What I want out of a mobile device is a really great experience when I'm out and about.*
True, that's a good goal to have for a mobile device, but you're not always out and about. In fact sometimes you're at home and there are data and apps on your home computer you might like to access. When we talk about integrating, we're talking about using and app on the desktop, then getting up and leaving and having the same app/data on your mobile phone. Edit your data on the phone then come back to your PC and it's all there.
Could you imagine being on a call, walking in your front door, then transferring that call onto the computer using skype? Or what about playing a game on xbox, pausing it, then hopping on a bus and picking up where you left off on your phone? That would be some pretty cool stuff, and I could see this as the groundwork.
major problem they will have is getting developers to make apps for it.
They in fact do not have this problem. The windows phone marketplace is growing at a faster rate than the android store at the same point in its lifecycle. Today they have 60,000 apps after only 16 months. Yes Android and iOS stores have an order of magnitude more, but at some point (much before half a million apps I'd say) there are diminishing returns associated with the number of apps in a store.
Microsoft has traditionally been very good about giving old devices updates to the latest version. There's no reason to believe at least the last generation will be upgradeable, if not all of them.
Uh... I think you may have missed something. This isn't about paper map companies. The company that sued Google, Bottin Cartographes offers the same product as the Google Maps API.
Do you understand what a Monopoly is? I believe that you have something wrong in your concept.
I didn't say anything about a monopoly. Nowhere did I mention anything about a monopoly. Don't put words in my mouth. You don't have to be a monopoly to exhibit anticompetitive behavior.
Did Google stop anyone at Mapquest from updating their product to be as good or better than Google's products? No
Did Google stop vendors from using APIs and Hooks from other vendor codes? No
Did Google say "Anything we ever do will be free of charge."? No
Did Google stop any company from using Mapquests products? No
Did Google tell the Internet that no other vendor could put products out there? No
This isn't about a better product. This is about taking a product that it would costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, giving it away for free to destroy your competition, then turning around and charging for it once the competition is gone. It's caled dumping and it's one example of an anticompetitive practice. Everything you mentioned has no bearing on the fact that this behavior occurred.
They are not making consumers pay for their products directly.
Google's customers for the Google Maps API are not users of the map service. They are companies who embed Google Maps in their web applications. Google is indeed asking those customers to pay for a service they were lured to use because it was once free, and is only now for pay once the competition has been crippled.
To say that the API for Google Maps is not related to Google Maps is absurd. The APIs are directly related to Google Maps. They have no value without Google maps.
Google Maps is the free product that you can access at maps.google.com. Google Maps API is the product that allows you to use Google's map data on your own website. The API has no data without the underlying map data. But it certainly has value without maps.google.com. This is what the other companies were selling. That these things reference the same database is irrelevant to the discussion.
Stealing market share? Really? Providing an exceptional products and services to gain customers is stealing?"
No, keeping a product free by using revenues from a different market (in which you are a dominant player) in order to gain customers and destroy competition only to then turn around and start charging for said free product is clearly antitrust. What is not clear about that?
When they start charging for you to use Google Maps, then start complaining. Until then, don't bitch about getting hand outs from them.
Ah, I see why you don't understand. You just came here to spout your ideology based off a perceived slight without even attempting to understand the discussion at hand. Before you run your mouth off, why don't you pay a little bit of attention to the discussion. As noted in the article, the summary, and even my post you replied to, this decision (and I'm going to bold some things to draw your attention, since you seem to have selective reading ability) WAS NOT ABOUT GOOGLE MAPS. This was about the Google Maps API which was free and is now for pay only after siphoning customers from other map companies, thus damaging the market for commercial maps. Let me reiterate this has fuck all to do with the free Google Maps service.
I also don't see why you think there was a "free market" during the 1700-1900s, please provide some evidence for this. Maybe we are still using two different definitions.
