There are far more players in the every day needs business than Wal-Mart and Amazon.
This is an easy business to get into for those stores already located in your community. An internet connection, some software, some minimum wage stock pickers, and delivery vans.
Amazon on the other hand has to build warehouses very close to every market, stock them, and then add An internet connection, some software, some minimum wage stock pickers, and delivery vans.
See the difference? Amazon is at a severe disadvantage here. Yet you see very few Grocery store chains jumping in to add this type of convenience. Why not? They already have the expensive part in hand. They have the store in every little town!!!!
Your insistence that every worker have a high paying job is precisely why there is so much unemployment in the US today. If high school kids or college students or out of work CPAs can earn a few bucks doing this work, where is the down side of that.
Its not pointless when it points out the principal reason Digg is done.
Virtually Nobody saw any good reason to use that site, virtually nobody goes there for a recommendation on what they should read about. It failed precisely because the vast majority shared Reboot246's opinion.
Rubbish. There is room for Safeway, Albertsons, Piggly Wiggley, Ralphs, Cosco, Fred Meyer all to be in this space.
We already build our shopping list on our cell phones, and we already have our favorite stores. How hard is it to hit a Send button, and have your local Grocery delivery boy ring the door bell 3 hours later.
(This used to be common back in the 40s and 50s, why is it such a bad idea now?)
Amazon as a system of getting goods makes sense, and if done right would cut down on gas consumption with everyone driving to the store separately. I happen to live in Seattle and have used AmazonFresh (grocery delivery) and have automatic monthly diaper delivery with AmazonMom and it's awesome. I look forward to a future where I don't need to drive anywhere to do my shopping, and can spend that time out hiking and having fun with my kid.
Exactly. A hundred thousand shoppers driving around to multiple stores in rush hour traffic to by the same old stuff, or bar scan that tin can with your cell phone before you throw it in the recycle so that another one will appear magically on your doorstep.
Probably the "Store" still gets to exist, but it serves a different purpose. "Try it" centers. Where you can see new things before you commit to buying it blind. But once you found your favorite brand of canned beans, you probably won't need to revisit that isle again for many months.
Pike Place Market isn't going anywhere, and neither is the Farmer's market. But 95% of the goods that come thru the door could just as well be picked for me, packed for me, and delivered. Employs lots of pickers, lots of packers, and lots of delivery people, but saves me the trip and the aggravation.
I fail to see how destroying competition by undercutting local shops is a good thing for the local economy in the long term.
In order to meet a Same Day Delivery promise Amazon will have to be LOCAL. So there went your major point. Poof.
Workers walk out of one failing business model which requires customers to come to them, and walk into a better business model which puts the "shelves" right there in people's homes (on the computer or their phone), and offers same day delivery.
You seem to have a lot in common with THESE people. They didn't prevail either.
Don't try to convince us you have never shopped on line.
Since it's trivial, you won't mind paying it then, right?
Exactly.
Its trivial, about two cents per day per subscriber per month. I would not be all that upset if my bill went up by $7.30 per year
If I were a subscriber, and those programs were important to me, I'd be happy to pay two cents per day to have them available. But DirectTV isn't giving THAT option either. They keep the bill the same and reduce the content.
Jobs and Wozniak created a new industry in their garage.
The created a new industry to market a product that was neither unique nor revolutionary at the time.
Creating a new industry is not the standard upon which we issue patents.
The newness and uniqueness of the invention is what counts (or should count). Adding a digital display to a telephone once both the display and the telephone are already invented is not particularly inventive either. Its simply recombination of existing parts. Recombination is what most patents cover these days.
I do not find many people that disagree with the idea of patents: Namely, that you publish how something works, and then for a limited period of time, you are allowed exclusive rights to sell that something. Then everyone is allowed to do it.
Then you haven't been paying attention to Slashdot for very long.
The under 25 generation has pretty much repudiated that entire concept, and often voice the opinion here on Slashdot and elsewhere that a bell once rung can't be un-rung, and an idea once published can't be owned by anyone. As justification they point to the Life Plus 70 years extension of copyrights and paint patents with the same brush.
As for originality: Slide to Unlock existed since the first dead bolt was created. Does that mean Apple's slide to unlock idea should not be patentable because it was simply a slightly different application?
What is producing? Many patents can be implement with a couple lines of javascript or similar. So a troll would just need to have a coder write a proof of concept implementation, put it on the troll's production server. And voila, it's produced.
Presumably, the Judge was thinking that "Produce" means make available for society via sales of a product incorporating your patent.
