They would need to take control of the carriers to do this. In an apocalyptic scenario, taking over the carrier would disrupt your phone communications anyways.

I think the most important thing is being able to maintain evidence you record via your phone and that it can't be destroyed by destroying your phone. A solution to that would be proper cloud backups of your data to mega style providers where only you hold the key to your data.

I don't get why we don't just have a treaty organization to have an international IMEI/MEID blacklist.

I'm also kind of wondering how all of this would be impacted by Project Ara, which modularizes phones much in the same way PCs are.

If quality and skill are heavily reduced, then it wouldn't be worth sending work there. You really can't have it both ways on this one -- either they're smart businessmen who know India saves money, or they're smart businessmen who are wise to a lack of quality and skill.

Often times you simply can't afford to hire your own in-house development staff. Imagine for example that you run a small business and you don't have any programmers on staff, nor does your business operate in the IT sector. Suppose you need a custom inventory management solution because no pre-built ones from any domestic companies are available. Your solution in this case may very well be to hire an outfit in India to do it. You may very well not have the amount of money that a US based firm would ask for, in which case what is your alternative? "Not doing it at all" isn't a good answer.

Walmart sells the same food you get anywhere else. Same brands, same species.

Being overweight isn't a result of eating unhealthy foods, rather it is a result of eating too much food. This is what we call a first world problem. Does walmart contribute to that? Probably, because by eating their food you get a lot for your money. It's really up to you to determine how much food you need, not walmart.

Stores like whole foods rip you off. The shit they sell isn't any better than what wal-mart sells, rather it just has a feel good label on it that makes you think it's somehow better. That, and they sell homeopathic medicine that is completely useless, yet people pay out the nose for it anyways thinking it's so natural and pure.

When given the choice between paying a lot more and getting nothing better (whole foods) and getting exactly what you pay for (walmart) I choose walmart, thanks. Whole foods bans ingredients that have actually proven to be harmless, including MSG. Some "natural" researchers don't even seem to understand what it is, like this:

http://www.naturalnews.com/034...

Notice they don't even seem to understand what the term means. Mono-Sodium Glutamate. They refer to it in the singular form, and then point to chemicals that don't have sodium (rather potassium) as being MSG (while additive-wise it serves the same purpose, it isn't the same chemical.) The proper thing they should be targeting are the glutamates in that case (this is the only thing on the "list" that they all have in common.)

Here's what the real research says:

http://www.yalescientific.org/...

Even if it did cause allergies, peanuts are known to be fatal for some people, yet you won't find whole foods banning peanuts. So why all the hate for MSG but not peanuts? I'll tell you why: It's because whole foods caters to people who are gullible idiots, and a fool and his money soon part. People who bitch about MSG are every bit as idiotic as those who claim they have electromagnetic allergies.

You know who follows the mainstream (rather than fringe) science though? Walmart.

And by the way, unlike most people, I actually know what "processed" means when it comes to processed foods, and I'm just going to call it like I know it: It isn't unhealthy. In fact I've actually turned my own health from provably bad (based on my blood work) to very good (again based on the same metrics.) Part of that included eating food at walmart and mcdonalds (prior to this I never actually ate at McDonalds; the reason I eat there now is because their food is so well documented I can know exactly what's in it.)

In a word: Bullshit. The US is still the worlds #2 manufacturer of physical goods. Frankly I'm surprised we're even that high; we're a very distant #3 on the global population list, but most of our population prefers to work in service jobs. So many of us look down their nose at people who work on assembly lines yet at the same time believe that there aren't enough manufacturing jobs.

These sound like developers, not management.

And you know what? I agree with them. Mainly because I don't think outsourcing means what you think it means. Outsourcing doesn't mean "send your job to India." In many cases that particular job never existed within your company to begin with for one, and it may not necessarily go to India number two, but rather it goes to the company down the street.

Outsourcing takes advantage of trade, only on a much larger scale. For example, if your mom makes a batch of cookies and UPS'es them to you, she "outsourced" the task of bringing them to you to UPS. She did this for a multitude of reasons: UPS can deliver them cheaper than she can, UPS can deliver them in a much shorter amount of time than she can, UPS can more efficiently deliver them than she can.

