The companies you've listed aren't really "product line" companies. Yes, they have some of their own (rebranded) lines, but their primary business is selling other people's products (Nike, Reebok, Guess, Apple, Nintendo, whatever).
That being said, I once knew somebody who worked as the middleman between a U.S. brand corp and Chinese manufacturers. Their contacts in the U.S. were ruthless and in many cases absolute dickheads. For whatever reason they could find, they'd slam the Chinese manufacturers with extra fees, penalties, etc. It became obvious fairly quickly that they considered the Chinese manufacturers a sort of sub-class... and the workers at said manufacturer weren't even considered at all.
It's not just Apple, or even Foxconn, it's big business in the west overall. Given the way the corporatocracy treats locals as an inferior subspecies, it's not exactly unexpected. So long as the majority of consumers buy their products with no consideration to how they end up here, that's the way it will be.
Don't weep for Apple. It's about time *somebody* noticed this sort of shit going all and asked their favoured corp an important question: "why?" One can only hope that it will result in some improvement, and - as Apple is currently a market leader - that it will eventually push other companies to follow.
Smaller reactors may be less efficient, but if they can be more readily distributed then there may be an overall savings in transmission costs. Efficiency costs are not only in production, transmission/distribution also has some pretty big hurdles
Younger drivers seem to be more likely to do the hard-gas+hard-brake thing. The main issues I've seen with older drivers is the drive-slow... speed up for awhile... slow down again... speed up awhile, and on occasion overall concentration issues (sudden turn off when almost missing an offramp, going against a one-way street etc)
I'd imagine that being able to pull up evidence from any of SCO's emails, computers, etc would also be quite useful, especially as previously linked articles seem to show *interesting* links to a large entity using third-parties to funnel money to SCO
This is the UK, where they have things like "phorm" In addition to packet inspection, I wouldn't be surprised if they could do some form of injection. The tech is pretty old (I had proxies that could modify content on-the-fly years ago, great for pranking people who leech your wifi) for non-encrypted data.
I believe it was by John Scalzi. Basically when you're old, you have two choice: Die and go into the group, or sign up for the military, be 'juved, and possibly die in war.
Actually, that's not such a terrible suggestion. When my whole head was stuffed up with allergies, a friend of mine got tired of hearing my noisy attempts to breathe and ordered me a "blueberry tea", which actually worked well at clearing my head out.
At least for phones. I have a GS2 and my battery is made in Korea, and the last time I pulled one apart it seemed that all the parts were labelled as made in Korea as well. I supposed perhaps it is assembled in China, or perhaps Samsung makes other products there, but I don't see any MIC logos in my phone.
One thing that impressed me about blackberry was that it asked me when an app wanted to do something (not before I downloaded/installed it), and gave me the "yes/always/no" option for trusting that app with said permission in the future. It was also a lot more fine-grained than android's "let them see security detail X and they can also sniff your calls and text-messages" type security.
I believe you can do this to some extent with "cyanogenmod" on Android, so I really wish google would get off their duff and look at adding such capabilities into the base unmodded OS.
McDonalds is not the only fast-food company in the industry with unhealthy food Neither is Nike the only shoe company to use cheap labour to make their products.
But, like Apple, these companies were hit hard on the reputation-front for what people perceive as areas in great need of improvement? Why them? KFC brings in things like the "double-down" which is a lot worse than a big-Mac.
The reason is that they're the elephants in the room. They're the most capable of pushing change, the have the biggest visibility, and often make the most profits. With their larger customer bases and tons of other companies just waiting to crawl over them, a big swing in reputation can be a real threat.
On top of the above, Apple has pretty much bragged about how they can get product pushed out quickly in foreign due to conditions where we wouldn't tolerate locally.