I don't think there ever has been a market truly free from external regulation. What you call a "free market." The industrial revolution wasn't a free market due to things like the patent office and post office. But it was heavily deregulated, and I think that the effects of are readily apparent. Companies seek to maximize profits. Fair wages, environmental concerns, worker safety etc. work to undermine profits. As a seller, why would I ever put safety rails around my vat of molten iron?
The real argument is whether or not you think an organization would arise to play the same role the FDA does.
I'm assuming you subscribe to the Wikipedia quote you posted above. That is, you believe "A free-market economy is one within which all markets are unregulated by any parties other than market participants." By this definition of a free market, a privatized FDA-like agency cannot exist. Any such agency would consist of the participants in the market (the buyers and the sellers). Any and all buyers and sellers would participate in this agency and to operate information must be shared back and forth about product contents and safety, etc. If information were not shared perfectly, the agency's ability to regulate would break down. Thus again you arrive at perfect information sharing, and therefore no agency is needed at all in the first place, since the laws of supply and demand will take over and do the same job. We arrive at the previous scenario where if information is not shared we cannot achieve equilibrium and the power shifts to either the buyers or the sellers. In most situations it shifts to the sellers and we need government regulation to restore equilibrium.
Or is it that you don't mind a private independent organization that regulates markets? Is your problem just that the FDA is government run, but you would have no problem with a privatized FDA? If so I really question your understanding of a free market.
Are you seriously not getting this? Google Maps API was introduced into the market free of charge to everyone. Customers who used to pay companies like Bottin Cartographes for their map service switch to Google Maps since it's free. After stealing marketshare and customers, in October 2011 Google begins charging for its service. How is this not textbook antitrust?
What gave you the idea that people think free=perfect?
Because an imperfect free market is what we saw during the industrial revolution. When most people say they want a free market, they don't have child labor, unsafe working condition, rampant and unfettered pollution in mind. Profit-seeking entities actively try to move away from the equilibrium price predicted by perfect market economics by violating the tenants of a perfect market economy. They collude with each other, price fix, employ unsafe labor practices, pollute the environment, etc. The only reason they can do these things is because of information imbalances.
Here's how the argument usually goes. I say "In a free market unregulated by government, companies create unsafe products. This is why we need the FDA." The free market proponent in turn says "In a free market, a competitor will enter the marketplace that does not create unsafe products, and people will buy that product instead. Thus, through the miracles of the free market, the irresponsible company will go out of business and the economy will regulate itself." But again, this does NOT happen in an imperfect free market because of barriers of entry, imperfect information, geographic conditions, etc.
So I still maintain that when people talk about the "free market" they're talking about this ideal economy that can regulate itself without the need for government intervention. The perfect market exists on this very unstable equilibrium where if any of the assumptions are violated, you slide in the direction of a monopolistic, oligopolistic, monopsonistic, etc. market. It's not always that bad, but in the worst cases you need government intervention and thus no such thing as a "free market" without a perfect market.
Nothing with respect to this topic, because it's not about Google Maps. It's about the Google Maps API, which was free, which killed the competition who charged, and now that there is no competition has switched to a for-pay model. The only reason the API was free in the first place was Google could keep it on life support using revenue from its search service.
The way the term "free market" is used in the article is just to indicate government has no intervention or at best a neutral position. When people espouse the virtues of a "free market" they're usually talking a market where there is perfect competition. That is, the company with the best product gets the most customers, prices follow the laws of supply and demand, etc. The only way these laws actually work is if it meets several conditions, one of which is perfect information and rational buyers. Otherwise you have failures in the system and you end up with collusion, scams, monopolies, etc. Sure the government isn't involved, but it's a far cry from a properly functioning "free" market. So I think it's safe to say there is no such thing as "free" market without a perfect market.
They aren't integrating it into windows like with the xbox's OS though, and they're certainly not marketing it.
I'm assuming you're referring to speech recognition here? True they're not marketing it, but it's deeply integrated into the OS. In fact I can perform just about any function the mouse can, even web browse. It's not perfect, but I use it all the time when I'm away from the keyboard. You can even make macros. I have one I use to bring up weather and traffic information in the morning when I'm getting ready for work.
