Well as fast as free speech world rankings go, the USA is 41st in the world
Costa Rica, Jamaica, Estonia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Ghana, Chile, Belize etc etc etc all rate higher, so yeah, seems like that "right" is not that well protected.
mind you the USA does not do well in Education, Freedom of the press, welfare, health, corruption, crime , etc either.
Actually, I think the people who are struggling with the new normal of being unemployed will struggle with the idea of technology helping them emotionally, that is why during the transition it will require people. That and a pet cat/dog.
And they help will also be for those that struggle with the idea that other people choose to do nothing, the "bludger" who is seen to be taking something from them, someone who seems to have a life style the same as someone who "does real work". A UBI needs to loose its attachment to Charity, and after the UBI a cash free society where you can have what ever you NEED (not want) for free.
Those that contribute back to society (unpaid work) can earn societal "points" that may allow international travel, a bigger home, etc as a form of compensation. Property "ownership" will also need to change.
One of the biggest problems will be those in positions of wealth and power who will not want to give those things up, especially the privilege that it gives them.
Ultimately, this will also free up a significant section of humanity who are "explorers", those who will risk all to go to mars and colonise it, because the idea of working, solving problems, living according to their ability will appeal to them.
People will still "work", though it won't be for pay.
Go to any large university, it will have a large number of honorary positions, retired professors who still have a desk, a lab, and continue to do research/teach but not get paid for it.
Yes, there is going to be a section of society that will sit , eat, watch porn, but most people will get bored out of their skulls, they will want to DO things, be it attend classes to learn how to paint, sculpt, play a musical instrument, program, speak cantonese or french,german, maori,etc, get involved in charity work , or teaching others a skill (it can be very rewarding), there will be things like performing arts, comedy, travel.
People will be freed, and like domesticated animals, some that are freed fail to survive because that captivity has become all these is to them, some people will fail in the new society and self destruct.
What we will need is trained psychologists , mental health workers in abundance until society gets over the hump and work free becomes the new normal.
The USA got very lucky, because after WWII they were the only large, highly populated country with significant food and natural resources to not get bombed.
Asia and Europe were rebuilding, and the US go to sell them stuff to do that with.
WWII also ramped up production, that production got converted to non military uses, like farm trucks, cars, aircraft and many of the technologies developed in WWII ended up with Civilian uses too.
This created a huge demand for consumer products and it fuelled the economy well into the late 60's, the the US "peaking" in the early 1970's.
this was when the rest of the world had caught up, they could manufacture for their own needs, produce their own consumer goods.
Where we are now is that US dominance of world trade has gone, in the 1950's it accounted for 60% of the worlds GDP, how its down to about 20%.
What had sheltered the US was the fact that the pie was growing significantly and so it seemed that the US was growing too, and it was, but its percentage of world trade was actually falling.
Improved telecoms/IT and shipping has allowed globalisation, the time restraints and shipping costs have fallen, so that now business can easily be done in real time right around the world, design changes can be handle in real time, and the cost per container has in real terms fallen dramatically.
Labour costs in Asia created and attractive environment for manufacturing, which still required significant about input. However Asia has modernised too to keep up with the increasing volumes of goods, for example Apple sells almost a million phones a day.
Manufacturing costs in Asia are still cheaper than the USA, and they also now have a huge infrastructure to support that manufacturing. This is unlikely to ever be replicated in the USA.
Any shift in manufacturing would come with high automation (which can also be used in Asia), meaning any jobs created would be low in number relative to what is currently employed in Asia (Foxconn currently employs 1.3 million people).
Wages will not rise in the USA, because comparatively they are high, and because the ease of doing business anywhere else in the world allows for most jobs to be replicated cheaper else where. Further automation will also serve to keep wages down, not just in labour intensive areas, but in areas such as law, accounting, medicine, engineering, transport as AIs do the job quicker and with fewer errors.
A Trade war with China will see other Asian countries take up the manufacturing, or Brazil, Africa, it will be a case of whack-a-mole, and retaliatory action by these countries against the US would offset any gains, and they may even make things worse. The worst outcome would be to become more isolationist, the US only having 4% of the worlds population could soon see its position fall faster as other countries continue free trade to each others benefits.
