Dude, you're really in over your head here. BCBS itself claims only 100MM nationwide members. Do the math -- that's less than 40% market share under the most conservative estimate of the number of currently uninsured Americans.
At the risk of repeating myself, this little detour of yours has precisely nothing to do with your original and still fully unsubstantiated claim that started this little exchange -- that insurance companies are validating the administration's 7.1MM enrollment number. You clearly have nothing on that, as I suspected from the beginning.
And with that, I'm done putting the rattle back on the highchair.
BCBS is a consortium of insurers coming together and offering plans. The BCBS group accounts for the majority of the enrollment . . .
Sorry, but citation very badly needed. Let me help: Here is a study of insurance carrier shares for ACA marketplace plans in seven states, hot off the presses from last month. It shows BCBS as having 97% market share in the whopping state of Rhode Island. After that it's 29% in California, 24% in Minnesota, 18% in New York, and not even enough share to make the charts in the rest. Is that what you meant by "a majority"?
Now, back to my question: What insurance company has validated the 7.1 million figure trumpeted by the administration, where, when, and how? It should be very simple to answer given your original matter-of-fact statement that "[a]ll of them seem to be putting out similar numbers in terms of those enrolled." Should I hold my breath?
Sorry, but I'm not going to let you glibly change the subject after getting called out on a ridiculous statement and having nothing to back it up.
You said: "All of them seem to be putting out similar numbers in terms of those enrolled."
After I asked for support, you give me one link from BCBS saying that 80-85% of enrollees in Blue Cross Blue Shield plans had paid their first month's premium.
Well, peachy. 80-85% of how many, and what has that to do with 7.1 million (or, as the title in your linked article claims, now 7.5 million)? Precisely nothing.
And I certainly hope you're not suggesting that there's anything remotely actionable about BCBS's statement that 80-85% of its own customers had paid one month's premium. Of course you're not.
All your original comment shows is that blind ideology and mod points are a dangerous combination.
I take it you didn't read the article you linked. That Rand study says that only 1.4 million people buying exchange plans were previously uninsured, and that the vast majority of the 9 million were new Medicaid recipients.
That aside, there's no mention at all of how many of those were people with pre-existing conditions, etc., as you originally claimed.
millions are MUCH better off by not being denied health care for pre-existing conditions, being able to stay on their parent's healthcare plans, etc.
You sound very well-informed. Would you mind sharing with the rest of us the data source you used to determine that "millions" are better off? Even a rough count for each one of the categories you mention would be great as well. Thanks.
Care to share at least a representative sample of these supposed statements by the insurance companies, in context? I see at least two potential issues:
1. Since no single insurance company is going to have anywhere close to all of these supposed enrollees, and we can reasonably presume that these competitors are acting like... well, you know, competitors, and not all sharing their enrollment numbers with each other, isn't it much more likely that the insurance companies making these supposed statements are simply parroting numbers from the administration or analysts?
2. If the insurance companies making these supposed statements are simply commenting on the total number of enrollees and not tying that to actual or implied representations of their relative performance in that market, what exactly in those statements do you think would be actionable by the SEC if the total number of enrollees later turned out to be wrong?
Unfortunately I'm short on time this morning, so please forgive the quick bullets:
- Patentees today often appeal rejections and ultimately receive a patent. Not sure what your point is about Edison. - An iPhone-style "swipe to unlock" on a Neonode would have been the holy grail of Samsung's invalidity case if true. It's an urban legend perpetuated by people who haven't read and understood Apple's patent -- https://www.google.com/patents... -- and think all it covers is responding to a finger gesture. - Courts in the UK and Netherlands have not thrown out Apple's U.S. patent claim. They've acted on the corresponding patents filed and prosecuted in their countries under their patent regimes. Unless you're an expert on comparative patent law across these countries and have analyzed the scope of the respective claims, you have no basis for saying that what the UK and Dutch courts threw out is the same as what Apple is asserting against Samsung. - Neonode's phone was considered by the USPTO before granting Apple's patent. It's not the same concept -- in fact, precisely the opposite. Read Neonode's own patent on it for yourself, in particular, the last phrase of claim 1: https://www.google.com/patents... - It's not clear what you're saying your Discman had. If a touchscreen-based button, again, Samsung would have quite cheerfully taken that to the bank, and it also seems to consume your following argument that the idea wasn't practical until capacitive touchscreens hit the mainstream. If a mechanical button, so what? This seems to be just like saying that the threshing machine shouldn't have been patentable, as I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread. - In any event, it's not correct that resistive touchscreens were a limiting factor. Palm Graffiti was a swipe-based input system on a resistive touchscreen available since the 1990s that worked quite well. But for some reason Palm never implemented the "obvious" swipe-to-unlock. - Multitouch isn't a requirement for swipe-to-unlock and thus is irrelevant here.
