No, what I am saying is that rich=greed. It is impossible to be rich with out being greedy. Otherwise, you would give away your wealth as soon as you acquire it.
Jesus made it clear. To be his disciple and follow his ways, you have to give your wealth to the poor and follow his teachings. If you do not, you are not.
I am not saying to you cannot be a Christian and be rich. I am just saying that you cannot be a "good" Christian being rich. Jesus already said how hard it is for a rich man to enter his kingdom, if you have problems with that, you should talk to him about it, not me.
Yes, wealth = greed. Is it really hard to fathom? Do I have to explain how this works?
So, tell me. If wealth is not so bad, why did Jesus ask the rich young man to give up ALL of his possessions to the poor? He certainly could have just asked him to be faithful, help the poor, and follow his teachings. But he SPECIFICALLY told him to give up his wealth, citing the "eye of the needle" remark when he refused to do so. If wealth is not so bad, then why would he insist AND make the remark?
It also tells you how great Jesus is compared to the shrills that "say" they represent the way to the lord. Every TV evangelist and even the pope would have said give the money to the church (and implay that church would then in turn give to the poor). But Jesus does not say "give me your wealth so that I can give to the poor" he says to "GIVE to the poor" directly, with no church/organization involved, leaving himself free from the burdens of wealth. More shrills today should follow that example.
Wow, that is an interesting interpretation. You are pretty much ignoring everything Jesus said about rich and poor.
For your reference, the Jesus quote was in response to a young rich man asking Jesus how to get to heaven. Jesus told him to give ALL of his possession to the poor and follow Jesus. If we were to follow YOUR twisted interpretation, Jesus would have skipped the giving the money to the poor part and just told him to follow him.
There are NUMEROUS Jesus teachings where he wails against greed and rich folks in general. Com'on, one of his most FAMOUS act is the overturning of the money lenders' tables.
Jesus point was SPECIFICALLY to equate greed (aka wealth) is not compatible with enternal life.
The scociety at EVERY PERIOD in HISTORY tries to interpret wealth as evidence of God's favor, because the history is written by the rich and the powerful and the same support the church hierarchy. Of COURSE, rich are going to endose that view. However, Jesus did everything in his power to preach against that.
Which is what makes him such a great man. But I guess you failed to observe that point...
Name me ONE example where Jesus said he was fond of rich, just ONE!
The Walton family (which owns the majority of stock) is quite religious and conservative
Hmmm... if they are devout Christians, then Osama should be named the Pope!
I seem to recall from reading the Bible that Jesus was not too fond of rich people. In fact, didn't he say "...I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:24."???
The Walton family publicizes that they are religious and conservatives because it is good for their business where majority of their customers are religious and conservative. Their actions speak VERY CLEAR that they certainly are not religious.
Did Kenny Boy show respect for people who lost their life savings? I am sure there were MANY people who died in similar fashion to Kenny Boy after realizing their life savings were gone. Did he show repect for them?
As to their family, his wife KNEW his husband was a fraud and in trouble, did she show respect for others who can't afford to spend millions on their birthday party? Did he kids who financially benefitted GREATLY from their "good ol" dad, return some of their ill-gotten gains to those who lost everything?
HELL NO!!!
The world is a better place now that Kenny Boy is no longer with us. And if his greedy bastard family is upset about that, so WHAT???
but but but, the watershed in my yard isn't in the water shed for the reservior.
How do you know?
Most watersheds are hundreds feets down, and most areas share the same water system. Even if it is not your watershed, it may flow to another watershed down hill from you. Anyway you look at it, using valuable resource like water to keep non-essential items like grass green, is huge waste of resource.
Funny, you wouldn't make much of a critic either...
You conveniently forgot the fact that the Courts only allowed spy agencies intercept OVERSEAS communications - as in NOT ORIGINATING from United States.
That is why we have the whole FISA setup for domestic interceptions.
There are two fools when it comes to the market.
First fool thinks that his/her stock will never go down OR if it goes down, it will comeback.
Second fool thinks that he/she can perfectly time the tops and bottoms of the cycle.
Only sure thing is that both fools will lose money one way or the other.
Nobody is a psychic. It is impossible to time the market (even for the experts). Anybody who tries is a fool. You may get lucky, but that was because of dumb luck, not because your were prescient.
