...prisoner's dilemma. Throwing your patents under FRAND means they are essentially not yours anymore; sure, you get paid something, but because of how "fair and reasonable" can be interpreted, it's probably really difficult to enforce anything. HOWEVER, if you do not do that, another company might offer a FRAND patent and turn that into an industry standard instead. And then you end up with a worthless patent.
Sounds like competitive bidding for including into the standard. Being part of a major standard will mean millions or billions of units, whereas if it's not included, it's pretty much up to your company to monetize on it's own.
Do you want to be a small fish in a big pond, or a big fish in your own pond? Yet, not all that many companies are complaining about the situation.
On the other hand, far too many people don't seem to have a problem with nationalization of actual private property in the form of, say, taxable income, so perhaps the underlying premise is incorrect. If they can nationalize part of your income, which is your by natural right, they can certainly nationalize a few patents which only exist by their say-so in the first place.
Something just doesn't sit right in your analogy - in this case, nationalization of "property/cash" (aka tax) isn't a judicial punitive measure, it's a generally agreed-upon, and well known code. The best way is for them to both fine Samsung and invalidate their patents. That's well in their power, since patents are just government granted monopolies (supposedly time-limited, but there are ways around that).
Most people don't sit down in front of the TV for news these days (and no, opinion is not news). They get their news from the internet. People get entertainment from TV these days.
I blame CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for this just as equally as the Internet's rise. These shows are designed to entertain a market, not inform citizens.
I for one, can't wait for TV to die. It does little productive except keep people from truly experiencing life. Even at our house, the TV is rarely watched except on major events or for the kiddies (it's a nice reward) but with iPads and Netflix, it's not even needed for that much anymore either... I keep wanting an excuse to replace our 42" LCD with a newer shinier bigger panel, but keep finding no reasons whatsoever.
At the moment, PowerVR is 3DFX (at the height of its success) strong in the ARM market, but faces the same problems that brought 3DFX's fortunes crashing down. PowerVR is currently used by Apple in all its non-x86 products. The important Chinese ARM chip companies are also starting to use PowerVR as well. PowerVR is in a golden age, but struggles to see a sunny future.
Soon, basic OpenGL ES2.0 functionality on ARM SoC parts will return almost worthless to the GPU IP companies. Good enough acceleration for everything but proper games (which have yet to have an important impact on ARM devices) is in a hardware race-to-the-bottom, with too many excellent competing designs. This mirrors the end of value in the PC 2D video space, after years of excellent profit for companies like Hercules, S3 and Number-nine.
This assertion is ridiculous. Smartphones and tablets will suck down all the graphics power-per-watt mobile GPU vendors can provide, as they are (and since the iPhone, have been) consumer-bought devices, where high-touch and bling win and win big. The differentiator is that, without massive enterprise control of spending, consumers will rightly choose the best graphics chip out there (enterprises just wanted enough to be able to surf spreadsheets and basic imagery - anything more was a liability - games capabilities are generally not preferred in corporate environments).
If you want an example of how important graphics capabilities are, take a look at the top grossing in the iOS App Store or Google Play markets. They are mostly games, and if not, apps that make extensive use of the graphics capabilities of the device.
Imagination will continue to thrive as long as Apple thrives - and if Apple fails, then I might start to get worried - Android-based manufacturers may not show the same desires as Apple to push forward the envelope on graphics - but then again, I doubt it even then.
I love how all your arguments for Apple buying into convergence is based on moves by Microsoft, anecdotal evidence of Android tablet users with keyboards and some handwaving arguments about lowered costs from converged lines.
Apple may at some point in the future do some "convergence" device and/or operating system. I sure as hell don't think it's likely. They already have the benefits of OS convergence by using the same/similar kernel and frameworks. Porting between iOS and OSX is easy enough.
Google may want to, and so might Microsoft, but they're chasing a red herring. People don't want convergence of device. They want convergence of usage and data. If you can keep your workflow going from your phone to your laptop (see iCloud, Google Drive, Azure) you don't mind having two devices - in fact, having two devices that do what they do well.
