Nobody is forcing you to buy one and you're definately not entitled to own one just because it exists.
Who keeps modding up these comments? How are they adding any insight to this discussion?
Apple isn't making us buy them at gunpoint. OK, so does that mean we can't discuss the weaknesses of the product? Does that mean their business ethics are above reproach? Does that mean the people who did choose to buy one are prohibited from complaining?
Come on folks. Apple is a broadly held public company with a very interesting new product that will have a major impact on a multi-$B industry. The GP makes a good point that they have made these mistakes before with Newton - will it work better this time around? These are grounds for some good discussion, so let's quit it with the "don't like it don't buy it" posts please.
Give me a break. A low price and lack of inventory hasn't hurt the Wii.
Bad example - while both products are luxury goods, the Wii has totally different customer demographics. The Wii customer is far more price sensitive and will simply buy a different console if it's overpriced. So a higher launch price would have caused a _failed_ launch, and immediately earn the product a reputation of being overpriced. Capturing some extra revenue in the first couple months is fine if you can do it, but not if it kills your product for the long term.
With the iPhone, there is a tremendous amount of price elasticity - units could be profitably sold at anywhere between $0 (with service plan) and perhaps $999. That's a different ball game altogether.
I work in the hardware business and I can tell you it is difficult enough to get enough inventory built for an ordinary product launch, but for what has been called the most successful CE launch _ever_... there is just no way they could have met demand without boosting the initial price significantly. And the problem with keeping the price high too long is that your momentum will dry up, and people won't even be paying attention any more by the time it does drop.
You can call it gouging if you want, but what if they'd instead just run out of stock immediately? Think "tickle me iPhone" - I don't think consumers would have been impressed by that.
Jobs did exactly the right thing. Price no lower than where you meet demand, and only once production has ramped up (which usually takes about two months - go figure) THEN price it at the sweet spot. Also consider seasonal factors which made it necessary to do this before the Xmas shopping season, which for the gadget industry begins right now.
I don't think that ANYONE, not one single person, who can afford a $600 phone and 2yr commitment to a $100+/mo plan, has a valid gripe about paying $200 extra up-front to be among the first to own it. If it was worth buying when you bought it, who cares what it sells for now? Were you hoping it would keep it's resale value or something?
the way to handle it is to allow their base Win32 API's to be implemented or copied...
This would only serve to further entrench the Windows API.
All Microsoft has to do then is make it a little more of a moving target, and we're worse off than when we started. More apps would be made for Windows because it's more prevalent, but only Microsoft's version would (relatively speaking) work. Do you think a business customer would take the risk of using an iffy clone implementation instead of dropping the dough for Windows? Do you think Dell is going to load "Freedows" on personal machines any time soon? Even if Freedows were better than the original, it would not hurt their revenue.
As the sibling already point out, the API is legal to copy now. However, what we really need is nobody using their crap at all.
Something I have not seen mentioned yet is whether SCO needs to accrue an estimate of what they should be paying Novell - whether they have the cash or not, it needs to go on the books. Their current balance sheet does not reflect it, which is probably one reason why the company is still grossly overvalued at $4.72M.
Try Microsoft (booo! hisss!) Live Search. Google had only the usual low-res satellite image of my neighborhood, but MSFT had high res airplane photos... and from multiple perspectives!
The price drop is incidental - I imagine the new iPhone pricing puts it generally in line with their other products. However, margins go down temporarily any time you bring out a new product, because it takes a few months for yields to reach their maximum level and for major component cost reductions to take effect. With the iphone, ipod, and imac all getting revamped, that is a lot of production precesses that need to be brought up and optimized. When you're Apple you can smooth over that initial spike in cost if you want to, but with the iPhone release it made sense to maximize revenue by charging early adopters a little more, and also to throttle demand a little bit until it reached full production rate.
So it's like you coming into my store and getting to the checkout and me refusing payment and calling the cops on you for stealing. Brilliant!
Don't be daft. It's more like you come into my store and offer me $0.01 for a case of beer, and I refuse, and you walk out of the store with the beer anyway.
You can't just name your own terms/price, and only if the seller accepts payment is a sale consummated. Conversely, the RIAA would have a rather hard time going after allofMP3 for copyright infringement if they were accepting payments from them, as that would legitimize their activity.