The failure here is that some patent never appear in a consumer product, rather they are patents cover only machines or tools or processes used in house but which lend a manufacturing advantage to the company using it. If the Judges proposal was expanded to cover that eventuality it would be reasonable. If society benefits indirectly (a cheaper car, fresher fruit
Your example of an embedded line of code that serves no societal purpose other than to block other meaningful use of the invention would not be protected under this scenario, because it produced nothing, rendered no benefit to society.
The Judge suggests that the Purpose of Patents is not fulfilled until an inventions is rendering a benefit to society. Simply inventing something and sitting on it like a spider waiting for a bug to fly into its net serves no societal purpose.
Side note: This view is not universal. The US Constitution mentions furthering the useful arts, but this is not a universally accepted reason for patents the world over. Even the Constitutions language is there as a thin wrapper around the fact that the reason Patents exist is to preserve the inventors monopoly. Patents historically, world wide, are a commercial device, wrapped in language that attempts to justify the monopoly they grant by making a (often weak) case that it is for the betterment of society as a whole. Some countries dispense with that pretense all together, as did the English system prior to the 1700s.
This is nothing at all like buying a car. So right out of the gate you FAIL.
Its a contract for a fixed level of service at a fixed price for a time certain.
They aren't passing on the cost increase, they are arbitrarily reducing the service and maintaining the same price. Even if the wrote it into the contract that they were allowed to do this, its dishonest, especially when DirectTV themselves are the ones holding up the negotiation without even once asking their customers if they would agree to pay two cents more per month.
Nothing compels you to run Microsoft's encryption APIs either. They are convenient, and well documented, so most programmers do use them, but you can write or bring your own from any platform you trust. If your platform is backdoored none of this will help you much.
The assertion that there are backdoors in spite of no one finding it and every single person in the chain of knowledge for the last 20+ years keeping their mouth shut right into the grave.
Google Glasses can be disguised, and roughly half the population wear some form of glasses anyway. No, they will not be DOA, they will be wildly successful, especially if they can be made to look like regular sunglasses or prescription glasses.
Do you run around punching people who wear Bluetooth headsets in the ear?
Well the API has too many wrappers and obsolete interfaces to take care of. If we could just get that processor out of that power hungry finicky motherboard and package in glassware, and maybe hook up hundred of them...
They were GIVEN the land in most cases, and have enjoyed the right of way a hundred years or better. We could hold their feet just a little closer to the fire if you ask me.
But why not pay them to maintain them to a standard. You rent an apartment, you expect windows that aren't broken. We pay via taxes for roads, why not direct some of that money to railroad improvements?
Except that Viacom charges DirectTV by the number of customers. They have a pretty darn good estimate of that number. And they set the prices.
I see less reason for them to sign a contract based on a LIE and then try to collect later. That just makes no sense.
DirectTV, on the other hand pockets every penny they can pinch. They have to buck-up the customers that they are inconveniencing and invoke the shared suffering mantra that they are doing this for them.
I pretty much think both sides are telling the truth, just disguising it in different numbers. 30% sounds way more draconian than 2 cents. But DirectTV never tells you 30% of WHAT?
So who used the most slippery salesman technique? Just figure that out and you know who to believe.
The direct quote was: "rate increase of a couple pennies per day, per subscriber."
That seems pretty well defined to me. A couple = 2.
The couple pennies a day which is 30% rate increase, only applies to what the subscriber pays of Viacom channels, not across the board for all channels. Subscribers were in no danger of seeing their bill increase by 30%.
DirectTV is deliberately using confusing units and facts to fool you. And evidently you bit, hook, line, and, sinker.
If both companies are telling you the literal truth, then we can deduce:
a couple pennies a day per subscriber amounts to a 30% rate increase for the Viacom channels,
the average subscriber must be getting them for about 6 cents per day now,
they would have to pay 8 cents after the rate increase,
which is both about a 30% increase AND about a couple pennies per day per subscriber.
But its still a couple pennies a day per subscriber, something DirectTV could easily handle out of pocket. DirecTV had increased rates 4 percent in January, and was on its way to $5 billion in profits for the year. According to MarketWatch, DirecTV had $1.31 billion in operating profit in the first quarter of its fiscal year.
First there was never any realistic suggestion of 4000mph, I think he made it up as a premise to write his fluff article. The story is about as thin on science or facts as your typical comic book.
If you could achieve 400mph that would be sufficient. Nobody has seriously suggested 4000mph land based travel.