Apple IS moving in the direction of convergence but I think they are taking a more gentle path than Microsoft.
This is complete bullshit, sorry. There is no convergence in the pipeline. Harmonizing your UI so they're a bit more similar is not convergence. Maintaining separate UI input factors (mouse/kb vs. touch) is not convergence. Fully understanding that a phone and a laptop have widely different performance factors, battery life needs, etc for different customer groups is not convergence.
Apple hasn't done it yet simply because their desktop operating system is too heavy for current phones and tablets but there is no reason at all why iOS and OS X could not or should not merge at least their underpinnings somewhere down the line. I strongly believe that eventually iOS and OS X will just be different front end interfaces for the same underlying back end software.
If you don't realize that iOS and OSX are heavily similar at the lowest levels, you ought to go familiar yourself with the architectural history of Apple's operating systems ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS ). Why should they get even more similar that they currently are? Apple doesn't chase Microsoft, it's the other way around. Apple logically would be the first company to get the most out of a converged operating system, yet they haven't done it. Maybe they understand something you don't?
While Apple wastes time on the Dick Tracy watch wanna-be
s/Apple/Samsung/ Apple's iWatch is as real a product as their full screen smart TV product (hint for the sarcastic challenged - they are both speculative products that Apple has never committed to).
Unless there are some nuclear reactions going on in there, I really don't think it is creating any energy at all, much less "creating enough energy to power 70,000 homes".
Solar energy converts energy from the nuclear reactions in the sun into electricity. Ok, conversion.
Hydroelectric - captures energy stored from gravitational potential energy and converts it using a turbine into electricity. Fine, conversion again.
Coal/Nat. Gas - takes stored energy in the form of deposits of oil, coal and natural gas and uses them to drive turbines... oh, you get the picture. Check, conversion of energy again.
Clearly nuclear energy reactions "create energy" - no wait, it's converting stored energy in the form of nuclear bonds into radiation, which can then be captured as a heat energy which can then drive a steam turbine turning into electricity.... uh... huh.
Conversion is all we can do apparently. We might want to thank/curse this lousy law [1].... who's with me for repeal?!?
I think the market says they want them. Chromebook now owns 25% of sub $300 market.
I spent 90% of my time on a laptop browsing the internet. A chromebook is my next upgrade.
No where does it quantify this with actual numbers. Kind of like when Amazon says the Kindle is the top selling product on Amazon. Without actual unit numbers it's hard to find out what the $300 market even means.
I laugh every time I hear Amazon decide to trot out their "Kindle rulz!" comments without numbers. If you aren't willing to show how much you've sold you can't say your product is popular at all. SalesRank is not a quantity.
Why bother making Chromebooks, the market doesn't much seem to care for them.
The Chromebook is a dual-attack against Google's biggest competitors/threats - Microsoft and Apple.
By sucking all the profit margin out of the low end, Microsoft can't levy it's Windows tax on each machine sold. Neither does a Chromebook carry MS Office. Both wins if you're hoping Microsoft's top line sinks... the fact that Apple rules the roost at the top end puts Microsoft in the same vice-grip that effectively killed Nokia and Blackberry in the smartphone space.
By simplifying ChromeOS so not even updates are manually handled, they make them simpler than Macbooks (it does less, but with more and more stuff being done on the web/cloud, it might be a moot point in a few years for mainstream users). And the Pixel was defintely a shot against the bow against Apple, targeting the high-end Retina MB Pros.
The Chromebook is a disruptive product, designed to torpedo both Apple and Google, first. And while doing so, support Google's services second.
While all of this is enjoyable and worthy of a bowl of popcorn as a bystander, the fact remains that Google has decided that Chrome needs to be an OS and not a browser first, and I see it in Chrome's recent bloat. It's a pity.
What's sad is that my netbook originally came with a 1024x600 screen. I got an aftermarket screen for it, but the best I could upgrade to was 1366x768... I don't understand why laptops/netbooks have such low res and dpi
There was no market for a high-end netbook, that's why (well, other than the small MB Air). That's a market that Microsoft wanted to create/crack for years - from their original "tablet PC" to "UMPC" to the more Intel-driven "Ultrabooks", the entire market has been a failure (some say, by design to preserve profit margins for the WinTel brothers).
