If companies keep things as trade secrets, they run the risk that those same things could be "invented" and patented by another. Basically, the patent system could be tweaked so that anything that hasn't been patented and has been kept secret can be patented by another. Prior art would only count for published inventions. This way, companies can decide to keep things secret (more power to them) but anything can be reverse engineered.
I was referring to the proposals that were put forward by some Republican controlled senates, not Nebraska. Nebraska is inconsequential, which is why no one cares. Everyone would care if a large state, such as California, Florida or Texas moved to such a system, because, depending on the color of the state (i.e. does it generally go Republican or Democrat), it would seriously disadvantage the other party.
To be fair, I used the wrong tense, I should have said, "the system would rather blatantly take away Democrat electoral college votes in the states the Dems are winning, while leaving them unchanged in the states that the Republicans are winning" to make it clear I was talking about the proposed changes (which to be fair have mostly been rejected by the Republican governor of those states, so kudos to them.
I would go further than the patent office though with its discount for small entities.
I would have annual application and maintenance fees of $100,000 per patent. (This would stop companies hoarding patents, especially the like of IBM who are awarded on the order of 6000 patents per year.)
To make this easier, I would have a discount on the 1st 100 patents owned per individual or corporate entity, e.g. $100 per patent.
I would base this on beneficial ownership, so basically, if you own the patent, or license it exclusively, then you pay the fee. If companies wilfully violate this, I would take their patents of them and put them in the public domain.
Basically, companies have an incentive to patent lots of things because it is so incredibly cheap to do so, especially on the off chance that someone independently thinks of something similar enough, but more useful. COmpanies should only patent things they want to make, and having hefty fees would ensure that companies do not patent too many things speculatively.
Republicans managed to win more congressional seats while losing the popular vote (for the congressional elections). So it's not a fantasy that such a system gives them an advantage.
The gerrymandering is not bogus. While a state may lean one way or another, the distribution of the votes is not uniform, therefore Republicans and Dems will tend to win in states that the other party generally has an overall majority in. Gerrymandering is real, and is easier for Republicans because Dems votes are concentrated in urban areas and tend to be overwhelming. There was a fairly large precinct in the last election without a single Republican vote. Congressional districts tend to be the same size, so if, as a party, your supporters are concentrated in a single urban area, you get really large margins there. If you are trying to win an election, all other things equal (especially overall number and distribution of voters), you want to win by slim margins, and have your victories spread out.
Secondly, the only states where this was proposed were states that vote Democrat and have Republican controlled state senates and governors. Basically, the system rather blatantly takes away Democrat electoral college votes in the states the Dems are winning, while leaving them unchanged in the states that the Republicans are winning. Ignoring the 2 electoral college votes given to each state for the senators it has, if all states that vote Dem did this, they would lose up to 40% or so of their electoral college vote, and could never win a presidential election. For this alone, the idea is deeply repugnant. The fact that a "serious" politician actually discusses this should be unsettling to all voters. When politicians lose elections, they should either change to suit their electorate or quit, not change the rules to get into power regardless of the electorates wishes.
Not clear that the voting compact would fall foul of the above. The states do have complete freedom to allocate electoral college votes as they wish. There are probably some clever ways to engineer around the compact clause. For example, if the states all legislate individually, and the legislation pretty much say if enough states legislate in the same way, then the states will allocate electoral college votes to the popular vote winner. There would be obvious collusion, but it would not be by agreement of the states, i.e., each state would reserve the right to revoke the legislation as it so wished.
No they haven't completely rebranded as EE. EE is a brand of Everything Everywhere, which is a joint venture between T-Mobile and Orange communications. EE is only used for the 4G service at the moment, and Orange and T-Mobile are alive and well for the 3G services.
It gets very confusing, but basically, the name of the joint venture is EE, and EE operates 3 brands, EE, Orange and T-Mobile.
IANAL, but I am struggling to understand how any justice system is not adversarial in the sense that one person is accused of something, and has to defend himself.
As far as I understand, the prosecution is compelled to produce evidence that may exonerate the defendent, even in an adversarial system.
I can sort of understand how, when dealing with civil lawsuits, one system may be less adversarial than another, e.g. when dealing with divorce proceedings. But when it comes to criminal law, I am not sure the differences are as stark as you are making them out to be.
