Ah, but that is why a court has to approve a warrant before officers can search your person, residence or effects. It's sad that we've watered down those protections, but they do still exist well enough to keep you from being convicted (most of the time) if you are illegally searched.
Voting is not anonymous. That is, that you voted is not anonymous; for whom or what you voted is. The difference between the vote and the petition is that there is only one option on the petition, but that does not obviate the need for political participation to be public. It is inherently a public act, after all. If you don't like, sign no petition, sign every petition, or eliminate the petition requirement as a method for getting issues onto the ballot.
Say what? I think you are mistaken. Certainly, nothing in the Constitution seems to give the President that power.
Although, of course, the government simply ignores the Constitution all the time.
Re:What the fuck are you talking about?
on
iPhone 4 News Roundup
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· Score: 4, Informative
I think you are confused. Pre-emptive multitasking means that the kernel (technically, the scheduler) decides when a process runs and when it yields; the process has no control. In cooperative multitasking, there is a system call which the applications must use to yield control, and the scheduler simply decides which task gets control next (but not when it will yield). The iPhone has full pre-emptive multitasking (it, too, is built on UNIX, BSD in this case), it just limits the applications' ability to use it if you are publishing through the app store.
Scary maybe, though I note that the ease of moving between mobile platforms means that Apple is unlikely to ever achieve any real lock-in of users.I think you're pretty far off, though, on items 2, 3 and 4. More basically, it's with the concept of a company being "greedy," which I'll get to after I address the specific points.
Yes, Apple apparently did initially get a portion of the monthly fee. (Piper Jaffrey's analysts put that at $18 per phone per month, IIRC.) I don't believe that is the case any more. My understanding is that this went away when they started offering the iPhones subsidized by the carriers. Even if they still do get a portion of the fees, though, so what? It's a part of the cost of service, not a tool of generating monopoly. (If anything, it's the opposite, as higher-priced iPhone service plans turn away users.)
Yes, Apple gets a cut of 30% on sales of third party apps. So what? They take 30%, and give me (as an iPhone app developer) a platform for sales, a distribution system and a much reduced cost to advertise. The 30% they take for those services is utterly worthwhile, particularly for independent developers.
Yes, Apple takes a 40% cut of ad sales through iAd. And no cut at all through other services, which pay (last I looked) between $0.30 and $1.00 eCPM. Given the ad customers Apple is signing up, I'd be amazed if iAd didn't pay better. (AdMob is among the worst in terms of eCPM, which is the only number that matters to a developer that wants to make money off of advertising.) As to banning AdMob, what do you think would be Google's reaction to Apple seeking analytics on Google searches about mobile devices? My bet is that it wouldn't be much different in effect than what Apple has done. Apple is under no obligation to provide their competitor with a competitive advantage against Apple.
As for companies being "greedy," that's really an utterly irrelevant consideration. All companies exist first and foremost to deliver a profit to their owners/shareholders. If they don't maximize their profit, they are not doing their fiduciary duty, and in most countries (certainly including the US) can be sued for that. Maximizing profit, though, is trickier than you might think. For example, Android is a real competitor to Apple in the phone business. If Apple gets too stupid (as they are in serious danger of with many of their app store policies, and particularly with the lack of transparency to developers and the interminable delays to get bug-fix releases up on the store), then Android will cannibalize iPhone sales. (Eventually, there will be similar competitors for the iPad and the iPod Touch, one assumes.) Thus, Apple can charge so much that customers flee to other platforms, or be so awful to developers that they flee to other platforms taking customers with them, and in the process Apple would have overreached and the market would correct that. So "greed" isn't really involved, because being "too greedy" inevitably leads a company to failure, unless the government is propping the company up. Or, in the American case, the unions whose workers are employed by the company is more to the point.
And that attitude is why the carriers are now rushing to offer limited, and clearly defined, data plans. Economics is the allocation of scarce (ie, not infinite) resources. Bandwidth is a scarce resource. The first allocation scheme (give everybody unlimited access and hope it fits within the bandwidth available to the carrier) failed to balance. The second allocation scheme (give everybody limited access, but tell them it's unlimited and then soak the few who are using up the vast majority of the bandwidth) failed to balance. Now they're trying a third approach: telling people what they'll have access to and for how much; in effect, they're moving towards a more free-market approach. It's not as good advertising, and it pisses off people with your attitude about it, but it probably will succeed at balancing the bandwidth used with that available.