Then the iPad came out and was the death knell (cheap Android tablets being the nails in the coffin to keep the analogy going). Why would a manufacturer create a $500 uber-netbook when they could sell a $500 tablet and not pay Microsoft $50-$200 for an OS (which, because Microsoft really never took it seriously, sucked at touch inputs for all of the 00 decade)?
Everyone in the lapdog press is running around crying Oh No'es but NOTHING bad is happening.
Well, nothing bad other than millions of Americans suddenly becoming essentially unemployed, even if temporarily, for which I can see no possible negative effect./sarc
House came together in a moment of rare bipartisanship to pass a bill, by a vote of 407 to 0, approving back pay for furloughed government workers.
President Obama has expressed his support for the measure.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid supports the measure, but said Saturday that if furloughed workers are guaranteed back pay, there’s no reason to keep them out of work.
They should be working, since they will be getting back pay. Why does Obama keep them home?
So let me get this straight. The House of Representatives has not voted to pass a budget or even CR for this year. And it's Obama's fault? I, for one, am amazed by your blinding logic! (or when did Obama become Speaker of the House?)
What you are seeing here is the birth of a government. First it's law enforcement, paid for by voluntary contributions. Then maybe some additional services - upgraded fire or rescue. Then it gets big enough that someone has to start working full time to manage it. If everyone decides (as often happens) that the people organizing this shouldn't be profiting, they all agree to take turns. Of course, this becomes cumbersome and they really find they need more continuity so the community chooses 3-4 people who will manage it, and they change those people every couple of years to each person doesn't get burned out. Then after a couple years the revenue starts flagging, and they realize that they're going to have to reimburse the organizers, and have to find a way to make sure everyone is contributing. So they form a local organization which includes everyone getting services and they agree on a way to split the costs equitably so everyone gets a bill. Most places choose the split by land area or value. Soon enough they realize that with everybody paying, they can get better garbage service, and maybe even reform the schools if everyone kicks in a little more.
And then one street decides that they aren't really getting enough service, so they take up a collection for a private security firm to supplement the (now official) police...
You're missing the part where these localities vote to disincorporate themselves from Oakland. I see that as a requirement for at least the 2nd half of your adventuresome tale. And at that point, they will find out that Wall Street has made a huge racket by fixing city bond/loan rates [1].
There's a limit to how long you can make text lines before it becomes harder to follow and/or people stop reading them. That's why newspapers use columns instead of the full width of the page.
This is what multiple columns are for. Look at theverge.com or feedly.com (where I skim most of the/. titles anyway, now that Google Reader is dead). Proper multi-column views.
I disagree that pictures are a waste. I wouldn't mind if slashdot stories had appropriate title images so it tiled appropriately nicely in flipboard or feedly when read as a feed. Not sure how the latest linux kernel update would have an interesting unique picture though.
sigh... so now I've got to pay for two plans, instead of one?
That's how it works today. HDHP + HSA. Two plans. Has been this way since the mid 00's. Everywhere. Have you ever actually subscribed to such a plan combo?
Just stop talking if you don't know what you're saying. You're embarrassing yourself.
They also need to understand why people are posting. People talked about Breaking Bad a lot because it was so good, and they also talked about Dexter because it got so bad. When good shows drop in quality hard core fans stick around but start to complain. So you could conceivably get an uptick in chatter that instead of signalling a rise in ratings actually precedes a drop in ratings.
Enter Sentiment Analysis [1]. Even a word-count analysis of positive/negative connotation words vs. a neutral sentiment control corpus could tell you with a reasonably high accuracy whether a show is being slagged or praised. And that's a simplistic guess of a prediction model from someone with a single machine learning course to brag about - nothing like using Google's prediction API.
Let's pretend it was taken to it's logical extreme, aka a society with zero taxes. Also known as a society with no roads, no enforced laws, no food inspection, no building codes, etc.
You're describing a libertarian government-free paradise known as "Somalia" (warlords and pirates are a feature of such a society).
