3 Foxconn Employees Charged For Leaking iPad 2 Design 178
syngularyx writes "Three employees from Taiwan-based Foxconn Electronics' (Hon Hai Precision Industry's) plants in Shenzhen, China, have been charged with leaking the iPad 2's design to outside accessory companies in China, according to a Chinese-language sznews.com report. Several online shopping retailers in China were able to sell iPad 2 protective case products before the iPad 2 was even launched, leading Foxconn to suspect that there might have been some employees leaking the design of iPad 2, which it reported to the local police."
remember the guy who was tortured & went suici (Score:5, Insightful)
there was a foxconn employee who lost a prototype or something .
he told several people that he was tortured.
he later committed suicide.
of course, if he had been on facebook and 'bullied', his case would be on Oprah and celebrities would be filming bizarre public service ads about 'how to stop bullying'.
but since he was just another replacable chinese worker, instead his case gets shouted down by mac fanboys who try to minimize what Steve Jobs and Foxconn are complicit in - Dickensian working conditions in a repressive police state.
'Leaking' is a bullshit phrase used to invent 'spies' when most 'leaked' information is either leaked by accident, incompetence, or higher up managers who are being payed. Every fucking case of espionage it works like this, from Aldrich Ames (ten+ years of spying, but he was a high up official so nobody got him until some old ladies at CIA decided to go after him) to Wen Ho Lee ( a low level nuclear weapons simulation programmer who was accused of 'espionage' for backing up his programs to tape... his persecution turned out to be entirely motivated by politics and the media cycle in washington, and had nothing to do with him ever leaking anything)
its all fucking PR, bullshit, and lies. do not fucking drink the fucking koolaid.
you are a free human being, and you have natural rights. one of them is to talk. another is to be free from inane prosecutions by incompetent bureaucrats and clueless officials. by drumming this idea into your head that 'leaking' is a 'crime', they are trying to destroy free speech by brainwashing you into thinking it doesnt really exist. it does exist. its as free as the air and as free as the mind god gave you.
A few months ago, China threw a girl in a labor camp for being sarcastic on twitter. BEfore that, they threw a guy in prison because he ran a website about the poisoned baby-milk scandal. Recently they have thrown artists and others in prison for similar bullshit reasons.
This is the system that is trying to make you believe that 'leaking' is a 'serious crime'.
the only thing criminal here are the systems themselves, and the nooses they keep tightening around the necks of humanity.
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Failure to adhere up to the terms of a contract can be a crime in certain jurisdictions.
While that doesn't excuse torture or other means of extreme coercion, we do need penalties harsh enough to make potential contract-breakers really think about it beforehand.
Economic crimes should not be tolerated just because no one gets physically hurt.
contracts - like geohot and the PSN? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sony sued Geohot - one of the claims was that he clicked 'accept' to a PSN user agreement. somehow they claim that is a contract. its total nonsense becasue 1, he claimed he never clicked it and 2. EULAs are not contracts nor should they be considered when they are 100 pages long and nobody can understand them.
again, they are trying to brainwash humanity into thinking that ordinary human behavior is a crime.
and if you think the law is fair on this, try going after some gigantic company that breaks its contr
Re:contracts - like geohot and the PSN? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that Employment Agreements are real honest to god 3-4 page dead tree contracts that you have to physically put pen to, and that you actually are free to talk to someone if you're uncomfortable with the terms of. This is completely fucking different from a 100 page agreement that you scroll to the bottom of and tap "Accept" on, and claiming otherwise is disingenuous and frankly bullshit.
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When was the last time you worked under contract?
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And in the US every single one of those says it is not an employment contract.
You aren't going to get an employment contract in the US today.
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I actually work under one, but yes - most people do not.
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It's illegal to work without one, so, always.
Re:remember the guy who was tortured & went su (Score:5, Interesting)
Failure to adhere up to the terms of a contract can be a crime in certain jurisdictions.
Economic crimes should not be tolerated just because no one gets physically hurt.
