backs this up?
You're talking about harm to a small group of people offset against the benefit to a larger group of people. Consider the fact that with American farmers exporting cheap milk around the world, people in countries that aren't amenable to raising large numbers of cattle can now increase their consumption of milk. Wheras thousands of local dairy farmers in one place may lose jobs, potentially millions of children in other places may improve a critical part of their diet.
Your argument is illogical. Free trade promotes industrialization and economic development. Economic development discourages rapid population growth.
It's easy to see why. If you're a subsistence farmer, having more children is beneficial, because children can work on the farm and increase production. If you consider a country where most of the population is engaged in subsistence farming, then you can see the reasons for rapid population growth. On the other hand, if you work on a factory or in a service job, having more children is a liability. They can't contribute to your production, and you have to feed, cloathe, and care for them.
Ending international trade would have the effect of creating more farmers, not just in developing nations, but in developed nations. That would cause birth rates to increase world-wide.
But the real point is that it WAS working for us- protectionism was working for quite a large number of generations. Insisting that it suddenly wasn't working is quite a shock to the system.
Actually, if you look at American economic propsperity, it's highly correlated with the breaking down of trade barriers.
That free trade makes you wealthier overall is something that almost nobody who knows what they're talking about (economists) disagrees with. It's been blatently evident for literally hundreds of years in the history of Europe.
The concerns that are brought up regarding free trade are better targetted at social policy. Now, a lot of pro-protectionists don't like talking about social policy, because they see it as a hand-out. But the truth of the matter is that protectionism is just another hand-out. If our consumers pay several times as much for a product just to keep Americans employed, how is that different from just buying the product more cheaply and contributing the difference to job-retraining programs? Either way, society is burdened with the welfare of a particular worker, it's just that in the latter case, there is no pretense about it.