I have just finished filing a patent that describes a system that might be a good compliment to yours : the heartata.
The patent describes a method of mechano-electrical propulsion for fluids wherein carbon based humaniod life may regulate the transfer velocity of select liquids throughout a network of tubular vessels through the regularly repeated electrical stimulation of a four-valve bio-engineered sac formation. Since this invention is a complex medical procedure and one with significant market potential, I am likewise patenting this to prevent any unauthorized use.
My invention builds upon the water system in use in certain cities, but -- in a carbon based humanoid life form -- and is therefore un-obvious and innovative. Please contact my lawyers regarding cross-licensing opportunities.
Whilst there are aspects of similarity, I feel a lot of these claims are tenuous at best.
Hardware (only the iPad-Galaxy Tab) : Handheld electronic device, rounded corners, grey/black/silver, with a screen on the front, black borders above and below the screen... Wait, what's different from all those shitty e-photo display things that you can buy? They're not tablets, but Apple's design patent doesn't specify any connectivity or any application capacities. As for the rectangular form, it's hardly an innovation (ever since the Dynabook handheld rectangular electronic devices have precedent)... So what's the "innovation" that Apple wants to protect? Black borders? I can understand Apple want to protect their design, and as such, I believe that if Samsung made a tablet that was closer to the iPad in ratio and size, it would be a stronger claim. But the Galaxy Tab has extra buttons on the bottom, a different size ratio, a huge "SAMSUNG" logo on top, a different back material... I believe the main problem in this case is that the Community Design granted to Apple is much, much too broad, and less that the Galaxy Tab creates confusion or imitates unfairly the iPad.
Interface:
- Phone icon : Similar (excessively) to Motorola and Nokia's "handset" icons on their phones since the early 1990s. White on green? Skype has that since 2000... Can Skype go after Apple for this icon? Green-Red (on-off) is a deep-rooted logical connection most people around the world share, and the outline of phones in this manner is also nothing new. Samsung's rounded square icon is all that I feel brings it closer to Apple's icon than Skype's. The background colour is closer to Skype's. Can Skype go after Samsung for this icon? IMO again the problem is that Apple was awarded a design that is neither new nor unique.
- Messaging icon : it's not a rectangle, it's not a white bubble on a green background... End of story. If I create a design patent that specifies it's a blue bubble inside a green rectangle on a red background, well if someone makes a red bubble on a black background, I don't have any standing for claiming design imitation, unless they intend to trick customers into believing their icon represents my service. Samsung isn't claiming to imitate Apple's iPhone messaging system any more than it imitates early SMS systems, so I can't see it being a case of consumer deception, ergo no claim.
- Photo icon : Yes, it's a stylized flower... If you know. Even then, the images are so different it'd be like Monet's estate claiming Gauguin's paintings should be removed from auctions because they both include flowers. Samsung's design includes features that are superposed to the flower, unlike Apple's, the overall colour scheme is different (no blue, black or grey)
- Settings icon : Seriously? It's a gear. They've been used since well before the iPhone to represent settings or preferences. One is blue, the other is grey. the styles are different (more steampunk on Apple's, more "weird" on Samsung's).
- Notes icon : It's a notepad that fills the whole icon. Samsung's is more like a day planner. Same colours, same "feel" (paper)... But it's a notepad. Samsung's is more like a post-it or a day calendar. Similar enough, but I can't say I find it to be a stunning example of innovation or design. It's like a website featuring a shopping cart to indicate "this way to pay". Sure, another website can represent their cart differently, but there's going to be limits pretty quick. IMO, Samsung's design is similar, but I would merely ask Samsung to change the background of their icon to make it acceptable.
- Contacts icon : A... contact book. See above. When it was just phone contacts, Samsung and other companies used a book with a phone icon on it. Now, it records more (including photos, contact details, e-mail...) so the front logo was changed to represent a person. The person isn't unique, it's the same kind of head & shoulders outline that Skype has been using since 2000. So... yes
"Japan is not just the #1 exporter of nuclear reactors, they are the ONLY exporter"
Areva, Siemens, Westinghouse, Atomstroyexport... General Electric Hitachi is only 40% owned by Hitachi, and Atmea is a 50-50 joint venture between Areva and Mitsubishi.
Yes, Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Hitachi are -possibly- the #1 exporters of nuclear reactor when combined, but they are far from being the -ONLY- exporter of nuclear reactors.
Good idea, decent implementation, too difficult for most people.
It's not "that" difficult once you start using it (you just remember that if you live in NY, @550 is mid-morning, @700 is lunchtime, @850 is mid-afternoon and anything from @050 to @450 is probably not good), and because the time format is different from usual convention there's no risk of mis-understanding. If someone on the telephone in HK says on a conference call with someone in LA and someone in NY "ok, next meeting on Monday the 9th @800", there's no need to wonder if that's HK, LA or NY time, or if it's the 9th in HK or the 9th in LA....
Another reason it didn't catch on is probably because so few people need such a system. Sure, with globalization it's more common to talk to people in different time-zones, but it's still a relatively limited thing. Most of the time you just need to know the time difference with one time-zone since that's the only one you call people in. So rather than re-learning that @XXX is early and @XXX is late, you just convert into the destination time-zone.
"We are just being lazy underachievers when we allow students to be relearning the 4 basic operations in high school."
+1.
However, I do not agree with the idea of trigonometric functions in primary school. There's quite a lot that needs to be learnt before going down the path of trigonometry. The four basic operations over all rational numbers, with appropriate knowledge of the ordering of operations, brackets and other proper use of the equal sign, greater than and less than signs should be perfect. Powers and roots should have been seen, factorising and expanding equations of the second degree shouldn't be new either. Systems of equations with multiple unknowns should be able to be solved, dependent or not, and being able to construct graphs that solve them too.
I'm probably forgetting loads of other things here, but I'd prefer students to learn the basics better (I suffer reading things where "=" is misused far too often as it is), rather than moving faster to the "fancier" things like trigonometry, sets, vectors, logs, and such. However, if there was a way for the students that are more interested and wish to work harder, I'd be all for them having a special class where they would go as far as trigonometry in primary school! But as a baseline, it might be a case of too much spread and not enough depth.
France already has taxes on HDDs (the above linked law was expanded to -all- HDDs, not just embedded ones) and blank media storage (CDs, DVDs, tapes) that goes directly to the SACEM's pockets (French RIAA).
I'm quite interested by your post, and I must say I disagree on quite a few points.
I'm a Frenchman who is now living in China for business purposes, and whilst I'm "right of the aisle" in France (Sarkozy got my vote over Royal, for instance), I think US politics would see me quite comfortably in the blue corner.
<quote><p>
I would like to see payroll taxes like Social Security, unemployment, and medicare become optional. I think others would to a better job of recognizing they need to save their own money to cover situations those insurance programs cover if they realized they didn't have a safety net, and they could do a much better job of taking care of their own future needs than the government will. Since people would have more incentive to save, prices of thing I might want to buy now would probably drop, either leaving me more money to spend or save, and leaving all shoppers in a better position. </p></quote>
Interesting, but I feel that if these taxes were made optional, two things would happen.
