Patriots of America unite! United we stand strong against terrorism and their vile quest for facism!

The following story came to my attention about the evil Ipod.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5262110.stm

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41468000/jpg/_41468712_apple_ipod203ap.jpg
The enemy has a face!

The iPod is made in China!!! A communist terrorist country! A country aspiring to join the axis of evil! A country who supported north korea, an established member of the axis of evil, to kill american heroes!

What does Apple do?!? It manufactures its iPods in China! In a communist factory! 200.000 people work in this factory of slavery alone. An estimated 30.000 are making iPods doing 60 hours a week shifts if they have a easy week.

That's 45.000 american jobs stolen away! 45.000 american lives which are ruined because of the unamerican ways of this terrorist organization which pretends to be a respectable corporation. YUCK!

Capitalism is terrorism!

American patriots unite!

Together we shall rid our fine nation of infidels and their evil friends!

Do not buy an iPod or ANY Apple product untill this company returns to its godfearing american ways!

Moreover, if you happen to live in Florida and have a concealed weapon shoot anyone with white headphones. Yes, they are a listening device made by the devil. Shoot those unpatriotic traitors with american made hand guns!

If you life outside florida do a citizens arrest. Arrest them for treason. For terrorism. For 9/11.


Together we can do this my patriotic friends.

You are either with us or against us, and for the first time we now have a visual cue that distinguishes friend from foe.

This is a war.

Too many exclamation marks warning


------------------

I don't buy apple products for a completly different reason: I just don't like Apple.

I don't buy apple products for a completly different reason: I just don't like Apple.


Well...not quite the patriot for the right reasons, but we will let it slip this time.

Well here is the thing: I want as many products as humanly possible that the US needs or wants produced here in the US. As I have stated before, our current tax system is the biggest reason why we outsource labor and manufacturing (and others like minimum wage and some thinking American's have more of a right to make $5.15 an hour than some kid in China).

But say Japan makes an MP3 player and it costs $200. Well, here in the US we might be able to make the exact same one for $230. Who do we buy it from? Japan. If we remove all the imbedded taxes from our MP3 player and drop the income tax, the same MP3 made here in the US would probably cost $190-$200. And that cost would INCLUDE a federal tax on it. It's the FairTax. I don't really want to go about explaining it, but it's a good idea. It puts more money into our pockets and reduces the size of the government and increases business.

But as far as making anything in sweatshops in a foreign country.. no. I do not advocate that.

I remember when Michael Jorden heard that Nike shoes were being made in Sweatshops. He wasn't very pleased.

America and China have a pretty good relationship, actually.

Did you happen to know that Mr. Hu, the Chinese president, visited the US a few months back? Even visited the white house.

Sure the relationship is a bit strained by China's history and human rights violations and manipulation of its currency but given all that, we do pretty good with them.

So.
Did you have a point other than this fictional anti-chinese stance of American politics?
I mean, it's fairly obvious that we should hate them. After all they are dirty commie pinko bastards and everything. Plus they're short and brown. Funny looking with strange names. All the American stereotypes would have us hating them, but that's just not the way it is.

You're not still caught up in stereotype, are you?

You could suggest that Apples employment of people in China is actually aiding their Human Rights.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.


Simply those chinese are working in an environment that might be seen as safer and fairer than other environments. I say this on the basis that such companies as Apple will attempt to make sure that there factories don't turn into facist labour camps, as if they did would the public still buy Ipods?

This is of course where the Money comes into it, yes it's sourced to a country that is considerably cheap labour and why most of us western cultures have become so Import friendly. You can say "It does people out of jobs" however most of those people that are out of work are so for a reason and it's not usually because they lost their job, it's usually for other reasons.

I do admit though it's Ironic, for years the US claimed that Capitalism was the way forwards and Communism was wrong and now the Communists are probably the largest Capitalists.

Hey, I don't buy Apple, so I'm all good. Ipods are highly overrated anyways. And talk about excessively exploited too. How many of you have seen the list of accessories they have? They have soooo many, most are so stupid. An Ipod DJ mixing table? Gloves specially made to use an Ipod? All kinds of weird and useless stuff, lol.

- N

Hey, I don't buy Apple, so I'm all good. Ipods are highly overrated anyways. And talk about excessively exploited too. How many of you have seen the list of accessories they have? They have soooo many, most are so stupid. An Ipod DJ mixing table? Gloves specially made to use an Ipod? All kinds of weird and useless stuff, lol.

