Why I'm ok with my Chinese manufactured iPhone/Pad
- or -
Apple/Foxconn worker and environmental exploitation rationalization worksheet
Check all that apply
[ ] Making iPhones in a Chinese factory is better than being a Chinese peasant
[ ] iPhones/Pads would cost too much if I had to pay my fellow citizens to make them
[ ] iPhones/Pads would cost too much given environmental regulations I vehemently insist on for myself
[ ] All the other manufacturers are doing it too
[ ] Some/Many/Most Chinese workers appreciate 70 hour weeks and breathing my aluminum dust
[ ] It's not Apple, it's Foxconn
[ ] It's not Apple, it's the Chinese government
[ ] It's just capitalism at work
[ ] It's just communism at work
[ ] Apple's disposable workers are paid better than non-Apple disposable workers
[ ] Apple's auditors didn't find any serious issues
[ ] Some day the Chinese will be too wealthy to exploit
[ ] Your Android is Foxconn too
[ ] You're an Apple hater using Apple as a scapegoat
[ ] I also work 60/80/100/120 hour weeks at my IT job
[ ] Apple designers are in the US
[ ] The US did the same thing to the British
[ ] The US had slaves once too
[ ] The US has prison labor today
[ ] It's up to the Chinese to stand up to their oppressive government
[ ] There are lines of willing workers outside Foxconn factories
[ ] If any company were to stop the exploitation, I really think it'll be Apple
[ ] Your free Linux runs on Chinese hardware too
[ ] Foxconn workers think they have it great, so it's ok!
[ ] Foxconn worker suicides are lower than Chicago's murder rate
[ ] We can't pollute the whole world!
[ ] Half of all US households have an Apple product
[ ] If we don't exploit them they'll never develop
No. They feel fear. Losing power means destruction in an authoritarian regime. You are either in power or you are subjugated by those who are. You don't lose an election and reinvent yourself. You lose your immunity from prosecution, your wealth, possibly your freedom and even your life.
Those realities leave precious little room for subtleties like "guilt."
I find it a bit disturbing that EU and US leaders are saying China is a good model to follow.
That view appears among statists from time to time when liberal democracies fail to cooperate. The most vital contemporary source of support for authoritarianism has emerged among global warming alarmists.
The gray market for drugs in the US is alive and well and entirely understood. The operate quietly by fax and email, reselling drugs to doctors and hospitals. They anticipate shortages, buy stocks of drugs and sell high when normal channels run dry.
Many drugs have few or even only one qualified production facility. When change-overs interfere with production or unanticipated events occur (regulatory action, facility damage, sudden new demand, etc.,) shortages appear. Last year Congress investigated medical drug shortages. Gray market drug resellers were publicly discussed as part of this testimony.
Typically seniors on Medicaid don't buy their drugs out of the back of El Camino
They don't need to. The drugs are sold through doctors and hospitals that have contacts with gray market resellers.
Among the 'cultures' that deliver the largest population growth are two characteristics that preclude 'doing something.' First, they're not wealthy, so they hold no interest at all for statists. Second, they are notoriously indifferent to the anxieties of Western intellectuals. Right up until the JDAMs detonate.
Technical reasons decided where to put the reactor.
You're both wrong. Cost decided where to put the reactor.
The reactor didn't have to be directly on the beach. Had it been placed one or two rows of foothills off the beach you wouldn't know the name Fukushima today. This would have cost more because a canal system would have been needed to flow cooling water.
The business vs. government debate is pathetic. These reactors require so much capital and legal coordination between business, government and rate payers that attempts to isolate blame to one or the other are truly stupid. TEPCO is quasi government. Rates paid to fund the huge capital costs of nuclear power are negotiated with rate payers.
There are no innocents. There are only malcontents and partisans beating each other over the head with bullshit sticks.
While refreshingly not the usual malcontent group-think we indulge around here, you're still wrong.
