Japan has been using these for years. In fact, while we usually call our bottles "24 oz. bottles", they call their standard 500 ml bottles "PET bottles" (of course due to the fact that they're made of PET plastic). From what I understand (little), they're also 100% recyclable like aluminum.
I'm no expert on Arkansas gas extraction, but there are oil wells all over western Kentucky and southern Illinois. In those states, the landowner has mineral rights over the ground beneath their land, and the oil companies pay them a percentage of the profits gained from that particular well. In exchange, the landowner lets the oil company place their semi-noisy oil well on their property (much less noisy than living in a city, mind you). A single well doesn't pay a whole lot, maybe only a few hundred dollars a year (these things aren't industrial-scale well operations), but if you're a farmer with a lot of land, it adds up.
I'm not sure how Arkansas works, but if it's like KY or IL, I doubt that there's some evil gas company out there raping the lands. Probably there are gas companies there that initially didn't think that fracking would induce earthquakes -- it doesn't everywhere; not every man-made ground disruption causes earthquakes, only some of them. The gas companies probably knock on people's doors and give them a deal, where the person will take home part of the profits of their particular gas well, and in exchange, the gas company can build a well on their property.
Everyone made fun of Japanese quality, and now Japanese stuff is first-rate.
Right now, China makes shit....
So history doesn't seem irrelevant at all.
Indeed. I have absolutely no problem with purchasing high quality products made in China.
Unfortunately, I have never found a high quality product made in China (that is purchasable in the USA -- some Chinese goods in China are good).
I would vote with my wallet if I had any other choice than Made in China ASUS, Made in China Dell, Made in China Toshiba, Made in China Canon, Made in China Fujifilm, Made in China etc.....
The USA is not a third-world country. It is not authoritarian. Stop being so sensationalist.
The US still ranks highly on all freedom lists. It is most certainly not the top, but it is most certainly within the ranks of highly advanced nations. Its corruption is low, its economic freedom is high. Once again, not #1, but not number #100, either.
Yes, there are politicians with hidden agendas and secret contacts. But the fact that we can talk about it, let alone have opposition opponents running against said corrupt politicians is better than most of the world.
Yes, there are corrupt police all over many cities, but the large cities of the United States != the United States. Local elections are significantly less corrupt all over the country, a corrupt police office in Chicago does not mean a corrupt police office in Carbondale, IL, and the citizens of the United States have remarkable say in how their state and local districts are run.
Additionally, unlike Egypt, most of us live remarkably luxurious lives, and the standard of living in the US, even for poor people, is very high. Of course, feelings are relative and a poor person in the US might think they're in hell -- they're not, and it would be good for them to put themselves in the shoes of people in other countries and see what real tyranny is.
The US has a lot of work to do -- a LOT. And it would be nice if the population would get a little bit more up-in-arms against the insanity of the federal government. However, it is not even close to revolution time. It is not even close to time to overthrow the government. It is time to reform.
From my understanding about the history of Apple, Steve Jobs IS Apple. Without Jobs, there would be no Apple. It's hard to groom a successor when the whole company runs around a single person as opposed to a board of directors with voting power, a corporate mission, etc.
So... is this like most PC developers where they ban your system from online multiplayer or is this like the Xbox where they ban you from the service? Banning from multiplayer is not a big deal, but banning completely from all online activities is an incredibly stupid thing to do -- one that encourages piracy. Millions have banned Xbox 360s simply because they've flashed their drive, and there are a number of Xbox Live Arcade games that they would gladly have purchased. Strangely, Microsoft felt it prudent to prevent people with banned Xboxes to purchase things, anymore, thus not only making things inconvenient for them, but actively discouraging the purchase of any Xbox-related products and encouraging the development of the piracy of XBLA games.
It actually did happen overnight -- but due to the Senkaku Islands incident. The entire world is scrambling to create alternatives to China, and East-Asian nations are basically saying, "USA, get back in here!"
