Your nostalgia glasses fail you. It was $500 for the 20gb model without an HDMI port, with $600 for the 60gb with. And once you add in tax, a game (c'mon, who buys a $600 blu-ray player and doesn't buy at least a couple games... The PS3 does have games, just not a lot of good exclusive ones) and an HDMI cable, you were looking at a $700 to $800 investment in that PS3.
....So, correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to support the notion that we could rid ourselves of the uncanny valley if we only budgeted more for, and employed better and more sophisticated motion capture software in our 3d animations?
We're assuming that they have documents showing conspiracy to falsify evidence in order to go to war and unsavory war actions. For all we know, anon could have gotten a hold of information of a a huge corruption and bribing scandal involving the Russian mafia. It could be anything. Perhaps anon doesn't look forward to being tracked down and assassinated.
Does anybody know the FBI stance on this? Despite some shady things done in the War on Drugs front, the FBI is actually pretty good about investigating corruption of even the very highest political elite.
If you want games with gameplay, I suggest you travel back to the 1990's. Unfortunately, most games these days seem to want to move into the "interactive movie" category.
Is it any wonder why so many botnets command zombie legions in China?
Is it also any wonder why so much high-profile hacking originates from inside China? (undoubtedly a lot of it does come from Chinese efforts, but anybody that's interested in hacking high-profile targets can just route themselves through China, too)
Ethical companies generally perform better, regardless of how the market is doing, compared to unethical ones. (I don't have an exact source for this, but I've seen stock market studies before)
...Well, that's not exactly true. Companies whose users actually like the company perform better. Usually that means that the company is ethical (e.g., Atlus, XSeed Games, Valve), but not always (e.g., Apple).
What goes around comes around. A company that respects its fans and is loyal to its fans will, in return, receive loyal fans that respect the company. A company that doesn't care about its customers will, in turn, receive customers that dump the company as soon as something better comes around.
While big companies can afford to be unethical in the short term, it is bad long-term policy.
Another thing that construction workers do in japan is get a small white towel and put it on their head longways going down and covering their neck, and then they put their hard hat on top of that. It's not uncommon for them to soak the towel in cold water before they do it, either. that would be effective, combined with a turban or straw hat or whatever else kind of hat you might find in Egypt.
I'm in Taiwan right now. People here sometimes spread water all over the ground (though they do it in Japan a lot more). With enough people doing it, you can really cool the air in a local area just by watering the hot asphalt and letting it evaporate. Otherwise, people just stay in the shade. There are some misting tents, too. And, of course, big straw hats (though I don't think people in the middle east need help on dressing appropriately for hot weather, they seem to have had that covered for thousands of years).
Being a native Hoosier here, I've seen the revolution in roundabouts over the past several years and I think it's a welcome addition. I've never seen anyone screw them up or use them dangerously. The worst I've seen is people stopping at them like stop signs, and then going around in a normal fashion, and even that is rare. Typically there are some trees installed in the middle so as to clue people in to the fact that you can't go straight through it. I don't know where these "scared and confused" drivers are, but I haven't seen them. Additionally, roundabouts have made the intersection just outside of Greenfield Central High School go from waiting-for-an-hour for the school buses at the stop signs to waiting-for-a-minute for the school buses to flow through the roundabout.
Nuclear engineers, most of them, have been supporting a deadly industry which will inevitable harm people.
Whaaat? Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how much planning an engineering goes on to produce a single nuclear plant? Do you have any idea how many engineers have dedicated their lives to creating a 100% safe and clean reactor? And do you know how close they are to achieving these kinds of goals?
I bought a $1600 ASUS G1S. I was a lucky one, the video card died after 2 years of use, so I just decided to purchase a new laptop. Others weren't so lucky. Many thousands of peoples' computers died after weeks or months. And their replacements would be more laptops with more defective cards that may or may not break after weeks or months.
And when the video card dies, you can expect all of the usual -- lots of bluescreens, screwy graphics, or complete failure to turn on the computer.
Use a dead monkey. Or a dead pig. Or heck, use a dead human. We have donated cadavers, why not use them for some engineering purposes every once in a while instead of biology purposes?
Government's a lot like religion. It's done so many bad things that a huge amount of ignorant people think the world would be better off without it. If you care at all to get your head out of your ass, you'll realize that it's done an incredible amount of unequaled good, too, between its short spurts of horrifically bad, though.
