I do think it's rather dumb to sue a company that isn't making any money and has no real prospects for doing so, but that just makes them dumb too; not a patent troll.
Why is it dumb? Presumably they have assets that could be taken to satisfy a judgment. Waiting until they start making millions of bucks and then filing your lawsuit would seem to be more questionable than just filing it. The former suggests that you are only in it for the money. The latter suggests that you may actually care about your patent.
And now you're criticizing me for purchasing Chinese products? What the hell does that have to do with this? You think the solution is for us to band together and boycott Chinese products? Do you really believe that causing their economic structure to collapse would be the answer?
I don't have the answer and no I wasn't criticizing you for purchasing Chinese products. I was criticizing you for telling the GP he was "compliant". My underlying point is that we are all "complaint" in one way or another with the crimes of the Chinese regime.
Did trade embargoes work for North Korea and pre-war Iraq?
Different situation. The Chinese actually have a pro-democracy movement. It can't get it's message out effectively right now because the Government counters it with "Do you really want Democracy? Look at all of the economic growth we are providing!" In that respect every person who buys goods made in China bears some measure of responsibility for helping that Government to retain power.
not pushing my ideals and isms on the sovereign people of China. Basic human rights are the only thing I push and I'm prepared to argue that.
I like how you say in the first sentence that you don't want to push your ideals on them and in the second sentence say you are prepared to push human rights. I'm sure it's occurred to you that different cultures might have a different conception of what "human rights" are.
By your argument, the Chinese murdered children at random because they underengineered some school houses in an earthquake-prone region. What about New Orleans, where our government, with a gajillion times the resources of an impoverished Chinese provincial town, failed to construct adequate levees in a similarly disaster-prone region and exacerbated the loss of life with inadequate relief efforts? Should I even mention the TVA coal ash spill [dailykos.com]?
Thousands of schoolchildren died as a result of the coal ash spill while our government arrested people who came to it seeking a redress of their grievances? Why wasn't this covered on the news?
or is it as Chinese a phenomenon as "fat camps" might be an American one?
I'm not aware of any fat camps where the government tells you that you have to go and punishes you if you refuse......
That's true, but the crews were rather poorly trained.
So what? We can only compare outcomes from events that actually happened. If you get into playing the "what if" game then the whole conversation wanders off track and you can't draw any meaningful conclusions about the real world performance of the various vehicles. The T-34 was an amazing vehicle that saved the Soviet Union but it wasn't without it's drawbacks. The internal ergonomics were a nightmare, the vehicle was undermanned (the commander had to fire the main gun, which distracted him from commanding the vehicle) and the ammo storage system was cumbersome.
It was still better than the German designs though. It was easier to build and maintain, so the Soviets could produce more of them and had an easier time keeping them out of the repair shop and on the line. It wasn't as complicated to operate and thus required less training for the crew -- a huge advantage when you consider the fact that the Red Army was largely a peasant force. Like the Sherman it was good enough for the role it had to play.
Still, IIRC, airpower once again was the real advantage in Korea - most of the T-34s killed were via aircraft.
So were most of the German tanks that were destroyed by the Western Allies, so why does everybody beat on the poor performance of the Sherman in the anti-tank role? Particularly when it was never designed for that or intended to be used in that fashion. I also recall reading somewhere that the bulk of the Shermans that were lost in combat weren't lost to enemy tanks -- they were damaged/destroyed by mines. Only a small percentage were taken out by enemy armor.
Your second remark is exactly my point. When you have hungry stakeholders looking for a good ROI there's no concept of turning down a lucrative offer to keep your business identity, or to ensure your tightly-knit board calls the shots, or to preserve Casual Thursdays, or because the offer mandates replacing 90% of your staff with cheap overseas labour. You've got to go where the money is.
That's exactly how it's supposed to work. Most investors did not put their money into Yahoo with such lofty ambitions as you describe. Tell me, when you put money into your 401(k) are you doing it so Yahoo can retain it's "business identity" or are you doing it so you can retire one day? Yahoo's "business identity" is toast anyway -- they don't have the cash to compete with Microsoft or the innovation to beat Google.
