If, instead, you met with your competitors and shown them the calculations above, they would likely agree that it is in the best interests of all of you (as in, each one of you, individually, would end up with higher profits today and tomorrow) if you agree not to drive prices below a certain level.
And, one more time, if this were as common as you're suggesting, then the courts would be FILLED with antitrust and price-fixing cases; we would see dozens of them filed every day. Yet they're not. Why is that?
It's not the case today because we have various anti-monopoly laws, which are regularly used to break down cartels and other forms of anti-competitive behavior. And the reason why such laws appeared in the first place were because, by the end of 19th century, powerful cartels and monopolies formed on free market basis, and started to have a profoundly negative effect on economy. Hence e.g. Sherman Act, originally to deal with Standard Oil. Are you going to claim that Standard Oil was a public utility, or other form of government monopoly?
So you provide two examples: Standard Oil, and DRAM price fixing, and links to a wikipedia page listing 8 or so cases. And from this, we are supposed to draw the conclusion that antitrust cases are common, and that the only reason we are not subject to monopolies and price fixing and cartels in EVERY industry is because of the eternal vigilance of our government, breaking down these horrible monopolies on our behalf?
Suggesting that price fixing, cartels, and monopolies are the default mode of business is just as foolish as suggesting that these things never happen. They are, without a doubt, the exception. But you are trying to paint them as the rule, and you've fallen far short of demonstrating that to be the case.
This assumes that, as a business owner, I would love nothing more than for you to spend your money at my competitors. In point of fact, as a business owner, I *don't* want you to spend your money at my competitor's place, I want you to spend it at *my* place.
So, how do I get a consumer to patronize my place of business? Right. By lowering my prices.
All these theories suggest that the world should be full of nothing but cartels and oligopolies and monopolies today. And yet, that's substantially not the case, in almost every industry where the government has not currently (or historically) granted a specific company monopoly status (public utilities, and telecom, most notably).
What prevents a big company from either buying a smaller one, or using its greater resources to artificially lower prices until the competition is gone?
I don't know, you tell me - why is it that we don't see monopolies everywhere in every aspect of life? Why is it that telecom seems to be the big one, and that telecom has historically been granted *monopoly status by the government*? Why aren't grocery stores, book stores, restaurants, auto dealerships, and just about every other purchase you make everyday subject to monopoly status, if monopoly is the inevitable end result of any industry's progression?
When I lived in Europe, there wasn't a free market, so I had choice. I had 100/10 Mbps internet for less than a third of what I pay for 1.5/512 here. I had mobile phone with close to 100% geographical coverage, yes even on mountain tops, with free incoming calls and a cost again less than a third of here. Because we had choice, because the market was regulated.
You also lived on a continent that is easily a fraction of the size, with nearly triple the population density - 33.7/km^2 in the US, 115.9/km^2 in the European Union, in an area almost half the size of the US (~4.3million km^2 for EU, ~9.8million km^2 for US);
Given those figures, it's also pretty easy to see why "last mile" coverage is a lot harder with infrastructure in the US - the population is much more spread out, and spread out over a much higher area: this means, obviously, that the physical act of stringing and maintaining the cable (and/or building the towers), even if it costs exactly the same per foot of cable / per tower, costs significantly more to build in the US, and each unit of area you cover has a substantially lower return because each unit of area contains less possible subscribers.
You can't just hand-wave away these differences in the cost of providing the service. This is not a defense of the existing quality of service, but you can't simply assume that the costs of doing business are exactly the same everywhere, because they're not. The US is much larger, with a much more spread out population. The capital required to build and maintain infrastructure is thus much larger, and that infrastructure generates much lower revenues per unit of area as a result. I'd love to have the coverage I had when I was in Dublin a couple years back, but I'm also realistic enough to understand that stringing cables into the middle of nowhere is going to be done at a loss, and no company can operate at a loss forever.
The most profitable endpoint of every industry is a pure monopoly with absolutely no competition.
You are, of course, engaging in hand-waving assertions that are not even remotely true.
Please explain the myriad choices I have for just about anything I want to purchase, except for public utilities, and phone/cable service, which are typically de facto monopolies due to the high expense of laying private cable to every residence in existence, if every industry will absolutely end up being dominated by a pure monopoly with no competition that has absorbed or destroyed all its competitors?