In the context of wealth disparity, character and morals are orthogonal, and money is the consequence of character. The bulk of the 'rich' are those of us that seek and obtain great rewards from our fellow primates. People with the nerve, charm, guile, and/or wit to lead, own, govern, defy, entertain, intimidate, etc. in ways that appeal to their peers accrue greater wealth. Among them are people for whom static speed limits are completely intolerable; traffic cops and fines do not scare them. This trait is, unsurprisingly, not limited to commuting.
There are people that can't not be in charge, take responsibility and face the powers that be. They will be recognized. They. Will. Be. Recognized. Many people can achieve the conditioning to run and throw well, but only those that can stand toe to toe with the rest of the locker room have any future in the sport. You can prove the Poincaré conjecture, but if you can't face the world -- as it is -- you will stay in your hovel. There are women with super model bodies that subsist on cash payouts for porn work, because it takes more than good equipment.
Go read the SEC Madoff investigation transcripts. He survived multiple audits over decades by intimidating junior auditors, bureaucrats and co-conspirators with nothing more threatening than some dropped names. He lived in terror someone would have the wit to kick over the obvious rocks, but he never once let that be seen. When you encountered Madoff you knew you were dealing with a force of nature, and most people would rather get home on time and have supper than cope with that phenomena. Throw him in the can and the first thing he does is cow the other inmates.
This life is a popularity contest, and morals are a factor in popularity only in as much as the morals of others are not offended... too much.
BTW, I don't advocate any of this; it's just the world observed without shit/rose colored glasses. I don't expect a lot of affirmation here because too many would rather reality be politely ignored.
No, I don't expect you to believe that. Further, I don't believe there are evaluations that are 'unbiased enough' for you to accept, because I don't believe your objections have anything to do with bias, or integrity, or any other legitimate rationale.
Our edu-crats never hesitate to expound upon the importance of their role in our world. If we accept this argument as justification for sucking down 50% of our state budgets then we have more than reason enough to scrutinize their performance. Indulging union fear mongering instead is irresponsible.
Actually Russia reprocesses fuel as well. Mayak has transitioned from a plutonium production system and the site of some of the most heinous nuclear disasters in history to a fuel reprocessing facility used by various European nations that prefer to outsource the problem.
The Swiss were using Mayak, but stopped after Rosatom denied inspections. They don't let many people see Mayak up close; way too much dirty laundry in there. They use to dump high level waste in a lake out back. It dried up in the 60's and the waste blew around the region.
There are ways to cool without dumping heat into rivers and oceans or evaporating water.
Stirling engines? Well maybe. Do those produce economically meaningful output without a large temperature differential? Regardless, these problems have solutions already available in real power plants.
Power plants can isolate their heat to cooling ponds with little lost to evaporation. Examples:
Otherwise, where fresh water is abundant cooling towers work fine.
This is a cost problem. It costs more to maintain a pond. It costs more to build cooling towers. It costs more to locate your plant behind the first or second row of foothills, rather than directly on the beach:
The hypocrisy doesn't help either. The ones screaming the loudest are the ones in the biggest houses with the largest fleets of SUV and private planes.
Here is Tom Brady's wife, a goodwill ambassador for the UN Environment Programme, lecturing us all about our responsibility to the 'environment.'
Bring it to this malcontent backwater though and you're 'flamebait.' We suspend our outrage for our 1% when they say the right things and bury all those fools with the temerity to point out our group-think.
Right... be sure to carefully avoid mentioning stupid huge budget deficits when discussing Japan and its science funding problems. They've only been running giant deficits since the '90s, accumulating debt equal to 200% GDP, a ratio worse than any of the European deadbeat PIIGS and twice as bad as the US.
Why? Let's see what the Japanese themselves concluded 10 years ago:
lowered individual income tax... two special tax cuts in FY 1998... permanent cuts in individual and corporate taxes... frequent economic stimulus packages... payments to the social security... disposing of failed financial institutions
Sound familiar?
Japan has become so unproductive it now has a tradedeficit. The first since 1981. Why? Just like us they're busy outsourcing their industrial base to China.
