This is good news, most of Google's hardware/software things are pretty awesome, but are marketed pathetically. Such as the Nexus series of phones. The Nexus Galaxy was a bit better with marketing, but they should have gone for all of the "big 4".
Please Google, sell this in retail stores all around, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. and don't make this be such a niche product where you have to order online and hope its as good as the reviews say.
Google has an advantage to all the rest of the tablets: it actually updates its stuff. I've got an Android phone I love (Samsung Captivate Glide) but annoyed at the fact that it/still/ has not received Ice Cream Sandwich. I suppose I'll root it eventually, but I'll keep the warranty... for now.
Quite a bit if you listen to Chinese dissident news.
However, given as I don't speak Chinese, know little about the geography and life in China I really don't listen to Chinese dissident news. It doesn't hit the "mainstream" because to be honest most people don't care about what is happening in China.
Exactly. I mean how is it so terrible that the cooks "fear for their job" of course they should fear for their job! Everyone "fears for their job" if they don't do well at their job. Perhaps incompetent IT guys should call up Oracle and tell them never to post any bug reports and sue any security blogs that post bug reports and security flaws, after all, if they installed an insecure program on a critical computer that can be exploited they'd fear for their job.
To be honest, all the British (and the foreign food) all looked fairly decent. Really the only terrible looking food was the "foreign" (being as she is from the UK) US meals. If anything it is a good showcase of what school lunches are from around the world and honestly I'd say it puts the British in more favorable light than the US.
The public have a fundamental right to see what their tax dollars (or pounds in this case) are doing, whether that is detailed information about Afghanistan and Iraq or school lunches.
But established competitors such as Microsoft, Apple and Google have way more infrastructure, talent, and cash to make it work out better in the end. Assuming the established competitor has a similar product to the startup, there are usually only minor reasons why people prefer the startup and it would generally cheaper to improve your product than to buy a startup and integrate it with your product.
I don't think that the acquisition/mergers of tech companies are anything to worry about, its just another bubble. What I imagine is happening is:
High-Ranking manager: I've heard that X buzzword is the next big thing (the cloud, social networking, etc.) what do we have that is in X buzzword?
Tech-Manager: Well, we have Y product but you disbanded that team...
High-Ranking manager: no problem, get me a list of the leading innovators in X and we'll buy one of them
And that dystopia won't happen because unlike governments, everything a corporation does is to make a profit. It makes a profit by improving people's standard of living. I don't know about you but (outside of government) I have not paid for a thing or supported a corporation that does not raise my standard of living. If a corporation stops improving my standard of living for the price they charge, I'm not going to support them and so they get no money from me. If there are more like-minded people like me, they still want my money so they make products to improve my (and others) standard of living so they will support that corporation.
Facebook was (and still is) massively overvalued. If Microsoft wants Facebook its best to wait until it falls to a price that more accurately reflects the price that there's little to no potential growth, can be easily struck down by silly regulations (if the EU now requires a warning for cookies which can easily be disabled and controlled via the browser, what's next for data that isn't that easily controlled?) and has only a billion in revenue.
What's the point in buying all these startups? I really don't see that it works out much in the end. Is it about patents? I simply don't see the justification to buy startups that are here today and gone tomorrow. Rather than spending billions to buy current competitors, why not pump those same billions into improving existing products. For every startup that produces lots of useful things, there seems to be ten that do nothing but cost cash because either the buying company does nothing with it or the innovations that the company that was acquired are technically meaningless.
And what Apple is doing is moral. Despite the fact China is essentially a totalitarian state, Chinese workers still have options, if Foxconn was truly so absolutely awful, why would the workers work there?
A) It's easily beat. It isn't going to do a damn thing to harm criminals, its just going to make legitimate citizens have to pay even more for ammo and firearms.
B) It makes it trivial to frame someone for a crime. Find some used brass at any gun range, drop them off at the shooting scene.
C) It creates even more tracking and tracing for gun owners. Just like the census was used to round up people of Japanese decent to put them in concentration camps, these databases will be used to round up potential political enemies. Mix that with B and you have an easy way to put lots of innocent people in jail.
