There are specific exclusions for DOD or any government contract that allow electronics to NOT be required to be made in the USA.(read the FAR guidelines)
You've completely missed the point of the GPL, it was never about money, it was about giving people choice. When I develop software that's open source, my intentions are to have a great piece of software accomplish a task and share this software with others. If they feel they need to make a change to it for their liking, then go for it; however, if they make a change and deliberately prevent others from making a change in the future, then you've abandoned my principles for the sake of your profit line. You've deliberately truncated the freedoms of others in order to get an advantage over your competitor. If I wanted to deliver an exclusive license to just you that doesn't apply to anyone you distribute my code to, then I would have given you a license to do so. I don't mind if you take my hard work and make money off it, I do mind when you take my hard work and remove the freedoms I granted you and anyone you distribute my software to in order to make money. If you stick to my principles, then make a mountain of cash and I won't ask for a dime. Violate my intentions for that cash, then I'll ensure you don't get to keep a single red cent.
"I have an iPad(iOS 5 -- I'm a developer)....My iPad is really just glorified personal media player" - Ditto. Even after jailbreaking, it's still just an oversize iPod touch. For media, it is great; for everything else, you should get something else. However, I believe this was Apple's goal the whole time. This tablet can't replace the functionality of my Windows XP Motion M1400 (which is now dead), but it does a wonderful job of replacing my phone for media viewing and web surfing. It's something that I could leave with my mother and not wonder if she's updated her virus scanner recently.
I've been thinking about that ASUS Transformer as a laptop (I don't have one since the Motion tablet died), and I don't need a crap load of power to create a few docs either, but almost $600 for tablet and dock is making me consider a cheap laptop.
What's really sad is that as of right now, you couldn't get more than 20% of all Facebook users to understand what secure tunneling is, so those that do understand it will just make it a one-click-fix for the other 80%, bypassing all of the ISPs' hard work.
Really it reminds me of Sony and the PS3 all over again. Most of Sony's PS3 gamers don't know the ins and outs of security hacking, yet Sony managed to piss off that 1% of users that do and open the flood gates for another 20% to follow a video tutorial on YouTube.
When will these giant corporations learn that you can't take a sledge hammer to a pin and think you're going to accomplish something. If you want piracy to drop, make your content more easily accessible. I'm guilty of using a torrent to download a TV episode or two, but only after I can't "one click to buy it" on Amazon or iTunes. $1.99 for 21-45 minutes of entertainment isn't going to break me, I'm just tired of paying $100+/month for access to that 21-45 minutes a week I want because the providers are too stubborn to put the damn content online where I can easily purchase it without having 20+ accounts at 20+ different websites.
Not really. The customer will just try to call back later, and now the client has paid for the same call twice. When you hear of companies moving their call centers back onshore, it's usually because the cost of helping the same customer five times, on average, for the same issue cost a lot more than solving it once with a knowledgible person.
This reminds me of an article I read a while ago. All the stuff Google creates seem less to do with monetizing those services directly and more to do with protecting their search business. I believed the author described it as a moat. Google is more than willing to give you billions of dollars of free stuff if they can continue to make tens of billions on search advertising. Truthfully, I'm not sure why they haven't been investigated for tying already. While they don't specifically require you to use their search to get all the other stuff, it's pretty damn close to the definition.
Percentage of overall sales won't make the management team seek better working conditions for the workers, if anything, it will make them worse since management will have an incentive to shorten the development cycle and pump out more loads of crap. The more SKUs out there, the harder it becomes to manage, meaning more overhead and less profits. After a while of eating the profits, gaming developers will begin to close their doors since the reward is now actually LESS than the risk.
If you want to change the system, then management will need to understand project management better. This way they can accurately predict the timelines, budgets, and desired profit margins BEFORE a contract is signed. The best way to get the management to change, is by demonstrating a clear path between destructive management policies and the smaller bottom line.
Prior art no, but going from one finger to two is not the work of an inventor, but the work of a mechanic. If the Prada's capacitive touch screen could actually recognize more than one input when it was created, then a person in the art could easily demonstrate that they purposely ignored the second input, making the second finger a work of a mechanic. Apple's patent for multi-touch based on the angle is a lot stronger than this patent.
