Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment All the time (Score 3, Insightful) 743

The US always pays its debts when they are due. I think perhaps the problem is you don't understand how US debt works, and why it is a bit special:

So the most important thing to understand is the US doesn't go and beg people to give it money, rather it auctions debt. People come and purchase the debt. You can do it yourself on their Treasury Direct site. The US sells debt instruments to interested buyers. They are bid on, and whoever bids the lowest interest rate wins. The upshot is the US sets the terms of the debt instruments sold. They have a variety, some are as short as 4 weeks, some as long as 30 years. When you buy something, the terms of repayment are stated up front: What it'll pay, and when. There is no provision to cash out early, and you don't get to dictate any terms, you just choose what note you want to buy (if they are available).

This is how public debt works in a lot of countries, but it isn't how things go when you are getting loans from the IMF.

The other important thing is that all US debt is denominated in US dollars. A US debt instrument specifies how many dollars it'll pay out and that number is NOT inflation adjusted, except in a few very special cases. Well the US government also controls the US mint, which makes US dollars. So the US government can literally print money, and inflate its way in to payments. There are negatives to that, of course, but it is perfectly doable. The US controls its fiscal and monetary policy regarding its debt. Since all its debts are in US dollars, and since US dollars are the world's reserve currency, the US cannot face a crisis where it can't pay, unless such a crisis is internally generated (via the debt limit).

Not the case with Greek debt, it is in Euros and Greece doesn't control the Euro.

Finally, there's the fact that the US has great credit. Doesn't matter if you disagree that it should, fact is it does. Investors are willing to loan the US money for extremely low interest rates because they see it as a very safe investment. 4 week T-Bills have been going for between 0%-0.015%. 30-year bonds have been going for 2.5%-3.75%. Investors bid the interest rates very low because they desire it as a safe investment.

Comment Re:Wireless charging (Score 1) 41

Scale: charging your phone with 5 volts compared to a car at 120/220 volts.
Safety: that much current floating around means if a child wanders in the wrong area they are fried
Efficiency: If it is half efficient to charge our phones. No big deal its conscience makes up for the cost. But to power a car you will feel the extra cost. Besides you get a electric car because it is better for the environment and if we need to create extra coal plants to power these cars its carbon footprint gets bigger.
Reliability: a car goes threw a lot of stressed. Rain, snow, ice, wind, salt, bugs, animals nesting in it.

It isn't the same as making a wireless charger to charge a 2 ton cell phone.

Comment Re:I'm extremely surprised... (Score 2) 161

In Minnesota, the public sector is mandated by statute to release information to the public and be setup in a way which facilitates this action:

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/sta...

13.03 ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT DATA.
Subdivision 1.Public data. All government data collected, created, received, maintained or disseminated by a government entity shall be public unless classified by statute, or temporary classification pursuant to section 13.06, or federal law, as nonpublic or protected nonpublic, or with respect to data on individuals, as private or confidential. The responsible authority in every government entity shall keep records containing government data in such an arrangement and condition as to make them easily accessible for convenient use. Photographic, photostatic, microphotographic, or microfilmed records shall be considered as accessible for convenient use regardless of the size of such records.

I have used this exact quoted statute many-a-time to force local government agencies in Minnesota to not only provide me information, which they were usually willing to do, but for free or very low cost.

I made a request once to a public transit agency who told me it would be several hundred dollars to do. I told them if they had followed the statute to make the data readily accessible by the public, it wouldn't require the work they were trying to charge me to do. Their legal counsel informed them I was indeed correct and I got it for the cost of the media.

Maybe there is a similar statute in this case which drove the decision?

Comment Re:Sudden? (Score 4, Insightful) 268

There are many cases where even republicans go on record stating man made climate change.
It is basicly the Oil industry who is trying to keep the doubt about it.
So the politicians Democrat or republican (mostly republican) who come from the Energy Producing states. Will play onto the spew to keep themselves elected.

Politics are not Pro- or Anti-Science. It is weather the science is political useful for them or not. Otherwise they will be happy putting their head in the sand.

Comment Re:Don't make me puke... (Score 3, Funny) 382

In contrast with other languages...

I find a better IDE for different and I was like, how about that, this makes it easier for me to write code for the language.

If back in the day where you had GWBasic

Ok
LIST
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10
Ok
15 PRINT "WORLD"
Ok
LIST
10 PRINT "HELLO"
15 PRINT "WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
Ok
15 PRINT "WORLD!"
LIST
10 PRINT "HELLO"
15 PRINT "WORLD!"
20 GOTO 10
Ok
RUN
HELLO
WORLD!
HELLO
WORLD!
HELLO
WORLD!
HELLO
WORLD!

If we had that type of IDE today the program will fail miserably. However you take the same language and give it a new IDE then you could in theory make an Enterprise class application in GWBASIC.

Comment Re:Plant? (Score 4, Interesting) 382

Well Oracle killing off Java was one of the biggest fear after it acquired Sun Microsystems. MySql was open sourced so it could fork like it had. VirtualBox we more or less kinda allowed it to die. Star err Open err LibreOffice had forked so many times that people probably forgot the Sun Acquired it as StarWriter. The Sun Servers Sparc based were declining in popularity.

But Java was the important thing we couldn't let die. And it isn't open source so the community couldn't steal it away from oracle.

Slashdot Top Deals

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

Working...