China has a highly corrupted political system that maintains dominance by censoring all forms of media and keeps the people in check through brutal police state terror tactics. There is little hope there of unions forming or a citisen driven government.
I beg to differ. Did you know there are over 200 protests per day across China? Mostly over corrupt government officials seizing land and selling it for a hefty profit to corporations. There are also several protests related to labor. A month or so ago one of them go into the news, 200 people at a bicycle factory laid off so they took their bicycles, laid them down across the road, and protested blocking all traffic. It's estimated for the government to maintain control they're going to need at least 8-10% growth each year until they can get some of these things sorted out. You see that happening? Nope. So there are going to be more riots, more protests, and they're going to be far too widespread for the Communist party to control. They're already being worked to the bone just holding the power they've got; they're getting dragged kicking and screaming into democracy. No, labor conditions will definitely be improving in the future as they move to more capital intensive, skilled forms of labor and the workers unionize. Just like Great Britain.
Your rant on sustainability is typical; China freely admits this won't be sustainable; they just want us to give them a little time to get everything in order. It's catching up to them, in the next 5-10 years they're going to _have_ to start thinking environmentally, pressure from Americans or not, because their rivers are becoming so polluted. They're installing ESP's on their Coal plants, and will be moving to nuclear eventually-- until then there is plenty of coal. I don't care if you think global warming is a problem; we have clear archeological evidence that the climate isn't nearly as stable as all the scientists-paid-for-by-Al-Gore-and-other-global-warming-doomsdayers would have you believe. Please explain the existence of the medieval British grape/wine industry, the medieval Viking coastal settlements (with everything including agriculture) in Greenland, and numerous other examples that would have been, and even are in recent times, impossible. Sustainability was a great idea-- until the shills took over and turned it into a religious sect of masochists that can't stand to see anyone enjoying life.
I would say subsistence farming is much better than 41 cents/hour in a factory.
Let them decide, they prefer to work apparently.
Also keep in mind every country has gone through an industrial revolution.
Western Industrial Revolution had the same horrors: Children working in factories 12 hours a day? Check. Children getting so tired they fall into machinery and die? Check. Grownups working 12 hours/day, 7 days/week? Check.
The thing about China is theirs is going to be over and done with in about 25 years for a total of 35; as opposed to hanging around for 75-100 and morphing into a second industrial revolution.
You forget to realize that even these conditions are far better than any Chinese would otherwise see. Running, clean water? Dependable food? Shelter to sleep in? They don't get that when they're farming 12 hours a day making barely enough food to survive on.
The other thing-- in the last 20 years, "extreme poverty" has shrunk from 40% globally to 20%*. That's not your humanitarian aid at work, that's American consumption fueling fewer deaths due to water poisoning, hunger, etc. in third world countries/regions. Why would you take that away from them? Until just recently (with the onset of this recession) Chinese were STILL taking trains to the cities to find a new life, new work, and new pay. That's in spite of all these "horrible work conditions" (by our standards, that we erroneously think nobody would want to work under) all over the place. They're welcome to quit their job and return to farming, but I think you miss how bad they have it farming.
This knowledge should cause us to stop and consider what we'd be doing before we start taxing trade with the Chinese.
*Go check out "The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for Us All" by Robyn Meredith. She covers all sorts of things like this and provides sound sources to back them up-- IIRC, there were about 30 pages at the back of this book with nothing but footnotes/sources for statistics like this one.
Yes I took a look at it and will look deeper into it this weekend; I'm just surprised they think they could be getting away with this.
My friend made an interesting point-- accepting cash makes it easier to under-report sales (for tax purposes). However, they have a distributor, which means they have to take inventory, which would make doing that difficult. Who knows what's going on. Thanks for the link.
Wait so they're not allowed to charge extra for letting you use Mastercard? There's a liquor store nearby that charges extra if you use credit and 1% extra if you use debit (as opposed to cash). Could I print this and show it to them along with my card?
Sure they can make showing ID a requirement, credit cards are NOT legal tender and so a merchant is free to put whatever restriction on their use they want.
At which point they have violated the Visa/MasterCard merchant agreement. And eventually, with enough reported violations, can't accept Visa or MasterCard.
