Sheesh. Look, this is what I'm trying to get through peoples' heads: you don't HAVE to agree with that. You have no say in the matter. Nor does the market. Bitcoin was DESIGNED to have a built-in value standard, and that is what its standard is. You can't change that, I can't change that, and the market can't change that.
The people who think they CAN are the ones who are going to lose a bunch of money.
Then answer me this: suppose I have a bitcoin. What can I do with it other than trade it to someone else in exchange for something? If the answer is nothing then a bitcoin has no intrinsic value.
If a bitcoin is only useful because other people are willing to give me stuff in exchange for it, then "the market" (the people that are doing the exchanging) absolutely control what a bitcoin is "worth". It's worth exactly what "the market" is willing to give me in exchange for it, no more, no less.
(Appologies for the double post. Forgot to login before hitting submit)
I'm not sure I'd agree with that. The computing time that goes into a bitcon is more akin to having a fixed production cost not an intrinsic value (although "fixed" migth also not be entirely accurate as the power of computing hardware, cost of electiricy and oppurtunity cost of what else that hardware could be doing probably varies drastically over time, but that's neither here nor there).
In this context intrinsic value means that you are able to use it for some practical purpose other than as a medium of exchange. In that sense I would argue that bitcoin has no intrinsic value. After all you can't take the bitcoin and extract from it the computing power that went into making it and use that computing power for some other purpose. If you want something with real intrinsic value think oil or wheat.
Now that's not to disparage bitcoin in any way. One of the things you actually look for in a medium of exchange is something that has limited intrinsic value. People tend to hoard currencies and you don't want actual useful stuff sitting around gathering dust in a bank vault.
How would you deal with a student that already knew the material?
Well I'm no expert in education but I expect the conversation would go something like this:
Professor:Hey Bob, I see on the computer here that you haven't been doing the required reading. Are you having trouble understanding something?
Bob:No, I've just already studied this subject in the past.
Professor:OK, great. Let me know if you have any questions.
That is of course assuming it was used properly. I highly doubt any Professor worth the name is just going to summarily flunk every student that the computer says didn't do the reading.
Hmmm well according to this something like two thirds of America's debt is owed to other Americans. Some of them will not be impressed if the government tries to welsh on the debt. And I highly doubt you're going to turn the army on them.
But seriously I think you're engaging in Reductio ad absurdum here. Most pragmatic people will totally agree that trivial code, where it's very obvious what the code does and why, doesn't need extra comments.
However the more complicated your code is the harder it becomes to make it "self documenting". ie I don't think anyone wants a method named
withdraw Positive Amount Or ThrowOverdrawnException IfAmount GreaterThan Balance Or ThrowInvalidArgument Exception IfAmount LessThan Zero (double amount)
Your argument is a logical fallacy. Just because somebody benefited from something when they were young and naive does not logically preclude them from opposing it when they're older and wiser.
It isn't logically prohibited for people to change their views over time, but I wouldn't call it a logical fallacy to argue that such changes in opinion might be considered hypocritical and/or cynical.
Which is worse, somebody who wants to end Social Security for good reasons, or somebody who wants to continue it so they can selfishly continue to benefit from others' labor?
Speaking of logical fallacies are you familiar with the concept of a false dichotomy?
I think you and I are in furious agreement (not sure if you meant to reply to me or the GP).
If the "C" guy does everything then he's not specializing in a single task. He's doing two tasks, the C task and SQL task. Similarly if two "C" guys do the whole thing they're still doing half of two different task. But if you put the "C" guy and "SQL" guy together, now each of them can do one thing, and one thing only, and the whole job gets done faster.
Now, has the group performed more work than the "sum of the individual contributors". I would say hell yes (as you illustrate, the same job gets done in 10 man hours vs 25). However the argument that the GP was making (or at least what I understood him to be saying) was that if we define the output of group to be "the sum of the amount contributed to the group by each individual member of the group" then the output of the group can't be greater then the sum of the individual members of the group. Now to me this seems like a meaningless tautology, so I'm not sure why he would bring it up, but I suppose that it's factually true. Of course it's entirely possible that I've completely misconstrued what he was trying to say.
The more separate the tasks, the more efficient your process can be.
But I can't have each person specializing in a single task without a group to make sure that all tasks have somebody that can specialize in them. Thus having people work together as a group makes them more efficient, which was I think the original point.
Now does that mean that the group can produce more than "the sum of each person". I guess that depends on how you define "the sum of each person". I was taking it to mean "the amount that could be produced by a single person completely by themselves, multiplied by the number of people in the group". Your definition seems to be "the sum of the amount contributed to the group by each individual member of the group".
