Media and politicians are framing this in completely wrong way . Virtually everybody has accepted this misinformation and virtually everybody is barking at the wrong tree. I don't know if it is intentional or not - but this debate should NOT focus on guns, but on the Constitution and Bill of Rights instead. Right to keep and bear arms is protected by Second Amendment. So you should ask whether those gun control laws pushed down your throats are constitutional or not. If not, then enacting those laws means abrogating the Constitution and it will be invitation for your government to formalize stripping citizenry of remaining rights granted by the Constitution. IF there is real need to enact some form of gun control that wouldn't be fully constitional, government should consider amending the Constitution itself (regardless of how long this process will take) and only after that it can work on gun control laws. I know this is idealistic or even naive: I'm aware US government routinely ignores US Constitution BUT letting them formalize abrogations elevates problem a new level.
Given that Zuckerberg has so good relations with Wall Street folks, that they decided to con Facebook shareholders to make him richer by pumping Facebook stock prior to IPO (typically they undervalue stock to make themselves richer - or at least used to), I doubt Instagram fiasco will have meaningful impact on Zuckerberg's business. Whatever disastrous deal this guy will do, he will be afloat anyway. Is Zuckerberg the new Murdoch ?
The US Justice System is there to enforce the law.
No, it isn't. Federal prosecutors routinely use fucked up laws, trumped up charges and fabricated evidence to indict innocent people and don't give a shit if their targets are felons or not. Defending oneself in a court is very expensive and US prosecutors have practically unlimited funds to drag their suspects long enough to bleed them dry. Thus you get >99% conviction rate for all who decide to go all the way through courts. Less than one person of 100 has chance to avoid jail. The only practical way to get out of this is to strike some deal with prosecutor (help to indict someone else, sign pre-written guilt plea or become informant). No wonder that you have the highest incarceration rate in the world - highest of any country in history, including most oppresive regimes. Now add to the equation all those banksters and wall street crooks who get away with crimes unprecented in history (of your country) and you end up in grotesque situation where most of Latin America banana republics look like way more civilized than US of A. Your "justice" system is completely fucked up. It is dysfunctional to the point foreigners (including myself) start considering to NOT travel to your country nor do any business with you. I hope Swartz's case will bring some sanity, yet I doubt things will become significantly better.
In civilized countries if terms contract terms are breaking laws, contract signers are not bound by those terms. Unfortunately it does not apply to (most of) banana republics. So be sure to double check if in your juristiction contract terms actually can override local laws before signing them. If so, consider moving to some civilized country.
They say "fight fire with fire". As soon as Microsoft would stop harrasing other Android vendors with their lawyers bringing bogus claims and "don't try this" attitude, I would assume your point valid. Yet I see Microsoft crying foul and AT THE SAME TIME doing way more cruel things to Android vendors than what Google is doing to them.
If you read or hear on how to treat psychopats getting in your way, you discover that first thing is to do (besides avoiding them) set aside ANY moral issues you have. Otherwise you get instant disadvantage because psychopats - like sharks - tend to have no empathy nor moral constraints at all. I'm bringing this up because corporate entities are the ultimate psychopats (and we still hear everywhere that "corporations are people" crap). Especially those built on deception from the start, like Microsoft.
People in the US of A have to learn what people in old communist countries leaned in their time. Double standards are forced upon us and if "we the people" don't adapt, we're in disadvantage. According to corporate executives and wall street money junkies we, ordinary people are all second class citizens. Why should we treat them differently ?
Look like they have succesfully bribed ITC to block devices competing with them and drop cases against them (eg. Motorola case). And I suspect that whole Wall-Street estabulshitment is backing them - money junkies and banksters are too much invested in Apple to let any competition threaten Apple's obscenic margins. This is scenario I'm worried about for some time: monopolistic cash cow artificially created by Wall Street crooks. Openness coming with Android is what they're fighting against, not Samsung. Add it to long list of Wall Street crimes they've done over all those years: internet bubble, housing bubble, derivatives, bailouts, market rigging (see LIBOR scandal), drug money laundering (see HSBC or Wachovia, now Citi). It's the whole system stacked against 'we, the people'. If you're uncomfortable enough to not feed Apple with your money, you should also consider NOT feeding other Wall Street firms whenever possible. Along with Apple, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Wallmart or Goldman Sachs they're all parts of one big criminal cartel 'we the people' should fight off so that in coming years you can tell your children that at least you've tried...
