The one thing QE2 did for the taxpayers was to reduce the interest tab on the federal debt. The long-term bonds the Fed bought on the open market are now effectively interest free to the government, since the Fed rebates its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs.
You don't correct it by telling your creditors: "We could pay you the money we promised you would have on the first of August, but we have decided not to because that would make us too indebted. So go away, you won't get your money back."
That kind of voluntary national bankruptcy is insane. Already the threat of it is causing higher interest rates which makes it even harder to balance the budget. Let us just hope that it does not come to pass.
Iceland is not a problem. Their only problem is that other countries are trying to get the Icelandic government to pay for the losses of the Icelandic banks.
The EU countries are heading for collapse because the European Central Bank is fighting inflation during a recession. Once the stricken countries wise up and leave the Euro, they will recover just like Argentina did after leaving the USD.
Non-nuclear power plants generally have thermodynamic efficiencies of at least 50% these days. Nuclear plants tend to run at low temperatures so their thermodynamic efficiency is crap and therefore the need for cooling is extreme.
One target for modern nuclear reactor design is higher operating temperatures to reduce the need for cooling and save fuel.
I am fairly sure that offshore wind farms even in the UK area will generate more power in winter than in summer. The opposite just seems completely unlikely. Either way, any extra power produced in the summer will be welcomed by countries further south where air conditioning is the main use of electricity.
Do you have a handy chart of wind-by-month in the UK? In Denmark, which is quite close, the wind turbines produce a quite a bit more power in winter than in summer.
Of course right now anyone who can produce energy in Northern Europe can make a good deal of money. The hydro reservoirs in Scandinavia ran almost empty this spring, Swedish nuclear power is still not at full output, Germany has shut down a lot of nuclear capacity, power lines are straining to deal with the demand... At least the spring flood came early and seems to be very generous this year, we just need bigger lines to Norway and Sweden.
See Nordpoolspot for the Scandinavian view. There is also EEX for the view a bit further south, sadly without the pretty maps. For extra prettiness there is the Danish grid which unfortunately eats 100% CPU with flash.
I have personally attempted to get a SIM card in Italy. All the shops asked to see my health insurance card. They were unimpressed when I gave them my Danish health insurance card. (And yes, I was attempting to get a prepaid card, so there is only a credit risk if their systems fail).
Even if you manage to get a local SIM, you have to carry two phones or somehow tell everyone what your current number is. The constant swapping of SIM cards is no fun, and the data charges on prepaid cards are almost as bad as data roaming.
Looks like Slashdot let another potsmoker start a thread.
It looks more like "let another potsmoker comment on the article" to me. Planes fly quite far north when they fly e.g. between Europe and North America, and practically all jet planes have fans -- propellers with many blades.
you are being charged for something you had no control over.
You are free to hit the red button rather than the green button when you receive a call. Paying for incoming texts makes no sense, the cost to the provider of handling an incoming text message is close to zero and in any case almost the same for texts to a fixed line and to a cell phone. Many fixed line providers cannot be bothered to upgrade their systems to handle texts at all.
Only the per-minute charges are capped, not the data roaming charges, and the caps are WAY higher than the actual costs. The wholesale data roaming charges are capped, but that just moves the profits from the company actually doing the work to the company sending the invoice without benefit to the user -- it generally hurts the Southern countries which have a lot of inbound data roaming while benefiting the Northern areas.
why do the ones outside of the US do just fine without being able to charge for incoming calls and charge less to boot?
They are able to charge less because they get a significant part of their income from incoming calls (i.e. fixed line users pay for cell phone users) and roaming charges.
If the situation was so dire why is it that the telecoms in most of the rest of the world seem perfectly able to survive such a burden and have cheaper prices to boot?
The US prices are artificially high because of the lack of competition. It is too difficult to switch provider in the US -- often you have to buy a new phone and locking customers with long contracts is allowed. There is no regulation forcing the large providers to offer access to their network to smaller providers, so there are no small providers in the US.
It is funny that everyone bashes the US cell phone market for the one thing they have done right when there are so many things they have done wrong.
So while true that Europe is a patchwork of carriers across its different states, every state there is better than any state in the US.
But if you travel you get raped on roaming charges. Especially data roaming which is completely unaffordable.
