Mega Blocks doesn't have the reputation to maintain that Lego holds itself to. If a Mega Blocks block, has an issue no one really cares; they're the cheap blocks anyway. Lego is keeping itself a premium brand.
Lego "sold out" because their patents expired. Once their patents expired other companies (ie Mega Blocks) started making plastic bricks which where interchangeable with Lego blocks. Why should Lego compete on a product (generic brick) where their competitors are making the identical pieces for half the price. The expiration of patents are what brought us Star Wars Lego's and I for one love it, and find it a great reason to let IP expire.
Over a hundred people die from firearms every day in America.
True, but if we could prevent massacres - or make them substantially more difficult - we could reduce the number even more. I'd rather try to improve the situation than to throw my hands up in the air and say that nothing could be improved. The national discussion isn't about how to stop shootings, it's how to stop massacres.
Since Windows stopped bundling a lot of DVD software natively, they've been the go-to software of choice for close to a decade
I'm having trouble following you here. Windows first put DVD codecs into Windows Vista (released Jan 2007). Windows stopped putting codecs in Windows 8 (released Oct 2012). Given that it isn't 2022, I find it hard to follow that the reason VLC has been the go-to choice for close to a decade is because Windows stopped bundling DVD software for about two months.
"The "killer feature" for me on Gmail is conversation view, where it groups messages together in conversations, so instead of a ton of disparate emails, they're grouped together in a single line and can be seen in sequential order"
Oh. You mean like sorting by sender and then date? If you use quoting properly in your emails it works just as well, and is just as easy, and has the added benefits that your conversation threads are still at your disposal when you are offline for whatever reason.
Given that nearly every email thread I'm on at work has way more than two people contributing to it, sorting by sender and date doesn't come close to a good conversation view.
Wow... 10 minutes when I can't use my iPad. If this is your biggest problem in your life, celebrate like there's no tomorrow.
It's not the biggest problem of my life, but when I'm using one to calm down a 1 year old who doesn't understand why he has to sit still for so long, in cramped quarters; it certainly is the biggest problem of my day. And if you were sitting next to me, his meltdown would be more annoying to you than it would be to me.
The FAA doesn't allow much of anything to be used on aircraft until it has been thoroughly tested, and shown not to interfere with the operation of the aircraft.
Well, they allow them in the cockpit where if they were going to cause interference, that would be the most likely place for them to do so. Plus, they have been thoroughly tested, and they've been shown to be safe. If FM radios are the one thing that causes interference, let's ban FM radios.
Of course Apple and MS build up profiles to track users, but it's not as pervasive in their solutions. If Android wasn't providing that information to Google, Google would kill the project and find something more profitable to do. Apple and MS would just charge more for their software.
Android phones can do everything an iPhone or Windows Phone does, at a lower cost. So it is not cheap, it is a more valuable option for the customer. And the reason for that is because the underlying platform is more 'open'
Or it's because user tracking and ad targeting are what the 'open' platform is built on, which subsidizes the phone by making Advertisers the customers of Android and the device owners part of the product.
i'd be the last to defend ballmer, but that quarterly (4/12 to 6/12) "loss" was due to writing down the $6+ billion acquisition of aquantive.... which was stupidly bought (at a grossly overvalued price) while uncle bill was still in charge.
Ballmer said that the Aquantive decision was his decision.
Will someone one please clarify for me if we will always be able to buy computers without a securebootloader, or will I have to deal with this shit sometime down the road. Thanks!
Only if you buy computers that have been Windows 8 certified.
the important data on the laptop should be in sync with the servers.
I agree, that's the way it should be. But it's probably not that way in the majority of deployments. Even with good IT policies in place, enough IW's are going to try and do their own thing, resulting in the laptop having some additional valuable data.
No. I work in a big corp. If I die, my FDE password dies with me and the data is gone. Real data is held on servers and managed. A PC is just an access device.
I suspect that most corporations don't want their IP to die along with, or be held ransomed by, their employees.
i think their refusal to support old, but still very popular, versions of the windows OS will be there death knell as users of XP and vista will be forced to switch to Firefox or chrome to keep there favourite sites fully working. Similarly with DirectX 10/11
Do you think it's possible that supporting the older OS's would begin to weigh the browsers down?
