The US stopped using thimerosal in vaccines in 1999. If it was causing autism, we should have seen a drop in the autism rates to Amish levels by now, 10 years later. Instead, the rates are still going up! Perhaps the increase in autism cases diagnosed since the beginning of the use of thimerosal have more to do with newer diagnostic procedures than with vaccinations.
The point is that one cannot compete on a level playing field with areas that have lower regulatory standards. I intentionally used the phrase "child labor standards" instead of the more general "labor standards". However, you raise a valid point -- on some issues it may make more sense to relax our standards to fit international norms, rather than try to force manufacturers in other countries to operate in accordance with our standards. I'm also pretty sure the US does not have "the world's least strict labor regulations." There are 203 countries in the world; I'm pretty sure we have stricter standards for hiring and firing than the majority of them. There are places in Africa where slavery is still practiced; one would be hard pressed to get away with that in the US.
Agreed, a device with the Pixel Qi screen at close to an eBook reader price would definitely qualify as an eBook killer. Support for WiFi, USB, touchscreen, decent audio, and decent browser with Flash support would help too. I would think you could build something like that for about half of the $499 iPad price point.
No Web browser Check. E-ink sucks for web browsing No MP3 player I think listening to music while reading would be nice, but only if I don't have to sacrifice battery life for it. No Wi-Fi or Bluetooth Bluetooth is useless in an eBook reader. Free WiFi hotspots are pretty ubiquitous now, so having a WiFi for downloading content (especially periodicals and other time-sensitive content) would be a nice feature. Yes, you wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, because it would kill your battery life. No keyboard No argument from me there. All it needs is a simple, reliable user interface that allows downloading content, selecting content, paging through content, bookmarking, and searching content. For serious educational reading, you would need a touchscreen that allows annotation.
In that case, it is web pages that the browser will display that sells hardware. For most people, a computing device isn't an end in itself, it is a means of accessing content. When the Android app store becomes as well stocked and diverse as the Apple app store, then Android based devices will be a better choice (provided they don't muck it up with incompatibility issues.) It is going to take a few years for the Linux touchscreen software to get to a point where it is competitive. In the meantime, Apple might fix at least some of the mistakes it has made with the iPhone/iPad, e.g. having all apps support multitasking, fixing Flash support, and yes, including a decent browser.
Backlit LCD displays don't work very well in direct sunlight. Reflective eInk displays do just fine. Take your iPad to the beach for reading this summer and tell me how it works out for you. Now, if they put both an eInk display and a backlit LCD in the same device, then that would rock both for reading and for watching videos (isn't there already one device that does that?), and that might signal the death of the dedicated eBook reader.
Are any of those Linux based tablets compatible with the Apple App Store? It's apps that sell hardware, not operating system awesomeness. For geeks that want to micromanage everything their tablet does, a Linux tablet is a better choice. For everyone else, "theirs an app for that" is a better choice. Plus, if you're a geek that wants versatility, wouldn't you be better off with a netbook running Linux? Touchscreen keyboards just slow computer geeks down.
If you weren't watching gay porn, you wouldn't have a problem with everybody knowing what movies you watch!
Personally, I circumvent this problem by lying about my gender and birthdate every time I sign up for something. When given a chance, I give my email address as billg@microsoft.com as well. (I wonder how much spam that address receives?)
1. Get naked in front of the camera under pretense of changing ones clothes.
2. Have a lawyer supoena the tapes for that time as part of an invasion of privacy lawsuit.
3. Have any school employee associated with this scheme arrested for possession child pornography.
Really, what kind of images did they think they were going to get with this system?
they understand that gaming can educate people So... what lessons have we all learned from playing World of Warcraft, etc.?
Actually, I believe if you play as a team, you do learn valuable lessons about how to organize a team of diverse individuals over the internet to achieve a common goal, and that does help prepare you for connected knowledge work in the future. Unfortunately, I almost always play solo, in which case it is little more than mental masturbation.
Also good points. Allow unencumbered re-importation of drugs from other countries if American drugs companies insist on selling them cheaper elsewhere. Also do away with regional encoding of DVDs, since with digital distribution, there is no longer any excuse to not release movies simultaneously worldwide. In a truly free market, drugs produced in the US would cost the same or slightly more (due to transportation costs) overseas, and CDs, DVDs, and software would be priced the same everywhere. (Movie tickets would still be more expensive in areas with a higher cost of doing business.)
As for housing, the government's blatant subsidy to the building industry of making mortgage interest deductible contributed to the bubble. I see a trend away from McMansions, and back to smaller, more energy-efficient homes in the future. Also, as baby boomers retire and more and more people telecommute, prices will continue to drop in urban areas, while rural areas with the best living conditions should see an increase.