US and other western governments are actively supporting, sponsoring, arming and training those rebels. Should they not do that, Assad would propably crush them quickly in some cruel way BUT thousands upon thousands of civilians would still be alive. It's sad to see our politicians being ultimately responsible for most of killed civilians and sponsoring those killings with mouths full of crap about "bringing democracy". If Norymberg precedents would be honored in today's world, most of our leaders would be already sentenced and jailed (or hanged).
Sould their sales tank, they'd just request federal bailout and you would pay them through your taxes. Or they'd push a low through congress that would make NOT buying their crapola products for two months in a row a felony. They don't need to do this YET as most of people are still dumbed down consumers - just look at some of black friday fiascos on youtube. Welcome to brave new, post-2008 corporate-fascist world.
As of now we know that Win8 is vulnerable to a huge chunk of malware designed for older versions of Windows. This "UEFI Secure Boot" does not prevent it at all. I suspected earlier that UEFI Secure Boot wasn't designed to make PCs more secure but rather to lock down PCs, so novice users trying to check out some Linux distribution will have tough time doing so. This fiasco makes me sure that this was the case and makes me wonder why antitrust authorities don't do anything about this. This is potentially more harmful than MSIE case after all.
Crooks defending a broken system they themselves designed and lobbied hard for. News at 11. Thus these silly argument aren't even wrong. These arguments are corrupt and should be dismissed as such. Having said that, I see more and more corporate parrots repeating this crap as pressure on fixing this (broken) system mounts. Expect more of them joining this chorus of lies and deceptions and more corporate money thrown at Congress to make sure US broken patent system won't go away.
This is also my policy since 9/11. From european POV post-9/11 United States seems to be half-way between civilzed country and banana-republic-style police state. This also applies to freedom of speech and amount of bullshit propaganda - compare Fox News with any mainstream european media and you'll see huge difference. Do something with this folks ! You're losing your freedoms and your country way faster than you think !
Regardless of technicals and wherever you use arm64 or not, this means that there will be a well qualified team of engineers working on OpenJDK besides Oracle. This is Good News (TM), folks ! For last three years I was worried that Larry will do with Java what he does with all other products and technologies he puts his hands on - specifically, turn it into crap (uh, yes - money producing one - yet total crap from engineer/dev/admin perspective). Oracle might be good money sucking entity, yet it is a remarkably poor steward to technologies and standards they put their hands on (especially open ones).
So, this is very good news folks! I'd even urge you to support Red Hat in this regard and make sure all your pet projects work as charm on OpenJDK (in addition to Oracle JDK).
With 600B+ market cap, whole market moves every time Apple moves. And with 600B+ market cap everyone expects Apple to grow even bigger. In a world driven by money (and only money) the only possible outcome will be Apple winning on all fronts, regardless of how much harm will it cause to everyone else (including consumers). Looking forward I expect judges mysteriously ruling in favor of Apple dubious patents and punishing competition every time regardless of their arguments. And even if tables turn in this debacle and Apple gets burned for the first time, I see Congress quickly passing a law "fixing it" - basically setting competition in an uphill battle against Apple or even outright graning monopoly on consumer electronics to Apple in some way.
Welcome to crony capitalism.
With 0.3-0.6% of GDP directly attributed to Apple and its basically unlimited funds for lobbying (bribing) politicians, your lovely (US) government cannot afford letting them lose their current market cap - it would harm whole market and trigger an avalanche of failing pension funds (lots of them also heavily invested into Apple itself) which in turn would bite government crooks in their lazy asses. Wall Street crooks also cannot afford Apple bubble popping exactly for the same reasons. Given that the biggest thread to Apple's profit is margin compression caused by maturing smartphone/tablet technology, I bet that both government and wall street will do everything they can to keep competition out of this space, heavily influencing courts, panels and commisions dealing with Apple's cases.
Winning short term (and getting fat bonus for it) is propably everything Tim Crook is looking for. Or maybe not ? Look at all those high-end engineers who left Apple in recent months. My suspicion is that Apple management team quite conciously got off the innovation path - they don't want do this anymore because they don't want to, not because they can't. Getting a monopoly and sitting on it forever seems to be the way they chose. Get consumers into a forced consumption treadmill (with iToys breaking just after warranty expires and being impossible to repair) is propably everything their Tim Crook and his cronies are able to grasp these days.
