When you compare a single company to a country, you have to consider demographic differences. For example, suicide rates are generally higher among the unemployed, among the mentally unstable, among the elderly, etc.
Foxconn employs people who are young, healthy, sane, not on drugs, and (obviously) gainfully employed. What is the national rate among that demographic, and how does Foxconn's rate compare? My guess is not favorably.
Considering that the only reason Apple exists is because of American prosperity, they have a duty to aid in the continuation of that prosperity so that the innovators of the next generation receive the same benefits that they did. Reducing their profits by $1.8B out of $13B is not asking all that much... only about 14%. Less than Mitt Romney pays in taxes!
Besides, pumping an extra several billion dollars a year into the pockets of middle class Americans will increase the sales for all Apple products, so the actual cost to the company would be less.
If they don't do it voluntarily, slap a 15% tax on overseas production and give that money to the poor and unemployed. It would be more efficient if they did the right thing by choice, but if they don't, we should obtain the effect by force.
The Republicans took millions of people hostage last time we even talked about reducing the Bush tax cuts. They'd burn the country to the ground before allowing them to be dropped entirely.
When ~50% of your government is insane, evil, or both, the best course of action is usually unavailable. We've got to work with what we've got.
If they catch you in the process of destroying the key, you're likely to be worse off than you would have been just handing it over. And having to decrypt a digital picture to get the key to your data would get really old, really fast. Tedious security procedures get abandoned and therefore won't be in use during the one off event in which you actually need them.
I think one of the above posters hit on the best solution. Use long, complex passwords that are written down for basically everything. For the most important things that you really want private ("the data"), use easy to remember passwords and don't write them down. Then simply claim that the paper containing the password for "the data" must have been lost. The existence of all the other scraps with complex passwords on them will give support to your claim that the password is too complex to remember. You can even make a show of trying to remember bits and pieces of it, if you are so inclined.
Most likely they'll either believe you, or think that you're lying about losing the paper. Either way, they waste time searching. Even if they do suspect that that was the one password you kept in your head, they can never prove it.
Could this sort of thing simply be the result of an avalanche? Bunch of animals grazing, they hear a loud rumbling, look up frozen in fear like a deer in headlights, and subsequently get buried in snow and frozen solid. If the snow is tight enough around them, they couldn't drop the food if they tried. It doesn't matter how long it takes for them to freeze at that point, 'cause they aren't going anywhere.
As a matter of fact, many schools do use iPads with kindergartners (and younger!) as part of special education. They make great replacements for low tech communication boards. As long as you're monitoring the students (which you really ought to be at that age) and don't let them take the devices home, you don't have much to worry about. It's actually the older kids who you need to worry about... they're clever enough to know how to lie and steal.
I don't even need to read the article to recognize the flaw in your thinking.
Wind blows water in the parts of the ocean not covered by ice. That water pushes on other water, which is under ice. Tada! Wind affects water under the ice, no magic required!
Define soaked. If we're talking about complete submersion for an extended time, obviously that will destroy a paper book. But if we're talking about spilling a drink on it, a book can easily survive that (maybe a couple pages get ruined at most) where as an electronic device can easily be wrecked.
And books have no problem surviving being carried around for years. I dunno what books you're using, but I have several textbooks that I purchased used, carried around, and still own to this day. They're a bit beat-up, and the binding to the cover has gotten rather loose, but they are still entirely usable. By contrast, the laptop that I got around the same time has long since passed away. In ten years, those textbooks will still be with me. I'd be amazed if my Kindle was still running by then.
Has this ever happened before? If so, what were the effects?
You seem to be implying that this might not be a problem because it could have happened before without us noticing. Maybe you're right. Or maybe it happened hundreds of thousands of years ago and caused some massive flooding that wasn't necessarily significant in an uncivilized world, but would be bad news for places like NYC.
I agree it would be foolish to panic, but we should investigate what the effects of this might be, and how to best mitigate them if they are unpleasant.
To add one more major benefit of paper textbooks to your (fairly exhaustive) list:
- I can put it on a public bookshelf. Every office I've worked at has had a few bookshelves where people deposit their useful textbooks to share with their coworkers. This would be either impossible or illegal with ebook textbooks.
Internet and technology startups rely on intellectual property rights. If you just invented a new widget, you'd much rather do business in the US (with all its flaws) than in some anarcho-libertarian utopia with no intellectual property rights, because in that "utopia" some big megacorp would just come along, take your idea, and mass produce it at a lower price than you can afford to compete at. Thanks for all your hard work, now get back in the unemployment line.