So now what's recommended for people who want to run PC applications that aren't very demanding of CPU speed on a device that fits in a messenger bag? Or are there so few people in that situation that they're an edge case not worth serving?
Every time I saw a netbook it was when someone handed it to me, asking me to make it faster. I told them it was a netbook and that it wasn't built to be fast, and that there was little I could do. I then asked them why they got it and they said that they wanted a cheap laptop. So you have a generation of consumers who bought a netbook, realized that they didn't have patience for it, and now will make sure they will get a laptop that they don't need to be patient with.
For Win 7 (and maybe Vista) there's the Easy Connect feature in Remote Assistance. I'm pretty sure this is all that Remote Assistance in Messenger was doing anyway.
I do not understand why the same company which sued others over some lousy rounded corners refuses to pay royalties over others' patents?
It could be that they believe that the technology Motorola is providing adds a certain dollar value to the device, not multiplies the value of the device by its mere presence.
Wait, and wasn't Apple wanting something like $30/phone from Samsung for rounded corners, the bounce back patents, and a couple other small ones???
$1 is laughable when compared to the importance of the phone.
Yes, but a dollar figure sets a minimum bar for the cost of the device. If 100 companies when after Apple, all claiming 2.5% of the cost of the device, the device would have to cost at least 2.5 times what it costs. Percentages are an impossible and unfounded way to demand royalties from another group.
One of the big publicised features was that you could code for the Surface RT in.Net. So I bloody well hope it has the.Net framework on it.
Could you point me to a publication from Microsoft saying that the.Net runtime will exist in Windows RT?
Given that.Net programs wouldn't be Metro programs why would Microsoft include it for Windows RT? There's no way to get a program running on Windows RT without permission from Microsoft, and they sure don't want desktop apps running on Windows RT outside of Office.
You can still program with C# and VB.Net as languages, but those apps will run on top of WinRT, not the.Net runtime. It's possible to create Portable Assemblies which can be loaded inside the.Net runtime as well as WinRT (and Phone 8 and Xbox), but I doubt there are too many existing.Net programs which have used them.
I never understood that idea that giving a tax break to high salary people will stimulate the economy.
Usually the reasonning is that since they will have more money, they will consume more and that will help the economy. If you give a tax break to low income people for the same amount of tax dollars, they will use that money as well. They are not going to set it on fire, they will use it in a grocery store.
Am I understanding something wrong?
I don't know about understanding it wrong, but your confusing might come from the fact that what we call 'tax breaks for the rich' aren't per se for the rich, it's taxing different categories of income at different levels, and it just so happens that rich people tend to make up the vast majority of some of the categories. The tax breaks for the rich are in reality lower tax rates for income made from investments. If a poor person were to make the same investments, the income made from these investments would be taxed at the same lower rate. So it's not tax breaks for the rich, the argument is to create tax breaks for investors; but it just so happens that investors tend to be rich people. This is why you see articles about how President Obama (a rich person) has a noticeably higher tax rate than Mitt Romney (also a rich person). The difference is due to their sources of income.
The argument is to tax income made from investments at a lower rate, because that should encourage more investing. It doesn't matter how rich the investor is. The idea is that investment money spreads/generates more wealth than money spent other wise. I can kind of see the argument possibly being true if investment was limited to actually being spent on expanding existing facilities or hiring more personal, but since it also covers gambling on the stock market, the argument is BS.
But I am sure Motorola's counter of a percentage based on device cost is NOT fair.
Why is it not fair? If anything it's fairer than a fixed fee.
Let's say I'm making a product that requires licensing 100 patents. If each license costs me $1, that creates a floor for my device to be sold for at least $100. But if each license is %2.5 of the end product, it would be impossible to even create a selling price for my device since by definition it must cost at least 2.5 times what it costs.
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Mega Blocks doesn't have the reputation to maintain that Lego holds itself to. If a Mega Blocks block, has an issue no one really cares; they're the cheap blocks anyway. Lego is keeping itself a premium brand.
