actually.... bitcoins are a commodity not a currency
That's a distinction without a difference in this case. Currencies are a form of commodity - just one used specifically to facilitate exchange. Commodities are undifferentiated and fungible goods and so are currencies. It's accurate to call bitcoin a commodity but its equally accurate to call a dollar or a yen a commodity.
Currency makes a terrible savings instrument in that its value tends to go down via inflation.
Same thing happens with lots of commodities like gold. If all you do is stick it in a warehouse then it will generally lose value due to inflation (as well as storage costs) over time.
Shocking that people wouldn't be doing transactions with a currency that few people know about or understand and that even fewer people are willing to accept as payment.
Based on exchange rates listed on Mt.Gox — the most widely used Bitcoin exchange — the coins have a value of more than $82.87 million.
That is referred to as an inferred value. Same thing happens with companies. Say you buy 5% of a company for $1 million. By doing so you think the entire company is worth $20 million (5% of $20 million is $1 million). That doesn't mean it is actually worth that much, it just means someone paid an amount that implies the value of the company. On a thinly traded commodity inferred values can be wildly misleading because the person doing the transaction might have overpaid compared with the going market rate. If most of the bitcoins are sitting on the sidelines, that $80 million valuation is almost certainly far higher than is realistic.
But, once they've found that subject, they should be allowed to pursue it. If a kid wants to be an auto mechanic for the rest of his life, then let hem learn about that.
Exactly how many high school students have you actually met that knew what they wanted to do for the rest of their life at age 15? I guarantee you the answer is a pretty good approximation of zero when compared with the student population. Oh sure there are a few, but not many. I work with high school students as a coach and most of them simply aren't anywhere close to that focused. While I agree that there needs to be room for electives there also needs to be a substantial core curriculum, some of which may not be interesting to a given student. I don't really use calculus in my daily life but I'm glad I was required to take the class. I understand more about the world around me and I was forced to think about things that I might not have if given a choice.
Locking them into a 'standardized program' doesn't magically make them a successful adult or magically teach them the skills they need to know in order to be a member of society.
Nor does it obviously hurt their ability to become a productive member of society. Even with a customized curriculum most of what you learn in school will not play much of a role in your daily life. The most important things that are being taught are how to learn and how to work - not specific subjects. I have a degree in engineering but don't think for a moment that I was fully prepared for my current job the moment I finished school. It would not have mattered a bit how flexible or not my curriculum happened to be. The reason employers care about whether you have a college degree is that it tells them that you have at least some capacity to work. They don't assume for a minute that you are perfectly trained for whatever career you seek. Furthermore if a student really wants to pursue a special interest they are welcome to do so outside of school. Never confuse schooling with education.
When specifically answering the "Do cars with ABS stop more quickly than cars without?" question they have this to say: "ABS is designed to help the driver maintain control of the vehicle during emergency braking situations, not make the car stop more quickly."
What it is designed to do and what it actually does are different issues. It is designed to keep you from locking up your wheels. This aids in maintaining steering. As a side benefit this also helps you stop faster under many circumstances.
They then do some hand waving saying some systems may stop a car faster, (BTW, they don't mention "skilled drivers").
What hand waving? Spend 5 seconds on google and you'll find innumerable credible sources that support that ABS brakes often (though not always) stop vehicles quicker. The fact that it helps you steer as well is awesome but a separate issue.
But Microsoft is still firmly entrenched in business.
In the PC market which is an almost completely unrelated market at this time. Furthermore just because you sell a lot of product to businesses today doesn't mean they will buy a different product from you tomorrow. Businesses buy Windows and Office primarily due to network effects. These don't really exist on this new tablet product and so Microsoft really has no advantage over Apple or Google or Amazon. Corporations don't buy from Microsoft out of loyalty - just ask Research In Motion.
I predict large corporations will eat up Microsoft's new tablet.
Based on what exactly? What does it provide that they cannot get from Android or Apple?
. It's only FWD cars that are inherently front-heavy.
FWD does not make them "inherently front-heavy". The engine location does that. A RWD car with a front engine is still going to tend to be nose heavy. Pickup trucks are a great example - despite being usually RWD they tend to be very front heavy because of the engine location. Transmission and driveline have some weight but they are light compared with the engine. When you have the engine out in front of the front wheels, it makes it front heavy.
