Meh, there's "good enough" and I find the Nexus 7 is absolutely fine for reading PDFs. Higher DPI may pretty it up a bit, but will offer no practical benefit, unless presumably, the PDF in question is using some absurdly small font size?
I suspect the reason he mentioned the Nexus 7 is that it's about the same size as a Kindle, whereas 10 inch tablets are just that little bit more awkward to cart around with you.
"Personally, I don't think true Communism would work any more than fake Communism did, but raising Communism's ghost to score points against someone who is clearly not arguing for Communism is beyond idiotic."
Right, and claiming someone is some right-wing free-marketer based on nothing more than a statement of fact about the way business works in the real world is equally beyond idiotic. That was kind of the point I was making, so well done on getting that.
As the other poster pointed out, the problem is that Samsung is far and away the best screen manufacturer around.
This is another of those Apple maps moments, where Apple has shot itself in the foot and thrown away another piece of it's products that make it's products what they are to people.
If Apple is now going to be using LG screens whilst Google, and Microsoft or whoever use Samsung screens for their tablets, then Apple has now become second rate in yet another area - display quality and reliability as well as maps.
With Apple you pay a premium but you know your device is built from quality components. If that's no longer true then what justification is there to pay Apple's premium anymore?
It's not even like LG can out-innovate Samsung very easily for two reasons:
1) Samsung has all the talent in this industry sector which is why it has been able to push even the likes of Sony out of panel development and into using Samsung's panels
2) Samsung holds key patents on modern display technology, and still provides some of the underlying components to even the likes of LG
1. I'm not a free marketer, but this doesn't prevent me recognising that being competitive is still a core tenet of staying in business, I mean, how else do you think companies survive? If anything you dismissal of the concept paints you as the direct opposite - a state controlled communist, because it implies you believe that all companies should be allowed to survive regardless of their fitness. Now I'm sure you don't really believe that, but thus is the implication in your desperate rush to declare extreme positions on the issue and assume that any simple mention of the way business works must inherently mean some extreme position. So well done on completely failing to have a rational conversation.
2. It's nothing to do with blaming the victim for the illegal practices, but merely pointing out that the illegal practices weren't the reason these companies have struggled, but in fact they struggled because they were too incompetent to compete, and that given that, they made a lot of noise about how it's the competition's fault, when it's merely their own, for doing a shit job. Or to put it simply, I'm not defending Intel/Microsoft for their illegal practices, but pointing out that the demise of Netscape/AMD was inevitable simply due to the fact they weren't competitive through no fault of their own and that that would've led to their downfall regardless of any anti-competitive actions or not. Again, as I say, whatever Microsoft or Intel did doesn't change the fact that Netscape's product was shit, and that AMD's products are shit.
Still, well done on jumping to conclusions and launching into a knee jack wingnut style argument, at least you managed to do that well, not that that's something you should be proud of.
Meh, this is the same bollocks we saw with the IE anti-trust case, but the problem is, it's exactly that, bollocks.
AMD's probablem isn't just old debt or lack of ability to satisfy demand, it's the fact they only offer an inferior product and it's as simple as that.
Anti-trust cases against Intel, like the anti-trust case against Microsoft were not attempts to stop the sole reasons these company's competitors were struggling, but to at least try and take the pressure off a bit, the problem is when said companies (AMD, and Netscape) were continuing to produce an inferior product the end was inevitable anyway. No amount of court restrictions against the likes of Intel/Microsoft are going to change the fact the problem is an inherent inability at their competitors to produce a competitive product and will at best delay the inevitable (though that in itself may be a good thing).
IE6 ruled supreme for quite a while because there was nothing competitive to it out there, but as soon as Firefox came along that changed, Microsoft had really done little to reduce browser integration into their OS, and yet Firefox, and later Chrome, stripped away at it's marketshare with ease- if nothing had changed from the Netscape days and as people like you imply, the reason that Netscape died was because of Microsoft's practices, then how can you explain Firefox/Chrome's rise when they were up against the same thing? As I say, the fact is they succeded by simply just producing a better product than the competition.
I think AMD is the walking dead, and I don't see why Intel would need it at all, it's not competitive enough to push it along, but more importantly I don't think it matters. There are already others out there producing a better product than Intel for modern needs (low power consumption and mobile), companies like, as TFA mentions, Qualcomm, and others based on ARM's designs so I don't even really buy the idea that much harm will be done if AMD does go away, it just opens the door for companies that are now simply more competent to fill it's shoes. Some degree of Windows 8 support for ARM suggests Microsoft sees this as the case too.
