That was a rather funny response, but seriously if someone offered you an ounce of gold for $20 bill, I'm fairly certain you would take it. My point was that people who advocate the purchase of gold know that in the long term the price of gold in terms of dollars or other fiat currencies has never gone down. Gold is a good means of preserving wealth, but not for deriving income from such wealth.
Gold and silver have value in and of themselves, but the papers with president's pictures on them the Federal Reserve prints, are just that, paper with no intrinsic value. A given weight of gold will buy more of most things today than it did in 1913, the year when they created the income tax. In those days an ounce of gold could be had for a $20 bill.
A piece of paper from the Federal Reserve called a $20 bill bought more groceries in 1913 than even the strongest man could possibly carry. Today even a first grader can easily carry a bag filled with $20 worth of groceries. Today an ounce of gold will buy considerably more groceries than it did in 1913. So which would you rather have today, a $20 bill or the amount of gold that such a bill would have bought in 1913?
In the end it is always the buyer that decides what a product is worth, not the seller. Apparently there are millions of buyers who think that Apple products are worth the premium price. I am sure that this is a problem that Apple's competitors wish they had. If you would check with eBay, you would find that used Apple computers sell for a far higher price than high-end competing products that originally cost the same as Apple products. Apple does provide updates for their products while makers of Android devices not so much. That's what this whole thread is about.
From everything I have read and heard, there must be a lot of Joe and Jane Averages that appreciate Apple's way of doing business and are willing to shovel mountains of money in their direction.
I never said I was against regulation, but we don't need any new laws. What's the difference between a cell phone company and a landline company? One uses wires and one doesn't, but other than that? Use the same rules that apply to wired phones.
You don't have to research anything, just buy your phone from a reputable company, like Apple or Samsung. The only regulation needed is already in place for landline phones. The phone company has to accept anybody's phone, provided it will work properly with their wired network. Why should this be different with cell phones? That's the way it works in Europe and most other countries in this world. Any manufacturer that doesn't support the products will soon be out of business.
I think anybody should be allowed to sell a phone and the carriers should be obligated to give service to it, provided that the phone will operate properly with their network. If carriers refuse to give updates for products they sell, this should be well publicized by the competition, so people won't buy crappy, unsupported phones from greedy carriers. That is basically how they do it in Europe and in other countries, so why can't it be that way here in the USA? This is how it has always worked with landline phones, so what is so different with a cell phone?
If Apple can give updates to their iPhone customers, why can't Samsung? Apple must be doing something right, by not letting carriers to what to do and not to do with their products. Why doesn't Samsung and other big companies stand up to the phone companies and tell them where to go?
This whole update problem could be solved if people only bought their phones from phone manufacturers, not the carriers. Any phone manufacturer that does not provide good customer service would soon be out of business. If this happened, the carriers would soon be confined to nothing more than providing connectivity whenever Wi-Fi is not available. Laws and lawyers are not needed here. If Apple can keep the carriers at bay, why can't companies like Samsung do this also?
If the second amendment is eliminated, the others are not worth the paper they're written on. Ultimately, ALL of the Constitution lives or dies by the Second Amendment. Take away the right of people to defend themselves, then all other rights of null and void.
Not getting updates from the manufacturer for any particular model of a product is a good reason not to buy such a product. If Apple can update their iPhones without carrier interference, why can't Android manufacturers update their particular phones the same way?
Why is it that carriers are not able to block iOS devices? Why can't Android manufacturers build their devices so that they can be updated from an Internet connection that is independent of any carrier?
Most geeks here on/. like to install things, but the common users couldn't care less. If they can install Angry Birds and a few other popular programs they are happy. Apple has been pretty good allowing newer versions of IOS to run on older hardware, even if the hardware support is not always there. Apple doesn't make any extra money installing crap-ware, so they have no incentive to do so. Apple's slogan "it just works" is not empty words for most people, except for many people here on/. who want to install all sorts of bells and whistles that ordinary users don't want or need.
No company puts a gun to a consumer's head and tells them you must buy our product or else! You can enter into a contract with a carrier and you can buy an iPhone or something from Samsung or another company. No choice in the marketplace is infinite, there will always be limitations, so choose the limitations that you are willing to live with. Consumers vote with their wallets and most companies pay attention to the vote. Apparently a lot of them like Apple's walled garden.
