It is lower than suicide rates at both MIT and Harvard (10.2 and 7.4 per 100,000, respectively, from a 2001 report). That's right, MIT and Harvard students are PAYING to be there, and their suicide rate is higher than Foxconn workers.
What are you doing about those shocking numbers? Who are you holding to account and starting online petitions to boycott?
The only thing shocking about the suicide rate of Foxconn workers is that people like you keep thinking it bolsters your argument. Hint: it does the exact opposite, if only you'd thought to analyze it for one minute.
BS. Take Apple's green initiatives. They were far ahead of most in the industry in moving to greener materials and processes, but Greenpeace shit on them anyway because they wouldn't publish an official public document declaring their commitment and improvement plans (i.e. "spin") like their competitors were doing.
Then when Apple did demonstrate how they're already fairly green, they're accused of marketing and spin. And Greenpeace still went after them because it still wasn't an official document, and going after Apple guarantees press.
So it is with Foxconn labour. By most accounts factories making their products are farther ahead than most of their competitors. Do they get a break? No, because aha, an independent report says it still sucks compared to western standards (and violates Chinese law, granted, but that means the Chinese government, not Apple, needs to do its job enforcing its own laws, they're supposed to be brutally efficient at that), and the protests ratchet up even higher.
This is a classic case of give them an inch, they demand a mile. It's like Democrats trying to compromise and the Republicans are so blinded by their ideology and hatred of anything "lefty/liberal" that they refuse to accept any concessions, they want to kill the bill out of spite. Compromise is taken as a sign of weakness so they go after them for even more compromises.
Yeah, that strategy works great to get what you want, short term. After awhile they'll realize all their efforts just get them even more grief, because it's *never* enough to satisfy their detractors, so they stop trying to concede anything.
I had no horse as such in the bill, since I'm not an American. As an interested observer from your northern neighbour, I saw that the Democrats' intentions were as you say--include all voices, concerns, and opinions. But when their opponents honestly abused that good faith and took advantage of attempts to compromise (because they don't want any part of the bill to pass, period), and the Dems had the balance of power, then it's clear the time for compromise is over. The party and president were elected on a platform that included that bill, they should have been leaders and forged ahead after that.
I would not characterize what passed as a "health care" bill, but mandatory health insurance.
Things aren't rosy up here either, our Conservative majority government is heavily suspected of involvement in voter suppression and disenfranchisement tactics against supporters of other parties during last year's federal election. These are extremely serious allegations that any anyone who actually cherishes democracy should be demanding answers to, but everyone's sick of politics up here too. And on their better days the Conservative government accuses advocates of fair intellectual property laws of being extremists, and those against invasive, zero-oversight internet monitoring as supporting child pornographers (the latter charge, at least, enraged enough of their conservative base that they quickly backed off on the legislation... for now).
A plurality of Canadians aren't any better. Despite all the crap the Harper's Conservatives pulled when they were in a minority, they got voted into a majority Parliament (with a little help from voter suppression and disenfranchisement tactics).
One possible flaw: I don't see anything that prevents Bill 1 passing into law, the next day Bill 2 is introduced to immediately amend parts of Bill/Law 1 so it now says what the powers-that-be really want in it, then Bill 3 is introduced to either amend #1 or #2...
This could be fixed by adding an additional rule: 6) Once bill is passed into law, no subsequent bill may override or amend it for a period of time, say a year.
Any way you slice it though, if a party has majority control of the legislative process (House -> Senate -> head of state), they can and will do whatever they want.
Well, except the Obama administration. Don't know why the hell they pandered and compromised so much in his first two years in office when the Republicans were clearly, irrationally hell-bent on blocking anything the Democrats introduced, no matter what.
Disagree. The "living is more than just being alive" argument by death-with-dignity supporters applies equally well to the world's population. Sure, tech and other breakthroughs can sustain more people in the literal sense (otherwise the world population wouldn't still be growing), but when you see numbers like 925 million hungry people around the world, and 1.3 billion are considered to be in "extreme poverty", you can't tell me reducing population grown is a bad thing.
