What I believe will happen, is that an economic homeostasis will occur (over several decades) whether we like it or not.
The problem with this is without government bailouts the US economy will slip into third world status.
This homeostasis will involve deflation. This means everyone who invested in an education, home, or any major durable good will be completely and totally screwed without government intervention.
Additionally, if not handled properly (i doubt it CAN be handled properly) we will end up rolling back 100 years of progress and main street will be tar-paper shacks while wall-street will have mansions the size of herst castle.
It's already happening, in case you didn't notice. I remember not so long ago when a VP made about 600k a year. Now its in the millions while they cut jobs and export them overseas.
Either people will unionize, or the nation will be pushed into ruin.
Structural unemployment ceases to be productive when sectors get shipped overseas faster than people can recover their training costs. If politicians dont put a stop to offshoring, the US will turn into an impoverished, third world backwater.
The USA has the best universities and the best talent in the globe--that's where IBM (and all others must concentrate, the hardest, most value-added tasks).
Sorry, but only above average people can accomplish the "hardest, most value-added tasks", and the kicker is no company wants to TRAIN them. Today's grads are learning it the hard way:
"Im interested in an entry level position" "do you have 2 years experience?" "no, but it's labeled 'entry level'" "You need 2 years experience." "And where do I get that" "I dont know" (real answer "nowhere, now enjoy the rest of your life flipping burgers while the student loan company garnishes your wages")
Either way, you have to have average jobs or there will be no middle class to buy your stuff.
This is the underlying problem in the financial crisis right now. Companies offshored and put pressure on wages, freezing them for upwards of a decade while inflation continued at 3% and energy costs skyrocketed.
People assumed debt to keep afloat, but eventually their capacity for debt gave out and they ended up defaulting. Now we're facing the spectre of deflation, which is bad for both joe sixpack and business.
The lesson: You can't lower the real cost of goods over the long term, the best you can do is short term, and the short term is over.
I've seen several large guilds "0wn3d" in this manner, and it's not pretty.
tens of thousands of gold and/or tens of thousands in enchanting mats, rare recipes, epic pieces all go up in smoke.
Guilds at that level of raiding are generally cellular in nature, with various cliques which get together to play. They don't recover when the roll is stripped, the gbank emptied, and the guild disbanded.
As someone who plays more traditional and structured MMO's, I find the idea that so much work can be reduced to ruins by one putz to be horrifying, especially given that games are supposed to be a way to escape the real-world.
I investigated further, like someone who just saw a massive train wreck, by reading the forums.
Goons seemed to have been given admin access to and archived the BoB forums as well, and have been posting juicier tidbits.
Having administered a "guild gone stale" in WoW, I can recognize the tone and content of the post. My conclusion is band of brothers had outgrown its purpose and was now as adrift and stale as GM.
The euthenasia of this massive organization will breathe new life into the game, but it may also drive a large number of these people who were screwed out of the game, making a huge dent in the userbase.
the info is true i'm italian (for the manner in which are going things in italy since some year, i'm quite sorry of being italian) all the red light system was made so only for generate money:(
that's italian style
we should delegate our country government to a smarter country (every country in a range of 2000Km from here is good)
i'm happy to see that news like that seems strange to "normal" people, cause for italian that's the normality pls help us
I'm glad to see the US is safely outside thies 2000km radius.
I agree with your argument from the standpoint of what *should* happen. I'm rather pessimistic though on whether it will happen. The US has, for better or worse, based a lot of the economy on intangible goods
This disastrous decision to turn the US into a dot-com company (made in the dot-com era) has already been put into effect.
As doctorow has pointed out, this policy was intended to make up the balance of trade, which means domestic law means nothing, and our quaint and victorian laws are given the attention of an occasional scoff by the world's fastest growing markets.
The disaster has already happened, it's time to stop inflcting pain and move along. It's time to repeal anti-circumvention law and roll back the duration of copyright protection.
In 1998 they passed a tiny little clause which gives them full regulatory control with which to crush it to death in the womb.
They have been doing just that ever since, and those allowed by their holy grace to survive are regulated into faceless conformity by license terms dictating the tiniest minutia of their construction.
The fact of the matter is, you asked for it, you got it, and arguing that 250gb a month isn't reasonable would be tough. Comcast is right - that should cover 99% of their customers, and of the 1% who "need" more bandwidth, 99% of them probably aren't using it for legitimate downloads. Anyone who needs.
Imagine if this same philosophy were applied at the time of dialup.
You'd never have high resolution image boards, or youtube, or open source news, etc etc etc.
Now everyone is browsing youtube. The obama inauguration speech was 120 megs on youtube for just a couple minutes, and most households have more than one member.
Those who do live in nations where caps were put in place when "reasonable persons" were using 4 and 5 gigs a month are now unable to download political activism videos and have to decide between upgrading their world of warcraft or actually playing it that month.
Hard caps are the wrong way to go, and don't directly deal with the issue of congestion. They are, in a word, fraud.
