By the numbers, lots of people buy Android tablets, but don't use them very much for either web browsing or applications.
For example, if you look at http://gs.statcounter.com/#tab... Safari is 67.7% of mobile browsing activity, while Android is 15.4% and Chrome (runs on both iOS and Android) is 10.5%. Even though by sales reports Android devices are outselling iOS by wide margins.
Similarly, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ew... is just one example of numerous developers seeing iOS downloads and revenue vastly (10x) outpacing Android.
I can't say why, but I imagine that Google is hard at work trying to figure out why Android users don't browse or use apps the way iOS users do. I used to think that it was market segmentation - people who have money to buy apps have money to buy iOS devices, and people with no money buy cheaper, Android devices. But these days there are high-end Android tablets that are as expensive as iPads, and of course web browsing is free, but people still aren't using either apps or browsing. It also doesn't explain why free apps on Android don't do well.So perhaps it's usability?
The question is, are they *actually* losing money (price vs. unit cost of goods) on each Surface sold, the way Sony actually spent more to produce each PS3 (originally) than it sold for, or is the Surface business losing money because their volume is too low to cover the cost of running the line of business? The former would be terrible for Microsoft because it means that the Surface has negative value - the product is less than the cost of the parts! The latter isn't quite as bad, in that if the sales increase, it can become a profitable business. And it'd be nearly impossible for the Surface not to increase sales volume. Heck, even if they shut the business down and dumped them, their sales would improve.
Personally, only the Surface Pro is interesting - the RT is just a complicated, expensive tablet, and iPad or Android tablet are dominant (and simpler and cheaper).
And the Surface Pro is too expensive to make sense - for the same money you can get an ultralight laptop, with a touchscreen, which is more generally useful.
The actual buy/sell price of a transaction isn't the number either part put in, but is a dynamic number based on the market, within the constraints of the buy/sell orders. So if you say "buy at up to 8" for a stock selling at 7, you'll end up paying somewhere below 8 depending on available sell orders.
What is happening is that a company has tapped into the front-line routers to the trading systems with extremely high performance systems that can see and execute and deliver an incoming buy/sell order faster than the real buy/sell orders so they execute first, and injecting their own order AHEAD of your order. This requires their hardware being tapped into the network, and having extremely high performance systems and networking, so it's an option only open to an extremely small number of companies. So if the stock is selling at 7, you say you'll buy at 8, and the third part injects an order to buy at 8 that executes before your buy order, to you end up buying at 8 instead of at 7. The actual differences are smaller, of course, but the volume is infinite, so it generates plenty of cash. Because it requires specialized gear running inside the exchange's network, it's an option only available to a very small number of well-connected companies (one that's been reported), and the collusion of the exchange to arrange for the trader to have better access to the exchange's data feeds than the exchange itself. Other than being highly profitable, I can't see how this can possibly be legal, since it's a clear corruption of the exchange giving one party an unfair advantage.
The is different from high frequency trading, which is programmed trading of rapid transactions, which can be done from anywhere - that doesn't require special network access, etc., just huge piles of cash and an algorithm.
So you think that the food industry completely changing our food chain, replacing simple foods with complex processed foods that are worse for us (full of salt, sugar, hydrogenated oils, etc.) and spending $billions to engineer food that makes people fat and aggressively market it, and people them buying what they're being sold, is entirely the buyer's fault? Really? How far does a corporation have to go to before it is responsible for its actions? Or can corporations do absolutely anything, and it's people's fault for believe what they're told?
For perspective, in 2009, $4.2B was spent marketing fast food, while the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (which is responsible for "nutrition research, education, and promotion programs for the American public") had a $144M total budget, a fraction of which of which went to marketing health eating.
Privatization is a scam. Governments sell off public assets that are needed long-term for a short-term cash boost, but then the public pays more forever for the use of the assets. So it makes one year's budget look better but is a *terrible* deal for the public. But if the local government is full of self-centered people that don't care about the long-term, they'll make that tradeoff. It's easy to come up with examples: water, roads, parking meters, mercenaries replacing soldiers, you name it - letting private, for-profit businesses take over what should be public infrastructure has consistently been a disaster for everyone other than the business' investors, as the businesses always deliver as little value as possible while jacking up prices, because that maximizes investor ROI. Public infrastructure should be run to maximize value delivered to the public, not ROI to the investors. And the two motivations, public service vs. private profit, are in direct opposition, which is why it fails every time.
