You are just stating your opinion, not more than that. What if we'd prosecute you for your opinion?
When the expression of your opinion directly results in people becoming ill and dying then you are effectively an accessory to manslaughter, particularly if your "opinion" is actually a misrepresentation of the known facts.
"The worry is the confirmation bias that can occur, because people might say: 'There you go, this is proof that you can't even have an alternative opinion.' It might in fact just give people more fuel for their belief systems."
That's right. On this matter there is no room for an alternative opinion because it isn't a question of opinion. Vaccines work and they are safe and are critical to keeping the population healthy. That is a proven and indisputable fact. You have the right to elect to not get a vaccine but you should not be allowed under any circumstances to spread misinformation or discourage others from vaccination. If you want to decline to be vaccinated that is your prerogative but there should be some quarantine consequences to your actions. Nurses who should know better discouraging others from getting vaccinations is particularly odious and to my mind criminal. Such people have no business being in the field of medicine.
Tesla is trying to say "you can't drive your own car in a manner that we don't like."
If software is driving the car then by definition you are not driving it. For all practical purposes Tesla is the driver. And if Tesla is driving the car it is actually kind of reasonable of them to want to do it on their terms if for no other reason than to protect themselves from liability.
I predict Tesla will be told in court that they can't enforce such a clause when they sell someone a car, even though there is an ongoing service component, specifically because they are competing and that would be anticompetitive.
Certainly a possibility. This is a legal grey area currently. Bundling of services like that definitely gets into areas covered by anti-trust law so it wouldn't shock me at all.
What I don't get is what the point of it would be for Tesla unless it is to protect against liability. They aren't going to compete with Uber and the whole value of a service like Uber is in the network effects. Tesla doesn't sell nearly enough cars for that to come into play so the only value in it to Tesla seems to be to cover their ass from liability.
no, if you own a self driving car you own the income it generates for you. no exceptions
Incorrect. There is a very clear exception in the case where you sign an agreement assigning such revenue to Tesla. You don't have to sign such an contract but Tesla doesn't have to sell you a car without such a contract. Fortunately there are numerous places where you can buy a car that does not have a Tesla badge if that is a problem for you.
OP seemed to be implying find what the specific error was, find who made it and punish them harshly, I was just pointing out it doesn't really matter who made the actual error, who ever approved it is ultimately at fault.
Incorrect. The fault lies in the system that permitted the error to occur. It's (probably) not the fault of a person but of the structure in which that person works. Assigning fault to an individual is generally a waste of time and usually counter-productive. To use a crude example it's like shooting your dog because it peed on the rug. It technically solves the problem in a sense (the dog won't do it again) but it won't result in the outcome that is truly desired.
My day job is to to run a manufacturing company. When we have an error occur the first thing we look at is whether the production system was set up to prevent the error. Maybe the work instructions weren't clear. Maybe the inspection procedures were faulty. The error is almost never because an individual was being irresponsible. You can say that the responsibility falls to management and that is true but it misses the point. The point is that mistakes are not systematically fixed by just finding the proximal or authorizing party and punishing them. Fix the problem not the blame.
People who pretend to be engineers go to jail. Did you actually read your link? It's nothing but people with forged documents and other fraudulent acts. Nothing about sending people to jail for honest errors where nobody died.
Maybe a little accountability for you "coding is an art" folks would be a good thing?
If someone is willing to pay for the proper quality control structures then fine. Most software engineering quality control is severely budget limited. There are folks out there who know how to write incredibly robust software but doing that isn't cheap and it isn't merely a matter of throwing money at the problem either. It's not a secret how to do it but it isn't cheap and it isn't easy. If you want people to do a better job then you need to give them the resources and organizational structure necessary to make it happen.
Answer this. Would you do a job where you could go to jail for making a error in a calculation? Especially if no one was injured?
Yeah, whoever signed off on it. Who's head of the ESA these days? Maybe 'jail for a very long time' is a bit harsh though.
Anyone who seriously believes that sending people in the space program to jail for a failed mission is a good idea is an idiot. If you want to kill a space program that would absolutely be the fastest way to make it happen short of completely defunding one. What engineer or program manager is going to risk going to jail for making an innocent error in a calculation?