Deficit spending, 'stimulus', monetary easing and all that other gunk doesn't work. Endless tax breaks don't work. Pretending deficits don't hurt doesn't work. Evacuating the productive elements of your economy to third world hell-holes to avoid your own regulatory regime doesn't work. Stop electing the statists that govern this way.
If you like well funded government science you need to figure out how to reconcile yourself with the need for actual prosperity based on actual productivity, despite your banana training. Otherwise, live with the decline. Quietly.
Also, for those of you that believe Japan's debts are inconsequential because most of it is held by its own citizens; who do you think is going to take the inevitable "hair-cut?" How much less hesitation will their statists have disappearing that savings when the time eventually comes due to the lack of diplomatic consequences? Retirements, endowments... poof. Gone to money heaven.
Here are some nice images of a 280MW coal fired power station in the US. This facility will power up to 10 of the Facebook data centers in question. There are also a few recently added 65MW GE 7EA turbines on the site, each capable of running two of these data centers.
BTW, those GE 7 frame turbines are common as dirt today with the rapid growth in natural gas power generation. GE can't build them fast enough.
The parent is largely correct. Counterfeit parts get into the DOD supply chain by way of the suppliers of suppliers (of suppliers...,) some of whom obtain and resell parts that have been salvaged in China and other hell-holes, or repackaged from lower cost/capability parts elsewhere. There are Chinese villages, such as those in Guiyu, that do nothing but dismantle and salvage electronics in open air cesspools. Some fraction of these gets refaced and imported, duty free, into the US as counterfeit.
When the DOD investigates suppliers to determine the origin of counterfeit components they typically uncover a chain of 4-5 or more suppliers leading back to China. The Senate Armed Services committee held a hearing on this about 10 weeks ago. Video here.
Almost no one is ever prosecuted for anything. Those few importers that are caught will fold up and re-appear under new names. The big contractors that ultimately source and install counterfeit parts pull whatever strings they must to minimize consequences to their business. They'll typically negotiate some replacement schedule and pay a nominal fine. Sometimes they even get to bill the US for the cost of placing counterfeits they installed.
Don't the assholes at Google have way more money than the assholes at Disney?
Google has a nice market cap, but otherwise it isn't necessarily wealthier than the media corps. Consider revenue; Google had $35.76B of revenue during the previous 12 months. Disney alone had $40.89B. The combined revenue of Time Warner, Disney, Sony and DreamWorks was $159.53B.
Incidentally, those media names figure prominently at OpenSecrets as big contributors. DreamWorks in particular punching well above its weight. About 95% of it goes to one party. It is left as an exercise to the reader to discover which one.
Oracle has been hostile to open systems on every front. Oracle has been indifferent to the concerns and contributions of legions of developers, and no meaningful effort was made to avoid the trauma that has ensued with the acquisition of Sun. Oracle clearly does not give a damn.
I've used most of the common tools of the trade that have appeared during the last 20 years. Java was among those at least 4 occasions that I recall. In each of those cases Java was one of several choices available to me, and in every case the competitors could have served equally well.
When I have the choice, Java will not be used by me or anyone that answers to me for future work. There are simply too many excellent alternatives available today to suffer Oracle and its hostile nature. Everyone I know with similar influence feels the same. The question is; how many years and how much decline must be suffered before Oracle figures out that Java needs us and our good will more than we need Java?
Re:But what use would I have for it?
on
FreeDOS 1.1 Released
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I actually used it extensively last November to develop an Option ROM BIOS extension. DOS is a convenient long real assembly code testing environment. Compile a COM program with NASM on Linux, use mtools to copy the output to the (live) VirtualBox FAT floppy image and execute in (Free)DOS.
The first graph of the first first result of my first attempt to find 'a survey which shows that folks who live near a nuclear plant are in favor of new units being built at the site.'