Windows is very popular in China and you can bet most installations are pirated.
I wonder what the trade deficit would be if they actually respected our intellectual property and paid the going rate for it instead of stealing it? Funny how we pay them for their stuff but not the other way around.....
No, everybody has a right to be pissed. They just don't have the right to call out others as being complicit in Chinese crimes when they themselves are buying products that prop up the regime.
The fact that 'internet addiction' is ill defined and that this was a CHILD not an adult and the fact that it's government run should cause alarm bells to ring even if it is only one case.
If your alarm bells weren't ringing about China long before this incident then I'd say that you haven't been paying much attention to the last 40 years of Chinese history.
Your compliance amazes me.
You are throwing stones about compliance? You fucking hypocrite. You are sitting on/. typing your rant on a computer that was largely made with Chinese parts/labor, probably wearing shoes/clothing that were made in China and god knows what else. I'm sorry but you don't get to throw stones when you live in a glass house.
This is why having shareholders can suck for a business's bosses.
I hate to break it to you but the CEO isn't the "boss" unless he owns 50.1% of the outstanding shares.
your shareholders are going to want you to accept if it doubles their investment.
Well duh! And this is a problem, because???? Are you telling me that if you owned a business and someone came along and offered you twice what it was worth you wouldn't accept their offer? Remember to take into consideration the fact that your business is facing both a much more nimble and innovative competitor (Google) and a 500 pound gorilla (Microsoft). Remember to account for the fact that your business has done nothing but decline over the last ten years. Taking all of that into consideration you'd really reject an offer like that?
Then again, when your military consists mainly of Mexican thugs looking for weapons training and inbred hicks from Arkansas, maybe they aren't in a position to make intelligent decisions.
Wow, you are a fucking asshole, do you realize that? The military is one of the most diverse parts of American society. Take any reasonably sized military unit and odds are that you can find a service member from each of the 50 states, from each religion (ranging from the big three to smaller groups such as wiccans) and ethic group.
The military isn't perfect but to claim that it's only made up of "inbred hicks" is absurd. I'd like to see you have the balls to make that statement on the street anywhere in the United States as opposed to making it as an anonymous coward on/.
All of what you just said sounds like another good reason why Yahoo should have accepted Microsoft's inflated offer and run with the cash while they had a chance......
It did fine in Africa and the Pacific - but the German's wiped the floor with it in Europe.
They wiped the floor with it in all those engagements they lost?
Anyway, if a tank wasn't an important part of the Allied strategy on the Western front
Where did I say it wasn't an important part of Allied strategy? All I said was that American tactics of the day didn't place an emphasis on tank-on-tank engagements. Enemy armor was intended to be dealt with using tank destroyers, field guns and air support. The Sherman was never designed with the intention of taking on enemy tanks. It was designed to attack fortifications and support the infantry. In those roles it excelled.
And as another sign that it was considered to be a debacle by the military, after the war the Americans spent considerably more time on heavy tanks. Rather than basing new tank designs on the Sherman, they chose the larger Pershing.
After the war tactics were changed, based on experiences learned from the war and reduced post-war budgets. I would still maintain that the Sherman was good enough for the job it was asked to perform and that when all factors (ease of maintenance, ease of production) are considered that it was a better design than anything fielded by the Germans. The best tank design in the world doesn't help you if it spends the majority of it's time off the line for repair and is so expensive that you can't produce them in large enough numbers to keep your forces equipped.
I still think I'd be pretty peeved if I owned Yahoo stock over the fact that they rejected Microsoft's buy-out offers. The last one that Microsoft made had Yahoo valued at $31/share. It's now trading at around $14.50. Given the fact that Google dominates the search engine market and Yahoo hasn't innovated anything in years does anybody really think it's likely that Yahoo will ever see a $31 share price again? They've entered an inexorable decline that will eventually end in them being bought out by someone (probably Microsoft) for a heck of a lot less than $31/share.
I'm kind of surprised that the board didn't sued for breaching their fiduciary responsibility when they rejected that offer. That was one heck of a deal for the shareholders and I'm extremely baffled that it was rejected.
