teke184

The main appeals to moving overseas would be if you happened to find wonderful human capital and had minimal costs in transporting work to them. Example- Customer service lines and computer programming in India India has decent population that is highly trained and capable of performing customer service jobs and programming computers. Since long-distance calling is at a minimum these days, especially when purchased in bulk, and computer programs can be transmitted over the Internet, it's very easy to get trained personnel to work and show results with a minimum of costs. A call center and a computer programming office are perfect examples of something that can be moved easily to a country like India. A call center mainly requires that the individual be computer-literate, speak an intelligible form of English, and be able to follow a scripted program to resolve problems. The only costs involved are finding a building, stocking it with phones and computers, then keeping it operating. A computer programming office is very similar to a call center except that the programmers don't necessarily need to know English. They just need to be able to follow instructions that have been translated for them into Hindi or whatever language they speak. They are not required to program in English, as they're able to use Hindi versions of Visual Basic, C++, and other computer languages. (The compiler only cares about machine instructions, NOT the format of the programming language used). Most other jobs moved overseas are typically sent to mid-major countries like Mexico which have semi-skilled populations compared to the Third World, have some stability to their government, and have some proper infrastructure. The wiring harness jobs I mentioned earlier went to Mexico because the plants were close enough to the US that it did not cause process-management problems, the workers were trained to do somewhat easily because it was only connecting color-coded wires, etc. Many other jobs that move overseas are ones where the entire process is moved out of country and only the finished products arrive in the US. In my earlier example, the best way of explaining it would be if all the primary parts for something came from South America, they were turned into intermediate parts in Central America, they were assembled into a finished product in Mexico, then were sold to consumers in the US.

$0.13 per worker a day doesn't mean crap on its own. In order to make a proper move overseas, you have to know a lot of things including, but not limited to: A. Cost of substitute goods and the cost of making them B. Proximity of raw goods to your plant and difficulty of moving intermediate goods to next step of manufacturing OR moving finished goods to the marketplace. C. Availability of human capital. This means properly trained workers, or potentially trainable workers, who are within a reasonable distance of where the plant is. D. Actual costs of moving production overseas (Purchasing new land, builing a new factory, moving the machinery there, cost of lost sales from moving the machinery, etc.) E. The X factor of being in a foreign land. This covers wars, revolutions, nationalization of assets, "grease", etc. F. Barriers to trade (tariffs, quotas, etc.) I could decide that I wanted to move a GM factory to Sri Lanka but the $0.13 a day per worker would easily be counterbalanced by other costs associated with a move. I'll use the example of a GM wiring harness for a car. The factors listed above would influence the cost as such: 1. Getting raw materials wouldn't be a problem because a lot of cheap electronics come from the Pacific Rim, which is right in that area. HOWEVER, a wiring harness is an intermediate good and it would need to go to the next step of the GM manufacturing chain. That means that you'd have to transport the harnesses out of the factory and ship them to the next factory. This alone will mean increased problems in process-management, as you'll have to change your processes to take into accounts longer lags in your supply chain. A wire harness that used to take one week to arrive may take four weeks now. 2. Shipping equipment, goods, etc. in Sri Lanka would probably be a serious problem, as most third-world countries (and some mid-major countries like Mexico) have serious problems with infrastructure. Need roads and a factory? Well, you're probably going to have to build them yourself. You'll probably need to import all of your construction material as well as key people on your construction crew, as it is unlikely that you'll find skilled construction workers there. 3. Making a wire harness, while not too hard, still requires a minimum level of education (human capital). The workers must be able to walk around in a factory without hurting themselves or others and must be able to follow instructions, oral or written, to perform their task. The first condition mentioned is probably more of a problem than you realize. A lot of third-world farmers would have serious problems if they tried to walk into a factory because they wouldn't know what does what and would be a danger to themselves or others. The second condition could be countered by simplifying the job as much as possible. One way it's done now is to color-code the wires and connections on the harness so that the worker knows that they need to connect the blue wire from the blue connector on A to the blue connector on B. 4. In order to have a plant in Sri Lanka, you'd need to buy land for a factory and build it, as well as taking all steps needed to do business in that country. That may involve several payments to the local government to get building permits, work visas for key employees, etc. 5. If you chose to buy new equipment to make this plant, you just spent a shit-ton of money to get this sweatshop off the ground. If you're transporting the existing equipment, you've put yourself out of the wire harness business temporarily and you'll either need to stockpile harnesses before you move the plant (overtime to workers) or you'll need to buy harnesses from a vendor (which costs more than normal). 6. Productivity- What used to take you one worker in the US may take you 10 workers overseas. On top of that, quality control costs are more likely to increase at the new plant because the workers typically aren't going to be able to do the same job that the US workers did before. 7. Weird rules of doing business in foreign countries- This could range from regular "grease" payments to kidnapping-for-ransom to terrorist activity to a revolution. If you are in a foreign country that is not particularly stable, your entire investment can disappear overnight. Even if there is some stability, there is always the chance that one of your key employees will be kidnapped and held for ransom or that you'll be the target of a terrorist attack because you're a US company. That's not everything that's involved, but it's certainly enough to make a point. That point being, of course, that moving jobs overseas takes more into account than the cost of individual workers. Anybody who decides to move jobs overseas solely for the cost of labor is an idiot.

