> However, rail can never match the speed and > flexibility of trucks to make smaller point-to-point > deliveries.
A significant contributor to this, though, has been poor urban planning that insufficiently utilizes rail. If corrected to more efficiently utilize the rail lines and hubs, those flexible point-to-point trucks could be smaller, lighter, and less damaging to the roads. Compare and contrast, for example, the lorries and "heavy trucks" used in the UK and Japan vs. the monstrous beasts on our roads here in the US.
I remember KARR. But I know there was also an episode where Bonnie's evil twin installed a counterfeit alpha circuit into KITT so that the baddies of the day could turn him evil; and I'm pretty sure there was at least one other "KITT is reprogrammed for eviluz" as well. Perhaps it's time to fire up the Netflix and refresh my memory. Remarkable though... for a show that had a grand total of six main characters throughout its run, how many of them had evil twins. I'm pretty sure Michael's even had the evil goatee. Oh, the '80s...
Of course, now that I think more, the episode where Airwolf turned evil as "Moffet's Ghost". It wasn't a case of the helicopter getting pwned, it was a rogue AI that had been installed by its creator during development.
Well, perhaps after a few years of that roadway chaos; sanity will finally prevail here, and we'll actually raise those fuel taxes to reflect the true cost of maintaining and building the roads. Yeah, it's a long shot. But stranger things have happened. And perhaps if the roads do get bad enough to start impacting corporate profits, even the republicans will finally understand that they do have to be paid for.
But as for the rails, I'm kind of torn. We desperately need a systemic upgrade to something modern like the Shinkansen or TGV. (And we need to stay on top of upgrades, instead of just putting the system in and letting it age and decay in place. I'm looking at you, BART.) But the existing rail operators are such a catastrophe of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption; I seriously doubt they're up to the task. It may be better to just let them die, so we can start over. Maybe just farm the job out to the Japanese in exchange for some technology sharing. Hell... imagine if we just skipped the "rail" part of rail and went straight to the L0 Series maglev (505kmph/314 mph) trains!
I'm pretty sure at least a couple of episodes of Knight Rider and one of Airwolf involved KITT or Airwolf getting hacked and turned evil for an episode.
Eh, I specifically mentioned April. I was referring to the penalties in the tax code for marriage, not the other benefits of a two-income or two-person household. You can solve all of your other problems, save insurance, by cohabitation with your partner, without officially becoming married. You can even set up trusts and power of attorney to mostly replicate the inheritance and medical authority benefits of marriage.
But the tax code in the US, as it relates to marriage, was designed in the 1950's for one-income households with the idea that the man is the breadwinner, and the woman is at home barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. At best, the second partner can work for a pittance in a low-income job... substitute teaching or whatever. In such a case, getting married and filing jointly provides a benefit. But if both partners work in real jobs in real careers (As is often the case with gay couples.), then yes, there is a significant tax penalty to getting married, whether you file jointly or not.
Federal law is severely lacking in GLBT protections though. Sure, we have marriage equality. That's great for people who've found the person they want to marry, and are willing to take the financial penalty every April that goes along with marriage. That SCOTUS ruling didn't amend the Civil Rights Act or Title 9 protections to include LGBT people though. And even ENDA... itself a very watered-down, insufficiently inclusive, and overall inadequate facsimile of those protections... has been stalled in congress for as long as I can recall.
And what exactly are your credentials and research, that you are so confident in contradicting the prevailing theories in gender studies? Presumably you are published. In what journals? And who did the peer reviews on your work?
Actually, Star Trek's computer was nearly always Majel Barrett, not Marina Sirtis. Barrett is even credited in the first Abrams movie; so apparently, she got all her dialog recorded before passing on. I don't know who did the computer voices for Into Darkness, but Sirtis isn't credited in IMDB.
They do let you pick a voice. Looking at the Siri settings on my iPhone, I not only have the choice between male or female, but between American, Australian, or British english, with both genders available for all three. What would you people have Apple do to not be "oppressive"? Not set a default, and pick one of the six at random every time an iPhone is set up?
The minimum-spec iPhones are also fairly popular for corporate and government customers, which buy them in bulk, put them in MDM with the official approves apps, and issue them to employees. Often they'll have additional restrictions. No room for your personal photos? Tough. It's a work device, not personal. But thanks for reminding us. The camera will be disabled in the next profile update.
