Samsung ripped off the look of the packaging AND the product. This is even before you turn the thing on! Copying visual design of popular products falls under copyright as a graphical design.
As far as I'm concerned, this is a flaky area, since it becomes difficult to distinguish what is a unique design, and what is the current trend in design, but in this particular case the copying is blatantly obvious. To add to that, the rules (law) says that such practice is illegal.
Is the box design some common good that should be copied? no. Lay off it Samsung.
This is actually a very serious marketing issue. My wife is willing to spend her life savings to drive a hip car, which does include electric, but will not be caught dead in an ugly car. How can these companies overlook the fact that people willing to put down dumb amounts of money for trendy niche products are the types that care about looks?
Electric is not yet into the utilitarian buyer's niche. Folks who buy electric are currently doing it because of the social status and the need to strut the trendiest new gadget in front of their friends.
The description of the CODA on their site seems to imply that it looks that way, because it isn't meant to be futuristic. Which suggests that someone thinks the Prius is "too futuristic". It's just Toyota's take on futurism. Toyota isn't known for pretty cars, and the Prius is no exception. That's why people think it's ugly - it's not the weirdness of it.
Take the Opel Astra (Saturn Astra), which is a cute car. It's a little dated now, but it's a catchy design for a practical car. The CODA could've taken inspiration from that. Instead, it seems to be inspired by a cross between an older Kia (i.e. before they actually hired a designer) and an older Civic (not the original, when it was truly hip, but the middleaged boring variety for seniors).
The Kia is a budget car, and the reason the Civic sells at all these days is because it's a Honda Civic, not because of it's hot shot looks. Have these CODA guys ever talked to a Honda Civic sedan owner and heard them rave about the looks of it? The owner will rave about the high RPMs on the Honda engine, and the sportiness, and that it "just works" and probably a whole bunch of other things before they get to the looks (which they never do).
It's like taking design cues from Subaru. The guys who buy Subaru couldn't care less about the looks. The legendary WRC is what does it for them and they take the poor looks (better lately!) as a badge of honour. What is compelling about the CODA? Really! What? Looking at it, I'll take a Leaf any day for "hip car" on the block status; mileage be damned. It never counted to the hipsters anyway.
Coal transport from mine to plant requires less carbon than oil from Saudi Arabia to the pump, plus refinement. Also, I'm not sure what the combustion energy effectiveness of a highly specialized generator turbines is, but I suspect it's a bit better than a pocket piston combustion engine that you'll find under your hood. Please consider city driving conditions for the combustion engine efficiency, because that's the niche for the new electric vehicles.
Premium price for truly crappy looks? How is that supposed to work? How would that look next to the stylin "long trip" vehicle in the driveway? The Prius is ugly enough as it is, but what's with the race to produce the worlds first paper bagger car?
Usually complex equipment requires very robust service and calibration. I suspect it's not like taking a car engine out of water and starting it up after letting it dry for a few days. The machines are going to be rebuilt to good-as-new condition fairly quickly.
Humans are capable of bringing famine on themselves even without specific environmental conditions, like global warming: Irish famine, holodomor, Somalia. Humanity will forget about global warming as soon as things get hairy. I wouldn't get too excited about being able to do anything about CO2. Humanity is going to have about 10 more urgent and more serious problems before global warming becomes a major factor in our ability to stay alive. Looking through history, I see global warming as a puny problem that came to the forefront, because we were on the biggest wave of economic growth and prosperity in history and had nothing better to worry about. It will pass, as will the period of prosperity. Global warming will have little to do with it.
... It's just that sometimes looking from that other side is a poor career choice.
Not to mention outright dangerous, given the absolute fanaticism about how bad global warming is for us. I happen to think that World War III will be far more damaging to our natural environment and the human population than any amount of fumes that our cows will fart out.
My argument is that it's not really complicated. It all boils down to how me make decisions. It is said (and I believe this) that our decisions are made unconsciously, and that most of the time we will use our rationality to justify decisions that we have already made. This is why justifying decisions gets so complicated; we try to fit the decisions we already made to what we consciously wish to be true about ourselves.
