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User: david_thornley

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  1. Re:Great Recession 2.0 coming? on Microsoft Could Be First Tech Company To Reach Trillion-Dollar Market Value: Analyst (geekwire.com) · · Score: 1

    Look, my investments pay more than the 0% financing I got on my current car. I could move a little money around and pay it off next week if I wanted, but it would cost me money in the long run. Debt is bad if the interest rate is higher than earnings from investments. I pay credit card companies no interest, my mortgage is at 4.5% and is a tax deduction, our cars are 0-1% interest.

  2. Re:Great Recession 2.0 coming? on Microsoft Could Be First Tech Company To Reach Trillion-Dollar Market Value: Analyst (geekwire.com) · · Score: 1

    Gold isn't money. Gold is a commodity, and the attempt to use it as money led to a lot of bad things.

  3. Net profit margin is useless when comparing across types of sales. Apple is primarily a hardware company. They make money from selling stuff that costs money to design and to make. Microsoft is primarily a software company. They make money from selling stuff that costs money to design but is trivial to make.

  4. I hold stock for a long time, and everyone generalizes from one example.

    Best I can do.

  5. Microsoft's enterprise market share and entrance into cloud computing are significant. The desktop market share is much less so. The average home desktop owner would be better served by a decent tablet with keyboard, and Microsoft has approximately no market share in mobile, and isn't going to get much.

  6. Re:Battery life is not the real issue on Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    As a first approximation, nobody cares whether the batteries, memory, or SSD are user-replaceable. What almost every consumer cares about is what the product will do for them. I'm sure Apple can replace the battery (it would cost me about $80 for my iPhone, but after more than three years of fairly heavy use I still don't see the need), and consumers aren't going to care that much about having to get a minor repair every three or four years. Most figure that their computer will eventually be disposed of. I know there's people reading this who have decades-old computers running, but most people don't.

    Most parts of a laptop are not user-serviceable. Why would there be a warning sticker just because the memory is not user-replaceable and not one where the mobo, optical drive, graphics hardware, screen, and keyboard aren't? I can replace all of these on my desktop, although I'd rather not have to replace the motherboard.

  7. Sure, and if you could just download the Chrome navigation program and get around that, it would be less of a problem. Or if you could have your software fixed without going back to the dealer. It's obviously Apple's problem, but it appears to be a Safari bug, meaning that there's perfectly good workarounds and that Apple can fix it without much ado.

  8. Re:Working on the report instead of the battery on Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    I was just saying that I was surprised that it will happen with an Apple.

    All consumer products, and most commercial products, have occasional defects. You got a defective computer. That sucks, but it says nothing about the quality of the line as a whole. I assume you have not yet asked Apple about this, but after crunch time you really need to, and see what they do.

  9. Re:Working on the report instead of the battery on Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    No, the same thing is not happening with Firefox. What you're reporting is much different from what CR reported. You probably have a defective MBP, and you need to get that taken care of while it's still under warranty.

    Manufacturing defects show up in most things, now and then. Sounds like you won the hard-luck lottery there.

  10. Re:I'be been a Mac user for 13+ years on Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Actually, Jobs' solution to "antenna-gate" was to give all the iPhone 4 customers a free case that would cover up the antenna junction. I got mine. In the meantime, I tested my 4 and found I had to lick my finger and put it on the short space between antennas to have any noticeable effect. It was a stupid design decision in the first place, but the problems were avoidable, not serious for every 4, and Apple provided a fix that worked.

  11. Re:I'be been a Mac user for 13+ years on Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    This is antenna-gate all over again.

    You mean an overblown and easily fixed problem?

  12. Re:Why would Amazon keep the recordings? on Police Request Amazon Echo Recordings For Homicide Investigation (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    What you're saying is very plausible speculation, but it's speculation. Neither you nor I nor the police actually know there isn't a scrap of evidence to be found there. This is a murder investigation, and the police are following up unlikely possibilities in the hope that something might turn up. The search warrant is adequately specific by Fourth Amendment standards. Why do people think there's a problem with this?

  13. Re: Amazon - Overly broad? on Police Request Amazon Echo Recordings For Homicide Investigation (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    How certain are you that they'll get nothing useful? This is a murder investigation. They often have trails that lead to dead ends, but need to be explored anyway. The police are being thorough here, that's all, and looking for anything that might possibly be helpful.

  14. I've watched several videos about the Electric Universe theory, it does appear to explain a lot of Cosmological phenomena that Relativity does not

    The next question is whether it explains all or most of the phenomena that General Relativity explains, and the next is whether it's compatible with quantum physics. Quantum mechanics and General Relativity are exceedingly successful theories that make a lot of amazingly exact predictions.

