The idea of being from India and just looking for a job in India is amusing.
In India, most jobs are filled by referral, not by posting a job listing and screening applicants. This is changing, as companies like Polaris have open houses where they screen and hire "freshers"... but in general, looking for a job without a personal recommendation letter from one of your contacts to one of their personal contacts in another company can be difficult.
In my experience, there are plenty of opportunities for American workers... as long as you want to be in management, or if you have specific business knowledge that's hard to find outside the US. The hard part is convincing the employer that you're worth the pay. Although it's important to note that $50,000 US in India can be enough to get you a decent home with a staff of servants... just make sure you have a driver.
The other possibility is to work in the US for a foreign company. I see a lot of this going on nowadays... global businesses who need to maintain a US presence (in particular, a NY-area presence) often have American employees working locally to manage workflow, processes, and teams in India, China, or elsewhere.
FWIW, WoW was in exactly the same boat a few years ago. MMOs were something only ubergeeks did. D&D was something only ubergeeks did[1]. Who would ever think to combine the two? Was Blizzard trying to create the Sum of All Geeks?
Besides, with Blizzard running ads with Mr T and other pop culture icons, MMOs are definitely hitting the mainstream.
[1]I may have tucked an onion into my belt, as was the fashion of the time, but in my day lots of people played D&D... even football players and members of the Homecoming Court and the FFA and the gearheads. The only population in my HS that didn't have quite a few D&D players was the girls. Which is why eventually D&D got relegated to geekdom, IMO.
You already missed the boat, Oracle stock has been taking a beating today (last time I checked, down over 10%... might have rallied a bit in the late afternoon).
Oracle's results are similar to SAP's... 12-14% YoY gains this quarter, but a very poor end, which doesn't bode well for the current quarter.
Keep in mind that both Oracle and SAP hiked prices across the board earlier this year, Oracle was about a 15% hike... which means they've lost net customers if their revenues have not increased 15% YoY. Which is to be expected, of course, raise your prices and you'll lose some customers... but I think Q4 is going to be pretty painful for Oracle and SAP both.
Although, to be fair, it appears Toshiba is hedging their bets... to determine if your Toshiba laptop's battery might explode, just check the fan motor and make sure it's not this model.
Sorry, MS was a bad example. Note, though, that there are individuals at MS with unexercised options (or there were when they started issuing dividends) -- this is why MS rewrote their option policy.
Personally, I'm still waiting for Cisco to admit to itself it's no longer a growth-based tech company and to start paying dividends.
Good luck with that. Those with vested stock options will never issue a dividend if they can help it, by doing so they reduce their own profit when they leave the company. This is a big reason why paying out dividends is so uncommon in tech companies -- the people calling the shots have too much to lose by issuing dividends. And that is without the tax advantages...
If you want dividends, stay away from tech companies. Look at MS, for example -- rebuying stock instead of issuing a dividend. Who really benefits from that -- those who have unexercised options. Not the common shareholder.
It's actually not that hard to come up with a solution that works for everybody once you kick all the raving nutters out of the room.
The hard part is realizing there is a problem without the raving nutters in the room.
The guys on the fringe of any issue stimulate dialogue on that issue... they may even shift the center a little bit to their side. This is why we must value the role of demagogue in our society.
Seriously, with RMS taking the hard line on privacy, etc, could we even hope to salvage what little privacy we have left?
That said, once we get the 'nutters' out of the room, we can get down to business (I'm looking at you RonPaulRossPerotRalphNader) -- hopefully taking their concerns into account.
Care to defend your original post and address the questions I raised? Or still working on the straw men?
As for my assertions re: ascendence of monopoly in inefficient markets, do me a favor and take some economics classes. While you're at it, take some economic history classics. Emergence of monopolies/cartels in inefficient markets -- particularly those with a high barrier to entry -- is a very common topic that I should have no need to inform you of if you had any knowledge whatsoever in the area. It's Econ 101, and if you really need it explained to you, then I'm not going to bother discussing something way over your head.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps you're of the Austrian school of thought, in which monopolies are not inefficient because they are not permanent, and some other entity will come along and compete given a long enough period of time.