Patents don't protect ideas, they protect inventions. If I can do something similar that's not simply an equivalent substitution (see doctrine of equivalents for more information).
Copyright law doesn't prevent you from taking a picture of something. A sculpture can have a copyright to it, but if I take a picture of the sculpture, the picture is mine. It is original content. I chose the angle, the focus, even lighting if possible. Furthermore, lights are a function and therefore cannot be copyrighted (look up the "useful article doctrine"). Now, the Eiffel Tower is in France, so their copyright laws may differ; however, in the USA, pictures are an original expression and therefore are copyright-able (I would find the case law for reference, but it alludes me right now).
"the less scientifically-minded will read the summary on the beeb website..."
Slashdot viewers are more than capable of understanding the paper, but that doesn't mean we want to pay for something we're most likely not going to implement in our basements when we get a spare chance.
In most cases, to bring suit, the company claiming trademark infringement must have registered the trademark, however a trademark can be inherited too. For instance, if iCloud Communication taught their customers that iCloud was associated with iCloud Communications, then they have a valid trademark. Same thing goes for anything taught to the consumer that utilizes any of your five senses. When a company fails to file for their trademark, it doesn't mean that the next business that comes along can use it willy nilly. It just means that it will be harder for them to file a lawsuit in Federal court. iCloud Communications is using the name in commerce, it is original and distinctive, therefore, they have trademark protections at least in their state of operations. If they are operating out of California, New York, or Texas, then Apple could see a big chunk of revenue go missing in these states, or may have to sell their iCloud service under another name.
The real key here is deadlines. Engineers can, for the most part, control how they reach their deadlines, as the only real factor is their work ethic. Sales people have deadlines every month, usually, to make the calls to customers, hold the conversations, build rapport, introduce, explain, and sell product/service beneifits, obtain payment, complete all paperwork for the other departments to know a new sale has occurred, then follow up with the customer for customer satisfaction to resolve any issues the salesperson promised that hasn't been delivered by the other departments. They have to do this with EVERY customer. The cycle is vicious and only a small amount of people can handle the environment, in the same way only a small amount of people can handle technicalities of engineering. Trying to teach the engineering crowd to sell is possible, but it will make them a lot less efficient at their jobs, meaning more mistakes in the products, and increased liability.
But what claim does Nintendo have in this case? An emulator doesn't violate Nintendo's right to copy, and the patent for emulation on mobile devices by Nintendo wouldn't be applicable to Google since Google is only distributing software. yongzh might be on the hook for patent infringement, but I dont see how he's violating Nintendo's copyrights nor trademarks.
You're in the 10k, you're like the old man of/. Yelling at the new comers to get off of your digital lawn. to answer your question, because from low ID discussions, the editorial process has been lacking for some time now. I haven't been here too long, so it's always been the same. Also, it was a joke (we'll say written by Leno to push the not-really-funny blame off to someone else).
I can't speak for what it was like during the Carter or reagan admins, as I Wasn't born for the former and was too young for the latter; however, I am interested enough to ask those whom were around during that time why Carter was such a bad president and why Reagan is idolized. To sum it up, Carter was too scientific while Reagan was a charismatic leader. But there are only a few people in the world who can be both a scientist and a great leader.
Americans in general tend to ignore science because only a few understand the concepts. While those that do understand it outshine the rest of the world, the rest of the country are too confused by scientific discussion and, unfortunately, fall prey to skepticism of scientific results. What is really daunting is that scientific understanding is lacking at all levels of society./. Frequenters are in a minority and a lot of our discussions are often logical and methodical. Slip an average American in these forums and their heads will start hurting in about thirty minutes, slip several/.'s in an American Idol discussion and we would probably have the same headaches. Carter simply fell in the wrong time to be a president. Methodical thinking takes too long to be effective in a political environment that wants instant gratification. Reagan seemed more of a shoot from the hip and ask questions later kind of person, and average Americans could cling more easily to someone they think is like them. It's one of the reasons Clinton, Bush, and even Obama are adored by the American public.