A good environemntalist is a conservative - they conserve their energy use by being conservative with their power needs.
Political conservatism has nothing to do with conservation of resources.
The core tenet of political conservatism is small government and personal freedom. That means _less_ government regulation on everything, _including_ environmental issues.
That's nice in "theory", like how communism is all about bettering the lives of all people, not just a few.
In practice, conservative does not equate to small government and more personal freedom. With "conservatives" in charge of the government for last 6 years, the government has grown larger and (even more frightening) personal freedom has taken severe cutbacks.
Generally, conservatives want other people to live by "their" values - i.e. they don't want to pay taxes (but still want all the benefits and more from the government), they want theocracy, they want to watch and control everything you say (you shouldn't mind if you have nothing to hide), and absolute corporate freedom (not the same thing as "personal freedom").
Although Blackberry provides software to send corporate e-mail to wireless devices, it does not have any marketshares in the e-mail servers themselves - thus no vertical leverage (control the distribution AND access).
Microsoft, on the otherhand, has a popular e-mail server - Exchange - that they can use to leverage integrated mobile devices that can tap the e-mail server directly.
Unless Blackberry quickly makes in-road in e-mail server market (highly unlikely), they are going to have some tough times ahead.
Blackberry is going to have a very hard time in the future.
Blackberry does not have a vertical leverage like Apple has with iPod where the content and the device is controlled by a same company.
In fact, many, many, corporations use Exchange and the value proposition (not having to buy an extra wireless email service) is going to be something that is going to be very difficult for Blackberry to compete against.
Add the fact that most power-types that own Blackberries tend to upgrade their device almost every year, there is really nothing holding people back from switching their wireless e-mail service.
Wow, your understanding of Natural Selection is so incomplete and wrong it is almost breath-taking.
Natural Selection is (like many great ideas throughout history) a VERY VERY simple idea. It just says genes mutate and if it helps you reproduce, it gets passed on, if it does not, it fizzels out.
Let me see if I can explaing the concept in the simplest way possible. Let say I am baking a cookie for a competition. I have a recipe that I use which produces a terrible tasting cookie and I finish 1000th place out of 1000 competitors. However, the following year, I randomly change a part of my recipe - I may add more flour, or bake it longer, or add more sugar, or less egg, etc.. I enter the new creation in the contest and I KEEP the change if my standings improve and I ABANDON the change if my standings worsen.
Since there are almost infinite variations I can change, I may not win the contest in my life time, however, if successive generations kept the recipe and kept doing the same thing (experimenting with the recipe), eventually and surely, my standings would improve and may even get the top prize.
That is what Natural Selection is all about. It is just a trial and error system. If the change works, it gets passed on, if it does not work (help produce more offspring), it dies. Repeat over billions of years and you can create almost anything.
That is absurd. Any variance in gravity (even for a HUGE bridge) is so small compared to the minimum safety margin they build into the structure that actually going out and measuring gravity is waste of time.
They certainly measure the stress points of major joints to make sure that the computer simulations and calculations are indeed verified in real life. But measuring gravity is not necessary.
Seems like you are using your BS to bolster your false anti-scientific bias.
Let's go through so-called "pro-Microsoft" posts that you have linked here.
1. http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175649&cid= 14601564 - You say this is arguably pro-Microsoft. And I would have to agree, that is arguable. This is basically calling out people for favoring both sides of the issue, not necessarily pro-Microsoft.
Like I said, such beast either does not exist, or it is so few that it will take you days to find it. Not that I am saying that is necessarily bad../ definitely has its biases and it is free to have it. But to deny that bias exist is bit naive.
The post you link is not pro-Microsoft, it is pro-graphics UI and it refers to Mac as well as Windows. And we all know that/. is DEFINITELY pro Mac. How about a truly pro-Microsoft post?
Your contention was that there are "many" pro-Microsoft posts on./ rated +5 Insightful. I am guessing there are at least a hundred or so +5 rated posts a day. If you were truly correct, you should be able to find at least 5 to 10 posts from just today.
Not necessarily suggesting that you are full of B.S...
...but, care to link a just a few (say, 5 or 6) of these +5 Insightful pro-Microsoft rant?