The minimum-sped iPad? What do you think is attacked to all of the Square terminals you see in small stores, and even in food trucks? The cash register app is probably the only thing those ever run.
Well, if by "many, many years" you mean the five years since our previous (Republican) governor left office because he was ineligible to run again due to the two term limit; this, after he deposed a Democratic governor (Who was, himself, preceded by another Republican) via a recall election, then sure... many, many years.
Actually, I have nothing against Schwarzenegger. He did a good job, especially the situation when he went into office. And he's one of very, very, few Republicans I can think of, for whom I'd be willing to vote. But the "Peoples Republic of California" where republicans have no power or ability to hold office, is nothing more than a mythological Fox "news" talking point.
Also, though the "Republican" name does have some taint to it due to Pete Wilson's overt racism (And blatant stupidity... Tie your political career to a proposition that's a racist attack against the state's fastest-growing demographic. How can you go wrong?); it's not uncommon, even in San Francisco, for the conservative candidate to win. See, for example, the Willie Brown vs. Tom Ammiano and Gavin Newsom vs. Matt Gonzalez mayoral elections, And Jerry Brown's victory over Newsom for governor when Schwarzenegger termed out. You just have to look at the nuances of the candidates, and see how their positions actually compare to each other, rather than just looking for the D or R on the ballot.
I wonder about this too. Not because I get sick... I'm blessed with a fairly iron stomach... but because probably about 90% of the time that I'm using Uber, it's because I've been out drinking. And I doubt that I'm an atypical Uber user. So I wonder what kind of "programming challenge" can be done drunk and on an iPhone screen that will give them anything resembling valid hiring data?
They'll either fund or spin off new "hip and modern" banks targeted at urban millennials. These banks won't have branches. Everything will be done online. If you need cash, they'll have a relationship with the ATM networks that serve credit unions*, so as to cut down on the fees. But you won't want to use cash. You'll use your card for everything, because you'll get points and you'll automagically track all of your expenses into categories and budgets via their iPhone app. And said app will easily integrate into mint.com, unlike traditional banks whose connection into mint breaks down every other week. You probably won't even have a checkbook for your "checking" account. Because who writes checks anymore anyway? And because of the lack of overhead from maintaining branches and other legacy cruft, these new banks will have significantly lower fees, and give out lots of "free" stuff vs. the traditional banks.
They start small, and are precisely targeted and marketed. So the initial capitalization can be modest. But most importantly, since they're starting fresh, they aren't encumbered by decrepit, 60-year-old, legacy COBOL. The backend systems won't be written in the latest trendy languages like node.js, go, or Swift... though the user-facing sites and apps may be... they'll be in something with a more solid foundation, but nevertheless still current and with a much larger talent pool, like C++ or even plain old vanilla C.
As the bugs get worked out, and the new systems prove themselves, and the new banks scale up successfully; they'll eventually be acquired or folded back into the parent bank. They'll stop marketing exclusively to hip, urban, millennials and first bring more customers onto the "new banks" ("Now a JP Morgan Chase company.", with full access to the capital which that entails.). Then they'll build up the new backend and transition their existing customers over. And finally, they'll terminate the new bank branding ("But don't worry, all of the features you've come to know and love are still available to you** as a JP Morgan Chase customer! Only the name has changed. Plus, you can use every ATM in the Chase*** network. And you now have the option of visiting any of out JP Morgan Chase branches**** for your banking needs!")
* Some of these "new banks" will actually *BE* credit unions, instead of "banks". Even the fairly well-established credit unions tend to already be significantly ahead of the curve versus banks.
** Additional fees may apply.
*** A $3 fee will apply per withdrawal. Additionally, there will be a $4 fee for using an ATM outside the Chase network.
Wasn't it supposed to be amber that was best on the eyes? I always hated that myself, and was solidly in the green camp. One of the first things I always do on a new computer is set the terminal to green on black.