The market is changing and that's why AMD is dying - it neither managed to compete in it's existing markets, nor has it managed to move convincingly to the new markets of mobile. Let it go and let someone better take it's place. Business is about survival of the fittest and AMD just isn't fit to survive anymore nor has it been for quite some time.
Sure but I guess they deem that it's worth it because that's exactly what they do.
Robocalling in the UK is illegal but it still happens precisely because the robocallers are calling from outside the UK where UK authorities and phone companies can neither distinguish incoming robocalls, nor track them to the source.
In the UK most (all?) phone providers let you block international calls incoming on your line which solves the problem for most as most people don't receive calls from people outside the country anyway but for those of us who do receive legitimate international calls I don't see that there's anyway it can be dealt with legally or technically in the UK itself and can only be resolved by political pressure or increasing the cost of routing calls for countries that have this endemic problem of being robocall savehavens (i.e. India) so that it's in their interests financially to sort it out themselves.
"I also remember reading in the BBC how the party was actually disappointed over the Conservatives' decision to block security "hacker" Gary McKinnon's extradition to the US."
The Tories have once again reached the point where they're openly acting as "the nasty party" once more, and are so confident in the fact they've got another 2 - 3 years of being able to fuck out country about at will now the Lib Dems are willing patsys despite the Torys not fulfilling any of their obligations to the Lib Dems in the coalition agreement.
But despite this, I'm not going to be able to bring myself to vote for Labour next election, I'm unsure if I'll even vote at all this time as I'm really at a loss as to who to vote for (we don't get anything like the pirate party in our constituency). The reason I couldn't vote Labour is for precisely the sort of thing you mention - there are certain things from their time in power that were key reasons I and many others were glad to see them go, yet they haven't recognised their faults and denounced them.
The ID card database is still very much something Labour wants, they still think they were right to spend all that time trying to extradite McKinnon, and they still think they were right about the Digital Economy Act, they still think they were right to throw as many benefits around left right and centre as they did to the point of near bankrupting the country, they still think they did the right thing in blocking all accountability about the torture they let the security services be complicit in under their rule, and they still think things like the interception modernisation programme, and censorship laws were a good idea.
I think Labour are guaranteed a majority or coalition next election because of the public distaste of the Tories now, but I also think that whilst it means we can say goodbye to the vocal Tory right, borderline far-right that seems to be getting it's own way despite only comprising a minority of the Tory party, it means we're going to end up fighting the same old shit we did last time - ID cards, censorship and so on.
Of course Western Europe gets them. I live in the UK and business lines are often subjected to them, but in the past I've had mobile and land lines that are subjected to them too.
Any call you receive with an automated pre-recorded message, or just about any call where it just goes silent when you pick up, is a robocall.
This is the often cited excuse for not dealing with it in the UK that BT uses.
So in my mind the best solution is to penalise BT financially for each call someone registers as being an illegal automated call. BT can then pass the cost on to whoever routed the call to them such that effectively as the cost gets passed back down the chain the cost of illegal calls eventually gets passed on to the source making it not cost effective.
It's normal, it's just rare that you have a company quite as prominent as Apple making such an idiotic claim in the first place.
This sort of thing usually affects smaller fly by night companies that are basically either trying to increase marketshare by lying, or generally just trying to swindle customers, or troll competitors.
IIRC a relatively recent example though that was a bit more prominent was one of the UK's major supermarkets (Tesco I think?) being forced to advertise that their prices weren't whatever percentage cheaper they claimed they were than their competitors.
We do have somewhat of a culture of it generally though, every once in a while before a TV programme starts you will see a statement by the broadcaster apologising for something they broadcast that was unfair or incorrect because they'd been found to be lying/exagerating and creating a false impression about someone or something they were supposedly providing a factual documentary about. When they are forced to make such apologies they're generally forced to make them at the start/end of the same timeslot in which they made the original misrepresentation. So if they defame someone unfairly in prime time for example, then they'll be expected to publicly apologise in the same prime time slot.
"He reports it in, nobody will claim, and he will get to keep it legally."
AFAIK that's not how it works in the UK, I believe it defaults to museum or council ownership or something unless they explicitly state they don't want it.
Yeah, to you or I it looks no big deal, what's the harm? but Apple would never go for it, because a 35% drop in their most lucrative line of products would make the stock market absolutely shit bricks, their stock value would plummet in seconds, and literally hundreds of billions would be whiped off the company value.
