Before the Nexus 7 it wasn't such a bad bargain compared to the junk you could get in the price range.
Granted but that's sort of damning with faint praise. A machine with ok hardware and crippled software being better than a machine with terrible hardware and crappy software. Not exactly the choices I'd hope for. Really the only reason those machines even sold as well as they did is because Apple left some oxygen at the low end of the market. If Apple comes out with a product that competes in that lower price tier (and I think they will) much of the reason to buy the Kindle Fire or B&N Nook disappears. Regardless of one's feelings towards Apple, the iPad is a more capable and more widely sought after product. It'll be interesting to learn how much (if any) of a mistake this was by Apple.
It's a reading device, it's awful at everything else, the browser is terrible.
$150-200 for a reading device that is terrible at everything else? No thanks. A tablet is a general purpose computer and I expect them to be more than a one trick pony no matter how well they do the one trick. The Kindle Fire and BN Nook are devices that weren't designed to be all they could be and I find that rather irritating. I buy from Amazon and B&N but I cannot conceive of a reason to buy an intentionally and unnecessarily limited device just so they can try to convince me to buy even more stuff from them. If the Kindle Fire was a full Android device like the Nexus 7 and it also happened to work well with Amazon's services, then we have something worth considering.
10" is almost big enough to use instead of a laptop, but 7" just doesn't have enough pixels for general use, and is too big to fit in a pocket.
The number of pixels is independent of the screen dimensions. You can have exactly the same number of pixels on either. You can make them appear identical depending on what distance you hold them from your eyes. Also, saying 7" is too big to fit in a pocket is not a differentiation either since the 10" screen doesn't fit in your pocket either.
Personally I find the 10" tablets moderately cumbersome to hold and carry. If it is going to be that large, given the way I work I may as well get an actual laptop. If your vision isn't so good the extra size might prove helpful. Maybe 10" is better for some games though I imaging the differences to be mostly unimportant. I suppose you can put a larger battery in the larger unit too. I prefer the more compact 7" form factor. It's lighter, takes up less space, and can do essentially all the same tasks. For me I just don't see any advantage to lugging around the extra weight and bulk.
The problem is that they could have 99% of the profit in the market, it doesn't matter if they keep on losing market share. Eventually, their profits will drop.
Or those loss making companies will go bankrupt or leave the market. With $100 billion in the bank and their current margins Apple can bankroll a pretty long fight. Apple only owns a relatively modest percentage of the PC market but they are easily the most profitable PC maker out there. They don't need much of the market share as long as they can continue to own the bits making all the profit. So far Apple has made all the right moves and their strategy looks good. Even Microsoft and Google cannot forever bankroll money losing ventures though Microsoft certainly has been willing to try.
That's not to say there is no risk to Apple. Apple depends heavily on just a few products. If they drop the ball on the next iPhone or the next iPad, their stock price will drop like a stone. The real risk to Apple is if someone comes out with software that they cannot compete with. Apple's products are differentiated primarily by their software. (yeah the design stuff matters too but much less) Google is a risk to them because Google has enough programming talent to potentially outperform Apple in some way. The devices themselves are important but actually somewhat secondary.
Apples numerous lawsuits aren't " 'blah blah emotional decision' posts", they are real.
Reactions to those lawsuits ARE emotional reactions. That's a judgement, just a fact. We have every right to have an emotional reaction to things and in fact a huge portion of our purchasing decisions are driven by factors other than pure reason.
I roll my eyes every time I see one of these posts positing that Apple is somehow more evil than the rest of them. Every one of these companies Apple is suing would do the exact same thing if they were in Apple's shoes and many of them have. There are no good guys here. Every one of them is as guilty as the next.
I.e. Samsung alone shipped almost twice as many smartphones as Apple.
Apple makes over 70% of industry profit. And Samsung is the only other phone maker making any significant profit at all in the smartphone. (HTC apparently makes a small operating profit) Pretty much every other phone maker including Research In Motion, Nokia, Motorola and Sony all posted losses. Because Samsung ships a lot more units (feature phones + smart phones) but still only has half the profit of Apple over the same period, that means that Samsung is competing with Apple primarily on price. Yes they are selling a lot of units but people (mostly) aren't buying them for the features - they are buying Samsung because of the price. It's unclear if Samsung will be able to continue its price leadership since there isn't all that much much to differentiate Samsung's Android phone from anyone else's.
This makes me wonder: will I actually use calculus and above
Probably not unless you are in some fairly specific areas of engineering or academia. I've almost never used calculus in my professional life though I've used software that does lots of it for me. I have however used the crap out of statistics. For most people they are much more likely to utilize statistics in their jobs and day to day life. Frankly I think it is terribly under emphasized in most curriculums.
or is it just a popular idea that you need to be a mathematician in order to program? What are your experiences?"
It's important to understand it even if you don't actually use it. You can't really understand a lot of things unless you have at least a basic appreciation of calculus. I'm glad I learned it even though I don't actually use it much.
Walmart gets away with selling a Dr. Pepper clone named Dr. Thunder, for example, whose packaging is clearly reminiscent of Dr. Pepper's. So I don't see why a "generic iPhone" can't come as close as "generic Dr. Pepper" does on the trade-dress claim.
