You clearly have a good working knowledge of the patent system, but you've missed my fundamental point (and the stated objectives of the USPTO)--patents cover processes, not business outcomes. There are many ways to fullfill most desires, and a patent covers only one. I didn't say the burden of proof fell on one party or another. Using that as an argument for why I'm incorrect is pretty stupid.
If I invent a patented black box that makes something lighter than air and you invent a patented black box that reduces the effects of gravity and the effect on a given object is exactly the same, our patents do not infringe. You may be able to crush me with your lawyers, but that's an entirely separate issue.
Again, the point I made was that patents are not made to reduce competition in the marketplace--if you've got a better way to do something than I do, by all means do it; just don't copy my way.
No. Patents protect the "inventor" from other people competing against them with duplicate products/processes/whatever. They do not protect the holder from competition in the marketplace. Anticompetitive behavior is using force to keep products unfairly out of participation in the marketplace. Keep in mind that patents aren't on actual results--if you have two black boxes which both produce, say, anti-gravity but they do it in different ways, the patents will not infringe. But if the owner of one company squelches the other one to death outside of the marketplace, they are being "anitcompetitive."
I wouldn't say dodo, but maybe the burmese tiger--very rare. The top-rated software on, say, CNET will make plenty for its coder to live in because the small number of paying users still make a rather large absolute number. But with the virility and universality of information among users, it's always going to be a blockbuster game, where only the best couple pieces of software will be winners, and everything else will be ignored. In a way this is great--it rewards the best person. But it's all or nothing, which definitely makes the winners as rare as a burmese tiger.
I don't claim to know the composition of coke, but it's more likely than not the way the regulation works; in the US they might be required to break out what kind of sugar it is, where in Italy listing it as sucrose is sufficient.
I hope you're aware of the can of worms you're opening up there! I have to respectfully disagree.
I am respectfully disagreeing because punk as a subculture (not counting avril et al here) reached it's genuine rebelliousness peak in the 70s, reached its popularity peak in the 80s, and has not yet reached its actual creative peak. There is more diverse and more creative punk rock out there now than there ever was before. I will agree that it is not as rebellious as it used to be (note that my disagreement is respectful rather than rude), nor as popular, but it is far more interesting now.
And how you EVER thought 80s punk was creative, here or in England, is a mystery to me...
I do agree that they don't know what they are going to do with it (if you read the googleblog, they literally said "we just think these guys are cool!). However, there are some clear and obvious ideas that will shear up holes in google's business and keep it ahead of the competition. One is to create a better mapping program than Yahoo. Currently, they link to yahoo and mapquest when you put in directions; clearly they'll want their own, rather than to continue sending people to yahoo (a note--isn't it great how they still openly give users that option?).
They have also been working on Google Local, which could seriously benefit from some real geographic definitions as opposed to just rough correlation. If they can throw their math at the problem of mapping the world out in a useable way, it'll scale incredibly well and give them a real edge going into the future.
Don't assume that just because Microsoft WAS losing money on the xbox that they still are. They are selling far more units recently than they were when they started, they have more leverage over flextronics for costing, and component costs have come down significantly since the box was designed.
I bought a laptop from someone who ended up sending me a piece of shit. I tried to get them to take it back, and they gave me further crap about no returns, condition as advertised, etc. I then e-mailed paypal and they sent me a response in UNDER two hours with their insurance information, how they were investigating, and what my recourse options were. About two days later they wrote back saying they had gotten the vendor to cooperate and that all I needed to do was send the laptop back and have receipt confirmed by the shipper (not necessary to have it confirmed by the asshole vendor) and they'd refund my money. I did and they did. Couldn't be more pleased. I used to work at MBNA, which is about the highest-service CC company out there, and their claims were nowhere near that quick.
Moreover, the other advantage to you as a buyer is that you can easily and conveniently do business with a HUGE range of people you could not previously do business with. That increases merchant competition and keeps prices lower.
That's fine--be prepared to pay twice as much for your ticket to handle the cost of 1. coordinating who sits where 2. underbooking flights because they can't get enough tall/short people 3. lawsuits: when the airlines try to charge more for more space, because even short people want more space, and so there will be huge demand for the 40 inchers and little for 20 inchers so they'll be justified in charging more, but fat people will complain that they're discriminated against based on their weight and be good litigious little americans and sue the airlines you ticket buyers everywhere will have to share the cost of your idiotic idea.
Actually, it's not that they weren't allowed to raise wages. It was made cheaper by tax writoffs to increase benefits rather than direct wages, so employers offered their employees more by doing that.