Some missions are going to fail. Get over it. It's the cost of doing business if you want to go into space. Only a complete imbecile would treat that as some sort of criminal act.
Billions of dollars spent on hardware, and some fuckup software dude sends the whole thing crashing to the ground
The proximal cause of failure is unknown at this time. There are people smarter and harder working than you working on it.
This pisses me off.
Oh well then I'm sure they'll care more now that you are "pissed off".
Someone should go to jail for a very long time as soon as we figure out exactly what was screwed up.
Ok asshole... For what crime exactly? What law was broken that justifies jail time? How about you tell that to them in person Mr. Anonymous Coward. Actually never mind since you aren't brave enough to put your name to your idiotic rant. Grow up you pathetic twit.
I seriously doubt this will happen, unless the costs for this type of DNA analysis comes way down. Currently the cost for this type of analysis is around $2,500. I can't imagine any employer willing to spend $25,000 just to interview 10 people.
For a job at McDonalds no. For a six figure tech job they already spend more than that on the interview process in a lot of places. Hiring the wrong person is a LOT more expensive than a few tests for jobs with serious consequences. I've seen companies spend substantial sums on background checks, length interviews, psychological and proficiency tests, etc. Believe me that DNA tests would get used too if they became a realistic option.
Of course I'm pretty sure there will be legislation prohibiting this sort of behavior. I think discrimination based on DNA will join the other protected classes (gender, race, etc) except for cases of it being a bona-fide job requirement which will be rare.
Let's try to use words with some integrity; bribery is a criminal offence, whereas what Samsung allegedly did was to try to buy the guy's silence, which is merely odious, but not a crime.
Let's consult a dictionary shall we?
bribe verb: bribe; 3rd person present: bribes; past tense: bribed; past participle: bribed; gerund or present participle: bribing
1 : money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust
2 : something that serves to induce or influence
These alleged actions by Samsung were definitely attempts at bribery by definition. Their actions may or may not have been criminal depending on the local laws but they definitely were bribery.
I don't believe it for a second. fads come and go. when people hunger for more talk-time and less 'omg, gotta go charge my phone!' they will be voting with their dollars and any vendor making swappable battery phones will get their business.
The handset makers could easily double or more the battery life by making the battery in the phone bigger. They also can sell you a USB external battery pack that serves exactly the same purpose as swapping the battery. Why would any of the big handset makers bother with the numerous problems of swappable batteries when they can simply put a better or bigger battery into the phone or get you to buy an external battery pack that accomplishes exactly the same goal? Swappable batteries will not come in to the picture in the near future if ever.
Your notion that there will be widespread consumer demand for user swappable batteries is belied by the fact that most people didn't do it even when it was an option. The phone makers have literally decades of data about how people used their phones and they have a very clear idea of what people use and what they care about. YOU may want to be able to change batteries but most people very clearly don't give a damn and frankly who the hell wants to lug around a lot of extra batteries all the time? You can get external battery cases, charge packs, and power outlets are damn near everywhere. Being able to pull the battery out of the back of the phone only helps in some rather uncommon corner cases.
Speaking for myself I'd rather carry an external battery pack and a charge cable. Solves pretty much every circumstance where swapping the battery might be helpful AND I don't need to shut the phone down to use either one. Plus since both the cable and battery pack have standard interfaces I can use them for multiple purposes rather than carrying a battery that only fits in one device. Maybe I want to charge my tablet or a bluetooth speaker or a smartwatch. Can't do that with a swappable battery but I can do it with an external battery pack and a charge cable.
the swappable battery will be back.
Possible but unlikely. Like I said it won't be anytime soon and especially not any time soon in mass market phones.
Similar to using over production of solar to pump water to a higher elevation and then release it through a turbine to generate electricity at night. Obviously this requires there to be more wind and solar plants in use. But it is an interesting idea.
So the goal here is to take a low carbon footprint technology and turn it into a high one by burning ethanol at least part of the time. That doesn't sound like an amazing plan to me.
How much energy is consumed in the process? Is this just mix two chemicals and stir or do you have to add power to make the process work? My concern is that this is another thing like corn ethanol, the production of which consumes as much or more energy than in produces with a net result of a negative benefit. It says "consume extra electricity when available" which is a rather screwy way of saying produce more power than is actually needed and then turn it into ethanol. This sounds like a movie I've already seen once before...