I for one, and this might just be my superstitious self, would be concerned about the prospect of my bodily fluids interacting with biological material that has been, so to speak, "immortalized."
That is nothing the Dem's haven't done for years. Yeah! High School Politics!!!
False.
In most votes on bush policy you had considerable support from the other side of the aisle.
The minute the situation is reversed the republicans pull this "not one vote, no matter what" crap.
This kind of "partisan for the sake of it" garbage is the reason why they continue to lose seats. Here's hoping they lose more and more each election until they learn being the opposition doesn't mean getting in the way for the sake of getting in the way.
The democrats were voted in overwhelmingly. This means the public wants what the democrats offered in their policy platforms. It's the republican's jobs to offer their perspective and grounding to that platform, not blindly rail against it tooth and nail.
This means instead of saying "no universal healthcare", they should be saying "If the public wants it, this is how it should work"
Nuclear plants can still do this, just get sane environmentalists working with engineers to provide supreme safety redundancy and get the "if its not zero impact it shouldn't be allowed" enviro-nazis out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
What I believe will happen, is that an economic homeostasis will occur (over several decades) whether we like it or not.
The problem with this is without government bailouts the US economy will slip into third world status.
This homeostasis will involve deflation. This means everyone who invested in an education, home, or any major durable good will be completely and totally screwed without government intervention.
Additionally, if not handled properly (i doubt it CAN be handled properly) we will end up rolling back 100 years of progress and main street will be tar-paper shacks while wall-street will have mansions the size of herst castle.
It's already happening, in case you didn't notice. I remember not so long ago when a VP made about 600k a year. Now its in the millions while they cut jobs and export them overseas.
Either people will unionize, or the nation will be pushed into ruin.
Or better yet, tax the shit out of them
surprise, the reaganite scumbags have "disputed the neutrality" of this article.
Sorry schmucks, but reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Someone failed multi-round game theory.
Structural unemployment ceases to be productive when sectors get shipped overseas faster than people can recover their training costs. If politicians dont put a stop to offshoring, the US will turn into an impoverished, third world backwater.
The USA has the best universities and the best talent in the globe--that's where IBM (and all others must concentrate, the hardest, most value-added tasks).
Sorry, but only above average people can accomplish the "hardest, most value-added tasks", and the kicker is no company wants to TRAIN them. Today's grads are learning it the hard way:
"Im interested in an entry level position"
"do you have 2 years experience?"
"no, but it's labeled 'entry level'"
"You need 2 years experience."
"And where do I get that"
"I dont know" (real answer "nowhere, now enjoy the rest of your life flipping burgers while the student loan company garnishes your wages")
Either way, you have to have average jobs or there will be no middle class to buy your stuff.
This is the underlying problem in the financial crisis right now.
Companies offshored and put pressure on wages, freezing them for upwards of a decade while inflation continued at 3% and energy costs skyrocketed.
People assumed debt to keep afloat, but eventually their capacity for debt gave out and they ended up defaulting. Now we're facing the spectre of deflation, which is bad for both joe sixpack and business.
The lesson:
You can't lower the real cost of goods over the long term, the best you can do is short term, and the short term is over.
You've never been in a heavy raiding guild.
I've seen several large guilds "0wn3d" in this manner, and it's not pretty.
tens of thousands of gold and/or tens of thousands in enchanting mats, rare recipes, epic pieces all go up in smoke.
Guilds at that level of raiding are generally cellular in nature, with various cliques which get together to play. They don't recover when the roll is stripped, the gbank emptied, and the guild disbanded.
Is this disparity good or bad? Is there any limit to how much disparity is good? Would we be better off if everybody had similar worries
without diversity creativity dies.
I do, however, agree that the level of human depravity you witness overseas should not be subjected to anyone.
As someone who plays more traditional and structured MMO's, I find the idea that so much work can be reduced to ruins by one putz to be horrifying, especially given that games are supposed to be a way to escape the real-world.
I investigated further, like someone who just saw a massive train wreck, by reading the forums.
Goons seemed to have been given admin access to and archived the BoB forums as well, and have been posting juicier tidbits.
Having administered a "guild gone stale" in WoW, I can recognize the tone and content of the post. My conclusion is band of brothers had outgrown its purpose and was now as adrift and stale as GM.
The euthenasia of this massive organization will breathe new life into the game, but it may also drive a large number of these people who were screwed out of the game, making a huge dent in the userbase.
I play games for fun, not to be screwed over by other players, and people wonder why EVE doesn't interest me enough...
Since the advent of g-banks, you can be screwed in the same way by a disgruntled officer in "safe" games like world of warcraft.
In fact, it happened once on my server about 6 months ago.
In other news, I just killed Revolver Ocelot in MGS. It was a really tough fight but I managed to pull it out. Can I get my own Slashdot article too?