And it doesn't have to be the draconian one-child-per-family policies seen in China. Simply providing free birth control (condoms being the simplest) in developing countries would be a huge start, both in reducing unwanted/impossible-to-support pregnancies and reducing HIV/AIDS, but the religious nutcases now in control of several countries restrict or deny funding to any aid organization that promotes contraceptive use or abortion (and are doing their best to kill abortion back home, too). The Catholic church is also guilty/complicit in prolonging this human suffering, again thanks to its anti-contraceptive stance.
The idealistic scenario is to distribute wealth and resources fairly such that no one is in poverty and has a decent life worth living. The reality is this will never, ever happen. Not only would the right-wing scream bloody socialism, communism, etc, the dictators and their cronies in most underdeveloped countries will never allow meaningful aid to reach their underclass--they've seen what reasonably well-off but unhappy populations did during the Arab Spring.
The religious right also screams at attempts to provide contraception too, but this is infinitely more likely to succeed (if only because the idealistic option has 0% chance of happening).
Where I come from, that's called being thrown under a bus.
The idea that "one young guy" has the ability to: - set up robocalls in multiple ridings (voting districts) to mislead Liberal or at least non-Conservative voters to nonexistent voting stations - making live harassing calls at odd hours that claim to be from Liberal supporters - access to results of calls to determine voting intentions, to target non-Con voters - authorize payments to Racknine to do all the robocalls, and direct them to set up a burn number belonging to "Pierre Poutine"... and other things I haven't bothered listing, is beyond belief. There were definitely more players involved in this disgusting violation of our democratic rights.
There are certainly older iPhones out there still running those versions, but new iPhones are all at v5.x which require physical access to the device to jailbreak.
You do realize what a "full size SIM card" actually is? It's the size of a credit card. The SIM card you're referring to is already called a mini SIM card.
Technology moves forward and miniaturizes. Older stuff becomes incompatible. It's unfortunate the nano format is already being proposed before the micro-SIM is even commonplace aside from Apple gear, but micro-SIMs were standardized in late 2003, almost 9 years ago. It's hardly Apple's fault that no one else wanted to take charge and move the technology ahead. Like USB on the iMac, they're driving and popularizing an existing standard.
Yes, and I got a nearly-spent tube of toothpaste confiscated one time because of that retarded rule.
Whatever the reason, I haven't had a problem with empty water bottles the last half-dozen times I've flown, even though I go through security expecting them to raise the issue. That's why I use the disposable bottles, not a solid plastic one or a thermos. The bottle's in the see-through mesh on the side of my carry-on bag, impossible to miss.
I should note that I almost never buy bottled water and have no problem drinking from water fountains, air travel is one of the few exceptions (the other is clubs that obviously don't have fountains and don't allow outside drinks). Bottled water is great for transporting and distributing water to disaster areas, but is the biggest scam in the western world--people complain about $1/L for gas but happily pay $2-3 for a half-litre of water at the same gas station.
Last year I flew into, within, and out of the USA. I had no problem bringing a regular 500 mL bottle of water onto the planes.
I just made sure it was empty when passing through security, then filled it up at a water fountain while waiting to board. Security did see it and didn't care to say or do anything about it.
Almost 10 years ago I applied to a job and attached both a PDF AND Word versions of my resume and cover letter. My supervisor later said that attention to detail was one of the factors in deciding to hire me.
It helped that they're a small company without a dedicated HR department and applications were screened by real people from start to finish...
Question: Why does Danica Patrick put her hands up and on what seems to be the sides of her helmet? The impact jolted her to the side and it almost looked like her wrist could be injured as it hit the padding on the side of her head.
The third driver in the video, on the other hand, crossed arms across chest. To this layman, this seems to make more sense since the arms/hands won't hit anything in either front or side impacts. Both are apparently good responses since these are professional race drivers...
