Except for modularity, it would be a worse product.
Maybe but maybe not. That's a bit like arguing that a PC with a discrete graphics card is a worse product than one with integrated graphics. Worse in what way? You have to consider the entire product and the equation isn't just as simple as More Complicated = Worse.
The video card would need to sit on a riser (or be perpendicular to the display).
A discrete card could be mounted into a gap in the board flush with the board for the monitor itself. It wouldn't necessarily have to have a riser though that is possible. Even if it did, is that really a problem? I don't see it as one. If my monitor is 4 inches deep vs 6 inches deep is that really a big concern?
It would be bulkier, physically less robust, harder to cool, harder to manage compatibility, and probably more expensive due to the extra components and cooling.
Probably a bit bulkier but not much and not enough to really matter in most cases. Physical robustness isn't likely to be a challenge unless you plan on moving it a lot which kind of defeats the entire purpose of a device like this. Plus it would be roughly as robust as a desktop PC which is demonstrably fine. Cooling is a concern but a well understood and manageable one. We're not talking bleeding edge water cooling here. It definitely would be more expensive than a regular monitor but that doesn't prevent it from being good value for money.
There is probably a market for a 5K monitor with user-replaceable video card, but I think a fixed GPU makes more sense for almost all of Apple's target market.
I think there is almost no chance it will be a user replaceable GPU. Would be nice but it would be pretty contrary to Apple's standard MO. If Apple can make it catch on however it wouldn't surprise me to see something in the PC enthusiast market for user replaceable cards. Unclear how much of a market there is for that but I could see it happening.
I'd say that monitors, keyboards, and mice are probably the exceptions to these.
I'm pretty sure Apple has substantial data regarding this. I'm equally sure they've examined it. Outside of the enthusiast market I think most people actually do "upgrade" those things when they change computers. They often don't throw away the old machine so the new one needs it's own peripherals. Some do use the old stuff of course but it's hardly unusual for them to buy new as well.
That was part of the motivation for the Mac Mini - most people already have the peripherals and so can plug in a computer.
The Mac Mini isn't Apple's best selling computer. They sell FAR more laptops and I seem to recall the iMac tends to outsell the Mac Mini. I think the external graphics is largely aimed at laptop users who want something beefier when sitting at a desk. On paper at least it seems to make sense if they do it right.
Isn't the entire purpose of SpaceX to get to Mars? The rocket launch business is just to fund things and develop the technology.
Not in its current incarnation. Oh, Elon has talked a lot about Mars, but as a business there is nothing structural about what SpaceX is currently (publicly) doing that solves most of the huge pile of technical challenges in getting a human safely to Mars. SpaceX is currently 99.999% about lowering cost to space. And that is hugely important and a vital first step to the future of exploring space. Without substantial economic improvements in cost to orbit a trip to Mars or anywhere else in space could never be more than a very expensive vanity project for a nation state.
So maybe SpaceX has a long term goal of getting to Mars but it's going to be a while before they get humans there no matter what bold claims Elon might make. I think it's achievable but I don't see it happening in the next few decades unless a new cold war starts up. My guess is the earliest we would see boots on Mars would be somewhere around 2050 without a crash program.
People have made docking stations with integrated graphics cards for quite some time.
None you could use by plugging in a single standard cable. I'm aware of a few clumsy attempts at it from days of yore but nothing anyone would actually buy as you point out. If Apple is really doing it and doing it properly, there is a stronger than average chance it will actually be done well and catch on to whatever degree the market will support. Personally I think it could make a ton of sense. I would absolutely buy such a thing for my laptop which I often tote between work and home. I only need heavy duty graphics when I'm sitting at my desk anyway and integrated graphics can handle the odd video or whatever else I do on the road.
There are lots of flaws in that argument. It's basically a version of the brain-in-a-jar argument. It is an argument possibly from a false premise. It has no physical evidence and (so far) no testable model to verify it. It's a mathematical and philosophical argument based on extrapolations and probabilities and axioms, not a (yet) physics argument based on empirical evidence.
This is one of those times where somebody from physics tries to play in philosophy without knowing that this is ground that has been covered before.
Integrated GPU just means that you'll be looking to upgrade your 5k monitor in a year or two.
That's what most people do anyway. The only people who upgrade piecemeal are geeks like us and even then most of us don't bother. Most people just buy a whole new system when they buy a new computer. Apple knows this better than anyone. What you are saying isn't silly but the numbers don't lie. Most people just go the simple route and upgrade everything.
Honestly I've wondered for a long time why nobody made an external graphics system - either integrated into a monitor or a separate box or in a docking station. I would be SUPER useful for a laptop or other portable device - maybe even for a tablet. Then you can have your industrial strength graphics at your permanent desk but when you are traveling or doing light duty work and don't need it you don't have to lug the extra hardware and have the attendant power drain. It makes a lot of sense if you have a fast enough interconnect. Apple sells a ton of laptops so external graphics processing actually makes a ton of sense for a certain segment.
This is why it bugs me so much when people call any penalties for unlawful speech "censorship".
Just because someone is able to speak doesn't mean they cannot be censored. To use an extreme example, if I credibly threaten to put you and your family in prison if you talk about me, you are probably not going to talk about me even if you are capable of doing so.. A threat of unreasonable punishment is a perfectly effective way to effect prior restraint even if technically there is nothing physically preventing me from speaking. It absolutely is a form of censorship.