The cost of a CA would almost certainly come down! I have no clue how many domain names exist, but remember how it used to cost $70 to register one and now it can be done for $8? That sort of pure profit, undifferentiated service doesn't last for long.
There's a difference between anticompetitive tactics and actually being a monopoly. Both are covered under antitrust laws, but WalMart is only the former.
I just thought I'd tack something onto that post--a bit of math in case you don't understand my point. Purchasing 60,000 CDs at one unit each is $720,000. If you expect a store to shell out enough to carry ten each of those most-popular 5,000 CDs and still carry one each of the rest, you're talking $1,260,000. At EACH store branch! Up front, with no chance of recouping most of them, offering that variety for you as a customer so you can have what you clearly desire: choice!
Assuming they want to stock enough to not lose sales to the store-next-door if they sell one of those 55,000 albums of which they only stock one, they need to tack on another $660,000 in stock. If you were to go try and borrow that kind of money, it'd cost you all your profits just to pay the interest!
I seriously cannot believe you fault indie-er record stores for charging what they charge, man. It's really, really pathetic.
The cost of carrying 60,000 cds instead of just five is tremendous assuming you don't want to be constantly stocked out. Granted, I buy all my music on the 'net and none of it from major labels, now, so I'm not necessarily supporting the old model, but if people want to find those other 55,000 CDs in a store, they're going to have to pay more. No gouging about it.
Or maybe they're just throwing everything they can out there so MS will be more worried. If I said
We're intensely evaluating each of the following possibilities: --Red Hat --Debian --Ximian --Gentoo --Mandrake [ha] --slackware --freeBSD --MacOSX --Windows
It's probably scarier than "We thought we'd check out linux." Then again, maybe not, and you definitely make a good point.
Sort of. You seem to be missing the fact that the service absolutely fucking rules, though. That's always a significant factor in how people spread their opinion of a service, especially between extremely-connected tech-savvy internet users.
Slashdot Mirror
You clearly have a good working knowledge of the patent system, but you've missed my fundamental point (and the stated objectives of the USPTO)--patents cover processes, not business outcomes. There are many ways to fullfill most desires, and a patent covers only one. I didn't say the burden of proof fell on one party or another. Using that as an argument for why I'm incorrect is pretty stupid.
If I invent a patented black box that makes something lighter than air and you invent a patented black box that reduces the effects of gravity and the effect on a given object is exactly the same, our patents do not infringe. You may be able to crush me with your lawyers, but that's an entirely separate issue.
Again, the point I made was that patents are not made to reduce competition in the marketplace--if you've got a better way to do something than I do, by all means do it; just don't copy my way.
No. Patents protect the "inventor" from other people competing against them with duplicate products/processes/whatever. They do not protect the holder from competition in the marketplace. Anticompetitive behavior is using force to keep products unfairly out of participation in the marketplace. Keep in mind that patents aren't on actual results--if you have two black boxes which both produce, say, anti-gravity but they do it in different ways, the patents will not infringe. But if the owner of one company squelches the other one to death outside of the marketplace, they are being "anitcompetitive."
I wouldn't say dodo, but maybe the burmese tiger--very rare. The top-rated software on, say, CNET will make plenty for its coder to live in because the small number of paying users still make a rather large absolute number. But with the virility and universality of information among users, it's always going to be a blockbuster game, where only the best couple pieces of software will be winners, and everything else will be ignored. In a way this is great--it rewards the best person. But it's all or nothing, which definitely makes the winners as rare as a burmese tiger.
I don't claim to know the composition of coke, but it's more likely than not the way the regulation works; in the US they might be required to break out what kind of sugar it is, where in Italy listing it as sucrose is sufficient.
Yeah, like it's really worse for them than the smog-clogging of our atmosphere.
Okay, who here thinks the chili peppers are punk? Even back in the eighties??
I hope you're aware of the can of worms you're opening up there! I have to respectfully disagree.
I am respectfully disagreeing because punk as a subculture (not counting avril et al here) reached it's genuine rebelliousness peak in the 70s, reached its popularity peak in the 80s, and has not yet reached its actual creative peak. There is more diverse and more creative punk rock out there now than there ever was before. I will agree that it is not as rebellious as it used to be (note that my disagreement is respectful rather than rude), nor as popular, but it is far more interesting now.
And how you EVER thought 80s punk was creative, here or in England, is a mystery to me...
I do agree that they don't know what they are going to do with it (if you read the googleblog, they literally said "we just think these guys are cool!). However, there are some clear and obvious ideas that will shear up holes in google's business and keep it ahead of the competition. One is to create a better mapping program than Yahoo. Currently, they link to yahoo and mapquest when you put in directions; clearly they'll want their own, rather than to continue sending people to yahoo (a note--isn't it great how they still openly give users that option?).