Welcome to Asia, where economic crimes aren't just tolerated, they're encouraged.
My money is on nothing of note happening to this guy. He might get fired, in which case he'll just get a new job at the factory down the street. Police wont charge him because he's go no money (for "tea money").
The true economic crimes such as the harsh conditions products are made in are also ignored.
Re:remember the guy who was tortured & went su (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't the conditions less harsh then the employees' alternatives? Would you rather them go do something else?
That's a very bad and obvious strawman, even for an AC.
It frames the argument by presenting a binary choice that is not explained. You _must_ choose between something bad or something unknown that is _worse_.
What this ignores is that there are more options, such as fair pay and conditions. However this would cause prices to rise which is why people dont like it and dismiss it as an option. A binary choice is bad as it deflects attention away from choices you find uncomfortable but may actually be better as well as alternatives you haven't thought of.
I once was asked this by a Philipina girl.
"why are Kano [American] rich and Pinoy [Philipino] poor?"
The best answer I could think of was education. I responded.
ME "how many years of school did you finish?"
HER "I didn't go to school, too expensive"
ME "who taught you to read and write"
HER "My Uncle"
Education in general is not as bad as this in the Philipines, this girl was from Samar, the poorest province of Luzon but it's nowhere near the 12 years we get at practically no cost in the west. BTW, I'm Australian not American, Kano (Americano) has just evolved into a name for all us whities.
The Worst Strawman Of all (Score:5, Insightful)
What this ignores is that there are more options, such as fair pay and conditions. However this would cause prices to rise which is why people dont like it and dismiss it as an option.
You know what is a REALLY bad strawman? To put up an alternate reality that is not possible and claim it is a "choice" that is being ignored.
Lets say magically you convinced a company to pay workers at a chinese assembly plant the same wages they would get in the U.S. Who would hire that plant? You have all of the downsides of interacting with people very far away, and for the same cost you could just build the thing at home.
So you mythical company with full pay has no customers, and goes out of business. The people with supposedly "fair pay and conditions" instead find there is no job at all.
From there you have to start sliding backwards away from "fair pay and conditions" to meet reality. The reality that you ignore that for China, the amount people working at places like Foxconn get IS "fair pay and conditions", because in fact the other choices they have are far worse. By trying to raise either side of that equation you drive companies to other parts of the world and instead of helping, you are putting people out of work. Other people have noted elsewhere that the supposed suicide factory of Foxconn has a lower percentage rate of suicide than the U.S., something which should be making you re-think assumptions about what is fair, what is a good rate of pay, and how exactly you help people without screwing them over.
You like thought terminating cliche's dont you? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're using the same logical fallacy as the AC. Except it's even less thought out.
You're preventing other options from existing in your example by means of using loaded language. What happens if China begins a push towards workers rights. Europe as a whole did this in about 50 years. China wont even
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What is cheap? Go have a look at the local electronics store would you. You'll find that NONE of the CHEAP stuff comes from Japan. Medium range things do. Look at the camera industry. Nikon, Canon, Olympus, most of their cheap consumer bodies are made in Thailand or China. It's not till you start paying $2000+ till you find things that say Made in Japan on them. Same with electronics. Most Panasonic TVs are made in Malaysia, their top of the range models are made in Japan with a premium price to boot.
Your r
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To say that something like fair pay and working conditions is an "alternate reality that is not possible" is fucking sad.
Re:remember the guy who was tortured & went su (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be far better for the governments to put more state funding into finding rare earth alternatives to break the Chinese monopoly on manufacturing/production. Cheap labour can be had even from India and other countries, where at least government is not itself on the IP theft scam.
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Well time for western companies to decide whether the savings from lower cost of production in China is worth the inevitable loss of IP that goes along as a cost of working with Chinese companies.
This is an excellent point.
For manufacturing this is not too bad a problem as long as you stay a step ahead and build up partnerships you trust.
However where your point really fits in is software. I cannot believe how many companies are handing over whole working systems to places in China, India, and elsewhere.