Lego "sold out" because their patents expired. Once their patents expired other companies (ie Mega Blocks) started making plastic bricks which where interchangeable with Lego blocks. Why should Lego compete on a product (generic brick) where their competitors are making the identical pieces for half the price. The expiration of patents are what brought us Star Wars Lego's and I for one love it, and find it a great reason to let IP expire.
Over a hundred people die from firearms every day in America.
True, but if we could prevent massacres - or make them substantially more difficult - we could reduce the number even more. I'd rather try to improve the situation than to throw my hands up in the air and say that nothing could be improved. The national discussion isn't about how to stop shootings, it's how to stop massacres.
Since Windows stopped bundling a lot of DVD software natively, they've been the go-to software of choice for close to a decade
I'm having trouble following you here. Windows first put DVD codecs into Windows Vista (released Jan 2007). Windows stopped putting codecs in Windows 8 (released Oct 2012). Given that it isn't 2022, I find it hard to follow that the reason VLC has been the go-to choice for close to a decade is because Windows stopped bundling DVD software for about two months.
Oh. You mean like sorting by sender and then date? If you use quoting properly in your emails it works just as well, and is just as easy, and has the added benefits that your conversation threads are still at your disposal when you are offline for whatever reason.
Given that nearly every email thread I'm on at work has way more than two people contributing to it, sorting by sender and date doesn't come close to a good conversation view.
that ban the sale or trade of patents. patents were designed to help individuals
One of they ways they were designed to help the individual was to allow the individual to sell the patent to someone who could do something with it.
Wow... 10 minutes when I can't use my iPad. If this is your biggest problem in your life, celebrate like there's no tomorrow.
It's not the biggest problem of my life, but when I'm using one to calm down a 1 year old who doesn't understand why he has to sit still for so long, in cramped quarters; it certainly is the biggest problem of my day. And if you were sitting next to me, his meltdown would be more annoying to you than it would be to me.
The FAA doesn't allow much of anything to be used on aircraft until it has been thoroughly tested, and shown not to interfere with the operation of the aircraft.
Well, they allow them in the cockpit where if they were going to cause interference, that would be the most likely place for them to do so. Plus, they have been thoroughly tested, and they've been shown to be safe. If FM radios are the one thing that causes interference, let's ban FM radios.
Because clearly Apple or MS would never do that.
Of course Apple and MS build up profiles to track users, but it's not as pervasive in their solutions. If Android wasn't providing that information to Google, Google would kill the project and find something more profitable to do. Apple and MS would just charge more for their software.
Android phones can do everything an iPhone or Windows Phone does, at a lower cost. So it is not cheap, it is a more valuable option for the customer. And the reason for that is because the underlying platform is more 'open'
Or it's because user tracking and ad targeting are what the 'open' platform is built on, which subsidizes the phone by making Advertisers the customers of Android and the device owners part of the product.
i'd be the last to defend ballmer, but that quarterly (4/12 to 6/12) "loss" was due to writing down the $6+ billion acquisition of aquantive.... which was stupidly bought (at a grossly overvalued price) while uncle bill was still in charge.
Ballmer said that the Aquantive decision was his decision.
Will someone one please clarify for me if we will always be able to buy computers without a securebootloader, or will I have to deal with this shit sometime down the road. Thanks!
Only if you buy computers that have been Windows 8 certified.
the important data on the laptop should be in sync with the servers.
I agree, that's the way it should be. But it's probably not that way in the majority of deployments. Even with good IT policies in place, enough IW's are going to try and do their own thing, resulting in the laptop having some additional valuable data.
No. I work in a big corp. If I die, my FDE password dies with me and the data is gone. Real data is held on servers and managed. A PC is just an access device.
I suspect that most corporations don't want their IP to die along with, or be held ransomed by, their employees.
i think their refusal to support old, but still very popular, versions of the windows OS will be there death knell as users of XP and vista will be forced to switch to Firefox or chrome to keep there favourite sites fully working. Similarly with DirectX 10/11
Do you think it's possible that supporting the older OS's would begin to weigh the browsers down?
Man, fire up start screen, start typing 'print'. Nothing found.