There is also the real risk of US policy rejection, particularly in the areas of copyright and patent that would greatly harm many of the US industries leading to further stagnation.
Bullshit! I think it can be made for a reasonable cost. It sounds like Apple is fudging a few things. I remember when US Airways got it's panties in a bunch over having to give up it's foreign call centers. It turns out that on-shoring all of the reservation processing added only a minor cost increase.
That is because the majority of its costs
Pilots
Air hostesses
Baggage Handlers
Airport Landing fees
Airport ticket counter costs
Fuel
Aircraft
were ALL paid for in US$ and at US prices, the minimum wage call centre costs were always trivial compared to those other costs
Oh I dont know
Maybe because the factory :
Was built in the USA, costing USA prices
Is built in the USA and has to pay USA prices for electricity, water, land taxes, etc etc etc
Is built in the USA so that all the maintenance is at US wage rates
Environmental issues take a higher priority and cost more to overcome
And Chinese wages are about 1/10th that of US wages, not 1/2, so the wage component would be 10 times higher, $100 instead of $10
The problem is, Trump was pushing how he was going to bring manufacturing back to the USA, effectively promising the angry voters Jobs.
It was all about bring jobs to them.
Truth is he can't, and won't .
Apple makes 60% of its profits internationally.
At best you will see Apple split into 2, "Apple International" and "Apple USA"
Given the profits from other things like iTunes, Apps, Services etc lets assume that 30% of profits are US based, so at best Apple would bring back 30% of its manufacturing because internationally there is no requirement, there are no import tariffs levied by the US government, and Apple has to remain internationally competitive.
Manufacturing is more expensive in the USA (power, water, land, buildings, etc etc all cost more), so end consumer prices will cost more, especially when those costs get distributed on a lower volume of production.
You could well see a situation where the iPhone becomes cheaper in the rest of the world than in the USA, and it would not just be Apple, it would be all the major brands of electronics, clothes, shoes, etc etc etc. I am not sure the voters will abide by that either.
ANY move by Trump will take time, and by time I also mean legal challenges. To see how quickly this will go just look at how many years have gone by since Apple won against Samsung and its still not finished.
AFTER the legal wrangling by all the manufacturers you will get them complying, but very slowly. They know at best Trump is there for 4 years, at worst 8. Failure of Trump producing jobs is likely to see him there for 1 term, and I doubt he honestly wants to be there for two.
So, IF apple then drags its feet, i.e. taking time with planning permission, deliberately blocking it up so they delay more because they have to redesign, argue of which state it will be in, delay any law suits that will take, plus any issues with infrastructure (required just to build the factory), they could spin this out way past a Trump 2nd term. And it won't be just Apple.
The mid terms may punish Trump too, failure to supply jobs to the people who voted for him, with the rich getting tax cuts at the same time. Trump could loose badly here and be unable to push through his demands, effectively killing the whole process off. Look for lots of money being spent by corporations trying to influence decisions.
And to be honest, it much more likely that Trump will be impeached before any manufacturing is bought back to the US.
The failure to have a blind trust for his businesses , the non-wall between him and those interests because his children are both in control of the business and part of his team means risks of insider trading is extremely high.
So, all in all, its NOT going to happen.
Well for the 96% of the people who don't live in the USA, we aren't willing to pay more.
More US jobs does nothing for us, but increased prices impact us.
Foxconn already functions is 14 countries.
Can you explain who else has the knowledge to work this out ?
Not you, obviously.
Do you know anything about large scale industrial manufacturing ?
For example, Apple produces about 1 million phones a day, the number of new cars bought in the USA each year is about 7.5 million, or just over a weeks worth of iPhone production. Scaling up manufacturing while maintaining quality control, availability of components, etc etc is a huge problem.
And its not just the assembly, there are all the parts that go into it, what are the logistic of that ? Shipping time, Storage, production flows, getting the end products out the doors
Each circuit board needs to be tested multiple times during the various stages of production, the machines to do this are not cheap, the cost of designing the tests are not cheap, and then in 12 months time they all have to be redesigned for the new model.