- N

Speak for yourself; I use mine for music, photos, university lecture podcasts and as a flashdrive to hold my experimental data and image backups. Its 30 GB of pure usefulness.

America and China have a pretty good relationship, actually.

Did you happen to know that Mr. Hu, the Chinese president, visited the US a few months back? Even visited the white house.

Sure the relationship is a bit strained by China's history and human rights violations and manipulation of its currency but given all that, we do pretty good with them.

So.
Did you have a point other than this fictional anti-chinese stance of American politics?
I mean, it's fairly obvious that we should hate them. After all they are dirty commie pinko bastards and everything. Plus they're short and brown. Funny looking with strange names. All the American stereotypes would have us hating them, but that's just not the way it is.

You're not still caught up in stereotype, are you?

The message is that corporate life is the enemy. And how inconsistent we all are. And how much full of shit we all are.

And how we kill our own societies because we are selfish fucks who think we need iPods to be happy.

You can pick many themes.

Apparently you picked the stereotype.

Another terrorist!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5274040.stm

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42000000/jpg/_42000540_perel_icm_203.jpg

This savage looking terrorist (see beard) solved one of the hardest problems in math.

When offered the freedom loving price of 15.000 $ (canadian) he refused! A delegation was send to St Petersburg to determine if their was a simple mistake going on. No, his vision on life prevented him from taking the price money! Never before have we seen such a vile act of anti-freedom loving terrorism!

i am a material minimalist.
i still use the same cd player from 1997. how UN-AMERICAN!!!
luckily, im with a woman that feels the same way i do about possessions.

apple hasnt made a decent product since the green & black screen computers they made for my grade school classrom. and i only thought they were awesome because i had never seen a computer before.
that, and i was an impressionable child.

Another terrorist!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5274040.stm

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42000000/jpg/_42000540_perel_icm_203.jpg

This savage looking terrorist (see beard) solved one of the hardest problems in math.

When offered the freedom loving price of 15.000 $ (canadian) he refused! A delegation was send to St Petersburg to determine if their was a simple mistake going on. No, his vision on life prevented him from taking the price money! Never before have we seen such a vile act of anti-freedom loving terrorism!

You can't use the terrorist anti freedom ploy on that guy. He's Russian, so you have to switch to Reagan-mode, and play up the 'commie angle'. His refusal to accept the money, and his understanding of math somehow threatens the nuclear arms treaty (his solution to P.C. = doughnut shaped nukes).

Duh.

Russian delivered weapons and weapons technology to the Iranians.

Duh.

Russian delivered weapons and weapons technology to the Iranians.

Weapons of mass destruction are suspected to be contained in a secret compartment under his proof. They haven't been able to find any however as they believe it's camoflaged by some sort of new paradoxical surface.

Dam...those ruskies are sneaky bastards!

What isn't made in China these days? I wouldn't be surpised if my computer was made there. It's for this reason that I would not have any qualms about buying yet another item made in China.

Also, if hating a particular OS and the company that dispenses it is all the reason someone has or needs to be patriotic (or unpatriotic) — or the other way around — then they have problems. And this goes for both anti-Apple and anti-Microsoft people equally. Your OS preferences and your patriotism are two fucking separate issues, people. :rolleyes:

Well, no. Corporations do not care about you or the country you live in.

They care about selling stuff to you. They care about getting something cheap from you (such as labour, or know-how).

The current trend of globalization will destroy society as we know it.

Especially if there are people who do not care where an 'OS' is made. iPod is not an OS btw.

The society you live in is your country. If you don't give a shit about your country you are usually labeled as unpatriotic under any nomenclature.

I don't buy anything from apple because they spend more money making their products shiny and advertising them then on actually making them good.

I don't buy anything from apple because they spend more money making their products shiny and advertising them then on actually making them good.

Doesn't that apply to most companies?

Unfortunately yes. That's what competition and capitalism does for you. Make products shinier.

You don't need quality. You can buy an image of quality.

Patriots of America unite! United we stand strong against terrorism and their vile quest for facism!

The following story came to my attention about the evil Ipod.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5262110.stm

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41468000/jpg/_41468712_apple_ipod203ap.jpg
The enemy has a face!

