the dollar

[⌐■_■]

be sure to stay over at my place when you come to holland HP maybe we can get you a visa

anyway, appart from the gasprices and other smaller conveniences and inconveniences there seems nothing really worrying.. strange tho, because less then 2 years back there was a crisis (smaller then the current one) and here in europe there was this silent panic about the prospects of our economy. i think its strange because the prospects of the economy are even badder now. i mean look at the loans george w bush has forced america to attract because of the war in iraq. im trying not to judging anything but the figures, but to be honest; they scare the hell out of me. im curious as to how america will overcome this financial blow to the head. i hope the next elected president will do a better job..

[-HP-]

lol, just don't get me to work at Macdonald's KT!

Yeh, I agree.. And another thing, we Europeans could invest ALOT more than we do, is "renewable energy", i belive that is the correct term, you know like eolic and solar energy! That way we wouldn't need the uber expensive oil anymore!

970 trillion kWh of energy fall from the skies everyday.

here, I love this advert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGN-8poqd6Q

[Fletch]

The price of gas is probably the biggest pain (I know we're still a lot less than Europe, but we're jackasses who love our big cars). If anything, if our game sells well in Europe, we're going to get a great exchange rate from Euros to American dollars. So go buy BiA:HH if you're in Europe. Papa needs a new Vespa.

[Deathy]

":49k3i4u0]lol, just don't get me to work at Macdonald's KT!

Yeh, I agree.. And another thing, we Europeans could invest ALOT more than we do, is "renewable energy", i belive that is the correct term, you know like eolic and solar energy! That way we wouldn't need the uber expensive oil anymore!

970 trillion kWh of energy fall from the skies everyday.

here, I love this advert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGN-8poqd6Q

We need satellite solar stations.

Those solar plantations may supply many people but you can supply many more with atomic energy, while taking less space.

It's maybe not that ecologically friendly but if you think realistic, that's the solution.

[zaphod]

yea the most noticeable thing is the price of gas sucking ass big time. Also, I have noticed that food prices have gone up a little as well. Not like, holy crap I can't afford to eat - but more like, wait a second - I always used to be able to pay for this with a 5 dollar bill and now I can't.

Also, going on vacation to anywhere in europe SUCKS

[e-freak]

600€ per Month??? In germany you get like 2200€ and on lowend its like 1250€ (ofc there are alot of people below this but that's "usually" the stop).

I don't know about the usual costs in your country hp but my sister just got herself a little apartment here and she pays alone 410€ for that (she's a midwife and gets 2200€ p/M)

Come over to germany and work at Crytek As Portugal is EU you don't even need a Visa.

[-HP-]

Well, trust me, house rents are not much cheaper than that over here either... Depends whether the location of the house is on a urban spot, or not. Prolly life is cheaper in here, compared to countries such as UK or Finland for example, but we also receive less money on our salaries compared to those countries.

And, yeh... I waiting on a certain company to get back to me, to know if I was accepted, if not I'll definitely send CV to Crytek. Who knows, right? :roll:

[BaRRaKID]

600€ per Month???

That's without the taxes, we need to give a part of those 600€ to the state for our retirement found, so we usually end up with less than 550€ each month, which is my salary atm as a computer tech

The biggest problem is that after we adopted the €, the prices inflated almost 200% in some cases, for example a coffee used to cost .25€, and it now costs 0.50€ to 0.80€, and in some places it can go up to 1€! So we get payed the same as before, but have to pay 2 times more for almost everything. What happens now is that more than half of our population is in debt, and sometimes the loans are not made to pay for a house or a car, they are made to pay for the end of the month expenses, there are even some families that get loans to pay for other loans, which is insane!

About the US financial crisis... it's great hahaha buying things online from the US has never been better, it even compensates for the shipping fees most of the time. For example COD4 costs 49.99$, that's more or less 30€, shipping fees are around 10$, which is more or less 5€, that totals 35€ for a game that costs 55€ in stores here in Portugal If you buy 2 games you save enough to buy a third game!

[dux]

I love the smell of petrol.

[Furyo]

Well there has to be those who are getting screwed by this, and I'm one of those. I'm still sending back money to France as I need to pay back my business school loan until 2011, and that's costing me a leg each time. I just send a large amount once every few months, but I sure hope the rate has gone down again (or up depending on your side of the fence) next time I do it.

And yeah that's CAD, not USD, but it's really just about the same thing right now. I heard that Canada's economy was not heading in recession unlike the US, so we may be better off here.