RESIDENTS WITHIN
10 MILES OF VOGTLE ELECTRIC GENERATING
PLANT
JULY 2009 for SOUTHERN NUCLEAR
Acceptability of Adding a New Nuclear Reactor at the Site of the
Nearest Nuclear Power Plant:
-- Acceptable 92%
-- Not acceptable 8%
General Impression of the Plant
-- Favorable 94%
-- Unfavorable 5%
Take issue with the survey if you must. I don't vouch for its credibility. You claim, as a planning consultant, to have never seen such a thing, yet some schmoe with a keyboard can turn up just such a survey inside a minute. That means one of two things; you're making stuff up or you're phenomenally bad at your job.
and that they're going to keep having lots of kids
That premise is incorrect.
Wealthy nations demonstrate very low population growth and even declining population. The US only experiences net population growth due to immigration and immigrants; the 'native' population is at replacement. Same with France, Germany and the UK. Japan's population is declining; the Japanese government is actually marketing parenthood because young people aren't breeding.
Wealth stops population growth. Disease, famine, war, coercion and other forces also stop and reverse population growth, but wealth does it without either widespread suffering or tyranny.
Cops routinely round up numpties that point lasers at pilots. You go firing at a UAV that is most likely returning real-time video of your brilliant self to the operator and you can bet they'll be at your door inside an hour with a picture of you drawing a bead someone's expensive aerospace equipment.
Have you not seen the video out of Iraq or Afghanistan of individual insurgents being hunted down by UAVs? Just replace the Hellfire with a patrol car and you've got the picture.
The dead don't complain much. This isn't being flippant. I personally knew a woman that took the 'alternative' road to 'cure' her breast cancer. It took four years to kill her.
They promised their blood 'filter' machine therapy would reverse the growth. They convinced her surgery was an unnecessary aberration of 'western' medicine, at a time when the 'western' surgeons offered at good prognosis for success. They fed here special diets, pills and all sorts of other stuff. The point of no return was eventually crossed and surgery was no longer an option.
There are a lot of quacks haunting Big Cancer because there is a lot of money sloshing around. All of the above was funded by employer provided insurance.
The US indulges an enormous collection of elites and their pressure groups that preclude or impede most development rather effectively, and common folk tacitly support this sort of governance (see NIMBY, BANANA, etc.) after they achieve their desired level of comfort. We call this 'environmentalism' and beat each other over the head with it.
Another reason is that US constitution established strong property rights and prescribes specific criteria and obligations for 'takings' by government. Some people believe that strong property rights has led to great prosperity and liberty. Others believe those people are evil capitalist pig-dogs that must skinned alive and slow-roasted in front of their offspring as a lesson to all.
I want every CD, every DVD, and every TV show available to me digitally.
Stay alive long enough and you'll see it. This won't happen in an orderly fashion; legacy content owners wisely adopting the new business model. Most of them will have to be bought to evict the legacy management and/or have change forced upon them.
I explained and predicted this back in July. Exclusive content is the way forward for streaming, just as it was for cable companies. Cable was the venue for CNN, MTV and all those other now household names. Netflix, or whomever wishes to do well, needs to keep prices low, ignore the big content providers that don't 'get it', and create/buy exclusive content.
there was one LP... standard
Ah no. No there wasn't. The LP format you seem to believe has always been standard is the product of evolution in the market that went on long before you were born. The LPs you see today each began as a proprietary offerings by cutthroat competitors.
The parent questioned the credibility of Science, not the efficacy of some peer review pencil whipping ritual. Peer review is a red herring you threw in for your own probably poor reasons. Astrologists peer review each other. Peer review is one factor in credibility, and a small one at that.
The parent is correct; this is a black mark. If peer review is the only filter between the Science reader and fraud, as you seem to imply, then it is a well deserved black mark.