1 - All medium-to-low jobs would cut them. Overnight, there'd be a sizeable portion of the US population that would not have any unemployment, medicare or retirement savings being accrued. Now, in the short term, this would be OK-ish. People would probably see their salaries raise a little (but less than the amount that used to be paid into these taxes IMO), and would probably raise their spending a little, and save a little more (i.e. get -less- into debt). In the longer run it wouldn't be so rosy. People that are on McWages or whatever Wal-mart pays aren't really able to "live well", and it's normal they'll prefer to make choices in favour of a better life -now-, even if it means blindly hoping they don't fall sick or working until they're 80. When they -do- fall sick, or -do- end up unemployed, they'll either be posting for bankruptcy (medical costs), or getting the police/social services involved (eviction or theft or homelessness). I'd like to think people are able to make good financial choices on long-term risks, but the sub-prime crisis, the high amount of debt that individuals have and the number of individual bankruptcies each year in the US don't bode well.
2 - Prices wouldn't drop. Sorry, but I've worked in marketing for long enough to know that it's not the market that sets the price. I'm not talking about iPads either. Some basic commodities and certain services get efficient competition. But most fields aren't competitive. If half the people in the world suddenly stopped shaving, razor blade prices wouldn't drop. Even though Gilette and Wilkinson would be sitting on large stocks. Prices don't work just based on offer and demand, they're also hierarchy markers, gateway holders (even though everybody wants the iPhone, its price isn't significantly higher than other phones since the carrier knows it represents a longer-term benefit), market indicators and answer far more to the desires of investors and managers. If you've built 3 million toys, and you spent $1 on each of them (all costs included), you're not going to sell them for less than $2, no matter how badly they're selling. It's probably better to throw them into a landfill or recycle them and lose all $3M invested in that venture than drive down the prices of your other toys that -are- selling! You'd have a little bit more money, and there might be a very marginal drop in the prices of certain commodities, but I can assure you there wouldn't be a 5% (or however much the aforementioned taxes take from the median/average salary) drop in prices across the board. If anything, companies would be rushing to find ways to actually increase the cost, since -people have more available money- (Ford would have a "brand new" financing package for you that would be longer but take less in down payment so that you can "put money on one side" for your retirement/medicare/unemployment plan).
So IMO I'll keep unemployment, medicare and retirement plans as taxes. Sure, there can/will/might be
...if you want general notes, pen and paper works roughly as well as anything you can type on.
"Roughly as well"?
IMO pen & paper is still a long way ahead of anything computerised for notes. Sure, you -can- record everything through a camera/microphone and take "digital notes" that you can play back whilst watching/listening to the recording. But I don't believe that for a second. In College? Perhaps for some very specific classes where the teacher is zapping out facts and speaking like a horse-race commentator on crack. But otherwise it's just bull. Johnny isn't going to spend 6 hours every evening going through his recordings to listen to his class again and read his notes. He'll just read his notes, and in the rare case when he wrote something down and didn't remember what it's about, he'll go onto Wikipedia or look in the textbook at that chapter.
Oh, and it avoids completely the question of kids using their "computer" to access the net/chats/programs/etc. They've already got their PMPs, PSPs, iPods, KINs and whatnot to distract them, I doubt adding yet another distraction will help them learn.
Ok, so let's assume the demand for a teacher that can -teach- is greater than for one that can't.
How do you measure how well a teacher can -teach-?
Education? Background? Head's gut feeling? Students' judgement? Increase in average test results? Seniority?
Prima facie, I'd go for the increase in test results. But that leads to a whole other set of problems.
First, it's ex post facto. How do you rank a teacher in the first few years until you can establish a ranking? When the teacher moves to another level of teaching, subject specialisation or school, does the ranking carry over?
Second, it encourages teachers not to -teach- but to turn the students into good test takers. Students could have little to no understanding of the problems and concepts underlying the applications they have been doing, and thus inflating their test results for one year at the expense of the longer-term development of their skills (which probably means lower test results in subsequent years).
So, it's not really that great. Seniority is not perfect, but provides teachers with stability and predictable income in exchange for their job. There is no reward for "better teachers", which is certainly disappointing, and little in the way of risk for poor teachers (unless there is a strong risk of termination or otherwise returning to the entry level salary). But as long as the teachers themselves are properly chosen, and kept motivated, I believe that it can achieve decent results.
The point was that the real world doesn't satisfy any of the conditions of Free market economic theory, and even if it did, there's nowhere anything in the Free market theory that suggests pay by merit would be the preferred way of reaching agreement. In fact, it's just as plausible that everybody would be paid exactly the same amount, regardless of job, seniority or education.
"But how can YOU argue against the following point: any government subsidized business will raise prices above what the market can bear to what GOVERNMENT can bear?"
Or, it could just be that the way the government is implementing these projects is inefficient?
Sweden's healthcare system is not more expensive than that of the USA, despite significantly more government intervention, and yet provides a similar level of services. France's higher education system is not more expensive than that of the USA, and offers a similar level of services. Germany's banking system encourages people to make more conscious choices due to increased government regulations.
"When a government enters a business, it creates moral hazard and it provides enormous opportunity to push prices up. Have you ever seen a government causing a price FALL?"
France, energy production, 1970-1980. In under 15 years, France built 56 nuclear reactors thanks to government backing of loans, and went from being dependent on imported oil to an energy exporter.
"- except that this is what the STORY here is all about, that Unions don't want you to know WHO are good teachers and who are not so good, just another government union BS. I would totally rather have a free market approach, with teachers being evaluated and then with students making INFORMED decisions on where to go to learn rather than GAMBLING and HOPING that you just may get a good teacher at some point. Ridiculous."
The only problem is that people are very bad at being rational. Ask any 13 year-old if he wants to do his homework or go and play outside/on the internet. Now zap 40 years forwards and ask the 53 year-old what he wishes he had done. There's a delayed reward effect, which means individuals are bad at estimating the value of the reward, as well as the uncertainty of ever getting the reward. How much delta does studying hard for a year have on one's future earnings? Is this delta worth the opportunity cost of not having fun that year?
Information is imperfect, and this story is more about disagreement on the validity of proposed information distribution. The "best teachers", are they the ones that have effectively -taught- better and helped their students better understand the problems at stake and how to tackle them, or are they the ones that have drilled their students best at answering tests? Is the "playing field" so to speak even for all teachers, with students that are of effectively random potential and learning ability? How do the classroom dynamics affect teachers' ratings? A class that is motivated, with good cohesion and ties, could quite likely improve faster on average than a less united class with more talent; how much of this is attributable to the teachers? At best, this information is a high-level aggregate, with little in the way of identifying the factors that caused any variations. Attributing them directly to one pre-supposed factor (teachers) is a jump. Why not attribute it to the classroom where the lesson was taught (perhaps there's an "optimal temperature"?), the number of years the students in the class have been together, or the TV programming on nights before the class in question?
"- not anymore. Not in a society that produces very very little, didn't you get the notice from your government - you are a CONSUMPTION based society, not a production based one. Good luck with that, it'll crash and burn, nothing can only consume and not produce forever."
Actually, the US is merely an advanced tertiary economy. The US produces a lot, albeit mostly in the manner of immaterial services and products, rather than physical goods. There's no reason why this isn't sustainable. After all, the Swiss have been doing it for the best part of a century without any major economic problems. The comment holds true. For primary economies (mining and agriculture) there are little educational requirements for most workers. A very small number of people who can direct work is sufficient to maintain the economy. Secondary e
How the various parties in a contract reach their agreement isn't important in Free-market theory. If they decide to use unions, to pay by performance, to pay by seniority, or by size of genitals... It's all the same for Free-market theory.
