Except that after 19 years the company re-files the same patent with a minor tweak, and because nobody examines patents it will be approved.
Do you really think that there is anything that is still patentable about a golf ball that wouldn't be easy to work around if you wanted to? Golf balls have been around forever, and patents are time limited. If you create your golf balls based on how they were made over 20 years ago there's no way you could be infringing a valid patent (any patent you are found to be violating would be invalid due to prior art)
Thing is, there's nothing to stop a big company from suing you anyway, you'd just have to prove it all in court, and hey, everyone can afford that right?
While you're mostly right, it's not quite that straightforward.
"leading brands" doesn't necessarily mean any specific one, but it wouldn't mean a brand nobody has ever heard of, it would have to be one of the top ones, but not necessarily "the" top one, and it can be "top" by various different metrics (they didn't specify) so it could be be top by sales volume, or profit, or most used by professionals, or by amateurs, most well recognized brand, or any of a number of other qualifications.
Additionally "better" is also subjective, and while you'd have to prove it's better, that doesn't mean better in all ways. only that it isn't worse in all ways. so it could fly straighter, or further, but it could simply be more aesthetically pleasing, or better value for money, or that some blind test had a group of golfers chose it.
So while these terms are mostly meaningless, they aren't completely meaningless. Basically if you weren't stupid in how you used them, it would be easy enough to prove you're ok. But if your product really is the worst on the market in all categories you could still be in trouble for saying it's "better than the leading national brand" (though any one specific brand may not have standing to sue as they can't prove you meant them, but it could still fall afoul of false advertising laws and a consumer group could)
Just because you refuse to accept it, doesn't make it any less true. Other posters have pointed out that it dates back at least to Shakespearean times. A few people in the 19th century tried to remove it from use, but were never particularly successful. Now we see that most of the remaining holdouts are finally admitting that "they" is perfectly acceptable as a singular pronoun.
The funny part is that every inanimate object in french has a gender, but they have a way of talking about people without gender, meanwhile in english we realize that inanimate objects don't need a gender, but somehow insist that people must have one.
That said, the singular "they" has been quite acceptable in most forms of english for many, many, years now.
The Note2 was the first I had of the Note series. I did really like it, until I smashed the screen. The 3 was an obvious upgrade for me though as it was an improvement over the 2 in pretty much every way. It's too bad the same can't be said of the more recent versions
If I hadn't destroyed the screen on my Note3 I'd likely still be using it.
The Note4 is a step up from the Note3, but it's hardly night and day. I had been planning on skipping the 4 with hopes that the 5 would be better but had to replace the Note3 due to the screen before the 5 came out. As it turns out, the 5 was their first real step backward.
Agreed, the fast-charging works great on my Note4, why stop that part?
The problem Samsung had with the Note7 was that there was zero tolerance around the battery, a slightly smaller battery (or heaven forbid, a slightly larger case) would solve that. No need to also cause it to charge slower.
Except that the Note7 was never a good replacement for the Note4, The combination of the non-removable battery, the atrocious "edge" display, and the increased lockdown of the firmware, has confirmed that the Note4 I currently have will likely be my last Samsung device. On the bright side, I've also seen no reason to replace it as it still functions perfectly (on it's second battery, see replaceable batteries ARE a good thing!)
It's not the battery fire fiasco that turned me off Samsung, everyone makes mistakes, and once they are fixed there's no reason to keep punishing them. What turned me off was that the Note series started out as an enthusiasts phone with tons of practicality, they've destroyed that, and their other offerings are no better.
I'm not yet sure what my next phone will be, but unless Samsung does a 180 on almost all their recent policies, it won't be one of theirs.
They used to ask me to power on devices, they no longer do that, but they do swab them for explosives....
The real tell though that this is BS is that they targeted specific origin locations, and not a blanket ban. I doubt any terrorist who was planning to do this can't come up with some way to get to a different airport.
But not valuable enough to have paid to keep the Concorde flying...
If the Concorde still flew, you might have an argument, but it was a commercial failure, the incredibly high prices still weren't high enough to make it profitable.
The catch is that it's starting to be "never buy anything" from anyone. There isn't a company on this planet that doesn't want this ability to control it's products after purchase, and they consistently get away with it. Once you get rid of all the companies that are trying to screw you over, you quickly find that there's nobody left to buy anything from.
Then use the already existing tools that do that, they've been built in to the OS on Android for ages, and available as add on programs for ages before that.
The point is that for a large portion of the world, they simply can't do that, so telling people to do so is pretty naive.