When buying any product, deciding which features are most important is the first thing to do. If support and updates is one of these, you should buy a product from a vendor who provides that. Apple locks their devices down pretty thoroughly, but provides updates and support for all of them during a reasonable time span. If other features are higher on your list, there will be a trade-off where you will have to determine whether you will make that trade-off. For many people, what Apple provides, despite their walled garden, is preferable to Android's diversity and freedom.
My old Ma Bell phone still works and it doesn't need any strings or tin cans. All I have to do is plug it into a regular phone jack. It makes long-distance calls and doesn't get any malware either. It still works when there is a power failure and I don't have to use, recharge or replace any batteries. It even has a real bell that actually rings when someone rings me up on the phone.
There are some companies that don't have to be forced by another useless government edict to support their product. Reward such companies with your money and punish those that let their customers flounder by not buying their stuff. Why does the government always have to solve everybody's problems? I can still download printer drivers from Epson for my six-year-old inkjet printer.
Why are there some people that are always advocating that the government should FORCE others to do this or that, when it only benefits a very small segment of the population but has absolutely zero benefit for the public? One reason Apple devices are selling well, is because people know that Apple supports their products for a reasonable time, without being forced to do so by another useless government edict. Would it cost the world for a company like Samsung to put up a website, where people could download new versions and bug patches of the software that runs their devices? If you are contemplating buying a certain device from a certain manufacturer, find out how and for how long they support their gadget.
The theory of evolution critically depends on unfathomable amounts of time. We have made a lot of progress in a lot of areas of science, but understanding the nature of time and how to accurately measure it is not one of them. We assume (believe by faith) that the clocks we're used for measuring time today have always run at the same rate they do today. This is particularly true of the atomic clocks upon which radioactive dating depends. The equations that govern the forces between atoms contain something called Planck's constant which varies inversely with the speed of light. The assumption is that these "constants" are and have been constant throughout all ages of time. The equations of gravity by means of which the movements of heavenly bodies and man-made satellites can be easily computed, contain no elements that imply time.
There is evidence in the light arriving from distant parts of the universe, that this assumption is not true. When the universe was small, after the creation event which has been labeled the "Big Bang", a beam of light would have crossed the entire universe in a tiny fraction of the second. Today a beam of light takes billions of years to make it across the universe. When Hubble discovered the red shift in 1929, he assumed this was due to the Doppler effect. This was not an unreasonable assumption, given the information he had at the time. Since then William Tifft observed and measured the red shift from distant galaxies in 1977 much more accurately and was astonished to find that the red shift is quantized. You can look up reports from him and others who have repeated these observations. Since objects cannot move in jumps, it is an indication that the observed red shift is not due to motion. It is a sign that constants such as the speed of light and those derived therefrom have changed many orders of magnitude. From the red shift measurements it is possible to calculate a curve which depicts this change. All data that uses atomic clocks need to be adjusted for this immense change over time. Clocks which are controlled by mass, using gravity, do not depend on time-containing constants. The Earth's and the other planetary bodies' orbits have been the same since their beginning. Therefore there is an increasingly large difference between clocks governed by gravity and clocks governed by electric charge, the further back we go towards the beginning.
It is basically true that when someone does not want to believe something, they generally will not. There are people today who are unwilling to believe that the Holocaust ever happened, despite the massive evidence, as well as the testimony of people that survived it. Only persons who WANT to believe in God will attribute the origin of life to him. At the least you are honest in declaring your indifference, rather than most who try to find an explanation outside of God.
I am not pleading anything or putting forth any kind of fallacy, but you refuse to acknowledge that cause and effect do exist and we are subject to it every day, moment by moment. Every effect requires a cause, even if we don't know the cause or want to admit its existence.
Whenever someone does not have a reasonable answer, resort to a personal attack. If you don't like the message, shoot the messenger. You're an example of a person that does that.
You obviously don't know much about learning. There are two main ways by which we learn. One is by experiment and observation and the other is by reasonably believing that someone else tells us. Most things in life we learn by the latter method. This means you have to believe, that is trust whoever is trying to tell you whatever. It is far less important what you believe, than whom you believe. This is especially true when it comes to history. Despite the mountain of evidence we have that the Holocaust happened, there are some who will deny this historical fact. In the end, no one will believe something he/she does not want to believe.