At my startup, we pay for good insurance for our employees and while maybe my individual insurance is slightly cheaper, that is apparently buried in the noise floor of the increasing costs for the total employee pool. And the small difference in individual cost for older individuals does not materially alter the risk calculus for the individual in terms of whether they'll start a tech company.
Can you explain how a bootstrap one-man operation can afford to pay for healthcare for his family? Nice that you're startup is well-funded or profitable already, but for those shoestring operations that are barely ramen profitable or still working towards that glorious day, are they supposed to forego healthcare?
Take a look at the individual markets or for small business coverage. Without a large risk pool, you're paying 10x what others pay - because insurance companies assume you want coverage because you're an actuarial risk/cost. Now that everyone requires coverage, the reasoning is that you simply don't have coverage, not that you're some pariah that shouldn't get it.
You could have gotten insurance that would cover precisely that sort of bill for a lot less than $1500/month.
The problem is that you don't even know that such plans exist: These days they are called "Catastrophic Coverage" but they used to be called "Major Medical" -- typically you will pay the first $1000 or so of any illness out of pocket, and the rest is on the insurance company.
You still can. It's called... *drumroll* - catastrophic coverage. It's provided on the exchanges (at least CA has it).
The people with these plans often create Health Savings Accounts for dealing with routine healthcare costs.. and these have serious tax advantages.
What prevents you from still enrolling in one? If you had an opportunity before, you still can. And you can enroll in a catastrophic coverage plan to pair with it.
But no.. people are too ignorant to know whats available, so they demand PelosiCare, so that some fuckers in an insurance company can get a percentage of the cost of every single doctors visit... Its people like you that ruined this country. You wanted something that was already available, and voted to get the government to provide it for you at 10 times the price.
That would be pro-business, and I'm always amazed it hasn't been promoted as such.
It wouldn't be pro-business; it would be pro-small business and pro-new business, but it wouldn't be pro-large business at all; after all, health care is one of the levers they use to press your nose to the grindstone.
Only for short-sighted idiotic companies. A wisely run business would see a chance to completely outsource a major cost of doing business as a huge boon. So you can't provide incentives on basic healthcare coverage - what about additional perks? It's not like providing healthcare is some profit-center for most corporations, it's a huge drain (costs keeps increasing) and requires a large non-trivial staff and expensive software to manage benefits and relationships with health insurance carriers. Instead they could offer other perks that employees would get accustomed to and miss if they left. Or hell, just take the money used to manage/pay for health coverage and spend it on bonuses/options/RSUs.
Take a look at France, big business still provides bonus coverage and cadillac plans for employees above and beyond what the government offers, despite the government providing single-payer healthcare.
Someone does have to pay the bill. There's really no getting around that. Stealing from Paul to pay Mary really doesn't change anything.
Exactly why private for-profit insurance is such a bad idea - in this case, your increased premiums turn into bonuses for the insurance company executives and dividends (or increased value) for the shareholders. It's almost like socialism - for corporations and their wealthy owners.
So, basically you're admitting that by design, this law priced his current coverage out of his reach, and forced him to buy insurance through a government controlled market. Fuck you.
Government regulated. The only difference between an exchange and company-sponsored coverage is who subsidizes (if at all) your coverage. The government only steps in to ensure that things like "pre-existing conditions" and "recission" are no longer allowed, and to ensure that poorer folks get subsidized so they can actually afford their coverage.
For those who have coverage that's better than the exchange (say through an employer), the only change is that private insurers may decide to blame the government while raising prices... at that point, it's a good idea to see if the exchange is cheaper for what you get.
If you happen to be running a startup that's say, Ramen profitable [1], you'll love the fact that you're effectively capable of getting very inexpensive coverage.
Slashdot Mirror
...prisoner's dilemma. Throwing your patents under FRAND means they are essentially not yours anymore; sure, you get paid something, but because of how "fair and reasonable" can be interpreted, it's probably really difficult to enforce anything. HOWEVER, if you do not do that, another company might offer a FRAND patent and turn that into an industry standard instead. And then you end up with a worthless patent.