Also like religion, it's a basic need of the world at large. Try as you might to replace it with something else or even nothing it all, it'll always come creeping back in/ Even in tribal societies there are village elders.
I found this comment on chinaSMACK, but I think it fits well here, too.
Chinasmack Rule 1. Subcategory A: i) A commenter cannot criticize one country without criticizing America in equal or greater amounts. If a poster criticizes China that person is inevitably from America, and must be met equal and opposite criticisms of the US (e.g. “But, but, America!”).
Thank you Cheech Wizard, you are in compliance with protocol and will be allowed further commenting privileges.
Oh yeah? Back this one up with a well written, fact-based post and you'll get a +5 informative. But I seriously doubt you can do it.
Well, on one hand the state forces foreign companies to make 49%/51% joint Chinese-owned company ventures in order to have access to the Chinese market. Once foreign firms get access and have spent a considerable amount of resources getting started in China, the state forces them to manufacture a certain percent of their product in China, NOT by themselves, but it should be subcontracted out to a Chinese company (e.g., Honda China can't make, design, and manufacture all their own stuff, they have to transfer technology to some Chinese company so that the Chinese company can make it... if you don't follow their rules, the state can simply legislate your technology away, or worse). Once you've transferred sufficient technology to the Chinese company, you start wondering why no more orders for your products are coming in, and then you realize that it's because the very Chinese company you've partnered with is now making the product 100% in China without your help and "entirely of their own innovation." http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/letter-bombs-11-coming-up-on-the-rail/
So there's our economic domination. And that's just one example of it. There's lots more, and it's in the news very frequently.
Then we have border disputes. China claims or has, in the past 10 years, claimed territory of: Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan (the entire country at missile-point, no less), Russia, India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Tajikstan, and any other country that has the misfortune to be touching them that isn't on their payroll. The People's Liberation Army annually ventures into Bhutan dozens of times. The government not only holds onto old conflicts which they have dubious claim, but starts new conflictssemi-frequently. We've also seen that when the CPC is pissed about a border, the Chinese media is used to intentionally and flagrantly lie about the facts in order to stir up nationalism. They have also shown that they will put the government's hand in everything, ranging from travel agents to school exchange trips to locking up the offending country's nationals for "espionage" (punishable by death) to economic embargoes meant to force countries to bend backwards and obey. Of course, the CPC will deny any involvement in any of these actions.
The People's Liberation Army continues to modernize and deploy more force aimed directly at Taiwan. The PLA "defense" budget continues to grow in the double digit percents every year, and it's almost exclusively aimed at Taiwan and the US -- it's still less than 20% of the US def
1. China gets powerful, annexes Taiwan 2. Taiwan asks for help 3. US gives up
It's common knowledge that when China does something shitty over Taiwan, the US sends an aircraft carrier down there. The US doesn't fire on anybody, it really doesn't expect to even do anything with the carrier other than just let it float down there. But having an aircraft carrier down there puts the ball back in China's court, and basically says, "What are you going to do, now? Settle down." If China were to decide to blow up the aircraft carrier and annex Taiwan, that would lead to more casualties than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined. You tell me how the American public would react to that.
If China is going to annex Taiwan by force, it's not only going to require military planning the likes of which we haven't seen since WWII, but they're also going to have to face an urban insurgency because you're going to have 23 million people who have never been so enraged or inspired to fight in their entire lives. You're also going to see world markets go to hell, a sharply anti-Chinese world response, and China's going to have to weather all of these things in spite of a horrible world depression, because that's exactly what would happen to the world if China went berserk. This past year truly shocked me and gave me new perspective on how incredibly stupid the PRC and PLA are. Their miscalculations and arrogance seemed to know no bounds in 2010. In spite of that, I still think that annexing Taiwan by any kind of coercive force whatsoever is so incredibly stupid that the govt wouldn't dare do such a thing. Fantasize about it, maybe; but I don't think they're going to act on those fantasies.
Regardless of what the KMT does and wants (and quite frankly, I think the KMT's leadership these past 3 years have been about as beneficial to Taiwan's sovereignty and freedom as Bush's reign was for the US's international image and freedom), the fact remains that virtually no one in Taiwan wants to be a part of the PRC. SAR status won't work because the people will not stand for it. No matter how many wet dreams the KMT has about reintegration with China, I really don't see it ever happening without a significant civil and military conflict/uprising. They had their chance to make up with China 50 years ago. Taiwan has been separated from China for so long, now, that I think any concept of "One China" is as futile, offensive, and ridiculous as I'm sure ideas of Britain re-taking America back in the 1800's were -- not to mention that Taiwan's large indigenous population has never really been "Chinese", and the entire island has never been part of the People's Republic.