You can put weight elsewhere to balance the car out as you note but that has to be done purposefully - either by moving parts, removing parts or adding ballast. Car manufacturers do not usually build balanced cars because for most drivers a bit of understeer is safer and having the car nose heavy helps achieve this. FWD cars tend to do better in the snow in large part because the weight is over the drive wheels without adding any ballast. However a rear engined RWD car like a 911 can achieve basically the same effect (and I've driven one in the snow so I've seen it first hand). There is a reason that the fastest cars tend to be mid-engined. It makes for fewer compromises when adjusting the weight distribution of the vehicle for handling. A front engined or rear engined car can only achieve the same effect by adding weight to to the other end of the vehicle (moving parts or ballast) to balance the engine location.
Just to be pedantic - in most situations, ABS will NOT decrease your stopping distance, in fact, by definition not locking your tires reduces friction and actually increases stopping distances.
The NHTSA thinks you are wrong except on very soft surfaces like loose gravel or fresh snow. On dry pavement under real world conditions ABS will often stop the car faster than even a skilled driver without ABS could manage.
Power Steering is only needed on cars that are Front Wheel Drive, because they are so nose-heavy.
All cars are nose heavy unless they are mid or rear engine vehicles. Has nothing to do with being front wheel drive - it has to do with where the heaviest item in the vehicle (the engine) is located. What determines the need for power steering is the weight of the vehicle and the type of tires. If you've got a heavy vehicle with sticky or wide tires, you are going to have a hard time steering at low speed. Power steering isn't generally needed at high speed as the wheels don't need to turn far. If the vehicle is light odds are power steering is optional.
Because it is illegal to do so without completely rewriting the laws in the US and the laws aren't going to change to accommodate this vehicle. For various reasons automobiles sold in the US are required to have certain safety features and if the Nano lacks these features it will not be allowed into the country. While I agree that motorcycles are plenty dangerous, they also are popular. The Tata Nano will not be popular. Might not be terribly logical from a safety standpoint but the safety feature requirements for cars aren't going to go away.
All knowledge can only exist if people accept someone else's story regarding the event.
Utter nonsense. I don't need anyone else for me to figure out that the earth is round or that gravity behaves a certain way or that I am two inches taller than my wife. While it is true that I cannot verify everything around me, I certainly can verify things that I feel need verifying. If someone else comes up with a good explanation for why something behaves the way it does, I don't have to accept their model blindly. Just because someone says something doesn't mean it is true. That is vastly different than reading some special book and accepting whatever it says as factual , no matter how absurd, without any critical thinking or correlation with ones own senses and logic.
People also believe in science because it brings them comfort.
People believe in science because it works and the findings can be verified. That's the whole point of it. Science makes a prediction about how something will behave and then we verify that it actually does behave that way. If the model is wrong we change the model rather than making up a fanciful story to protect our ignorance.
Most advanced physics is accepted purely on faith by your reasoning, because it cannot possibly be verified.
If you believe that you know nothing about physics. I absolutely can verify physics and in fact it doesn't work unless you can verify the models. We have verified with countless experiments the Standard Model to about 12 decimal places. It is incredibly well tested and you can test it yourself. When physicists don't know something they say "I don't know" instead of making up fairy tales and deities to explain what they don't understand.
Why is it irrational to follow "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,"
It's not. The irrational bit is believing someone else's nonsensical story about an invisible man in the sky who told you to believe that. You don't need to invoke a deity to think treating others with decency and respect is a good idea. Some (though not all) of the teachings of religions are perfectly fine. It's when they start with the supernatural stuff that it becomes irrational.
Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorised 1.6 billion people.
What a disingenuous bunch of crap. Someone questions their invisible friend and they call it terrorism? Hurt feelings are the same as killing innocent people?Someone who would say something like that has the emotional maturity of a 4 year old. I can handle someone criticizing my beliefs but apparently all the followers of islam are so emotionally fragile that they can be traumatized by a book or a comic. Pathetic.