The thing about capitalism is it allows you to support only the things YOU want. Don't want melamine in baby formula? Don't buy it, don't support it, make sure that all the formula you buy is melamine free and has been tested by three labs if you want. For example, I don't like Sony's policies so I don't have to give Sony a penny of my money. I also don't like the wars, the welfare state, etc. but I still have to pay taxes or else I go to jail.
See, the only reason companies are profitable in pure capitalism is because they provide things that people want in ways that they want them, otherwise they go bankrupt and even if someone else wanted to support them by buying their product. You would not have to spend a single penny. There is not a single thing (outside of government) that I buy that does not improve my standard of living. If they didn't, I wouldn't buy them, I wouldn't support the companies.
See, that's the great thing about capitalism. It doesn't attempt to change human nature, it allows human nature to work as is and get the same results as you would with super-moral people who care immensely about others.
Which is more likely, the fact that individuals are acting with their own self interest in mind and the fact that people tend to vote with people who they perceive to benefit from. The fact that most democrats tend to vote in favor of federally funded science programs and universities and are general proponents of aid for college.
Or is it more likely that because I identify more as X than Y, clearly X must be superior in all the ways that I believe myself to be superior, which is what your argument basically comes down to.
People vote for who they think will benefit them the most. People with higher education tend to work in education because in the business world with a few exceptions (law fields, medical fields) having an advanced degree really doesn't transfer to all that better pay and a better job. In general, democrats tend to vote in ways that favor education funding. Republicans tend to vote in ways that favor the private sector. Naturally those who are in education will vote democrat if they think it will help education and therefore will help them. Those in the private sector will vote republican if they think it will help the private sector and therefore will help them.
As for your last part I said in my comment
If we, for a moment define "right wing" as Republican and "left wing" as Democrat (and ignore for a moment third parties and independent voters and the inconsistencies between labeling them right wing and left wing)
meaning that I recognize the fact that left wing and right wing make no sense but I used them because the poster I replied to used them.
Lets see here, the industrial revolution and the Victorian era, two of the most productive and revolutionary eras in mankind's history was defined by the use of hard currencies (gold and silver) and while it didn't have a "technical" gold standard in most countries (bimetallism was much more common) we had none of this paper money crap.
If you look at the decline of civilizations the first thing to tell of their impending collapse is the decline of their currency. When Rome was prosperous, their main silver coin, the denarius was nearly pure silver. When a string of bad emperors, a welfare state and expensive wars happened, Rome reduced the denarius slowly until it was just a copper coin with a thin silver plating.
Look at the Athenian city state, its principle coin, the tetradrachm, was nearly pure silver during prosperity and became a copper coin with silver plating when Athens was troubled by wars and conflicts.
The US was in an unusual situation. When it abandoned the true gold standard in 1933, it managed to still dominate the financial world via the pseudo-gold Bretton Woods system, of course that collapsed in the early 1970s. So here is the financial situation of the US:
A) Abandoned the true gold standard in 1933, abandoned a pseudo-gold standard essentially in 1971, removed good silver from all coins in 1965 and abandoned all silver in circulating coins in 1971 (1965-1970 half dollars are 40% silver)
B) Currently have a number of expensive wars to pay for, a worldwide military presence, and other expenses related to being the "world's policeman"
C) The US has a huge debt problem
D) The US is increasingly becoming a welfare state
E) The only logical way out of this is by (hyper) inflating its currency.
People have been looking for gold for all of mankind's history, the chances of a true substantial deposit being found are slim, especially with all the regulations when it comes to mining in some of the richer deposit sites (California, South Africa)
Gold is not an investment. Gold is money. It has the same properties as money. Silver is both money and a investment (it has lots of industrial uses).
A) Capital controls. If you look at the places that have had currency troubles this is the first thing that happens. It starts innocently enough, first you have to "declare" that you have a "large" amount of cash and fill out a form. Next there are limits to how much cash can be brought in and out of the country. Next there are limits to how much money you can take out of the ATM and spend on your debit card.
B) Government reporting.