There needs to be a balance of power between labor and management, as well as encouragement to both to work for the best interest of the companies. I believe employee ownership is a much better way of fostering this than developing an adversarial relationship between labor and management. I worked for Teamsters Local 959 in the early '80s when they practically ran the state of Alaska and were considered more powerful than the governor. That's a huge imbalance of power that is not good for the common good. But then, the conditions of the early industrial age that led to union organization in the first place were also a harmful imbalance of power, which I would rather not return to.
One more observation regarding IBM... I knew software engineers that worked for IBM in the late '80s that were forced to leave the building at 5:00 every day! This seems emblematic of a corporate culture that completely misunderstands the mindset of the people that are actually producing it's products.
One obvious move would be to not allow anything to be sold in the US that was not manufactured in accordance with US environmental, health and safety, and child labor standards. But that would require a certification regime for foreign manufactures which could probably be easily circumvented with a few well-placed bribes. Another obvious move would be to find a way to prevent multinationals from playing games with internal transfers of goods such that all profits are taken in the region with the lowest tax rate, rather than the region where most of the work is done. However, ultimately some leveling of wage levels must be seen as an inevitable consequence of globalization. Americans simply have no god-given right to a higher standard of living than people doing identical work in other parts of the world.
Also, this offshoring is ultimately rather short sighted -- how long will it take for shareholders to realize that there are trained overseas executives also willing to do the job of their American counterparts for far less, and that it doesn't make sense to have all your blue collar workers overseas, while all of your management stays in the US?
It wasn't atmospheric methane that got sequestered this way, it was methane produced by decaying organic matter on the bottom of the ocean, then forced into a precipitate by low temperature and high pressure. Do you think oil deposits came from atmospheric hydrocarbons too?
Now I no longer need to smuggle these chips in to and out of the assignments where I'm doing industrial espionage by hiding them in my, er, "nether regions"! (Those things have really sharp corners!)
In all seriousness, who believes this will have any impact whatsoever on the smuggling of data?
Labor at IBM is unionized? And these unions can't see any connection between unionized labor in the US, and IBM's preference to offshore labor to places without unionized labor? Hey, if you want to stop IBM from shipping jobs overseas, why don't you try unionizing all of their overseas employees?
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The US stopped using thimerosal in vaccines in 1999. If it was causing autism, we should have seen a drop in the autism rates to Amish levels by now, 10 years later. Instead, the rates are still going up! Perhaps the increase in autism cases diagnosed since the beginning of the use of thimerosal have more to do with newer diagnostic procedures than with vaccinations.
The point is that one cannot compete on a level playing field with areas that have lower regulatory standards. I intentionally used the phrase "child labor standards" instead of the more general "labor standards". However, you raise a valid point -- on some issues it may make more sense to relax our standards to fit international norms, rather than try to force manufacturers in other countries to operate in accordance with our standards. I'm also pretty sure the US does not have "the world's least strict labor regulations." There are 203 countries in the world; I'm pretty sure we have stricter standards for hiring and firing than the majority of them. There are places in Africa where slavery is still practiced; one would be hard pressed to get away with that in the US.
Agreed, a device with the Pixel Qi screen at close to an eBook reader price would definitely qualify as an eBook killer. Support for WiFi, USB, touchscreen, decent audio, and decent browser with Flash support would help too. I would think you could build something like that for about half of the $499 iPad price point.
Water is the limiting factor, not availability of land.
No Web browser Check. E-ink sucks for web browsing
No MP3 player I think listening to music while reading would be nice, but only if I don't have to sacrifice battery life for it.
No Wi-Fi or Bluetooth Bluetooth is useless in an eBook reader. Free WiFi hotspots are pretty ubiquitous now, so having a WiFi for downloading content (especially periodicals and other time-sensitive content) would be a nice feature. Yes, you wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, because it would kill your battery life.
No keyboard No argument from me there. All it needs is a simple, reliable user interface that allows downloading content, selecting content, paging through content, bookmarking, and searching content. For serious educational reading, you would need a touchscreen that allows annotation.
In that case, it is web pages that the browser will display that sells hardware. For most people, a computing device isn't an end in itself, it is a means of accessing content. When the Android app store becomes as well stocked and diverse as the Apple app store, then Android based devices will be a better choice (provided they don't muck it up with incompatibility issues.) It is going to take a few years for the Linux touchscreen software to get to a point where it is competitive. In the meantime, Apple might fix at least some of the mistakes it has made with the iPhone/iPad, e.g. having all apps support multitasking, fixing Flash support, and yes, including a decent browser.
They could replace those IT workers with trained monkeys and save a lot more money! Unfortunately, you usually get what you pay for.
Backlit LCD displays don't work very well in direct sunlight. Reflective eInk displays do just fine. Take your iPad to the beach for reading this summer and tell me how it works out for you. Now, if they put both an eInk display and a backlit LCD in the same device, then that would rock both for reading and for watching videos (isn't there already one device that does that?), and that might signal the death of the dedicated eBook reader.