I mostly agree with you, until the point of not thinking by themselves. I am religious, and I do learn science and have a very letftiah libertarian way of thinking, so I dont see how can someone say that I dont think by myself, still I might be blind.
Religions can only exist if people accept someone else's story regarding the existence and nature of a mythical being based on no factual evidence whatsoever. People believe in religions because it brings them comfort. But if you accept anything purely on faith and especially if you cannot possibly verify the claims, that is pretty much the definition of not thinking for yourself. You have traded rational and independent thought for comfort. Seems a costly trade to me.
How many people have you actually seen with an N9 in their hand. I haven't seen one in the wild yet and I do pay attention to this sort of thing. Almost no one cares, myself included. I don't have anything particularly against Nokia but they are playing catch up and so far have done a poor job of it.
And many people won't give up their N900s.
Which proves what exactly? A device that never sold particularly well is beloved by a tiny few devotees. You'll find some people who love all sorts of devices. I'm not even saying the device is a bad design. It just isn't what people actually want and it runs software that no one cares about.
My own experiences with Nokia devices is that they engage in checkbox design. My last Nokia smartphone had a browser and email and all the same features as the iPhone that was available at the time. However in practice they were so badly designed that they may as well have not bothered. The browser was horrific, the email clumsy, it required special headphones and installing music was a joke, etc. The software never got upgraded or improved. And the worst bit was the interface with my PC which was worse than useless. Their Ovi suite was just a mess. Nokia produced such crap devices that they're going to have to work hard to win me back as a customer. They can't just match Google or Apple, they have to be significantly better - and I doubt they can be.
Maybe back in the day. Nokia's hardware now is fine (not great, just fine) but the prices are nothing special. Their high end stuff historically has tended to be wildly overpriced.
Their gear tends to be much more rugged than Apple's fragile mobile devices.
I have no general data to point to but I used Nokia phones almost exclusively for 10 years and have used Apple's for the last 3 and the Nokia stuff I had was no more or less durable than my Apple gear. I'm pretty sure Nokia's current smartphones will break at pretty much the same rate as iPhones.
Their problems are more on the marketing side.
Their problems have been on the product side. They have had no answer to the iPhone and Android phones. Their software has seriously sucked for a long time. Symbian was a dead end years ago and MeeGo wasn't going to get the job done. Nokia's problems are simply that they have had no phones anyone wanted for quite a while now. Their dumb phones were fine but they missed the smartphone revolution big time.
If Microsoft wants it that bad, then Apple would be stupid not to bid the price up. They win if they win, and they win if they lose.
Or one of them overpays hugely and never recoups the investment. It is very possible to overpay for a company like Nokia and overpaying is always a bad thing.
Top tip when investing, if you hear a company start talking about "transformative acquisitions", run away as fast as you can. That is an almost sure sign that a company is about to overpay for something.
Tablets are not a step forward from the current state of the art
That's only true if you expect things to remain unchanged. Like PCs in years past, tablets are still finding their niche. They've already found one in personal entertainment (movies, light browing, light email, books) and they seem to be finding more in places like aiding pilots, managing data in doctor's offices and the like. No they aren't going to replace PCs for everything but they are a big step forward for certain activities. We're integrating them into our manufacturing plant as an efficient way to distribute work instructions to the factory floor. A PC would be a lot more awkward since our people have no need for a keyboard - they simply need to get PDFs to read.
PCs are advantageous for tasks where a keyboard is necessary and there are a lot of those. Tablets are a better form factor for certain tasks that have less need of a keyboard and they'll find their niche there. Keyboards are handy but they are not the best way to interact with a computer for every task and lugging one around can be surprisingly awkward at times.
question is "which country do we import most stuff" than the answers is China - top of the list at 18% (then Canada @ ~14% and Mexico @ ~12%, Japan @ ~6% and then drops off rapidly)
The question wasn't which country do we import the most stuff from, the assertion was that "most of what we buy was made in China" which is patent nonsense. The US has the largest manufacturing sector in the world by a wide margin - by some measures over double the output of China. Most of what we buy in the US was also made in the US since only fraction (around 20-30%) of what we manufacture is exported. The notion that everything we buy was made in China is demonstrably false.
