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Is that you Nike/Shia? :P

Nike is a premium company that Nike Free pas cher sells well branded and expensive products that are known for their superior quality. Nike is well known for the trademark "just do it" and it relates to the sporting spirit. This company has more than 500 factories in over 45 countries that are contracted to manufacture these products. With this extended production capacity, the company has elaborate marketing strategies that has made it possible for the company to realize its goals and objectives (Nike, 2008) Company logo; source: http://www.nike.com/ Table 1: Summary of important aspects of Nike Incorporated, adapted from: Nike (2008) Founded 1972 Key peoplePhilip Knight, co-founder, chairman Mark Parker, CEO and president IndustrySports equipments, sportswear, apparel and accessories RevenueUS$16.326 Billion (2007 FY) Net incomeUS$1.492 Billion (2007) Employees30,200 (January, 2008) Slogan Just Do It Strengths Nike Corporation is an extremely competitive company, as its market share can attest. Mr Phil Knight the Founder and Nike CEO is frequently quoted as stating that "Business is war without bullets nike tn ." Nike Corporation has a strong dislike of its competitors.

With the timberland Homme current high competition being witnessed in all industries, companies are increasingly being faced with new challenges to shirts, t-shirts and Jerseys for various sporting activities including, football, athletics, basketball, cricket, tennis, skateboarding and golf. Nike is a premium company that sells well branded and expensive products that are known for their superior quality. Nike is well known for the trademark "just do it" and it relates to the sporting spirit. This company has more than 500 factories in over 45 countries that are contracted to manufacture these products. With this extended production capacity, the company has elaborate marketing strategies that has made it possible for the company to realize its goals and objectives (Nike, 2008) Company logo; source: http://www.nike.com/ Table 1: Summary of important aspects of Nike Incorporated, adapted from: Nike (2008) Founded 1972 Key peoplePhilip Knight, co-founder, chairman Mark Parker, CEO and president IndustrySports equipments, sportswear, apparel and accessories RevenueUS$16.326 Billion (2007 FY) Net incomeUS$1.492 Billion (2007) Employees30,200 (January, 2008) Slogan Just Do It.

"... just do it!" ----Nike :P

I agree, Nike. ;)

Hence, why I use the original old XMMS in Linux/Debian.

The problem isn't the watch form factor, it's that most of the people behind these products haven't thought through what makes sense to wear on your wrist. Meanwhile, options like the Basis Band offer useful functionality that makes sense to strap to your wrist. The FuelBand isn't bad either. Both devices are less "cellphone on your wrist" and more health/activity trackers.

Definitely something for the atypical slashdotter, but if Apple can bring something to the market which combines iOS, the Nike+t, the Fit Bit, and/or the Suunto Core they could potentially capture a good portion of the exercise watch / band market. Current options aren't truly versatile (e.g. hiking, running, backpacking, daily activity), but combine this with Apple's UI and they could produce a very interesting product that I'm likely to try.

Yes, I've looked at Motorola's GPS watches and was far from impressed.

[disjointed rant]
I think the larger point is that we keep trying to replace teachers with technology. It should be the other way. Replace technology with teachers. I'm not suggesting slipping back to the days of using slide rules and log tables (although, some of the most amazing things were made at that time). We need quality teachers that are good at what they do. Not people constantly looking for new "toys" to play with in the classroom. One of my college professors called it all "whiz-bangery" and he actively eschewed it. I thought he was nuts at the time, but sometimes this stuff really distracts more than it helps.

Sadly, and despite school policy (just about everywhere), kids have already replaced their teachers with cell phones in the classroom. I don't get it when fifth graders at an inner city school have iPhones. I can't even afford a fuckin' iPhone and I have a job. These kids wear nice shoes that are worth about two weeks in groceries for my family. They have every modern game console. I have a PS2 and a Wii, both were hand-me-downs. They play WoW instead of doing homework. One kid in my mothers classroom even brags about it. He comes in and sleeps during the school day and takes pride in the fact that he is good at whatever the fuck you do in WoW. And the part that really aggravates the fuck out of me is how we're throwing money at the wrong part of the equation here. Most of these kids are on the subsidized lunch program. Parents are teaching their children how to mismanage money, shirk responsibility, maximize aloofness, and generally believe that the world owes them something which they haven't earned. There's no work ethic. There's no compassion. These kids all think they're going to grow up and be the next [Jordan, LeBron, Kobe, et. al]. Last November, I went in and talked with a class about my job [corporate pilot] and presented some simple [or so I thought] math problems that I have to use every day at work, such as: 400 miles divided by 200 miles per hour = how many hours? Not one person in the class could figure it out. Not one person in the class even bothered to try.