The fact is that, while people around the world adore "China," nobody likes the People's Republic, their leadership, their ideals, or their actions. That dislike is rapidly turning into animosity, both from the public and officials. Except maybe Myanmar and Pakistan.
It's worth mentioning that Chinese people don't like the government, either.
Since everyone's going to be hosting the internet on their own little wall plug dongle, couldn't you just make them all encrypt the traffic? At least you could encrypt it up to the final wall plug which sends it to whatever sever it's going to; in that case, it wouldn't be possible to see the original source of the traffic, just that whatever traffic that was ended up being sent to the server by whatever node in whatever house.
I'm pretty sure that anonymous does the things it does as retaliation for what it perceives as attacks on it and internet freedom.
The protesters in Egypt were peaceful, but when they were attacked they took up arms, attacked back, and set up neighborhood watches, detaining people that it deemed were "thugs" -- vigilante justice, in other words. Maybe you'll be on the moral high ground when you die as a martyr because you didn't defend yourself, but that doesn't mean that it's not incredibly stupid to just sit there and wait to get beaten to death.
The incremental and continuous aggressive actions taken not only against "piracy," but even against the possibility of piracy, the creation of thought-crimes (such as making the knowledge of breaking encryption illegal), and the whole notion of ending anonymity on the internet itself, as many of anon's "enemies" seem to want to do to -- these things are viewed as attacks on anon and its principles, and so they believe that it's acceptable to take up arms to defend themselves, their principles, and impose vigilante justice.
At least in my opinion, that's how this whole development of the anon underground is going, and the harder powerful entities try to stop them, the more angry and decentralized anon will become (unless the "powers that be" actually manage to find and detain the many multiples of leaders that anon has, some of which I have no doubt are in other countries with nicer laws than the US).
Only 2.5% percent of the modern world is Atheist, and that number is likely millions of times greater than it has been in the past. Despite this, we are no longer wielding sharpened rocks, we have traveled to space, the majority of people in the world believe that there is a high possibility for alien life (including the POPE), we've derived the bizarro world of quantum physics, and the most religious advanced nation in the world, with 83% claiming some religion, the USA, has the most scientific output on the planet.
Yeah, religion holds back science.
As we've seen with Muslims over the past 10 years, it's really easy to point fingers at a large population of fundamentalist lunatics and then claim that 97.5% of the whole group is bad.
I appreciate any bit of opinion from a Chinese person that helps me better understand China; it's very hard, from my experience, to learn what anyone from the People's Republic actually thinks about any given sensitive subject unless you're really, really good friends with them. I imagine that's probably because they spend their whole lives in an environment where you're not supposed to ever say out loud that the authority is wrong, nor are you ever supposed to step out of line.
But again, I think that the more people like you that can comment on these stories the better. What with the astroturfing army and the "angry youth" being seemingly the only kind of Chinese people on the internet, about the only insight into China and Chinese cultural that most of us ignorant Westerners can get is filtered through Taiwanese or Chinese ex-pat opinions of the PRC and its people.
From what I, personally, have experienced, though, Chinese people seem to consistently be extremely hospital, caring people that welcome you as a friend and will help you when you're in need. At the same time, however, they also seem to be ruthless, uncaring and unforgiving monsters that will stop at nothing to get ahead in business.
To most Westerners, I think that those two kinds of behaviors -- caring on a personal level, evil on a business level -- are contradictory. From what you say, though, there's nothing contradictory about that kind of behavior at all to a Chinese person, and it's just business?
Most of the nicest, most caring people I've ever met are Chinese. All the Chinese from the mainland that I know are extremely hospitable, and will always help you out if you need something.
However, you probably shouldn't trust any Chinese companies backed by the PRC government with any valuable information. Or if you do trust them, know that the state companies have no loyalty to your company and they are always looking for a way to get ahead.
While what you say is true now, that is changing rapidly. The People's Republic of China is a relatively new country, and almost all of the people that made up the government were military officers, economists, engineers, geologists, etc. The next generation of leaders that are both up-and-coming and already in office, however, are not only simply career politicians, but they have nothing at all to do with the military.