When I was in Japan, I could choose between AU KDDI, Softbank, and DoCoMo. And you know what? They all had awesome service.
Here, check out this $3/mo student plan on Softbank this year. Oh, and no fees for 3 years. Also, plans in Japan always have a "maximum overage charge," so maybe if you go over your allotted data it'll be something like $5/x megabytes, but it's a maximum of $40, or so, for any given month. http://mb.softbank.jp/en/price_plans/student_family.html
Why is it that us Western countries are incapable of providing good service if a company grows too large? Why can't we use leverage the strength of that largeness to dramatically increase efficiencies, and lower cost due to economies of scale like the Asians can?/American here//If I could get for even $50/mo what I got in Japan for $13/mo, I'd be thrilled
There won't be a middle class there because the corruption prevents it from forming. It prevents the middle class from forming by transferring the money from projects that would facilitate the middle class forming into the pockets of those who already have the money and power.
Not every country is Zimbabwe. Every developing and developed Asian nation is an example of a country that started so filthy with corruption you'd want to wash your hands after dealing with them, and each country, on its own pace of development and reform, has been building middle classes and cleaning things up over time.
Japan is an example where corruption is down to first-world levels and the middle class is gigantic.
South Korea and Taiwan are examples of countries where there are still struggles between the younger and more virtuous, and the older and staunchly corrupt generations of politicians, but they're both embarking on the home-stretch towards being world-class, unambiguously first-world highly developed nations.
China is a country that is still firmly in the grasp of endemic corruption but is steadily creating a middle class and is visibly heading in the right direction.
Chinese do what they like in China, but imprisoning foreigners, especially executives, looks bad and is bad for business. It's hard to convince foreigners to invest in your country if you lock them when the set foot on your soil after all.
One of the things China likes is bribes. Bribes aren't a way to get ahead in business over there, they are the way to do business. Maybe it's changing, maybe its not -- depending on who you ask -- but I'd guess that Intel not only bribed officials a ton, but they were probably expected to bribe a ton, and it probably wasn't looked down upon as long as the culturally-proper chain of bribes was maintained.
I'm not sure about South Korea nowadays, but they also certainly have a history of bribery as a way to do business, and I bet that it was were pretty damn common in the early 90's.
There is no research that shows that California is due for the next big one simply due to the presence of a big one elsewhere on the plate.
There is, however, lots of research that shows that California's next big one is coming, and there's enough stress built up for a M7.0+ right now. The fault trembles a lot (I've heard from others, not directly looked into it myself) just every time big teleseismic Rayleigh waves pass through the area. The "big one" is definitely coming, but technically, geologically speaking, "it's ready to blow" is equal to "it could blow tomorrow or 150 years from now." Heck, the Japanese M9.0 earthquake was caused from the plates being locked for a long freakin' time. It could have ruptured any time in the past many decades, but it chose to rupture after it built up the energy for a M9.0; earthquake prediction isn't a very exact science.
Some other ones to worry about, though, are the Northwest Pacific -- iirc, they're ready for their next M9.0 megathrust event. And Japan is still overdue their next "big one" -- the Great Tokai Quake. It just so happens that they got an unrelated M9.0 while waiting for their next gigantic M8.0+ quake.
Another thing people don't know is that while these super-gigantic megathrust earthquakes seem to be causing the largest tsunamis, that's not always the case. Normal faulting quakes are capable of much larger tsunamis at much smaller magnitudes. The size of the tsunami is directly related to the size of the offset of the water. It takes a huge megathrust earthquake to displace the billions of tons of water upward that it takes to cause one of these Japan or Indonesia-sized tsunamis. However, if you have a relatively small normal faulting event (say, M7.0) that creates a huge rift in the ocean, suddenly you have the force of gravity suck a ton of water downward into the rift that develops -- which means a ton of water displacement, and a huge tsunami.
