Corporations have to funnel money through PACs. PAC spending is closely monitored by competing PACs. PACs are generally limited to ~$5,000 per employee. Shell corporations only have a handful of employees. It's not a perfect system and can be abused, but at least something exists to avoid wholesale abuse of the lobbying system. From wikipedia:
Contributions by individuals to federal PACs are limited to $5,000 per year. Federal multi-candidate PACs are limited in the amount of money they can contribute to candidate campaigns or other organizations:
at most $5,000 per candidate per election. Elections such as primaries, general elections and special elections are counted separately.
PACs already have a capped limit for donations. Lobbyists have to register with the government on the federal and (most) state levels. Checks and balances already exist on some (low) level.
Foreign companies are already advertising in mass media (freedom of speech and all that). Money spent on PR firms and advertising funnels money back into the country so I'm not against that. It's the direct lobbying that is an issue and we already have an (admittedly low, with lots of holes in it) fence, but you have to start a groundwork somewhere. If you can cut off 50% of outside international lobbyist influence, you're still letting in 50%, but on the other hand, you've still cut out 50% of international lobbyist influence. Once a law is in place, it's much easier for the ethics committee to point to the law and say "hey what you're doing is wrong". At the very least writing a bill and putting it to a debate and a vote on the house/senate floor gets the discussion going and we can come to some sort of consensus on the subject. I'm sure we could get both sides of the asile on board with this if we advertised that currently Iran, China and North Korea (or even drug-funded terrorist groups) have a perfectly legal avenue to directly influence US legislation and foreign policy.
Saudi Arabia already recieves plenty of money and goods exports from the US. I do agree with you on building close family ties with the Bush family. At least that's an indirect influence - nobody in the Bush family has direct influence on federal legislation anymore.
re: flotilla
You're very liberal with the use of the word jihadist
You are right that it is a publicity stunt. The flotilla is simply trying to shed light on the apartheid policy Israel has been enforcing for years. Bringing aid to the Palestinians is a fairly neutral way to raise international awareness and attempt to get the UN to take action on this. Apartheid didn't work in South Africa, and while the region is a giant mess, Apartheid isn't really solving any long term problems in Israel either. It's a poor band-aid creating a festering abscess. Both sides are at fault for many things, but keeping up this policy of Apartheid is dehumanizing and not acceptable.
/not Islamic, not Jewish, simply an outside observer
I think you're twisting what I'm saying here. Otherwise known as trolling. I am saying to limit lobbying from international entities. Only allow domestic dollars and companies to lobby our government. In practice domestic entities are typically looking for some sort of gain.
I'm sure the Chinese or Russians wouldn't like it very much if I started paying their party leaders to enact policies that awarded me (not a Chinese or Russian citizen) lots and lots of contracts for military hardware, sold me the state-owned mineral rights to oil fields and gold and precious gem mines at 10% of the actual value, and then export those raw goods duty (export tax) free to the USA where their prices are much higher. The Russians lose money on that deal, the Chinese loose money on that deal, but I come out way, way ahead. How much would it cost to keep my loyal politicians in support of my raping of their lands, despite public outcry and my willful ignorance of environmental law? Not nearly as much as the money I'm making.
Surely the Russians and Chinese in that instance would not approve of my foreign money influencing their politics that way? Would you allow that sort of abuse of our government on our watch? Let the domestic lobbyists do what they will, at least when they're abusing our government, the majority of the money stays in the country. Right now we're exporting literally billions, tens of billions of dollars in hard currency in addition to military hardware based on private international lobbying efforts. The cost:benefit ratio in these situations is very, very high, that is, unless you're a politician facing a difficult reelection.
Right; I'm not saying to ban lobbying, simply, ban lobbying by those who can't vote in our country. To bring up the old Nazi defense, how would things have turned out in WW2 if the Nazis had dumped a bunch of money into US lobbying to win support for Germany in the war? Or at least delayed it until they'd occupied Britain and Sweden?
