So, is your argument basically that if we (meaning the West) doesn't actively oppose every single massacre out there, or actively oppose every single dictator there is, we should not do so at all? Either we do everything everywhere, or we do nothing at all?

What would you do if West did nothing in Libya, and it resulted in massacre of thousands?

The biggest threat that Netflix is going to face is the cost of bandwidth to the end users. Someone has to carry the cost of transmitting all of this video data across the Internet, and Netflix is rapidly becoming the biggest hog of them all. ISP's are no longer able to carry this cost and so will be looking to push it back to Netflix or onto their end users with higher prices. There is also the danger of the ISP's becoming their own content distribution centers and shutting out Netflix entirely.

It should be interesting to see how this all plays out.

That might matter to the handful of Linux-users out there who want to use iPods, rest of the world does not care one bit. And your comment has nothing to do whether Apple has "failed" or not. If you look at hard data, Apple has anything but failed. Their lack of Linux-support doesn't seem to be hurting them one bit.

That would result in crappier software. iTunes is really designed for OS X, and it works fine over there. Windows-users are complaining, because it doesn't work as well on Windows. Doing a proper cross-platform app would result in jack-of-all-trades app which would be mediocre on all platforms, as opposed to current situation, where the app is good on one platform, and mediocre on another. Just about all cross-platform apps look weird and alien and they do not seem to fit in with the OS and UI that surrounds them.

Because Windows and OS X cater to about 99.9% of their potential customers, and it's not worth the effort to support Linux.

All of them. Sales of Macs slowed down a bit, but they still outgrew the PC-market. Sales of Macs increased, while sales of PC's decreased when compared to the previous year.

Sales of Macs have increased faster than sales of PC's for several years in a row. That means that Apple's market-share is increasing.

...Whiners keep on pointing out the Mac vs. PC-situation as a failure of Apple, and they keep on talking about how Android is going to do the same with iPhone. Well, if we looked at the computer-business, we would see that Macs have something like 5-10% market-share, but they out-earn just about everyone else. HP is the company with biggest market-share in the PC-business, and Apple out-earns them in the computer-business. Reason being that HP sells lots of dirt-cheap computers at razor-thin margins, while Apple really competes only in the $1000+ market, where profits are fatter.

And it should be noted that Macs are outgrowing the PC-market, so not only are they laughing all the way to the bank, they are actually gaining market-share. Add to that the high customer-satisfaction-ratings.

If that is a "failure", I wonder what a "success" looks like....

iPhone has something like 15-20% market-share, and out-earns everyone else. So how exactly are they "doomed"? because Android is outshipping them? And that's a "failure" because.....? Why is it that people expect Apple to gain iPod-like market-domininace, if they get something less, it means they have failed? Do people think that there can only be one "success" in the market, while everyone else are "failures"? That either you utterly dominiate the market, or you are a failure? iPhones are selling like crazy, and Apple is earning big bucks from their phone-business. I'm honestly at a loss at trying to see the "failure" here....

Which is why Apple's sales came crashing down during the financial crisis, while the sellers of cheap PC's saw their sales soar. No, that's not the way it happened....

People who replace batteries in their phones are few and far between. And the lack of replaceable battery will hardly be the downfall of iPhone.

I think the OP was referring to profits. Apple is way more profitable than Android-sellers combined.

Agreed, tax increases should be considered, however we have also lost a lot of jobs, and the consumer debt in America is very high. What this means is that there are fewer people who can actually afford to pay taxes. There comes a point where you can no longer increasing taxes because the damage caused to the economy due to lack of available capital actually results in less revenue for the government. We are dangerously close to that condition.

When you find yourself unable to increase revenue, you must cut back on your spending to balance your budget. I wonder if people would be more willing to pay more taxes if they felt they could trust government to use it wisely. Given the government's track record, I would rather have government cut back than to give them yet another loan to waste on their excesses.