Bullocks. Indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is unacceptable; and everyone involved in it, axis and allied alike, should have been tossed away into a hole as a war criminal. I do say indiscriminate for a reason though. If you take a job producing arms to ammunition you do become part of the war machine... you know there's a risk and you take your chances when you sign on the dotted line. But if you're flipping hamburgers, fixing people's plumbing, or making sure they can get their Netflix, you should be off limits. And no, it's not acceptable to firebomb or nuke an entire city just to take out a rifle factory within its limits.
That's not to say that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't prevent an even greater evil. They probably did, given the predictions for operation downfall and the fact that the soviets were slithering into the area. But that doesn't make the atomic bombings anything less than pure unadulterated evil themselves. And the people responsible for initiating and implementing those bombings should have been held accountable.
Well, in the Star Trek chronology, that society shattering disaster was World War 3... that was over 600 million killed via a combination of nuclear exchanges between most major powers, biological warfare, multiple conventional conflicts, mass genocide of survivors thought to be irradiated or infected, the dissolution of the United Nations, collapse of social order in the United States, and ecological collapse and famine on multiple continents. And all of that was a few decades the Eugenics Wars (In the 1990s, so we're over that hump.), which themselves had a body count that rivaled WW1.
Yeah. Im fairly nerdly for remembering all that. But there's probably even more that I don't recall off the top of my head. And while I don't think the post-war, pre-first contact, status of Australia has been addressed specifically; I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that Master Blaster and Auntie Entity are butting heads somewhere in the outback. I doubt that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase did very well when the nukes fell on Manhattan either.
The solution in that particular instance is obvious through: get rid of enclaves and ghettos, and insist on and pursue full assimilation. The "fresh off the boat" immigrant arriving speaking only Italian or Polish or German or Spanish or Chinese or Vietnamese or whatever; hardly speaking a word of English; busting to learn it; and nevertheless eventually assimilating so thoroughly that they don't even bother to teach their kids the language of ye olde country, is practically an archetype here. That one is one of our strength, I think.
More like they Apple's last filling demolished their case, both in facts and law, thoroughly. And Tim Cook has said publicly he's willing to take the case to the Supreme Court. The FBI doesn't want a precedent set, at any level.
Don't forget that Tim Cook has also said very publicly that he is totally willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court over this, and said court just lost its most thuggish scumbag justice. By folding now, the FBI loses this particular round; but avoids setting a precedent and still gets to extort anyone who can't darken the sky with quite so many lawyers as an enraged Apple.
(I'm not sure if you're referring to my post last week. But I pointed out then that, when the DoJ thought to take on IBM in the '70s, Big Blue ground them down under so many lawyers, dragging the case out for better than a decade, that the DoJ just gave up entirely... and Apple is richer (ie. can afford more and better lawyers) now than IBM was then.)
1) China has Apple, and every every other US tech company, compromised at the highest level, and we're all fucked.
2) China's government is not so much comprised of shit-for-brains idiots who have to get on television to appease a bunch of even more shit-for-brains idiots by appearing to "get tough on terr'ism." as ours. And while they'd no doubt like to be able to monitor all electronic communication with more efficiency than they do; they understand that forcing tech companies to build in that backdoor not only lets them do so, but lets everyone else spy on them that much more easily too.
What are the medical dangers from eating or not eating a kosher or halal diet? None. Yet we still have appropriate food labeling to allow people who wish to follow those diets to do so. And you can still get all of your nutrients either way. We also have all the labeling necessary for vegans (A diet which can easily cause health problems if you do it wrong.) to avoid all animal products as well.
I agree actually that the anti-GMO arguments are pretty stupid. But people have the right to eat what they want to eat, be it non-GMO, organic, fair trade, kosher, vegan, ovo/lacto vegetarian, gluten free, paleo, soylent, or whatever the next diet fad that comes down the pipeline will be. And it's a dick move to try to talk, trick, or coerce people into eating something they don't want to eat. Yeah, some of proselytism by people about their diets can be obnoxious. But that's no reason to withhold information about their food in order to trick them into breaking said diet. And if you think the GMO-free ones are the worst, I suspect you've not encountered many vegans or paleos.
As a rule, we do expect manufacturers to do due diligence on their supply chain. Do you really think Frito-Lay doesn't know exactly what they're buying as raw ingredients for Cheetos? If they don't, it's likely that they're being willfully ignorant in order to have deniability because something seriously shady is going on.