I guess "educational software" was the answer.
Not educational software, but for education. As in computer vision and robotics education/research. We just bought 15 kinect sensors for my lab to use for a course in computer vision next semester. We use the kinect all the time in our research. The only reason we didn't buy these new sensors is because we can't wait for the educational pricing to go live. I imagine most computer science departments around the world will want to have a fleet of kinects on hand for their curriculum as well.
Then there's the other 3rd party companies who ALSO beat them to market, and with cheaper products. Microsoft's innovation is staggering.
Where are the sub $140 RGBD sensors that beat Kinect to market?
So wait, its more expensive? And there's going to be less games that use it. (see: none) Few if any will buy it, so nobody will waste time developing AAA games that use it, so nobody will buy it, so nobody will develop for it...
This isn't just about games anymore. This isn't even just about desktop PCs. We're talking about the ability to build customized solutions using Kinect sensors for commercial sale and educational applications.
So without mainstream games, who is this supposed to appeal to?
Companies looking to commercialize and educational institutions, as evidenced by the commercial license and educational pricing.
So without mainstream games, who is this supposed to appeal to? The very hackers who already got it working, because they wanted it? Whoops.
People who don't want to go through the hassle of hacking it. It's relatively easy if you have the know how. But in many ways it's a pain in the ass. Nothing is easier than plugging it into windows and clicking "install" and having access to everything. Plus, the Windows SDK has access to much more advanced features you don't get with the hacked versions, including access to Windows speech recognition engine (which is very good) as well as bangarang skeletal tracking with a few lines of code. With the hacked API, you get sensor streams and that's it. You have to leverage several different architectures in order to get the functionality the Windows SDK provides. Microsoft is offering a better learning curve and that is worth something.
But if that is the case, why not just add that software capability to Windows?!
Windows 7 can already handle voice commands. Search for "Speech recognition" in the start menu.
Support for up to four Kinect sensors plugged into the same computer
Significantly improved skeletal tracking, including the ability for developers to control which user is being tracked by the sensor
Near Mode for the new Kinect for Windows hardware, which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimeters in front of the device
Many API updates and enhancements in the managed and unmanaged runtimes
The latest Microsoft Speech components (V11) are now included as part of the SDK and runtime installer
Improved “far-talk” acoustic model that increases speech recognition accuracy
New and updated samples, such as Kinect Explorer, which enables developers to explore the full capabilities of the sensor and SDK, including audio beam and sound source angles, color modes, depth modes, skeletal tracking, and motor controls
A commercial-ready installer which can be included in an application’s set-up program, making it easy to install the Kinect for Windows runtime and driver components for end-user deployments.
Robustness improvements including driver stability, runtime fixes, and audio fixes
That's the main problem facing perception systems today. Humans have these two simple exteroceptive eyeballs and yet we can do incredible things. That's thanks to the amazing computational power of our brain, which we hardly understand. Thus, when we try to replicate our cognitive abilities we end up with algorithms that are completely intractable. I think this is in a large part due to computer scientists tendency to approach things with an engineering perspective instead of a biological perspective.
The cheapest 2D LIDAR you're going to find is about $2000 (Hokuyo URG). It has pretty terrible range for a LIDAR, but it's still a good sensor. For 3D ranging you're going to spend at least a grand. The IFM O3D 2XX is the cheapest 3D Flash LIDAR I know of, and you're only getting 64x48 pixels of resolution, so essentially 1% of the pixels you're getting back from the Kinect for 10x the price. Given this, the Kinect is truely an amazing sensor.
Sure, but it's also hard to say that the company's success was due to Linux when 90% of users are on different platforms. Just making that number up but It's probably not far off. Anyone have actual numbers?
To show that Linux is a market worth tapping by game developers, you basically have to show that the revenues from sales to Linux users will be larger than the costs associated with marketing and developing the game for Linux. The case usually starts with Linux's miniscule consumer install base and gets worse from there ending with "If they really want the game they'll just boot into windows or play it on xbox, so why bother?"