There is no downside to everyone saying what they want when they want, true or false.
Complete and demonstrable bullshit. People can be injured by words. Physically, economically, emotionally and and sometimes permanently. There is a reason shouting fire in a crowded theater is illegal. Inciting a riot can get people killed. Fraudulent speech can hurt people economically. Slander and libel can ruin someone's life. Etc. Free speech doesn't remain free for long if the powerful or malicious can injure others without consequences by what they say. It's no different than your right to swing your fist ends at my chin. Free speech is not the same thing as speech without limits and never has been.
So, why can we parody and ridicule Trump but not Putin?
Short version? Putin will literally execute or imprison Twitter executives in Russia if they offend him. Trump couldn't really do that even here in the US even if we actually were dumb enough to elect him unless someone was stupid enough to directly threaten him. I don't think people here in the US really appreciate just how gangster Putin and other leaders in Russia really are. They have people killed or put in jail routinely. Russia isn't really a democracy even if they've adopted the trappings of one. While the US leaders hardly have their hands clean, they aren't the sort of threat to the media that they are in Russia.
And what do the other people in your house do when you and your laptop aren't around? I'm not being critical at all of how you view things - I totally get where you are coming from and it makes sense. But it isn't a viewing style that works for everybody, particularly larger households. If I was a single guy I could see it working for me but as things stand it makes less sense in my particular circumstances. Where I do agree though is that I don't need any smarts in the TV itself. Just a good image, a number of inputs and outputs for sound. Let the devices I decide to attach to it (laptop, DVR, Blu-ray, whatever) have the smarts. That makes FAR more sense even if it makes for a messy bunch of devices.
What really grinds my gears though is that nobody has come up with a two way communication protocol for remotes and devices that lets them communicate information about their state without human involvement. My remote has no idea if the device it is signaling is currently on or off, what volume it is set at, etc. So even if I use a fancy Logitech Harmony remote, it routinely gets confused because it has no way to track the state of the devices it is controlling. It has to guess and troubleshoot if wrong.
You're confusing your own country with the rest of the world. Many major TV broadcasters in the european continent are state-owned: BBC in the UK, RAI in Italy, France 2 in France, etc...
All of those exist along side a huge amount of privately owned media. State owned media is fine as long as it doesn't have enough of the market or sufficient influence to undercut media independence. See Russia and China if you need an example of too much media being State owned/controlled. I don't think media independence in the UK or France is a serious concern.
Surely they are often biased, especially in favor of the current government.
Not necessarily though it's a reasonable concern. I would argue the BBC is remarkably independent in most important ways. I could say the same of others. NPR and PBS in the US is partially sponsored by the government and yet nobody is arguing that NPR is beholden to the whims of our government even in the face of many who would like to defund it. (helps that not much of their funding comes from the government these days)
However, that's not worse than a newspaper or a private TV channel whose owner is a bank or a major industrial group, which will obviously report in a way that serves the owner's interests
Of course. That's why you need a variety of voices so that no single voice dominates the conversation whether it be public or private.
Why the fuck do people rely on centralised private speech platforms to make political speech?
Because speech that nobody hears is pretty much useless and twitter and facebook are where the readers are these days. Platforms for widely disseminated speech have been private for centuries. Newspapers, TV, radio, etc are all centralized and privately owned in most cases and it's generally worked just fine as long as there was more than one publisher. In fact you don't actually want your publishers to be owned by the government if you actually care about free speech.
I don't even want a regular TV. I watch Netflix on a 25" monitor that I plug into a laptop.
While there is nothing wrong with that, I personally prefer watching video on my 65" screen while sitting on a couch. Much more pleasant and comfortable, particularly if more than one person wants to watch which is pretty routine around my home. It's especially nice for movies with a significant other.
That said, I really don't use any of the "smart" TV features. I really just want a huge monitor with inputs for video and sound. I don't even need a tuner since my TiVo handles that. Problem is that all the best screens aren't available without the SmartTV crap.
The consumer electronics giant's support staff have admitted drivers for its PCs still don't work with Microsoft's newest operating system and told customers they should simply not make the upgrade.
So they've had nearly a year since Windows 10 was released and quite some time before that with betas to figure out how to make their drivers work. Sounds like the problem isn't with Windows 10 but with Samsung being unable to develop quality drivers. Plenty of other companies seem to have figured it out. Basically this tells me to avoid Samsung products. Windows 10 isn't without problems but by and large they don't seem to be technical ones but rather Microsoft being overly aggressive about pushing updates down our throats.
So I'm supposed to depend on some company I've never heard of, who doesn't own the intellectual property involved, who clearly doesn't have the resources to evaluate the code or audit the hardware properly, is "partnering" with other companies I've never heard of (who the F is Koolspan?), and who wants to sell me a phone "focused on privacy" (whatever that is supposed to mean) for an outrageous amount of money? For a piece of hardware that even if it makes it to market will be obsolete faster than the milk in my refrigerator will spoil.
The moment you've all been waiting for is almost here, as you will no longer need a cable to connect your Ubuntu Phone to your TV or a supported LCD monitor.
All three of you who own one... Seriously is the market share for these things into triple digits yet?