Ha ha. Good one. Nice use of an ad hominem in an attempt to delegitimize my point. Sadly, a bit too transparent. Try again.
Clearly, the judgement sought against LimeWire is over the top and stupid, and were I to end up on the jury, they'd have a hard time getting a judgement in their favor. However, that does not change the fact that civil common law and commercial statute law are two very different beasties.
You need to look up the term "rent seeking". In fact, you probably need to start with rents and fee simple and such before you progress to more advanced topics like gaming the system of ownership. It may or may not be a good thing (and it's probably, on balance, neutral), but it's not rent seeking.
That's a pretty tenuous argument. In what way am I (I am a third party app developer, after all) being hurt by this? There are different services that offer to put ads in my software for some payment terms. I can either write software without ads (and charge or not for it, depending on whether I want to make money) or I can write software with ads, hoping to make money off the advertising. If I choose the latter, I can pick from several different ad networks, based on which offers me the best terms; I can even mix and match if I so choose. Now, because of this, AdMob will likely offer worse terms on the iPhone than they would have otherwise; I can choose to accept those terms or not. If Apple prevents anyone from offering good terms on the iPhone, and I want to write an ad-supported app, then I can move to Android and try to do better there. But in no way is Apple really limiting me, as a developer, even if I were to choose to write ad-supported apps.
I don't have a complaint about the cost/limits, and I get annoyed with all the whining, but there is one thing about this that really bugs me, and that's the tethering at additional cost. OK, you want to limit my data plan before you give me tethering? I can live with that. But you want to do that and charge me $20 a month more into the bargain? Um, no.
Anyone who thinks that the Constitution should be a living document, and that the rule of law should be replaced by the consensus of 9 people as to what's just, should draw the obvious analogy here. Apple is making things up as they go along, and it is the unpredictability, not the rules per se, that cause people headaches. If people knew this rule in advance, they wouldn't develop this kind of app. It is the opening that other platforms have to surpass Apple, even with Apple's headstart, but to do it they will have to have at least a comparable integration and buying experience for the customer, and so far no one has managed that.
Most iPhone users don't experience a high dropped call rate, either. It's only in the largest, most media-visible markets that this happens, and then only in the US. In other words, AT&T's network is saturated in a few cities, and mostly fine elsewhere, and the networks overseas are generally fine. And in those places, there aren't a lot of dropped iPhone calls.
So would you be willing to use OSX if it was just on non-Apple hardware? Would a Hackintosh suit your needs? Or is that glowing logo a necessity for you?
If a Hackintosh provided the same experience, yes, it would work. However, you might note that a Hackintosh does not provide the same experience, because first you have to hack it together to work (hence the name) and then you have to do without support from Apple.
For a marginal player, they are doing an exceptional job of both capturing outsized profits and driving every other company's cell phone designs and features. They have changed the assumptions about what a smartphone is and in the process they have dramatically grown that market, as people who used to use the inaptly-named "feature phones" started buying smartphones instead. They may not be large in total cell phone market share, but "marginal" is the wrong word to describe them.
Now let's hope that Android can push Apple and HP, and WebOS can push Google and Apple, and Apple can continue to push Google and HP. Competition is good, and we'll be better off if no one ends up with a majority share of the overall cell phone market.
I read things like this (from both the Left and the Right), and I wonder how we can survive as a nation when we no longer share the same goals, or even a common feeling of belonging to the same group. Frankly, if might be better if we broke up into several nations.
It seems to me that what PS is saying is that the only people who think that they're benefitting from the bizarre and Byzantine system of IP we have set up (a) are the people who set up the system, rather than either of the two communities they purport to serve, and (b) probably aren't actually benefitting. Can't disagree with the assertions made.
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Ah, but that is why a court has to approve a warrant before officers can search your person, residence or effects. It's sad that we've watered down those protections, but they do still exist well enough to keep you from being convicted (most of the time) if you are illegally searched.
I would be fine with that, actually. In fact, I would prefer it.
