Diversification is overrated. What Google, or any other company that is making a lot of money, really needs to do, is to save as much cash as possible and when the golden goose dies, they move on. Have you considered that it might be a bad idea for Google to start worrying too much about what happens when the market changes? The original investor have already made their money back many times over.
Android is free to manufacturers. Unless Microsoft has one last surprise under it's sleeve, that $10-20 per phone is going to be significant when (not if) the typical price of a smartphone comes under $100. then it becomes a choice between free and good enough, and expensive and making losses.
It can happen. The rest of the world could gang up on China and impose heavy duties on Chinese products. They could also impose duties on products that are manufactured in China to encourage companies to move their industries out of China. Lets face it, wages in China are beginning to rise, fast. China will want its IP protected because soon, it will not be able to produce goods as cheaply as other even poorer countries. So it will have to play ball. They can get away with it while they are the world's production line, but not once the world can move production to some African country, or India, or Vietnam.
On the shoe analogy, one interesting thing mentioned to us at work by some marketing guy. One business person tried to set up a store in the UK which would allow men to choose from a bazillion styles of formal shoe and then choose the right size, and some assistant would go to the storeroom to get the correct pair. The men preferred to go to Marks and Spencer which only ever sells a handful of formal shoe styles, mostly in black. Men didn't like the choice. They prefer their choices curated. Sometimes, too much choice is a bad thing. Apple makes this easy. They are the third largets computer seller in the UK, and they have 3 defined computer products. iMac, MacPro and MacBook (OK, they have 4 if you count MacBook Pro). It makes it easy for people to choose the right product for them. Apple only sells one phone product (2 if you count the 3GS). They sold more of those than the Blackberry's 5 different models.
And I am sure Steve won't say this, but Apple are not exactly chasing market dominance. That would mean them trying to make and sell sub $100 phones. They want to dominate the high end, where the money is. Apple can survive, thrive even with a sub 10% share of the smartphone market. As long as they have the end of the market where people spend more money on phones, apps and expensive accessories. Android or Windows Phone 7 will become the de facto OS system of choice among those without their own OS. But that will include the sub $100 phones which Apple does not want to be in the business of selling.
I would mod this up if I didn't want to reply to it. I used to come up with pretty strong password for my work login. Now I don't bother. Having to change my password every 90 days means I prefer to either recycle my passwords (but they seem to now prevent me from recycling old passwords) or just change something trivial on it. I don't access my work account much from out of the office (and I have the RSA SecurID) so I guess it's to prevent other coworkers from accessing my account. Who am I kidding, this is a tick box exercise. Password policy has to conform to all the stupid rules set out by security consultants (password length - OK fair enough, needs at least one number, must include at least 1 cap, a symbol etc). So users have to come up with memorable passwords that are so complex they can't be guessed every 90 days. Ridiculous.
Conceptually, the Laffer curve is a sound theory. Practically, it is really difficult to know where you are on the curve. So you basically don't know if higher or lower tax rates will increase revenue. After the tax cuts reduced revenue, the right response may have been to increase the tax rates to increase revenue.
When you have 10% unemployment, then can you really argue that there are enough jobs to go around? The whole western free market capitalism pretty much guarantees that some people will be without a job (not knocking it, just saying that safeguards are necessary). Especially when countries move their production off to China, India and Vietnam. Subsistence farming isn't even an option for most people anymore, and neither is hunting for your next meal (someone owns those animals and will shoot you for stealing their property).
The Laffer curve is an obvious thing really. I don't think anyone can argue with whether it makes sense to postulate one. I think we can basically agree about the 100% and the 0% ends of the curve. We would raise zero in taxes if we taxed at 0%, and I think we can agree that there would be very little incentive to produce if the government taxed you at 100%. So I think we can basically agree that a government cannot always reduce its deficit by increasing tax rates. So the rest is essentially an argument between politicians between economists about where a government can maximise taxes collected.