And then you have ones like the M6.3 that damaged Christchurch so badly. A M6.3 is hardly even news in highly advanced earthquake-prone societies. The problem there was that it was so damn shallow. Such a shallow earthquake is going to produce huge ground accelerations, and all the sediments that we like to build cities on (as opposed to hard bedrock, which is much safer) is going to amplify that ground motion. On top of that, you have liquefaction in big sediment areas. And from what I understand, the Christchurch earthquake happened on a previously unknown (or at least benign) fault. This is something that's going to happen a lot in places like China -- if you've seen a fault map of California, imagine that kind of mess on a US-sized scale; that's China, and they've just begun the problem of mapping their faults (not to mention they've already built nuclear plants and huge dams on top of them).
Some of us don't live in a city. Most of us don't live within biking distance to work.
"Move closer to work!"
Why don't you try ponying up the cash to move to a new home -- in the city, no less -- during a good time, let alone during a craptastic recovery of about the worst "recession" that you can get.
"Well the USA shouldn't have developed so far spread out."
No country in the world, Japan included, is even close to 100% rail-connected. Lots of places need lots of cars, even in the densest countries. And really, sit down and think how difficult it will be to fundamentally restructure 250+ years of heavy urbanization in the third-largest, third-most populous country in the world. That stuff doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't even happen in even a decade.
Realistically, the most positive thing that will come out of ridiculously high gas prices, in my opinion, will be 1.) Americans will become a little less selfish; they're going to have to start interacting with others, helping more -- maybe even carpool. It'll suck, and I'm all about individualism, but I think we (I'm an American, too) could use a little bit more community spirit. We always get some after a huge disaster, and then quickly forget it after suffering through the craptastic government's overreactions and failings. 2.) Freight rail traffic will skyrocket. This'll take semis off the roads (though semi-truck drivers need jobs, too....). With fewer people driving and fewer semis, driving won't be so bad. 3.) Maybe the electric car movement will finally get to the point that they'll become practical for most people, with recharge stations all over the place.
Of course, there will be a gigantic amount of cons that will also come with high gas prices. Many more cons than pros, in the short term at the very least.
Slashdot Mirror
The current model Saab 9-5 also has a HUD.
More importantly, however, I think that window-sized transparent screens will be good to selectively strongly tint areas where sun is shining through. Not at all dissimilar to these prototype LCD sunglasses that do exactly that:
http://www.ecouterre.com/sensor-equipped-sunglasses-block-glare-by-blacking-out-parts-of-lenses/
Your nostalgia glasses fail you. It was $500 for the 20gb model without an HDMI port, with $600 for the 60gb with. And once you add in tax, a game (c'mon, who buys a $600 blu-ray player and doesn't buy at least a couple games... The PS3 does have games, just not a lot of good exclusive ones) and an HDMI cable, you were looking at a $700 to $800 investment in that PS3.
....So, correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to support the notion that we could rid ourselves of the uncanny valley if we only budgeted more for, and employed better and more sophisticated motion capture software in our 3d animations?
We're assuming that they have documents showing conspiracy to falsify evidence in order to go to war and unsavory war actions. For all we know, anon could have gotten a hold of information of a a huge corruption and bribing scandal involving the Russian mafia. It could be anything. Perhaps anon doesn't look forward to being tracked down and assassinated.
Does anybody know the FBI stance on this? Despite some shady things done in the War on Drugs front, the FBI is actually pretty good about investigating corruption of even the very highest political elite.
If you want games with gameplay, I suggest you travel back to the 1990's. Unfortunately, most games these days seem to want to move into the "interactive movie" category.
Is it any wonder why so many botnets command zombie legions in China?
Is it also any wonder why so much high-profile hacking originates from inside China? (undoubtedly a lot of it does come from Chinese efforts, but anybody that's interested in hacking high-profile targets can just route themselves through China, too)
Ethical companies generally perform better, regardless of how the market is doing, compared to unethical ones. (I don't have an exact source for this, but I've seen stock market studies before)
...Well, that's not exactly true. Companies whose users actually like the company perform better. Usually that means that the company is ethical (e.g., Atlus, XSeed Games, Valve), but not always (e.g., Apple).
What goes around comes around. A company that respects its fans and is loyal to its fans will, in return, receive loyal fans that respect the company. A company that doesn't care about its customers will, in turn, receive customers that dump the company as soon as something better comes around.
While big companies can afford to be unethical in the short term, it is bad long-term policy.
Another thing that construction workers do in japan is get a small white towel and put it on their head longways going down and covering their neck, and then they put their hard hat on top of that. It's not uncommon for them to soak the towel in cold water before they do it, either. that would be effective, combined with a turban or straw hat or whatever else kind of hat you might find in Egypt.