There is how much power the plant uses, the maintenance of the plant, water, waste, the logistics of getting the components into the factory, sorted, loaded into the machines.
And they are not just doing stuff for Apple, there is Dell, HP, Samsung, etc etc etc, they are the experts on this.
God, you don't go an see your plumber to get an estimate of costs to get a filling in your teeth, you go to the people who know the job.
And increased US wages will push up the cost of everything else in the USA, including exports. Now suddenly you have more than $2 Trillion is exports at risk because the rest of the world can and will still trade with China, India, Australia, the EU, etc etc etc.
The US only accounts for 20% of the worlds GDP and 4% of the worlds population.
Apple, HP, Dell, etc etc etc will still manufacture for the rest of the world in Asia, they have to to compete in the international markets. At best these companies will bring back 1/3 of their manufacturing back to the US, Clothes, Shoes, Electronics, car parts, books,etc etc etc and this WILL cause ALL prices to rise in the USA because things like the ink used to print the picture on the box may have once come from China and now needs to be made in the USA at higher costs.
A trader with China will only harm the USA long term , the US is NOT the only country that trades with China.
China is already working on an Asian Trade bloc (60% of the worlds population), the US can not afford to get excluded, and yes, just as you think the US can make life tough for the Chinese, China can make it tough on the USA, you do NOT get a free ride.
In other, other words, how much profit in built into an iPhone anyway?
That metric really depends on how many child laborers you can fit into each factory.
Yes, and multiplied by the number of workers that commit suicide before receiving benefits.
The suicide rate is actually lower than the average suicide rate in the USA.
But then they don't also have people going into schools shooting children either.
And before the USA gets holier than thou, they should look at how many jobs get done by children in the USA, News Paper deliveries for a start.
Then they should look at their modern version of slavery, you force prisoners to work manufacturing gear for the military etc. Any one who fails to work gets solitary confinement or other punishments. This is part of the privatisation of prisons, you have corporations making money by effectively having slave labour.
Then there is the whole "tipping" crap where because workers can earn tips employers can pay them $2/hr
And of course there are the croppers/farmers who exploit illegal immigrants because no American will work in the sun for that kind of pay
weird New Zealand has one of the most open economies in the world, with almost zero trade barriers and tariffs , and yet it is doing well for a country on the arse end of the world where the have all the additional costs of shipping to everywhere.
In fact New Zealand has all sorts of issues with the US protectionist economy.
Or how about
Oh, that was your wallet with this weeks rent in it.... hey dude, toughen up you shouldn't have dropped it...DUH!
I find it amazing that so many people feel free to victimise someone else, yet turn around and feel that they have rights and no one is allowed to ignore them.
Treat others the way you want them to treat you.
I can accept some of that, and perhaps this is part of the solution, getting the ADSL/Cable Modem routers preconfigured for the Mum and Dads so that they are "safer" than not.The ISPs liability would be on a par with anti-virus vendors, so I can't see that being the real problem, its a damn good excuse though.
ISPs could also monitor email, most people would have 20-30 people on their mailing list, if they start doubling that list then its an indication they may be infected. Again this kind of monitoring/filtering can be an OPT-IN option that ISPs can offer the Mum and Dads. Guess this comes down to how much you figure big brother is watching, however I suspect they are already.
The point is, the spam is comming from botnets, without them the spammers loose everything: The ability to spam, The ability for DDOS, The Ability to "host" phishing sites, and so on. That effectively kills the money too which is the driving force, be it for commercial gains, illegal gains, or to fund crime and terrorism.
I know at home I had so much trouble with hackers from China I spent a whole weekend and firewalled every IP address in China and I now have large chunks of Korea, Brazil,Russia, Taiwan, Romania and even some USA ones firewalled. I had found that when the kids went to some games "cheat" sites the number of attacks greatly increased from all sorts of places so I suspect that some sites are little more than honeypots themselves harvesting IPs to try and hack. I have OSX server at home running IPFW and its sometimes interesting to see who trys to do what on my network port 53 gets a regular hammering now and again as does one tosser who tried 200 attempts to SSH into my network in an hour.
