Trade imbalance? No, not unless you're displeased with the price you paid for Chinese goods, in which case, you shouldn't have paid that price. As long as you're paying the price that a good is worth to get the good, there is no imbalance.
The nice thing about a currency economy is you can trade magical pieces of paper that hold value for real physical objects and services that have value. Dollar bills and numbers in computers are nice and all to have, but they are worthless unless you can exchange them for things you want to own. The Chinese may be ending up with more magical pieces of paper than us, but we end up with all the stuff we want. And the Chinese are pretty smart too, they spend all their magical pieces of paper for things they want, some of which are sold by us, and some of which are sold by other people we give things to that they pay us for. We have plenty of stuff, more stuff than most, and somehow, keep being able to buy more stuff. Could it be because the China-USA trade relationship does not exist as a closed system? We're not being sucked dry, here, we're just involved in a worldwide marketplace where magical pieces of paper and physical goods and services are exchanged every which way constantly, and everyone is better off as a result.
Trade imbalances are a meaningless concept. Instead, ask yourself where you'd rather live, which country has the higher standard of living, i.e. more stuff owned, right now? The free market does result in a balancing of economies worldwide, as specialization happens, and people everywhere are able to get the goods they want, but ultimately it raises the standard of living for everyone. We should not fear China growing faster than the US, because they are starting from lower and because China won't end up doing better than us. We'll both end up doing better than us, and on a roughly equal standard of living. As the Chinese grow more wealthy, they'll be able to buy more of our stuff, which will give us more magical pieces of paper to buy even more of their stuff, and stuff from other places, and invest in specialization so we can sell even more stuff to China and other places too.
Believe it or not, government is not always the answer to all of society's problems, education least of all. Parents need to take an interest in their children's educations. It's pretty much a local issue, anyway, so start going to PTA meetings and lobby your town selectmen or mayor. Heck, run for your local school board if they're incompetent.
Unfortunately the local phone company (Frontier) has a mortal lock on telecom, and of course the usual shitty cable provider (Time Warner) prevents any competition. So we won't be seeing fiber in my area, probably ever.
Certainly though, if a cop is lawfully arresting you, and has his gun drawn, you shouldn't pull yours out and open fire. That's not self-defense. Self-defense is protecting your life, not your ability to evade capture from arrest.
Of course, if somebody is actively shooting at you unprovoked, defend yourself by whatever means and you'll be ethical and moral. I don't think somebody's employment status matters in that case, and in that moment, can you even know with certainty that the person shooting at you is not impersonating a cop, abusing their power as one for non-sanctioned action, or even simply has made a mistake and is posing an unwarranted danger people's lives? There's no reason you have to roll over and take it, but do be prepared for the consequences of saving your life or that of others. Legal difficulties may be worth it, if just one innocent is still breathing, but those decisions are something everyone will have to live with on a personal basis.
I learned in the first term of the first year I was in college, that in any liberal arts classes, just write papers that tell the professor what they want to hear.
Hippie history professor? Write a final paper saying that war is bad. Get an A.
Feminist english lit professor? Write a final paper about strong women and evil men. Get an A.
Philosophy professor? Too easy. Name drop in your paper but say nothing at all. Get an A.
Political science? Write a final paper that parrots back their pet theory. Get an A.
Worked for me every time, and took minimal effort. I saved my energies for classes that actually mattered. Heck, for a lot of those papers I didn't even read the books, just picked some random quotes out that I knew the professors agreed with.
There is no place for independent thought in these classes, these people have a little bit of power, and see themselves as somehow shaping the minds of their students. So you let them think they've won, and then be grateful whenever you're in an objective math or science class, or when you've finished your general eds. Even in nice objective classes, where truth is truth, your relationship with the professor matters more than any of the material. Go to the professor's office hours to hang out, joke around with them before and after class, and they will jump through hoops to get you better grades. I usually didn't go to such extremes, but I saw some people do it with great results. If you work hard enough, you can overcome a lack of sucking up to the boss, but for goodness sake don't ever challenge the professor's ideas or any of their favorite "experts".