Slashdot Mirror
Why I'm ok with my Chinese manufactured iPhone/Pad
- or -
Apple/Foxconn worker and environmental exploitation rationalization worksheet
Check all that apply
[ ] Making iPhones in a Chinese factory is better than being a Chinese peasant
[ ] iPhones/Pads would cost too much if I had to pay my fellow citizens to make them
[ ] iPhones/Pads would cost too much given environmental regulations I vehemently insist on for myself
[ ] All the other manufacturers are doing it too
[ ] Some/Many/Most Chinese workers appreciate 70 hour weeks and breathing my aluminum dust
[ ] It's not Apple, it's Foxconn
[ ] It's not Apple, it's the Chinese government
[ ] It's just capitalism at work
[ ] It's just communism at work
[ ] Apple's disposable workers are paid better than non-Apple disposable workers
[ ] Apple's auditors didn't find any serious issues
[ ] Some day the Chinese will be too wealthy to exploit
[ ] Your Android is Foxconn too
[ ] You're an Apple hater using Apple as a scapegoat
[ ] I also work 60/80/100/120 hour weeks at my IT job
[ ] Apple designers are in the US
[ ] The US did the same thing to the British
[ ] The US had slaves once too
[ ] The US has prison labor today
[ ] It's up to the Chinese to stand up to their oppressive government
[ ] There are lines of willing workers outside Foxconn factories
[ ] If any company were to stop the exploitation, I really think it'll be Apple
[ ] Your free Linux runs on Chinese hardware too
[ ] Foxconn workers think they have it great, so it's ok!
[ ] Foxconn worker suicides are lower than Chicago's murder rate
[ ] We can't pollute the whole world!
[ ] Half of all US households have an Apple product
[ ] If we don't exploit them they'll never develop
Do Chinese leaders feel no guilt?
No. They feel fear. Losing power means destruction in an authoritarian regime. You are either in power or you are subjugated by those who are. You don't lose an election and reinvent yourself. You lose your immunity from prosecution, your wealth, possibly your freedom and even your life.
Those realities leave precious little room for subtleties like "guilt."
I find it a bit disturbing that EU and US leaders are saying China is a good model to follow.
That view appears among statists from time to time when liberal democracies fail to cooperate. The most vital contemporary source of support for authoritarianism has emerged among global warming alarmists.
...any more illegal than...
This isn't a criminal matter. 'Wrongful death' is civil law.
520 tons / 8.33 lbs = 124,850 gallons
A cube of water about 25 feet a side.
but I don't think anyone has hard evidence
The gray market for drugs in the US is alive and well and entirely understood. The operate quietly by fax and email, reselling drugs to doctors and hospitals. They anticipate shortages, buy stocks of drugs and sell high when normal channels run dry.
Many drugs have few or even only one qualified production facility. When change-overs interfere with production or unanticipated events occur (regulatory action, facility damage, sudden new demand, etc.,) shortages appear. Last year Congress investigated medical drug shortages. Gray market drug resellers were publicly discussed as part of this testimony.
Typically seniors on Medicaid don't buy their drugs out of the back of El Camino
They don't need to. The drugs are sold through doctors and hospitals that have contacts with gray market resellers.
do something about our fertility
Among the 'cultures' that deliver the largest population growth are two characteristics that preclude 'doing something.' First, they're not wealthy, so they hold no interest at all for statists. Second, they are notoriously indifferent to the anxieties of Western intellectuals. Right up until the JDAMs detonate.
Business decided where to put the reactor
Technical reasons decided where to put the reactor.
You're both wrong. Cost decided where to put the reactor.
The reactor didn't have to be directly on the beach. Had it been placed one or two rows of foothills off the beach you wouldn't know the name Fukushima today. This would have cost more because a canal system would have been needed to flow cooling water.
The business vs. government debate is pathetic. These reactors require so much capital and legal coordination between business, government and rate payers that attempts to isolate blame to one or the other are truly stupid. TEPCO is quasi government. Rates paid to fund the huge capital costs of nuclear power are negotiated with rate payers.
There are no innocents. There are only malcontents and partisans beating each other over the head with bullshit sticks.
Money doesn't spoil character, money reveals character.
While refreshingly not the usual malcontent group-think we indulge around here, you're still wrong.
