Sure, but isn't the hypothesis that for each change in SIM it requires a re-registration with itunes? This doesn't seem to be the case.

In anycase, I re-tested today back in Singapore - it definitely didn't require re-log in to itunes....

This is interesting, but it doesn't seem to match what I have seen.

Last week, as an experiment I switched the (Sing-Tel) SIM in my unlocked iPhone (purchased in Singapore unlocked) with one from another company (M1). It worked straight away. I actually made a call to test. I certainly didn't log into itunes.... Admittedly I was in Australia at the time, so there may have been something to that (perhaps the global roam overrides the lock?) but I would have thought it would have made it less likely to work, not more....

So what gives?

Good post/question.

One of my closest friends met his now wife by way of a book he was reading - while I guess the "line" may have worked if he was holding a Kindle (it wasn't title specific really) perhaps that relationship wouldn't have happened.

Close - but you don't want the banks to fail if you're gambling with CDS - after all how would you collect? And now they have all been nationalised it's not going to happen.

But a company you've punted on - that's a different matter.

How about this scenario -
Bank has a loan to a company that's about to get into difficulty as the economy slows. The bank has insurance on the company default by way of CDS. In the past they work work with a good company to get through the trouble and keep them out of default - might take a few years and they may not get all their interest in the short term but the company would survive and the bank would hopefully get most of the loan back. No bank wants to put a company in default because everybody loses - the company, the employees and the banks (perhaps only the lawyers may win).

BUT with CDS as insurance the bank is incentivised to put the company into default - then they get them all their money back. It's better for them to burn the company. And the insured has no say in the process. They can't keep the companies out of default!

At least there was a period where they may have been concerned that their insurance (CDS) may have been worthless - if they put enough people under perhaps AIG would have gone under - but now everything has been effectively nationalised - no risk. And everybody is worse off.

Thing are going to get worse.

Skip the ultrasonic repellers - I've seen rat's and mice party on those things (I think the ultrasonic pulse is actually like a rave for rodents - I swear the ones i saw dancing had pupils as big as their eye sockets).

They also claim they repel insects, but I think they actually attract cockroaches (cause they get a little warm..)

To get real value for money AND improve your ninja status - go for a nice 8 iron instead (you often don't get enough leverage with a 9 - they just bounce of the roof and keep running). It's hard work to really time a nice stroke with them all running around - but when you lift one right down the hall it's better than a hole in one - a bit like Mr Miyagi catching fly's with chopsticks.

Don't mind the sentiment, I agree that plastics (or more likely composites) are going to be of more and more importance, and I'm all for trying out some of these neat ideas, but I'm not convinced we're going to see a lot of new models with SERS anytime soon.

Don't get me wrong - it's easy to see how this can work in theory, at least to a degree (easy demo - get a bike with adjustable front shocks see how puffed you get riding 10km with the shocks on and off - quite a large difference)- but is seems likely the over all benefit is going to be pretty marginal AT BEST.

Firstly it can't save 10% over time - it's just too much.

If your common or garden variety shock was currently converting 10% of the output of a car to heat we'd need to have little heat sinks on each of our shock absorbers - admittedly they are exhausting heat into nice little oil baths or gas, but there is not that much volume and we don't see smoke pouring out of each corner after a long ride on a bumpy dirt road - there is just not that much heat going in! Then take into account the losses from the turbine system they have... doesn't even get close to passing the laugh test.

I'm guessing the 1Kw number they are quoting in the article is as the suspension is a peak oscillation or something (made up?).

Secondly, even if it does work, there is going to be a cost - at least in complexity, almost certainly in weight, probably in materials - I think the economics above are actually extremely optimistic - something with this sort of tech, machining tolerances, materials is going to cost heaps.

I also think you're a little harsh with your comments on the likely lifetime of such a system - TFA states that they "use a hydraulic system that forces fluid through a turbine attached to a generator" - seems like something pretty bloody complicated to me (and heavy by the way) and it will certainly wear (if not shake to destruction) - faster than the simple valve in todays shocks anyway. Even if they can move it to some sort of electromagnetic system it's still hard to see it can beat the rubber cones in a mini for durability and low cost/weight.

Perhaps the efficiency just comes from having almost no suspension travel - like the bike example again.