Samsung, take note. People like replaceable batteries.
A few geeks like replaceable batteries. Most people don't give them a moment's thought and never swapped them even when it was an option. Furthermore there are both advantages and disadvantages to swappable batteries. It's not a simple equation and the economics of them from the handset's perspective clearly favor sealed batteries. I like swappable batteries too but they aren't something most people give a crap about and they aren't likely to come back any time soon.
People keep mentioning user swappable batteries as if that would have solved this problem. Folks, if it was as simple as sourcing a new battery it would have been fixed already. If the control electronics are defective you can destroy a phone even with a perfectly good battery. Most likely that is what is happening here.
What is so hard about making it so you can swap the battery out?
Let it go. User replaceable batteries aren't coming back any time soon for most smartphones. That battle is lost.
What is so hard about making it so you can swap the battery out?
Off the top of my head, it's more expensive, make quality control more difficult, it requires the handset maker to allow third party batteries possibly of dubious quality, it is more difficult to make water and dust proof, very few users actually swap their batteries, it doesn't solve problems of bad control electronics, it makes the phones thicker, it makes the phones uglier, and it it doesn't provide any performance benefit to most users.
There are advantages to user swappable batteries too of course but there are a lot of genuine problems with them too including but not limited to the ones above. I have to admit that I think that of the multiple cell phones I've owned that did have user swappable batteries I think I might have done that once over a space of 10 years. Hard to justify a feature that never gets used by most people.
I'd suggest that somebody sit Nadella down to explain what "open platform" ordinarily means...
I have no doubt whatsoever that he knows exactly what the term means and is trying to twist it to his own purposes. Nadella is not a dumb guy and I think he chose his words very carefully. I'm sure he has some rules-lawyer definition of the term so he can plausibly make that claim knowing full well that it overlaps with the more common meaning of the term.
It's a lot harder to quit your job and strike out on your own now that having health insurance is the law. I'm in my late 30's and can't do what i did in my 20's because i went without insurance for many years.
If a few hundred dollars a month for health insurance is the difference between you starting a business vs not bothering you probably were doomed to failure from the start. That's a flimsy excuse to not try. It's no harder to start your own business than it ever was and in a lot of ways it's easier today than in years gone by. There certainly are more resources available to help a budding entrepreneur.
The definition of pound force depends on the factor 9.8... m/s2 which never changes
It never changes because it's defined based on an arbitrarily agreed upon value for what to use for Earth's gravity on the surface. While they could I suppose redefine the pound if Earth's gravitational field changed that would have to be an affirmative action - it would not automatically change because the reference value is a chosen one, not a natural one. Bear in mind that acceleration due to gravity is not uniform on the Earth's surface because the Earth is not a perfect sphere and it does not have uniform density and is changing constantly as the Earth's mass changes. As a result scientists have agreed to use a nominal value instead of the real one since there is no single real value. Any value chosen for the definition of the standard pound (force) will be an arbitrary number not subject to changes in the gravitational pull of the Earth.
Apparently, you misinterpreted "gravity" as "actual acceleration being considered to calculate lbf from lb";
No misinterpretation at all. We are talking about a force here when defining the pound (force). Force = mass * acceleration. For purposes of defining the pound (force) we are talking about the rate of acceleration due to gravity under a standard (nominal earth's surface) gravitational field. So any reference to gravity in this context is in reference to the acceleration under a specific set of conditions that happen to correspond to the nominal gravitational force experienced on Earth surface.
Specifically I'm referring to the international pound sometimes called the Avoirdupois pound which is by far the most commonly used measurement by the name of pound.
Pound-force is dependant on gravity, pound-mass is not.
Not quite. Pound-force is defined based on an arbitrary reference value for acceleration under standard gravity but is not actually dependent on gravity as the definition of a pound (force) does not change as gravity changes. The mass used in the equation is the international standard avoirdupois pound which is defined as exactly 0.45259237kg. If you go into space a pound-force is still the same value. A scale would lose its ability to measure it but that doesn't change the value of a pound. A standard pound-force can be converted directly into Newtons at all times with the same conversion factor ( 4.4482216152605 Newtons )
When people say you "weigh less on the Moon" what they are doing is saying that if we change the acceleration in the calculation to the value for the local gravitational force then we get a different number. But the definition of the standard pound (force) doesn't change regardless of the local gravitational field any more than the definition of a Newton would change.