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Nice elitest attitude. In effect, what you've said is, "It's alright to ship away laborer's jobs, and give them to Chinese who work cheaply. But, I can't believe that our companies are giving away the stuff that us intellectual snobs have slaved over! It's unfair, I tell you!"
You, who have no compassion for the average working Joe on the street, deserve to lose your precious Intellectual Property. I'll dance with glee when the day comes that you can't make a mortgage payment, and the bank decides to mak
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Sorry, but you can't stop the movement of labor out of the US to cheaper places.
The WTO (that the US signed on to) will block any attempts to put tariffs or protectionist surcharges onto any sort of outsourced labor. Trying to make foreign-made products more expensive isn't going to work - Bush tried that move once and got slapped for it. Obama can't do anything about it either.
The choices for the US are pretty limited at this point. The people aren't going to stand up and say they want to pay more for U
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"So what happens to all the unskilled labor in the US?"
Correct - but the problem is even worse than that. Skilled labor is drying up. Try to get an apprenticeship in any skilled trade today. Carpentry, masonry, iron working, plumbing and/or pipefitting - you name it. I am a journeyman carpenter, among other things. Today, journeymen are working for less than carpenter's helpers worked for in 1990. At least here, in my area, this is true. Blame most of that on the influx of illegal aliens, blame part
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Apple has a looooong history of being a very leaky company. Doing business in China hasn't changed that in the slightest.
bullied is when you get picked on for being fat (Score:2)
This guy failed to do his job. Doing your job is a condition of being paid. Don't like the restrictions? Quit.
Re:remember the guy who was tortured & went su (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what is your solution for Apple's dilemma? They're trying to release their product, and not be ripped to pieces by cheap chinese knockoffs from companies who never had to eat the costs of design and R&D. Should the government subsidise them for their losses? Should they just refrain from releasing hardware in the future? Should we allow people to voluntarily enter into contracts to not talk about certain aspects of their working life? Without some actual solution to the problems that arose to present this situation, you might as well argue that time travel is a moral imperitive; you may make a pursuasive argument, but the argument itself will produce no positive change, and the argument is practically worthless.
Also, on a more personal note, I find arguments like this leave a very unpleasant taste in my mouth. It seems that the source of pursuasion comes not from demonstration that your position is right (or that their position is wrong), but from making people feel uncomfortable for believing the opposing side. If I believe that leaking private secrets is immoral, you are trying to implant the idea that this is because I have been brainwashed by companies, thus making me feel stupid or used for that belief, instead of convincing me that the belief is wrong. Who knows? Perhaps this idea that companies are implanting in our minds is 100% correct? Nothing in your argument addresses this, rather it preys off the ad hominem fallacy: that if someone as bad as corporations want us to believe it to be true, then it must be false.
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He's more so appealing to the "Wake up sheeple!!" argument. It's pretty common, and based on the idea that everyone is blindly accepting the propaganda of $THE_RULING_CLASSES which is necessary to maintain the unequal status quo.
Now I personally don't believe in this idea, but not because I don't think the
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Now I personally don't believe in this idea, but not because I don't think there's a status quo, but because I don't believe that a propaganda campaign is necessary to maintain that status quo.
Yes, yes it is. That propaganda campaign consists of massive fraud. The corporations don't give a fuck about anyone but they spend billions giving that impression.
It typically takes a revolution--industrial, social or actual--to force societies to really change the way they operate on just about every level.
You win that one.
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It's interesting the difference in viewpoint here. We read the same argument (with ill-defined premises and conclusions), and came up with two distinct reasons why it was supposed to be convincing, which reveal two distinct ways of looking at the argument. The way that I see it, it'
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This isn't about companies copying the iPad design, it is about them creating compatible accessories. Apple want only their iPad 2 cases to be on sale from launch day because they make big margins on them, but if the design is leaked much cheaper Chinese cases will eating in to that.
I don't think it is really necessary to go to these lengths. Amazon sell a lot of overpriced Kindle covers because they are the best ones, despite many cheaper models also being available on Amazon's own web site. Apple like to
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The $30 trainers in this case would be Android devices - just as good, and a whole lot cheaper.