Sounds like competitive bidding for including into the standard. Being part of a major standard will mean millions or billions of units, whereas if it's not included, it's pretty much up to your company to monetize on it's own.
Do you want to be a small fish in a big pond, or a big fish in your own pond? Yet, not all that many companies are complaining about the situation.
On the other hand, far too many people don't seem to have a problem with nationalization of actual private property in the form of, say, taxable income, so perhaps the underlying premise is incorrect. If they can nationalize part of your income, which is your by natural right, they can certainly nationalize a few patents which only exist by their say-so in the first place.
Something just doesn't sit right in your analogy - in this case, nationalization of "property/cash" (aka tax) isn't a judicial punitive measure, it's a generally agreed-upon, and well known code. The best way is for them to both fine Samsung and invalidate their patents. That's well in their power, since patents are just government granted monopolies (supposedly time-limited, but there are ways around that).
Most people don't sit down in front of the TV for news these days (and no, opinion is not news). They get their news from the internet. People get entertainment from TV these days.
I blame CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for this just as equally as the Internet's rise. These shows are designed to entertain a market, not inform citizens.
I for one, can't wait for TV to die. It does little productive except keep people from truly experiencing life. Even at our house, the TV is rarely watched except on major events or for the kiddies (it's a nice reward) but with iPads and Netflix, it's not even needed for that much anymore either... I keep wanting an excuse to replace our 42" LCD with a newer shinier bigger panel, but keep finding no reasons whatsoever.
It's only evil when you get caught.
According to my little league soccer coach (and likely Republican motto) "If you're not cheating you're not trying".
At the moment, PowerVR is 3DFX (at the height of its success) strong in the ARM market, but faces the same problems that brought 3DFX's fortunes crashing down. PowerVR is currently used by Apple in all its non-x86 products. The important Chinese ARM chip companies are also starting to use PowerVR as well. PowerVR is in a golden age, but struggles to see a sunny future.
Soon, basic OpenGL ES2.0 functionality on ARM SoC parts will return almost worthless to the GPU IP companies. Good enough acceleration for everything but proper games (which have yet to have an important impact on ARM devices) is in a hardware race-to-the-bottom, with too many excellent competing designs. This mirrors the end of value in the PC 2D video space, after years of excellent profit for companies like Hercules, S3 and Number-nine.
This assertion is ridiculous. Smartphones and tablets will suck down all the graphics power-per-watt mobile GPU vendors can provide, as they are (and since the iPhone, have been) consumer-bought devices, where high-touch and bling win and win big. The differentiator is that, without massive enterprise control of spending, consumers will rightly choose the best graphics chip out there (enterprises just wanted enough to be able to surf spreadsheets and basic imagery - anything more was a liability - games capabilities are generally not preferred in corporate environments).
If you want an example of how important graphics capabilities are, take a look at the top grossing in the iOS App Store or Google Play markets. They are mostly games, and if not, apps that make extensive use of the graphics capabilities of the device.
Imagination will continue to thrive as long as Apple thrives - and if Apple fails, then I might start to get worried - Android-based manufacturers may not show the same desires as Apple to push forward the envelope on graphics - but then again, I doubt it even then.
I love how all your arguments for Apple buying into convergence is based on moves by Microsoft, anecdotal evidence of Android tablet users with keyboards and some handwaving arguments about lowered costs from converged lines.
Apple may at some point in the future do some "convergence" device and/or operating system. I sure as hell don't think it's likely. They already have the benefits of OS convergence by using the same/similar kernel and frameworks. Porting between iOS and OSX is easy enough.
Google may want to, and so might Microsoft, but they're chasing a red herring. People don't want convergence of device. They want convergence of usage and data. If you can keep your workflow going from your phone to your laptop (see iCloud, Google Drive, Azure) you don't mind having two devices - in fact, having two devices that do what they do well.
Apple IS moving in the direction of convergence but I think they are taking a more gentle path than Microsoft.
This is complete bullshit, sorry. There is no convergence in the pipeline. Harmonizing your UI so they're a bit more similar is not convergence. Maintaining separate UI input factors (mouse/kb vs. touch) is not convergence. Fully understanding that a phone and a laptop have widely different performance factors, battery life needs, etc for different customer groups is not convergence.