Courts have long since decided that "obvious" means something other than the common meaning, thus they have failed to uphold the standard.
Not at all. Just parroting a dictionary definition doesn't really help define a common framework for deciding whether an idea -- any idea -- is obvious. There's a lot more to the process than simply shooting from the hip and saying "well, DUH" because it feels that way to you today. Two examples -- there are many more:
As I said earlier, one of the primary problems that courts have to grapple with is hindsight bias. The patented idea has to be obvious, not to CauseBy in 2014, but to one of ordinary skill in the relevant art at the time of the invention.
Another issue is what level of skill to ascribe to that hypothetical person -- should the standard be what would have been obvious to someone with a Bachelor's degree in the relevant field and no work experience? Someone with a PhD and 20 years of industry experience? Many more ideas will be obvious to the latter person than the former -- which are deserving of patent protection and which are not?
The problem with patents is the failure of courts to uphold the obviousness standard.
After I pointed out you were wrong, you now say:
You are right that there is a well-developed body of law on the obviousness standard -- and that body of law is fucking retarded!
So apparently we agree that courts actually do generally uphold the obviousness standard on the books -- it's just not a standard you agree with. That's a bit different than what you originally said.
I get you don't like the patent system as it stands and feel like you have the perfect solution to make it better. But looking at your analogies above, it seems like to be consistent you'd have to agree that (1) the threshing machine was "obvious" over people with flails standing in a circle (it "just" beats grain to extract the kernels); (2) the automobile was "obvious" over the horse and buggy (it "just" rolls down the road without human power); and (3) the cellular phone was "obvious" over the land line (it "just" lets you say good morning to your mom). That's certainly an approach for a patent system, but one that probably would (1) incentivize a return to concealing developments as trade secrets rather than making them publicly available for others to build on, and (2) generally depress R&D, innovation, and risk-taking because of the loss of first mover advantage. You may think that would be a great world to live in -- most would disagree with you. Emigration to one of the few remaining countries that takes a more relaxed view toward intellectual property rights (and other property rights, for that matter) is always an option.
Probably because [2007] was around the time when touchscreens became feasible on mobile devices and other input methods were abandoned to cut costs?
I'm not sure what "other input methods [] abandoned to cut costs" has to do with the subject (the iPhone still has multiple mechanical buttons the last time I checked), but you're simply wrong about touchscreens not being feasible prior to 2007. I personally owned multiple mobile devices with touchscreens in the early 2000s.
The problem with patents is the failure of courts to uphold the obviousness standard.
Courts actually do "uphold the obviousness standard" -- there's a very well-developed body of law on this. I think your real quarrel is that you disagree with that standard, which attempts to deal with the fact that many--even most--ideas appear completely obvious in hindsight.
One very simple example: If swipe-to-unlock on a handheld device with a touchscreen really has been so blazingly obvious since half-past forever, why was Apple the first to commercially implement it in 2007, for heaven's sake? Why then, and only then, did others flock to copy it?
Nate Silver, stats-steeped liberal darling of the past 6+ years, has the temerity to direct his ruthless, data-driven worldview against a liberal sacred cow.
Get caught again, trial, convicted, no more rehab. Death penalty. This system provides real effort to make you a member of society, and allows for mistakes in the trial system.
Well, one mistake in the trial system per person, anyway -- and as long as the mistake was in your first trial and not your second. Otherwise, your "mistake in the trial system" commits you to death.
Oh, and can you imagine the blackmail potential against people with "one strike"? What if that strike was due to a mistake in the trial system? Should that relegate you to walking around on pins and needles, looking over your shoulder the rest of your life?
I'm not against the death penalty at all, and I don't disagree that due process rights are abused as the system stands, but this is the opposite extreme IMO -- way too little due process to count on staying alive very long. Particularly if someone in the system has an axe to grind with you.
Yeah, he's a bitter little troll, this one. Can't be troubled to justify his snippy pronouncements -- the burden is always on you to go read something/think really hard/reeducate yourself to understand why he's correct. If you're bored sometime, you should ask him how he feels about BitCoin and to explain why he feels that way. Bring popcorn. LOL
The biggest jump was 2008-2009, a budget proposed by Bush, not Obama. . . . But I've got no interest in hatchet-job newspaper articles that are more about ideological carping than sound analysis.
Sorry, but the juxtaposition was just a bit too ironic. How about some "sound analysis" rather than "ideological carping" on what really happened in 2009?
Bush's proposed 2009 budget (not passed by Congress): $3.1 trillion.
Obama's proposed 2009 budget (passed by Congress): $3.5 trillion.