Just look up bias in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases). You will be amazed at how many ways we invent to delude ourselves that we are logical and objective and somehow more complex than we really are. Our mind is complex, but our fundamental behaviour is less subject to logic than we tend to appreciate. I'm talking about the meaningful behaviour - the type that actually influences your lifestyle, how much you own, whether you or your family survive. This fundamental behaviour is what makes the economy work.
Now, I'm not saying that we can't control what we will ultimately do and we will behave the same way no matter what, but I am saying that what we will do given a certain set of circumstances is predictable, because it is rooted much deeper than our logic can take us. If you really want to logically control your decisions, be prepared to confront your fears, be prepared to understand what those whom you disagree with are saying, be prepared to be wrong about things you thought obvious. If you think that's easy, you are doing it wrong.
Your argument is not questioning whether you are susceptible to commercials or not. You seem to be saying that you think yourself not susceptible to bad commercials. You're still wrong, but you're changing the topic. Commercials are meant to seduce you into making a decision in their favour when you are not in a position to invest much time into evaluating the product or if buying the product is an image or assciation type decision for you.
In the case of sound cards, *you* will most likely evaluate SNR and other technical specs before buying. That's ok. In that case, the commercial was probably not meant for the type of consumer that you represent. You will, however, be tempted just to check what kind of sound card Intel does make, when you conduct your research.
As for sugary stuff.. maybe you aren't into sugary stuff. But what if you were to buy something sweet as a present for someone whom you KNOW to love sweets? The fact that you abstain from sweets would make you particularly poorly informed on what sweets are good (much less what they taste like). What will motivate your buying decision if you: 1. Have 10 seconds to make your decision at the market, 2. Don't care enough to research the ingredients of all the choices or to ask the person what they would like. I am willing to bet that you will just shove in the basket whatever you recognize (even if you don't know why). That's what most (if not all) people will do.
Yes. 1. The economists, who were correct were not listened to. (just look up Peter Schiff's predictions and how he was ridiculed) 2. The economists, who were wrong were listened to, because that's what everyone *wished* were true. 3. If anyone was in a position to personally gain from what was going on, they would most likely not have stopped it. So even if there were potential whistleblowers among the bankers and brokers, their incentive structure made whistleblowing a dumb move. If everything is going to s**t and you know it, but are in a position to set yourself up for life from the situation, or risk your job and your retirement saving a train that you probably couldn't stop anyway... what do you do? Be honest with yourself.
Just ask Derren Brown if people are predictable. If you think people cannot be modeled, you are deluding yourself. Adam Smith saw it, and came up with a revolutionary theory that worked. Amazingly enough, his model assumes that all people act in their own self interest.
Of course, the way you interpret the 'self interest' is what varies, but I am pretty sure that for the majority of humans self interest is fairly narrowly defined.
Saying that every human is unique and special is like saying you're immune to commercials. It's just wishful thinking.
See comments below. The crash was predicted. People acted in a predictable way.
Yes, Microsoft CAN "control" you into buying something from them. You probably own a copy of Windows, whether you want to or not, and have paid Microsoft patent licensing fees via your Android or whatnot.
The only terrorists whom legislation limits in embarking on a terrorist mission by limiting access to ready-made tools are certified idiots (the medical term). Non-certified retarded individuals have better tools at hand than RC planes: they can and will get drivers licenses and will be able to buy cars. Why is noone driving to limit access to cars? Cars can carry much bigger payloads than RC B-17s, as we saw in Oklahoma.
I was just in a sales meeting, where a guy told me, "why do we need your system if all we can do is issue a management decree that will mandate the time to respond to [insert issue type] within 14 days? Issuing such an order is much cheaper than your system." My brain rattled to a halt. I blinked - I was almost sure the guy was serious, and I had no evidence that he wasn't. It's folks like that, who think regulating RC airplanes is a cheap way to prevent RC airplane attacks. The approach is not cheap, and it doesn't work, but convincing the public on this one is a challenge.
Nokia is doing what Apple was doing to itself
on
Intel Drops MeeGo
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· Score: 1
In the early nineties Apple was trying to get more leverage for its platforms by letting others in on its fantastic architecture and OS. Steve Jobs proved this to be a mistake. Noka is repeating it. I wonder when they wake up. Intel was never on the bandwagon. Maemo was one polished system. The Intel lever was as necessary as a fifth wheel on a cart.