Agreed, Popick. It's historical precedent that industrial and pre-industrial societies can and will exploit child labor until the point is reached where the work needs a certain level of human capital above being alive. What's happening today in the sweatshops of India and Indonesia happened hundreds of years ago in England and the US and it stopped when it became more profitable to get trained adults to do work instead of masses of untrained workers. In fact, I'd say India's starting to get out of this rut considering that their universities are producing a LOT of computer programmers, engineers, physicists, and other professions that are highly trained in fields that are important and, in some cases, are in a severe shortage in the US. (Engineers and physicists are particularly hard to find because most US students tend to avoid subjects that place an emphasis on hard science or lots of math)

There should be a ROM Request thread around here somewhere... Do a search for NES roms on Yahoo and you might find it. Otherwise, consider using BitTorrent or Kazaa to find one of those jumbo NES ROM packs.

Mike's right about a lot of this... raising the minimum wage will either cut jobs here or INCREASE outsourcing of low-level jobs and some mid-level jobs. The reason that accounting departments of some major companies are now overseas is that paying an American to investigate a $50 discrepancy was not cost effective. Paying someone a fraction of that made it possible to investigate VERY small errors in payment, thus making outsourcing a better bargain than they thought it would be. To change the subject slightly, I'll talk about the downside of out-sourcing. Mainly, that downside deals with the fact that a US company is now dependant on a foreign country's stability to maintain its current productivity. Have a plant in Pakistan? There's a chance that Al Qaeda could bomb it or that a war could break out between Pakistan and India. Have a business in Europe? Good luck if you ever try to fire a worker. European job-protection laws are so fucked that you'd have to pay them a severance package equal to what they've earned during their employment to that company. The inability to close several unprofitable factories in France sent a large French company to its destruction a few years ago. They couldn't lay off the plant workers without paying them exorbinant amounts of severance pay, so the entire company went bust. Cuba was a businessman's paradise until Castro forced Batista to abdicate then nationalized all the assets within the country. Iran was considered to be a solid beacon of stability in the Middle East until Khomeni overthrew the Shah. The point being that out-sourcing is high-risk in the long run if you don't evaluate the possibilities beforehand. In addition, there are many hidden costs to running business in foreign countries. One of these is that the country's workers may rely on "grease" payments in order to let your company do business as normal. ("Grease" is permissable for corporations because it is to ensure business continues to run normally, NOT to bribe people to get undue influence.) If you're selling cars in Brazil, you may have the choice between paying grease to a customs official and getting your cars right away or not paying it and risking the cars being destroyed, stolen, or rejected and sent back to the US. Etc. Etc. Etc. The point being that out-sourcing could be a HUGE pain in the ass for a company if they aren't planning it out well. Dell's been paying for it lately and is in the process of bringing their customer service lines back to the US from India because of it. (There was such a backlash against people in India using the Dell playbook to troubleshoot problems that there were MASSIVE amounts of complaints). Out-sourcing is only a short-term problem UNLESS someone does something stupid to encourage more of it, like hiking the minimum wage by $2 and making even MORE jobs too pricy to compete against foreigners. It's already bad enough that some unions have priced their industries out of competition, but this would make it far worse. This has all been a bit of a ramble but the point is that you have to think long-term about how to realign your economy to compete against other countries. We don't need to be propping up any businesses that are not essential to this country. All that does is keep the business from becoming as competitive as it can, which sets it up for a bigger failure down the road.

If you're speaking in US dollars, the only $70-80 games I remember were for the SNES or Genesis. Most, if not all, NES games topped out at $50-55 US. If you're talking Canadian dollars, that may be different.

