Yes. Organic food is not sprayed with pesticides. Hence, it contains no pesticide residue. That is why people buy organic food. That is the biochemical model.
That's a theory, not a model. HUGE difference between the two. A theory posits an idea. A model makes predictions of future results based on a theory. The theory of organic food seemingly makes sense but the scientific models to support that theory have been very slow in coming. You have to prove that organic food contains less pesticides (not terribly hard) as well as prove that the pesticides have actual measurable health effects (harder but still possible) and that organic food consumption reduces those health effects (extremely difficult and expensive). A model of the health effects of eating organic foods should be able to make predictions based on the accumulated evidence and there so far doesn't appear to be much in the way of models of the health effects of organic foods. I'm sure people are working on it but there isn't much out there yet.
The flavor of a tomato depends 99% on when it was picked, nothing more.
Not entirely true. It also depends on the genetics of the plant you grow. Tomatoes that you can get today have been bred for their appearance and durability and not for taste at all. Farmers have selected for traits other than taste because that is what they are paid for. I haven't had a genuinely good peach in over 20 years. Acceptable ones yes, but not actually good tasting even when I've picked them myself right off the tree. Same with strawberries - you just cannot get a genuinely good one. They are grown for traits other than taste. I haven't seen the sorts of strawberries I grew up with in a long time because they were relatively fragile and didn't ship too well. Produce is sold by the pound, not for taste and we get a product that reflects those incentives.
Why are there so many studies on nutritional content when that's not why most people eat organic?
People eat organic because they perceive it is healthier or more nutritious or tastier (or all of the above) or because it is fashionable to do so. The problem is that there is limited evidence that it actually has the benefits that are typically claimed. The theory of organic farming seems to make sense - keeping the nasty industrial chemicals and pesticides out seems like it should result in a healthier product. I'll freely admit that, in theory, organic farming seems to make sense. Problem is that just because this seems to make sense doesn't mean it actually results in a product with the benefits claimed. The jury is still out but so far the evidence is very poor that organic food is measurably superior in ways that affect health or taste for most people. There's nothing wrong with eating organic food but by doing so one is accepting a theory that so far is unproven by science. A leap of faith if you will.
I think the fashion aspect of organic food is actually the strongest reason a lot of people eat organic or specialty foods. While not exactly the same thing, go into a Whole Foods store and look a the amount of gluten free foods. Genuine gluten allergies are quite rare but people claiming to have a problem with gluten is quite fashionable lately for reasons that I don't really understand. There is far more gluten free food than would be justified by the actual number of people who have diagnosable health problems with gluten. It's a placebo effect to be sure. I think organic food is similarly fashionable. People perceive a benefit (real or not) based on what others are saying/doing and so they think it might be worth doing too. Remember that the strongest marketing message ever is "everyone else is doing it".
We grow lots of our own food. We do "blind taste tests" from time the time and it is fucking easy to work out which is the home-grown stuff.
Home grown is not the same thing and not what is being discussed. I have a garden too and our tomatoes (organically grown for what it is worth) taste better than anything I can get from the grocery store if for no other reason than I can actually pick them when they are ripe. But that's a different issue. I'm merely talking about food in the grocery store with the label organic on it. Quite simply I've never seen any persuasive evidence that organic food from the grocery store is tastier or more nutritious than non-organic food and I've never met anyone who could tell the difference just by taste or appearance.
So, supermarket organic stuff which is "organic" in the sense of merely sticking to some list of requirements (e.g. "no pesticide") may not be tastier. You are buying for the farming method.
Sort of. Unfortunately seeing organic on a label doesn't mean nearly as much as people think it does. It's a pretty narrowly defined term with loopholes you can drive a tanker truck through.
Debatable. While my own experience is hardly data, I've tried all sorts of organic and non-organic food and frankly I cannot tell the difference most of the time and I've never met anyone else who can either without seeing the label on the product. I defy anyone to take a blind taste test on eggs from your local mega-mart and tell me they can tell the difference between organic and non-organic. Same with produce or most other foods. It is true that with more careful farming techniques you can get better quality and tastier food but that is true whether or not you are using organic farming. Organic farming theoretically makes sense but in practice I'm not so sure the benefits are as significant as claimed.
But making them in the US means you don't have to pay as much on shipping.
You are forgetting that it also costs money to ship the components, which happen to mostly be made in eastern Asia. It's considerably cheaper to ship one finished phone than to ship 20+ components.
The minute "people" are willing to spend $1500 on a phone that currently costs $550, you'll see iPhones built right here in the good ol' USA.
It's a big misconception that manufacturing in the US is more expensive. The US is extremely competitive for many products. The only things that it is difficult to do cheaply in the US is items with high labor content and long lead times. If the object in question has sufficient volume to automate or if the lead times are short it usually makes a lot of sense to build domestically. There also are some items for which the supply base is located predominately outside the US (a lot of electronics fits this description) which can sometimes complicate matters.
I run a company that does contract assembly work - largely cable assemblies and electronics. For the kind of volumes involved with the iPhone it would actually be pretty cost effective to automate much of the assembly. There would be some be up front costs but when you are talking about billions of dollars of product, that becomes a manageable problem. We are able to compete on lots of assembly work - it just depends on the specific requirements of the product.
The main obstaclea actually are flexibility and supply chain proximity. It's pretty easy to update work instructions for people and change assembly processes. Doing it for automation is harder given the current state of the art. Doable but it requires some pretty serious smarts. Nevertheless it is often cheaper and easier to throw bodies at the problem IF you can get them at a low enough price. The bigger problem is that the production of most of the components is done in eastern Asia these days. Would be expensive to ship all the parts over and then assemble them. Much cheaper to assemble the product then ship a finished good.
