Actually, not even Ubuntu understands that. (Why does Firefox have Ubuntu in its spellcheck dictionary, but not spellcheck?) Ubuntu would never tell you to "go into the kitchen and cook it yourself". It would, however, based on my experience, say:
-"Oh your food's not hot enough? Just give us your microwave real quick and we'll heat it right up!" "I don't carry a microwave with me to restaurants, especially ones that have signs outside advertising freedom from carrying around a microwave." "Oh, well, we don't really help thieves." [1] -me: "I tasted my food and it's too cold. Please correct it." Ubuntu: "Okay, problem with your food? First, let's do a little diagnostic. Taste it and see if it's too cold." [2] -"Okay, you can't get your food packaging open? First, tell us what's inside the package and every dietary disorder you have." "Um, what does that have to do with being able to open the container? Look, I explained that it's just a problem with the tabs not separating." "OH WELL GEEZ, IF YOUR GONNA BE LIKE THAT, you can just go fuck yourself." [3] -"Okay, if you were choking to death on our food, why didn't you just ask one of us for help? I mean, that doesn't make sense -- somehow, you're capable of ordering food, but not requesting a Heimlich?"[4]
[1] Ubuntu flaunts its philosophy of freedom from proprietary software, and the forum told me that if I want to access my computer after Ubuntu near-bricked it, I would need my Windows CD, then accused me of pirating it when I didn't instantly know where it was. [2] When I explained what was wrong and what I had tried, the first, and several other posters completely ignored that and suggested things I had tried several times over. [3] An Ubuntu forum poster demanded to know what version of Windows I had installed, in order to diagnose a well-defined error with the bootloader, which happens before it has any chance to load any OS, and then claimed it would be impossible to help me unless he knew this. [4] Several Ubuntu forum posters claimed that, as a logical consequence of me having burned the Ubuntu install CD, I must be able to burn new CDs they listed, forgetting that it was using the install CD in the first place that disabled my CD burner from being used!
A while ago I thought up the idea of having a translator that requires someone who understands the writing in its original form and then "tells" the computer what it means (by eliminating any ambiguities). This then reduces the problem to simple rule application. It would be robust against incomplete "meaning-imbuing" because the person who does so can have it translate to and back from the target language, and if anything's wrong, it's just a sign that they didn't give it enough meaning to go on, and they can further clarify.
While this obviously isn't fully automated, it would be much better than what currently exists, because it would mean that, as long as one person who understands it can work on it, anyone in the world can read it.
I remember searching for stuff like this that people are currently trying, and it didn't look like there was much out there. Eventually I was going to hire a patent attorney to search for something it would infringe on, but then the first three I asked said that it would create a conflict of interest with something they were currently working on for a client.
I think you've got me on 2. I suppose people could "buy gold" by redeeming notes and create a deflationary spiral. But explain to me what a deflationary spiral would look like when the currency is backed by gold? I'm having a hard time imagining this.
It would look the same as any deflationary spiral: gold would surge in value, people would be unable to repay their loans (or exercise the option they arranged on the loan) because what they sell is no longer worth enough to make money to service the debt, and anyone not holding the physical gold itself would be screwed because of that option exercise or illiquidity.
For 1, it would be a win-win to tie gold to a large currency system: it would stabilize the currency system, and it would stabilize the gold price. For example, a lot of the volatility of gold prices right now is (by some) attributed to the devaluing US Dollar, so if that is the case often enough, tie the two to each other and everybody wins. What am I missing?
To squeeze out arbitrage opportunites, gold's price (the dollar's price) would have to fluctuate as new gold hit the market. The fact that more people are influenced by this makes it worse, not better. The "no-arbitrage" constraint is more powerful than the "we just want to use it as money" constraint.
For 3, it's not the amount of oil in reserve, it's actually the amount being traded. As the amount of oil produced (and traded) increases, the value of the US Dollar increases. Thus Hurricane Katrina was a big deal.
I'm not sure how that contradicts the point I made. Oil is being put to use, instead of being held off the market to back the currency. So we get all the oil that's in the ground, plus get a currency. Under a gold standard, there would still be a currency, but no one could use the gold.
My objection referred to "You are also using an example of information transport (audio) and trying to apply it to physical object transport."
Saying my analogy is invalid because "that's information, this is physical objects", which the above quote does, it itself an invalid objection, and that was what I was referring to. He did list other reasons, but the quoted claim is an invalid response, and is unrelated to the rest of his post.