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I was not prioritising Apple over anybody or anything, rather I was pointing out that Apple's position had absolutely no priority whatsoever in the OP's argument. In fact, it's not so much the fact that it's Apple's problem, rather it is the problem (whosever it is) that lead to the way things are now (specifically, regarding "leaks" and their being illegal/wrong/whatever). Nothing can change if we ignore the source of the problem. Perhaps the solution is, as I suggested, for Apple (or anyone else) not to r
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Or, perhaps you ignore the factory workers because they're inconvenient to your point, the fact of the matter is that apples suppliers pay their workers peanuts, so there is little incentive in keeping trade secrets, secret. Apple has made their own bed, and now they should sleep in it, rather than relying on a totalitarian police state to "incentivise" their employees into obedience.
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Oh, please then, explain to everyone how the existence of factory workers is even the slightest bit "inconvenient" to either of my points. No really, go ahead. Come on internet tough guy, make my day.
I swear, we've gotta be more careful when talking about China, or someone is going to put an eye out with all this knee-jerking. I come out talking about bad logic (as I often do), and so many idiots manage to somehow conclude
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If I had to guess, I'd say it had probably something to do with the mods realising that this is not even close to what I was saying. This probably stemmed from them reading my post, comprehending it, and thinking before jerking their knees (assuming they jerked their knees at all).
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No. What I want is evidence that every person who believes leaking is morally wrong, do so primarily because of corporate influence. That is, had the person access to all the relevant facts, that they would have sided with you on the issue. This premise would validate your argument, and it is the implicit assumption that this premise holds that gives your argument the power to convcince people. I cannot see any reason why it would be true, but if you can prove it to me (or d
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And I'll say it again, no I'm not. I'm not talking about China. It doesn't even enter into the points I was making. The only one that comes close is my berating the OP for his imposing of his views upon the west.
Now I'm sorry, but I'm kind of sick of people trying to convince me of a point that I don't contend about a subject that doesn't particularly interest me, so I'm not going to r
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Actually, the questions posed are more rhetorical than anything. I was more generally talking about the OP's argument, rather than simply responding to it. The OP was claiming that leaking is only considered wrong because of corporate 'brainwashing'. I didn't present arguments as to why this is not the case, but I did outline why I thought that his arguments on that particular point were worthless.
As for what Apple actually should do, I think the discussion is pointless. We should be discussing what we shou
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Interesting. What would be your solution to medical research, i.e. something that's a little less frivolous than consumer electronics? Would you be fine with them packing up and going home if they can't continue their research? Even at the expense of human lives?
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If you don't like the conditions of China, then don't buy any products made in China. For the Chinese economy which is used by the likes of Apple, IBM, HP, Dell, Sony, Toshiba ..... are all based on Chinese factories.
And good luck with that. The switch your internet connection is based on was made in China so by posting to Slashdot, you're just as complicit in all of China's crimes that you're blaming on Apple. Accessory to murder if you will.
OR, you could simply realize that the Chinese people, without mak
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I've never really got that. Wouldn't it be better for them if they made shit for themselves?
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It's called trade. They make shit for us. They have about 2 1/2 trillion US dollars in foreign reserves that they can use sometime down the road to buy shit from us.
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You mean in the unlikely event that "we" actually decide to get our hands dirty and make something that they might want? I wouldn't call that trade, I'd call it gambling.
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If anyone can't afford to buy it, it's the US, which is why the trade balance is the way that it is. Money is a proxy for goods[1], which means goods[2] are a proxy for money. The workers in Apple's sweat shops could meet up with those from Nike's and trade iPods for shoes if they wanted to[3].
As to not being able to afford to design things, bravo! That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time.
[1] and services
[2] and services
[3] they probably already do, a bit. Enter "ghost shift" in YFSE
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Let's not also forget the complete inane bullshit of the story.
It allowed accessory makers to make protective cases.