Having an expectation that one day we will have scientist at the highest level of authority is wishful thinking. Science isn't the American way. Profit is the American way, science is just a means to obtain it. Once you realize that people don't care that your scientific discoveries have saved lives, time, and made their lives more bearable, then you'll understand that the only thing people care about is the amount of money in your pocket at the end of the day. It's a sad but unfortunate truth.
I think I speak for many here when I say that the editors need to, well, edit a bit more. The summary is full of bias which should be reserved for the comments. Can we please just have factual summaries in future?
Your Id is below 200k, you should know better not to ask.
Comcast and Time Warner are going to be busy. Just IDing and notifying the downloaders is going to be a pain in the ass, and God forbid the customer moved, switch, and/or can't be found. As a manager, I would file a motion to stop this just to keep my cost down. Furthermore, this is a witch hunt and the sitting Judge needs to step down for being incompetent. While I may not have a JD, any rational person can see that the company is just trying to start a legal phishing scheme.
What really irks me, is that they'll try to sue these people into paying rather than engaging them as customers. MPAA, here's an idea, instead of sending notices to ISPs about someone stealing a movie, how about you work with ISPs to send the downloader a link to pay for the movie instead. Give the option to rent or buy it, and play with the price until you find a sweet spot these el cheapo's are willing to fork over. Threatening them with lawsuits because it seems like a great way to set an example hasn't worked thus far, why keep beating this dead horse then?
Am I supposed to feel sorry for, or even relate to, the guy who didn't sit down for 30 minutes at the most, assuming he's not a business person, and do a break even analysis?
Here, this is a layman's break even in this case: minimum # sales = (desired total revenue)/(groupon take home amount) -(total cost of a package)
Simplistic. You need not know fixed cost or contribution margin definitions, just how much the typical shoot costs you and how much Groupon is going to fork over to you. While this isn't technically breaking even (target income, actually), it's a great way to come up with ways to play with your numbers BEFORE committing to ANYTHING. Last time I checked, Groupon had an all or nothing deal where if one didn't attain X number of sales, then the discount didn't happen.
Lastly, Groupon's sales staff should have made this man aware of the dangers if not performing a break even analysis. If they're hiring competent people then it would have taken them 10 minutes to help the client out in this way.
By that logic, Gates, Buffet, Opera, and even, Satin in corporate form, Ellison have already contributed immensely, so why do they continue to give more? Gates et el. have singlehandedly provided technology that has enabled millions of businesses to be more productive, creating more jobs, and more profit than Jobs has EVER done with Apple. Buffet has created billions of wealth and provided capital to thousands of businesses to expand, creating jobs around the globe. Opera has made a fortune simply by providing entertainment and empowerment to millions of women around the globe, net worth isn't close to Gates, yet still finds the time to help those in greater need. Larry Ellison couldn't get closer to hell if he tried, yet based on your argument, founding Oracle and giving thousands of businesses the technology they need to record and analyze data, employing thousands for his own company, and creating competition and forcing prices down should be enough for society. But the man is still pledging to give away 95% of his net worth to charitable causes.
Making an argument that Jobs has done enough for society by creating products that only a small portion of society can afford is a weak argument at best. Contrasting that to Gates's endeavors to reduce poverty and make the world a better place outweighs ANY product Apple can come up with. Apple's idea of helping education is providing a very small discount for Apple computers to public schools for computers that are equal to the $500 Dell system the school can get for $200. Furthermore, saying that you've done enough for society just by engaging in commerce is plain narcacistic and proves that people will trample their fellow man in the pursuit of profit. It also ignores the fact that people are put in situations that often times they simply can't get out of.
A child can't choose to be born in poverty nor wealth. They can only be born into the lifestyle of the parents, and have to make do from that point. If the child is born into poverty, they have no choice but to make with the scraps they're given. They don't have the privilege of not having to worry about where the next meal will come from, if they will have lights to educate themselves, or heat to keep warm. The only options they have to choose between are helping the family survive or starve, so priorities shift from attaining an education to doing whatever is necessary to survive. The only way these people can escape this life is by the better-off society playing their part and enabling the poor to not have to focus on the next meal, by providing them the assistance they need to keep the lights on, and most importantly, educating the poor so they can escape poverty. The free market doesn't provide an option for these services. They have to come from people compassionate about these issues and money, and often the money will come from those higher in the income brackets.