I'm not going to bother making this a discussion about rights, because my concern has nothing to do with rights, it has to do with economics. You asserted something in your OP that runs counter to economic theory -- namely, that deregulation of a market with high barriers to entry will result in an efficient competitive market. Put the straw men down, and either address the economics or admit that you don't understand them -- regardless of rights, the economics do not support your assertion.
The cost to build out infrastructure for cable is massive, which is why it's a natural monopoly.
If we look at the market for internet access (which is different than the cable monopoly I was discussing previously) in your example, you have three competitors -- FiOS from your phone company, DSL from the phone company, and cable from the cable company. Let's see... the phone co and the cable co... both of whom have existing infrastructure that reduces the barrier to entry.
Ever wonder why a new company doesn't sprout up to offer FiOS? It's because the barrier to entry is too high for the company to be profitable, when there are competitors with lower infrastructure costs (due to other lines of business). As for competition, the internet service provided by the competitors (DSL, Cable, FiOS) is not directly comparable -- DSL cannot deliver the same service as FiOS. FiOS is not going to have to compete at the highest speeds, until someone builds out competing infrastructure... which I don't see happening for a very, very long time (if ever)... thus FiOS will have a natural monopoly on the highest speeds.
It's not real competition if the services/goods sold by "competitors" are not fungible.
As for governmental interference in competition, have you checked out why your locality took so long to approve FiOS? I did, in my town. Part of the reason was agreements with te cable provider, but the largest reason for the delay was assigning new right-of-way to Verizon, and determining how to compensate landowners. Imagine the same problem for entirely new infrastructure.
To make a long story short, allowing competition to work efficiently requires a relatively efficient market, and the high cost of entry into internet access provision (due to infrastructure) prevents any real competition from occuring in an unregulated environment.
Thanks for entirely missing my point, were you purposely avoiding addressing it?
Except in the current system, that's not possible, thanks to government restriction, as always.
With the huge capital outlay for infrastructure, there would be de facto monopoly, as there would be no way for a company to offset the capital expense with sales. The existant monopoly (the first entrant) would underprice sales to the point where the second entrant would be forced out of business.
Let me stop you there: first, you either accept that people have individual rights, or you accept the violation those rights.
Let me stop you there: either you believe that a false dichotomy straw man is a useful component to discussion, or you do not. This not about rights, it's about economics. You can spin it as rights all you want, but the simple fact is that individuals have long traded individual rights for collective good, and it's a matter of scale that determines how they choose to govern themselves.
Parallel lines. Redundancy benefits the customer, who can switch to another provider if one goes down. Competition reduces costs and increases efficiency and desirable results, all benefiting the customer.
And who is going to pay to build out a parallel line? No one -- they know they will not be able to compete against an existant monopoly.
you can go on about violation of rights, etc, all you want, but the simple truth is that markets like this are inefficient by nature, and will result in monopoly time and again due to huge capital outlay requirements just to enter the market.
Go on and blather about anarchy and rights all you want... but admit that the outcome is not always best for the individual in pure capitalism, due to imperfect markets.
I'd like to see your arguments against this, besides the paltry "that's ridiculous!", or "that's not convenient in the short-term!", or "that means more money will have to be invested by a company!"
My argument against this is that it does not work due to inefficient markets. If the cable market were perfectly efficient, then it would make sense to lay out a competing parallel infrastructure... as long as all markets were perfectly efficient. But, if there existed a non-efficient market somewhere, that capital should be invested in that market, to take advantage of the inefficiency. End result? The capital to build out the infrastructure is only invested if expected returns are better there than elsewhere... and given the existance of a current monopoly in that market, there is no way that the best choice is to invest in that infrastructure. So -- no one builds out the redundant infrastructure, and competition doesn't magically appear just because you want it to.