Last I checked I have half a dozen car manufacturers; No less than 4 grocery stores. at least half a dozen different brands of gasoline. At least 3 bookstores (B&N, Borders, and a smaller independent shop). Dozens of restaurants (and multiple choices for many cuisines), no less than 4 different brands of coffee shop, 3 different department stores; all of this, within a 10 minute drive of where I live. I could go on listing examples of the numerous choices-per-industry available to me, but I suspect you get the point, and you also know that your claims literally won't stand up to a [citation needed] response.
Jesus christ, do you have the least understanding of how these reactors work? It takes months for them to cool down safely under normal circumstances. This means that they need the cooling systems to not break down and corrode away even after they have power back on. This means that injecting seawater into the reactor could make that eventual cooling-down even more risky, as the seawater leaves all kinds of impurities and salts behind when it boils away - clogging up cooling system components, and generally making the system less efficient.
THIS is why they want to avoid pumping the reactor full of seawater. They began pumping in seawater the NEXT DAY after the tsunami struck. That was a "last ditch" effort - not because they were trying to "save the reactors," but because they were trying to "save the cooling systems" for the months-long process of safely cooling down the reactors until they can be fully shut down and the fuel safely removed. If you prevent a meltdown today, and end up with a meltdown tomorrow because you destroyed your cooling system, what the hell difference does it make?
They weren't trying to "save the reactors" if they were pumping seawater into them on March 12 (tsunami struck on March 11). It is entirely reasonable for them to have tried to see if they could get power back to the cooling systems in time to prevent having to take cooling steps that would cause widespread damage inside the reactor and the reactor cooling system, which will now hamper their efforts to cool down the reactors safely indefinitely.
You do realize that it takes - literally - months to cool down a nuclear reactor... right? Decay heat from the fuel continues boiling away water at a very high rate for months. It's not like they can just dump a bit of salt water into the core and let it sit for a day or two, then wipe their foreheads and go, "Phew, we really dodged a bullet on that one."
Injecting a bunch of contaminated and impure water into the core means many of those impurities get left behind when the water boils off. Salts, organics, and all kinds of other impurities that can react with the containment vessel (weakening it), the fuel (breaking down the components of the fuel rods), and the cooling system itself. And meanwhile, all of those things must be cooled down for months until they're at a safe enough temperature that they can be removed, and moved to long term storage or reprocessing.
But yeah, I can see why you'd want to introduce corrosive materials into a critical reactor component at the first sign of any trouble, rather than trying to bring the regular cooling system (which uses purified water) back online. Why worry about all those impurities clogging heat exchangers and valves, making it more difficult to run the cooling system properly once power is restored, right?
And so, instead of spending time trying to restore the *actual cooling system* that was designed to handle the stresses of cooling the reactor without injecting corrosive metals into the reactor core - the same systems which you just opined were completely functional, and simply lacked power - they should have just immediately gone to the lengths of injecting saltwater with numerous unknown contaminants into the reactor core?
Again, in your professional judgement as a nuclear engineer, who also has access to all of the data about how these reactors were functioning, how long should they have waited before flooding the reactor with seawater? Bearing in mind that seawater was actually injected into one of the reactors on March 12, the day after the quake & tsunami struck?
Unless you're arguing for some type of immediate immersion, it's pretty difficult to argue that TEPCO simply sat on its hands while everything was unfolding, or that the decision to inject seawater came "DAYS" after it should have. It came one day after the disaster, it's hard to argue that they somehow stalled for "days" to begin the process when only one day elapsed between the disaster & the initial decision to inject seawater into one of the reactors.
The earthquake happened on March 11. They began injecting seawater into Reactors 2 & 3 early on March 14, and by March 15, all 3 reactor cores had been subjected to this, as well as seawater being injected into the containment buildings as well for at least Reactor 1 & 2.
"Many days late" makes it sound like they dicked around toasting marshmallows for a week while the reactors melted down. The best you could argue would be that they should have started flooding the reactor cores with seawater immediately on March 11, when they had no idea what sort of damage had been done to the reactors by the quake or the tsunami - flooding in seawater may have made the problem worse by damaging a marginally-functional cooling system to the point where it would stop cooling things.
But, since you're apparently a nuclear engineer, how quickly - in your professional judgement - should they have written everything off and concluded that seawater was the only possible way to cool things down? I presume you have access to all of the data and information that the Japanese engineers have access to, as well?