That's an extreme point of view, but on a smaller scale, Israel dumps a huge amount of money into our political system, and in return they get $100 for every $1 they spend on lobbying in terms of foreign aid, $15 billion dollars worth of "military aid money", in addition to discounts on US military hardware and preferential treatment on military equipment sales to the US government.
We do help out a lot of smaller countries financially and send aid, but it is nowhere near what we send to Israel, and Israel's funding on lobbying reflects that. The whitehouse has been mum on this whole flotilla disaster so far, and while they've been more vocal lately, it's generally very muted response in general.
There's no reason why you can't have lobbying, it's a good system that definitely gets abused, but in a two party system you definitely need lobbying so that special interest groups like PETA, Pro-Lifers, Pro-Choicers, Gun Control, NRA, Socialized Medicine-ites, "Hands off my Medicare!"-ers and every other group out there can have their say in Washington. By no means end lobbying outright.... just limit it to domestic and foreign policy that is actually beneficial to our country, not policies that are detrimental to the USA.
Can we finally close this legal loophole? There's no reason why lawmakers should be allowed to take money from non-US citizens, and particularly from other countries. Only US Citizens can vote in elections; there's no reason why other countries and non-citizens should be able to influence how citizens vote, or dictate our foreign policy.
the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units
Uh, I think you missed a zero at the end there, pal. Wikiawnsers says somewhere around 110 million households in the USA. *I* don't watch broadcast TV, but I still have an ancient 27" TV that a friend of a friend was looking to unload buried in the attic somewhere. The number of households that don't own even one set (even in storage) are vanishingly small. That doesn't even account for the hundreds of millions of TVs bought and broken, or simply given away or trashed over the years. You can't even give away a TV under 27" these days. I can't count the number of TVs I've seen on the curb with signs that say FREE or STILL WORKS! attached. Most households own closer to two sets. I have no idea how they got the 63 million number, that should be 630 million. But 630 million is not a number anywhere near how many products Apple has sold during the entire lifetime of the company combined, so it doesn't make for as interesting of an article.
It's not the worst idea to try and simplify government. Let government dictate a few large things (international trade, military/defense, social security, healthcare, interstate commerce/disputes) and leave everything else up to the states. I'm not sure how much I agree with it, but a very republican guy I sailed with made a strong case for repealing some amendment that requires senators to be directly elected by the public, rather than appointed by the state. The idea was that senators are appointed by the governor and/or state legislators, and could be recalled/reappointed at any time if they didn't agree with what they were doing there. The end result was that the house represented the will of the people, and the senate existed to prevent the people from overriding states rights.
Anyways, it's been shown time and time again that representative republics only work until you hit about 15 or 20 million people. After that you run out of space in the building for desks for the representatives. The number of seats in the house has been locked at 435 for a very simple reason -- you can't fit any more desks in that room without an extensive remodel. This means that my congressman is more powerful and presides over more constituents than when my father was my age, and will continue to accrue power. For larger states, we almost need some sort of intermediary federal position to fill the gap of representation between the state legislators and governor and federal house of representatives.
AT&T junk tends to work on Tmobile, so here's hoping. I am a big fan of physical keyboards, but I can live with a shitty onscreen keyboard if it's on a 5" screen. The fact that it supports voice over traditional cellphone networks is a plus too, for when I absolutely have to make or receive a phone call. I'm guessing Skype service is in the cards for this one. I think a 5.5" screen would have been better but it's a great start. $500 might be a little steep though, Dell. Drop it down to $350 or $400 and now we're talking. LCDs are cheap as hell and it's just a traditional android phone inside, there's no reason to jack the price up to iPad prices without an iPad OS to go along with it.
This is done pretty much throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area, to the point we're so used to properly timed lights that it's almost rage inducing when you come to a light that's out of sync with all the others. Most of the main artery roads here are 3 lanes in each direction and 40-55mph. Even in the thick of rush hour on a friday afternoon before a three day weekend, Preston Road out of downtown Dallas flows ~45mph all the way to northern Frisco, crossing four major highways. Most roads aren't that good, but you can usually hit five or six green lights (spaced a half mile-to-mile apart) and coast through most cities before hitting one red light. In addition to saving fuel, it really, really cuts down on traffic congestion and minimizes the number of additional roads you have to build to carry the traffic.