Would it cost $1500 to build an iPhone here in the US? Absolutely not. It would be a bit more expensive but not horribly. If manufacture of some key components could be done in the US it could be built for very competitive rates.
Why do people assume that any car that requires power to run must also cause emissions?
Because they do. Outside of a few corner cases, virtually all power consumption uses at least some amount of fossil fuels and hence creates some emissions. Hopefully someday that will change but for now that is the reality we live in.
We already have many counterexamples: fission, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, biomass..
None of which are sufficient to cover our energy consumption at present. Furthermore even in cases where those technologies operate emissions free, the manufacture of them is not emissions free. Use any steel? There is no such thing as an emissions free steel plant. Aluminum? Copper? Rubber? All those components generate emissions during manufacture. There is no present way to construct a solar panel in mass quantities without generating emissions in the process. In time it might become possible but right now it is not.
Bull. Compressing air requires power and lots of it. The emissions might not be coming from the car itself but there will be plenty of emissions. Plus this still has the infrastructure network problem. Even if the drive technology is feasible (and I have my doubts on that) you still need a sufficiently large network of pumping stations to make using the vehicles feasible. It can be done but I doubt it will be.
First, most cyclists ride in several races during the year. By the time they get to the Tour de France, they've already ridden in the Giro and have had only a few weeks to rest ahead of the Tour. And, they may have ridden in some events in between.Lance rides the Tour de France. That's it. So he's fresh in a way the rest of the field isn't, and probably financially can't afford to be.
Plenty of riders do not ride the Giro and do ride the Tour. Lance is not unusual in riding only one or the other grand tours. In fact only a minority of riders ride both the Tour and Giro and most of the ones that do aren't racing to win but merely to train. Racing is an extremely effective form of training and most of the peleton races to get into shape.
Second, Lance Armstrong is a notorious trainer. You don't have to look far to find stories of how Lance pushed his teammates to train when they thought they didn't have to, or to find Lance training when others were taking time off for little things like Christmas morning.
Everybody in the pro peleton trains hard. Lance is nothing unusual in this regard. Lance is not such an unusual physical specimen by the standards of the pro peleton. Even if he could train slightly harder, many of the athletes he was beating were known dopers. If you seriously are going to argue that hard training beats a doping program at that level of the sport than you have no idea what you are talking about. I have competed at top tier college levels (my coach was a 2 time Olympic champion) which in my sport is only one step below the Olympics and the differences in physical ability at the very top are extremely minor. The winner of the Tour will win by a few minutes in a race that lasts for over 80 hours of riding. Doping easily can boost performance by enough to erase that gain. Literally the majority of the guys who stood on the podium with Lance were at some point busted for doping. (Ricard Virenque, Jan Ulrich, Ivan Basso, etc) All of these guys were extremely talented riders, every bit the match for Lance. Furthermore a huge percentage of Lance's own team has been busted for or admitted to doping while they were riding with or against him. It doesn't matter how hard a trainer you are when everyone else is doping.
Third, and maybe most importantly, Lance Armstrong is an arrogant asshole. No, really. He taunts other riders to try to keep up - and they can't. He rubs in every victory, calls out every weakness, and talks trash mercilessly. On top of all that, he's rich from endorsements and gets to be the face of Cycling, for the huge achievement of riding in just one damn race per year.
Nobody, including Lance, rides just one race per year. Armstrong rode in numerous races leading up to the Tour each year including the Amstel Gold, the Dauphine Libere, and many more. Lance was unusual in that he focused on just one race but he was hardly the only guy who did that either. The Tour is the biggest and most prestigious race in cycling. There are about a dozen guys every year for whom the Tour is primary focus of their season every year. Pro riders at that level are paid quite well and while Lance may have done exceptionally well, guys like Jan Ulrich were hardly hurting for cash.
I don't know if Armstrong did the things he's accused of doing, and neither do you,' concludes Hamilton adding that it can't work both ways. 'Either a drug test is the standard, or it isn't.
Spoken like someone who has no idea how the science works. The drug test IS a standard but what it tests for is very specific. If the athlete does something outside the parameters of what the test can detect, it isn't going to detect anything. The drug tests are a necessary step but by themselves they cannot eliminate doping because they cannot test for every method of doping and new ones are developed constantly. It is pretty much the worst kept secret in the world that you can dope and still test clean. Marion Jones never tested positive but she is a self admitted doper. The athletes who dope have doctors too and they are typically at least one step ahead of the dope tests. The ones that get caught are the ones that are either stupid or clumsy. (Or like Ricardo Ricco both stupid and clumsy) The athletes either use drugs that aren't being tested for or they administer them in such a way that the tests cannot detect their use.
Evidence comes in many forms besides a drug test. Cyclists and their teams have been caught with doping paraphernalia (drugs and stuff to administer them) by the police multiple times in raids and checkpoints. Read the book by Willy Voet about the the Festina doping scandal at the 1998 Tour, one year before Lance started his run of wins. If Lance doped, he didn't do it by himself. Someone had to buy the drugs, deliver them, administer them, store them, and somehow the athlete has to pay for them. If a transaction can be tied to Lance for purchasing EPO, that is clear evidence of guilt since there is precisely zero reason for such a transaction to exist unless he was either doping or assisting others in doping. E
Also let's apply a little reason. Literally the majority of athletes that have stood on the podium at the Tour with Lance Armstrong, all very talented cyclists themselves, have been busted or admitted to doping in the years since. It is also well known that doping was rife throughout the during that time. Furthermore Lance had numerous teammates who were busted for doping some of whom were talented enough to win Grand Tours like the Giro d'Italia themselves. So we are to believe that Lance was somehow so much better that he could compete clean against all these athletes who were doping? That is absurd on the face of it. There may not be a smoking gun in the form of a failed drug test, but the other evidence pointing to his guilt is extremely substantial.