The iPod is made in China!!! A communist terrorist country! A country aspiring to join the axis of evil! A country who supported north korea, an established member of the axis of evil, to kill american heroes!

What does Apple do?!? It manufactures its iPods in China! In a communist factory! 200.000 people work in this factory of slavery alone. An estimated 30.000 are making iPods doing 60 hours a week shifts if they have a easy week.

That's 45.000 american jobs stolen away! 45.000 american lives which are ruined because of the unamerican ways of this terrorist organization which pretends to be a respectable corporation. YUCK!

Capitalism is terrorism!

American patriots unite!

Together we shall rid our fine nation of infidels and their evil friends!

Do not buy an iPod or ANY Apple product untill this company returns to its godfearing american ways!

Moreover, if you happen to live in Florida and have a concealed weapon shoot anyone with white headphones. Yes, they are a listening device made by the devil. Shoot those unpatriotic traitors with american made hand guns!

If you life outside florida do a citizens arrest. Arrest them for treason. For terrorism. For 9/11.


Together we can do this my patriotic friends.

You are either with us or against us, and for the first time we now have a visual cue that distinguishes friend from foe.

This is a war.

Too many exclamation marks warning


------------------


I think that after Apple management leaves a worksite that is seemingly better than the norm all hell breaks loose and the whip gets cracked.

Do European manufacturers ousource?

Speak for yourself; I use mine for music, photos, university lecture podcasts and as a flashdrive to hold my experimental data and image backups. Its 30 GB of pure usefulness.

I didn't say MP3 players are overrated, but the Ipod version is. There's so many more that are better than Apple's yet everyone buys an Ipod for it's name -- they must really love U2. ;)

- N

I didn't say MP3 players are overrated, but the Ipod version is. There's so many more that are better than Apple's yet everyone buys an Ipod for it's name -- they must really love U2. ;)

- N

Are there mp3 players which play music, video, podcasts, and function as flashdrives?

I'd like to know. (Mine was a gift).

I like the clickwheel.

China's GDP is growing at the astounding rate of ten percent per year. Of course they're reinvesting a lot of that in infrastructure and capital construction, but still it translates into arguably the fastest rise in personal income and standard of living of any country on earth. The "starving children in China" that my mother used to taunt me with to shame me into eating my carrots are long gone. (Little did I know then that raw carrots have almost no nutritional value, they really are child abuse.) People in remote villages have TVs and cell phones. Only the ethnic minorities have consistently hard times, and which of our exalted countries has no complaints of abuse from its ethnic minorities?

You can thank Apple, Wal-Mart, and all the other villains in your scenario for that prosperity. For the fact that China may still be a dictatorship but it's not a very faithfully communist dictatorship or even a socialist one. For the fact that China can see its way out of its problems through economic means rather than military.

Very few of us would buy those iPods or fashion sneakers if they were made by unionized American high-school dropouts making $45,000 a year for pushing a bloody button on a machine. We wouldn't even buy them if they were made by Chinese workers who were paid the equivalent in Chinese money, adjusting for the lower cost of living. It would not be a moral decision, we simply couldn't afford to buy them.

So the Chinese people have a simple choice. Work for what to them is at least a living wage, a wage their parents couldn't even dream of, a wage that allows most of them to have a roof, a full belly, electricity most of the time, and some modest comforts. Or overthrow their government (for the sake of argument) and create a people's paradise (oh wait didn't they already try that) where everybody makes at least $10,000 a year... and then watch their products sit on the shelf because none of us can afford to buy them.

Every industry in which America has ever achieved prominence has been one that draws on our strengths: creativity, risk-taking, innovation. We're cowboys, oil-well drillers, movie moguls, railroad builders, inventors, trail-blazers. Whenever one of our industries matures, we lose our edge. Autos, steel, electronics, originally these were frontier industries requiring big ideas with no fear of failure. And we rule in that environment.

Now they need quality assurance, incremental improvements, perfectability, economic efficiency... and we absolutely suck at that stuff. We can't even spell QA, and as a process improvement consultant I can assure you that most American leaders fall asleep when you start talking about doing what they're already doing, just a little bit better, instead of doing something exciting and new.