Ottawa and I know Vancouver now track buses via GPS. Ottawa's uses a text-message system with estimated times, while Vancouver actually updates locations on a map every 2 minutes. I prefer the Vancouver option--knowing how far away my bus is, I can much better guess when I've passed the point of no return and take my time getting to the stop for the next bus. The text option though is more accessible, i.e. better for people without smartphones.
Much as I love to hate taking our city's (Ottawa, Canada) bus transit system, it is supposedly one of the best in North America. I think the keys are sufficient funding, public willingness, and sense of environmental responsibility.
Ottawa is actually badly laid out for a transit system once you get out of the core, I won't bore you with why, but public transit is the single largest "service" charge in my municipal tax bill, more than police and fire combined IIRC. We have decent dedicated high-speed bus-only lanes and corridors, so if you're coming in from major hubs 20km out, it takes only 30-40 minutes to get downtown. It would take at least that long to drive in and park during rush hour. There's also a dedicated transit security force that can respond quickly to incidents in most of the city, so despite a few cases of robbery at or near transit stations after-hours it's regarded as safe. Most buses run a decent schedule during the day.
I've read that in the US there's the perception that public buses are for the underclass. Add in the car as a status symbol and it's no wonder anyone who can afford to, avoids transit. Here, doctors and businessmen in fancy suits can be seen sitting or standing next to kids with punk haircuts. Environmentalism, despite our current Conservative federal government's best efforts, is still a big deal in Canada, so many try and do their part.
The fact that there would be need for a "licensing specialist" speaks volumes about the complexity of navigating the Microsoft licensing system.
I was researching Sharepoint a couple years ago. In Microsoft's FAQ for it, where I thought I'd find lots of technical Q&As, the section on licensing was longer than all other sections combined.
A software product/service that requires a lawyer more than a technical person to evaluate? Screw it.
Your post was obviously before the Apple's late-afternoon announcement, but they said they sold 3 million iPads over 3 days, including online pre-orders that were delivered Friday. It's not clear if this includes non-Apple retail stores.
Plenty of stock means they were anticipating *more* retail sales, so it's true that they over-estimated initial demand. Hurts their mystique a little, we'll see how the markets react tomorrow.
Wikipedia starts its page on innovation with this: "Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself."
Has Apple invented anything recently? Not really--or if they have, it's behind the scenes and not a distinct product.
But "Doing X better" where "better" translates to better acceptance by the market (not necessarily you individually), definitely meet this definition of innovation.
This includes simplifying things for normal users, the same way an automatic transmission is an innovation over manual. Heck, it's a great car analogy: Apple walls off iOS, automatic transmission walls off the driver from everything above gear 2 ("takes away user's freedoms!"), and adds to the cost of a new car.
And on the complete opposite end, when I visited California last summer California two different stores singled out and refused to take the one Canadian penny in a low-cash transaction involving some dollar bills and other coins. I even joked that the Canadian penny they were refusing was actually worth more than the American penny at the time.
I have no idea what policies they were following, in Canada most places accept American coins without problem.
One of the last shuttle flights, as the shuttle crew left the station and they were sealing up the airlock hatches, a black laptop was prominently on screen and open, taking up a lot of space. One the space station crew did something quick with it at one point, but as you'd expect had to carry it in one arm as he typed or trackpad-ed around with the other.
Right there is an example where a touch tablet would have made a lot of sense. Not necessarily an iPad, but certainly one without a stylus. Of course they'd have to run it through radiation and other hardening, certify it for spaceflight, etc.
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The suicide rate in these places is shocking.
You lost all credibility right there. There's plenty to criticize about Apple, the suicide rate at a contractor's factories is not one of them.
The Foxconn worker suicide rate (1.5 per 100,000 at its worst, in 2010) is lower than the general Chinese population (22.23 per 100,000).
It is lower than New York (6 per 100,000), which itself is over half the national average (11 per 100,000).
It is lower than US soldiers soldiers (20 per 100,000 as of 2008), which was already an 80% jump over the rate in 2004.