If you follow the supply chain down, you start to hit China pretty quickly...
If you follow the supply chain you'll hit any country you care to name, including the US. That's what global trade is all about. The product we make on our assembly like has parts from China, Mexico, Japan and the US. Furthermore there are lots of manufacturing needs that are not easily serviced by China, no matter how good their manufacturing prowess. Any production in the US that is done on a Just In Time basis pretty much rules out manufacturing in China. Shipping is expensive and makes lead times very long. You also have exchange rate fluctuations which have a strong impact on the cost of exporting/importing. China imports a lot of items like every big country.
Yes, China is going to be a player - they have 1/5 of the worlds population for crying out loud. They should be a major part of the economy. But the US isn't going to be a third world country just because China finally got their act together. It's just going to be different. Whining about it accomplishes nothing useful.
That does however mean we need a lot less people, or a lot more welfare.
No, it means those people will do something else other than manufacturing. When this country was founded, something like 80% of the workforce was in agriculture. Now the number is something like 2%. You will note that the population did not shrink (quite the opposite in fact) and the country did not become a welfare state. There is much more to an economy than simply farming or manufacturing. Needing fewer people in those sectors means we can use the labor force productively elsewhere.
If we hardly manufacture anything now and IP is our primary "resource"...
Strawman argument. The US has a $3.7 TRILLION manufacturing sector and it is growing. Just in case that isn't clear, measured by value the US has manufactures more than any other country in the world by a wide margin. By itself the US manufacturing sector would be in top 5 economies in the world. The notion that "we don't manufacture anything anymore" is complete nonsense. The only change is that products with a high proportion of labor cost (labor intensive) are now manufactured where labor is cheaper. However a huge number of products have a low proportion of labor cost (capital intensive) and those are made here. We manufacture automobiles, airplanes, pharmaceuticals, agriculture products, chemicals, integrated circuits, and much much more. The death of US manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated.
The change in manufacturing in the US is that it is evolving somewhat like farming did 100 years ago - fewer workers as a percent of population but producing more. As a proportion of the population manufacturing jobs are going to continue to decrease for some time. That does not mean that the US will cease being a manufacturing powerhouse however.
12-16 hour days 5-7 days a week WILL result in burnout in most people without significant time off to balance the shifts. There is copious research to support this. Yes there are some people who can handle long hours 8 days a week but they are rare. And no matter what they tell you, people that work those kinds of hours have no work/life balance. Most people can do long hours for short periods of time without major ill effects but they cannot keep it up indefinitely. Most people can do long hours if there are long rest periods in between though their productivity will almost certainly diminish late in the shift. Doing 10-14 hour days 3-4 days a week can work and I've seen people do it effectively. I've almost never seen anyone be effective 16+ hours into a shift and I have seen the effects first hand enough times for it to be more than anecdotal.
If people work those sorts of hours voluntarily, are compensated appropriately and both employer and employee are ok with it, then I have no problem with people doing it - HOWEVER their productivity is unlikely to be optimal.
not really. not when you factor in that businesses are buying "enterprise" class laptops with hefty support contracts. businesses don't buy the $499 refurbished special.
The hardware isn't what keeps people from buying Macs - the software is. Businesses are demonstrably NOT buying Macbooks and native Macintosh software in general. Businesses aren't going to buy a Mac because much of the time all the software they need requires a PC or at least requires a PC to be supported by the vendor. Sure, you can run Windows software using Parallels or VMWare or Bootcamp (for additional $) but there is little point in doing that when you can simply buy a Windows based PC in the first place. Apple's support is fine but it is definitely NOT tailored to the needs of business and the software that many companies need to run is not supported on a Mac at all.
I like Macs and I'm even using one as I type this but companies are not going to switch from PCs to Macs en-mass any time in the foreseeable future. The only real threat to Windows is people switching away from PCs in general. I could see smartphones gaining the ability to dock with a monitor and keyboard and becoming de-facto PCs. Tablets will erode some PC market share - how much will be interesting to watch. These might be threats to Windows. OS X on a Mac in its present form is not.
my group works entirely on macs without problems, and our IT dept supports macs 100%.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Macs have a market share below 20%. You might work among people who use Macs heavily and your company's needs might be such that Mac are a great fit for your organization but that is very much the exception and not going to change anytime soon. I work with a lot of companies and I can count on my hands with fingers left over the number of companies I've seen that are all or mostly Mac. Some graphics design shops, a few smallish software companies, and a few others. Most use PCs and the data supports that being the case. The majority of Mac buyers are people buying for personal use.
Vista was different. There was no heir apparent. Now there are two. That may be difference enough.
I presume you are referring to OS X and linux? Not going to happen. Even if Windows 8 was a colossal flop, Windows 7 still exists and people would simply use it instead just like they did with Vista. Microsoft has enough cash to survive Windows 8 failing horribly. The only real alternative that will be considered is Windows 7.
Apple's PC products are too expensive for businesses and Apple makes little effort to pursue business customers. Furthermore Apple doesn't make $250 PCs - they don't even try to compete at the low end of the market. Their products are nice but they don't try to be everything to everyone and they would go out of business if they tried. OS X is not a threat to Windows dominance.