My other argument against it is that it is folly to believe that a functional system can exist where no individual gives up rights in exchange for benefit. This is the nature of collective law. What matters, then, is to what extant you believe a collective group should be able to make decisions for the common good. It's just splitting hairs... you draw the line one place, I draw it somewhere else. None of which matters to the question at hand, which is "How would a competitive environment come to be in a market with a huge barrier to entry and an established monopoly in place, without regulation?"
Please, take your straw man and stuff it. I don't really care what your views on rights are... what I want to know is whether you have the economic understanding of what you propose, and how you think it is possible for a competitive market in cable to arise without regulation or state sponsorship of the infrastructure.
You have only government restriction on the existence of competition to thank for the monopolies these jokers are able to maintain, despite customer demand for better services. In a more free system, customers would have threatened to leave for another provider by now. That would have forced providers to upgrade their systems to support the growing userbase. Not so here. There's no other choice.
And, pray tell, who would have paid to lay out the cable, if there were no assurances that the owner of said cable could have a monopoly? There is a significant initial cost to providing cable service. Guess what would tend to happen naturally if there were no regulation?
A monopoly provider. With no regulatory oversight to ensure *some* decent level of service.
Look, I understand that the free market has a lot of benefits, but in a capital-intensive industry where profitability is hard to get without a monopoly, the best thing for end-customers is a well-regulated monopoly. Of course I've yet to see a well-regulated monopoly... but on the other hand I've yet to see a natural monopoly act well either.
Anyway, getting back to my point -- how can you have free competition in cable? One company lays out the capital to lay out the physical infrastructure, then everyone gets to use that infrastructure? Why would the company lay out the cash to build out, if they only see a fraction of the benefit? Say they charge others to use the infrastructure... without regulation, why wouldn't they charge exorbitant prices, so that they'd be able to outcompete their competitors? Wouldn't it take regulation to prevent that?
Or perhaps you'd prefer that the government build out the infrastructure, for all to share... but that doesn't seem to jibe with the rest of your views.
Please, explain to me, how would you propose deregulating the cable industry in a manner that allows competitive access, does not involve government ownership of the infrastructure, and results in greater options for the end-consumer?
Just to note, that the peg was removed, but replaced by a different peg. The RMB is now tied to a basket of currencies, of which the USD is only one component.
As a side note, related to where to put assets right now, there are no economies completely immune to the problem in the US. Some have more exposure to US-based risk than others, but no country is unaffected -- we have a truly global economy.
The biggest thing I worry about is a global inflationary spiral. If we can keep US price inflation under 5% for five years or so, I think we'll be OK in the long run... but inflationary pressure from other currencies may make this impossible... in which case, I think we're looking at a global depression.
1: Some renewable energy source that actually can handle dense loads 24/7. Solar can't. Nuclear really can't because contractors are too inept or corrupt to do a job right. Pretty much, fusion is the only thing we got going.
Dude, if you have fusion going, then wtf are you doing applying to google for some share of a 10MM grant?! You could have billions in VC funding.
5: Tape backup that has a modern arial density, and that is inexpensive. Hard disks are fickle and fragile, and tape isn't perfect, but can stand the test of time.
10 pt or 12 pt arial? Fuck that. I want Times New Roman density.
From Jack's press release regarding his filing of some kind of emergency injunction aggainst the bar:
Thompson always wanted to own a Bar. Now, armed with multiple US Supreme Court rulings that no state bar can do what it has done to Thompson, he is set to own that Bar.
1. Doesn't he mean "pwn" that Bar?
2. Thompson knew this was going to happen, so last week he file an action against the bar; now he claims his disbarment was retaliation. Nice pre-emptive strike last week, Jack -- too bad it's as transparent as day that it's unrelated to the numerous reasons the Florida Bar Association decided you're unfit to practice law.
The insurance company makes a lot of acquisitions, and the first step is always unloading everything the new company does that isn't insurance, no matter how profitable they've been.