As for network, I'd suggest that very much like water, postal service, etc., that the city should run a public networking utility, and people who want more/better can use private services. That eliminates most of the overhead from the equation, letting the engineers focus on delivering services efficiently. For example, if you look at telecommunications generally, the actual cost of delivering the voice/data is a relatively trivial cost. The complexity of metering usage and billing for it, marketing, sales, distribution deals, executives, etc., is the large majority of the costs. So if everyone got, say, 100 Mbps for a flat fee, paid for by splitting the cost and covering them with no profit margin, the cost per-person would be much, much lower than what we're paying now for service. And because it would be publicly managed and audited, anyone can inspect the books, and voters can control the policies. Very different from private business, which can hide their costs and do anything they like with the traffic.
And if a private provider can come in and compete with that, great! Competition is good! It's just for-profit monopolies that are bad.
The non-partisan CBO says that ACA is saving the budget $billions, and is saving more money than originally projected (http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44176). For example, the 80/20 rule (that caps insurance company overhead at 20%) has already saved consumers $4 billion by itself. And healthcare costs went up less this year than any year in decades.
And many millions of Americans have healthcare that didn't before, which saves lives. And, interestingly, it also saves money, because people with regular healthcare cost a lot less than people who get really sick and then require extremely expensive ER visits (which we all end up paying for).
So I'll stick with what the facts support - ACA is saving money, and saving people's lives.
Plan-B does not "abort a pregnancy after fertilization", it prevents the egg from implanting. Women's bodies do that millions of times a year - good luck making that illegal.
Of course, in reality the contraceptives that Hobby Lobby objects to aren't actually abortifacients. At this point Hobby Lobby is fighting for the right to impose *incorrect* beliefs on their employees.
If people have the right to not have to pay for things that go in any part towards things that they object to, then millions of pacifists are due a huge tax break!
If you're just going to reply to all of the Australian research showing that the gun ban saved lives, as "another meaningless gun stat" then we're not having a debate, you're just making baseless assertions.
The founding fathers passed a mandatory healthcare plan (for sailors) with government-collected penalty for non-payment. So I doubt that they'd agree with your "logic".
The pre-existing condition exclusion was outlawed starting 1/1/2014. And that applies to all insurance plans sold through the exchanges, including all of the plans sold through the healthcare.gov web site, which is what we're discussing.
The extension until 2015 was to allow insurance companies to keep keep existing customers on insurance plans that aren't up to the standards, but those are sold directly by the insurance companies, not through the exchanges, so aren't relevant to this discussion. And since it's only for existing customers, I'm not sure that they'd ask for medical history which presumably they already had from the original enrollment.
Also, ACA covers the case you mentioned - "No more pre-existing conditions means you can't be denied coverage, charged more, or denied treatment based on health status" . So everyone pays the same, whether they have a pre-existing condition or not. Because jacking up rates until nobody can afford them is the same as excluding people - that's what they used to do, and it was immoral, and now it's illegal.
So the first 'A' in ACA seems to be working out. Healthcare costs are up this year less than any year in decades, and insurance companies are already complaining that the rates next year will be 'too low', though I don't think they're going to get much sympathy.
There are some people doing interesting work with carbon fiber and 3D printing. One approach, which I think is clever, is to 3D print parts, then wrap and glue the carbon fiber tape around the part along the stress lines. This lets you make things like 3D printed pulleys that are amazingly strong.
At least one company is doing 3D printing with carbon fiber running in the filament. That's pretty trickily to pull off, but if it works (and they claim they're going to be selling the printers soon) it should be extremely strong because the carbon fiber will run everywhere the filament runs. So no inter-layer filaments, but it should be very strong on the X/Y plane, which should work well for many applications.
There are plenty of ways to "rent a 3D printer". The most obvious is that you can use a service bureau such as ShapeWays, which operates high-end 3D printers (the $100K+ kind), which you "rent" by sending them STL files to print and ship you. And there are numerous "Maker spaces" that have 3D printers that you can use for the cost of membership. And there are enough people with 3D printers around that you can ask around to see who can do you a favor and print the parts for you. Or you can look on the e-NABLE map http://enablingthefuture.org/c... and see if there's a group member in your area who can help you out. There are several universities doing substantial volumes of this work as well, because their students learn a lot by designing and printing parts and working directly with patients.
Typically the first one is assembled by the volunteer working with the family, as a training session, and after that they can print replacements and do the assembly themselves.
this approach does require a parent/relative/friend with some dedicated to get started. There's a map of volunteers http://enablingthefuture.org/c... . If you don't have anyone around that wants to help, you'd better have insurance to cover paying a professional to help you out.