Free market theory simply says that with atomic employers and employees, perfect information, no entry or exit barriers, immediate transferability of capital, perfect rationality of all actors and no cost of exchanges, then there will be a unique agreement on the compensation to offer in exchange for labor observed by all parties. In short, everybody will agree on one salary structure. Nowhere does the free market say how this salary structure will be established, on what it will be based, or how it relates to prices in other parts of the economy.
Apple can't release a computer called "Kleenex" because that would be trademark blurring. However, I'd love to see Kleenex bring a case against an Apple Inc. computer called "iClinix".
Delta (the US-based airline) has no basis to sue Delta (US-based manufacturer of plumbing equipment) for instance. Delta and Delta both hold trademarks in their respective fields, as there is no reasonable risk of confusion between the services offered by both companies.
The only thing Apple wants is to sue for trademark tarnishment. iPood is not iPod, so it's not a case of trademark blurring. The goods are dissimilar enough to make it not a case of trademark infringement. So the big question is "can iPood present a substantial risk to tarnishing the iPod trademark"? Since the iPood is much more limited in distribution, is not associated in any way with any current (and hopefully future) line of Apple products, nor even likely to be considered in similar shops... I can't see Apple winning.
A very quick Google search tells me that iPood is likely covered under the same protection that allowed Chewy Vuitton to defeat Louis Vuitton in 2006 and 2007 (appeal). Too dissimilar, meaning there is no risk of confusion, as for the name, it's parody, which requires a certain degree of resemblance, whilst conveying evidently the notion that it is not the original product.
Or, you can read his book and decide that he's just overboard. Yes, he has some interesting points, but loads of them are just plain idiotic.
I'm taking from the top here, in summary form.
Bianca, six, gets shouted at in assembly, her classmates tease her, she drops out of school for a month and becomes basically some kind of frothing-at-the-mouth hater of anything looking like "educated". Ergo, she goes out of her way to harm people who she percieves as "successful" in schooling terms.
Seriously? John, ten, wants to win the Super Bowl as a QB who makes the winning pass. His coach thinks he's not good enough, so he drops him from the team. John becomes a psycopath and murders 11 NFL players a few years later.
That's not an argument. That's just some kind of dreamed-up delirium. Sure, it is -possible-. But it's far more -likely- that Bianca whimpers for a few minutes and rallies with some friends to say nasty things behind the teacher's back, and John just cries his little heart out for a few minutes before dreaming he wants to be the pitcher who throws the winning strike-out in the World Series.
One in every nine schoolchildren is terrified of physical harm happening to them in school, terrified with good cause; about thirty-three are murdered there every year. From 1992 through 1999, 262 children were murdered in school in the United States.
Yes. I guess every person in the USA must live in some kind of perpetual fear of physical harm then. 262 murders in 7 years across the country? That's probably much lower than the risk -outside- of school! How many children have been murdered at their own home? How many children are sexually harassed, violated or raped in their own home? Does this mean every child lives in morbid fear of death and rape at home?
"The cost in New York State for building a well-schooled child in the year 2000 is $200,000 per body when lost interest is calculated. That capital sum invested in the child’s name over the past twelve years would have delivered a million dollars to each kid as a nest egg to compensate for having no school. The original $200,000 is more than the average home in New York costs."
Interesting, but nonetheless useless figure. A minimum wage worker in NY earns $7.25/hour. For a 45h/week job, 49weeks/year, that's about 200,000$ over 12 years. So, each child is "costing" as much as a minimum wage employee would to the school system. Ok, so give them 200k straight away. What do they do with it? Spend it on going to school? Learn from... Who? Their parents who don't always know anything about the subject matter? Who would probably have to cut down on their job(s) to take care of the child? I mean, I'm all for exploring different education methods, but "look how much money it is" doesn't make "give the child the money" a convincing argument. Sure, they could use it to go to another school. But since schools know about it (and they'd have a lot more people trying to get into these schools), they'd just raise the prices. So poorer children would still not be able to go to the good private schools. Ergo two choices. Go to a "cheap" school (i.e. a state/public school under a different name), or be "taught" at home by someone who doesn't have enough of a broad understanding to teach well in all kinds of subjects. Sure, some families can thrive with homeschooling, providing rich educational endeavours to their children... But not everybody. Far from that.
"Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession, something like this would happen."
Socrates sure knew about teaching as a formal profession. And he didn't guard against it. He guarded against teachers who taught only how to speak, and not how to think. Socrates (or Plato, YMMV) felt that the sophists were just quite simply not good teachers.
"David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you c
Whilst interesting, your point fails to address one point : Who does what?
"Umm, well, China has pretty cheap labour, and 3+ billion people to do it, and because its so much its practically infinite."
As someone who is actually working in China, I can tell you this much : not all jobs are created equal. I'm paid well in excess of the average Chinese salary (I'm actually paid on par with what I would earn in Europe). Why? Because I have skills that are extremely rare in the Chinese market. On the other hand, jobs that require very common skills are indeed cheap to the extreme. China doesn't (yet) have 3+ billion workers, and there are serious openings in executive and engineering positions across the board. Why? Because they've got easy access to cheap manufacturing, but design and preparation is rare. In the US, design and preparation are much easier to get hold of, but manufacturing is (comparatively) rare.
" The big issue is that companies would rather NOT pay employees, or if they have to, would like to pay them very little. Since the government regulates a minimum pay, these jobs go to countries where the government regulated minimum pay is the lowest."
So why China? Sure, China has low salaries, but it's far from being the lowest. Laos has pretty miserable salaries, Vietnam isn't much better off, and there's always Tajikistan/Turkmenistan/Kazakhstan or Africa where the average salary is enough for the Chinese middle class to take pleasant holidays there...
Thing is, companies want low salaries, but with a whole lot of other things. Access to materials, infrastructure, political stability, and even skills. Sure, the skills for certain jobs are quite minimal, but the immense majority of Chinese manufacturing laborers are literate, which is an obvious advantage. There's also sufficient middle-management knowledge and other skills to organise and equip these manufacturing centres. Hence why Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan are a long shot from taking China's role in the near future.
By taking away low-level jobs and allocating them to China, companies are making it more interesting for Chinese companies to outsource design and other "high-value" jobs in the US. Simple question : why do so many companies that don't do their main business in the US have HQs in the US? Why are companies that don't even operate in the US listed on the NYSE? Competitive advantage works both ways. Want to know what the Chinese middle class thinks of all the finance jobs that -every- major Chinese company has been moving to the US over the past few years? Well, you weren't particularly excited about someone who wants to work on CPUs moving to India. They just bite the bullet and apply for a job in the US, knowing that if they get the job, it's 6 months to a year without coming home, most likely without any real chance of renewing your contract with the company in question. But it's that or getting a job that they feel is "below them".