Where've you been the past few years? Insurance companies used to be forbidden from operating in certain other areas. Not so anymore... look at Prudential. They have diversified bigtime.
As for Oracle in particular... this is not an unrelated product. Providing hardware for their software could potentially reduce their support costs significantly. I haven't seen any numbers, and I'm only slightly familiar with Oracle's pricing structure for support, but it seems to me that some of their clientele might prefer one-stop shopping... as they then save money on installation costs.
So rather tha seeing this as Oracle moving away from their core business, maybe a better perspective would be to think of this as supporting their core business.
One other thing to note -- Oracle's core business is no longer software, it's services. While the services business is largely dependent on their software offerings, take a look at their recent revenue figures... and take a bigger look at where their projected growth is.
Economy 101: Boycotts do not work in a monopoly or oligopoly market.
That's not true. If a game developer's business side determines that [lost sales from piracy] would be less than [lost sales from DRM disgruntlement], they would release their game without DRM. The problem is that piracy "losses" are often overestimated... though from personal experience, I can guarantee that the analysts know losses are overstated, but sing a different song in order to get the legislation they want.
Doesn't matter though, PC games will follow the same path as the music industry, they are just behind a few years. We'll get massive piracy, an unwillingness to have online distribution, then an acceptance of DRM in order to get our games cheaply and easily (a la iTunes). The big problem with Spore is that the DRM is poorly implemented.
The only lesson learned from this fiasco will be to have less intrusive DRM on games... it's not going away. What the game execs are hearing is "I won't buy it because the DRM is a PITA". They are not hearing "I won't buy it because I don't like DRM".
Maybe it's just me, but Isis and Mastodon seem to be just classic thrash revivalists... I mean really, wasn't Slayer doing the same stuff a decade or two ago? Just my honest opinion, maybe I'm not catching some of the subtleties -- and also IMO, it sure beats the hell out of Nu Metal or whatever it's called.
I'd also add Yes (particularly the early stuff), Genesis (only the early stuff), and ELP.
Or, go to Pandora.com and check out some of the prog rock shared stations people have created.
Mine is not strictly prog rock, as I've added XTC to the seeds to get some variety... sometimes it goes off on a post-punk tangent, which I kind of like (though most prog rock fans might be appalled).
It's creatively:) named "Red Flayer's Prog Rock".
Or just create your own station and seed it with a couple prog rock core groups, like Floyd, Zep, and King Crimson.
(1),(4),(5)? What happened to (2) and (3), are they still on Mars exploring?
They must have some pretty advanced counting methods over there at NASA. Either that or they royally screwed up the 1, 2, 5 -- no 3! gag from Holy Grail.
I agree with you, but as to whether it is an *illegal* anti-competitive measure is a different thing.
Comcast is not using its cable monopoly to inhibit competition in the market for high-speed internet (which is not illegal anyway, since they do not have a monopoly in TV service -- satellite, broadcast, and eventually some kind of TVOIP). Comcast is using it's position (NOT a monopoly position, according to the feds, since there is competition from DSL/FIOS/satellite etc according to the FCC) in the internet market to impact their position in the TV market.
Yes, it's deplorable... but since they do not have a monopoly on either video content delivery, or on "high-speed" internet delivery, there's nothing illegal about it.
This actually leads me to another thought... it's often remarked on slashdot how the definition of 'broadband' in the US is laughable. Maybe this is because if we raised the threshold to meet international standards of broadband, we'd see that there is only a single supplier in most areas, meaning that the government would likely be forced to step in and regulate that provider more assiduously. Maybe this is why the cable companies do not mind DSL being classified as broadband?
I'm not a goofus moron that has no credit, I just choose not to pay exorberant amounts of interest to some faceless bank to use their money temporarily... money that happens to be in my account, and readily available.
You're a goofus moron for not seeing how credit cards work in your favor. The money is in your account, readily available? Why not have it earn interest for an extra couple weeks until you need to pay the credit card bill?