I'd love it if all my electronics were made in safe, employee-friendly workplaces. Heck, I'd love it if more were made locally. When you're pushing for change, you don't push on the little guys, because even if they *do* want to change, they don't have much influence themselves. With their high profit margins, they've also got a few bucks extra to spare to deal with the issue (heck, even if they increased the prices of an iphone by $1-2 a unit to do so, it's not like anyone would notice).
Apple has the ability to push change. They may not really want to until right now as it's not profitable, but if bad reputation hits their bottom-line, you can be sure that they'll feel more desire to do so. If the biggest customer of said factories wants change... then it's a whole lot more likely to happen.
Starbucks is also a big name, but they generally seem to have a fairly decent reputation for being fair to their suppliers, and seem to push for improvement of labor conditions. Why can't Apple do the same?
And yet many companies did still manufacture in the US (some few still do), and did manage to manage a profit. The only thing is that they weren't making the easy *record profits* that companies do nowadays from farming them cheap labor overseas.
Actually, as much as I love my smartphone, I'd have to say that neither type are "good phones", though they are good internet-enabled smart devices.
Requiring a touchscreen to dial, answer, and hang-up/reject calls makes for a crap phone IMHO. This is especially true in places where cold weather is prevalent. Ever try to answer your smartphone with gloves on?
Full-size touchscreens are great for smart-devices, but actually quite crappy for phones. I can still dial, answer, and hang-up on a "dumbphone" much faster than any touchscreen phone. Although I have an Android myself, I must give kudos to Apple for at least including a physical "vibrate only" switch on their phones, but it would be much better if manufacturers would *BRING BACK* the physical answer/hang-up buttons. There's still plenty of room for these near the edges of most phones, and android (Motorola/Samsung) tends to have a central physical button with surrounded by a few sensor-buttons. Make those all physical, and capable of doing the above, and the "phone" part of the device would be a lot better.
Well, that an... you might think to check all the servers/laptops/desktops when looking for an intrusion vector, but would you suspect the thermostat? If not, then it's a good way for an infection to sneak back in after being "cleaned"
Amazon: Good for books, bad for other stuff. As mentioned, I got E-series (low watt) "triple-core CPU" that was actually a duo. After returning it, and contacting them twice to fix the listing, it's still listed as triple-core. Others I know have had similar issues. Ended up getting a used E-series quad-core off ebay that worked out much nicer though.
Newegg: Usually good, but sometimes you should watch for deals that advertise huge discounts which actually just leave you at the same "regular" price as elsewhere (especially for refurbs)
Tigerdirect: Bought an LCD TV. Two months later got an extra charge on my card, apparently for the "recycle tax." Other places include the tax in the price, or show it on the invoice. Charging somebody's card for something that wasn't part of the invoice is against Visa regs (and laws in mahy places). Tiger tried to pull a fast to sneak that in and *would not* refund the charge until Visa backcharged them.
It seems that the rule is: Even decent merchants can be bad, so there appears to be none that's perfect. Be vigilant, watch your card, and double-check your purchase. Oh, and credit-cards + regulators can be your friends when it comes to dealing with a bad transaction.
Except in my case where they shipped me a product that wasn't what was listed... wherein I had to wait for a refund (and missed all the decent sales between shipping)
Two reasons I've found a) Looking at stuff that I plan to buy, probably elsewhere (but at least I get to see what it looks like first) b) Immediacy: Buy it and use it, no waiting for the post c) Floor models: I've bought a few floor-models of things, and those actually tend to come out well as one can see their condition/functionality before taking them home, and the price is reduced.
Also d) A place to send relatives when I don't want to be their personal computer consultant/repair-person
You've just described several incidents where items ordered online arrived broken, incomplete, or not-at-all. How is that hassle-free? You have to wait for the item, then go through the RMA process, return the item, and wait for refund/replacement. Meanwhile, the merchant has your money, and you have no product.