In the context of wealth disparity, character and morals are orthogonal, and money is the consequence of character. The bulk of the 'rich' are those of us that seek and obtain great rewards from our fellow primates. People with the nerve, charm, guile, and/or wit to lead, own, govern, defy, entertain, intimidate, etc. in ways that appeal to their peers accrue greater wealth. Among them are people for whom static speed limits are completely intolerable; traffic cops and fines do not scare them. This trait is, unsurprisingly, not limited to commuting.
There are people that can't not be in charge, take responsibility and face the powers that be. They will be recognized. They. Will. Be. Recognized. Many people can achieve the conditioning to run and throw well, but only those that can stand toe to toe with the rest of the locker room have any future in the sport. You can prove the Poincaré conjecture, but if you can't face the world -- as it is -- you will stay in your hovel. There are women with super model bodies that subsist on cash payouts for porn work, because it takes more than good equipment.
Go read the SEC Madoff investigation transcripts. He survived multiple audits over decades by intimidating junior auditors, bureaucrats and co-conspirators with nothing more threatening than some dropped names. He lived in terror someone would have the wit to kick over the obvious rocks, but he never once let that be seen. When you encountered Madoff you knew you were dealing with a force of nature, and most people would rather get home on time and have supper than cope with that phenomena. Throw him in the can and the first thing he does is cow the other inmates.
This life is a popularity contest, and morals are a factor in popularity only in as much as the morals of others are not offended ... too much.
BTW, I don't advocate any of this; it's just the world observed without shit/rose colored glasses. I don't expect a lot of affirmation here because too many would rather reality be politely ignored.
You really expect us to believe
No, I don't expect you to believe that. Further, I don't believe there are evaluations that are 'unbiased enough' for you to accept, because I don't believe your objections have anything to do with bias, or integrity, or any other legitimate rationale.
Our edu-crats never hesitate to expound upon the importance of their role in our world. If we accept this argument as justification for sucking down 50% of our state budgets then we have more than reason enough to scrutinize their performance. Indulging union fear mongering instead is irresponsible.
Actually Russia reprocesses fuel as well. Mayak has transitioned from a plutonium production system and the site of some of the most heinous nuclear disasters in history to a fuel reprocessing facility used by various European nations that prefer to outsource the problem.
The Swiss were using Mayak, but stopped after Rosatom denied inspections. They don't let many people see Mayak up close; way too much dirty laundry in there. They use to dump high level waste in a lake out back. It dried up in the 60's and the waste blew around the region.
There are ways to cool without dumping heat into rivers and oceans or evaporating water.
Stirling engines? Well maybe. Do those produce economically meaningful output without a large temperature differential? Regardless, these problems have solutions already available in real power plants.
Power plants can isolate their heat to cooling ponds with little lost to evaporation. Examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station
http://www.powermag.com/coal/Rawhide-Energy-Station-Fort-Collins-Colorado_1444.html
Otherwise, where fresh water is abundant cooling towers work fine.
This is a cost problem. It costs more to maintain a pond. It costs more to build cooling towers. It costs more to locate your plant behind the first or second row of foothills, rather than directly on the beach:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station
The hypocrisy doesn't help either. The ones screaming the loudest are the ones in the biggest houses with the largest fleets of SUV and private planes.
Here is Tom Brady's wife, a goodwill ambassador for the UN Environment Programme, lecturing us all about our responsibility to the 'environment.'
Here is her new house.
Bring it to this malcontent backwater though and you're 'flamebait.' We suspend our outrage for our 1% when they say the right things and bury all those fools with the temerity to point out our group-think.
In its battle against a sluggish economy
Right... be sure to carefully avoid mentioning stupid huge budget deficits when discussing Japan and its science funding problems. They've only been running giant deficits since the '90s, accumulating debt equal to 200% GDP, a ratio worse than any of the European deadbeat PIIGS and twice as bad as the US. Why? Let's see what the Japanese themselves concluded 10 years ago:
lowered individual income tax ... two special tax cuts in FY 1998 ... permanent cuts in individual and corporate taxes ... frequent economic stimulus packages ... payments to the social security ... disposing of failed financial institutions
Sound familiar?