On the other hand, if you just stuck to SMS or email like sane people you'd be able to use the same ones since 1993 or the early 1970s, and they have the added benefit of being the ones that reaches the most people too.
So the real question is, why would people in this day and age still use a limited proprietary chat feature that works for such a small percentage of the population, and needs to be replaced every year or so?
It may work well for some people, but it doesn't work for many others. My phone is often used as the emergency contact number for events that I volunteer on, as a result I need to receive calls from many different numbers that are unknown to me ahead of time. Not answering isn't really an option, and I won't get a list ahead of time that I can program in to a whitelist of the hundreds of people that will be on or near the event.
Other people use their phones for their business, if you don't answer when a customer phones, they'll phone someone else, and while that may make your business easier, it also makes it quite unprofitable.
Apple has the rights to "app store" so Google had to name it something else. Unfortunately "Application" isn't hip enough. Play unfortunately has connotations that all it contains is games though.
It would greatly help your case if you hadn't mixed up past and passed yourself. However after reading your comment, it is very difficult to take your criticism seriously.
I don't think you understand, Apple will gladly pay, as will any huge company. It's dirt cheap insurance to put up another major obstacle to any new competitor that might arise in the future. No existing player will pass up that opportunity.
Why would they tell those users to move to Hangouts, when they've already started telling hangouts users to move to Allo, Duo, and Messages?
Google seriously needs to stop this. The way to improve a product isn't to scrap it and build a new one every 6 months, but to upgrade the existing one. People get used to your existing product and want to keep using it. worse yet, people on your old product can't talk to people on your new product, and right now you have at least 3 generations of incompatible product in operation!
There is zero grace period here, I can tell you that from experience. I have had 1 red light ticket in my life. the ticket shows that I entered the intersection 0.1 second after the light turned. This means that when I entered the intersection, by a human's perception, it was still yellow. I guess next time I'll slam the brakes harder and not risk a yellow. Too bad I can't get the city to pay for the damage from being rear-ended for braking so hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that after 19 years the company re-files the same patent with a minor tweak, and because nobody examines patents it will be approved.
Do you really think that there is anything that is still patentable about a golf ball that wouldn't be easy to work around if you wanted to? Golf balls have been around forever, and patents are time limited. If you create your golf balls based on how they were made over 20 years ago there's no way you could be infringing a valid patent (any patent you are found to be violating would be invalid due to prior art)
Thing is, there's nothing to stop a big company from suing you anyway, you'd just have to prove it all in court, and hey, everyone can afford that right?
While you're mostly right, it's not quite that straightforward.
"leading brands" doesn't necessarily mean any specific one, but it wouldn't mean a brand nobody has ever heard of, it would have to be one of the top ones, but not necessarily "the" top one, and it can be "top" by various different metrics (they didn't specify) so it could be be top by sales volume, or profit, or most used by professionals, or by amateurs, most well recognized brand, or any of a number of other qualifications.
Additionally "better" is also subjective, and while you'd have to prove it's better, that doesn't mean better in all ways. only that it isn't worse in all ways. so it could fly straighter, or further, but it could simply be more aesthetically pleasing, or better value for money, or that some blind test had a group of golfers chose it.
So while these terms are mostly meaningless, they aren't completely meaningless. Basically if you weren't stupid in how you used them, it would be easy enough to prove you're ok. But if your product really is the worst on the market in all categories you could still be in trouble for saying it's "better than the leading national brand" (though any one specific brand may not have standing to sue as they can't prove you meant them, but it could still fall afoul of false advertising laws and a consumer group could)
Just because you refuse to accept it, doesn't make it any less true. Other posters have pointed out that it dates back at least to Shakespearean times. A few people in the 19th century tried to remove it from use, but were never particularly successful. Now we see that most of the remaining holdouts are finally admitting that "they" is perfectly acceptable as a singular pronoun.
And people who are even more educated know that the singular "they" has been in use for centuries and is perfectly acceptable.
The funny part is that every inanimate object in french has a gender, but they have a way of talking about people without gender, meanwhile in english we realize that inanimate objects don't need a gender, but somehow insist that people must have one.
That said, the singular "they" has been quite acceptable in most forms of english for many, many, years now.
The Note2 was the first I had of the Note series. I did really like it, until I smashed the screen. The 3 was an obvious upgrade for me though as it was an improvement over the 2 in pretty much every way. It's too bad the same can't be said of the more recent versions
If I hadn't destroyed the screen on my Note3 I'd likely still be using it.