The attack requires access for about 1 hour to the remote control (for example, while it is stored in your pocket).
This may be an interesting academic exercise in breaking a cipher, but if the implication is that someone who has physical possession of the remote is able to open the car, then from a practical standpoint no much has been compromised.
"unconscionable" basically means that no person of sound mind could have been expected to accept the contract at the time the contract was signed.
Seem to me like that should apply to all EULAS, click-through terms of service, notice of terms after the fact, etc. No person should be expected to wade through such a contract for such trifling matters as purchasing a telephone, installing some software, etc.
The only way this statement could possibly be true is if the terrorists you mention are actually elected U.S. officials.
All those Arab guys did was blow up a couple buildings, but IT WAS OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS who leveraged that event to orchestrate the real terror campaign. Orange alert anyone? How else could you get people to accept the "Patriot" Act, ID cards, etc?
Now, I'm not a physicist (I tried once, but gave it up), but I've got to question your assertion that you can't transmit information using quantum entanglement. Yeah, you have no way to control which state it collapses into, but can't you tell if it HAS collapsed into a state? Then couldn't you have a number of entangled particles, and collapse only some of them, and transmit information that way (like flipping bits)? Just curious.
Right, not only do you know a) whether or not it has collapsed, a boolean value, but you also know b) the _time_ at which it collapsed, an analog value. Either or both of those pieces of information could be used to encode data.
Obviously with (a) one can encode any binary string given enough particles. And with (b), you could potentially transfer several bits of information with each particle, limited only by how accurately you can measure the time of is collapse (perhaps relative to the next particle in a series of them).
Who exactly takes these surveys? Isn't it largely midwestern housewives who have time to answer the phone during the day, and are happy just to have someone to talk to?
Every month for the last six years, I have received a bill from XO communications for -$846.52, for a line that I canceled which had a billing error on the closing statement. I thought about calling them to try to get it fixed, but I figured that would probably take several hours of navigating phone trees and getting transferred from one retarded support rep to the next. Easier to just toss them.
I also got a refund check one time from PacBell for $0.01.
If you mean stores in China, no way. There is practically zero enforcement. You can buy newly released DVD movies complete with the printed sleeves for $0.50 ea, and Rolex knockoffs that look as good as the originals for $80.
In the US though, yes absolutely you can injunctions and/or sue the pants of anyone distributing or selling a knockoff - if they're infringing copyright or trademark. Doesn't matter who made it.
But given that drastic inaccuracy in 2001, plus the fact that NASA does not disclose the source code or methodology used to compile the historical data, wouldn't you agree it's prudent to call the rest of the data into question?
Shouldn't they establish first that the battery _needs_ to be replaced more often, than say, some capacitor on the board? Why not sue over any other part in the product not being socketed or user replaceable?
The iphone is very thin and seamless. It probably could not accommodate the same aesthetics and size if it had a removable battery. If you want a phone with a removable battery there are lots of big clunky ones to choose from.
I wonder what the story is behind this Ms. Feldman, 25, and her multizillion dollar real estate deal?
My guess is she got herself real pumped up and greedy over what was probably only passing interest expressed by some buyer. If she's enough of a looney to get this bent out of shape over an "emoticon", then I wouldn't put it past her to grossly overstate the importance or her deal and the notion that it spontaneously fell through at the "23rd hour". I'm guessing her buyer may have been spooked for reasons that had nothing to do with the property...
I withdrew $300 once from an ordinary small ATM inside a 7-11 in Campbell CA, and it gave me two hundreds and five twenties. I wish the bank ATMs everywhere could do that.
Aren't you glad it is public knowledge now how rediculously insecure those machines are?
Of course I am! What on earth gave you the idea that I was complaining about the machines being proven insecure? The point is that whereas before, one might have tried to dismiss hackability of the machiens as speculation, now there is no excuse for _anyone_ to allow them to be used. Perhaps the tone of my comment was lost on you?
Slashdot Mirror
NOT NO BAN on new taxes, EXCEPT NOT on voip, but NOT after 2011.
Nobody is forcing you to buy one and you're definately not entitled to own one just because it exists.
Who keeps modding up these comments? How are they adding any insight to this discussion?