Canada is an example of a country that recently embarked on serious cuts and that seems to have worked. I think he fallacy is that society can somehow keep postponing making decisions about how we finance government programs. I think the only thing government should borrow for are capital projects. Government should be able to meet ongoing commitments from taxes raised, i.e. should be able to run a budget surplus when not considering single capital expenditures. Governments shouldn't need to borrow to pay teachers, policemen, soldiers etc. That is dysfunctional. This excessive borrowing is hidden taxation. And dare i say it, in the case of the USA, it might actually be the USA taxing foreign countries by stealth.
Why couldn't the software programmer use the fact that the software is achieving much lower accident rates as a solid defence. Airlines have been computerising flying a lot, and planes can pretty much fly autonomously nowadays, and if a glitch occurs and is fatal, it's investigated, fixed, and lower accidents result. It's much more reliable than asking pilots to make decisions on all aspects of flying. Who knows, maybe automating driving is the thing that might finally allow speed limits to be raised again, because software can be much better/quicker than humans at recognising when conditions have changed, and so can react quicker, avoiding accidents. For example, it can take milliseconds for a system that is completely focussed on that task, rather than relying on a human being who is engaging in conversation, whilst watching their speed and looking out for opportunities to overhaul the car in front of them, and making sure they do not cut-off the guy who might be in their blind spot.
There are not enough jobs to go around. Welfare buys the country peace. If you cut down on welfare, you would have to increase spending on security, and prisons. I think capitalistic societies would fall apart very quickly without welfare.
I don't really know why those families should be paid for the natural resources. In other countries, you don't own any natural resources below the surface. Those rights have to be purchased separately. You could argue everyone owns those resources (i.e. government owns them).
All I talk to my friends about _is_ politics. What sort of friends do you have whose feelings you are afraid to hurt over some good political discussion?
Um. Which is exactly what Truecrypt does, except for the wiping the disc part (Which doesn't work because any good forensics investigator probably clones said disc before attempting any data retrieval, and they won't use your system whilst doing it because they could give you deniability if timestamps change on the disc, and you could booby trap it, but I digress). The hidden volume is accessible by a second password which reads a key from the other end of the container. If you want to write to the outer volume without overwriting the inner volume, you provide both passwords.
Tea party people are often the poor and uneducated. It's sad to see them manipulated by the entertainment corporation backed by one of the super-rich elite (FOX News) into backing these super rich and their rights to not be taxed.
This is almost a uniquely American problem. Some Americans seem to have been sold the fantasy of the American dream, the one in which they _will_ (not "may") become fantastically wealthy and therefore they need to vote now, to stop these tax rises which will obviously hit them soon. (See Joe the plumber). So they will vote down their own interests now, because those will cease to be their interests when they become wealthy. Astonishing. Fox didn't even need to pay lobbyists to get such a result.
The functionality is common in mobile computers, but is basically pervasive in mobile phones since the 90s. Who has a phone without a battery and signal strength indicator? It's beyond ridiculous! How the heck can someone patent something so obvious. It should be obvious to anyone by now that computers can simulate, and actually do anything that involves display and monitoring stuff, and this isn't something anyone should necessarily need to patent.
I like the Swedish system! Criminals shouldn't get away because of technicalities, as long as there are appropriate safeguards, in this case, police being prosecuted for wrongdoing in obtaining evidence.
I think the concept of property rights needs to be redefined. I believe all people in a country should have an interest in all the productive resources in the country. Property rights should be understood as an agreement for society to give up claims on those resources, in return for the expectation that we will tax the returns on those resources. It is also in society's interest that these resources are held by the people who can get the best return on them, and that is essentially what capitalism gives us, although not necessarily guaranteeing it. For greater efficiency, we allow corporations and individuals to own large tracts of land, necessarily to the exclusion of most individuals. However, this social contract should include a welfare provision, because we can't guarantee full employment, and we can't offer every unemployed person a piece of land which they can work to make themselves a livelihood (i.e. to eat, to shelter themselves and their children).
Food self sufficiency is sometimes a misleading statistic. Sometimes it's just cheaper to import. I am sure Japan could get that figure closer to 100% if they had to. Heck, I am sure China wasn't exporting them food during WW2.