Obama's supposed one-time stimulus package that (as I said in my first post) simply became a new floor after the Senate started playing the year-to-year CR game: $831 billion, including a $20 billion USDA kicker that, as I showed above, has never gone away.
I responded in the first place because you were just throwing out Obama talking points belied by the underlying numbers. Disappointingly, you did exactly the same thing in your reply.
And Apple claims that its patents (which were mostly UI stuff like swipe-to-unlock) so valuable that any such cross-licensing agreement with Samsung and others is beyond consideration. Which is, of course, bullshit as well.
Citation required. Actually several, given the number of conclusory propositions you have packed in those sentences. To support all that, it seems to me you'd need to be able to semi-confidently answer at least the following questions:
What's the business value of Apple's entire relevant patent portfolio to Samsung?
What's the business value of Samsung's entire relevant patent portfolio to Apple?
How many of Apple's relevant patents did it commit to license on RAND terms?
How many of Samsung's relevant patents did it commit to license on RAND terms?
Which of Apple's patents are to features that fundamentally drive consumer demand for a smartphone? How does that affect the value of those patents to Samsung?
Which of Samsung's patents are to features that fundamentally drive consumer demand for a smartphone? How does that affect the value of those patents to Apple?
Did Apple truly say that "any such cross-licensing agreement with Samsung and others is beyond consideration," or do you just not agree with the terms of the licensing Apple made that included a cross-license?
As I said previously, companies agree to cross-license or decide not to cross-license all the time -- it's not at all the universal concept that the conventional wisdom in this thread suggests. A patentee at the end of the day has the right to exclude others from practicing the subject matter of the patent, and the patentee may or may not choose to give up that right in exchange for money. It's true that injunctions are becoming more infrequent, but one of the primary considerations these days for granting an injunction is whether the parties are true competitors. In other words, the law still recognizes the patentee's right to use the patent to protect market share. Don't like that and think we should continue moving toward a truly compulsory licensing system -- or that we should nuke the patent system altogether? Talk to your congresscritter. Meanwhile, as the saying goes, don't hate the player -- hate the game.
Even if that's what he meant, at the end of the day it gets us to exactly the same place -- he's effectively ordering Apple to assign an arbitrary value to its patent portfolio that may not reflect its actual value, apparently based on a distorted understanding of how patent valuation and licensing actually works.
Here's a little thought experiment. For the sake of the hypothetical, please assume all patents are in the same or similar technology space:
Scenario 1: I'm a company with 5 patents. I approach Samsung and say "hey -- I've seen all those 'small price + cross licensing agreement' deals you've done with other companies.* I want the same deal. Here's my 5 patents and a "small price" -- cough up your 100,000 patents." Proper result?
Scenario 2: I'm a company with 1,000,000 patents, including a broad, pioneering patent on logic circuits made from room-temperature superconductors. Samsung approaches me and offers its 100,000 patents and a "small price," and demands a cross-license to my 1,000,000 patents, including the superconductor patent. Proper result?
Big companies have disagreements about the actual value of their patents allthetime. Companies decide to cross-license -- or not -- with other companies all the time. The OP presented no evidence that Apple is doing anything fundamentally different.
* Which I probably haven't, because many companies tend to be highly secretive of the exact terms of these agreements -- for obvious reasons.
Kill the meaning of FRAND patents is a standardisation disaster, and a short term cash grab by Apple to the detriment of everyone else, including their own users.
It's not like you sprinkle magic pixie dust on a patent and it becomes a "FRAND patent," or that certain categories of patents are "FRAND patents."
What you're referring to as "FRAND patents" are those for which the owner has previously pledged (typically to a standard-setting organization of which they're a member) to license the patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Courts tend to enforce that sort of promise when it's actually time to negotiate the rate of the license and the patent holder and licensee have a different understanding of what "fair" and "reasonable" mean.
If a patent holder does not make that kind of commitment, the patent is not subject to FRAND licensing terms (or, as you call it, a "FRAND patent"). Full stop.
If Apple is holding other patent owners to their FRAND licensing commitments, but is licensing its non-FRAND patents on non-FRAND terms, that doesn't "kill the meaning of FRAND patents." Whether you like Apple's chosen patent monetization strategy is a different issue altogether, but there's no need to make stuff up in the process of making that point.
So if their are 250,000 patentable inventions in a phone, and that phone retails for $600, by my math each of those inventions are worth about a quarter of a cent per device. So it looks like Apple has a justifiable claim to 1.25 cents per phone.
It depends a bit on how much each individual patent contributes to the overall device/standard/etc.