I'm in Taiwan right now. People here sometimes spread water all over the ground (though they do it in Japan a lot more). With enough people doing it, you can really cool the air in a local area just by watering the hot asphalt and letting it evaporate. Otherwise, people just stay in the shade. There are some misting tents, too. And, of course, big straw hats (though I don't think people in the middle east need help on dressing appropriately for hot weather, they seem to have had that covered for thousands of years).
Being a native Hoosier here, I've seen the revolution in roundabouts over the past several years and I think it's a welcome addition. I've never seen anyone screw them up or use them dangerously. The worst I've seen is people stopping at them like stop signs, and then going around in a normal fashion, and even that is rare. Typically there are some trees installed in the middle so as to clue people in to the fact that you can't go straight through it. I don't know where these "scared and confused" drivers are, but I haven't seen them. Additionally, roundabouts have made the intersection just outside of Greenfield Central High School go from waiting-for-an-hour for the school buses at the stop signs to waiting-for-a-minute for the school buses to flow through the roundabout.
Nuclear engineers, most of them, have been supporting a deadly industry which will inevitable harm people.
Whaaat? Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how much planning an engineering goes on to produce a single nuclear plant? Do you have any idea how many engineers have dedicated their lives to creating a 100% safe and clean reactor? And do you know how close they are to achieving these kinds of goals?
I bought a $1600 ASUS G1S. I was a lucky one, the video card died after 2 years of use, so I just decided to purchase a new laptop. Others weren't so lucky. Many thousands of peoples' computers died after weeks or months. And their replacements would be more laptops with more defective cards that may or may not break after weeks or months.
And when the video card dies, you can expect all of the usual -- lots of bluescreens, screwy graphics, or complete failure to turn on the computer.
Use a dead monkey. Or a dead pig. Or heck, use a dead human. We have donated cadavers, why not use them for some engineering purposes every once in a while instead of biology purposes?
Government's a lot like religion. It's done so many bad things that a huge amount of ignorant people think the world would be better off without it. If you care at all to get your head out of your ass, you'll realize that it's done an incredible amount of unequaled good, too, between its short spurts of horrifically bad, though.
Also like religion, it's a basic need of the world at large. Try as you might to replace it with something else or even nothing it all, it'll always come creeping back in/ Even in tribal societies there are village elders.
I found this comment on chinaSMACK, but I think it fits well here, too.
Chinasmack Rule 1. Subcategory A:
i) A commenter cannot criticize one country without criticizing America in equal or greater amounts. If a poster criticizes China that person is inevitably from America, and must be met equal and opposite criticisms of the US (e.g. “But, but, America!”).
Thank you Cheech Wizard, you are in compliance with protocol and will be allowed further commenting privileges.
Oh yeah? Back this one up with a well written, fact-based post and you'll get a +5 informative. But I seriously doubt you can do it.
Well, on one hand the state forces foreign companies to make 49%/51% joint Chinese-owned company ventures in order to have access to the Chinese market. Once foreign firms get access and have spent a considerable amount of resources getting started in China, the state forces them to manufacture a certain percent of their product in China, NOT by themselves, but it should be subcontracted out to a Chinese company (e.g., Honda China can't make, design, and manufacture all their own stuff, they have to transfer technology to some Chinese company so that the Chinese company can make it... if you don't follow their rules, the state can simply legislate your technology away, or worse). Once you've transferred sufficient technology to the Chinese company, you start wondering why no more orders for your products are coming in, and then you realize that it's because the very Chinese company you've partnered with is now making the product 100% in China without your help and "entirely of their own innovation."
http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/letter-bombs-11-coming-up-on-the-rail/
So there's our economic domination. And that's just one example of it. There's lots more, and it's in the news very frequently.
Then we have border disputes. China claims or has, in the past 10 years, claimed territory of: Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan (the entire country at missile-point, no less), Russia, India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Tajikstan, and any other country that has the misfortune to be touching them that isn't on their payroll. The People's Liberation Army annually ventures into Bhutan dozens of times. The government not only holds onto old conflicts which they have dubious claim, but starts new conflicts semi-frequently. We've also seen that when the CPC is pissed about a border, the Chinese media is used to intentionally and flagrantly lie about the facts in order to stir up nationalism. They have also shown that they will put the government's hand in everything, ranging from travel agents to school exchange trips to locking up the offending country's nationals for "espionage" (punishable by death) to economic embargoes meant to force countries to bend backwards and obey. Of course, the CPC will deny any involvement in any of these actions.