Walmart gets away with it because Walmart can hurt the makers of Dr Pepper. Walmart could drop their entire product line with little effect to the bottom line of Walmart since it is a tiny fraction of their business. Losing Walmart as a customer would hurt the makers of Dr Pepper much worse since Walmart accounts for a rather significant portion of their business. Sure Dr. Pepper's maker could sue Walmart and might even win but it would be a Pyrrhic victory.
Apple on the other hand cannot hurt Samsung in the same way. Samsung has potentially much to gain by copying Apple and they know it will be harder for Apple to retaliate since Apple's only real option is a lawsuit. Certainly risky but nothing like the situation above with Walmart.
A government grant of monopoly. Then they expire, and the monopoly is over. If the government does not like such monopolies, then it should stop issuing patents.
The government doesn't mind monopolies and in some cases monopolies are actually useful. Patents are granted because a *temporary* monopoly is a lesser evil than the Free Rider problem. Some monopolies are hard to avoid (utilities) and some are regulated. The problem is when monopolies start to abuse their power in ways that hurt consumers or the economy in general. Standard Oil was broken up because having a single unregulated company in controlling the nation's energy supply was demonstrably dangerous. You can argue that patents are too long or issued for frivolous "inventions" but they exist for a very good reason. Monopolies as such aren't the problem - unchecked monopolies sometimes are and that is when the government worries about them.
What if the iPhone really is that innovative in the smartphone arena that only Apple can provide smartphones?
Unlikely. There is a difference between providing a similar product and slavishly copying one. I don't pretend to know the details of this case but if Samsung simply copied everything Apple did then they deserve the consequences. Apple's way is hardly the only way.
Then they have a monopoly, and the DoJ tends to get upset with monopolies that appear to be unreasonably restraining consumer choice raising prices, or both.
Apple lacks the market power in phones to do either and all it would take for a mass migration away from Apple would be one bad or inferior product. Android based phones collectively outsell iOS based phones and there is no indication that this lawsuit is going to change that. Arguably the telecoms are closer to being monopolies - they certainly are an oligopoly right now - and they have NO interest in letting Apple gain control. That's why they rather enthusiastically push Android phones - it creates an alternative and keeps Apple in check.
Just ask Microsoft. They, arguably, have never recovered from the antitrust suit. Does Apple want to go down that path?
The antitrust suit resulted in a slap on the wrist for Microsoft. It changed little about how they behave and certainly made no appreciable dent in their monopoly. What has been killing Microsoft is that the world is moving to something other than the PC. Microsoft has never figured out how achieve the same kind of dominance that Windows and Office achieved on a different platform. Not for lack of trying - games, mobile, search, etc. They've tried a lot of stuff and some is even profitable but nothing like Windows and Office. Furthermore they now have to compete with a resurgent Apple and linux on the PC. They aren't going away anytime soon but Microsoft is unlikely to achieve its previous high perch ever again.
Who said anything about dispute mediation? Western Union transfers the money where you tell them to in whatever currency the recipient needs. They do the currency exchange, not the recipient. If you are involved in a stupid transaction then you are a dumbass but that's a separate issue. Western Union will reliably handle the currency exchange for you and can be trusted to do so without resorting to an illiquid and risky virtual currency. No they don't do it for free but they can do it almost anywhere in the world without any technological sophistication required and with considerably less counter party risk for the exchange. Only an idiot or someone willing to take on huge amounts of risk would use bitcoin to perform a currency exchange.
You can have low-trust dispute mediation with Bitcoin, by the way.
Only if you have a mutually trustworthy third party who is willing to do the transaction for free - in other words someone who doesn't value their time - and are willing to go to the trouble to set up a complicated transaction. Otherwise you can pay Western Union or a bank a small fee and accomplish the same end without anywhere near the risk for exchanging the cash.
It isn't fully implemented today (it can be done with command line tools but isn't user friendly), but this will come with time.
So basically you cannot do it easily and only a computer geek with a poor understanding of risk and a worse understanding of liquidity would even try. Where do I sign up?
And a wireless money transfer between separate currencies without paying the crazy rates banks/western union/etc... charge.
And taking considerably more risk in the process. There is no escrow or trusted neutral party ensuring everyone gets the right amount. Basically you are trusting that the other party is an honest broker. In principle you are doing the same thing with a bank but there is actually oversight of the bank. You pay a middle man a fee not just to facilitate the transfer but also to reduce the risk to you. You are reducing the transfer fee but hugely increasing the risk.
So, how do drugs explain a sudden increase in performance?
Let's say you start taking epogen doses shortly before the olympics. You will be producing additional red blood cells, be able to carry more oxygen and have better endurance. Suddenly an athlete who's previous results were unremarkable is meeting or beating athletes they previously were unable to match. Now that isn't a smoking gun by itself but only someone who is naive would not raise an eyebrow. You don't have to take my word for it. There are lots of books on the subject written by or about people who have first hand knowledge of the effects.
In other words, if she has a super-drug, why would she wait to start suddenly using it onsite at the Olympic Games when it was too late to see if/how it would work, and if it did everybody would be suspicious?
Drugs don't have to be taken onsite to have an effect. In fact many of them take some time to actually have an effect. You don't need to wait until the big even to find out if it works. Epogen for instance (popular among endurance athletes) takes some time because it stimulates production of red blood cells. If you are using steroids to build muscle the muscle doesn't go away immediately. The drugs let the athlete train harder and recover more quickly and get stronger than they might otherwise. They also can increase oxygen carrying capacity. The effects last - the challenge is in getting sometime that cannot be tested for or using it in such a manner that it cleans out of the system before the test is administered. Both are demonstrably possible. It's sad but you should regard any remarkable performance with some amount of skepticism, especially when the money or prestige is high.