This assumes the merchant is reliable too. Amazon may not be bad for returns, but ebay/paypal can be pretty awful for both buyers and sellers. For pricing, I've noticed that a lot of online merchants have gotten into the habit of "sales" that are more than the regular price elsewhere. Amazon seems to be pretty bad for this with books, and Newegg was selling REFURBISHED iPad 2's around Xmas as something like $200-300 off... at a reduced price of $699, except that $699 was the REGULAR price of the things elsewhere new...
See this "Triple core" CPU. It's actually a dual-core
Awhile after Xmas, I ordered the last unit they had. I returned it as soon as I got it and found it to be a dual-core. After my return, their stock went back up to 1. I believe the description has now changed a bit to indicate "Multi-Core: Dual-core", but the short description still says "triple core"
I called to report that they were still selling a dual-core as a triple-core, but it's STILL got a header calling it triple-core.
Depends on whether it's Newegg that does the refurbishing. It may be that the drive was send back to the manufacturer, who fixed some issue (but didn't wipe the drive) and then gave it to Newegg for resale.
Virgin mobile: You get a "tab" where you can whittle down the cost of the phone as a percentage of your plan (30-days notice to cancel but no long-term contract). Cancel early and you need to pay off whatever's left on the cost of the phone.
In the long run, it costs you more than a "3 year plan", but less than buying the phone straight out.
Main issue I've seen is that (in Canada) they don't unlock iPhones as they haven't got the infrastructure setup. Other phones it seems they'll unlock after 3 months.
Yeah, but there's a finite time resource too. I picked up a bunch of movie series for a decent price when Blockbuster went down. In my limited free time, I'm still watching through episodes of BSG. For everyone which picks up "older series X" at a lower price (because people likely won't pay the same as the newest shiny), that may delay or inhibit somebody from buying "shiny new series Y"...
It's all about pushing the "new shiny" at the highest price-point possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Those aren't great examples.
The companies you've listed aren't really "product line" companies. Yes, they have some of their own (rebranded) lines, but their primary business is selling other people's products (Nike, Reebok, Guess, Apple, Nintendo, whatever).
That being said, I once knew somebody who worked as the middleman between a U.S. brand corp and Chinese manufacturers. Their contacts in the U.S. were ruthless and in many cases absolute dickheads. For whatever reason they could find, they'd slam the Chinese manufacturers with extra fees, penalties, etc. It became obvious fairly quickly that they considered the Chinese manufacturers a sort of sub-class... and the workers at said manufacturer weren't even considered at all.
It's not just Apple, or even Foxconn, it's big business in the west overall. Given the way the corporatocracy treats locals as an inferior subspecies, it's not exactly unexpected. So long as the majority of consumers buy their products with no consideration to how they end up here, that's the way it will be.
Don't weep for Apple. It's about time *somebody* noticed this sort of shit going all and asked their favoured corp an important question: "why?"
One can only hope that it will result in some improvement, and - as Apple is currently a market leader - that it will eventually push other companies to follow.
Smaller reactors may be less efficient, but if they can be more readily distributed then there may be an overall savings in transmission costs.
Efficiency costs are not only in production, transmission/distribution also has some pretty big hurdles
Younger drivers seem to be more likely to do the hard-gas+hard-brake thing. ... slow down again ... speed up awhile, and on occasion overall concentration issues (sudden turn off when almost missing an offramp, going against a one-way street etc)
The main issues I've seen with older drivers is the drive-slow... speed up for awhile
I'd imagine that being able to pull up evidence from any of SCO's emails, computers, etc would also be quite useful, especially as previously linked articles seem to show *interesting* links to a large entity using third-parties to funnel money to SCO
This is the UK, where they have things like "phorm"
In addition to packet inspection, I wouldn't be surprised if they could do some form of injection. The tech is pretty old (I had proxies that could modify content on-the-fly years ago, great for pranking people who leech your wifi) for non-encrypted data.
Somewhere, in our DNA, is the equivalent to a 32-bit unsigned-integer...
I believe it was by John Scalzi.