The only thing that makes less sense than the RIAA's trillion dollar "losses" is the notion of IP abolition.
You're ignoring the final point in the article (and the only one that's at all insightful): that the people voting in these petitions think that they're representative of the American public and are outraged when Obama doesn't immediately do everything they demand. Given how many people in this very thread have expressed the same attitude, I'd say that the article is pretty spot on.
That's stupid. If you want to get ten coins face up, you don't flip them all every time and hope for the best.
Flailing about in a rage won't accomplish anything. The only way to make things better is to actually do your homework and vote for the best person you can find each time.
The real number is much higher than that. You're forgetting the bribers themselves, plus all of the congressional aides who get high paying jobs to go bribe their (now former) colleagues.
I've shown you repeatedly that the bill does no such thing. You never provide sources, and when you do post links they don't say what you claim they say.
The President cannot round people up into concentration camps. That's simply not true.
You are seriously delusional. I'm not saying this as an insult, I'm saying it because I am genuinely worried that these delusions will lead you to harm someone. Get help.
You have no idea what it means because you've never bothered to think about it. Now, I'm not saying you should, it's very much inside baseball stuff. But if you're going to try to point it as an inconsistency, you should make a good faith effort to understand it.
I'm not going to bother explaining it, because I know you'll simply ignore everything I write and come back with some poorly thought out quip. Instead I'll suggest that you start by reading the Wikipedia article on it.
Ah, there's that handwaving that you attributed to others. It's so incredibly easy to "win" debates when you don't even bother to read the counter-arguments.
Being chaotic isn't the same as choosing. The fact that something can't be predicted doesn't mean that a choice was made.
If your entire belief set comes down to "Maybe there are some undiscovered laws of nature that make free will possible", then that is every bit as faith based as anything a theist believes.
Time and again I have copied the exact text of the bill for you. You either refuse to read it or refuse to internalize it. You are suffering from an self inflicted delusion, and I can't fix you.
It's been answered time and time again, you just choose not to listen.
There are two sorts of "evil" in the world that are typically used in the argument:
Evil done by man. To get rid of it, God would need to strip us of free will. The existence of free will -- the ability to lead our own lives rather than be puppets -- is of tremendous value, and removing it would more evil than allowing us to occasionally do bad things. By analogy, you would not support the government ruling over every aspect of your life in the interest of "the greater good", because you recognize the value inherent in freedom.
Evil done by nature. Two ways to get rid of this. One would be a micromanaging God who rules over every natural interaction to make sure there are never any storms or fires or earthquakes. Of course, this makes science impossible for the reasons best put forward in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Hard to make electricity when lightning is the spears hurled by fighting thunder giants. Along the same line as before, we can surely agree that a world in which we are able to learn and understand is better than a cosmic daycare.
The alternative would be to design a better world. One in which the natural laws prevent the existence of storms or earthquakes or viruses, while still allowing all the good things about nature and life. This is along the same lines as asking why computer programmers don't design a system that can compile plain English into computer programs. It assumes a better system is possible without putting any thought into what might get in the way of such a system.
Free will is incompatible with a material universe because free will requires there to be some thing (mind, soul, spirit) making the choices. If that thing is itself material, then it must follow the physical laws, and thus isn't really choosing. Therefore, in order for there to be free will, there must be nonmaterial things capable of influencing material things (e.g. our brains).
That doesn't necessarily require religion (there can be spirits without gods), but it does require you to believe in things that aren't part of the material, observable universe.
Yep, those people from hundreds of years ago sure were dicks. I hear they had slaves back then too. I guess all of America is bad FOREVER because of the sins of their great great grandfathers. And the Europeans, sheesh, after what their ancestors did during the imperialist era, I guess we can't trust them either.
So a question is a fact, based entirely on some barely legible babblings. You need to state your arguments in a formal, literate way. Not just rattle off things like "Virgin birth. Resurrection. Incarnation."
And the NDAA is same as it ever was, not to mention completely off topic. I find it funny that you say that the CIA and FBI directors have said that Obama "pushed for it all singlehandedly" when the article you link says absolutely nothing of the sort.
Wait a second, are you that crazy person from, like, a month ago who was convinced the NDAA would allow them to lock up US citizens? Once again, I'll point out that the section you're basing that wild notion on is Section 1021 of Subtitle D, and that subsection (e) of that very section clearly states: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States."
Honestly, how can you keep dragging up this nonsense and then complain that religious people aren't rational in their beliefs?
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I've always wondered about this statistic.
When you compare a single company to a country, you have to consider demographic differences. For example, suicide rates are generally higher among the unemployed, among the mentally unstable, among the elderly, etc.