You can believe and apply the principles of copyright and apply the doctrine of first sale
Not as it applies to ebooks you cannot. Copyright restricts making copies and first sale doctrine applies to original items, not copies. You cannot distribute an ebook without making copies - it is technologically impossible to do otherwise unless you distribute the device containing the ebook along with the ebook. A paper book consists of a tangible object containing an expression of an abstract concept. An ebook consists of merely the expression of that abstract concept. Unless you sell the kindle containing the ebook along with it, you have to make a copy to resell the ebook which is prohibited under copyright and first sale doctrine doesn't apply. You aren't selling the original work, you are selling a copy of the original work. NOT the same thing.
No, wrong again. Copyright exist so that the public, citizens of a state for example, can aid the creators of useful works to get fair recompense for their creative activities.
You just described solving the free rider problem and what copyright does to solve it. The problem is that it is substantially cheaper to copy a work than to create one. That IS the free rider problem as it applies to creative works. To ensure authors get the opportunity to get the opportunity for compensation, copyright grants them a "temporary" (I know) monopoly so that others can't simply do the economically far easier task of copying someone else's work until much later. That is EXACTLY what the Free Rider Problem is and what copyright does in an effort to mitigate it.
Bullshit, anyone can buy a brand new book and photocopy or scan it if they like, and then resell the original while retaining a copy.
They cannot however distribute or sell any of the copies (legally) without the permission of the author and you can resell the original book without needing to make a new copy. That's not an insignificant detail. You can make copies of a paper book all you want l if you want but so long as you never distribute the copies it doesn't matter and you don't need to make any copies to sell the original. A paper book is a tangible object and consists of more than just the abstract written contents within. They copyright holder has (presumably) already gotten paid for his efforts and expenses in creating the book and no new copy needed to be created for you to resell the original paper book. Copyright merely restricts your ability to distribute any copies you made even if not exact. Digital ebooks are different in one very important respect. You literally cannot transfer an ebook to another party without copying it, even if you delete the original immediately afterwards. That is just how the technology works. Copying a paper book is demonstrably not identical to copying an ebook in a variety of important ways. If you wanted to hand the kindle containing the ebook to a new party then it would be logically the same activity.
Ebooks are not the same as physical books in one important manner. You can sell a physical book under current law because you are not making a copy of it. With electronic books however making copies is trivial and in fact it is in practice the only way to distribute ebooks. So selling an ebook is not the same thing as selling a physical book and currently reselling an ebook without the permission of the author is in most cases copyright infringement unless submit to some pretty harsh DRM.
Whether you think it should be permitted to "resell" ebooks really is asking the question whether you support copyright law. Without getting bogged down into the flaws in our current system, if you believe copyright (in principle) to be a useful thing, then you de-facto have to be against reselling ebooks to be logically consistent. If you don't respect copyright then you would be fine with reselling ebooks but you also are in effect arguing that we should have a right to copy physical books as well. Copyright exists to address the free rider problem. If you wish to do away with copyright you need to come up with an alternative for dealing with the free rider problem.
On a related note I think ideas like "loaning" ebooks from libraries are ridiculous. How do you "loan" something with zero marginal cost to reproduce?
Doctors are supposed to pay for malpractice insurance which takes a big chunk out of the doctor's paid. In order to keep $80k~$150k/year, the real gross income for doctors is much higher than that (could be about double).
Not as a general proposition. The amount you pay for malpractice insurance varies by specialty and by location but it very rarely doubles the cost of a doctor. Something between $10K-30K/year is fairly typical. Larger practices and hospitals can typically get better rates than smaller ones. Some specialties like OBGYN in certain locations can get socked with outrageous malpractice insurance fees due to the tort laws in that area. Most of the doctors I personally know about pay somewhere between $10K-15K per year. Substantial but not back breaking.
Specialty doctors can easily earn $300-600K/year. Good money and it sounds like a lot but as a percentage of health care costs is actually quite minor. Lst time I looked at the statistics, doctors salaries accounted for single digit percentages of the overall cost.
As a results, a doctor visit (seeing a doctor) becomes higher charges.
Not necessarily. In many cases doctors cannot charge whatever they want. If the patient is a medicare patient, is indigent, etc the doctor or hospital may be limited in their ability to pass on increased costs. The notion that doctors can just pass on every increase isn't really true. Typically the profit a doctor's office makes depends heavily on their ability to negotiate with and work around insurance companies. Most insurance companies use medicare to determine rates they will pay for specific services.
So all in all, insurance companies are making money off you all.
Of course they are. There would be no reason for a private insurance company to exist if they weren't making a profit. The only way to avoid that is to have a government run health care system because the government is the only entity that entirely lacks a profit motive. (yes this even includes not-for-profit hospitals and the like) But since the idea a government run health care system gives republicans hives (despite the fact that we already de-facto have one with medicare) we have this Frankenstein monster of a system instead that only insurance companies could love. Idiotic but it's not going to change any time soon.
No, the tax burden IS LESS than if they didn't provide them, due to the saving they enable, so yes they are entirely free, they are in fact better than free since they pay for themselves and more.
Less does not equal free. By taking advantage of preventative medicine the average cost to a patient is less. Health care is NEVER free. The fact that you pay with tax dollars instead of private insurance doesn't change the fact that you still are paying some amount for the visit.
I come from one of those hippie countries with socialized healthcare, and doctors' income is usually not really a concern here.