Also, dollar value doesn't convey the number of items that are imported. Imagine buying $.01 widgets from China, and $1,000,000,000 luxury cars from all other places. I can imagine that less objects would come from all other places.
Come up with some data or you are just hypothesizing. Even if you are right it is just a guess unless you can back it up. Plus you are forgetting the HUGE amount of stuff that is made domestically. The US has the largest manufacturing sector in the world. According to the UN, the US manufactures about 2.5 times as much stuff as China and accounts for a bit over 20% of the world total. Odds are that most of the stuff you buy was made right here in the USA. China is coming on strong but the notion that "everything is made in China" is demonstrably nonsense.
True, but doesn't most of the crap bought in the U.S. come from China?
Not even remotely. Year to date in 2012 the US has imported about $235 billion in goods from China (out of ~$1323 billion total imports) which accounts for a little under 18% of total imports. Not even under the most wild definition of "most" does most of the stuff we buy come from China.
People buy Apple products, initially, because of the marketing and the fact that owning such a device elevates their social status.
I'm getting rather tired of this social status meme. Nobody sells 80 million phones on social status and most people who buy Apple products do so for fairly practical reasons. (perceived ease of use, network effects, halo effects, perceived quality, etc) Apple products aren't rare or hard to get and nobody thinks you are special because you have one. Status isn't elevated unless there is some sort of exclusivity. There is almost no exclusivity with Apple products - people who want one typically go ahead and get one. They're not cheap but they are well within the means of lower middle class families in the US. Apple products are considered cool but not because they are exclusive and certainly not because of a few social climbers.
There will never be a profit model for exploration
Nonsense. You think the Americas were explored just because of curiosity? No, it was because people were exploring FOR something. Land, resources, minerals, etc. They didn't always know what they would find and they had to be flexible but they didn't go exploring just for the heck of it. Oil and mining companies explore for mineral wealth all the time. You can do exploration with a perfectly sensible profit model. The limitations to space exploration are economic and technological but not the lack of a potential profit model.
If it's advantageous to sell, you sell and make money, there's your liquidity
That is most definitely not liquidity. Just because you want to sell something doesn't mean there is a buyer. Or it might mean there is a buyer but they want a big premium to do the deal. Liquidity is a measure of the ease with which buyers and sellers can find each other and agree to a price. Our recent financial crisis was in large part a crisis of liquidity. Big banks needed to be able to borrow money and everyone was afraid of lending to someone who might be insolvent so there was literally nowhere to borrow from. It's not just an all or nothing proposition either. If a stock is thinly traded, the spreads are going to be huge and it will be really expensive to buy that stock. If it is difficult to find sellers it likely will be difficult to find future buyers as well. The more trading that occurs in a stock, the narrower the bid/ask spreads because it is easier (and less expensive) for buyers and sellers to find each other. More trading = more liquitity = lower transaction costs.
It's trivial to port Android to Nokia platforms, hobbyists do it all the time:
Great, so now Nokia has ported Android over and they have an undifferentiated Android phone. If I'm interested in using Android I can get one from dozens of vendors. Nokia has nothing special to bring to the Android party that isn't already there AND they would be well behind their competitors who are already using Android. While Nokia COULD go to Android, it isn't obvious that doing so would be a good idea from a business perspective. Nokia would do much better in the long run if their Microsoft strategy were to pay off. If Microsoft were to pull the plug on Nokia, Android might be their only option left but it isn't really a path Nokia would be eager to go down.
Nokia's experiment with Microsoft isn't over yet (though it isn't looking good thus far) and it does have the advantage of being able to use Microsoft's pile of cash to their advantage. Windows on mobile devices is critical for Microsoft and through Nokia they are able to have a path to market. If Nokia falls, Microsoft really doesn't have anyone to make and market phones with their software so in all likelihood Microsoft would buy out Nokia if needed. Right now Nokia would be expensive but if things keep going the way they are, Nokia could get really cheap.
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actually.... bitcoins are a commodity not a currency
That's a distinction without a difference in this case. Currencies are a form of commodity - just one used specifically to facilitate exchange. Commodities are undifferentiated and fungible goods and so are currencies. It's accurate to call bitcoin a commodity but its equally accurate to call a dollar or a yen a commodity.