It is easy enough to reason and conclude that the natural end product of a free market always will be a monopoly.
No, it's not easy enough to reason & conclude this, please walk us through your reasoning. I fail to see how the inevitable "natural result of a free market will always be a monopoly."
Then when it hit the fan, they used their influence to socialize the risk/losses while still keeping the profits.
So perhaps we should vote in politicians who will refuse to let them socialize the risks and losses? Gambling would be viewed as a lot riskier for these companies if they knew that they would absolutely have to bear the burden of their poor business decisions.
Certainly, and my comment should not be taken as a statement that Android was the one to invent this model. I'm simply pointing out that you can expect the "community updates" to be light years ahead of the "manufacturer defaults" as a result of this model, pretty much forever. Android tablets absolutely haven't invented this model, and given the state of Android phone support from manufacturers, you can expect the tablets to follow the same model.
No manufacturer is going to spend a bit more time than they are absolutely legally required to on updating software - there's simply no margin in it. Every developer they have to put on staff to port new versions of software to is that much less profit they make. It's a race to the bottom, and this is why computer manufacturers have (generally) quite thin margins. Unless the device manufacturer controls the end-to-end functionality of the device (hardware and software) it's a hard spot to be in.
then that company would have a great selling point, and it would be able to outsell even Apple
No, they wouldn't have a great selling point, because the device they were offering to sell would cost orders of magnitude more than it does today, and very few people would be willing to buy it. This is the reason they still haven't built a car that will run for 500,000 miles with virtually no maintenance and get 100 miles to the gallon.
Also, guaranteeing future software upgrades is INCREDIBLY simple and should cost ZERO DOLLARS to the company. [...] Do you see computer manufacturers going crazy over supporting future software?
Of course not - because they are decoupled. Dell makes the hardware, Microsoft makes the software. Microsoft doesn't exactly have a sterling track record with providing updates and high-quality software, and Dell doesn't exactly have a sterling track record with providing an amazingly well-built piece of hardware. Dell cares about selling hardware. Microsoft cares about selling software. This means that they are both aiming for the lowest common denominator - something that works "well enough" to sell the product. Each has plausible deniability: "Your device isn't working? Must be the other guy's fault. Go talk to them."
Your solution of "releasing everything under the GPL" just dumps the mess back in the lap of the consumer: "You want upgrades? Go get them yourself."
The net result of this is exactly what we've seen: hardware manufacturers who only care about selling hardware, and abandon their software except for bare-minimum security upgrades. Commoditization of the hardware and the software is a good way to drive down consumer prices, but it's an AWFUL way to guarantee that you'll get well-designed, high-quality devices with long lifespans.
The sad state of Android tablets, is that community firmwares are light-years ahead of factory defaults.
Right, because Motorola and Samsung don't give a shit what happens with the software on your device after you pay for it. There's no revenue for them in providing updates to the latest-and-greatest software, so you can expect them (as a rule) to refuse to provide any upgrades except bare-minimum security support.
When you decouple the software from the hardware maker (like Android), you automatically create incentives for the manufacturer to NOT spend any time improving the software: 1) Any of my hard work upgrading the software and fixing bugs in any of the free software on the device means my competitors can take those changes and include them in their hardware for minimal cost; 2) I care about selling the device - after it's been sold, it becomes a support drain on me, so the focus is to get the software "good enough to make the sale," and then focus on new versions of the hardware.
How many phones out there have been abandoned by the manufacturers, in terms of software upgrades to new Android versions after the sale? It seems like upgrades are the vast exception to the rule, rather than the rule. This same sad scene is likely to play out in the tablet space, as well.
No, they probably wouldn't let you go. You're still in possession of an illegal substance. It's possible (though admittedly unlikely) that you'd get let off via the courts on the 4th amendment technicality: since the checkpoint is there to find drunk drivers, and that's the only reason you were stopped, then the police would have had no reasonable suspicion that you were in possession of cocaine or engaged in terrorist activity otherwise. As such, the discovery of the cocaine could *conceivably* be thrown out as evidence, as the product of an unlawful search, but I suspect that'd be a pretty hard argument to carry off.
The point of this law is that the police can't just set up a roadblock and say, "While we're here, we're going to search everybody's car, just to see what we find." I would expect there'd be some leeway for the police to take action if you've got a kilo of coke on your dashboard in plain view, and stupid enough to leave it sitting there when you roll up to the checkpoint.