As for linux, as much as I like it, linux has no reasonable prospects of becoming a desktop of choice for PCs anytime soon. It certainly isn't going to supplant Windows. It doesn't have access to certain key pieces of software as native applications. (No LibreOffice is not going to seriously challenge Microsoft Office in the near future unfortunately) It has very little support among OEMs and even a horrible failure of Windows 8 would not change that. Windows installed base is too strong to overcome on the PC platform as we know it. Where linux can and does beat Windows is on platforms where Microsoft has no installed base and software ecosystem to overcome. Mobile phones, tablets, servers, etc. Linux does just fine on these. Perhaps in time these other areas will provide enough to be a threat to Microsoft on PCs but I can't see it happening for at least another 10 years.
First off, grow up. Calling someone a fool when you have your facts wrong makes you look foolish yourself. If you think I'm wrong then prove me so with your arguments instead of with unnecessary personal attacks. Second off, the differences are anything but pedantic. The US uses democratic processes and we can casually describe our government as a democracy (particularly at lower levels of government) but it is organized as a constitutional republic. Were it actually a democracy the majority would always get what they want and that demonstrably does not occur. A pure democracy is a tyrannical form of government. While it isn't actually wrong to call the US a democracy, it isn't really correct either.
Democracy means we elect our leaders, and that's most certainly what we do.
Republics also elect their leaders and then they limit their powers. In a democracy the majority has unlimited power over a minority. Not so in a republic. The difference is enormously important.
If a majority wants religious teaching, and pushes for it long enough, they'll get it one way or another.
That might prove true in time if such a hypothetical majority actually existed. But because we are a republic and not a democracy, they'll find it rather difficult to accomplish that goal. And furthermore there is no one religion that constitutes anywhere near a majority in the US. So you are arguing a hypothetical not based in any reasonably probable reality. I can provide you countless examples of cases where a majority of the populous wanted something but was prevented from getting it by a minority.
No, actually we don't. It depends on what the people want, since this is a democracy.
The United States is not and never has been a democracy. The US is a republic. I leave it to you to go figure out the difference and why it matters. And fortunately we have laws that explicitly prohibit binding religious teaching with secular education regardless of what a majority (or minority) might desire.
You don't have a point. It's like picking up the original iPhone today and complaining about how crap it is compared to phones today.
The current Nook offerings share the exact same problem. They are good at reading and not so good at much else. They are intentionally (or incompetently) crippled in what they can do. I can forgive a first offering being flawed but they've had a long time to correct the problem and haven't. Google has now released a device that is more like what the Nook should have been. They cost similar amounts of money so B&N had better release something more capable soon or drop the prices rather significantly. Sounds like they are working on it so it will be interesting to see what they do next.
And no, people who read will happily pay for a device that is great for reading.
Of course they will... unless there is something that can do that and more. The Nook is capable of more but for whatever reasons doesn't do it.
The software wasn't crap, it was just crap compared to the iPad, otherwise it would be considered revolutionary.
So your argument is that it was worse than existing software but in some other mythical universe where the iPad didn't exist it would be revolutionary? Fact is it was behind state of the art the day it was released. The only thing the Nook really had going for it was that it was cheaper than an iPad and the more compact form factor appealed to some.. That's ok especially if they continue to improve it but so far they haven't done enough.
Its quite easy. You just appoint leadership to the Motorola division, and then Google deals with them for most purposes just like they would any other hardware manufacturer.
It's not easy because there is no credible way for Motorola to compete successfully without Motorola's competitors presuming Google is giving them a leg up. The only way they will believe it is if Motorola behaves incompetently. And it Motorola is behaving incompetently Google's shareholders can, will and should throw a fit. Either they compete successfully and piss off their OEMs or they compete badly and piss off their shareholders.
The simple fact is that Motorola cannot be the same as any other manufacturer even if they honestly try to be. Perception matters and Motorola's competitors would be fools to trust Google completely.
The Nook Color wasn't just ok hardware, it is brilliant hardware for it's time.
Ok, call it brilliant hardware but my point doesn't change. The software was handicapped when it didn't have to be and thus it became a pointless device. My smartphone is a computer that happens to be able to make calls. Devices that are capable of general purpose use should do so. A tablet that is only good for reading e-books is a waste of money when you can use the same hardware to read e-books plus a whole lot more. Same reason I hardly use my point and shoot camera anymore - my smartphone does the same job adequately plus a whole lot more.
With crap software yes, but everything this side of the iPad had crap software back then.
The software is the most important thing. If you screw up the most important thing it really doesn't matter how nice the rest of it is. I like hacking devices as much as the next guy here on slashdot but if I have to hack something to improve it, then it probably wasn't very good in the first place. Just because everything else not made by Apple had poor software is no excuse for B&N to produce something with crap software.
It was the first non e-ink reading device that was worth considering.
I still haven't seen one I'd seriously consider, e-ink or not, merely for reading purposes. These are general purpose computers. Artificially limiting them to more modest purposes than they are capable of is stupid and self defeating.
My understanding was that Google was going to operate Motorola almost as an independent company so as to not step on the toes of their other OEMs. I would expect Motorola to have to go through the same selection process of Asus, Samsung and everybody else.
They can say that all they want but I don't really see how it would be possible. Google will have to compete directly with their partners at some level - there really is no way around that. Otherwise there was no point in buying Motorola Mobility unless they were just buying them for the patents and intend to shut down the manufacturing and design operations.
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Yes. Organic food is not sprayed with pesticides. Hence, it contains no pesticide residue. That is why people buy organic food. That is the biochemical model.