400mph tube trains would allow you to have fixed stations supplying the propulsive power, and the mag-lev or air-suspension engineering can easily handle any defects that would affect the ride at that speed, or at least detect them before they became serious issues
However, what remains to be seen is if the cost of building the tubes is worth the hassle, vs more conventional electrical powered surface trains. After all there is no free lunch, and removing the air from in front of the train while pumping it in behind induces some rather huge air movement requirements, and inefficiencies in that process may well be higher than more conventional electric trains pushing air out of the way.
The problem we have in the US with high speed trains is our rail system is beat to crap by freight trains, meaning our trains can't go very fast. Other countries tend to use new and separate facilities for passenger and freight. Even Amtrak is starting to gear up for high speed rail, but it is dependent on private railroads for track. But laying new track, or improving existing track is far cheaper than building tubes all over the country.
In short, this article sets up the straw man and knocks it down very handily, but the fact of the matter is this was never seriously a contender for mass transit.
I mean the Weasel words listed in the contract, which transfers all risk to the customer and absolves the corporation from adhering to any of the terms in the contract, let alone the spirit of the contract. So yeah, those weasel words. You should read them sometime. Its clear you haven't.
I prefer that Direct TV absorb the cost for the remainder of my contract, and raise it at the end of my contract, just like rent (because that is what it is).
After all, the impasse is over a trivial amount: "Viacom is asking DirecTV for a rate increase of a couple pennies per day, per subscriber."
At the end of their contract with the providers they should give plenty of advanced warning to the customers, and if an impasse is reached, a price reduction to reflect the reduced content should be offered to the DirectTV subscribers.
Regardless of the weasel words in the fine print of the subscription brochure, it seems to me that when you sign up with DirectTV and they drop channels simply because there was a cost change seems like a breach of contract. Costs have always changed over the years, up and down, yet DirectTV's prices seldom decline when suppliers offer programming for less.
Holding your customers hostage seems to be the common tactic these days. Cities counties and states pass new taxes for one fluff package after another, but when the budget shrinks and they need a tax increase the first cuts threatened are to Police Fire and Teachers.
Slashdot Mirror
There are far more players in the every day needs business than Wal-Mart and Amazon.
This is an easy business to get into for those stores already located in your community.
An internet connection, some software, some minimum wage stock pickers, and delivery vans.
Amazon on the other hand has to build warehouses very close to every market, stock them, and then add An internet connection, some software, some minimum wage stock pickers, and delivery vans.
See the difference?
Amazon is at a severe disadvantage here. Yet you see very few Grocery store chains jumping in to add this type of convenience. Why not? They already have the expensive part in hand. They have the store in every little town!!!!
Your insistence that every worker have a high paying job is precisely why there is so much unemployment in the US today. If high school kids or college students or out of work CPAs can earn a few bucks doing this work, where is the down side of that.
Slashdot is very old when measured in Digg lives.
Its not pointless when it points out the principal reason Digg is done.
Virtually Nobody saw any good reason to use that site, virtually nobody goes there for a recommendation on what they should read about. It failed precisely because the vast majority shared Reboot246's opinion.
Single company?
Rubbish. There is room for Safeway, Albertsons, Piggly Wiggley, Ralphs, Cosco, Fred Meyer all to be in this space.
We already build our shopping list on our cell phones, and we already have our favorite stores. How hard is it to hit a Send button, and have your local Grocery delivery boy ring the door bell 3 hours later.
(This used to be common back in the 40s and 50s, why is it such a bad idea now?)
Amazon as a system of getting goods makes sense, and if done right would cut down on gas consumption with everyone driving to the store separately. I happen to live in Seattle and have used AmazonFresh (grocery delivery) and have automatic monthly diaper delivery with AmazonMom and it's awesome. I look forward to a future where I don't need to drive anywhere to do my shopping, and can spend that time out hiking and having fun with my kid.
Exactly. A hundred thousand shoppers driving around to multiple stores in rush hour traffic to by the same old stuff, or bar scan that tin can with your cell phone before you throw it in the recycle so that another one will appear magically on your doorstep.
Probably the "Store" still gets to exist, but it serves a different purpose. "Try it" centers. Where you can see new things before you commit to buying it blind. But once you found your favorite brand of canned beans, you probably won't need to revisit that isle again for many months.
Pike Place Market isn't going anywhere, and neither is the Farmer's market. But 95% of the goods that come thru the door could just as well be picked for me, packed for me, and delivered. Employs lots of pickers, lots of packers, and lots of delivery people, but saves me the trip and the aggravation.
I fail to see how destroying competition by undercutting local shops is a good thing for the local economy in the long term.
In order to meet a Same Day Delivery promise Amazon will have to be LOCAL. So there went your major point. Poof.