Currency makes a terrible savings instrument in that its value tends to go down via inflation.
Same thing happens with lots of commodities like gold. If all you do is stick it in a warehouse then it will generally lose value due to inflation (as well as storage costs) over time.
Shocking that people wouldn't be doing transactions with a currency that few people know about or understand and that even fewer people are willing to accept as payment.
Based on exchange rates listed on Mt.Gox — the most widely used Bitcoin exchange — the coins have a value of more than $82.87 million.
That is referred to as an inferred value. Same thing happens with companies. Say you buy 5% of a company for $1 million. By doing so you think the entire company is worth $20 million (5% of $20 million is $1 million). That doesn't mean it is actually worth that much, it just means someone paid an amount that implies the value of the company. On a thinly traded commodity inferred values can be wildly misleading because the person doing the transaction might have overpaid compared with the going market rate. If most of the bitcoins are sitting on the sidelines, that $80 million valuation is almost certainly far higher than is realistic.
But, once they've found that subject, they should be allowed to pursue it. If a kid wants to be an auto mechanic for the rest of his life, then let hem learn about that.
Exactly how many high school students have you actually met that knew what they wanted to do for the rest of their life at age 15? I guarantee you the answer is a pretty good approximation of zero when compared with the student population. Oh sure there are a few, but not many. I work with high school students as a coach and most of them simply aren't anywhere close to that focused. While I agree that there needs to be room for electives there also needs to be a substantial core curriculum, some of which may not be interesting to a given student. I don't really use calculus in my daily life but I'm glad I was required to take the class. I understand more about the world around me and I was forced to think about things that I might not have if given a choice.
Locking them into a 'standardized program' doesn't magically make them a successful adult or magically teach them the skills they need to know in order to be a member of society.
Nor does it obviously hurt their ability to become a productive member of society. Even with a customized curriculum most of what you learn in school will not play much of a role in your daily life. The most important things that are being taught are how to learn and how to work - not specific subjects. I have a degree in engineering but don't think for a moment that I was fully prepared for my current job the moment I finished school. It would not have mattered a bit how flexible or not my curriculum happened to be. The reason employers care about whether you have a college degree is that it tells them that you have at least some capacity to work. They don't assume for a minute that you are perfectly trained for whatever career you seek. Furthermore if a student really wants to pursue a special interest they are welcome to do so outside of school. Never confuse schooling with education.
Fuck "getting ahead". Getting ahead is living the life you want.
I heard a great quote once. Success is getting what you want but happiness is wanting what you get.
When specifically answering the "Do cars with ABS stop more quickly than cars without?" question they have this to say:
"ABS is designed to help the driver maintain control of the vehicle during emergency braking situations, not make the car stop more quickly."
What it is designed to do and what it actually does are different issues. It is designed to keep you from locking up your wheels. This aids in maintaining steering. As a side benefit this also helps you stop faster under many circumstances.
They then do some hand waving saying some systems may stop a car faster, (BTW, they don't mention "skilled drivers").
What hand waving? Spend 5 seconds on google and you'll find innumerable credible sources that support that ABS brakes often (though not always) stop vehicles quicker. The fact that it helps you steer as well is awesome but a separate issue.
But Microsoft is still firmly entrenched in business.
In the PC market which is an almost completely unrelated market at this time. Furthermore just because you sell a lot of product to businesses today doesn't mean they will buy a different product from you tomorrow. Businesses buy Windows and Office primarily due to network effects. These don't really exist on this new tablet product and so Microsoft really has no advantage over Apple or Google or Amazon. Corporations don't buy from Microsoft out of loyalty - just ask Research In Motion.
I predict large corporations will eat up Microsoft's new tablet.
Based on what exactly? What does it provide that they cannot get from Android or Apple?
. It's only FWD cars that are inherently front-heavy.
FWD does not make them "inherently front-heavy". The engine location does that. A RWD car with a front engine is still going to tend to be nose heavy. Pickup trucks are a great example - despite being usually RWD they tend to be very front heavy because of the engine location. Transmission and driveline have some weight but they are light compared with the engine. When you have the engine out in front of the front wheels, it makes it front heavy.