It'd be a brave chief exec that does that, though they would deserve much kudos for doing it and taking the company down a more ethical path. It wont happen though, because money > kudos in the business world.
"In some cases defenders of using dogs claim that the high rate of false positives is due to drug residue being left in a vehicle or on a person."
That sounds like a reasonable claim, we know dogs can detect to this degree, yet we can't recreate instruments to detect to this degree.
"That the mere presence of someone carrying a substance the dog was trained to detect, like marijuana, in a vehicle hours earlier could result in a false positive. Medical marijuana is legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Which means that just transporting someone to legally obtain some marijuana for a medical condition could result in being searched and detained."
Sure, but that's an argument against the use of dogs, the GP was arguing that the other person's argument that dogs aren't very good detectors is false. As such you could both be quite right - if the point above is true, that it's not that dogs were responding to false positives, but simply detecting residue that we couldn't easily detect ourselves, then the GP has a point- the GGP could be full of shit citing an invalid study based on this point. You of course could also be right however that dogs still aren't the ideal tool for the job regardless, but that's a different discussion and not a counter to the discussion at hand i.e. the validity of the GGP's study.
"Wha?? Someone failed basic statistics. If the rate is lower over a population (where "rate" = incidents/population), how is the concentration (eh, also incidents/population) striking? In fact, it's only striking because of the *anecdotes* sensationalized by stories like this..."
If you're going to be snarky yourself you should at least consider a bit more whether they are definitely wrong.
I suspect they are not, the point they are probably making is that if the suicide rate is say 5% amongst the general population, but only 1% in the industry of tech manufacturing yet Foxconn's rate is 3% then it is striking, it means that something at Foxconn is leading to a higher suicide rate than in other people of a similar income level and job role.
China is a massive country with a massively varied demographic. When you take the overall suicide rate for such a large and varied demographic you're basically lumping the suicide rate for tech billionaires in with the suicide rate for barely making a living wage pig farmers. To find out if a particular company is doing good or bad it makes much more sense to compare them to their peers - bear in mind that the number of people in China employed in this industry is in itself as numerous as many small European nations so simply taking workers of this one particular industry in China still provides you with a perfectly meaningful sample size whereas using the rate of the average population of such a large sample size as you did results in inevitable information loss - it's too broad a spread of demographics to obtain anything meaningful from it other than what it is- the average suicide rate for China, and whilst comparisons against that rate for individual demographics are perfectly valid, extrapolating that to mean that somehow Foxconn is doing a good job of looking after it's workers is where you have crossed the line in inferring something that simply cannot be inferred from the information given- you're jumping to a conclusion that the data simply does not provide. The authors of the article can however, if they're comparing against the industry average, make the claim that they have.
"Just like how Saddam was "unique" in his blocking of weapon's inspectors...except the inspectors weren't blocked and he had no WMD's. Same crap, different pile."
Someone else mentioned Saddam in another story the other day. As I pointed out then the IAEA actually ruled in Saddam's favour. The fact the US/UK simply chose to completely ignore that, and complaints from Hans Blix et. al. also has little relevance to Iran where the IAEA has ruled Iran non-compliant. If anything the fact the IAEA did act independently in the case of Iraq is further evidence that if it's voicing concerns about Iran, they probably have some merit.
But regardless, as I said in response to another thread I'm not really interested in getting into debates about what the US does wrong here as this story really has absolutely nothing to do with the US. As I said in that thread there are plenty of other stories about the US where I'm happy to list the many things I dislike about the US, primarily related to the hypocrisy it spews. Despite this, I'm not sure your second point makes any sense, you say it's not about stopping Iran from getting the bomb, but then you basically go on to say it is. Which is it?
"Along with the USA refusing to filfil its obligations as an NPT signatory, you mean? There aren't many signatories failing it, but the USA is one."
I'm intrigued to read about this as it's the first I've heard of it. Do you have any evidence for it, as I couldn't find any IAEA reports citing US non-compliance on their site which is where they publish reports on issues of non-compliance:
"And if Iran withdrew from the NPT, would it get the embargo lifted?"
Probably not, as I say, North Korea isn't an NPT signatory. See my post here to see why the NPT isn't really relevant to the actions against a state, and why it's just about politics regardless of NPT status:
Note that I'm not defending this fact, and certainly not defending the US, just stating things as the way they are and providing the rationale behind the reason why things are the way they are.