I think you are right... the Sherman tank was an absolute disaster for the allies. It was a failed tactical experiment. The main gun couldn't penetrate the armor of the heavy German tanks, even at close range
So what? American tactics didn't call for tank on tank engagements. They called for using tank destroyers to engage and destroy enemy tanks. Later in the war it was also realized that air power was an effective way to deal with enemy armor. There weren't too many pitched battles with large numbers of tank-on-tank engagements on the Western front (the Eastern front is another matter of course) so this bit of criticism seems to miss the mark.
I don't have the reference handy but I once came across a study showing that incarcerated psychopaths who undergo treatment for the condition are statistically more likely to demonstrate a greater degree of psychopathy in the future than are those who do not undergo treatment.
Any psychiatrists out there want to back me up?
What I think we need to do is figure out a way to get these people to stop committing sex offenses besides locking them up with a bunch of other criminals and then letting them go.
I can think of one solution but you just know some liberal is gonna come along and complain about it;)
Read the text of the 1960 security treaty with Japan. Neither party is actually required to go to war to defend the other. It's a feel good treaty that gives the USA basing rights.
South Korea's defense being a UN Mandate, perhaps the UN could take up the matter in a security council meeting. Perhaps a stern letter to North Korea would work.
Eh, there are other considerations as well. If the United States allowed South Korea and/or Japan to get pummeled by an outside party and didn't intervene then why would any of our remaining allies believe that we would protect them? We owe our position in the world to our various allies -- without them and the basing rights that come with them the United States is a regional power without the ability to project power outside of the Western hemisphere and Pacific (our various island holdings give us basing rights there regardless of any allies)
NATO expansion was a mistake.
No argument here. But for better or worse we are obligated to defend those countries now. If we aren't willing to do so then perhaps we should withdraw from the alliance now and not bother to maintain the illusion. There are times when I'd be all for withdrawal -- NATO invoked Article 5 after 9/11 but hasn't done much of anything to help us in Afghanistan. The bulk of the burden there is being carried by us, the Canadians, the British and the Dutch. Most of the remaining NATO members have attached various strings to their forces and refuse to allow them to be employed as needed. Hardly seems like an alliance if it's a one-way street, does it?
I was struck by the craftsmanship and pride that went into trivial things in Germany. For instance, the asphalt on the road doesn't simply get slopped over the concrete curb like in the US... they left a perfect little gap, rarely getting any asphalt at all on the concrete. Then, the tar guy would seal the gap, carefully getting tar only into the gap and very little, if any, on the curb. In the US, they ladle it out without any concern whatsoever about aesthetics.
Interestingly enough that's part of the reason why they lost the war. The typical German design for equipment was overly-engineered, overly-complicated and overly-expensive. Compare their armored vehicle designs to those of the Americans and Soviets. They were arguably more advanced but they pushed the engineering technology of the day to the point that they were more prone to breakdown, harder to maintain and harder to mass produce.
The Sherman wasn't a match for most German tanks one-on-one but that didn't matter -- it was easier to maintain in the field, easier to mass produce and was coupled with tactics (air power and tank destroyers) that more than offset it's disadvantages. It was good enough for the job it had to perform and when all factors are taken into account was arguably better than the German designs.
Then there's the modern day examples. Ever own a Volkswagen? Repairs on them will typically cost you 200% to 300% more than they would on the equivalent Japanese or American automobile. Whether that's because of over-engineering or other factors (proprietary parts) is open to debate but the fact remains that the American or Japanese model is going to be cheaper to keep on the road. In the end that's the most important factor for a lot of people.
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I do think it's rather dumb to sue a company that isn't making any money and has no real prospects for doing so, but that just makes them dumb too; not a patent troll.
Why is it dumb? Presumably they have assets that could be taken to satisfy a judgment. Waiting until they start making millions of bucks and then filing your lawsuit would seem to be more questionable than just filing it. The former suggests that you are only in it for the money. The latter suggests that you may actually care about your patent.
