Yeah, I eventually realized that it's better to live life than pretend to live a different life. So I sold off all my stuff last year, for about eight thousand dollars (just the stuff, didn't sell any characters themselves), and that's it for me. I doubt I'll ever play another game that requires such a time investment.
My foster mother (in the U.S.) had a weird kind of thing going with her sister (in Canada). They aren't twins, of either type, just siblings. My foster mother, several times over the course of a year, said something like, "I haven't heard from my sister in a while. I wonder how she's doing." Then within five minutes, she'd get a long distance telephone call from her sister. That could, of course, be coincidence. However, I saw it happen enough times in a short enough period of time that I at least HAD to wonder if it wasn't something beyond coincidence.
As a rational person, communicating telepathically with another person -- I just don't see how it's possible. But who knows. I have no real explanation for that odd thing that my foster mother and her sister have going, other than coincidence, but that'd have to be one hell of a coincidence.
I believe that is Israel's point: if you kidnap one of their people, they'll blow away 30 or 50 of yours. Eventually, the Palestinians will either stop kidnapping Israelis, or there won't be any Palestinians left alive to do any more kidnapping. Which path they choose is up to them.
This seems similar to how the Mongol empire worked. If you stole something, you'd lose a hand, or two. Commit a more serious crime, you die. Commit a very serious crime and you AND all your family die. Net result: not a whole ton of crime, so little that it was said a beautiful virgin carrying a sack of gold could walk unmolested across the expanse of the empire. The price of that safety was the harshness of the punishments levied against criminals. But it certainly worked!
I participated in the invasion of Grenada back in the 80s. For some insane reason, my 'superiors' decided to build our radio site at the bottom of a valley, right next to a small swamp. Being that this was a tropical area, swamp meant mosquitoes, in mind-boggling numbers. The Cuban POWs screaming next door were annoying, but eventually they were gone, but the swamp and the mosquitoes remained.
My mosquito-prevention methods reflected the harshness of living next to a swamp in the tropics. To get ready to (try to) sleep, about an hour before sunset I would close my tent up tight, then set afire a coffee can half-full of mosquito coils. It was not uncommon for me to hear newly-arrived people screaming "fire!" at all the smoke pouring out of my tent. Once those coils had burned down, I'd slip into my tent, open the doors to get some breeze going, then light three more mosquito coils right beneath my cot. While that smoke was billowing up around my cot, I'd slip under the mosquito netting, then spend ten or fifteen minutes finding and killing the mosquitoes that had somehow managed to slip beneath the net and were still alive. Finally, I'd try to sleep. And even after this comprehensive ritual of mosquito destruction, I'd still wake up each morning heavily bitten, with half a dozen blood-plumped mosquitoes clinging to my netting.
These weren't particularly large mosquitoes. What they lacked in individual size though, they more than made up for in sheer numbers and determination to feast on human blood. One soldier was apparently allergic to mosquito bites. By the second or third day there he was just covered in huge red welts, and had to be shipped back to the States on the next flight back to Fort Bragg.
I've hunted and camped all over the U.S., and other countries as well, but in terms of nasty mosquitoes *nothing* compared to that swampy area in that valley in Grenada. It was the stuff of nightmares.
We, the U.S., are certainly prosperous, but I don't know that we're as free as many other countries. After all, if we ARE so free, why is it that of all the first-world countries, the U.S. has, by far, the largest percentage of its population living in prison? Is it because the U.S. has that many more criminals? Or is it because some things which people in other countries can do freely are considered criminal acts here? (Hint: marijuana != methamphetamine.)
I also don't view gun ownership as a fundamental human right. I'm not really sure there are any fundamental human rights. I know we'd LIKE there to be, but that's not the same thing. The rights we have are those which the government has decided we will have, nothing more, and nothing less. Some would respond to this with something like: yes, but it's government of the people, for the people. To which I would have to reply: you don't watch the news much.
Personally, despite being a combat veteran and an expert marksman, I don't particularly like the idea of every Tom, Dick and Harry carrying guns. In my experience, at least half of all people seem stupid, irresponsible, crazy, or some combination of the three, and I'd feel safer if the stupid, irresponsible and/or crazy people didn't have easy access to guns. That said, there are far too many guns in circulation now in the U.S. to effectively do anything about it. The massive number of annual gun deaths is now just part of the landscape in the U.S. Some countries are cursed with endemic diseases, some are cursed by being vulnerable to natural disasters, and we are cursed with comparatively huge levels of gun violence.