I am genuinely interest to see the evidence of US non-compliance though, as it would certainly provide further evidence of US hypocrisy which I hadn't come across before. Note that I'm a firm believer that the US needs to stop acting hypocritically- a common example I use is strong arming nations into joining the WTO, and then refusing to adhere to WTO rulings against it iself. Fining companies like BAE and BP for corruption/oil spills whilst largely ignoring the actions of it's own companies such as Boeing, Halliburton, and Exxon when they do the exact same things.
When the topic of Iran came up the other day I was accused of defending the US, or being a US apologist, for daring to bring facts into the conversation about Iran. I'm not, far from it, I just don't like seeing conversations that are full of one-sided bullshit. The fact is both nations are wrong, but this particular discussion is about Iran. If I'm not criticising the US alongside Iran in my posts here it's because I'll save any criticism about the US for news stories that are actually about the US and stick to discussions about Iran in stories about Iran thanks.
With all due respect, your information is either out of date, or in place, completely and utterly wrong.
"As a signatory to the NNPT, Iran has every right to develop nuclear power, enrich uranium and have access the full nuclear fuel cycle."
It has the right to obtain peaceful nuclear technology, whilst it is also fulfilling it's obligations under the NPT. The problem is, as it's not currently fulfilling it's obligations under the NPT, it also does not have the right to obtain peaceful nuclear technology via NPT supported mechanisms.
"Israel and the USA are attempting to deny this capability to Iran because they *might* build a nuclear weapon."
It's not about might, it's about the fact that as an NPT signatory to gain the benefits of NPT mechanisms for transfer of peaceful nuclear technology you have to fulfil certain obligations. Iran is currently in breach of those obligations and it's nothing to do with what the US or Israel thinks as the IAEA is a multinational organisation staffed by as many of US/Israel's foes as it is their allies. If you do not believe me that it is the IAEA condemning Iran for not fulfilling it's obligations and simply US/Israeli say-so, then see here, read it directly from the horse's mouth:
"National Intelligence assessments concluded that Iran had abandoned its weapons program 10+ years ago."
This is true, but only a half-truth. You've missed the fact that the IAEA believes there is some evidence the programme may have restarted, and it is up to Iran to fulfil it's obligations to prove otherwise if it wants to be in compliance with the NPT. So sure they did abandon it, but that doesn't mean they didn't start it again.
"Iran has bent over backwards to accommodate UN (i.e. USA) demands for access to its facilities"
No it hasn't, you've got a number of things wrong here:
1) Iran hasn't bent over backwards to accomodate the UN (IAEA), on the contrary, the IAEA has bent over backwards to accomodate Iran. Specifically, Iran barred a number of IAEA inspectors from it's site from countries it has a distaste for (including the US). A country is not meant to be able to pick and choose what inspectors it allows in as that defeat the object of impartial observations of a nuclear programme. Despite this the IAEA let it do it and got on with it's job anyway. If there is any bending over backwards, it's from the IAEA not Iran.
2) The UN isn't the USA, and the USA isn't the UN. I think you'll find there are a number of UN members, including Iran themselves who'd take offence to you determining that their UN votes are controlled by the USA.
3) There are a number of facilities and sections of facilities the IAEA has requested access to, but have had their request deny. This is one of the reasons the IAEA has determined Iran non-compliant. See the most recent report here for evidence of this complaint by the IAEA:
"Iran has not responded to the Agencyâ(TM)s initial questions on Parchin and the foreign expert; Iran has not provided the agency with access to the location within the Parchin site to which the Agency has requested access; and Iran has been conducting activities at that location that will significantly hamper the Agencyâ(TM)s ability to conduct effective verification."
"but EVERY TIME Iran has compromised, the USA and Israel create another hoop for them to jump through."
Again, it's nothing to do with the US and Israel, the US's
"Makes sense to me, it's one of the few public offices that crams all of our children together on one place for such a long period of time. They should have been there anyway."
Are you actually serious about this?
You know the rest of the world handles this by, you know, simply teaching kids to get along and just not kill each other right?
Slashdot Mirror
Meh, there's "good enough" and I find the Nexus 7 is absolutely fine for reading PDFs. Higher DPI may pretty it up a bit, but will offer no practical benefit, unless presumably, the PDF in question is using some absurdly small font size?
I suspect the reason he mentioned the Nexus 7 is that it's about the same size as a Kindle, whereas 10 inch tablets are just that little bit more awkward to cart around with you.