When outsourcing goes overseas, it tends to be due to what economists refer to as comparative advantage. Steve Jobs (who I am not a fan of, but respect in various ways) once notoriously mentioned this: Some manufacturing tasks that you'll find they can do in China (such as rapidly changing design specifications in a mass production line) simply aren't available here. So it isn't necessarily that the labor is cheaper in China (it is cheaper) but that the jobs that you need to do just aren't available in a domestic US facility.

Generally it is easier to not to send work tasks offshore. This mainly has to do with issues like language barriers, customs, etc making offshoring more difficult. You need to really be able to justify doing it, not only due to those reasons, but for reasons like KKK type groups complaining that you're giving brownie a job, or liberal groups claiming that you're not paying dues to the labor unions, and both giving you bad press about it in their respective circles. Both of them are douchebags for doing that, by the way, but that's life. At any rate, if they can do it so much cheaper overseas than it can be done domestically, then you should do it. Why? Competitive advantage (not the same as comparative advantage.)

You see, you selling your product to Americans who will only buy American is fine, but Australians, Canadians, indeed even BRIC nations buy our products en masse. But you know what? They never follow the "buy American mantra." They go for whoever offers the best value, and that can't be you if you don't minimize your operating expenses, which may include getting cheaper labor if that's what it takes. No amount of mercantilism (tariffs, etc) will fix that, so don't even think about calling your congressman. If foreign companies can do the job much cheaper, eventually your entire company moves over there, or it just goes belly up because it can't compete with global competitors.

But anyways outsourcing is good, and in light of paragraph 3, 4, and 5, offshoring is also good. If I were them, I would also ignore questions asked by labor unions. Why? Because no good can come of it. No matter what your answer is, they'll always demonize you.

And I speak as somebody who is in one of those careers that is most vulnerable to offshoring and H1-B competition (by the way, I support H1-B as well.)

Good developer tools, yes, but I wouldn't at all say lots of developers. Windows (x86/x64/WPF) has a lot of developers. Windows RT has almost none. Windows Phone has almost none. Microsoft has been pushing really hard for developers to migrate, but they won't budge. (Examples that come to mind include them sending private emails asking developers of popular Windows apps to port them to the 8 store; most don't act on them at all, but outfits like the Mojang developers famously refused in public.)

I think a lot of developers came to the PC platform to begin with because they don't have to deal with licensing, royalties, skimming, etc. Microsoft demands all of these if you want to publish RT or WP apps, hence it makes sense that nobody wants to go there. They'll probably only accept that if their target platform is too popular to pass up, e.g. iOS, but such popularity doesn't exist in the case of RT/WP, and it probably never will to be honest.

You're working under the assumption that consumers will demand them...I'm kind of thinking that's a negative. I think most of them are probably more interested in having a tablet or smartphone instead. When it comes to me getting cars, I don't really give a shit about infotainment systems as I've always found my smartphone to be much more flexible. Music? Pandora. GPS? Google Maps. How would CarPlay improve anything? Maybe, *maybe* for a self-driving car, but beyond what I mentioned, I don't really mess with any controls while I'm driving.

It is "just playing the game." The question is, whose side are you on? Google in many cases has to lobby just to be allowed to do anything at all. Intuit in this case is lobbying to keep the tax system unintuitive.

You mean the same IRS that would automatically audit tea party groups even if they weren't suspected of doing anything wrong?

Ugh...I don't think I'm getting my point across correctly. This is pretty much the opposite of a "why, no true scottsman would..." argument. You're just picking things you want to identify as right wing, and if that person meets any of those you just dismiss them entirely.

Why not just look at each individual viewpoint based on its own merits/demerits?

I'm pro second amendment, free market capitalist, and anti affirmative action. Does that make me right wing?

I'm for the legalization of drugs, gambling, prostitution, and I'm atheist. Does that make me left wing?

Here's a better idea: Let's talk about these issues individually rather than say left or right.

No, I'm justifying lobbying based on a lot of things. People react so stupidly to perceived problems that they theorize will happen, and it often costs money (not bribe money, but lobbying takes time, and you know how time relates to money.)