You're probably better off getting them capped with ceramics (crowns) now and save what's left of the tooth structure for when you need to recap them in 10-20 years' time. It costs about 1.5x-double but it definitely pays off in the long run. Fillings in your situation are simply a very poor bandaid to a much larger enamel problem.
It's worth pointing out that there's something like twice as many trees today in North America as there was at the beginning of last century, and at that time we were doing our damnedest to cut all of them down ASAP. Conservation and planting timber as a crop didn't really take hold until the 1930's.
There are a couple spots in Washington State where they clearcut a particularly steep chunk of a hill that are now bare rock. They're better about doing that sort of things these days. Those areas might not grow back quickly on an island, but within 100 years in WA state I'm sure they will. If it weren't for the visitor's center you'd never know Mt St Helens had blown it's top in 1980 today, or hell even in 1995 when I visited it. Ecosystems bounce back if you don't pave over them.
A lot of people will download something simply because it's there and available. "A 220mb torrent of everything Stephen King has ever written, including magazine articles? Hey why not it's only a 20 min download" and there's a good chance they may never even open that torrent to look at it's contents. How many young teenagers download the anarchist's cookbook and actually read the whole thing? How many teenagers have the money to buy Steven King's entire life's works? You can download a thousand times more books in a day over a broadband connection than you can consume in a single lifetime, and most people pirating books can't afford 4-5 new books a week in addition to their other entertainment expenses. How much potential money is a publisher really losing when some 15 yo geek looking to score some nerd cred with his friends downloads the entire Issac Asimov collection to brag to his friends, and then proceeds to play WoW and never touches the book archive again?
eInk is a fantastic product. It's the device it's attached to that is the weak link. The iPad is a lot more effective product on the whole, while a dedicated eInk ebook reader is... just an ebook reader, sometimes with an MP3 player and a crude web browser hacked on. A kindle DX isn't much cheaper than an iPad and they share very similar sized screens, but the iPad has a much better value per dollar IMO. The two display technologies will continue to have their pros and cons argued for quite some time, similar to Plasma and LCD back in the day.
What piqued my interest was that the tablet might both A) Run Windows and B) Have an ARM processor
I was under the impression that Windows was limited to x86/x64 with some prior versions running on Itanium. Squeezing windows onto an ARM device would probably take advantage of EFI which would mean EFI drivers which would mean "run anywhere" drivers.... down the road. No more driver roulette trying to get crap to work? Sure, let's have an ARM based Windows device. Please!
I've been looking at an iPod touch or upgrading my blackberry to a jailbroken iphone (tmobile) as an ereader for some time now. I think at the moment Apple makes the best ereader in terms of book retailer compatibility. Mostly I just want the e-edition of the NYT for my lunch breaks. If/when Apple introduces a 5-7" screen model I might just jump on that. Either way, until large screen (3.2"+) smart phones drop in price quite a bit more, the people with ereaders (i.e. $$$) are going to continue to find it convenient to purchase their books rather than hunt for free copies online. High school students and freshmen in college just don't make up a large portion of hardback novel buyers. E-ink at this point is pretty much a failed product with the introduction of the iPad at a similar price point with a boat load of more/better features. I think you are correct though, as mobile phones improve we will see ereaders as another service people will more seriously consider spending money on. I think we're 10 years off before most people start considering digital readers over physical copies.
At the profit margins Apple runs, they could probably afford to manufacture the iPad here in the USA in a prexisting plant under contract. One of the (many) reasons why they probably don't do this is because we don't have the kind of manufacturing plants here in the US with the capacity to handle those kinds of volumes.