Now: what did your lastest philosophical example have to do with anything?
Okay, I'll respond, but I don't really have a the hatred of the gold standard that a lot of people do. Also, the WP article seeme to have significantly shortened by the time I posted my original comment.
1) Yes, gold follows supply and demand, but the problem is that these S/D curves result in significant daily volatility. It does not steadily increase like you seem to think. The problem with the volatility is that it exposes people to sharp, unpredictable price changes. (Yeah, yeah, "price changes are good, because they reflect..." I know. But that doesn't mean you have to tie all of your exchanges to a good that has "too much" volatility) The magnitude of these volatility cost is reflected in option prices on gold. If you think of it this way: all people must, in effect, buy a hedge against gold shifting in price.
It's true that you have to do this with government currency too; however, historically, it has been less volatile, so the risk is limited to the so-called "systematic risk" -- it requires a truly drastic crisis to have a major shift.
2) When you have to store gold to back the currency, you *are* that much closer to "running out of gold" because it's forever out of production. (If people actually start redeeming the notes and using the gold, the money supply contracts significantly, which can precipitate a crisis.) Storing it doesn't delay this event, but hastens it.
3) The analogy to oil seems valid, except that if more resources are diverted to extracting oil (or more generally, energy), that energy is put directly into production, instead of simply adding more backing to the currency.
You misunderstand. Specifying the *principle* that differentiates the circumstances is a valid response. Specifying the correct basis for comparison (showing it's not currently apples to apples) is a valid response. But merely saying that we're "talking" about topic X and not Y, is not a valid response. To give you an example:
"I think it's wrong to shoot trespassers because that involves violence." "Fighting in a war involves violence too. You're saying no one should ever fight in any war?" "No, but that's different. I'm talking about trespassers here, not wars."
Or, to skip to Godwin's law:
"Our university shouldn't let Jews in because a lot of them cheat." "A lot of non-Jews cheat too, should we ban them?" "Irrelevant. We're talking about the Jews here."
In my original response, I attempted to show the flaw in his reasoning by giving an example of the exact same argument being applied to a different technology we now know to be fallacious. Specifically, the inability to think of a use for a quicker invention because of present alternatives. His response to that: "We're talking about information here, not physical goods" is the same type of fallacy described above.
That's a very good point, and a great summary. However, I believe there is one asymmetry:
A non-desirable guy can be converted into the top 10% merely by giving women the appearance that other women want him. The converse is not true: making that ugly, nerdy girl appear to be fawned over by guys, won't make her suddenly attractive to the guys.
This is what I don't like about arguments against the gold standard.
The entire disadvantage you just listed as stemming from a gold standard is: "Things requiring gold would be unjustifiably expensive."
That advantage is so bad that no one can support a gold standard unless they "fundamentally misunderstand macroeconomics"?
It's things like this that for so long kept me from understanding the hate for the gold standard. The best arguments against it seemed to be pretty trivial, and yes, that includes the extensive list on Wikipedia.
Think how confusing that must sound: Those who support a gold standard are idiots because they are too dismissive of high prices for items containing gold. Huh?
After a while of wringing out sources for a serious argument, I finally found something more convincing, which is this:
1) Under a gold standard, the (very high) volatility of gold is imposed on the general price level, making it that much harder to plan economic activity, and magnifying negative events. 2) Significant amounts of gold must be held out of production, just for use as money, with signficant opportunity cost. 3) Increasingly huge portions of the economy are diverted to gold production during times of economic growth because that, rather than e.g. cancer cures, have the highest return.
Yeah, normally, you have to wait for a thread to tangent about money to have one of these discussions. A book about the Federal Reserve just doesn't seem appropriate for/.
Nevertheless, I'm going to comment:
The review claims that a number of statements are false. I mostly disagree:
The Federal Reserve is federal, i.e., a part of the US government.
It's a semantics game to claim otherwise. The Fed chairman is appointed by "the government", charterd by the government, and designated to achieve US domestic policy goals, and subject to being shut down if it acts too crazily. It is given significant autonomy by congress. Does that make it "not part of the government"? Okay, then I guess the federal courts aren't either.
The Federal Reserve is a reserve, i.e., it has monetary savings of real value.
The federal reserve has cash holdings. Cash has real value. Don't believe me? Go offer it in an exchange.
The Federal Reserve serves the public, and is not a cartel of private banks serving itself.