Basically when you're old, you have two choice: Die and go into the group, or sign up for the military, be 'juved, and possibly die in war.
Actually, that's not such a terrible suggestion.
When my whole head was stuffed up with allergies, a friend of mine got tired of hearing my noisy attempts to breathe and ordered me a "blueberry tea", which actually worked well at clearing my head out.
At least for phones. I have a GS2 and my battery is made in Korea, and the last time I pulled one apart it seemed that all the parts were labelled as made in Korea as well. I supposed perhaps it is assembled in China, or perhaps Samsung makes other products there, but I don't see any MIC logos in my phone.
One thing that impressed me about blackberry was that it asked me when an app wanted to do something (not before I downloaded/installed it), and gave me the "yes/always/no" option for trusting that app with said permission in the future. It was also a lot more fine-grained than android's "let them see security detail X and they can also sniff your calls and text-messages" type security.
I believe you can do this to some extent with "cyanogenmod" on Android, so I really wish google would get off their duff and look at adding such capabilities into the base unmodded OS.
McDonalds is not the only fast-food company in the industry with unhealthy food
Neither is Nike the only shoe company to use cheap labour to make their products.
But, like Apple, these companies were hit hard on the reputation-front for what people perceive as areas in great need of improvement? Why them? KFC brings in things like the "double-down" which is a lot worse than a big-Mac.
The reason is that they're the elephants in the room. They're the most capable of pushing change, the have the biggest visibility, and often make the most profits. With their larger customer bases and tons of other companies just waiting to crawl over them, a big swing in reputation can be a real threat.
On top of the above, Apple has pretty much bragged about how they can get product pushed out quickly in foreign due to conditions where we wouldn't tolerate locally.
I'd love it if all my electronics were made in safe, employee-friendly workplaces. Heck, I'd love it if more were made locally. When you're pushing for change, you don't push on the little guys, because even if they *do* want to change, they don't have much influence themselves. With their high profit margins, they've also got a few bucks extra to spare to deal with the issue (heck, even if they increased the prices of an iphone by $1-2 a unit to do so, it's not like anyone would notice).
Apple has the ability to push change. They may not really want to until right now as it's not profitable, but if bad reputation hits their bottom-line, you can be sure that they'll feel more desire to do so. If the biggest customer of said factories wants change... then it's a whole lot more likely to happen.
Starbucks is also a big name, but they generally seem to have a fairly decent reputation for being fair to their suppliers, and seem to push for improvement of labor conditions. Why can't Apple do the same?
And yet many companies did still manufacture in the US (some few still do), and did manage to manage a profit. The only thing is that they weren't making the easy *record profits* that companies do nowadays from farming them cheap labor overseas.
Actually, as much as I love my smartphone, I'd have to say that neither type are "good phones", though they are good internet-enabled smart devices.
Requiring a touchscreen to dial, answer, and hang-up/reject calls makes for a crap phone IMHO. This is especially true in places where cold weather is prevalent. Ever try to answer your smartphone with gloves on?
Full-size touchscreens are great for smart-devices, but actually quite crappy for phones. I can still dial, answer, and hang-up on a "dumbphone" much faster than any touchscreen phone. Although I have an Android myself, I must give kudos to Apple for at least including a physical "vibrate only" switch on their phones, but it would be much better if manufacturers would *BRING BACK* the physical answer/hang-up buttons. There's still plenty of room for these near the edges of most phones, and android (Motorola/Samsung) tends to have a central physical button with surrounded by a few sensor-buttons. Make those all physical, and capable of doing the above, and the "phone" part of the device would be a lot better.
Well, that an...
you might think to check all the servers/laptops/desktops when looking for an intrusion vector, but would you suspect the thermostat? If not, then it's a good way for an infection to sneak back in after being "cleaned"
Amazon: Good for books, bad for other stuff. As mentioned, I got E-series (low watt) "triple-core CPU" that was actually a duo. After returning it, and contacting them twice to fix the listing, it's still listed as triple-core. Others I know have had similar issues. Ended up getting a used E-series quad-core off ebay that worked out much nicer though.
