you sound just like the record industry when they cry wolf: "mp3 means the end of music as we know it". if I had mod points I would have modded you -1 Overrated.
get real, man. portable players were here long before you heard about the iPod, much longer than the 1998 Diamond Rio. At the time there was no market, yet the players did exist.
also, economics 101: if you want to recover your money from a bad investment, you DO NOT raise the price. you lower it. you sell it to the first jerk that show up, then "Take The Money and Run".
True. For example, here in Argentina, Windows and Office cost that (plus 21% tax). But, a movie ticket cost $ 5 (5 pesos, which is about USD 1,60). A Big Mac too, $5 or something (you can't really expect people to pay what a Big Mac costs in the US, because nobody, and I mean nobody will ever buy that).
That means, movie studios and McDonald's figured that they can adjust the price to what people can pay, and still make profit. Why can't Microsoft do the same thing? They want to charge you the same price as in the US or Europe, where people make 10 times more money. That's just stupid. So what do they do? They make a "Starter Edition", the most discriminative piece of software I've ever seen in my whole life: you are poor? then YOU DON'T DESERVE to have a computer with more than 512MB ram and run more than 3 apps at a time.
Why can't Microsoft make a local version, something like "Windows Vista latin" or something. The same windows vista you get in the US, only that it's in Spanish (windows comes in spanish, of course), and it costs something like what people can afford down here. No, people from other parts of the world won't buy it (because it's in Spanish), and as most south american countries are more or less the same (we are all "poor"), the price could be the same for this whole market. Norton did that, and you could get a year subscription of Norton antivirus for $15 or so here in Argentina. Don't know if they still do that, but I'm glad that they want to fight piracy with something that people can afford.
Get real, is either "make less money" than "make no money". I can assure you, NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND will spend their month (or 3 month in some cases) salary just to give Bill (the richest man alive) a drop in his ocean of money.
Bill was in this business long before the PC world. If you care to read a Commodore "boot" screen, you'd see "(C) 1977 MICROSOFT". We don't know if IBM would have succeeded if they did things Apple's way. If IBM wanted to go the Apple way, I'd risk to say that they would have lost. Commodore was big back in the 80s, the Amiga was great for its time. I guess Commodoree would have been the winner at the time.
But when talking about how many million computers Apple can sell, keep in mind one thing: No company could ever be that big. There's no way that Apple (or IBM, or whoever) could make all of the "personal computers" in existence in the whole world. What do you say? Companies can grow? Wrong. A software company can grow as much as they want to. But a hardware company can't be that big. And, it's competition what drives capitalism. So even if they could produce all of the machines in the world, technology would not improve (there would be no need for improvement, be it in features or cost reduction). Also, the capitalism has a nice way of self-limiting: law-and-demand.
Also, I'm happy that it went that way. It's a good thing Apple (or IBM, or whoever) was not the "winner". Because that way, only the US then the UK, Japan, and finally a few european countries plus australia would have computers. Down here in latin america we don't have ITMS, Tivo, iPods (they cost USD 1000 for the 80GB model). Companies like to sell where there are no risks. They don't give a shit about us down here in "the rest of the world". So, the IBM PC opened the door to a "democratic" model of computer, which allows us, the "third world" as you like to call us, to have computers.
Also, if Microsoft made Windows to run on Microsoft machines, and Apple made System to run on any machine, then everyone would hate System (or OS X)... "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".
MS said, "bring the hardware and we will (somewhat) embrace it". Apple's strategy has been to own both the hardware and OS. Microsoft's strategy has been to (mostly) allow all comers. I really can't say which philosophy is better.
What the fuck, dude? Last time I checked, Bill Gates was the richest men in the world. Steve Jobs wasn't anywhere near. So considering that, I'm pretty sure that MS's philosophy is much better.
what? E-mail virtual domains are extremely popular (Google's GMail for your domain for example). All those "you@yourname.com" e-mail hosts use them. Also, many ISPs will host your domain on their mail servers as part of their "business" packs. And, considering that a lot of domains hosted in virtual WWW servers also have a contact e-mail address, just that alone counts for millions of "virtual" emails. Even forwarders count for virtual domains too.
Hell, I'd bet there may be more domains used for e-mail than those used for WWW.
The Email would have a better chance of survival than the WWW. Put your IMAP/POP/SMTP servers in your hosts file, then e-mail anyone, via their service's IP address: fred@10.130.19.12
Not quite. You may want to check Postfix's manual pages for virtual domains (or any other modern mail server's manual pages).
[blockquote]The Email would have a better chance of survival than the WWW. Put your IMAP/POP/SMTP servers in your hosts file, then e-mail anyone, via their service's IP address: fred@10.130.19.12[/blockquote]
Not quite. You may want to check Postfix's manual pages for virtual domains (or any other modern mail server's manual pages).
So, what's the news? I have lost faith in games lately. All I see are new releases of FPS and the newest MMORPG, I'm just tired of that. I guess I'm a kid, I love playing third person console games, but there aren't that many games worth it. Last one I played was the latest "Harry Potter" game. Nice graphics (when you press "black" and "white" together and everything lights up... very cool effect), and an interesting way of playing (the ability to switch players, etc). Problem? Too short. But better short than shitty. Read on:
Yesterday I picked up the "Narnia" game. The first few levels were easy, but fun nevertheless. Nice graphics, combo hits and team-up hits (remember the Simpsons arcade?) The completion counter quickly reached 44%. Then I got to the "The Great Battle" level. Cool, THOUSANDS of enemies walking in the background. Really cool. Then come waves of enemies. First 2 of them, then 3 of them, then 6 of them, etc. Each takes 6 to 8 blows to beat. And they all come to you at once. So what you have to do is press all of the buttons like crazy. It's just stupid, boring, and it hurts after a while.
Then.. 50% completion, wtf? Next level: the witch. Guess what: hit the witch, then a wave of enemies. Hit her again, then a greater wave of enemies. And so on. Oh, and you can't save. It only reaches checkpoints, but you can't resume later (and it's a long level).
But not everything is lost. I had the opportunity to play Okami a few weeks ago (I don't own a PS2). Sweet! Finally. A game that's innovative (the paint effect is really good, and it also brings memories of Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island). The character is easy to control. Oh, and that celestial brush... great!. But not only that. It's a LONG game. DAMN long. You have enemies here and there, beat 'em up, and carry on. No stupid "impossible" levels (Psychonauts!).