Apple isn't making us buy them at gunpoint. OK, so does that mean we can't discuss the weaknesses of the product? Does that mean their business ethics are above reproach? Does that mean the people who did choose to buy one are prohibited from complaining?
Come on folks. Apple is a broadly held public company with a very interesting new product that will have a major impact on a multi-$B industry. The GP makes a good point that they have made these mistakes before with Newton - will it work better this time around? These are grounds for some good discussion, so let's quit it with the "don't like it don't buy it" posts please.
Give me a break. A low price and lack of inventory hasn't hurt the Wii.
Bad example - while both products are luxury goods, the Wii has totally different customer demographics. The Wii customer is far more price sensitive and will simply buy a different console if it's overpriced. So a higher launch price would have caused a _failed_ launch, and immediately earn the product a reputation of being overpriced. Capturing some extra revenue in the first couple months is fine if you can do it, but not if it kills your product for the long term.
With the iPhone, there is a tremendous amount of price elasticity - units could be profitably sold at anywhere between $0 (with service plan) and perhaps $999. That's a different ball game altogether.
I work in the hardware business and I can tell you it is difficult enough to get enough inventory built for an ordinary product launch, but for what has been called the most successful CE launch _ever_... there is just no way they could have met demand without boosting the initial price significantly. And the problem with keeping the price high too long is that your momentum will dry up, and people won't even be paying attention any more by the time it does drop.
You can call it gouging if you want, but what if they'd instead just run out of stock immediately? Think "tickle me iPhone" - I don't think consumers would have been impressed by that.
Jobs did exactly the right thing. Price no lower than where you meet demand, and only once production has ramped up (which usually takes about two months - go figure) THEN price it at the sweet spot. Also consider seasonal factors which made it necessary to do this before the Xmas shopping season, which for the gadget industry begins right now.
I don't think that ANYONE, not one single person, who can afford a $600 phone and 2yr commitment to a $100+/mo plan, has a valid gripe about paying $200 extra up-front to be among the first to own it. If it was worth buying when you bought it, who cares what it sells for now? Were you hoping it would keep it's resale value or something?
This would only serve to further entrench the Windows API.
All Microsoft has to do then is make it a little more of a moving target, and we're worse off than when we started. More apps would be made for Windows because it's more prevalent, but only Microsoft's version would (relatively speaking) work. Do you think a business customer would take the risk of using an iffy clone implementation instead of dropping the dough for Windows? Do you think Dell is going to load "Freedows" on personal machines any time soon? Even if Freedows were better than the original, it would not hurt their revenue.
As the sibling already point out, the API is legal to copy now. However, what we really need is nobody using their crap at all.
Coal isn't an option
I take it you haven't been to China recently?
You get that sound effect: "wah, wah, wah, waaaaaah...."
I don't think you understand the concept of shorting.
Something I have not seen mentioned yet is whether SCO needs to accrue an estimate of what they should be paying Novell - whether they have the cash or not, it needs to go on the books. Their current balance sheet does not reflect it, which is probably one reason why the company is still grossly overvalued at $4.72M.
Cool, can i get some of my neighborhood?
Try Microsoft (booo! hisss!) Live Search. Google had only the usual low-res satellite image of my neighborhood, but MSFT had high res airplane photos... and from multiple perspectives!
NOT to evaluate the competitor's product. What's the point of this story?
The price drop is incidental - I imagine the new iPhone pricing puts it generally in line with their other products. However, margins go down temporarily any time you bring out a new product, because it takes a few months for yields to reach their maximum level and for major component cost reductions to take effect. With the iphone, ipod, and imac all getting revamped, that is a lot of production precesses that need to be brought up and optimized. When you're Apple you can smooth over that initial spike in cost if you want to, but with the iPhone release it made sense to maximize revenue by charging early adopters a little more, and also to throttle demand a little bit until it reached full production rate.
The Russian government named its price, and AllOfMP3 complied.
OK OK, I stand corrected!
So it's like you coming into my store and getting to the checkout and me refusing payment and calling the cops on you for stealing. Brilliant!
Don't be daft. It's more like you come into my store and offer me $0.01 for a case of beer, and I refuse, and you walk out of the store with the beer anyway.