The only time I've ever been stopped at a sobriety checkpoint in ~20 years of driving was actually while visiting Dublin a few years back, and to be completely honest, it wasn't remotely unpleasant. I had a brief chat with a petite blonde Garda named Niamh, she asked me to take a breath test (I passed), we chatted for a few more minutes about how I was enjoying my visit to Ireland, and then she recommended that I visit Dun Laoghaire, Bray and Greystones while I was there, and sent me on my way. Not exactly the jackbooted thuggery it seems everybody likes to imagine when this topic comes up.
Really? So the UI and the function is exactly the same across both the iPhone and the iPad? The iPhone uses popover elements and split view controllers?
Damn, I guess I just don't know WHAT I'm talking about.
As well as impaired depth perception, night vision, flare recovery (the amount of time required for your eyes to adjust to a bright light source flashing across your field of vision, i.e. an oncoming car) judgement, and reasoning. These are measurably reduced before you are falling-down drunk as well; indeed, they start to become impaired before you even reach the legal threshold (around here) of.08 blood alcohol content.
Here in New Hampshire, there are specific prohibitions against using a sobriety checkpoint for trapping ANY violation other than drunk driving.
The legislature enacted RSA 265:1-a (2004), which provides:[...] Sobriety checkpoints can't be used as a backdoor method to find other types of criminal violations. They must be published in advance by at least one newspaper.
Go figure, the legislature - along with armies of lawyers and police officers, thought of your trick and specifically closed the loophole to prevent against that abuse.
Why would you want to constrain their use of the funds to a single relief effort?
Donor: "Hi Red Cross, here's $100 to use for the Japan earthquake relief."
Red Cross: "Thanks for your donation. But you know, we've received SO MANY donations that we really don't have anything to spend the money on right now in that relief effort. But Myanmar was just hit with an earthquake, and we could really put that money to good use helping in some relief efforts there."
Donor: "No, sorry. I gave for relief in Japan. FUCK Myanmar!"
If you give to charitable organizations because you believe that their mission is worth supporting, and provides valuable services in disaster situations, why would you constrain them by forcing them to spend that money - possibly wastefully - on their response to a SINGLE disaster when there are dozens of relief efforts around the world that could also be funded with that money? Leaving aside whether or not it's the Red Cross, due to your obvious distaste for that particular charity, what's the benefit of earmarking like this? Find a charity whose mission you support, and trust them to not piss your money away on hookers and blow. There are many really excellent charities out there.
Don't you think the military might put slightly better shielding on its avionics systems than commercial aircraft require? You know, to prevent the enemy from setting up a cell tower and bringing down the entire Air Force?
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And, one more time, if this were as common as you're suggesting, then the courts would be FILLED with antitrust and price-fixing cases; we would see dozens of them filed every day. Yet they're not. Why is that?
So you provide two examples: Standard Oil, and DRAM price fixing, and links to a wikipedia page listing 8 or so cases. And from this, we are supposed to draw the conclusion that antitrust cases are common, and that the only reason we are not subject to monopolies and price fixing and cartels in EVERY industry is because of the eternal vigilance of our government, breaking down these horrible monopolies on our behalf?
Suggesting that price fixing, cartels, and monopolies are the default mode of business is just as foolish as suggesting that these things never happen. They are, without a doubt, the exception. But you are trying to paint them as the rule, and you've fallen far short of demonstrating that to be the case.
This assumes that, as a business owner, I would love nothing more than for you to spend your money at my competitors. In point of fact, as a business owner, I *don't* want you to spend your money at my competitor's place, I want you to spend it at *my* place.
So, how do I get a consumer to patronize my place of business? Right. By lowering my prices.
All these theories suggest that the world should be full of nothing but cartels and oligopolies and monopolies today. And yet, that's substantially not the case, in almost every industry where the government has not currently (or historically) granted a specific company monopoly status (public utilities, and telecom, most notably).
Please explain.
I don't know, you tell me - why is it that we don't see monopolies everywhere in every aspect of life? Why is it that telecom seems to be the big one, and that telecom has historically been granted *monopoly status by the government*? Why aren't grocery stores, book stores, restaurants, auto dealerships, and just about every other purchase you make everyday subject to monopoly status, if monopoly is the inevitable end result of any industry's progression?