Op is exactly right. Just because everyone sells games at $40-$60 doesn't mean that games should be $40-$60.
Companies make the excuse that they need to sell them at that point to continue making the huge blockbusters. While that may be true, every other company in the world has to balance quality and cost. Of course I'm going to get better quality if I buy a Lexus over a Toyota, but not everyone has the money to purchase a Lexus and Lexus shouldn't expect to sell one to everybody. It's no different with games.
Your entire point is moot because 1.) In a drive-by-wire system the brake always takes priority over the accelerator and there is at least double, if not triple redundancy in anything that could ever possibly fail. In the even more unlikely scenario of all redundancies failing, all drive-by-wire systems I'm away of cut the engine. In addition, brakes are never brake-by-wire, and the handbrake works, too. 2.) Toyota's drive-by-wire system didn't fail even once. 3.) The chance of every piece of a drive by wire failing in such a way as to cause your car to accelerate uncontrollably is probably similar to your chance of being struck down by a falling meteorite. In the unusual even that it does happen, you can shift your car into neutral to stop.
I've heard a lot that the people of Egypt were a little bit embarrassed that a small country like Tunisia could topple a dictator when they couldn't. Egypt has more than 5000 years of history, and Egyptians have some pride and exceptionalism regarding their long history and power in the Arab world. Chinese people also have a lot of pride and exceptionalism in their long history, and feel that they should be the center of the world in Asia. In that regard, the two countries aren't so different, and this revolution could be very threatening to the communist regime.
In reality, I think as long as China continues to concretely improve, at a snails pace though it may be, there will not be sufficient appetite for a revolution in China. To say that the CPC is a little bit paranoid about revolutions and stability, though, would be an understatement.
According to Al Jazeera and everyone they've interviewed for days on their live stream, CNN, BBC, Twitter, and in general the whole of the internet, this is a genuinely popular revolution in Egypt, and everyone from children to seniors are participating in it. Of course the protests are mostly dominated by young adults, but that's because they have the worst unemplyoment and most zeal, energy, and strength. Nevertheless, those police that aren't apparently ransacking the city in plain clothes are either hiding or have joined with the protesters, and the army seems to have also sided with the protesters. During Tiananmen, too, the army sided with the people. The Communist Party of China's ace in the hole was that they were able to bring in military units from far away from Beijing that weren't as empathetic to Beijing-ers. I'm no expert in the Middle-East, but I doubt Egypt has that kind of massiveness, and also, unlike Beijing, the Egypt protests are country-wide.
Well, the PSP (which also launched at $250) has nearly 67 million sales compared to the PS3's 47 million. And the Nintendo DS has 145 million sales compared to the Wii's 85 million, or the PS3 and Xbox 360's 98 million combined.
That said, it sure would be nice if the 3DS has a tv-out function...
An illegal clause in a EULA makes the EULA void in the US. However, do you really want to go against Blizzards lawyers in court, who would like nothing more than to rip you to pieces, bankrupt you, and destroy your reputation? Even if you win, it could take years to get your legal fees paid.
'Tis the unfortunate reality of the modern consumer-corporate relationship in the USA. Even though the vast majority of EULAs are illegal, few, if any, have been tested in court because of the resources and time required to challenge them.
The video game industry is not in danger until all these phones with games start getting dedicated buttons for those games. Touch screens and motion controls do not now, nor will they ever replace buttons.
Since we're all about correlation here, and there is a direct correlation between kids being addicted to video games and kids with mental problems, I'd like to propose that, conversely, children who have mental problems become addicted to video games....I might also remind us all of the horrible danger the lack of pirates in the world represents.
I might add that there have been many protests in various African countries due to the fact that the Africans work under slave wages and the Chinese live an aristocratic lifestyle with good wages.
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Japan has been using these for years. In fact, while we usually call our bottles "24 oz. bottles", they call their standard 500 ml bottles "PET bottles" (of course due to the fact that they're made of PET plastic). From what I understand (little), they're also 100% recyclable like aluminum.