Wow, nice to see someone with an informed post. The amusing thing to me is that we've got tons of videos, and this is the one that made Slashdot. But we're happy with any of the patent's stories. They're pretty cool, actually - patients talking about their prosthetics, shot by either the patients, their parents, or the "maker", and a few videos of people giving presentations (e.g. at TED). Check out http://enablingthefuture.org/m... .
We're not claiming that 3D printed prosthetics are better than commercial prosthetics, just that they're more accessible. Particularly outside of the US and Europe, the cost is a huge barrier, and we're excited that we are producing designs, documentation, etc., empowering people to help each other if they don't have a viable commercial option.
As I said, I used to work in the airplane business. And if you bought a kit for an airplane and built it yourself, you can't sue the company that sold you the kit because you assumed the liability. That's why most innovation in airplanes in the US is in kit planes - commercial manufactures fall under liability, which complicates their lives quite a bit, which (perversely) discourages innovation, so many people are flying airplanes with engine designs from the 1950s.
Hand prosthetics are "prosthetic devices class I, non-significant risk devices" by the FDA.
"steal the IP that others spent time and money designing, testing and getting approved"
The designs of the 3D printed prosthetics are substantially different from modern commercial prosthetics, because the manufacturing process is utterly different. And mechanical prosthetics have been around for a very, very long time. So there's no "stealing of IP". Really, do some research before accusing people of theft.
"people actually ignorant enough to believe that a part is going to magically design itself in a 3D printer"
So far what's happening is that people with design skills and a 3D printer are making designs to help themselves or others in their area. Then they share the results with people who can then adapt and print the files. So what's "magically" happening is that people are sharing their work freely, to everyone's benefit. Because they need the problem solved so they solved it, but they don't want to be in the prosthetics business so they gave the design away.
You know, like Free Open Source Software. Which has worked out pretty well so far.
Slashdot Mirror
"Completely false. This does indeed describe front running,"
Since what I was describing was front running, which is specifically what was alleged, then your comment doesn't make any sense.
By the numbers, lots of people buy Android tablets, but don't use them very much for either web browsing or applications.
For example, if you look at http://gs.statcounter.com/#tab... Safari is 67.7% of mobile browsing activity, while Android is 15.4% and Chrome (runs on both iOS and Android) is 10.5%. Even though by sales reports Android devices are outselling iOS by wide margins.
Similarly, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ew... is just one example of numerous developers seeing iOS downloads and revenue vastly (10x) outpacing Android.
I can't say why, but I imagine that Google is hard at work trying to figure out why Android users don't browse or use apps the way iOS users do. I used to think that it was market segmentation - people who have money to buy apps have money to buy iOS devices, and people with no money buy cheaper, Android devices. But these days there are high-end Android tablets that are as expensive as iPads, and of course web browsing is free, but people still aren't using either apps or browsing. It also doesn't explain why free apps on Android don't do well.So perhaps it's usability?
The question is, are they *actually* losing money (price vs. unit cost of goods) on each Surface sold, the way Sony actually spent more to produce each PS3 (originally) than it sold for, or is the Surface business losing money because their volume is too low to cover the cost of running the line of business? The former would be terrible for Microsoft because it means that the Surface has negative value - the product is less than the cost of the parts! The latter isn't quite as bad, in that if the sales increase, it can become a profitable business. And it'd be nearly impossible for the Surface not to increase sales volume. Heck, even if they shut the business down and dumped them, their sales would improve.
Personally, only the Surface Pro is interesting - the RT is just a complicated, expensive tablet, and iPad or Android tablet are dominant (and simpler and cheaper).
And the Surface Pro is too expensive to make sense - for the same money you can get an ultralight laptop, with a touchscreen, which is more generally useful.
Perhaps you don't understand "front running".
The actual buy/sell price of a transaction isn't the number either part put in, but is a dynamic number based on the market, within the constraints of the buy/sell orders. So if you say "buy at up to 8" for a stock selling at 7, you'll end up paying somewhere below 8 depending on available sell orders.