I also have my router blocking activeX and the logs regularly show people throwing that at me too (though apart from 1 PC we all use Macs in our household).
The likes of free email companies (Yahoo, MSN,GMail, et al) should when notified that someone has used a free email account to try and run a scam is to harvest all the email addresses from the people who wrote TO the adrress and inform them that the whole things is a scam, that will get rid of Mr MBekkei with his 15Million US that he needs help to transport overseas.
The most effective weapon of course is education. I spend a lot of time though the local Mac users groups teaching people how to protect themselves by starting with "EVERYONE ON THE NET IS A CRIMINAL", then loosening the strings from there. I have a large supply of all the scams going around and teach them what they look like, why they shold NEVER buy anything from a spammer and so on. I even managed to get one fool to contact police because he had signed up with some group phsing scammers thinking he was onto a great money making venture. Because he reported it BEFORE the money went into his account he was never charged with being a party to the crime.
Instead of everyone spending millions a year to try and stop spam, how about the ISPs do something like: 1) Stop the machines becomming BOTs in the first place, ie close down all the ports except the common ones but have the option for those who have special requirements to open up those ports. Heck for a lot of the Mum and Dads out there they could almost get away with only port 80 open to the outside world.
2) When they get a complaint about spam, actively seek out the owner and give them some HELP to kill off the bot on their machine, get rid of the viruses, and get them updated with a virus checker/spyware checker etc.
3) Start listing "danerous web sites", ie those known to have spyware/viruses and then giving people the OPTION of allowing the ISP to firewall those sites for them
4) Having tutorials on their sites explaining how viruses work, how spyware works, how phishing scams work, why penny stocks are a scam, as are all the viagra adds etc.
5) Instead of blocking the spam, block the web sites they point to, you can send as many spams as you like, but if no one can buy your fake watches, fake viagra then you will go out of business fairly quickly, and by blocking the domain name this will stop them from shifting the domain from hacked server to hacked server as it will not matter WHERE it is located.
6) Web hosts who do not kill of spmavertised sites and phishing sites quickly (1-2 hours MAX) repeatedly should become permanently blocked.
ISPs should take more responsibility for their customers.
Isn't this exactly where Apple used to be ?
Wasn't it the "experts" who pushed the windows line (on the basis that it ensured they stayed employed)
Wasn't it the "experts" who derided the TCO studies showing Macs were a better financial choice ?
Well congrats everyone, its all come back to bite you on the A$$ because all of the anti-mac FUD pushed by the "experts" is now being applied to linux, and all the reasons why the FUD is wrong is being dismissed by the management whom the "experts" have so successfully trained to be pro-windows.
Personally I don't give a damn one way or the other about open source software. What I do care about is open source document/data formats and open source protocol formats.
Miscrosoft, Apple, Adobe, who ever can write their own software, keep the source well hidden and do what they like, however the DATA that is created is created by ME, not them, so I believe that I own that data and have the right to access it via what ever means I require.
Instead of anyone protecting their marketshare by consumer lock-in methods such as proprietry formats, they should be keeping their customers happy by having the best products. It is ONLY through this method that we will see software improvements, better interface designs, better (useable/needed) functionality, better speed, wider platform acceptance.
Lets face it, how much more needs to be jammed into a wordprocessor, being able to put in multimedia is crap as the ultimate goal of a WP is the printed format/document, if you need a multimedia presentation then there are other formats (acrobat is one option). Bottom line is if it can not be printed it is not part of a WP. So I guess we can almost safely assume that the WP has been done to death and the only thing keeping it there as a revenue stream is changes in file/data formats.
The same applies to protocols, Microsoft can keep Exchange proprietry as hell, however the data and the protocols must be open, that way someone can create a functionally equal (better?) product. if MS has the best product (useability,support,functionality,etc) and they charge for it and have the most customers then more power to them, if someone can create a better product client side or server side the again more power to them.
To see if this works, well just look at POP servers, Webservers,NNTP, etc etc etc. There are both open source and commercial softwares accross a variety of platforms, and it seems to me that this system has proven its worth over time.