You can put weight elsewhere to balance the car out as you note but that has to be done purposefully - either by moving parts, removing parts or adding ballast. Car manufacturers do not usually build balanced cars because for most drivers a bit of understeer is safer and having the car nose heavy helps achieve this. FWD cars tend to do better in the snow in large part because the weight is over the drive wheels without adding any ballast. However a rear engined RWD car like a 911 can achieve basically the same effect (and I've driven one in the snow so I've seen it first hand). There is a reason that the fastest cars tend to be mid-engined. It makes for fewer compromises when adjusting the weight distribution of the vehicle for handling. A front engined or rear engined car can only achieve the same effect by adding weight to to the other end of the vehicle (moving parts or ballast) to balance the engine location.
Just to be pedantic - in most situations, ABS will NOT decrease your stopping distance, in fact, by definition not locking your tires reduces friction and actually increases stopping distances.
The NHTSA thinks you are wrong except on very soft surfaces like loose gravel or fresh snow. On dry pavement under real world conditions ABS will often stop the car faster than even a skilled driver without ABS could manage.
Power Steering is only needed on cars that are Front Wheel Drive, because they are so nose-heavy.
All cars are nose heavy unless they are mid or rear engine vehicles. Has nothing to do with being front wheel drive - it has to do with where the heaviest item in the vehicle (the engine) is located. What determines the need for power steering is the weight of the vehicle and the type of tires. If you've got a heavy vehicle with sticky or wide tires, you are going to have a hard time steering at low speed. Power steering isn't generally needed at high speed as the wheels don't need to turn far. If the vehicle is light odds are power steering is optional.
So, why not just ditch all the safety features?
Because it is illegal to do so without completely rewriting the laws in the US and the laws aren't going to change to accommodate this vehicle. For various reasons automobiles sold in the US are required to have certain safety features and if the Nano lacks these features it will not be allowed into the country. While I agree that motorcycles are plenty dangerous, they also are popular. The Tata Nano will not be popular. Might not be terribly logical from a safety standpoint but the safety feature requirements for cars aren't going to go away.
All knowledge can only exist if people accept someone else's story regarding the event.
Utter nonsense. I don't need anyone else for me to figure out that the earth is round or that gravity behaves a certain way or that I am two inches taller than my wife. While it is true that I cannot verify everything around me, I certainly can verify things that I feel need verifying. If someone else comes up with a good explanation for why something behaves the way it does, I don't have to accept their model blindly. Just because someone says something doesn't mean it is true. That is vastly different than reading some special book and accepting whatever it says as factual , no matter how absurd, without any critical thinking or correlation with ones own senses and logic.
People also believe in science because it brings them comfort.
People believe in science because it works and the findings can be verified. That's the whole point of it. Science makes a prediction about how something will behave and then we verify that it actually does behave that way. If the model is wrong we change the model rather than making up a fanciful story to protect our ignorance.
Most advanced physics is accepted purely on faith by your reasoning, because it cannot possibly be verified.
If you believe that you know nothing about physics. I absolutely can verify physics and in fact it doesn't work unless you can verify the models. We have verified with countless experiments the Standard Model to about 12 decimal places. It is incredibly well tested and you can test it yourself. When physicists don't know something they say "I don't know" instead of making up fairy tales and deities to explain what they don't understand.
Why is it irrational to follow "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,"
It's not. The irrational bit is believing someone else's nonsensical story about an invisible man in the sky who told you to believe that. You don't need to invoke a deity to think treating others with decency and respect is a good idea. Some (though not all) of the teachings of religions are perfectly fine. It's when they start with the supernatural stuff that it becomes irrational.
Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorised 1.6 billion people.
What a disingenuous bunch of crap. Someone questions their invisible friend and they call it terrorism? Hurt feelings are the same as killing innocent people?Someone who would say something like that has the emotional maturity of a 4 year old. I can handle someone criticizing my beliefs but apparently all the followers of islam are so emotionally fragile that they can be traumatized by a book or a comic. Pathetic.
I mostly agree with you, until the point of not thinking by themselves. I am religious, and I do learn science and have a very letftiah libertarian way of thinking, so I dont see how can someone say that I dont think by myself, still I might be blind.