Free trade isn't some kind of voodoo magick that companies call upon. Grove knows full well that the US hasn't been "hurt" by not keeping battery manufacturing plants any more than having millions of people working in the textile industry. Instead, the people that in an "isolationist" economy would be working in textile have been working in the service industry. It hasn't harmed America at all. It's even helped the USA stay at the forefront of IT in general, and provided pretty much the entire American population with more IT know-how than anybody but the techies and geeks of the countries where Nike and the Gap get their T-shirts made. Why is China a "follower" of the IT innovation in the US (foursquare, Groupon, Facebook, Youtube...)? Because in the US, there is both experience (which creates the idea and desire/need for new services) and the expertise (to actually create them). China has expertise, and only thanks to the 1.3 billion-strong population, which means that despite far fewer Chinese people being good with IT, the sheer numbers make it enough, but
Take something "boring" like... A beef steak. Now, I don't doubt that the cow itself is as American as can be. Or that the employees of the ranch, the slaughterhouse and the supermarket are American through and through. But what about the food? Did the cow only eat "American" food? Or was it fed with granules that were partly researched in, say, Canda? What about the design or certain machines used in the ranch, the slaughterhouse and the supermarket? If the cow was vaccinated using a vaccine manufactured in Europe, is that going to make it "not-American"? Where is the limit to what is "manufacturing", "development" and "support"? Once you start looking at more complex products (IT being the foremost of those fields), you're just going to run into a situation where pretty much everything has at least one component (hard or soft) that was "designed" to a certain extent by a company with at least one non-US based collaborator.
First of all, which laws will apply? Say you host a website in Sudan (it's just an example, I don't know the specifics of Sudanese law, but in a Crapsack World...), registered to the Sudanese authorities (with appropriate bribing), and insured by a nice little front company (which has also done all the required palm-greasing). Now, you can "legally" take photos of 15 year-old girls in the nude, and distribute them in Sudan. Does this mean these images can be posted on CrapsackWorld.xxx? Or will the TLD require I only post images of 18+ year old women? On the other hand, Sudan has strong laws that ban intercourse of muslims with non-muslims. Can Sudan be sure that this type of content will not be available? Or will the TLD deem that it's an "unreasonable request" on Sudan's behalf, leading Sudan to block the entire "*.xxx" range?
Even before we start looking at the "criminals", the simple differences in laws between countries mean that it's almost certain the ".xxx" TLD will attract even more controversy and be criticized for "not holding up to promises" by every side in the debate : USA blaming for the profusion of "illegal underage porn", Sudan blaming for the profusion of "immoral interreligious porn", companies feeling that they're just being conned into paying an extra amount since they've got to retain the.com register to be available in the markets where ".xxx" is blanket-banned (like Australia??), and those that "think of the children" appalled that there is still so much smut outside of the.xxx TLD.
Now, where do criminal websites that offer "kiddie porn" usually operate from? The USA? Canada? Saudi Arabia? Russia? Belarus? Ukraine? Moldova? They work in countries where there is a lack of general public enforcement of laws, where it's easy to bribe officials or falsify documents, and they can "easily" dissappear. So what is the ".xxx" TLD registar going to do when he recieves the first bunch of documents from Moldova that "appear" legitimate? Authorise them? Refuse them? And when they've been shown to be 30% fakes, are they going to implement a new kind of detective/investigative process to find out with each application if it's legitimate? Refuse the lot and tell them to get similar documents from Russian officials? It'll just be a case of these criminals moving around a little to find the right hands to grease (and if they're into human trafficking, they probably already know enough about that), falsifying a couple of documents, and then waiting for the take-down letter to move to the next domain name they've registered.
Or do you think countries like Congo that just cannot guarantee a minimum of protection against corruption and fraud shouldn't have the right to have companies register.xxx names? In that case, where will these companies go? Vanish? I doubt it. So they'll just host on a.com, a.org, a.net, and so forth, meaning the people who wanted the.xxx TLD will have reason to complain, and websites that did migrate to.xxx will be at a competitive disadvantage.
There are other issues, like free speech and expression (should 4chan move to a.xxx name? should a BBS with discussions of sexual topics be moved to a.xxx?), but even on the point of "it'll stop criminals which is good", I find you're over-optimistic as to how difficult it can be to forge and corrupt officials from some of the poorer and less structured of the 200-odd countries in the world.
Good business sense is to develop so that your customers can access your service.
IE6 has 14-20% market share, so it's worth investing time and effort to bring your website to them. Chrome has about half that market share, so it's also worth pursuing that development option.
Furthermore, IE6 shouldn't really be around anymore. It's the "end" of the IE family for ME, 2000 and 98, which together represent less than 1% of the OS market. XP can upgrade to IE7 or IE8, and Vista/7 can't even run IE6. Each year that goes by, IE6 is losing browser share (down 12% over the past 12 months according to NetMarketshare), whilst Chrome is growing and seems set to outpace Safari as well as the bunch of other "little" browsers combined by the end of the year.
Supporting Chrome/Opera/Safari/??? doesn't mean they've -got- to use tons of Javascript any more than supporting IE6 means they have to pre-load a few.gifs of dancing babies. Good web design should be strived for as well as intelligent support. And I can't see much of either. In six months it is highly likely that IE6 will have fewer users than Chrome, Safari will have fewer users than Chrome, and Firefox 2 will have fewer users than Chrome. Are they going to wait for Chrome to have over 30% browser share to start "supporting" it? If they are, it certainly doesn't make much business sense.
I think the problem with "Remotely Driven" is that... It's pretty hard to simulate driving. Sure you can get close, you can have a couple of video feeds that provide a 360 degree view (perhaps even a kind of "dome") so that the driver can look around, you can get readings of the vibrations in multiple places around the car and reproduce them, you can have audio feeds spread around the car so the driver can hear what's going on... But there'll always be a little difference between the real thing and the simulation (how are you going to reproduce the smell of warm rubber? How will you reproduce the G-forces in the turns?).
All in all, I think it'd be more "interesting" to have a completely automated version of formula one. Get rid of the drivers, plop a crash test dummy with a bunch of sensors and stuff inside each "Formula AI", get the teams to work on AI solutions to driving the cars without killing/maiming/etc. the dummy.
It would probably lose interest quite quickly as either the technology isn't capable of making the races interesting (cue slow, boring races with lots of crashes), or the technology manages to make it work, and then each race would be pretty boring since the number of mistakes would diminish dramatically, as would the "defensive" capacities of the "drivers". Still, it's interesting to think about what F1 would be like if they just said "let's just let all the technological gizmos the teams can think of and manage to cram into the cars be accepted".
How does that advocate Google owning your telephone if the default setting is for them to force certain installs/uninstalls, but that setting can be opted-out?
Wouldn't a better representation be that they are offering a service to the end user as part of the contract by which the end user, the handset manufacturer, the carrier, the developers of apps on the marketplace and themselves?
I'm uneasy with the concept of "forced install/uninstall without notification". However, I can see what TheEyes is trying to say. People like my mother would see the message, not understand it (even if it just said "For security reasons, Android recommends uninstalling the following application <Application name>. UNINSTALL/DO NOT UNINSTALL"; ibid for the install process), and would therefore be liable to make the choice that puts their data at risk.
If there is a choice in a "deeper" Settings menu to permanently disable these remote install/uninstall features, but this reduces the liability of the other parties in the case of privacy problems, I can't see what the problem is. Most people won't look for it or disable it if they find it, and the people who are concerned about this feature can delete it. By combining the "no remote update/install from Google" setting, the notifications on all but the most extreme security risks, and the notification-less install/uninstall for the few critical errors, Android OS would provide both the features that normal users want ("It just works") and those that power users and security freaks want.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but is it patented... On a smartphone?
Hmm...
I have just finished filing a patent that describes a system that might be a good compliment to yours : the heartata.