If the evidence says one of them did it, and they both deny it, then both are implicitly accusing the other brother.
Now, if I was the innocent brother, I wouldn't be liking my brother very much. But the innocent brother is telling the truth, and the guilty brother is lying.
Now, if the innocent brother is covering for the other, then that is another story, but nothing I have seen so far suggests that the twins are covering for each other.
Apple had the iMac in 1998, 2 or 3 years before iPaq!
It's obvious that many companies are now engaging in trademark "squatting", in particular when Apple is involved. That is why Apple did the whole smoke and mirrors thing to acquire the iPad name from Proview.
Why spend money on creating a product when you can rather more easily trademark a name Apple is likely to want to use. I am sure this is the reason we have an iPad instead of an iSlate or an iTab.
If I was Tim Cook, I would direct that Apple sells iPhone in Brazil without the iPhone trademark. People will know they are iPhones anyway. Just remove the iPhone text on the back of the phone and continue as normal.
Priests don't have much in the way of belongings. Of all conspiracy theories, that one is one of the most bizarre. Priests are given a small stipend, and their upkeep is generally the responsibility of the church. No, there are no BIll-Gates-rich priests who the church doesn't want to marry because their wives would run off with everything.
Really? Are you one of those people who claims that the Catholic Church impedes science? You are probably one of those people who is truly shocked to discover that guy who first proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe was a Catholic priest (Georges Lemaître).
Copernicus was also a Catholic priest, as were other scientific greats such as Ruer Josip Bokovi, Francesco Maria Grimaldi (the crater Grimaldi on the moon is named after him). There are many more.
The Catholic built universities long before nation states built universities. You can make many charges against the Catholic Church, but impeding scientific progress is not one of them. The Catholic Church is one of the most power forces for education in the developing world. I know this because the first private school for african students in ZImbabwe was built by the Catholic Church. Arguably, the Catholic Church, wherever it has operated, has done more for the education of the disadvantaged than foreign governments (which are always more powerful and wealthier) in many parts of the developing world.
Woz would be useless at Apple. Woz has not achieved much of note since the Apple II. Hiring Woz back would be a mistake.
Steve Jobs did not come back alone. He went to Apple with his NeXT people, with an operating system, and having been working in the industry pretty much all the time since he left Apple. Woz has not been doing much that is anyway near relevant to the sort of work that Apple is doing.
Steve was a Hail Mary pass from a company that was in deep trouble. It worked spectacularly. No need for any Hail Marys at the moment for Apple.
You have to look at it from the user's perspective. Is the fix available to the user or not? Looking at it from Google's perspective is wrong because that is not what fixes the issue for the customer.
iOS does not force you to apply any updates. It doesn't apply them automatically. Ever. It will let you know an update exists, but it will always ask you before installing it.
On the iphone, if you receive a call, you can mute it by either hitting the volume button on the side, or by hitting the power button. Hitting the power button the second time sends the incoming call to voicemail. You can do all of this without taking you phone out of your pocket of course.
You dislike of the man (Steve Jobs) clouds your judgement of him. Steve Jobs was not just a showman. Yes, he was very careful and considered about presenting his company's products in the best possible light, and about maximising the impact of the product introductions, but he is the one CEO who knew and cared about the products his company made.
I can bet the CEO of Samsung does not know the name of half of the smartphones that his company makes. Heck, he might not even use a Samsung smartphone for all we know. For him, making smartphones is probably just about making money.
Jobs was obsessive about the products he made. All the evidence points to someone who wasn't willing to just release any product and hope that the marketing would hide the flaws. He wanted his products to be as good as he could make them.
So while his idea of a good product might have been different to your, to claim he was just a huckster is just your prejudices talking rather than fact. Apple makes good products that are popular with their customers. Yes, they are distinctive because, well, it is stupid to make your product generic if you can help it. No one, or almost no one, sets out to make a generic looking product.
Claiming that customers are hurt is hyperbole that is worse that anything you could accuse Jobs for.
Well, I love the iPhone because they made damn sure it has a good music player.
And the iPhone definitely has an equalizer, maybe not a graphical one, but it certainly provides equalizer presets.