It is lower than suicide rates at both MIT and Harvard (10.2 and 7.4 per 100,000, respectively, from a 2001 report). That's right, MIT and Harvard students are PAYING to be there, and their suicide rate is higher than Foxconn workers.
What are you doing about those shocking numbers? Who are you holding to account and starting online petitions to boycott?
The only thing shocking about the suicide rate of Foxconn workers is that people like you keep thinking it bolsters your argument. Hint: it does the exact opposite, if only you'd thought to analyze it for one minute.
BS. Take Apple's green initiatives. They were far ahead of most in the industry in moving to greener materials and processes, but Greenpeace shit on them anyway because they wouldn't publish an official public document declaring their commitment and improvement plans (i.e. "spin") like their competitors were doing.
Then when Apple did demonstrate how they're already fairly green, they're accused of marketing and spin. And Greenpeace still went after them because it still wasn't an official document, and going after Apple guarantees press.
So it is with Foxconn labour. By most accounts factories making their products are farther ahead than most of their competitors. Do they get a break? No, because aha, an independent report says it still sucks compared to western standards (and violates Chinese law, granted, but that means the Chinese government, not Apple, needs to do its job enforcing its own laws, they're supposed to be brutally efficient at that), and the protests ratchet up even higher.
This is a classic case of give them an inch, they demand a mile. It's like Democrats trying to compromise and the Republicans are so blinded by their ideology and hatred of anything "lefty/liberal" that they refuse to accept any concessions, they want to kill the bill out of spite. Compromise is taken as a sign of weakness so they go after them for even more compromises.
Yeah, that strategy works great to get what you want, short term. After awhile they'll realize all their efforts just get them even more grief, because it's *never* enough to satisfy their detractors, so they stop trying to concede anything.
I had no horse as such in the bill, since I'm not an American. As an interested observer from your northern neighbour, I saw that the Democrats' intentions were as you say--include all voices, concerns, and opinions. But when their opponents honestly abused that good faith and took advantage of attempts to compromise (because they don't want any part of the bill to pass, period), and the Dems had the balance of power, then it's clear the time for compromise is over. The party and president were elected on a platform that included that bill, they should have been leaders and forged ahead after that.
I would not characterize what passed as a "health care" bill, but mandatory health insurance.
Things aren't rosy up here either, our Conservative majority government is heavily suspected of involvement in voter suppression and disenfranchisement tactics against supporters of other parties during last year's federal election. These are extremely serious allegations that any anyone who actually cherishes democracy should be demanding answers to, but everyone's sick of politics up here too. And on their better days the Conservative government accuses advocates of fair intellectual property laws of being extremists, and those against invasive, zero-oversight internet monitoring as supporting child pornographers (the latter charge, at least, enraged enough of their conservative base that they quickly backed off on the legislation... for now).
A plurality of Canadians aren't any better. Despite all the crap the Harper's Conservatives pulled when they were in a minority, they got voted into a majority Parliament (with a little help from voter suppression and disenfranchisement tactics).
One possible flaw: I don't see anything that prevents Bill 1 passing into law, the next day Bill 2 is introduced to immediately amend parts of Bill/Law 1 so it now says what the powers-that-be really want in it, then Bill 3 is introduced to either amend #1 or #2...
This could be fixed by adding an additional rule: 6) Once bill is passed into law, no subsequent bill may override or amend it for a period of time, say a year.
Any way you slice it though, if a party has majority control of the legislative process (House -> Senate -> head of state), they can and will do whatever they want.
Well, except the Obama administration. Don't know why the hell they pandered and compromised so much in his first two years in office when the Republicans were clearly, irrationally hell-bent on blocking anything the Democrats introduced, no matter what.
Disagree. The "living is more than just being alive" argument by death-with-dignity supporters applies equally well to the world's population. Sure, tech and other breakthroughs can sustain more people in the literal sense (otherwise the world population wouldn't still be growing), but when you see numbers like 925 million hungry people around the world, and 1.3 billion are considered to be in "extreme poverty", you can't tell me reducing population grown is a bad thing.