The patent describes a method of mechano-electrical propulsion for fluids wherein carbon based humaniod life may regulate the transfer velocity of select liquids throughout a network of tubular vessels through the regularly repeated electrical stimulation of a four-valve bio-engineered sac formation. Since this invention is a complex medical procedure and one with significant market potential, I am likewise patenting this to prevent any unauthorized use.
My invention builds upon the water system in use in certain cities, but -- in a carbon based humanoid life form -- and is therefore un-obvious and innovative. Please contact my lawyers regarding cross-licensing opportunities.
1) VW Touareg 3.0 V6 TDI 204PS.
2) VW Amarok Startline 122PS 4MOTION Selectable (over 2.5t breaked towing).
3) Porsche Panamera S Hybrid - with bonus point.
I'd have looked outside of VW and Porsche's lineups, but why bother?
Whilst there are aspects of similarity, I feel a lot of these claims are tenuous at best.
:
Hardware (only the iPad-Galaxy Tab) : Handheld electronic device, rounded corners, grey/black/silver, with a screen on the front, black borders above and below the screen... Wait, what's different from all those shitty e-photo display things that you can buy? They're not tablets, but Apple's design patent doesn't specify any connectivity or any application capacities. As for the rectangular form, it's hardly an innovation (ever since the Dynabook handheld rectangular electronic devices have precedent)... So what's the "innovation" that Apple wants to protect? Black borders? I can understand Apple want to protect their design, and as such, I believe that if Samsung made a tablet that was closer to the iPad in ratio and size, it would be a stronger claim. But the Galaxy Tab has extra buttons on the bottom, a different size ratio, a huge "SAMSUNG" logo on top, a different back material... I believe the main problem in this case is that the Community Design granted to Apple is much, much too broad, and less that the Galaxy Tab creates confusion or imitates unfairly the iPad.
Interface
- Phone icon : Similar (excessively) to Motorola and Nokia's "handset" icons on their phones since the early 1990s. White on green? Skype has that since 2000... Can Skype go after Apple for this icon? Green-Red (on-off) is a deep-rooted logical connection most people around the world share, and the outline of phones in this manner is also nothing new. Samsung's rounded square icon is all that I feel brings it closer to Apple's icon than Skype's. The background colour is closer to Skype's. Can Skype go after Samsung for this icon? IMO again the problem is that Apple was awarded a design that is neither new nor unique.
- Messaging icon : it's not a rectangle, it's not a white bubble on a green background... End of story. If I create a design patent that specifies it's a blue bubble inside a green rectangle on a red background, well if someone makes a red bubble on a black background, I don't have any standing for claiming design imitation, unless they intend to trick customers into believing their icon represents my service. Samsung isn't claiming to imitate Apple's iPhone messaging system any more than it imitates early SMS systems, so I can't see it being a case of consumer deception, ergo no claim.
- Photo icon : Yes, it's a stylized flower... If you know. Even then, the images are so different it'd be like Monet's estate claiming Gauguin's paintings should be removed from auctions because they both include flowers. Samsung's design includes features that are superposed to the flower, unlike Apple's, the overall colour scheme is different (no blue, black or grey)
- Settings icon : Seriously? It's a gear. They've been used since well before the iPhone to represent settings or preferences. One is blue, the other is grey. the styles are different (more steampunk on Apple's, more "weird" on Samsung's).
- Notes icon : It's a notepad that fills the whole icon. Samsung's is more like a day planner. Same colours, same "feel" (paper)... But it's a notepad. Samsung's is more like a post-it or a day calendar. Similar enough, but I can't say I find it to be a stunning example of innovation or design. It's like a website featuring a shopping cart to indicate "this way to pay". Sure, another website can represent their cart differently, but there's going to be limits pretty quick. IMO, Samsung's design is similar, but I would merely ask Samsung to change the background of their icon to make it acceptable.
- Contacts icon : A... contact book. See above. When it was just phone contacts, Samsung and other companies used a book with a phone icon on it. Now, it records more (including photos, contact details, e-mail...) so the front logo was changed to represent a person. The person isn't unique, it's the same kind of head & shoulders outline that Skype has been using since 2000. So... yes
WTF Idou?
"Japan is not just the #1 exporter of nuclear reactors, they are the ONLY exporter"
Areva, Siemens, Westinghouse, Atomstroyexport... General Electric Hitachi is only 40% owned by Hitachi, and Atmea is a 50-50 joint venture between Areva and Mitsubishi.
Yes, Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Hitachi are -possibly- the #1 exporters of nuclear reactor when combined, but they are far from being the -ONLY- exporter of nuclear reactors.
Good idea, decent implementation, too difficult for most people.
It's not "that" difficult once you start using it (you just remember that if you live in NY, @550 is mid-morning, @700 is lunchtime, @850 is mid-afternoon and anything from @050 to @450 is probably not good), and because the time format is different from usual convention there's no risk of mis-understanding. If someone on the telephone in HK says on a conference call with someone in LA and someone in NY "ok, next meeting on Monday the 9th @800", there's no need to wonder if that's HK, LA or NY time, or if it's the 9th in HK or the 9th in LA....
Another reason it didn't catch on is probably because so few people need such a system. Sure, with globalization it's more common to talk to people in different time-zones, but it's still a relatively limited thing. Most of the time you just need to know the time difference with one time-zone since that's the only one you call people in. So rather than re-learning that @XXX is early and @XXX is late, you just convert into the destination time-zone.
"We are just being lazy underachievers when we allow students to be relearning the 4 basic operations in high school."
+1.
However, I do not agree with the idea of trigonometric functions in primary school. There's quite a lot that needs to be learnt before going down the path of trigonometry. The four basic operations over all rational numbers, with appropriate knowledge of the ordering of operations, brackets and other proper use of the equal sign, greater than and less than signs should be perfect. Powers and roots should have been seen, factorising and expanding equations of the second degree shouldn't be new either. Systems of equations with multiple unknowns should be able to be solved, dependent or not, and being able to construct graphs that solve them too.
I'm probably forgetting loads of other things here, but I'd prefer students to learn the basics better (I suffer reading things where "=" is misused far too often as it is), rather than moving faster to the "fancier" things like trigonometry, sets, vectors, logs, and such. However, if there was a way for the students that are more interested and wish to work harder, I'd be all for them having a special class where they would go as far as trigonometry in primary school! But as a baseline, it might be a case of too much spread and not enough depth.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/13/2234206&mode=thread&tid=98
France already has taxes on HDDs (the above linked law was expanded to -all- HDDs, not just embedded ones) and blank media storage (CDs, DVDs, tapes) that goes directly to the SACEM's pockets (French RIAA).
How many times do you have to pay the same tax?
I'm quite interested by your post, and I must say I disagree on quite a few points.
I'm a Frenchman who is now living in China for business purposes, and whilst I'm "right of the aisle" in France (Sarkozy got my vote over Royal, for instance), I think US politics would see me quite comfortably in the blue corner.
<quote><p>
I would like to see payroll taxes like Social Security, unemployment, and medicare become optional. I think others would to a better job of recognizing they need to save their own money to cover situations those insurance programs cover if they realized they didn't have a safety net, and they could do a much better job of taking care of their own future needs than the government will. Since people would have more incentive to save, prices of thing I might want to buy now would probably drop, either leaving me more money to spend or save, and leaving all shoppers in a better position.
</p></quote>
Interesting, but I feel that if these taxes were made optional, two things would happen.