Donating to a charitable cause isn't just about making society better, it's about helping those who can't help themselves, at the time they need it the most.
You know, I thought I was going to be able to challenge the remark about Jobs' philanthropic endeavors, but every time I searched, the answer was the same: he doesn't do charity. An article came close to something, but it was only how Jobs was pushing legislation for CA to require people be asked to be an organ donor when getting a license or having it renewed. I understand that this could be in some way helpful to CA residents that need transplants, but considering that Steve was a recipient of a donated organ, it only seems like he's trying to fulfill his own selfish goals of not having to fly around the country just to be put on multiple donor lists.
Until today, I never once thought corporate social responsibility was important, even though I've spent a many nights defining such programs in college for my BBA. However, when your net worth is greater than $5 billion, you're the deity of overpriced computers, and your entire market is the upper middle to upper class who give to causes regularly, it seems like you are in the best position to find a cause that your followers can get behind and you demonstrate your leadership in helping those less fortunate than yourself. And forcing your employees to volunteer their time but you yourself are too arrogant to get off your ass and grab a trash bag to help cleanup an urban park is a slap in the face. I've never felt more disgusted writing a post from my iPad until today.
Just throwing this out there. You know you can watch HBO online now, right? While it doesn't have the accessibility of Netflix, it's some step in the right direction. Just let this sink in for a bit.
Same here. I have a separate router that I use for open and free access to my 20Mb connection on another subnet. I rarely use that bandwidth more than 50% of the time, and when I do need it, the secured router has a higher QOS priority. My reasoning isn't so much about being neighborly, but paying forward when I was too poor to afford Internet and piggy-backed off of the neighbors. I do get the occasional DMCA notice from someone using P2P, but I kindly let the RIAA or MPAA rep know that the connection is open and without the internal IP, I have no idea who's sharing nor will I do anything about it without more information on their part. For the most part though, people behave themselves and use it to surf, rea, and keep up with friends and family. What's so wrong about that?
Slashdot Mirror
There are specific exclusions for DOD or any government contract that allow electronics to NOT be required to be made in the USA.(read the FAR guidelines)
You've completely missed the point of the GPL, it was never about money, it was about giving people choice. When I develop software that's open source, my intentions are to have a great piece of software accomplish a task and share this software with others. If they feel they need to make a change to it for their liking, then go for it; however, if they make a change and deliberately prevent others from making a change in the future, then you've abandoned my principles for the sake of your profit line. You've deliberately truncated the freedoms of others in order to get an advantage over your competitor. If I wanted to deliver an exclusive license to just you that doesn't apply to anyone you distribute my code to, then I would have given you a license to do so. I don't mind if you take my hard work and make money off it, I do mind when you take my hard work and remove the freedoms I granted you and anyone you distribute my software to in order to make money. If you stick to my principles, then make a mountain of cash and I won't ask for a dime. Violate my intentions for that cash, then I'll ensure you don't get to keep a single red cent.
"I have an iPad(iOS 5 -- I'm a developer)....My iPad is really just glorified personal media player" - Ditto. Even after jailbreaking, it's still just an oversize iPod touch. For media, it is great; for everything else, you should get something else. However, I believe this was Apple's goal the whole time. This tablet can't replace the functionality of my Windows XP Motion M1400 (which is now dead), but it does a wonderful job of replacing my phone for media viewing and web surfing. It's something that I could leave with my mother and not wonder if she's updated her virus scanner recently.
I've been thinking about that ASUS Transformer as a laptop (I don't have one since the Motion tablet died), and I don't need a crap load of power to create a few docs either, but almost $600 for tablet and dock is making me consider a cheap laptop.
Where the hell are you getting free Xooms from?
What's really sad is that as of right now, you couldn't get more than 20% of all Facebook users to understand what secure tunneling is, so those that do understand it will just make it a one-click-fix for the other 80%, bypassing all of the ISPs' hard work.
Really it reminds me of Sony and the PS3 all over again. Most of Sony's PS3 gamers don't know the ins and outs of security hacking, yet Sony managed to piss off that 1% of users that do and open the flood gates for another 20% to follow a video tutorial on YouTube.