Kind of. Given its autonomy, it could achieve nefarious goals. However, members are required to basically give up any financial holdsing that could lead to a conflict of interest.
The US dollar has real value, i.e., it represents tangible wealth, such as gold securely stored at Fort Knox.
It is true that money is only a *claim* on real wealth; that, in other words, money flows in the opposite direction as wealth. However, you can in fact trade your money for real wealth; in that sense, it has real value.
Inflation is an increase in prices.
Usage determines meaning, and this is exactly how most people use the term "inflation" (in the economics sense).
Inflation is caused by greedy companies, not the US government or the Federal Reserve.
Under the definition the author wants to use, yes, the US gov. and Fed cause inflation. They're not the only cause of general price increases. There are also supply shocks.
I don't know what you thought my point was, but saying that the situation isn't analagous "because we're talking about X, not Y" isn't in general a valid response.
My point was that quick global transport appears to us now, as the telephone appeared to people in the 1880s. There are even quotes (that I didn't bother to look up) where people question the use of it on the grounds that "we have messenger boys". No one bothers to come up with uses for quick global transport, because it's always been so prohibitive expensive as to be out of the question. Once it's cheap, people will find a use for it.
Off the top of my head:
-A California computer company with factories in east Asia may prefer to have prototypes in their hands in 3 hours rather than 12. -Rich people may want the luxury of fish freshly caught across the globe, delivered to them so shortly after catching it. -And of course, human transport.
Like, there are going to be some existing male-as-female players, and to bring them in line with the policy, you'd have to make the female avatar male. Doesn't an RPG have to have some storyline reason for this?
(If they're planning to "grandfather" ["grandmother?"] existing male-as-female avatars, that'll probably create even more problems for them.)
A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific audio message to cross the globe in a couple tenths of a second. The postal system relieves any written information hauling needs, and the rise of messenger boys has meant that it's easy to send messages that need to be delivered more locally. So most remaining situations would be fully burdened (not amortized like all 2,000 letters in a mail truck). Now it takes a LOT of energy to get even the smallest audio message across the cables.
Yeah, DEFINITELY don't forget about that. As you can see in the link, they trademarked "Home", so if you're going to talk to people about real-world "homes", you'll just have to find another noun. Might I recommend: domicile, dwelling, hab(itat), pad, crib, and estate.
It's part of the whole trend to make products and ideas sound more complicated than they really are. See: the tendency of people to say "price point" instead of "price", regardless of the lack of additional information it provides.
When it comes to the term "product", I'd say the most annoying offenders are lenders. (eek, rhyme) They can't talk about the different mortgages they offer -- no, that would be too appropriate to the simplicity of what they do. They have to talk about the different "loan products" they sell. Not a loan, nay, a loan product. (And don't even get me started on their bastardization of the term "interest rate", which they equate with "payment rate".)
The moon landing was "one of the most important developments in human history", but that doesn't mean you should report it as news on slashdot forty years later!
Well, actually, the optical computers they mentioned could have serious implications for bombardment ability, because they enable the use of heavy artillery.
How pathetic to ONLY aspire to money. Why not aspire to be Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa or....
Probably because it's not a good thing to aspire to:
-Oppose condom usage in AIDS-stricken areas -Take money from despotic regimes and spend only a small portion on its intended purpose -Run a completely non-transparent operation -Make your clinic painful to teach people the value of suffering -Convince people that they should fake miracles in your name
Now you're just being silly. No one wants to ban the PS3 on the grounds that it's being sold "too cheaply" to inflate sales. That's ridiculous. The reason that informed, serious activists want the PS3 banned is because it uses too much energy for the benefit it provides, just like incandescent lights.
Don't try to trivialize the solid case for banning PS3s by associating it with the cranks who want to ban PS3s for being too cheap.
(Unfortunately, I have to remind people this is sarcastic...)
I'd criticize that, but the link depressed me too much.
