I guess I don't see how this relates, or rather maybe I disagree with how it relates. Apple is, as far as I know, the only tech company that performs internal and external audits of their Chinese labor and actually fines and fires companies that don't comply with workers rights guidelines. It is far from perfect, but can you name any company that is doing as much as Apple? Hell ,as far as I can tell they get more flack in the media about it for two reasons, first they are popular and well known, second they publish all this info so it makes it easy for reporters to write about them.

As for economies in crisis, yup, we need tax reform, but again, Apple is not one of the companies lobbying against tax reform and has even spoken in favor of it.

Trash piles are an issue, but again Apple works towards "green" goals, conducts audits and publishes how well they are doing. They sponsor a recycling program where you can send them any of their devices and they recycle them free of cost and pay for the shipping.

As for energy consumption, that would be their iDevice's strongest suit and greatest weakness. Apps are limited in their interactions with each other and with the background processes they can run specifically because Apple designed them around the concept of energy conservation (not out of some altruistic goal, just because they believed battery life was a huge consumer concern).

As for phones that last 4 years, my last iPhone lasted 5 years before I gave it to a friend. My current one is 3 years old and still works fine. I'll probably update in another year or two. So, mission accomplished?

I think some of what you write is exactly what is wrong with the PC industry. There is more to quality that the amount of RAM or disk space, there is also the quality of the components. Don't get me wrong, Lenovo uses pretty good hardware for the most part, but there is a reason Apple crushes everyone else on consumer satisfaction, hardware failure rates, and DOA rates every year in Consumer Reports. The last numbers I recall, Apple scored 86 versus Lenovos 63 out of 100 for overall laptop quality.

The problem is geeks focus on easy to find and compare numbers like RAM and disk size and ignore things like reliability. Stores advertise based on these numbers and make recommendations based on them. As a result, most computer makers are racing one another to the bottom and trying to by the biggest cheapest disk out there and the biggest crappiest RAM out there, etc.

Apple gets away with quality hardware mostly because they've already differentiated themselves in the market with a different OS, while all the other makers are competing with one another but they differentiator for consumers is price. Chromebook's might be the only exception, and barely at that.

Apple has publicly stated to its shareholders that it runs the iTunes store at nearly break even levels to encourage hardware sales. Is it possible that they lied and the SEC will bust them, sure. But it just isn't likely. Apple is firmly in the razor end of the razor and blades model.

2013 lobbying dollars: Google - $14.06 million, Microsoft - $10.49 million, Apple -$3.37 million

I don't think profit correlates well with how much money each company is giving to politicians.

"Since nothing is stopping gay couples from having ceremonies and living as if married, as far as I can tell, gay marriage is all about forcing acceptance and government benefits."

You're half right. This isn't about forcing acceptance. It's about forcing equal treatment under law. It's a little thing called "personal freedom". You can be critical of gays and of gays getting married all you want. The minute you try to use the government to force your beliefs on other, by denying them the same choices everyone else has, however, you've stepped across the line into the "anti-freedom" camp. When you do that, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You rightfully deserve scorn and boycotts and the label of "bigot". If Eich doesn't like gays getting married, fine he can talk about what he thinks and try to persuade people. That's not what he did though, is it? He worked to try to force his view on others by controlling their actions with legislation.

"If the gay community and it's supporters put as much effort into really creating equality for all, instead of selfishly grabbing benefits for themselves..."

Umm, grabbing benefits everyone else has IS creating equality for all. All your attitudes are a rehash of the same bullshit we heard about interracial marriage and marriage for non-christians. Go back to the stone age already.

Hmmm, maybe I'm not familiar with your particular kind of "anti-GMO" movement. Here in Real America (laugh it's a funny) we don't even have labeling so people know what is and is not GMO and the only political action has been on attempts to provide that information. If you count accurate labeling of food as anti-GMO, well then maybe you should think about that for a second in terms of whether it is pro or anti science.

The Harvard Classics were the answer to your question as of 1900. They still hold up as a pretty good start on an education.

There was a study last year I read, although a quick Google search does not find it. I think it was "New Scientist". The gist was that the more expensive a car was the more likely the driver was to violate a studied subset of traffic laws including giving right of way to pedestrian in crosswalks. The study stuck in my mind because of the studied cars there was one exception that really stood out in the data, the Nissan Leaf for some reason had drivers that were much less likely to violate those laws, compared to drivers of similarly priced cars.

I'm a casual gamer. I don't mind shelling out some money for a weekend or two of fun. I bought Diablo 3 and at first it was, okay, but not on par with Diablo 2. I often ended up dying or at least being very annoyed when network lag interfered with playability, and of course there is no offline mode. That was annoying. But the real problem came when my account was de-activated randomly one day. Well crap, that's strange, but I had the serial and the login and password for my account, how much of a hassle could it be? Several e-mail exchanges and numerous broken help pages later, they finally decided they needed a copy of my driver's license! WTF?

I might consider another game from Blizzard in future if they ever manage to implement a level of DRM that doesn't inconvenience me, their customer, quite so much with poorer gameplay and stupid bureaucracy. I tossed Diablo 3 in the trash, sent an e-mail explaining why, and bought a better game (for less money) from their competitor.

Blizzard has done nothing to address what was wrong with Diablo 3 for this customer.

Have you been following the news? Apple stopped doing business with two suppliers. They forced the companies using child labor to pay for those kids to go to school and pay them wages while they went. They forced several companies to pay all the overtime they were trying to bilk employees out of. Any they did all this for years and openly published their audits before anyone paid any attention.

Who else has done anything? Who do you buy your computer from that is doing better? You are part of the problem Mr. Cowboy. Stop and think. Apple published these audits and reporters used it as dirt to write articles like this one. The company you buy from published jack and shit and has done even less. What are you doing to solve the problem? Who are you buying from and why?

Well, according to Apple's own (scanty) information on iMessage and on third party analysis, it looks like it is some sort of end to end encryption with Apple serving as the cert authority. it may well be that Apple cannot intercept the messages as the system is currently designed and can only reissue a certificate by killing the old one (and thus alerting the user because their iMessage stops working). That is by no means certain, but if it is not the case then Apple might have a false advertising lawsuit headed their way.

I think you're confusing Pwnium with Pwn2own. Chrome OS was the only thing in the former. The latter did not include any thin clients, just Chrome on Windows, which failed along with every other browser offered for testing on Windows.

The core components are LGPL, which means if it is distributed contributions have to be submitted back. That's pretty copyleft in my book, in fact it is about the most copyleft license I know of that is practical for a library that the developers want to be widely used.

Agreed. I did not mean to imply this was a good technology (either the port or the adaptor), just that conceptually putting a chip in the cable seems like an excellent idea.

I always wonder about people who use the term "gun crime". Does anyone really think, "man I'm glad this guy is beating me to death with a hammer because guns are just so scary." In the nicest places to live violent crime in general is very rare, regardless of the tool used. I've heard it said (and there is some justification) that americans are obsessed with guns, but there are certainly particular countries in Europe just as obsessed with lack of guns, to the point that they use terms like "gun crime" without ever thinking about it.