We scream bloody murder, after all, if Apple is even suspected of sourcing parts for their products made from conflict minerals. Why shouldn't we expect the same level of diligence from our food suppliers. Hell... for necessities like food, shouldn't we hold the producers to a *higher* standard then we do producers of consumer electronics?
Well, being able to verify that your produce was not picked by exploited, underpaid, or otherwise poorly treated workers (Which many Mexican immigrants in the US are.) is a legit desire. Likewise, systems should be set up so that they can confirm that neither their chocolate nor seafood is harvested with slave labor, if that consumer is concerned about such things.
Yes, there's probably not room on the labels for every single item that may be of concern to a consumer. But there's definitely room for more than is already present. And it's the 21st century, after all. There's no reason the additional information has to be on the actual label itself. Just require; in addition to the basic information wrt/ nutrition, ingredients, and allergens; a QR code that shoppers can scan into an app that would pull up GMO, organic, fair trade, free range, grass fed, non-slave labor, and other such certifications or information. All of the information would be available consumer, and the producer still gets full choice about how to market their product.
Apple didn't move a million jobs to China, or anywhere else. Those jobs DID NOT EXIST when Apple was doing their manufacturing in-house. When Steve Jobs returned in 1997, Apple had 8,437 employees worldwide plus 1,739 temporary employees and contractors. Those numbers include Apple's in-house manufacturing employees in the three factories they operated at the time. Yes, when the iPod was released, Apple began to shift manufacturing to China. But that did not mean a net loss of jobs in the US, because they were expanding the rest of their business simultaneously. In 2015, Apple had approximately 110,000 full-time employees worldwide, NOT including the outsourced manufacturing in China.
The new headquarters building alone (And they're not shutting down the rest of their Cupertino facilities.) will have more workers than their entire global workforce before the manufacturing was outsourced. Cuperting in general will probably have twice as many employees as Apple had worldwide in 1997. So no, buying an iPhone made under contract by Foxxcon did not deprive a single American of his or her job.
Source of my numbers? Apple's 10-K Annual Report SEC filings.
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> However, rail can never match the speed and
> flexibility of trucks to make smaller point-to-point
> deliveries.
A significant contributor to this, though, has been poor urban planning that insufficiently utilizes rail. If corrected to more efficiently utilize the rail lines and hubs, those flexible point-to-point trucks could be smaller, lighter, and less damaging to the roads. Compare and contrast, for example, the lorries and "heavy trucks" used in the UK and Japan vs. the monstrous beasts on our roads here in the US.
I remember KARR. But I know there was also an episode where Bonnie's evil twin installed a counterfeit alpha circuit into KITT so that the baddies of the day could turn him evil; and I'm pretty sure there was at least one other "KITT is reprogrammed for eviluz" as well. Perhaps it's time to fire up the Netflix and refresh my memory. Remarkable though... for a show that had a grand total of six main characters throughout its run, how many of them had evil twins. I'm pretty sure Michael's even had the evil goatee. Oh, the '80s...
Of course, now that I think more, the episode where Airwolf turned evil as "Moffet's Ghost". It wasn't a case of the helicopter getting pwned, it was a rogue AI that had been installed by its creator during development.
Well, perhaps after a few years of that roadway chaos; sanity will finally prevail here, and we'll actually raise those fuel taxes to reflect the true cost of maintaining and building the roads. Yeah, it's a long shot. But stranger things have happened. And perhaps if the roads do get bad enough to start impacting corporate profits, even the republicans will finally understand that they do have to be paid for.
But as for the rails, I'm kind of torn. We desperately need a systemic upgrade to something modern like the Shinkansen or TGV. (And we need to stay on top of upgrades, instead of just putting the system in and letting it age and decay in place. I'm looking at you, BART.) But the existing rail operators are such a catastrophe of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption; I seriously doubt they're up to the task. It may be better to just let them die, so we can start over. Maybe just farm the job out to the Japanese in exchange for some technology sharing. Hell... imagine if we just skipped the "rail" part of rail and went straight to the L0 Series maglev (505kmph/314 mph) trains!
I'm pretty sure at least a couple of episodes of Knight Rider and one of Airwolf involved KITT or Airwolf getting hacked and turned evil for an episode.
