Read my post again, China IS evil, but we are too. We refuse to cut them off, therefore we enable them to continue to be evil. We should be using our position to force them to become more democratic, enact and enforce environmental and labor protection laws, and generally kick them into the 21st century. Instead we are using them to erode our own laws, undermine our own workforce, and generally let them lead the way to further recidivism.

By your own statement, it does sound like we have laws to protect workers, but they are not enforced aggressively enough. So at some point in our history we decided to protect our workers, and I suspect because of fear of losing their jobs to China, are not complaining to have the law enforced enough. That is exactly my problem, Fuck China, worry about us, worry about their effects on us.

It's not for any one company to be magnanimous, corporations are profit machines they will do anything for profit. Our job as citizens, and our government's job is to put up barriers and make it clear there are some ways they may not make profit. It needs to be applied equally, with sufficient enough punishments that the corporations police each other. After all, if you can hit your competitor with a billion dollar labor lawsuit, you will come out ahead on wall st., right?

I don't see how 12 hour shifts in a factory to attach bevelled screens to an iPhone has any relationship to women in "tech" job (engineering & technical marketing). People in those roles are very well paid and voluntarily put in 24 hour "shifts" when the situation calls for it. The summary seems to be comparing the doctor to the orderly. Every single time "diversity in technology" comes up, someone mischaracterizes it, then someone else draws a parallel to their own hot issue that is more or less orthogonal.

I'm going to say it again: Fuck China, Fuck Chinese Workers, they are not OUR problem. I don't agree with how they live their lives, or how their government fails to protect them, or how they set themselves up for abuse. They should be rioting in the streets, setting fires to buildings, murdering their bosses, overthrowing their corrupt government, whatever it takes. But I have no vote, and no say in their government, and my own country refuses to enact laws that would prohibit american companies (or purveyors of products sold in america) from engaging China on terms that we would tolerate in our own country. Until such time as laws are created and enforced, it is a purely stupid statement to blame Apple, or any other company, for abusing the Chinese workforce. If the law says it is ok, it will be done, those not doing it will lose money and be run out of business.

On an entirely unrelated note of women in technology (R&D/software dev/hardware design/electrical or integration testing), Cook is probably right in that there are things keeping women and minorities out of technology. Those things might be perception based (i.e. not fun, being the one woman for 15 men, etc.), but in my opinion are probably a combination of: elitist hiring practices, unsustainable working hours for family-minded engineers, and to some degree isolation. I can't say how many competent people I've seen turned down for jobs in my life, but it's a large number, they simply weren't the very best. My opinion is that it may be difficult for women and minorities to get through this, as they are likely not raised and surrounded by the community required to produce success. There are a lot of things wrong within the engineering community with respect to hiring practices that are self-defeating. One of them is that by excluding so many qualified people, we implicitly encourage H-1Bs and offshoring, and we implicitly discourage women & minorities from entering the field. We make it worse by being willing to work 12+ hour shifts, leaving the kids homes for our wives or SOs to take care of, for no extra pay and very little equity in the final product.

This is the irritating discussion you have with the people when you try to terminate services, where they argue they are the lower cost option. Not the point. The point is what you get for your dollar, my argument to them is the competitor costs less/bwidth and I choose solely based on bwidth.

Lots of "but but but the value", but once you explain that their other "value-add" services are junk and replaceable with free apps that just need bandwidth, they are reduced to hostility. Google FIber is the lowest $/bwidth option out there, at the moment. If they were more pervasive, then other bandwidth providers could be compelled to increase their bandwidths. Unfortunately it's just not prevalent enough and the monopolies don't have any motivation to upgrade. The better solution is state/muni options where we can vote on our bandwidth, and use that as a forcing function on private companies to upgrade their networks.

Went to reddit and they chased me away with this thing they call "The Motherforker".

Not only not frowned upon, it's actively beneficial to all parties. The "problem" is market based pricing and region lockouts. That actively is socially unacceptable, unfortunately that doesn't really stop the idiots in question.

No, we think Bernie is high. And so is this guy. I'm not sure if they're using the same drug, but the DNC will be a riot.

Then we should burn up the bill of rights, throw out all our environmental regulations and go "full capitalist". We will demolish China, who while strong, could not withstand us (at this moment). We will have kings at the top of the smogheap that rule the world, and those kings may let us work their lands.

Or, we accept that there is a price to our freedom, a price to having nice things, and protect those things to the exclusion of those outside of us. If we have a real need for workers, we let their very best in and we give them green cards, and we do everything we can to encourage them to stay.

Especially surreal when my wife learned to shoot same weapons in PRC at 12 years of age as part of the school curriculum, when around here we'd probably try to bring someone up on charges for doing that. Sometimes the gun control side sounds like the "abstinence only" education argument. Both seem to think lack of knowledge and superficial fixes will solve unrelated problems (i.e. sociopaths running amok).