C) Possibility of collapse. I'm not just talking about a major economic crisis but minor ones such as 9/11 where many banks were not open and were not functioning fully.
D) Inflation will eat up your savings. How much interest is your savings account earning? My guess is ~.5% depending on your bank. The Federal Reserve's official (manipulated) inflation statistics say inflation is at 2.3%, using the older methods of calculating inflation which are not prone to manipulation, inflation is somewhere around 5%. That means you are taking a guaranteed loss. Of course putting cash in something else such as gold, silver, stocks, land, or heck, bitcoins carries some risk, there is at least a potential for reward, it is not a guaranteed loss.
The problem with bitcoins is at the end of the day, at the end of the system, they are still worthless. A fun project, fun to have, fun to look at all the technical details, but still worthless. The only value that fake money has (such as the dollar and Euro today) is that you can use them to pay the thieves that demand your income (via taxation) something that bitcoins can't and will most likely never be able to do.
The better solution would be to barter directly or use barter substitutes that are universally recognized for their scarcity, ease to determine if they are genuine, are always in high demand, and throughout mankind's history have never been worthless, such as gold, silver and copper. The biggest problem with that is transactions online still might be detectable so it would not be anonymous the way bitcoin is today.
The one and only "advantage" to the fictional currencies such as the dollar and the Euro is that they can be used to pay for taxes since they are legal tender for those purposes. This is something Bitcoin does not have. Bitcoin is a fiat currency and is intrinsically worthless. While it is convenient for anonymous transactions done online, why not instead go for something with intrinsic value that can easily be bartered such as gold, silver or copper?
Yeah, Bitcoin is neat, yeah, the technology behind it is interesting, but at the end of the day its a made up currency with none of the advantages of the rest of the made up currencies. Why not just stick with gold and silver? Especially since TFA mentions physical transactions.
If we, for a moment define "right wing" as Republican and "left wing" as Democrat (and ignore for a moment third parties and independent voters and the inconsistencies between labeling them right wing and left wing)
The majority of universities are left wing because that is in their best self interest. Look at who pays professors at state-run universities: the state. In general, democrats spend more on education meaning the university gets more money and they get paid more. Similarly if you are in the "pure science" fields (science for the sake of science) you'd vote democrat because they support public funding for sciences more than republicans.
The majority of students at universities will tend to, at least for a while, support the policies of the democrats. Why? Who is paying for their college? Usually its federal loans and federal grants. Who supports increasing the amount of financial aid? Democrats. Students usually also have a lower tax burden, are working lower-paying jobs and consume more government assistance.
The higher education you have the more likely you are to be in a university job which means you want more funding which means you vote democrat.
On the other hand, the person who gets a decent paying job doing manual work is likely to pay higher taxes sooner (though perhaps less overall because they most likely will make less in their lifetime), they would favor less government assistance (when the college kids are making part-time minimum wage, they are advancing the ladder in their chosen trade and generally wouldn't qualify for assistance and aren't going to use grants and federal financial aid) and would vote republican.
Education makes you more liberal is true, but it is simply on a matter of self interest and should not be taken as those who think better are liberal, merely that those with higher education levels tend to work in areas financed by the government such as universities and "pure" sciences which receive grants while those with only high school or bachelor's degrees tend to work for the private sector.
In general, I've never really found that expensive headphones are worth it due to their tendency to break. Myself I'm using a cheap pair of Phillips in-ear headphones, I don't think they cost more than $15, fit pretty comfortable for long terms and have decent enough sound quality, at least for me. Of course, I'm not much of an audiophile and mostly use my headphones for listening to music in bed, throwing them in my pocket and using them with my laptop/phone while in a car (passenger of course), listening to music at a coffee shop and occasionally when walking.
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This is good news, most of Google's hardware/software things are pretty awesome, but are marketed pathetically. Such as the Nexus series of phones. The Nexus Galaxy was a bit better with marketing, but they should have gone for all of the "big 4".
/still/ has not received Ice Cream Sandwich. I suppose I'll root it eventually, but I'll keep the warranty... for now.
