At least from the story we were told, WFC didn't want to take the money but Treasure forcd them to take it. The plan of treasure was to flood all banks, good or bad, with lots of cash, and so we couldn't tell the good ones from the bad and so we wouldn't all withdraw meoney from a perceived bad bank and cause another major bank-run.
I should say: Nobody ever patent a machine. Rather people patent the design of a type of machines and such a design can be said of "IS" of physical and/or chemical laws.
Nobody ever patent a machine. Rather people patent the design of a type of machines and such a design can be said of "IS MADE UP" of physical and/or chemical laws.
All discrimination against software invention is groundless and flaw. They should solve patent trolls for all types of inventions, which exists for cars (see the 2000 patents filed by Toyota for Prius.) Short of killing all patent lawyers, they could not get rid of trolls in general, and so they just take shortcut of eliminate a large category where there are more trolls; but there are more trolls in software, because it is relatively easy to develop software. Try develop a new compression or AI algorithms and see if all software inventions are trivial to develop.
His argument is simple: (1) math cannot be patented (2) all algorithms are math (3) all software is one or more algorithms and so follows that software cannot be patentable.
My argument is simple: (1) physics, biology, and chemistry cannot be patented (2) all mechanical operations, chemical/biological reactions are physical, chemical and/or biological (3) all machines, chemical/biological processes and compounds is one or more mechanical operations, chemical/biological reactions and so follows that machines, chemical/biological processes and compounds cannot be patentable.
While patent trolls in software are real, just like those for cars, machines, detergents, all claims that discriminated against software are in effect groundless. They should solve all patent troll problems, not just targeting software. Maybe the best solution is to kill all lawyers.
That's generally correct. And we can't do anything about it because China is our largest bank that gives us the biggest credit lines. They are now too big to fail as well. Before they became our Big Bank; they were our biggest allied fighting the Soviets in the 70s and 80s, and so the US had to give in to their demand as well. That's called deals.
For companies like Google, the easiest solution is just to buy up some right officials (via hidden means,) then everything will be fine. China has their weak spot too. In China, you can accomplish anything big by bribing some officials; illegal but doable. In the US, you can accomplish anything big by contributing to the campaign of some politicians, legal and doable.
That's why we ended up with humongous debts and deficits! Right, who does not want good health care, education, housing, retirement, and high-speed internet? They are all human rights and everyone deserves the rights. Let there be Rights!Paying the bills, however, is not a human right.
Nope. That's not the sentiment I have heard while I was in China. The people there actually like the idea of democracy and most of them have an over-idealistic view of the American democracy (like they don't quite grasp all those special interest influence and political contributions,) but they are afraid of any political movements as they still have bad memory of the cultural revolution. Big social changes only happen if it is driven by a big social movements.
Also the current main Chinese belief is pragmatism -- whatever that solves the problems on hand is good. Judging from results of most democratic countries in the world -- India, eastern Europe, Mexico, Philllipine, they don't fare much better in most aspects that people care about -- anti-corruption, health care, education, and now environment. Most of the rest are built on mountains of debts. So while they (especially the poors) still think democracy is good, they are not too eager to pursue it.
Unfortunately, democracy is an ideal that sounds very good on paper but always inescapably screwed in real world implementation, just like communism (which Chinese also got fed up with.)
Why? As a former owner, I don't see it being bad quality -- the engine/transmission/electronics or the overall. Maybe it is not best, but certainly not bad.
Before you worry about soldiers of US army and marines riding on Chinese made jeeps, you should also note that GM China has made recorded sales in China, despite of its parent's woe in the US. I personally did notice quite a lot more Buick's running in the city of Shenzhen than on the streets of California. When I was over there, I owned a Buick myself which was made in China but with US-made engines and transmissions; whereas i own a Japanese car here in California. Strange world.
Why is it edited away? Is / . censoring our post, because the news of american company doing well in China does not fit the site's editorial agenda?
But how many Americans have known from their text books and TV news of the following history and facts:
The US has sponsored many many dictators in the world, including Saddem Hussein.
It is the US who betrayed Taiwan and sent China into the UN security council during the 1970's when China was under the rule of a true dictator (Mao) who was a thousands times more oppressive than anyone in the Chinese government now.
Dalai Lama was sponsored by the CIA.
Most countries with a "democratic system" today do not do any better in most aspects, including social fairness, anti-corruption, or even human rights, than China.