  15. Suppose you see a door opening. You can come back any time you like and see it opening and closing, so you can make detailed observations, and anyone you want can come and see it doing that. You examine the area carefully, and find that there are no people or machinery doing it. You measure the breeze and find the air to be very still. You observe the hinges and find that they do have friction, so the door couldn't be swinging indefinitely from an initial impulse. You observe the mass distribution of the door and there's nothing odd about it. No matter how long you study it, you can't find anything that would make the door open and close, and everybody you bring in to observe it sees that the door is opening and closing with no reason why that might be happening.

    Then you find that some people can describe features of death scenes that they couldn't possibly know but get right. Again, you find that this continues to happen, and can be verified by anyone who bothers. You, and everyone else who checks, find that these people can also tell you personal details about the deceased.

    Would you find this evidence of the existence of ghosts?

  16. What's a "placeholder"? There's a lot of things we can't observe directly. By this line of reasoning, quarks and gluons are definitely "placeholders", since we're never going to observe an isolated quark or gluon.

    There's nothing complicated about dark matter. It's matter that doesn't interact electromagnstically. We just don't know much about its other properties. You might be thinking that galactic rotation curves are complicated, but gravitational lensing isn't.

  17. It's something that has mass and doesn't interact electromagnetically. You know, kind of like a neutrino, except slower. We have observed it as such. What are you going to call it? What counts as finding it, considering we're never going to observe it using EM radiation? We can see the effects it has on spacetime.

  18. I find the gravitational lensing that comes without detectable mass to be more convincing evidence, myself. Other theories of gravitational rotation can't explain the lensing. There's other evidence also.

  19. There's no experimental evidence that stars exist, either. Have we ever made one in the lab? There's a whole lot of observational evidence, just as there's lots of observational evidence of dark matter.

  20. Re: Dark Matter is a horrible kludge on Vera Rubin, Pioneering Astronomer Who Confirmed Existence of Dark Matter, Dies At 88 (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 1

    Scientifically, a theory is a collection of related evidence, mathematical models, and ways of thinking about something. It is never actually proven. A Law is the next best thing to a proven theory, and some have had to be revised (conservation of energy and conservation of matter in the Twentieth Century), but not often.

    The EM Drive, if it works as claimed, violates the Laws of Conservation of Momentum and Conservation of Matter and Energy. While these could conceivably be wrong, that would mean that the laws of physics vary over fairly short distances in ways that have not been observed before (see Noether's Theorem). Neither AC nor you nor I made up these laws, or that theorem, and so I feel very confident in saying that the EM drive isn't what it's often claimed to be. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claiming that conservation laws are simply wrong is extraordinary, and I haven't seen anything quite up to ordinary evidence that the EM drive works.

  21. Re:The Stoics on What's the Best Book You Read This Year? · · Score: 1

    Sometimes thinking about what one can control gets depressing, because I feel impelled to do things I really don't want to have to do. Sort of the dark side of Stoicism.

  22. Re: Because on How Social Isolation Is Killing Us (nymag.com) · · Score: 1

    You're the one who brought up divorce rates, which are falling. I'm not sure what you meant.

    I know a reasonable number of women well, and have been married to two. The first was the biggest mistake of my life, and didn't conform to your description. The second I've been married to for 35 years now, and really doesn't.

    However, congratulations on your successful marriage.

  23. Re:I hope those in power learned on After Brexit, More Than 100 Firms May Move To Ireland (mirror.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    And Trump only won the Electoral College because of states he did well in, also, which would be just as stupid to bring up in an argument. Californians are people and US citizens too, and you seem to ignore this.

  24. Re:The days of high taxes on corps are numbered on After Brexit, More Than 100 Firms May Move To Ireland (mirror.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Nope. The product price for maximum pre-tax profit is the same as the product price for post-tax profit, assuming the tax goes up with profit and does not exceed it. Therefore, companies will not raise prices to compensate for income taxes, because they'd lose money. Similarly, the business is presumably paying employees what gives the maximum profit, and cutting wages will ultimately result in less pre-tax and hence less post-tax profit. Besides, pay for employees is not profit, so there's no corporate income tax on that.

  25. Re:The days of high taxes on corps are numbered on After Brexit, More Than 100 Firms May Move To Ireland (mirror.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    If a dollar goes to the government, that dollar has to come from somewhere. If it doesn't come from customers, employees, or shareholders, then where, pray tell, does it come from? The tooth fairy?

    Taxes on profits reduce profits (duh), and make the company less profitable (duh), so the company is less valuable, and since the shareholders theoretically own the company it comes from the shareholders. This can be direct (IIRC dividends come from post-tax profits) or indirect.

    Also, it doesn't matter whether there are competitors or not. If the company is in a competitive market, the price that makes the most pre-tax profit is the same that makes the most post-tax profit, based on competitive pricing. If it's a monopoly, the price will be higher, but there will be an optimum price for maximum profit.