And just to reinforce some of the other comments about the IT departments at schools. I'm no computer whiz (unless lurking around Slashdot makes me so), but my mother tells me that I could easily drop in and fill an IT leadership role in her school system based on her experiences with the IT staff there. Personally, I wouldn't be so bold to suggest that. But it makes me wonder what's going on in these institutions.
[/disjointed rant]

Too pissed to login.

I hope nobody points out that not-olympic-sponsor Nike mentions not just olympic athletes, but the Olympics themselves on one of their web pages:
Nike Training - Winter Olympics

(Strange, as far as I can tell, the Vancouver Olympic Committee has contracted with Nike to provide material for the games. So VOC is paying Nike, not Nike paying any OC.)

Nike creates a shoe that is less like a shoe and more like not wearing shoes. It's creating a non-shoe. And they're charging $100 for it...

I think I'll hire their marketing team to sell some new clothes to the emperor.

Improper mechanics in your feet cause problems every where else...Running is one thing, walking around in any shoe with an elevated heel is just as bad...

Vibram makes "shoes" called five fingers, which are the closest thing you can get to running/walking barefoot.
http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/

If you insist on fashion...
http://www.nike.com/nikefree/

True, it's not nice to run into broken glass or just dog crap. That's why there's new breed of minimalistic shoes. They're designed to look like shoes (which is important for social reasons, like not getting kicked out restaurant or workplace) but don't limit your feet the way traditional shoes do. Additionally wearing *some kind* of shoes is important for hygiene and aforementioned avoidance of injuries. The important thing: soles need to be very thin and flexible, and there should be lots of room for toes.. Some examples: Vivo Barefoot serries, with kevlar soles http://www.terraplana.com/ Nike Free serries http://www.nike.com/nikefree/ Vibram Fivefingers (Danger: look awkward) http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/

You can get shoes with a built-in iPod from Nike+. Very geek-friendly.

I mean really, why do they even bother? Shit, everyone knows that all you need to be successful is a good brand. If your product sucks donkey balls, you'll still be profitable, year after year. All you need is a good brand! Experience doesn't matter, quality doesn't matter. Just brand! 100% of Apple's success is due to their brand, not because they make good products. Obviously!

Ahem. may I draw your attention to... Microsoft or perhaps Nike?

Trademarked, at least. You have to ask? :)

I agree that Flash ads are, in themselves, not evil. However, few people have even the skills necessary to do good stationary graphics. Almost no one has the ability to do moving pictures that tell a good advertising story, apparently.

So the biggest effect of almost all Flash ads is annoyance. Pay money to annoy prospective customers? That is a business method for those who want to sink their companies.

Want an example? Look at the Nike web site. That site is so bad it puts an upper limit on the intelligence of Nike top management. Or, maybe it puts an upper limit on their age, which can't be more than 14, and emotionally damaged from having a bad childhood.

With JavaScript turned off, there is nothing on the Nike web site, just a blank screen. When you turn on JavaScript, you see... something loading. It's Flash. A short video with loud sound begins playing. I don't know the point of the video, but it is embarassingly without humanistic sensibility. I suppose it tries to appeal to angry women by being anti-male.

That's Flash. Somewhat evil because it abandons web standards. More evil because it is used stupidly to irritate prospective customers.

Greetings! You are in flagrant breach of numerous patents, trademarks and copyrights owned by my clients, Nike. To avoid further escalation send 28 million dollars immediately to: Account 10986754, Bank of Nigeria, Zurich CH.