So, the answer is simple. A videogame needs a lot of development. Okami had a lot of development, innovation, etc. It's a jewel. Narnia needed to be ready NOW. Get typical prefabricated engine, a few textures and get the cast to donate their voices. That's it. But it's so short it would disappoint anyone. So they made it hard instead of longer, and that's what gaming industry has become. Promotion for commercial products (I'm pretty sure there must be a Paris Hilton videogame).
Well. I guess I'll have to get used to it. Just a couple of great games a year and nothing else.
You Must Be New Here! (yes I saw your user id). Don't you know that people rant about anything here all the time?
Besides, microchip isn't fixing anything. I have been using #includes from the first time I programmed PICs. MPASM (the assembler) is very powerful when you get to know it. It can give you a lot of flexibility and portability when you use it properly. MPLAB has a great simulator, with very useful features (such as the Stopwatch that allows you to count instruction cycles. I use it all the time for realtime apps).
Now seriously, regarding AVR... could you give an example of what's wrong with PICs vs AVR? All I can find wrong with the PICs is that they aren't pipelined (they have a regular 4 Tc instruction cycle). I think that *could* be fixed, and that microchip *should* have done it for their newer PIC series (such as the 24FJ, but I haven't read too much about them so I can't speak for sure).
From Wikipedia:
The AVR instruction set is more orthogonal than most eight-bit microcontrollers, however, it is not completely regular:
* Pointer registers X, Y, and Z have addressing capabilities that are different from each other.
* Register locations R0 to R15 have different addressing capabilities than register locations R16 to R31.
* I/O ports 0 to 31 have different addressing capabilities than I/O ports 32 to 63.
* CLR affects flags, while SER does not, even though they are complementary instructions. CLR set all bits to zero and SER sets them to one. (Note that CLR is pseudo-op for EOR R,R; and SER is short for LDI R,$FF. Math operations such as EOR modify flags while moves/loads/stores/branches such as LDI do not.)
wtf? Anyway, there are reasons to do it that way, the last instruction for example. I think is just like Microchips MOVWF and SWAPWF. Both move the contents of W to a register (SWAP of course swaps the nibbles), but MOVWF alters status bits while SWAPWF does not. This is useful when you need the Status bits untouched. For example, when the PIC calls an interrupt, it doesn't automatically do "context saving" (doesn't save the contents of PCLATH, STATUS and W). You need to do it by hand. So in order to save STATUS you do a MOVF STATUS,W and then SWAPWF STATUS_TEMP. Then you do your processing, and then back again SWAPF STATUS_TEMP,W; MOVWF STATUS. There's your status bits unaltered.
PICs have their issues too, of course. Such as accessing "RAM" banks, which is annoying sometimes because you need to know what you want to address, or Program Memory pages which are even worse because the program counter is 8-bit (the lower part, PCL), so you can't make a table read of more than 256 bytes in an elegant way.
Where am I going with all this rant? Well, I think there are no "bad" architectures, or instruction sets (Microchip mnemonics, I think, are a little more friendly). There is a tool for everything, and one should choose accordingly. I choose Microchip, obviously because I'm used to it, but also because I think it's the best overall (price, features, free tools, etc).
Sure, I would use AVR chips. Just point me in the right direction (an IDE, a few examples, and an easy to make programmer) and I'll give it a try. I saw the ATtiny11 chips at $0.79 here while PIC12F629's are $1.30 here in my country. That would be a pretty good reason for me to switch (sure, the PIC has more memory but I rarely use it).
Right now I have a project in mind: I want to make a car alarm (for an old car I have). I did the remote with RF modules from www.rentron.com and Keeloq chips from Microchip. I was going to do the alarm with a 12F629, but I think that would be a nice project to start with the ATtiny11 (it's just a flip-flop and a timer anyway...).
What the hell are you talking about? I use PICs since 2001, when they taught me that in college. Since then, I have done quite a few projects with these microcontrollers. I started with the good 'ol F84, but since 2003 i have switched to the 16F628. I also programmed with the 16F88, the '877, the 18F4520, 12F629/675, etc.
MPLAB macros help a lot, #defines can help you use your same ASM code over different families (12 and 16F for example), and make it straightforward to port the same code between different microcontrollers of the same family. The hardware peripherals (A/D, USARTs, CCP, Timers) are very easy to use. In short, I love PICs. Tried to switch to Motorola once. Couldn't find a programmer. With PICmicro, you use only one programmer (I use my homemade ICD2, which lets me step and set breakpoints on the target circuit, and it has helped me a lot with debugging, for a project that costs $20, is wonderful). MPLAB is SO powerful, everyday I find new tricks and new ways to do things. For Motorola, a few years ago, I couldn't find an IDE either.
Recently I started using the 18 series, with their own C compiler. Rather nasty at first, but when I finally understood it, it was straightforward.
Besides, PICs are dirt cheap too. I love the way Microchip has made it easy for the hobbyist to access development tools (the ICD2 is really cheap, less than $200. And the REAL ICE, for $500, is great), and the amount of literature you can find on the internet is invaluable (due to the amount of people using PICs for a hobby)... forum.microchip.com and piclist.com are basically all you need (besides the data sheets).
while FPGAs are great and all, I personally have the Spartan-3 board. I find it VERY difficult to program. I mean, no to actually program it, but to think what I have to do. I tend to think of a computer as a machine that executes a series of instructions. An FPGA is more than that. It's exactly that, if you want it to be. But it can be more. The problem with the FPGAs is that you need, indeed, to forget all you know about "computers", and think more outside the box. Remember that the FPGA executes all "instructions" at once, which can be confusing. A person programming with VHDL would think that, because of putting a sequence of instructions, that sequence will run in that order. Wrong, all of the instructions will be run at once. If you need a sequence, then you need to make yourself a Finite State Machine.
so, for hardware engineers, FPGAs are a good option. but for your regular "computer" class, traditional sequential languages are the way to go.
Some of that happened in Brazil a couple of years ago. Only it was a paramilitary force, the Death Squads. They came out at night with their AK's and gunned down the kids that were in the street. Hundreds of kids were murdered that way in São Paulo. They got to that situation, I think, for different reason than the Skinheads. The nazis do it just for fun. These guys did it for real, they saw it as a solution to the problem, and they systematically did that every night, for months.
How did Brazil got to that situation? Well, years and years of ignoring the law, judges that let people free because they were minors, drug lords buying the police, etc. This is happening in Argentina too, but at a minor scale (I think because of the less dense population in the Great Buenos Aires area).
The right-wing is trying to lower the age that minors can be judged for a crime (currently, a 17 year old kid can commit murder and basically walk free the next day, because he's a kid and he can't understand what he did, so he can't be held responsible for his own actions. Well, he doesn't actually walk free the next day. Most times, the police makes sure he can't walk the next day. Many times, they can't walk ever again.
