Thanks. I wasn't in disagreement with your points actually, I was just wondering what is your personal reason for being so strongly against this event. I understand now that it's because you've seen the ugly side of such deals from up close.
That said, in my opinion this is still a good option for someone young and energetic who doesn't have business skills but has an idea he wants to make happen regardless of the money. E.g. someone like Steve Wozniak. They probably wouldn't know how to find angel investors or run a business, and if they are not lucky to team up with a Steve Jobs, this could be their only chance to do what they like. They may end up short money-wise but the experience could be priceless, and they may be able to use in their next startup.
For someone closer to a finished product, I think your points are definitely something to keep in mind.
You raise some good points... except for the fact that anywhere in this discussion someone said something in favor of the event, you pounced on them. (Yes I read all the posts, incl. Score: 0). I wonder why, and what your motivation is. Care to give some context?
I'll take this a step further: I want Google+ to fail. If a big corporation that doesn't understand a domain just throws money at it and makes a product that a lot of people *like* (and I think you have to like a social networking site in order to use it), that would feel defeating.
I really like google search though, along with google maps and google news and a couple of others. I wish they would stick to what they know how to do.
People *love* their iPhones, literally. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/opinion/you-love-your-iphone-literally.html) Jobs may have pissed off a few people like you but his artistic obsession and management and business style delivered joy to tens of millions. That's where his greatness comes from, and that is something that's hard to find.
And for charity -- Jobs helped create enormous value, and if you assume that the people in that large chain who received some of that value are average contributors, you'd probably get that quite a sum that went to charity because of what Jobs has done.
Btw I'm not an Apple fan -- I *love* Windows, literally, and don't care for Macs or OSX at all, but I do own iPhone (3G) and iPad (1).
He's saying that patents will be harder to file for smaller corporations, and that a large corporation is more likely to be immune from patent infringement if they internally developed something but did not disclose it before the small corporation filed, and so on.
As far as I am concerned, the fewer patent "traffic" there is and the smaller chance of successful patent lawsuits, the better -- but not for him, since he gets paid more when there is more such traffic.
If anything, I tend to think that a really bad situation got just a little better. And it's still quite bad.
"Now, scientists believe they understand how this might work. There are two theories: the first is that an infection serious enough to provoke a fever response can push the body's immune system into a high-powered, hypersensitive state.
This helps the patient's immune system detect the fact that cancer cells are subtly different from normal healthy cells. It then attacks the tumour cells as though they are infectious invaders.
In everyday life, our immune systems may wipe out many cancer cells unobtrusively, so we never know we were at risk. But, too often, such tumour cells can be sufficiently similar to normal ones that they sneak under the radar of a normally-running immune system and develop into serious cancers.
The other theory is that the high temperature itself attacks and destroys the cancer. "
Microsoft is really good at adding new features and functionality while keeping everything compatible with your existing apps and (more importantly) your data. That *is* where they innovate, and I'd say they are better at it than anyone else. Their position is unique for them -- huge existing platform and user base, radical new technologies coming -- and they have to solve it in a unique way.
They have done it before. Will they pull it off this time? Maybe. Leadership is different, culture is similar, competition is stronger, market share larger. I think chances are they will.
I remember reading about a decades old cancer treatment technique that included fevers with very high temperatures. The physicians of the time claimed it was the body heat that killed the tumors.
Don't know how valid that is, but I know that a doctor told me once when I have fever not to take an aspirin just to lower the body temperature (unless it's dangerously high) because fever creates conditions for the body to fight the germs.
You need to ask how much extra the world of charity received as a consequence of what Jobs did. Apple employees, stockholders, middlemen who made a profit -- some of them must have given money to charity, and I can guess that combined amount is quite high. Jobs created conditions where value is created and some of it inevitably passed on to less fortunate. That is far more than you or I have done.
He does have that privilege as long as he conveys the information correctly, which he did. By saying that the scholar in question defined something as 'bull****', he both makes his readers aware that the person literally said "bullshit," and spares them the offensive emotional connotation of a curse word spelled out letter for letter.
Bottom line -- information properly transmitted, emotional impact of it dialed back to the taste of the submitter, and you think your emotional scale is better than his.