I know this may sound like a troll, but this might be worth a thought: the shareholders don't give a flying f..k who runs the company and how much they get paid to leave. They make money on soap opera type information and herd mentality of small "investors". I wonder how much of HP shares are in hands of shareholders who care about how HP *does* in the future as opposed to how will HP's short to mid-term share price do? Does anyone have the numbers?
I bet that for any company whose shareholders are distributed enough among speculators and the individual day-traders, the company profit stops being an issue... which means that "market makers" may ruin companies by providing liquidity.
Every developer should be aware of the admin side of what they do. One day, you might aspire to be an architect, and by then, you had better know how to talk with the admin, who can't install your application even though you wrote the instructions well enough for an Apple user to follow. Yes, you will write the instructions for the admin. Your stint in administration will come in very handy. Word of caution - don't get stuck there. Get out after one year. 2 years is too long to admin, if you want to code.
Curious. From my experience, there is an IT department under the CIO, which has an IT infrastructure head and an application development head. Both are in IT (or ICT as some would have it, because the PBX admins are in there too). Application development sometimes is the commando unit that can program stuff, and sometimes it's just a glorified procurement unit. To boot, the business users seem to all be convinced that if they order applications, they order them from IT, and not from "Application Development", and they often don't care whether it's custom or out of the box - heck, they may even prefer the shrink wrapped version from what the idiots in app dev can give them. The CIOs budget is also called an IT budget.
While I see no reason to mix IT infrastructure with IT development I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm not in Information Tech. We are what we are; i.e. the mechanic, who comes out from under the ship deck once in a while, dressed in rather unfashionable and perhaps even dirty clothes, to tell the capitan "I've giv'n her all she's got captain, an' I canna give her no more..." Whether I'm a line mechanic, or the chief of engineering, I'm still the engine guy. Know your place; you will earn the respect of business, and the admiration of your "IT" brethren. Have ambition, but don't be deluded about what you are hired to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Samsung ripped off the look of the packaging AND the product. This is even before you turn the thing on! Copying visual design of popular products falls under copyright as a graphical design.
As far as I'm concerned, this is a flaky area, since it becomes difficult to distinguish what is a unique design, and what is the current trend in design, but in this particular case the copying is blatantly obvious. To add to that, the rules (law) says that such practice is illegal.
Is the box design some common good that should be copied? no. Lay off it Samsung.
This is actually a very serious marketing issue. My wife is willing to spend her life savings to drive a hip car, which does include electric, but will not be caught dead in an ugly car. How can these companies overlook the fact that people willing to put down dumb amounts of money for trendy niche products are the types that care about looks?
Electric is not yet into the utilitarian buyer's niche. Folks who buy electric are currently doing it because of the social status and the need to strut the trendiest new gadget in front of their friends.
The description of the CODA on their site seems to imply that it looks that way, because it isn't meant to be futuristic. Which suggests that someone thinks the Prius is "too futuristic". It's just Toyota's take on futurism. Toyota isn't known for pretty cars, and the Prius is no exception. That's why people think it's ugly - it's not the weirdness of it.
Take the Opel Astra (Saturn Astra), which is a cute car. It's a little dated now, but it's a catchy design for a practical car. The CODA could've taken inspiration from that. Instead, it seems to be inspired by a cross between an older Kia (i.e. before they actually hired a designer) and an older Civic (not the original, when it was truly hip, but the middleaged boring variety for seniors).
The Kia is a budget car, and the reason the Civic sells at all these days is because it's a Honda Civic, not because of it's hot shot looks. Have these CODA guys ever talked to a Honda Civic sedan owner and heard them rave about the looks of it? The owner will rave about the high RPMs on the Honda engine, and the sportiness, and that it "just works" and probably a whole bunch of other things before they get to the looks (which they never do).
It's like taking design cues from Subaru. The guys who buy Subaru couldn't care less about the looks. The legendary WRC is what does it for them and they take the poor looks (better lately!) as a badge of honour. What is compelling about the CODA? Really! What? Looking at it, I'll take a Leaf any day for "hip car" on the block status; mileage be damned. It never counted to the hipsters anyway.
Coal transport from mine to plant requires less carbon than oil from Saudi Arabia to the pump, plus refinement. Also, I'm not sure what the combustion energy effectiveness of a highly specialized generator turbines is, but I suspect it's a bit better than a pocket piston combustion engine that you'll find under your hood. Please consider city driving conditions for the combustion engine efficiency, because that's the niche for the new electric vehicles.