But the lefties hate the idea of people going to jail. They want laxer laws, they make you look like a criminal if you say minors should be in jail. And it's all going to hell, because the president is kind of a leftie. 2007 is a presidential election year, so the government is making a lot of announcements of how they managed to reduce unemployment (they count "unemployment insurance" as employment, and that way they reduce unemployment in a 2 or 3%), etc. But the media that is against the government, as usual, shows the reality. Murders, robberies, etc. Now the trend is to go into old people's houses and beat the crap out of them to rob them $200 or something, which is all they have.
I remember a particular case. A 12 year old kid robbed an elder person. The man didn't have money, just change. He gave it to the kid. So the kid told him, so you don't have any money? Then I have to kill you. And he did. The kid just killed a man just because he didn't have money. Or kids that beat (or kill) other people and then go to the cyber-cafe around the corner to play some counter-strike!. But the lefties justify all of that. They're poor, they don't fit in society, they come from a violent background. Yeah, right. That's bullshit. They're poor because they parents don't work and have 7 to 10 kids. They don't fit in society because they have BAD MANNERS: you can see that in their houses, they throw the garbage out of the window, they yell and have loud music all the time. They come from a violent background because the father drinks and he gets violent. It's bullshit that they can't get decent education. Schools here are FREE, they even give FOOD to the kids. But no, they don't like school. So, they don't get education because they DON'T WANT TO. Seems that your right to play counter-strike is more important than my right to live, down here in Argentina.
Sure, but what I meant was that they're starting with the wrong foot. There is a cleaner solution, but they don't use it. So, there may be cleaner ways to process everything else in the plant... they just won't use them. I'm sorry for being skeptical, but life has taught me not to trust companies that come and do business down here. They pay the government and the government looks away and they can do whatever they want. That happens all the time here in South America.
Partly true. But still, corporations are moving their "dirty industries" elsewhere. You see, here, we don't have ROHS, so we don't worry about lead in solder. Our legislation isn't that tight regarding ecology, and if it is, you can always pay to make it a little more relaxed. Or pay someone to look the other way.
So, suppose you have a pulp mill. In Europe, you'd need to make a lot of processing to your waste so you'd keep the rivers totally clean. Down here, you don't need to make it clean. Check out this quote:
"The most widely used pulp bleaching technique in the world today-and the one used by Botnia and ENCE is Elemental Chlorine-free, or ECF. While cleaner than older technologies, it still releases dioxins, furans and other toxic substances. Safer yet is Totally Chlorine-Free (TCF) process which uses oxygen-based compounds instead of chlorine-based compounds.
Botnia has chosen not to go with this cleaner technology in its Uruguayan mills, says agricultural engineer Carlos Faroppa. The Botnia spokesperson says that the decision was based not on cost, but on quality and effectiveness. The oxygen-based "TCF is hardly used around the world because the technology has not continued to advance," he said. "The fibers it produces cannot be used to manufacture quality paper."
But Botnia does, in fact, use TCF technology at its pulp mill in Rauma, Finland, according to Arrarte. The company has not denied or confirmed this version. Botnia and ENCE's choice of the less safe process means that "Every day, millions of liters of wastewater will be dumped into the river, which will degrade it," Fray Bento activist Delia Villalba told CorpWatch."
In short, you can see why they move here. Besides.. "The oxygen-based "TCF is hardly used around the world because the technology has not continued to advance," he said. "The fibers it produces cannot be used to manufacture quality paper.". Yeah, right. And they won't invest anything on R&D to make it better, either. Seems that it's easier to go screw someone else than to do your job.
But the worst thing is that Uruguay and Argentina signed a treaty where they agreed not to place polluting industries in the Uruguay River. Now they ignored that and allowed the plants to install there. So you can see how things work here.
well, that's true. It happens here in Argentina too. The problem, as you state, don't seem to be the immigrants, but the system that lets them do whatever they want. In any case, the problem with anti-immigration is the reason that drives people to go and hate the immigrants: xenophobia. Not insecurity. They, with the excuse of "immigrants are murdering and raping us", try to kick out every immigrant, even the ones that work and help the country grow.
You can see that in the Spain thing I was telling you about. A bunch of kids are gathering all over Spain to beat the hell out of immigrants, just for the hell of it, under the premise that "immigrants are killing all of us". So, vigilante justice seems to be the solution. I wonder what they will go after they have killed all the immigrants.
Soon, you'll see the movie "American History X" repeating itself in Europe, like when they destroyed the chinese guy's store because he used illegal immigrants to run the shop.
I found that part very funny: it keeps happening in the US, many Americans justify that kind of violence, because they think they deserve to have the job (just because they are Americans), not the immigrants because these are illegal (illegal or legal, they are all illegal to these narrow-minded kind of americans). Yet, they blindly promote liberal capitalism, which is basically to do just anything you need to do, to get what you want. Well, having immigrants is cheaper than Americans. Sorry. That's just the way it is. If you want to work, you'll get paid what a Mexican gets paid. Else, you can go to hell. That's basically what American companies do in Mexico: this is what you'll get paid. If you don't like it, well fuck you. We won't pay you more. There's someone that will do the job for this money. That's what americans call "eat your own dog food".
Well, a friend of mine sells networking gear. Every week we get quotation requests for such things as Motorola Canopy wireless links, or 3com 10G Ethernet switches. Almost USD 500.000 a week in network gear alone. And that's for the province alone. The national government spends more even. The government-owned bank recently spent USD 38.000 on a Fluke protocol analyzer. They thought they could use that for certification of the network. Well, they can't.
But the real spending is in, let's call it "unemployment insurance": the government just gives away $150 a month (USD 50) to basically anyone who shows up and asks for it (they get the votes that way). Also, the gov't is saving a lot of money too. Recently we finished paying our debt with the IMF (international monetary fund) for USD 10 billion. Now we are recovering from that payment.
The government is proud to announce that they reduce spending every month, and that there's even more and more "superavit". But they don't reduce taxes, no sir. They are even more aggressive now in enforcing the payment of taxes. But they are just aggressive, they don't make it any easier for you or your pocket.
So the short answer is: they steal all that money. And when they don't steal it, they "give it away to the poor". They give them fish. They don't teach them how to fish. An ignorant person is another vote in your pocket.