We have to let these industries migrate offshore, where different cultures have different strengths. No people on earth love to take somebody else's ideas and find a way to make them a little more efficient than the Japanese. No people on earth love to pore over a procedure exhaustively until it comes out perfect like the Germans. The Indians, the Chinese, the Brazilians, the Ghanaians, they all have their cultural predisposition.

And so do we. Ours is the love of doing something new and different even when everybody says it won't work. Sometimes it doesn't work but when it does it changes the world.

We need to stick with that. We need to stop lamenting the loss of manufacturing jobs and instead realize that what we're manufacturing are the products of mature industries that have no home in America. We need business leaders who are risk takers, not bookkeepers.

We also need to retake the lead in information technology. It's not just an industry, it's the infrastructure for the entire new world economy. Whoever misses out on this will be the new Third World countries. There is still lots of room for creativity and innovation in IT, especially in software development. We build software like it was still 1967, we treat it like a medieval guild craft rather than a true engineering discipline. Many other countries like Estonia are already doing much better, but we all have a long way to go. Our IT managers need to have vision and be willing to try out new ideas, but instead they are all either bean counters who transferred into IT for the money, or technicians who got promoted as a reward for good work but have no management aptitude.

Are there mp3 players which play music, video, podcasts, and function as flashdrives?

I'd like to know. (Mine was a gift).

Yes, usually any MP3 player that is over 10GB, and that's only for the video part since they're large files. Any MP3 player can be used as a flashdrive and any MP3 player can play podcasts as podcasts are just MP3 files, heh. Podcast is just a buzzword.

And also on the MP3 players with more memory, they're able to play FLAC or other large lossless file types for better audio quality. Not to mention non-Ipods can play more different file types than Ipods can as you have to convert most audio formats to play on an Apple product.

They also usually all have built-in FM radio whereas with the Ipod, you have to buy a special device for it. You can also record what you're listening to on the radio as well. And I forget if Ipods have built-in microphones that you can record with, but most MP3 players have that ability too.

Also, other than the 60GB Ipod, they'll cost less than an Ipod in the same gigabyte range. For the price of a 2GB Ipod mini, you can get a 5 or 6GB MP3 player from another company.

- N

Do European manufacturers outsource?

Hell yes.

recently there was an article on the related story of Dutch companies being bought by foreign investors. In almost every case this just leads to reorganization (read laying off of workers) to increase the value of the stock.

An entire city was thriving around 'Philips'. Production costs were rising and factories got closed down, factories moved. But this classic example happened decades ago.

But yes. It's a common phenomenon in western countries.

Doesn't that apply to most companies?

True, but Apple seem worse then most.

Hell yes.

recently there was an article on the related story of Dutch companies being bought by foreign investors. In almost every case this just leads to reorganization (read laying off of workers) to increase the value of the stock.

An entire city was thriving around 'Philips'. Production costs were rising and factories got closed down, factories moved. But this classic example happened decades ago.

But yes. It's a common phenomenon in western countries.


Too bad, I bought something distinctly British only to find out it was made in China.

I talk to India now more than people in the states- for tech support, credit cards etc. :bugeye:

In finland you have the nice system that anything made here get's a special label. Well, i think there is more than one label actually. There is the Swan label:
The "gott från finland-" or "good from Finland-" swan is a voluntary label
that is used on ready packaged products and refined provisions. The swan
label can be found on about 9200 different products, that are manufactured
by 273 companies.
To be able to display the swan label, 75% of the raw material has to be of
Finnish origin. When it concerns meat, fish, egg or dairy products, 100%.
The swan products are manufactured in Finland. The usage of the label is
monitored by frequent inspection visits.

http://www.mtk.fi/maatalous/ajankohtaista_maataloudesta/maatalousuutiset/fi_FI/broileri/_files/74937584165001582/default/joutsenmerkki%20vaal%20sin.jpg

There is another one for non-food products but I can't find it.

An easy way to buy stuff made locally. And it's more than just the company being Finnish. The product actually has to be largely made in finland.

This savage looking terrorist (see beard) solved one of the hardest problems in math.
That's not a beard! This is a beard!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/48/RichardStallmanBrussels.jpg/220px-RichardStallmanBrussels.jpg

And he's the founder of the communistical Free Software Foundation. BSD is allied with the devil! We must pray to Bush to save us from all this terrrrist open source! *spasms*

(He's American, BTW.)