Doctor's income has very little to do with the skyrocketing cost of health care here in the US. In fact a huge portion of doctors don't actually have take home pay much different than a well paid software engineer. An internal medicine doctor in solo practice can work 70-100 hours per week and maybe take home $80-150K/year when all is said and done. Other doctors do better financially (particularly specialists) but the big drivers for health care costs are demonstrably not doctor's salaries. Those doctors who do make bigger salaries tend to be economically far more valuable than their take home pay.
The big drivers of cost (in no particular order) are perverse treatment incentives relating to insurance, high drug costs, uncontrolled hospital billing, ridiculous administrative burden, lack of modern and interconnected computer systems, fraud, lack of a single payer entity, torts and actions to protect from torts, overuse of expensive medical equipment, and a few other things. Salaries of staff is a consideration too but it's not even in the top 10 problems driving health care costs. In fact there is a shortage of adequately trained staff in many parts of the country.
What we did was kicking frivolous lawsuits out of the window where you could sue a hospital for a few billions based on "mental anguish" or similar bullshit, lowering their insurance bills and enabling them to provide FAR cheaper rates.
And what do you do when you really do get screwed by an incompetent hospital? I'm quite sure that happens just as often as it does here in the US. What is your recourse when something goes horribly wrong?
We also made a distinction between necessary and elective treatment. Reattaching a severed finger is necessary. Moving your nose a few inches up because you think it's not pretty enough is not. The former is paid by your insurance, the latter not.
That is no different in the US. Elective cosmetic surgery is rarely covered by insurance except for cases related to reconstruction following an accident or serious illness. Your botox injection will not be covered by any insurance that I am aware of. My wife is a physician in a dermatology practice and they make a ton of money from elective cosmetic procedures not covered by insurance. (Vanity literally has a price)
And finally we got free routine check ups, the older you get the more frequent they get.
They're not free. You just pay for them with tax dollars instead of insurance premiums. I agree that they are a good idea and I think the US does it in a retarded way but let's not pretend it's free just because you didn't get presented with a bill when you left the office.
What if they have a long term outlook and preparing themselves for the next 25% margin industry?
Do you have any idea how rare large businesses with that kind of profit margin are? Google, Apple and Microsoft are all basically software companies (yes Apple is a software company) and it's unlikely they will find huge businesses with that kind of margin outside of software and even within software ideas worth tens of billions of dollars don't come around every day. Microsoft has been milking Windows and Office for decades now. Despite everything Google has thrown money at they still make virtually all their money from advertising. Furthermore they don't have a lot of institutional expertise outside of software so if they want to get out of their lane it's going to be a incredibly hard adjustment culturally more than anything else. Worse, they are fighting the law of big numbers. It's far easier to grow a million dollar company by 25% than to grow a billion dollar company by 5%.
I'm not saying it's impossible but businesses like the iPhone don't come around every 5 years. Realistically Apple has had 4 revolutionary products in 40 years (Apple ][, Macintosh, iPod/iTunes, and the iPhone/iPad) that have been major commercial successes for them and they still almost went bankrupt at one point 20 years ago. What's next? No idea. But they are going to have a VERY hard time matching the success of the iPhone/iPad platform. Odds are we will see a regression to the mean. It's possible they will buck the trend but it's hard to have any objective confidence.
Does Apple pay enough dividend to make the difference between 5% and 25% meaningful to shareholders, or are we just playing the stock price appreciation game where shareholders don't give a shit about fundamentals as long as the stock price increases?
Apple currently has annual earnings per share of $9.22 and pays $1.98 in dividends per share. That is roughly 20% of their earnings going to dividends. Plus they are doing some stock buyback as well. So if margins were to drop by to 5% and all else held stable, they would basically be paying out all of their earnings in dividends. So yes, the margins matter. A lot. But that's a bit over simplistic. More realistically they could find some businesses with 10-15% net margins and buy those. Then their margins would fall some but still be plenty high. Apple simply has the law of big numbers working against them so if investors are realistic they'll understand that it is unlikely the company can substantially grow AND maintain their margins where they are. I won't say it's impossible but it will be difficult.
If Apple does introduce a car, I guarantee you they are NOT going to make 25% net margins. The most profitable car companies in the world manage to get around 10% net margins and most are somewhere around 5% or lower.
Pardon my cynicism, but I think corporations should have to provide compelling reasons to hoard cash on this scale or pay dividends.
That's not cynicism. That's a very reasonable stance. If the company does not have investment opportunities with an expected return superior to the market as a whole they should return any excess cash to the shareholders. Any shareholder can put the money in an index fund and get a decent return. But if the company just sits on a pile of cash that does nothing to benefit the shareholders. Having a big war chest isn't bad in and of itself what with economic cycles and market risk. But beyond a certain point they are no longer protecting the company from risk and instead are creating an opportunity cost for the shareholders.
And shame on investors for just surfing stock price increases and not giving a shit about how these companies are managed.
I couldn't agree more. It's one of the reasons I don't typically invest in stocks of companies whose price has no relation to economic fundamentals. For example Tesla. I like Tesla and I think it is a well managed company. But it's market cap is insane compared to the actual economic prospects of the company right now. Explain to me any reasonable way a company which sold around 50,000 cars and that hasn't made a dime of profit last year justifies a valuation of $30 billion. For comparison Ford's market cap is $50 billion and they sell a hell of a lot more cars than Tesla AND are profitable.
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Except for modularity, it would be a worse product.