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That was a rather funny response, but seriously if someone offered you an ounce of gold for $20 bill, I'm fairly certain you would take it. My point was that people who advocate the purchase of gold know that in the long term the price of gold in terms of dollars or other fiat currencies has never gone down. Gold is a good means of preserving wealth, but not for deriving income from such wealth.
Gold and silver have value in and of themselves, but the papers with president's pictures on them the Federal Reserve prints, are just that, paper with no intrinsic value. A given weight of gold will buy more of most things today than it did in 1913, the year when they created the income tax. In those days an ounce of gold could be had for a $20 bill.
A piece of paper from the Federal Reserve called a $20 bill bought more groceries in 1913 than even the strongest man could possibly carry. Today even a first grader can easily carry a bag filled with $20 worth of groceries. Today an ounce of gold will buy considerably more groceries than it did in 1913. So which would you rather have today, a $20 bill or the amount of gold that such a bill would have bought in 1913?
In the end it is always the buyer that decides what a product is worth, not the seller. Apparently there are millions of buyers who think that Apple products are worth the premium price. I am sure that this is a problem that Apple's competitors wish they had. If you would check with eBay, you would find that used Apple computers sell for a far higher price than high-end competing products that originally cost the same as Apple products. Apple does provide updates for their products while makers of Android devices not so much. That's what this whole thread is about.
From everything I have read and heard, there must be a lot of Joe and Jane Averages that appreciate Apple's way of doing business and are willing to shovel mountains of money in their direction.
I never said I was against regulation, but we don't need any new laws. What's the difference between a cell phone company and a landline company? One uses wires and one doesn't, but other than that? Use the same rules that apply to wired phones.
You don't have to research anything, just buy your phone from a reputable company, like Apple or Samsung. The only regulation needed is already in place for landline phones. The phone company has to accept anybody's phone, provided it will work properly with their wired network. Why should this be different with cell phones? That's the way it works in Europe and most other countries in this world. Any manufacturer that doesn't support the products will soon be out of business.
I think anybody should be allowed to sell a phone and the carriers should be obligated to give service to it, provided that the phone will operate properly with their network. If carriers refuse to give updates for products they sell, this should be well publicized by the competition, so people won't buy crappy, unsupported phones from greedy carriers. That is basically how they do it in Europe and in other countries, so why can't it be that way here in the USA? This is how it has always worked with landline phones, so what is so different with a cell phone?
If Apple can give updates to their iPhone customers, why can't Samsung? Apple must be doing something right, by not letting carriers to what to do and not to do with their products. Why doesn't Samsung and other big companies stand up to the phone companies and tell them where to go?
This whole update problem could be solved if people only bought their phones from phone manufacturers, not the carriers. Any phone manufacturer that does not provide good customer service would soon be out of business. If this happened, the carriers would soon be confined to nothing more than providing connectivity whenever Wi-Fi is not available. Laws and lawyers are not needed here. If Apple can keep the carriers at bay, why can't companies like Samsung do this also?
If the second amendment is eliminated, the others are not worth the paper they're written on. Ultimately, ALL of the Constitution lives or dies by the Second Amendment. Take away the right of people to defend themselves, then all other rights of null and void.
Not getting updates from the manufacturer for any particular model of a product is a good reason not to buy such a product. If Apple can update their iPhones without carrier interference, why can't Android manufacturers update their particular phones the same way?
Why is a phone manufacturer not able to provide updates for THEIR particular flavor of Android? Apple seems to be able to do that for the iPhones.
Why is it that carriers are not able to block iOS devices? Why can't Android manufacturers build their devices so that they can be updated from an Internet connection that is independent of any carrier?
Most geeks here on /. like to install things, but the common users couldn't care less. If they can install Angry Birds and a few other popular programs they are happy. Apple has been pretty good allowing newer versions of IOS to run on older hardware, even if the hardware support is not always there. Apple doesn't make any extra money installing crap-ware, so they have no incentive to do so. Apple's slogan "it just works" is not empty words for most people, except for many people here on /. who want to install all sorts of bells and whistles that ordinary users don't want or need.
That is one reason why people are buying Apple devices. The carriers have nothing to say about the software running on iPhones.
No company puts a gun to a consumer's head and tells them you must buy our product or else! You can enter into a contract with a carrier and you can buy an iPhone or something from Samsung or another company. No choice in the marketplace is infinite, there will always be limitations, so choose the limitations that you are willing to live with. Consumers vote with their wallets and most companies pay attention to the vote. Apparently a lot of them like Apple's walled garden.