I'm no expert on Arkansas gas extraction, but there are oil wells all over western Kentucky and southern Illinois. In those states, the landowner has mineral rights over the ground beneath their land, and the oil companies pay them a percentage of the profits gained from that particular well. In exchange, the landowner lets the oil company place their semi-noisy oil well on their property (much less noisy than living in a city, mind you). A single well doesn't pay a whole lot, maybe only a few hundred dollars a year (these things aren't industrial-scale well operations), but if you're a farmer with a lot of land, it adds up.
I'm not sure how Arkansas works, but if it's like KY or IL, I doubt that there's some evil gas company out there raping the lands. Probably there are gas companies there that initially didn't think that fracking would induce earthquakes -- it doesn't everywhere; not every man-made ground disruption causes earthquakes, only some of them. The gas companies probably knock on people's doors and give them a deal, where the person will take home part of the profits of their particular gas well, and in exchange, the gas company can build a well on their property.
At least, that's how it works in other states.
I think you just made his point.
Everyone made fun of Japanese quality, and now Japanese stuff is first-rate.
Right now, China makes shit....
So history doesn't seem irrelevant at all.
Indeed. I have absolutely no problem with purchasing high quality products made in China.
Unfortunately, I have never found a high quality product made in China (that is purchasable in the USA -- some Chinese goods in China are good).
I would vote with my wallet if I had any other choice than Made in China ASUS, Made in China Dell, Made in China Toshiba, Made in China Canon, Made in China Fujifilm, Made in China etc.....
I see this over and over and over again.
The USA is not a third-world country. It is not authoritarian. Stop being so sensationalist.
The US still ranks highly on all freedom lists. It is most certainly not the top, but it is most certainly within the ranks of highly advanced nations. Its corruption is low, its economic freedom is high. Once again, not #1, but not number #100, either.
Yes, there are politicians with hidden agendas and secret contacts. But the fact that we can talk about it, let alone have opposition opponents running against said corrupt politicians is better than most of the world.
Yes, there are corrupt police all over many cities, but the large cities of the United States != the United States. Local elections are significantly less corrupt all over the country, a corrupt police office in Chicago does not mean a corrupt police office in Carbondale, IL, and the citizens of the United States have remarkable say in how their state and local districts are run.
Additionally, unlike Egypt, most of us live remarkably luxurious lives, and the standard of living in the US, even for poor people, is very high. Of course, feelings are relative and a poor person in the US might think they're in hell -- they're not, and it would be good for them to put themselves in the shoes of people in other countries and see what real tyranny is.
The US has a lot of work to do -- a LOT. And it would be nice if the population would get a little bit more up-in-arms against the insanity of the federal government. However, it is not even close to revolution time. It is not even close to time to overthrow the government. It is time to reform.
Looney or not, in a presidential debate, all candidates should be given equal time. They were not.
From my understanding about the history of Apple, Steve Jobs IS Apple. Without Jobs, there would be no Apple. It's hard to groom a successor when the whole company runs around a single person as opposed to a board of directors with voting power, a corporate mission, etc.
So... is this like most PC developers where they ban your system from online multiplayer or is this like the Xbox where they ban you from the service? Banning from multiplayer is not a big deal, but banning completely from all online activities is an incredibly stupid thing to do -- one that encourages piracy. Millions have banned Xbox 360s simply because they've flashed their drive, and there are a number of Xbox Live Arcade games that they would gladly have purchased. Strangely, Microsoft felt it prudent to prevent people with banned Xboxes to purchase things, anymore, thus not only making things inconvenient for them, but actively discouraging the purchase of any Xbox-related products and encouraging the development of the piracy of XBLA games.
It actually did happen overnight -- but due to the Senkaku Islands incident. The entire world is scrambling to create alternatives to China, and East-Asian nations are basically saying, "USA, get back in here!"