In the standards context, courts lately have been making an effort (it's never going to be perfect, but at least making an effort) to assign some level of proportional value the patents in question vs. the rest of the patents covering the standard, and use those numbers to calculate a reasonable royalty for the patents in question. In theory (and if all courts eventually start using a similar methodology) that will largely address the royalty stacking problem.
As the article points out, most of this is going to mandatory programs, which would be the same even if it were Romney or McCain or Sarah Fucking Palin in office.
What this means, for those dumb enough to believe what they read in IBD, is that what Obama has achieved is to reduce the amount of spending on the discretionary side. Agriculture, down 8%. HHS, down 7.6%. Even Homeland Security, down 2.8%.
This is misleading -- at best -- on both counts. So-called "mandatory" spending has been on a screaming binge since the 2009 stimulus, with the Senate letting that supposed "one time emergency" increase ride by not passing a budget for years. Who cares what label the politicians put on the dollars if the absolute number of dollars keeps skyrocketing?
Let's take just one of your examples, the USDA, and look at absolute dollars spent before and during Obama's term in office (sources here, and here, all numbers in billions):
2007: Mandatory $67, discretionary $25, total $92
2008: Mandatory $67, discretionary $26, total $93
2009: Mandatory $92, discretionary $24, total $116
2010: Mandatory $103, discretionary $27, total $130
2011: Mandatory $118, discretionary $25, total $143
2012: Mandatory $128, discretionary $24, total $152
2013: Mandatory $132, discretionary $23, total $155
2014: Mandatory $134, discretionary $24, total $158
2015: Mandatory $123, discretionary $23, total $146
So the harsh mathematical reality is that since Obama took office, the USDA budget is up between 155% and 170%, depending on whether you believe the factors driving the 2014-2015 decrease in "mandatory" spending (discussed on PDF page 6 of the second link) are going to stick in future years.
So two takeaways: First, you can't say with a straight face that this same outcome would have occurred regardless of who was in office. Second, what exactly from the above numbers makes you want to give Obama a big ol' backslap? Because he trimmed somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion from a cumulative $349 billion in increased USDA spending during his time in office? Give me a break.
To make it worse you are trying to pretend that you haven't written the comments you have.
Hmmm... still can't cite any actual words of mine to support your allegations, I see. We know from your past comments that you know how to quote. Cut and paste keys broken? LOL
it's very clear that you are just spinning a tale to bring in the marks . . . "just try it you'll like it"
And here, as unlikely as it might seem, your shrill irrationality reaches a whole new level. I've not breathed even a suggestion that you or anyone else should try BitCoin, and you can point to none. But you knew that -- it's clear now that you're just frothing at the mouth for reasons that even you may not understand.
Here's the bottom line, my friend: after reading through a number of your past comments, it's abundantly clear that (1) you despise BitCoin with a passion; (2) you can't present a cogent argument why you do (hint: "look at the definition of Ponzi scheme and look at BitCoin -- DERP" isn't a cogent argument); and (3) when asked to justify your rhetoric, you lash out at the questioner on a personal level and declare them to be part of the conspiracy you imagine to exist.
Given that you're doing exactly the same thing here, it's clear there's no productive discussion to be had (and shame on me, perhaps, for not realizing that from your very first post in this thread, where you broke into the middle of a discussion that didn't involve you and lobbed out one of your classic one-line insults). I think we'll both best be served by you getting back to counting black helicopters and finding another target for your rants. Please do have as good of a life as your angry, irrational, conspiratorial life perspective will allow.
Oh dear. One more time, for whatever good it'll do.
Me:
BitCoin is speculation. Stocks are speculation. Gold is speculation. Belly up to the bar like the rational adult you supposedly are and tell me why I'm wrong, or kindly take your ill-directed bitterness somewhere else.
You:
If you are not part of the scam why the loud advocacy and why demean yourself by pretending to be so stupid?
Please be so kind as to direct us all to the specific language above that you characterize as "loud advocacy" on my part (I assume for BitCoin, but you didn't really say that).
As to your continued vitriol, I reissue and clarify my challenge: If the distinction between BitCoin and any other target of a speculative bubble is so blindingly obvious, it should be quite simple for you to marshal a very succinct collection of words in the English language to make that point. Care to do so?
I find that people who don't say anything more than, "it's so clear I don't have to explain it to you" or "if you don't see why I'm right, you must be stupid" generally do that because they realize they're backed into a corner, have nothing substantive they can say, and thus try to get out of the situation by waving their hands and pounding the table. Looking forward to your thoughtful, rational reply.
No, not very polite, but more polite than writing "who is this creep trying to justify the scam he is part of by pretending he's too stupid to be able to see the differences between it and the stock market".
In other words your petty little tactic of pretended stupidity has been seen through.
Are you getting the hint yet?