Religions can only exist if people accept someone else's story regarding the existence and nature of a mythical being based on no factual evidence whatsoever. People believe in religions because it brings them comfort. But if you accept anything purely on faith and especially if you cannot possibly verify the claims, that is pretty much the definition of not thinking for yourself. You have traded rational and independent thought for comfort. Seems a costly trade to me.
I guess you're oblivious to the N9.
How many people have you actually seen with an N9 in their hand. I haven't seen one in the wild yet and I do pay attention to this sort of thing. Almost no one cares, myself included. I don't have anything particularly against Nokia but they are playing catch up and so far have done a poor job of it.
And many people won't give up their N900s.
Which proves what exactly? A device that never sold particularly well is beloved by a tiny few devotees. You'll find some people who love all sorts of devices. I'm not even saying the device is a bad design. It just isn't what people actually want and it runs software that no one cares about.
My own experiences with Nokia devices is that they engage in checkbox design. My last Nokia smartphone had a browser and email and all the same features as the iPhone that was available at the time. However in practice they were so badly designed that they may as well have not bothered. The browser was horrific, the email clumsy, it required special headphones and installing music was a joke, etc. The software never got upgraded or improved. And the worst bit was the interface with my PC which was worse than useless. Their Ovi suite was just a mess. Nokia produced such crap devices that they're going to have to work hard to win me back as a customer. They can't just match Google or Apple, they have to be significantly better - and I doubt they can be.
Nokia makes excellent hardware at a good price.
Maybe back in the day. Nokia's hardware now is fine (not great, just fine) but the prices are nothing special. Their high end stuff historically has tended to be wildly overpriced.
Their gear tends to be much more rugged than Apple's fragile mobile devices.
I have no general data to point to but I used Nokia phones almost exclusively for 10 years and have used Apple's for the last 3 and the Nokia stuff I had was no more or less durable than my Apple gear. I'm pretty sure Nokia's current smartphones will break at pretty much the same rate as iPhones.
Their problems are more on the marketing side.
Their problems have been on the product side. They have had no answer to the iPhone and Android phones. Their software has seriously sucked for a long time. Symbian was a dead end years ago and MeeGo wasn't going to get the job done. Nokia's problems are simply that they have had no phones anyone wanted for quite a while now. Their dumb phones were fine but they missed the smartphone revolution big time.
If Microsoft wants it that bad, then Apple would be stupid not to bid the price up. They win if they win, and they win if they lose.
Or one of them overpays hugely and never recoups the investment. It is very possible to overpay for a company like Nokia and overpaying is always a bad thing.
Top tip when investing, if you hear a company start talking about "transformative acquisitions", run away as fast as you can. That is an almost sure sign that a company is about to overpay for something.
Tablets are not a step forward from the current state of the art
That's only true if you expect things to remain unchanged. Like PCs in years past, tablets are still finding their niche. They've already found one in personal entertainment (movies, light browing, light email, books) and they seem to be finding more in places like aiding pilots, managing data in doctor's offices and the like. No they aren't going to replace PCs for everything but they are a big step forward for certain activities. We're integrating them into our manufacturing plant as an efficient way to distribute work instructions to the factory floor. A PC would be a lot more awkward since our people have no need for a keyboard - they simply need to get PDFs to read.
PCs are advantageous for tasks where a keyboard is necessary and there are a lot of those. Tablets are a better form factor for certain tasks that have less need of a keyboard and they'll find their niche there. Keyboards are handy but they are not the best way to interact with a computer for every task and lugging one around can be surprisingly awkward at times.
question is "which country do we import most stuff"
than the answers is China - top of the list at 18% (then Canada @ ~14% and Mexico @ ~12%, Japan @ ~6%
and then drops off rapidly)
The question wasn't which country do we import the most stuff from, the assertion was that "most of what we buy was made in China" which is patent nonsense. The US has the largest manufacturing sector in the world by a wide margin - by some measures over double the output of China. Most of what we buy in the US was also made in the US since only fraction (around 20-30%) of what we manufacture is exported. The notion that everything we buy was made in China is demonstrably false.