The police are involved because some guy said, "Shsssshshshshshhshshshhshhsh! come over here.... give me 10$ and I will tell you the new iPad2 is x.y.z dimensions and here is where you cut the holes."
Seriously? The physical dimensions and possibly the locations of the some fucking buttons and inputs is the lowest stupidest level of corporate espionage I have ever heard and stretches the defi
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Hmmmmm.... well if I recall the math I learned in my formative years that is only 3 out of the 11 spices....... If you really know the secret post it here.
Seriously.
I think actually leaking the 11 secret herbs and spices is like the WikiLeaks and Playstation key leak combined.
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Yes, it's those filthy mac fanbois and that evil hobgoblin Steve Jobs who are perpetrating this! Unlike all those other manufacturers of electronic goods, who are well known for paying a living wage and making the goods in countries like the US, Canada, and -- oh, wait...
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IRL I rarely (if ever) see this "mac fanboi" you haters are always bitching about. Also, because I'm not much on bandwagons and try to be fair I've often been accused of being a "mac fanboi" myself which tells me a lot of the applehate crowd are pretty much a bunch of morons bent on conducting an applehate fest -- IOW just a bunch of stupid, sensele
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he told several people that he was tortured.
Chinese workers know, you DO NOT fuck with Steve.
And this guy committed the cardinal Apple sin. He leaked the designs to a company that was able to beat Apple's own overpriced protective cover to the market--thus cutting into their bottom line. They'll probably hang him for it.
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Remember, China pretty much is the owner of the US today. Should they choose to exercise their power the US only has the options of fighting them off militarily, trying to negotiate a settlement and utter capitulation. My vote right now is that we end up negotiating and have China replacing a good part of the Federal Government with some new unelected "ministers".
Certainly, China can get whatever legal changes they want made right now.
other companies don't use Gandhi as advertising (Score:1)
if michael dell ever starts telling me that he is a champion of human rights, then i will gather up a bunch of Austin homeless people and go protest in front of their call center.
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That's not what they're saying. That comes up because people put down Apple customers for 'supporting sweatshops' whilst being completely unaware that they're doing it, too.
In other words: Until this topic comes up with the many other companies that use Foxcon, You're demonstratably being biased against Apple and are not any better than the 'apologists' that bug you so much.
In other news... (Score:3)
that van may need to chgnge for that to work (Score:1)
that van may need to change for that to work
Organ donations must be performed in hospitals and executions are held in prisons. The three-drug cocktail used in lethal injection may render organs unsuitable for transplant. And, with high rates of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C, jail and prison inmates are considered high-risk donors by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and subject to even stricter testing and lifestyle scrutiny than typical organ donors.
http://donatelife-organdonation.blogs [blogspot.com]
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Sorry, but that quote doesn't seem right.
First off, that van is explicitly designed for this purpose. So it's assumed it has the necessary medical equipment to perform the organ harvesting. In TFA, it explictly states that one of the reasons for the vans is so they don't *have* to have specialized medical facilities in the prisons.
Second, all the drugs used have regular medical uses, and have hopefully been subject to reasonable testing. I'd be really surprised if the doctor(s) who planned for these vans
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China is not using the US 3-drug cocktail which will damage heart and other organs. It uses barbiturates which kill the prisoner as fast as the 3-drug and leave the organs nicely suited for harvesting. Further to this, it is a "clean brain death" so you can put the living vegetable on a ventilator for transport purposes if you want to. The only damaged organ may be liver and even that will happen if the vegetable is kept alive too long. If the liver is collected right away it will be in OK shape for transpl
Well... (Score:3)
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Nuh-uh! Steve only takes designer organs. Most people in prison aren't designers, so their organs wouldn't look good inside a black turtleneck.
Unlike iPhone 4 hipsters, I'm not sure Steve will be able to wait six months till they come in white.
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Seems to be a modern trend towards leaks. (Score:2)
I don't think the current spate of leaks, both government and corporate, are co-incidental. It seems to reflect a wider growing community attitude that there are no secrets anymore.