I'm getting offended by being seen as fresh meat to be taken advantage of by scammers.
Ouch... lose some money in BitCoin or something? No need to take it out on me.
And if you really know me and my supposed involvement in BitCoin, pray do post the details here for the world to see. Since I've never touched the stuff, you'll just make yourself look like a bigger fool than you already have.
Once again from the top: BitCoin is speculation. Stocks are speculation. Gold is speculation. Belly up to the bar like the rational adult you supposedly are and tell me why I'm wrong, or kindly take your ill-directed bitterness somewhere else.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, you're really in over your head here. BCBS itself claims only 100MM nationwide members. Do the math -- that's less than 40% market share under the most conservative estimate of the number of currently uninsured Americans.
At the risk of repeating myself, this little detour of yours has precisely nothing to do with your original and still fully unsubstantiated claim that started this little exchange -- that insurance companies are validating the administration's 7.1MM enrollment number. You clearly have nothing on that, as I suspected from the beginning.
And with that, I'm done putting the rattle back on the highchair.
BCBS is a consortium of insurers coming together and offering plans. The BCBS group accounts for the majority of the enrollment . . .
Sorry, but citation very badly needed. Let me help: Here is a study of insurance carrier shares for ACA marketplace plans in seven states, hot off the presses from last month. It shows BCBS as having 97% market share in the whopping state of Rhode Island. After that it's 29% in California, 24% in Minnesota, 18% in New York, and not even enough share to make the charts in the rest. Is that what you meant by "a majority"?
Now, back to my question: What insurance company has validated the 7.1 million figure trumpeted by the administration, where, when, and how? It should be very simple to answer given your original matter-of-fact statement that "[a]ll of them seem to be putting out similar numbers in terms of those enrolled." Should I hold my breath?
Sorry, but I'm not going to let you glibly change the subject after getting called out on a ridiculous statement and having nothing to back it up.
You said: "All of them seem to be putting out similar numbers in terms of those enrolled."
After I asked for support, you give me one link from BCBS saying that 80-85% of enrollees in Blue Cross Blue Shield plans had paid their first month's premium.
Well, peachy. 80-85% of how many, and what has that to do with 7.1 million (or, as the title in your linked article claims, now 7.5 million)? Precisely nothing.
And I certainly hope you're not suggesting that there's anything remotely actionable about BCBS's statement that 80-85% of its own customers had paid one month's premium. Of course you're not.
All your original comment shows is that blind ideology and mod points are a dangerous combination.
I take it you didn't read the article you linked. That Rand study says that only 1.4 million people buying exchange plans were previously uninsured, and that the vast majority of the 9 million were new Medicaid recipients.
That aside, there's no mention at all of how many of those were people with pre-existing conditions, etc., as you originally claimed.
millions are MUCH better off by not being denied health care for pre-existing conditions, being able to stay on their parent's healthcare plans, etc.
You sound very well-informed. Would you mind sharing with the rest of us the data source you used to determine that "millions" are better off? Even a rough count for each one of the categories you mention would be great as well. Thanks.
Care to share at least a representative sample of these supposed statements by the insurance companies, in context? I see at least two potential issues:
1. Since no single insurance company is going to have anywhere close to all of these supposed enrollees, and we can reasonably presume that these competitors are acting like... well, you know, competitors, and not all sharing their enrollment numbers with each other, isn't it much more likely that the insurance companies making these supposed statements are simply parroting numbers from the administration or analysts?
2. If the insurance companies making these supposed statements are simply commenting on the total number of enrollees and not tying that to actual or implied representations of their relative performance in that market, what exactly in those statements do you think would be actionable by the SEC if the total number of enrollees later turned out to be wrong?
Unfortunately I'm short on time this morning, so please forgive the quick bullets:
- Patentees today often appeal rejections and ultimately receive a patent. Not sure what your point is about Edison.
- An iPhone-style "swipe to unlock" on a Neonode would have been the holy grail of Samsung's invalidity case if true. It's an urban legend perpetuated by people who haven't read and understood Apple's patent -- https://www.google.com/patents... -- and think all it covers is responding to a finger gesture.
- Courts in the UK and Netherlands have not thrown out Apple's U.S. patent claim. They've acted on the corresponding patents filed and prosecuted in their countries under their patent regimes. Unless you're an expert on comparative patent law across these countries and have analyzed the scope of the respective claims, you have no basis for saying that what the UK and Dutch courts threw out is the same as what Apple is asserting against Samsung.
- Neonode's phone was considered by the USPTO before granting Apple's patent. It's not the same concept -- in fact, precisely the opposite. Read Neonode's own patent on it for yourself, in particular, the last phrase of claim 1: https://www.google.com/patents...