That's a theory, not a model. HUGE difference between the two. A theory posits an idea. A model makes predictions of future results based on a theory. The theory of organic food seemingly makes sense but the scientific models to support that theory have been very slow in coming. You have to prove that organic food contains less pesticides (not terribly hard) as well as prove that the pesticides have actual measurable health effects (harder but still possible) and that organic food consumption reduces those health effects (extremely difficult and expensive). A model of the health effects of eating organic foods should be able to make predictions based on the accumulated evidence and there so far doesn't appear to be much in the way of models of the health effects of organic foods. I'm sure people are working on it but there isn't much out there yet.
The flavor of a tomato depends 99% on when it was picked, nothing more.
Not entirely true. It also depends on the genetics of the plant you grow. Tomatoes that you can get today have been bred for their appearance and durability and not for taste at all. Farmers have selected for traits other than taste because that is what they are paid for. I haven't had a genuinely good peach in over 20 years. Acceptable ones yes, but not actually good tasting even when I've picked them myself right off the tree. Same with strawberries - you just cannot get a genuinely good one. They are grown for traits other than taste. I haven't seen the sorts of strawberries I grew up with in a long time because they were relatively fragile and didn't ship too well. Produce is sold by the pound, not for taste and we get a product that reflects those incentives.
Why are there so many studies on nutritional content when that's not why most people eat organic?
People eat organic because they perceive it is healthier or more nutritious or tastier (or all of the above) or because it is fashionable to do so. The problem is that there is limited evidence that it actually has the benefits that are typically claimed. The theory of organic farming seems to make sense - keeping the nasty industrial chemicals and pesticides out seems like it should result in a healthier product. I'll freely admit that, in theory, organic farming seems to make sense. Problem is that just because this seems to make sense doesn't mean it actually results in a product with the benefits claimed. The jury is still out but so far the evidence is very poor that organic food is measurably superior in ways that affect health or taste for most people. There's nothing wrong with eating organic food but by doing so one is accepting a theory that so far is unproven by science. A leap of faith if you will.
I think the fashion aspect of organic food is actually the strongest reason a lot of people eat organic or specialty foods. While not exactly the same thing, go into a Whole Foods store and look a the amount of gluten free foods. Genuine gluten allergies are quite rare but people claiming to have a problem with gluten is quite fashionable lately for reasons that I don't really understand. There is far more gluten free food than would be justified by the actual number of people who have diagnosable health problems with gluten. It's a placebo effect to be sure. I think organic food is similarly fashionable. People perceive a benefit (real or not) based on what others are saying/doing and so they think it might be worth doing too. Remember that the strongest marketing message ever is "everyone else is doing it".
We grow lots of our own food. We do "blind taste tests" from time the time and it is fucking easy to work out which is the home-grown stuff.
Home grown is not the same thing and not what is being discussed. I have a garden too and our tomatoes (organically grown for what it is worth) taste better than anything I can get from the grocery store if for no other reason than I can actually pick them when they are ripe. But that's a different issue. I'm merely talking about food in the grocery store with the label organic on it. Quite simply I've never seen any persuasive evidence that organic food from the grocery store is tastier or more nutritious than non-organic food and I've never met anyone who could tell the difference just by taste or appearance.
So, supermarket organic stuff which is "organic" in the sense of merely sticking to some list of requirements (e.g. "no pesticide") may not be tastier. You are buying for the farming method.
Sort of. Unfortunately seeing organic on a label doesn't mean nearly as much as people think it does. It's a pretty narrowly defined term with loopholes you can drive a tanker truck through.
4) And those methods often produce tastier food.
Debatable. While my own experience is hardly data, I've tried all sorts of organic and non-organic food and frankly I cannot tell the difference most of the time and I've never met anyone else who can either without seeing the label on the product. I defy anyone to take a blind taste test on eggs from your local mega-mart and tell me they can tell the difference between organic and non-organic. Same with produce or most other foods. It is true that with more careful farming techniques you can get better quality and tastier food but that is true whether or not you are using organic farming. Organic farming theoretically makes sense but in practice I'm not so sure the benefits are as significant as claimed.
But making them in the US means you don't have to pay as much on shipping.
You are forgetting that it also costs money to ship the components, which happen to mostly be made in eastern Asia. It's considerably cheaper to ship one finished phone than to ship 20+ components.
The minute "people" are willing to spend $1500 on a phone that currently costs $550, you'll see iPhones built right here in the good ol' USA.
It's a big misconception that manufacturing in the US is more expensive. The US is extremely competitive for many products. The only things that it is difficult to do cheaply in the US is items with high labor content and long lead times. If the object in question has sufficient volume to automate or if the lead times are short it usually makes a lot of sense to build domestically. There also are some items for which the supply base is located predominately outside the US (a lot of electronics fits this description) which can sometimes complicate matters.
I run a company that does contract assembly work - largely cable assemblies and electronics. For the kind of volumes involved with the iPhone it would actually be pretty cost effective to automate much of the assembly. There would be some be up front costs but when you are talking about billions of dollars of product, that becomes a manageable problem. We are able to compete on lots of assembly work - it just depends on the specific requirements of the product.
The main obstaclea actually are flexibility and supply chain proximity. It's pretty easy to update work instructions for people and change assembly processes. Doing it for automation is harder given the current state of the art. Doable but it requires some pretty serious smarts. Nevertheless it is often cheaper and easier to throw bodies at the problem IF you can get them at a low enough price. The bigger problem is that the production of most of the components is done in eastern Asia these days. Would be expensive to ship all the parts over and then assemble them. Much cheaper to assemble the product then ship a finished good.