Can you imagine being so poor and destitute, with so little prospects for the future that taking your own life for profit seems like the best way to help your family in the long run? All the while some American is working 20 hours a week managing the manufacturing of the product from his pool overlooking some valley in California; his biggest worries is whether or not he can afford his wife buying her third convertible this week, and if he is going to be able to make it down to the yacht club this Sunday. It's sort of hard (or it should be) to take your $10 million bonus for exceeding production goals on a product that people are taking their lives over. Whoever is paying the bills to the manufacturing plant ultimately doesn't matter, some company is going to be the low-hanging fruit (pun intended) and the fact that modern asian manufacturing is actually worse than slavery is the important thing people are trying to highlight here. Plantation slaves in the deep south had it better than many asians working in factories today.
I don't think publishing will see nearly the same scope of piracy due to the nature of their customers (well read, well heeled. educated, and generally able to afford books). Also, any idiot can put together a few microchips a battery and a headphone jack with a digital watch display. The internals of an ebook reader are about the same as an MP3 player, but you need a decently high quality screen and great battery life to really use pirated ebooks. The vast, vast minority of people read entire novels in their computer chair.
The people out there paying $45.96 for the latest hardback copy of Stephen King's new novel aren't really interested in reading it in front of the computer, and if they can afford an ebook reader are probably happy to pay for the privilege to read it on that. Books don't appeal on a 1:1 level to people who pirate the latest Britney Spears or Justin Biber CD. Maybe 1% of those people pirating mainstream music and movies are interested in pirating pleasure reading novels. Even fewer would have ever bought the book full price in hard cover.
On the flip side you have smaller poorer countries that import a lot of American culture that they might be losing potential sales to, where it's simply not possible, or very difficult to buy in their country.
But he [the attorney for big corp] gave that up when he learned I wasn't a lame-brain home computer user. I have a software engineering background and worked for Sun Microsystems and Fidelity Investments tech group
Good to know all you need is a 4 year bachelors in software design and 10 years in the industry to win a $1500 lawsuit! Keep up the good work.
Dammit, cellphones just got cheap enough that even pawn shops won't buy them from drug craving petty thieves, now they want to jack the prices up on used cell phones again? I sort of enjoy finding my cheapo blackberry still sitting in the passenger seat when I come back from getting a soda at the gas station and leave my windows down.
Yeah but people who smoke do so at work, and they're looked down upon by their non-smoker coworkers for being lazy and taking too many smoke breaks. Nobody minds people who only smoke while they drink, because very few people drink at work. If you're showing up to work drunk you're probably on someone's list to fire anyways. The fewer coworkers who waste their time taking smoke breaks, the better IMO.
Slashdot Mirror
Why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee
PACs already have a capped limit for donations. Lobbyists have to register with the government on the federal and (most) state levels. Checks and balances already exist on some (low) level.
Foreign companies are already advertising in mass media (freedom of speech and all that). Money spent on PR firms and advertising funnels money back into the country so I'm not against that. It's the direct lobbying that is an issue and we already have an (admittedly low, with lots of holes in it) fence, but you have to start a groundwork somewhere. If you can cut off 50% of outside international lobbyist influence, you're still letting in 50%, but on the other hand, you've still cut out 50% of international lobbyist influence. Once a law is in place, it's much easier for the ethics committee to point to the law and say "hey what you're doing is wrong". At the very least writing a bill and putting it to a debate and a vote on the house/senate floor gets the discussion going and we can come to some sort of consensus on the subject. I'm sure we could get both sides of the asile on board with this if we advertised that currently Iran, China and North Korea (or even drug-funded terrorist groups) have a perfectly legal avenue to directly influence US legislation and foreign policy.
So what, if someone pushes the "criminal!" button, AU PD get full access to both your FB profile and the accuser's as well? No thanks.
Saudi Arabia already recieves plenty of money and goods exports from the US. I do agree with you on building close family ties with the Bush family. At least that's an indirect influence - nobody in the Bush family has direct influence on federal legislation anymore.
re: flotilla
You're very liberal with the use of the word jihadist
You are right that it is a publicity stunt. The flotilla is simply trying to shed light on the apartheid policy Israel has been enforcing for years. Bringing aid to the Palestinians is a fairly neutral way to raise international awareness and attempt to get the UN to take action on this. Apartheid didn't work in South Africa, and while the region is a giant mess, Apartheid isn't really solving any long term problems in Israel either. It's a poor band-aid creating a festering abscess. Both sides are at fault for many things, but keeping up this policy of Apartheid is dehumanizing and not acceptable.