I'm happy to see people rushed to buy Samsung gadgets as soon out of fear that these might be banned anytime. This means that real market mechanism (not rigged by corporate commercials & propaganda) is still working.
Your lovely US media once again caught on spewing a bunch of utter lies and calling it "news". Oh my. Not a long shot from soviet Pravda, just a bit more "modern". Here is something worth looking for.. Lots of interesting stuff - especially for misled by corporate media propaganda US residents.
One of things that caught my attention was that after losing in UK Supreme Court Assange lawyers planned to appeal to European Court of Justice but were denied: standard 14-day term for filing an appeal was "magicaly" shortened to 0 days (!). That's the last one of a whole series of strange events in this case. Did you hear about this in CNN, folks from US ? Oh, you didn't ? Welcome to the real world.
So many things indicate that this was a setup from the beginning, yet even in this forum I see so many folks in this forum still seem to live in a fictional world of lies and propaganda fabricated by CNN and other "murdoch-media" organizations (as I call them). Sorry to say that but everyone still buying CNN crap deserves for any cruelty your lovely government serves you.
You are responsible for letting this ill system running and only you can shut it down by withdrawing consent and ignoring corporate propaganda outlets. It's a waste of time, folks ! Getting back to history books will be a MUCH better way to spend time than watching Fox News. Plus, after reading enough of these you won't need to see much media coverage to easily predict what really happened and what will happen tommorow.
There are already laws in place to deal with those crooks. The problem is selective application of laws - ordinary people will be jailed for years for having a little bit of marijuana in possesion, while crooky ruling elite is clearly above the law and they can do whatever they want. And if they break laws (stealing billions in the process), enforcement officials will cover it up (instead of doing what they're supposed to do) or some law retroactively legalizing criminal ruling crooks' behavior will be passed.
Wake up folks, 2012 US of A is a two-tiered society, pretty much like medieval Europe. Technology and cheap energy is the only thing keeping standard of live relatively high but if it ends, you'll get back into dark ages sooner than you think.
Are you kidding ? $5m is a peanuts. In the age of "Citizens United" and super-PACs overall lobbying contributions are few orders of magnitude higher. I don't know what means this graph published in Forbes - propably a bunch of lies. My suspicion is that both Apple and Google spends some between one and two order of magnitude more on lobbying, yet both found good ways to hide this (with some "creative" techniques resembling tax evasion). My take is - judging for crap quality of patents they ram through UPSTO and politicians freaking up every time when a competitor tries to defend itself against barage of Apple crap patents - that Apple's impact on politicians/bourocrats is way higher than Google's (see FRAND fiasco and suspicious silence about Apple's patent crapola at the same time - it speaks for itself).
Some 20T (yes, 20 trillion) in 2008 and 2009 alone for financial institutions. Plus few trillions every year sucked off the economy via ZIRP policies and rigging all meaningful markets and base market rates (eg. LIBOR scandal). We don't see austerity because of some budget-balancing need, it just bankers who want this money for themselves.
Slightly off-topic, yet still relevant as **AA/IFPI** is one of (many) similiar parts of out corporate world.
As Nouriel Roubini and few other well known commentators (economists) noticed, hanging a few bankers is rapidly becoming mainstream meme. Hanging a few **AA crooks, hanging few big-pharma crooks, hanging few Monsanto crooks etc. might follow soon. While it is an exaggeration, it correctly reflects popular mood of everyone feeling screwed by those corporate fucks and desire to properly prosecute and jail some more sociopatic corporate offenders.
What (still) didn't seep into mainstream is translating this popular mood into actions. People feel bad about being abused by corporations, yet they still watch murdoch-media crap, still buy overpriced corporate-crapola-music CDs, still buy in Wall-Mart, still invest their money into Wall-Street rigged game, still believe into "democrats vs republicans" lie and still do not leave home to protest against abuse (except for some OWS folks).