Eh, I specifically mentioned April. I was referring to the penalties in the tax code for marriage, not the other benefits of a two-income or two-person household. You can solve all of your other problems, save insurance, by cohabitation with your partner, without officially becoming married. You can even set up trusts and power of attorney to mostly replicate the inheritance and medical authority benefits of marriage.
But the tax code in the US, as it relates to marriage, was designed in the 1950's for one-income households with the idea that the man is the breadwinner, and the woman is at home barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. At best, the second partner can work for a pittance in a low-income job... substitute teaching or whatever. In such a case, getting married and filing jointly provides a benefit. But if both partners work in real jobs in real careers (As is often the case with gay couples.), then yes, there is a significant tax penalty to getting married, whether you file jointly or not.
Federal law is severely lacking in GLBT protections though. Sure, we have marriage equality. That's great for people who've found the person they want to marry, and are willing to take the financial penalty every April that goes along with marriage. That SCOTUS ruling didn't amend the Civil Rights Act or Title 9 protections to include LGBT people though. And even ENDA... itself a very watered-down, insufficiently inclusive, and overall inadequate facsimile of those protections... has been stalled in congress for as long as I can recall.
And what exactly are your credentials and research, that you are so confident in contradicting the prevailing theories in gender studies? Presumably you are published. In what journals? And who did the peer reviews on your work?
Actually, Star Trek's computer was nearly always Majel Barrett, not Marina Sirtis. Barrett is even credited in the first Abrams movie; so apparently, she got all her dialog recorded before passing on. I don't know who did the computer voices for Into Darkness, but Sirtis isn't credited in IMDB.
They do let you pick a voice. Looking at the Siri settings on my iPhone, I not only have the choice between male or female, but between American, Australian, or British english, with both genders available for all three. What would you people have Apple do to not be "oppressive"? Not set a default, and pick one of the six at random every time an iPhone is set up?
The minimum-spec iPhones are also fairly popular for corporate and government customers, which buy them in bulk, put them in MDM with the official approves apps, and issue them to employees. Often they'll have additional restrictions. No room for your personal photos? Tough. It's a work device, not personal. But thanks for reminding us. The camera will be disabled in the next profile update.
The minimum-sped iPad? What do you think is attacked to all of the Square terminals you see in small stores, and even in food trucks? The cash register app is probably the only thing those ever run.
Well, if by "many, many years" you mean the five years since our previous (Republican) governor left office because he was ineligible to run again due to the two term limit; this, after he deposed a Democratic governor (Who was, himself, preceded by another Republican) via a recall election, then sure... many, many years.
Actually, I have nothing against Schwarzenegger. He did a good job, especially the situation when he went into office. And he's one of very, very, few Republicans I can think of, for whom I'd be willing to vote. But the "Peoples Republic of California" where republicans have no power or ability to hold office, is nothing more than a mythological Fox "news" talking point.
Also, though the "Republican" name does have some taint to it due to Pete Wilson's overt racism (And blatant stupidity... Tie your political career to a proposition that's a racist attack against the state's fastest-growing demographic. How can you go wrong?); it's not uncommon, even in San Francisco, for the conservative candidate to win. See, for example, the Willie Brown vs. Tom Ammiano and Gavin Newsom vs. Matt Gonzalez mayoral elections, And Jerry Brown's victory over Newsom for governor when Schwarzenegger termed out. You just have to look at the nuances of the candidates, and see how their positions actually compare to each other, rather than just looking for the D or R on the ballot.
I wonder about this too. Not because I get sick... I'm blessed with a fairly iron stomach... but because probably about 90% of the time that I'm using Uber, it's because I've been out drinking. And I doubt that I'm an atypical Uber user. So I wonder what kind of "programming challenge" can be done drunk and on an iPhone screen that will give them anything resembling valid hiring data?
And it's already happening.
They'll either fund or spin off new "hip and modern" banks targeted at urban millennials. These banks won't have branches. Everything will be done online. If you need cash, they'll have a relationship with the ATM networks that serve credit unions*, so as to cut down on the fees. But you won't want to use cash. You'll use your card for everything, because you'll get points and you'll automagically track all of your expenses into categories and budgets via their iPhone app. And said app will easily integrate into mint.com, unlike traditional banks whose connection into mint breaks down every other week. You probably won't even have a checkbook for your "checking" account. Because who writes checks anymore anyway? And because of the lack of overhead from maintaining branches and other legacy cruft, these new banks will have significantly lower fees, and give out lots of "free" stuff vs. the traditional banks.