I never said it was illegal for them to require it, it is just a violation of the contract they signed to be able to accept Visa/MasterCard.
Is that merchant agreement available online? I'd love to read it so I know what I'm talking about when the clerk asks to see my ID.
It's getting really annoying; it's becoming faster and easier to pay with cash. I scan it, but usually it takes about 15 seconds to verify, then I have to sign their little digital thing and press accept, then it says "please present card to cashier" then they look at it and ask to see my ID, verify that the names are the same...then they press accept, the full authorization goes through, I wait for the receipt to print...all this before I can get the stuff I paid for and leave.
I'd rather just have those RFID things everywhere with no ID checking. Scan it, get my receipt, and leave. Done.
There's also the story of how Watts sat on the patent for the steam engine, keeping innovation hindered until the patent ran out. Only then did he begin producing steam engines on a large scale.
But you have to admit, at the core of your argument you are saying "He holds something good, and I want to receive the benefit of that, so I think we should deny him the right to do what he wants with his good thing that I want."
He invented it, why doesn't he have the right to do with it as he please? Even if that involves keeping people from having it. Agreeing to anything else (make him produce it! Yeah! It's for the good of all!) is a slippery slope. Who determines if it's good for all, and when does "good for all" become "we all want free stuff".
At the core, I do not have a problem with IP or the owner's control of it. I have a problem with the current method our country uses to enable the owner to control it. The existence of patent trolls, etc.
You can't find any good Linux admins though unless you're willing to pay out the wazoo. Even then, they're usually already taken and happy at their current job.
There's a wealth of MS trained IT guys to hire, though.
Even as Microsoft celebrates its 10,000th patent, angry shareholders are starting to speak out against what they say is the squandering of billions of dollars on pointless R&D projects.
Investors know that sometimes things won't pay out. These are the whiny little 10%-return-no-risk assholes who sue when a CEO doesn't start layoffs ASAP to pump up the stock price.
Here's news for you: sometimes weird investments pay off in radically unforeseeable ways. If you're the kind of jackass who dismissed the idea because we already had vacuum tubes, then you're the same kind who thinks modern R&D is a waste of money.
As much as I dislove Microsoft, I'm glad they're doing this stuff. Apparently they understand the importance even if a few short term profit-takers are too stupid to see it.
They're welcome to sell their shares if they don't like it.
When you get as big as Microsoft (as in, you've saturated your market) you've got to _create_ new markets to sell to. This is why they dump so much into R&D.
If they want to fuss at MS they should fuss about the guys that came by the office the other day. They do pretty much nothing but drive around to different people that purchase Microsoft Server licenses and tell them "Eh? Go read the documentation, it's all in that book we gave you. No, sorry, we can't do that, this is how the product works and if you don't like it, too bad." IE, they do nothing. They make ~$500K each and tether their laptops to their cellphone and play WoW all day while not telling clients to figure it out. There probably aren't many of those guys though.
While the Atom needs 132.8 seconds to display simple HTML pages, the Nano does it in 70.1 seconds.
With those speeds, why do they call these things "netbooks?":)
Very large web page. 17 seconds on an e5200 (That's a 2.5Ghz Core2Duo).
I had a feeling the second I learned the Atom was an In-Order processor that it was going to suck. Sure enough, it feels rather sluggish. Getting a dual core + dual threaded Atom might be better.
VIA's documentation is a nightmare to trudge through. Their hardware is usually great, but designing a product around it tends to be very difficult. With Intel, OTOH, we usually have no trouble getting a hold of an engineer if we have questions. Poor VIA...we'd love to use their chip but their support just isn't dependable when we have deadlines to meet.
I hope the netbook crowd (Acer esp) can muscle some legit documentation from them-- I'd take the Nano over the Atom any day.
None of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a center of innovation.
They don't have to. Our own intellectual property laws have strangled innovation in this country.
At least we have some. In China, forget about R&D unless you're willing to pay the police to go raid the counterfeiters for you. In Hong Kong, Shenzhen, etc. you can buy real North Face and -insert-favorite-brand-here- clothing. The manufacturers are told to produce a certain number of goods, but it's _so cheap_ to make stuff over there they still produce more of it, and sell it to street vendors, who then sell it to you for 90% less what you'd pay over here, and the street guys STILL make a profit on it.