I realize this is targeted at a wide consumer audience, but it would be really cool to see some high-end versions of this for more serious athletes. I would love to see this merged with the kinds of functions the really good fitness computers have.

Here's a sampling of such products:

Nike's Triax Elite running watch is one of the items on this page
http://www.nike.com/nikerunning/usa/home.jhtml?ref =global_home#equipment

Polar's S625X Running watch with S1 foot pod
http://www.polarusa.com/consumer/runtri/model/S625 x.asp

and perhaps coolest of all, Suunto's T6
http://www.suunto.com/dyn/t6

Nike has the right idea with the foot sensor. All the devices listed above use a similar sort of accelerometer to measure a runner's speed and distance. This Nike+ thing is way cheaper though, which makes me think they're cutting corners. Or they're pricing it extra low to move a lot of them. Hopefully it's the latter.

What Nike+ is missing, that those other products have, is a heart rate monitor. It's a no-brainer. All they'd need to add is the capability to receive data from the heart rate straps Nike already makes. While speed and distance give you performance, heart rate gives you a great indicator of effort. Once you have both performance and effort, you can divide the one by the other and get your fitness level. Then each time you sync your ipod, you get your new songs, update your podcasts, and see an updated graph of your fitness level rising over the last few weeks.

On top of that, the ipod nano could easily record every single heartbeat, which is the sort of thing only the extra-high-end monitors (the S625X and T6) can do. With detailed timing information like that, they've been able to do some other nifty things. Suunto computes an estimate for "EPOC" (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption). Using this, their software can offer advice on how hard your workout should be, and prevent you from overtraining.

Imagine a consumer product that puts this kind of advanced information in the hands of the casual athlete and makes it simple to use. With this equipment, you're already packing enough computing power to record and store the information. Why not use it?

I would buy this, if it also received and recorded data from a heart rate sensor chest strap, like Nike's other product, the Triax Elite HRM/SDM.
http://www.nike.com/nikerunning/usa/home.jhtml?ref =global_home#equipment

The guy gets voice feedback during his run in the ad ("your average pace is seven fifteen"):
http://www.nike.com/nikeplus/

"Hit the ground running with workout-based voice feedback"
http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/gear.html

"Voice feedback"
http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/run.html

The Nike+

How is the text of the commercial used to launch Joga in a thread about Joga even slightly offtopic?

If you're serious, travel to Hong Kong, Bangkok, or any other major Asian city with a lax view of copyrights.

You'll be able to start a large collection of many different styles for not very much money. And on top of that you will have traveled around and have a story for all of your watches. The story really makes the watch.

Other than that, try a
Casio Waveceptor (note, doesn't work in New England)
Fossil PDA Watch
USB Watch
YES watch
MP3 watch
Sleep Tracker Watch (too bad it is so ugly)

Tokyo Flash
Nike Watches (always something interesting)

Also, consider pocketwatches. They're rare enough that you get immediate oddball points for using one, but they're common enough that you can find interesting ones.

The only people that go there aren't going to changing their shiping needs because some guy made a couch of boxes.

You don't know shit about marketing.

Why did Anheuser-Busch spend millions of dollars on those "Real men of genius" commercials? You think anybody switched to drinking Bud Light after hearing those?

Why does Nike spend millions of dollars on it's ridiculous commercials? Watch this. Not a single shoe in it. In fact, the commercial had nothing to do with shoes at all.

Marketing by large corporations is about brand awareness, you doof. It has little to do with convincing customers to purchase your products or services. Were I the CEO of FedEx, I'd give this guy all the free boxes he needed, pay him for some links back to FedEx, then quietly tweak my supplies ordering system to discourage everyone and their dog from doing the same thing.

Instead, they spent 50 times more money on lawyers than "fedexfurniture.com" would have ever cost them in boxes. Seems they understand marketing about as well as you.

Companies are out to make a profit not a political statement.

Companies are out to do what their owners want them to do. Some, such as Patagonia, or Working Assets, do make political statements because their owner(s) want them to. Others, such as Nike have learned (been taught, actually) the economic advantages of corporate responsibility (and disadvantages of a lack thereof).