My favorite part is where the guy is playing with a balloon inside a dodecahedron, which probably took significant time to assemble, and he's all like "we looked for these circles, and uh, we didn't find any." In my head, I imagine him thinking to himself, "did I just get punked?"
They already are the same OS, essentially. They have the same core OS and the same basic application framework; only the top-level UI layer is different.
Nobody ever said Wall Street understood the technology involved in the tech companies they are trading.
What analytically useful market exists that includes iPads, iPods, and the iPhone as part of the same market?
The app market. It's useful for software developers to see the entire platform when determining what to code/port their software for/to. Obviously they'll take other factors into account as well, but knowing how large various operating systems are, over all devices, is important.
So yes, the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone are all in a single market.
Specialization is a pretty basic to macroeconomics. The US makes airplanes. We make movies and music. We make medicines. We make cotton, corn, and wheat. We make IP, and then sue companies from other nations over patents and make money off of their goods as well as our own. Unemployment right now isn't at the low level we'd like it to be, but that's because of a recession, not because the Chinese are making our computers.
The jobs we outsource are jobs we don't actually want because they don't pay well enough and are pretty unskilled. If somebody with no education is willing and able to do the job for pennies a day, we should be glad to let them do it and profit off their labors, getting those valuable goods far far cheaper (increasing our standard of living), or selling the stuff they make to the rest of the world. The free market determines the value of the labor involved in making these devices, and let's face it, the value of that labor is not that high. The work is done very efficiently and takes minimal training or education. Nobody in the US would be happy with those jobs' hours, salary, or benefits.
If a job can be done by a robot, it's not a job anyone is going to pay an (American) living wage for you to do. Humans make far better thinkers, designers, innovators, and entertainers. Those are the jobs we have here, and those are the jobs valued high enough so workers can get paid to live to the standard we've become accustomed to.
I remember reading a while back, that per capita, Foxconn employees commit suicide at a lower rate than the Chinese population overall. It's good to have a job, even if the job sucks, and there are far worse places to be in that country.
Of course, now that Chinese labor standards are going up, and workers are demanding higher wages, all their jobs will start getting outsourced to other countries where the labor is even cheaper (or I guess, replaced by robots).
Much of the weight and size in spacecraft is not the instruments, it's the fuel and engine. I get that you need a lot less of both if you've got a small mass, but still, how are you going to move the thing around?
TFA says they'll need some crazy new propulsion system, so yeah, we won't be seeing chip ships any time soon, probably.
That was always the excuse, of course, that the PS3 didn't have that many exclusives compared to the 360. It's why myself, and so many other people, just got two consoles. But that has changed over time, and there are a number of games now that I would want to play on the PS3 that don't exist on the 360.
On the other side of things, I don't think there's enough on the 360 anymore to get a PS3 owner to switch sides. If they were interested in any of the Halos, they'd have gotten a 360 to begin with.
This is why I think the PS3 will sell longer, and the 360 has already peaked.
I wonder if the reason for this surge now towards the end is because people already have their Wii, already have their 360, and are now looking to complete the set with a PS3. I've been considering doing it now, myself, though the recent hacking scandal makes me less confident.
As others have said, the PS2 has had an amazing shelf life, and I think people will keep buying used PS2s and playing games on them for many more years to come. The PS3 will probably be very much the same, and getting a PS3 now is still a pretty decent investment. The Wii will be replaced soon, and everyone has one already, and the 360 is on the decline. If you're going to pick up a new console now, the PS3 is really the best choice, and for many people who own Wiis and 360s already, the only remaining choice.
Let's not forget the basis of this story is that Apple didn't include NFC in a desktop computer and laptop. It doesn't make any sense to include NFC in a desktop computer, or even a laptop.
As for speculation about Apple's plans for NFC in their phones, it's simply that. Pure, unadulterated, unfounded speculation based on the fallacy that wireless technologies implemented in a desktop computer are the only ones allowed on a mobile phone. That's never been true because phones necessarily have different technologies built into them that would make no earthly sense on any desktop computer. In case it's not clear, I'm referring to the radios used to make phone calls. Something like NFC that's clearly only intended for mobile devices would fall under that same category of things computers don't need, and thus there is no reason whatsoever to think Apple wouldn't someday include NFC on their phones.