This is a prime example of what you're talking about:
Overweight Man Receives 'Lose Weight Fast' Spam E-Mail Featuring His Picture
HOUSTON—Jim Funderburke, a 240-pound accountant, was surprised to find a photo of himself in a spam e-mail for a weight-loss product Monday. "That's the last time I post vacation pictures on my web site," said Funderburke, 38, gazing at an unflattering image of himself in a bathing suit. "I'd like to be able to check my messages without seeing myself used as the online embodiment of obesity and overindulgence." Funderburke also expressed a wish to water his lawn without neighborhood teenagers calling him "Before Dude."
that's a separate question from whether S&P's downgrade was incorrect and/or political. Someone mentioned here that this same S&P held its AAA rating for AIG as late as 2008 -- and it's hard to believe that the AIG was a better place to lend money to than the US is now.
So whether you think the system is working or broken, either this downgrade is wrong or other ratings that S&P gives are wrong, either way is makes it less relevant and more political. This will be confirmed if the market shrugs this one off.
War on drugs is different. America is puritan and most politicians are afraid to take a stance that the electorate could see as not being morally pure. But with patents, majority of people either wouldn't care or would favor the little guy. So if a compelling case is made and an anti-software-patent lobby starts pushing (led by Google maybe?), things may change.
single corp, a mega powerful and scary one, at that
Add "scared" and "angry" to it.
I hope Google will get over this social thing and focus back on providing good data mining and organizing tools. There is such thing as "core competency" and for Google social it ain't.
The mental process of you wanting to read a piece of news and so extend your awareness of the world is completely incompatible with the mental process of you trying to be done with a task in order to get abstract points. Seems to me that someone at Google who understands neither is trying to push social into news b/c their bonus depends on it.
Congress Abandons WikiConstitution September 28, 2005 | ISSUE 4139
WASHINGTON, DC -- Congress scrapped the open-source, open-edit, online version of the Constitution Monday, only two months after it went live. "The idea seemed to dovetail perfectly with our tradition of democratic participation," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said. "But when so-called 'contributors' began loading it down with profanity, pornography, ASCII art, and mandatory-assault-rifle-ownership amendments, we thought it might be best to cancel the project." Congress intends to restore the Constitution to its pre-Wiki format as soon as an unadulterated copy of the document can be found.
Apple licensed it, for their own reasons, and that's fine (as fine as scumbag patent trolling is concerned), but this does not give an answer why individual developers should pay for it since they can only charge in-app in the way Apple mandates it (AFAIK). "But your honor it is only fair that we bilk these unwitting people out of their money" sounds like a weak defense, and it seems to me their choice of words reveals this weakness.
The uncommon lowliness of this troll is that they don't go after big companies but after individuals, that's why this one must not go through.
Their answer to the first and most important question, "why targeting little guys and not Apple?" is "it is only fair to get paid by the party that is accountable for the entire solution." When you are trying to forcibly take money from small fry who have no knowledge of your so called patent and you have to use the words "it is only fair," you know you don't have a case.
And then they proceed with that ridiculous hotel analogy: "hotel owner is responsible for the service, not the owner of the land that the hotel is leasing, or the manufacturer of hammers used to build the hotel." The analogy is flawed because the manner of the service is instituted by the Apple.
Yeah on second watching I realized it's true, they even say something to that extent. Knew it was too good to be true.:-( Still it's probably satisfying for the person doing it.
I would imagine that the lag between thought/intention and detection by the EEG device and would be too high but he plays some really complex and dynamic tunes.
PS. Technically even when you use your fingers, you're at the bottom of it still playing with your mind.:-)
More likely Apple was planning to get into that market from the beginning, and these guys came along and asked "you won't get into that market, will ya? cause we have this neat idea." Apple wouldn't have risked having their plans being revealed early just to save this guy from doom.
I think the moral of the story is anytime a small company goes for a mass market and not a niche market, they have a high risk of being eaten by a big company. (And a small chance of striking it big, so his experience is unlikely to deter anyone.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks. I wasn't in disagreement with your points actually, I was just wondering what is your personal reason for being so strongly against this event. I understand now that it's because you've seen the ugly side of such deals from up close.
That said, in my opinion this is still a good option for someone young and energetic who doesn't have business skills but has an idea he wants to make happen regardless of the money. E.g. someone like Steve Wozniak. They probably wouldn't know how to find angel investors or run a business, and if they are not lucky to team up with a Steve Jobs, this could be their only chance to do what they like. They may end up short money-wise but the experience could be priceless, and they may be able to use in their next startup.