Voting is not anonymous. That is, that you voted is not anonymous; for whom or what you voted is. The difference between the vote and the petition is that there is only one option on the petition, but that does not obviate the need for political participation to be public. It is inherently a public act, after all. If you don't like, sign no petition, sign every petition, or eliminate the petition requirement as a method for getting issues onto the ballot.
Say what? I think you are mistaken. Certainly, nothing in the Constitution seems to give the President that power.
Although, of course, the government simply ignores the Constitution all the time.
I think you are confused. Pre-emptive multitasking means that the kernel (technically, the scheduler) decides when a process runs and when it yields; the process has no control. In cooperative multitasking, there is a system call which the applications must use to yield control, and the scheduler simply decides which task gets control next (but not when it will yield). The iPhone has full pre-emptive multitasking (it, too, is built on UNIX, BSD in this case), it just limits the applications' ability to use it if you are publishing through the app store.
Well, from your comment, :-8 is already spawning. Um, twice now.
Scary maybe, though I note that the ease of moving between mobile platforms means that Apple is unlikely to ever achieve any real lock-in of users.I think you're pretty far off, though, on items 2, 3 and 4. More basically, it's with the concept of a company being "greedy," which I'll get to after I address the specific points.
Yes, Apple apparently did initially get a portion of the monthly fee. (Piper Jaffrey's analysts put that at $18 per phone per month, IIRC.) I don't believe that is the case any more. My understanding is that this went away when they started offering the iPhones subsidized by the carriers. Even if they still do get a portion of the fees, though, so what? It's a part of the cost of service, not a tool of generating monopoly. (If anything, it's the opposite, as higher-priced iPhone service plans turn away users.)
Yes, Apple gets a cut of 30% on sales of third party apps. So what? They take 30%, and give me (as an iPhone app developer) a platform for sales, a distribution system and a much reduced cost to advertise. The 30% they take for those services is utterly worthwhile, particularly for independent developers.
Yes, Apple takes a 40% cut of ad sales through iAd. And no cut at all through other services, which pay (last I looked) between $0.30 and $1.00 eCPM. Given the ad customers Apple is signing up, I'd be amazed if iAd didn't pay better. (AdMob is among the worst in terms of eCPM, which is the only number that matters to a developer that wants to make money off of advertising.) As to banning AdMob, what do you think would be Google's reaction to Apple seeking analytics on Google searches about mobile devices? My bet is that it wouldn't be much different in effect than what Apple has done. Apple is under no obligation to provide their competitor with a competitive advantage against Apple.
As for companies being "greedy," that's really an utterly irrelevant consideration. All companies exist first and foremost to deliver a profit to their owners/shareholders. If they don't maximize their profit, they are not doing their fiduciary duty, and in most countries (certainly including the US) can be sued for that. Maximizing profit, though, is trickier than you might think. For example, Android is a real competitor to Apple in the phone business. If Apple gets too stupid (as they are in serious danger of with many of their app store policies, and particularly with the lack of transparency to developers and the interminable delays to get bug-fix releases up on the store), then Android will cannibalize iPhone sales. (Eventually, there will be similar competitors for the iPad and the iPod Touch, one assumes.) Thus, Apple can charge so much that customers flee to other platforms, or be so awful to developers that they flee to other platforms taking customers with them, and in the process Apple would have overreached and the market would correct that. So "greed" isn't really involved, because being "too greedy" inevitably leads a company to failure, unless the government is propping the company up. Or, in the American case, the unions whose workers are employed by the company is more to the point.
And that attitude is why the carriers are now rushing to offer limited, and clearly defined, data plans. Economics is the allocation of scarce (ie, not infinite) resources. Bandwidth is a scarce resource. The first allocation scheme (give everybody unlimited access and hope it fits within the bandwidth available to the carrier) failed to balance. The second allocation scheme (give everybody limited access, but tell them it's unlimited and then soak the few who are using up the vast majority of the bandwidth) failed to balance. Now they're trying a third approach: telling people what they'll have access to and for how much; in effect, they're moving towards a more free-market approach. It's not as good advertising, and it pisses off people with your attitude about it, but it probably will succeed at balancing the bandwidth used with that available.