You also lived on a continent that is easily a fraction of the size, with nearly triple the population density - 33.7/km^2 in the US, 115.9/km^2 in the European Union, in an area almost half the size of the US (~4.3million km^2 for EU, ~9.8million km^2 for US);
Given those figures, it's also pretty easy to see why "last mile" coverage is a lot harder with infrastructure in the US - the population is much more spread out, and spread out over a much higher area: this means, obviously, that the physical act of stringing and maintaining the cable (and/or building the towers), even if it costs exactly the same per foot of cable / per tower, costs significantly more to build in the US, and each unit of area you cover has a substantially lower return because each unit of area contains less possible subscribers.
You can't just hand-wave away these differences in the cost of providing the service. This is not a defense of the existing quality of service, but you can't simply assume that the costs of doing business are exactly the same everywhere, because they're not. The US is much larger, with a much more spread out population. The capital required to build and maintain infrastructure is thus much larger, and that infrastructure generates much lower revenues per unit of area as a result. I'd love to have the coverage I had when I was in Dublin a couple years back, but I'm also realistic enough to understand that stringing cables into the middle of nowhere is going to be done at a loss, and no company can operate at a loss forever.
You are, of course, engaging in hand-waving assertions that are not even remotely true.
Please explain the myriad choices I have for just about anything I want to purchase, except for public utilities, and phone/cable service, which are typically de facto monopolies due to the high expense of laying private cable to every residence in existence, if every industry will absolutely end up being dominated by a pure monopoly with no competition that has absorbed or destroyed all its competitors?
Last I checked I have half a dozen car manufacturers; No less than 4 grocery stores. at least half a dozen different brands of gasoline. At least 3 bookstores (B&N, Borders, and a smaller independent shop). Dozens of restaurants (and multiple choices for many cuisines), no less than 4 different brands of coffee shop, 3 different department stores; all of this, within a 10 minute drive of where I live. I could go on listing examples of the numerous choices-per-industry available to me, but I suspect you get the point, and you also know that your claims literally won't stand up to a [citation needed] response.
They started pumping seawater into the reactors the day after the tsunami hit.
Even after they were pumping seawater in, they were having trouble keeping the fuel rods & reactor cores covered and cool.
This is not a case of "oh they waited and then, bam, Chernobyl." Your assertion that they waited for "days" is, simply put, completely incorrect.
Jesus christ, do you have the least understanding of how these reactors work? It takes months for them to cool down safely under normal circumstances. This means that they need the cooling systems to not break down and corrode away even after they have power back on. This means that injecting seawater into the reactor could make that eventual cooling-down even more risky, as the seawater leaves all kinds of impurities and salts behind when it boils away - clogging up cooling system components, and generally making the system less efficient.
THIS is why they want to avoid pumping the reactor full of seawater. They began pumping in seawater the NEXT DAY after the tsunami struck. That was a "last ditch" effort - not because they were trying to "save the reactors," but because they were trying to "save the cooling systems" for the months-long process of safely cooling down the reactors until they can be fully shut down and the fuel safely removed. If you prevent a meltdown today, and end up with a meltdown tomorrow because you destroyed your cooling system, what the hell difference does it make?
They weren't trying to "save the reactors" if they were pumping seawater into them on March 12 (tsunami struck on March 11). It is entirely reasonable for them to have tried to see if they could get power back to the cooling systems in time to prevent having to take cooling steps that would cause widespread damage inside the reactor and the reactor cooling system, which will now hamper their efforts to cool down the reactors safely indefinitely.
You do realize that it takes - literally - months to cool down a nuclear reactor... right? Decay heat from the fuel continues boiling away water at a very high rate for months. It's not like they can just dump a bit of salt water into the core and let it sit for a day or two, then wipe their foreheads and go, "Phew, we really dodged a bullet on that one."
Injecting a bunch of contaminated and impure water into the core means many of those impurities get left behind when the water boils off. Salts, organics, and all kinds of other impurities that can react with the containment vessel (weakening it), the fuel (breaking down the components of the fuel rods), and the cooling system itself. And meanwhile, all of those things must be cooled down for months until they're at a safe enough temperature that they can be removed, and moved to long term storage or reprocessing.
