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.

I don't know what really matters behind the scenes. But whilst they are standing and speaking, then this about resonating with people's values can matter. I am still wondering to this day what was the real reason for the Iraq invasion. I mean the really real reason.

Regards China, can I ask, there were some documentaries that China of late is becoming more passionate about nationalism, is that true?

There is a theory, used in South Africa to help ease the transition away from Apartheid, called Spiral Dynamics. It models human development as going through about 6 worldwiews, each with their own sense of morality/justice/values. It spans history, so the first worldview is of a hunter gatherer. The most recent worldview is of an educated Western post-modern cultural relative intellectual interested in minority rights and the environment. Anyway, between those two worldviews you have the view of warlords, then the view of religious-empire-order, and then the view of individualistic achievement/playing to win in a competitive world individualism. That last one by the way was the start of modernity and freedom in the French revolution sense of the word, it recognises that EVERY human is equal and has their won brain and is an equal player and should not be oppressed by religious-empire-orders (Communism is similar in that it is also a single empire order which oppresses individual freedom and ingenuity).

OK so, this relates to politics because the politicians do, as you say, simply have to FRAME a proposal in language which RESONATES with the worldview of the people being targeted. The point is that when you are born, you are basically at the hunter-gatherer level. Culturally and intellectually and morally you then grow up and somewhere along the way, tend to stop or focus on one of the worldview levels. If you are currently living in a Nigerian bad land, you're probably hovering around warlordism. That's fine, that's just the most appropriate adaption to your environment. A pomo sensitive type will merely become a target in that environment. So whatever level people are at, that's just the best they can manage. Anyway, Spiral Dynamics might not be 100% true, but it is a useful distilling of some of the major differences.

So yes, the tradition-valuing, we are one nation, one flag, NCIS TV show committed marine of honour and purpose, holy order type worldview is about half of America, I forget the exact percentage they estimate, and so anything that speaks about being a responsible individual who self-sacrifices their own selfish needs for the sake of serving the lager community, any issue framed in that way, will gain a lot of voter approval. People like W. Bush, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton know all about Spiral Dynamics and such theories (various institutes and advisors etc.) and it is anybody's guess how much they are using them.

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.

1. - Create Condition - convoluted tax code
2. - Fix condition you created with Government money- Federal paid assistance to file taxes
3. - Claim you're helping the little guy
4. - Profit!

Here is another example - Food Stamps (aka SNAP) and Agriculture policy. You might think food stamps exist to help the poor, but you'd be wrong. Food stamps are part of the AGRICULTURE spending bill, not the health and human services bill. The idea is to stimulate buying of "surplus" agricultural produce by subsidizing poor people who can't aford to buy it. But the dirty secret is that the agrculture policy of price supports both stimulates over-production for some crops and under-production for others while keeping prices high and making food LESS affordable for the poor. With food stamps the agribusinness interests can now sell the 'surplus' created by the price supports (government money) at artificially high prices to the poor (with government money), all the while with the political overhead cover of helping "family-farmers" and the "hungry children".

1. - Create Condition - Pay yourself Government money to artifically inflate prices (agricultural subsidy)
2. - Fix condition you created with Government money - Funnel yourself even more Government money by subsidizing purchase of your artificially high priced goods (food stamps)
3. - Claim you're helping the little guy
4. - Profit!

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?

Carpenter Who Cut Off His Fingers Makes "Robohand" With 3-D Printer, Cuts Off Other Fingers With 3-D Printer

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.