And now you're criticizing me for purchasing Chinese products? What the hell does that have to do with this? You think the solution is for us to band together and boycott Chinese products? Do you really believe that causing their economic structure to collapse would be the answer?
I don't have the answer and no I wasn't criticizing you for purchasing Chinese products. I was criticizing you for telling the GP he was "compliant". My underlying point is that we are all "complaint" in one way or another with the crimes of the Chinese regime.
Did trade embargoes work for North Korea and pre-war Iraq?
Different situation. The Chinese actually have a pro-democracy movement. It can't get it's message out effectively right now because the Government counters it with "Do you really want Democracy? Look at all of the economic growth we are providing!" In that respect every person who buys goods made in China bears some measure of responsibility for helping that Government to retain power.
not pushing my ideals and isms on the sovereign people of China. Basic human rights are the only thing I push and I'm prepared to argue that.
I like how you say in the first sentence that you don't want to push your ideals on them and in the second sentence say you are prepared to push human rights. I'm sure it's occurred to you that different cultures might have a different conception of what "human rights" are.
By your argument, the Chinese murdered children at random because they underengineered some school houses in an earthquake-prone region. What about New Orleans, where our government, with a gajillion times the resources of an impoverished Chinese provincial town, failed to construct adequate levees in a similarly disaster-prone region and exacerbated the loss of life with inadequate relief efforts? Should I even mention the TVA coal ash spill [dailykos.com]?
Thousands of schoolchildren died as a result of the coal ash spill while our government arrested people who came to it seeking a redress of their grievances? Why wasn't this covered on the news?
or is it as Chinese a phenomenon as "fat camps" might be an American one?
I'm not aware of any fat camps where the government tells you that you have to go and punishes you if you refuse......
That's true, but the crews were rather poorly trained.
So what? We can only compare outcomes from events that actually happened. If you get into playing the "what if" game then the whole conversation wanders off track and you can't draw any meaningful conclusions about the real world performance of the various vehicles. The T-34 was an amazing vehicle that saved the Soviet Union but it wasn't without it's drawbacks. The internal ergonomics were a nightmare, the vehicle was undermanned (the commander had to fire the main gun, which distracted him from commanding the vehicle) and the ammo storage system was cumbersome.
It was still better than the German designs though. It was easier to build and maintain, so the Soviets could produce more of them and had an easier time keeping them out of the repair shop and on the line. It wasn't as complicated to operate and thus required less training for the crew -- a huge advantage when you consider the fact that the Red Army was largely a peasant force. Like the Sherman it was good enough for the role it had to play.
Still, IIRC, airpower once again was the real advantage in Korea - most of the T-34s killed were via aircraft.
So were most of the German tanks that were destroyed by the Western Allies, so why does everybody beat on the poor performance of the Sherman in the anti-tank role? Particularly when it was never designed for that or intended to be used in that fashion. I also recall reading somewhere that the bulk of the Shermans that were lost in combat weren't lost to enemy tanks -- they were damaged/destroyed by mines. Only a small percentage were taken out by enemy armor.
Your second remark is exactly my point. When you have hungry stakeholders looking for a good ROI there's no concept of turning down a lucrative offer to keep your business identity, or to ensure your tightly-knit board calls the shots, or to preserve Casual Thursdays, or because the offer mandates replacing 90% of your staff with cheap overseas labour. You've got to go where the money is.
That's exactly how it's supposed to work. Most investors did not put their money into Yahoo with such lofty ambitions as you describe. Tell me, when you put money into your 401(k) are you doing it so Yahoo can retain it's "business identity" or are you doing it so you can retire one day? Yahoo's "business identity" is toast anyway -- they don't have the cash to compete with Microsoft or the innovation to beat Google.
Umm, has Yahoo ever paid a dividend? Didn't think so......
Go fuck yourself
Windows isn't the only bit of American IP that the Chinese can't be bothered to pay for.
Windows is very popular in China and you can bet most installations are pirated.
I wonder what the trade deficit would be if they actually respected our intellectual property and paid the going rate for it instead of stealing it? Funny how we pay them for their stuff but not the other way around.....