When will these giant corporations learn that you can't take a sledge hammer to a pin and think you're going to accomplish something. If you want piracy to drop, make your content more easily accessible. I'm guilty of using a torrent to download a TV episode or two, but only after I can't "one click to buy it" on Amazon or iTunes. $1.99 for 21-45 minutes of entertainment isn't going to break me, I'm just tired of paying $100+/month for access to that 21-45 minutes a week I want because the providers are too stubborn to put the damn content online where I can easily purchase it without having 20+ accounts at 20+ different websites.
Not really. The customer will just try to call back later, and now the client has paid for the same call twice. When you hear of companies moving their call centers back onshore, it's usually because the cost of helping the same customer five times, on average, for the same issue cost a lot more than solving it once with a knowledgible person.
This reminds me of an article I read a while ago. All the stuff Google creates seem less to do with monetizing those services directly and more to do with protecting their search business. I believed the author described it as a moat. Google is more than willing to give you billions of dollars of free stuff if they can continue to make tens of billions on search advertising. Truthfully, I'm not sure why they haven't been investigated for tying already. While they don't specifically require you to use their search to get all the other stuff, it's pretty damn close to the definition.
As does Disney.
Percentage of overall sales won't make the management team seek better working conditions for the workers, if anything, it will make them worse since management will have an incentive to shorten the development cycle and pump out more loads of crap. The more SKUs out there, the harder it becomes to manage, meaning more overhead and less profits. After a while of eating the profits, gaming developers will begin to close their doors since the reward is now actually LESS than the risk.
If you want to change the system, then management will need to understand project management better. This way they can accurately predict the timelines, budgets, and desired profit margins BEFORE a contract is signed. The best way to get the management to change, is by demonstrating a clear path between destructive management policies and the smaller bottom line.
Prior art no, but going from one finger to two is not the work of an inventor, but the work of a mechanic. If the Prada's capacitive touch screen could actually recognize more than one input when it was created, then a person in the art could easily demonstrate that they purposely ignored the second input, making the second finger a work of a mechanic. Apple's patent for multi-touch based on the angle is a lot stronger than this patent.
Patents don't protect ideas, they protect inventions. If I can do something similar that's not simply an equivalent substitution (see doctrine of equivalents for more information).
Copyright law doesn't prevent you from taking a picture of something. A sculpture can have a copyright to it, but if I take a picture of the sculpture, the picture is mine. It is original content. I chose the angle, the focus, even lighting if possible. Furthermore, lights are a function and therefore cannot be copyrighted (look up the "useful article doctrine"). Now, the Eiffel Tower is in France, so their copyright laws may differ; however, in the USA, pictures are an original expression and therefore are copyright-able (I would find the case law for reference, but it alludes me right now).
"the less scientifically-minded will read the summary on the beeb website..."
Slashdot viewers are more than capable of understanding the paper, but that doesn't mean we want to pay for something we're most likely not going to implement in our basements when we get a spare chance.
In most cases, to bring suit, the company claiming trademark infringement must have registered the trademark, however a trademark can be inherited too. For instance, if iCloud Communication taught their customers that iCloud was associated with iCloud Communications, then they have a valid trademark. Same thing goes for anything taught to the consumer that utilizes any of your five senses. When a company fails to file for their trademark, it doesn't mean that the next business that comes along can use it willy nilly. It just means that it will be harder for them to file a lawsuit in Federal court. iCloud Communications is using the name in commerce, it is original and distinctive, therefore, they have trademark protections at least in their state of operations. If they are operating out of California, New York, or Texas, then Apple could see a big chunk of revenue go missing in these states, or may have to sell their iCloud service under another name.
The real key here is deadlines. Engineers can, for the most part, control how they reach their deadlines, as the only real factor is their work ethic. Sales people have deadlines every month, usually, to make the calls to customers, hold the conversations, build rapport, introduce, explain, and sell product/service beneifits, obtain payment, complete all paperwork for the other departments to know a new sale has occurred, then follow up with the customer for customer satisfaction to resolve any issues the salesperson promised that hasn't been delivered by the other departments. They have to do this with EVERY customer. The cycle is vicious and only a small amount of people can handle the environment, in the same way only a small amount of people can handle technicalities of engineering. Trying to teach the engineering crowd to sell is possible, but it will make them a lot less efficient at their jobs, meaning more mistakes in the products, and increased liability.