Here is a chart of the spending by department.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=172

In my post, I may have overstated the size a bit. So I guess we have one additional option -- instead of eliminating two programs, we can eliminate one and then all other government spending. :-)

Here is an article placing the current US deficit at $1.5 trillion:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aNaqecavD9ek

Another interesting site is ShadowStats which shows a more accurate representation of government figures that they have been manipulating over the past three decades.

http://www.shadowstats.com/

The sad thing is that all of these budget cuts don't even come close to addressing the problem. Nearly all of the government spending comes down to four programs: 1) national defense, 2) welfare, 3) Social Security, and 4) Medicare. If you eliminated every other department in the government, I think you would come to about half of any one of these programs. Our deficit (the amount of money we spend more than we bring in every year) is over $1.5 trillion.

The four programs are all basically the same size. For the sake of convenience, let us call is $750 billion each. In order to eliminate our deficit (we'll work on the actual debt later), we have two options:

1) Cut all four programs in half.
2) Eliminate two programs -- take your pick.

That is what it has come down to, plain and simple. But no one has the courage to do what it will take to steer the ship aright.

Thanks!

I was not attempting to open a debate on abortion, but rather to question how much the perceived improvements in life expectancy world-wide could possibly be affected by the practice.

As for sex education, condoms do absolutely nothing to combat sexually transmitted diseases, so while they may help reduce the number of pregnancies, they also fuel the rise of HIV and AIDS around the world. Abstinence and marital fidelity are the only effective methods that can stop this deadly trend. In fact, in light of the scientific and historical evidence, it is gross negligence bordering on manslaughter to promote "sex education" as a cure when millions suffer from the effects of this "civilised" education.

Your example of the unfertilized ovaries is completely off-base and has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand -- or even the debate about abortion. It is the ultimate straw man argument that ignores the real issues of a truly intellectual debate.

I would be curious to know if/how he took into account two items that could seriously skew the data. When you observe the initial dataset in the 1800s, all childhood deaths were reported including stillborn babies and so forth. With abortion, many of the poorer or unhealthy children are more likely to not enter the world. How much of an impact does this have on these figures? How much lower would the American lifespan be if we included the 1.5 million abortions we have every year?

Also, he calculates the figures in terms of dollars, but define a dollar. In 1910, a dollar was worth far more than it is today. I am assuming that he takes into account inflation, but I would be curious to see how.

All that said, that was a fascinating video. I would love to be able to play with the graph and move it back and forth at my own speed to track the various movements of each country through history and so forth. It be fantastic if they put together an interactive website to do just that.

...this "either/or" mentality. That if Android succeeds, everyone else has failed.

Let's look at computers. Microsoft and OEM's that use Windows have about 90% market-share, while Apple and OS X has a bit under 10%. Does that mean that Apple has "failed"? Not really. They seem to be having highly succesful computer-business, happy users, and lots of profits. Apple earns more money on their computers than HP, the market-leader, does with theirs. yet for some reason some people say that Apple should be like HP and Dell, since licensing OS from someone else is "the way this business works". Even though it seems that the OEM's are not earning that much, while Intel and Microsoft are the companies that reap the profits.

If we look at phones, we can see that Apple is earning lots of money there as well. More than Nokia is earning, even though Apple is a lot smaller. It seems that people are expecting Apple to gain iPod-like dominance in the phone-business, and if/when Android overtakes iOS, people decide that iOS has "failed", since history did not repeat itself. Well, Symbian dwarfs both iOS and Android, yet no-one is calling iOS or Android failures because of that fact. And gaining iPod-like share in a mature market like phones is quite hard, if not impossible. When Nokia was at it's biggest, it had something like 60-70% share of the market. But that was a market that wasn't all that mature yet. and they managed that for only few years.

What if Android gets 50% share in few years? Great! Android is a good OS, and we need more good phones. does that mean that everyone else has failed? I don't think so. It seems that people have this strange idea that there must be a clear winner and a clear loser(s). We got that in computers, when Microsoft ended up dominating the market. So we MUST have something similar elsewhere as well, right? I don't think so. And even in computers the "niche player" is earning quite nice profits. Even though they have single-digits market-share does not seem to be hurting them. You do not need to be big, biggest or dominating in order to have a good business.