Goonies II was a part of the STELLAR Konami launch titles in about 1987. Those titles, for the most part, were some of the best early games on the system. Gradius, Track And Field, Castlevania, Rush 'N Attack, Goonies, Stinger, Top Gun... Out of all of those, the only average or below titles are Stinger and Top Gun, and Top Gun is only average because it's hard to translate a flight sim to the NES controller. On top of that, Konami had very few, if any, crap games on the NES. Even CapCom had some trash every once in a while. The only half-assed Konami game that comes to mind is the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that they released on the Ultra label.

This list seems to have some reaches here. West Virginia at #9 and Cal at #10? West Virginia probably won't play anybody this year until they reach a bowl game because the Big (L)East is so drained by Miami and V-Tech leaving. As for Cal, I can see them being good but not THAT good. Beat USC, Washington State, and/or Oregon State and I'll believe it. Utah at #11? Utah's good but that's a bit high for any mid-major team to start, especially one playing in the Mountain West. The only other teams I have any respect for in that league are Air Force and Colorado State. #15 or so is more realistic because they'll have room to move and won't have a serious backlash if they drop one. Virginia at #14? That's another reach. Virginia's never been able to put together an entire ACC season, even though they have upset Florida State before. Expecting them to be great in a year where they're facing Miami, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Clemson, AND Florida State is lunacy. The plus for them is that V-Tech is their last regular season game of the season and V-Tech has a bad habit of coming out strong then hitting the wall about midway through the season. Alabama at #24? Bama's still living off the memories of years past. This year will be better than last year, but not enough to warrant a pre-season Top 25 ranking. Notre Dame at #39? I know that isn't a Top 25 ranking, but quit kidding yourself. Notre Dame, like Alabama, and Penn State, is living off of a legacy right now, only it hasn't quite sunk in to most people that the Irish went into the crapper the second that Lou Holtz left. The one season that DIDN'T suck, they were overrated, got taken by the BCS and then got the ever-loving SHIT knocked out of them by Oregon State. Whittingham's good, but he isn't going to pull out a good season with this schedule. Brigham Young, Michigan, Michigan State, Washington, Purdue, Stanford, Navy, Boston College, Pitt, Tennessee, and USC? Outside of BYU, those teams have actually been pretty good over the last few years, so I'd say that 6-5 would be VERY tough.

Athlon does an outstanding job. All 117 team's projected starters and backups. A great magazine too get to know some of the lesser known players and teams. National Championship is usually a bitch to figure out. Last year neither LSU or USC were national championship contenders going into the season. Same goes for Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Ohio St. when they won it. USC was considered to be a national title contender going in, although not one of the top ones. Their early-season game with Auburn was supposed to have a massive effect on the post-season picture, although it didn't because Auburn folded under the pre-season predictions and didn't score a TD for 3 games.

The only feasable explanation I can see for a sequel would be if one of the planes escaping from the UK in the scene mentioned early in the movie had an Infected in the cargo bay. That way, the plane could land as normal because the pilot would be okay, but the Infected would either escape the airport or infect everyone on the plane, who would then overwhelm people in the airport and infect them, etc. If it's anything other than that, it will probably come off as a HUGE ripoff of Day Of The Dead or Jurassic Park. IE- "Hey, let's keep this infected guy as a pet then charge people admission to see him tear apart small animals!"

This isn't going to help Kerry in some battleground states, especially Louisiana. Cleo Fields (D-Baton Rouge) of the Louisiana House has been trying to get a law passed through that would make Louisiana's minimum wage PERMANENTLY $1.00 to $1.50 above the nationally-mandated minimum wage. ("Permanently" as in the state will have a new minimum wage of $8 if Kerry gets his way and rases the national minimum wage to $7). Needless to say, this subject has been under a LOT of debate recently, with the current feeling being that Cleo knows he doesn't have a hope in Hell of getting it passed and is trying to ingratiate himself to his constituents in poor North Baton Rouge while pissing off some of the constituents of other representatives fighting him on the subject. Most people speaking on the subject besides Cleo bring up a lot of the arguments listed previously, which are that small businesses take it up the ass when the minimum wage gets raised and either someone loses their job or the business suffers, which is the exact OPPOSITE of what someone needs to be doing in an economy that is supposedly the worst since the Depression according to some. Considering that this bill seems to be panned by a vast majority of LA representatives and LA *IS* a battle-ground state in this election, I think Kerry may have just stepped in a giant mess.

Super Dodge Ball was one of the launch titles for the GBA... although it still isn't as much fun as the NES version.