Lastly, you can use an alternative music player on the iPhone. There are many in the App Store, and they can and do use the main music database, so you basically get a who new shell with all the access to your music. Heck, there is a player that make the iPhone play music just like the Zune if that floats your boat.
Whenever I see someone dismissing a product other people prefer as being a "status symbol" or "fashion accessory", I just think "snob". Seriously, why can't people like an iPhone and not have it be about being a status symbol, because as 50m sold in 3 months, it definitely isn't one.
The iPhone is a quality product for which consumers are willing to pay more than they are for other products, and not because it is a status symbol because, I assure you, no women have offered sex to me because I own an iPhone!
While it is fair to criticise men who do not take responsibility for their offspring, how about the women who also take chances with unreliable men.
While marriage has become less fashionable, and is no panacea, if women demanded it before they would have a man's kids, they might just be more likely to get a responsible father for their children.
You mean the internet. Well, the argument isn't that government can never invent anything useful. It's that for the most part, they wouldn't invest in the right thing. Back when the internet was invented, no one except for government wanted (or needed) a fault resistant network, so government had to create one on its own. And fair dues, they invented something useful.
But would they have invested a smartphone? Unlikely
Any company in the world would love to bea a dying beast with $137bn in the bank.
That kind of money can let a company enter into completely new industries at the stroke of a pen. Apple was able to enter completely new industries and be instantly competitive because of its ginormous cash pile. Economies of scale can be bought in an instant with that sort of cash. Now, $137bn might be too much cash to be holding, but Apple has started paying a dividend, and until Apple stops being profitable, I doubt investors will care too much.
Apple didn't get to where it is by following conventional wisdom.
No, it isn't on paper. It's US government bonds (ok so on paper), and short term investments and cash. This is retained earnings we are talking about. (Fun fact, last year Apple made more profits than Nokia has since 2000. There is a possibility that Apple made more profits last year than Nokia has since inception!)
Basically, Apple only goes under if the US government goes under.
Slashdot Mirror
If companies keep things as trade secrets, they run the risk that those same things could be "invented" and patented by another. Basically, the patent system could be tweaked so that anything that hasn't been patented and has been kept secret can be patented by another. Prior art would only count for published inventions. This way, companies can decide to keep things secret (more power to them) but anything can be reverse engineered.
I was referring to the proposals that were put forward by some Republican controlled senates, not Nebraska. Nebraska is inconsequential, which is why no one cares. Everyone would care if a large state, such as California, Florida or Texas moved to such a system, because, depending on the color of the state (i.e. does it generally go Republican or Democrat), it would seriously disadvantage the other party.
To be fair, I used the wrong tense, I should have said, "the system would rather blatantly take away Democrat electoral college votes in the states the Dems are winning, while leaving them unchanged in the states that the Republicans are winning" to make it clear I was talking about the proposed changes (which to be fair have mostly been rejected by the Republican governor of those states, so kudos to them.
I would go further than the patent office though with its discount for small entities.
I would have annual application and maintenance fees of $100,000 per patent. (This would stop companies hoarding patents, especially the like of IBM who are awarded on the order of 6000 patents per year.)
To make this easier, I would have a discount on the 1st 100 patents owned per individual or corporate entity, e.g. $100 per patent.
I would base this on beneficial ownership, so basically, if you own the patent, or license it exclusively, then you pay the fee. If companies wilfully violate this, I would take their patents of them and put them in the public domain.
Basically, companies have an incentive to patent lots of things because it is so incredibly cheap to do so, especially on the off chance that someone independently thinks of something similar enough, but more useful. COmpanies should only patent things they want to make, and having hefty fees would ensure that companies do not patent too many things speculatively.
The fear is not bogus.
Republicans managed to win more congressional seats while losing the popular vote (for the congressional elections). So it's not a fantasy that such a system gives them an advantage.
The gerrymandering is not bogus. While a state may lean one way or another, the distribution of the votes is not uniform, therefore Republicans and Dems will tend to win in states that the other party generally has an overall majority in. Gerrymandering is real, and is easier for Republicans because Dems votes are concentrated in urban areas and tend to be overwhelming. There was a fairly large precinct in the last election without a single Republican vote. Congressional districts tend to be the same size, so if, as a party, your supporters are concentrated in a single urban area, you get really large margins there. If you are trying to win an election, all other things equal (especially overall number and distribution of voters), you want to win by slim margins, and have your victories spread out.