What is happening is that a company has tapped into the front-line routers to the trading systems with extremely high performance systems that can see and execute and deliver an incoming buy/sell order faster than the real buy/sell orders so they execute first, and injecting their own order AHEAD of your order. This requires their hardware being tapped into the network, and having extremely high performance systems and networking, so it's an option only open to an extremely small number of companies. So if the stock is selling at 7, you say you'll buy at 8, and the third part injects an order to buy at 8 that executes before your buy order, to you end up buying at 8 instead of at 7. The actual differences are smaller, of course, but the volume is infinite, so it generates plenty of cash. Because it requires specialized gear running inside the exchange's network, it's an option only available to a very small number of well-connected companies (one that's been reported), and the collusion of the exchange to arrange for the trader to have better access to the exchange's data feeds than the exchange itself. Other than being highly profitable, I can't see how this can possibly be legal, since it's a clear corruption of the exchange giving one party an unfair advantage.
The is different from high frequency trading, which is programmed trading of rapid transactions, which can be done from anywhere - that doesn't require special network access, etc., just huge piles of cash and an algorithm.
So you think that the food industry completely changing our food chain, replacing simple foods with complex processed foods that are worse for us (full of salt, sugar, hydrogenated oils, etc.) and spending $billions to engineer food that makes people fat and aggressively market it, and people them buying what they're being sold, is entirely the buyer's fault? Really? How far does a corporation have to go to before it is responsible for its actions? Or can corporations do absolutely anything, and it's people's fault for believe what they're told?
For perspective, in 2009, $4.2B was spent marketing fast food, while the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (which is responsible for "nutrition research, education, and promotion programs for the American public") had a $144M total budget, a fraction of which of which went to marketing health eating.
Privatization is a scam. Governments sell off public assets that are needed long-term for a short-term cash boost, but then the public pays more forever for the use of the assets. So it makes one year's budget look better but is a *terrible* deal for the public. But if the local government is full of self-centered people that don't care about the long-term, they'll make that tradeoff. It's easy to come up with examples: water, roads, parking meters, mercenaries replacing soldiers, you name it - letting private, for-profit businesses take over what should be public infrastructure has consistently been a disaster for everyone other than the business' investors, as the businesses always deliver as little value as possible while jacking up prices, because that maximizes investor ROI. Public infrastructure should be run to maximize value delivered to the public, not ROI to the investors. And the two motivations, public service vs. private profit, are in direct opposition, which is why it fails every time.
As for network, I'd suggest that very much like water, postal service, etc., that the city should run a public networking utility, and people who want more/better can use private services. That eliminates most of the overhead from the equation, letting the engineers focus on delivering services efficiently. For example, if you look at telecommunications generally, the actual cost of delivering the voice/data is a relatively trivial cost. The complexity of metering usage and billing for it, marketing, sales, distribution deals, executives, etc., is the large majority of the costs. So if everyone got, say, 100 Mbps for a flat fee, paid for by splitting the cost and covering them with no profit margin, the cost per-person would be much, much lower than what we're paying now for service. And because it would be publicly managed and audited, anyone can inspect the books, and voters can control the policies. Very different from private business, which can hide their costs and do anything they like with the traffic.
And if a private provider can come in and compete with that, great! Competition is good! It's just for-profit monopolies that are bad.
The non-partisan CBO says that ACA is saving the budget $billions, and is saving more money than originally projected (http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44176). For example, the 80/20 rule (that caps insurance company overhead at 20%) has already saved consumers $4 billion by itself. And healthcare costs went up less this year than any year in decades.
And many millions of Americans have healthcare that didn't before, which saves lives. And, interestingly, it also saves money, because people with regular healthcare cost a lot less than people who get really sick and then require extremely expensive ER visits (which we all end up paying for).
So I'll stick with what the facts support - ACA is saving money, and saving people's lives.
Thanks!
Plan-B does not "abort a pregnancy after fertilization", it prevents the egg from implanting. Women's bodies do that millions of times a year - good luck making that illegal.
Of course, in reality the contraceptives that Hobby Lobby objects to aren't actually abortifacients. At this point Hobby Lobby is fighting for the right to impose *incorrect* beliefs on their employees.
If people have the right to not have to pay for things that go in any part towards things that they object to, then millions of pacifists are due a huge tax break!
If you're just going to reply to all of the Australian research showing that the gun ban saved lives, as "another meaningless gun stat" then we're not having a debate, you're just making baseless assertions.
Bye.
The founding fathers passed a mandatory healthcare plan (for sailors) with government-collected penalty for non-payment. So I doubt that they'd agree with your "logic".
The pre-existing condition exclusion was outlawed starting 1/1/2014. And that applies to all insurance plans sold through the exchanges, including all of the plans sold through the healthcare.gov web site, which is what we're discussing.