/not Islamic, not Jewish, simply an outside observer
I think you're twisting what I'm saying here. Otherwise known as trolling. I am saying to limit lobbying from international entities. Only allow domestic dollars and companies to lobby our government. In practice domestic entities are typically looking for some sort of gain.
I'm sure the Chinese or Russians wouldn't like it very much if I started paying their party leaders to enact policies that awarded me (not a Chinese or Russian citizen) lots and lots of contracts for military hardware, sold me the state-owned mineral rights to oil fields and gold and precious gem mines at 10% of the actual value, and then export those raw goods duty (export tax) free to the USA where their prices are much higher. The Russians lose money on that deal, the Chinese loose money on that deal, but I come out way, way ahead. How much would it cost to keep my loyal politicians in support of my raping of their lands, despite public outcry and my willful ignorance of environmental law? Not nearly as much as the money I'm making.
Surely the Russians and Chinese in that instance would not approve of my foreign money influencing their politics that way? Would you allow that sort of abuse of our government on our watch? Let the domestic lobbyists do what they will, at least when they're abusing our government, the majority of the money stays in the country. Right now we're exporting literally billions, tens of billions of dollars in hard currency in addition to military hardware based on private international lobbying efforts. The cost:benefit ratio in these situations is very, very high, that is, unless you're a politician facing a difficult reelection.
Right; I'm not saying to ban lobbying, simply, ban lobbying by those who can't vote in our country. To bring up the old Nazi defense, how would things have turned out in WW2 if the Nazis had dumped a bunch of money into US lobbying to win support for Germany in the war? Or at least delayed it until they'd occupied Britain and Sweden?
That's an extreme point of view, but on a smaller scale, Israel dumps a huge amount of money into our political system, and in return they get $100 for every $1 they spend on lobbying in terms of foreign aid, $15 billion dollars worth of "military aid money", in addition to discounts on US military hardware and preferential treatment on military equipment sales to the US government.
We do help out a lot of smaller countries financially and send aid, but it is nowhere near what we send to Israel, and Israel's funding on lobbying reflects that. The whitehouse has been mum on this whole flotilla disaster so far, and while they've been more vocal lately, it's generally very muted response in general.
There's no reason why you can't have lobbying, it's a good system that definitely gets abused, but in a two party system you definitely need lobbying so that special interest groups like PETA, Pro-Lifers, Pro-Choicers, Gun Control, NRA, Socialized Medicine-ites, "Hands off my Medicare!"-ers and every other group out there can have their say in Washington. By no means end lobbying outright.... just limit it to domestic and foreign policy that is actually beneficial to our country, not policies that are detrimental to the USA.
Can we finally close this legal loophole? There's no reason why lawmakers should be allowed to take money from non-US citizens, and particularly from other countries. Only US Citizens can vote in elections; there's no reason why other countries and non-citizens should be able to influence how citizens vote, or dictate our foreign policy.
Uh, I think you missed a zero at the end there, pal. Wikiawnsers says somewhere around 110 million households in the USA. *I* don't watch broadcast TV, but I still have an ancient 27" TV that a friend of a friend was looking to unload buried in the attic somewhere. The number of households that don't own even one set (even in storage) are vanishingly small. That doesn't even account for the hundreds of millions of TVs bought and broken, or simply given away or trashed over the years. You can't even give away a TV under 27" these days. I can't count the number of TVs I've seen on the curb with signs that say FREE or STILL WORKS! attached. Most households own closer to two sets. I have no idea how they got the 63 million number, that should be 630 million. But 630 million is not a number anywhere near how many products Apple has sold during the entire lifetime of the company combined, so it doesn't make for as interesting of an article.