And it's so reminiscent of the reporting on Lance Armstrong in the international press (and especially France) as he won the Tour de France year after year. And as with Armstrong we might never know the truth. But does anybody really believe NBC would be so quick to spread the notion of her cheating if she were American?
Perhaps you didn't follow the reporting on Lance very closely? He has been dogged by doping accusations from both foreign and domestic sources pretty much from the time he won his first Tour. Suddenly we had this guy who was recovering from cancer who never had the ability to compete in grand tours before winning the biggest one of them all. It never made much sense. There has never been a smoking gun such as a failed drug test but there is a LOT of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that he was dirty. Virtually everyone who stood on the podium with him when he was winning his Tours was later busted for doping and we were somehow expected to believe he was competing clean. A large number of his team mates have been busted for doping, he worked with a doctor who is known to aid and abet doping, etc. He is presently the subject of a USADA accusation of doping and is suspended from competing pending its outcome. The odds that he was competing clean are pretty long given the body of evidence against him. Can't say for sure but I very much doubt he was clean.
Bolt is as fast as he is, not because of some lucky draw in the gene pool, but because of proper training and starting at a young age.
Genetics are a pre-requisite. Granted, exceptional genetics alone are not sufficient, but they are absolutely necessary if you want to compete at that level. To be able to compete at the elite level, it doesn't matter what age you start at or how hard or properly you train if you haven't won the genetic lottery as well. Bolt is as fast as he is primarily because he is a genetic freak. The hard training lets him maximize the ability he has but even without training at all he would be faster than the vast majority of the people in the world based thanks to his genetics.
Full disclosure: I have competed at the division one college level and competed directly with and been coached by Olympic and world champions. I know what it is like to compete against those who are genetically gifted in a sport first hand. I'm relatively talented at my chosen sport and I worked hard at it when I competed but I also know that I simply didn't have the genetic gifts to go to the next level no matter how hard I worked. I'm ok with that now though - most of us weren't born with the genetics to make it to the Olympic games and there is no shame in that.
Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?
No because the circumstantial facts indicate there is a very high probability of doping. It's demonstrably possible to evade doping tests. Marion Jones (an American) passed every drug test she took while winning multiple world and olympic medals and yet she is an admitted doper. You can be absolutely certain that there are numerous athletes from all over the world at the Olympics who are doping but will not be caught.
Otherworldly improvements in performance at that level almost never happen. People do not beat their best times in a relatively short event by multiple seconds in relatively short swimming events just coincidentally when they happen to be at the Olympics. Women do not swim a faster last 50 meters than the men in the same event. World records do not fall by wide margins. Add in that the Chinese swimming program has a well recorded history of doping and being caught doing it.
Is it true that the Chinese girl has passed all the drug testing? Is it true that she is clean?
You can pass all the drug tests and still have doped. Marion Jones is an admitted doper who never tested positive. Drug tests are rather specific in what they test for and what they can find. The dopers are typically a step ahead of the tests to catch them. Saying an athlete is clean and saying they passed all their drug tests are completely different statements. You cannot conclusively prove that an athlete is competing clean - that would be trying to prove a negative. You can say that an athlete has not failed specific drug tests but that tests only a limited number of possible doping methodologies.
The trouble is the mistaken and misguided belief that if there has ever been an example of abuse, or a mistake, then ALL activity MUST be abuse.
Nice strawman. The problem is that sometimes there is ALWAYS the potential for abuse and sometimes there actually are abuses. Thus we need oversight and lots of it. No rational person is claiming everything the NSA has done is abuse or in error. But only a naive fool would assume that the NSA is an entity to be trusted.
Look, NSA intercepts communications, and it does so for only one purpose -- to protect the lives, the liberties and the well-being of the citizens of the United States from those who would do us harm
You cannot possibly know that with any actual certainty. However even if true, that does not mean that US citizens cannot be abused by the actions of the NSA in the process. We locked up thousands of innocent citizens of Japanese descent in the 1940s in the name of "protecting" US citizens. There are almost countless examples of our law enforcement and government agencies abusing citizens with all the good intentions in the world. Martin Luther King was considered extremely dangerous by the FBI. Our government has a LONG track record of abusing citizens even when they have the best of intentions and that's even taking into account that the US government is relatively benign and benevolent compared with some of the other governments out there. (it could be a lot worse) Believing the only purpose of the NSA and it's employees is to protect US citizens is naive on the face of it. And even it if were true, it doesn't mean that bad things won't happen to people who do not deserve it.
It's a question drilled into every employee of NSA from day one, and it shapes every decision about how NSA operates.
Even if true (and I very much doubt that it is) that means precisely nothing. People do all sorts of evil things while thinking they are doing the right thing. Laws get followed that are bad laws. Don't get me wrong, I think the NSA or an organization similar to it serves an important purpose. But I don't really care at all what comes out of the mouths of the people in charge of it. What they are doing has the potential to both violate the law and to result in real and tangible harm to the rights, person and property of US citizens and that is worthy of serious concern.