In large part due to people buying them and playing them on the Windows platform. So remind me again exactly where developers lose out by targeting only Windows?
I never said it's impossible to prove anything. I said that it's impossible for the scientific method to prove anything. You can of course prove things through contradiction, induction, exhaustion, construction, etc. That is not the scientific method. What you illustrated in your examples is not the scientific method.
Your examples are not science, and this is what non-scientists do not understand. Our goal is to discover the fundamental laws of nature. It is not just to observe and say "things happen" as you do with your examples, but to understand why and how. What you illustrate is the famous correlation != causation fallacy. Letting go of the rock correlated with it falling to the ground. Does that mean letting it go caused it to fall to the ground? No, in fact if the gravity of the earth increased enough, your strength would fail and the rock would fall to the ground with your hand still around it. Or assume I held a piece of ice to a candle and it burst into flames. Does that mean the ice caused the candle to light on fire, or maybe did someone with a laser shine it on the candle at that exact moment? The appearance of the substance in the child correlated with the introduction to the mother, but was it caused by it, or was it just chance? Do you see the dangers of simply observing and drawing conclusions from observations?
Your first two examples are very simple because of course every time we let go of the rock it falls to the ground and of course every time we bring a flame to the candle it combusts. But did you know that according to statistical mechanics there is a very very small probability that if you drop the rock to the ground it will rewind itself and leap into your hand? Or that according to quantum physics if you walk into a wall enough, all particles in your body will quantum tunnel through the wall at the exact same moment and you will pass straight through it? Of course it would take several ages of the universe to ever see such an effect with 1% probability, but this is what science and mathematics and the scientific method tells us. If we just stopped with what we observe we'd be missing out on most of the universe.
Maybe we'll figure out a way to workaround it. But I suspect the idea of 'curing cancer' will prove to be essentially impossible.
I don't buy it. Like I said some clams live 400 years. Some fish can live a couple hundred years, likewise with some tortoises and whales.Plants can live thousands of years. Why do these organisms have longer lives than us? Obviously there's a lot we can learn, but at least there's a proof of concept out there that shows just because something is old doesn't mean it has to die.
Slashdot Mirror
What I want out of a mobile device is a really great experience when I'm out and about.*
True, that's a good goal to have for a mobile device, but you're not always out and about. In fact sometimes you're at home and there are data and apps on your home computer you might like to access. When we talk about integrating, we're talking about using and app on the desktop, then getting up and leaving and having the same app/data on your mobile phone. Edit your data on the phone then come back to your PC and it's all there.
Could you imagine being on a call, walking in your front door, then transferring that call onto the computer using skype? Or what about playing a game on xbox, pausing it, then hopping on a bus and picking up where you left off on your phone? That would be some pretty cool stuff, and I could see this as the groundwork.
major problem they will have is getting developers to make apps for it.
They in fact do not have this problem. The windows phone marketplace is growing at a faster rate than the android store at the same point in its lifecycle. Today they have 60,000 apps after only 16 months. Yes Android and iOS stores have an order of magnitude more, but at some point (much before half a million apps I'd say) there are diminishing returns associated with the number of apps in a store.
Microsoft has traditionally been very good about giving old devices updates to the latest version. There's no reason to believe at least the last generation will be upgradeable, if not all of them.
Uh... I think you may have missed something. This isn't about paper map companies. The company that sued Google, Bottin Cartographes offers the same product as the Google Maps API.
Well, yes this is true, but it's not exactly an unsolved problem.
Do you understand what a Monopoly is? I believe that you have something wrong in your concept.
I didn't say anything about a monopoly. Nowhere did I mention anything about a monopoly. Don't put words in my mouth. You don't have to be a monopoly to exhibit anticompetitive behavior.