If China embargoes food exports to Japan, I am sure many other countries would also willingly step into the breach. Argentina, Brazil, Russia, heck, USA are waiting in the wings.
And not to forget that Japan probably consumes much more food than it really needs to. Developed countries are surprisingly wasteful when it comes to food consumption. I think in the UK, about 30-40% of food is actually thrown away. In a crisis situation, with food prices rising, people will be less likely to waste it.
We will start to use oil only for plastic then and other uses which don't account for as much of the oil production. And plastics can be recycled, so we should be able to go very far. There are also lots of materials in competition with plastic and for which the materials are abundant. Peak oil will be an age of invention and experimentation unlike seen recently. Anyone who comes up with real solutions is likely to become fantastically wealthy. And I haven't even touched the issue of efficiency. Right now, we have, for example, companies making cars with 7 litre engines that can go 250 mph. OK, that's a little extreme, but the point is, we are very wasteful. Some mass markets models have incredibly insane fuel consumption. People will move to smaller, lighter cars that require less energy to move about, and go about moving slower than cars at present.
Perhaps people will abandon making long journey by car frequently, and mass transit will take off in the US. Suburbs may become a thing of the past, or the preserve of the wealthy. Perhaps ships will make a comeback as a mass transportation means of choice. Perhaps we will see less mass migration, and the world will not really be poorer for it. Basically, we will become more efficient, or we may discover a way to make energy work in the future without impacting our quality of life, and perhaps improving it too. I was reading a book sometime ago where the author talked about whaling for oil, and how the discovery of this black stuff changed everything. Perhaps it is time for us to make another leap.
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Diversification is overrated. What Google, or any other company that is making a lot of money, really needs to do, is to save as much cash as possible and when the golden goose dies, they move on. Have you considered that it might be a bad idea for Google to start worrying too much about what happens when the market changes? The original investor have already made their money back many times over.
Or maybe, they realise that the more HTML5 apps are out there, the less of an advantage iOS and Android have over them in the mobile arena.
Joe Sixpack doesn't want to appear to know the "high tech stuff" as it would make him appear less macho among his Bud Light [1] swilling buds.
I thought Joe Sixpack had retired and Joe the Plumber had taken his place as Mr General Public
Which leads to the questions:
What do you have against Bud swilling Joe's?
Why do you hate plumbers?
Android is free to manufacturers. Unless Microsoft has one last surprise under it's sleeve, that $10-20 per phone is going to be significant when (not if) the typical price of a smartphone comes under $100. then it becomes a choice between free and good enough, and expensive and making losses.
Not anymore it isn't. I live in the UK, and a billion in the UK is now generally accepted to be 1e9.
It can happen. The rest of the world could gang up on China and impose heavy duties on Chinese products. They could also impose duties on products that are manufactured in China to encourage companies to move their industries out of China. Lets face it, wages in China are beginning to rise, fast. China will want its IP protected because soon, it will not be able to produce goods as cheaply as other even poorer countries. So it will have to play ball. They can get away with it while they are the world's production line, but not once the world can move production to some African country, or India, or Vietnam.
Game centre.
On the shoe analogy, one interesting thing mentioned to us at work by some marketing guy. One business person tried to set up a store in the UK which would allow men to choose from a bazillion styles of formal shoe and then choose the right size, and some assistant would go to the storeroom to get the correct pair. The men preferred to go to Marks and Spencer which only ever sells a handful of formal shoe styles, mostly in black. Men didn't like the choice. They prefer their choices curated. Sometimes, too much choice is a bad thing. Apple makes this easy. They are the third largets computer seller in the UK, and they have 3 defined computer products. iMac, MacPro and MacBook (OK, they have 4 if you count MacBook Pro). It makes it easy for people to choose the right product for them. Apple only sells one phone product (2 if you count the 3GS). They sold more of those than the Blackberry's 5 different models.