Would it cost $1500 to build an iPhone here in the US? Absolutely not. It would be a bit more expensive but not horribly. If manufacture of some key components could be done in the US it could be built for very competitive rates.
Why do people assume that any car that requires power to run must also cause emissions?
Because they do. Outside of a few corner cases, virtually all power consumption uses at least some amount of fossil fuels and hence creates some emissions. Hopefully someday that will change but for now that is the reality we live in.
We already have many counterexamples: fission, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, biomass..
None of which are sufficient to cover our energy consumption at present. Furthermore even in cases where those technologies operate emissions free, the manufacture of them is not emissions free. Use any steel? There is no such thing as an emissions free steel plant. Aluminum? Copper? Rubber? All those components generate emissions during manufacture. There is no present way to construct a solar panel in mass quantities without generating emissions in the process. In time it might become possible but right now it is not.
With virtually zero emissions...
Bull. Compressing air requires power and lots of it. The emissions might not be coming from the car itself but there will be plenty of emissions. Plus this still has the infrastructure network problem. Even if the drive technology is feasible (and I have my doubts on that) you still need a sufficiently large network of pumping stations to make using the vehicles feasible. It can be done but I doubt it will be.
First, most cyclists ride in several races during the year. By the time they get to the Tour de France, they've already ridden in the Giro and have had only a few weeks to rest ahead of the Tour. And, they may have ridden in some events in between.Lance rides the Tour de France. That's it. So he's fresh in a way the rest of the field isn't, and probably financially can't afford to be.
Plenty of riders do not ride the Giro and do ride the Tour. Lance is not unusual in riding only one or the other grand tours. In fact only a minority of riders ride both the Tour and Giro and most of the ones that do aren't racing to win but merely to train. Racing is an extremely effective form of training and most of the peleton races to get into shape.
Second, Lance Armstrong is a notorious trainer. You don't have to look far to find stories of how Lance pushed his teammates to train when they thought they didn't have to, or to find Lance training when others were taking time off for little things like Christmas morning.
Everybody in the pro peleton trains hard. Lance is nothing unusual in this regard. Lance is not such an unusual physical specimen by the standards of the pro peleton. Even if he could train slightly harder, many of the athletes he was beating were known dopers. If you seriously are going to argue that hard training beats a doping program at that level of the sport than you have no idea what you are talking about. I have competed at top tier college levels (my coach was a 2 time Olympic champion) which in my sport is only one step below the Olympics and the differences in physical ability at the very top are extremely minor. The winner of the Tour will win by a few minutes in a race that lasts for over 80 hours of riding. Doping easily can boost performance by enough to erase that gain. Literally the majority of the guys who stood on the podium with Lance were at some point busted for doping. (Ricard Virenque, Jan Ulrich, Ivan Basso, etc) All of these guys were extremely talented riders, every bit the match for Lance. Furthermore a huge percentage of Lance's own team has been busted for or admitted to doping while they were riding with or against him. It doesn't matter how hard a trainer you are when everyone else is doping.
Third, and maybe most importantly, Lance Armstrong is an arrogant asshole. No, really. He taunts other riders to try to keep up - and they can't. He rubs in every victory, calls out every weakness, and talks trash mercilessly. On top of all that, he's rich from endorsements and gets to be the face of Cycling, for the huge achievement of riding in just one damn race per year.
Nobody, including Lance, rides just one race per year. Armstrong rode in numerous races leading up to the Tour each year including the Amstel Gold, the Dauphine Libere, and many more. Lance was unusual in that he focused on just one race but he was hardly the only guy who did that either. The Tour is the biggest and most prestigious race in cycling. There are about a dozen guys every year for whom the Tour is primary focus of their season every year. Pro riders at that level are paid quite well and while Lance may have done exceptionally well, guys like Jan Ulrich were hardly hurting for cash.
I don't know if Armstrong did the things he's accused of doing, and neither do you,' concludes Hamilton adding that it can't work both ways. 'Either a drug test is the standard, or it isn't.
Spoken like someone who has no idea how the science works. The drug test IS a standard but what it tests for is very specific. If the athlete does something outside the parameters of what the test can detect, it isn't going to detect anything. The drug tests are a necessary step but by themselves they cannot eliminate doping because they cannot test for every method of doping and new ones are developed constantly. It is pretty much the worst kept secret in the world that you can dope and still test clean. Marion Jones never tested positive but she is a self admitted doper. The athletes who dope have doctors too and they are typically at least one step ahead of the dope tests. The ones that get caught are the ones that are either stupid or clumsy. (Or like Ricardo Ricco both stupid and clumsy) The athletes either use drugs that aren't being tested for or they administer them in such a way that the tests cannot detect their use.
Evidence comes in many forms besides a drug test. Cyclists and their teams have been caught with doping paraphernalia (drugs and stuff to administer them) by the police multiple times in raids and checkpoints. Read the book by Willy Voet about the the Festina doping scandal at the 1998 Tour, one year before Lance started his run of wins. If Lance doped, he didn't do it by himself. Someone had to buy the drugs, deliver them, administer them, store them, and somehow the athlete has to pay for them. If a transaction can be tied to Lance for purchasing EPO, that is clear evidence of guilt since there is precisely zero reason for such a transaction to exist unless he was either doping or assisting others in doping. E
Also let's apply a little reason. Literally the majority of athletes that have stood on the podium at the Tour with Lance Armstrong, all very talented cyclists themselves, have been busted or admitted to doping in the years since. It is also well known that doping was rife throughout the during that time. Furthermore Lance had numerous teammates who were busted for doping some of whom were talented enough to win Grand Tours like the Giro d'Italia themselves. So we are to believe that Lance was somehow so much better that he could compete clean against all these athletes who were doping? That is absurd on the face of it. There may not be a smoking gun in the form of a failed drug test, but the other evidence pointing to his guilt is extremely substantial.