"...the most highest purpose of a man's life is his family, to care for them and to protect them, with body and soul, and that also includes financial matters."
That's not a fact, that's a subjective belief. I believe the highest purpose of a person's life is to make life better for others - not necessarily family. In fact, my woman and I have chosen NOT to have children, in part because we believe that there are already enough people on the planet. Instead of raising a family, we choose to help other people as best we can, and of course that includes children as well - other peoples' children. This also means that when we pass on, our money and valuables will go back to the community rather than selfishly going just to our own offspring. There are FAR needier people in the world than my family or my woman's family, both of which are comprised of reasonably intelligent people entirely capable of helping themselves.
This reminds me of an encounter I had with the police. I was in the Army, but home on leave. I decided to visit my sister, by walking to her home, about a 4 mile journey. On the way I bought a cold beer. Not wanting to be a bad role model or anything, I kept it in the paper bag it came in as I swigged on it. Well, I did look young, although I was 21 and completely legal. A cop stopped me and asked what was in the bag, and I told him it was a cold beer. He asked for my ID. I asked what would happen to me if I didn't provide identification and he told me he'd have to take me to the police station. Since the police station was about 2.5 miles closer to my sister's house than my current location, this seemed like a good deal to me, so I declined to show him my ID and he told me to get in the car, which I did.
We got to the station and he asked me again to show him identification, which I promptly produced. Seeing that I was 21 and therefore had broken no laws, he asked me why I had refused to show him my identification previously, to which I replied, "Because you just got me a whole lot closer to where I was going, and frankly, I was tired of walking in the heat." This produced much laughter from his police comrades, and clearly pissed him off no end, but I had done nothing wrong, and they couldn't hold me, so I left and was at my sister's house about 40 minutes faster than I could have arrived without the police serving as my personal taxi.;)
I understand where you're coming from, but your stance isn't all that logical. It's like saying, why purchase homeowners insurance instead of making homes earthquake-proof and tornado-proof and asteroid-proof and fire-proof and...so on. People buy insurance because it's CHEAPER than making their homes invulnerable to everything, and because if they do lose their home to some disaster, they aren't totally screwed. Likewise, getting some backups for the human race going is cheaper (and far more doable) than making the earth asteroid-proof and supernova-proof and nanobot-proof and violence-free and idiot-free and so on. No one likes paying for insurance, but as someone who had their home burn down last year, I assure you insurance is a good idea.;)
Yes, indeed, people see someone making what TO THEM is a pittance, and believe that it is also a pittance to the worker. But it's not true, and this is what drives outsourcing. Assume person A and person B are equally skilled and perform the same job. If person A is in the U.S., he makes at least minimum wage and generally more. Person B, let's say, in India or China, may make just a fraction of that, but what matters is his buying power with what he does make. $10k a year here and you're poor. $10k a year elsewhere and you could easily be wealthy.
I used to see this when I lived in Turkey; I'd go to the store and buy a buttload of groceries, a *giant* sack of groceries...for less than five bucks. Shoeshines? I bargained 'em down to a nickel, or I'd pay a dime to have two guys do the shining, one guy on each shoe. Cigarettes? A dime a pack (local brand, not Marlboros, but still). I had a friend retire from the Army, but choose to remain living in Turkey, because his $1200/month retirement pay allowed him to live like a king there, whereas he'd be near povery level in the U.S.
As the world shrinks, and enterprises grow more global, what you will end up seeing is a lot more outsourcing, because it's just common sense -- you pay as little as you can, but as much as you have to, in order to get the job done properly. In other words, companies are seeking the best return on their employee wage investments. Increasingly, they achieve the best return by hiring people in other countries. This will always be the case as long as wages and buying power are determined at a more or less local level. You even see wage and cost of living discrepancies in the same country. For example, a person who is making $50k/year living in San Diego is relatively poorer than someone making the exact same wages living in southern Illinois. A house in San Diego might cost $800k, while an identical house in a smaller Midwest city might cost one fourth that.