North Face, for example, pays this fee to keep the street vendors at bay. Friend was telling me about his trip there a few months ago-- "Do you have any NorthFace" "No, no no, no NorthFace. Here look at these instead, see this nice backpack? $5." "No but we want NorthFace" "No NorthFace, I don't have it" "Surely you've got something NorthFace." The guy looks at my friend, decides he's legit and not an undercover cop, looks left and right up and down the street, and the proceeds to climb up his shelves into a compartment above his shop and begins throwing down North Face sweatshirts, fleeces, backpacks, etc.
They won't be able to move up the food chain until they get _some form_ of copyright/trademark/IP protection. There is no "code of law" there, anything they can replicate is fair game. Better make sure anything you produce can't be replicated or they'll undercut you fast.
Ebay will likely be the leader at the forefront of this revolution. I, for one, can't wait.
As much as I don't like ebay, you have to admit they match the little guy from China DIRECTLY with the buyer (you and me). I just bought 12 screen protectors for my PDA for $3 free shipping. I bought a replacement 1200mAh same--physical-size-battery-as-the-Dell-900mAh battery for $8 free shipping. 33% extra battery capacity! I could have gotten the 2200mAh version for $10 free shipping but I didn't want it sticking out the back of the PDA. I hate to imagine how much the replacement battery would have cost from Dell. My 4GB of Crucial DDR2-800 2.2v ram was $20 AR thanks to China. That 1.5TB WD harddrive Frys had for $106 +$7 shipping one day last week was thanks to Chinafacturing. My 24" 1920x1200 M-PVA (true 8-bit/color display) LCD monitor was $299 a year ago thanks to China. Now, a TN 24" panel is $220 at Costco this week, and there is a 42" Vizio 1080P LCD TV for $600, too.
In some market segments we don't benefit, but in many, we do. If I bought it the PDA battery from Dell they probably would have charged $25 for the 900mAh replacement, and maybe $40 for the extended 2200mAh battery. They would have paid maybe $6 to the China guys for being a bulk buyer, and would have pocketed the other $19/$34. But since I went through Ebay, the China guys got to charge a little bit more, I get the same product, and still came away paying 20% what I would have had to pay through Dell.
It wasn't until recently that we started seeing the benefits of this with laptops-- before the companies pocketed all the cash, but now there are so many suppliers over there it's trivial to produce yet-another-version of laptop. Now you can catch a dual core laptop with 3GB of RAM, Vista, and 160-250GB HDD for $400 if you keep your eyes open. Or you could get a netbook with 1GB of RAM and an 8GB fast SSD with 32GB slower SSD (for documents and stuff) for $300.
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese manufacturing Overlords.
And it will reduce incentive for American companies to produce competitive products.
Just look at what happened to India after Ghandi. While well intentioned and initially beneficial to the country, his protectionist rhetoric (and the subsequent laws passed which do things like stipulate the maximum size (# employees) an Indian company can grow to-- fortunately this one was recently repealed) ultimately lead to the removal of India from the competitive global market. (It's hard to become a big provider (say, textiles) in even your own country of 1 Billion when you're limited to 100 employees, not to mention entering the global market. These laws were meant to increase Indian ownership of companies, and to encourage people to start their own company (spread the market need over multiple companies to create more upper-middle class citizens. Instead, the laws ensured ultra-efficient, ultra innovative companies could only spread their wings so far and fly only so high.)
No, no, the last thing our bros in Detroit need is LESS foreign competition, which is what will happen if we give rebates for buying American.
After all, it would be down right un-American to not work my ass off to help cloth and feed a bunch of rich assholes!
So, while we are at it then, do you want to do something about universities owning huge patent portfolios paid for by your tax dollars, while at the same time raising tuition faster than even the price of gasoline?
Yes. Lets cut Pell Grants. The student is will to pay $x to go to school. Pell grants allow the school to charge $(x+PellGrant). No extra cost to the student, but they get extra money to throw at things like football stadiums and multi-million dollar severance packages for getting rid of coaches early.