I don't think it's the falling dollar per se that bothers me, but the fact that usurers like me aren't getting compensated with higher interest rates:-(
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, not even Ubuntu understands that. (Why does Firefox have Ubuntu in its spellcheck dictionary, but not spellcheck?) Ubuntu would never tell you to "go into the kitchen and cook it yourself". It would, however, based on my experience, say:
-"Oh your food's not hot enough? Just give us your microwave real quick and we'll heat it right up!" "I don't carry a microwave with me to restaurants, especially ones that have signs outside advertising freedom from carrying around a microwave." "Oh, well, we don't really help thieves." [1]
-me: "I tasted my food and it's too cold. Please correct it." Ubuntu: "Okay, problem with your food? First, let's do a little diagnostic. Taste it and see if it's too cold." [2]
-"Okay, you can't get your food packaging open? First, tell us what's inside the package and every dietary disorder you have." "Um, what does that have to do with being able to open the container? Look, I explained that it's just a problem with the tabs not separating." "OH WELL GEEZ, IF YOUR GONNA BE LIKE THAT, you can just go fuck yourself." [3]
-"Okay, if you were choking to death on our food, why didn't you just ask one of us for help? I mean, that doesn't make sense -- somehow, you're capable of ordering food, but not requesting a Heimlich?"[4]
[1] Ubuntu flaunts its philosophy of freedom from proprietary software, and the forum told me that if I want to access my computer after Ubuntu near-bricked it, I would need my Windows CD, then accused me of pirating it when I didn't instantly know where it was.
[2] When I explained what was wrong and what I had tried, the first, and several other posters completely ignored that and suggested things I had tried several times over.
[3] An Ubuntu forum poster demanded to know what version of Windows I had installed, in order to diagnose a well-defined error with the bootloader, which happens before it has any chance to load any OS, and then claimed it would be impossible to help me unless he knew this.
[4] Several Ubuntu forum posters claimed that, as a logical consequence of me having burned the Ubuntu install CD, I must be able to burn new CDs they listed, forgetting that it was using the install CD in the first place that disabled my CD burner from being used!
A while ago I thought up the idea of having a translator that requires someone who understands the writing in its original form and then "tells" the computer what it means (by eliminating any ambiguities). This then reduces the problem to simple rule application. It would be robust against incomplete "meaning-imbuing" because the person who does so can have it translate to and back from the target language, and if anything's wrong, it's just a sign that they didn't give it enough meaning to go on, and they can further clarify.
While this obviously isn't fully automated, it would be much better than what currently exists, because it would mean that, as long as one person who understands it can work on it, anyone in the world can read it.
I remember searching for stuff like this that people are currently trying, and it didn't look like there was much out there. Eventually I was going to hire a patent attorney to search for something it would infringe on, but then the first three I asked said that it would create a conflict of interest with something they were currently working on for a client.
I think you've got me on 2. I suppose people could "buy gold" by redeeming notes and create a deflationary spiral. But explain to me what a deflationary spiral would look like when the currency is backed by gold? I'm having a hard time imagining this.
It would look the same as any deflationary spiral: gold would surge in value, people would be unable to repay their loans (or exercise the option they arranged on the loan) because what they sell is no longer worth enough to make money to service the debt, and anyone not holding the physical gold itself would be screwed because of that option exercise or illiquidity.
For 1, it would be a win-win to tie gold to a large currency system: it would stabilize the currency system, and it would stabilize the gold price. For example, a lot of the volatility of gold prices right now is (by some) attributed to the devaluing US Dollar, so if that is the case often enough, tie the two to each other and everybody wins. What am I missing?
To squeeze out arbitrage opportunites, gold's price (the dollar's price) would have to fluctuate as new gold hit the market. The fact that more people are influenced by this makes it worse, not better. The "no-arbitrage" constraint is more powerful than the "we just want to use it as money" constraint.
For 3, it's not the amount of oil in reserve, it's actually the amount being traded. As the amount of oil produced (and traded) increases, the value of the US Dollar increases. Thus Hurricane Katrina was a big deal.
I'm not sure how that contradicts the point I made. Oil is being put to use, instead of being held off the market to back the currency. So we get all the oil that's in the ground, plus get a currency. Under a gold standard, there would still be a currency, but no one could use the gold.
Imagine there was a program that could talk to you just like it was another human being, and you couldn't tell that it was a computer.
Hey as long as we're imagining shit that doesn't exist and doesn't look like it's going to happen any time in the near future...
My objection referred to "You are also using an example of information transport (audio) and trying to apply it to physical object transport."
Saying my analogy is invalid because "that's information, this is physical objects", which the above quote does, it itself an invalid objection, and that was what I was referring to. He did list other reasons, but the quoted claim is an invalid response, and is unrelated to the rest of his post.
Now: what did your lastest philosophical example have to do with anything?
Okay, I'll respond, but I don't really have a the hatred of the gold standard that a lot of people do. Also, the WP article seeme to have significantly shortened by the time I posted my original comment.