Maybe but maybe not. That's a bit like arguing that a PC with a discrete graphics card is a worse product than one with integrated graphics. Worse in what way? You have to consider the entire product and the equation isn't just as simple as More Complicated = Worse.
The video card would need to sit on a riser (or be perpendicular to the display).
A discrete card could be mounted into a gap in the board flush with the board for the monitor itself. It wouldn't necessarily have to have a riser though that is possible. Even if it did, is that really a problem? I don't see it as one. If my monitor is 4 inches deep vs 6 inches deep is that really a big concern?
It would be bulkier, physically less robust, harder to cool, harder to manage compatibility, and probably more expensive due to the extra components and cooling.
Probably a bit bulkier but not much and not enough to really matter in most cases. Physical robustness isn't likely to be a challenge unless you plan on moving it a lot which kind of defeats the entire purpose of a device like this. Plus it would be roughly as robust as a desktop PC which is demonstrably fine. Cooling is a concern but a well understood and manageable one. We're not talking bleeding edge water cooling here. It definitely would be more expensive than a regular monitor but that doesn't prevent it from being good value for money.
There is probably a market for a 5K monitor with user-replaceable video card, but I think a fixed GPU makes more sense for almost all of Apple's target market.
I think there is almost no chance it will be a user replaceable GPU. Would be nice but it would be pretty contrary to Apple's standard MO. If Apple can make it catch on however it wouldn't surprise me to see something in the PC enthusiast market for user replaceable cards. Unclear how much of a market there is for that but I could see it happening.
I'd say that monitors, keyboards, and mice are probably the exceptions to these.
I'm pretty sure Apple has substantial data regarding this. I'm equally sure they've examined it. Outside of the enthusiast market I think most people actually do "upgrade" those things when they change computers. They often don't throw away the old machine so the new one needs it's own peripherals. Some do use the old stuff of course but it's hardly unusual for them to buy new as well.
That was part of the motivation for the Mac Mini - most people already have the peripherals and so can plug in a computer.
The Mac Mini isn't Apple's best selling computer. They sell FAR more laptops and I seem to recall the iMac tends to outsell the Mac Mini. I think the external graphics is largely aimed at laptop users who want something beefier when sitting at a desk. On paper at least it seems to make sense if they do it right.
Isn't the entire purpose of SpaceX to get to Mars? The rocket launch business is just to fund things and develop the technology.
Not in its current incarnation. Oh, Elon has talked a lot about Mars, but as a business there is nothing structural about what SpaceX is currently (publicly) doing that solves most of the huge pile of technical challenges in getting a human safely to Mars. SpaceX is currently 99.999% about lowering cost to space. And that is hugely important and a vital first step to the future of exploring space. Without substantial economic improvements in cost to orbit a trip to Mars or anywhere else in space could never be more than a very expensive vanity project for a nation state.
So maybe SpaceX has a long term goal of getting to Mars but it's going to be a while before they get humans there no matter what bold claims Elon might make. I think it's achievable but I don't see it happening in the next few decades unless a new cold war starts up. My guess is the earliest we would see boots on Mars would be somewhere around 2050 without a crash program.
People have made docking stations with integrated graphics cards for quite some time.
None you could use by plugging in a single standard cable. I'm aware of a few clumsy attempts at it from days of yore but nothing anyone would actually buy as you point out. If Apple is really doing it and doing it properly, there is a stronger than average chance it will actually be done well and catch on to whatever degree the market will support. Personally I think it could make a ton of sense. I would absolutely buy such a thing for my laptop which I often tote between work and home. I only need heavy duty graphics when I'm sitting at my desk anyway and integrated graphics can handle the odd video or whatever else I do on the road.
s there a flaw in that argument?"
There are lots of flaws in that argument. It's basically a version of the brain-in-a-jar argument. It is an argument possibly from a false premise. It has no physical evidence and (so far) no testable model to verify it. It's a mathematical and philosophical argument based on extrapolations and probabilities and axioms, not a (yet) physics argument based on empirical evidence.
This is one of those times where somebody from physics tries to play in philosophy without knowing that this is ground that has been covered before.
Integrated GPU just means that you'll be looking to upgrade your 5k monitor in a year or two.
That's what most people do anyway. The only people who upgrade piecemeal are geeks like us and even then most of us don't bother. Most people just buy a whole new system when they buy a new computer. Apple knows this better than anyone. What you are saying isn't silly but the numbers don't lie. Most people just go the simple route and upgrade everything.
Honestly I've wondered for a long time why nobody made an external graphics system - either integrated into a monitor or a separate box or in a docking station. I would be SUPER useful for a laptop or other portable device - maybe even for a tablet. Then you can have your industrial strength graphics at your permanent desk but when you are traveling or doing light duty work and don't need it you don't have to lug the extra hardware and have the attendant power drain. It makes a lot of sense if you have a fast enough interconnect. Apple sells a ton of laptops so external graphics processing actually makes a ton of sense for a certain segment.
This is why it bugs me so much when people call any penalties for unlawful speech "censorship".
Just because someone is able to speak doesn't mean they cannot be censored. To use an extreme example, if I credibly threaten to put you and your family in prison if you talk about me, you are probably not going to talk about me even if you are capable of doing so.. A threat of unreasonable punishment is a perfectly effective way to effect prior restraint even if technically there is nothing physically preventing me from speaking. It absolutely is a form of censorship.
There is no downside to everyone saying what they want when they want, true or false.