Did Google stop anyone at Mapquest from updating their product to be as good or better than Google's products? No Did Google stop vendors from using APIs and Hooks from other vendor codes? No Did Google say "Anything we ever do will be free of charge."? No Did Google stop any company from using Mapquests products? No Did Google tell the Internet that no other vendor could put products out there? No
This isn't about a better product. This is about taking a product that it would costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, giving it away for free to destroy your competition, then turning around and charging for it once the competition is gone. It's caled dumping and it's one example of an anticompetitive practice. Everything you mentioned has no bearing on the fact that this behavior occurred.
They are not making consumers pay for their products directly.
Google's customers for the Google Maps API are not users of the map service. They are companies who embed Google Maps in their web applications. Google is indeed asking those customers to pay for a service they were lured to use because it was once free, and is only now for pay once the competition has been crippled.
To say that the API for Google Maps is not related to Google Maps is absurd. The APIs are directly related to Google Maps. They have no value without Google maps.
Google Maps is the free product that you can access at maps.google.com. Google Maps API is the product that allows you to use Google's map data on your own website. The API has no data without the underlying map data. But it certainly has value without maps.google.com. This is what the other companies were selling. That these things reference the same database is irrelevant to the discussion.
Stealing market share? Really? Providing an exceptional products and services to gain customers is stealing?"
No, keeping a product free by using revenues from a different market (in which you are a dominant player) in order to gain customers and destroy competition only to then turn around and start charging for said free product is clearly antitrust. What is not clear about that?
When they start charging for you to use Google Maps, then start complaining. Until then, don't bitch about getting hand outs from them.
Ah, I see why you don't understand. You just came here to spout your ideology based off a perceived slight without even attempting to understand the discussion at hand. Before you run your mouth off, why don't you pay a little bit of attention to the discussion. As noted in the article, the summary, and even my post you replied to, this decision (and I'm going to bold some things to draw your attention, since you seem to have selective reading ability) WAS NOT ABOUT GOOGLE MAPS. This was about the Google Maps API which was free and is now for pay only after siphoning customers from other map companies, thus damaging the market for commercial maps. Let me reiterate this has fuck all to do with the free Google Maps service.
I also don't see why you think there was a "free market" during the 1700-1900s, please provide some evidence for this. Maybe we are still using two different definitions.
I don't think there ever has been a market truly free from external regulation. What you call a "free market." The industrial revolution wasn't a free market due to things like the patent office and post office. But it was heavily deregulated, and I think that the effects of are readily apparent. Companies seek to maximize profits. Fair wages, environmental concerns, worker safety etc. work to undermine profits. As a seller, why would I ever put safety rails around my vat of molten iron?
The real argument is whether or not you think an organization would arise to play the same role the FDA does.
I'm assuming you subscribe to the Wikipedia quote you posted above. That is, you believe "A free-market economy is one within which all markets are unregulated by any parties other than market participants." By this definition of a free market, a privatized FDA-like agency cannot exist. Any such agency would consist of the participants in the market (the buyers and the sellers). Any and all buyers and sellers would participate in this agency and to operate information must be shared back and forth about product contents and safety, etc. If information were not shared perfectly, the agency's ability to regulate would break down. Thus again you arrive at perfect information sharing, and therefore no agency is needed at all in the first place, since the laws of supply and demand will take over and do the same job. We arrive at the previous scenario where if information is not shared we cannot achieve equilibrium and the power shifts to either the buyers or the sellers. In most situations it shifts to the sellers and we need government regulation to restore equilibrium.
Or is it that you don't mind a private independent organization that regulates markets? Is your problem just that the FDA is government run, but you would have no problem with a privatized FDA? If so I really question your understanding of a free market.
Are you seriously not getting this? Google Maps API was introduced into the market free of charge to everyone. Customers who used to pay companies like Bottin Cartographes for their map service switch to Google Maps since it's free. After stealing marketshare and customers, in October 2011 Google begins charging for its service. How is this not textbook antitrust?
What gave you the idea that people think free=perfect?