Japan has become so unproductive it now has a trade deficit. The first since 1981. Why? Just like us they're busy outsourcing their industrial base to China.
Deficit spending, 'stimulus', monetary easing and all that other gunk doesn't work. Endless tax breaks don't work. Pretending deficits don't hurt doesn't work. Evacuating the productive elements of your economy to third world hell-holes to avoid your own regulatory regime doesn't work. Stop electing the statists that govern this way.
If you like well funded government science you need to figure out how to reconcile yourself with the need for actual prosperity based on actual productivity, despite your banana training. Otherwise, live with the decline. Quietly.
Also, for those of you that believe Japan's debts are inconsequential because most of it is held by its own citizens; who do you think is going to take the inevitable "hair-cut?" How much less hesitation will their statists have disappearing that savings when the time eventually comes due to the lack of diplomatic consequences? Retirements, endowments ... poof. Gone to money heaven.
Here are some nice images of a 280MW coal fired power station in the US. This facility will power up to 10 of the Facebook data centers in question. There are also a few recently added 65MW GE 7EA turbines on the site, each capable of running two of these data centers.
BTW, those GE 7 frame turbines are common as dirt today with the rapid growth in natural gas power generation. GE can't build them fast enough.
The parent is largely correct. Counterfeit parts get into the DOD supply chain by way of the suppliers of suppliers (of suppliers...,) some of whom obtain and resell parts that have been salvaged in China and other hell-holes, or repackaged from lower cost/capability parts elsewhere. There are Chinese villages, such as those in Guiyu, that do nothing but dismantle and salvage electronics in open air cesspools. Some fraction of these gets refaced and imported, duty free, into the US as counterfeit.
When the DOD investigates suppliers to determine the origin of counterfeit components they typically uncover a chain of 4-5 or more suppliers leading back to China. The Senate Armed Services committee held a hearing on this about 10 weeks ago. Video here.
Almost no one is ever prosecuted for anything. Those few importers that are caught will fold up and re-appear under new names. The big contractors that ultimately source and install counterfeit parts pull whatever strings they must to minimize consequences to their business. They'll typically negotiate some replacement schedule and pay a nominal fine. Sometimes they even get to bill the US for the cost of placing counterfeits they installed.
Don't the assholes at Google have way more money than the assholes at Disney?
Google has a nice market cap, but otherwise it isn't necessarily wealthier than the media corps. Consider revenue; Google had $35.76B of revenue during the previous 12 months. Disney alone had $40.89B. The combined revenue of Time Warner, Disney, Sony and DreamWorks was $159.53B.
Incidentally, those media names figure prominently at OpenSecrets as big contributors. DreamWorks in particular punching well above its weight. About 95% of it goes to one party. It is left as an exercise to the reader to discover which one.
Oracle has been hostile to open systems on every front. Oracle has been indifferent to the concerns and contributions of legions of developers, and no meaningful effort was made to avoid the trauma that has ensued with the acquisition of Sun. Oracle clearly does not give a damn.
I've used most of the common tools of the trade that have appeared during the last 20 years. Java was among those at least 4 occasions that I recall. In each of those cases Java was one of several choices available to me, and in every case the competitors could have served equally well.
When I have the choice, Java will not be used by me or anyone that answers to me for future work. There are simply too many excellent alternatives available today to suffer Oracle and its hostile nature. Everyone I know with similar influence feels the same. The question is; how many years and how much decline must be suffered before Oracle figures out that Java needs us and our good will more than we need Java?
I actually used it extensively last November to develop an Option ROM BIOS extension. DOS is a convenient long real assembly code testing environment. Compile a COM program with NASM on Linux, use mtools to copy the output to the (live) VirtualBox FAT floppy image and execute in (Free)DOS.