Shove over n00b, I just downed hogger!
the info is true :(
i'm italian (for the manner in which are going things in italy since some year, i'm quite sorry of being italian)
all the red light system was made so only for generate money
that's italian style
we should delegate our country government to a smarter country (every country in a range of 2000Km from here is good)
i'm happy to see that news like that seems strange to "normal" people, cause for italian that's the normality
pls help us
I'm glad to see the US is safely outside thies 2000km radius.
The US: like italy, only worse.
I agree with your argument from the standpoint of what *should* happen. I'm rather pessimistic though on whether it will happen. The US has, for better or worse, based a lot of the economy on intangible goods
This disastrous decision to turn the US into a dot-com company (made in the dot-com era) has already been put into effect.
As doctorow has pointed out, this policy was intended to make up the balance of trade, which means domestic law means nothing, and our quaint and victorian laws are given the attention of an occasional scoff by the world's fastest growing markets.
The disaster has already happened, it's time to stop inflcting pain and move along. It's time to repeal anti-circumvention law and roll back the duration of copyright protection.
They don't have to understand it.
In 1998 they passed a tiny little clause which gives them full regulatory control with which to crush it to death in the womb.
They have been doing just that ever since, and those allowed by their holy grace to survive are regulated into faceless conformity by license terms dictating the tiniest minutia of their construction.
PVR-PLUS will never, ever happen.
I suppose putting the attack dogs for anti-competitive businesses in the DOJ is better than putting tax evaders in charge of the IRS...
Actually I find it an interesting move, much like obama's move to appoint a republican senator, freeing up a seat in a state governed by a democrat.
By recruiting these people he's denying that manpower to the forces of "evil(TM)"
There's really no such thing as a viable flat-fee unlimited-access service.
yes there is.
Capacity per second / number of users = each user's capacity per second.
No lies, no caps, no problems.
See here: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/02/04/twc.data.caps.spread/ ... :(
The collusion is already starting.
So that makes:
Time warner
Comcast
Charter
Anyone else want to add to this list?
RCN?
" Now everyone is complaining about the firm cap.
The fact of the matter is, you asked for it, you got it, and arguing that 250gb a month isn't reasonable would be tough. Comcast is right - that should cover 99% of their customers, and of the 1% who "need" more bandwidth, 99% of them probably aren't using it for legitimate downloads. Anyone who needs .
Imagine if this same philosophy were applied at the time of dialup.
You'd never have high resolution image boards, or youtube, or open source news, etc etc etc.
Now everyone is browsing youtube. The obama inauguration speech was 120 megs on youtube for just a couple minutes, and most households have more than one member.
Those who do live in nations where caps were put in place when "reasonable persons" were using 4 and 5 gigs a month are now unable to download political activism videos and have to decide between upgrading their world of warcraft or actually playing it that month.
Hard caps are the wrong way to go, and don't directly deal with the issue of congestion. They are, in a word, fraud.
I think you could use a healthy does of reality and a touch of humility. Infrastructure costs money and you are not the sole user thereof.
and we gave the hundreds of billions of dollars to build it out, which they promptly fed to their upper management in bonuses.
They squandered our tax money, and should now be held accountable!
I for one, and this might just be my superstitious self, would be concerned about the prospect of my bodily fluids interacting with biological material that has been, so to speak, "immortalized."
Ah, so you're saying you are an atheist?
"It am who am...the liver!"
That is nothing the Dem's haven't done for years. Yeah! High School Politics!!!
False.
In most votes on bush policy you had considerable support from the other side of the aisle.
The minute the situation is reversed the republicans pull this "not one vote, no matter what" crap.
This kind of "partisan for the sake of it" garbage is the reason why they continue to lose seats. Here's hoping they lose more and more each election until they learn being the opposition doesn't mean getting in the way for the sake of getting in the way.
The democrats were voted in overwhelmingly. This means the public wants what the democrats offered in their policy platforms. It's the republican's jobs to offer their perspective and grounding to that platform, not blindly rail against it tooth and nail.
This means instead of saying "no universal healthcare", they should be saying "If the public wants it, this is how it should work"
Yes, but if he is capable of hurting himself with the toys he owns, he may not make it to adulthood.
there's always that risk. parents need to learn to live with it or never eat steak in their homes again, or else they're hypocrites.
The lawn darts were a bit extreme but I have to agree.
what was extreme about them?
Read the notice.
How many kids have been killed by being struck with baseballs before or since? Baseball bats? Surely more than 3.
it was a joke.. /whoosh!
Yeah! Bring back Lawn Darts!
god forbid kids toys reflect real-world dangers.
If your kid is incapable of hurting himself with the toys he owns, he will not learn proper self-restraint.
Since Australians verge into two categories, the normal Australians with sense (a rarity) and the racist blundering idiots
you do realize america has that second category too. Who do you think votes republican every election?
Nuclear plants can still do this, just get sane environmentalists working with engineers to provide supreme safety redundancy and get the "if its not zero impact it shouldn't be allowed" enviro-nazis out of it.