1 - All medium-to-low jobs would cut them. Overnight, there'd be a sizeable portion of the US population that would not have any unemployment, medicare or retirement savings being accrued. Now, in the short term, this would be OK-ish. People would probably see their salaries raise a little (but less than the amount that used to be paid into these taxes IMO), and would probably raise their spending a little, and save a little more (i.e. get -less- into debt). In the longer run it wouldn't be so rosy. People that are on McWages or whatever Wal-mart pays aren't really able to "live well", and it's normal they'll prefer to make choices in favour of a better life -now-, even if it means blindly hoping they don't fall sick or working until they're 80. When they -do- fall sick, or -do- end up unemployed, they'll either be posting for bankruptcy (medical costs), or getting the police/social services involved (eviction or theft or homelessness). I'd like to think people are able to make good financial choices on long-term risks, but the sub-prime crisis, the high amount of debt that individuals have and the number of individual bankruptcies each year in the US don't bode well.
2 - Prices wouldn't drop. Sorry, but I've worked in marketing for long enough to know that it's not the market that sets the price. I'm not talking about iPads either. Some basic commodities and certain services get efficient competition. But most fields aren't competitive. If half the people in the world suddenly stopped shaving, razor blade prices wouldn't drop. Even though Gilette and Wilkinson would be sitting on large stocks. Prices don't work just based on offer and demand, they're also hierarchy markers, gateway holders (even though everybody wants the iPhone, its price isn't significantly higher than other phones since the carrier knows it represents a longer-term benefit), market indicators and answer far more to the desires of investors and managers. If you've built 3 million toys, and you spent $1 on each of them (all costs included), you're not going to sell them for less than $2, no matter how badly they're selling. It's probably better to throw them into a landfill or recycle them and lose all $3M invested in that venture than drive down the prices of your other toys that -are- selling! You'd have a little bit more money, and there might be a very marginal drop in the prices of certain commodities, but I can assure you there wouldn't be a 5% (or however much the aforementioned taxes take from the median/average salary) drop in prices across the board. If anything, companies would be rushing to find ways to actually increase the cost, since -people have more available money- (Ford would have a "brand new" financing package for you that would be longer but take less in down payment so that you can "put money on one side" for your retirement/medicare/unemployment plan).
So IMO I'll keep unemployment, medicare and retirement plans as taxes. Sure, there can/will/might be
...if you want general notes, pen and paper works roughly as well as anything you can type on.
"Roughly as well"?
IMO pen & paper is still a long way ahead of anything computerised for notes. Sure, you -can- record everything through a camera/microphone and take "digital notes" that you can play back whilst watching/listening to the recording. But I don't believe that for a second. In College? Perhaps for some very specific classes where the teacher is zapping out facts and speaking like a horse-race commentator on crack. But otherwise it's just bull. Johnny isn't going to spend 6 hours every evening going through his recordings to listen to his class again and read his notes. He'll just read his notes, and in the rare case when he wrote something down and didn't remember what it's about, he'll go onto Wikipedia or look in the textbook at that chapter.
Oh, and it avoids completely the question of kids using their "computer" to access the net/chats/programs/etc. They've already got their PMPs, PSPs, iPods, KINs and whatnot to distract them, I doubt adding yet another distraction will help them learn.
Ok, so let's assume the demand for a teacher that can -teach- is greater than for one that can't.
How do you measure how well a teacher can -teach-?
Education? Background? Head's gut feeling? Students' judgement? Increase in average test results? Seniority?
Prima facie, I'd go for the increase in test results. But that leads to a whole other set of problems.
First, it's ex post facto. How do you rank a teacher in the first few years until you can establish a ranking? When the teacher moves to another level of teaching, subject specialisation or school, does the ranking carry over?
Second, it encourages teachers not to -teach- but to turn the students into good test takers. Students could have little to no understanding of the problems and concepts underlying the applications they have been doing, and thus inflating their test results for one year at the expense of the longer-term development of their skills (which probably means lower test results in subsequent years).
So, it's not really that great. Seniority is not perfect, but provides teachers with stability and predictable income in exchange for their job. There is no reward for "better teachers", which is certainly disappointing, and little in the way of risk for poor teachers (unless there is a strong risk of termination or otherwise returning to the entry level salary). But as long as the teachers themselves are properly chosen, and kept motivated, I believe that it can achieve decent results.
The point was that the real world doesn't satisfy any of the conditions of Free market economic theory, and even if it did, there's nowhere anything in the Free market theory that suggests pay by merit would be the preferred way of reaching agreement. In fact, it's just as plausible that everybody would be paid exactly the same amount, regardless of job, seniority or education.
"But how can YOU argue against the following point: any government subsidized business will raise prices above what the market can bear to what GOVERNMENT can bear?"
Or, it could just be that the way the government is implementing these projects is inefficient?
Sweden's healthcare system is not more expensive than that of the USA, despite significantly more government intervention, and yet provides a similar level of services.
France's higher education system is not more expensive than that of the USA, and offers a similar level of services.
Germany's banking system encourages people to make more conscious choices due to increased government regulations.
"When a government enters a business, it creates moral hazard and it provides enormous opportunity to push prices up. Have you ever seen a government causing a price FALL?"
France, energy production, 1970-1980. In under 15 years, France built 56 nuclear reactors thanks to government backing of loans, and went from being dependent on imported oil to an energy exporter.
"- except that this is what the STORY here is all about, that Unions don't want you to know WHO are good teachers and who are not so good, just another government union BS. I would totally rather have a free market approach, with teachers being evaluated and then with students making INFORMED decisions on where to go to learn rather than GAMBLING and HOPING that you just may get a good teacher at some point. Ridiculous."
The only problem is that people are very bad at being rational. Ask any 13 year-old if he wants to do his homework or go and play outside/on the internet. Now zap 40 years forwards and ask the 53 year-old what he wishes he had done. There's a delayed reward effect, which means individuals are bad at estimating the value of the reward, as well as the uncertainty of ever getting the reward. How much delta does studying hard for a year have on one's future earnings? Is this delta worth the opportunity cost of not having fun that year?
Information is imperfect, and this story is more about disagreement on the validity of proposed information distribution. The "best teachers", are they the ones that have effectively -taught- better and helped their students better understand the problems at stake and how to tackle them, or are they the ones that have drilled their students best at answering tests? Is the "playing field" so to speak even for all teachers, with students that are of effectively random potential and learning ability? How do the classroom dynamics affect teachers' ratings? A class that is motivated, with good cohesion and ties, could quite likely improve faster on average than a less united class with more talent; how much of this is attributable to the teachers? At best, this information is a high-level aggregate, with little in the way of identifying the factors that caused any variations. Attributing them directly to one pre-supposed factor (teachers) is a jump. Why not attribute it to the classroom where the lesson was taught (perhaps there's an "optimal temperature"?), the number of years the students in the class have been together, or the TV programming on nights before the class in question?
"- not anymore. Not in a society that produces very very little, didn't you get the notice from your government - you are a CONSUMPTION based society, not a production based one. Good luck with that, it'll crash and burn, nothing can only consume and not produce forever."