And I am sure Steve won't say this, but Apple are not exactly chasing market dominance. That would mean them trying to make and sell sub $100 phones. They want to dominate the high end, where the money is. Apple can survive, thrive even with a sub 10% share of the smartphone market. As long as they have the end of the market where people spend more money on phones, apps and expensive accessories. Android or Windows Phone 7 will become the de facto OS system of choice among those without their own OS. But that will include the sub $100 phones which Apple does not want to be in the business of selling.
I would mod this up if I didn't want to reply to it. I used to come up with pretty strong password for my work login. Now I don't bother. Having to change my password every 90 days means I prefer to either recycle my passwords (but they seem to now prevent me from recycling old passwords) or just change something trivial on it. I don't access my work account much from out of the office (and I have the RSA SecurID) so I guess it's to prevent other coworkers from accessing my account. Who am I kidding, this is a tick box exercise. Password policy has to conform to all the stupid rules set out by security consultants (password length - OK fair enough, needs at least one number, must include at least 1 cap, a symbol etc). So users have to come up with memorable passwords that are so complex they can't be guessed every 90 days. Ridiculous.
Conceptually, the Laffer curve is a sound theory. Practically, it is really difficult to know where you are on the curve. So you basically don't know if higher or lower tax rates will increase revenue. After the tax cuts reduced revenue, the right response may have been to increase the tax rates to increase revenue.
When you have 10% unemployment, then can you really argue that there are enough jobs to go around? The whole western free market capitalism pretty much guarantees that some people will be without a job (not knocking it, just saying that safeguards are necessary). Especially when countries move their production off to China, India and Vietnam. Subsistence farming isn't even an option for most people anymore, and neither is hunting for your next meal (someone owns those animals and will shoot you for stealing their property).
The Laffer curve is an obvious thing really. I don't think anyone can argue with whether it makes sense to postulate one. I think we can basically agree about the 100% and the 0% ends of the curve. We would raise zero in taxes if we taxed at 0%, and I think we can agree that there would be very little incentive to produce if the government taxed you at 100%. So I think we can basically agree that a government cannot always reduce its deficit by increasing tax rates. So the rest is essentially an argument between politicians between economists about where a government can maximise taxes collected.
Canada is an example of a country that recently embarked on serious cuts and that seems to have worked. I think he fallacy is that society can somehow keep postponing making decisions about how we finance government programs. I think the only thing government should borrow for are capital projects. Government should be able to meet ongoing commitments from taxes raised, i.e. should be able to run a budget surplus when not considering single capital expenditures. Governments shouldn't need to borrow to pay teachers, policemen, soldiers etc. That is dysfunctional. This excessive borrowing is hidden taxation. And dare i say it, in the case of the USA, it might actually be the USA taxing foreign countries by stealth.
Why couldn't the software programmer use the fact that the software is achieving much lower accident rates as a solid defence. Airlines have been computerising flying a lot, and planes can pretty much fly autonomously nowadays, and if a glitch occurs and is fatal, it's investigated, fixed, and lower accidents result. It's much more reliable than asking pilots to make decisions on all aspects of flying. Who knows, maybe automating driving is the thing that might finally allow speed limits to be raised again, because software can be much better/quicker than humans at recognising when conditions have changed, and so can react quicker, avoiding accidents. For example, it can take milliseconds for a system that is completely focussed on that task, rather than relying on a human being who is engaging in conversation, whilst watching their speed and looking out for opportunities to overhaul the car in front of them, and making sure they do not cut-off the guy who might be in their blind spot.
There are not enough jobs to go around. Welfare buys the country peace. If you cut down on welfare, you would have to increase spending on security, and prisons. I think capitalistic societies would fall apart very quickly without welfare.
I don't really know why those families should be paid for the natural resources. In other countries, you don't own any natural resources below the surface. Those rights have to be purchased separately. You could argue everyone owns those resources (i.e. government owns them).
All I talk to my friends about _is_ politics. What sort of friends do you have whose feelings you are afraid to hurt over some good political discussion?