1) Yes, gold follows supply and demand, but the problem is that these S/D curves result in significant daily volatility. It does not steadily increase like you seem to think. The problem with the volatility is that it exposes people to sharp, unpredictable price changes. (Yeah, yeah, "price changes are good, because they reflect..." I know. But that doesn't mean you have to tie all of your exchanges to a good that has "too much" volatility) The magnitude of these volatility cost is reflected in option prices on gold. If you think of it this way: all people must, in effect, buy a hedge against gold shifting in price.
It's true that you have to do this with government currency too; however, historically, it has been less volatile, so the risk is limited to the so-called "systematic risk" -- it requires a truly drastic crisis to have a major shift.
2) When you have to store gold to back the currency, you *are* that much closer to "running out of gold" because it's forever out of production. (If people actually start redeeming the notes and using the gold, the money supply contracts significantly, which can precipitate a crisis.) Storing it doesn't delay this event, but hastens it.
3) The analogy to oil seems valid, except that if more resources are diverted to extracting oil (or more generally, energy), that energy is put directly into production, instead of simply adding more backing to the currency.
*sigh*
... in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
I was referring to the lower courts that Congress has to specifically establish (like the Federal Reserve). In other words, these ones:
"shall be vested
You misunderstand. Specifying the *principle* that differentiates the circumstances is a valid response. Specifying the correct basis for comparison (showing it's not currently apples to apples) is a valid response. But merely saying that we're "talking" about topic X and not Y, is not a valid response. To give you an example:
"I think it's wrong to shoot trespassers because that involves violence."
"Fighting in a war involves violence too. You're saying no one should ever fight in any war?"
"No, but that's different. I'm talking about trespassers here, not wars."
Or, to skip to Godwin's law:
"Our university shouldn't let Jews in because a lot of them cheat."
"A lot of non-Jews cheat too, should we ban them?"
"Irrelevant. We're talking about the Jews here."
In my original response, I attempted to show the flaw in his reasoning by giving an example of the exact same argument being applied to a different technology we now know to be fallacious. Specifically, the inability to think of a use for a quicker invention because of present alternatives. His response to that: "We're talking about information here, not physical goods" is the same type of fallacy described above.
That's a very good point, and a great summary. However, I believe there is one asymmetry:
A non-desirable guy can be converted into the top 10% merely by giving women the appearance that other women want him. The converse is not true: making that ugly, nerdy girl appear to be fawned over by guys, won't make her suddenly attractive to the guys.
This is what I don't like about arguments against the gold standard.
The entire disadvantage you just listed as stemming from a gold standard is: "Things requiring gold would be unjustifiably expensive."
That advantage is so bad that no one can support a gold standard unless they "fundamentally misunderstand macroeconomics"?
It's things like this that for so long kept me from understanding the hate for the gold standard. The best arguments against it seemed to be pretty trivial, and yes, that includes the extensive list on Wikipedia.
Think how confusing that must sound: Those who support a gold standard are idiots because they are too dismissive of high prices for items containing gold. Huh?
After a while of wringing out sources for a serious argument, I finally found something more convincing, which is this:
1) Under a gold standard, the (very high) volatility of gold is imposed on the general price level, making it that much harder to plan economic activity, and magnifying negative events.
2) Significant amounts of gold must be held out of production, just for use as money, with signficant opportunity cost.
3) Increasingly huge portions of the economy are diverted to gold production during times of economic growth because that, rather than e.g. cancer cures, have the highest return.
Yeah, normally, you have to wait for a thread to tangent about money to have one of these discussions. A book about the Federal Reserve just doesn't seem appropriate for /.
Nevertheless, I'm going to comment:
The review claims that a number of statements are false. I mostly disagree:
The Federal Reserve is federal, i.e., a part of the US government.
It's a semantics game to claim otherwise. The Fed chairman is appointed by "the government", charterd by the government, and designated to achieve US domestic policy goals, and subject to being shut down if it acts too crazily. It is given significant autonomy by congress. Does that make it "not part of the government"? Okay, then I guess the federal courts aren't either.
The Federal Reserve is a reserve, i.e., it has monetary savings of real value.
The federal reserve has cash holdings. Cash has real value. Don't believe me? Go offer it in an exchange.
The Federal Reserve serves the public, and is not a cartel of private banks serving itself.