Investors, i.e., the shareholders, want a monetary return, not a political return on their investment. As an investor in Cisco I would sell immediately if I knew Cisco was going to quit selling to one of the largest markets in existence because they were going to make a political statment

Other investors want many things, some of which you might not care about. The way to find out what percentage of them want a certain thing is to poll them on it. Blocking such a poll based on the opinions of management is ridiculous. Management works for the owners.

Only if all companies did this would that then make an impact. (And yes, I know you have to start somewhere, but why don't you start with the people in China first?)

Because I don't own shares in the people of China.

Corporates are Sociopaths!

Nothing beats playing my favorite EA games over my SBC Yahoo! DSL connection using my D-Link DGL-4300 Wireless 108G Gaming Router with a cool, refreshing Pepsi in one hand, my Logitech mouse in the other, wearing my Nike clothes and blasting a ClearChannel affiliate, my source for great new hits from 50 Cent and A Simple Plan.

Whoops, I meant to post that as an article.

This is not always the case.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as anti-big-brother as the next person, but in a society where privacy cannot be garunteed, the next best thing is to have as much as public as possible.
Since we cannot guarantee privacy, we should just eliminate it? So you want your coworkers to know how much money you make, know your medical history, have an exact account of when you take your breaks, how long your lunch is, etc. Oh look Joe from accounting takes 2 hour lunch breaks he doesn't deserve more money than me. Except perhaps he's efficient and gets more accomplished than you in less time. This promotes a backstabbing type mentality in the workplace.
More information is not necessarily better unless you have a good way to analyze it to get a complete picture.
In your example of shoes:The company wants to make shoes in Indonesia for a total material and labor cost of $20/pair and sell them in the USA for $120/pair.
You forgot to mention the other expenses. Company spent $13/pair in marketing, $5/pair getting choice shelving at the store, $3/pair tariffs, $2/pair overhead, $4/pair shipping, $5/pair licensing. So that $20/pair of shoes for material & labor actually cost $50. Of course you are selling it wholesale for $75 (50% pre-tax margin). Then the retailer sells it for $120, of course the retailer has its own costs to factor in.
If you don't understand an industry how can you accurately understand all the information provided? You can't, but what will happen is people with their own agendas will use the information to put their own spin on things. So while a company may look like it has 500% margins, in actuallity it makes about 44% (12/22/04 10-Q filing).
How can you expect people to make good use of increased information when they don't even spend the time to look through what is provided now.

Flash cartoons are a hot item in entertainment these days.

If you recall, the original http://jibjab.com/ cartoon featuring George W. Bush and John Kerry was such a big hit that they played portions of it on cnn and almost every news organization. Afterwards, they made a sequel that the Tonight Show with Jay Leno secured the rights to premiere. You can now buy them both on DVD for $10, although I doubt they'll last very long since they're meant to lighten a certain political mood. (I don't know how much they paid for this, but it was definitely worth it. Funnier than one year of his show combined.)

Also, the creator of the hugely popular "The End of the World" was asked to make a series of advertisement flashes for nike.

The nike ads can be found here http://www.nike.com/usa/nikesphere/

For the facelift, the first for a summer games in 76 years, organisers asked artists to submit proposals that included two distinctly Greek elements: a depiction of Nike, the goddess of victory, and the Panathinaikos, the horseshoe-shaped stadium in Athens where the first modern Olympic games were held in 1896.

Ever since the Amsterdam Olympics of 1928, Nike had been shown on the medals, seated on a chariot with a wreath in one hand and an ear of corn in the other, symbolically honouring winning athletes. Next to the goddess was usually a stadium that looked a lot like a Roman amphitheatre - not surprising since the designer was an Italian, Giuseppi Cassioli.

Ah, there we have it:

Her design has a winged, almost angelic Nike boldly swooshing down feet-first from the heavens, delivering the laurel in the Panathinaikos stadium, the all-marble venue for archery and the finish line of the marathon later this month. Her Nike is based on a marble statue by the sculptor Paionios of Chalkidiki from 421 B.C.

