Thirty years ago Bow Wow Wow charted a song called "C30 C60 C90 Go" which basically extolled the virtues of recording vinyl onto tape.

They hate it when you do that.

If YouTube is an Italian TV Station, where are the breasts?

OP said the logs went up to 1900. Opium wars were 1839 - 1860. The 19th century was 1801 - 1900. Perhaps you were thinking 19th century was 1901 - 2000? I would also suggest that the opium wars were the head of a long-term attitude on both sides. The Chinese weren't interested in European trade. The Europeans had nothing the Chinese wanted. On the other hand, the Europeans were desperate for Chinese goods.

In defense of the Chinese who found themselves trading with 19th century Europeans, that might be expected when you force one party to trade at gunpoint.

Noboby ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other bastard die for his - George S. Patton

True, with inflation the price of the CD has probably dropped somewhat since the early 80s. But compare that price drop with price drop of the CD player. I think you could argue that the savings in terms of reproduction costs, recording costs, packaging, etc. have not been passed on to the CD cost the way they were for the CD player. My first CD player had no features and cost >$500. I could buy one today that was a quarter of the size and a fifth of the price with LOTS of programming features and a remote control. The CD I buy today is cheaper to reproduce, cheaper to record, and cheaper to package (remember the big boxes they came in during the 80s?) but I don't pay a fifth of the price.

I can remember the first CD's I bought in the early 1980s. The price was much higher than vinyl, but there were a number of advantages: easier playback, no wear to CDs, etc. The other "comfort" was that I was paying higher prices for CD's because I was an early adopter of the format. As the format became more mainstream, the price would drop. Shyaaa, right...

Interesting experiences. I too have had experience with both the U.S. and U.K. and I came away with a much higher opinion of the U.K. I lived in the U.K. for about a year and towards the end of my stay my parents came for a visit. My mother hurt her back getting out of the bath on the weekend. By Monday (a bank holiday Monday) she was bedridden and my landlord suggested we call the hospital. I was very skeptical, having grown up with the U.S. system. I called the local hospital (South London - Herne Hill) and the first thing they asked was whether she was well enough to travel to the hospital. If not, they offered to come to the house. I couldn't believe it. I told them we would get her in a cab and bring her over. Once there, there was no paperwork to fill out, and they saw her right away. After just a few minutes she was given a prescription for a muscle relaxer and a pain-killer. Got another cab to take my folks back to my place, and then I asked the cab driver to take me to the nearest chemist to fill the prescription. Got both prescriptions filled for about $16. I tipped the cabbie handsomely when he dropped me at my place. He asked me, "Do you know how much you are giving me here?" I told him I did, and that it was because I was having a great day. In the U.S. I would have had to have taken her to an emergency room. That would have taken 4 to 12 hours of my day and cost her about $500 copayment. Then the drugs would have cost another $65 copayment. In the U.K the whole thing took less than an hour portal to portal, and the cost was $20. As others have commented, maybe the U.K. is better for the little things than the big things, but I've got plenty of U.S. horror stories for big things too. I just find it interesting that the U.K. spends significantly less in terms of GDP and they don't have reduced life expectancy than the U.S.

I'll second that. I'm posting on, and my main work computer is, a G4 Quicksilver that I have upgraded extensively. This 8-year-old computer now has a dual 7448 processor upgrade (originally single 733MHz processor, now dual 1.73GHz), maxed out RAM, ATI 7500, SATA card, and USB 2.0 card. With the exception of working with video files, it doesn't seem to lag behind my Intel Mac-Pro at home. It doesn't run the latest OS upgrade, but I'm happy using 10.4.11. Upgrading Macs is often more expensive, but it can be done.

But correlation isn't causality. It may be that cheaper = worse, or it may be that cheaper = smaller form factor = more portability = more transportation and use = more wear and tear = more breakdowns. The article also says that Apple laptops are less reliable, but it could also be that Apple laptops are used more by their owners and again are subject or greater wear and tear. Or it could be that Apple makes crap laptops. With a correlation design, you cannot infer causality.

You're forgetting searches where people are looking for other people, not for facebook.com. If you are wondering what ever happened to Suzy Q. from down the road when you were little, a Google search might lead you to facebook.com.

Let's see you entertain a kitten with a hamburger...

The correlation coefficient or r value alone does not tell one whether the relationship is statistically significant or not. It is the correlation coefficient in light of the sample size that determines this. So, for example, if we set Type I error at .05, a correlation coefficient (Pearson r) of .33 would be significant if the sample size was 37, but it would not be with a sample size of 30. On the other hand, with sample size of 100, even correlations of .195 are considered statistically significant.

What do these companies do with all of these employees? They had 30K and can cut 3K at the drop of a hat? Adobe has about 7K, Google 20K, Apple 32K, Microsoft 91K and IBM nearly 400K!! What do all of these people do? By way of comparison, Harvard has 13K and GM had about 245K. How many TPS reports do 10K employees generate?