And it doesn't have to be the draconian one-child-per-family policies seen in China. Simply providing free birth control (condoms being the simplest) in developing countries would be a huge start, both in reducing unwanted/impossible-to-support pregnancies and reducing HIV/AIDS, but the religious nutcases now in control of several countries restrict or deny funding to any aid organization that promotes contraceptive use or abortion (and are doing their best to kill abortion back home, too). The Catholic church is also guilty/complicit in prolonging this human suffering, again thanks to its anti-contraceptive stance.
The idealistic scenario is to distribute wealth and resources fairly such that no one is in poverty and has a decent life worth living. The reality is this will never, ever happen. Not only would the right-wing scream bloody socialism, communism, etc, the dictators and their cronies in most underdeveloped countries will never allow meaningful aid to reach their underclass--they've seen what reasonably well-off but unhappy populations did during the Arab Spring.
The religious right also screams at attempts to provide contraception too, but this is infinitely more likely to succeed (if only because the idealistic option has 0% chance of happening).
Where I come from, that's called being thrown under a bus.
The idea that "one young guy" has the ability to: ... and other things I haven't bothered listing, is beyond belief. There were definitely more players involved in this disgusting violation of our democratic rights.
- set up robocalls in multiple ridings (voting districts) to mislead Liberal or at least non-Conservative voters to nonexistent voting stations
- making live harassing calls at odd hours that claim to be from Liberal supporters
- access to results of calls to determine voting intentions, to target non-Con voters
- authorize payments to Racknine to do all the robocalls, and direct them to set up a burn number belonging to "Pierre Poutine"
Note that it's only available for iOS v4.2.6 through 4.3.3.
There are certainly older iPhones out there still running those versions, but new iPhones are all at v5.x which require physical access to the device to jailbreak.
You do realize what a "full size SIM card" actually is? It's the size of a credit card. The SIM card you're referring to is already called a mini SIM card.
Technology moves forward and miniaturizes. Older stuff becomes incompatible. It's unfortunate the nano format is already being proposed before the micro-SIM is even commonplace aside from Apple gear, but micro-SIMs were standardized in late 2003, almost 9 years ago. It's hardly Apple's fault that no one else wanted to take charge and move the technology ahead. Like USB on the iMac, they're driving and popularizing an existing standard.
I still don't read it that way. Chalk it up to sarchasm.
Yes, and I got a nearly-spent tube of toothpaste confiscated one time because of that retarded rule.
Whatever the reason, I haven't had a problem with empty water bottles the last half-dozen times I've flown, even though I go through security expecting them to raise the issue. That's why I use the disposable bottles, not a solid plastic one or a thermos. The bottle's in the see-through mesh on the side of my carry-on bag, impossible to miss.
There's no whoosh to be had from Malc's comment, which still reads as was a non-sarcastic opinion. If you care to point out what I missed, feel free.
Ginger ale most certainly does have flavour. Club soda is the carbonated water with no flavour.
I should note that I almost never buy bottled water and have no problem drinking from water fountains, air travel is one of the few exceptions (the other is clubs that obviously don't have fountains and don't allow outside drinks). Bottled water is great for transporting and distributing water to disaster areas, but is the biggest scam in the western world--people complain about $1/L for gas but happily pay $2-3 for a half-litre of water at the same gas station.
Last year I flew into, within, and out of the USA. I had no problem bringing a regular 500 mL bottle of water onto the planes.
I just made sure it was empty when passing through security, then filled it up at a water fountain while waiting to board. Security did see it and didn't care to say or do anything about it.
Almost 10 years ago I applied to a job and attached both a PDF AND Word versions of my resume and cover letter. My supervisor later said that attention to detail was one of the factors in deciding to hire me.
It helped that they're a small company without a dedicated HR department and applications were screened by real people from start to finish...