If you carry a balance on a credit card, you're doing it wrong. If you pay in full every month, you're actually *making* money from the interest-free credit your card issuer extends to you.
My daily-use card has an $11k limit. I charge almost everything to this card, then pay it off in full every month. My typical bill is around $3k. Over the course of a year, not only do I have the airline miles from the card, but I also make around an extra $50 in interest from my bank, since my money sits in my account for longer.
Without these options, I guess we purists have no on-line options.
Yeah, I used to be a cash-on-the-barrel type of guy, but when I realized I was giving up free money... well, I changed my tune. As for on-line purchasing, if you're a "purist" (which some people might call a luddite), then why are you shopping online anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of being from India and just looking for a job in India is amusing.
In India, most jobs are filled by referral, not by posting a job listing and screening applicants. This is changing, as companies like Polaris have open houses where they screen and hire "freshers"... but in general, looking for a job without a personal recommendation letter from one of your contacts to one of their personal contacts in another company can be difficult.
In my experience, there are plenty of opportunities for American workers... as long as you want to be in management, or if you have specific business knowledge that's hard to find outside the US. The hard part is convincing the employer that you're worth the pay. Although it's important to note that $50,000 US in India can be enough to get you a decent home with a staff of servants... just make sure you have a driver.
The other possibility is to work in the US for a foreign company. I see a lot of this going on nowadays... global businesses who need to maintain a US presence (in particular, a NY-area presence) often have American employees working locally to manage workflow, processes, and teams in India, China, or elsewhere.
FWIW, WoW was in exactly the same boat a few years ago. MMOs were something only ubergeeks did. D&D was something only ubergeeks did[1]. Who would ever think to combine the two? Was Blizzard trying to create the Sum of All Geeks?
Besides, with Blizzard running ads with Mr T and other pop culture icons, MMOs are definitely hitting the mainstream.
[1]I may have tucked an onion into my belt, as was the fashion of the time, but in my day lots of people played D&D... even football players and members of the Homecoming Court and the FFA and the gearheads. The only population in my HS that didn't have quite a few D&D players was the girls. Which is why eventually D&D got relegated to geekdom, IMO.
You already missed the boat, Oracle stock has been taking a beating today (last time I checked, down over 10%... might have rallied a bit in the late afternoon).
Oracle's results are similar to SAP's... 12-14% YoY gains this quarter, but a very poor end, which doesn't bode well for the current quarter.
Keep in mind that both Oracle and SAP hiked prices across the board earlier this year, Oracle was about a 15% hike... which means they've lost net customers if their revenues have not increased 15% YoY. Which is to be expected, of course, raise your prices and you'll lose some customers... but I think Q4 is going to be pretty painful for Oracle and SAP both.
C'mon now, this is from Toshiba, not Sony or Apple.
Everyone knows that Toshiba laptop "heat events" are caused by their mobile modules provided from Intel.
Although, to be fair, it appears Toshiba is hedging their bets... to determine if your Toshiba laptop's battery might explode, just check the fan motor and make sure it's not this model.
Sorry, MS was a bad example. Note, though, that there are individuals at MS with unexercised options (or there were when they started issuing dividends) -- this is why MS rewrote their option policy.
Good luck with that. Those with vested stock options will never issue a dividend if they can help it, by doing so they reduce their own profit when they leave the company. This is a big reason why paying out dividends is so uncommon in tech companies -- the people calling the shots have too much to lose by issuing dividends. And that is without the tax advantages...
If you want dividends, stay away from tech companies. Look at MS, for example -- rebuying stock instead of issuing a dividend. Who really benefits from that -- those who have unexercised options. Not the common shareholder.
The hard part is realizing there is a problem without the raving nutters in the room.
The guys on the fringe of any issue stimulate dialogue on that issue... they may even shift the center a little bit to their side. This is why we must value the role of demagogue in our society.
Seriously, with RMS taking the hard line on privacy, etc, could we even hope to salvage what little privacy we have left?