Apple really screwed up including only Bluetooth in their computers, but maybe next time they'll figure out people's preferred method of transactions is to lug their Mac Minis to the store with them in order to pay for goods and services. This is just common sense, but it's good TFS outlines that clearly for anyone who didn't understand it.
Obviously there's no chance Apple might implement more than one wireless technology in their phones ever, too. I don't think this was necessary to say either, but I suppose there may be ignorant people who might believe Apple is capable of getting more than one antenna into a device, despite them never having done that before.
Luckily there are plenty of people here on slashdot who understand these facts and are willing to educate the rest of us who may not have understood.
Yeah, they want to charge me almost double. I'm not canceling, but I am downgrading my account, so they'll be taking in half of what they did before from me. I hardly use Netflix much anymore as it is. Netflix was great in its heyday, but they've simply not kept up with technologies and the marketplace.
You're exactly right, that we produce enough food to feed everyone. Inadequate packaging and storage, as well as inadequate distribution channels, corrupt governments, and plain old poverty keeps a lot of it getting to where it needs to go. Much of it spoils before reaching market and much of it gets used as a political and social weapon.
Just recently the UN FAO said we need to double our food output by 2050, when population is expected to reach 9 billion. Well, ignoring the fact that math doesn't make sense, it's missing the point. We can produce food for 6.5 billion right now. Production will need to increase to meet the demands of another 2.5 billion people, but the problem isn't production and never was. So long as there isn't enough refrigeration, pest-resistent procedures and packaging, and the roads and governments in place to distribute it adequately, production is irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Trade imbalance? No, not unless you're displeased with the price you paid for Chinese goods, in which case, you shouldn't have paid that price. As long as you're paying the price that a good is worth to get the good, there is no imbalance.
The nice thing about a currency economy is you can trade magical pieces of paper that hold value for real physical objects and services that have value. Dollar bills and numbers in computers are nice and all to have, but they are worthless unless you can exchange them for things you want to own. The Chinese may be ending up with more magical pieces of paper than us, but we end up with all the stuff we want. And the Chinese are pretty smart too, they spend all their magical pieces of paper for things they want, some of which are sold by us, and some of which are sold by other people we give things to that they pay us for. We have plenty of stuff, more stuff than most, and somehow, keep being able to buy more stuff. Could it be because the China-USA trade relationship does not exist as a closed system? We're not being sucked dry, here, we're just involved in a worldwide marketplace where magical pieces of paper and physical goods and services are exchanged every which way constantly, and everyone is better off as a result.
Trade imbalances are a meaningless concept. Instead, ask yourself where you'd rather live, which country has the higher standard of living, i.e. more stuff owned, right now? The free market does result in a balancing of economies worldwide, as specialization happens, and people everywhere are able to get the goods they want, but ultimately it raises the standard of living for everyone. We should not fear China growing faster than the US, because they are starting from lower and because China won't end up doing better than us. We'll both end up doing better than us, and on a roughly equal standard of living. As the Chinese grow more wealthy, they'll be able to buy more of our stuff, which will give us more magical pieces of paper to buy even more of their stuff, and stuff from other places, and invest in specialization so we can sell even more stuff to China and other places too.
Believe it or not, government is not always the answer to all of society's problems, education least of all. Parents need to take an interest in their children's educations. It's pretty much a local issue, anyway, so start going to PTA meetings and lobby your town selectmen or mayor. Heck, run for your local school board if they're incompetent.
This is slashdot, you insensitive clod, we aren't supposed to just RTFS, we RTFA!
I just canceled my account. I was pissed off enough about the fee hike, but now I am out for good. Screw these asshats.
Unfortunately the local phone company (Frontier) has a mortal lock on telecom, and of course the usual shitty cable provider (Time Warner) prevents any competition. So we won't be seeing fiber in my area, probably ever.