But what claim does Nintendo have in this case? An emulator doesn't violate Nintendo's right to copy, and the patent for emulation on mobile devices by Nintendo wouldn't be applicable to Google since Google is only distributing software. yongzh might be on the hook for patent infringement, but I dont see how he's violating Nintendo's copyrights nor trademarks.
You're in the 10k, you're like the old man of /. Yelling at the new comers to get off of your digital lawn. to answer your question, because from low ID discussions, the editorial process has been lacking for some time now. I haven't been here too long, so it's always been the same. Also, it was a joke (we'll say written by Leno to push the not-really-funny blame off to someone else).
I can't speak for what it was like during the Carter or reagan admins, as I Wasn't born for the former and was too young for the latter; however, I am interested enough to ask those whom were around during that time why Carter was such a bad president and why Reagan is idolized. To sum it up, Carter was too scientific while Reagan was a charismatic leader. But there are only a few people in the world who can be both a scientist and a great leader.
Americans in general tend to ignore science because only a few understand the concepts. While those that do understand it outshine the rest of the world, the rest of the country are too confused by scientific discussion and, unfortunately, fall prey to skepticism of scientific results. What is really daunting is that scientific understanding is lacking at all levels of society. /. Frequenters are in a minority and a lot of our discussions are often logical and methodical. Slip an average American in these forums and their heads will start hurting in about thirty minutes, slip several /.'s in an American Idol discussion and we would probably have the same headaches. Carter simply fell in the wrong time to be a president. Methodical thinking takes too long to be effective in a political environment that wants instant gratification. Reagan seemed more of a shoot from the hip and ask questions later kind of person, and average Americans could cling more easily to someone they think is like them. It's one of the reasons Clinton, Bush, and even Obama are adored by the American public.
Having an expectation that one day we will have scientist at the highest level of authority is wishful thinking. Science isn't the American way. Profit is the American way, science is just a means to obtain it. Once you realize that people don't care that your scientific discoveries have saved lives, time, and made their lives more bearable, then you'll understand that the only thing people care about is the amount of money in your pocket at the end of the day. It's a sad but unfortunate truth.
I think I speak for many here when I say that the editors need to, well, edit a bit more. The summary is full of bias which should be reserved for the comments. Can we please just have factual summaries in future?
Your Id is below 200k, you should know better not to ask.
Comcast and Time Warner are going to be busy. Just IDing and notifying the downloaders is going to be a pain in the ass, and God forbid the customer moved, switch, and/or can't be found. As a manager, I would file a motion to stop this just to keep my cost down. Furthermore, this is a witch hunt and the sitting Judge needs to step down for being incompetent. While I may not have a JD, any rational person can see that the company is just trying to start a legal phishing scheme.
What really irks me, is that they'll try to sue these people into paying rather than engaging them as customers. MPAA, here's an idea, instead of sending notices to ISPs about someone stealing a movie, how about you work with ISPs to send the downloader a link to pay for the movie instead. Give the option to rent or buy it, and play with the price until you find a sweet spot these el cheapo's are willing to fork over. Threatening them with lawsuits because it seems like a great way to set an example hasn't worked thus far, why keep beating this dead horse then?
Am I supposed to feel sorry for, or even relate to, the guy who didn't sit down for 30 minutes at the most, assuming he's not a business person, and do a break even analysis?
Here, this is a layman's break even in this case: minimum # sales = (desired total revenue)/(groupon take home amount) -(total cost of a package)
Simplistic. You need not know fixed cost or contribution margin definitions, just how much the typical shoot costs you and how much Groupon is going to fork over to you. While this isn't technically breaking even (target income, actually), it's a great way to come up with ways to play with your numbers BEFORE committing to ANYTHING. Last time I checked, Groupon had an all or nothing deal where if one didn't attain X number of sales, then the discount didn't happen.
Lastly, Groupon's sales staff should have made this man aware of the dangers if not performing a break even analysis. If they're hiring competent people then it would have taken them 10 minutes to help the client out in this way.