My write-ins were Archon (Loved it to death on the Atari 800), Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest (Still the best Castlevania IMHO), and Skate Or Die 2 (forgotten gem from late in the NES's life).

Moore's been a long-term Arab supporter, so that comment doesn't surprise me. (One of the terms on his contract for Roger And Me was that the only way it could be shown in Israel is if the Palestinians could see it whenever and whereever they wished). However, Hezbollah supporting the movie does surprise and disgust me, as the fat fucking piece of shit who always talks about how people on the right destroy lives through commerical means (Reagan's financial policies supposedly destroying his hometown of Flint, MI, etc.) and harps on gun policiy in the US leading to deaths, I find it ironic that he'd let his film be promoted by people who have actively taken part in the killing of hundreds of US citizens.

Golgo 13 pwnz j00r azzez!

Hey Paulie, why don't you try getting RVD a main event spot instead of bringing crackheads into SD. I dunno why I found that ironic, but I did. Good thing I'm not the only one. Candido though is past it to be a real cruiserweight threat....or anything for that matter. I don't follow wrestlers ages, but he's gotta be getting up their in years, and from what I've heard recently, he's not in the best physical condition. I haven't seen him work since he was in WCW, but I have heard he is tearing it up in the Jersey independents these days. If Guerrero and Regal could make the most out of their respective second or third chances, why not give Candido a shot? After he is retired, he could help book things as well. Candido blew his chances at comebacks several times over the years. He left the WWE on bad terms, left ECW with almost no notice, I'm pretty sure he was fired from WCW, etc. Eddy got another shot because he is a great guy, had worked in the WWF recently, and appeared to have cleaned up. Regal was in Memphis for a LONG time before they put him on TV because they didn't want him to go back to being a screwup. If Candido gets hired, he'll just be Lance Storm's understudy as an OVW instructor because Cornette is the only guy in WWE management who probably isn't on bad terms with him. (I know that Candido pissed off both Pritchards, JR, and a few others on his way out the door in 1997)

That was a bit low on Vic's part... Not that I wouldn't hit the Armenian chick myself but it's bad when he fucks her after her sister died in his arms and just after he ventilated Margos.

Whoops... wrong thread.

Actually, Samoa Joe threatened to turn the title into a 9-Iron then go golfing with RF-hater Bob Barnett.

I haven't supported ROH or RF Video in over three months now, so this only reinforces the feelings I already had on the situation. I hope Rob Feinstein dies from an infection caused by getting anally raped by a guy named Bubba.

The problem is that most presidents fall into a few ranges, with the vast majority being caretaker presidents between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln then between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. "We are the mediocre presidents / you won't find our faces on dollars or on cents there's Taylor, there's Tyler, there's Filmore and there's Hayes / there's William Henry Harrison "I died in 30 days!" Memorable good presidents (numbers represent the line of succession, NOT their overall rank)- 1. George Washington 3. Thomas Jefferson 5. James Monroe (Monroe Doctrine) 7. Andrew Jackson (People will certainly debate this one) 11. James Polk (Mexican-American War) 16. Abraham Lincoln 26. Teddy Roosevelt 32. Franklin D. Roosevelt 33. Harry S Truman 34. Dwight D. Eisenhower 35. John F. Kennedy (This is pushing it IMHO) 40. Ronald Reagan The rest of the presidents, by far, were ineffective at best and downright corrupt at worst. The worst of the worst would have to be US Grant, Rutheford B. Hayes, and Warren G. Harding due to their incredibly corrupt administrations. Hell, Hayes only won election in 1876 because of massive electoral fraud on both sides of the fence lead to the compromise of Hayes becoming president in exchange for Reconstruction ending in the South.

Wow... Grut actually does something RIGHT for once.

Truman DEFINITELY. Ike, too. I had Ike as #4 and JFK as #5 already.

I would put Harrison before him. After all, before he had been in office a month, he died. Carter wasn't the worst... he was just inept instead of corrupt. Harding's administration defines corrupt. Ford's administration was a lame-duck for two years before losing to an unknown peanut farmer from the Deep South, back before people realized that the South HAD emerged from the Civil War. (Billy Carter certainly didn't help his brother's image...)

As I said, though, it's hard to rate him under some people. He's just above the no-names that hardly anyone remembers (Coolidge, Taft) and the memorable people with serious flaws (Wilson, Nixon). Outside of Truman, I couldn't really put anyone else over him in good conscience without a REALLY good explanation.