I don't mean those posts where people are taking lesser of two evils (say, MS vs Patents or MS vs Hollywood, etc.), I mean GENUINELY pro-Microsoft rant that is rated +5 Insightful.
I just can't for the life of me, can remember a single one...
Re:Your understanding of money is incomplete
on
PayPal vs Google(Buy)
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
A typical executive answer - "my belief is truer than facts".
I am very happy that your expensive mechanic is telling you that BMW costs more to fix. That's nice. And if that was true, than BMW's would not break down more often than lowly Hyundai's. But guess what? THEY DO!!!
No matter how you try to get around the issue ("BMW owners will hold their car to a higher standard than a Hyundai owner generally will" - what a freakin BS!), it still does not change the fact that BMW's break down more often.
Have you even seen the CR survey? It is pretty detailed and non-judgemental. It just asks you if you had to bring your car in for a service, what part broke down (electrical, brakes, powertrain, etc.). How BMW owners would bring their cars for service more often because "they have a higher standard" is beyond me. Especially when Hyunday has longer and more comprehensive warranty which makes it less costly for the owners of Hyundai to bring it in for service than BMW owners (who would pay a LOT more out of their pocket).
People like you just make me laugh. I am sure you are the same guy who paid $500 bucks for a wine that you won't even be able to tell in a blind taste test.
I am happy for you that you have so much money that you can waste it how ever way you want.
But you are going to have to do a lot better than just saying "BMW's are better because I say so".
So lame....
Re:Your understanding of money is incomplete
on
PayPal vs Google(Buy)
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Sure, BMW may save you a lot of time in getting a chick in bed, but not in time spent in shop.
Not every good is valued on equal terms. Some are valued for its utility (save time), some are valued for its rarity (supply is significantly lower than demand), and some are just valued high because they can (say, Versace bags - they certainly don't take 1000X more to produce or last 1000X longer than a normal bag, but that does not stop Versace from pricing them 1000X more than a normal bag).
Perhaps you should come down from your high-CEO horse and stop sprouting your bugus arguments on how you are so "worth it".
I don't think your defense of Hollaar is still not on the mark.
It is true that one of the main problems with the patent system today is that the "novel" requirement is hard to define precisely. But instead of making this requirement more defined, Hollaar pretty much suggests that we should just open the floodgates. He compliments that by shortening the patent expiration duration so that if a non-novel invention is patented, it will only affect the public for 4 short years (and more open to challenges).
To me, this solves absolutely nothing. Sure, this proposal will make it less costly to file patents, but it would also increase the likelyhood of expensive legal challenges due to its limited protections. So not only are you increasing the chances of frivolous patent filing, you are making it even more expensive for people with valid (i.e. profitable) patents to defend their patents.
Why go through this schrade? Why not just abolish software patents? It will pretty much accomplish exactly what the Prof is trying to address without the added confusion and cost.
However, that still does not change the fact that increasing the number of patents and decreasing the effective duration is a dumb idea.
Just because it is shorter does not make thing better when the number of rediculous patents will explode.
The problem is not necessarily that the patents are too long or even it is too expensive to obtain. The problem is that too many non-novel ideas are granted patents.
What Professor Hollaar suggests does not address those problems at all. And that does not change no matter how well respected he is.
The #1 goal for ALL publicly traded company is to deliver profits to shareholders. That is how the market works. That is how US economy (as well as other free markets) work.
If Apple is not doing its best to deliver the most profit it can for its shareholders, then it is not living up to its fiduciary responsibilities.
It cannot be over-stated that every corporation's bottom line is to make money.
Of course you can argue whether or not licensing FairPlay does deliver the most profit to the investors in the long term, but whether or not profit is the main motivation for any moves that corporations make is not in question.
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus made it clear. To be his disciple and follow his ways, you have to give your wealth to the poor and follow his teachings. If you do not, you are not.
I am not saying to you cannot be a Christian and be rich. I am just saying that you cannot be a "good" Christian being rich. Jesus already said how hard it is for a rich man to enter his kingdom, if you have problems with that, you should talk to him about it, not me.
So, tell me. If wealth is not so bad, why did Jesus ask the rich young man to give up ALL of his possessions to the poor? He certainly could have just asked him to be faithful, help the poor, and follow his teachings. But he SPECIFICALLY told him to give up his wealth, citing the "eye of the needle" remark when he refused to do so. If wealth is not so bad, then why would he insist AND make the remark?
