Who's they?

I'm my own Grandpa!

People love it. I know people that it's the only thing they care about. They didn't _have_ to bribe politicians. People cheerfully vote in favor of their stadiums just so they could have a team.

Gun Control. Legalized Drugs. Health Care. Terrorism. Tough on Crime. Gay Marriage.

We, the electorate, have a laundry list of issues that are important to us. While the wealthy care about just one thing: their pocket books. It's easy to divide and conqueror us.

they are capable for a little while. Usually the 90 days to get out of any warranty work. Maybe a few of 'em even run at the clock freqs without crashing. It's not just clock freq either. Nvidia shuts off broken cores in software. You're games might run but they'll crash a lot. What Nvidia's worried about is that You'll blame them for a buggy card and go buy AMD. It has major brand damage potential especially with Alibaba about to become a household word what with their IPO.

I'm guessing this is a response to Alibaba, where you can buy a $300 graphics card for $100 so long as you're OK with being an $80 card with a flashed bios. Remember folks, if it looks too good to be true it probably is :(.

they ran scary commercials targeted at clueless old people about the dangers of over regulation so they could pass laws that let them stop paying people for the power they generated and bill them a fee for having solar connected to the grid. I'm genuinely embarrassed to say it worked...

You're not reading my post....

Foxconn is a lousy company that does lousy things. They know this, and don't put up a friendly image about it or pretend like they care about their workers. Costco they ain't. They're in it to make money and they're going to do it in whatever way the law allows

No large tech company has gone beyond Apple, but then again at least most are honest about the unpleasant things they do (in so much as the law and legal liabliity allows).

Apple goes on and on and on about how they care deeply about their workers. That's actually worse, because it gives people an excuse to ignore the horrible things their suppliers are doing. It's like buying a Prius. It makes you feel better without actually _doing_ anything better. It's a set back.

will never allow us to blow each other up. The Soviet Union/Russia was not and is not a threat. This is Wargarble that serves one of 3 purposes: to keep the economy going with the military industrial complex (since real socialism is a pill Americans can't swallow), an excuse for ever lowering standards of living or just plain 'ole war profiteering.

I remember a few years ago a bunch of Pakistani terrorists hit a major building in India. There was strong evidence the Pakistani gov't was aware of the impending attack and said nothing. I was all set for WWIII and then... nothing. Not so much as a wimper.

See, dropping bombs on people that can't fight back from $2 million dollar drones is profitable. Real, large scale total war isn't.

Not so much. Critical to the _investor class_ maybe? But for anyone in tech this is the end of what's left of their careers. How are we suppose to compete which borderline indentured servitude?

Also, Foxconn doesn't make public statements about their commitment to workers rights while cheerfully ignoring the abuses. I was prepared to give Apple a pass the first time they claimed they weren't aware. The second I was leery. We're on something like the 5th or 6th report. Apple, like all tech companies, abuses it's workforce. The difference is they spend a lot of time claiming they don't....

And tried them with off the wall games? Like Psychonauts, Stranger's Odyssey, older Need For Speed games or Maybe Fallout 3? I'm wondering how stable they are these days. The 4000 serious turned me off ATI again. Ran fine on Call of Duty and other big titles but the smaller ones were really unstable :(... I miss the nicer image quality, better performance and lower prices...

I'll stop bashing when I stop reading reports about their Labor abuses. Deal?

and Germany. And the Netherlands. And a tonne of other countries where Socialism works just fine thank you very much. What _doesn't_ work is mixing American Style right-wing Reagan-Thatcher politics in. See the UK's collapsing economy for that, or wealth inequality in the U.S. that's gone back to pre-Black Tuesday leves.

Also, there's this little think called progress. I'm too lazy to google for the Robert Reich infographic that show that productivity is up 80% since 1979 but wages are only up 8% (and that proves wages stopped growing in America in 1979). Forget all that. We're rapidly automating away just about every job. Even _China_ is replacing workers with robots. When robots are cheaper than Chinese slave labor you know you have a problem.

So, when we don't need people to work 20 hours a week let alone the 50 they're doing now (you can google the /. article on that one too) what the _heck_ do we do with 'em all. The world _doesn't_ need ditch diggers....

the real capitalists are global. They benefit from us competing with cheaper labor. Marx predicted this but all anyone can remember about him is that a few dictators used his books for rhetoric.

As for Adam Smith, he actually as against this sort of naked capitalism. He wrote at a time of small merchant artisans. He didn't see the industrial revolution coming and if he had probably wouldn't have written the books he did. These days he's like Marx: all anybody remembers about him is what fits in with what they want.