That said, if these guys really have found a way to EFFICIENTLY get energy out of small, random, decaying oscillations they are millionaires - and i'm not sure why they are bothering with cars - you could go for some low hanging fruit that doesn't have the problems of mounting in a car - think about all the possible use for this sort of tech - the obvious one would be to drive a pylon into the ocean, put a float on one end of the shock and attach the other end to the pylon and bang instant wave energy capture mechanism - unfortunately, people have been trying to do this for a while and it's pretty hard - now imagine to try and do it on a small scale, with increased losses at every turn.....

Sorry mate - I'm a bit skeptical

But lowering the weight of a vehicle with plastics - now that seem highly possible - it works for planes....

Agreed - but that risk no longer exists thanks to the nationalisation of the finance industry.

The real problem with CDS is that they typically have leverage built into them - while it's a zero sum game and the governments have in theory guaranteed all the above counterparty risk, if there are enough defaults and enough leverage there may be a serious, serious problem.

It's much more complicated than this. The economy is one big confidence game.
Nothing is worth anything intrinsically - it's only worth what other people are willing to pay.

Normally everyone agrees what something is worth within a small margin of error - let's say 10% on average (I just made that up). The world is in equilibrium, people buy and sell and and everyone is happy. At the moment, everyone has massively shifted what they think things are worth (financial assets esp - but all assets, look at the dow!) so there are no trades and it gets worse because no one knows what the price of anything is, so even less trade and it's a downward spiral. At its worst, there are now buyers for an asset and it's worth nothing.

The government is trying to give confidence to the system to set a flow and get transactions, especially between banks happening again to "set a price". Most of the "bailouts" are not cash as such but guarantees (or guaranteed loans) - if they are successful (I doubt it) - we'll all agree that the assets are worth just a little less than they were before the crash and we can all get on with our lives. Then it may not cost the governments very much at all - they may even make a small profit.

If they're not successful then we really are fucked - especially the US.

>There are over 50 TRILLION dollars of these CDS out there carried by banks who use them as collateral to make loans. They are actually worthless at this time so these banks are in reality bankrupt. That is why banks can not loan right now.>

Sorry, while I don't disagree with the sentiment, I think you may not fully understand what a CDS is or what banks use them for when they manage risk - in fact at a guess I would suggest you have confused CDS and CDO. Actually it could be said it's scaremongering..

To break it down

At the base level, a CDS is an insurance contract between two parties. It's simply an agreement, typically between two banks or a bank and an insurer or a hedge fund or some other financial player. We could even enter into a CDS - to simplify as much as possible it could look like this (we should print it on letter head to make it legal ;)) -

I [Blackhalo - the seller of protection] agree to pay [ozmrsparkle - the buyer of protection] an amount of [x million dollars (the notional)] if [Some company - say GE as an example] [fails to pay interest] in the next [x years/months/days]. For agreeing to this, [ozmrsparkle] will pay [blackhalo] a fee of [x%] of the notional each [x time period] until the contract expires.

Signed, Blackhalo Signed, ozmrsparkle

That's it - if we signed that we would have entered into a CDS - it's really no more complicated than that - and as it is just a contract between two consenting adults we could negotiate any of the square brackets to be anything we want - in fact instead of "fails to pay interest", we could negotiate that the pay-out occurs if your house burns down - and then you would have the exact same contract you probably already have with your insurance company. So they are not that complicated or scary when you break them downâ¦

So what does this mean in relation to your post -
Firstly the notional outstanding is fairly irrelevant (your "50 TRILLION") for a number of reasons

1. I can perform some magic and enter into the exact opposite of the CDS above with say cowboyneal (ie I could be the seller of protection, rather than the buyer) - by doing this I will have passed the risk and expenses on to cowboyneal so my net risk (ignoring counterparty risk) is zero ie Your risk is still the same. The amount of risk in the market is exactly the same, but now we have two contracts so the notional value is 2 x million. This actually happens all the time in the CDS market - banks enter into the opposite trade to exit existing trades hence the notional becomes meaningless pretty quickly - it makes no representation of the amount of risk/potential losses or anything useful.

2. You may have noticed that it is a zero sum game - there are actually only two parties involved, so if you win, I lose and vice versa - so this is not something that needs to be repaid per se - they can't really go to zero value (someone will win!).

Now thatâ(TM)s not to say that there are not serious, serious problems including with CDS (and even some complications not highlighted in my simplified eample above - like counterparty risk - a huge issue as is mark to market accounting) - but the second half of your post is very inaccurate. Personally I'm expecting double-digit unemployment in the next two yearsâ¦

CDO's are different again...

BTW - Yes I am one of the asshole bankers who occasionally trades CDS (although I work in an area that tries to help companies raise appropriate funding rather than punt things they shouldn't)