Premium price for truly crappy looks? How is that supposed to work? How would that look next to the stylin "long trip" vehicle in the driveway?
The Prius is ugly enough as it is, but what's with the race to produce the worlds first paper bagger car?
Hint: 12% of the working population is not actually disabled.
Usually complex equipment requires very robust service and calibration. I suspect it's not like taking a car engine out of water and starting it up after letting it dry for a few days. The machines are going to be rebuilt to good-as-new condition fairly quickly.
Humans are capable of bringing famine on themselves even without specific environmental conditions, like global warming: Irish famine, holodomor, Somalia. Humanity will forget about global warming as soon as things get hairy. I wouldn't get too excited about being able to do anything about CO2. Humanity is going to have about 10 more urgent and more serious problems before global warming becomes a major factor in our ability to stay alive.
Looking through history, I see global warming as a puny problem that came to the forefront, because we were on the biggest wave of economic growth and prosperity in history and had nothing better to worry about. It will pass, as will the period of prosperity. Global warming will have little to do with it.
If that were a good argument, then large corps should have abolished labour unions by now via corporate lobby.
... It's just that sometimes looking from that other side is a poor career choice.
Not to mention outright dangerous, given the absolute fanaticism about how bad global warming is for us. I happen to think that World War III will be far more damaging to our natural environment and the human population than any amount of fumes that our cows will fart out.
My argument is that it's not really complicated. It all boils down to how me make decisions. It is said (and I believe this) that our decisions are made unconsciously, and that most of the time we will use our rationality to justify decisions that we have already made. This is why justifying decisions gets so complicated; we try to fit the decisions we already made to what we consciously wish to be true about ourselves.
Just look up bias in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases). You will be amazed at how many ways we invent to delude ourselves that we are logical and objective and somehow more complex than we really are. Our mind is complex, but our fundamental behaviour is less subject to logic than we tend to appreciate. I'm talking about the meaningful behaviour - the type that actually influences your lifestyle, how much you own, whether you or your family survive. This fundamental behaviour is what makes the economy work.
Now, I'm not saying that we can't control what we will ultimately do and we will behave the same way no matter what, but I am saying that what we will do given a certain set of circumstances is predictable, because it is rooted much deeper than our logic can take us. If you really want to logically control your decisions, be prepared to confront your fears, be prepared to understand what those whom you disagree with are saying, be prepared to be wrong about things you thought obvious. If you think that's easy, you are doing it wrong.
Your argument is not questioning whether you are susceptible to commercials or not. You seem to be saying that you think yourself not susceptible to bad commercials. You're still wrong, but you're changing the topic.
Commercials are meant to seduce you into making a decision in their favour when you are not in a position to invest much time into evaluating the product or if buying the product is an image or assciation type decision for you.
In the case of sound cards, *you* will most likely evaluate SNR and other technical specs before buying. That's ok. In that case, the commercial was probably not meant for the type of consumer that you represent. You will, however, be tempted just to check what kind of sound card Intel does make, when you conduct your research.
As for sugary stuff.. maybe you aren't into sugary stuff. But what if you were to buy something sweet as a present for someone whom you KNOW to love sweets? The fact that you abstain from sweets would make you particularly poorly informed on what sweets are good (much less what they taste like). What will motivate your buying decision if you:
1. Have 10 seconds to make your decision at the market,
2. Don't care enough to research the ingredients of all the choices or to ask the person what they would like.
I am willing to bet that you will just shove in the basket whatever you recognize (even if you don't know why). That's what most (if not all) people will do.
It's not a circular definition. It's an accurate observation.
I'm writing this comment to feed my ego (self interest).
Yes.
1. The economists, who were correct were not listened to. (just look up Peter Schiff's predictions and how he was ridiculed)
2. The economists, who were wrong were listened to, because that's what everyone *wished* were true.
3. If anyone was in a position to personally gain from what was going on, they would most likely not have stopped it. So even if there were potential whistleblowers among the bankers and brokers, their incentive structure made whistleblowing a dumb move. If everything is going to s**t and you know it, but are in a position to set yourself up for life from the situation, or risk your job and your retirement saving a train that you probably couldn't stop anyway... what do you do? Be honest with yourself.