They start small, and are precisely targeted and marketed. So the initial capitalization can be modest. But most importantly, since they're starting fresh, they aren't encumbered by decrepit, 60-year-old, legacy COBOL. The backend systems won't be written in the latest trendy languages like node.js, go, or Swift... though the user-facing sites and apps may be... they'll be in something with a more solid foundation, but nevertheless still current and with a much larger talent pool, like C++ or even plain old vanilla C.
As the bugs get worked out, and the new systems prove themselves, and the new banks scale up successfully; they'll eventually be acquired or folded back into the parent bank. They'll stop marketing exclusively to hip, urban, millennials and first bring more customers onto the "new banks" ("Now a JP Morgan Chase company.", with full access to the capital which that entails.). Then they'll build up the new backend and transition their existing customers over. And finally, they'll terminate the new bank branding ("But don't worry, all of the features you've come to know and love are still available to you** as a JP Morgan Chase customer! Only the name has changed. Plus, you can use every ATM in the Chase*** network. And you now have the option of visiting any of out JP Morgan Chase branches**** for your banking needs!")
* Some of these "new banks" will actually *BE* credit unions, instead of "banks". Even the fairly well-established credit unions tend to already be significantly ahead of the curve versus banks.
** Additional fees may apply.
*** A $3 fee will apply per withdrawal. Additionally, there will be a $4 fee for using an ATM outside the Chase network.
**** Additional fees may apply.
Wasn't it supposed to be amber that was best on the eyes? I always hated that myself, and was solidly in the green camp. One of the first things I always do on a new computer is set the terminal to green on black.
Bullocks. Indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is unacceptable; and everyone involved in it, axis and allied alike, should have been tossed away into a hole as a war criminal. I do say indiscriminate for a reason though. If you take a job producing arms to ammunition you do become part of the war machine... you know there's a risk and you take your chances when you sign on the dotted line. But if you're flipping hamburgers, fixing people's plumbing, or making sure they can get their Netflix, you should be off limits. And no, it's not acceptable to firebomb or nuke an entire city just to take out a rifle factory within its limits.
That's not to say that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't prevent an even greater evil. They probably did, given the predictions for operation downfall and the fact that the soviets were slithering into the area. But that doesn't make the atomic bombings anything less than pure unadulterated evil themselves. And the people responsible for initiating and implementing those bombings should have been held accountable.
Well, in the Star Trek chronology, that society shattering disaster was World War 3... that was over 600 million killed via a combination of nuclear exchanges between most major powers, biological warfare, multiple conventional conflicts, mass genocide of survivors thought to be irradiated or infected, the dissolution of the United Nations, collapse of social order in the United States, and ecological collapse and famine on multiple continents. And all of that was a few decades the Eugenics Wars (In the 1990s, so we're over that hump.), which themselves had a body count that rivaled WW1.
Yeah. Im fairly nerdly for remembering all that. But there's probably even more that I don't recall off the top of my head. And while I don't think the post-war, pre-first contact, status of Australia has been addressed specifically; I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that Master Blaster and Auntie Entity are butting heads somewhere in the outback. I doubt that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase did very well when the nukes fell on Manhattan either.
The solution in that particular instance is obvious through: get rid of enclaves and ghettos, and insist on and pursue full assimilation. The "fresh off the boat" immigrant arriving speaking only Italian or Polish or German or Spanish or Chinese or Vietnamese or whatever; hardly speaking a word of English; busting to learn it; and nevertheless eventually assimilating so thoroughly that they don't even bother to teach their kids the language of ye olde country, is practically an archetype here. That one is one of our strength, I think.
More like they Apple's last filling demolished their case, both in facts and law, thoroughly. And Tim Cook has said publicly he's willing to take the case to the Supreme Court. The FBI doesn't want a precedent set, at any level.
Don't forget that Tim Cook has also said very publicly that he is totally willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court over this, and said court just lost its most thuggish scumbag justice. By folding now, the FBI loses this particular round; but avoids setting a precedent and still gets to extort anyone who can't darken the sky with quite so many lawyers as an enraged Apple.