In the UK we have a word for companies that claim costs for taxes on products on which there is no or lesser tax owed.
It's called fraud.
"Personally, I don't think true Communism would work any more than fake Communism did, but raising Communism's ghost to score points against someone who is clearly not arguing for Communism is beyond idiotic."
Right, and claiming someone is some right-wing free-marketer based on nothing more than a statement of fact about the way business works in the real world is equally beyond idiotic. That was kind of the point I was making, so well done on getting that.
As the other poster pointed out, the problem is that Samsung is far and away the best screen manufacturer around.
This is another of those Apple maps moments, where Apple has shot itself in the foot and thrown away another piece of it's products that make it's products what they are to people.
If Apple is now going to be using LG screens whilst Google, and Microsoft or whoever use Samsung screens for their tablets, then Apple has now become second rate in yet another area - display quality and reliability as well as maps.
With Apple you pay a premium but you know your device is built from quality components. If that's no longer true then what justification is there to pay Apple's premium anymore?
It's not even like LG can out-innovate Samsung very easily for two reasons:
1) Samsung has all the talent in this industry sector which is why it has been able to push even the likes of Sony out of panel development and into using Samsung's panels
2) Samsung holds key patents on modern display technology, and still provides some of the underlying components to even the likes of LG
1. I'm not a free marketer, but this doesn't prevent me recognising that being competitive is still a core tenet of staying in business, I mean, how else do you think companies survive? If anything you dismissal of the concept paints you as the direct opposite - a state controlled communist, because it implies you believe that all companies should be allowed to survive regardless of their fitness. Now I'm sure you don't really believe that, but thus is the implication in your desperate rush to declare extreme positions on the issue and assume that any simple mention of the way business works must inherently mean some extreme position. So well done on completely failing to have a rational conversation.
2. It's nothing to do with blaming the victim for the illegal practices, but merely pointing out that the illegal practices weren't the reason these companies have struggled, but in fact they struggled because they were too incompetent to compete, and that given that, they made a lot of noise about how it's the competition's fault, when it's merely their own, for doing a shit job. Or to put it simply, I'm not defending Intel/Microsoft for their illegal practices, but pointing out that the demise of Netscape/AMD was inevitable simply due to the fact they weren't competitive through no fault of their own and that that would've led to their downfall regardless of any anti-competitive actions or not. Again, as I say, whatever Microsoft or Intel did doesn't change the fact that Netscape's product was shit, and that AMD's products are shit.
Still, well done on jumping to conclusions and launching into a knee jack wingnut style argument, at least you managed to do that well, not that that's something you should be proud of.
Meh, this is the same bollocks we saw with the IE anti-trust case, but the problem is, it's exactly that, bollocks.
AMD's probablem isn't just old debt or lack of ability to satisfy demand, it's the fact they only offer an inferior product and it's as simple as that.
Anti-trust cases against Intel, like the anti-trust case against Microsoft were not attempts to stop the sole reasons these company's competitors were struggling, but to at least try and take the pressure off a bit, the problem is when said companies (AMD, and Netscape) were continuing to produce an inferior product the end was inevitable anyway. No amount of court restrictions against the likes of Intel/Microsoft are going to change the fact the problem is an inherent inability at their competitors to produce a competitive product and will at best delay the inevitable (though that in itself may be a good thing).
IE6 ruled supreme for quite a while because there was nothing competitive to it out there, but as soon as Firefox came along that changed, Microsoft had really done little to reduce browser integration into their OS, and yet Firefox, and later Chrome, stripped away at it's marketshare with ease- if nothing had changed from the Netscape days and as people like you imply, the reason that Netscape died was because of Microsoft's practices, then how can you explain Firefox/Chrome's rise when they were up against the same thing? As I say, the fact is they succeded by simply just producing a better product than the competition.
I think AMD is the walking dead, and I don't see why Intel would need it at all, it's not competitive enough to push it along, but more importantly I don't think it matters. There are already others out there producing a better product than Intel for modern needs (low power consumption and mobile), companies like, as TFA mentions, Qualcomm, and others based on ARM's designs so I don't even really buy the idea that much harm will be done if AMD does go away, it just opens the door for companies that are now simply more competent to fill it's shoes. Some degree of Windows 8 support for ARM suggests Microsoft sees this as the case too.
The market is changing and that's why AMD is dying - it neither managed to compete in it's existing markets, nor has it managed to move convincingly to the new markets of mobile. Let it go and let someone better take it's place. Business is about survival of the fittest and AMD just isn't fit to survive anymore nor has it been for quite some time.