Slashdot Mirror
Well as fast as free speech world rankings go, the USA is 41st in the world Costa Rica, Jamaica, Estonia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Ghana, Chile, Belize etc etc etc all rate higher, so yeah, seems like that "right" is not that well protected. mind you the USA does not do well in Education, Freedom of the press, welfare, health, corruption, crime , etc either.
Actually, I think the people who are struggling with the new normal of being unemployed will struggle with the idea of technology helping them emotionally, that is why during the transition it will require people. That and a pet cat/dog. And they help will also be for those that struggle with the idea that other people choose to do nothing, the "bludger" who is seen to be taking something from them, someone who seems to have a life style the same as someone who "does real work". A UBI needs to loose its attachment to Charity, and after the UBI a cash free society where you can have what ever you NEED (not want) for free.
Those that contribute back to society (unpaid work) can earn societal "points" that may allow international travel, a bigger home, etc as a form of compensation. Property "ownership" will also need to change.
One of the biggest problems will be those in positions of wealth and power who will not want to give those things up, especially the privilege that it gives them.
Ultimately, this will also free up a significant section of humanity who are "explorers", those who will risk all to go to mars and colonise it, because the idea of working, solving problems, living according to their ability will appeal to them.
People will still "work", though it won't be for pay. Go to any large university, it will have a large number of honorary positions, retired professors who still have a desk, a lab, and continue to do research/teach but not get paid for it. Yes, there is going to be a section of society that will sit , eat, watch porn, but most people will get bored out of their skulls, they will want to DO things, be it attend classes to learn how to paint, sculpt, play a musical instrument, program, speak cantonese or french,german, maori,etc, get involved in charity work , or teaching others a skill (it can be very rewarding), there will be things like performing arts, comedy, travel. People will be freed, and like domesticated animals, some that are freed fail to survive because that captivity has become all these is to them, some people will fail in the new society and self destruct. What we will need is trained psychologists , mental health workers in abundance until society gets over the hump and work free becomes the new normal.
The USA got very lucky, because after WWII they were the only large, highly populated country with significant food and natural resources to not get bombed. Asia and Europe were rebuilding, and the US go to sell them stuff to do that with. WWII also ramped up production, that production got converted to non military uses, like farm trucks, cars, aircraft and many of the technologies developed in WWII ended up with Civilian uses too. This created a huge demand for consumer products and it fuelled the economy well into the late 60's, the the US "peaking" in the early 1970's. this was when the rest of the world had caught up, they could manufacture for their own needs, produce their own consumer goods. Where we are now is that US dominance of world trade has gone, in the 1950's it accounted for 60% of the worlds GDP, how its down to about 20%. What had sheltered the US was the fact that the pie was growing significantly and so it seemed that the US was growing too, and it was, but its percentage of world trade was actually falling. Improved telecoms/IT and shipping has allowed globalisation, the time restraints and shipping costs have fallen, so that now business can easily be done in real time right around the world, design changes can be handle in real time, and the cost per container has in real terms fallen dramatically. Labour costs in Asia created and attractive environment for manufacturing, which still required significant about input. However Asia has modernised too to keep up with the increasing volumes of goods, for example Apple sells almost a million phones a day. Manufacturing costs in Asia are still cheaper than the USA, and they also now have a huge infrastructure to support that manufacturing. This is unlikely to ever be replicated in the USA. Any shift in manufacturing would come with high automation (which can also be used in Asia), meaning any jobs created would be low in number relative to what is currently employed in Asia (Foxconn currently employs 1.3 million people). Wages will not rise in the USA, because comparatively they are high, and because the ease of doing business anywhere else in the world allows for most jobs to be replicated cheaper else where. Further automation will also serve to keep wages down, not just in labour intensive areas, but in areas such as law, accounting, medicine, engineering, transport as AIs do the job quicker and with fewer errors. A Trade war with China will see other Asian countries take up the manufacturing, or Brazil, Africa, it will be a case of whack-a-mole, and retaliatory action by these countries against the US would offset any gains, and they may even make things worse. The worst outcome would be to become more isolationist, the US only having 4% of the worlds population could soon see its position fall faster as other countries continue free trade to each others benefits. There is also the real risk of US policy rejection, particularly in the areas of copyright and patent that would greatly harm many of the US industries leading to further stagnation.