Complete and demonstrable bullshit. People can be injured by words. Physically, economically, emotionally and and sometimes permanently. There is a reason shouting fire in a crowded theater is illegal. Inciting a riot can get people killed. Fraudulent speech can hurt people economically. Slander and libel can ruin someone's life. Etc. Free speech doesn't remain free for long if the powerful or malicious can injure others without consequences by what they say. It's no different than your right to swing your fist ends at my chin. Free speech is not the same thing as speech without limits and never has been.
So, why can we parody and ridicule Trump but not Putin?
Short version? Putin will literally execute or imprison Twitter executives in Russia if they offend him. Trump couldn't really do that even here in the US even if we actually were dumb enough to elect him unless someone was stupid enough to directly threaten him. I don't think people here in the US really appreciate just how gangster Putin and other leaders in Russia really are. They have people killed or put in jail routinely. Russia isn't really a democracy even if they've adopted the trappings of one. While the US leaders hardly have their hands clean, they aren't the sort of threat to the media that they are in Russia.
I solve that by plugging my laptop into the TV.
And what do the other people in your house do when you and your laptop aren't around? I'm not being critical at all of how you view things - I totally get where you are coming from and it makes sense. But it isn't a viewing style that works for everybody, particularly larger households. If I was a single guy I could see it working for me but as things stand it makes less sense in my particular circumstances. Where I do agree though is that I don't need any smarts in the TV itself. Just a good image, a number of inputs and outputs for sound. Let the devices I decide to attach to it (laptop, DVR, Blu-ray, whatever) have the smarts. That makes FAR more sense even if it makes for a messy bunch of devices.
What really grinds my gears though is that nobody has come up with a two way communication protocol for remotes and devices that lets them communicate information about their state without human involvement. My remote has no idea if the device it is signaling is currently on or off, what volume it is set at, etc. So even if I use a fancy Logitech Harmony remote, it routinely gets confused because it has no way to track the state of the devices it is controlling. It has to guess and troubleshoot if wrong.
You're confusing your own country with the rest of the world. Many major TV broadcasters in the european continent are state-owned: BBC in the UK, RAI in Italy, France 2 in France, etc...
All of those exist along side a huge amount of privately owned media. State owned media is fine as long as it doesn't have enough of the market or sufficient influence to undercut media independence. See Russia and China if you need an example of too much media being State owned/controlled. I don't think media independence in the UK or France is a serious concern.
Surely they are often biased, especially in favor of the current government.
Not necessarily though it's a reasonable concern. I would argue the BBC is remarkably independent in most important ways. I could say the same of others. NPR and PBS in the US is partially sponsored by the government and yet nobody is arguing that NPR is beholden to the whims of our government even in the face of many who would like to defund it. (helps that not much of their funding comes from the government these days)
However, that's not worse than a newspaper or a private TV channel whose owner is a bank or a major industrial group, which will obviously report in a way that serves the owner's interests
Of course. That's why you need a variety of voices so that no single voice dominates the conversation whether it be public or private.
Why the fuck do people rely on centralised private speech platforms to make political speech?
Because speech that nobody hears is pretty much useless and twitter and facebook are where the readers are these days. Platforms for widely disseminated speech have been private for centuries. Newspapers, TV, radio, etc are all centralized and privately owned in most cases and it's generally worked just fine as long as there was more than one publisher. In fact you don't actually want your publishers to be owned by the government if you actually care about free speech.
I don't even want a regular TV. I watch Netflix on a 25" monitor that I plug into a laptop.
While there is nothing wrong with that, I personally prefer watching video on my 65" screen while sitting on a couch. Much more pleasant and comfortable, particularly if more than one person wants to watch which is pretty routine around my home. It's especially nice for movies with a significant other.
That said, I really don't use any of the "smart" TV features. I really just want a huge monitor with inputs for video and sound. I don't even need a tuner since my TiVo handles that. Problem is that all the best screens aren't available without the SmartTV crap.
The consumer electronics giant's support staff have admitted drivers for its PCs still don't work with Microsoft's newest operating system and told customers they should simply not make the upgrade.
So they've had nearly a year since Windows 10 was released and quite some time before that with betas to figure out how to make their drivers work. Sounds like the problem isn't with Windows 10 but with Samsung being unable to develop quality drivers. Plenty of other companies seem to have figured it out. Basically this tells me to avoid Samsung products. Windows 10 isn't without problems but by and large they don't seem to be technical ones but rather Microsoft being overly aggressive about pushing updates down our throats.
So I'm supposed to depend on some company I've never heard of, who doesn't own the intellectual property involved, who clearly doesn't have the resources to evaluate the code or audit the hardware properly, is "partnering" with other companies I've never heard of (who the F is Koolspan?), and who wants to sell me a phone "focused on privacy" (whatever that is supposed to mean) for an outrageous amount of money? For a piece of hardware that even if it makes it to market will be obsolete faster than the milk in my refrigerator will spoil.
Umm, ok. What a deal.... [/sarcasm]
The moment you've all been waiting for is almost here, as you will no longer need a cable to connect your Ubuntu Phone to your TV or a supported LCD monitor.
All three of you who own one... Seriously is the market share for these things into triple digits yet?