I hope that with 'hang a few bankers' meme some actionable change will come. When people will stop watching fox news en masse, stop buying crap from **AA crooks en masse, change habits and start buying, investing local, it will severly impair corporate grip on us. People know what's going on and going into action about this is the last step that finally might bring some change (as opposed to Obama's "home and change" lies) - come on folks, get up your lazy butts:)
Tim Cook received some $500M in stock options. He'll be able to cash it in few years from now and until then he has to keep its current (absurd) market capitalization where it is and keep all these hedge funds invested in it. This is pretty darn good incentive for any CEO to do whatever possible with complete disregard to those petty "externalities". My bet is he'll push to continue patent trolling, cheating (photoshopped "evidence"), bribe government officials (make them punishing everyone trying to defend against Apple patent trolling, changing law to Apple's favor if necessary) and do other cruel things in order to keep Apple monopoly on certain designs and thus keep its profit margins and share price without actually innovating too much (Steve Jobs is dead after all and some prominent engineers left Apple recently). It's too much money at stake here - expect never ending stream of dirty tricks from those crooks.
Yet I think, it's $99 now, strange problems with non-MS keys disappearing from more and more hardware models later and complete lock-in a few years from now. Microsoft basicaly got its foot in the door and instead of pushing them back with antitrust complaints we're sitting idle and explaining them with "$99 isn't much money" arguments. Wake up folks unless it's too late !
I don't know exact numbers but I suppose their margins on stuff sold to Apple are razor thin. More than half of Samsung revenues come from mobile phones. More than all the rest combined (chips, nand flash, computers, TVs, cameras, washing machines, tons of other stuff).
Yet I think cutting Apple off still would be a very bad deal for Samsung. I imagine Apple going to US regulators and crying foul how unfairly have they been threated. I imagine US regulators opening antitrust case for Samsung and cutting them off US market due to "monopoly abuse". US govt officials would quickly press other countries to ban Samsung from their markets or make them pay huge fines for "abuses". It would make Apple more happy than many people think.
Crony capitalism, crookery and corruption is the name of game nowadays and Apple became one of prominent examples of this phenomenon. As Apple's business quickly moves from competing on quality basis (developing new cool stuff) to outright rent seeking (and racketeering), we'll see more and more evidence of Apple being in bed with (corrupt) US government.
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Media and politicians are framing this in completely wrong way . Virtually everybody has accepted this misinformation and virtually everybody is barking at the wrong tree. I don't know if it is intentional or not - but this debate should NOT focus on guns, but on the Constitution and Bill of Rights instead. Right to keep and bear arms is protected by Second Amendment. So you should ask whether those gun control laws pushed down your throats are constitutional or not. If not, then enacting those laws means abrogating the Constitution and it will be invitation for your government to formalize stripping citizenry of remaining rights granted by the Constitution. IF there is real need to enact some form of gun control that wouldn't be fully constitional, government should consider amending the Constitution itself (regardless of how long this process will take) and only after that it can work on gun control laws. I know this is idealistic or even naive: I'm aware US government routinely ignores US Constitution BUT letting them formalize abrogations elevates problem a new level.
Given that Zuckerberg has so good relations with Wall Street folks, that they decided to con Facebook shareholders to make him richer by pumping Facebook stock prior to IPO (typically they undervalue stock to make themselves richer - or at least used to), I doubt Instagram fiasco will have meaningful impact on Zuckerberg's business. Whatever disastrous deal this guy will do, he will be afloat anyway. Is Zuckerberg the new Murdoch ?
The US Justice System is there to enforce the law.
No, it isn't. Federal prosecutors routinely use fucked up laws, trumped up charges and fabricated evidence to indict innocent people and don't give a shit if their targets are felons or not. Defending oneself in a court is very expensive and US prosecutors have practically unlimited funds to drag their suspects long enough to bleed them dry. Thus you get >99% conviction rate for all who decide to go all the way through courts. Less than one person of 100 has chance to avoid jail. The only practical way to get out of this is to strike some deal with prosecutor (help to indict someone else, sign pre-written guilt plea or become informant). No wonder that you have the highest incarceration rate in the world - highest of any country in history, including most oppresive regimes. Now add to the equation all those banksters and wall street crooks who get away with crimes unprecented in history (of your country) and you end up in grotesque situation where most of Latin America banana republics look like way more civilized than US of A. Your "justice" system is completely fucked up. It is dysfunctional to the point foreigners (including myself) start considering to NOT travel to your country nor do any business with you. I hope Swartz's case will bring some sanity, yet I doubt things will become significantly better.