No it is not. I'm a certified accountant so I ought to know. I do this for a living. Samsung does not and never has been able to arbitrarily raise prices to compensate for product disasters. They are limited in what they can charge by what other can charge. This is a cold stone fact not up for dispute.
Samsung's profits are, in part, a hedge on cost of risk; or they have insurance against shit like this, which they cover a deductible for (from cash holdings built by profits), and the insurer essentially manages that cost.
A company the size of Samsung is most likely self insured for issues like this. The fact that they have built up a pile of profits to absorb losses like this has NOTHING to do with the fact that they will not be able to arbitrarily raise prices on future products to make up for the loss. It also does not mean that they cleverly raised prices in the past to pay for the screwup in advance. The prices went as high as market conditions would allow. Nothing more nothing less. Instead of the money going to shareholders it is now going to refund customers who bought a faulty product and for various other expenses.
Prices don't go up after the fact because they were already raised in anticipation of this shit happening now and then.
Prices were where they were because that is as high as their position in the market would allow. Nothing more complicated than that. Profits aren't some clever hedge on potential disasters. It's just a pile of money that is left over after you've paid all your expenses. The company keeps some of it in case of problems or investment opportunities. They don't get to arbitrarily raise prices to customers before or after the disaster just to hedge against disaster in a competitive market. The discussion was about whether they can pass on the cost of the disaster and the answer to that is mostly no. Samsung will have lower cash reserves than they would have had the problem not occurred and they will not be likely to recoup this money.
Slashdot Mirror
You are just stating your opinion, not more than that. What if we'd prosecute you for your opinion?
When the expression of your opinion directly results in people becoming ill and dying then you are effectively an accessory to manslaughter, particularly if your "opinion" is actually a misrepresentation of the known facts.
"The worry is the confirmation bias that can occur, because people might say: 'There you go, this is proof that you can't even have an alternative opinion.' It might in fact just give people more fuel for their belief systems."
That's right. On this matter there is no room for an alternative opinion because it isn't a question of opinion. Vaccines work and they are safe and are critical to keeping the population healthy. That is a proven and indisputable fact. You have the right to elect to not get a vaccine but you should not be allowed under any circumstances to spread misinformation or discourage others from vaccination. If you want to decline to be vaccinated that is your prerogative but there should be some quarantine consequences to your actions. Nurses who should know better discouraging others from getting vaccinations is particularly odious and to my mind criminal. Such people have no business being in the field of medicine.
Tesla is trying to say "you can't drive your own car in a manner that we don't like."
If software is driving the car then by definition you are not driving it. For all practical purposes Tesla is the driver. And if Tesla is driving the car it is actually kind of reasonable of them to want to do it on their terms if for no other reason than to protect themselves from liability.
I predict Tesla will be told in court that they can't enforce such a clause when they sell someone a car, even though there is an ongoing service component, specifically because they are competing and that would be anticompetitive.
Certainly a possibility. This is a legal grey area currently. Bundling of services like that definitely gets into areas covered by anti-trust law so it wouldn't shock me at all.
What I don't get is what the point of it would be for Tesla unless it is to protect against liability. They aren't going to compete with Uber and the whole value of a service like Uber is in the network effects. Tesla doesn't sell nearly enough cars for that to come into play so the only value in it to Tesla seems to be to cover their ass from liability.
no, if you own a self driving car you own the income it generates for you. no exceptions
Incorrect. There is a very clear exception in the case where you sign an agreement assigning such revenue to Tesla. You don't have to sign such an contract but Tesla doesn't have to sell you a car without such a contract. Fortunately there are numerous places where you can buy a car that does not have a Tesla badge if that is a problem for you.
I personally like the power hungry narcissist with the least amount of recent asshattery at the moment, who ever that is...
So you definitely aren't voting for Trump. He's clearly the most worst but picking a least worst remains problematic even taking him off the table...