Bullshit! I think it can be made for a reasonable cost. It sounds like Apple is fudging a few things. I remember when US Airways got it's panties in a bunch over having to give up it's foreign call centers. It turns out that on-shoring all of the reservation processing added only a minor cost increase.
That is because the majority of its costs Pilots Air hostesses Baggage Handlers Airport Landing fees Airport ticket counter costs Fuel Aircraft were ALL paid for in US$ and at US prices, the minimum wage call centre costs were always trivial compared to those other costs
No, wages in China are 1/10 US wages, and that applies for maintenance of the factory, shipping of goods, etc etc etc
Oh I dont know Maybe because the factory : Was built in the USA, costing USA prices Is built in the USA and has to pay USA prices for electricity, water, land taxes, etc etc etc Is built in the USA so that all the maintenance is at US wage rates Environmental issues take a higher priority and cost more to overcome And Chinese wages are about 1/10th that of US wages, not 1/2, so the wage component would be 10 times higher, $100 instead of $10
The problem is, Trump was pushing how he was going to bring manufacturing back to the USA, effectively promising the angry voters Jobs. It was all about bring jobs to them. Truth is he can't, and won't . Apple makes 60% of its profits internationally. At best you will see Apple split into 2, "Apple International" and "Apple USA" Given the profits from other things like iTunes, Apps, Services etc lets assume that 30% of profits are US based, so at best Apple would bring back 30% of its manufacturing because internationally there is no requirement, there are no import tariffs levied by the US government, and Apple has to remain internationally competitive. Manufacturing is more expensive in the USA (power, water, land, buildings, etc etc all cost more), so end consumer prices will cost more, especially when those costs get distributed on a lower volume of production. You could well see a situation where the iPhone becomes cheaper in the rest of the world than in the USA, and it would not just be Apple, it would be all the major brands of electronics, clothes, shoes, etc etc etc. I am not sure the voters will abide by that either. ANY move by Trump will take time, and by time I also mean legal challenges. To see how quickly this will go just look at how many years have gone by since Apple won against Samsung and its still not finished. AFTER the legal wrangling by all the manufacturers you will get them complying, but very slowly. They know at best Trump is there for 4 years, at worst 8. Failure of Trump producing jobs is likely to see him there for 1 term, and I doubt he honestly wants to be there for two. So, IF apple then drags its feet, i.e. taking time with planning permission, deliberately blocking it up so they delay more because they have to redesign, argue of which state it will be in, delay any law suits that will take, plus any issues with infrastructure (required just to build the factory), they could spin this out way past a Trump 2nd term. And it won't be just Apple. The mid terms may punish Trump too, failure to supply jobs to the people who voted for him, with the rich getting tax cuts at the same time. Trump could loose badly here and be unable to push through his demands, effectively killing the whole process off. Look for lots of money being spent by corporations trying to influence decisions. And to be honest, it much more likely that Trump will be impeached before any manufacturing is bought back to the US. The failure to have a blind trust for his businesses , the non-wall between him and those interests because his children are both in control of the business and part of his team means risks of insider trading is extremely high. So, all in all, its NOT going to happen.
Well for the 96% of the people who don't live in the USA, we aren't willing to pay more. More US jobs does nothing for us, but increased prices impact us.
Foxconn already functions is 14 countries. Can you explain who else has the knowledge to work this out ? Not you, obviously. Do you know anything about large scale industrial manufacturing ? For example, Apple produces about 1 million phones a day, the number of new cars bought in the USA each year is about 7.5 million, or just over a weeks worth of iPhone production. Scaling up manufacturing while maintaining quality control, availability of components, etc etc is a huge problem. And its not just the assembly, there are all the parts that go into it, what are the logistic of that ? Shipping time, Storage, production flows, getting the end products out the doors Each circuit board needs to be tested multiple times during the various stages of production, the machines to do this are not cheap, the cost of designing the tests are not cheap, and then in 12 months time they all have to be redesigned for the new model. There is how much power the plant uses, the maintenance of the plant, water, waste, the logistics of getting the components into the factory, sorted, loaded into the machines. And they are not just doing stuff for Apple, there is Dell, HP, Samsung, etc etc etc, they are the experts on this. God, you don't go an see your plumber to get an estimate of costs to get a filling in your teeth, you go to the people who know the job.