No, everybody has a right to be pissed. They just don't have the right to call out others as being complicit in Chinese crimes when they themselves are buying products that prop up the regime.
The fact that 'internet addiction' is ill defined and that this was a CHILD not an adult and the fact that it's government run should cause alarm bells to ring even if it is only one case.
If your alarm bells weren't ringing about China long before this incident then I'd say that you haven't been paying much attention to the last 40 years of Chinese history.
Your compliance amazes me.
You are throwing stones about compliance? You fucking hypocrite. You are sitting on /. typing your rant on a computer that was largely made with Chinese parts/labor, probably wearing shoes/clothing that were made in China and god knows what else. I'm sorry but you don't get to throw stones when you live in a glass house.
This is why having shareholders can suck for a business's bosses.
I hate to break it to you but the CEO isn't the "boss" unless he owns 50.1% of the outstanding shares.
your shareholders are going to want you to accept if it doubles their investment.
Well duh! And this is a problem, because???? Are you telling me that if you owned a business and someone came along and offered you twice what it was worth you wouldn't accept their offer? Remember to take into consideration the fact that your business is facing both a much more nimble and innovative competitor (Google) and a 500 pound gorilla (Microsoft). Remember to account for the fact that your business has done nothing but decline over the last ten years. Taking all of that into consideration you'd really reject an offer like that?
Then again, when your military consists mainly of Mexican thugs looking for weapons training and inbred hicks from Arkansas, maybe they aren't in a position to make intelligent decisions.
Wow, you are a fucking asshole, do you realize that? The military is one of the most diverse parts of American society. Take any reasonably sized military unit and odds are that you can find a service member from each of the 50 states, from each religion (ranging from the big three to smaller groups such as wiccans) and ethic group.
The military isn't perfect but to claim that it's only made up of "inbred hicks" is absurd. I'd like to see you have the balls to make that statement on the street anywhere in the United States as opposed to making it as an anonymous coward on /.
And yet the T-34 fared rather poorly when it went up against Shermans in Korea......
All of what you just said sounds like another good reason why Yahoo should have accepted Microsoft's inflated offer and run with the cash while they had a chance......
It did fine in Africa and the Pacific - but the German's wiped the floor with it in Europe.
They wiped the floor with it in all those engagements they lost?
Anyway, if a tank wasn't an important part of the Allied strategy on the Western front
Where did I say it wasn't an important part of Allied strategy? All I said was that American tactics of the day didn't place an emphasis on tank-on-tank engagements. Enemy armor was intended to be dealt with using tank destroyers, field guns and air support. The Sherman was never designed with the intention of taking on enemy tanks. It was designed to attack fortifications and support the infantry. In those roles it excelled.
And as another sign that it was considered to be a debacle by the military, after the war the Americans spent considerably more time on heavy tanks. Rather than basing new tank designs on the Sherman, they chose the larger Pershing.
After the war tactics were changed, based on experiences learned from the war and reduced post-war budgets. I would still maintain that the Sherman was good enough for the job it was asked to perform and that when all factors (ease of maintenance, ease of production) are considered that it was a better design than anything fielded by the Germans. The best tank design in the world doesn't help you if it spends the majority of it's time off the line for repair and is so expensive that you can't produce them in large enough numbers to keep your forces equipped.
There is no difference between zero dollars times 93 percent and zero dollars times 83 percent.
There is if you operate your business under the same accounting principles used by the Federal Government ;)
I still think I'd be pretty peeved if I owned Yahoo stock over the fact that they rejected Microsoft's buy-out offers. The last one that Microsoft made had Yahoo valued at $31/share. It's now trading at around $14.50. Given the fact that Google dominates the search engine market and Yahoo hasn't innovated anything in years does anybody really think it's likely that Yahoo will ever see a $31 share price again? They've entered an inexorable decline that will eventually end in them being bought out by someone (probably Microsoft) for a heck of a lot less than $31/share.
I'm kind of surprised that the board didn't sued for breaching their fiduciary responsibility when they rejected that offer. That was one heck of a deal for the shareholders and I'm extremely baffled that it was rejected.