OP seemed to be implying find what the specific error was, find who made it and punish them harshly, I was just pointing out it doesn't really matter who made the actual error, who ever approved it is ultimately at fault.
Incorrect. The fault lies in the system that permitted the error to occur. It's (probably) not the fault of a person but of the structure in which that person works. Assigning fault to an individual is generally a waste of time and usually counter-productive. To use a crude example it's like shooting your dog because it peed on the rug. It technically solves the problem in a sense (the dog won't do it again) but it won't result in the outcome that is truly desired.
My day job is to to run a manufacturing company. When we have an error occur the first thing we look at is whether the production system was set up to prevent the error. Maybe the work instructions weren't clear. Maybe the inspection procedures were faulty. The error is almost never because an individual was being irresponsible. You can say that the responsibility falls to management and that is true but it misses the point. The point is that mistakes are not systematically fixed by just finding the proximal or authorizing party and punishing them. Fix the problem not the blame.
Real engineers go to jail when they fuck up.
People who pretend to be engineers go to jail. Did you actually read your link? It's nothing but people with forged documents and other fraudulent acts. Nothing about sending people to jail for honest errors where nobody died.
Maybe a little accountability for you "coding is an art" folks would be a good thing?
If someone is willing to pay for the proper quality control structures then fine. Most software engineering quality control is severely budget limited. There are folks out there who know how to write incredibly robust software but doing that isn't cheap and it isn't merely a matter of throwing money at the problem either. It's not a secret how to do it but it isn't cheap and it isn't easy. If you want people to do a better job then you need to give them the resources and organizational structure necessary to make it happen.
Answer this. Would you do a job where you could go to jail for making a error in a calculation? Especially if no one was injured?
Yeah, whoever signed off on it. Who's head of the ESA these days? Maybe 'jail for a very long time' is a bit harsh though.
Anyone who seriously believes that sending people in the space program to jail for a failed mission is a good idea is an idiot. If you want to kill a space program that would absolutely be the fastest way to make it happen short of completely defunding one. What engineer or program manager is going to risk going to jail for making an innocent error in a calculation?
Some missions are going to fail. Get over it. It's the cost of doing business if you want to go into space. Only a complete imbecile would treat that as some sort of criminal act.
Billions of dollars spent on hardware, and some fuckup software dude sends the whole thing crashing to the ground
The proximal cause of failure is unknown at this time. There are people smarter and harder working than you working on it.
This pisses me off.
Oh well then I'm sure they'll care more now that you are "pissed off".
Someone should go to jail for a very long time as soon as we figure out exactly what was screwed up.
Ok asshole... For what crime exactly? What law was broken that justifies jail time? How about you tell that to them in person Mr. Anonymous Coward. Actually never mind since you aren't brave enough to put your name to your idiotic rant. Grow up you pathetic twit.
I seriously doubt this will happen, unless the costs for this type of DNA analysis comes way down. Currently the cost for this type of analysis is around $2,500. I can't imagine any employer willing to spend $25,000 just to interview 10 people.
For a job at McDonalds no. For a six figure tech job they already spend more than that on the interview process in a lot of places. Hiring the wrong person is a LOT more expensive than a few tests for jobs with serious consequences. I've seen companies spend substantial sums on background checks, length interviews, psychological and proficiency tests, etc. Believe me that DNA tests would get used too if they became a realistic option.
Of course I'm pretty sure there will be legislation prohibiting this sort of behavior. I think discrimination based on DNA will join the other protected classes (gender, race, etc) except for cases of it being a bona-fide job requirement which will be rare.
Let's try to use words with some integrity; bribery is a criminal offence, whereas what Samsung allegedly did was to try to buy the guy's silence, which is merely odious, but not a crime.
Let's consult a dictionary shall we?
bribe
verb: bribe; 3rd person present: bribes; past tense: bribed; past participle: bribed; gerund or present participle: bribing
1 : money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust
2 : something that serves to induce or influence
These alleged actions by Samsung were definitely attempts at bribery by definition. Their actions may or may not have been criminal depending on the local laws but they definitely were bribery.
I don't believe it for a second. fads come and go. when people hunger for more talk-time and less 'omg, gotta go charge my phone!' they will be voting with their dollars and any vendor making swappable battery phones will get their business.