But I'm not American either. I'm from Argentina. Our peso, 6 years ago, was 1=1 with the US Dollar. January 6, 2002, the peso was "let free". Now it's worth USD 0,33. Yes. I'm laughing at my own disgrace.
well, yes, but in the end you get to have a pretty decent life. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(PPP) ), but with our salaries, we cannot afford to have many luxuries. Sure, we get paid 1/10 of what they pay in Europe, but still it's enough to have cable (US$20 a month, 80 channels), cell phone (US$ 0,33 a minute, US$ 0,03 each SMS), broadband (US$ 40, 1,2mbps to 5mbps --dont remember that price), and eating meat (one of the world's finest, mind you) every day of the week. But, we cannot afford luxuries such as good education, security, decent politicians, etc.
Not calling you a racist, but when you talk about the immigrants, I totally understand you. It's annoying to have people who aren't even supposed to be there, and they get you in trouble. We have some of that here too, people from Paraguay or (most of them) Bolivia. Poor people who have been through hell and want some decent living for them too, and they come to live here in Argentina. People from here, go instead to Spain.
You'll see on the news that spanish people are doing some demonstrations in Spain against the immigrants. A trend that's repeating all over Europe now. But they do it for all the wrong reasons. Many of them are in there just "against the immigrants", who will ruin their race or whatever (which is not true, for example we in Argentina are 90% white, immigrant-descendant, mostly from Spain and Italy). That's not right, you may claim that immigrants increase the delinquency or something, which may be true (but that's because the system won't allow them to "legalize" themselves. If government finds them, they get deported. That doesn't happen here in Argentina, you could ask for citizenship and you are likely to get it). That's a shame, Europe is in serious need for workforce, and the Xenophobia is doing nothing for them. We in Argentina received the Europeans when there were wars, and Argentina was a MUCH better country than European countries at the time (1910-1950). Now Europe is good and people want their piece of the cake, but no, you cannot have it. That's wrong.
I was trying to say, you (not you in particular) should try to understand why immigrants go to Europe, or the US. I wouldn't like to leave behind everything I own and everything I know, to go to another country, where they don't even speak the same language, and where they will treat me as trash just because I wasn't born there. Even less if, because of that, I would never be able to be part of that, living in the underground, hiding from the police, etc. There should be a VERY GOOD reason why people would do that. Sure, there are the smart-asses who think they'd go and make a lot of money right now, and those are the ones that fail and sooner or later come back. But there's people who really need the money, and they go, out of desperation. Most of them are lied to, they find out Europe is not the paradise someone promised. But they're stuck there, because it's even worse at home.
That's why manifestations against "immigrants" make me sick. You should make them against crime, against violence, or even better, pro-integration of the immigrants. But why AGAINST them? There's room for everyone. Not being born in some place is not a reason to hate someone.
Forgot to mention, Europe is moving their "dirty industries" to Latin America and other poor countries. Finnish Botnia is making a H U G E paper pulp mill in Uruguay (and keeping their Paper factories in Finland). Is that because they want to share their wealth with us, the poor, or is it because they're going to pollute so much that Europe won't let them build that factory? Why don't they make the paper factory in Uruguay too, so Uruguay can sell paper to Europe (and no the cheap paper pulp)? Anyway, when pollution gets more serious, expect to see more immigrants in Europe.
I live in a country (Argentina) where you have to pay a 21% tax for almost everything you buy (the Value Added Tax, or VAT, just like in the UK). Some items (Such as milk, or curiously, computer parts, have 10,5% VAT, while most others, like TV sets or CAT5 cable, have 10,5% Tax. Finally, Telephone has 27% VAT). That's when you buy something.
When you sell something, you have to pay the VAT, but only for what you're earning (that is, buy for $100 and sell for $120, you pay the tax for $20, not for $120). That means, if you're a "computer tech" like me, you don't "buy-and-sell", you just sell. That is, if I charge someone $ 300, I have to pay the tax for $300. Also, besides that tax there's the Gross Income tax, 3,5% (yes PERCENT) of EVERYTHING you earn, whether you have made profit of it, or not. The VAT is for national government, and the Gross Income is for the province.
As if that wasn't enough, we have a plethora of taxes you could never dream of, such as the Check (UK: Cheque) Tax, the Money Transfer tax, the "sending money offshore" tax, etc. Whenever someone deposits a check in your account, the government just goes and grabs the tax for it out of your bank account (that's right, they just go and grab it). You can write that off your Gross Income tax, but if you, for some reason, got a big check, more than what you declared in Gross Income, all you get is fiscal credit, not money back from the government.
Oh and don't let me get started on the 'Rich' tax ("Impuesto a la riqueza"). If you're "rich", you pay more. Rich, was someone with $100.000 or more in their bank accounts. Before devaluation, people who had $50.000 pesos (= US $50.000), didn't pay for the tax. Then devaluation came, and people had $50.000 pesos (= $16.000 USD). They sued their banks (the banks, prior to the devaluation, and with the help of the government, didn't let you take out more than $1000 a day on cash). Most people got their original money (USD 50.000), but now it was $150.000. So, people had to pay the "rich tax". That means most citizens here in Argentina are rich. Because not only your cash counts: your car, house, boat, whatever, counts for the rich tax. And a house and a car are worth more than $100.000 pesos, so you pay the tax.
Also, the tax is higher for new cars than for old cars. So people have no reason to "upgrade" their cars, and you see a lot of cars from over 10 years ago.
With all these taxes, you'd think we would have streets covered in gold, Xenon street lights, and public employees that welcome you with a big smile and don't make you wait. Not to mention, some of the best colleges and schools in the world.
But no, we get a terrible education system (the Systems Engineering career hasn't been updated since 1995, and a law project that will allow 1st graders to pass whether they have had good grads or not, because repeating a grade will hurt them psychologically. Also there's no punishment system in the schools. Previously you had points, and when you had too many, you got expelled. Now there's no such thing. You can't even expell a student. My mom was the substitute principal at a school, in her last day as principal, a kid (about 16) shot another kid in the leg. None of them got expelled, or anything. They even tried to blame it on my mom (wtf?). In another school, an 11 year old boy was trying to rape a 6 year girl. The teacher kicked the door down, found both of them half naked, the girl crying. The boy tried to run away, she slapped him so hard, he passed out. They tried to let the kid stay at school and SEND THE TEACHER TO JAIL for hitting him. They managed to get the kid out of that school, and let the teacher stay. All of this because the girl's father was a military general or something, who pulled some strings. If it wasn't for that.. you could imagine.
Also, there's a lot of "insecurity". In some parts of the Great Buenos Aires area, you could get killed (they kill you first and then they rob you). Streets aren't clean, and a pothole could take years to be fixed
ok. first: what the fuck? second: "A farm is the basic unit in agriculture. It is a section of land devoted to the production and management of food, either produce or livestock." (from wikipedia).