Certainly though, if a cop is lawfully arresting you, and has his gun drawn, you shouldn't pull yours out and open fire. That's not self-defense. Self-defense is protecting your life, not your ability to evade capture from arrest.
Of course, if somebody is actively shooting at you unprovoked, defend yourself by whatever means and you'll be ethical and moral. I don't think somebody's employment status matters in that case, and in that moment, can you even know with certainty that the person shooting at you is not impersonating a cop, abusing their power as one for non-sanctioned action, or even simply has made a mistake and is posing an unwarranted danger people's lives? There's no reason you have to roll over and take it, but do be prepared for the consequences of saving your life or that of others. Legal difficulties may be worth it, if just one innocent is still breathing, but those decisions are something everyone will have to live with on a personal basis.
I learned in the first term of the first year I was in college, that in any liberal arts classes, just write papers that tell the professor what they want to hear.
Hippie history professor? Write a final paper saying that war is bad. Get an A.
Feminist english lit professor? Write a final paper about strong women and evil men. Get an A.
Philosophy professor? Too easy. Name drop in your paper but say nothing at all. Get an A.
Political science? Write a final paper that parrots back their pet theory. Get an A.
Worked for me every time, and took minimal effort. I saved my energies for classes that actually mattered. Heck, for a lot of those papers I didn't even read the books, just picked some random quotes out that I knew the professors agreed with.
There is no place for independent thought in these classes, these people have a little bit of power, and see themselves as somehow shaping the minds of their students. So you let them think they've won, and then be grateful whenever you're in an objective math or science class, or when you've finished your general eds. Even in nice objective classes, where truth is truth, your relationship with the professor matters more than any of the material. Go to the professor's office hours to hang out, joke around with them before and after class, and they will jump through hoops to get you better grades. I usually didn't go to such extremes, but I saw some people do it with great results. If you work hard enough, you can overcome a lack of sucking up to the boss, but for goodness sake don't ever challenge the professor's ideas or any of their favorite "experts".
I for one welcome our unbiased robots graders!
My favorite part is where the guy is playing with a balloon inside a dodecahedron, which probably took significant time to assemble, and he's all like "we looked for these circles, and uh, we didn't find any." In my head, I imagine him thinking to himself, "did I just get punked?"
Except you can only create iOS apps using OS X. OS X and actual desktop computers aren't going anywhere.
Nobody ever said Wall Street understood the technology involved in the tech companies they are trading.
What analytically useful market exists that includes iPads, iPods, and the iPhone as part of the same market?
The app market. It's useful for software developers to see the entire platform when determining what to code/port their software for/to. Obviously they'll take other factors into account as well, but knowing how large various operating systems are, over all devices, is important.
So yes, the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone are all in a single market.
Now we just need to get our enemies to buy a whole bunch of these, and conveniently place them on all the nice targets we'd like to bomb.
It was linked from Slashdot, at some point in the last year. Probably half year. From a pretty reputable news site, I believe. That's all I remember.
Specialization is a pretty basic to macroeconomics. The US makes airplanes. We make movies and music. We make medicines. We make cotton, corn, and wheat. We make IP, and then sue companies from other nations over patents and make money off of their goods as well as our own. Unemployment right now isn't at the low level we'd like it to be, but that's because of a recession, not because the Chinese are making our computers.
The jobs we outsource are jobs we don't actually want because they don't pay well enough and are pretty unskilled. If somebody with no education is willing and able to do the job for pennies a day, we should be glad to let them do it and profit off their labors, getting those valuable goods far far cheaper (increasing our standard of living), or selling the stuff they make to the rest of the world. The free market determines the value of the labor involved in making these devices, and let's face it, the value of that labor is not that high. The work is done very efficiently and takes minimal training or education. Nobody in the US would be happy with those jobs' hours, salary, or benefits.
If a job can be done by a robot, it's not a job anyone is going to pay an (American) living wage for you to do. Humans make far better thinkers, designers, innovators, and entertainers. Those are the jobs we have here, and those are the jobs valued high enough so workers can get paid to live to the standard we've become accustomed to.
I remember reading a while back, that per capita, Foxconn employees commit suicide at a lower rate than the Chinese population overall. It's good to have a job, even if the job sucks, and there are far worse places to be in that country.