It also tells you how great Jesus is compared to the shrills that "say" they represent the way to the lord. Every TV evangelist and even the pope would have said give the money to the church (and implay that church would then in turn give to the poor). But Jesus does not say "give me your wealth so that I can give to the poor" he says to "GIVE to the poor" directly, with no church/organization involved, leaving himself free from the burdens of wealth. More shrills today should follow that example.
Wow, that is an interesting interpretation. You are pretty much ignoring everything Jesus said about rich and poor.
For your reference, the Jesus quote was in response to a young rich man asking Jesus how to get to heaven. Jesus told him to give ALL of his possession to the poor and follow Jesus. If we were to follow YOUR twisted interpretation, Jesus would have skipped the giving the money to the poor part and just told him to follow him.
There are NUMEROUS Jesus teachings where he wails against greed and rich folks in general. Com'on, one of his most FAMOUS act is the overturning of the money lenders' tables.
Jesus point was SPECIFICALLY to equate greed (aka wealth) is not compatible with enternal life.
The scociety at EVERY PERIOD in HISTORY tries to interpret wealth as evidence of God's favor, because the history is written by the rich and the powerful and the same support the church hierarchy. Of COURSE, rich are going to endose that view. However, Jesus did everything in his power to preach against that.
Which is what makes him such a great man. But I guess you failed to observe that point...
Name me ONE example where Jesus said he was fond of rich, just ONE!
Hmmm... if they are devout Christians, then Osama should be named the Pope!
I seem to recall from reading the Bible that Jesus was not too fond of rich people. In fact, didn't he say "...I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:24."???
The Walton family publicizes that they are religious and conservatives because it is good for their business where majority of their customers are religious and conservative. Their actions speak VERY CLEAR that they certainly are not religious.
Did Kenny Boy show respect for people who lost their life savings? I am sure there were MANY people who died in similar fashion to Kenny Boy after realizing their life savings were gone. Did he show repect for them? As to their family, his wife KNEW his husband was a fraud and in trouble, did she show respect for others who can't afford to spend millions on their birthday party? Did he kids who financially benefitted GREATLY from their "good ol" dad, return some of their ill-gotten gains to those who lost everything? HELL NO!!! The world is a better place now that Kenny Boy is no longer with us. And if his greedy bastard family is upset about that, so WHAT???
How do you know?
Most watersheds are hundreds feets down, and most areas share the same water system. Even if it is not your watershed, it may flow to another watershed down hill from you. Anyway you look at it, using valuable resource like water to keep non-essential items like grass green, is huge waste of resource.
You conveniently forgot the fact that the Courts only allowed spy agencies intercept OVERSEAS communications - as in NOT ORIGINATING from United States.
That is why we have the whole FISA setup for domestic interceptions.
There are two fools when it comes to the market. First fool thinks that his/her stock will never go down OR if it goes down, it will comeback. Second fool thinks that he/she can perfectly time the tops and bottoms of the cycle. Only sure thing is that both fools will lose money one way or the other. Nobody is a psychic. It is impossible to time the market (even for the experts). Anybody who tries is a fool. You may get lucky, but that was because of dumb luck, not because your were prescient.
Tongue PORN! Hmmmmmm.... porn.....
A good environemntalist is a conservative - they conserve their energy use by being conservative with their power needs.
Political conservatism has nothing to do with conservation of resources.
The core tenet of political conservatism is small government and personal freedom. That means _less_ government regulation on everything, _including_ environmental issues.
That's nice in "theory", like how communism is all about bettering the lives of all people, not just a few.
In practice, conservative does not equate to small government and more personal freedom. With "conservatives" in charge of the government for last 6 years, the government has grown larger and (even more frightening) personal freedom has taken severe cutbacks.
Generally, conservatives want other people to live by "their" values - i.e. they don't want to pay taxes (but still want all the benefits and more from the government), they want theocracy, they want to watch and control everything you say (you shouldn't mind if you have nothing to hide), and absolute corporate freedom (not the same thing as "personal freedom").
This message brought to you buy Real Life 101.
What odds are you giving me?