Foxconn employs people who are young, healthy, sane, not on drugs, and (obviously) gainfully employed. What is the national rate among that demographic, and how does Foxconn's rate compare? My guess is not favorably.
Considering that the only reason Apple exists is because of American prosperity, they have a duty to aid in the continuation of that prosperity so that the innovators of the next generation receive the same benefits that they did. Reducing their profits by $1.8B out of $13B is not asking all that much... only about 14%. Less than Mitt Romney pays in taxes!
Besides, pumping an extra several billion dollars a year into the pockets of middle class Americans will increase the sales for all Apple products, so the actual cost to the company would be less.
If they don't do it voluntarily, slap a 15% tax on overseas production and give that money to the poor and unemployed. It would be more efficient if they did the right thing by choice, but if they don't, we should obtain the effect by force.
The Republicans took millions of people hostage last time we even talked about reducing the Bush tax cuts. They'd burn the country to the ground before allowing them to be dropped entirely.
When ~50% of your government is insane, evil, or both, the best course of action is usually unavailable. We've got to work with what we've got.
Unless, of course, the new menu is Microsoft's ribbon. Then it's clearly the worst thing ever and deserving of derision.
If they catch you in the process of destroying the key, you're likely to be worse off than you would have been just handing it over. And having to decrypt a digital picture to get the key to your data would get really old, really fast. Tedious security procedures get abandoned and therefore won't be in use during the one off event in which you actually need them.
I think one of the above posters hit on the best solution. Use long, complex passwords that are written down for basically everything. For the most important things that you really want private ("the data"), use easy to remember passwords and don't write them down. Then simply claim that the paper containing the password for "the data" must have been lost. The existence of all the other scraps with complex passwords on them will give support to your claim that the password is too complex to remember. You can even make a show of trying to remember bits and pieces of it, if you are so inclined.
Most likely they'll either believe you, or think that you're lying about losing the paper. Either way, they waste time searching. Even if they do suspect that that was the one password you kept in your head, they can never prove it.
Could this sort of thing simply be the result of an avalanche? Bunch of animals grazing, they hear a loud rumbling, look up frozen in fear like a deer in headlights, and subsequently get buried in snow and frozen solid. If the snow is tight enough around them, they couldn't drop the food if they tried. It doesn't matter how long it takes for them to freeze at that point, 'cause they aren't going anywhere.
As a matter of fact, many schools do use iPads with kindergartners (and younger!) as part of special education. They make great replacements for low tech communication boards. As long as you're monitoring the students (which you really ought to be at that age) and don't let them take the devices home, you don't have much to worry about. It's actually the older kids who you need to worry about... they're clever enough to know how to lie and steal.
I don't even need to read the article to recognize the flaw in your thinking.
Wind blows water in the parts of the ocean not covered by ice. That water pushes on other water, which is under ice. Tada! Wind affects water under the ice, no magic required!
Define soaked. If we're talking about complete submersion for an extended time, obviously that will destroy a paper book. But if we're talking about spilling a drink on it, a book can easily survive that (maybe a couple pages get ruined at most) where as an electronic device can easily be wrecked.
And books have no problem surviving being carried around for years. I dunno what books you're using, but I have several textbooks that I purchased used, carried around, and still own to this day. They're a bit beat-up, and the binding to the cover has gotten rather loose, but they are still entirely usable. By contrast, the laptop that I got around the same time has long since passed away. In ten years, those textbooks will still be with me. I'd be amazed if my Kindle was still running by then.
Important addendum to the question:
Has this ever happened before? If so, what were the effects?
You seem to be implying that this might not be a problem because it could have happened before without us noticing. Maybe you're right. Or maybe it happened hundreds of thousands of years ago and caused some massive flooding that wasn't necessarily significant in an uncivilized world, but would be bad news for places like NYC.
I agree it would be foolish to panic, but we should investigate what the effects of this might be, and how to best mitigate them if they are unpleasant.
To add one more major benefit of paper textbooks to your (fairly exhaustive) list:
- I can put it on a public bookshelf. Every office I've worked at has had a few bookshelves where people deposit their useful textbooks to share with their coworkers. This would be either impossible or illegal with ebook textbooks.
Internet and technology startups rely on intellectual property rights. If you just invented a new widget, you'd much rather do business in the US (with all its flaws) than in some anarcho-libertarian utopia with no intellectual property rights, because in that "utopia" some big megacorp would just come along, take your idea, and mass produce it at a lower price than you can afford to compete at. Thanks for all your hard work, now get back in the unemployment line.