Workers walk out of one failing business model which requires customers to come to them, and walk into a better business model which puts the "shelves" right there in people's homes (on the computer or their phone), and offers same day delivery.
You seem to have a lot in common with THESE people. They didn't prevail either.
Don't try to convince us you have never shopped on line.
Since it's trivial, you won't mind paying it then, right?
Exactly.
Its trivial, about two cents per day per subscriber per month.
I would not be all that upset if my bill went up by $7.30 per year
If I were a subscriber, and those programs were important to me, I'd be happy to pay two cents per day to
have them available. But DirectTV isn't giving THAT option either. They keep the bill the same and reduce
the content.
Jobs and Wozniak created a new industry in their garage.
The created a new industry to market a product that was neither unique nor revolutionary at the time.
Creating a new industry is not the standard upon which we issue patents.
The newness and uniqueness of the invention is what counts (or should count). Adding a digital display to a telephone once both the display and the telephone are already invented is not particularly inventive either. Its simply recombination of existing parts. Recombination is what most patents cover these days.
I do not find many people that disagree with the idea of patents: Namely, that you publish how something works, and then for a limited period of time, you are allowed exclusive rights to sell that something. Then everyone is allowed to do it.
Then you haven't been paying attention to Slashdot for very long.
The under 25 generation has pretty much repudiated that entire concept, and often voice the opinion here on Slashdot and elsewhere that a bell once rung can't be un-rung, and an idea once published can't be owned by anyone. As justification they point to the Life Plus 70 years extension of copyrights and paint patents with the same brush.
As for originality: Slide to Unlock existed since the first dead bolt was created. Does that mean Apple's slide to unlock idea should not be patentable because it was simply a slightly different application?
What is producing? Many patents can be implement with a couple lines of javascript or similar. So a troll would just need to have a coder write a proof of concept implementation, put it on the troll's production server. And voila, it's produced.
Presumably, the Judge was thinking that "Produce" means make available for society via sales of a product incorporating your patent.
The failure here is that some patent never appear in a consumer product, rather they are patents cover only machines or tools or processes used in house but which lend a manufacturing advantage to the company using it. If the Judges proposal was expanded to cover that eventuality it would be reasonable. If society benefits indirectly (a cheaper car, fresher fruit
Your example of an embedded line of code that serves no societal purpose other than to block other meaningful use of the invention would not be protected under this scenario, because it produced nothing, rendered no benefit to society.
The Judge suggests that the Purpose of Patents is not fulfilled until an inventions is rendering a benefit to society. Simply inventing something and sitting on it like a spider waiting for a bug to fly into its net serves no societal purpose.
Side note:
This view is not universal. The US Constitution mentions furthering the useful arts, but this is not a universally accepted reason for patents the world over. Even the Constitutions language is there as a thin wrapper around the fact that the reason Patents exist is to preserve the inventors monopoly. Patents historically, world wide, are a commercial device, wrapped in language that attempts to justify the monopoly they grant by making a (often weak) case that it is for the betterment of society as a whole. Some countries dispense with that pretense all together, as did the English system prior to the 1700s.
This is nothing at all like buying a car. So right out of the gate you FAIL.
Its a contract for a fixed level of service at a fixed price for a time certain.
They aren't passing on the cost increase, they are arbitrarily reducing the service and maintaining the same price.
Even if the wrote it into the contract that they were allowed to do this, its dishonest, especially when DirectTV themselves are the ones holding up the negotiation without even once asking their customers if they would agree to pay two cents more per month.
Well said.
Nothing compels you to run Microsoft's encryption APIs either. They are convenient, and well documented, so most programmers do use them, but you can write or bring your own from any platform you trust. If your platform is backdoored none of this will help you much.
The assertion that there are backdoors in spite of no one finding it and every single person in the chain of knowledge for the last 20+ years keeping their mouth shut right into the grave.
Google Glasses can be disguised, and roughly half the population wear some form of glasses anyway.
No, they will not be DOA, they will be wildly successful, especially if they can be made to look like regular sunglasses or prescription glasses.
Do you run around punching people who wear Bluetooth headsets in the ear?
Well the API has too many wrappers and obsolete interfaces to take care of.
If we could just get that processor out of that power hungry finicky motherboard and package in glassware, and maybe hook up hundred of them...
Buy the from the railroads?
They were GIVEN the land in most cases, and have enjoyed the right of way a hundred years or better. We could hold their feet just a little closer to the fire if you ask me.
But why not pay them to maintain them to a standard. You rent an apartment, you expect windows that aren't broken. We pay via taxes for roads, why not direct some of that money to railroad improvements?