Motherboard:
BIOSTAR NF4 4X-A7-COMBO31 AMD Athlon64 3000+ Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce4 4X ATX Motherboard/CPU Set - $179
Memory:
CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Dual Channel Kit System Memory - $74.99
DVD Drive:
NEC Beige IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - 37.99
Hard Drive:
2 SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series 250GB 3.5" IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive - $95/each, $190 for 2
Case:
Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Computer Case (with 450W quiet power supply) - $99
OS:
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 w/Update Rollup Release 2 OEM 1 Pack - $114.95
Video Card:
Rosewill Geforce 6600 R6600-256D Video Card - $109.99
Analog Tuner:
VisionTek VTK-THXP550P PCI Interface Xtasy Theater 550 Pro PVR XP Edition w/Snapstream PVR software - $78.99/each 2 for $157.98
HDTV Tuner:
KWORLD ATSC-110 PCI Digital / Analog HDTV Tuner - $93
(comes with remote)
For a GRAND TOTAL of - $1055.95
Hell you can blow another couple of hundred on a kick ass remote and you will still be close to half the price they have quoted.
Guarantee, this will work JUST as well if not better than what they have in the article.
Although Blackberry provides software to send corporate e-mail to wireless devices, it does not have any marketshares in the e-mail servers themselves - thus no vertical leverage (control the distribution AND access).
Microsoft, on the otherhand, has a popular e-mail server - Exchange - that they can use to leverage integrated mobile devices that can tap the e-mail server directly.
Unless Blackberry quickly makes in-road in e-mail server market (highly unlikely), they are going to have some tough times ahead.
Blackberry does not have a vertical leverage like Apple has with iPod where the content and the device is controlled by a same company.
In fact, many, many, corporations use Exchange and the value proposition (not having to buy an extra wireless email service) is going to be something that is going to be very difficult for Blackberry to compete against.
Add the fact that most power-types that own Blackberries tend to upgrade their device almost every year, there is really nothing holding people back from switching their wireless e-mail service.
Natural Selection is (like many great ideas throughout history) a VERY VERY simple idea. It just says genes mutate and if it helps you reproduce, it gets passed on, if it does not, it fizzels out.
Let me see if I can explaing the concept in the simplest way possible. Let say I am baking a cookie for a competition. I have a recipe that I use which produces a terrible tasting cookie and I finish 1000th place out of 1000 competitors. However, the following year, I randomly change a part of my recipe - I may add more flour, or bake it longer, or add more sugar, or less egg, etc.. I enter the new creation in the contest and I KEEP the change if my standings improve and I ABANDON the change if my standings worsen.
Since there are almost infinite variations I can change, I may not win the contest in my life time, however, if successive generations kept the recipe and kept doing the same thing (experimenting with the recipe), eventually and surely, my standings would improve and may even get the top prize.
That is what Natural Selection is all about. It is just a trial and error system. If the change works, it gets passed on, if it does not work (help produce more offspring), it dies. Repeat over billions of years and you can create almost anything.
That is absurd. Any variance in gravity (even for a HUGE bridge) is so small compared to the minimum safety margin they build into the structure that actually going out and measuring gravity is waste of time.
They certainly measure the stress points of major joints to make sure that the computer simulations and calculations are indeed verified in real life. But measuring gravity is not necessary.
Seems like you are using your BS to bolster your false anti-scientific bias.
Let's go through so-called "pro-Microsoft" posts that you have linked here.
1. http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175649&cid= 14601564 - You say this is arguably pro-Microsoft. And I would have to agree, that is arguable. This is basically calling out people for favoring both sides of the issue, not necessarily pro-Microsoft.
2. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175579&cid =14597420 - How you could argue that this is pro-Micrsoft is beyond me. Just because it is not Anti-Microsoft does not mean it is pro-Microsoft.
3. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175579&cid =14597688 - This one is not even rated...
4. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175579&cid =14598309 - This is not rated +5 AND it is more of a ranting against hacking than pro-Microsoft.
5. The examples with Gates is about his charitable foundations, NOT Microsoft. Not the same thing.
Here is a GENUINE pro-Linux rated +5 post (http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176890& threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=14681954 ) and it took me one click to find it. Can you find an equivalent pro-Microsoft post rated so high?