The only thing that makes less sense than the RIAA's trillion dollar "losses" is the notion of IP abolition.
You're ignoring the final point in the article (and the only one that's at all insightful): that the people voting in these petitions think that they're representative of the American public and are outraged when Obama doesn't immediately do everything they demand. Given how many people in this very thread have expressed the same attitude, I'd say that the article is pretty spot on.
That's stupid. If you want to get ten coins face up, you don't flip them all every time and hope for the best.
Flailing about in a rage won't accomplish anything. The only way to make things better is to actually do your homework and vote for the best person you can find each time.
The real number is much higher than that. You're forgetting the bribers themselves, plus all of the congressional aides who get high paying jobs to go bribe their (now former) colleagues.
I've shown you repeatedly that the bill does no such thing. You never provide sources, and when you do post links they don't say what you claim they say.
The President cannot round people up into concentration camps. That's simply not true.
You are seriously delusional. I'm not saying this as an insult, I'm saying it because I am genuinely worried that these delusions will lead you to harm someone. Get help.
You have no idea what it means because you've never bothered to think about it. Now, I'm not saying you should, it's very much inside baseball stuff. But if you're going to try to point it as an inconsistency, you should make a good faith effort to understand it.
I'm not going to bother explaining it, because I know you'll simply ignore everything I write and come back with some poorly thought out quip. Instead I'll suggest that you start by reading the Wikipedia article on it.
Ah, there's that handwaving that you attributed to others. It's so incredibly easy to "win" debates when you don't even bother to read the counter-arguments.
Being chaotic isn't the same as choosing. The fact that something can't be predicted doesn't mean that a choice was made.
If your entire belief set comes down to "Maybe there are some undiscovered laws of nature that make free will possible", then that is every bit as faith based as anything a theist believes.
If you add a tariff or tax to the producer basically adds an additional cost. This reduces the supply and pushes up the cost.
But not as much as the cost of the tax. The corporatists always gloss over that part.
Time and again I have copied the exact text of the bill for you. You either refuse to read it or refuse to internalize it. You are suffering from an self inflicted delusion, and I can't fix you.
It's been answered time and time again, you just choose not to listen.
There are two sorts of "evil" in the world that are typically used in the argument:
Evil done by man. To get rid of it, God would need to strip us of free will. The existence of free will -- the ability to lead our own lives rather than be puppets -- is of tremendous value, and removing it would more evil than allowing us to occasionally do bad things. By analogy, you would not support the government ruling over every aspect of your life in the interest of "the greater good", because you recognize the value inherent in freedom.
Evil done by nature. Two ways to get rid of this. One would be a micromanaging God who rules over every natural interaction to make sure there are never any storms or fires or earthquakes. Of course, this makes science impossible for the reasons best put forward in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Hard to make electricity when lightning is the spears hurled by fighting thunder giants. Along the same line as before, we can surely agree that a world in which we are able to learn and understand is better than a cosmic daycare.
The alternative would be to design a better world. One in which the natural laws prevent the existence of storms or earthquakes or viruses, while still allowing all the good things about nature and life. This is along the same lines as asking why computer programmers don't design a system that can compile plain English into computer programs. It assumes a better system is possible without putting any thought into what might get in the way of such a system.
Free will is incompatible with a material universe because free will requires there to be some thing (mind, soul, spirit) making the choices. If that thing is itself material, then it must follow the physical laws, and thus isn't really choosing. Therefore, in order for there to be free will, there must be nonmaterial things capable of influencing material things (e.g. our brains).
That doesn't necessarily require religion (there can be spirits without gods), but it does require you to believe in things that aren't part of the material, observable universe.
Yep, those people from hundreds of years ago sure were dicks. I hear they had slaves back then too. I guess all of America is bad FOREVER because of the sins of their great great grandfathers. And the Europeans, sheesh, after what their ancestors did during the imperialist era, I guess we can't trust them either.
So a question is a fact, based entirely on some barely legible babblings. You need to state your arguments in a formal, literate way. Not just rattle off things like "Virgin birth. Resurrection. Incarnation."
And the NDAA is same as it ever was, not to mention completely off topic. I find it funny that you say that the CIA and FBI directors have said that Obama "pushed for it all singlehandedly" when the article you link says absolutely nothing of the sort.
Wait a second, are you that crazy person from, like, a month ago who was convinced the NDAA would allow them to lock up US citizens? Once again, I'll point out that the section you're basing that wild notion on is Section 1021 of Subtitle D, and that subsection (e) of that very section clearly states: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States."
Honestly, how can you keep dragging up this nonsense and then complain that religious people aren't rational in their beliefs?