Sure but I guess they deem that it's worth it because that's exactly what they do.
Robocalling in the UK is illegal but it still happens precisely because the robocallers are calling from outside the UK where UK authorities and phone companies can neither distinguish incoming robocalls, nor track them to the source.
In the UK most (all?) phone providers let you block international calls incoming on your line which solves the problem for most as most people don't receive calls from people outside the country anyway but for those of us who do receive legitimate international calls I don't see that there's anyway it can be dealt with legally or technically in the UK itself and can only be resolved by political pressure or increasing the cost of routing calls for countries that have this endemic problem of being robocall savehavens (i.e. India) so that it's in their interests financially to sort it out themselves.
"I also remember reading in the BBC how the party was actually disappointed over the Conservatives' decision to block security "hacker" Gary McKinnon's extradition to the US."
The Tories have once again reached the point where they're openly acting as "the nasty party" once more, and are so confident in the fact they've got another 2 - 3 years of being able to fuck out country about at will now the Lib Dems are willing patsys despite the Torys not fulfilling any of their obligations to the Lib Dems in the coalition agreement.
But despite this, I'm not going to be able to bring myself to vote for Labour next election, I'm unsure if I'll even vote at all this time as I'm really at a loss as to who to vote for (we don't get anything like the pirate party in our constituency). The reason I couldn't vote Labour is for precisely the sort of thing you mention - there are certain things from their time in power that were key reasons I and many others were glad to see them go, yet they haven't recognised their faults and denounced them.
The ID card database is still very much something Labour wants, they still think they were right to spend all that time trying to extradite McKinnon, and they still think they were right about the Digital Economy Act, they still think they were right to throw as many benefits around left right and centre as they did to the point of near bankrupting the country, they still think they did the right thing in blocking all accountability about the torture they let the security services be complicit in under their rule, and they still think things like the interception modernisation programme, and censorship laws were a good idea.
I think Labour are guaranteed a majority or coalition next election because of the public distaste of the Tories now, but I also think that whilst it means we can say goodbye to the vocal Tory right, borderline far-right that seems to be getting it's own way despite only comprising a minority of the Tory party, it means we're going to end up fighting the same old shit we did last time - ID cards, censorship and so on.
So how do you enforce that when the equipment is installed in foreign countries where no such enforcement exists?
Do you just become isolationist and block all incoming international calls?
Of course Western Europe gets them. I live in the UK and business lines are often subjected to them, but in the past I've had mobile and land lines that are subjected to them too.
Any call you receive with an automated pre-recorded message, or just about any call where it just goes silent when you pick up, is a robocall.
This is the often cited excuse for not dealing with it in the UK that BT uses.
So in my mind the best solution is to penalise BT financially for each call someone registers as being an illegal automated call. BT can then pass the cost on to whoever routed the call to them such that effectively as the cost gets passed back down the chain the cost of illegal calls eventually gets passed on to the source making it not cost effective.
Who would take over anyway? If Google doesn't make enough profit from them to justify paying them to index, no one else will.
It's normal, it's just rare that you have a company quite as prominent as Apple making such an idiotic claim in the first place.
This sort of thing usually affects smaller fly by night companies that are basically either trying to increase marketshare by lying, or generally just trying to swindle customers, or troll competitors.
IIRC a relatively recent example though that was a bit more prominent was one of the UK's major supermarkets (Tesco I think?) being forced to advertise that their prices weren't whatever percentage cheaper they claimed they were than their competitors.
We do have somewhat of a culture of it generally though, every once in a while before a TV programme starts you will see a statement by the broadcaster apologising for something they broadcast that was unfair or incorrect because they'd been found to be lying/exagerating and creating a false impression about someone or something they were supposedly providing a factual documentary about. When they are forced to make such apologies they're generally forced to make them at the start/end of the same timeslot in which they made the original misrepresentation. So if they defame someone unfairly in prime time for example, then they'll be expected to publicly apologise in the same prime time slot.
"He reports it in, nobody will claim, and he will get to keep it legally."
AFAIK that's not how it works in the UK, I believe it defaults to museum or council ownership or something unless they explicitly state they don't want it.
Yeah, to you or I it looks no big deal, what's the harm? but Apple would never go for it, because a 35% drop in their most lucrative line of products would make the stock market absolutely shit bricks, their stock value would plummet in seconds, and literally hundreds of billions would be whiped off the company value.