Kind of. Given its autonomy, it could achieve nefarious goals. However, members are required to basically give up any financial holdsing that could lead to a conflict of interest.
The US dollar has real value, i.e., it represents tangible wealth, such as gold securely stored at Fort Knox.
It is true that money is only a *claim* on real wealth; that, in other words, money flows in the opposite direction as wealth. However, you can in fact trade your money for real wealth; in that sense, it has real value.
Inflation is an increase in prices.
Usage determines meaning, and this is exactly how most people use the term "inflation" (in the economics sense).
Inflation is caused by greedy companies, not the US government or the Federal Reserve.
Under the definition the author wants to use, yes, the US gov. and Fed cause inflation. They're not the only cause of general price increases. There are also supply shocks.
I don't know what you thought my point was, but saying that the situation isn't analagous "because we're talking about X, not Y" isn't in general a valid response.
My point was that quick global transport appears to us now, as the telephone appeared to people in the 1880s. There are even quotes (that I didn't bother to look up) where people question the use of it on the grounds that "we have messenger boys". No one bothers to come up with uses for quick global transport, because it's always been so prohibitive expensive as to be out of the question. Once it's cheap, people will find a use for it.
Off the top of my head:
-A California computer company with factories in east Asia may prefer to have prototypes in their hands in 3 hours rather than 12.
-Rich people may want the luxury of fish freshly caught across the globe, delivered to them so shortly after catching it.
-And of course, human transport.
Like, there are going to be some existing male-as-female players, and to bring them in line with the policy, you'd have to make the female avatar male. Doesn't an RPG have to have some storyline reason for this?
(If they're planning to "grandfather" ["grandmother?"] existing male-as-female avatars, that'll probably create even more problems for them.)
A vanishingly small number of situations require a specific audio message to cross the globe in a couple tenths of a second. The postal system relieves any written information hauling needs, and the rise of messenger boys has meant that it's easy to send messages that need to be delivered more locally. So most remaining situations would be fully burdened (not amortized like all 2,000 letters in a mail truck). Now it takes a LOT of energy to get even the smallest audio message across the cables.
Yeah, DEFINITELY don't forget about that. As you can see in the link, they trademarked "Home", so if you're going to talk to people about real-world "homes", you'll just have to find another noun. Might I recommend: domicile, dwelling, hab(itat), pad, crib, and estate.
It's part of the whole trend to make products and ideas sound more complicated than they really are. See: the tendency of people to say "price point" instead of "price", regardless of the lack of additional information it provides.
When it comes to the term "product", I'd say the most annoying offenders are lenders. (eek, rhyme) They can't talk about the different mortgages they offer -- no, that would be too appropriate to the simplicity of what they do. They have to talk about the different "loan products" they sell. Not a loan, nay, a loan product. (And don't even get me started on their bastardization of the term "interest rate", which they equate with "payment rate".)
The moon landing was "one of the most important developments in human history", but that doesn't mean you should report it as news on slashdot forty years later!
Well, actually, the optical computers they mentioned could have serious implications for bombardment ability, because they enable the use of heavy artillery.
Oh wait, that's Alpha Centauri.
Er, except that the ads on /. still show up even if you subscribe and turn them off.
How pathetic to ONLY aspire to money. Why not aspire to be Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa or ....
Probably because it's not a good thing to aspire to:
-Oppose condom usage in AIDS-stricken areas
-Take money from despotic regimes and spend only a small portion on its intended purpose
-Run a completely non-transparent operation
-Make your clinic painful to teach people the value of suffering
-Convince people that they should fake miracles in your name
Now you're just being silly. No one wants to ban the PS3 on the grounds that it's being sold "too cheaply" to inflate sales. That's ridiculous. The reason that informed, serious activists want the PS3 banned is because it uses too much energy for the benefit it provides, just like incandescent lights.
Don't try to trivialize the solid case for banning PS3s by associating it with the cranks who want to ban PS3s for being too cheap.
(Unfortunately, I have to remind people this is sarcastic...)
An off-topic with a double-self-reply ...
:-(
I'd criticize that, but the link depressed me too much.
I don't think it's the falling dollar per se that bothers me, but the fact that usurers like me aren't getting compensated with higher interest rates
5. Wait for early adopters' dicks to fit back into their pants before a price drop.
That shirt is fucking awesome.
:-(
But I can't shake the feeling it would make people nervous in some contexts
Did you really just equate "showing your receipt upon leaving a retail store" with death?
(PS: Refriend me.)