Please Google, sell this in retail stores all around, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. and don't make this be such a niche product where you have to order online and hope its as good as the reviews say.
Google has an advantage to all the rest of the tablets: it actually updates its stuff. I've got an Android phone I love (Samsung Captivate Glide) but annoyed at the fact that it
There's a difference between simply overhearing what someone says and remotely placing bugs to listen and record conversations.
Exactly. I mean, it doesn't work in any other industry, why should it work in this case? If you do a poor job, expect to be fired.
Quite a bit if you listen to Chinese dissident news.
However, given as I don't speak Chinese, know little about the geography and life in China I really don't listen to Chinese dissident news. It doesn't hit the "mainstream" because to be honest most people don't care about what is happening in China.
Exactly. I mean how is it so terrible that the cooks "fear for their job" of course they should fear for their job! Everyone "fears for their job" if they don't do well at their job. Perhaps incompetent IT guys should call up Oracle and tell them never to post any bug reports and sue any security blogs that post bug reports and security flaws, after all, if they installed an insecure program on a critical computer that can be exploited they'd fear for their job.
More transparency is always a good thing.
To be honest, all the British (and the foreign food) all looked fairly decent. Really the only terrible looking food was the "foreign" (being as she is from the UK) US meals. If anything it is a good showcase of what school lunches are from around the world and honestly I'd say it puts the British in more favorable light than the US.
The public have a fundamental right to see what their tax dollars (or pounds in this case) are doing, whether that is detailed information about Afghanistan and Iraq or school lunches.
But established competitors such as Microsoft, Apple and Google have way more infrastructure, talent, and cash to make it work out better in the end. Assuming the established competitor has a similar product to the startup, there are usually only minor reasons why people prefer the startup and it would generally cheaper to improve your product than to buy a startup and integrate it with your product.
I don't think that the acquisition/mergers of tech companies are anything to worry about, its just another bubble. What I imagine is happening is:
High-Ranking manager: I've heard that X buzzword is the next big thing (the cloud, social networking, etc.) what do we have that is in X buzzword?
Tech-Manager: Well, we have Y product but you disbanded that team...
High-Ranking manager: no problem, get me a list of the leading innovators in X and we'll buy one of them
And that dystopia won't happen because unlike governments, everything a corporation does is to make a profit. It makes a profit by improving people's standard of living. I don't know about you but (outside of government) I have not paid for a thing or supported a corporation that does not raise my standard of living. If a corporation stops improving my standard of living for the price they charge, I'm not going to support them and so they get no money from me. If there are more like-minded people like me, they still want my money so they make products to improve my (and others) standard of living so they will support that corporation.
Facebook was (and still is) massively overvalued. If Microsoft wants Facebook its best to wait until it falls to a price that more accurately reflects the price that there's little to no potential growth, can be easily struck down by silly regulations (if the EU now requires a warning for cookies which can easily be disabled and controlled via the browser, what's next for data that isn't that easily controlled?) and has only a billion in revenue.
What's the point in buying all these startups? I really don't see that it works out much in the end. Is it about patents? I simply don't see the justification to buy startups that are here today and gone tomorrow. Rather than spending billions to buy current competitors, why not pump those same billions into improving existing products. For every startup that produces lots of useful things, there seems to be ten that do nothing but cost cash because either the buying company does nothing with it or the innovations that the company that was acquired are technically meaningless.
And what Apple is doing is moral. Despite the fact China is essentially a totalitarian state, Chinese workers still have options, if Foxconn was truly so absolutely awful, why would the workers work there?
"We" is the most destructive 2 letter word in the English language.
There are lots of reasons to oppose this:
A) It's easily beat. It isn't going to do a damn thing to harm criminals, its just going to make legitimate citizens have to pay even more for ammo and firearms.
B) It makes it trivial to frame someone for a crime. Find some used brass at any gun range, drop them off at the shooting scene.
C) It creates even more tracking and tracing for gun owners. Just like the census was used to round up people of Japanese decent to put them in concentration camps, these databases will be used to round up potential political enemies. Mix that with B and you have an easy way to put lots of innocent people in jail.