The extension until 2015 was to allow insurance companies to keep keep existing customers on insurance plans that aren't up to the standards, but those are sold directly by the insurance companies, not through the exchanges, so aren't relevant to this discussion. And since it's only for existing customers, I'm not sure that they'd ask for medical history which presumably they already had from the original enrollment.
Also, ACA covers the case you mentioned - "No more pre-existing conditions means you can't be denied coverage, charged more, or denied treatment based on health status" . So everyone pays the same, whether they have a pre-existing condition or not. Because jacking up rates until nobody can afford them is the same as excluding people - that's what they used to do, and it was immoral, and now it's illegal.
So the first 'A' in ACA seems to be working out. Healthcare costs are up this year less than any year in decades, and insurance companies are already complaining that the rates next year will be 'too low', though I don't think they're going to get much sympathy.
There are some people doing interesting work with carbon fiber and 3D printing. One approach, which I think is clever, is to 3D print parts, then wrap and glue the carbon fiber tape around the part along the stress lines. This lets you make things like 3D printed pulleys that are amazingly strong.
At least one company is doing 3D printing with carbon fiber running in the filament. That's pretty trickily to pull off, but if it works (and they claim they're going to be selling the printers soon) it should be extremely strong because the carbon fiber will run everywhere the filament runs. So no inter-layer filaments, but it should be very strong on the X/Y plane, which should work well for many applications.
Sure. That worked for Barbie 3D Printed Armor!
There are plenty of ways to "rent a 3D printer". The most obvious is that you can use a service bureau such as ShapeWays, which operates high-end 3D printers (the $100K+ kind), which you "rent" by sending them STL files to print and ship you. And there are numerous "Maker spaces" that have 3D printers that you can use for the cost of membership. And there are enough people with 3D printers around that you can ask around to see who can do you a favor and print the parts for you. Or you can look on the e-NABLE map http://enablingthefuture.org/c... and see if there's a group member in your area who can help you out. There are several universities doing substantial volumes of this work as well, because their students learn a lot by designing and printing parts and working directly with patients.
And if people are willing to do the work for free and give the results away, is that so bad?
Exactly! Thanks for getting to the heart of the matter.
Typically the first one is assembled by the volunteer working with the family, as a training session, and after that they can print replacements and do the assembly themselves.
this approach does require a parent/relative/friend with some dedicated to get started. There's a map of volunteers http://enablingthefuture.org/c... . If you don't have anyone around that wants to help, you'd better have insurance to cover paying a professional to help you out.
Luckily http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/...
Luckily "External limb prosthetic component, Class I" aren't regulated as tightly.
Wow, nice to see someone with an informed post. The amusing thing to me is that we've got tons of videos, and this is the one that made Slashdot. But we're happy with any of the patent's stories. They're pretty cool, actually - patients talking about their prosthetics, shot by either the patients, their parents, or the "maker", and a few videos of people giving presentations (e.g. at TED). Check out http://enablingthefuture.org/m... .
We're not claiming that 3D printed prosthetics are better than commercial prosthetics, just that they're more accessible. Particularly outside of the US and Europe, the cost is a huge barrier, and we're excited that we are producing designs, documentation, etc., empowering people to help each other if they don't have a viable commercial option.
As I said, I used to work in the airplane business. And if you bought a kit for an airplane and built it yourself, you can't sue the company that sold you the kit because you assumed the liability. That's why most innovation in airplanes in the US is in kit planes - commercial manufactures fall under liability, which complicates their lives quite a bit, which (perversely) discourages innovation, so many people are flying airplanes with engine designs from the 1950s.
Hand prosthetics are "prosthetic devices class I, non-significant risk devices" by the FDA.
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/... .
The group has a web site http://enablingthefuture.org/ which links to a map of participants, and a very active Google+ community.
The Cyborg Beast is assembled from parts, each of which can fit in a small build area.
"steal the IP that others spent time and money designing, testing and getting approved"
The designs of the 3D printed prosthetics are substantially different from modern commercial prosthetics, because the manufacturing process is utterly different. And mechanical prosthetics have been around for a very, very long time. So there's no "stealing of IP". Really, do some research before accusing people of theft.
"people actually ignorant enough to believe that a part is going to magically design itself in a 3D printer"
So far what's happening is that people with design skills and a 3D printer are making designs to help themselves or others in their area. Then they share the results with people who can then adapt and print the files. So what's "magically" happening is that people are sharing their work freely, to everyone's benefit. Because they need the problem solved so they solved it, but they don't want to be in the prosthetics business so they gave the design away.
You know, like Free Open Source Software. Which has worked out pretty well so far.