The People's Liberation Army continues to modernize and deploy more force aimed directly at Taiwan. The PLA "defense" budget continues to grow in the double digit percents every year, and it's almost exclusively aimed at Taiwan and the US -- it's still less than 20% of the US def
Taiwan is not so simple of a situation as
1. China gets powerful, annexes Taiwan
2. Taiwan asks for help
3. US gives up
It's common knowledge that when China does something shitty over Taiwan, the US sends an aircraft carrier down there. The US doesn't fire on anybody, it really doesn't expect to even do anything with the carrier other than just let it float down there. But having an aircraft carrier down there puts the ball back in China's court, and basically says, "What are you going to do, now? Settle down." If China were to decide to blow up the aircraft carrier and annex Taiwan, that would lead to more casualties than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined. You tell me how the American public would react to that.
If China is going to annex Taiwan by force, it's not only going to require military planning the likes of which we haven't seen since WWII, but they're also going to have to face an urban insurgency because you're going to have 23 million people who have never been so enraged or inspired to fight in their entire lives. You're also going to see world markets go to hell, a sharply anti-Chinese world response, and China's going to have to weather all of these things in spite of a horrible world depression, because that's exactly what would happen to the world if China went berserk. This past year truly shocked me and gave me new perspective on how incredibly stupid the PRC and PLA are. Their miscalculations and arrogance seemed to know no bounds in 2010. In spite of that, I still think that annexing Taiwan by any kind of coercive force whatsoever is so incredibly stupid that the govt wouldn't dare do such a thing. Fantasize about it, maybe; but I don't think they're going to act on those fantasies.
Regardless of what the KMT does and wants (and quite frankly, I think the KMT's leadership these past 3 years have been about as beneficial to Taiwan's sovereignty and freedom as Bush's reign was for the US's international image and freedom), the fact remains that virtually no one in Taiwan wants to be a part of the PRC. SAR status won't work because the people will not stand for it. No matter how many wet dreams the KMT has about reintegration with China, I really don't see it ever happening without a significant civil and military conflict/uprising. They had their chance to make up with China 50 years ago. Taiwan has been separated from China for so long, now, that I think any concept of "One China" is as futile, offensive, and ridiculous as I'm sure ideas of Britain re-taking America back in the 1800's were -- not to mention that Taiwan's large indigenous population has never really been "Chinese", and the entire island has never been part of the People's Republic.
China flexing their economic might on the US would be like the US flexing their military might against China over Taiwan.
NEITHER OF US WANT TO FUCK EVERYTHING UP.
When I was in Japan, I could choose between AU KDDI, Softbank, and DoCoMo. And you know what? They all had awesome service.
Here, check out this $3/mo student plan on Softbank this year. Oh, and no fees for 3 years. Also, plans in Japan always have a "maximum overage charge," so maybe if you go over your allotted data it'll be something like $5/x megabytes, but it's a maximum of $40, or so, for any given month.
http://mb.softbank.jp/en/price_plans/student_family.html
Why is it that us Western countries are incapable of providing good service if a company grows too large? Why can't we use leverage the strength of that largeness to dramatically increase efficiencies, and lower cost due to economies of scale like the Asians can? /American here //If I could get for even $50/mo what I got in Japan for $13/mo, I'd be thrilled
There won't be a middle class there because the corruption prevents it from forming. It prevents the middle class from forming by transferring the money from projects that would facilitate the middle class forming into the pockets of those who already have the money and power.
Not every country is Zimbabwe. Every developing and developed Asian nation is an example of a country that started so filthy with corruption you'd want to wash your hands after dealing with them, and each country, on its own pace of development and reform, has been building middle classes and cleaning things up over time.
Japan is an example where corruption is down to first-world levels and the middle class is gigantic.
South Korea and Taiwan are examples of countries where there are still struggles between the younger and more virtuous, and the older and staunchly corrupt generations of politicians, but they're both embarking on the home-stretch towards being world-class, unambiguously first-world highly developed nations.
China is a country that is still firmly in the grasp of endemic corruption but is steadily creating a middle class and is visibly heading in the right direction.