It's not the worst idea to try and simplify government. Let government dictate a few large things (international trade, military/defense, social security, healthcare, interstate commerce/disputes) and leave everything else up to the states. I'm not sure how much I agree with it, but a very republican guy I sailed with made a strong case for repealing some amendment that requires senators to be directly elected by the public, rather than appointed by the state. The idea was that senators are appointed by the governor and/or state legislators, and could be recalled/reappointed at any time if they didn't agree with what they were doing there. The end result was that the house represented the will of the people, and the senate existed to prevent the people from overriding states rights.
Anyways, it's been shown time and time again that representative republics only work until you hit about 15 or 20 million people. After that you run out of space in the building for desks for the representatives. The number of seats in the house has been locked at 435 for a very simple reason -- you can't fit any more desks in that room without an extensive remodel. This means that my congressman is more powerful and presides over more constituents than when my father was my age, and will continue to accrue power. For larger states, we almost need some sort of intermediary federal position to fill the gap of representation between the state legislators and governor and federal house of representatives.
AT&T junk tends to work on Tmobile, so here's hoping. I am a big fan of physical keyboards, but I can live with a shitty onscreen keyboard if it's on a 5" screen. The fact that it supports voice over traditional cellphone networks is a plus too, for when I absolutely have to make or receive a phone call. I'm guessing Skype service is in the cards for this one. I think a 5.5" screen would have been better but it's a great start. $500 might be a little steep though, Dell. Drop it down to $350 or $400 and now we're talking. LCDs are cheap as hell and it's just a traditional android phone inside, there's no reason to jack the price up to iPad prices without an iPad OS to go along with it.
[[citation needed]]
This is done pretty much throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area, to the point we're so used to properly timed lights that it's almost rage inducing when you come to a light that's out of sync with all the others. Most of the main artery roads here are 3 lanes in each direction and 40-55mph. Even in the thick of rush hour on a friday afternoon before a three day weekend, Preston Road out of downtown Dallas flows ~45mph all the way to northern Frisco, crossing four major highways. Most roads aren't that good, but you can usually hit five or six green lights (spaced a half mile-to-mile apart) and coast through most cities before hitting one red light. In addition to saving fuel, it really, really cuts down on traffic congestion and minimizes the number of additional roads you have to build to carry the traffic.
You're probably better off getting them capped with ceramics (crowns) now and save what's left of the tooth structure for when you need to recap them in 10-20 years' time. It costs about 1.5x-double but it definitely pays off in the long run. Fillings in your situation are simply a very poor bandaid to a much larger enamel problem.
It's worth pointing out that there's something like twice as many trees today in North America as there was at the beginning of last century, and at that time we were doing our damnedest to cut all of them down ASAP. Conservation and planting timber as a crop didn't really take hold until the 1930's.
There are a couple spots in Washington State where they clearcut a particularly steep chunk of a hill that are now bare rock. They're better about doing that sort of things these days. Those areas might not grow back quickly on an island, but within 100 years in WA state I'm sure they will. If it weren't for the visitor's center you'd never know Mt St Helens had blown it's top in 1980 today, or hell even in 1995 when I visited it. Ecosystems bounce back if you don't pave over them.
A lot of people will download something simply because it's there and available. "A 220mb torrent of everything Stephen King has ever written, including magazine articles? Hey why not it's only a 20 min download" and there's a good chance they may never even open that torrent to look at it's contents. How many young teenagers download the anarchist's cookbook and actually read the whole thing? How many teenagers have the money to buy Steven King's entire life's works? You can download a thousand times more books in a day over a broadband connection than you can consume in a single lifetime, and most people pirating books can't afford 4-5 new books a week in addition to their other entertainment expenses. How much potential money is a publisher really losing when some 15 yo geek looking to score some nerd cred with his friends downloads the entire Issac Asimov collection to brag to his friends, and then proceeds to play WoW and never touches the book archive again?
eInk is a fantastic product. It's the device it's attached to that is the weak link. The iPad is a lot more effective product on the whole, while a dedicated eInk ebook reader is... just an ebook reader, sometimes with an MP3 player and a crude web browser hacked on. A kindle DX isn't much cheaper than an iPad and they share very similar sized screens, but the iPad has a much better value per dollar IMO. The two display technologies will continue to have their pros and cons argued for quite some time, similar to Plasma and LCD back in the day.