Until there is wage parity on a global scale (which may never happen), one can expect to see outsourcing increase.
As for whether the Chinese workers are being paid fairly, I have no idea. I don't believe they are being forced to do this work at gunpoint though, so if they are choosing to do that job at those wages, it may be because that is the best deal available to them, in which case Apple should be commended for providing an opportunity for those people that they otherwise would not have. As long as no one is FORCED to do the work, and it is a free choice on their part, I don't really have much quibble with the situation.
Heh, I never understood the concept of immorality with porn. It's moral to HAVE sex, but it's immoral to WATCH sex? Even some of the laws are ridiculous. For example, in the state where I live, you can legally have sex with someone for four years, enough time to generate five batches of children, before you can legally WATCH sex. In other words, you can be legally giving blowjobs left and right for 4 years, but during that time you are not allowed to watch any type of instructional video on how to give a GOOD blowjob. That just seems like a waste to me.;)
On my 17th birthday, my brother gave me a hundred dollar bill and a gram of cocaine. I was in high school, senior year, and they'd messed up my schedule horribly. I was down for 4 hours of gym (which should have been 0 hours), and 2 hours of study hall (which should have been 0 hours as well). It took them six weeks to correct this (!), so I was six weeks behind in trigonometry - which is a lot, a huge amount. I was so far behind the others in my class that I doubted I would ever catch up, and thought I'd probably fail.
Anyway, after snorting up the coke, I had a eureka moment, and boom, all the things that had confused me about trigonometry became clear. I got out my trig book (which I had brought with me to my brother's home in a half-hearted attempt to pass the class), and suddenly it all looked easy. In the end, I got an A in that class. I'm not saying perpetual coke use is good. I'm not saying that most people, or even ANY other people, would have that same eureka-moment effect. But that's what it did for me. Other than making me very awake, that's also all it did for me, so I never have really understood how people could blow hundreds of dollars a day on coke, when the effect wasn't all that incredible.
I also smoked a fair bit of pot that year of high school. I noticed that when I was stoned, math actually became easier for me. I was always good at math (I was only screwed in trig in the beginning because I'd missed the first month and a half of class). But stoned, I became a math god. Unstoned, I was probably the second best at math in my class. Stoned, I was easily the best. I remember there was some theory the teacher wanted us to solve one day, in the shortest number of steps possible, as usual. I was really quite stoned that day, and he called on me. I solved that proof in three steps, but it was in such an unconventional and bizarre way that the teacher gave me an odd look. He asked if anyone else had solved the proof the same way, but no one had, just me. He said I was, in fact, correct, but he called on someone else to demonstrate solving that proof the 'normal' way, the way that everyone else in class had used (even though it took an additional two steps that way).
Again, I am not saying that that effect is normal for most pot smokers (the math enhancement), or that anyone but me has ever had that effect... but I did, and still do, actually. I wrote a web application about 9 years ago, mainly while stoned, but I haven't had anything to do with it in about 7 or 8 years. Out of curiosity, I did a little googling a couple of days ago, and that ancient application is still in use today on websites spanning the globe. Not a huge number of websites, no, but the fact that 9 YEARS LATER it is still being used at all anywhere, well, that was some decent coding. (No, I won't give the name of the app, because that also reveals my identity, and I'll pass on that.)
I have had one issue with pot though. The main one is that it affects my vocabulary detrimentally. I'm a pretty educated guy, with a large vocabulary. When I smoke pot extensively, I notice that when I go to call on some less-frequently-used words, they just aren't there. It's like the rooms of my mind containing the words are still there, but I lose the directions to get to that room. Since pot isn't at all addictive, I have gone months or even years at a time without smoking at all, and when I 'dry out' that way, my vocabulary returns to normal, so the effect is completely temporary. It is one of the few effects from pot that I have found that is unambiguously 'bad'; there is no good reason to ever want to lose access to any portion of your learned vocabulary. (Most of the effects from pot, in my experience, are good; this vocabulary problem is the biggest exception, at least for me.)
So, both cocaine and pot have done me some good. I know they have also ruined other folks' lives, so I'm not advocating anything here; I'm just stating my own personal experience.