In civilized countries if terms contract terms are breaking laws, contract signers are not bound by those terms. Unfortunately it does not apply to (most of) banana republics. So be sure to double check if in your juristiction contract terms actually can override local laws before signing them. If so, consider moving to some civilized country.
They say "fight fire with fire". As soon as Microsoft would stop harrasing other Android vendors with their lawyers bringing bogus claims and "don't try this" attitude, I would assume your point valid. Yet I see Microsoft crying foul and AT THE SAME TIME doing way more cruel things to Android vendors than what Google is doing to them.
If you read or hear on how to treat psychopats getting in your way, you discover that first thing is to do (besides avoiding them) set aside ANY moral issues you have. Otherwise you get instant disadvantage because psychopats - like sharks - tend to have no empathy nor moral constraints at all. I'm bringing this up because corporate entities are the ultimate psychopats (and we still hear everywhere that "corporations are people" crap). Especially those built on deception from the start, like Microsoft.
People in the US of A have to learn what people in old communist countries leaned in their time. Double standards are forced upon us and if "we the people" don't adapt, we're in disadvantage. According to corporate executives and wall street money junkies we, ordinary people are all second class citizens. Why should we treat them differently ?
Unless US Department of State intervenes (as they did in Germany). CoS has lots of money and significant lobbying power after all...
Look like they have succesfully bribed ITC to block devices competing with them and drop cases against them (eg. Motorola case). And I suspect that whole Wall-Street estabulshitment is backing them - money junkies and banksters are too much invested in Apple to let any competition threaten Apple's obscenic margins. This is scenario I'm worried about for some time: monopolistic cash cow artificially created by Wall Street crooks. Openness coming with Android is what they're fighting against, not Samsung. Add it to long list of Wall Street crimes they've done over all those years: internet bubble, housing bubble, derivatives, bailouts, market rigging (see LIBOR scandal), drug money laundering (see HSBC or Wachovia, now Citi). It's the whole system stacked against 'we, the people'. If you're uncomfortable enough to not feed Apple with your money, you should also consider NOT feeding other Wall Street firms whenever possible. Along with Apple, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Wallmart or Goldman Sachs they're all parts of one big criminal cartel 'we the people' should fight off so that in coming years you can tell your children that at least you've tried...
US and other western governments are actively supporting, sponsoring, arming and training those rebels. Should they not do that, Assad would propably crush them quickly in some cruel way BUT thousands upon thousands of civilians would still be alive. It's sad to see our politicians being ultimately responsible for most of killed civilians and sponsoring those killings with mouths full of crap about "bringing democracy". If Norymberg precedents would be honored in today's world, most of our leaders would be already sentenced and jailed (or hanged).
Sould their sales tank, they'd just request federal bailout and you would pay them through your taxes. Or they'd push a low through congress that would make NOT buying their crapola products for two months in a row a felony. They don't need to do this YET as most of people are still dumbed down consumers - just look at some of black friday fiascos on youtube. Welcome to brave new, post-2008 corporate-fascist world.
As of now we know that Win8 is vulnerable to a huge chunk of malware designed for older versions of Windows. This "UEFI Secure Boot" does not prevent it at all. I suspected earlier that UEFI Secure Boot wasn't designed to make PCs more secure but rather to lock down PCs, so novice users trying to check out some Linux distribution will have tough time doing so. This fiasco makes me sure that this was the case and makes me wonder why antitrust authorities don't do anything about this. This is potentially more harmful than MSIE case after all.
Crooks defending a broken system they themselves designed and lobbied hard for. News at 11. Thus these silly argument aren't even wrong. These arguments are corrupt and should be dismissed as such. Having said that, I see more and more corporate parrots repeating this crap as pressure on fixing this (broken) system mounts. Expect more of them joining this chorus of lies and deceptions and more corporate money thrown at Congress to make sure US broken patent system won't go away.
This is also my policy since 9/11. From european POV post-9/11 United States seems to be half-way between civilzed country and banana-republic-style police state. This also applies to freedom of speech and amount of bullshit propaganda - compare Fox News with any mainstream european media and you'll see huge difference. Do something with this folks ! You're losing your freedoms and your country way faster than you think !
Iranian PressTV has been recently banned from UK. Does West really differ so much from China in this regard ?