That said, once we get the 'nutters' out of the room, we can get down to business (I'm looking at you RonPaulRossPerotRalphNader) -- hopefully taking their concerns into account.
Care to defend your original post and address the questions I raised? Or still working on the straw men?
As for my assertions re: ascendence of monopoly in inefficient markets, do me a favor and take some economics classes. While you're at it, take some economic history classics. Emergence of monopolies/cartels in inefficient markets -- particularly those with a high barrier to entry -- is a very common topic that I should have no need to inform you of if you had any knowledge whatsoever in the area. It's Econ 101, and if you really need it explained to you, then I'm not going to bother discussing something way over your head.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps you're of the Austrian school of thought, in which monopolies are not inefficient because they are not permanent, and some other entity will come along and compete given a long enough period of time.
I'm not going to bother making this a discussion about rights, because my concern has nothing to do with rights, it has to do with economics. You asserted something in your OP that runs counter to economic theory -- namely, that deregulation of a market with high barriers to entry will result in an efficient competitive market. Put the straw men down, and either address the economics or admit that you don't understand them -- regardless of rights, the economics do not support your assertion.
The cost to build out infrastructure for cable is massive, which is why it's a natural monopoly.
If we look at the market for internet access (which is different than the cable monopoly I was discussing previously) in your example, you have three competitors -- FiOS from your phone company, DSL from the phone company, and cable from the cable company. Let's see... the phone co and the cable co... both of whom have existing infrastructure that reduces the barrier to entry.
Ever wonder why a new company doesn't sprout up to offer FiOS? It's because the barrier to entry is too high for the company to be profitable, when there are competitors with lower infrastructure costs (due to other lines of business). As for competition, the internet service provided by the competitors (DSL, Cable, FiOS) is not directly comparable -- DSL cannot deliver the same service as FiOS. FiOS is not going to have to compete at the highest speeds, until someone builds out competing infrastructure... which I don't see happening for a very, very long time (if ever)... thus FiOS will have a natural monopoly on the highest speeds.
It's not real competition if the services/goods sold by "competitors" are not fungible.
As for governmental interference in competition, have you checked out why your locality took so long to approve FiOS? I did, in my town. Part of the reason was agreements with te cable provider, but the largest reason for the delay was assigning new right-of-way to Verizon, and determining how to compensate landowners. Imagine the same problem for entirely new infrastructure.
To make a long story short, allowing competition to work efficiently requires a relatively efficient market, and the high cost of entry into internet access provision (due to infrastructure) prevents any real competition from occuring in an unregulated environment.
With the huge capital outlay for infrastructure, there would be de facto monopoly, as there would be no way for a company to offset the capital expense with sales. The existant monopoly (the first entrant) would underprice sales to the point where the second entrant would be forced out of business.
Let me stop you there: either you believe that a false dichotomy straw man is a useful component to discussion, or you do not. This not about rights, it's about economics. You can spin it as rights all you want, but the simple fact is that individuals have long traded individual rights for collective good, and it's a matter of scale that determines how they choose to govern themselves.
And who is going to pay to build out a parallel line? No one -- they know they will not be able to compete against an existant monopoly.
you can go on about violation of rights, etc, all you want, but the simple truth is that markets like this are inefficient by nature, and will result in monopoly time and again due to huge capital outlay requirements just to enter the market.
Go on and blather about anarchy and rights all you want... but admit that the outcome is not always best for the individual in pure capitalism, due to imperfect markets.
My argument against this is that it does not work due to inefficient markets. If the cable market were perfectly efficient, then it would make sense to lay out a competing parallel infrastructure... as long as all markets were perfectly efficient. But, if there existed a non-efficient market somewhere, that capital should be invested in that market, to take advantage of the inefficiency. End result? The capital to build out the infrastructure is only invested if expected returns are better there than elsewhere... and given the existance of a current monopoly in that market, there is no way that the best choice is to invest in that infrastructure. So -- no one builds out the redundant infrastructure, and competition doesn't magically appear just because you want it to.