Really? Because when I Google aspertime free gum I find a lot of matches:
Such as Glee Gum (either sugar or Xylitol), and Pur Gum (uses Xylitol)
It just takes a bit of looking around. You can buy Glee Gum online on their site ( http://www.gleegum.com/order_now.htm ), And Pur gum can be found on Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Pur-Gum-Peppermint-gum/dp/B005G238YM/ref=sr_1_6?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1339626146&sr=1-6&keywords=pur+gum )
The thing about capitalism is it allows you to support only the things YOU want. Don't want melamine in baby formula? Don't buy it, don't support it, make sure that all the formula you buy is melamine free and has been tested by three labs if you want. For example, I don't like Sony's policies so I don't have to give Sony a penny of my money. I also don't like the wars, the welfare state, etc. but I still have to pay taxes or else I go to jail.
See, the only reason companies are profitable in pure capitalism is because they provide things that people want in ways that they want them, otherwise they go bankrupt and even if someone else wanted to support them by buying their product. You would not have to spend a single penny. There is not a single thing (outside of government) that I buy that does not improve my standard of living. If they didn't, I wouldn't buy them, I wouldn't support the companies.
See, that's the great thing about capitalism. It doesn't attempt to change human nature, it allows human nature to work as is and get the same results as you would with super-moral people who care immensely about others.
Or is it more likely that because I identify more as X than Y, clearly X must be superior in all the ways that I believe myself to be superior, which is what your argument basically comes down to.
People vote for who they think will benefit them the most. People with higher education tend to work in education because in the business world with a few exceptions (law fields, medical fields) having an advanced degree really doesn't transfer to all that better pay and a better job. In general, democrats tend to vote in ways that favor education funding. Republicans tend to vote in ways that favor the private sector. Naturally those who are in education will vote democrat if they think it will help education and therefore will help them. Those in the private sector will vote republican if they think it will help the private sector and therefore will help them.
As for your last part I said in my comment
If we, for a moment define "right wing" as Republican and "left wing" as Democrat (and ignore for a moment third parties and independent voters and the inconsistencies between labeling them right wing and left wing)
meaning that I recognize the fact that left wing and right wing make no sense but I used them because the poster I replied to used them.
Lets see here, the industrial revolution and the Victorian era, two of the most productive and revolutionary eras in mankind's history was defined by the use of hard currencies (gold and silver) and while it didn't have a "technical" gold standard in most countries (bimetallism was much more common) we had none of this paper money crap.
If you look at the decline of civilizations the first thing to tell of their impending collapse is the decline of their currency. When Rome was prosperous, their main silver coin, the denarius was nearly pure silver. When a string of bad emperors, a welfare state and expensive wars happened, Rome reduced the denarius slowly until it was just a copper coin with a thin silver plating.
Look at the Athenian city state, its principle coin, the tetradrachm, was nearly pure silver during prosperity and became a copper coin with silver plating when Athens was troubled by wars and conflicts.
The US was in an unusual situation. When it abandoned the true gold standard in 1933, it managed to still dominate the financial world via the pseudo-gold Bretton Woods system, of course that collapsed in the early 1970s. So here is the financial situation of the US:
A) Abandoned the true gold standard in 1933, abandoned a pseudo-gold standard essentially in 1971, removed good silver from all coins in 1965 and abandoned all silver in circulating coins in 1971 (1965-1970 half dollars are 40% silver)
B) Currently have a number of expensive wars to pay for, a worldwide military presence, and other expenses related to being the "world's policeman"
C) The US has a huge debt problem
D) The US is increasingly becoming a welfare state
E) The only logical way out of this is by (hyper) inflating its currency.
People have been looking for gold for all of mankind's history, the chances of a true substantial deposit being found are slim, especially with all the regulations when it comes to mining in some of the richer deposit sites (California, South Africa)
Gold is not an investment. Gold is money. It has the same properties as money. Silver is both money and a investment (it has lots of industrial uses).
Which is why people will also have copper and silver coins, exactly how they did when currency was real and had intrinsic value.