Oversea Chinese's attitude is more like reactions to stuck-up American ideal and opinion as well as to the feeling of second class citizen (see all the Chinese-phobia comments on this page.) Back home, they complain about their government as much as or even more than average Americans complain about the US government; and they do not feel the oppressiveness as labeled.by the Western media. There are of course people being oppressed in China, just like there are prisoners being beaten up in the US; but it is not so widespread that it occurs to average people.
If you are betting against odds, which would you bet? and which would you bet starting from now?
There is no 100% winning investment strategy -- holding onto your cash is not. When everybody does the same thing, it ceases to work. When most people stay away from it, it becomes attractive again. That's what distinguish between smart and rich investors and those who complains in/. and other forums.
History has proven nothing but perpetual inflation, because inflation is the driving force of the economy. Yes, today, the average house price may be down by 30%. But in 10, 20 or 30 years, one may have to pay $1000/hour just to paint the house. The peak price of your house a few years ago may look a like a bargain 20 years from now. Remember, an average worker got dollar a day in the past. Rent would be like $30000/month. The problem is that you will likely still be live by then but too weak to work, and housing is a major cost still.
It all comes down to timing and cash flow of your investment.
As long as the governments keep drumming up the alert messages, nothing terrible will happen. Disaster only strikes when there are not enough media coverage!
TV news anchor: In another news, due to the lack of any major natural disaster,... *cough* *cough*,... hope I'm not catching that little swine flu virus, FEMA moved to create a PR disaster by publishing a 9/11 coloring book for children who get extra off-school days from the flu.
First, 90% of patients don't need a team of doctors working together. Usually, one doctor just needs to know what other doctors have you seen recently and what illness do you have. That can be described by the patient briefly, as it is working in the rest of the world now. Again the patients (or the parents) need to learn about their illness and tell the doctor. This society is overdependent on somebody taking care of you, whereas in the rest of the world, you are expected to take care of yourself as much as possible.
Digitization won't solve the needs you described better than a folder of manila anyway, until computers can reliably recognize the cursive writings of doctors. The key of the problem has not been solved. Solving storage and transmission problems are useless. and I can bet nobody will ever bother inputting the text manually in the clinic w/o making health care even more expensive.
I don't understand all these buzz about electronic health records. The roots of health care crisis are that doctors charge you $500 for seeing you for 2 minute w/o doing anything else and hospital charges thousands for lying on their bed for one night of "observation." Those are probably caused by lack of doctors and hospitals as well as, over zealots about quality and ridiculous malpractice insurance costs due to ridiculous high malpractice claims.
It does not seem to be caused by the need to pull out your chart by a $20/hour assistant.
It just seems like marketing gimmick trying to treat a non-existent cause. Can the patients just take their charts around like patients in many places of world are doing?
then we should wish they get this patent and actually charge other businesses ridiculously for outsourcing; most of us don't work for IBM anyway, so IBM will help you keep your job. go IBM!
Correct. In fact, for long time already, you can buy legal American movies from Walmart in China at much lower price than in the US for the same title.
That's only your perspective. If you read online forums in Chinese website, you should see a lot of complain recently about "trading all those Chinese products with junk US government debts". Junk products exchange for junk debts -- hmm... sounds like fair trade to me.
This proves nothing but your ignorance about Chinese society. The fact is that Chinese consumers have preferred foreign products even though they are not made in China and a lot more expensive. The order of preferences are
Foreign imports, especially Japanese ones even though Chinese generally dislike Japan for historical reasons;
Products made locally by subsidiaries of foreign companies (with imported parts) -- by the way cars made by the China subsidiary of our highly incompetent GM are best selling autos over there.
Products made by Chinese companies for the purpose of exporting. they even have a term for these -- "exports turned domestic."
If they can't afford above, they then buy products makde by local companies for local market.
Prices of imports are much higher because of the high tariff, but there are thriving smugglers to the rescue.
These have been the cases for almost all categories since China opened up in the 1980's. These preferences are weaker nowaday for some electronic products like TV and computers, but not cell phone, because Chinese made ones are good enough.
With the recent scandal of baby milk powders, that market is now completed taken over by foreign brand.
And in general Chinese are much less nationalistic until recently, probably because China has become much stronger (and richer.)
Most people complaining about quality of Chinese product should instead wish it stay the same, because if there is no quality problem, we would have completely lost our competitiveness.