Ha ha. Good one. Nice use of an ad hominem in an attempt to delegitimize my point. Sadly, a bit too transparent. Try again.
Clearly, the judgement sought against LimeWire is over the top and stupid, and were I to end up on the jury, they'd have a hard time getting a judgement in their favor. However, that does not change the fact that civil common law and commercial statute law are two very different beasties.
You need to look up the term "rent seeking". In fact, you probably need to start with rents and fee simple and such before you progress to more advanced topics like gaming the system of ownership. It may or may not be a good thing (and it's probably, on balance, neutral), but it's not rent seeking.
That's a pretty tenuous argument. In what way am I (I am a third party app developer, after all) being hurt by this? There are different services that offer to put ads in my software for some payment terms. I can either write software without ads (and charge or not for it, depending on whether I want to make money) or I can write software with ads, hoping to make money off the advertising. If I choose the latter, I can pick from several different ad networks, based on which offers me the best terms; I can even mix and match if I so choose. Now, because of this, AdMob will likely offer worse terms on the iPhone than they would have otherwise; I can choose to accept those terms or not. If Apple prevents anyone from offering good terms on the iPhone, and I want to write an ad-supported app, then I can move to Android and try to do better there. But in no way is Apple really limiting me, as a developer, even if I were to choose to write ad-supported apps.
Then write your own program with whatever ad engine you want. But you won't get it on the App Store, because it's Apple's app store, not yours.
SQL ERROR: inconsistent indices
Category error. You are comparing the unadjudicated claim of a litigant against a law that imposes a liability cap. Apples and oranges, as it were.
I don't have a complaint about the cost/limits, and I get annoyed with all the whining, but there is one thing about this that really bugs me, and that's the tethering at additional cost. OK, you want to limit my data plan before you give me tethering? I can live with that. But you want to do that and charge me $20 a month more into the bargain? Um, no.
Anyone who thinks that the Constitution should be a living document, and that the rule of law should be replaced by the consensus of 9 people as to what's just, should draw the obvious analogy here. Apple is making things up as they go along, and it is the unpredictability, not the rules per se, that cause people headaches. If people knew this rule in advance, they wouldn't develop this kind of app. It is the opening that other platforms have to surpass Apple, even with Apple's headstart, but to do it they will have to have at least a comparable integration and buying experience for the customer, and so far no one has managed that.
Well, they've predicted seventeen of the last zero times Apple has collapsed. Soon they must be vindicated.
Most iPhone users don't experience a high dropped call rate, either. It's only in the largest, most media-visible markets that this happens, and then only in the US. In other words, AT&T's network is saturated in a few cities, and mostly fine elsewhere, and the networks overseas are generally fine. And in those places, there aren't a lot of dropped iPhone calls.
So would you be willing to use OSX if it was just on non-Apple hardware? Would a Hackintosh suit your needs? Or is that glowing logo a necessity for you?
If a Hackintosh provided the same experience, yes, it would work. However, you might note that a Hackintosh does not provide the same experience, because first you have to hack it together to work (hence the name) and then you have to do without support from Apple.
For a marginal player, they are doing an exceptional job of both capturing outsized profits and driving every other company's cell phone designs and features. They have changed the assumptions about what a smartphone is and in the process they have dramatically grown that market, as people who used to use the inaptly-named "feature phones" started buying smartphones instead. They may not be large in total cell phone market share, but "marginal" is the wrong word to describe them.
Now let's hope that Android can push Apple and HP, and WebOS can push Google and Apple, and Apple can continue to push Google and HP. Competition is good, and we'll be better off if no one ends up with a majority share of the overall cell phone market.
I honestly can't tell if you're astoundingly dense or the best troll ever.
I wonder what would happen if you applied their algorithm to any given slashdot post, particularly one on the Apple board.
Yeah, like that would work!
I read things like this (from both the Left and the Right), and I wonder how we can survive as a nation when we no longer share the same goals, or even a common feeling of belonging to the same group. Frankly, if might be better if we broke up into several nations.
It seems to me that what PS is saying is that the only people who think that they're benefitting from the bizarre and Byzantine system of IP we have set up (a) are the people who set up the system, rather than either of the two communities they purport to serve, and (b) probably aren't actually benefitting. Can't disagree with the assertions made.