Are any of those Linux based tablets compatible with the Apple App Store? It's apps that sell hardware, not operating system awesomeness. For geeks that want to micromanage everything their tablet does, a Linux tablet is a better choice. For everyone else, "theirs an app for that" is a better choice. Plus, if you're a geek that wants versatility, wouldn't you be better off with a netbook running Linux? Touchscreen keyboards just slow computer geeks down.
If you weren't watching gay porn, you wouldn't have a problem with everybody knowing what movies you watch!
Personally, I circumvent this problem by lying about my gender and birthdate every time I sign up for something. When given a chance, I give my email address as billg@microsoft.com as well. (I wonder how much spam that address receives?)
It's good to see these folks finally seriously cracking down on the truancy problem!
1. Get naked in front of the camera under pretense of changing ones clothes.
2. Have a lawyer supoena the tapes for that time as part of an invasion of privacy lawsuit.
3. Have any school employee associated with this scheme arrested for possession child pornography.
Really, what kind of images did they think they were going to get with this system?
Don't think of it as drinking it... think of it as pouring it down the toilet, but running it through your kidneys first!
they understand that gaming can educate people So... what lessons have we all learned from playing World of Warcraft, etc.?
Actually, I believe if you play as a team, you do learn valuable lessons about how to organize a team of diverse individuals over the internet to achieve a common goal, and that does help prepare you for connected knowledge work in the future. Unfortunately, I almost always play solo, in which case it is little more than mental masturbation.
Also good points. Allow unencumbered re-importation of drugs from other countries if American drugs companies insist on selling them cheaper elsewhere. Also do away with regional encoding of DVDs, since with digital distribution, there is no longer any excuse to not release movies simultaneously worldwide. In a truly free market, drugs produced in the US would cost the same or slightly more (due to transportation costs) overseas, and CDs, DVDs, and software would be priced the same everywhere. (Movie tickets would still be more expensive in areas with a higher cost of doing business.)
As for housing, the government's blatant subsidy to the building industry of making mortgage interest deductible contributed to the bubble. I see a trend away from McMansions, and back to smaller, more energy-efficient homes in the future. Also, as baby boomers retire and more and more people telecommute, prices will continue to drop in urban areas, while rural areas with the best living conditions should see an increase.
There needs to be a balance of power between labor and management, as well as encouragement to both to work for the best interest of the companies. I believe employee ownership is a much better way of fostering this than developing an adversarial relationship between labor and management. I worked for Teamsters Local 959 in the early '80s when they practically ran the state of Alaska and were considered more powerful than the governor. That's a huge imbalance of power that is not good for the common good. But then, the conditions of the early industrial age that led to union organization in the first place were also a harmful imbalance of power, which I would rather not return to.
One more observation regarding IBM... I knew software engineers that worked for IBM in the late '80s that were forced to leave the building at 5:00 every day! This seems emblematic of a corporate culture that completely misunderstands the mindset of the people that are actually producing it's products.
One obvious move would be to not allow anything to be sold in the US that was not manufactured in accordance with US environmental, health and safety, and child labor standards. But that would require a certification regime for foreign manufactures which could probably be easily circumvented with a few well-placed bribes. Another obvious move would be to find a way to prevent multinationals from playing games with internal transfers of goods such that all profits are taken in the region with the lowest tax rate, rather than the region where most of the work is done. However, ultimately some leveling of wage levels must be seen as an inevitable consequence of globalization. Americans simply have no god-given right to a higher standard of living than people doing identical work in other parts of the world.
Also, this offshoring is ultimately rather short sighted -- how long will it take for shareholders to realize that there are trained overseas executives also willing to do the job of their American counterparts for far less, and that it doesn't make sense to have all your blue collar workers overseas, while all of your management stays in the US?
It wasn't atmospheric methane that got sequestered this way, it was methane produced by decaying organic matter on the bottom of the ocean, then forced into a precipitate by low temperature and high pressure. Do you think oil deposits came from atmospheric hydrocarbons too?
Now I no longer need to smuggle these chips in to and out of the assignments where I'm doing industrial espionage by hiding them in my, er, "nether regions"! (Those things have really sharp corners!)
In all seriousness, who believes this will have any impact whatsoever on the smuggling of data?
Can you make a leisure suit out of this polyethylene? I usually have problems with overheating myself whilst I'm displaying my disco dancing finesse!
Labor at IBM is unionized? And these unions can't see any connection between unionized labor in the US, and IBM's preference to offshore labor to places without unionized labor? Hey, if you want to stop IBM from shipping jobs overseas, why don't you try unionizing all of their overseas employees?
No, her name is iBook... why do you ask?
I prefer to toss them up in the air and compete for longest air time. However, I recommend not doing this right after they've just been fed!
Shouldn't that be "My God, it's full of nerds!" -- Dave Bowman, 2001
I hear it's just like Facebook, except that once a month William Shatner personally sends a message to each member advising them to get a life!