To be fair your lightbulb example would be considered too obvious for patent protection AIUI.
In this case they did a little more work, in that they selected a barcode system and created an automated scanning and notification process. So while it's obvious that it could be done by computer in an automated fashion, the exact details of how to do that may be worthy of a patent.
The thing is such patents are usually very easy to work around, because they tend to be quite specific to that process. Trivial changes like using a different encoding scheme with some dubious claim that it's "better" is often enough. I get the impression that people are more willing to test patents in court in the US though, where as in Europe their legal council would advise that they were likely to lose.
That actually illustrates the problem - they don't support 5k/60Hz over DisplayPort. You have to use Thunderbolt which means you can only buy a Thunderbolt based 5k monitor, and the only option is that LG one.
DisplayPort 1.3, released in 2014, supports 5k/60Hz.
I wonder if the touchpad could double as a pen input pad. A lot of artists would love that I think. Then again I'm sure Apple would rather sell them an iPad Pro for that kind of use, but then they don't get the functionality of OSX and a proper keyboard.
When the did a 5k monitor with LG there was a decent reason for using Thunderbolt, in that DisplayPort wasn't quite there yet. Now it is, even for 6k... But it looks like they are going for Thunderbolt again.
Shame because that could be a good PC monitor, but if it's like the LG one it will lack any controls or decent software to drive it. Forget about calibration outside of OSX.
6k at 32" is ideal. Basically you want to keep the DPI to 2x the base 2k/24" to make scaling perfect.
I bought a first generation Retina MBP for $2900. To get a replacement MBP today with the same clock speed, RAM, and storage, I'd pay about $2800. Six and a half years later.
Yeah but it has a touch bar instead of F keys, and the lowest travel/tactility keyboard on the market! And USB-C! Progress!
There is also a surprising lack of decent file managers for Linux. Certainly nothing on the level of Directory Opus.
It's very strange. You would think that Linux would be the best at all the nerdy stuff like advanced file management and software development, but actually it lags quite a bit in those areas. Games I don't really care about, but productivity tools...
In the EU you can request that Equifax delete the data they have about you, and not collect any more. You have a legal right to do that.
The problem is that it buggers up your credit file. There are other credit rating agencies, but it depends if the bank you apply to for a loan happens to use them, or considers the lack of an Equifax file to be suspicious.
People seem to have forgotten how expensive computing resources were before the cloud. They seem to have forgotten when sites were Slashdotted regularly, when a site from the other side of the world took 30 seconds to load, when free email accounts were limited to 20 MB, and when off-site backup was prohibitively pricey.
The cloud has been of great benefit to us, we just need to fix it so that it works better for us.
You could be right. It's certainly their go-to accusation. Drag everyone into the conspiracy as a quick an easy way if discrediting them without having to actually engage with the argument.
They're interested in the manufacturing process - how things are made, integrated, and put together. That's the part that China needs to learn.
That's the part that China taught Apple.
Apple doesn't do most of the manufacturing development for its products, Foxconn does. Foxconn has the expertise in that area, and they will sell it to anyone who pays.
In the case of the Apple Watch heart rate sensor there isn't really much to tell. The sensor at that time is just a basic capacitative pick-up stack and an off-the-shelf amplifier from Analogue Devices, as the teardown clearly shows. Any cleverness is in the software, and back the it wasn't even that clever - extremely average battery life, average sensitivity and accuracy.
It might make some sense if it was the newer optical type of sensor, but even then it's not an Apple specific part and they could just buy one from the same place Apple gets them.
This claim needs some concrete evidence to back it up.
Thanks. I have some unpopular opinions, but they are genuine and I always try to express them as clearly as I can. There is no hidden motive, as some seem to suspect.
Problem is that a lot of the really good games don't sell. History is littered with classics that didn't do particularly well when released, where as FIFA 2020 is a guaranteed money-maker.
Part of the problem is that people expect AAA games to have very high production values, which means very high development costs. The days of a 10 person team producing a top selling game are long gone now. Top of the GoG indie charts maybe, but the AAA studios are multi-billion Euro industries. GTA 5 from way back in 2013 passed the billion dollar sales watermark.
It doesn't pass the sniff test. Why bother going to all this effort to get details of the heart rate sensor when they could just buy an Apple watch, rip it open and take a look for themselves? Or just wait for iFixIt to do a teardown for them a day after it's released.
Morality is a pretty broad, deep topic. I don't really anchor mine to anything, as I'm a humanist. A lot of moral questions are existential in nature.
I'm not sure what you example of sexual morality is supposed to demonstrate... The key, IMHO, is always consent. Male gaze is something entirely different though, it's about film-making and to some extent literature and art in general.
Nintendo just announced Super Mario Maker 2. I have the first game (it's actually the only game I have for my Wii U!) and it's great fun. Classic 2D platforming action, thousands of great levels and the ability to make your own.
I'm very happy that it sold well enough and developed enough of a community to warrant a sequel. It came at just the right time, when Mario ROM hacks were getting popular.