The first graph of the first first result of my first attempt to find 'a survey which shows that folks who live near a nuclear plant are in favor of new units being built at the site.'
RESIDENTS WITHIN 10 MILES OF VOGTLE ELECTRIC GENERATING PLANT
JULY 2009 for SOUTHERN NUCLEAR
Acceptability of Adding a New Nuclear Reactor at the Site of the Nearest Nuclear Power Plant:
-- Acceptable 92%
-- Not acceptable 8%
General Impression of the Plant
-- Favorable 94%
-- Unfavorable 5%
Take issue with the survey if you must. I don't vouch for its credibility. You claim, as a planning consultant, to have never seen such a thing, yet some schmoe with a keyboard can turn up just such a survey inside a minute. That means one of two things; you're making stuff up or you're phenomenally bad at your job.
Which is it?
and that they're going to keep having lots of kids
That premise is incorrect.
Wealthy nations demonstrate very low population growth and even declining population. The US only experiences net population growth due to immigration and immigrants; the 'native' population is at replacement. Same with France, Germany and the UK. Japan's population is declining; the Japanese government is actually marketing parenthood because young people aren't breeding.
Wealth stops population growth. Disease, famine, war, coercion and other forces also stop and reverse population growth, but wealth does it without either widespread suffering or tyranny.
taking pot shots at them
Cops routinely round up numpties that point lasers at pilots. You go firing at a UAV that is most likely returning real-time video of your brilliant self to the operator and you can bet they'll be at your door inside an hour with a picture of you drawing a bead someone's expensive aerospace equipment.
Have you not seen the video out of Iraq or Afghanistan of individual insurgents being hunted down by UAVs? Just replace the Hellfire with a patrol car and you've got the picture.
The dead don't complain much. This isn't being flippant. I personally knew a woman that took the 'alternative' road to 'cure' her breast cancer. It took four years to kill her.
They promised their blood 'filter' machine therapy would reverse the growth. They convinced her surgery was an unnecessary aberration of 'western' medicine, at a time when the 'western' surgeons offered at good prognosis for success. They fed here special diets, pills and all sorts of other stuff. The point of no return was eventually crossed and surgery was no longer an option.
There are a lot of quacks haunting Big Cancer because there is a lot of money sloshing around. All of the above was funded by employer provided insurance.
Can someone explain
The US indulges an enormous collection of elites and their pressure groups that preclude or impede most development rather effectively, and common folk tacitly support this sort of governance (see NIMBY, BANANA, etc.) after they achieve their desired level of comfort. We call this 'environmentalism' and beat each other over the head with it.
Another reason is that US constitution established strong property rights and prescribes specific criteria and obligations for 'takings' by government. Some people believe that strong property rights has led to great prosperity and liberty. Others believe those people are evil capitalist pig-dogs that must skinned alive and slow-roasted in front of their offspring as a lesson to all.
I want every CD, every DVD, and every TV show available to me digitally.
Stay alive long enough and you'll see it. This won't happen in an orderly fashion; legacy content owners wisely adopting the new business model. Most of them will have to be bought to evict the legacy management and/or have change forced upon them.
I explained and predicted this back in July. Exclusive content is the way forward for streaming, just as it was for cable companies. Cable was the venue for CNN, MTV and all those other now household names. Netflix, or whomever wishes to do well, needs to keep prices low, ignore the big content providers that don't 'get it', and create/buy exclusive content.
there was one LP ... standard
Ah no. No there wasn't. The LP format you seem to believe has always been standard is the product of evolution in the market that went on long before you were born. The LPs you see today each began as a proprietary offerings by cutthroat competitors.
The parent questioned the credibility of Science, not the efficacy of some peer review pencil whipping ritual. Peer review is a red herring you threw in for your own probably poor reasons. Astrologists peer review each other. Peer review is one factor in credibility, and a small one at that.
The parent is correct; this is a black mark. If peer review is the only filter between the Science reader and fraud, as you seem to imply, then it is a well deserved black mark.