Actually, the US is merely an advanced tertiary economy. The US produces a lot, albeit mostly in the manner of immaterial services and products, rather than physical goods. There's no reason why this isn't sustainable. After all, the Swiss have been doing it for the best part of a century without any major economic problems. The comment holds true. For primary economies (mining and agriculture) there are little educational requirements for most workers. A very small number of people who can direct work is sufficient to maintain the economy. Secondary e
How the various parties in a contract reach their agreement isn't important in Free-market theory. If they decide to use unions, to pay by performance, to pay by seniority, or by size of genitals... It's all the same for Free-market theory. Free market theory simply says that with atomic employers and employees, perfect information, no entry or exit barriers, immediate transferability of capital, perfect rationality of all actors and no cost of exchanges, then there will be a unique agreement on the compensation to offer in exchange for labor observed by all parties. In short, everybody will agree on one salary structure. Nowhere does the free market say how this salary structure will be established, on what it will be based, or how it relates to prices in other parts of the economy.
Apple can't release a computer called "Kleenex" because that would be trademark blurring. However, I'd love to see Kleenex bring a case against an Apple Inc. computer called "iClinix". Delta (the US-based airline) has no basis to sue Delta (US-based manufacturer of plumbing equipment) for instance. Delta and Delta both hold trademarks in their respective fields, as there is no reasonable risk of confusion between the services offered by both companies. The only thing Apple wants is to sue for trademark tarnishment. iPood is not iPod, so it's not a case of trademark blurring. The goods are dissimilar enough to make it not a case of trademark infringement. So the big question is "can iPood present a substantial risk to tarnishing the iPod trademark"? Since the iPood is much more limited in distribution, is not associated in any way with any current (and hopefully future) line of Apple products, nor even likely to be considered in similar shops... I can't see Apple winning. A very quick Google search tells me that iPood is likely covered under the same protection that allowed Chewy Vuitton to defeat Louis Vuitton in 2006 and 2007 (appeal). Too dissimilar, meaning there is no risk of confusion, as for the name, it's parody, which requires a certain degree of resemblance, whilst conveying evidently the notion that it is not the original product.
Bianca, six, gets shouted at in assembly, her classmates tease her, she drops out of school for a month and becomes basically some kind of frothing-at-the-mouth hater of anything looking like "educated". Ergo, she goes out of her way to harm people who she percieves as "successful" in schooling terms.
Seriously? John, ten, wants to win the Super Bowl as a QB who makes the winning pass. His coach thinks he's not good enough, so he drops him from the team. John becomes a psycopath and murders 11 NFL players a few years later. That's not an argument. That's just some kind of dreamed-up delirium. Sure, it is -possible-. But it's far more -likely- that Bianca whimpers for a few minutes and rallies with some friends to say nasty things behind the teacher's back, and John just cries his little heart out for a few minutes before dreaming he wants to be the pitcher who throws the winning strike-out in the World Series.
One in every nine schoolchildren is terrified of physical harm happening to them in school, terrified with good cause; about thirty-three are murdered there every year. From 1992 through 1999, 262 children were murdered in school in the United States.
Yes. I guess every person in the USA must live in some kind of perpetual fear of physical harm then. 262 murders in 7 years across the country? That's probably much lower than the risk -outside- of school! How many children have been murdered at their own home? How many children are sexually harassed, violated or raped in their own home? Does this mean every child lives in morbid fear of death and rape at home?
"The cost in New York State for building a well-schooled child in the year 2000 is $200,000 per body when lost interest is calculated. That capital sum invested in the child’s name over the past twelve years would have delivered a million dollars to each kid as a nest egg to compensate for having no school. The original $200,000 is more than the average home in New York costs."
Interesting, but nonetheless useless figure. A minimum wage worker in NY earns $7.25/hour. For a 45h/week job, 49weeks/year, that's about 200,000$ over 12 years. So, each child is "costing" as much as a minimum wage employee would to the school system. Ok, so give them 200k straight away. What do they do with it? Spend it on going to school? Learn from... Who? Their parents who don't always know anything about the subject matter? Who would probably have to cut down on their job(s) to take care of the child? I mean, I'm all for exploring different education methods, but "look how much money it is" doesn't make "give the child the money" a convincing argument. Sure, they could use it to go to another school. But since schools know about it (and they'd have a lot more people trying to get into these schools), they'd just raise the prices. So poorer children would still not be able to go to the good private schools. Ergo two choices. Go to a "cheap" school (i.e. a state/public school under a different name), or be "taught" at home by someone who doesn't have enough of a broad understanding to teach well in all kinds of subjects. Sure, some families can thrive with homeschooling, providing rich educational endeavours to their children... But not everybody. Far from that.
"Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession, something like this would happen."
Socrates sure knew about teaching as a formal profession. And he didn't guard against it. He guarded against teachers who taught only how to speak, and not how to think. Socrates (or Plato, YMMV) felt that the sophists were just quite simply not good teachers.
"David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you c
Whilst interesting, your point fails to address one point : Who does what?
"Umm, well, China has pretty cheap labour, and 3+ billion people to do it, and because its so much its practically infinite."
As someone who is actually working in China, I can tell you this much : not all jobs are created equal. I'm paid well in excess of the average Chinese salary (I'm actually paid on par with what I would earn in Europe). Why? Because I have skills that are extremely rare in the Chinese market. On the other hand, jobs that require very common skills are indeed cheap to the extreme. China doesn't (yet) have 3+ billion workers, and there are serious openings in executive and engineering positions across the board. Why? Because they've got easy access to cheap manufacturing, but design and preparation is rare. In the US, design and preparation are much easier to get hold of, but manufacturing is (comparatively) rare.
" The big issue is that companies would rather NOT pay employees, or if they have to, would like to pay them very little. Since the government regulates a minimum pay, these jobs go to countries where the government regulated minimum pay is the lowest."
So why China? Sure, China has low salaries, but it's far from being the lowest. Laos has pretty miserable salaries, Vietnam isn't much better off, and there's always Tajikistan/Turkmenistan/Kazakhstan or Africa where the average salary is enough for the Chinese middle class to take pleasant holidays there...
Thing is, companies want low salaries, but with a whole lot of other things. Access to materials, infrastructure, political stability, and even skills. Sure, the skills for certain jobs are quite minimal, but the immense majority of Chinese manufacturing laborers are literate, which is an obvious advantage. There's also sufficient middle-management knowledge and other skills to organise and equip these manufacturing centres. Hence why Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan are a long shot from taking China's role in the near future.
By taking away low-level jobs and allocating them to China, companies are making it more interesting for Chinese companies to outsource design and other "high-value" jobs in the US. Simple question : why do so many companies that don't do their main business in the US have HQs in the US? Why are companies that don't even operate in the US listed on the NYSE? Competitive advantage works both ways. Want to know what the Chinese middle class thinks of all the finance jobs that -every- major Chinese company has been moving to the US over the past few years? Well, you weren't particularly excited about someone who wants to work on CPUs moving to India. They just bite the bullet and apply for a job in the US, knowing that if they get the job, it's 6 months to a year without coming home, most likely without any real chance of renewing your contract with the company in question. But it's that or getting a job that they feel is "below them".