[Sindwiller]

Those solar plantations may supply many people but you can supply many more with atomic energy, while taking less space.

It's maybe not that ecologically friendly but if you think realistic, that's the solution.

It's not that simple. You would have to mine uranium minerals (which could get short, too - just like oil), isolate them and make depleted uranium in facilities, and come to think of all the nuclear waste we're supposed to put somewhere. History has proven many times (also here in Switzerland), that many nuclear waste disposals aren't safe enough or are lacking certain security measures due to cheapness. I do not like the idea of my life being threatened by the cheapness of some firm. Hence why atom reactors are not the ultimative solution.

[Chunks]

I disagree. Uranium is found in virtually every rock on earth. It's pretty abundant and you would be surprised at how much energy you can extract from a small amount of enriched ore.

Also, depleted uranium is not THAT dangerous unless it you inhale dust when it is incenerated/exploded/etc. Not trying to underplay its' toxicity but it is nowhere as dangerous as u235.

I do admit that storing it could be dangerous, but as long as there is a good plan and strategy at containing it I still think it is the best option we have at making clean power en masse at this point. I do agree that it is not an ultimate solution but I think it is the correct stepping stone.

In the US they are building a pretty huge facility inside of a mountain in the middle of a desert, should be pretty secure, but who knows.

Solar technology I hope will be the future, but the technology still just isn't there. We still aren't to the point where the efficiency is there and the cost per watt is way too high.

[Sentura]

I disagree. Uranium is found in virtually every rock on earth. It's pretty abundant and you would be surprised at how much energy you can extract from a small amount of enriched ore.

Also, depleted uranium is not THAT dangerous unless it you inhale dust when it is incenerated/exploded/etc. Not trying to underplay its' toxicity but it is nowhere as dangerous as u235.

I do admit that storing it could be dangerous, but as long as there is a good plan and strategy at containing it I still think it is the best option we have at making clean power en masse at this point. I do agree that it is not an ultimate solution but I think it is the correct stepping stone.

In the US they are building a pretty huge facility inside of a mountain in the middle of a desert, should be pretty secure, but who knows.

Solar technology I hope will be the future, but the technology still just isn't there. We still aren't to the point where the efficiency is there and the cost per watt is way too high.

while it's true that uranium is pretty abundant, it's mostly the depleted u238 isotope that is present. the highly radioactive u235 is only found in 5% of all uranium cases (give or take, cant remember the exact numbers). also, having a facility in the desert has little to no effect on the magnitude of a nuclear meltdown; chernobyl showed us that a meltdown can create a radioactively toxic cloud the size of belarus, and with heavy winds it swept over a large part of europe. so, unless you build it on antartica (poor penguins), there'll always be massive amounts of people endangered by it.

as for solar technology, read this guy's post about it (scroll down a bit, the headline is "the laser elevator"). while the tone is sort of humourous and at times sarcastic, this is actually written by a guy that worked at nasa, so i'd imagine it's something he has a lot of insight in:

http://blag.xkcd.com/

[Chunks]

You can't have a meltdown without the fuel rods hitting critical mass, something that modern day reactors are not very likely to ever see. Not to mention that's not an issue when you are storing depleted fuel rods. The only danger in storing the waste material is if someone was to break in and steal some and then make a dirty bomb out of it, which in the end would cause more hysteria than environmental damage. Which is why storing it in one big place is safer.

Reactors are designed differently now than they were in the chernobyl days, it was a flawed design to begin with.

I think we are getting off-topic

[Sentura]

You can't have a meltdown without the fuel rods hitting critical mass, something that modern day reactors are not very likely to ever see. Not to mention that's not an issue when you are storing depleted fuel rods. The only danger in storing the waste material is if someone was to break in and steal some and then make a dirty bomb out of it, which in the end would cause more hysteria than environmental damage. Which is why storing it in one big place is safer.

Reactors are designed differently now than they were in the chernobyl days, it was a flawed design to begin with.

I think we are getting off-topic

the fundemental design hasn't changed since chernobyl; however in the chernobyl accident there were many warnings that the plant administrator ignored. it feels bad to say that disaster could have been averted, and with ease at that; but the administrator just wouldn't listen!

point is, there is always a chance of something like this happening. it happened at chernobyl, it happened at the three mile island, and it'll probably happen again.

also, fyi, this is the off topic forum :monocle: