So what would you like be done? Give all those workers a huge benefits package, insurance, pension, 36 hour weeks, paid-for kindergarten places for their kids, christmas bonuses? Realize that virtually nobody enjoys these kinds of benefits in China at this point! The majority of Chinese go to work their ass off every day in the fields growing food in order to not starve to death. Do you expect Apple to come in and revolutionize the whole country over night? Make the Foxconn workers kings with huge salaries?
Maybe, just maybe, providing an enormous number of jobs with a stable, not bad salary for Chinese standards, even though it's a tough job by western standards, is the best they can do at this point.
If that ever proves to be true, great. I'll be skeptical until I see it. Yes, Star Trek replicators are always the dream of mankind, but at this point in time there are more hands building stuff than ever before in human history. Let's see if we can ever obsolete the manual labor part entirely. So far we've only been successful in shifting it around, not in eliminating it. You'll always need somebody that builds the thing that builds the thing.
Continuing along this line of thought, a lot of our current infrastructure is really highly dependent on not-yet-quite-so-developed countries such as China and their political and social system. After "we" have "exploited" all those countries to make cheep stuff for us, where are we going to build anything? Computers may become an unaffordable luxury good. Our societies will have to change in response to those countries developing a middle class.
Seriously though, the GP is a little too pessimistic I'd say. From a western viewpoint, working conditions in China must be horrendous. The locals there may not think much of it, or at least not as much as westerners do. People get used to surprisingly pretty much any condition, and can become more or less happy in their surroundings. At least they do clean work, they get their meals, they're not cold and they get paid, which is more than you can say about most of rural China. It's all extremely relative. I'm not saying they have the most awesomest job in the world, and I'm sure their working conditions can be improved, but it's all relative.
I cannot speak for hard disks in particular, but in general everything that can be produced by hand is produced by hand in countries where labor costs are cheaper than machines.
Why aren't more factories in Colorado and Michigan then? Oh, because the workers there want to be paid an order of magnitude better than their "hellhole" counterparts, which... wait for it... would jack up the end price for the product. There's a reason these things are being manufactured there in the first place.
You'd get the same thing in "first world hellholes", only that the reason for production going down would be due to strikes and general laziness rather than natural catastrophes. Which, in addition, happen in first world countries as well occasionally.
*sigh* PDFs are *fixed layout documents*. When creating the document, you have to create it at a certain size. That can be A4 or postcard size or anything else. Now, read my comment again and pay attention to the "vice versa".
They did, however, decide to base their file format *very heavily* on ePub3, and change it in a way that will make it incompatible, without submitting their changes to the International Digital Publishing Forum (who maintain the ePub file format on which the ibooks file format is heavily based).
Which is exactly where I say: So What? If you didn't look at the innards of the format, you'd never know it was based on ePub. What if they'd based it on an entirely different format, on something that was entirely proprietary to begin with? Would this make any difference? ePub by itself didn't do what they wanted it to do, so they modified it to their needs. To me that's the same as developing a proprietary format, period. Unless that is against the terms of use of the ePub format, they're entirely in their right to do so.
Yes, actually, I would expect from a big company such as Apple who is a member of the International Digital Publishing Forum. [...] I'm not saying that they *must* contribute to standards, only that I think it is greedy of them not to do so...
Why do they have to go through a lengthy discussion and approval process through a standards body which will take years and years and just water down the final product and level the playing field for the competition, when they can release a well working product right now? Which company in its right mind would not release first? If you want to call that greedy, fine. I'm calling it realistic.
...considering the circumstances and their competitive advantage.
Competitive advantage? Like... what exactly? They have a lot of tablets out there, but there are many options for consuming electronic text on an iPad and Apple's iBook Store is pretty much a no-name also-ran in the eBook business. So it's actually kind of a long shot for them to be releasing an entirely proprietary format which only works on their proprietary platform at this point.
It's equivalent to saying that if you want to sell an iBook on the Apple iBook store to be consumed on Apple iDevices, you may use this tool. That's the purpose of this file format and authoring tool. The purpose is not to create a new interoperable format. It's equivalent to saying that if you want to program a widget for the HyperFridge 3000, you have to learn and write it in VisiFoo++ 3.4 and compile it to ProprietyARMBinaryCode 25E, which will only run on HyperFridge compatible devices. The EULA is limiting because the purpose of the tool is limited.
A peek into.iba files and a comparison with epub files evidences that Apple deliberately re-designed and implemented features in order to make the ibooks file format incompatible with industry standards.
Please point to any material released by Apple that advertises in any way that.ibook files are epub files in any way, shape or form. I'll wait.