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you sound just like the record industry when they cry wolf: "mp3 means the end of music as we know it". if I had mod points I would have modded you -1 Overrated.
get real, man. portable players were here long before you heard about the iPod, much longer than the 1998 Diamond Rio. At the time there was no market, yet the players did exist.
also, economics 101: if you want to recover your money from a bad investment, you DO NOT raise the price. you lower it. you sell it to the first jerk that show up, then "Take The Money and Run".
True. For example, here in Argentina, Windows and Office cost that (plus 21% tax). But, a movie ticket cost $ 5 (5 pesos, which is about USD 1,60). A Big Mac too, $5 or something (you can't really expect people to pay what a Big Mac costs in the US, because nobody, and I mean nobody will ever buy that).
That means, movie studios and McDonald's figured that they can adjust the price to what people can pay, and still make profit. Why can't Microsoft do the same thing? They want to charge you the same price as in the US or Europe, where people make 10 times more money. That's just stupid. So what do they do? They make a "Starter Edition", the most discriminative piece of software I've ever seen in my whole life: you are poor? then YOU DON'T DESERVE to have a computer with more than 512MB ram and run more than 3 apps at a time.
Why can't Microsoft make a local version, something like "Windows Vista latin" or something. The same windows vista you get in the US, only that it's in Spanish (windows comes in spanish, of course), and it costs something like what people can afford down here. No, people from other parts of the world won't buy it (because it's in Spanish), and as most south american countries are more or less the same (we are all "poor"), the price could be the same for this whole market. Norton did that, and you could get a year subscription of Norton antivirus for $15 or so here in Argentina. Don't know if they still do that, but I'm glad that they want to fight piracy with something that people can afford.
Get real, is either "make less money" than "make no money". I can assure you, NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND will spend their month (or 3 month in some cases) salary just to give Bill (the richest man alive) a drop in his ocean of money.
Bill was in this business long before the PC world. If you care to read a Commodore "boot" screen, you'd see "(C) 1977 MICROSOFT". We don't know if IBM would have succeeded if they did things Apple's way. If IBM wanted to go the Apple way, I'd risk to say that they would have lost. Commodore was big back in the 80s, the Amiga was great for its time. I guess Commodoree would have been the winner at the time.
But when talking about how many million computers Apple can sell, keep in mind one thing: No company could ever be that big. There's no way that Apple (or IBM, or whoever) could make all of the "personal computers" in existence in the whole world. What do you say? Companies can grow? Wrong. A software company can grow as much as they want to. But a hardware company can't be that big. And, it's competition what drives capitalism. So even if they could produce all of the machines in the world, technology would not improve (there would be no need for improvement, be it in features or cost reduction). Also, the capitalism has a nice way of self-limiting: law-and-demand.
Also, I'm happy that it went that way. It's a good thing Apple (or IBM, or whoever) was not the "winner". Because that way, only the US then the UK, Japan, and finally a few european countries plus australia would have computers. Down here in latin america we don't have ITMS, Tivo, iPods (they cost USD 1000 for the 80GB model). Companies like to sell where there are no risks. They don't give a shit about us down here in "the rest of the world". So, the IBM PC opened the door to a "democratic" model of computer, which allows us, the "third world" as you like to call us, to have computers.
Also, if Microsoft made Windows to run on Microsoft machines, and Apple made System to run on any machine, then everyone would hate System (or OS X)... "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".
what? E-mail virtual domains are extremely popular (Google's GMail for your domain for example). All those "you@yourname.com" e-mail hosts use them. Also, many ISPs will host your domain on their mail servers as part of their "business" packs. And, considering that a lot of domains hosted in virtual WWW servers also have a contact e-mail address, just that alone counts for millions of "virtual" emails. Even forwarders count for virtual domains too.
Hell, I'd bet there may be more domains used for e-mail than those used for WWW.
Real men don't use DNS servers, they run their own local caching server querying roots.
But, if you're a wuss, you can always use 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2
[blockquote]The Email would have a better chance of survival than the WWW. Put your IMAP/POP/SMTP servers in your hosts file, then e-mail anyone, via their service's IP address: fred@10.130.19.12[/blockquote] Not quite. You may want to check Postfix's manual pages for virtual domains (or any other modern mail server's manual pages).
So, what's the news? I have lost faith in games lately. All I see are new releases of FPS and the newest MMORPG, I'm just tired of that. I guess I'm a kid, I love playing third person console games, but there aren't that many games worth it. Last one I played was the latest "Harry Potter" game. Nice graphics (when you press "black" and "white" together and everything lights up... very cool effect), and an interesting way of playing (the ability to switch players, etc). Problem? Too short. But better short than shitty. Read on:
Yesterday I picked up the "Narnia" game. The first few levels were easy, but fun nevertheless. Nice graphics, combo hits and team-up hits (remember the Simpsons arcade?) The completion counter quickly reached 44%. Then I got to the "The Great Battle" level. Cool, THOUSANDS of enemies walking in the background. Really cool. Then come waves of enemies. First 2 of them, then 3 of them, then 6 of them, etc. Each takes 6 to 8 blows to beat. And they all come to you at once. So what you have to do is press all of the buttons like crazy. It's just stupid, boring, and it hurts after a while.
Then.. 50% completion, wtf? Next level: the witch. Guess what: hit the witch, then a wave of enemies. Hit her again, then a greater wave of enemies. And so on. Oh, and you can't save. It only reaches checkpoints, but you can't resume later (and it's a long level).
But not everything is lost. I had the opportunity to play Okami a few weeks ago (I don't own a PS2). Sweet! Finally. A game that's innovative (the paint effect is really good, and it also brings memories of Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island). The character is easy to control. Oh, and that celestial brush... great!. But not only that. It's a LONG game. DAMN long. You have enemies here and there, beat 'em up, and carry on. No stupid "impossible" levels (Psychonauts!).
So, the answer is simple. A videogame needs a lot of development. Okami had a lot of development, innovation, etc. It's a jewel. Narnia needed to be ready NOW. Get typical prefabricated engine, a few textures and get the cast to donate their voices. That's it. But it's so short it would disappoint anyone. So they made it hard instead of longer, and that's what gaming industry has become. Promotion for commercial products (I'm pretty sure there must be a Paris Hilton videogame).
Well. I guess I'll have to get used to it. Just a couple of great games a year and nothing else.
Damn! Where were these kind of girls when I was 11?