For someone closer to a finished product, I think your points are definitely something to keep in mind.
You raise some good points... except for the fact that anywhere in this discussion someone said something in favor of the event, you pounced on them. (Yes I read all the posts, incl. Score: 0). I wonder why, and what your motivation is. Care to give some context?
I'll take this a step further: I want Google+ to fail. If a big corporation that doesn't understand a domain just throws money at it and makes a product that a lot of people *like* (and I think you have to like a social networking site in order to use it), that would feel defeating.
I really like google search though, along with google maps and google news and a couple of others. I wish they would stick to what they know how to do.
People *love* their iPhones, literally. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/opinion/you-love-your-iphone-literally.html) Jobs may have pissed off a few people like you but his artistic obsession and management and business style delivered joy to tens of millions. That's where his greatness comes from, and that is something that's hard to find.
And for charity -- Jobs helped create enormous value, and if you assume that the people in that large chain who received some of that value are average contributors, you'd probably get that quite a sum that went to charity because of what Jobs has done.
Btw I'm not an Apple fan -- I *love* Windows, literally, and don't care for Macs or OSX at all, but I do own iPhone (3G) and iPad (1).
He's saying that patents will be harder to file for smaller corporations, and that a large corporation is more likely to be immune from patent infringement if they internally developed something but did not disclose it before the small corporation filed, and so on.
As far as I am concerned, the fewer patent "traffic" there is and the smaller chance of successful patent lawsuits, the better -- but not for him, since he gets paid more when there is more such traffic.
If anything, I tend to think that a really bad situation got just a little better. And it's still quite bad.
Thanks for the explanation, it really makes sense. As for fever and cancer, just found this article from Sep 2010:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1313773/Can-fever-cure-cancer-Jordan-baffled-doctors-leukaemia-vanished-new-evidence-suggests-remarkable-explanation-.html
"Now, scientists believe they understand how this might work. There are two theories: the first is that an infection serious enough to provoke a fever response can push the body's immune system into a high-powered, hypersensitive state.
This helps the patient's immune system detect the fact that cancer cells are subtly different from normal healthy cells. It then attacks the tumour cells as though they are infectious invaders.
In everyday life, our immune systems may wipe out many cancer cells unobtrusively, so we never know we were at risk. But, too often, such tumour cells can be sufficiently similar to normal ones that they sneak under the radar of a normally-running immune system and develop into serious cancers.
The other theory is that the high temperature itself attacks and destroys the cancer. "
Microsoft is really good at adding new features and functionality while keeping everything compatible with your existing apps and (more importantly) your data. That *is* where they innovate, and I'd say they are better at it than anyone else. Their position is unique for them -- huge existing platform and user base, radical new technologies coming -- and they have to solve it in a unique way.
They have done it before. Will they pull it off this time? Maybe. Leadership is different, culture is similar, competition is stronger, market share larger. I think chances are they will.
I remember reading about a decades old cancer treatment technique that included fevers with very high temperatures. The physicians of the time claimed it was the body heat that killed the tumors.
Don't know how valid that is, but I know that a doctor told me once when I have fever not to take an aspirin just to lower the body temperature (unless it's dangerously high) because fever creates conditions for the body to fight the germs.
You need to ask how much extra the world of charity received as a consequence of what Jobs did. Apple employees, stockholders, middlemen who made a profit -- some of them must have given money to charity, and I can guess that combined amount is quite high. Jobs created conditions where value is created and some of it inevitably passed on to less fortunate. That is far more than you or I have done.
He does have that privilege as long as he conveys the information correctly, which he did. By saying that the scholar in question defined something as 'bull****', he both makes his readers aware that the person literally said "bullshit," and spares them the offensive emotional connotation of a curse word spelled out letter for letter.
Bottom line -- information properly transmitted, emotional impact of it dialed back to the taste of the submitter, and you think your emotional scale is better than his.