Like I said, such beast either does not exist, or it is so few that it will take you days to find it. Not that I am saying that is necessarily bad. ./ definitely has its biases and it is free to have it. But to deny that bias exist is bit naive.
Thanks for proving my point, though...
The post you link is not pro-Microsoft, it is pro-graphics UI and it refers to Mac as well as Windows. And we all know that /. is DEFINITELY pro Mac. How about a truly pro-Microsoft post?
Your contention was that there are "many" pro-Microsoft posts on ./ rated +5 Insightful. I am guessing there are at least a hundred or so +5 rated posts a day. If you were truly correct, you should be able to find at least 5 to 10 posts from just today.
If not, I think that kinda proves my point...
I don't mean those posts where people are taking lesser of two evils (say, MS vs Patents or MS vs Hollywood, etc.), I mean GENUINELY pro-Microsoft rant that is rated +5 Insightful.
I just can't for the life of me, can remember a single one...
Amen! Brother, Amen...
I am very happy that your expensive mechanic is telling you that BMW costs more to fix. That's nice. And if that was true, than BMW's would not break down more often than lowly Hyundai's. But guess what? THEY DO!!!
No matter how you try to get around the issue ("BMW owners will hold their car to a higher standard than a Hyundai owner generally will" - what a freakin BS!), it still does not change the fact that BMW's break down more often.
Have you even seen the CR survey? It is pretty detailed and non-judgemental. It just asks you if you had to bring your car in for a service, what part broke down (electrical, brakes, powertrain, etc.). How BMW owners would bring their cars for service more often because "they have a higher standard" is beyond me. Especially when Hyunday has longer and more comprehensive warranty which makes it less costly for the owners of Hyundai to bring it in for service than BMW owners (who would pay a LOT more out of their pocket).
People like you just make me laugh. I am sure you are the same guy who paid $500 bucks for a wine that you won't even be able to tell in a blind taste test.
I am happy for you that you have so much money that you can waste it how ever way you want.
But you are going to have to do a lot better than just saying "BMW's are better because I say so".
So lame....
For your information, Hyundai cars are rated consistently better than BMW in reliability (http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/08/pf/autos/cr_auto_ reliability/).
Sure, BMW may save you a lot of time in getting a chick in bed, but not in time spent in shop.
Not every good is valued on equal terms. Some are valued for its utility (save time), some are valued for its rarity (supply is significantly lower than demand), and some are just valued high because they can (say, Versace bags - they certainly don't take 1000X more to produce or last 1000X longer than a normal bag, but that does not stop Versace from pricing them 1000X more than a normal bag).
Perhaps you should come down from your high-CEO horse and stop sprouting your bugus arguments on how you are so "worth it".
It is true that one of the main problems with the patent system today is that the "novel" requirement is hard to define precisely. But instead of making this requirement more defined, Hollaar pretty much suggests that we should just open the floodgates. He compliments that by shortening the patent expiration duration so that if a non-novel invention is patented, it will only affect the public for 4 short years (and more open to challenges).
To me, this solves absolutely nothing. Sure, this proposal will make it less costly to file patents, but it would also increase the likelyhood of expensive legal challenges due to its limited protections. So not only are you increasing the chances of frivolous patent filing, you are making it even more expensive for people with valid (i.e. profitable) patents to defend their patents.
Why go through this schrade? Why not just abolish software patents? It will pretty much accomplish exactly what the Prof is trying to address without the added confusion and cost.
However, that still does not change the fact that increasing the number of patents and decreasing the effective duration is a dumb idea.
Just because it is shorter does not make thing better when the number of rediculous patents will explode.
The problem is not necessarily that the patents are too long or even it is too expensive to obtain. The problem is that too many non-novel ideas are granted patents.
What Professor Hollaar suggests does not address those problems at all. And that does not change no matter how well respected he is.
The #1 goal for ALL publicly traded company is to deliver profits to shareholders. That is how the market works. That is how US economy (as well as other free markets) work.
If Apple is not doing its best to deliver the most profit it can for its shareholders, then it is not living up to its fiduciary responsibilities.
It cannot be over-stated that every corporation's bottom line is to make money.
Of course you can argue whether or not licensing FairPlay does deliver the most profit to the investors in the long term, but whether or not profit is the main motivation for any moves that corporations make is not in question.