- It's not clear what you're saying your Discman had. If a touchscreen-based button, again, Samsung would have quite cheerfully taken that to the bank, and it also seems to consume your following argument that the idea wasn't practical until capacitive touchscreens hit the mainstream. If a mechanical button, so what? This seems to be just like saying that the threshing machine shouldn't have been patentable, as I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread.
- In any event, it's not correct that resistive touchscreens were a limiting factor. Palm Graffiti was a swipe-based input system on a resistive touchscreen available since the 1990s that worked quite well. But for some reason Palm never implemented the "obvious" swipe-to-unlock.
- Multitouch isn't a requirement for swipe-to-unlock and thus is irrelevant here.
Courts have long since decided that "obvious" means something other than the common meaning, thus they have failed to uphold the standard.
Not at all. Just parroting a dictionary definition doesn't really help define a common framework for deciding whether an idea -- any idea -- is obvious. There's a lot more to the process than simply shooting from the hip and saying "well, DUH" because it feels that way to you today. Two examples -- there are many more:
As I said earlier, one of the primary problems that courts have to grapple with is hindsight bias. The patented idea has to be obvious, not to CauseBy in 2014, but to one of ordinary skill in the relevant art at the time of the invention.
Another issue is what level of skill to ascribe to that hypothetical person -- should the standard be what would have been obvious to someone with a Bachelor's degree in the relevant field and no work experience? Someone with a PhD and 20 years of industry experience? Many more ideas will be obvious to the latter person than the former -- which are deserving of patent protection and which are not?
You first said:
The problem with patents is the failure of courts to uphold the obviousness standard.
After I pointed out you were wrong, you now say:
You are right that there is a well-developed body of law on the obviousness standard -- and that body of law is fucking retarded!
So apparently we agree that courts actually do generally uphold the obviousness standard on the books -- it's just not a standard you agree with. That's a bit different than what you originally said.
I get you don't like the patent system as it stands and feel like you have the perfect solution to make it better. But looking at your analogies above, it seems like to be consistent you'd have to agree that (1) the threshing machine was "obvious" over people with flails standing in a circle (it "just" beats grain to extract the kernels); (2) the automobile was "obvious" over the horse and buggy (it "just" rolls down the road without human power); and (3) the cellular phone was "obvious" over the land line (it "just" lets you say good morning to your mom). That's certainly an approach for a patent system, but one that probably would (1) incentivize a return to concealing developments as trade secrets rather than making them publicly available for others to build on, and (2) generally depress R&D, innovation, and risk-taking because of the loss of first mover advantage. You may think that would be a great world to live in -- most would disagree with you. Emigration to one of the few remaining countries that takes a more relaxed view toward intellectual property rights (and other property rights, for that matter) is always an option.
Probably because [2007] was around the time when touchscreens became feasible on mobile devices and other input methods were abandoned to cut costs?
I'm not sure what "other input methods [] abandoned to cut costs" has to do with the subject (the iPhone still has multiple mechanical buttons the last time I checked), but you're simply wrong about touchscreens not being feasible prior to 2007. I personally owned multiple mobile devices with touchscreens in the early 2000s.
The problem with patents is the failure of courts to uphold the obviousness standard.
Courts actually do "uphold the obviousness standard" -- there's a very well-developed body of law on this. I think your real quarrel is that you disagree with that standard, which attempts to deal with the fact that many--even most--ideas appear completely obvious in hindsight.
One very simple example: If swipe-to-unlock on a handheld device with a touchscreen really has been so blazingly obvious since half-past forever, why was Apple the first to commercially implement it in 2007 , for heaven's sake? Why then, and only then, did others flock to copy it?
I have to laugh at your comment.
And I'm still chuckling at yours -- it's like the perfect intersection of straw man argument and cut-and-paste blizzard. Very impressive, I'm sure.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, did you happen to take note that neither this article nor my post said anything about temperature?
Nate Silver, stats-steeped liberal darling of the past 6+ years, has the temerity to direct his ruthless, data-driven worldview against a liberal sacred cow.
Hilarity ensues.
Get caught again, trial, convicted, no more rehab. Death penalty. This system provides real effort to make you a member of society, and allows for mistakes in the trial system.
Well, one mistake in the trial system per person, anyway -- and as long as the mistake was in your first trial and not your second. Otherwise, your "mistake in the trial system" commits you to death.
Oh, and can you imagine the blackmail potential against people with "one strike"? What if that strike was due to a mistake in the trial system? Should that relegate you to walking around on pins and needles, looking over your shoulder the rest of your life?
I'm not against the death penalty at all, and I don't disagree that due process rights are abused as the system stands, but this is the opposite extreme IMO -- way too little due process to count on staying alive very long. Particularly if someone in the system has an axe to grind with you.