On my system when I type 'print' I get 2 Apps 17 Settings and 508 Files.
So now what's recommended for people who want to run PC applications that aren't very demanding of CPU speed on a device that fits in a messenger bag? Or are there so few people in that situation that they're an edge case not worth serving?
Every time I saw a netbook it was when someone handed it to me, asking me to make it faster. I told them it was a netbook and that it wasn't built to be fast, and that there was little I could do. I then asked them why they got it and they said that they wanted a cheap laptop. So you have a generation of consumers who bought a netbook, realized that they didn't have patience for it, and now will make sure they will get a laptop that they don't need to be patient with.
For Win 7 (and maybe Vista) there's the Easy Connect feature in Remote Assistance. I'm pretty sure this is all that Remote Assistance in Messenger was doing anyway.
I do not understand why the same company which sued others over some lousy rounded corners refuses to pay royalties over others' patents?
It could be that they believe that the technology Motorola is providing adds a certain dollar value to the device, not multiplies the value of the device by its mere presence.
Wait, and wasn't Apple wanting something like $30/phone from Samsung for rounded corners, the bounce back patents, and a couple other small ones???
$1 is laughable when compared to the importance of the phone.
Yes, but a dollar figure sets a minimum bar for the cost of the device. If 100 companies when after Apple, all claiming 2.5% of the cost of the device, the device would have to cost at least 2.5 times what it costs. Percentages are an impossible and unfounded way to demand royalties from another group.
Sure it does.
Then why doesn't Visual Studio 2012 list ARM as one of the target types?
One of the big publicised features was that you could code for the Surface RT in .Net. So I bloody well hope it has the .Net framework on it.
Could you point me to a publication from Microsoft saying that the .Net runtime will exist in Windows RT? .Net programs wouldn't be Metro programs why would Microsoft include it for Windows RT? There's no way to get a program running on Windows RT without permission from Microsoft, and they sure don't want desktop apps running on Windows RT outside of Office. .Net runtime. It's possible to create Portable Assemblies which can be loaded inside the .Net runtime as well as WinRT (and Phone 8 and Xbox), but I doubt there are too many existing .Net programs which have used them.
Given that
You can still program with C# and VB.Net as languages, but those apps will run on top of WinRT, not the
is like 4GB alone. They need to get rid of the bloat if they are serious about mobile/tablet.
.Net doesn't exist on the Surface RT.
I never understood that idea that giving a tax break to high salary people will stimulate the economy.
Usually the reasonning is that since they will have more money, they will consume more and that will help the economy. If you give a tax break to low income people for the same amount of tax dollars, they will use that money as well. They are not going to set it on fire, they will use it in a grocery store.
Am I understanding something wrong?
I don't know about understanding it wrong, but your confusing might come from the fact that what we call 'tax breaks for the rich' aren't per se for the rich, it's taxing different categories of income at different levels, and it just so happens that rich people tend to make up the vast majority of some of the categories. The tax breaks for the rich are in reality lower tax rates for income made from investments. If a poor person were to make the same investments, the income made from these investments would be taxed at the same lower rate. So it's not tax breaks for the rich, the argument is to create tax breaks for investors; but it just so happens that investors tend to be rich people. This is why you see articles about how President Obama (a rich person) has a noticeably higher tax rate than Mitt Romney (also a rich person). The difference is due to their sources of income.
The argument is to tax income made from investments at a lower rate, because that should encourage more investing. It doesn't matter how rich the investor is. The idea is that investment money spreads/generates more wealth than money spent other wise. I can kind of see the argument possibly being true if investment was limited to actually being spent on expanding existing facilities or hiring more personal, but since it also covers gambling on the stock market, the argument is BS.
But I am sure Motorola's counter of a percentage based on device cost is NOT fair.
Why is it not fair? If anything it's fairer than a fixed fee.
Let's say I'm making a product that requires licensing 100 patents. If each license costs me $1, that creates a floor for my device to be sold for at least $100. But if each license is %2.5 of the end product, it would be impossible to even create a selling price for my device since by definition it must cost at least 2.5 times what it costs.