It's a logical fallacy to call into question the credibility of the writer instead of attacking the argument, but might I add that Lawful Good is suicide when your enemy is Chaotic Evil. I believe in bias, because the masses are stupid; but it is only to be used if your point is truth.
When the "enemy" is fighting with incendiary bombs, fighting it Lawful Good would be akin to bringing portable fire extinguisher. No, you need hundreds of those firetrucks that tote the flame-retardant water-soluble mixture, and several fire hydrants for each of them.
This is a slippery slope, but considering all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and that of all the good men there are, very few of them stand up and fight; why would you disarm those that do? Don't give them a Red Rider BB gun, give them an assault rifle.
"Why? You and all your Linux friends are a bunch of paranoid idiots!
If she's really saying that, then you a). need to stand up for yourself, telling her she's not allowed to say stuff like that about you; or else b). she's no longer allowed to use the computer and you will make sure she is unable to.
I am not married but I do know there are some boundaries that are not to be crossed, and we geeky/nerdy folk are used to having them trampled upon and crossed over back and forth and thus don't recognize as easily when it's happening as others. That doesn't change the fact that it's happening, and that it shouldn't be. If you stood up to her for her saying something like this she'd try to play it back on you and confuse you into thinking what she said was acceptable and that you (the paranoid one of course) just need to relax. But it's not OK, she knows it and knows other guys wouldn't allow her to say something like that to them, and you just have to convince her you know it's not and that you won't stand for it. As they say, speak your piece, even if your voice quivers.
She'll scream at you at first, but she'll respect you more for it in the end. I know this much for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
China has a highly corrupted political system that maintains dominance by censoring all forms of media and keeps the people in check through brutal police state terror tactics. There is little hope there of unions forming or a citisen driven government.
I beg to differ. Did you know there are over 200 protests per day across China? Mostly over corrupt government officials seizing land and selling it for a hefty profit to corporations. There are also several protests related to labor. A month or so ago one of them go into the news, 200 people at a bicycle factory laid off so they took their bicycles, laid them down across the road, and protested blocking all traffic. It's estimated for the government to maintain control they're going to need at least 8-10% growth each year until they can get some of these things sorted out. You see that happening? Nope. So there are going to be more riots, more protests, and they're going to be far too widespread for the Communist party to control. They're already being worked to the bone just holding the power they've got; they're getting dragged kicking and screaming into democracy. No, labor conditions will definitely be improving in the future as they move to more capital intensive, skilled forms of labor and the workers unionize. Just like Great Britain.
Your rant on sustainability is typical; China freely admits this won't be sustainable; they just want us to give them a little time to get everything in order. It's catching up to them, in the next 5-10 years they're going to _have_ to start thinking environmentally, pressure from Americans or not, because their rivers are becoming so polluted. They're installing ESP's on their Coal plants, and will be moving to nuclear eventually-- until then there is plenty of coal. I don't care if you think global warming is a problem; we have clear archeological evidence that the climate isn't nearly as stable as all the scientists-paid-for-by-Al-Gore-and-other-global-warming-doomsdayers would have you believe. Please explain the existence of the medieval British grape/wine industry, the medieval Viking coastal settlements (with everything including agriculture) in Greenland, and numerous other examples that would have been, and even are in recent times, impossible. Sustainability was a great idea-- until the shills took over and turned it into a religious sect of masochists that can't stand to see anyone enjoying life.
I would say subsistence farming is much better than 41 cents/hour in a factory.
Let them decide, they prefer to work apparently.
Also keep in mind every country has gone through an industrial revolution.
Western Industrial Revolution had the same horrors: Children working in factories 12 hours a day? Check. Children getting so tired they fall into machinery and die? Check. Grownups working 12 hours/day, 7 days/week? Check.
The thing about China is theirs is going to be over and done with in about 25 years for a total of 35; as opposed to hanging around for 75-100 and morphing into a second industrial revolution.
You forget to realize that even these conditions are far better than any Chinese would otherwise see. Running, clean water? Dependable food? Shelter to sleep in? They don't get that when they're farming 12 hours a day making barely enough food to survive on.