Newegg: Usually good, but sometimes you should watch for deals that advertise huge discounts which actually just leave you at the same "regular" price as elsewhere (especially for refurbs)
Tigerdirect: Bought an LCD TV. Two months later got an extra charge on my card, apparently for the "recycle tax." Other places include the tax in the price, or show it on the invoice. Charging somebody's card for something that wasn't part of the invoice is against Visa regs (and laws in mahy places). Tiger tried to pull a fast to sneak that in and *would not* refund the charge until Visa backcharged them.
It seems that the rule is: Even decent merchants can be bad, so there appears to be none that's perfect. Be vigilant, watch your card, and double-check your purchase. Oh, and credit-cards + regulators can be your friends when it comes to dealing with a bad transaction.
Except in my case where they shipped me a product that wasn't what was listed... wherein I had to wait for a refund (and missed all the decent sales between shipping)
Wow. Conflict of interest FAIL!
Two reasons I've found
a) Looking at stuff that I plan to buy, probably elsewhere (but at least I get to see what it looks like first)
b) Immediacy: Buy it and use it, no waiting for the post
c) Floor models: I've bought a few floor-models of things, and those actually tend to come out well as one can see their condition/functionality before taking them home, and the price is reduced.
Also
d) A place to send relatives when I don't want to be their personal computer consultant/repair-person
You've just described several incidents where items ordered online arrived broken, incomplete, or not-at-all. How is that hassle-free?
You have to wait for the item, then go through the RMA process, return the item, and wait for refund/replacement.
Meanwhile, the merchant has your money, and you have no product.
This assumes the merchant is reliable too. Amazon may not be bad for returns, but ebay/paypal can be pretty awful for both buyers and sellers.
For pricing, I've noticed that a lot of online merchants have gotten into the habit of "sales" that are more than the regular price elsewhere. Amazon seems to be pretty bad for this with books, and Newegg was selling REFURBISHED iPad 2's around Xmas as something like $200-300 off... at a reduced price of $699, except that $699 was the REGULAR price of the things elsewhere new...
See this "Triple core" CPU. It's actually a dual-core
Awhile after Xmas, I ordered the last unit they had. I returned it as soon as I got it and found it to be a dual-core. After my return, their stock went back up to 1. I believe the description has now changed a bit to indicate "Multi-Core: Dual-core", but the short description still says "triple core"
I called to report that they were still selling a dual-core as a triple-core, but it's STILL got a header calling it triple-core.
I'd be very wary of buying anything from amazon.
Depends on whether it's Newegg that does the refurbishing.
It may be that the drive was send back to the manufacturer, who fixed some issue (but didn't wipe the drive) and then gave it to Newegg for resale.
If there was something *bad* on the drive, it might still be hanging around. Leave it running for a day or so with DBAN.
If that's the case, I hope his reincarnation comes as the offspring of a poor sweatshop-factory worker...
Virgin mobile: You get a "tab" where you can whittle down the cost of the phone as a percentage of your plan (30-days notice to cancel but no long-term contract). Cancel early and you need to pay off whatever's left on the cost of the phone.
In the long run, it costs you more than a "3 year plan", but less than buying the phone straight out.
Main issue I've seen is that (in Canada) they don't unlock iPhones as they haven't got the infrastructure setup. Other phones it seems they'll unlock after 3 months.
Yeah, but there's a finite time resource too.
I picked up a bunch of movie series for a decent price when Blockbuster went down. In my limited free time, I'm still watching through episodes of BSG. For everyone which picks up "older series X" at a lower price (because people likely won't pay the same as the newest shiny), that may delay or inhibit somebody from buying "shiny new series Y"...
It's all about pushing the "new shiny" at the highest price-point possible.