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Yeah, I eventually realized that it's better to live life than pretend to live a different life. So I sold off all my stuff last year, for about eight thousand dollars (just the stuff, didn't sell any characters themselves), and that's it for me. I doubt I'll ever play another game that requires such a time investment.
My foster mother (in the U.S.) had a weird kind of thing going with her sister (in Canada). They aren't twins, of either type, just siblings. My foster mother, several times over the course of a year, said something like, "I haven't heard from my sister in a while. I wonder how she's doing." Then within five minutes, she'd get a long distance telephone call from her sister. That could, of course, be coincidence. However, I saw it happen enough times in a short enough period of time that I at least HAD to wonder if it wasn't something beyond coincidence.
As a rational person, communicating telepathically with another person -- I just don't see how it's possible. But who knows. I have no real explanation for that odd thing that my foster mother and her sister have going, other than coincidence, but that'd have to be one hell of a coincidence.
I believe that is Israel's point: if you kidnap one of their people, they'll blow away 30 or 50 of yours. Eventually, the Palestinians will either stop kidnapping Israelis, or there won't be any Palestinians left alive to do any more kidnapping. Which path they choose is up to them.
This seems similar to how the Mongol empire worked. If you stole something, you'd lose a hand, or two. Commit a more serious crime, you die. Commit a very serious crime and you AND all your family die. Net result: not a whole ton of crime, so little that it was said a beautiful virgin carrying a sack of gold could walk unmolested across the expanse of the empire. The price of that safety was the harshness of the punishments levied against criminals. But it certainly worked!
I participated in the invasion of Grenada back in the 80s. For some insane reason, my 'superiors' decided to build our radio site at the bottom of a valley, right next to a small swamp. Being that this was a tropical area, swamp meant mosquitoes, in mind-boggling numbers. The Cuban POWs screaming next door were annoying, but eventually they were gone, but the swamp and the mosquitoes remained.
My mosquito-prevention methods reflected the harshness of living next to a swamp in the tropics. To get ready to (try to) sleep, about an hour before sunset I would close my tent up tight, then set afire a coffee can half-full of mosquito coils. It was not uncommon for me to hear newly-arrived people screaming "fire!" at all the smoke pouring out of my tent. Once those coils had burned down, I'd slip into my tent, open the doors to get some breeze going, then light three more mosquito coils right beneath my cot. While that smoke was billowing up around my cot, I'd slip under the mosquito netting, then spend ten or fifteen minutes finding and killing the mosquitoes that had somehow managed to slip beneath the net and were still alive. Finally, I'd try to sleep. And even after this comprehensive ritual of mosquito destruction, I'd still wake up each morning heavily bitten, with half a dozen blood-plumped mosquitoes clinging to my netting.
These weren't particularly large mosquitoes. What they lacked in individual size though, they more than made up for in sheer numbers and determination to feast on human blood. One soldier was apparently allergic to mosquito bites. By the second or third day there he was just covered in huge red welts, and had to be shipped back to the States on the next flight back to Fort Bragg.
I've hunted and camped all over the U.S., and other countries as well, but in terms of nasty mosquitoes *nothing* compared to that swampy area in that valley in Grenada. It was the stuff of nightmares.
We, the U.S., are certainly prosperous, but I don't know that we're as free as many other countries. After all, if we ARE so free, why is it that of all the first-world countries, the U.S. has, by far, the largest percentage of its population living in prison? Is it because the U.S. has that many more criminals? Or is it because some things which people in other countries can do freely are considered criminal acts here? (Hint: marijuana != methamphetamine.)
I also don't view gun ownership as a fundamental human right. I'm not really sure there are any fundamental human rights. I know we'd LIKE there to be, but that's not the same thing. The rights we have are those which the government has decided we will have, nothing more, and nothing less. Some would respond to this with something like: yes, but it's government of the people, for the people. To which I would have to reply: you don't watch the news much.
Personally, despite being a combat veteran and an expert marksman, I don't particularly like the idea of every Tom, Dick and Harry carrying guns. In my experience, at least half of all people seem stupid, irresponsible, crazy, or some combination of the three, and I'd feel safer if the stupid, irresponsible and/or crazy people didn't have easy access to guns. That said, there are far too many guns in circulation now in the U.S. to effectively do anything about it. The massive number of annual gun deaths is now just part of the landscape in the U.S. Some countries are cursed with endemic diseases, some are cursed by being vulnerable to natural disasters, and we are cursed with comparatively huge levels of gun violence.