The other thing-- in the last 20 years, "extreme poverty" has shrunk from 40% globally to 20%*. That's not your humanitarian aid at work, that's American consumption fueling fewer deaths due to water poisoning, hunger, etc. in third world countries/regions. Why would you take that away from them? Until just recently (with the onset of this recession) Chinese were STILL taking trains to the cities to find a new life, new work, and new pay. That's in spite of all these "horrible work conditions" (by our standards, that we erroneously think nobody would want to work under) all over the place. They're welcome to quit their job and return to farming, but I think you miss how bad they have it farming.
This knowledge should cause us to stop and consider what we'd be doing before we start taxing trade with the Chinese.
*Go check out "The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for Us All" by Robyn Meredith. She covers all sorts of things like this and provides sound sources to back them up-- IIRC, there were about 30 pages at the back of this book with nothing but footnotes/sources for statistics like this one.
Yes I took a look at it and will look deeper into it this weekend; I'm just surprised they think they could be getting away with this.
My friend made an interesting point-- accepting cash makes it easier to under-report sales (for tax purposes). However, they have a distributor, which means they have to take inventory, which would make doing that difficult. Who knows what's going on. Thanks for the link.
Wait so they're not allowed to charge extra for letting you use Mastercard? There's a liquor store nearby that charges extra if you use credit and 1% extra if you use debit (as opposed to cash). Could I print this and show it to them along with my card?
I think you meant "NO REPEA
At which point they have violated the Visa/MasterCard merchant agreement.
And eventually, with enough reported violations, can't accept Visa or MasterCard.
I never said it was illegal for them to require it, it is just a violation of the contract they signed to be able to accept Visa/MasterCard.
Is that merchant agreement available online? I'd love to read it so I know what I'm talking about when the clerk asks to see my ID.
It's getting really annoying; it's becoming faster and easier to pay with cash. I scan it, but usually it takes about 15 seconds to verify, then I have to sign their little digital thing and press accept, then it says "please present card to cashier" then they look at it and ask to see my ID, verify that the names are the same...then they press accept, the full authorization goes through, I wait for the receipt to print...all this before I can get the stuff I paid for and leave.
I'd rather just have those RFID things everywhere with no ID checking. Scan it, get my receipt, and leave. Done.
Luckily there are libertarians who are not in support of the bullshit concept of Imanginary Property.
The Mercantilism of Our Time
There's also the story of how Watts sat on the patent for the steam engine, keeping innovation hindered until the patent ran out. Only then did he begin producing steam engines on a large scale.
But you have to admit, at the core of your argument you are saying "He holds something good, and I want to receive the benefit of that, so I think we should deny him the right to do what he wants with his good thing that I want."
He invented it, why doesn't he have the right to do with it as he please? Even if that involves keeping people from having it.
Agreeing to anything else (make him produce it! Yeah! It's for the good of all!) is a slippery slope. Who determines if it's good for all, and when does "good for all" become "we all want free stuff".
At the core, I do not have a problem with IP or the owner's control of it. I have a problem with the current method our country uses to enable the owner to control it. The existence of patent trolls, etc.
You can't find any good Linux admins though unless you're willing to pay out the wazoo. Even then, they're usually already taken and happy at their current job.
There's a wealth of MS trained IT guys to hire, though.
Even as Microsoft celebrates its 10,000th patent, angry shareholders are starting to speak out against what they say is the squandering of billions of dollars on pointless R&D projects.
Investors know that sometimes things won't pay out. These are the whiny little 10%-return-no-risk assholes who sue when a CEO doesn't start layoffs ASAP to pump up the stock price.
Here's news for you: sometimes weird investments pay off in radically unforeseeable ways. If you're the kind of jackass who dismissed the idea because we already had vacuum tubes, then you're the same kind who thinks modern R&D is a waste of money.
As much as I dislove Microsoft, I'm glad they're doing this stuff. Apparently they understand the importance even if a few short term profit-takers are too stupid to see it.
They're welcome to sell their shares if they don't like it.
When you get as big as Microsoft (as in, you've saturated your market) you've got to _create_ new markets to sell to. This is why they dump so much into R&D.