Ask yourself if it really makes sense that hundreds, if not thousands, of professional civilian and military members of our government have so little regard for their fellow citizens that they are systematically violating both the letter and spirit of law and the Constitution
It very much makes sense. We have fairly severe restrictions on our police forces and they regularly try and often succeed in circumventing them. The FBI has a decades long record of abusing the civil rights of US citizens. Every law enforcement and intelligence agency regularly chaffs against the restrictions placed on their power. Those same "professionals" you cite did nothing while our government condoned torture in clear violation of the spirit and letter of our laws. Why should I believe the NSA is any different? Those restrictions are inconvenient, expensive and it's not as if regular citizens can check their work to ensure they aren't breaking the rules. I believe they have power without sufficient accountability and that is almost certain to result in abuse of that power.
Trust the NSA? No I don't trust the NSA, it's employees or any other branch of our government and that is the way it should bet. We have checks and balances because we KNOW we cannot trust them. Unchecked power absolutely will be abused. The real question is do we have sufficient oversight from congress or the judiciary? It's not clear that we do.
And what should have been the proper response to this?
You mean what is the proper response to a perceived death threat? Pretty much exactly what happened is the proper response. Yes it seems extreme in hindsight but the situation cannot be properly evaluated that way. A colleague is told essentially to shut up or they will be killed. If you don't know the full context of the joke it is very easy to perceive that as a deadly serious threat. While it was indeed a joke, such things need to go through proper channels and sometimes
Tell the crying woman, after an explanation (maybe she didn't 'get it' for some reason)...after a point, to get over it. It is a fucking joke.
What is intended as a joke is not always funny to others. In some cases it can be deadly offensive. While intent needs to be taken into account, sometimes it doesn't actually matter.
It isn't your fault someone misunderstands things or has such a thin skin and likely will cry if too many flies are swatted on the window sill.
Actually it IS your fault. The other person might share some of the blame in some cases but you don't get to decide what is offensive to others. If you make an attempt at a joke and it is perceived as an offense, you are at fault for that. Making a joke can be quite risky so you had better be sure of your audience.
No wonder men don't care often for working with women.
Only the immature and insecure feel this way. Believe it or not you can have a terrific working relationship or friendship with a woman without behaving like a jerk.
Guys can't be guys in the workplace....
By that I assume you mean they can't behave like juvenile imbeciles? That they can't make unnecessary hurtful remarks at the expense of others? That they can't make someone feel uncomfortable or afraid just because they feel like it?
let your new female coworker set the tone. If she does not mind the jokes (or she starts the jokes herself) then you don't have to worry about it unless somebody gets drunk and goes out into left field.
Wrong. Even if she permits it for a time she can change her mind at any time. "But she was fine with me being a crude jackass before" is not a defense that will stand up in any court of law. You and the company are on very thin legal ice if you start permitting that sort of behavior. The difference between flirting/joking and harassment is essentially whether the other person likes it. If they don't, it's harassment. Since you have no way of knowing in advance whether your actions will be received well, the appropriate course of action is to assume they will not and behave accordingly. Adults know this and don't make crude jokes at the expense of others.
3D printing, robotics, AI, and nanotechnology are all expected to dramatically change the manufacturing landscape over the next several years
I suspect the impact will be considerably less than expected
But now, several different technologies have ripened to the point where U.S. companies are bringing some operations back home.
It's not technology that is bringing the operations back home. It's logistics and economics. Shipping is expensive. Long lead times are expensive. Long distance management is VERY expensive. China's labor rates are rising. Manufacturing is like water, it tends to go where the costs are lowest. There is no new technology available in the US to give it an advantage over China. It's merely that costs are rising for production in China and so some production is moving back to the US because it is now viable.
The factory assembly that the Chinese are performing is child’s play for the next generation of robots—which will soon become cheaper than human labor.
Robots are not and will NOT be cheaper than human labor for a wide variety of tasks any time soon. Anything that happens in small volumes and requires significant material handling is difficult to automate economically. Much factory assembly handled by people is ALREADY possible to automate - but to do so economically requires either high volumes or an expensive product or both. This is nothing new and there is no near term technology that is going to change this.
The world’s most advanced car, the Tesla Roadster, is also being manufactured in Silicon Valley, which is one of the most expensive places in the country. Tesla can afford this because it is using robots to do the assembly.
Tesla is selling a luxury good where the price of the product is relatively high. This is one of the normal uses of robotics. High volume and/or high value. All the other auto manufacturers use robots for exactly the same reason. It's not like labor costs in Detroit are low compared with China. Foxconn is looking into robotics because they deal in high volumes so it become economical. You can amortize the high up front capital expenditure over lots of units.
If the phone is big enough that you have to make concessions to accomodate it, then that's a problem.
So is having a wardrobe that is not designed to fit the phone you would prefer to use. Choosing to wear pants without pockets is a choice just as much as choosing which phone to carry.
Around here, telecom has rights to dig up a good portion of your private property. Something like 10' from the road is fair-game.
In most places they can only dig where they have some form of easement on your property which permits that specific use of your property. For example I have an easement on a portion of my property to allow servicing of the electrical lines. They can only use this easement for certain specific purposes. Any use other than those purposes or anywhere outside the easement is a violation of the law and they can be subject to prosecution.
I know from recent personal experience that utilities and telecoms tend to assume that people won't actually know their rights and basically trespass at will.
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Before the Nexus 7 it wasn't such a bad bargain compared to the junk you could get in the price range.