Except that Viacom charges DirectTV by the number of customers.
They have a pretty darn good estimate of that number.
And they set the prices.
I see less reason for them to sign a contract based on a LIE and then try to collect later. That just makes no sense.
DirectTV, on the other hand pockets every penny they can pinch. They have to buck-up the customers that they are inconveniencing and invoke the shared suffering mantra that they are doing this for them.
I pretty much think both sides are telling the truth, just disguising it in different numbers. 30% sounds way more draconian than 2 cents.
But DirectTV never tells you 30% of WHAT?
So who used the most slippery salesman technique? Just figure that out and you know who to believe.
The direct quote was: "rate increase of a couple pennies per day, per subscriber."
That seems pretty well defined to me. A couple = 2.
The couple pennies a day which is 30% rate increase, only applies to what the subscriber pays of Viacom channels, not across the board for all channels. Subscribers were in no danger of seeing their bill increase by 30%.
DirectTV is deliberately using confusing units and facts to fool you. And evidently you bit, hook, line, and, sinker.
If both companies are telling you the literal truth, then we can deduce:
a couple pennies a day per subscriber amounts to a 30% rate increase for the Viacom channels,
the average subscriber must be getting them for about 6 cents per day now,
they would have to pay 8 cents after the rate increase,
which is both about a 30% increase AND about a couple pennies per day per subscriber.
But its still a couple pennies a day per subscriber, something DirectTV could easily handle out of pocket.
DirecTV had increased rates 4 percent in January, and was on its way to $5 billion in profits for the year.
According to MarketWatch, DirecTV had $1.31 billion in operating profit in the first quarter of its fiscal year.
Reading comprehension. Try it some time.
First there was never any realistic suggestion of 4000mph, I think he made it up as a premise to write his fluff article.
The story is about as thin on science or facts as your typical comic book.
If you could achieve 400mph that would be sufficient. Nobody has seriously suggested 4000mph land based travel.
400mph tube trains would allow you to have fixed stations supplying the propulsive power, and the mag-lev or air-suspension engineering can easily handle any defects that would affect the ride at that speed, or at least detect them before they became serious issues
However, what remains to be seen is if the cost of building the tubes is worth the hassle, vs more conventional electrical powered surface trains.
After all there is no free lunch, and removing the air from in front of the train while pumping it in behind induces some rather huge air movement requirements, and inefficiencies in that process may well be higher than more conventional electric trains pushing air out of the way.
The problem we have in the US with high speed trains is our rail system is beat to crap by freight trains, meaning our trains can't go very fast. Other countries tend to use new and separate facilities for passenger and freight. Even Amtrak is starting to gear up for high speed rail, but it is dependent on private railroads for track. But laying new track, or improving existing track is far cheaper than building tubes all over the country.
In short, this article sets up the straw man and knocks it down very handily, but the fact of the matter is this was never seriously a contender for mass transit.
Not to mention US passengers will take down and hog tie anybody who even mutters the word box cutter.
If you can detect it at a distance, why not detonate it at a distance, in a blast proof, single passenger at a time hallway.
Problem would be self-solving.
I mean the Weasel words listed in the contract, which transfers all risk to the customer and absolves the corporation from adhering to any of the terms in the contract, let alone the spirit of the contract. So yeah, those weasel words. You should read them sometime. Its clear you haven't.
I prefer that Direct TV absorb the cost for the remainder of my contract, and raise it at the end of my contract, just like rent (because that is what it is).
After all, the impasse is over a trivial amount: "Viacom is asking DirecTV for a rate increase of a couple pennies per day, per subscriber."
At the end of their contract with the providers they should give plenty of advanced warning to the customers, and if an impasse is reached, a price reduction to reflect the reduced content should be offered to the DirectTV subscribers.
Geez, you kids today are so demanding.
Give him a break, his favorite TV channel is off the air and he's sitting there with nothing to do till it returns.
Regardless of the weasel words in the fine print of the subscription brochure, it seems to me that when you sign up with DirectTV and they drop channels simply because there was a cost change seems like a breach of contract. Costs have always changed over the years, up and down, yet DirectTV's prices seldom decline when suppliers offer programming for less.
Holding your customers hostage seems to be the common tactic these days. Cities counties and states pass new taxes for one fluff package after another, but when the budget shrinks and they need a tax increase the first cuts threatened are to Police Fire and Teachers.
"Global Temperatures Were a Falling Trend."
The long term graphs in TFA show a long term decline, but they all still kick up sharply at the end when we get to the industrial age.
Please look at more than one picture before rushing to an uneducated judgement.
The whole article is here: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html