There are plenty of problems with banks:
A) Capital controls. If you look at the places that have had currency troubles this is the first thing that happens. It starts innocently enough, first you have to "declare" that you have a "large" amount of cash and fill out a form. Next there are limits to how much cash can be brought in and out of the country. Next there are limits to how much money you can take out of the ATM and spend on your debit card.
B) Government reporting.
C) Possibility of collapse. I'm not just talking about a major economic crisis but minor ones such as 9/11 where many banks were not open and were not functioning fully.
D) Inflation will eat up your savings. How much interest is your savings account earning? My guess is ~.5% depending on your bank. The Federal Reserve's official (manipulated) inflation statistics say inflation is at 2.3%, using the older methods of calculating inflation which are not prone to manipulation, inflation is somewhere around 5%. That means you are taking a guaranteed loss. Of course putting cash in something else such as gold, silver, stocks, land, or heck, bitcoins carries some risk, there is at least a potential for reward, it is not a guaranteed loss.
The problem with bitcoins is at the end of the day, at the end of the system, they are still worthless. A fun project, fun to have, fun to look at all the technical details, but still worthless. The only value that fake money has (such as the dollar and Euro today) is that you can use them to pay the thieves that demand your income (via taxation) something that bitcoins can't and will most likely never be able to do.
The better solution would be to barter directly or use barter substitutes that are universally recognized for their scarcity, ease to determine if they are genuine, are always in high demand, and throughout mankind's history have never been worthless, such as gold, silver and copper. The biggest problem with that is transactions online still might be detectable so it would not be anonymous the way bitcoin is today.
The one and only "advantage" to the fictional currencies such as the dollar and the Euro is that they can be used to pay for taxes since they are legal tender for those purposes. This is something Bitcoin does not have. Bitcoin is a fiat currency and is intrinsically worthless. While it is convenient for anonymous transactions done online, why not instead go for something with intrinsic value that can easily be bartered such as gold, silver or copper?
Yeah, Bitcoin is neat, yeah, the technology behind it is interesting, but at the end of the day its a made up currency with none of the advantages of the rest of the made up currencies. Why not just stick with gold and silver? Especially since TFA mentions physical transactions.
If we, for a moment define "right wing" as Republican and "left wing" as Democrat (and ignore for a moment third parties and independent voters and the inconsistencies between labeling them right wing and left wing)
The majority of universities are left wing because that is in their best self interest. Look at who pays professors at state-run universities: the state. In general, democrats spend more on education meaning the university gets more money and they get paid more. Similarly if you are in the "pure science" fields (science for the sake of science) you'd vote democrat because they support public funding for sciences more than republicans.
The majority of students at universities will tend to, at least for a while, support the policies of the democrats. Why? Who is paying for their college? Usually its federal loans and federal grants. Who supports increasing the amount of financial aid? Democrats. Students usually also have a lower tax burden, are working lower-paying jobs and consume more government assistance.
The higher education you have the more likely you are to be in a university job which means you want more funding which means you vote democrat.
On the other hand, the person who gets a decent paying job doing manual work is likely to pay higher taxes sooner (though perhaps less overall because they most likely will make less in their lifetime), they would favor less government assistance (when the college kids are making part-time minimum wage, they are advancing the ladder in their chosen trade and generally wouldn't qualify for assistance and aren't going to use grants and federal financial aid) and would vote republican.
Education makes you more liberal is true, but it is simply on a matter of self interest and should not be taken as those who think better are liberal, merely that those with higher education levels tend to work in areas financed by the government such as universities and "pure" sciences which receive grants while those with only high school or bachelor's degrees tend to work for the private sector.
In general, I've never really found that expensive headphones are worth it due to their tendency to break. Myself I'm using a cheap pair of Phillips in-ear headphones, I don't think they cost more than $15, fit pretty comfortable for long terms and have decent enough sound quality, at least for me. Of course, I'm not much of an audiophile and mostly use my headphones for listening to music in bed, throwing them in my pocket and using them with my laptop/phone while in a car (passenger of course), listening to music at a coffee shop and occasionally when walking.