Granted but that's sort of damning with faint praise. A machine with ok hardware and crippled software being better than a machine with terrible hardware and crappy software. Not exactly the choices I'd hope for. Really the only reason those machines even sold as well as they did is because Apple left some oxygen at the low end of the market. If Apple comes out with a product that competes in that lower price tier (and I think they will) much of the reason to buy the Kindle Fire or B&N Nook disappears. Regardless of one's feelings towards Apple, the iPad is a more capable and more widely sought after product. It'll be interesting to learn how much (if any) of a mistake this was by Apple.
It's a reading device, it's awful at everything else, the browser is terrible.
$150-200 for a reading device that is terrible at everything else? No thanks. A tablet is a general purpose computer and I expect them to be more than a one trick pony no matter how well they do the one trick. The Kindle Fire and BN Nook are devices that weren't designed to be all they could be and I find that rather irritating. I buy from Amazon and B&N but I cannot conceive of a reason to buy an intentionally and unnecessarily limited device just so they can try to convince me to buy even more stuff from them. If the Kindle Fire was a full Android device like the Nexus 7 and it also happened to work well with Amazon's services, then we have something worth considering.
10" is almost big enough to use instead of a laptop, but 7" just doesn't have enough pixels for general use, and is too big to fit in a pocket.
The number of pixels is independent of the screen dimensions. You can have exactly the same number of pixels on either. You can make them appear identical depending on what distance you hold them from your eyes. Also, saying 7" is too big to fit in a pocket is not a differentiation either since the 10" screen doesn't fit in your pocket either.
Personally I find the 10" tablets moderately cumbersome to hold and carry. If it is going to be that large, given the way I work I may as well get an actual laptop. If your vision isn't so good the extra size might prove helpful. Maybe 10" is better for some games though I imaging the differences to be mostly unimportant. I suppose you can put a larger battery in the larger unit too. I prefer the more compact 7" form factor. It's lighter, takes up less space, and can do essentially all the same tasks. For me I just don't see any advantage to lugging around the extra weight and bulk.
The problem is that they could have 99% of the profit in the market, it doesn't matter if they keep on losing market share. Eventually, their profits will drop.
Or those loss making companies will go bankrupt or leave the market. With $100 billion in the bank and their current margins Apple can bankroll a pretty long fight. Apple only owns a relatively modest percentage of the PC market but they are easily the most profitable PC maker out there. They don't need much of the market share as long as they can continue to own the bits making all the profit. So far Apple has made all the right moves and their strategy looks good. Even Microsoft and Google cannot forever bankroll money losing ventures though Microsoft certainly has been willing to try.
That's not to say there is no risk to Apple. Apple depends heavily on just a few products. If they drop the ball on the next iPhone or the next iPad, their stock price will drop like a stone. The real risk to Apple is if someone comes out with software that they cannot compete with. Apple's products are differentiated primarily by their software. (yeah the design stuff matters too but much less) Google is a risk to them because Google has enough programming talent to potentially outperform Apple in some way. The devices themselves are important but actually somewhat secondary.
Apples numerous lawsuits aren't " 'blah blah emotional decision' posts", they are real.
Reactions to those lawsuits ARE emotional reactions. That's a judgement, just a fact. We have every right to have an emotional reaction to things and in fact a huge portion of our purchasing decisions are driven by factors other than pure reason.
I roll my eyes every time I see one of these posts positing that Apple is somehow more evil than the rest of them. Every one of these companies Apple is suing would do the exact same thing if they were in Apple's shoes and many of them have. There are no good guys here. Every one of them is as guilty as the next.
I.e. Samsung alone shipped almost twice as many smartphones as Apple.
Apple makes over 70% of industry profit. And Samsung is the only other phone maker making any significant profit at all in the smartphone. (HTC apparently makes a small operating profit) Pretty much every other phone maker including Research In Motion, Nokia, Motorola and Sony all posted losses. Because Samsung ships a lot more units (feature phones + smart phones) but still only has half the profit of Apple over the same period, that means that Samsung is competing with Apple primarily on price. Yes they are selling a lot of units but people (mostly) aren't buying them for the features - they are buying Samsung because of the price. It's unclear if Samsung will be able to continue its price leadership since there isn't all that much much to differentiate Samsung's Android phone from anyone else's.
This makes me wonder: will I actually use calculus and above
Probably not unless you are in some fairly specific areas of engineering or academia. I've almost never used calculus in my professional life though I've used software that does lots of it for me. I have however used the crap out of statistics. For most people they are much more likely to utilize statistics in their jobs and day to day life. Frankly I think it is terribly under emphasized in most curriculums.
or is it just a popular idea that you need to be a mathematician in order to program? What are your experiences?"
It's important to understand it even if you don't actually use it. You can't really understand a lot of things unless you have at least a basic appreciation of calculus. I'm glad I learned it even though I don't actually use it much.
Walmart gets away with selling a Dr. Pepper clone named Dr. Thunder, for example, whose packaging is clearly reminiscent of Dr. Pepper's. So I don't see why a "generic iPhone" can't come as close as "generic Dr. Pepper" does on the trade-dress claim.
Walmart gets away with it because Walmart can hurt the makers of Dr Pepper. Walmart could drop their entire product line with little effect to the bottom line of Walmart since it is a tiny fraction of their business. Losing Walmart as a customer would hurt the makers of Dr Pepper much worse since Walmart accounts for a rather significant portion of their business. Sure Dr. Pepper's maker could sue Walmart and might even win but it would be a Pyrrhic victory.