The recent manifestation of hacker-sub-culture into the mainstream seems to promote ideas such as "information wants to be free" and provided recognition and kudos for having been the leak.
Based on this, I think that business and government alike will have to find new ways to work in an environment in which their own employees ar
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Keeping the IP pool secure is going to be far more difficult in future when not only are those swimming in it poking holes in the side, they are getting positive public recognition for their efforts in many cases.
"Positive public recognition"? You think that's what the Chinese police have been giving these three since December 26?
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or govt+corps are criminalizing ordinary behavior (Score:2)
maybe leaks are occuring at the same rate they always have.
maybe what has changed is that government and corporations are trying to criminalize more behavior.
evidence: Obama has prosecuted more non-spy 'espionage' cases than the last dozen or so presidents put together.
Obama: Drake, Kim, Sterling, Leibowitz, and Manning
BushII: Ford, Franklin, Rosen, Weissman
Clinton: Lee
Bush I: none???
Reagan: Morison
Carter: none???
Ford: none?
Nixon: Russo / Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) ...
I'm not as knowledgable about corporati
turning against your own people (Score:1)
thats the first step a dictatorship takes IIRC. viewing not foreigners as the enemy, but its own internal population.
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"Charged?" (Score:1)
But did they do it? (Score:3)
Not that I'm sure they didn't get the right people, but the story had no details, and there's been nothing showing any details, which is how they would handle it if they didn't know who did what, but wanted to serve up some patsies.
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That's actually a good thing. When did accountability become a dirty word?
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When did accountability become a dirty word?
When "accountability" means throwing a few patsies under the bus (in a nearly literal fashion) to cover up a culture of corruption. In many of these cases, the crime is getting caught, for which the punishment is harsh, but the government will know and ignore of the criminal activity until foreign media forces them to acknowledge it by inducing fear of Chinese goods.
Ratcheting up the severity of the punishment isn't intended as a deterrent. It's intended as a sop to foreign media. Those who haven't been
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Today's lesson (Score:2)
No, but an ex CEO or a former regional director is. It just takes a stroke of the pen.
What cronyism and connections giveth, falling out of favour taketh away.
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Yeah, I knew somebody was going to come back with "America is just as bad". I didn't say it wasn't. It's just different.
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There isn't real accountability. There is random and capricious accountability. And they go after the people with the least political capital who will satisfy those seeking vengeance, rather than those most directly involved. But if you count that as "accountability" and assert
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There's a difference between tokenism and policy. We wouldn't have such a dearth of Chinese knockoffs and lead-based toys if what you said were true. And, those tainted products? China doesn't bury them in a hole or recycle them. They just ship them off to a nation that won't care.
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You may want to look up the word dearth for future reference...I think you meant the opposite.
Only Apple would have a cow over this. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's so Apple. A case designer needs some basic info about the outside dimensions, like height, width, thickness, and corner radius. Maybe a bit of info about areas that need to to be uncovered for connector or button access. Only Apple would consider those to be significant trade secrets. Especially since this is Model #2 of the product, which is probably going to be a lot like Model #1.
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you could've made the covers and start the sales just by guesswork, and they would have matched well enough. or by leaked pics from internet. or by just taking the guesswork from analysts.
if you were one of the companies that thought that apple would give them free launch day cash.. well pfew, how about inventing some business model that doesn't depend on crap like that, you know, artificial limitations on who can sell a piece of cloth/leather. that they were on sale before ipad2 was launched doesn't matter
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you could've made the covers and start the sales just by guesswork, and they would have matched well enough. or by leaked pics from internet. or by just taking the guesswork from analysts.
Except that it's maybe 50/50 that any leaked photos are of the actual product. In the case of Apple there is so much rumor going around that you don't really know. Do you gamble on manufacturing based on a guess? That did not happen in this case. Foxconn employees did leak the information.
if you were one of the companies that thought that apple would give them free launch day cash.. well pfew, how about inventing some business model that doesn't depend on crap like that, you know, artificial limitations on who can sell a piece of cloth/leather.