The handset makers could easily double or more the battery life by making the battery in the phone bigger. They also can sell you a USB external battery pack that serves exactly the same purpose as swapping the battery. Why would any of the big handset makers bother with the numerous problems of swappable batteries when they can simply put a better or bigger battery into the phone or get you to buy an external battery pack that accomplishes exactly the same goal? Swappable batteries will not come in to the picture in the near future if ever.
Your notion that there will be widespread consumer demand for user swappable batteries is belied by the fact that most people didn't do it even when it was an option. The phone makers have literally decades of data about how people used their phones and they have a very clear idea of what people use and what they care about. YOU may want to be able to change batteries but most people very clearly don't give a damn and frankly who the hell wants to lug around a lot of extra batteries all the time? You can get external battery cases, charge packs, and power outlets are damn near everywhere. Being able to pull the battery out of the back of the phone only helps in some rather uncommon corner cases.
Speaking for myself I'd rather carry an external battery pack and a charge cable. Solves pretty much every circumstance where swapping the battery might be helpful AND I don't need to shut the phone down to use either one. Plus since both the cable and battery pack have standard interfaces I can use them for multiple purposes rather than carrying a battery that only fits in one device. Maybe I want to charge my tablet or a bluetooth speaker or a smartwatch. Can't do that with a swappable battery but I can do it with an external battery pack and a charge cable.
the swappable battery will be back.
Possible but unlikely. Like I said it won't be anytime soon and especially not any time soon in mass market phones.
Similar to using over production of solar to pump water to a higher elevation and then release it through a turbine to generate electricity at night. Obviously this requires there to be more wind and solar plants in use. But it is an interesting idea.
So the goal here is to take a low carbon footprint technology and turn it into a high one by burning ethanol at least part of the time. That doesn't sound like an amazing plan to me.
How much energy is consumed in the process? Is this just mix two chemicals and stir or do you have to add power to make the process work? My concern is that this is another thing like corn ethanol, the production of which consumes as much or more energy than in produces with a net result of a negative benefit. It says "consume extra electricity when available" which is a rather screwy way of saying produce more power than is actually needed and then turn it into ethanol. This sounds like a movie I've already seen once before...
Samsung, take note. People like replaceable batteries.
A few geeks like replaceable batteries. Most people don't give them a moment's thought and never swapped them even when it was an option. Furthermore there are both advantages and disadvantages to swappable batteries. It's not a simple equation and the economics of them from the handset's perspective clearly favor sealed batteries. I like swappable batteries too but they aren't something most people give a crap about and they aren't likely to come back any time soon.
People keep mentioning user swappable batteries as if that would have solved this problem. Folks, if it was as simple as sourcing a new battery it would have been fixed already. If the control electronics are defective you can destroy a phone even with a perfectly good battery. Most likely that is what is happening here.
What is so hard about making it so you can swap the battery out?
Let it go. User replaceable batteries aren't coming back any time soon for most smartphones. That battle is lost.
What is so hard about making it so you can swap the battery out?
Off the top of my head, it's more expensive, make quality control more difficult, it requires the handset maker to allow third party batteries possibly of dubious quality, it is more difficult to make water and dust proof, very few users actually swap their batteries, it doesn't solve problems of bad control electronics, it makes the phones thicker, it makes the phones uglier, and it it doesn't provide any performance benefit to most users.
There are advantages to user swappable batteries too of course but there are a lot of genuine problems with them too including but not limited to the ones above. I have to admit that I think that of the multiple cell phones I've owned that did have user swappable batteries I think I might have done that once over a space of 10 years. Hard to justify a feature that never gets used by most people.
I'd suggest that somebody sit Nadella down to explain what "open platform" ordinarily means...
I have no doubt whatsoever that he knows exactly what the term means and is trying to twist it to his own purposes. Nadella is not a dumb guy and I think he chose his words very carefully. I'm sure he has some rules-lawyer definition of the term so he can plausibly make that claim knowing full well that it overlaps with the more common meaning of the term.
It's a lot harder to quit your job and strike out on your own now that having health insurance is the law. I'm in my late 30's and can't do what i did in my 20's because i went without insurance for many years.