My other argument against it is that it is folly to believe that a functional system can exist where no individual gives up rights in exchange for benefit. This is the nature of collective law. What matters, then, is to what extant you believe a collective group should be able to make decisions for the common good. It's just splitting hairs... you draw the line one place, I draw it somewhere else. None of which matters to the question at hand, which is "How would a competitive environment come to be in a market with a huge barrier to entry and an established monopoly in place, without regulation?"
Please, take your straw man and stuff it. I don't really care what your views on rights are... what I want to know is whether you have the economic understanding of what you propose, and how you think it is possible for a competitive market in cable to arise without regulation or state sponsorship of the infrastructure.
And, pray tell, who would have paid to lay out the cable, if there were no assurances that the owner of said cable could have a monopoly? There is a significant initial cost to providing cable service. Guess what would tend to happen naturally if there were no regulation?
A monopoly provider. With no regulatory oversight to ensure *some* decent level of service.
Look, I understand that the free market has a lot of benefits, but in a capital-intensive industry where profitability is hard to get without a monopoly, the best thing for end-customers is a well-regulated monopoly. Of course I've yet to see a well-regulated monopoly... but on the other hand I've yet to see a natural monopoly act well either.
Anyway, getting back to my point -- how can you have free competition in cable? One company lays out the capital to lay out the physical infrastructure, then everyone gets to use that infrastructure? Why would the company lay out the cash to build out, if they only see a fraction of the benefit? Say they charge others to use the infrastructure... without regulation, why wouldn't they charge exorbitant prices, so that they'd be able to outcompete their competitors? Wouldn't it take regulation to prevent that?
Or perhaps you'd prefer that the government build out the infrastructure, for all to share... but that doesn't seem to jibe with the rest of your views.
Please, explain to me, how would you propose deregulating the cable industry in a manner that allows competitive access, does not involve government ownership of the infrastructure, and results in greater options for the end-consumer?
Just to note, that the peg was removed, but replaced by a different peg. The RMB is now tied to a basket of currencies, of which the USD is only one component.
As a side note, related to where to put assets right now, there are no economies completely immune to the problem in the US. Some have more exposure to US-based risk than others, but no country is unaffected -- we have a truly global economy.
The biggest thing I worry about is a global inflationary spiral. If we can keep US price inflation under 5% for five years or so, I think we'll be OK in the long run... but inflationary pressure from other currencies may make this impossible... in which case, I think we're looking at a global depression.
Dude, if you have fusion going, then wtf are you doing applying to google for some share of a 10MM grant?! You could have billions in VC funding.
10 pt or 12 pt arial? Fuck that. I want Times New Roman density.
What are you doing on Slashdot, Senator McCain?
Sounds like the narration of one of those horrible 80s space pornos.
That's just plain disgusting and in bad taste. You're kidding, right?
Politicians do not crunch when you eat them, unless you deep-fry them first. The proper way to serve them is thinly sliced on a bed of lettuce.
1. Doesn't he mean "pwn" that Bar?
2. Thompson knew this was going to happen, so last week he file an action against the bar; now he claims his disbarment was retaliation. Nice pre-emptive strike last week, Jack -- too bad it's as transparent as day that it's unrelated to the numerous reasons the Florida Bar Association decided you're unfit to practice law.
Where've you been the past few years? Insurance companies used to be forbidden from operating in certain other areas. Not so anymore... look at Prudential. They have diversified bigtime.
As for Oracle in particular... this is not an unrelated product. Providing hardware for their software could potentially reduce their support costs significantly. I haven't seen any numbers, and I'm only slightly familiar with Oracle's pricing structure for support, but it seems to me that some of their clientele might prefer one-stop shopping... as they then save money on installation costs.
So rather tha seeing this as Oracle moving away from their core business, maybe a better perspective would be to think of this as supporting their core business.