But increased wages would compensate for that.
And increased US wages will push up the cost of everything else in the USA, including exports. Now suddenly you have more than $2 Trillion is exports at risk because the rest of the world can and will still trade with China, India, Australia, the EU, etc etc etc. The US only accounts for 20% of the worlds GDP and 4% of the worlds population. Apple, HP, Dell, etc etc etc will still manufacture for the rest of the world in Asia, they have to to compete in the international markets. At best these companies will bring back 1/3 of their manufacturing back to the US, Clothes, Shoes, Electronics, car parts, books,etc etc etc and this WILL cause ALL prices to rise in the USA because things like the ink used to print the picture on the box may have once come from China and now needs to be made in the USA at higher costs. A trader with China will only harm the USA long term , the US is NOT the only country that trades with China. China is already working on an Asian Trade bloc (60% of the worlds population), the US can not afford to get excluded, and yes, just as you think the US can make life tough for the Chinese, China can make it tough on the USA, you do NOT get a free ride.
In other, other words, how much profit in built into an iPhone anyway?
That metric really depends on how many child laborers you can fit into each factory.
Yes, and multiplied by the number of workers that commit suicide before receiving benefits.
The suicide rate is actually lower than the average suicide rate in the USA. But then they don't also have people going into schools shooting children either. And before the USA gets holier than thou, they should look at how many jobs get done by children in the USA, News Paper deliveries for a start. Then they should look at their modern version of slavery, you force prisoners to work manufacturing gear for the military etc. Any one who fails to work gets solitary confinement or other punishments. This is part of the privatisation of prisons, you have corporations making money by effectively having slave labour. Then there is the whole "tipping" crap where because workers can earn tips employers can pay them $2/hr And of course there are the croppers/farmers who exploit illegal immigrants because no American will work in the sun for that kind of pay
weird New Zealand has one of the most open economies in the world, with almost zero trade barriers and tariffs , and yet it is doing well for a country on the arse end of the world where the have all the additional costs of shipping to everywhere. In fact New Zealand has all sorts of issues with the US protectionist economy.
Or how about Oh, that was your wallet with this weeks rent in it.... hey dude, toughen up you shouldn't have dropped it...DUH! I find it amazing that so many people feel free to victimise someone else, yet turn around and feel that they have rights and no one is allowed to ignore them. Treat others the way you want them to treat you.
I can accept some of that, and perhaps this is part of the solution, getting the ADSL/Cable Modem routers preconfigured for the Mum and Dads so that they are "safer" than not.The ISPs liability would be on a par with anti-virus vendors, so I can't see that being the real problem, its a damn good excuse though.
ISPs could also monitor email, most people would have 20-30 people on their mailing list, if they start doubling that list then its an indication they may be infected. Again this kind of monitoring/filtering can be an OPT-IN option that ISPs can offer the Mum and Dads. Guess this comes down to how much you figure big brother is watching, however I suspect they are already.
The point is, the spam is comming from botnets, without them the spammers loose everything: The ability to spam, The ability for DDOS, The Ability to "host" phishing sites, and so on. That effectively kills the money too which is the driving force, be it for commercial gains, illegal gains, or to fund crime and terrorism.
I know at home I had so much trouble with hackers from China I spent a whole weekend and firewalled every IP address in China and I now have large chunks of Korea, Brazil,Russia, Taiwan, Romania and even some USA ones firewalled. I had found that when the kids went to some games "cheat" sites the number of attacks greatly increased from all sorts of places so I suspect that some sites are little more than honeypots themselves harvesting IPs to try and hack. I have OSX server at home running IPFW and its sometimes interesting to see who trys to do what on my network port 53 gets a regular hammering now and again as does one tosser who tried 200 attempts to SSH into my network in an hour.
