Why does it matter? Just because an alternative isn't perfect doesn't mean it's not better. How often have software patents prevented reverse engineering? Does anyone even care anymore? Oh god, if I reverse engineer I'll get sued but if I try to make my own independent version I'll get sued as well. How many frivolous patent lawsuits are happening every single second? How much innovation is stiffed because anything you do is under fifty potential patents backed by a mountain of well paid lawyers?

You know what prevents reverse engineering? The cost of doing so successfully and the delay during which you get to exploit the market.

Define more efficient. Does the hours upon hours someone spend re-installing and re-configuring their system after a re-image count? What about the time spent reloading data from backups? And the time making an image because the last backup was a week ago? Then having to manually reload the files that have changed since that time?

So since only 30% of crimes are ever solved in Canada (15% for property crimes, 55% for violent crimes) the police must just be utter morons.

That's not a lot of data, if you think it is then you haven't seen how much data some corporations have. At my last job I didn't even notice a stray terabyte here or there.

Let's say you end up with 1TB worth of data per day and 400TB per year. Facebook has 21 petabytes in it's 2000 machine hadoop cluster . Every day they add 12TB of compressed data and scan through 800TB of compressed data. Yahoo had 40000 machines in it's various hadoop clusters.

400TB a year is nothing. You'd need maybe 100 of those 12TB facebook like servers for that (with replication, etc, etc.). Let's say 300 across two data centers for true redundancy. A moderately sized cluster as such things go.

The cost of a server is I think $10000/year. So that all comes out to only $3million per year, make it $10million with all the usual corruption involved in such things. Basically peanuts to a government.

Airlines want a flight that is 100% filled (they also want to make the most money out of those sales but that's a different point). Every empty seat is money thrown out the window for them so it's something they really want to avoid.

Unfortunately people cancel flight all the time so even a flight that's 100% booked can end up with empty seats on the day of the flight. So airlines try to predict how many people will cancel and overbook just enough to compensate for that.

The models they use are very sophisticated but it's impossible to perfectly predict something as random as cancellations.

So if I tell you that we're going to play hockey and you bring proper protection then I shoot you with a shotgun it's your fault for not bringing a bulletproof vest?

Those frequencies were supposed to be for satellite transmissions, GPS worked perfectly fine under that assumption. Lightsquared would have paid a lot more for frequencies that were allocated for ground transmissions. They didn't. They tried to cheat the system and rightfully got burned.

Furthermore as others have pointed out there's a physical limit on what can be filtered out and a ground transmitter would have caused interference no matter what type of GPS device or filtering you had.

I'm guessing you were asleep when all the coupons for free digital tv receivers were given out, god that must have been a nice nap you had.

Plus paying $30 for a converter (and often $0) is very different than paying $20000 for a new GPS (yes, the aircraft ones cost around that much).

The demographic corresponding to Foxconn workers has, at best, an average suicide rate so baring further data my comparison is generally valid. Foxconn hires more people than live in many cities, at that scale you're gonna get a lot of unhappy people in absolute not matter what the working conditions are.

Granted, I never said Foxconn is a paradise but merely that it's not a hell hole either. Probably a better work environment than the Mexican crop pickers get in the US (and not as health destroying long term).

Mostly I find the focus on suicide rates hilarious because that's one thing that Foxconn can't really be called out for. You'd probably get more suicides if you actually implemented all those Western reforms people want, freedom has a lovely was of causing gluttony, drama and despair. Maybe I just find the western-centric manifest destiny "we're perfect and better in every regard" view of the world so two centuries ago.

I simply stated straight up facts.

Yet the very suicide rate, which you brought up, disagrees.

That you can't accept facts and instead cling to your beliefs irrespective of the facts is not my fault.

The Empire State Building also has nets, does that mean all of NYC is a giant sweat shop filled with despair and misery?

For every million people in the US, there are 106 suicides per year.

For every million people in the China, there are 222 suicides per year.

For every million people at Foxcom, there are under 20 suicides per year.

So, in fact, the very low suicide rate at Foxconn is an indication of joy compared not just to China but to the USA as well.