If a few hundred dollars a month for health insurance is the difference between you starting a business vs not bothering you probably were doomed to failure from the start. That's a flimsy excuse to not try. It's no harder to start your own business than it ever was and in a lot of ways it's easier today than in years gone by. There certainly are more resources available to help a budding entrepreneur.
But the most notable remark from Nadella was when he said this, "Windows is the most open platform there is."
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The definition of pound force depends on the factor 9.8... m/s2 which never changes
It never changes because it's defined based on an arbitrarily agreed upon value for what to use for Earth's gravity on the surface. While they could I suppose redefine the pound if Earth's gravitational field changed that would have to be an affirmative action - it would not automatically change because the reference value is a chosen one, not a natural one. Bear in mind that acceleration due to gravity is not uniform on the Earth's surface because the Earth is not a perfect sphere and it does not have uniform density and is changing constantly as the Earth's mass changes. As a result scientists have agreed to use a nominal value instead of the real one since there is no single real value. Any value chosen for the definition of the standard pound (force) will be an arbitrary number not subject to changes in the gravitational pull of the Earth.
Apparently, you misinterpreted "gravity" as "actual acceleration being considered to calculate lbf from lb";
No misinterpretation at all. We are talking about a force here when defining the pound (force). Force = mass * acceleration. For purposes of defining the pound (force) we are talking about the rate of acceleration due to gravity under a standard (nominal earth's surface) gravitational field. So any reference to gravity in this context is in reference to the acceleration under a specific set of conditions that happen to correspond to the nominal gravitational force experienced on Earth surface.
You mean american pounds?
Specifically I'm referring to the international pound sometimes called the Avoirdupois pound which is by far the most commonly used measurement by the name of pound.
Pound-force is dependant on gravity, pound-mass is not.
Not quite. Pound-force is defined based on an arbitrary reference value for acceleration under standard gravity but is not actually dependent on gravity as the definition of a pound (force) does not change as gravity changes. The mass used in the equation is the international standard avoirdupois pound which is defined as exactly 0.45259237kg. If you go into space a pound-force is still the same value. A scale would lose its ability to measure it but that doesn't change the value of a pound. A standard pound-force can be converted directly into Newtons at all times with the same conversion factor ( 4.4482216152605 Newtons )
When people say you "weigh less on the Moon" what they are doing is saying that if we change the acceleration in the calculation to the value for the local gravitational force then we get a different number. But the definition of the standard pound (force) doesn't change regardless of the local gravitational field any more than the definition of a Newton would change.
4.45 Newtons.
More precisely 4.4482216152605 Newtons.
On earth, it is approximately 0.45kg, according to Google.
Doesn't matter if it is on Earth or not since it is defined in relation to standard gravity.
A pound of mass is defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg by definition.
Actually, that's exactly how it works.
No it is not. I'm a certified accountant so I ought to know. I do this for a living. Samsung does not and never has been able to arbitrarily raise prices to compensate for product disasters. They are limited in what they can charge by what other can charge. This is a cold stone fact not up for dispute.
Samsung's profits are, in part, a hedge on cost of risk; or they have insurance against shit like this, which they cover a deductible for (from cash holdings built by profits), and the insurer essentially manages that cost.
A company the size of Samsung is most likely self insured for issues like this. The fact that they have built up a pile of profits to absorb losses like this has NOTHING to do with the fact that they will not be able to arbitrarily raise prices on future products to make up for the loss. It also does not mean that they cleverly raised prices in the past to pay for the screwup in advance. The prices went as high as market conditions would allow. Nothing more nothing less. Instead of the money going to shareholders it is now going to refund customers who bought a faulty product and for various other expenses.
Prices don't go up after the fact because they were already raised in anticipation of this shit happening now and then.
Prices were where they were because that is as high as their position in the market would allow. Nothing more complicated than that. Profits aren't some clever hedge on potential disasters. It's just a pile of money that is left over after you've paid all your expenses. The company keeps some of it in case of problems or investment opportunities. They don't get to arbitrarily raise prices to customers before or after the disaster just to hedge against disaster in a competitive market. The discussion was about whether they can pass on the cost of the disaster and the answer to that is mostly no. Samsung will have lower cash reserves than they would have had the problem not occurred and they will not be likely to recoup this money.