Secondly, the only states where this was proposed were states that vote Democrat and have Republican controlled state senates and governors. Basically, the system rather blatantly takes away Democrat electoral college votes in the states the Dems are winning, while leaving them unchanged in the states that the Republicans are winning. Ignoring the 2 electoral college votes given to each state for the senators it has, if all states that vote Dem did this, they would lose up to 40% or so of their electoral college vote, and could never win a presidential election. For this alone, the idea is deeply repugnant. The fact that a "serious" politician actually discusses this should be unsettling to all voters. When politicians lose elections, they should either change to suit their electorate or quit, not change the rules to get into power regardless of the electorates wishes.
Not clear that the voting compact would fall foul of the above. The states do have complete freedom to allocate electoral college votes as they wish. There are probably some clever ways to engineer around the compact clause. For example, if the states all legislate individually, and the legislation pretty much say if enough states legislate in the same way, then the states will allocate electoral college votes to the popular vote winner. There would be obvious collusion, but it would not be by agreement of the states, i.e., each state would reserve the right to revoke the legislation as it so wished.
And you left out the McIntosh!
No they haven't completely rebranded as EE. EE is a brand of Everything Everywhere, which is a joint venture between T-Mobile and Orange communications. EE is only used for the 4G service at the moment, and Orange and T-Mobile are alive and well for the 3G services.
It gets very confusing, but basically, the name of the joint venture is EE, and EE operates 3 brands, EE, Orange and T-Mobile.
IANAL, but I am struggling to understand how any justice system is not adversarial in the sense that one person is accused of something, and has to defend himself.
As far as I understand, the prosecution is compelled to produce evidence that may exonerate the defendent, even in an adversarial system.
I can sort of understand how, when dealing with civil lawsuits, one system may be less adversarial than another, e.g. when dealing with divorce proceedings. But when it comes to criminal law, I am not sure the differences are as stark as you are making them out to be.
Then again, IANAL!
Logic fail.
If the evidence says one of them did it, and they both deny it, then both are implicitly accusing the other brother.
Now, if I was the innocent brother, I wouldn't be liking my brother very much. But the innocent brother is telling the truth, and the guilty brother is lying.
Now, if the innocent brother is covering for the other, then that is another story, but nothing I have seen so far suggests that the twins are covering for each other.
Apple had the iMac in 1998, 2 or 3 years before iPaq!
It's obvious that many companies are now engaging in trademark "squatting", in particular when Apple is involved. That is why Apple did the whole smoke and mirrors thing to acquire the iPad name from Proview.
Why spend money on creating a product when you can rather more easily trademark a name Apple is likely to want to use. I am sure this is the reason we have an iPad instead of an iSlate or an iTab.
If I was Tim Cook, I would direct that Apple sells iPhone in Brazil without the iPhone trademark. People will know they are iPhones anyway. Just remove the iPhone text on the back of the phone and continue as normal.
Priests don't have much in the way of belongings. Of all conspiracy theories, that one is one of the most bizarre. Priests are given a small stipend, and their upkeep is generally the responsibility of the church. No, there are no BIll-Gates-rich priests who the church doesn't want to marry because their wives would run off with everything.
Really? Are you one of those people who claims that the Catholic Church impedes science? You are probably one of those people who is truly shocked to discover that guy who first proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe was a Catholic priest (Georges Lemaître).
Copernicus was also a Catholic priest, as were other scientific greats such as Ruer Josip Bokovi, Francesco Maria Grimaldi (the crater Grimaldi on the moon is named after him). There are many more.
The Catholic built universities long before nation states built universities. You can make many charges against the Catholic Church, but impeding scientific progress is not one of them. The Catholic Church is one of the most power forces for education in the developing world. I know this because the first private school for african students in ZImbabwe was built by the Catholic Church. Arguably, the Catholic Church, wherever it has operated, has done more for the education of the disadvantaged than foreign governments (which are always more powerful and wealthier) in many parts of the developing world.
Woz would be useless at Apple. Woz has not achieved much of note since the Apple II. Hiring Woz back would be a mistake.