You can believe and apply the principles of copyright and apply the doctrine of first sale
Not as it applies to ebooks you cannot. Copyright restricts making copies and first sale doctrine applies to original items, not copies. You cannot distribute an ebook without making copies - it is technologically impossible to do otherwise unless you distribute the device containing the ebook along with the ebook. A paper book consists of a tangible object containing an expression of an abstract concept. An ebook consists of merely the expression of that abstract concept. Unless you sell the kindle containing the ebook along with it, you have to make a copy to resell the ebook which is prohibited under copyright and first sale doctrine doesn't apply. You aren't selling the original work, you are selling a copy of the original work. NOT the same thing.
No, wrong again. Copyright exist so that the public, citizens of a state for example, can aid the creators of useful works to get fair recompense for their creative activities.
You just described solving the free rider problem and what copyright does to solve it. The problem is that it is substantially cheaper to copy a work than to create one. That IS the free rider problem as it applies to creative works. To ensure authors get the opportunity to get the opportunity for compensation, copyright grants them a "temporary" (I know) monopoly so that others can't simply do the economically far easier task of copying someone else's work until much later. That is EXACTLY what the Free Rider Problem is and what copyright does in an effort to mitigate it.
Bullshit, anyone can buy a brand new book and photocopy or scan it if they like, and then resell the original while retaining a copy.
They cannot however distribute or sell any of the copies (legally) without the permission of the author and you can resell the original book without needing to make a new copy. That's not an insignificant detail. You can make copies of a paper book all you want l if you want but so long as you never distribute the copies it doesn't matter and you don't need to make any copies to sell the original. A paper book is a tangible object and consists of more than just the abstract written contents within. They copyright holder has (presumably) already gotten paid for his efforts and expenses in creating the book and no new copy needed to be created for you to resell the original paper book. Copyright merely restricts your ability to distribute any copies you made even if not exact. Digital ebooks are different in one very important respect. You literally cannot transfer an ebook to another party without copying it, even if you delete the original immediately afterwards. That is just how the technology works. Copying a paper book is demonstrably not identical to copying an ebook in a variety of important ways. If you wanted to hand the kindle containing the ebook to a new party then it would be logically the same activity.
Ebooks are not the same as physical books in one important manner. You can sell a physical book under current law because you are not making a copy of it. With electronic books however making copies is trivial and in fact it is in practice the only way to distribute ebooks. So selling an ebook is not the same thing as selling a physical book and currently reselling an ebook without the permission of the author is in most cases copyright infringement unless submit to some pretty harsh DRM.
Whether you think it should be permitted to "resell" ebooks really is asking the question whether you support copyright law. Without getting bogged down into the flaws in our current system, if you believe copyright (in principle) to be a useful thing, then you de-facto have to be against reselling ebooks to be logically consistent. If you don't respect copyright then you would be fine with reselling ebooks but you also are in effect arguing that we should have a right to copy physical books as well. Copyright exists to address the free rider problem. If you wish to do away with copyright you need to come up with an alternative for dealing with the free rider problem.
On a related note I think ideas like "loaning" ebooks from libraries are ridiculous. How do you "loan" something with zero marginal cost to reproduce?
Doctors are supposed to pay for malpractice insurance which takes a big chunk out of the doctor's paid. In order to keep $80k~$150k/year, the real gross income for doctors is much higher than that (could be about double).
Not as a general proposition. The amount you pay for malpractice insurance varies by specialty and by location but it very rarely doubles the cost of a doctor. Something between $10K-30K/year is fairly typical. Larger practices and hospitals can typically get better rates than smaller ones. Some specialties like OBGYN in certain locations can get socked with outrageous malpractice insurance fees due to the tort laws in that area. Most of the doctors I personally know about pay somewhere between $10K-15K per year. Substantial but not back breaking.
Specialty doctors can easily earn $300-600K/year. Good money and it sounds like a lot but as a percentage of health care costs is actually quite minor. Lst time I looked at the statistics, doctors salaries accounted for single digit percentages of the overall cost.
As a results, a doctor visit (seeing a doctor) becomes higher charges.
Not necessarily. In many cases doctors cannot charge whatever they want. If the patient is a medicare patient, is indigent, etc the doctor or hospital may be limited in their ability to pass on increased costs. The notion that doctors can just pass on every increase isn't really true. Typically the profit a doctor's office makes depends heavily on their ability to negotiate with and work around insurance companies. Most insurance companies use medicare to determine rates they will pay for specific services.
So all in all, insurance companies are making money off you all.
Of course they are. There would be no reason for a private insurance company to exist if they weren't making a profit. The only way to avoid that is to have a government run health care system because the government is the only entity that entirely lacks a profit motive. (yes this even includes not-for-profit hospitals and the like) But since the idea a government run health care system gives republicans hives (despite the fact that we already de-facto have one with medicare) we have this Frankenstein monster of a system instead that only insurance companies could love. Idiotic but it's not going to change any time soon.
No, the tax burden IS LESS than if they didn't provide them, due to the saving they enable, so yes they are entirely free, they are in fact better than free since they pay for themselves and more.
Less does not equal free. By taking advantage of preventative medicine the average cost to a patient is less. Health care is NEVER free. The fact that you pay with tax dollars instead of private insurance doesn't change the fact that you still are paying some amount for the visit.
The peer review process is broken and everybody knows it.
To paraphrase a quote about democracy as a system of government, 'peer review is the worst system of review except for all the others'.
I come from one of those hippie countries with socialized healthcare, and doctors' income is usually not really a concern here.