It'd be a brave chief exec that does that, though they would deserve much kudos for doing it and taking the company down a more ethical path. It wont happen though, because money > kudos in the business world.
"In some cases defenders of using dogs claim that the high rate of false positives is due to drug residue being left in a vehicle or on a person."
That sounds like a reasonable claim, we know dogs can detect to this degree, yet we can't recreate instruments to detect to this degree.
"That the mere presence of someone carrying a substance the dog was trained to detect, like marijuana, in a vehicle hours earlier could result in a false positive. Medical marijuana is legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Which means that just transporting someone to legally obtain some marijuana for a medical condition could result in being searched and detained."
Sure, but that's an argument against the use of dogs, the GP was arguing that the other person's argument that dogs aren't very good detectors is false. As such you could both be quite right - if the point above is true, that it's not that dogs were responding to false positives, but simply detecting residue that we couldn't easily detect ourselves, then the GP has a point- the GGP could be full of shit citing an invalid study based on this point. You of course could also be right however that dogs still aren't the ideal tool for the job regardless, but that's a different discussion and not a counter to the discussion at hand i.e. the validity of the GGP's study.
"Wha?? Someone failed basic statistics. If the rate is lower over a population (where "rate" = incidents/population), how is the concentration (eh, also incidents/population) striking? In fact, it's only striking because of the *anecdotes* sensationalized by stories like this..."
If you're going to be snarky yourself you should at least consider a bit more whether they are definitely wrong.
I suspect they are not, the point they are probably making is that if the suicide rate is say 5% amongst the general population, but only 1% in the industry of tech manufacturing yet Foxconn's rate is 3% then it is striking, it means that something at Foxconn is leading to a higher suicide rate than in other people of a similar income level and job role.
China is a massive country with a massively varied demographic. When you take the overall suicide rate for such a large and varied demographic you're basically lumping the suicide rate for tech billionaires in with the suicide rate for barely making a living wage pig farmers. To find out if a particular company is doing good or bad it makes much more sense to compare them to their peers - bear in mind that the number of people in China employed in this industry is in itself as numerous as many small European nations so simply taking workers of this one particular industry in China still provides you with a perfectly meaningful sample size whereas using the rate of the average population of such a large sample size as you did results in inevitable information loss - it's too broad a spread of demographics to obtain anything meaningful from it other than what it is- the average suicide rate for China, and whilst comparisons against that rate for individual demographics are perfectly valid, extrapolating that to mean that somehow Foxconn is doing a good job of looking after it's workers is where you have crossed the line in inferring something that simply cannot be inferred from the information given- you're jumping to a conclusion that the data simply does not provide. The authors of the article can however, if they're comparing against the industry average, make the claim that they have.
Sure, I'm not talking about bigger chips though, but more room for heat management - i.e. heatsinks to help dissipate that heat more effectively.
"Just like how Saddam was "unique" in his blocking of weapon's inspectors...except the inspectors weren't blocked and he had no WMD's. Same crap, different pile."
Someone else mentioned Saddam in another story the other day. As I pointed out then the IAEA actually ruled in Saddam's favour. The fact the US/UK simply chose to completely ignore that, and complaints from Hans Blix et. al. also has little relevance to Iran where the IAEA has ruled Iran non-compliant. If anything the fact the IAEA did act independently in the case of Iraq is further evidence that if it's voicing concerns about Iran, they probably have some merit.
But regardless, as I said in response to another thread I'm not really interested in getting into debates about what the US does wrong here as this story really has absolutely nothing to do with the US. As I said in that thread there are plenty of other stories about the US where I'm happy to list the many things I dislike about the US, primarily related to the hypocrisy it spews. Despite this, I'm not sure your second point makes any sense, you say it's not about stopping Iran from getting the bomb, but then you basically go on to say it is. Which is it?
"Along with the USA refusing to filfil its obligations as an NPT signatory, you mean? There aren't many signatories failing it, but the USA is one."
I'm intrigued to read about this as it's the first I've heard of it. Do you have any evidence for it, as I couldn't find any IAEA reports citing US non-compliance on their site which is where they publish reports on issues of non-compliance:
http://www.iaea.org/
"And if Iran withdrew from the NPT, would it get the embargo lifted?"
Probably not, as I say, North Korea isn't an NPT signatory. See my post here to see why the NPT isn't really relevant to the actions against a state, and why it's just about politics regardless of NPT status:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3191577&cid=41680697
Note that I'm not defending this fact, and certainly not defending the US, just stating things as the way they are and providing the rationale behind the reason why things are the way they are.