Apple does not claim to be compatible with anything. This isn't a bait and switch. It's Apple releasing a proprietary tool for you to author a proprietary file format to be sold on a proprietary distribution platform to be consumed on proprietary devices. Nobody ever claimed otherwise. To the contrary, the EULA explicitly says so. What's there to complain about?
Oh, you were hoping for a selfless deed of good and Apple to release a great, free authoring tool for the epub format that would make the world a better place and cure cancer. I guess you were also hoping for the iPhone 5 instead of the 4S. Sorry to disappoint.
So what you're saying is that you have experience administering Windows boxes, but not much for other OSes? Excuse me if I can't take your experience as neutral, fact based review of Apple products (or Linux for that matter) if you were unable to find the FileVault encryption options in the Security Preference pane. In = 10.6, that's user home folder encryption, in 10.7+, it's one-click full disk encryption. And the Registry being less arcane than plist files...? And apparently you haven't looked into Automator at all...?
The plant in question did have issues coping with the water.
So... the engineering was fine then?
Not sure why engineering is judged on a sliding scale here. Did the plant survive a massive but not unprecedented earthquake/tsunami or didn't it? Japan is one of the few countries on earth that's plagued by earthquakes on a regular basis, every once in a while a massive one. Shouldn't the absolute worst case have been part of the planning? If it was, then the planning obviously wasn't good enough. If it wasn't then why the heck was that thing built in the first place?
Have you actually seen any pictures of "Fuki" since March 2011? That thing is in no condition to be run. Hell, it's in no condition to shut the windows at night! The best you can hope is that it stays halfway upright until the fission material has been discarded as safely as is possible at this stage.
Which is the point the GG*P allures to. If there are continual inspections, what does the optional 40 year limit actually mean? If the plant was deemed unsafe at the last inspection, it is shut down before 40 years are up. If the plant passes its inspection as usual after 40 years, it can continue to operate as usual.
I think you forgot to close your sarcasm tag. Or have I missed the story on Slashdot about the 100% accurate tidal wave prediction technology they are using?
Slashdot Mirror
So what would you like be done? Give all those workers a huge benefits package, insurance, pension, 36 hour weeks, paid-for kindergarten places for their kids, christmas bonuses? Realize that virtually nobody enjoys these kinds of benefits in China at this point! The majority of Chinese go to work their ass off every day in the fields growing food in order to not starve to death. Do you expect Apple to come in and revolutionize the whole country over night? Make the Foxconn workers kings with huge salaries?
Maybe, just maybe, providing an enormous number of jobs with a stable, not bad salary for Chinese standards, even though it's a tough job by western standards, is the best they can do at this point.
If that ever proves to be true, great. I'll be skeptical until I see it. Yes, Star Trek replicators are always the dream of mankind, but at this point in time there are more hands building stuff than ever before in human history. Let's see if we can ever obsolete the manual labor part entirely. So far we've only been successful in shifting it around, not in eliminating it. You'll always need somebody that builds the thing that builds the thing.
Very much indeed. +5 Insightful if I could.
Continuing along this line of thought, a lot of our current infrastructure is really highly dependent on not-yet-quite-so-developed countries such as China and their political and social system. After "we" have "exploited" all those countries to make cheep stuff for us, where are we going to build anything? Computers may become an unaffordable luxury good. Our societies will have to change in response to those countries developing a middle class.
First day on the job maybe? Give her a week... :)
Seriously though, the GP is a little too pessimistic I'd say. From a western viewpoint, working conditions in China must be horrendous. The locals there may not think much of it, or at least not as much as westerners do. People get used to surprisingly pretty much any condition, and can become more or less happy in their surroundings. At least they do clean work, they get their meals, they're not cold and they get paid, which is more than you can say about most of rural China. It's all extremely relative. I'm not saying they have the most awesomest job in the world, and I'm sure their working conditions can be improved, but it's all relative.
Uhm... one punctuation symbol and one word?
!dead
Just look at the guy's /. profile. Do you want the +5 Funny guy, the +4 Insightful/1 Interesting or the wild -3 Flamebait?
Generalizations and assumptions, Slashoogle at it's best. See http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html.
I cannot speak for hard disks in particular, but in general everything that can be produced by hand is produced by hand in countries where labor costs are cheaper than machines.
An order of magnitude is more than 30%. :)
Why aren't more factories in Colorado and Michigan then? Oh, because the workers there want to be paid an order of magnitude better than their "hellhole" counterparts, which... wait for it... would jack up the end price for the product. There's a reason these things are being manufactured there in the first place.
You'd get the same thing in "first world hellholes", only that the reason for production going down would be due to strikes and general laziness rather than natural catastrophes. Which, in addition, happen in first world countries as well occasionally.
Maybe we should just store our data inside people, they're cheap apparently.
"The data you requested is 101101001011010, no, wait, 10110100101101110, no, erm... wait, I got it, 1011010010110100112."