"...the most highest purpose of a man's life is his family, to care for them and to protect them, with body and soul, and that also includes financial matters."
That's not a fact, that's a subjective belief. I believe the highest purpose of a person's life is to make life better for others - not necessarily family. In fact, my woman and I have chosen NOT to have children, in part because we believe that there are already enough people on the planet. Instead of raising a family, we choose to help other people as best we can, and of course that includes children as well - other peoples' children. This also means that when we pass on, our money and valuables will go back to the community rather than selfishly going just to our own offspring. There are FAR needier people in the world than my family or my woman's family, both of which are comprised of reasonably intelligent people entirely capable of helping themselves.
This reminds me of an encounter I had with the police. I was in the Army, but home on leave. I decided to visit my sister, by walking to her home, about a 4 mile journey. On the way I bought a cold beer. Not wanting to be a bad role model or anything, I kept it in the paper bag it came in as I swigged on it. Well, I did look young, although I was 21 and completely legal. A cop stopped me and asked what was in the bag, and I told him it was a cold beer. He asked for my ID. I asked what would happen to me if I didn't provide identification and he told me he'd have to take me to the police station. Since the police station was about 2.5 miles closer to my sister's house than my current location, this seemed like a good deal to me, so I declined to show him my ID and he told me to get in the car, which I did.
;)
We got to the station and he asked me again to show him identification, which I promptly produced. Seeing that I was 21 and therefore had broken no laws, he asked me why I had refused to show him my identification previously, to which I replied, "Because you just got me a whole lot closer to where I was going, and frankly, I was tired of walking in the heat." This produced much laughter from his police comrades, and clearly pissed him off no end, but I had done nothing wrong, and they couldn't hold me, so I left and was at my sister's house about 40 minutes faster than I could have arrived without the police serving as my personal taxi.
I understand where you're coming from, but your stance isn't all that logical. It's like saying, why purchase homeowners insurance instead of making homes earthquake-proof and tornado-proof and asteroid-proof and fire-proof and...so on. People buy insurance because it's CHEAPER than making their homes invulnerable to everything, and because if they do lose their home to some disaster, they aren't totally screwed. Likewise, getting some backups for the human race going is cheaper (and far more doable) than making the earth asteroid-proof and supernova-proof and nanobot-proof and violence-free and idiot-free and so on. No one likes paying for insurance, but as someone who had their home burn down last year, I assure you insurance is a good idea. ;)
Yes, indeed, people see someone making what TO THEM is a pittance, and believe that it is also a pittance to the worker. But it's not true, and this is what drives outsourcing. Assume person A and person B are equally skilled and perform the same job. If person A is in the U.S., he makes at least minimum wage and generally more. Person B, let's say, in India or China, may make just a fraction of that, but what matters is his buying power with what he does make. $10k a year here and you're poor. $10k a year elsewhere and you could easily be wealthy.
I used to see this when I lived in Turkey; I'd go to the store and buy a buttload of groceries, a *giant* sack of groceries...for less than five bucks. Shoeshines? I bargained 'em down to a nickel, or I'd pay a dime to have two guys do the shining, one guy on each shoe. Cigarettes? A dime a pack (local brand, not Marlboros, but still). I had a friend retire from the Army, but choose to remain living in Turkey, because his $1200/month retirement pay allowed him to live like a king there, whereas he'd be near povery level in the U.S.
As the world shrinks, and enterprises grow more global, what you will end up seeing is a lot more outsourcing, because it's just common sense -- you pay as little as you can, but as much as you have to, in order to get the job done properly. In other words, companies are seeking the best return on their employee wage investments. Increasingly, they achieve the best return by hiring people in other countries. This will always be the case as long as wages and buying power are determined at a more or less local level. You even see wage and cost of living discrepancies in the same country. For example, a person who is making $50k/year living in San Diego is relatively poorer than someone making the exact same wages living in southern Illinois. A house in San Diego might cost $800k, while an identical house in a smaller Midwest city might cost one fourth that.