Opencores has a 16F84 core for free.
You Must Be New Here! (yes I saw your user id). Don't you know that people rant about anything here all the time?
Besides, microchip isn't fixing anything. I have been using #includes from the first time I programmed PICs. MPASM (the assembler) is very powerful when you get to know it. It can give you a lot of flexibility and portability when you use it properly. MPLAB has a great simulator, with very useful features (such as the Stopwatch that allows you to count instruction cycles. I use it all the time for realtime apps).
Now seriously, regarding AVR... could you give an example of what's wrong with PICs vs AVR? All I can find wrong with the PICs is that they aren't pipelined (they have a regular 4 Tc instruction cycle). I think that *could* be fixed, and that microchip *should* have done it for their newer PIC series (such as the 24FJ, but I haven't read too much about them so I can't speak for sure).
From Wikipedia:
The AVR instruction set is more orthogonal than most eight-bit microcontrollers, however, it is not completely regular:
* Pointer registers X, Y, and Z have addressing capabilities that are different from each other.
* Register locations R0 to R15 have different addressing capabilities than register locations R16 to R31.
* I/O ports 0 to 31 have different addressing capabilities than I/O ports 32 to 63.
* CLR affects flags, while SER does not, even though they are complementary instructions. CLR set all bits to zero and SER sets them to one. (Note that CLR is pseudo-op for EOR R,R; and SER is short for LDI R,$FF. Math operations such as EOR modify flags while moves/loads/stores/branches such as LDI do not.)
wtf? Anyway, there are reasons to do it that way, the last instruction for example. I think is just like Microchips MOVWF and SWAPWF. Both move the contents of W to a register (SWAP of course swaps the nibbles), but MOVWF alters status bits while SWAPWF does not. This is useful when you need the Status bits untouched. For example, when the PIC calls an interrupt, it doesn't automatically do "context saving" (doesn't save the contents of PCLATH, STATUS and W). You need to do it by hand. So in order to save STATUS you do a MOVF STATUS,W and then SWAPWF STATUS_TEMP. Then you do your processing, and then back again SWAPF STATUS_TEMP,W; MOVWF STATUS. There's your status bits unaltered.
PICs have their issues too, of course. Such as accessing "RAM" banks, which is annoying sometimes because you need to know what you want to address, or Program Memory pages which are even worse because the program counter is 8-bit (the lower part, PCL), so you can't make a table read of more than 256 bytes in an elegant way.
Where am I going with all this rant? Well, I think there are no "bad" architectures, or instruction sets (Microchip mnemonics, I think, are a little more friendly). There is a tool for everything, and one should choose accordingly. I choose Microchip, obviously because I'm used to it, but also because I think it's the best overall (price, features, free tools, etc).
Sure, I would use AVR chips. Just point me in the right direction (an IDE, a few examples, and an easy to make programmer) and I'll give it a try. I saw the ATtiny11 chips at $0.79 here while PIC12F629's are $1.30 here in my country. That would be a pretty good reason for me to switch (sure, the PIC has more memory but I rarely use it).
Right now I have a project in mind: I want to make a car alarm (for an old car I have). I did the remote with RF modules from www.rentron.com and Keeloq chips from Microchip. I was going to do the alarm with a 12F629, but I think that would be a nice project to start with the ATtiny11 (it's just a flip-flop and a timer anyway...).
What the hell are you talking about? I use PICs since 2001, when they taught me that in college. Since then, I have done quite a few projects with these microcontrollers. I started with the good 'ol F84, but since 2003 i have switched to the 16F628. I also programmed with the 16F88, the '877, the 18F4520, 12F629/675, etc.
MPLAB macros help a lot, #defines can help you use your same ASM code over different families (12 and 16F for example), and make it straightforward to port the same code between different microcontrollers of the same family. The hardware peripherals (A/D, USARTs, CCP, Timers) are very easy to use. In short, I love PICs. Tried to switch to Motorola once. Couldn't find a programmer. With PICmicro, you use only one programmer (I use my homemade ICD2, which lets me step and set breakpoints on the target circuit, and it has helped me a lot with debugging, for a project that costs $20, is wonderful). MPLAB is SO powerful, everyday I find new tricks and new ways to do things. For Motorola, a few years ago, I couldn't find an IDE either.
Recently I started using the 18 series, with their own C compiler. Rather nasty at first, but when I finally understood it, it was straightforward.
Besides, PICs are dirt cheap too. I love the way Microchip has made it easy for the hobbyist to access development tools (the ICD2 is really cheap, less than $200. And the REAL ICE, for $500, is great), and the amount of literature you can find on the internet is invaluable (due to the amount of people using PICs for a hobby)... forum.microchip.com and piclist.com are basically all you need (besides the data sheets).
while FPGAs are great and all, I personally have the Spartan-3 board. I find it VERY difficult to program. I mean, no to actually program it, but to think what I have to do. I tend to think of a computer as a machine that executes a series of instructions. An FPGA is more than that. It's exactly that, if you want it to be. But it can be more. The problem with the FPGAs is that you need, indeed, to forget all you know about "computers", and think more outside the box. Remember that the FPGA executes all "instructions" at once, which can be confusing. A person programming with VHDL would think that, because of putting a sequence of instructions, that sequence will run in that order. Wrong, all of the instructions will be run at once. If you need a sequence, then you need to make yourself a Finite State Machine.
so, for hardware engineers, FPGAs are a good option. but for your regular "computer" class, traditional sequential languages are the way to go.
Some of that happened in Brazil a couple of years ago. Only it was a paramilitary force, the Death Squads. They came out at night with their AK's and gunned down the kids that were in the street. Hundreds of kids were murdered that way in São Paulo. They got to that situation, I think, for different reason than the Skinheads. The nazis do it just for fun. These guys did it for real, they saw it as a solution to the problem, and they systematically did that every night, for months.
How did Brazil got to that situation? Well, years and years of ignoring the law, judges that let people free because they were minors, drug lords buying the police, etc. This is happening in Argentina too, but at a minor scale (I think because of the less dense population in the Great Buenos Aires area).
The right-wing is trying to lower the age that minors can be judged for a crime (currently, a 17 year old kid can commit murder and basically walk free the next day, because he's a kid and he can't understand what he did, so he can't be held responsible for his own actions. Well, he doesn't actually walk free the next day. Most times, the police makes sure he can't walk the next day. Many times, they can't walk ever again.