Apple on the other hand cannot hurt Samsung in the same way. Samsung has potentially much to gain by copying Apple and they know it will be harder for Apple to retaliate since Apple's only real option is a lawsuit. Certainly risky but nothing like the situation above with Walmart.
A government grant of monopoly. Then they expire, and the monopoly is over. If the government does not like such monopolies, then it should stop issuing patents.
The government doesn't mind monopolies and in some cases monopolies are actually useful. Patents are granted because a *temporary* monopoly is a lesser evil than the Free Rider problem. Some monopolies are hard to avoid (utilities) and some are regulated. The problem is when monopolies start to abuse their power in ways that hurt consumers or the economy in general. Standard Oil was broken up because having a single unregulated company in controlling the nation's energy supply was demonstrably dangerous. You can argue that patents are too long or issued for frivolous "inventions" but they exist for a very good reason. Monopolies as such aren't the problem - unchecked monopolies sometimes are and that is when the government worries about them.
What if the iPhone really is that innovative in the smartphone arena that only Apple can provide smartphones?
Unlikely. There is a difference between providing a similar product and slavishly copying one. I don't pretend to know the details of this case but if Samsung simply copied everything Apple did then they deserve the consequences. Apple's way is hardly the only way.
Then they have a monopoly, and the DoJ tends to get upset with monopolies that appear to be unreasonably restraining consumer choice raising prices, or both.
Apple lacks the market power in phones to do either and all it would take for a mass migration away from Apple would be one bad or inferior product. Android based phones collectively outsell iOS based phones and there is no indication that this lawsuit is going to change that. Arguably the telecoms are closer to being monopolies - they certainly are an oligopoly right now - and they have NO interest in letting Apple gain control. That's why they rather enthusiastically push Android phones - it creates an alternative and keeps Apple in check.
Just ask Microsoft. They, arguably, have never recovered from the antitrust suit. Does Apple want to go down that path?
The antitrust suit resulted in a slap on the wrist for Microsoft. It changed little about how they behave and certainly made no appreciable dent in their monopoly. What has been killing Microsoft is that the world is moving to something other than the PC. Microsoft has never figured out how achieve the same kind of dominance that Windows and Office achieved on a different platform. Not for lack of trying - games, mobile, search, etc. They've tried a lot of stuff and some is even profitable but nothing like Windows and Office. Furthermore they now have to compete with a resurgent Apple and linux on the PC. They aren't going away anytime soon but Microsoft is unlikely to achieve its previous high perch ever again.
Western Union is not a dispute mediator.
Who said anything about dispute mediation? Western Union transfers the money where you tell them to in whatever currency the recipient needs. They do the currency exchange, not the recipient. If you are involved in a stupid transaction then you are a dumbass but that's a separate issue. Western Union will reliably handle the currency exchange for you and can be trusted to do so without resorting to an illiquid and risky virtual currency. No they don't do it for free but they can do it almost anywhere in the world without any technological sophistication required and with considerably less counter party risk for the exchange. Only an idiot or someone willing to take on huge amounts of risk would use bitcoin to perform a currency exchange.
You can have low-trust dispute mediation with Bitcoin, by the way.
Only if you have a mutually trustworthy third party who is willing to do the transaction for free - in other words someone who doesn't value their time - and are willing to go to the trouble to set up a complicated transaction. Otherwise you can pay Western Union or a bank a small fee and accomplish the same end without anywhere near the risk for exchanging the cash.
It isn't fully implemented today (it can be done with command line tools but isn't user friendly), but this will come with time.
So basically you cannot do it easily and only a computer geek with a poor understanding of risk and a worse understanding of liquidity would even try. Where do I sign up?
And a wireless money transfer between separate currencies without paying the crazy rates banks/western union/etc... charge.
And taking considerably more risk in the process. There is no escrow or trusted neutral party ensuring everyone gets the right amount. Basically you are trusting that the other party is an honest broker. In principle you are doing the same thing with a bank but there is actually oversight of the bank. You pay a middle man a fee not just to facilitate the transfer but also to reduce the risk to you. You are reducing the transfer fee but hugely increasing the risk.
So, how do drugs explain a sudden increase in performance?
Let's say you start taking epogen doses shortly before the olympics. You will be producing additional red blood cells, be able to carry more oxygen and have better endurance. Suddenly an athlete who's previous results were unremarkable is meeting or beating athletes they previously were unable to match. Now that isn't a smoking gun by itself but only someone who is naive would not raise an eyebrow. You don't have to take my word for it. There are lots of books on the subject written by or about people who have first hand knowledge of the effects.
In other words, if she has a super-drug, why would she wait to start suddenly using it onsite at the Olympic Games when it was too late to see if/how it would work, and if it did everybody would be suspicious?
Drugs don't have to be taken onsite to have an effect. In fact many of them take some time to actually have an effect. You don't need to wait until the big even to find out if it works. Epogen for instance (popular among endurance athletes) takes some time because it stimulates production of red blood cells. If you are using steroids to build muscle the muscle doesn't go away immediately. The drugs let the athlete train harder and recover more quickly and get stronger than they might otherwise. They also can increase oxygen carrying capacity. The effects last - the challenge is in getting sometime that cannot be tested for or using it in such a manner that it cleans out of the system before the test is administered. Both are demonstrably possible. It's sad but you should regard any remarkable performance with some amount of skepticism, especially when the money or prestige is high.