By that logic, Gates, Buffet, Opera, and even, Satin in corporate form, Ellison have already contributed immensely, so why do they continue to give more? Gates et el. have singlehandedly provided technology that has enabled millions of businesses to be more productive, creating more jobs, and more profit than Jobs has EVER done with Apple. Buffet has created billions of wealth and provided capital to thousands of businesses to expand, creating jobs around the globe. Opera has made a fortune simply by providing entertainment and empowerment to millions of women around the globe, net worth isn't close to Gates, yet still finds the time to help those in greater need. Larry Ellison couldn't get closer to hell if he tried, yet based on your argument, founding Oracle and giving thousands of businesses the technology they need to record and analyze data, employing thousands for his own company, and creating competition and forcing prices down should be enough for society. But the man is still pledging to give away 95% of his net worth to charitable causes.
Making an argument that Jobs has done enough for society by creating products that only a small portion of society can afford is a weak argument at best. Contrasting that to Gates's endeavors to reduce poverty and make the world a better place outweighs ANY product Apple can come up with. Apple's idea of helping education is providing a very small discount for Apple computers to public schools for computers that are equal to the $500 Dell system the school can get for $200. Furthermore, saying that you've done enough for society just by engaging in commerce is plain narcacistic and proves that people will trample their fellow man in the pursuit of profit. It also ignores the fact that people are put in situations that often times they simply can't get out of.
A child can't choose to be born in poverty nor wealth. They can only be born into the lifestyle of the parents, and have to make do from that point. If the child is born into poverty, they have no choice but to make with the scraps they're given. They don't have the privilege of not having to worry about where the next meal will come from, if they will have lights to educate themselves, or heat to keep warm. The only options they have to choose between are helping the family survive or starve, so priorities shift from attaining an education to doing whatever is necessary to survive. The only way these people can escape this life is by the better-off society playing their part and enabling the poor to not have to focus on the next meal, by providing them the assistance they need to keep the lights on, and most importantly, educating the poor so they can escape poverty. The free market doesn't provide an option for these services. They have to come from people compassionate about these issues and money, and often the money will come from those higher in the income brackets.
Donating to a charitable cause isn't just about making society better, it's about helping those who can't help themselves, at the time they need it the most.
You know, I thought I was going to be able to challenge the remark about Jobs' philanthropic endeavors, but every time I searched, the answer was the same: he doesn't do charity. An article came close to something, but it was only how Jobs was pushing legislation for CA to require people be asked to be an organ donor when getting a license or having it renewed. I understand that this could be in some way helpful to CA residents that need transplants, but considering that Steve was a recipient of a donated organ, it only seems like he's trying to fulfill his own selfish goals of not having to fly around the country just to be put on multiple donor lists.
Until today, I never once thought corporate social responsibility was important, even though I've spent a many nights defining such programs in college for my BBA. However, when your net worth is greater than $5 billion, you're the deity of overpriced computers, and your entire market is the upper middle to upper class who give to causes regularly, it seems like you are in the best position to find a cause that your followers can get behind and you demonstrate your leadership in helping those less fortunate than yourself. And forcing your employees to volunteer their time but you yourself are too arrogant to get off your ass and grab a trash bag to help cleanup an urban park is a slap in the face. I've never felt more disgusted writing a post from my iPad until today.
Thank you for opening my eyes.
Just throwing this out there. You know you can watch HBO online now, right? While it doesn't have the accessibility of Netflix, it's some step in the right direction. Just let this sink in for a bit.
Same here. I have a separate router that I use for open and free access to my 20Mb connection on another subnet. I rarely use that bandwidth more than 50% of the time, and when I do need it, the secured router has a higher QOS priority. My reasoning isn't so much about being neighborly, but paying forward when I was too poor to afford Internet and piggy-backed off of the neighbors. I do get the occasional DMCA notice from someone using P2P, but I kindly let the RIAA or MPAA rep know that the connection is open and without the internal IP, I have no idea who's sharing nor will I do anything about it without more information on their part. For the most part though, people behave themselves and use it to surf, rea, and keep up with friends and family. What's so wrong about that?