I also have my router blocking activeX and the logs regularly show people throwing that at me too (though apart from 1 PC we all use Macs in our household).
The likes of free email companies (Yahoo, MSN,GMail, et al) should when notified that someone has used a free email account to try and run a scam is to harvest all the email addresses from the people who wrote TO the adrress and inform them that the whole things is a scam, that will get rid of Mr MBekkei with his 15Million US that he needs help to transport overseas.
The most effective weapon of course is education. I spend a lot of time though the local Mac users groups teaching people how to protect themselves by starting with "EVERYONE ON THE NET IS A CRIMINAL", then loosening the strings from there. I have a large supply of all the scams going around and teach them what they look like, why they shold NEVER buy anything from a spammer and so on. I even managed to get one fool to contact police because he had signed up with some group phsing scammers thinking he was onto a great money making venture. Because he reported it BEFORE the money went into his account he was never charged with being a party to the crime.
Instead of everyone spending millions a year to try and stop spam, how about the ISPs do something like:
1) Stop the machines becomming BOTs in the first place, ie close down all the ports except the common ones but have the option for those who have special requirements to open up those ports. Heck for a lot of the Mum and Dads out there they could almost get away with only port 80 open to the outside world.
2) When they get a complaint about spam, actively seek out the owner and give them some HELP to kill off the bot on their machine, get rid of the viruses, and get them updated with a virus checker/spyware checker etc.
3) Start listing "danerous web sites", ie those known to have spyware/viruses and then giving people the OPTION of allowing the ISP to firewall those sites for them
4) Having tutorials on their sites explaining how viruses work, how spyware works, how phishing scams work, why penny stocks are a scam, as are all the viagra adds etc.
5) Instead of blocking the spam, block the web sites they point to, you can send as many spams as you like, but if no one can buy your fake watches, fake viagra then you will go out of business fairly quickly, and by blocking the domain name this will stop them from shifting the domain from hacked server to hacked server as it will not matter WHERE it is located.
6) Web hosts who do not kill of spmavertised sites and phishing sites quickly (1-2 hours MAX) repeatedly should become permanently blocked.
ISPs should take more responsibility for their customers.
Isn't this exactly where Apple used to be ? Wasn't it the "experts" who pushed the windows line (on the basis that it ensured they stayed employed) Wasn't it the "experts" who derided the TCO studies showing Macs were a better financial choice ? Well congrats everyone, its all come back to bite you on the A$$ because all of the anti-mac FUD pushed by the "experts" is now being applied to linux, and all the reasons why the FUD is wrong is being dismissed by the management whom the "experts" have so successfully trained to be pro-windows.
Personally I don't give a damn one way or the other about open source software. What I do care about is open source document/data formats and open source protocol formats. Miscrosoft, Apple, Adobe, who ever can write their own software, keep the source well hidden and do what they like, however the DATA that is created is created by ME, not them, so I believe that I own that data and have the right to access it via what ever means I require. Instead of anyone protecting their marketshare by consumer lock-in methods such as proprietry formats, they should be keeping their customers happy by having the best products. It is ONLY through this method that we will see software improvements, better interface designs, better (useable/needed) functionality, better speed, wider platform acceptance. Lets face it, how much more needs to be jammed into a wordprocessor, being able to put in multimedia is crap as the ultimate goal of a WP is the printed format/document, if you need a multimedia presentation then there are other formats (acrobat is one option). Bottom line is if it can not be printed it is not part of a WP. So I guess we can almost safely assume that the WP has been done to death and the only thing keeping it there as a revenue stream is changes in file/data formats. The same applies to protocols, Microsoft can keep Exchange proprietry as hell, however the data and the protocols must be open, that way someone can create a functionally equal (better?) product. if MS has the best product (useability,support,functionality,etc) and they charge for it and have the most customers then more power to them, if someone can create a better product client side or server side the again more power to them. To see if this works, well just look at POP servers, Webservers,NNTP, etc etc etc. There are both open source and commercial softwares accross a variety of platforms, and it seems to me that this system has proven its worth over time.