I find it interesting that Apple was ordered to pay more in damages than Samsung was, even though Apple brought the suit.
Yes, shocking that a Korean court would fine the American company more heavily than the Korean one.
And that's why they need educated.
With apologies to Ron White, you can't fix stupid. There's not a class you can take or a pill you can eat.
If you follow the supply chain down, you start to hit China pretty quickly...
If you follow the supply chain you'll hit any country you care to name, including the US. That's what global trade is all about. The product we make on our assembly like has parts from China, Mexico, Japan and the US. Furthermore there are lots of manufacturing needs that are not easily serviced by China, no matter how good their manufacturing prowess. Any production in the US that is done on a Just In Time basis pretty much rules out manufacturing in China. Shipping is expensive and makes lead times very long. You also have exchange rate fluctuations which have a strong impact on the cost of exporting/importing. China imports a lot of items like every big country.
Yes, China is going to be a player - they have 1/5 of the worlds population for crying out loud. They should be a major part of the economy. But the US isn't going to be a third world country just because China finally got their act together. It's just going to be different. Whining about it accomplishes nothing useful.
That does however mean we need a lot less people, or a lot more welfare.
No, it means those people will do something else other than manufacturing. When this country was founded, something like 80% of the workforce was in agriculture. Now the number is something like 2%. You will note that the population did not shrink (quite the opposite in fact) and the country did not become a welfare state. There is much more to an economy than simply farming or manufacturing. Needing fewer people in those sectors means we can use the labor force productively elsewhere.
If we hardly manufacture anything now and IP is our primary "resource"...
Strawman argument. The US has a $3.7 TRILLION manufacturing sector and it is growing. Just in case that isn't clear, measured by value the US has manufactures more than any other country in the world by a wide margin. By itself the US manufacturing sector would be in top 5 economies in the world. The notion that "we don't manufacture anything anymore" is complete nonsense. The only change is that products with a high proportion of labor cost (labor intensive) are now manufactured where labor is cheaper. However a huge number of products have a low proportion of labor cost (capital intensive) and those are made here. We manufacture automobiles, airplanes, pharmaceuticals, agriculture products, chemicals, integrated circuits, and much much more. The death of US manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated.
The change in manufacturing in the US is that it is evolving somewhat like farming did 100 years ago - fewer workers as a percent of population but producing more. As a proportion of the population manufacturing jobs are going to continue to decrease for some time. That does not mean that the US will cease being a manufacturing powerhouse however.
12-16 hour days 5-7 days a week WILL result in burnout in most people without significant time off to balance the shifts. There is copious research to support this. Yes there are some people who can handle long hours 8 days a week but they are rare. And no matter what they tell you, people that work those kinds of hours have no work/life balance. Most people can do long hours for short periods of time without major ill effects but they cannot keep it up indefinitely. Most people can do long hours if there are long rest periods in between though their productivity will almost certainly diminish late in the shift. Doing 10-14 hour days 3-4 days a week can work and I've seen people do it effectively. I've almost never seen anyone be effective 16+ hours into a shift and I have seen the effects first hand enough times for it to be more than anecdotal.
If people work those sorts of hours voluntarily, are compensated appropriately and both employer and employee are ok with it, then I have no problem with people doing it - HOWEVER their productivity is unlikely to be optimal.
not really. not when you factor in that businesses are buying "enterprise" class laptops with hefty support contracts. businesses don't buy the $499 refurbished special.
The hardware isn't what keeps people from buying Macs - the software is. Businesses are demonstrably NOT buying Macbooks and native Macintosh software in general. Businesses aren't going to buy a Mac because much of the time all the software they need requires a PC or at least requires a PC to be supported by the vendor. Sure, you can run Windows software using Parallels or VMWare or Bootcamp (for additional $) but there is little point in doing that when you can simply buy a Windows based PC in the first place. Apple's support is fine but it is definitely NOT tailored to the needs of business and the software that many companies need to run is not supported on a Mac at all.
I like Macs and I'm even using one as I type this but companies are not going to switch from PCs to Macs en-mass any time in the foreseeable future. The only real threat to Windows is people switching away from PCs in general. I could see smartphones gaining the ability to dock with a monitor and keyboard and becoming de-facto PCs. Tablets will erode some PC market share - how much will be interesting to watch. These might be threats to Windows. OS X on a Mac in its present form is not.
my group works entirely on macs without problems, and our IT dept supports macs 100%.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Macs have a market share below 20%. You might work among people who use Macs heavily and your company's needs might be such that Mac are a great fit for your organization but that is very much the exception and not going to change anytime soon. I work with a lot of companies and I can count on my hands with fingers left over the number of companies I've seen that are all or mostly Mac. Some graphics design shops, a few smallish software companies, and a few others. Most use PCs and the data supports that being the case. The majority of Mac buyers are people buying for personal use.
Vista was different. There was no heir apparent. Now there are two. That may be difference enough.
I presume you are referring to OS X and linux? Not going to happen. Even if Windows 8 was a colossal flop, Windows 7 still exists and people would simply use it instead just like they did with Vista. Microsoft has enough cash to survive Windows 8 failing horribly. The only real alternative that will be considered is Windows 7.
Apple's PC products are too expensive for businesses and Apple makes little effort to pursue business customers. Furthermore Apple doesn't make $250 PCs - they don't even try to compete at the low end of the market. Their products are nice but they don't try to be everything to everyone and they would go out of business if they tried. OS X is not a threat to Windows dominance.