I guess I don't consider something you post on facebook with inappropriate privacy settings, or broadcast out loud in a bar, or write in a newspaper, or have written in the sky to be private. I don't think the government is doing anything wrong by looking there. But if you have the appropriate privacy settings and/or the reasonable expectation of privacy, the government should be forbidden from it and not given any special privileges.

Let's spell it all out. I'm sure this isn't comprehensive:
- I want personal issues related to my family (medical, mental, social, sexual, etc.) hidden. No one needs to know that, frequently even I do not, but families overshare and it should be safe to do so.
- I want my finances secret. The government already knows how much I make, my employer and investment banks already helpfully report this and withhold taxes. But that does not mean it should be casually available to anyone who wants to go look. It is not anyone else's business, and worse, can be used to hurt me or my family.
- I want my choices to be secret. I am protected by the Bill of Rights against self-incrimination, I would not voluntarily admit to any crime I committed if I knew they were watching nor am I obligated to do so. I should not be in a position to accidentally "confess" particularly to a crime no one is investigating. I may not have known what I did was a crime, and in fact no one may have been hurt, therefore there is no reason for the police to be involved. The government, however, has financial motive to collect fines. If say, I bought alcohol from on a Sunday morning in Texas, this is illegal. No one is hurt, but if the government were to spy, the purchaser would lose his liquor license and I'd be fined making the government money. In fact more people are hurt by the crime disclosure than by keeping it on the DL, but it's hardly 'dishonest'.
- I want my private activities secret. Not all things I do are for everyone to know: I may be looking for a new job, I may have a mistress or five, I may be in the closet but the winter coats are a rockin', I may be working on the Next Big Thing and trying to get a business going but in a position where someone could snipe my idea and get a leg up on me (particularly if that someone were wealthier than I am, and not having to go seek funding), etc. There are tons of honest or quasi-honest reasons to want privacy.
- I may be communicating privileged information to a client, patient or customer with the expectation or perhaps written guarantee of secrecy and have a significant contractual liability should that information get out. It should not be victim to the government (or private corps) prurient interests.
- I may be in a position where I am about to acquire, legally, something incredibly valuable but until I have possession and/or have dispositioned it securely be vulnerable to dishonest people. Ex. Let's say I won the lottery, until such time as I can get the ticket notarized, successfully placed in the appropriate hands, there is a huge financial incentive for a thug to mug me of that ticket. I cannot do this without communication: i may need to make several parties aware of my position and arrange for security. A bad agent spying on me, who makes a normal wage at his poice force job would really like to get that ticket and already has the right combination of weapons, authority and disposition to steal it.
- I may simply not want to be gossiped about, and have the elements of truth of that gossip come around and haunt me later. The less people know, the less interesting the gossip and the sooner it all ends.

I wasn't sure. So I clicked on "terminal" and typed "gcc" and it worked. To be fair, "gcc" seems to invoke this "clang" thing not gcc, but it compiles code and Hello, World! shows up. I tried python too, that also seems to work, if you're in to white spaces.

Not sure what this guy is talking about really. Even MS gives out free dev tools these days, and that is in spite of Bill Gates' famous objection to giving such tools out for free.

I don't think it's fair to call those people stupid, they have reasons. Personally I agree with you, I want a 17" luggable with a fully performant CPU that is just selectively gimped when I'm running on battery. I find 17" can comfortably used on domestic flights with a bit of cramping, but otherwise works great for where I am 99% of the time.

The majority of people i see on an airplane have their little 13" things they need to run for 5 hour flights, then 2 hour meetings and 5 hour flights home, and are just powerpointing. It seems like they have legitimate wants, and different lifestyles than I do.

The problem is not them, the problem is the push for one size fits all. It is more profitable, but it is not good for customers. So just don't buy that shit.

It's ok, they should. If someone offers you a machine with only 1 and you need more than 1, don't buy it, that'll learn em.

You have to own your career.....no one else will do it for you.

Say that stronger. You have to own your own career. Anyone who wants to do it for you should not be trusted. Your manager will happily guide you to what the company needs, to what he needs, but not necessarily what is best or most lucrative for you. I've had several employers "guide" young college kids down the path of engineering management and schedule keeping, and in 5 years these people were unhireable and "stuck" at their employer, until such time as the ax man cometh. Never let this happen to you. If you care about technology, stay as obsessively technical as possible. If you want to be in technology management, be even MORE technical, but go to meetings and learn to powerpoint.

The management where schedules are kept and technology isn't important: this you want to avoid. While it may seem like there are infinite openings, that's largely because of a revolving door as the sediment is flushed from the system. The pay is bad, the future is bad, and your career is that self-same sediment. Do not be fooled by all the letters you can put after your name, they are not valued by most anyone.

You could go the other way: this removes absolutely all doubt that X is an idiot. If you can be seen goofing off and surfing the internet all day, and still get more work done than X, he's clearly a tool.