Europe has somewhat-decent per-minute charges due to fixed line users paying way too much to call cell phones and because of roaming charges/charges for international calls. The US doesn't have that kind of make-money-fast schemes for cell phone providers but unfortunately the lack of regulation means that it is difficult to start another provider and for the users to change providers.
Are you, Americans are still paying for incoming calls and SMSes?
Paying for incoming calls is the only sane solution. Otherwise you end up without number portability between fixed and mobile lines and you punish the fixed line providers because they have to pay a fortune for outgoing calls to cell phones while they get practically no compensation for incoming calls. You get a market where there is a large disconnect between price paid by the user and the cost to the operator, and that kind of disconnect leads to inflated prices.
The French power industry is owned by the government and it is doubtful how competitive it would be without its monopoly status in France. When you are outside France, buying subsidized French electricity is an excellent idea.
If you do a read on the data drive, the file access time will update. 5 seconds later Linux will push that to disk. Modern Linux distributions (as of the last couple of years) have "relatime" enabled by default, which solves the problem. You may want to check that you have it enabled; otherwise it is probably time to upgrade.
One has to defend them from infringements upon their research or they lose them. Grow up.
This is NOT true. If you allow someone to use your patent, you may not be able to later enforce your patent against that particular person/company (estoppel), but you can still enforce it against everyone else. Estoppel is rather narrow, it only hits you if you have fraudulent intent. Having a policy of defensive-only use of patents is certainly not fraudulent.
Apparently the parachute problem happened because the launch was aborted. This made the parachute deploy at high speed, rather than at top of the trajectory where speed is low. It is ok to lose the parachute for the booster this way, but obviously they need to solve the problem for the crew module. Controlled abort is one of the great things about their current rocket, and it would be a bit counterproductive if an abort ended in impact after a few km of freefall.
Slashdot Mirror
The US submarines can easily handle any retaliation required on their own. They are unlikely to be taken out by a surprise attack.
Ellen Brown seems somewhat confused:
The one thing QE2 did for the taxpayers was to reduce the interest tab on the federal debt. The long-term bonds the Fed bought on the open market are now effectively interest free to the government, since the Fed rebates its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs.
That is a rather large benefit.
You don't correct it by telling your creditors: "We could pay you the money we promised you would have on the first of August, but we have decided not to because that would make us too indebted. So go away, you won't get your money back."
That kind of voluntary national bankruptcy is insane. Already the threat of it is causing higher interest rates which makes it even harder to balance the budget. Let us just hope that it does not come to pass.
Iceland is not a problem. Their only problem is that other countries are trying to get the Icelandic government to pay for the losses of the Icelandic banks.
The EU countries are heading for collapse because the European Central Bank is fighting inflation during a recession. Once the stricken countries wise up and leave the Euro, they will recover just like Argentina did after leaving the USD.
Non-nuclear power plants generally have thermodynamic efficiencies of at least 50% these days. Nuclear plants tend to run at low temperatures so their thermodynamic efficiency is crap and therefore the need for cooling is extreme.
One target for modern nuclear reactor design is higher operating temperatures to reduce the need for cooling and save fuel.
Heat pumps are getting popular in Greenland...
Anyway, you can increase efficiency by using ground-coupled heat exchangers.
I am fairly sure that offshore wind farms even in the UK area will generate more power in winter than in summer. The opposite just seems completely unlikely. Either way, any extra power produced in the summer will be welcomed by countries further south where air conditioning is the main use of electricity.
Do you have a handy chart of wind-by-month in the UK? In Denmark, which is quite close, the wind turbines produce a quite a bit more power in winter than in summer.
Of course right now anyone who can produce energy in Northern Europe can make a good deal of money. The hydro reservoirs in Scandinavia ran almost empty this spring, Swedish nuclear power is still not at full output, Germany has shut down a lot of nuclear capacity, power lines are straining to deal with the demand... At least the spring flood came early and seems to be very generous this year, we just need bigger lines to Norway and Sweden.
See Nordpoolspot for the Scandinavian view. There is also EEX for the view a bit further south, sadly without the pretty maps. For extra prettiness there is the Danish grid which unfortunately eats 100% CPU with flash.
Patents are government-granted monopolies. It does not really make sense to apply anti-monopoly legislation to them.