Free trade isn't some kind of voodoo magick that companies call upon. Grove knows full well that the US hasn't been "hurt" by not keeping battery manufacturing plants any more than having millions of people working in the textile industry. Instead, the people that in an "isolationist" economy would be working in textile have been working in the service industry. It hasn't harmed America at all. It's even helped the USA stay at the forefront of IT in general, and provided pretty much the entire American population with more IT know-how than anybody but the techies and geeks of the countries where Nike and the Gap get their T-shirts made. Why is China a "follower" of the IT innovation in the US (foursquare, Groupon, Facebook, Youtube...)? Because in the US, there is both experience (which creates the idea and desire/need for new services) and the expertise (to actually create them). China has expertise, and only thanks to the 1.3 billion-strong population, which means that despite far fewer Chinese people being good with IT, the sheer numbers make it enough, but
So it's a tax on everything, then?
Take something "boring" like... A beef steak. Now, I don't doubt that the cow itself is as American as can be. Or that the employees of the ranch, the slaughterhouse and the supermarket are American through and through. But what about the food? Did the cow only eat "American" food? Or was it fed with granules that were partly researched in, say, Canda? What about the design or certain machines used in the ranch, the slaughterhouse and the supermarket? If the cow was vaccinated using a vaccine manufactured in Europe, is that going to make it "not-American"? Where is the limit to what is "manufacturing", "development" and "support"? Once you start looking at more complex products (IT being the foremost of those fields), you're just going to run into a situation where pretty much everything has at least one component (hard or soft) that was "designed" to a certain extent by a company with at least one non-US based collaborator.
Erm... I can see two problems with this.
.com register to be available in the markets where ".xxx" is blanket-banned (like Australia??), and those that "think of the children" appalled that there is still so much smut outside of the .xxx TLD.
.xxx names? In that case, where will these companies go? Vanish? I doubt it. So they'll just host on a .com, a .org, a .net, and so forth, meaning the people who wanted the .xxx TLD will have reason to complain, and websites that did migrate to .xxx will be at a competitive disadvantage.
.xxx name? should a BBS with discussions of sexual topics be moved to a .xxx?), but even on the point of "it'll stop criminals which is good", I find you're over-optimistic as to how difficult it can be to forge and corrupt officials from some of the poorer and less structured of the 200-odd countries in the world.
First of all, which laws will apply? Say you host a website in Sudan (it's just an example, I don't know the specifics of Sudanese law, but in a Crapsack World...), registered to the Sudanese authorities (with appropriate bribing), and insured by a nice little front company (which has also done all the required palm-greasing). Now, you can "legally" take photos of 15 year-old girls in the nude, and distribute them in Sudan. Does this mean these images can be posted on CrapsackWorld.xxx? Or will the TLD require I only post images of 18+ year old women? On the other hand, Sudan has strong laws that ban intercourse of muslims with non-muslims. Can Sudan be sure that this type of content will not be available? Or will the TLD deem that it's an "unreasonable request" on Sudan's behalf, leading Sudan to block the entire "*.xxx" range?
Even before we start looking at the "criminals", the simple differences in laws between countries mean that it's almost certain the ".xxx" TLD will attract even more controversy and be criticized for "not holding up to promises" by every side in the debate : USA blaming for the profusion of "illegal underage porn", Sudan blaming for the profusion of "immoral interreligious porn", companies feeling that they're just being conned into paying an extra amount since they've got to retain the
Now, where do criminal websites that offer "kiddie porn" usually operate from? The USA? Canada? Saudi Arabia? Russia? Belarus? Ukraine? Moldova? They work in countries where there is a lack of general public enforcement of laws, where it's easy to bribe officials or falsify documents, and they can "easily" dissappear. So what is the ".xxx" TLD registar going to do when he recieves the first bunch of documents from Moldova that "appear" legitimate? Authorise them? Refuse them? And when they've been shown to be 30% fakes, are they going to implement a new kind of detective/investigative process to find out with each application if it's legitimate? Refuse the lot and tell them to get similar documents from Russian officials? It'll just be a case of these criminals moving around a little to find the right hands to grease (and if they're into human trafficking, they probably already know enough about that), falsifying a couple of documents, and then waiting for the take-down letter to move to the next domain name they've registered.
Or do you think countries like Congo that just cannot guarantee a minimum of protection against corruption and fraud shouldn't have the right to have companies register
There are other issues, like free speech and expression (should 4chan move to a
Good business sense is to develop so that your customers can access your service.
.gifs of dancing babies. Good web design should be strived for as well as intelligent support. And I can't see much of either. In six months it is highly likely that IE6 will have fewer users than Chrome, Safari will have fewer users than Chrome, and Firefox 2 will have fewer users than Chrome. Are they going to wait for Chrome to have over 30% browser share to start "supporting" it? If they are, it certainly doesn't make much business sense.
IE6 has 14-20% market share, so it's worth investing time and effort to bring your website to them. Chrome has about half that market share, so it's also worth pursuing that development option.
Furthermore, IE6 shouldn't really be around anymore. It's the "end" of the IE family for ME, 2000 and 98, which together represent less than 1% of the OS market. XP can upgrade to IE7 or IE8, and Vista/7 can't even run IE6. Each year that goes by, IE6 is losing browser share (down 12% over the past 12 months according to NetMarketshare), whilst Chrome is growing and seems set to outpace Safari as well as the bunch of other "little" browsers combined by the end of the year.
Supporting Chrome/Opera/Safari/??? doesn't mean they've -got- to use tons of Javascript any more than supporting IE6 means they have to pre-load a few
I think the problem with "Remotely Driven" is that... It's pretty hard to simulate driving. Sure you can get close, you can have a couple of video feeds that provide a 360 degree view (perhaps even a kind of "dome") so that the driver can look around, you can get readings of the vibrations in multiple places around the car and reproduce them, you can have audio feeds spread around the car so the driver can hear what's going on... But there'll always be a little difference between the real thing and the simulation (how are you going to reproduce the smell of warm rubber? How will you reproduce the G-forces in the turns?).
All in all, I think it'd be more "interesting" to have a completely automated version of formula one. Get rid of the drivers, plop a crash test dummy with a bunch of sensors and stuff inside each "Formula AI", get the teams to work on AI solutions to driving the cars without killing/maiming/etc. the dummy.
It would probably lose interest quite quickly as either the technology isn't capable of making the races interesting (cue slow, boring races with lots of crashes), or the technology manages to make it work, and then each race would be pretty boring since the number of mistakes would diminish dramatically, as would the "defensive" capacities of the "drivers". Still, it's interesting to think about what F1 would be like if they just said "let's just let all the technological gizmos the teams can think of and manage to cram into the cars be accepted".
How does that advocate Google owning your telephone if the default setting is for them to force certain installs/uninstalls, but that setting can be opted-out?
Wouldn't a better representation be that they are offering a service to the end user as part of the contract by which the end user, the handset manufacturer, the carrier, the developers of apps on the marketplace and themselves?
I'm uneasy with the concept of "forced install/uninstall without notification". However, I can see what TheEyes is trying to say. People like my mother would see the message, not understand it (even if it just said "For security reasons, Android recommends uninstalling the following application <Application name>. UNINSTALL/DO NOT UNINSTALL"; ibid for the install process), and would therefore be liable to make the choice that puts their data at risk.
If there is a choice in a "deeper" Settings menu to permanently disable these remote install/uninstall features, but this reduces the liability of the other parties in the case of privacy problems, I can't see what the problem is. Most people won't look for it or disable it if they find it, and the people who are concerned about this feature can delete it. By combining the "no remote update/install from Google" setting, the notifications on all but the most extreme security risks, and the notification-less install/uninstall for the few critical errors, Android OS would provide both the features that normal users want ("It just works") and those that power users and security freaks want.