Yeah ok I can see I'm arguing with a brick wall.
Yeah, he's a bitter little troll, this one. Can't be troubled to justify his snippy pronouncements -- the burden is always on you to go read something/think really hard/reeducate yourself to understand why he's correct. If you're bored sometime, you should ask him how he feels about BitCoin and to explain why he feels that way. Bring popcorn. LOL
The biggest jump was 2008-2009, a budget proposed by Bush, not Obama. . . . But I've got no interest in hatchet-job newspaper articles that are more about ideological carping than sound analysis.
Sorry, but the juxtaposition was just a bit too ironic. How about some "sound analysis" rather than "ideological carping" on what really happened in 2009?
I responded in the first place because you were just throwing out Obama talking points belied by the underlying numbers. Disappointingly, you did exactly the same thing in your reply.
And Apple claims that its patents (which were mostly UI stuff like swipe-to-unlock) so valuable that any such cross-licensing agreement with Samsung and others is beyond consideration. Which is, of course, bullshit as well.
Citation required. Actually several, given the number of conclusory propositions you have packed in those sentences. To support all that, it seems to me you'd need to be able to semi-confidently answer at least the following questions:
As I said previously, companies agree to cross-license or decide not to cross-license all the time -- it's not at all the universal concept that the conventional wisdom in this thread suggests. A patentee at the end of the day has the right to exclude others from practicing the subject matter of the patent, and the patentee may or may not choose to give up that right in exchange for money. It's true that injunctions are becoming more infrequent, but one of the primary considerations these days for granting an injunction is whether the parties are true competitors. In other words, the law still recognizes the patentee's right to use the patent to protect market share. Don't like that and think we should continue moving toward a truly compulsory licensing system -- or that we should nuke the patent system altogether? Talk to your congresscritter. Meanwhile, as the saying goes, don't hate the player -- hate the game.
Even if that's what he meant, at the end of the day it gets us to exactly the same place -- he's effectively ordering Apple to assign an arbitrary value to its patent portfolio that may not reflect its actual value, apparently based on a distorted understanding of how patent valuation and licensing actually works.
Here's a little thought experiment. For the sake of the hypothetical, please assume all patents are in the same or similar technology space:
Scenario 1: I'm a company with 5 patents. I approach Samsung and say "hey -- I've seen all those 'small price + cross licensing agreement' deals you've done with other companies.* I want the same deal. Here's my 5 patents and a "small price" -- cough up your 100,000 patents." Proper result?
Scenario 2: I'm a company with 1,000,000 patents, including a broad, pioneering patent on logic circuits made from room-temperature superconductors. Samsung approaches me and offers its 100,000 patents and a "small price," and demands a cross-license to my 1,000,000 patents, including the superconductor patent. Proper result?
Big companies have disagreements about the actual value of their patents all the time. Companies decide to cross-license -- or not -- with other companies all the time. The OP presented no evidence that Apple is doing anything fundamentally different.
* Which I probably haven't, because many companies tend to be highly secretive of the exact terms of these agreements -- for obvious reasons.
Kill the meaning of FRAND patents is a standardisation disaster, and a short term cash grab by Apple to the detriment of everyone else, including their own users.
It's not like you sprinkle magic pixie dust on a patent and it becomes a "FRAND patent," or that certain categories of patents are "FRAND patents."
What you're referring to as "FRAND patents" are those for which the owner has previously pledged (typically to a standard-setting organization of which they're a member) to license the patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Courts tend to enforce that sort of promise when it's actually time to negotiate the rate of the license and the patent holder and licensee have a different understanding of what "fair" and "reasonable" mean.
If a patent holder does not make that kind of commitment, the patent is not subject to FRAND licensing terms (or, as you call it, a "FRAND patent"). Full stop.
If Apple is holding other patent owners to their FRAND licensing commitments, but is licensing its non-FRAND patents on non-FRAND terms, that doesn't "kill the meaning of FRAND patents." Whether you like Apple's chosen patent monetization strategy is a different issue altogether, but there's no need to make stuff up in the process of making that point.
So if their are 250,000 patentable inventions in a phone, and that phone retails for $600, by my math each of those inventions are worth about a quarter of a cent per device. So it looks like Apple has a justifiable claim to 1.25 cents per phone.
It depends a bit on how much each individual patent contributes to the overall device/standard/etc.
In the standards context, courts lately have been making an effort (it's never going to be perfect, but at least making an effort) to assign some level of proportional value the patents in question vs. the rest of the patents covering the standard, and use those numbers to calculate a reasonable royalty for the patents in question. In theory (and if all courts eventually start using a similar methodology) that will largely address the royalty stacking problem.