Steve Jobs did not come back alone. He went to Apple with his NeXT people, with an operating system, and having been working in the industry pretty much all the time since he left Apple. Woz has not been doing much that is anyway near relevant to the sort of work that Apple is doing.
Steve was a Hail Mary pass from a company that was in deep trouble. It worked spectacularly. No need for any Hail Marys at the moment for Apple.
You have to look at it from the user's perspective. Is the fix available to the user or not? Looking at it from Google's perspective is wrong because that is not what fixes the issue for the customer.
iOS does not force you to apply any updates. It doesn't apply them automatically. Ever. It will let you know an update exists, but it will always ask you before installing it.
On the iphone, if you receive a call, you can mute it by either hitting the volume button on the side, or by hitting the power button. Hitting the power button the second time sends the incoming call to voicemail. You can do all of this without taking you phone out of your pocket of course.
You dislike of the man (Steve Jobs) clouds your judgement of him. Steve Jobs was not just a showman. Yes, he was very careful and considered about presenting his company's products in the best possible light, and about maximising the impact of the product introductions, but he is the one CEO who knew and cared about the products his company made.
I can bet the CEO of Samsung does not know the name of half of the smartphones that his company makes. Heck, he might not even use a Samsung smartphone for all we know. For him, making smartphones is probably just about making money.
Jobs was obsessive about the products he made. All the evidence points to someone who wasn't willing to just release any product and hope that the marketing would hide the flaws. He wanted his products to be as good as he could make them.
So while his idea of a good product might have been different to your, to claim he was just a huckster is just your prejudices talking rather than fact. Apple makes good products that are popular with their customers. Yes, they are distinctive because, well, it is stupid to make your product generic if you can help it. No one, or almost no one, sets out to make a generic looking product.
Claiming that customers are hurt is hyperbole that is worse that anything you could accuse Jobs for.
Well, I love the iPhone because they made damn sure it has a good music player.
And the iPhone definitely has an equalizer, maybe not a graphical one, but it certainly provides equalizer presets.
Lastly, you can use an alternative music player on the iPhone. There are many in the App Store, and they can and do use the main music database, so you basically get a who new shell with all the access to your music. Heck, there is a player that make the iPhone play music just like the Zune if that floats your boat.
Whenever I see someone dismissing a product other people prefer as being a "status symbol" or "fashion accessory", I just think "snob". Seriously, why can't people like an iPhone and not have it be about being a status symbol, because as 50m sold in 3 months, it definitely isn't one.
The iPhone is a quality product for which consumers are willing to pay more than they are for other products, and not because it is a status symbol because, I assure you, no women have offered sex to me because I own an iPhone!
Yes, because it is very hard to flick a hardware switch on the side of the phone to put it on silent/vibrate.
While it is fair to criticise men who do not take responsibility for their offspring, how about the women who also take chances with unreliable men.
While marriage has become less fashionable, and is no panacea, if women demanded it before they would have a man's kids, they might just be more likely to get a responsible father for their children.
Yes, they own the US justice system, and yet it is the EU courts that produced a pretty scathing opinion of Samsung's abuse of FRAND patents.
But let's not let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy.
So how many times should an artist get paid, and how much.
$1 for the first song. Should we limit it to just 10,000 buyers, or should we set some other arbitrary limit?
You mean the internet. Well, the argument isn't that government can never invent anything useful. It's that for the most part, they wouldn't invest in the right thing. Back when the internet was invented, no one except for government wanted (or needed) a fault resistant network, so government had to create one on its own. And fair dues, they invented something useful.
But would they have invested a smartphone? Unlikely
Any company in the world would love to bea a dying beast with $137bn in the bank.
That kind of money can let a company enter into completely new industries at the stroke of a pen. Apple was able to enter completely new industries and be instantly competitive because of its ginormous cash pile. Economies of scale can be bought in an instant with that sort of cash. Now, $137bn might be too much cash to be holding, but Apple has started paying a dividend, and until Apple stops being profitable, I doubt investors will care too much.
Apple didn't get to where it is by following conventional wisdom.
No, it isn't on paper. It's US government bonds (ok so on paper), and short term investments and cash. This is retained earnings we are talking about. (Fun fact, last year Apple made more profits than Nokia has since 2000. There is a possibility that Apple made more profits last year than Nokia has since inception!)
Basically, Apple only goes under if the US government goes under.