It isn't just politicians; it's voters as well. For example, I'm pro immigration, but against illegal immigration. I suggested ending birthright citizenship in an old slashdot post. Somebody replies to me saying "oh but that would cause second class citizens and it would be so awful." Really? Well, in numerous countries in Europe they don't have birthright citizenship, yet they don't have those perceived problems. I make similar arguments in favor of gambling, drugs, prostitution, and others, where other countries have legalized them to REDUCE violent crime, (German red light districts and the autobahn aren't causing social problems there) yet politicians and indeed many voters have this fear about them anyways (and no, it's not just the religious ones, the secular ones fear it as well, but for different reasons.)

Liz Figueroa was overreacting to Google's advertising model. This reaction came mainly out of misunderstanding what google is doing (they actually had people making claims in the popular media about things they were doing that they weren't actually doing) in addition to having her own vision about how the world "ought to be" and wanting to force it on everybody else. Also you seem to have a misunderstanding of your own - companies like them have ALWAYS had the ability to look over your emails if they wanted to - there never has been anything stopping them from doing so. Microsoft demonstrated that recently. Google just has a machine look for words and show ads -- your emails are safe from Mrs. Kravits.

So being for gay rights and anti-creationism is right wing? What, seriously? I must have missed the memo.

Really dude, get out of that stupid left vs right world you live in. There is a lot more to the world than your one bit (literally) political viewpoint. I'm being very sincere here, it's a stupid paradigm that I would really like to see go away.

See my other post as for why I chose the gmail issue and not any of the other ones (in a nutshell, because the article is about Google.)

Tell that to labor unions who demand you pay dues to the union boss or else say goodbye to your job. Why? Because there's a fine line between what some consider extortion and some don't. You can also look at taxation as extortion. Again, depends who you ask.

Screw that; in order to be fair that would amount to requiring every ad in the world be a full page ad. That's total bullshit. The terms and conditions are fully presented to you, it's up to you to choose not to read them.

Uh...WHAT? 2005 was a full 7 years after I already had cable. My uncle who lives in a very VERY rural farm area also had DSL back in 2003. Where do you live, Afghanistan?

Actually you're quite wrong there. The first public facing implementation of what is today called Ajax was Gmail. The Microsoft variant you refer to is missing the J portion, and used the much maligned ActiveX, and therefore was not Ajax by definition. Besides, when the term was coined, it was referenced specifically to techniques google used. Not only that, but gmail was an internal google service in 2001, and actually began development much earlier.

Oh and by the way, I picked that particular one for no reason other than TFA is about Google and only Google, and so I wanted to give an example of what Google has had to deal with. When you're a company as big as Google. spending money on lobbying is very much obligatory. If some smaller outfit did gmail, Liz Figueroa wouldn't have even noticed.

Comcast/Netflix has zero to do with Google. Net neutrality does, but it isn't even remotely specific to them. Gmail is.

I don't really think her being a Democrat had anything to do with it, nor is Cato right wing.

I'd also cite this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It was almost entirely Democrats attacking that game, so is that also a right wing campaign to bring down Democrats? Or is it just a bunch of retarded politicians being...retarded? I mean you can see how stupid their reaction is to this game, so why are they reacting this strongly to it? It may or may not be about wanting their palms greased, but nevertheless money must be spent on lobbying efforts just to keep their game on store shelves (alternatively they may face e.g. bankruptcy, loss of jobs, etc.)

Though to be honest I think you're probably just an apologist for Democrats as if they can't do anything wrong.

So in that case I'll just calm your heart with the following words: Go Obama!

No it's not that. The best thing I can see to compare it to is 2:30 into this video: (watch til at least 4:00)

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-g...

Basically you have to pay them money in order to be allowed to do things that are already ethical, perhaps even legal to do. If you already can do these things, then you often have to put up lobbying efforts to make sure that you can continue doing them.

For example, recall how after Google introduced gmail, California senator Liz Figueroa wanted to ban it. In that case, it took some heavy lobbying in order to keep gmail legal.

Personally, it would have pissed me off if they would have banned it; look at how gmail has revolutionized webmail. Before gmail they used to suck horribly, the good ones gave you a whopping 10MB of storage and each action you took required an entire page reload, making them slow as fuck. Yet gmail managed to be faster than native desktop clients in everything it did, including things that native clients were horridly slow at, such as searching.

But you know what? Often the US government (or even some state governments, like California) don't give a shit about whether or not anything is good and useful. The only thing they care about is how well their palms are greased.