I have personally attempted to get a SIM card in Italy. All the shops asked to see my health insurance card. They were unimpressed when I gave them my Danish health insurance card. (And yes, I was attempting to get a prepaid card, so there is only a credit risk if their systems fail).
Even if you manage to get a local SIM, you have to carry two phones or somehow tell everyone what your current number is. The constant swapping of SIM cards is no fun, and the data charges on prepaid cards are almost as bad as data roaming.
Looks like Slashdot let another potsmoker start a thread.
It looks more like "let another potsmoker comment on the article" to me. Planes fly quite far north when they fly e.g. between Europe and North America, and practically all jet planes have fans -- propellers with many blades.
Mystery? What exactly was mysterious about it? Are all fogs mystery fogs?
you are being charged for something you had no control over.
You are free to hit the red button rather than the green button when you receive a call. Paying for incoming texts makes no sense, the cost to the provider of handling an incoming text message is close to zero and in any case almost the same for texts to a fixed line and to a cell phone. Many fixed line providers cannot be bothered to upgrade their systems to handle texts at all.
That is my point. If you charge separate rates, you can't realistically handle number portability, and you punish the fixed line providers.
Only the per-minute charges are capped, not the data roaming charges, and the caps are WAY higher than the actual costs. The wholesale data roaming charges are capped, but that just moves the profits from the company actually doing the work to the company sending the invoice without benefit to the user -- it generally hurts the Southern countries which have a lot of inbound data roaming while benefiting the Northern areas.
why do the ones outside of the US do just fine without being able to charge for incoming calls and charge less to boot?
They are able to charge less because they get a significant part of their income from incoming calls (i.e. fixed line users pay for cell phone users) and roaming charges.
If the situation was so dire why is it that the telecoms in most of the rest of the world seem perfectly able to survive such a burden and have cheaper prices to boot?
The US prices are artificially high because of the lack of competition. It is too difficult to switch provider in the US -- often you have to buy a new phone and locking customers with long contracts is allowed. There is no regulation forcing the large providers to offer access to their network to smaller providers, so there are no small providers in the US.
It is funny that everyone bashes the US cell phone market for the one thing they have done right when there are so many things they have done wrong.
So while true that Europe is a patchwork of carriers across its different states, every state there is better than any state in the US.
But if you travel you get raped on roaming charges. Especially data roaming which is completely unaffordable.
Europe has somewhat-decent per-minute charges due to fixed line users paying way too much to call cell phones and because of roaming charges/charges for international calls. The US doesn't have that kind of make-money-fast schemes for cell phone providers but unfortunately the lack of regulation means that it is difficult to start another provider and for the users to change providers.
Are you, Americans are still paying for incoming calls and SMSes?
Paying for incoming calls is the only sane solution. Otherwise you end up without number portability between fixed and mobile lines and you punish the fixed line providers because they have to pay a fortune for outgoing calls to cell phones while they get practically no compensation for incoming calls. You get a market where there is a large disconnect between price paid by the user and the cost to the operator, and that kind of disconnect leads to inflated prices.
Come back when you can find me a law which forbids selling cheaply rather than price dumping.
The EU is forcing France to raise its electricity prices because the unsubsidised price of EDF's electricty makes it hard for others to compete.
Don't be ridiculous. The law prevents price dumping, not cheap prices.
The French power industry is owned by the government and it is doubtful how competitive it would be without its monopoly status in France. When you are outside France, buying subsidized French electricity is an excellent idea.
If you do a read on the data drive, the file access time will update. 5 seconds later Linux will push that to disk. Modern Linux distributions (as of the last couple of years) have "relatime" enabled by default, which solves the problem. You may want to check that you have it enabled; otherwise it is probably time to upgrade.
One has to defend them from infringements upon their research or they lose them. Grow up.
This is NOT true. If you allow someone to use your patent, you may not be able to later enforce your patent against that particular person/company (estoppel), but you can still enforce it against everyone else. Estoppel is rather narrow, it only hits you if you have fraudulent intent. Having a policy of defensive-only use of patents is certainly not fraudulent.
Apparently the parachute problem happened because the launch was aborted. This made the parachute deploy at high speed, rather than at top of the trajectory where speed is low. It is ok to lose the parachute for the booster this way, but obviously they need to solve the problem for the crew module. Controlled abort is one of the great things about their current rocket, and it would be a bit counterproductive if an abort ended in impact after a few km of freefall.