Um. Which is exactly what Truecrypt does, except for the wiping the disc part (Which doesn't work because any good forensics investigator probably clones said disc before attempting any data retrieval, and they won't use your system whilst doing it because they could give you deniability if timestamps change on the disc, and you could booby trap it, but I digress). The hidden volume is accessible by a second password which reads a key from the other end of the container. If you want to write to the outer volume without overwriting the inner volume, you provide both passwords.
Tea party people are often the poor and uneducated. It's sad to see them manipulated by the entertainment corporation backed by one of the super-rich elite (FOX News) into backing these super rich and their rights to not be taxed.
This is almost a uniquely American problem. Some Americans seem to have been sold the fantasy of the American dream, the one in which they _will_ (not "may") become fantastically wealthy and therefore they need to vote now, to stop these tax rises which will obviously hit them soon. (See Joe the plumber). So they will vote down their own interests now, because those will cease to be their interests when they become wealthy. Astonishing. Fox didn't even need to pay lobbyists to get such a result.
The functionality is common in mobile computers, but is basically pervasive in mobile phones since the 90s. Who has a phone without a battery and signal strength indicator? It's beyond ridiculous! How the heck can someone patent something so obvious. It should be obvious to anyone by now that computers can simulate, and actually do anything that involves display and monitoring stuff, and this isn't something anyone should necessarily need to patent.
If your name is John Smith, good luck cleaning up your online identity.
Actually, if your name is John Smith, just claim (quite plausibly too) "It wasn't me!".
I like the Swedish system! Criminals shouldn't get away because of technicalities, as long as there are appropriate safeguards, in this case, police being prosecuted for wrongdoing in obtaining evidence.
I think the concept of property rights needs to be redefined. I believe all people in a country should have an interest in all the productive resources in the country. Property rights should be understood as an agreement for society to give up claims on those resources, in return for the expectation that we will tax the returns on those resources. It is also in society's interest that these resources are held by the people who can get the best return on them, and that is essentially what capitalism gives us, although not necessarily guaranteeing it. For greater efficiency, we allow corporations and individuals to own large tracts of land, necessarily to the exclusion of most individuals. However, this social contract should include a welfare provision, because we can't guarantee full employment, and we can't offer every unemployed person a piece of land which they can work to make themselves a livelihood (i.e. to eat, to shelter themselves and their children).
Food self sufficiency is sometimes a misleading statistic. Sometimes it's just cheaper to import. I am sure Japan could get that figure closer to 100% if they had to. Heck, I am sure China wasn't exporting them food during WW2.
If China embargoes food exports to Japan, I am sure many other countries would also willingly step into the breach. Argentina, Brazil, Russia, heck, USA are waiting in the wings.
And not to forget that Japan probably consumes much more food than it really needs to. Developed countries are surprisingly wasteful when it comes to food consumption. I think in the UK, about 30-40% of food is actually thrown away. In a crisis situation, with food prices rising, people will be less likely to waste it.
That defeats the purpose of search engines. If you don't click on the links, how does google know it is finding the right pages for you?
We will start to use oil only for plastic then and other uses which don't account for as much of the oil production. And plastics can be recycled, so we should be able to go very far. There are also lots of materials in competition with plastic and for which the materials are abundant. Peak oil will be an age of invention and experimentation unlike seen recently. Anyone who comes up with real solutions is likely to become fantastically wealthy. And I haven't even touched the issue of efficiency. Right now, we have, for example, companies making cars with 7 litre engines that can go 250 mph. OK, that's a little extreme, but the point is, we are very wasteful. Some mass markets models have incredibly insane fuel consumption. People will move to smaller, lighter cars that require less energy to move about, and go about moving slower than cars at present. Perhaps people will abandon making long journey by car frequently, and mass transit will take off in the US. Suburbs may become a thing of the past, or the preserve of the wealthy. Perhaps ships will make a comeback as a mass transportation means of choice. Perhaps we will see less mass migration, and the world will not really be poorer for it. Basically, we will become more efficient, or we may discover a way to make energy work in the future without impacting our quality of life, and perhaps improving it too. I was reading a book sometime ago where the author talked about whaling for oil, and how the discovery of this black stuff changed everything. Perhaps it is time for us to make another leap.