This small blurb was sponsored by your favorite running shoes

The IOC did think about the billboards near the venues, and about what spectators wear and eat, but they completely forgot the advertisements on web sites reporting about the Olympics!. And it's always the the usual suspects!

Its like a NASCAR season, 21 races in 23 days, speed climing, and sprinting all differant races, but on bicycles. 188 bicycles, with the best riders in the world. Rain, wind, potholes, and fans in the road. And the guy that dominates 5 years straight in "Le Tour de Fance" is a Texas cancer survivor who was dropped by his then French cycling team when he first was diagnosed.

Five Sport Illustrated covers (including Sportman of the Year) in a country that is barely conscious of the sport. Armstrong defines human spirit, courage and strength. It is entirely possible we are seeing the "Golden Age of Cycling". Like the NBA without Michael Jordan, it won't be the same without Armstrong.

LiveSTRONG, GO POSTAL !!!!!!!!!

US Postal
The Cyclysm
Wear Yellow

Nuff said.
US Postal
The Cyclysm
Wear Yellow

"You know what really would have been badass. If they added bluetooth capability between it and a pda so you can track your workouts wirelessly. Then create a bluetooth heart rate monitor with a watch that would intergrate the entire system. You could modify your step and check your heart rate at the same time. I should start working on the patent..."

Good idea, maybe Nike will come up with something?

I found the Garmin GPS systems, like that in the Garmin Forerunner 201 and Timex Bodylink (which also uses Garmin's GPS technology) to be unsatisfactorily inaccurate at speed and distance measurement.

Just recently, I had the opportunity to field test the Forerunner 201 (fully charged) vs. the FitSense FS-1 Speedometer at an outdoor 12K run across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The Forerunner repeatedly kept losing satellite signal, and in the end had over calculated the travelled distance by well over a quarter of a mile. On the other hand, literally, the FitSense watch was right on the mark, off by only 0.01 miles.

If the Forerunner or Bodylink don't have the luxury of a perfectly clear and cloudless day, with abosolutely no tree coverage or tall buildings near by, they're excellent. But that's not a realistic surrounding for most runners. The FitSense uses advanced pedometer technology instead of relying on a GPS signal and throughout my testing has proven to be a much more accurate device. Other noteworthy advanced speed distance monitors include the sleek Nike Triax Elite, it's predecessor the Nike Triax SDM 100, and the ultra lightweight SportBrain pod.

I found the Garmin GPS systems, like that in the Garmin Forerunner 201 and Timex Bodylink (which also uses Garmin's GPS technology) to be unsatisfactorily inaccurate at speed and distance measurement.

Just recently, I had the opportunity to field test the Forerunner 201 (fully charged) vs. the FitSense FS-1 Speedometer at an outdoor 12K run across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The Forerunner repeatedly kept losing satellite signal, and in the end had over calculated the travelled distance by well over a quarter of a mile. On the other hand, literally, the FitSense watch was right on the mark, off by only 0.01 miles.

If the Forerunner or Bodylink don't have the luxury of a perfectly clear and cloudless day, with abosolutely no tree coverage or tall buildings near by, they're excellent. But that's not a realistic surrounding for most runners. The FitSense uses advanced pedometer technology instead of relying on a GPS signal and throughout my testing has proven to be a much more accurate device. Other noteworthy advanced speed distance monitors include the sleek Nike Triax Elite, it's predecessor the Nike Triax SDM 100, and the ultra lightweight SportBrain pod.

Some runners use heart rate monitors which measure electrical signals given off by the heart - these are in contrast to monitors which sense pulse in blood vessels. These systems are also "non-invasive;"; however, they do not work by simply "'listening' to the pulse with a pressure transducer & working some fairly mundane math to get the numbers." See generally Nike HRM/SDM

I have tried a couple of bags, including the ones from STM who make great backpacks, and a leather one from Samsonite (no URL included, it is about 5 years old and probably unavailable). I currently use the Nike Epic E1 (sorry flash guys). But for comfort factor, either the E1, or the Sport series offer the best balance of weight and comfort. IMHO I'd say the E1 compromises weight for more comfort and better protection as it is a heavier bag.