Question: Why does Danica Patrick put her hands up and on what seems to be the sides of her helmet? The impact jolted her to the side and it almost looked like her wrist could be injured as it hit the padding on the side of her head.
The third driver in the video, on the other hand, crossed arms across chest. To this layman, this seems to make more sense since the arms/hands won't hit anything in either front or side impacts. Both are apparently good responses since these are professional race drivers...
Ottawa and I know Vancouver now track buses via GPS. Ottawa's uses a text-message system with estimated times, while Vancouver actually updates locations on a map every 2 minutes. I prefer the Vancouver option--knowing how far away my bus is, I can much better guess when I've passed the point of no return and take my time getting to the stop for the next bus. The text option though is more accessible, i.e. better for people without smartphones.
Much as I love to hate taking our city's (Ottawa, Canada) bus transit system, it is supposedly one of the best in North America. I think the keys are sufficient funding, public willingness, and sense of environmental responsibility.
Ottawa is actually badly laid out for a transit system once you get out of the core, I won't bore you with why, but public transit is the single largest "service" charge in my municipal tax bill, more than police and fire combined IIRC. We have decent dedicated high-speed bus-only lanes and corridors, so if you're coming in from major hubs 20km out, it takes only 30-40 minutes to get downtown. It would take at least that long to drive in and park during rush hour. There's also a dedicated transit security force that can respond quickly to incidents in most of the city, so despite a few cases of robbery at or near transit stations after-hours it's regarded as safe. Most buses run a decent schedule during the day.
I've read that in the US there's the perception that public buses are for the underclass. Add in the car as a status symbol and it's no wonder anyone who can afford to, avoids transit. Here, doctors and businessmen in fancy suits can be seen sitting or standing next to kids with punk haircuts. Environmentalism, despite our current Conservative federal government's best efforts, is still a big deal in Canada, so many try and do their part.
The fact that there would be need for a "licensing specialist" speaks volumes about the complexity of navigating the Microsoft licensing system.
I was researching Sharepoint a couple years ago. In Microsoft's FAQ for it, where I thought I'd find lots of technical Q&As, the section on licensing was longer than all other sections combined.
A software product/service that requires a lawyer more than a technical person to evaluate? Screw it.
Your post was obviously before the Apple's late-afternoon announcement, but they said they sold 3 million iPads over 3 days, including online pre-orders that were delivered Friday. It's not clear if this includes non-Apple retail stores.
Plenty of stock means they were anticipating *more* retail sales, so it's true that they over-estimated initial demand. Hurts their mystique a little, we'll see how the markets react tomorrow.
Wikipedia starts its page on innovation with this: "Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself."
Has Apple invented anything recently? Not really--or if they have, it's behind the scenes and not a distinct product.
But "Doing X better" where "better" translates to better acceptance by the market (not necessarily you individually), definitely meet this definition of innovation.
This includes simplifying things for normal users, the same way an automatic transmission is an innovation over manual. Heck, it's a great car analogy: Apple walls off iOS, automatic transmission walls off the driver from everything above gear 2 ("takes away user's freedoms!"), and adds to the cost of a new car.
And on the complete opposite end, when I visited California last summer California two different stores singled out and refused to take the one Canadian penny in a low-cash transaction involving some dollar bills and other coins. I even joked that the Canadian penny they were refusing was actually worth more than the American penny at the time.
I have no idea what policies they were following, in Canada most places accept American coins without problem.
For me personally, the Swiss army knife (smartphone) is just fine.
One of the last shuttle flights, as the shuttle crew left the station and they were sealing up the airlock hatches, a black laptop was prominently on screen and open, taking up a lot of space. One the space station crew did something quick with it at one point, but as you'd expect had to carry it in one arm as he typed or trackpad-ed around with the other.
Right there is an example where a touch tablet would have made a lot of sense. Not necessarily an iPad, but certainly one without a stylus. Of course they'd have to run it through radiation and other hardening, certify it for spaceflight, etc.