We have seen a bit of an explosion of retro style games in the last few years. There are a lot of hidden gems from the 80s and 90s that people don't know about too, especially Japanese games that never made it to the west. Loads of great platformers and shooters.
GDPR allows for 4% of global turnover. Not profit made in the EU, but 4% of every penny made by Facebook world wide before tax and before costs.
For many companies that's more than adequate because their profit margins are barely 4% overall. But for tech companies like Facebook... Well, it would be about 10% of their profits, painful but not crippling.
The limit should be raised at least to 4% of global turnover or 100% of global profit, which ever is higher.
Problem is it would have forced a lot of the existing residents out of the area. It's immoral to get tax money in exchange for allowing your constituents to be displaced.
The issue seems to have been the people who already live there getting priced out of their homes. Rents and property prices shoot up, that sort of thing.
Amazon could have addressed those concerns. They didn't, and AOC was elected to represent her constituents who were protesting what the correctly identified as a plan to force them out via gentrification.
Any sanely run corporation must pass on all costs to the customers or eventually go out of business.
Only if they want to be absolutely certain of going bust. Can't just raise prices every time costs increase, there is only so much the market will stand. If they don't cut costs or cut profits eventually no-one will buy their products, and they will be out of business.
It's interesting how AOC's opponents are taking every opportunity to work her into topics so they have have a bash. I get the impression they are really worried about her, worried about another Obama style opponent who is popular without being a populist.
Or maybe it's just SOP to build up decades of shit-slinging now, in case she ever tries to get one of the higher offices. Worked so well with Clinton, it's going to be used on everyone now.
In other words your dislike of federally mandated minimum income tax levels, and federal taxes in general, allows rich people to pit state against state and force a race to the bottom.
Taxes shouldn't really operate like a free market.
I did a bit of paid development on some open source projects I made once, long ago. Decided to stop accepting any money though, because the amount people are willing to pay is never enough to let me quit my job or make it worth doing in my free time. Once you accept their money there is an obligation.
Pharma companies make less profit in Europe, including the American ones selling drugs here. For example, in the UK most people use the tax-funded NHS, and relatively few have private healthcare that will pay for expensive treatments. So if they want to sell a drug to the UK market, they have to negotiate with the NHS and they don't pay commercial rates.
It's still profitable so they still do it. Might as well make some money rather than nothing. It's far from perfect but we don't see the same price inflation that is seen in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair your lightbulb example would be considered too obvious for patent protection AIUI.
In this case they did a little more work, in that they selected a barcode system and created an automated scanning and notification process. So while it's obvious that it could be done by computer in an automated fashion, the exact details of how to do that may be worthy of a patent.
The thing is such patents are usually very easy to work around, because they tend to be quite specific to that process. Trivial changes like using a different encoding scheme with some dubious claim that it's "better" is often enough. I get the impression that people are more willing to test patents in court in the US though, where as in Europe their legal council would advise that they were likely to lose.
That actually illustrates the problem - they don't support 5k/60Hz over DisplayPort. You have to use Thunderbolt which means you can only buy a Thunderbolt based 5k monitor, and the only option is that LG one.
DisplayPort 1.3, released in 2014, supports 5k/60Hz.
New law: Any consumable part must be user replaceable, e.g. batteries.
I wonder if the touchpad could double as a pen input pad. A lot of artists would love that I think. Then again I'm sure Apple would rather sell them an iPad Pro for that kind of use, but then they don't get the functionality of OSX and a proper keyboard.
When the did a 5k monitor with LG there was a decent reason for using Thunderbolt, in that DisplayPort wasn't quite there yet. Now it is, even for 6k... But it looks like they are going for Thunderbolt again.
Shame because that could be a good PC monitor, but if it's like the LG one it will lack any controls or decent software to drive it. Forget about calibration outside of OSX.
6k at 32" is ideal. Basically you want to keep the DPI to 2x the base 2k/24" to make scaling perfect.
4k @ 24"
5k @ 27"
6k @ 32"
I bought a first generation Retina MBP for $2900. To get a replacement MBP today with the same clock speed, RAM, and storage, I'd pay about $2800. Six and a half years later.
Yeah but it has a touch bar instead of F keys, and the lowest travel/tactility keyboard on the market! And USB-C! Progress!
There is also a surprising lack of decent file managers for Linux. Certainly nothing on the level of Directory Opus.
It's very strange. You would think that Linux would be the best at all the nerdy stuff like advanced file management and software development, but actually it lags quite a bit in those areas. Games I don't really care about, but productivity tools...
In the EU you can request that Equifax delete the data they have about you, and not collect any more. You have a legal right to do that.
The problem is that it buggers up your credit file. There are other credit rating agencies, but it depends if the bank you apply to for a loan happens to use them, or considers the lack of an Equifax file to be suspicious.
Is that a desirable outcome?
People seem to have forgotten how expensive computing resources were before the cloud. They seem to have forgotten when sites were Slashdotted regularly, when a site from the other side of the world took 30 seconds to load, when free email accounts were limited to 20 MB, and when off-site backup was prohibitively pricey.