While I hate the source, the Nike Epic E1 is my current bag of choice.

Features of the E1:
1. Plastic exoskeleton which channels weight of bag to lumbar. The contents of your bag will rest on the exoskeleton which covers the entire bag, starts high and ends at your lumbar / waist.
2. Adjustable torso height and lumbar size. This is what makes this bag so comfortable.
3. Auto-compression straps do work, and when fully used, make this bag very comfortable.
4. Lots of other pockets including one for music player, waterproof pouch at bottom of bag, and organiser for personal effects. This is a huge feature since it means all your little other gadgets, keys, phone, and nick-nacks can be organised in your bag and ready wherever you need.
5. The bag has a built-in stand in the exoskeleton so it stands up; all the time. This ends the tiresome lean the bag up the wall trick you have to play with most other bags.
6. External netting for helmet and wet articles that can be used for expanding the capacity of the bag while still channeling weight down the exoskeleton.

Gotchas of E1:
1. Breathable pellicle for back support doesn't work (you will sweat underneath this)
2. You can't really use this bag on one shoulder, since the auto-compression straps only work if you use two.
3. Exoskeleton means the bag stays at one size -- isn't expandable, isn't compressible.
4. Heavy and expensive.
5. Nike, supporter of child labour, isn't really my brand of choice. I think this bag is made in either Vietnam or China too which doesn't really bode too well.
6. No warranty.

STM Sport Series is a great bag which I used before E1.

Features of STM:
1. Arguably better protection for laptop than E1, less protection for personal effects. The laptop slip in the STM doesn't sit on the bottom of the bag and is elevated, so if you drop the bag it is padded.
2. Intelligent padding between back and laptop gives protection to laptop and breathability. Also allows bag to be used on one shoulder.
3. Compression straps for bag make it thinner, and expand it when you need more space.
4. Simple organiser for items in front pocket.
5. External breathable section for wet items.
6. Portable music player pouch, plus rubberised hole for cord.
7. Extensive warranty (at time of my purchase, lifetime warranty for bag).
8. Relatively cheap.

Gotchas of STM:
1. Not as comfortable as E1.
2. Doesn't carry heavy weight as well as E1. This bag had design limitations, and it gets uncomfortable when you exceed them.
3. Doesn't look as cool as the E1, especially with their huge logo on the front (the first thing I took off with a pair of small scissors).

I have to say though, that Nike's use of sweatshops to produce their merchandise is troubling. Hopefully INDEO as an ethical corporation will take a stand against this shameful labor policy and adopt democratic production methods. A good, book on this written by an objective journalist (not an extremist hippy protester) you can take a look at here.

Keep up the good work!

In Japan is is absolutely critical for every teenage girl to have exactly the same stuff as every other, or else she faces some rather severe social consequences. It's no secret that these girls/sheep run the Japanese economy.

Yes. It's a good thing teenage American girls don't run their own economy...

I would like to agree with you. You do make good points, that the path of force does make you do things that you regret sometimes. Scratch that. Most of the time. That the path of imperialism is immoral.

But the thing is morality is no barrier to force. Morality is merely a tool which allows society to control the masses, to let the ordinary moral person be safe from thievery and violation at the hands of the other moral people. But not everyone comes to the same conclusion as the protagonist of Crime and Punishment. Trust me, those who believe that morality will protect them, and find themselves in the path of immoral people will be crushed. They will die with a look of surprise and outrage on their faces.

Which brings me to your next point: the cynical view of life has to be masked to be effective. I'm pretty sure that everyone who stays in office for any amount of time knows the joke inside Machiavelli's The Prince, or would be able to write such a book from their own personal experience. The exercise of power is struggle. The beauty of an election system is that you can lose the struggle without losing much more than money and pride, but people still have to struggle to get the right to lead. And they have to make their competitors lose.