*sigh* PDFs are *fixed layout documents*. When creating the document, you have to create it at a certain size. That can be A4 or postcard size or anything else. Now, read my comment again and pay attention to the "vice versa".
They did, however, decide to base their file format *very heavily* on ePub3, and change it in a way that will make it incompatible, without submitting their changes to the International Digital Publishing Forum (who maintain the ePub file format on which the ibooks file format is heavily based).
Which is exactly where I say: So What? If you didn't look at the innards of the format, you'd never know it was based on ePub. What if they'd based it on an entirely different format, on something that was entirely proprietary to begin with? Would this make any difference? ePub by itself didn't do what they wanted it to do, so they modified it to their needs. To me that's the same as developing a proprietary format, period. Unless that is against the terms of use of the ePub format, they're entirely in their right to do so.
Yes, actually, I would expect from a big company such as Apple who is a member of the International Digital Publishing Forum. [...] I'm not saying that they *must* contribute to standards, only that I think it is greedy of them not to do so...
Why do they have to go through a lengthy discussion and approval process through a standards body which will take years and years and just water down the final product and level the playing field for the competition, when they can release a well working product right now? Which company in its right mind would not release first? If you want to call that greedy, fine. I'm calling it realistic.
...considering the circumstances and their competitive advantage.
Competitive advantage? Like... what exactly? They have a lot of tablets out there, but there are many options for consuming electronic text on an iPad and Apple's iBook Store is pretty much a no-name also-ran in the eBook business. So it's actually kind of a long shot for them to be releasing an entirely proprietary format which only works on their proprietary platform at this point.
Oh, because A4 page sized content works so well on postcard sized screens and vice versa...
It's equivalent to saying that if you want to sell an iBook on the Apple iBook store to be consumed on Apple iDevices, you may use this tool. That's the purpose of this file format and authoring tool. The purpose is not to create a new interoperable format. It's equivalent to saying that if you want to program a widget for the HyperFridge 3000, you have to learn and write it in VisiFoo++ 3.4 and compile it to ProprietyARMBinaryCode 25E, which will only run on HyperFridge compatible devices. The EULA is limiting because the purpose of the tool is limited.
A peek into .iba files and a comparison with epub files evidences that Apple deliberately re-designed and implemented features in order to make the ibooks file format incompatible with industry standards.
Please point to any material released by Apple that advertises in any way that .ibook files are epub files in any way, shape or form. I'll wait.
Apple does not claim to be compatible with anything. This isn't a bait and switch. It's Apple releasing a proprietary tool for you to author a proprietary file format to be sold on a proprietary distribution platform to be consumed on proprietary devices. Nobody ever claimed otherwise. To the contrary, the EULA explicitly says so. What's there to complain about?
Oh, you were hoping for a selfless deed of good and Apple to release a great, free authoring tool for the epub format that would make the world a better place and cure cancer. I guess you were also hoping for the iPhone 5 instead of the 4S. Sorry to disappoint.
So what you're saying is that you have experience administering Windows boxes, but not much for other OSes? Excuse me if I can't take your experience as neutral, fact based review of Apple products (or Linux for that matter) if you were unable to find the FileVault encryption options in the Security Preference pane. In = 10.6, that's user home folder encryption, in 10.7+, it's one-click full disk encryption. And the Registry being less arcane than plist files...? And apparently you haven't looked into Automator at all...?
Sorry, try again, still waaaay off the mark.
Indeed, I'm ashamed for simply echoing the GP. -_-;;
The plant in question did have issues coping with the water.
So... the engineering was fine then?
Not sure why engineering is judged on a sliding scale here. Did the plant survive a massive but not unprecedented earthquake/tsunami or didn't it? Japan is one of the few countries on earth that's plagued by earthquakes on a regular basis, every once in a while a massive one. Shouldn't the absolute worst case have been part of the planning? If it was, then the planning obviously wasn't good enough. If it wasn't then why the heck was that thing built in the first place?
Have you actually seen any pictures of "Fuki" since March 2011? That thing is in no condition to be run. Hell, it's in no condition to shut the windows at night! The best you can hope is that it stays halfway upright until the fission material has been discarded as safely as is possible at this stage.
Which is the point the GG*P allures to. If there are continual inspections, what does the optional 40 year limit actually mean? If the plant was deemed unsafe at the last inspection, it is shut down before 40 years are up. If the plant passes its inspection as usual after 40 years, it can continue to operate as usual.
I think you forgot to close your sarcasm tag. Or have I missed the story on Slashdot about the 100% accurate tidal wave prediction technology they are using?
There's almost nothing that php does better than other modern scripting languages.
Very true; but it's ubiquitous, very easy to get into and has great documentation. Choose your evil.