One other thing to note -- Oracle's core business is no longer software, it's services. While the services business is largely dependent on their software offerings, take a look at their recent revenue figures... and take a bigger look at where their projected growth is.
That's not true. If a game developer's business side determines that [lost sales from piracy] would be less than [lost sales from DRM disgruntlement], they would release their game without DRM. The problem is that piracy "losses" are often overestimated... though from personal experience, I can guarantee that the analysts know losses are overstated, but sing a different song in order to get the legislation they want.
Doesn't matter though, PC games will follow the same path as the music industry, they are just behind a few years. We'll get massive piracy, an unwillingness to have online distribution, then an acceptance of DRM in order to get our games cheaply and easily (a la iTunes). The big problem with Spore is that the DRM is poorly implemented.
The only lesson learned from this fiasco will be to have less intrusive DRM on games... it's not going away. What the game execs are hearing is "I won't buy it because the DRM is a PITA". They are not hearing "I won't buy it because I don't like DRM".
Maybe it's just me, but Isis and Mastodon seem to be just classic thrash revivalists... I mean really, wasn't Slayer doing the same stuff a decade or two ago? Just my honest opinion, maybe I'm not catching some of the subtleties -- and also IMO, it sure beats the hell out of Nu Metal or whatever it's called.
To me, prog metal == classic thrash.
Prog rock is a whole different can of beans.
I'd also add Yes (particularly the early stuff), Genesis (only the early stuff), and ELP.
:) named "Red Flayer's Prog Rock".
Or, go to Pandora.com and check out some of the prog rock shared stations people have created.
Mine is not strictly prog rock, as I've added XTC to the seeds to get some variety... sometimes it goes off on a post-punk tangent, which I kind of like (though most prog rock fans might be appalled).
It's creatively
Or just create your own station and seed it with a couple prog rock core groups, like Floyd, Zep, and King Crimson.
(1),(4),(5)? What happened to (2) and (3), are they still on Mars exploring?
They must have some pretty advanced counting methods over there at NASA. Either that or they royally screwed up the 1, 2, 5 -- no 3! gag from Holy Grail.
I agree with you, but as to whether it is an *illegal* anti-competitive measure is a different thing.
Comcast is not using its cable monopoly to inhibit competition in the market for high-speed internet (which is not illegal anyway, since they do not have a monopoly in TV service -- satellite, broadcast, and eventually some kind of TVOIP). Comcast is using it's position (NOT a monopoly position, according to the feds, since there is competition from DSL/FIOS/satellite etc according to the FCC) in the internet market to impact their position in the TV market.
Yes, it's deplorable... but since they do not have a monopoly on either video content delivery, or on "high-speed" internet delivery, there's nothing illegal about it.
This actually leads me to another thought... it's often remarked on slashdot how the definition of 'broadband' in the US is laughable. Maybe this is because if we raised the threshold to meet international standards of broadband, we'd see that there is only a single supplier in most areas, meaning that the government would likely be forced to step in and regulate that provider more assiduously. Maybe this is why the cable companies do not mind DSL being classified as broadband?
Hosting a gaming server for his group is not a personal use... so the AND statement is false, regardless of whether it is commercial or not.
If he were to host a server that only he accessed from a location outside his LAN, then it's personal use.
You're a goofus moron for not seeing how credit cards work in your favor. The money is in your account, readily available? Why not have it earn interest for an extra couple weeks until you need to pay the credit card bill?
If you carry a balance on a credit card, you're doing it wrong. If you pay in full every month, you're actually *making* money from the interest-free credit your card issuer extends to you.
My daily-use card has an $11k limit. I charge almost everything to this card, then pay it off in full every month. My typical bill is around $3k. Over the course of a year, not only do I have the airline miles from the card, but I also make around an extra $50 in interest from my bank, since my money sits in my account for longer.
Yeah, I used to be a cash-on-the-barrel type of guy, but when I realized I was giving up free money... well, I changed my tune. As for on-line purchasing, if you're a "purist" (which some people might call a luddite), then why are you shopping online anyway?