I think you are right... the Sherman tank was an absolute disaster for the allies. It was a failed tactical experiment. The main gun couldn't penetrate the armor of the heavy German tanks, even at close range
So what? American tactics didn't call for tank on tank engagements. They called for using tank destroyers to engage and destroy enemy tanks. Later in the war it was also realized that air power was an effective way to deal with enemy armor. There weren't too many pitched battles with large numbers of tank-on-tank engagements on the Western front (the Eastern front is another matter of course) so this bit of criticism seems to miss the mark.
I don't have the reference handy but I once came across a study showing that incarcerated psychopaths who undergo treatment for the condition are statistically more likely to demonstrate a greater degree of psychopathy in the future than are those who do not undergo treatment.
Any psychiatrists out there want to back me up?
Where's Dr. Melfi when you need her?
It would be interesting if you could fix sociopathy with a knife.
Well, you can but firearms are generally more effective and easier to employ ;)
What I think we need to do is figure out a way to get these people to stop committing sex offenses besides locking them up with a bunch of other criminals and then letting them go.
I can think of one solution but you just know some liberal is gonna come along and complain about it ;)
Read the text of the 1960 security treaty with Japan. Neither party is actually required to go to war to defend the other. It's a feel good treaty that gives the USA basing rights.
South Korea's defense being a UN Mandate, perhaps the UN could take up the matter in a security council meeting. Perhaps a stern letter to North Korea would work.
Eh, there are other considerations as well. If the United States allowed South Korea and/or Japan to get pummeled by an outside party and didn't intervene then why would any of our remaining allies believe that we would protect them? We owe our position in the world to our various allies -- without them and the basing rights that come with them the United States is a regional power without the ability to project power outside of the Western hemisphere and Pacific (our various island holdings give us basing rights there regardless of any allies)
NATO expansion was a mistake.
No argument here. But for better or worse we are obligated to defend those countries now. If we aren't willing to do so then perhaps we should withdraw from the alliance now and not bother to maintain the illusion. There are times when I'd be all for withdrawal -- NATO invoked Article 5 after 9/11 but hasn't done much of anything to help us in Afghanistan. The bulk of the burden there is being carried by us, the Canadians, the British and the Dutch. Most of the remaining NATO members have attached various strings to their forces and refuse to allow them to be employed as needed. Hardly seems like an alliance if it's a one-way street, does it?
I was struck by the craftsmanship and pride that went into trivial things in Germany. For instance, the asphalt on the road doesn't simply get slopped over the concrete curb like in the US... they left a perfect little gap, rarely getting any asphalt at all on the concrete. Then, the tar guy would seal the gap, carefully getting tar only into the gap and very little, if any, on the curb. In the US, they ladle it out without any concern whatsoever about aesthetics.
Interestingly enough that's part of the reason why they lost the war. The typical German design for equipment was overly-engineered, overly-complicated and overly-expensive. Compare their armored vehicle designs to those of the Americans and Soviets. They were arguably more advanced but they pushed the engineering technology of the day to the point that they were more prone to breakdown, harder to maintain and harder to mass produce.
The Sherman wasn't a match for most German tanks one-on-one but that didn't matter -- it was easier to maintain in the field, easier to mass produce and was coupled with tactics (air power and tank destroyers) that more than offset it's disadvantages. It was good enough for the job it had to perform and when all factors are taken into account was arguably better than the German designs.
Then there's the modern day examples. Ever own a Volkswagen? Repairs on them will typically cost you 200% to 300% more than they would on the equivalent Japanese or American automobile. Whether that's because of over-engineering or other factors (proprietary parts) is open to debate but the fact remains that the American or Japanese model is going to be cheaper to keep on the road. In the end that's the most important factor for a lot of people.
I do not see the reason for Americans to go to war to protect either the South Koreans or the Japanese
How about the fact that we have a security alliance with Japan and that the mission of defending South Korea has a UN mandate?
Do you also think that we have no obligation to defend Australia, New Zealand or our NATO allies?