But the lefties hate the idea of people going to jail. They want laxer laws, they make you look like a criminal if you say minors should be in jail. And it's all going to hell, because the president is kind of a leftie. 2007 is a presidential election year, so the government is making a lot of announcements of how they managed to reduce unemployment (they count "unemployment insurance" as employment, and that way they reduce unemployment in a 2 or 3%), etc. But the media that is against the government, as usual, shows the reality. Murders, robberies, etc. Now the trend is to go into old people's houses and beat the crap out of them to rob them $200 or something, which is all they have.
I remember a particular case. A 12 year old kid robbed an elder person. The man didn't have money, just change. He gave it to the kid. So the kid told him, so you don't have any money? Then I have to kill you. And he did. The kid just killed a man just because he didn't have money. Or kids that beat (or kill) other people and then go to the cyber-cafe around the corner to play some counter-strike!. But the lefties justify all of that. They're poor, they don't fit in society, they come from a violent background. Yeah, right. That's bullshit. They're poor because they parents don't work and have 7 to 10 kids. They don't fit in society because they have BAD MANNERS: you can see that in their houses, they throw the garbage out of the window, they yell and have loud music all the time. They come from a violent background because the father drinks and he gets violent. It's bullshit that they can't get decent education. Schools here are FREE, they even give FOOD to the kids. But no, they don't like school. So, they don't get education because they DON'T WANT TO. Seems that your right to play counter-strike is more important than my right to live, down here in Argentina.
Sure, but what I meant was that they're starting with the wrong foot. There is a cleaner solution, but they don't use it. So, there may be cleaner ways to process everything else in the plant... they just won't use them. I'm sorry for being skeptical, but life has taught me not to trust companies that come and do business down here. They pay the government and the government looks away and they can do whatever they want. That happens all the time here in South America.
Avisale que se lo van a morfar los mosquitos, seguro que ni conoce lo que son jaja!!
Partly true. But still, corporations are moving their "dirty industries" elsewhere. You see, here, we don't have ROHS, so we don't worry about lead in solder. Our legislation isn't that tight regarding ecology, and if it is, you can always pay to make it a little more relaxed. Or pay someone to look the other way.
So, suppose you have a pulp mill. In Europe, you'd need to make a lot of processing to your waste so you'd keep the rivers totally clean. Down here, you don't need to make it clean. Check out this quote:
"The most widely used pulp bleaching technique in the world today-and the one used by Botnia and ENCE is Elemental Chlorine-free, or ECF. While cleaner than older technologies, it still releases dioxins, furans and other toxic substances. Safer yet is Totally Chlorine-Free (TCF) process which uses oxygen-based compounds instead of chlorine-based compounds.
Botnia has chosen not to go with this cleaner technology in its Uruguayan mills, says agricultural engineer Carlos Faroppa. The Botnia spokesperson says that the decision was based not on cost, but on quality and effectiveness. The oxygen-based "TCF is hardly used around the world because the technology has not continued to advance," he said. "The fibers it produces cannot be used to manufacture quality paper."
But Botnia does, in fact, use TCF technology at its pulp mill in Rauma, Finland, according to Arrarte. The company has not denied or confirmed this version. Botnia and ENCE's choice of the less safe process means that "Every day, millions of liters of wastewater will be dumped into the river, which will degrade it," Fray Bento activist Delia Villalba told CorpWatch."
Source: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13111
In short, you can see why they move here. Besides.. "The oxygen-based "TCF is hardly used around the world because the technology has not continued to advance," he said. "The fibers it produces cannot be used to manufacture quality paper.". Yeah, right. And they won't invest anything on R&D to make it better, either. Seems that it's easier to go screw someone else than to do your job.
But the worst thing is that Uruguay and Argentina signed a treaty where they agreed not to place polluting industries in the Uruguay River. Now they ignored that and allowed the plants to install there. So you can see how things work here.
well, that's true. It happens here in Argentina too. The problem, as you state, don't seem to be the immigrants, but the system that lets them do whatever they want. In any case, the problem with anti-immigration is the reason that drives people to go and hate the immigrants: xenophobia. Not insecurity. They, with the excuse of "immigrants are murdering and raping us", try to kick out every immigrant, even the ones that work and help the country grow.
You can see that in the Spain thing I was telling you about. A bunch of kids are gathering all over Spain to beat the hell out of immigrants, just for the hell of it, under the premise that "immigrants are killing all of us". So, vigilante justice seems to be the solution. I wonder what they will go after they have killed all the immigrants.
Soon, you'll see the movie "American History X" repeating itself in Europe, like when they destroyed the chinese guy's store because he used illegal immigrants to run the shop.
I found that part very funny: it keeps happening in the US, many Americans justify that kind of violence, because they think they deserve to have the job (just because they are Americans), not the immigrants because these are illegal (illegal or legal, they are all illegal to these narrow-minded kind of americans). Yet, they blindly promote liberal capitalism, which is basically to do just anything you need to do, to get what you want. Well, having immigrants is cheaper than Americans. Sorry. That's just the way it is. If you want to work, you'll get paid what a Mexican gets paid. Else, you can go to hell. That's basically what American companies do in Mexico: this is what you'll get paid. If you don't like it, well fuck you. We won't pay you more. There's someone that will do the job for this money. That's what americans call "eat your own dog food".
Well, a friend of mine sells networking gear. Every week we get quotation requests for such things as Motorola Canopy wireless links, or 3com 10G Ethernet switches. Almost USD 500.000 a week in network gear alone. And that's for the province alone. The national government spends more even. The government-owned bank recently spent USD 38.000 on a Fluke protocol analyzer. They thought they could use that for certification of the network. Well, they can't.
But the real spending is in, let's call it "unemployment insurance": the government just gives away $150 a month (USD 50) to basically anyone who shows up and asks for it (they get the votes that way). Also, the gov't is saving a lot of money too. Recently we finished paying our debt with the IMF (international monetary fund) for USD 10 billion. Now we are recovering from that payment.
The government is proud to announce that they reduce spending every month, and that there's even more and more "superavit". But they don't reduce taxes, no sir. They are even more aggressive now in enforcing the payment of taxes. But they are just aggressive, they don't make it any easier for you or your pocket.
So the short answer is: they steal all that money. And when they don't steal it, they "give it away to the poor". They give them fish. They don't teach them how to fish. An ignorant person is another vote in your pocket.
It was a joke.