The Note4 is a step up from the Note3, but it's hardly night and day. I had been planning on skipping the 4 with hopes that the 5 would be better but had to replace the Note3 due to the screen before the 5 came out. As it turns out, the 5 was their first real step backward.
Agreed, the fast-charging works great on my Note4, why stop that part?
The problem Samsung had with the Note7 was that there was zero tolerance around the battery, a slightly smaller battery (or heaven forbid, a slightly larger case) would solve that. No need to also cause it to charge slower.
I expected them to be re-named at least....
That's the part I find funny. I never expected them to simply throw away that many units, but I fully expected them to re-name them before re-selling!
Except that the Note7 was never a good replacement for the Note4, The combination of the non-removable battery, the atrocious "edge" display, and the increased lockdown of the firmware, has confirmed that the Note4 I currently have will likely be my last Samsung device. On the bright side, I've also seen no reason to replace it as it still functions perfectly (on it's second battery, see replaceable batteries ARE a good thing!)
It's not the battery fire fiasco that turned me off Samsung, everyone makes mistakes, and once they are fixed there's no reason to keep punishing them. What turned me off was that the Note series started out as an enthusiasts phone with tons of practicality, they've destroyed that, and their other offerings are no better.
I'm not yet sure what my next phone will be, but unless Samsung does a 180 on almost all their recent policies, it won't be one of theirs.
Last time this was on Slashdot they explained that the refurbished Note 7 units will have a slightly smaller battery. So yes, that is the plan.
They used to ask me to power on devices, they no longer do that, but they do swab them for explosives....
The real tell though that this is BS is that they targeted specific origin locations, and not a blanket ban. I doubt any terrorist who was planning to do this can't come up with some way to get to a different airport.
But not valuable enough to have paid to keep the Concorde flying...
If the Concorde still flew, you might have an argument, but it was a commercial failure, the incredibly high prices still weren't high enough to make it profitable.
And I remind you that the Concorde doesn't fly any more because the airlines just couldn't make money on it.
The catch is that it's starting to be "never buy anything" from anyone. There isn't a company on this planet that doesn't want this ability to control it's products after purchase, and they consistently get away with it.
Once you get rid of all the companies that are trying to screw you over, you quickly find that there's nobody left to buy anything from.
Then use the already existing tools that do that, they've been built in to the OS on Android for ages, and available as add on programs for ages before that.
The point is that for a large portion of the world, they simply can't do that, so telling people to do so is pretty naive.
On the other hand, if you just stuck to SMS or email like sane people you'd be able to use the same ones since 1993 or the early 1970s, and they have the added benefit of being the ones that reaches the most people too.
So the real question is, why would people in this day and age still use a limited proprietary chat feature that works for such a small percentage of the population, and needs to be replaced every year or so?
That't technically easy, but socially difficult.
It may work well for some people, but it doesn't work for many others. My phone is often used as the emergency contact number for events that I volunteer on, as a result I need to receive calls from many different numbers that are unknown to me ahead of time. Not answering isn't really an option, and I won't get a list ahead of time that I can program in to a whitelist of the hundreds of people that will be on or near the event.
Other people use their phones for their business, if you don't answer when a customer phones, they'll phone someone else, and while that may make your business easier, it also makes it quite unprofitable.
Apple has the rights to "app store" so Google had to name it something else. Unfortunately "Application" isn't hip enough.
Play unfortunately has connotations that all it contains is games though.
It would greatly help your case if you hadn't mixed up past and passed yourself. However after reading your comment, it is very difficult to take your criticism seriously.
I don't think you understand, Apple will gladly pay, as will any huge company. It's dirt cheap insurance to put up another major obstacle to any new competitor that might arise in the future. No existing player will pass up that opportunity.
So punished if you do, punished if you don't.... You just love to punish people.
Why would they tell those users to move to Hangouts, when they've already started telling hangouts users to move to Allo, Duo, and Messages?
Google seriously needs to stop this. The way to improve a product isn't to scrap it and build a new one every 6 months, but to upgrade the existing one. People get used to your existing product and want to keep using it. worse yet, people on your old product can't talk to people on your new product, and right now you have at least 3 generations of incompatible product in operation!
There is zero grace period here, I can tell you that from experience.
I have had 1 red light ticket in my life. the ticket shows that I entered the intersection 0.1 second after the light turned. This means that when I entered the intersection, by a human's perception, it was still yellow.
I guess next time I'll slam the brakes harder and not risk a yellow. Too bad I can't get the city to pay for the damage from being rear-ended for braking so hard.