And it's so reminiscent of the reporting on Lance Armstrong in the international press (and especially France) as he won the Tour de France year after year. And as with Armstrong we might never know the truth. But does anybody really believe NBC would be so quick to spread the notion of her cheating if she were American?
Perhaps you didn't follow the reporting on Lance very closely? He has been dogged by doping accusations from both foreign and domestic sources pretty much from the time he won his first Tour. Suddenly we had this guy who was recovering from cancer who never had the ability to compete in grand tours before winning the biggest one of them all. It never made much sense. There has never been a smoking gun such as a failed drug test but there is a LOT of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that he was dirty. Virtually everyone who stood on the podium with him when he was winning his Tours was later busted for doping and we were somehow expected to believe he was competing clean. A large number of his team mates have been busted for doping, he worked with a doctor who is known to aid and abet doping, etc. He is presently the subject of a USADA accusation of doping and is suspended from competing pending its outcome. The odds that he was competing clean are pretty long given the body of evidence against him. Can't say for sure but I very much doubt he was clean.
Bolt is as fast as he is, not because of some lucky draw in the gene pool, but because of proper training and starting at a young age.
Genetics are a pre-requisite. Granted, exceptional genetics alone are not sufficient, but they are absolutely necessary if you want to compete at that level. To be able to compete at the elite level, it doesn't matter what age you start at or how hard or properly you train if you haven't won the genetic lottery as well. Bolt is as fast as he is primarily because he is a genetic freak. The hard training lets him maximize the ability he has but even without training at all he would be faster than the vast majority of the people in the world based thanks to his genetics.
Full disclosure: I have competed at the division one college level and competed directly with and been coached by Olympic and world champions. I know what it is like to compete against those who are genetically gifted in a sport first hand. I'm relatively talented at my chosen sport and I worked hard at it when I competed but I also know that I simply didn't have the genetic gifts to go to the next level no matter how hard I worked. I'm ok with that now though - most of us weren't born with the genetics to make it to the Olympic games and there is no shame in that.
Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?
No because the circumstantial facts indicate there is a very high probability of doping. It's demonstrably possible to evade doping tests. Marion Jones (an American) passed every drug test she took while winning multiple world and olympic medals and yet she is an admitted doper. You can be absolutely certain that there are numerous athletes from all over the world at the Olympics who are doping but will not be caught.
Otherworldly improvements in performance at that level almost never happen. People do not beat their best times in a relatively short event by multiple seconds in relatively short swimming events just coincidentally when they happen to be at the Olympics. Women do not swim a faster last 50 meters than the men in the same event. World records do not fall by wide margins. Add in that the Chinese swimming program has a well recorded history of doping and being caught doing it.
Is it true that the Chinese girl has passed all the drug testing? Is it true that she is clean?
You can pass all the drug tests and still have doped. Marion Jones is an admitted doper who never tested positive. Drug tests are rather specific in what they test for and what they can find. The dopers are typically a step ahead of the tests to catch them. Saying an athlete is clean and saying they passed all their drug tests are completely different statements. You cannot conclusively prove that an athlete is competing clean - that would be trying to prove a negative. You can say that an athlete has not failed specific drug tests but that tests only a limited number of possible doping methodologies.
The trouble is the mistaken and misguided belief that if there has ever been an example of abuse, or a mistake, then ALL activity MUST be abuse.
Nice strawman. The problem is that sometimes there is ALWAYS the potential for abuse and sometimes there actually are abuses. Thus we need oversight and lots of it. No rational person is claiming everything the NSA has done is abuse or in error. But only a naive fool would assume that the NSA is an entity to be trusted.
Look, NSA intercepts communications, and it does so for only one purpose -- to protect the lives, the liberties and the well-being of the citizens of the United States from those who would do us harm
You cannot possibly know that with any actual certainty. However even if true, that does not mean that US citizens cannot be abused by the actions of the NSA in the process. We locked up thousands of innocent citizens of Japanese descent in the 1940s in the name of "protecting" US citizens. There are almost countless examples of our law enforcement and government agencies abusing citizens with all the good intentions in the world. Martin Luther King was considered extremely dangerous by the FBI. Our government has a LONG track record of abusing citizens even when they have the best of intentions and that's even taking into account that the US government is relatively benign and benevolent compared with some of the other governments out there. (it could be a lot worse) Believing the only purpose of the NSA and it's employees is to protect US citizens is naive on the face of it. And even it if were true, it doesn't mean that bad things won't happen to people who do not deserve it.
It's a question drilled into every employee of NSA from day one, and it shapes every decision about how NSA operates.
Even if true (and I very much doubt that it is) that means precisely nothing. People do all sorts of evil things while thinking they are doing the right thing. Laws get followed that are bad laws. Don't get me wrong, I think the NSA or an organization similar to it serves an important purpose. But I don't really care at all what comes out of the mouths of the people in charge of it. What they are doing has the potential to both violate the law and to result in real and tangible harm to the rights, person and property of US citizens and that is worthy of serious concern.