Of course, now that Chinese labor standards are going up, and workers are demanding higher wages, all their jobs will start getting outsourced to other countries where the labor is even cheaper (or I guess, replaced by robots).
Much of the weight and size in spacecraft is not the instruments, it's the fuel and engine. I get that you need a lot less of both if you've got a small mass, but still, how are you going to move the thing around?
TFA says they'll need some crazy new propulsion system, so yeah, we won't be seeing chip ships any time soon, probably.
That was always the excuse, of course, that the PS3 didn't have that many exclusives compared to the 360. It's why myself, and so many other people, just got two consoles. But that has changed over time, and there are a number of games now that I would want to play on the PS3 that don't exist on the 360.
On the other side of things, I don't think there's enough on the 360 anymore to get a PS3 owner to switch sides. If they were interested in any of the Halos, they'd have gotten a 360 to begin with.
This is why I think the PS3 will sell longer, and the 360 has already peaked.
I wonder if the reason for this surge now towards the end is because people already have their Wii, already have their 360, and are now looking to complete the set with a PS3. I've been considering doing it now, myself, though the recent hacking scandal makes me less confident.
As others have said, the PS2 has had an amazing shelf life, and I think people will keep buying used PS2s and playing games on them for many more years to come. The PS3 will probably be very much the same, and getting a PS3 now is still a pretty decent investment. The Wii will be replaced soon, and everyone has one already, and the 360 is on the decline. If you're going to pick up a new console now, the PS3 is really the best choice, and for many people who own Wiis and 360s already, the only remaining choice.
I picked out the fake review immediately.
Let's not forget the basis of this story is that Apple didn't include NFC in a desktop computer and laptop. It doesn't make any sense to include NFC in a desktop computer, or even a laptop.
As for speculation about Apple's plans for NFC in their phones, it's simply that. Pure, unadulterated, unfounded speculation based on the fallacy that wireless technologies implemented in a desktop computer are the only ones allowed on a mobile phone. That's never been true because phones necessarily have different technologies built into them that would make no earthly sense on any desktop computer. In case it's not clear, I'm referring to the radios used to make phone calls. Something like NFC that's clearly only intended for mobile devices would fall under that same category of things computers don't need, and thus there is no reason whatsoever to think Apple wouldn't someday include NFC on their phones.
Apple really screwed up including only Bluetooth in their computers, but maybe next time they'll figure out people's preferred method of transactions is to lug their Mac Minis to the store with them in order to pay for goods and services. This is just common sense, but it's good TFS outlines that clearly for anyone who didn't understand it.
Obviously there's no chance Apple might implement more than one wireless technology in their phones ever, too. I don't think this was necessary to say either, but I suppose there may be ignorant people who might believe Apple is capable of getting more than one antenna into a device, despite them never having done that before.
Luckily there are plenty of people here on slashdot who understand these facts and are willing to educate the rest of us who may not have understood.
Yeah, they want to charge me almost double. I'm not canceling, but I am downgrading my account, so they'll be taking in half of what they did before from me. I hardly use Netflix much anymore as it is. Netflix was great in its heyday, but they've simply not kept up with technologies and the marketplace.
All our evildoers are probably pasty white suburb kids who live in their parent's basements running scripts they downloaded.
You're exactly right, that we produce enough food to feed everyone. Inadequate packaging and storage, as well as inadequate distribution channels, corrupt governments, and plain old poverty keeps a lot of it getting to where it needs to go. Much of it spoils before reaching market and much of it gets used as a political and social weapon.
Just recently the UN FAO said we need to double our food output by 2050, when population is expected to reach 9 billion. Well, ignoring the fact that math doesn't make sense, it's missing the point. We can produce food for 6.5 billion right now. Production will need to increase to meet the demands of another 2.5 billion people, but the problem isn't production and never was. So long as there isn't enough refrigeration, pest-resistent procedures and packaging, and the roads and governments in place to distribute it adequately, production is irrelevant.
I think you'd be surprised how many Catholics use artificial birth control.