Dealers stock parts and provide a distribution network for said parts. This is why my '94 Honda Accord still runs
As someone who has spent quite a bit of time keeping older cars on the road, I feel compelled to ask: what in the WORLD are you talking about?
As the article points out, most of this is going to mandatory programs, which would be the same even if it were Romney or McCain or Sarah Fucking Palin in office.
What this means, for those dumb enough to believe what they read in IBD, is that what Obama has achieved is to reduce the amount of spending on the discretionary side. Agriculture, down 8%. HHS, down 7.6%. Even Homeland Security, down 2.8%.
This is misleading -- at best -- on both counts. So-called "mandatory" spending has been on a screaming binge since the 2009 stimulus, with the Senate letting that supposed "one time emergency" increase ride by not passing a budget for years. Who cares what label the politicians put on the dollars if the absolute number of dollars keeps skyrocketing?
Let's take just one of your examples, the USDA, and look at absolute dollars spent before and during Obama's term in office (sources here, and here, all numbers in billions):
So the harsh mathematical reality is that since Obama took office, the USDA budget is up between 155% and 170%, depending on whether you believe the factors driving the 2014-2015 decrease in "mandatory" spending (discussed on PDF page 6 of the second link) are going to stick in future years.
So two takeaways: First, you can't say with a straight face that this same outcome would have occurred regardless of who was in office. Second, what exactly from the above numbers makes you want to give Obama a big ol' backslap? Because he trimmed somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion from a cumulative $349 billion in increased USDA spending during his time in office? Give me a break.
To make it worse you are trying to pretend that you haven't written the comments you have.
Hmmm... still can't cite any actual words of mine to support your allegations, I see. We know from your past comments that you know how to quote. Cut and paste keys broken? LOL
it's very clear that you are just spinning a tale to bring in the marks . . . "just try it you'll like it"
And here, as unlikely as it might seem, your shrill irrationality reaches a whole new level. I've not breathed even a suggestion that you or anyone else should try BitCoin, and you can point to none. But you knew that -- it's clear now that you're just frothing at the mouth for reasons that even you may not understand.
Here's the bottom line, my friend: after reading through a number of your past comments, it's abundantly clear that (1) you despise BitCoin with a passion; (2) you can't present a cogent argument why you do (hint: "look at the definition of Ponzi scheme and look at BitCoin -- DERP" isn't a cogent argument); and (3) when asked to justify your rhetoric, you lash out at the questioner on a personal level and declare them to be part of the conspiracy you imagine to exist.
Given that you're doing exactly the same thing here, it's clear there's no productive discussion to be had (and shame on me, perhaps, for not realizing that from your very first post in this thread, where you broke into the middle of a discussion that didn't involve you and lobbed out one of your classic one-line insults). I think we'll both best be served by you getting back to counting black helicopters and finding another target for your rants. Please do have as good of a life as your angry, irrational, conspiratorial life perspective will allow.
Oh dear. One more time, for whatever good it'll do.
Me:
BitCoin is speculation. Stocks are speculation. Gold is speculation. Belly up to the bar like the rational adult you supposedly are and tell me why I'm wrong, or kindly take your ill-directed bitterness somewhere else.
You:
If you are not part of the scam why the loud advocacy and why demean yourself by pretending to be so stupid?
Please be so kind as to direct us all to the specific language above that you characterize as "loud advocacy" on my part (I assume for BitCoin, but you didn't really say that).
As to your continued vitriol, I reissue and clarify my challenge: If the distinction between BitCoin and any other target of a speculative bubble is so blindingly obvious, it should be quite simple for you to marshal a very succinct collection of words in the English language to make that point. Care to do so?
I find that people who don't say anything more than, "it's so clear I don't have to explain it to you" or "if you don't see why I'm right, you must be stupid" generally do that because they realize they're backed into a corner, have nothing substantive they can say, and thus try to get out of the situation by waving their hands and pounding the table. Looking forward to your thoughtful, rational reply.
No, not very polite, but more polite than writing "who is this creep trying to justify the scam he is part of by pretending he's too stupid to be able to see the differences between it and the stock market". In other words your petty little tactic of pretended stupidity has been seen through. Are you getting the hint yet? I'm getting offended by being seen as fresh meat to be taken advantage of by scammers.
Ouch... lose some money in BitCoin or something? No need to take it out on me.
And if you really know me and my supposed involvement in BitCoin, pray do post the details here for the world to see. Since I've never touched the stuff, you'll just make yourself look like a bigger fool than you already have.
Once again from the top: BitCoin is speculation. Stocks are speculation. Gold is speculation. Belly up to the bar like the rational adult you supposedly are and tell me why I'm wrong, or kindly take your ill-directed bitterness somewhere else.