Ask yourself if it really makes sense that hundreds, if not thousands, of professional civilian and military members of our government have so little regard for their fellow citizens that they are systematically violating both the letter and spirit of law and the Constitution
It very much makes sense. We have fairly severe restrictions on our police forces and they regularly try and often succeed in circumventing them. The FBI has a decades long record of abusing the civil rights of US citizens. Every law enforcement and intelligence agency regularly chaffs against the restrictions placed on their power. Those same "professionals" you cite did nothing while our government condoned torture in clear violation of the spirit and letter of our laws. Why should I believe the NSA is any different? Those restrictions are inconvenient, expensive and it's not as if regular citizens can check their work to ensure they aren't breaking the rules. I believe they have power without sufficient accountability and that is almost certain to result in abuse of that power.
Trust the NSA? No I don't trust the NSA, it's employees or any other branch of our government and that is the way it should bet. We have checks and balances because we KNOW we cannot trust them. Unchecked power absolutely will be abused. The real question is do we have sufficient oversight from congress or the judiciary? It's not clear that we do.
And what should have been the proper response to this?
You mean what is the proper response to a perceived death threat? Pretty much exactly what happened is the proper response. Yes it seems extreme in hindsight but the situation cannot be properly evaluated that way. A colleague is told essentially to shut up or they will be killed. If you don't know the full context of the joke it is very easy to perceive that as a deadly serious threat. While it was indeed a joke, such things need to go through proper channels and sometimes
Tell the crying woman, after an explanation (maybe she didn't 'get it' for some reason)...after a point, to get over it. It is a fucking joke.
What is intended as a joke is not always funny to others. In some cases it can be deadly offensive. While intent needs to be taken into account, sometimes it doesn't actually matter.
It isn't your fault someone misunderstands things or has such a thin skin and likely will cry if too many flies are swatted on the window sill.
Actually it IS your fault. The other person might share some of the blame in some cases but you don't get to decide what is offensive to others. If you make an attempt at a joke and it is perceived as an offense, you are at fault for that. Making a joke can be quite risky so you had better be sure of your audience.
No wonder men don't care often for working with women.
Only the immature and insecure feel this way. Believe it or not you can have a terrific working relationship or friendship with a woman without behaving like a jerk.
Guys can't be guys in the workplace....
By that I assume you mean they can't behave like juvenile imbeciles? That they can't make unnecessary hurtful remarks at the expense of others? That they can't make someone feel uncomfortable or afraid just because they feel like it?
Grow the hell up.
let your new female coworker set the tone. If she does not mind the jokes (or she starts the jokes herself) then you don't have to worry about it unless somebody gets drunk and goes out into left field.
Wrong. Even if she permits it for a time she can change her mind at any time. "But she was fine with me being a crude jackass before" is not a defense that will stand up in any court of law. You and the company are on very thin legal ice if you start permitting that sort of behavior. The difference between flirting/joking and harassment is essentially whether the other person likes it. If they don't, it's harassment. Since you have no way of knowing in advance whether your actions will be received well, the appropriate course of action is to assume they will not and behave accordingly. Adults know this and don't make crude jokes at the expense of others.
3D printing, robotics, AI, and nanotechnology are all expected to dramatically change the manufacturing landscape over the next several years
I suspect the impact will be considerably less than expected
But now, several different technologies have ripened to the point where U.S. companies are bringing some operations back home.
It's not technology that is bringing the operations back home. It's logistics and economics. Shipping is expensive. Long lead times are expensive. Long distance management is VERY expensive. China's labor rates are rising. Manufacturing is like water, it tends to go where the costs are lowest. There is no new technology available in the US to give it an advantage over China. It's merely that costs are rising for production in China and so some production is moving back to the US because it is now viable.
The factory assembly that the Chinese are performing is child’s play for the next generation of robots—which will soon become cheaper than human labor.
Robots are not and will NOT be cheaper than human labor for a wide variety of tasks any time soon. Anything that happens in small volumes and requires significant material handling is difficult to automate economically. Much factory assembly handled by people is ALREADY possible to automate - but to do so economically requires either high volumes or an expensive product or both. This is nothing new and there is no near term technology that is going to change this.
The world’s most advanced car, the Tesla Roadster, is also being manufactured in Silicon Valley, which is one of the most expensive places in the country. Tesla can afford this because it is using robots to do the assembly.
Tesla is selling a luxury good where the price of the product is relatively high. This is one of the normal uses of robotics. High volume and/or high value. All the other auto manufacturers use robots for exactly the same reason. It's not like labor costs in Detroit are low compared with China. Foxconn is looking into robotics because they deal in high volumes so it become economical. You can amortize the high up front capital expenditure over lots of units.
If the phone is big enough that you have to make concessions to accomodate it, then that's a problem.
So is having a wardrobe that is not designed to fit the phone you would prefer to use. Choosing to wear pants without pockets is a choice just as much as choosing which phone to carry.
Around here, telecom has rights to dig up a good portion of your private property. Something like 10' from the road is fair-game.
In most places they can only dig where they have some form of easement on your property which permits that specific use of your property. For example I have an easement on a portion of my property to allow servicing of the electrical lines. They can only use this easement for certain specific purposes. Any use other than those purposes or anywhere outside the easement is a violation of the law and they can be subject to prosecution.
I know from recent personal experience that utilities and telecoms tend to assume that people won't actually know their rights and basically trespass at will.
For water and gas pipes, they're pretty easy, since they're metal pipes.
Lots of water pipes are not metal. Many are stone or PVC. Some, believe it or not, are even wood.