Regardless of technicals and wherever you use arm64 or not, this means that there will be a well qualified team of engineers working on OpenJDK besides Oracle. This is Good News (TM), folks ! For last three years I was worried that Larry will do with Java what he does with all other products and technologies he puts his hands on - specifically, turn it into crap (uh, yes - money producing one - yet total crap from engineer/dev/admin perspective). Oracle might be good money sucking entity, yet it is a remarkably poor steward to technologies and standards they put their hands on (especially open ones).
So, this is very good news folks! I'd even urge you to support Red Hat in this regard and make sure all your pet projects work as charm on OpenJDK (in addition to Oracle JDK).
Since when US army gives a crap about collateral damage ?
With 600B+ market cap, whole market moves every time Apple moves. And with 600B+ market cap everyone expects Apple to grow even bigger. In a world driven by money (and only money) the only possible outcome will be Apple winning on all fronts, regardless of how much harm will it cause to everyone else (including consumers). Looking forward I expect judges mysteriously ruling in favor of Apple dubious patents and punishing competition every time regardless of their arguments. And even if tables turn in this debacle and Apple gets burned for the first time, I see Congress quickly passing a law "fixing it" - basically setting competition in an uphill battle against Apple or even outright graning monopoly on consumer electronics to Apple in some way.
Welcome to crony capitalism.
With 0.3-0.6% of GDP directly attributed to Apple and its basically unlimited funds for lobbying (bribing) politicians, your lovely (US) government cannot afford letting them lose their current market cap - it would harm whole market and trigger an avalanche of failing pension funds (lots of them also heavily invested into Apple itself) which in turn would bite government crooks in their lazy asses. Wall Street crooks also cannot afford Apple bubble popping exactly for the same reasons. Given that the biggest thread to Apple's profit is margin compression caused by maturing smartphone/tablet technology, I bet that both government and wall street will do everything they can to keep competition out of this space, heavily influencing courts, panels and commisions dealing with Apple's cases.
Winning short term (and getting fat bonus for it) is propably everything Tim Crook is looking for. Or maybe not ? Look at all those high-end engineers who left Apple in recent months. My suspicion is that Apple management team quite conciously got off the innovation path - they don't want do this anymore because they don't want to, not because they can't. Getting a monopoly and sitting on it forever seems to be the way they chose. Get consumers into a forced consumption treadmill (with iToys breaking just after warranty expires and being impossible to repair) is propably everything their Tim Crook and his cronies are able to grasp these days.
I'm happy to see people rushed to buy Samsung gadgets as soon out of fear that these might be banned anytime. This means that real market mechanism (not rigged by corporate commercials & propaganda) is still working.
Your lovely US media once again caught on spewing a bunch of utter lies and calling it "news". Oh my. Not a long shot from soviet Pravda, just a bit more "modern". Here is something worth looking for.. Lots of interesting stuff - especially for misled by corporate media propaganda US residents.
One of things that caught my attention was that after losing in UK Supreme Court Assange lawyers planned to appeal to European Court of Justice but were denied: standard 14-day term for filing an appeal was "magicaly" shortened to 0 days (!). That's the last one of a whole series of strange events in this case. Did you hear about this in CNN, folks from US ? Oh, you didn't ? Welcome to the real world.
So many things indicate that this was a setup from the beginning, yet even in this forum I see so many folks in this forum still seem to live in a fictional world of lies and propaganda fabricated by CNN and other "murdoch-media" organizations (as I call them). Sorry to say that but everyone still buying CNN crap deserves for any cruelty your lovely government serves you.
You are responsible for letting this ill system running and only you can shut it down by withdrawing consent and ignoring corporate propaganda outlets. It's a waste of time, folks ! Getting back to history books will be a MUCH better way to spend time than watching Fox News. Plus, after reading enough of these you won't need to see much media coverage to easily predict what really happened and what will happen tommorow.
There are already laws in place to deal with those crooks. The problem is selective application of laws - ordinary people will be jailed for years for having a little bit of marijuana in possesion, while crooky ruling elite is clearly above the law and they can do whatever they want. And if they break laws (stealing billions in the process), enforcement officials will cover it up (instead of doing what they're supposed to do) or some law retroactively legalizing criminal ruling crooks' behavior will be passed.