But I'm not American either. I'm from Argentina. Our peso, 6 years ago, was 1=1 with the US Dollar. January 6, 2002, the peso was "let free". Now it's worth USD 0,33. Yes. I'm laughing at my own disgrace.
well, yes, but in the end you get to have a pretty decent life. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(PPP) ), but with our salaries, we cannot afford to have many luxuries. Sure, we get paid 1/10 of what they pay in Europe, but still it's enough to have cable (US$20 a month, 80 channels), cell phone (US$ 0,33 a minute, US$ 0,03 each SMS), broadband (US$ 40, 1,2mbps to 5mbps --dont remember that price), and eating meat (one of the world's finest, mind you) every day of the week. But, we cannot afford luxuries such as good education, security, decent politicians, etc.
Not calling you a racist, but when you talk about the immigrants, I totally understand you. It's annoying to have people who aren't even supposed to be there, and they get you in trouble. We have some of that here too, people from Paraguay or (most of them) Bolivia. Poor people who have been through hell and want some decent living for them too, and they come to live here in Argentina. People from here, go instead to Spain.
You'll see on the news that spanish people are doing some demonstrations in Spain against the immigrants. A trend that's repeating all over Europe now. But they do it for all the wrong reasons. Many of them are in there just "against the immigrants", who will ruin their race or whatever (which is not true, for example we in Argentina are 90% white, immigrant-descendant, mostly from Spain and Italy). That's not right, you may claim that immigrants increase the delinquency or something, which may be true (but that's because the system won't allow them to "legalize" themselves. If government finds them, they get deported. That doesn't happen here in Argentina, you could ask for citizenship and you are likely to get it). That's a shame, Europe is in serious need for workforce, and the Xenophobia is doing nothing for them. We in Argentina received the Europeans when there were wars, and Argentina was a MUCH better country than European countries at the time (1910-1950). Now Europe is good and people want their piece of the cake, but no, you cannot have it. That's wrong.
I was trying to say, you (not you in particular) should try to understand why immigrants go to Europe, or the US. I wouldn't like to leave behind everything I own and everything I know, to go to another country, where they don't even speak the same language, and where they will treat me as trash just because I wasn't born there. Even less if, because of that, I would never be able to be part of that, living in the underground, hiding from the police, etc. There should be a VERY GOOD reason why people would do that. Sure, there are the smart-asses who think they'd go and make a lot of money right now, and those are the ones that fail and sooner or later come back. But there's people who really need the money, and they go, out of desperation. Most of them are lied to, they find out Europe is not the paradise someone promised. But they're stuck there, because it's even worse at home.
That's why manifestations against "immigrants" make me sick. You should make them against crime, against violence, or even better, pro-integration of the immigrants. But why AGAINST them? There's room for everyone. Not being born in some place is not a reason to hate someone.
Forgot to mention, Europe is moving their "dirty industries" to Latin America and other poor countries. Finnish Botnia is making a H U G E paper pulp mill in Uruguay (and keeping their Paper factories in Finland). Is that because they want to share their wealth with us, the poor, or is it because they're going to pollute so much that Europe won't let them build that factory? Why don't they make the paper factory in Uruguay too, so Uruguay can sell paper to Europe (and no the cheap paper pulp)? Anyway, when pollution gets more serious, expect to see more immigrants in Europe.
I live in a country (Argentina) where you have to pay a 21% tax for almost everything you buy (the Value Added Tax, or VAT, just like in the UK). Some items (Such as milk, or curiously, computer parts, have 10,5% VAT, while most others, like TV sets or CAT5 cable, have 10,5% Tax. Finally, Telephone has 27% VAT). That's when you buy something.
When you sell something, you have to pay the VAT, but only for what you're earning (that is, buy for $100 and sell for $120, you pay the tax for $20, not for $120). That means, if you're a "computer tech" like me, you don't "buy-and-sell", you just sell. That is, if I charge someone $ 300, I have to pay the tax for $300. Also, besides that tax there's the Gross Income tax, 3,5% (yes PERCENT) of EVERYTHING you earn, whether you have made profit of it, or not. The VAT is for national government, and the Gross Income is for the province.
As if that wasn't enough, we have a plethora of taxes you could never dream of, such as the Check (UK: Cheque) Tax, the Money Transfer tax, the "sending money offshore" tax, etc. Whenever someone deposits a check in your account, the government just goes and grabs the tax for it out of your bank account (that's right, they just go and grab it). You can write that off your Gross Income tax, but if you, for some reason, got a big check, more than what you declared in Gross Income, all you get is fiscal credit, not money back from the government.
Oh and don't let me get started on the 'Rich' tax ("Impuesto a la riqueza"). If you're "rich", you pay more. Rich, was someone with $100.000 or more in their bank accounts. Before devaluation, people who had $50.000 pesos (= US $50.000), didn't pay for the tax. Then devaluation came, and people had $50.000 pesos (= $16.000 USD). They sued their banks (the banks, prior to the devaluation, and with the help of the government, didn't let you take out more than $1000 a day on cash). Most people got their original money (USD 50.000), but now it was $150.000. So, people had to pay the "rich tax". That means most citizens here in Argentina are rich. Because not only your cash counts: your car, house, boat, whatever, counts for the rich tax. And a house and a car are worth more than $100.000 pesos, so you pay the tax.
Also, the tax is higher for new cars than for old cars. So people have no reason to "upgrade" their cars, and you see a lot of cars from over 10 years ago.
With all these taxes, you'd think we would have streets covered in gold, Xenon street lights, and public employees that welcome you with a big smile and don't make you wait. Not to mention, some of the best colleges and schools in the world.
But no, we get a terrible education system (the Systems Engineering career hasn't been updated since 1995, and a law project that will allow 1st graders to pass whether they have had good grads or not, because repeating a grade will hurt them psychologically. Also there's no punishment system in the schools. Previously you had points, and when you had too many, you got expelled. Now there's no such thing. You can't even expell a student. My mom was the substitute principal at a school, in her last day as principal, a kid (about 16) shot another kid in the leg. None of them got expelled, or anything. They even tried to blame it on my mom (wtf?). In another school, an 11 year old boy was trying to rape a 6 year girl. The teacher kicked the door down, found both of them half naked, the girl crying. The boy tried to run away, she slapped him so hard, he passed out. They tried to let the kid stay at school and SEND THE TEACHER TO JAIL for hitting him. They managed to get the kid out of that school, and let the teacher stay. All of this because the girl's father was a military general or something, who pulled some strings. If it wasn't for that.. you could imagine.
Also, there's a lot of "insecurity". In some parts of the Great Buenos Aires area, you could get killed (they kill you first and then they rob you). Streets aren't clean, and a pothole could take years to be fixed
ok. first: what the fuck? second: "A farm is the basic unit in agriculture. It is a section of land devoted to the production and management of food, either produce or livestock." (from wikipedia).
$4 Canadian is like, what? a dime?