This is a prime example of what you're talking about:
Overweight Man Receives 'Lose Weight Fast' Spam E-Mail Featuring His Picture
HOUSTON—Jim Funderburke, a 240-pound accountant, was surprised to find a photo of himself in a spam e-mail for a weight-loss product Monday. "That's the last time I post vacation pictures on my web site," said Funderburke, 38, gazing at an unflattering image of himself in a bathing suit. "I'd like to be able to check my messages without seeing myself used as the online embodiment of obesity and overindulgence." Funderburke also expressed a wish to water his lawn without neighborhood teenagers calling him "Before Dude."
source:theonion
But likewise the submitter thought that 'bullshit' and 'bull***' have different emotional textures and connotations, and preferred the second.
that's a separate question from whether S&P's downgrade was incorrect and/or political. Someone mentioned here that this same S&P held its AAA rating for AIG as late as 2008 -- and it's hard to believe that the AIG was a better place to lend money to than the US is now.
So whether you think the system is working or broken, either this downgrade is wrong or other ratings that S&P gives are wrong, either way is makes it less relevant and more political. This will be confirmed if the market shrugs this one off.
War on drugs is different. America is puritan and most politicians are afraid to take a stance that the electorate could see as not being morally pure. But with patents, majority of people either wouldn't care or would favor the little guy. So if a compelling case is made and an anti-software-patent lobby starts pushing (led by Google maybe?), things may change.
single corp, a mega powerful and scary one, at that
Add "scared" and "angry" to it.
I hope Google will get over this social thing and focus back on providing good data mining and organizing tools. There is such thing as "core competency" and for Google social it ain't.
The mental process of you wanting to read a piece of news and so extend your awareness of the world is completely incompatible with the mental process of you trying to be done with a task in order to get abstract points. Seems to me that someone at Google who understands neither is trying to push social into news b/c their bonus depends on it.
I had never even heard of Ray Ozzie before reading his parting letter a while ago, and I my impression of the guy was exactly the same.
Congress Abandons WikiConstitution
September 28, 2005 | ISSUE 4139
WASHINGTON, DC -- Congress scrapped the open-source, open-edit, online version of the Constitution Monday, only two months after it went live. "The idea seemed to dovetail perfectly with our tradition of democratic participation," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said. "But when so-called 'contributors' began loading it down with profanity, pornography, ASCII art, and mandatory-assault-rifle-ownership amendments, we thought it might be best to cancel the project." Congress intends to restore the Constitution to its pre-Wiki format as soon as an unadulterated copy of the document can be found.
Source: TheOnion
Apple licensed it, for their own reasons, and that's fine (as fine as scumbag patent trolling is concerned), but this does not give an answer why individual developers should pay for it since they can only charge in-app in the way Apple mandates it (AFAIK). "But your honor it is only fair that we bilk these unwitting people out of their money" sounds like a weak defense, and it seems to me their choice of words reveals this weakness.
The uncommon lowliness of this troll is that they don't go after big companies but after individuals, that's why this one must not go through.
Their answer to the first and most important question, "why targeting little guys and not Apple?" is "it is only fair to get paid by the party that is accountable for the entire solution." When you are trying to forcibly take money from small fry who have no knowledge of your so called patent and you have to use the words "it is only fair," you know you don't have a case.
And then they proceed with that ridiculous hotel analogy: "hotel owner is responsible for the service, not the owner of the land that the hotel is leasing, or the manufacturer of hammers used to build the hotel." The analogy is flawed because the manner of the service is instituted by the Apple.
Yeah on second watching I realized it's true, they even say something to that extent. Knew it was too good to be true. :-( Still it's probably satisfying for the person doing it.
Guy plays piano with his mind: http://www.gizmag.com/music-with-the-mind-brain-computer-music-interface/18489/
I would imagine that the lag between thought/intention and detection by the EEG device and would be too high but he plays some really complex and dynamic tunes.
PS. Technically even when you use your fingers, you're at the bottom of it still playing with your mind. :-)
... than an FDA member leaving to work for Monsanto.
More likely Apple was planning to get into that market from the beginning, and these guys came along and asked "you won't get into that market, will ya? cause we have this neat idea." Apple wouldn't have risked having their plans being revealed early just to save this guy from doom.
I think the moral of the story is anytime a small company goes for a mass market and not a niche market, they have a high risk of being eaten by a big company. (And a small chance of striking it big, so his experience is unlikely to deter anyone. :-)
Didn't see in the preview what disappeared -- what I meant was what counts is (number of people moved) x (average moving depth).