So you are equating earning money by making a product is the same as riding on someone's coattails? I don't think companies expected free cash but they may have expected everyone to play by rules. And to do so require
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http://www.amazon.com/Professional-PHP6-Wrox-Programmer/dp/0470395095 [amazon.com]
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You clearly haven't dealt with Apple or contract manufacturers. At least at my company, we regularly joke that Apple's secrecy policies are similar to those of the Kremlin. Meanwhile, contractors in China or Taiwan will do the minimum to get paid. You need to send someone over at least once a quarter to let them know you mean business, otherwise they figure you aren't paying attention and start slacking off. You can always see when we visit their factories by looking for the spikes on the yield charts,
Nationality of workers? (Score:2)
Dear Foxconn (Score:2)
If you paid your employees a living wage they would not sell your customers info for $100.00 or a months wages.
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Mystery Solved (Score:2)
Wild guess (Score:2)
Is it white with rounded corn&*-
'@*9
n o c a r r i e r
Why Bother.....? (Score:2)
Why bother stealing the specs?
All you really need is a good set of calipers and micrometer, or an automated CAD machine and you could get the specs yourself in no time.....
1) Buy item as soon as it is released,
2) Dissassemble and measure dimensions,
3) Design the product to your likes using said dimensions,
4) Profit!!!
Not much thinking there. Yeah you would have to wait until the product is released, but you could avoid the legal wrangling.
Re:goatse's asshole charged with leaking (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear /.
Is there a way to report fucktards who want to turn /. into a nanny-state, thin skinned, politically correct retard bin?
I find the goatse stuff as distasteful as the next... and a lot more than some I'm sure. But I would rather have those moderated below my threshold than see a nanny site.
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Exactly. Moderation works to remove the goatse trolls while making it at least somewhat difficult (through meta moderation) to silence people you want to say are "trolling" because they have differing views.
A report function would also require a human being to examine a post and see if it's worth removing which, again, would lead to situations where someone simply expressing an unpopular belief could be silenced.
If people want a forum where there are some rules of conduct enforced from on high, there are pl
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Property ownership is a social construction, ownership of fiat money doubly so.
He has all that money because society has granted him the privilege as reward for whatever he is supposed to have done to benefit society. If society considers the reward excessive, it will take some of it away - or simply stop protecting him.
If you don't like this, you can live in an alternative reality where humans are slaves who have no choice but to live by your principles - principles which seem to be based on the childish n
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Oh, by the way we all got together and decided your wife was too hot for you, so we gang banged her.
I realise that the free market in early southern USA was left to decide who counted as a person and who counted as a slave, but "my wife" is not "for me", not being in any sense my property. I have neither the right nor the physical power to control who she has sex with, nor am I not her bodyguard.
She isn't gang banged by you because (i) she doesn't want to be; (ii) society has decided that rape is not a good thing for society, and society at large has more power than your fantasy libertarian rape gang.
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You arbitrarily say that she can have sex with whoever she likes,
I didn't say that at all. Re-read to find out what I actually said.
I say rape is bad even if society condones it.
That's fine, but it's society's general opinion on rape which counts. And you're onto a winner with this one.
I also think that deciding a trade of one resource (money) for another (a good or service) is a right,
But with this one you're pretty much in a minority. Very few societies regard unrestricted trade as a "right". More fundamentally, few societies agree with the assumption you're making: that you have a right to exclusive control of the money / the good / the service in first place. Society gave you so much to allow you to get to the p
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Would you rather be in charge of valuing the things you trade for, or would you rather a majority of other people evaluate that?
Well, even if there was "small government" (in itself impossible: power will always fill a vacuum), I wouldn't be in charge of valuing the things I trade for: the person I'm trading with would get a say. His perception of value would depend on the wider society in which he sits.
What's up for debate is how the buyer determines the value of something he wants. It could be influenced according to centrally perceived need. It could be influenced according to labour value, such as through labourers controlling t
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You actually read enough to see that? Must be a slow news day where you are.
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