But yeah, I can see why you'd want to introduce corrosive materials into a critical reactor component at the first sign of any trouble, rather than trying to bring the regular cooling system (which uses purified water) back online. Why worry about all those impurities clogging heat exchangers and valves, making it more difficult to run the cooling system properly once power is restored, right?
And I'm the daft one.
And so, instead of spending time trying to restore the *actual cooling system* that was designed to handle the stresses of cooling the reactor without injecting corrosive metals into the reactor core - the same systems which you just opined were completely functional, and simply lacked power - they should have just immediately gone to the lengths of injecting saltwater with numerous unknown contaminants into the reactor core?
Again, in your professional judgement as a nuclear engineer, who also has access to all of the data about how these reactors were functioning, how long should they have waited before flooding the reactor with seawater? Bearing in mind that seawater was actually injected into one of the reactors on March 12, the day after the quake & tsunami struck?
Unless you're arguing for some type of immediate immersion, it's pretty difficult to argue that TEPCO simply sat on its hands while everything was unfolding, or that the decision to inject seawater came "DAYS" after it should have. It came one day after the disaster, it's hard to argue that they somehow stalled for "days" to begin the process when only one day elapsed between the disaster & the initial decision to inject seawater into one of the reactors.
The earthquake happened on March 11. They began injecting seawater into Reactors 2 & 3 early on March 14, and by March 15, all 3 reactor cores had been subjected to this, as well as seawater being injected into the containment buildings as well for at least Reactor 1 & 2.
"Many days late" makes it sound like they dicked around toasting marshmallows for a week while the reactors melted down. The best you could argue would be that they should have started flooding the reactor cores with seawater immediately on March 11, when they had no idea what sort of damage had been done to the reactors by the quake or the tsunami - flooding in seawater may have made the problem worse by damaging a marginally-functional cooling system to the point where it would stop cooling things.
But, since you're apparently a nuclear engineer, how quickly - in your professional judgement - should they have written everything off and concluded that seawater was the only possible way to cool things down? I presume you have access to all of the data and information that the Japanese engineers have access to, as well?
No, it's not easy enough to reason & conclude this, please walk us through your reasoning. I fail to see how the inevitable "natural result of a free market will always be a monopoly."
So perhaps we should vote in politicians who will refuse to let them socialize the risks and losses? Gambling would be viewed as a lot riskier for these companies if they knew that they would absolutely have to bear the burden of their poor business decisions.
Certainly, and my comment should not be taken as a statement that Android was the one to invent this model. I'm simply pointing out that you can expect the "community updates" to be light years ahead of the "manufacturer defaults" as a result of this model, pretty much forever. Android tablets absolutely haven't invented this model, and given the state of Android phone support from manufacturers, you can expect the tablets to follow the same model.
No manufacturer is going to spend a bit more time than they are absolutely legally required to on updating software - there's simply no margin in it. Every developer they have to put on staff to port new versions of software to is that much less profit they make. It's a race to the bottom, and this is why computer manufacturers have (generally) quite thin margins. Unless the device manufacturer controls the end-to-end functionality of the device (hardware and software) it's a hard spot to be in.
No, they wouldn't have a great selling point, because the device they were offering to sell would cost orders of magnitude more than it does today, and very few people would be willing to buy it. This is the reason they still haven't built a car that will run for 500,000 miles with virtually no maintenance and get 100 miles to the gallon.
Of course not - because they are decoupled. Dell makes the hardware, Microsoft makes the software. Microsoft doesn't exactly have a sterling track record with providing updates and high-quality software, and Dell doesn't exactly have a sterling track record with providing an amazingly well-built piece of hardware. Dell cares about selling hardware. Microsoft cares about selling software. This means that they are both aiming for the lowest common denominator - something that works "well enough" to sell the product. Each has plausible deniability: "Your device isn't working? Must be the other guy's fault. Go talk to them."
Your solution of "releasing everything under the GPL" just dumps the mess back in the lap of the consumer: "You want upgrades? Go get them yourself."
The net result of this is exactly what we've seen: hardware manufacturers who only care about selling hardware, and abandon their software except for bare-minimum security upgrades. Commoditization of the hardware and the software is a good way to drive down consumer prices, but it's an AWFUL way to guarantee that you'll get well-designed, high-quality devices with long lifespans.
Right, because Motorola and Samsung don't give a shit what happens with the software on your device after you pay for it. There's no revenue for them in providing updates to the latest-and-greatest software, so you can expect them (as a rule) to refuse to provide any upgrades except bare-minimum security support.