Until there is wage parity on a global scale (which may never happen), one can expect to see outsourcing increase.
As for whether the Chinese workers are being paid fairly, I have no idea. I don't believe they are being forced to do this work at gunpoint though, so if they are choosing to do that job at those wages, it may be because that is the best deal available to them, in which case Apple should be commended for providing an opportunity for those people that they otherwise would not have. As long as no one is FORCED to do the work, and it is a free choice on their part, I don't really have much quibble with the situation.
Heh, I never understood the concept of immorality with porn. It's moral to HAVE sex, but it's immoral to WATCH sex? Even some of the laws are ridiculous. For example, in the state where I live, you can legally have sex with someone for four years, enough time to generate five batches of children, before you can legally WATCH sex. In other words, you can be legally giving blowjobs left and right for 4 years, but during that time you are not allowed to watch any type of instructional video on how to give a GOOD blowjob. That just seems like a waste to me. ;)
Speaking on behalf of Italians, we find the aforementioned WOP encryption deeply offensive!
On my 17th birthday, my brother gave me a hundred dollar bill and a gram of cocaine. I was in high school, senior year, and they'd messed up my schedule horribly. I was down for 4 hours of gym (which should have been 0 hours), and 2 hours of study hall (which should have been 0 hours as well). It took them six weeks to correct this (!), so I was six weeks behind in trigonometry - which is a lot, a huge amount. I was so far behind the others in my class that I doubted I would ever catch up, and thought I'd probably fail.
... but I did, and still do, actually. I wrote a web application about 9 years ago, mainly while stoned, but I haven't had anything to do with it in about 7 or 8 years. Out of curiosity, I did a little googling a couple of days ago, and that ancient application is still in use today on websites spanning the globe. Not a huge number of websites, no, but the fact that 9 YEARS LATER it is still being used at all anywhere, well, that was some decent coding. (No, I won't give the name of the app, because that also reveals my identity, and I'll pass on that.)
Anyway, after snorting up the coke, I had a eureka moment, and boom, all the things that had confused me about trigonometry became clear. I got out my trig book (which I had brought with me to my brother's home in a half-hearted attempt to pass the class), and suddenly it all looked easy. In the end, I got an A in that class. I'm not saying perpetual coke use is good. I'm not saying that most people, or even ANY other people, would have that same eureka-moment effect. But that's what it did for me. Other than making me very awake, that's also all it did for me, so I never have really understood how people could blow hundreds of dollars a day on coke, when the effect wasn't all that incredible.
I also smoked a fair bit of pot that year of high school. I noticed that when I was stoned, math actually became easier for me. I was always good at math (I was only screwed in trig in the beginning because I'd missed the first month and a half of class). But stoned, I became a math god. Unstoned, I was probably the second best at math in my class. Stoned, I was easily the best. I remember there was some theory the teacher wanted us to solve one day, in the shortest number of steps possible, as usual. I was really quite stoned that day, and he called on me. I solved that proof in three steps, but it was in such an unconventional and bizarre way that the teacher gave me an odd look. He asked if anyone else had solved the proof the same way, but no one had, just me. He said I was, in fact, correct, but he called on someone else to demonstrate solving that proof the 'normal' way, the way that everyone else in class had used (even though it took an additional two steps that way).
Again, I am not saying that that effect is normal for most pot smokers (the math enhancement), or that anyone but me has ever had that effect
I have had one issue with pot though. The main one is that it affects my vocabulary detrimentally. I'm a pretty educated guy, with a large vocabulary. When I smoke pot extensively, I notice that when I go to call on some less-frequently-used words, they just aren't there. It's like the rooms of my mind containing the words are still there, but I lose the directions to get to that room. Since pot isn't at all addictive, I have gone months or even years at a time without smoking at all, and when I 'dry out' that way, my vocabulary returns to normal, so the effect is completely temporary. It is one of the few effects from pot that I have found that is unambiguously 'bad'; there is no good reason to ever want to lose access to any portion of your learned vocabulary. (Most of the effects from pot, in my experience, are good; this vocabulary problem is the biggest exception, at least for me.)
So, both cocaine and pot have done me some good. I know they have also ruined other folks' lives, so I'm not advocating anything here; I'm just stating my own personal experience.
I did try crack once, the injected