Yeah, you could say that. But they have popular election. You could make the same claim for each and everyone on the list. And you could make the same claim against the USA -- remember all those generous but questionable folks and companies donating to your favorite politicians? And what your favorite politicians have done? Then you will have to define exactly what a real democracy should look like and then good luck finding it on earth.
Slashdot Mirror
At least from the story we were told, WFC didn't want to take the money but Treasure forcd them to take it. The plan of treasure was to flood all banks, good or bad, with lots of cash, and so we couldn't tell the good ones from the bad and so we wouldn't all withdraw meoney from a perceived bad bank and cause another major bank-run.
Very likely, the two original loans were made by different banks; the smaller one by Wachovia. As WFC bought Wacho, the loan went into WFC's portfolio
Yeah, but that just passes the stupidity to our legal system, according to The Law of Conservation of Stupidity.
I should say: Nobody ever patent a machine. Rather people patent the design of a type of machines and such a design can be said of "IS" of physical and/or chemical laws.
Nobody ever patent a machine. Rather people patent the design of a type of machines and such a design can be said of "IS MADE UP" of physical and/or chemical laws.
All discrimination against software invention is groundless and flaw. They should solve patent trolls for all types of inventions, which exists for cars (see the 2000 patents filed by Toyota for Prius.) Short of killing all patent lawyers, they could not get rid of trolls in general, and so they just take shortcut of eliminate a large category where there are more trolls; but there are more trolls in software, because it is relatively easy to develop software. Try develop a new compression or AI algorithms and see if all software inventions are trivial to develop.
His argument is simple: (1) math cannot be patented (2) all algorithms are math (3) all software is one or more algorithms and so follows that software cannot be patentable.
My argument is simple: (1) physics, biology, and chemistry cannot be patented (2) all mechanical operations, chemical/biological reactions are physical, chemical and/or biological (3) all machines, chemical/biological processes and compounds is one or more mechanical operations, chemical/biological reactions and so follows that machines, chemical/biological processes and compounds cannot be patentable.
While patent trolls in software are real, just like those for cars, machines, detergents, all claims that discriminated against software are in effect groundless. They should solve all patent troll problems, not just targeting software. Maybe the best solution is to kill all lawyers.
That's generally correct. And we can't do anything about it because China is our largest bank that gives us the biggest credit lines. They are now too big to fail as well. Before they became our Big Bank; they were our biggest allied fighting the Soviets in the 70s and 80s, and so the US had to give in to their demand as well. That's called deals.
For companies like Google, the easiest solution is just to buy up some right officials (via hidden means,) then everything will be fine. China has their weak spot too. In China, you can accomplish anything big by bribing some officials; illegal but doable. In the US, you can accomplish anything big by contributing to the campaign of some politicians, legal and doable.
That's why we ended up with humongous debts and deficits! Right, who does not want good health care, education, housing, retirement, and high-speed internet? They are all human rights and everyone deserves the rights. Let there be Rights! Paying the bills, however, is not a human right.
Nope. That's not the sentiment I have heard while I was in China. The people there actually like the idea of democracy and most of them have an over-idealistic view of the American democracy (like they don't quite grasp all those special interest influence and political contributions,) but they are afraid of any political movements as they still have bad memory of the cultural revolution. Big social changes only happen if it is driven by a big social movements.
Also the current main Chinese belief is pragmatism -- whatever that solves the problems on hand is good. Judging from results of most democratic countries in the world -- India, eastern Europe, Mexico, Philllipine, they don't fare much better in most aspects that people care about -- anti-corruption, health care, education, and now environment. Most of the rest are built on mountains of debts. So while they (especially the poors) still think democracy is good, they are not too eager to pursue it.
Unfortunately, democracy is an ideal that sounds very good on paper but always inescapably screwed in real world implementation, just like communism (which Chinese also got fed up with.)
Why? As a former owner, I don't see it being bad quality -- the engine/transmission/electronics or the overall. Maybe it is not best, but certainly not bad.
The original post has
Before you worry about soldiers of US army and marines riding on Chinese made jeeps, you should also note that GM China has made recorded sales in China, despite of its parent's woe in the US. I personally did notice quite a lot more Buick's running in the city of Shenzhen than on the streets of California. When I was over there, I owned a Buick myself which was made in China but with US-made engines and transmissions; whereas i own a Japanese car here in California. Strange world.
Why is it edited away? Is / . censoring our post, because the news of american company doing well in China does not fit the site's editorial agenda?