The cloud has been of great benefit to us, we just need to fix it so that it works better for us.
You could be right. It's certainly their go-to accusation. Drag everyone into the conspiracy as a quick an easy way if discrediting them without having to actually engage with the argument.
They're interested in the manufacturing process - how things are made, integrated, and put together. That's the part that China needs to learn.
That's the part that China taught Apple.
Apple doesn't do most of the manufacturing development for its products, Foxconn does. Foxconn has the expertise in that area, and they will sell it to anyone who pays.
In the case of the Apple Watch heart rate sensor there isn't really much to tell. The sensor at that time is just a basic capacitative pick-up stack and an off-the-shelf amplifier from Analogue Devices, as the teardown clearly shows. Any cleverness is in the software, and back the it wasn't even that clever - extremely average battery life, average sensitivity and accuracy.
It might make some sense if it was the newer optical type of sensor, but even then it's not an Apple specific part and they could just buy one from the same place Apple gets them.
This claim needs some concrete evidence to back it up.
Thanks. I have some unpopular opinions, but they are genuine and I always try to express them as clearly as I can. There is no hidden motive, as some seem to suspect.
Problem is that a lot of the really good games don't sell. History is littered with classics that didn't do particularly well when released, where as FIFA 2020 is a guaranteed money-maker.
Part of the problem is that people expect AAA games to have very high production values, which means very high development costs. The days of a 10 person team producing a top selling game are long gone now. Top of the GoG indie charts maybe, but the AAA studios are multi-billion Euro industries. GTA 5 from way back in 2013 passed the billion dollar sales watermark.
It doesn't pass the sniff test. Why bother going to all this effort to get details of the heart rate sensor when they could just buy an Apple watch, rip it open and take a look for themselves? Or just wait for iFixIt to do a teardown for them a day after it's released.
What is this invisible skyhook you refer to?
Morality is a pretty broad, deep topic. I don't really anchor mine to anything, as I'm a humanist. A lot of moral questions are existential in nature.
I'm not sure what you example of sexual morality is supposed to demonstrate... The key, IMHO, is always consent. Male gaze is something entirely different though, it's about film-making and to some extent literature and art in general.
Nintendo just announced Super Mario Maker 2. I have the first game (it's actually the only game I have for my Wii U!) and it's great fun. Classic 2D platforming action, thousands of great levels and the ability to make your own.
I'm very happy that it sold well enough and developed enough of a community to warrant a sequel. It came at just the right time, when Mario ROM hacks were getting popular.
We have seen a bit of an explosion of retro style games in the last few years. There are a lot of hidden gems from the 80s and 90s that people don't know about too, especially Japanese games that never made it to the west. Loads of great platformers and shooters.
GDPR allows for 4% of global turnover. Not profit made in the EU, but 4% of every penny made by Facebook world wide before tax and before costs.
For many companies that's more than adequate because their profit margins are barely 4% overall. But for tech companies like Facebook... Well, it would be about 10% of their profits, painful but not crippling.
The limit should be raised at least to 4% of global turnover or 100% of global profit, which ever is higher.
Problem is it would have forced a lot of the existing residents out of the area. It's immoral to get tax money in exchange for allowing your constituents to be displaced.
The issue seems to have been the people who already live there getting priced out of their homes. Rents and property prices shoot up, that sort of thing.
Amazon could have addressed those concerns. They didn't, and AOC was elected to represent her constituents who were protesting what the correctly identified as a plan to force them out via gentrification.
Any sanely run corporation must pass on all costs to the customers or eventually go out of business.
Only if they want to be absolutely certain of going bust. Can't just raise prices every time costs increase, there is only so much the market will stand. If they don't cut costs or cut profits eventually no-one will buy their products, and they will be out of business.
It's interesting how AOC's opponents are taking every opportunity to work her into topics so they have have a bash. I get the impression they are really worried about her, worried about another Obama style opponent who is popular without being a populist.
Or maybe it's just SOP to build up decades of shit-slinging now, in case she ever tries to get one of the higher offices. Worked so well with Clinton, it's going to be used on everyone now.
In other words your dislike of federally mandated minimum income tax levels, and federal taxes in general, allows rich people to pit state against state and force a race to the bottom.
Taxes shouldn't really operate like a free market.
I did a bit of paid development on some open source projects I made once, long ago. Decided to stop accepting any money though, because the amount people are willing to pay is never enough to let me quit my job or make it worth doing in my free time. Once you accept their money there is an obligation.
Pharma companies make less profit in Europe, including the American ones selling drugs here. For example, in the UK most people use the tax-funded NHS, and relatively few have private healthcare that will pay for expensive treatments. So if they want to sell a drug to the UK market, they have to negotiate with the NHS and they don't pay commercial rates.
It's still profitable so they still do it. Might as well make some money rather than nothing. It's far from perfect but we don't see the same price inflation that is seen in the US.