Wake up folks, 2012 US of A is a two-tiered society, pretty much like medieval Europe. Technology and cheap energy is the only thing keeping standard of live relatively high but if it ends, you'll get back into dark ages sooner than you think.
Are you kidding ? $5m is a peanuts. In the age of "Citizens United" and super-PACs overall lobbying contributions are few orders of magnitude higher. I don't know what means this graph published in Forbes - propably a bunch of lies. My suspicion is that both Apple and Google spends some between one and two order of magnitude more on lobbying, yet both found good ways to hide this (with some "creative" techniques resembling tax evasion). My take is - judging for crap quality of patents they ram through UPSTO and politicians freaking up every time when a competitor tries to defend itself against barage of Apple crap patents - that Apple's impact on politicians/bourocrats is way higher than Google's (see FRAND fiasco and suspicious silence about Apple's patent crapola at the same time - it speaks for itself).
Some 20T (yes, 20 trillion) in 2008 and 2009 alone for financial institutions. Plus few trillions every year sucked off the economy via ZIRP policies and rigging all meaningful markets and base market rates (eg. LIBOR scandal). We don't see austerity because of some budget-balancing need, it just bankers who want this money for themselves.
Slightly off-topic, yet still relevant as **AA/IFPI** is one of (many) similiar parts of out corporate world.
As Nouriel Roubini and few other well known commentators (economists) noticed, hanging a few bankers is rapidly becoming mainstream meme. Hanging a few **AA crooks, hanging few big-pharma crooks, hanging few Monsanto crooks etc. might follow soon. While it is an exaggeration, it correctly reflects popular mood of everyone feeling screwed by those corporate fucks and desire to properly prosecute and jail some more sociopatic corporate offenders.
What (still) didn't seep into mainstream is translating this popular mood into actions. People feel bad about being abused by corporations, yet they still watch murdoch-media crap, still buy overpriced corporate-crapola-music CDs, still buy in Wall-Mart, still invest their money into Wall-Street rigged game, still believe into "democrats vs republicans" lie and still do not leave home to protest against abuse (except for some OWS folks).
I hope that with 'hang a few bankers' meme some actionable change will come. When people will stop watching fox news en masse, stop buying crap from **AA crooks en masse, change habits and start buying, investing local, it will severly impair corporate grip on us. People know what's going on and going into action about this is the last step that finally might bring some change (as opposed to Obama's "home and change" lies) - come on folks, get up your lazy butts :)
Tim Cook received some $500M in stock options. He'll be able to cash it in few years from now and until then he has to keep its current (absurd) market capitalization where it is and keep all these hedge funds invested in it. This is pretty darn good incentive for any CEO to do whatever possible with complete disregard to those petty "externalities". My bet is he'll push to continue patent trolling, cheating (photoshopped "evidence"), bribe government officials (make them punishing everyone trying to defend against Apple patent trolling, changing law to Apple's favor if necessary) and do other cruel things in order to keep Apple monopoly on certain designs and thus keep its profit margins and share price without actually innovating too much (Steve Jobs is dead after all and some prominent engineers left Apple recently). It's too much money at stake here - expect never ending stream of dirty tricks from those crooks.
Yet I think, it's $99 now, strange problems with non-MS keys disappearing from more and more hardware models later and complete lock-in a few years from now. Microsoft basicaly got its foot in the door and instead of pushing them back with antitrust complaints we're sitting idle and explaining them with "$99 isn't much money" arguments. Wake up folks unless it's too late !
I don't know exact numbers but I suppose their margins on stuff sold to Apple are razor thin. More than half of Samsung revenues come from mobile phones. More than all the rest combined (chips, nand flash, computers, TVs, cameras, washing machines, tons of other stuff).
Yet I think cutting Apple off still would be a very bad deal for Samsung. I imagine Apple going to US regulators and crying foul how unfairly have they been threated. I imagine US regulators opening antitrust case for Samsung and cutting them off US market due to "monopoly abuse". US govt officials would quickly press other countries to ban Samsung from their markets or make them pay huge fines for "abuses". It would make Apple more happy than many people think.
Crony capitalism, crookery and corruption is the name of game nowadays and Apple became one of prominent examples of this phenomenon. As Apple's business quickly moves from competing on quality basis (developing new cool stuff) to outright rent seeking (and racketeering), we'll see more and more evidence of Apple being in bed with (corrupt) US government.