As for linux, as much as I like it, linux has no reasonable prospects of becoming a desktop of choice for PCs anytime soon. It certainly isn't going to supplant Windows. It doesn't have access to certain key pieces of software as native applications. (No LibreOffice is not going to seriously challenge Microsoft Office in the near future unfortunately) It has very little support among OEMs and even a horrible failure of Windows 8 would not change that. Windows installed base is too strong to overcome on the PC platform as we know it. Where linux can and does beat Windows is on platforms where Microsoft has no installed base and software ecosystem to overcome. Mobile phones, tablets, servers, etc. Linux does just fine on these. Perhaps in time these other areas will provide enough to be a threat to Microsoft on PCs but I can't see it happening for at least another 10 years.
Wrong. It's both, stop being a pedantic fool.
First off, grow up. Calling someone a fool when you have your facts wrong makes you look foolish yourself. If you think I'm wrong then prove me so with your arguments instead of with unnecessary personal attacks. Second off, the differences are anything but pedantic. The US uses democratic processes and we can casually describe our government as a democracy (particularly at lower levels of government) but it is organized as a constitutional republic. Were it actually a democracy the majority would always get what they want and that demonstrably does not occur. A pure democracy is a tyrannical form of government. While it isn't actually wrong to call the US a democracy, it isn't really correct either.
Democracy means we elect our leaders, and that's most certainly what we do.
Republics also elect their leaders and then they limit their powers. In a democracy the majority has unlimited power over a minority. Not so in a republic. The difference is enormously important.
If a majority wants religious teaching, and pushes for it long enough, they'll get it one way or another.
That might prove true in time if such a hypothetical majority actually existed. But because we are a republic and not a democracy, they'll find it rather difficult to accomplish that goal. And furthermore there is no one religion that constitutes anywhere near a majority in the US. So you are arguing a hypothetical not based in any reasonably probable reality. I can provide you countless examples of cases where a majority of the populous wanted something but was prevented from getting it by a minority.
No, actually we don't. It depends on what the people want, since this is a democracy.
The United States is not and never has been a democracy. The US is a republic. I leave it to you to go figure out the difference and why it matters. And fortunately we have laws that explicitly prohibit binding religious teaching with secular education regardless of what a majority (or minority) might desire.
You don't have a point. It's like picking up the original iPhone today and complaining about how crap it is compared to phones today.
The current Nook offerings share the exact same problem. They are good at reading and not so good at much else. They are intentionally (or incompetently) crippled in what they can do. I can forgive a first offering being flawed but they've had a long time to correct the problem and haven't. Google has now released a device that is more like what the Nook should have been. They cost similar amounts of money so B&N had better release something more capable soon or drop the prices rather significantly. Sounds like they are working on it so it will be interesting to see what they do next.
And no, people who read will happily pay for a device that is great for reading.
Of course they will... unless there is something that can do that and more. The Nook is capable of more but for whatever reasons doesn't do it.
The software wasn't crap, it was just crap compared to the iPad, otherwise it would be considered revolutionary.
So your argument is that it was worse than existing software but in some other mythical universe where the iPad didn't exist it would be revolutionary? Fact is it was behind state of the art the day it was released. The only thing the Nook really had going for it was that it was cheaper than an iPad and the more compact form factor appealed to some.. That's ok especially if they continue to improve it but so far they haven't done enough.
Its quite easy. You just appoint leadership to the Motorola division, and then Google deals with them for most purposes just like they would any other hardware manufacturer.
It's not easy because there is no credible way for Motorola to compete successfully without Motorola's competitors presuming Google is giving them a leg up. The only way they will believe it is if Motorola behaves incompetently. And it Motorola is behaving incompetently Google's shareholders can, will and should throw a fit. Either they compete successfully and piss off their OEMs or they compete badly and piss off their shareholders.
The simple fact is that Motorola cannot be the same as any other manufacturer even if they honestly try to be. Perception matters and Motorola's competitors would be fools to trust Google completely.
The Nook Color wasn't just ok hardware, it is brilliant hardware for it's time.
Ok, call it brilliant hardware but my point doesn't change. The software was handicapped when it didn't have to be and thus it became a pointless device. My smartphone is a computer that happens to be able to make calls. Devices that are capable of general purpose use should do so. A tablet that is only good for reading e-books is a waste of money when you can use the same hardware to read e-books plus a whole lot more. Same reason I hardly use my point and shoot camera anymore - my smartphone does the same job adequately plus a whole lot more.
With crap software yes, but everything this side of the iPad had crap software back then.
The software is the most important thing. If you screw up the most important thing it really doesn't matter how nice the rest of it is. I like hacking devices as much as the next guy here on slashdot but if I have to hack something to improve it, then it probably wasn't very good in the first place. Just because everything else not made by Apple had poor software is no excuse for B&N to produce something with crap software.
It was the first non e-ink reading device that was worth considering.
I still haven't seen one I'd seriously consider, e-ink or not, merely for reading purposes. These are general purpose computers. Artificially limiting them to more modest purposes than they are capable of is stupid and self defeating.
My understanding was that Google was going to operate Motorola almost as an independent company so as to not step on the toes of their other OEMs. I would expect Motorola to have to go through the same selection process of Asus, Samsung and everybody else.
They can say that all they want but I don't really see how it would be possible. Google will have to compete directly with their partners at some level - there really is no way around that. Otherwise there was no point in buying Motorola Mobility unless they were just buying them for the patents and intend to shut down the manufacturing and design operations.