The fact is that, while people around the world adore "China," nobody likes the People's Republic, their leadership, their ideals, or their actions. That dislike is rapidly turning into animosity, both from the public and officials. Except maybe Myanmar and Pakistan.
It's worth mentioning that Chinese people don't like the government, either.
Since everyone's going to be hosting the internet on their own little wall plug dongle, couldn't you just make them all encrypt the traffic? At least you could encrypt it up to the final wall plug which sends it to whatever sever it's going to; in that case, it wouldn't be possible to see the original source of the traffic, just that whatever traffic that was ended up being sent to the server by whatever node in whatever house.
I'm pretty sure that anonymous does the things it does as retaliation for what it perceives as attacks on it and internet freedom.
The protesters in Egypt were peaceful, but when they were attacked they took up arms, attacked back, and set up neighborhood watches, detaining people that it deemed were "thugs" -- vigilante justice, in other words. Maybe you'll be on the moral high ground when you die as a martyr because you didn't defend yourself, but that doesn't mean that it's not incredibly stupid to just sit there and wait to get beaten to death.
The incremental and continuous aggressive actions taken not only against "piracy," but even against the possibility of piracy, the creation of thought-crimes (such as making the knowledge of breaking encryption illegal), and the whole notion of ending anonymity on the internet itself, as many of anon's "enemies" seem to want to do to -- these things are viewed as attacks on anon and its principles, and so they believe that it's acceptable to take up arms to defend themselves, their principles, and impose vigilante justice.
At least in my opinion, that's how this whole development of the anon underground is going, and the harder powerful entities try to stop them, the more angry and decentralized anon will become (unless the "powers that be" actually manage to find and detain the many multiples of leaders that anon has, some of which I have no doubt are in other countries with nicer laws than the US).
Only 2.5% percent of the modern world is Atheist, and that number is likely millions of times greater than it has been in the past. Despite this, we are no longer wielding sharpened rocks, we have traveled to space, the majority of people in the world believe that there is a high possibility for alien life (including the POPE), we've derived the bizarro world of quantum physics, and the most religious advanced nation in the world, with 83% claiming some religion, the USA, has the most scientific output on the planet.
Yeah, religion holds back science.
As we've seen with Muslims over the past 10 years, it's really easy to point fingers at a large population of fundamentalist lunatics and then claim that 97.5% of the whole group is bad.
That said, I suppose Democracy didn't come about in Korea and Taiwan for several decades.
Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea have been good successes.
I appreciate any bit of opinion from a Chinese person that helps me better understand China; it's very hard, from my experience, to learn what anyone from the People's Republic actually thinks about any given sensitive subject unless you're really, really good friends with them. I imagine that's probably because they spend their whole lives in an environment where you're not supposed to ever say out loud that the authority is wrong, nor are you ever supposed to step out of line.
But again, I think that the more people like you that can comment on these stories the better. What with the astroturfing army and the "angry youth" being seemingly the only kind of Chinese people on the internet, about the only insight into China and Chinese cultural that most of us ignorant Westerners can get is filtered through Taiwanese or Chinese ex-pat opinions of the PRC and its people.
From what I, personally, have experienced, though, Chinese people seem to consistently be extremely hospital, caring people that welcome you as a friend and will help you when you're in need. At the same time, however, they also seem to be ruthless, uncaring and unforgiving monsters that will stop at nothing to get ahead in business.
To most Westerners, I think that those two kinds of behaviors -- caring on a personal level, evil on a business level -- are contradictory. From what you say, though, there's nothing contradictory about that kind of behavior at all to a Chinese person, and it's just business?
Most of the nicest, most caring people I've ever met are Chinese. All the Chinese from the mainland that I know are extremely hospitable, and will always help you out if you need something.
However, you probably shouldn't trust any Chinese companies backed by the PRC government with any valuable information. Or if you do trust them, know that the state companies have no loyalty to your company and they are always looking for a way to get ahead.