Because an imperfect free market is what we saw during the industrial revolution. When most people say they want a free market, they don't have child labor, unsafe working condition, rampant and unfettered pollution in mind. Profit-seeking entities actively try to move away from the equilibrium price predicted by perfect market economics by violating the tenants of a perfect market economy. They collude with each other, price fix, employ unsafe labor practices, pollute the environment, etc. The only reason they can do these things is because of information imbalances.
Here's how the argument usually goes. I say "In a free market unregulated by government, companies create unsafe products. This is why we need the FDA." The free market proponent in turn says "In a free market, a competitor will enter the marketplace that does not create unsafe products, and people will buy that product instead. Thus, through the miracles of the free market, the irresponsible company will go out of business and the economy will regulate itself." But again, this does NOT happen in an imperfect free market because of barriers of entry, imperfect information, geographic conditions, etc.
So I still maintain that when people talk about the "free market" they're talking about this ideal economy that can regulate itself without the need for government intervention. The perfect market exists on this very unstable equilibrium where if any of the assumptions are violated, you slide in the direction of a monopolistic, oligopolistic, monopsonistic, etc. market. It's not always that bad, but in the worst cases you need government intervention and thus no such thing as a "free market" without a perfect market.
Nothing with respect to this topic, because it's not about Google Maps. It's about the Google Maps API, which was free, which killed the competition who charged, and now that there is no competition has switched to a for-pay model. The only reason the API was free in the first place was Google could keep it on life support using revenue from its search service.
The way the term "free market" is used in the article is just to indicate government has no intervention or at best a neutral position. When people espouse the virtues of a "free market" they're usually talking a market where there is perfect competition. That is, the company with the best product gets the most customers, prices follow the laws of supply and demand, etc. The only way these laws actually work is if it meets several conditions, one of which is perfect information and rational buyers. Otherwise you have failures in the system and you end up with collusion, scams, monopolies, etc. Sure the government isn't involved, but it's a far cry from a properly functioning "free" market. So I think it's safe to say there is no such thing as "free" market without a perfect market.
Correct... so 4% of the pixels. I was just throwing out an order of magnitude estimate.
I suppose you also believe you are only worth your weight in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen right?
They aren't integrating it into windows like with the xbox's OS though, and they're certainly not marketing it.
I'm assuming you're referring to speech recognition here? True they're not marketing it, but it's deeply integrated into the OS. In fact I can perform just about any function the mouse can, even web browse. It's not perfect, but I use it all the time when I'm away from the keyboard. You can even make macros. I have one I use to bring up weather and traffic information in the morning when I'm getting ready for work.
I guess "educational software" was the answer.
Not educational software, but for education. As in computer vision and robotics education/research. We just bought 15 kinect sensors for my lab to use for a course in computer vision next semester. We use the kinect all the time in our research. The only reason we didn't buy these new sensors is because we can't wait for the educational pricing to go live. I imagine most computer science departments around the world will want to have a fleet of kinects on hand for their curriculum as well.
Then there's the other 3rd party companies who ALSO beat them to market, and with cheaper products. Microsoft's innovation is staggering.
Where are the sub $140 RGBD sensors that beat Kinect to market?
So wait, its more expensive? And there's going to be less games that use it. (see: none) Few if any will buy it, so nobody will waste time developing AAA games that use it, so nobody will buy it, so nobody will develop for it...
This isn't just about games anymore. This isn't even just about desktop PCs. We're talking about the ability to build customized solutions using Kinect sensors for commercial sale and educational applications.
So without mainstream games, who is this supposed to appeal to?
Companies looking to commercialize and educational institutions, as evidenced by the commercial license and educational pricing.
So without mainstream games, who is this supposed to appeal to? The very hackers who already got it working, because they wanted it? Whoops.
People who don't want to go through the hassle of hacking it. It's relatively easy if you have the know how. But in many ways it's a pain in the ass. Nothing is easier than plugging it into windows and clicking "install" and having access to everything. Plus, the Windows SDK has access to much more advanced features you don't get with the hacked versions, including access to Windows speech recognition engine (which is very good) as well as bangarang skeletal tracking with a few lines of code. With the hacked API, you get sensor streams and that's it. You have to leverage several different architectures in order to get the functionality the Windows SDK provides. Microsoft is offering a better learning curve and that is worth something.