Also, dollar value doesn't convey the number of items that are imported. Imagine buying $.01 widgets from China, and $1,000,000,000 luxury cars from all other places. I can imagine that less objects would come from all other places.
Come up with some data or you are just hypothesizing. Even if you are right it is just a guess unless you can back it up. Plus you are forgetting the HUGE amount of stuff that is made domestically. The US has the largest manufacturing sector in the world. According to the UN, the US manufactures about 2.5 times as much stuff as China and accounts for a bit over 20% of the world total. Odds are that most of the stuff you buy was made right here in the USA. China is coming on strong but the notion that "everything is made in China" is demonstrably nonsense.
The share of Chinese imports gets substantially higher when you subtract oil from the total, at $400-500 billion per year.
Taking random things out doesn't serve purpose. We can lower Chinese imports if we subtract steel but it would be just as pointless.
Oh, and the total amount of crude oil imported into the US in 2011 was around $225 billion according to the US Census Bureau.
True, but doesn't most of the crap bought in the U.S. come from China?
Not even remotely. Year to date in 2012 the US has imported about $235 billion in goods from China (out of ~$1323 billion total imports) which accounts for a little under 18% of total imports. Not even under the most wild definition of "most" does most of the stuff we buy come from China.
People buy Apple products, initially, because of the marketing and the fact that owning such a device elevates their social status.
I'm getting rather tired of this social status meme. Nobody sells 80 million phones on social status and most people who buy Apple products do so for fairly practical reasons. (perceived ease of use, network effects, halo effects, perceived quality, etc) Apple products aren't rare or hard to get and nobody thinks you are special because you have one. Status isn't elevated unless there is some sort of exclusivity. There is almost no exclusivity with Apple products - people who want one typically go ahead and get one. They're not cheap but they are well within the means of lower middle class families in the US. Apple products are considered cool but not because they are exclusive and certainly not because of a few social climbers.
There will never be a profit model for exploration
Nonsense. You think the Americas were explored just because of curiosity? No, it was because people were exploring FOR something. Land, resources, minerals, etc. They didn't always know what they would find and they had to be flexible but they didn't go exploring just for the heck of it. Oil and mining companies explore for mineral wealth all the time. You can do exploration with a perfectly sensible profit model. The limitations to space exploration are economic and technological but not the lack of a potential profit model.
If it's advantageous to sell, you sell and make money, there's your liquidity
That is most definitely not liquidity. Just because you want to sell something doesn't mean there is a buyer. Or it might mean there is a buyer but they want a big premium to do the deal. Liquidity is a measure of the ease with which buyers and sellers can find each other and agree to a price. Our recent financial crisis was in large part a crisis of liquidity. Big banks needed to be able to borrow money and everyone was afraid of lending to someone who might be insolvent so there was literally nowhere to borrow from. It's not just an all or nothing proposition either. If a stock is thinly traded, the spreads are going to be huge and it will be really expensive to buy that stock. If it is difficult to find sellers it likely will be difficult to find future buyers as well. The more trading that occurs in a stock, the narrower the bid/ask spreads because it is easier (and less expensive) for buyers and sellers to find each other. More trading = more liquitity = lower transaction costs.
It's trivial to port Android to Nokia platforms, hobbyists do it all the time:
Great, so now Nokia has ported Android over and they have an undifferentiated Android phone. If I'm interested in using Android I can get one from dozens of vendors. Nokia has nothing special to bring to the Android party that isn't already there AND they would be well behind their competitors who are already using Android. While Nokia COULD go to Android, it isn't obvious that doing so would be a good idea from a business perspective. Nokia would do much better in the long run if their Microsoft strategy were to pay off. If Microsoft were to pull the plug on Nokia, Android might be their only option left but it isn't really a path Nokia would be eager to go down.
Nokia's experiment with Microsoft isn't over yet (though it isn't looking good thus far) and it does have the advantage of being able to use Microsoft's pile of cash to their advantage. Windows on mobile devices is critical for Microsoft and through Nokia they are able to have a path to market. If Nokia falls, Microsoft really doesn't have anyone to make and market phones with their software so in all likelihood Microsoft would buy out Nokia if needed. Right now Nokia would be expensive but if things keep going the way they are, Nokia could get really cheap.