You can't just name your own terms/price, and only if the seller accepts payment is a sale consummated. Conversely, the RIAA would have a rather hard time going after allofMP3 for copyright infringement if they were accepting payments from them, as that would legitimize their activity.
The attack requires access for about 1 hour to the remote control (for example, while it is stored in your pocket).
This may be an interesting academic exercise in breaking a cipher, but if the implication is that someone who has physical possession of the remote is able to open the car, then from a practical standpoint no much has been compromised.
"unconscionable" basically means that no person of sound mind could have been expected to accept the contract at the time the contract was signed.
Seem to me like that should apply to all EULAS, click-through terms of service, notice of terms after the fact, etc. No person should be expected to wade through such a contract for such trifling matters as purchasing a telephone, installing some software, etc.
The only way this statement could possibly be true is if the terrorists you mention are actually elected U.S. officials.
All those Arab guys did was blow up a couple buildings, but IT WAS OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS who leveraged that event to orchestrate the real terror campaign. Orange alert anyone? How else could you get people to accept the "Patriot" Act, ID cards, etc?
Or did I miss the sarcasm in your post?
Now, I'm not a physicist (I tried once, but gave it up), but I've got to question your assertion that you can't transmit information using quantum entanglement. Yeah, you have no way to control which state it collapses into, but can't you tell if it HAS collapsed into a state? Then couldn't you have a number of entangled particles, and collapse only some of them, and transmit information that way (like flipping bits)? Just curious.
Right, not only do you know a) whether or not it has collapsed, a boolean value, but you also know b) the _time_ at which it collapsed, an analog value. Either or both of those pieces of information could be used to encode data.
Obviously with (a) one can encode any binary string given enough particles. And with (b), you could potentially transfer several bits of information with each particle, limited only by how accurately you can measure the time of is collapse (perhaps relative to the next particle in a series of them).
But IANAP so maybe I'm missing something here.
Who exactly takes these surveys? Isn't it largely midwestern housewives who have time to answer the phone during the day, and are happy just to have someone to talk to?
Every month for the last six years, I have received a bill from XO communications for -$846.52, for a line that I canceled which had a billing error on the closing statement. I thought about calling them to try to get it fixed, but I figured that would probably take several hours of navigating phone trees and getting transferred from one retarded support rep to the next. Easier to just toss them.
I also got a refund check one time from PacBell for $0.01.
If you mean stores in China, no way. There is practically zero enforcement. You can buy newly released DVD movies complete with the printed sleeves for $0.50 ea, and Rolex knockoffs that look as good as the originals for $80.
In the US though, yes absolutely you can injunctions and/or sue the pants of anyone distributing or selling a knockoff - if they're infringing copyright or trademark. Doesn't matter who made it.
But given that drastic inaccuracy in 2001, plus the fact that NASA does not disclose the source code or methodology used to compile the historical data, wouldn't you agree it's prudent to call the rest of the data into question?
Shouldn't they establish first that the battery _needs_ to be replaced more often, than say, some capacitor on the board? Why not sue over any other part in the product not being socketed or user replaceable?
The iphone is very thin and seamless. It probably could not accommodate the same aesthetics and size if it had a removable battery. If you want a phone with a removable battery there are lots of big clunky ones to choose from.
I wonder what the story is behind this Ms. Feldman, 25, and her multizillion dollar real estate deal?
My guess is she got herself real pumped up and greedy over what was probably only passing interest expressed by some buyer. If she's enough of a looney to get this bent out of shape over an "emoticon", then I wouldn't put it past her to grossly overstate the importance or her deal and the notion that it spontaneously fell through at the "23rd hour". I'm guessing her buyer may have been spooked for reasons that had nothing to do with the property...
I withdrew $300 once from an ordinary small ATM inside a 7-11 in Campbell CA, and it gave me two hundreds and five twenties. I wish the bank ATMs everywhere could do that.
Aren't you glad it is public knowledge now how rediculously insecure those machines are?
Of course I am! What on earth gave you the idea that I was complaining about the machines being proven insecure? The point is that whereas before, one might have tried to dismiss hackability of the machiens as speculation, now there is no excuse for _anyone_ to allow them to be used. Perhaps the tone of my comment was lost on you?