Chinese do what they like in China, but imprisoning foreigners, especially executives, looks bad and is bad for business. It's hard to convince foreigners to invest in your country if you lock them when the set foot on your soil after all.
One of the things China likes is bribes. Bribes aren't a way to get ahead in business over there, they are the way to do business. Maybe it's changing, maybe its not -- depending on who you ask -- but I'd guess that Intel not only bribed officials a ton, but they were probably expected to bribe a ton, and it probably wasn't looked down upon as long as the culturally-proper chain of bribes was maintained.
I'm not sure about South Korea nowadays, but they also certainly have a history of bribery as a way to do business, and I bet that it was were pretty damn common in the early 90's.
There is no research that shows that California is due for the next big one simply due to the presence of a big one elsewhere on the plate.
There is, however, lots of research that shows that California's next big one is coming, and there's enough stress built up for a M7.0+ right now. The fault trembles a lot (I've heard from others, not directly looked into it myself) just every time big teleseismic Rayleigh waves pass through the area. The "big one" is definitely coming, but technically, geologically speaking, "it's ready to blow" is equal to "it could blow tomorrow or 150 years from now." Heck, the Japanese M9.0 earthquake was caused from the plates being locked for a long freakin' time. It could have ruptured any time in the past many decades, but it chose to rupture after it built up the energy for a M9.0; earthquake prediction isn't a very exact science.
Some other ones to worry about, though, are the Northwest Pacific -- iirc, they're ready for their next M9.0 megathrust event. And Japan is still overdue their next "big one" -- the Great Tokai Quake. It just so happens that they got an unrelated M9.0 while waiting for their next gigantic M8.0+ quake.
Another thing people don't know is that while these super-gigantic megathrust earthquakes seem to be causing the largest tsunamis, that's not always the case. Normal faulting quakes are capable of much larger tsunamis at much smaller magnitudes. The size of the tsunami is directly related to the size of the offset of the water. It takes a huge megathrust earthquake to displace the billions of tons of water upward that it takes to cause one of these Japan or Indonesia-sized tsunamis. However, if you have a relatively small normal faulting event (say, M7.0) that creates a huge rift in the ocean, suddenly you have the force of gravity suck a ton of water downward into the rift that develops -- which means a ton of water displacement, and a huge tsunami.
And then you have ones like the M6.3 that damaged Christchurch so badly. A M6.3 is hardly even news in highly advanced earthquake-prone societies. The problem there was that it was so damn shallow. Such a shallow earthquake is going to produce huge ground accelerations, and all the sediments that we like to build cities on (as opposed to hard bedrock, which is much safer) is going to amplify that ground motion. On top of that, you have liquefaction in big sediment areas. And from what I understand, the Christchurch earthquake happened on a previously unknown (or at least benign) fault. This is something that's going to happen a lot in places like China -- if you've seen a fault map of California, imagine that kind of mess on a US-sized scale; that's China, and they've just begun the problem of mapping their faults (not to mention they've already built nuclear plants and huge dams on top of them).
Gas is expensive!
"Why don't you try riding a bike?"
Some of us don't live in a city. Most of us don't live within biking distance to work.
"Move closer to work!"
Why don't you try ponying up the cash to move to a new home -- in the city, no less -- during a good time, let alone during a craptastic recovery of about the worst "recession" that you can get.
"Well the USA shouldn't have developed so far spread out."
No country in the world, Japan included, is even close to 100% rail-connected. Lots of places need lots of cars, even in the densest countries. And really, sit down and think how difficult it will be to fundamentally restructure 250+ years of heavy urbanization in the third-largest, third-most populous country in the world. That stuff doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't even happen in even a decade.
Realistically, the most positive thing that will come out of ridiculously high gas prices, in my opinion, will be
1.) Americans will become a little less selfish; they're going to have to start interacting with others, helping more -- maybe even carpool. It'll suck, and I'm all about individualism, but I think we (I'm an American, too) could use a little bit more community spirit. We always get some after a huge disaster, and then quickly forget it after suffering through the craptastic government's overreactions and failings.
2.) Freight rail traffic will skyrocket. This'll take semis off the roads (though semi-truck drivers need jobs, too....). With fewer people driving and fewer semis, driving won't be so bad.
3.) Maybe the electric car movement will finally get to the point that they'll become practical for most people, with recharge stations all over the place.
Of course, there will be a gigantic amount of cons that will also come with high gas prices. Many more cons than pros, in the short term at the very least.