When you decouple the software from the hardware maker (like Android), you automatically create incentives for the manufacturer to NOT spend any time improving the software:
1) Any of my hard work upgrading the software and fixing bugs in any of the free software on the device means my competitors can take those changes and include them in their hardware for minimal cost;
2) I care about selling the device - after it's been sold, it becomes a support drain on me, so the focus is to get the software "good enough to make the sale," and then focus on new versions of the hardware.
How many phones out there have been abandoned by the manufacturers, in terms of software upgrades to new Android versions after the sale? It seems like upgrades are the vast exception to the rule, rather than the rule. This same sad scene is likely to play out in the tablet space, as well.
No, they probably wouldn't let you go. You're still in possession of an illegal substance. It's possible (though admittedly unlikely) that you'd get let off via the courts on the 4th amendment technicality: since the checkpoint is there to find drunk drivers, and that's the only reason you were stopped, then the police would have had no reasonable suspicion that you were in possession of cocaine or engaged in terrorist activity otherwise. As such, the discovery of the cocaine could *conceivably* be thrown out as evidence, as the product of an unlawful search, but I suspect that'd be a pretty hard argument to carry off.
The point of this law is that the police can't just set up a roadblock and say, "While we're here, we're going to search everybody's car, just to see what we find." I would expect there'd be some leeway for the police to take action if you've got a kilo of coke on your dashboard in plain view, and stupid enough to leave it sitting there when you roll up to the checkpoint.
The only time I've ever been stopped at a sobriety checkpoint in ~20 years of driving was actually while visiting Dublin a few years back, and to be completely honest, it wasn't remotely unpleasant. I had a brief chat with a petite blonde Garda named Niamh, she asked me to take a breath test (I passed), we chatted for a few more minutes about how I was enjoying my visit to Ireland, and then she recommended that I visit Dun Laoghaire, Bray and Greystones while I was there, and sent me on my way. Not exactly the jackbooted thuggery it seems everybody likes to imagine when this topic comes up.
I don't know, why don't you tell us what the reason is if the risk of EMI with avionics systems isn't a concern?
Really? So the UI and the function is exactly the same across both the iPhone and the iPad? The iPhone uses popover elements and split view controllers?
Damn, I guess I just don't know WHAT I'm talking about.
Spoken like somebody who has never, ever touched an iPad or an iPhone, much less compared the actual behavior of the UI on those devices.
As well as impaired depth perception, night vision, flare recovery (the amount of time required for your eyes to adjust to a bright light source flashing across your field of vision, i.e. an oncoming car) judgement, and reasoning. These are measurably reduced before you are falling-down drunk as well; indeed, they start to become impaired before you even reach the legal threshold (around here) of .08 blood alcohol content.
Here in New Hampshire, there are specific prohibitions against using a sobriety checkpoint for trapping ANY violation other than drunk driving.
Go figure, the legislature - along with armies of lawyers and police officers, thought of your trick and specifically closed the loophole to prevent against that abuse.
Ramming them from behind at a high rate of speed will do the trick. Messy, but effective.
Why would you want to constrain their use of the funds to a single relief effort?
Donor: "Hi Red Cross, here's $100 to use for the Japan earthquake relief."
Red Cross: "Thanks for your donation. But you know, we've received SO MANY donations that we really don't have anything to spend the money on right now in that relief effort. But Myanmar was just hit with an earthquake, and we could really put that money to good use helping in some relief efforts there."
Donor: "No, sorry. I gave for relief in Japan. FUCK Myanmar!"
If you give to charitable organizations because you believe that their mission is worth supporting, and provides valuable services in disaster situations, why would you constrain them by forcing them to spend that money - possibly wastefully - on their response to a SINGLE disaster when there are dozens of relief efforts around the world that could also be funded with that money? Leaving aside whether or not it's the Red Cross, due to your obvious distaste for that particular charity, what's the benefit of earmarking like this? Find a charity whose mission you support, and trust them to not piss your money away on hookers and blow. There are many really excellent charities out there.
Right, it's much better to stand by and do nothing in the face of tragedy.
Because DDOS'ing them will get those payments processed faster?
Don't you think the military might put slightly better shielding on its avionics systems than commercial aircraft require? You know, to prevent the enemy from setting up a cell tower and bringing down the entire Air Force?