With regards to war being no longer an option because the riches of this world cannot be looted, note that globalism is simply colonialism continued through other means. You don't have to conquer your client states, you just have to get them to tie their currency to yours and become economically enmeshed in your country... for the purpose of your enrichment. Economic warfare is a very new thing. so far the only useful tactic of note is the dumping of currency to cause rapid inflation in the target country while making it cheap to buy goods from them. When they've had enough, then you sell them back the processed goods (ie wool into designer jumpers) and buy back their currency. It's worked all over south east asia and south america. I don't know if it's been done in to africa or russia/CIS yet, but we get so little news from there.

If you want to capture intangible things like "talent" you simply have to amass enough creature comforts and then brain drain the talent to yourself. If you want cheap labour, find an amenible country with no labour laws, ship them old, outmoded equipment, set them up and milk them dry. It's so simple it's painful.

With regards to actual war, real economic strength - that is the amount of goods in your economy to fuel your military industrial complex - is the backbone of todays high tech battlefield. Unless your economy can produce trucks that can trace artillery shells in flight back to their point of origin, or bombs that can kill every one of your enemies before they can hurt your vastly outnumbered force, then you are fighting last year's war. The engineers that make this hapen need a large economy to pay the taxes or the actual market price of this equipment (ie govt buys specialised equipment such as tanks, other equipment like gps reciever chips are bought by private individuals for peaceful ends because it is dual use) and keep them in material comforts. Material comforts not everything? A strong economy also pays for good religeous institutions, higher education and entertainment.

When the economy begins to "soften" (ie it is still huge but is not *growing*) then the depressive mood must be chased away by a big distraction. And there is no better way to get somebody's attention than to kill somebody they love. Their sons. Their daughters. Innocent people who look at them accusingly from websites and tv. Some are outraged by this and protest in the street. Others are frightened and redouble their efforts to hold up a "sick" economy.

Have you noticed that no protest has ever put the fairware lable on nike (see pages 22 and 23 of the Nike Verite Report. I'm sorry it's a .PDF)? Have you noticed that no pr

If Nike gets their way in court not only will deception by mindless corporate beings be legal, so will outright lying. Collusion between facisist corporate amerika and it's puppet government becomes less veiled daily.

One word: tight as hell.

Yes, the author is amazingly optimistic about human intelligence in general. They should not be taken seriously. I saw an interview with this guy on TechTV during an airing of The Screensavers, and I feel I can safely state that the author would agree with me in saying that it's not the foretelling that's important, but rather the intentions and thoughts behind them.

Let's not forget that Americans living during the 1900s lived in slums in the major cities of New York and Chicago. They invisioned flying cars and personal spacecraft before stumbling onto the Great Depression and two world wars. Let's not _underestimate_ human achievement either.

The author's intentions in this is to show what _can_ happen, given the proper circumstances and funding. I personally feel that if and when some glorious invention / annovation is made (e.g., time travel or "cure" for aging), it will be developed (and thus _patented_) by a whatever company creates it, and thus, most people will never see its hayday, until half a century later when politicians realize what a fucked up world it is. I can envision a world where time travel is patented by Sony and there's a huge Nike swoosh over Mars. Basically the worst parts of the Bible and The Matrix.

IMO, the author simply wants to foster intelligent conversation among people who care: this is what the world can be like. Here's what has to be done to prevent that... The power rests in your hands. Welcome to the Real World.

I've heard that Nike is always looking for some child labor.

:-)

It's been far too long since a new gadget was added to shoes. In the halcyon days of footwear (that was the early and mid '80s for you youngins) we had a radically new pedal contraption every couple of weeks! Shoes with no laces?! That's a loafer! Shox? We've had spring loaded tennies for like a decade.

No. What we need is power.
I want to be the first kid on my block with pulse jet game!

-----------

Mother of god, a trillion electron volts thru a pair of sport sandals? That can't be good for my feet!

While I'm sure it kicks the ass of the tree-hugging Birkatron, I have to believe that something like the Nikatron will eventually replace it due to reduced, off-shore labour costs.

In all seriousness, I had no idea that RMS was so ideologically aligned with the far-left in this country.

The same drug policies have continued for eight years under Clinton's administration -- does that make them ok?

Parts of our collective culture have given up the Golden Rule.

[RMS] simply doesn't see the big picture with regard to social issues.