Apple hasn't done it yet simply because their desktop operating system is too heavy for current phones and tablets but there is no reason at all why iOS and OS X could not or should not merge at least their underpinnings somewhere down the line. I strongly believe that eventually iOS and OS X will just be different front end interfaces for the same underlying back end software.
If you don't realize that iOS and OSX are heavily similar at the lowest levels, you ought to go familiar yourself with the architectural history of Apple's operating systems ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS ). Why should they get even more similar that they currently are? Apple doesn't chase Microsoft, it's the other way around. Apple logically would be the first company to get the most out of a converged operating system, yet they haven't done it. Maybe they understand something you don't?
While Apple wastes time on the Dick Tracy watch wanna-be
s/Apple/Samsung/ Apple's iWatch is as real a product as their full screen smart TV product (hint for the sarcastic challenged - they are both speculative products that Apple has never committed to).
Unless there are some nuclear reactions going on in there, I really don't think it is creating any energy at all, much less "creating enough energy to power 70,000 homes".
Solar energy converts energy from the nuclear reactions in the sun into electricity. Ok, conversion.
Hydroelectric - captures energy stored from gravitational potential energy and converts it using a turbine into electricity. Fine, conversion again.
Coal/Nat. Gas - takes stored energy in the form of deposits of oil, coal and natural gas and uses them to drive turbines... oh, you get the picture. Check, conversion of energy again.
Clearly nuclear energy reactions "create energy" - no wait, it's converting stored energy in the form of nuclear bonds into radiation, which can then be captured as a heat energy which can then drive a steam turbine turning into electricity.... uh... huh.
Conversion is all we can do apparently. We might want to thank/curse this lousy law [1] .... who's with me for repeal?!?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421744,00.asp
I think the market says they want them. Chromebook now owns 25% of sub $300 market.
I spent 90% of my time on a laptop browsing the internet. A chromebook is my next upgrade.
No where does it quantify this with actual numbers. Kind of like when Amazon says the Kindle is the top selling product on Amazon. Without actual unit numbers it's hard to find out what the $300 market even means.
I laugh every time I hear Amazon decide to trot out their "Kindle rulz!" comments without numbers. If you aren't willing to show how much you've sold you can't say your product is popular at all. SalesRank is not a quantity.
Why bother making Chromebooks, the market doesn't much seem to care for them.
The Chromebook is a dual-attack against Google's biggest competitors/threats - Microsoft and Apple.
By sucking all the profit margin out of the low end, Microsoft can't levy it's Windows tax on each machine sold. Neither does a Chromebook carry MS Office. Both wins if you're hoping Microsoft's top line sinks... the fact that Apple rules the roost at the top end puts Microsoft in the same vice-grip that effectively killed Nokia and Blackberry in the smartphone space.
By simplifying ChromeOS so not even updates are manually handled, they make them simpler than Macbooks (it does less, but with more and more stuff being done on the web/cloud, it might be a moot point in a few years for mainstream users). And the Pixel was defintely a shot against the bow against Apple, targeting the high-end Retina MB Pros.
The Chromebook is a disruptive product, designed to torpedo both Apple and Google, first. And while doing so, support Google's services second.
While all of this is enjoyable and worthy of a bowl of popcorn as a bystander, the fact remains that Google has decided that Chrome needs to be an OS and not a browser first, and I see it in Chrome's recent bloat. It's a pity.
What's sad is that my netbook originally came with a 1024x600 screen. I got an aftermarket screen for it, but the best I could upgrade to was 1366x768... I don't understand why laptops/netbooks have such low res and dpi
There was no market for a high-end netbook, that's why (well, other than the small MB Air). That's a market that Microsoft wanted to create/crack for years - from their original "tablet PC" to "UMPC" to the more Intel-driven "Ultrabooks", the entire market has been a failure (some say, by design to preserve profit margins for the WinTel brothers).
