Posts by BongoJoe

Re: useful features

I use FoorBar via a DAC through an USB port (i.e. avoiding the Windows mangling of the sound) and it's simply wonderful.

+1 from me too.

Other moronic assumptions:

- All houses have house numbers or street names.

- That I can find my county in a list of dropdowns which was accurate only up until 1972

- Pigeon holing my job as in Forestry, Accounting, Insurance, etc..

Re: Spot on.

Dcumentation? I remember the old Microsoft C (before the days of Visual Studio) when the documentation came in a box four feet long.

Re: Schmarketing & manipulation of adolescents

Exactly. I remember the T Rex/Slade thing back in the 70s.

Re: Huh?

Saddam Hussein was very rich and decided to do just that. He announced that he was no longer going to sell oil in dollars.

Within two months the tanks were moving...

Re: I really don’t understand?????

By that I meant that they were no worse than any other country kicking off the first world war. In fact it could be argued that they were dragged into it by The Austria-Hungarian Empire who forced them into it by their multualy protective treaty.

None of the other European countries comes out with any credit.

But this, I fear, is beyond the scope of the topic.

Re: I really don’t understand?????

Maharg

A good question. But I will try to respond as this is a complex subject of which I understand a little. But I think that the gist is this.

Once upon a time money was used. say gold, as medium of exchange. Now, I remember from my Commerce lessons back in the 70s that money had to be three things to make it useful and therefore 'valuable'. These were scarcity, durability and portability.

It was no use having money made out of leaves (see HHgttG) nor having money too large to cart around and it was no use it falling apart. So gold became the de-facto standard because, essentially, gold is gold is gold. One could have used diamonds, for example, but some diamonds are bigger than others and some are better than others. So we all settled on gold. it could well have been any othe precious metal but it was gold.

Once upon a time the wealth of a nation was how much gold it had. The money in circulation was backed by gold. If you look at a British Five Pound note today it still says "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of five pounds" (or words to that effect) and that is signed by the chief cashier of the Bank of England. This meant that I could wander down to Threadneedle Street and swap my note for some scraps of gold.

And that's how commerce worked. Gold was mined, stord in vaults and notes were used in place of the gold.

Then some bright spark decided that we ought to liberate our money from the gold. Which meant that the countries can print as much money as they like. Now this is where the complete bonkers Magic Money Tree comes into life. If you print more money then you have, er, more money. Of course it becomes that slightly less worth but no-one minds especially if you call it Quantitive Easing and say that it's a Good Thing. But don't look too closely, play the game of musical chairs and hope that no-one points out the Emperor's New Clothes.

Before the second world war, Germany had to pay repairations for the first world war. They were found to be 'to blame' for all. Only in the sense that they lost and, therefore, they were the Bad Guys. As if having a good proportion of its young men killed wasn't enough the Allies punished them with crippling debts that they had to pay.

They had no choice to pay but paying them would mean that the country would go broke. If they paid it all back in installments then the bankrupcy would have been long and painful and would have gone on for decades or more. So what they did was was rather clever; the Weimar Government printed all the Marks it needed and paid off the debt. Of course the Marks were effectively worthless as they were backed by thin air (as in your message) and then hyper-inflation set in as a loaf of bread costs millons of Marks when it cost only thousands yesterday.

Hyper inflation is what happens when one has too much money trying to chase too few goods.

And, as an aside, this is one of the dangers facing the US Treasury. We all know that the US Debt is alarming. However, to pay the bills more money has to be printed which means that the dollar is getting to be less and less valuable. And sooner or later unless the US actually reduces the deficit (I don't mean slowing the increase, I mean making the debt smaller) then some day soon someone is going to say "Oi, these dollars; they're not so valuable now, are they?" and then the US is going to have major problems all because the dollar isn't backed by anything but goodwill (at the end of the day a currency is either backed by an agreed tangiable asset or goodwill). If the dollar is devalued then there's quiestions about the PetroDollar as this is the only thing that's keeping the country afloat -- because of this Magical Money Pump (money comes into the Treasury from the sale of the oil somewhere, it goes around the US and then out again) the dollar is seen to be a strong currency.

But devalue the dollar and the lads from the Middle East may decide to go into another currency and then there's no limit to the potential plunge.

It's not only currencies which are subject to this. We had, not in living memory, the Tulip Bulb Bubble when people decided that tulip bulbs, especially rare ones,. were worth a small fortune. The mayhem and madness of the markets as people wanted to get in on these is much the same... until the music stops and then the market comes to its collective senses and says "I am not buying a tulip bub for the price of a town house" and then the price comes crashing down. All currencies which aren't backed by something, be it gold, good will or the Magic Petroleum Money Pump are liable to this.

BitCoin is not dissimilar in that it's not backed by anything so in that sense it's "worthless" but on the side of the coin (excuse pun) there is only going to be a limited amount of these BitCoins so, in theory, they ought to settle down in value.

What is the value of a BitCoin? Well, if you deal wth stocks at all then you will know that the price of a share is determined by one person thinking he wants to get out, that the share is undervalued, whilst the other party thinks it's undervalued and wants to get in. Value is just one person's peception and when two people have two different opinions on value then we have a market and that is what determines the price.

The same applies to any free markets; what I peceive to be good value I will buy into or go long and what I think is poor value I will sell or go short. If I wished to trade in BitCoin and think that the price will increase, ie the coin is undervalued, then I will buy them. If I think that the whole thing is overvalued, as I do as I believe it to be a bubble, then I will either short or keep away.

And yes, they are writing "IOU 5 Internetz" but I may sell that IOU tomorrow for six to someone else who may think that they can get seven for it.

All I am saying is that scratch down far enough and you'll find thin air which makes economics both interesting and frightening at the same time.

This is my take on it. Cue to downvoters...

Re: XP 2.0?

XP 2.0... like W7 then?

Yes, but without the newly introduced features which tend to get in the way. In fact, a good XP2 would be XP with a few of its bugs killed.

Adding new bugs and bits that annoy users is not the way to encourage take-up. If W7 worked as promised then there would be about three XP machines left running in the UK. The fact that there's a strong reluctance to regrade must indicate to someone that there's not a real compelling reason other than scary stories of trolls under the bridge watiting for the unwary who don't have Aero to protect them.

I would be a massive fan of W7 if the following basic conditions were met:

1. It would run as fast as XP

2. XP Compability mode were compatable with, say, XP

3. The networking would be stable and not lose shares, machines or even forget where the machine was

4. That File Explorer would refresh if two, or more, instances were open

The last two, I would have thought, were basic and relatively easy to solve. The second should have been mandatory before W7 left the 'manufacturing plant' and the first point, whilst I can't expect miracles, it ought to come close.

Fix these four things and I will say Goodbye to XP forever.

Re: What exactly is the problem here?

As a Belgian you ought to be aware of the problem.

I have lived in Antwerpen and I have seen on a number of occasions the police stop people in the street for no good reason and demand to see their ID card. No ID card? Then off to the police station with you and an immediate fine of (in the 80s) of around 7000 BEF and a night in the cells.

The police were just picking on people in the street for no good reason other than to pick on them.

Re: All you DAB naysayers forget one thing

Privacy? If I had DAB then I wouldn't be bothered by any reception either.

Someone here mentioned that DAB has been going for over a decade. Not seen a sniff of it here.