What piqued my interest was that the tablet might both A) Run Windows and B) Have an ARM processor
I was under the impression that Windows was limited to x86/x64 with some prior versions running on Itanium. Squeezing windows onto an ARM device would probably take advantage of EFI which would mean EFI drivers which would mean "run anywhere" drivers.... down the road. No more driver roulette trying to get crap to work? Sure, let's have an ARM based Windows device. Please!
I've been looking at an iPod touch or upgrading my blackberry to a jailbroken iphone (tmobile) as an ereader for some time now. I think at the moment Apple makes the best ereader in terms of book retailer compatibility. Mostly I just want the e-edition of the NYT for my lunch breaks. If/when Apple introduces a 5-7" screen model I might just jump on that. Either way, until large screen (3.2"+) smart phones drop in price quite a bit more, the people with ereaders (i.e. $$$) are going to continue to find it convenient to purchase their books rather than hunt for free copies online. High school students and freshmen in college just don't make up a large portion of hardback novel buyers. E-ink at this point is pretty much a failed product with the introduction of the iPad at a similar price point with a boat load of more/better features. I think you are correct though, as mobile phones improve we will see ereaders as another service people will more seriously consider spending money on. I think we're 10 years off before most people start considering digital readers over physical copies.
At the profit margins Apple runs, they could probably afford to manufacture the iPad here in the USA in a prexisting plant under contract. One of the (many) reasons why they probably don't do this is because we don't have the kind of manufacturing plants here in the US with the capacity to handle those kinds of volumes.
Can you imagine being so poor and destitute, with so little prospects for the future that taking your own life for profit seems like the best way to help your family in the long run? All the while some American is working 20 hours a week managing the manufacturing of the product from his pool overlooking some valley in California; his biggest worries is whether or not he can afford his wife buying her third convertible this week, and if he is going to be able to make it down to the yacht club this Sunday. It's sort of hard (or it should be) to take your $10 million bonus for exceeding production goals on a product that people are taking their lives over. Whoever is paying the bills to the manufacturing plant ultimately doesn't matter, some company is going to be the low-hanging fruit (pun intended) and the fact that modern asian manufacturing is actually worse than slavery is the important thing people are trying to highlight here. Plantation slaves in the deep south had it better than many asians working in factories today.
I don't think publishing will see nearly the same scope of piracy due to the nature of their customers (well read, well heeled. educated, and generally able to afford books). Also, any idiot can put together a few microchips a battery and a headphone jack with a digital watch display. The internals of an ebook reader are about the same as an MP3 player, but you need a decently high quality screen and great battery life to really use pirated ebooks. The vast, vast minority of people read entire novels in their computer chair.
The people out there paying $45.96 for the latest hardback copy of Stephen King's new novel aren't really interested in reading it in front of the computer, and if they can afford an ebook reader are probably happy to pay for the privilege to read it on that. Books don't appeal on a 1:1 level to people who pirate the latest Britney Spears or Justin Biber CD. Maybe 1% of those people pirating mainstream music and movies are interested in pirating pleasure reading novels. Even fewer would have ever bought the book full price in hard cover.
On the flip side you have smaller poorer countries that import a lot of American culture that they might be losing potential sales to, where it's simply not possible, or very difficult to buy in their country.
Good to know all you need is a 4 year bachelors in software design and 10 years in the industry to win a $1500 lawsuit! Keep up the good work.
Dammit, cellphones just got cheap enough that even pawn shops won't buy them from drug craving petty thieves, now they want to jack the prices up on used cell phones again? I sort of enjoy finding my cheapo blackberry still sitting in the passenger seat when I come back from getting a soda at the gas station and leave my windows down.
Yeah but people who smoke do so at work, and they're looked down upon by their non-smoker coworkers for being lazy and taking too many smoke breaks. Nobody minds people who only smoke while they drink, because very few people drink at work. If you're showing up to work drunk you're probably on someone's list to fire anyways. The fewer coworkers who waste their time taking smoke breaks, the better IMO.