Then the iPad came out and was the death knell (cheap Android tablets being the nails in the coffin to keep the analogy going). Why would a manufacturer create a $500 uber-netbook when they could sell a $500 tablet and not pay Microsoft $50-$200 for an OS (which, because Microsoft really never took it seriously, sucked at touch inputs for all of the 00 decade)?
Everyone in the lapdog press is running around crying Oh No'es but NOTHING bad is happening.
Well, nothing bad other than millions of Americans suddenly becoming essentially unemployed, even if temporarily, for which I can see no possible negative effect. /sarc
Apparently you haven't heard!
They are all going to get paid
House came together in a moment of rare bipartisanship to pass a bill, by a vote of 407 to 0, approving back pay for furloughed government workers.
President Obama has expressed his support for the measure.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid supports the measure, but said Saturday that if furloughed workers are guaranteed back pay, there’s no reason to keep them out of work.
They should be working, since they will be getting back pay.
Why does Obama keep them home?
So let me get this straight. The House of Representatives has not voted to pass a budget or even CR for this year. And it's Obama's fault? I, for one, am amazed by your blinding logic! (or when did Obama become Speaker of the House?)
What you are seeing here is the birth of a government. First it's law enforcement, paid for by voluntary contributions. Then maybe some additional services - upgraded fire or rescue. Then it gets big enough that someone has to start working full time to manage it. If everyone decides (as often happens) that the people organizing this shouldn't be profiting, they all agree to take turns. Of course, this becomes cumbersome and they really find they need more continuity so the community chooses 3-4 people who will manage it, and they change those people every couple of years to each person doesn't get burned out. Then after a couple years the revenue starts flagging, and they realize that they're going to have to reimburse the organizers, and have to find a way to make sure everyone is contributing. So they form a local organization which includes everyone getting services and they agree on a way to split the costs equitably so everyone gets a bill. Most places choose the split by land area or value. Soon enough they realize that with everybody paying, they can get better garbage service, and maybe even reform the schools if everyone kicks in a little more.
And then one street decides that they aren't really getting enough service, so they take up a collection for a private security firm to supplement the (now official) police...
You're missing the part where these localities vote to disincorporate themselves from Oakland. I see that as a requirement for at least the 2nd half of your adventuresome tale. And at that point, they will find out that Wall Street has made a huge racket by fixing city bond/loan rates [1].
[1] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620
20% of the market and probably 50% of the profits
Samsung Dethrones Apple in Smartphone Profits
Apple has fallen off the profit throne.
Last quarter, Samsung Electronics made more money selling handsets than Apple for the first time.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/07/26/samsung-dethrones-apple-in-smartphone-profits/
Try again. This has been debunked: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not-dethroned-apple-in-mobile-profits
There's a limit to how long you can make text lines before it becomes harder to follow and/or people stop reading them. That's why newspapers use columns instead of the full width of the page.
This is what multiple columns are for. Look at theverge.com or feedly.com (where I skim most of the /. titles anyway, now that Google Reader is dead). Proper multi-column views.
I disagree that pictures are a waste. I wouldn't mind if slashdot stories had appropriate title images so it tiled appropriately nicely in flipboard or feedly when read as a feed. Not sure how the latest linux kernel update would have an interesting unique picture though.
sigh... so now I've got to pay for two plans, instead of one?
That's how it works today. HDHP + HSA. Two plans. Has been this way since the mid 00's. Everywhere. Have you ever actually subscribed to such a plan combo?
Just stop talking if you don't know what you're saying. You're embarrassing yourself.
They also need to understand why people are posting. People talked about Breaking Bad a lot because it was so good, and they also talked about Dexter because it got so bad. When good shows drop in quality hard core fans stick around but start to complain. So you could conceivably get an uptick in chatter that instead of signalling a rise in ratings actually precedes a drop in ratings.
Enter Sentiment Analysis [1]. Even a word-count analysis of positive/negative connotation words vs. a neutral sentiment control corpus could tell you with a reasonably high accuracy whether a show is being slagged or praised. And that's a simplistic guess of a prediction model from someone with a single machine learning course to brag about - nothing like using Google's prediction API.