Doctor's income has very little to do with the skyrocketing cost of health care here in the US. In fact a huge portion of doctors don't actually have take home pay much different than a well paid software engineer. An internal medicine doctor in solo practice can work 70-100 hours per week and maybe take home $80-150K/year when all is said and done. Other doctors do better financially (particularly specialists) but the big drivers for health care costs are demonstrably not doctor's salaries. Those doctors who do make bigger salaries tend to be economically far more valuable than their take home pay.
The big drivers of cost (in no particular order) are perverse treatment incentives relating to insurance, high drug costs, uncontrolled hospital billing, ridiculous administrative burden, lack of modern and interconnected computer systems, fraud, lack of a single payer entity, torts and actions to protect from torts, overuse of expensive medical equipment, and a few other things. Salaries of staff is a consideration too but it's not even in the top 10 problems driving health care costs. In fact there is a shortage of adequately trained staff in many parts of the country.
What we did was kicking frivolous lawsuits out of the window where you could sue a hospital for a few billions based on "mental anguish" or similar bullshit, lowering their insurance bills and enabling them to provide FAR cheaper rates.
And what do you do when you really do get screwed by an incompetent hospital? I'm quite sure that happens just as often as it does here in the US. What is your recourse when something goes horribly wrong?
We also made a distinction between necessary and elective treatment. Reattaching a severed finger is necessary. Moving your nose a few inches up because you think it's not pretty enough is not. The former is paid by your insurance, the latter not.
That is no different in the US. Elective cosmetic surgery is rarely covered by insurance except for cases related to reconstruction following an accident or serious illness. Your botox injection will not be covered by any insurance that I am aware of. My wife is a physician in a dermatology practice and they make a ton of money from elective cosmetic procedures not covered by insurance. (Vanity literally has a price)
And finally we got free routine check ups, the older you get the more frequent they get.
They're not free. You just pay for them with tax dollars instead of insurance premiums. I agree that they are a good idea and I think the US does it in a retarded way but let's not pretend it's free just because you didn't get presented with a bill when you left the office.
What if they have a long term outlook and preparing themselves for the next 25% margin industry?
Do you have any idea how rare large businesses with that kind of profit margin are? Google, Apple and Microsoft are all basically software companies (yes Apple is a software company) and it's unlikely they will find huge businesses with that kind of margin outside of software and even within software ideas worth tens of billions of dollars don't come around every day. Microsoft has been milking Windows and Office for decades now. Despite everything Google has thrown money at they still make virtually all their money from advertising. Furthermore they don't have a lot of institutional expertise outside of software so if they want to get out of their lane it's going to be a incredibly hard adjustment culturally more than anything else. Worse, they are fighting the law of big numbers. It's far easier to grow a million dollar company by 25% than to grow a billion dollar company by 5%.
I'm not saying it's impossible but businesses like the iPhone don't come around every 5 years. Realistically Apple has had 4 revolutionary products in 40 years (Apple ][, Macintosh, iPod/iTunes, and the iPhone/iPad) that have been major commercial successes for them and they still almost went bankrupt at one point 20 years ago. What's next? No idea. But they are going to have a VERY hard time matching the success of the iPhone/iPad platform. Odds are we will see a regression to the mean. It's possible they will buck the trend but it's hard to have any objective confidence.
Does Apple pay enough dividend to make the difference between 5% and 25% meaningful to shareholders, or are we just playing the stock price appreciation game where shareholders don't give a shit about fundamentals as long as the stock price increases?
Apple currently has annual earnings per share of $9.22 and pays $1.98 in dividends per share. That is roughly 20% of their earnings going to dividends. Plus they are doing some stock buyback as well. So if margins were to drop by to 5% and all else held stable, they would basically be paying out all of their earnings in dividends. So yes, the margins matter. A lot. But that's a bit over simplistic. More realistically they could find some businesses with 10-15% net margins and buy those. Then their margins would fall some but still be plenty high. Apple simply has the law of big numbers working against them so if investors are realistic they'll understand that it is unlikely the company can substantially grow AND maintain their margins where they are. I won't say it's impossible but it will be difficult.
If Apple does introduce a car, I guarantee you they are NOT going to make 25% net margins. The most profitable car companies in the world manage to get around 10% net margins and most are somewhere around 5% or lower.
Pardon my cynicism, but I think corporations should have to provide compelling reasons to hoard cash on this scale or pay dividends.
That's not cynicism. That's a very reasonable stance. If the company does not have investment opportunities with an expected return superior to the market as a whole they should return any excess cash to the shareholders. Any shareholder can put the money in an index fund and get a decent return. But if the company just sits on a pile of cash that does nothing to benefit the shareholders. Having a big war chest isn't bad in and of itself what with economic cycles and market risk. But beyond a certain point they are no longer protecting the company from risk and instead are creating an opportunity cost for the shareholders.
And shame on investors for just surfing stock price increases and not giving a shit about how these companies are managed.
I couldn't agree more. It's one of the reasons I don't typically invest in stocks of companies whose price has no relation to economic fundamentals. For example Tesla. I like Tesla and I think it is a well managed company. But it's market cap is insane compared to the actual economic prospects of the company right now. Explain to me any reasonable way a company which sold around 50,000 cars and that hasn't made a dime of profit last year justifies a valuation of $30 billion. For comparison Ford's market cap is $50 billion and they sell a hell of a lot more cars than Tesla AND are profitable.