I am genuinely interest to see the evidence of US non-compliance though, as it would certainly provide further evidence of US hypocrisy which I hadn't come across before. Note that I'm a firm believer that the US needs to stop acting hypocritically- a common example I use is strong arming nations into joining the WTO, and then refusing to adhere to WTO rulings against it iself. Fining companies like BAE and BP for corruption/oil spills whilst largely ignoring the actions of it's own companies such as Boeing, Halliburton, and Exxon when they do the exact same things.
When the topic of Iran came up the other day I was accused of defending the US, or being a US apologist, for daring to bring facts into the conversation about Iran. I'm not, far from it, I just don't like seeing conversations that are full of one-sided bullshit. The fact is both nations are wrong, but this particular discussion is about Iran. If I'm not criticising the US alongside Iran in my posts here it's because I'll save any criticism about the US for news stories that are actually about the US and stick to discussions about Iran in stories about Iran thanks.
With all due respect, your information is either out of date, or in place, completely and utterly wrong.
"As a signatory to the NNPT, Iran has every right to develop nuclear power, enrich uranium and have access the full nuclear fuel cycle."
It has the right to obtain peaceful nuclear technology, whilst it is also fulfilling it's obligations under the NPT. The problem is, as it's not currently fulfilling it's obligations under the NPT, it also does not have the right to obtain peaceful nuclear technology via NPT supported mechanisms.
"Israel and the USA are attempting to deny this capability to Iran because they *might* build a nuclear weapon."
It's not about might, it's about the fact that as an NPT signatory to gain the benefits of NPT mechanisms for transfer of peaceful nuclear technology you have to fulfil certain obligations. Iran is currently in breach of those obligations and it's nothing to do with what the US or Israel thinks as the IAEA is a multinational organisation staffed by as many of US/Israel's foes as it is their allies. If you do not believe me that it is the IAEA condemning Iran for not fulfilling it's obligations and simply US/Israeli say-so, then see here, read it directly from the horse's mouth:
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iaeairan/index.shtml
Or specifically the most recent report here, asking Iran to fulfil it's obligations:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2012/gov2012-50.pdf
"National Intelligence assessments concluded that Iran had abandoned its weapons program 10+ years ago."
This is true, but only a half-truth. You've missed the fact that the IAEA believes there is some evidence the programme may have restarted, and it is up to Iran to fulfil it's obligations to prove otherwise if it wants to be in compliance with the NPT. So sure they did abandon it, but that doesn't mean they didn't start it again.
"Iran has bent over backwards to accommodate UN (i.e. USA) demands for access to its facilities"
No it hasn't, you've got a number of things wrong here:
1) Iran hasn't bent over backwards to accomodate the UN (IAEA), on the contrary, the IAEA has bent over backwards to accomodate Iran. Specifically, Iran barred a number of IAEA inspectors from it's site from countries it has a distaste for (including the US). A country is not meant to be able to pick and choose what inspectors it allows in as that defeat the object of impartial observations of a nuclear programme. Despite this the IAEA let it do it and got on with it's job anyway. If there is any bending over backwards, it's from the IAEA not Iran.
2) The UN isn't the USA, and the USA isn't the UN. I think you'll find there are a number of UN members, including Iran themselves who'd take offence to you determining that their UN votes are controlled by the USA.
3) There are a number of facilities and sections of facilities the IAEA has requested access to, but have had their request deny. This is one of the reasons the IAEA has determined Iran non-compliant. See the most recent report here for evidence of this complaint by the IAEA:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2012/gov2012-37.pdf
Specifically, near the top of page 3:
"Iran has not responded to the Agencyâ(TM)s initial questions on Parchin and the foreign expert; Iran has not provided the agency with access to the location within the Parchin site to which the Agency has requested access; and Iran has been conducting activities at that location that will significantly hamper the Agencyâ(TM)s ability to conduct effective verification."
"but EVERY TIME Iran has compromised, the USA and Israel create another hoop for them to jump through."
Again, it's nothing to do with the US and Israel, the US's
What makes you think the thief even knew it was a police officers home and didn't just carry out a random burglary?
"Makes sense to me, it's one of the few public offices that crams all of our children together on one place for such a long period of time. They should have been there anyway."
Are you actually serious about this?
You know the rest of the world handles this by, you know, simply teaching kids to get along and just not kill each other right?
Dunno, what games are you referring to?
Jealous much?