[1] https://developers.google.com/prediction/docs/sentiment_analysis
This just isn't that big a deal. The US likely has plans to invade Canada if necessary
Here is some excellent stolen documentary [1] of such a planned exercise.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109370/
Let's pretend it was taken to it's logical extreme, aka a society with zero taxes. Also known as a society with no roads, no enforced laws, no food inspection, no building codes, etc.
You're describing a libertarian government-free paradise known as "Somalia" (warlords and pirates are a feature of such a society).
At my startup, we pay for good insurance for our employees and while maybe my individual insurance is slightly cheaper, that is apparently buried in the noise floor of the increasing costs for the total employee pool. And the small difference in individual cost for older individuals does not materially alter the risk calculus for the individual in terms of whether they'll start a tech company.
Can you explain how a bootstrap one-man operation can afford to pay for healthcare for his family? Nice that you're startup is well-funded or profitable already, but for those shoestring operations that are barely ramen profitable or still working towards that glorious day, are they supposed to forego healthcare?
Take a look at the individual markets or for small business coverage. Without a large risk pool, you're paying 10x what others pay - because insurance companies assume you want coverage because you're an actuarial risk/cost. Now that everyone requires coverage, the reasoning is that you simply don't have coverage, not that you're some pariah that shouldn't get it.
My son needed a surgery the cost 15K.
You could have gotten insurance that would cover precisely that sort of bill for a lot less than $1500/month.
The problem is that you don't even know that such plans exist: These days they are called "Catastrophic Coverage" but they used to be called "Major Medical" -- typically you will pay the first $1000 or so of any illness out of pocket, and the rest is on the insurance company.
You still can. It's called... *drumroll* - catastrophic coverage. It's provided on the exchanges (at least CA has it).
The people with these plans often create Health Savings Accounts for dealing with routine healthcare costs.. and these have serious tax advantages.
What prevents you from still enrolling in one? If you had an opportunity before, you still can. And you can enroll in a catastrophic coverage plan to pair with it.
But no.. people are too ignorant to know whats available, so they demand PelosiCare, so that some fuckers in an insurance company can get a percentage of the cost of every single doctors visit... Its people like you that ruined this country. You wanted something that was already available, and voted to get the government to provide it for you at 10 times the price.
What are you whining about again?
It wouldn't be pro-business; it would be pro-small business and pro-new business, but it wouldn't be pro-large business at all; after all, health care is one of the levers they use to press your nose to the grindstone.
Only for short-sighted idiotic companies. A wisely run business would see a chance to completely outsource a major cost of doing business as a huge boon. So you can't provide incentives on basic healthcare coverage - what about additional perks? It's not like providing healthcare is some profit-center for most corporations, it's a huge drain (costs keeps increasing) and requires a large non-trivial staff and expensive software to manage benefits and relationships with health insurance carriers. Instead they could offer other perks that employees would get accustomed to and miss if they left. Or hell, just take the money used to manage/pay for health coverage and spend it on bonuses/options/RSUs.
Take a look at France, big business still provides bonus coverage and cadillac plans for employees above and beyond what the government offers, despite the government providing single-payer healthcare.
Someone does have to pay the bill. There's really no getting around that. Stealing from Paul to pay Mary really doesn't change anything.
Exactly why private for-profit insurance is such a bad idea - in this case, your increased premiums turn into bonuses for the insurance company executives and dividends (or increased value) for the shareholders. It's almost like socialism - for corporations and their wealthy owners.
So, basically you're admitting that by design, this law priced his current coverage out of his reach, and forced him to buy insurance through a government controlled market. Fuck you.
Government regulated. The only difference between an exchange and company-sponsored coverage is who subsidizes (if at all) your coverage. The government only steps in to ensure that things like "pre-existing conditions" and "recission" are no longer allowed, and to ensure that poorer folks get subsidized so they can actually afford their coverage.
For those who have coverage that's better than the exchange (say through an employer), the only change is that private insurers may decide to blame the government while raising prices... at that point, it's a good idea to see if the exchange is cheaper for what you get.
If you happen to be running a startup that's say, Ramen profitable [1], you'll love the fact that you're effectively capable of getting very inexpensive coverage.
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html