(I'm not sure if you're referring to my post last week. But I pointed out then that, when the DoJ thought to take on IBM in the '70s, Big Blue ground them down under so many lawyers, dragging the case out for better than a decade, that the DoJ just gave up entirely... and Apple is richer (ie. can afford more and better lawyers) now than IBM was then.)
Well, there are two possibilities:
1) China has Apple, and every every other US tech company, compromised at the highest level, and we're all fucked.
2) China's government is not so much comprised of shit-for-brains idiots who have to get on television to appease a bunch of even more shit-for-brains idiots by appearing to "get tough on terr'ism." as ours. And while they'd no doubt like to be able to monitor all electronic communication with more efficiency than they do; they understand that forcing tech companies to build in that backdoor not only lets them do so, but lets everyone else spy on them that much more easily too.
Personally, I'm hoping for #2.
What are the medical dangers from eating or not eating a kosher or halal diet? None. Yet we still have appropriate food labeling to allow people who wish to follow those diets to do so. And you can still get all of your nutrients either way. We also have all the labeling necessary for vegans (A diet which can easily cause health problems if you do it wrong.) to avoid all animal products as well.
I agree actually that the anti-GMO arguments are pretty stupid. But people have the right to eat what they want to eat, be it non-GMO, organic, fair trade, kosher, vegan, ovo/lacto vegetarian, gluten free, paleo, soylent, or whatever the next diet fad that comes down the pipeline will be. And it's a dick move to try to talk, trick, or coerce people into eating something they don't want to eat. Yeah, some of proselytism by people about their diets can be obnoxious. But that's no reason to withhold information about their food in order to trick them into breaking said diet. And if you think the GMO-free ones are the worst, I suspect you've not encountered many vegans or paleos.
As a rule, we do expect manufacturers to do due diligence on their supply chain. Do you really think Frito-Lay doesn't know exactly what they're buying as raw ingredients for Cheetos? If they don't, it's likely that they're being willfully ignorant in order to have deniability because something seriously shady is going on.
We scream bloody murder, after all, if Apple is even suspected of sourcing parts for their products made from conflict minerals. Why shouldn't we expect the same level of diligence from our food suppliers. Hell... for necessities like food, shouldn't we hold the producers to a *higher* standard then we do producers of consumer electronics?
Well, being able to verify that your produce was not picked by exploited, underpaid, or otherwise poorly treated workers (Which many Mexican immigrants in the US are.) is a legit desire. Likewise, systems should be set up so that they can confirm that neither their chocolate nor seafood is harvested with slave labor, if that consumer is concerned about such things.
Yes, there's probably not room on the labels for every single item that may be of concern to a consumer. But there's definitely room for more than is already present. And it's the 21st century, after all. There's no reason the additional information has to be on the actual label itself. Just require; in addition to the basic information wrt/ nutrition, ingredients, and allergens; a QR code that shoppers can scan into an app that would pull up GMO, organic, fair trade, free range, grass fed, non-slave labor, and other such certifications or information. All of the information would be available consumer, and the producer still gets full choice about how to market their product.
Seriously? This tired old argument again?
Apple didn't move a million jobs to China, or anywhere else. Those jobs DID NOT EXIST when Apple was doing their manufacturing in-house. When Steve Jobs returned in 1997, Apple had 8,437 employees worldwide plus 1,739 temporary employees and contractors. Those numbers include Apple's in-house manufacturing employees in the three factories they operated at the time. Yes, when the iPod was released, Apple began to shift manufacturing to China. But that did not mean a net loss of jobs in the US, because they were expanding the rest of their business simultaneously. In 2015, Apple had approximately 110,000 full-time employees worldwide, NOT including the outsourced manufacturing in China.
The new headquarters building alone (And they're not shutting down the rest of their Cupertino facilities.) will have more workers than their entire global workforce before the manufacturing was outsourced. Cuperting in general will probably have twice as many employees as Apple had worldwide in 1997. So no, buying an iPhone made under contract by Foxxcon did not deprive a single American of his or her job.
Source of my numbers? Apple's 10-K Annual Report SEC filings.