Just ask Derren Brown if people are predictable. If you think people cannot be modeled, you are deluding yourself. Adam Smith saw it, and came up with a revolutionary theory that worked. Amazingly enough, his model assumes that all people act in their own self interest.
Of course, the way you interpret the 'self interest' is what varies, but I am pretty sure that for the majority of humans self interest is fairly narrowly defined.
Saying that every human is unique and special is like saying you're immune to commercials. It's just wishful thinking.
See comments below. The crash was predicted. People acted in a predictable way.
My parents live just outside of Redmond, WA. Their house does not have cellular coverage at all - never mind data.
Uh. Awesome navigation?
I'm also expecting the UI to be among the smoothest out there.
Yes, Microsoft CAN "control" you into buying something from them. You probably own a copy of Windows, whether you want to or not, and have paid Microsoft patent licensing fees via your Android or whatnot.
Nerds don't engage in society. You're correct. This is no news for nerds.
The only terrorists whom legislation limits in embarking on a terrorist mission by limiting access to ready-made tools are certified idiots (the medical term). Non-certified retarded individuals have better tools at hand than RC planes: they can and will get drivers licenses and will be able to buy cars. Why is noone driving to limit access to cars? Cars can carry much bigger payloads than RC B-17s, as we saw in Oklahoma.
I was just in a sales meeting, where a guy told me, "why do we need your system if all we can do is issue a management decree that will mandate the time to respond to [insert issue type] within 14 days? Issuing such an order is much cheaper than your system." My brain rattled to a halt. I blinked - I was almost sure the guy was serious, and I had no evidence that he wasn't. It's folks like that, who think regulating RC airplanes is a cheap way to prevent RC airplane attacks. The approach is not cheap, and it doesn't work, but convincing the public on this one is a challenge.
In the early nineties Apple was trying to get more leverage for its platforms by letting others in on its fantastic architecture and OS. Steve Jobs proved this to be a mistake. Noka is repeating it. I wonder when they wake up. Intel was never on the bandwagon. Maemo was one polished system. The Intel lever was as necessary as a fifth wheel on a cart.
I know this may sound like a troll, but this might be worth a thought: the shareholders don't give a flying f..k who runs the company and how much they get paid to leave. They make money on soap opera type information and herd mentality of small "investors". I wonder how much of HP shares are in hands of shareholders who care about how HP *does* in the future as opposed to how will HP's short to mid-term share price do? Does anyone have the numbers?
I bet that for any company whose shareholders are distributed enough among speculators and the individual day-traders, the company profit stops being an issue... which means that "market makers" may ruin companies by providing liquidity.
You would probably be looking at an inversely proportional need for power and cooling, since you will want to generate the same energies.
You think the US isn't loosing jobs to programmers in India? Which planet are you from?
Every developer should be aware of the admin side of what they do. One day, you might aspire to be an architect, and by then, you had better know how to talk with the admin, who can't install your application even though you wrote the instructions well enough for an Apple user to follow. Yes, you will write the instructions for the admin. Your stint in administration will come in very handy. Word of caution - don't get stuck there. Get out after one year. 2 years is too long to admin, if you want to code.
Curious. From my experience, there is an IT department under the CIO, which has an IT infrastructure head and an application development head. Both are in IT (or ICT as some would have it, because the PBX admins are in there too). Application development sometimes is the commando unit that can program stuff, and sometimes it's just a glorified procurement unit. To boot, the business users seem to all be convinced that if they order applications, they order them from IT, and not from "Application Development", and they often don't care whether it's custom or out of the box - heck, they may even prefer the shrink wrapped version from what the idiots in app dev can give them. The CIOs budget is also called an IT budget.
While I see no reason to mix IT infrastructure with IT development I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm not in Information Tech. We are what we are; i.e. the mechanic, who comes out from under the ship deck once in a while, dressed in rather unfashionable and perhaps even dirty clothes, to tell the capitan "I've giv'n her all she's got captain, an' I canna give her no more ..." Whether I'm a line mechanic, or the chief of engineering, I'm still the engine guy. Know your place; you will earn the respect of business, and the admiration of your "IT" brethren. Have ambition, but don't be deluded about what you are hired to do.