If they want to fuss at MS they should fuss about the guys that came by the office the other day. They do pretty much nothing but drive around to different people that purchase Microsoft Server licenses and tell them "Eh? Go read the documentation, it's all in that book we gave you. No, sorry, we can't do that, this is how the product works and if you don't like it, too bad." IE, they do nothing. They make ~$500K each and tether their laptops to their cellphone and play WoW all day while not telling clients to figure it out.
There probably aren't many of those guys though.
Thank you for pointing that out, I couldn't tell from the GGP's moderation. ;)
I don't believe you.
While the Atom needs 132.8 seconds to display simple HTML pages, the Nano does it in 70.1 seconds.
With those speeds, why do they call these things "netbooks?" :)
Very large web page. 17 seconds on an e5200 (That's a 2.5Ghz Core2Duo).
I had a feeling the second I learned the Atom was an In-Order processor that it was going to suck. Sure enough, it feels rather sluggish. Getting a dual core + dual threaded Atom might be better.
VIA's documentation is a nightmare to trudge through. Their hardware is usually great, but designing a product around it tends to be very difficult. With Intel, OTOH, we usually have no trouble getting a hold of an engineer if we have questions. Poor VIA...we'd love to use their chip but their support just isn't dependable when we have deadlines to meet.
I hope the netbook crowd (Acer esp) can muscle some legit documentation from them-- I'd take the Nano over the Atom any day.
Then the SOB has the nerve to comment on how your suit is wrinkled and how your tired and absent minded. ....
He might be wondering why you're not versed in telling your "you're" from your "your".
4.8G and the wings were still attached? That's quite impressive. Good job, Boeing.
None of the Asian tigers has replaced the US as a center of innovation.
They don't have to. Our own intellectual property laws have strangled innovation in this country.
At least we have some. In China, forget about R&D unless you're willing to pay the police to go raid the counterfeiters for you. In Hong Kong, Shenzhen, etc. you can buy real North Face and -insert-favorite-brand-here- clothing. The manufacturers are told to produce a certain number of goods, but it's _so cheap_ to make stuff over there they still produce more of it, and sell it to street vendors, who then sell it to you for 90% less what you'd pay over here, and the street guys STILL make a profit on it.
North Face, for example, pays this fee to keep the street vendors at bay. Friend was telling me about his trip there a few months ago-- "Do you have any NorthFace" "No, no no, no NorthFace. Here look at these instead, see this nice backpack? $5." "No but we want NorthFace" "No NorthFace, I don't have it" "Surely you've got something NorthFace." The guy looks at my friend, decides he's legit and not an undercover cop, looks left and right up and down the street, and the proceeds to climb up his shelves into a compartment above his shop and begins throwing down North Face sweatshirts, fleeces, backpacks, etc.
They won't be able to move up the food chain until they get _some form_ of copyright/trademark/IP protection. There is no "code of law" there, anything they can replicate is fair game. Better make sure anything you produce can't be replicated or they'll undercut you fast.
Ebay will likely be the leader at the forefront of this revolution. I, for one, can't wait.
As much as I don't like ebay, you have to admit they match the little guy from China DIRECTLY with the buyer (you and me). I just bought 12 screen protectors for my PDA for $3 free shipping. I bought a replacement 1200mAh same--physical-size-battery-as-the-Dell-900mAh battery for $8 free shipping. 33% extra battery capacity! I could have gotten the 2200mAh version for $10 free shipping but I didn't want it sticking out the back of the PDA. I hate to imagine how much the replacement battery would have cost from Dell.
My 4GB of Crucial DDR2-800 2.2v ram was $20 AR thanks to China.
That 1.5TB WD harddrive Frys had for $106 +$7 shipping one day last week was thanks to Chinafacturing.
My 24" 1920x1200 M-PVA (true 8-bit/color display) LCD monitor was $299 a year ago thanks to China. Now, a TN 24" panel is $220 at Costco this week, and there is a 42" Vizio 1080P LCD TV for $600, too.