When buying any product, deciding which features are most important is the first thing to do. If support and updates is one of these, you should buy a product from a vendor who provides that. Apple locks their devices down pretty thoroughly, but provides updates and support for all of them during a reasonable time span. If other features are higher on your list, there will be a trade-off where you will have to determine whether you will make that trade-off. For many people, what Apple provides, despite their walled garden, is preferable to Android's diversity and freedom.
My old Ma Bell phone still works and it doesn't need any strings or tin cans. All I have to do is plug it into a regular phone jack. It makes long-distance calls and doesn't get any malware either. It still works when there is a power failure and I don't have to use, recharge or replace any batteries. It even has a real bell that actually rings when someone rings me up on the phone.
There are some companies that don't have to be forced by another useless government edict to support their product. Reward such companies with your money and punish those that let their customers flounder by not buying their stuff. Why does the government always have to solve everybody's problems? I can still download printer drivers from Epson for my six-year-old inkjet printer.
Why are there some people that are always advocating that the government should FORCE others to do this or that, when it only benefits a very small segment of the population but has absolutely zero benefit for the public? One reason Apple devices are selling well, is because people know that Apple supports their products for a reasonable time, without being forced to do so by another useless government edict. Would it cost the world for a company like Samsung to put up a website, where people could download new versions and bug patches of the software that runs their devices? If you are contemplating buying a certain device from a certain manufacturer, find out how and for how long they support their gadget.
The theory of evolution critically depends on unfathomable amounts of time. We have made a lot of progress in a lot of areas of science, but understanding the nature of time and how to accurately measure it is not one of them. We assume (believe by faith) that the clocks we're used for measuring time today have always run at the same rate they do today. This is particularly true of the atomic clocks upon which radioactive dating depends. The equations that govern the forces between atoms contain something called Planck's constant which varies inversely with the speed of light. The assumption is that these "constants" are and have been constant throughout all ages of time. The equations of gravity by means of which the movements of heavenly bodies and man-made satellites can be easily computed, contain no elements that imply time.
There is evidence in the light arriving from distant parts of the universe, that this assumption is not true. When the universe was small, after the creation event which has been labeled the "Big Bang", a beam of light would have crossed the entire universe in a tiny fraction of the second. Today a beam of light takes billions of years to make it across the universe. When Hubble discovered the red shift in 1929, he assumed this was due to the Doppler effect. This was not an unreasonable assumption, given the information he had at the time. Since then William Tifft observed and measured the red shift from distant galaxies in 1977 much more accurately and was astonished to find that the red shift is quantized. You can look up reports from him and others who have repeated these observations. Since objects cannot move in jumps, it is an indication that the observed red shift is not due to motion. It is a sign that constants such as the speed of light and those derived therefrom have changed many orders of magnitude. From the red shift measurements it is possible to calculate a curve which depicts this change. All data that uses atomic clocks need to be adjusted for this immense change over time. Clocks which are controlled by mass, using gravity, do not depend on time-containing constants. The Earth's and the other planetary bodies' orbits have been the same since their beginning. Therefore there is an increasingly large difference between clocks governed by gravity and clocks governed by electric charge, the further back we go towards the beginning.
It is basically true that when someone does not want to believe something, they generally will not. There are people today who are unwilling to believe that the Holocaust ever happened, despite the massive evidence, as well as the testimony of people that survived it. Only persons who WANT to believe in God will attribute the origin of life to him. At the least you are honest in declaring your indifference, rather than most who try to find an explanation outside of God.
I am not pleading anything or putting forth any kind of fallacy, but you refuse to acknowledge that cause and effect do exist and we are subject to it every day, moment by moment. Every effect requires a cause, even if we don't know the cause or want to admit its existence.
Whenever someone does not have a reasonable answer, resort to a personal attack. If you don't like the message, shoot the messenger. You're an example of a person that does that.
You obviously don't know much about learning. There are two main ways by which we learn. One is by experiment and observation and the other is by reasonably believing that someone else tells us. Most things in life we learn by the latter method. This means you have to believe, that is trust whoever is trying to tell you whatever. It is far less important what you believe, than whom you believe. This is especially true when it comes to history. Despite the mountain of evidence we have that the Holocaust happened, there are some who will deny this historical fact. In the end, no one will believe something he/she does not want to believe.