While what you say is true now, that is changing rapidly. The People's Republic of China is a relatively new country, and almost all of the people that made up the government were military officers, economists, engineers, geologists, etc. The next generation of leaders that are both up-and-coming and already in office, however, are not only simply career politicians, but they have nothing at all to do with the military.
Op is exactly right. Just because everyone sells games at $40-$60 doesn't mean that games should be $40-$60.
Companies make the excuse that they need to sell them at that point to continue making the huge blockbusters. While that may be true, every other company in the world has to balance quality and cost. Of course I'm going to get better quality if I buy a Lexus over a Toyota, but not everyone has the money to purchase a Lexus and Lexus shouldn't expect to sell one to everybody. It's no different with games.
Your entire point is moot because
1.) In a drive-by-wire system the brake always takes priority over the accelerator and there is at least double, if not triple redundancy in anything that could ever possibly fail. In the even more unlikely scenario of all redundancies failing, all drive-by-wire systems I'm away of cut the engine. In addition, brakes are never brake-by-wire, and the handbrake works, too.
2.) Toyota's drive-by-wire system didn't fail even once.
3.) The chance of every piece of a drive by wire failing in such a way as to cause your car to accelerate uncontrollably is probably similar to your chance of being struck down by a falling meteorite. In the unusual even that it does happen, you can shift your car into neutral to stop.
I've heard a lot that the people of Egypt were a little bit embarrassed that a small country like Tunisia could topple a dictator when they couldn't. Egypt has more than 5000 years of history, and Egyptians have some pride and exceptionalism regarding their long history and power in the Arab world. Chinese people also have a lot of pride and exceptionalism in their long history, and feel that they should be the center of the world in Asia. In that regard, the two countries aren't so different, and this revolution could be very threatening to the communist regime.
In reality, I think as long as China continues to concretely improve, at a snails pace though it may be, there will not be sufficient appetite for a revolution in China. To say that the CPC is a little bit paranoid about revolutions and stability, though, would be an understatement.
According to Al Jazeera and everyone they've interviewed for days on their live stream, CNN, BBC, Twitter, and in general the whole of the internet, this is a genuinely popular revolution in Egypt, and everyone from children to seniors are participating in it. Of course the protests are mostly dominated by young adults, but that's because they have the worst unemplyoment and most zeal, energy, and strength. Nevertheless, those police that aren't apparently ransacking the city in plain clothes are either hiding or have joined with the protesters, and the army seems to have also sided with the protesters. During Tiananmen, too, the army sided with the people. The Communist Party of China's ace in the hole was that they were able to bring in military units from far away from Beijing that weren't as empathetic to Beijing-ers. I'm no expert in the Middle-East, but I doubt Egypt has that kind of massiveness, and also, unlike Beijing, the Egypt protests are country-wide.
Well, the PSP (which also launched at $250) has nearly 67 million sales compared to the PS3's 47 million. And the Nintendo DS has 145 million sales compared to the Wii's 85 million, or the PS3 and Xbox 360's 98 million combined.
That said, it sure would be nice if the 3DS has a tv-out function...
An illegal clause in a EULA makes the EULA void in the US. However, do you really want to go against Blizzards lawyers in court, who would like nothing more than to rip you to pieces, bankrupt you, and destroy your reputation? Even if you win, it could take years to get your legal fees paid.
'Tis the unfortunate reality of the modern consumer-corporate relationship in the USA. Even though the vast majority of EULAs are illegal, few, if any, have been tested in court because of the resources and time required to challenge them.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The video game industry is not in danger until all these phones with games start getting dedicated buttons for those games. Touch screens and motion controls do not now, nor will they ever replace buttons.
Since we're all about correlation here, and there is a direct correlation between kids being addicted to video games and kids with mental problems, I'd like to propose that, conversely, children who have mental problems become addicted to video games. ...I might also remind us all of the horrible danger the lack of pirates in the world represents.
I might add that there have been many protests in various African countries due to the fact that the Africans work under slave wages and the Chinese live an aristocratic lifestyle with good wages.
Does this sound familiar?