But if that is the case, why not just add that software capability to Windows?!
Windows 7 can already handle voice commands. Search for "Speech recognition" in the start menu.
The rest of your post is just blind nerd-rage.
Kinect would need a lot of work to get it small enough to fit inside of a phone.
That's the main problem facing perception systems today. Humans have these two simple exteroceptive eyeballs and yet we can do incredible things. That's thanks to the amazing computational power of our brain, which we hardly understand. Thus, when we try to replicate our cognitive abilities we end up with algorithms that are completely intractable. I think this is in a large part due to computer scientists tendency to approach things with an engineering perspective instead of a biological perspective.
The cheapest 2D LIDAR you're going to find is about $2000 (Hokuyo URG). It has pretty terrible range for a LIDAR, but it's still a good sensor. For 3D ranging you're going to spend at least a grand. The IFM O3D 2XX is the cheapest 3D Flash LIDAR I know of, and you're only getting 64x48 pixels of resolution, so essentially 1% of the pixels you're getting back from the Kinect for 10x the price. Given this, the Kinect is truely an amazing sensor.
Sure, but it's also hard to say that the company's success was due to Linux when 90% of users are on different platforms. Just making that number up but It's probably not far off. Anyone have actual numbers?
To show that Linux is a market worth tapping by game developers, you basically have to show that the revenues from sales to Linux users will be larger than the costs associated with marketing and developing the game for Linux. The case usually starts with Linux's miniscule consumer install base and gets worse from there ending with "If they really want the game they'll just boot into windows or play it on xbox, so why bother?"
These games are turning a huge profit
In large part due to people buying them and playing them on the Windows platform. So remind me again exactly where developers lose out by targeting only Windows?
He certainly has better qualifications than the average Slashdot armchair lawyer to be commenting on this topic.
I never said it's impossible to prove anything. I said that it's impossible for the scientific method to prove anything. You can of course prove things through contradiction, induction, exhaustion, construction, etc. That is not the scientific method. What you illustrated in your examples is not the scientific method.
Your examples are not science, and this is what non-scientists do not understand. Our goal is to discover the fundamental laws of nature. It is not just to observe and say "things happen" as you do with your examples, but to understand why and how. What you illustrate is the famous correlation != causation fallacy. Letting go of the rock correlated with it falling to the ground. Does that mean letting it go caused it to fall to the ground? No, in fact if the gravity of the earth increased enough, your strength would fail and the rock would fall to the ground with your hand still around it. Or assume I held a piece of ice to a candle and it burst into flames. Does that mean the ice caused the candle to light on fire, or maybe did someone with a laser shine it on the candle at that exact moment? The appearance of the substance in the child correlated with the introduction to the mother, but was it caused by it, or was it just chance? Do you see the dangers of simply observing and drawing conclusions from observations?
Your first two examples are very simple because of course every time we let go of the rock it falls to the ground and of course every time we bring a flame to the candle it combusts. But did you know that according to statistical mechanics there is a very very small probability that if you drop the rock to the ground it will rewind itself and leap into your hand? Or that according to quantum physics if you walk into a wall enough, all particles in your body will quantum tunnel through the wall at the exact same moment and you will pass straight through it? Of course it would take several ages of the universe to ever see such an effect with 1% probability, but this is what science and mathematics and the scientific method tells us. If we just stopped with what we observe we'd be missing out on most of the universe.
Maybe we'll figure out a way to workaround it. But I suspect the idea of 'curing cancer' will prove to be essentially impossible.
I don't buy it. Like I said some clams live 400 years. Some fish can live a couple hundred years, likewise with some tortoises and whales.Plants can live thousands of years. Why do these organisms have longer lives than us? Obviously there's a lot we can learn, but at least there's a proof of concept out there that shows just because something is old doesn't mean it has to die.