They have also been working on Google Local, which could seriously benefit from some real geographic definitions as opposed to just rough correlation. If they can throw their math at the problem of mapping the world out in a useable way, it'll scale incredibly well and give them a real edge going into the future.
Don't assume that just because Microsoft WAS losing money on the xbox that they still are. They are selling far more units recently than they were when they started, they have more leverage over flextronics for costing, and component costs have come down significantly since the box was designed.
I bought a laptop from someone who ended up sending me a piece of shit. I tried to get them to take it back, and they gave me further crap about no returns, condition as advertised, etc. I then e-mailed paypal and they sent me a response in UNDER two hours with their insurance information, how they were investigating, and what my recourse options were. About two days later they wrote back saying they had gotten the vendor to cooperate and that all I needed to do was send the laptop back and have receipt confirmed by the shipper (not necessary to have it confirmed by the asshole vendor) and they'd refund my money. I did and they did. Couldn't be more pleased. I used to work at MBNA, which is about the highest-service CC company out there, and their claims were nowhere near that quick.
Moreover, the other advantage to you as a buyer is that you can easily and conveniently do business with a HUGE range of people you could not previously do business with. That increases merchant competition and keeps prices lower.
That's fine--be prepared to pay twice as much for your ticket to handle the cost of 1. coordinating who sits where 2. underbooking flights because they can't get enough tall/short people 3. lawsuits: when the airlines try to charge more for more space, because even short people want more space, and so there will be huge demand for the 40 inchers and little for 20 inchers so they'll be justified in charging more, but fat people will complain that they're discriminated against based on their weight and be good litigious little americans and sue the airlines you ticket buyers everywhere will have to share the cost of your idiotic idea.
Yeah, I found the game absolutely incredible and would consider it one of my all-time desert island games, but I couldn't beat the omega pirate!
Actually, it's not that they weren't allowed to raise wages. It was made cheaper by tax writoffs to increase benefits rather than direct wages, so employers offered their employees more by doing that.
Someone on slashdot once said
"Sure, (X) may be twenty years off now, but there's strong evidence that in fifteen years, it'll only be ten years away!"
Agreed. It's like saying "People who don't like to follow the rules oftentimes don't like to have rules imposed on them." No fucking shit, right?
The cost of a CA would almost certainly come down! I have no clue how many domain names exist, but remember how it used to cost $70 to register one and now it can be done for $8? That sort of pure profit, undifferentiated service doesn't last for long.
dude, they ALL have STDs
There's a difference between anticompetitive tactics and actually being a monopoly. Both are covered under antitrust laws, but WalMart is only the former.
I just thought I'd tack something onto that post--a bit of math in case you don't understand my point. Purchasing 60,000 CDs at one unit each is $720,000. If you expect a store to shell out enough to carry ten each of those most-popular 5,000 CDs and still carry one each of the rest, you're talking $1,260,000. At EACH store branch! Up front, with no chance of recouping most of them, offering that variety for you as a customer so you can have what you clearly desire: choice!
Assuming they want to stock enough to not lose sales to the store-next-door if they sell one of those 55,000 albums of which they only stock one, they need to tack on another $660,000 in stock. If you were to go try and borrow that kind of money, it'd cost you all your profits just to pay the interest!
I seriously cannot believe you fault indie-er record stores for charging what they charge, man. It's really, really pathetic.
The cost of carrying 60,000 cds instead of just five is tremendous assuming you don't want to be constantly stocked out. Granted, I buy all my music on the 'net and none of it from major labels, now, so I'm not necessarily supporting the old model, but if people want to find those other 55,000 CDs in a store, they're going to have to pay more. No gouging about it.
He means a car you moron! It's the same joke everyone was making when they first announced the segway!
VoIP is good because AT&T can begin using and save $500 million like that. No, really. It scales incredibly.
And the deep south is in the UK, is it?
Or maybe they're just throwing everything they can out there so MS will be more worried. If I said
We're intensely evaluating each of the following possibilities:
--Red Hat
--Debian
--Ximian
--Gentoo
--Mandrake [ha]
--slackware
--freeBSD
--MacOSX
--Windows
It's probably scarier than "We thought we'd check out linux." Then again, maybe not, and you definitely make a good point.
Sort of. You seem to be missing the fact that the service absolutely fucking rules, though. That's always a significant factor in how people spread their opinion of a service, especially between extremely-connected tech-savvy internet users.