In some market segments we don't benefit, but in many, we do. If I bought it the PDA battery from Dell they probably would have charged $25 for the 900mAh replacement, and maybe $40 for the extended 2200mAh battery. They would have paid maybe $6 to the China guys for being a bulk buyer, and would have pocketed the other $19/$34. But since I went through Ebay, the China guys got to charge a little bit more, I get the same product, and still came away paying 20% what I would have had to pay through Dell.
It wasn't until recently that we started seeing the benefits of this with laptops-- before the companies pocketed all the cash, but now there are so many suppliers over there it's trivial to produce yet-another-version of laptop. Now you can catch a dual core laptop with 3GB of RAM, Vista, and 160-250GB HDD for $400 if you keep your eyes open. Or you could get a netbook with 1GB of RAM and an 8GB fast SSD with 32GB slower SSD (for documents and stuff) for $300.
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese manufacturing Overlords.
how about ipods made of lead?
Depends, can I change the battery?
Why not, the good people of our small towns and countrysides subsidize the ever lasting cycle of inner-city welfare recipients.
Touche.
And it will reduce incentive for American companies to produce competitive products.
Just look at what happened to India after Ghandi. While well intentioned and initially beneficial to the country, his protectionist rhetoric (and the subsequent laws passed which do things like stipulate the maximum size (# employees) an Indian company can grow to-- fortunately this one was recently repealed) ultimately lead to the removal of India from the competitive global market.
(It's hard to become a big provider (say, textiles) in even your own country of 1 Billion when you're limited to 100 employees, not to mention entering the global market. These laws were meant to increase Indian ownership of companies, and to encourage people to start their own company (spread the market need over multiple companies to create more upper-middle class citizens. Instead, the laws ensured ultra-efficient, ultra innovative companies could only spread their wings so far and fly only so high.)
No, no, the last thing our bros in Detroit need is LESS foreign competition, which is what will happen if we give rebates for buying American.
We could fix all this by returning to a private schooling system.
Shh! You're going to aggro the audiophiles!
BTW, I am a recipient of Pell Grants.
After all, it would be down right un-American to not work my ass off to help cloth and feed a bunch of rich assholes!
So, while we are at it then, do you want to do something about universities owning huge patent portfolios paid for by your tax dollars, while at the same time raising tuition faster than even the price of gasoline?
Yes. Lets cut Pell Grants.
The student is will to pay $x to go to school. Pell grants allow the school to charge $(x+PellGrant). No extra cost to the student, but they get extra money to throw at things like football stadiums and multi-million dollar severance packages for getting rid of coaches early.
Nietzsche started the "Soviet Russia" meme?
It's a logical fallacy to call into question the credibility of the writer instead of attacking the argument, but might I add that Lawful Good is suicide when your enemy is Chaotic Evil. I believe in bias, because the masses are stupid; but it is only to be used if your point is truth.
When the "enemy" is fighting with incendiary bombs, fighting it Lawful Good would be akin to bringing portable fire extinguisher. No, you need hundreds of those firetrucks that tote the flame-retardant water-soluble mixture, and several fire hydrants for each of them.
This is a slippery slope, but considering all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and that of all the good men there are, very few of them stand up and fight; why would you disarm those that do? Don't give them a Red Rider BB gun, give them an assault rifle.
This is why the GGGP is correct in his thinking.
WOW thank you so much for doing that. I don't think any liberals have a problem with NYT, I will be using that link for years to come.
"Why? You and all your Linux friends are a bunch of paranoid idiots!
If she's really saying that, then you a). need to stand up for yourself, telling her she's not allowed to say stuff like that about you; or else b). she's no longer allowed to use the computer and you will make sure she is unable to.
I am not married but I do know there are some boundaries that are not to be crossed, and we geeky/nerdy folk are used to having them trampled upon and crossed over back and forth and thus don't recognize as easily when it's happening as others. That doesn't change the fact that it's happening, and that it shouldn't be. If you stood up to her for her saying something like this she'd try to play it back on you and confuse you into thinking what she said was acceptable and that you (the paranoid one of course) just need to relax. But it's not OK, she knows it and knows other guys wouldn't allow her to say something like that to them, and you just have to convince her you know it's not and that you won't stand for it. As they say, speak your piece, even if your voice quivers.
She'll scream at you at first, but she'll respect you more for it in the end. I know this much for sure.