But how many Americans have known from their text books and TV news of the following history and facts:
Oversea Chinese's attitude is more like reactions to stuck-up American ideal and opinion as well as to the feeling of second class citizen (see all the Chinese-phobia comments on this page.) Back home, they complain about their government as much as or even more than average Americans complain about the US government; and they do not feel the oppressiveness as labeled.by the Western media. There are of course people being oppressed in China, just like there are prisoners being beaten up in the US; but it is not so widespread that it occurs to average people.
If you are betting against odds, which would you bet? and which would you bet starting from now?
There is no 100% winning investment strategy -- holding onto your cash is not. When everybody does the same thing, it ceases to work. When most people stay away from it, it becomes attractive again. That's what distinguish between smart and rich investors and those who complains in /. and other forums.
History has proven nothing but perpetual inflation, because inflation is the driving force of the economy. Yes, today, the average house price may be down by 30%. But in 10, 20 or 30 years, one may have to pay $1000/hour just to paint the house. The peak price of your house a few years ago may look a like a bargain 20 years from now. Remember, an average worker got dollar a day in the past. Rent would be like $30000/month. The problem is that you will likely still be live by then but too weak to work, and housing is a major cost still.
It all comes down to timing and cash flow of your investment.
As long as the governments keep drumming up the alert messages, nothing terrible will happen. Disaster only strikes when there are not enough media coverage!
TV news anchor: In another news, due to the lack of any major natural disaster, ... *cough* *cough*, ... hope I'm not catching that little swine flu virus, FEMA moved to create a PR disaster by publishing a 9/11 coloring book for children who get extra off-school days from the flu.
First, 90% of patients don't need a team of doctors working together. Usually, one doctor just needs to know what other doctors have you seen recently and what illness do you have. That can be described by the patient briefly, as it is working in the rest of the world now. Again the patients (or the parents) need to learn about their illness and tell the doctor. This society is overdependent on somebody taking care of you, whereas in the rest of the world, you are expected to take care of yourself as much as possible.
Digitization won't solve the needs you described better than a folder of manila anyway, until computers can reliably recognize the cursive writings of doctors. The key of the problem has not been solved. Solving storage and transmission problems are useless. and I can bet nobody will ever bother inputting the text manually in the clinic w/o making health care even more expensive.
I don't understand all these buzz about electronic health records. The roots of health care crisis are that doctors charge you $500 for seeing you for 2 minute w/o doing anything else and hospital charges thousands for lying on their bed for one night of "observation." Those are probably caused by lack of doctors and hospitals as well as, over zealots about quality and ridiculous malpractice insurance costs due to ridiculous high malpractice claims.
It does not seem to be caused by the need to pull out your chart by a $20/hour assistant.
It just seems like marketing gimmick trying to treat a non-existent cause. Can the patients just take their charts around like patients in many places of world are doing?
then we should wish they get this patent and actually charge other businesses ridiculously for outsourcing; most of us don't work for IBM anyway, so IBM will help you keep your job. go IBM!
The best patent on the planet!
Correct. In fact, for long time already, you can buy legal American movies from Walmart in China at much lower price than in the US for the same title.
I assume this one but the download link is blocked because it detects your IP's from US.
That's only your perspective. If you read online forums in Chinese website, you should see a lot of complain recently about "trading all those Chinese products with junk US government debts". Junk products exchange for junk debts -- hmm... sounds like fair trade to me.
This proves nothing but your ignorance about Chinese society. The fact is that Chinese consumers have preferred foreign products even though they are not made in China and a lot more expensive. The order of preferences are
Prices of imports are much higher because of the high tariff, but there are thriving smugglers to the rescue.
These have been the cases for almost all categories since China opened up in the 1980's. These preferences are weaker nowaday for some electronic products like TV and computers, but not cell phone, because Chinese made ones are good enough.
With the recent scandal of baby milk powders, that market is now completed taken over by foreign brand.
And in general Chinese are much less nationalistic until recently, probably because China has become much stronger (and richer.)
Most people complaining about quality of Chinese product should instead wish it stay the same, because if there is no quality problem, we would have completely lost our competitiveness.
SUPPLY and DEMAND:
Do you see your incentive?
Yeah, you could say that. But they have popular election. You could make the same claim for each and everyone on the list. And you could make the same claim against the USA -- remember all those generous but questionable folks and companies donating to your favorite politicians? And what your favorite politicians have done? Then you will have to define exactly what a real democracy should look like and then good luck finding it on earth.
It is an ideal.