However using your definition means that it is mathematically impossible to have a group produce more than sum of it's members (because that's the definition of what the groups produces) even without the Ringelmann effect, so it's not fair to say that the Ringelmann is the cause and I'm not sure why you brought it up.
Sorry to disappoint you, but a group cannot produce more than the sum of each person.
Not sure I agree with that. Having a team means you can take advantage of things like specialization of labor. So even if each individual team member is not working as hard, the overall output can still be increased.
There's a reason that assembly lines are much more efficient than having each individual build each unit from start to finish
Excuse me ? Are you telling me you know better than I how *my* conversations went ?
I can assure you it absolutely is true.
Is there a -1 pedantic mod somewhere? While what you say is technically true it completely misses the point. Was implication of what you said not supposed to be "Pretty much everyone that's not emotionally invested in the results are 'pro' jury and think the result was fair, as evidenced by the fact that everyone I've talked to believes this"?
Because if that's what you were going for then the the GPs reply is right on point. If that's not what you were going for, I would counter and say: Why should anyone care about your useless personal anecdote?
One of the reasons this trial ever happened was because consumers was mislead by Samsung into believing that they actually bought an Apple device instead of a Samsung. That's why consumers will benefit.
Oh please. Show me one person that even claims to have inadvertently bought a Samsung when they intended to buy an Apple. It says Samsung right on the freaking box!
1. If there are no government laws that should put people in prison, but some people (eg violent criminals) should still go to prison then who exactly decides what rules these theoretical private courts and police should enforce?
2. If the courts and the police are all private entities, who hires them? Who ensures their objectivity (or do you even care about that)? Who makes sure they don't abuse their authority? Hell, who defines what authority they even have?
3. If someone steals from you and can't repay the value + damages (that you seem to have arbitrarily defined without need for any laws that specify what those damages should be) what then? Death? They work it off slave labor style? What do you do if the thief declines to show up for his forced labor? What happens if I'd rather not have hardened criminals doing work around my home or business?
4. If private prison sentences are to be paid for by liability insurance who ensures that criminals will keep up on their insurance premiums? Because you know I'm sure that violent criminals (the only people that should go to jail remember) wouldn't dare walk around without paying for their insurance.
In short, I think this plan could use some more work.
Irrelevant. They ship it in refrigerated trucks. In case you haven't noticed, your neighborhood UPS or Fedex delivery truck is not refrigerated.
<sarcasm>Yes and it's such a shame that all present and future online grocery delivery businesses are contractually obligated to use UPS or Fedex for delivery. And it's practically criminal that UPS and Fedex are fundamentally incapable of introducing new types of trucks into their fleet to meet new demand requirements...Yes-sir-ee what an intractable problem we've been delt.</sarcasm>
Are you really that stupid? I'm sorry, I have to ask because if you don't understand this simple concept you should get help.
Ummm...how complicated is it to make a refrigerated truck full of ice cream? They drive through my neighborhood all the time. Sometimes they ring little bells.
Re:Let them talk forever, it's what the EU is for
on
Bye ACTA, Hello CETA
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· Score: 1
Are you by an chance a member of the Judean People's Front?
Wow, I don't know who taught you to debate, but if you paid them you should demand a refund.
You uneducated fuck.
Ad hominem attack.
There is no viable argument against capitalism as the good far outweighs any of the, more news worthy, bad.
Completely unsubstantiated assertion.
It is not like infrastructure at all. What corporations are taking care of infrastructure for us? How many are independently researching and manufacturing drugs?
Completely missing the point (or deliberately ignoring it). He's arguing that it's as important as vital infrastructure, and thus should not be trusted to for-profit corporations, in the same what the critical infrastructure is not. Now the extent to which this is actually true is debatable, and one might question whether it's wise to argue this course of action given the state of some of our publicly maintained "critical infrastructure". But you did neither of those things.
I'm not fan-boy'ing for pharma, I'm just saying your diarrhea of the brain needs some remedy.
More ad hominem attacks. Keep it up I'm sure you're really winning him over.
If you are going to rant on something at least come to the keyboard with a half-stable argument.
The phrase "practice what you preach" comes to mind.
Actually, according to your numbers, your company would be far better off spending 2k$ a year on marketing because the ROI is 4x, while in your second example the ROI is 2.5x and in the third it is 2x. Perfect example of the fact that "more" != "better".
But generally you're looking to maximize total profit not ROI. Assuming everything else is equal
Expenses: 2k Gross Profit: 8k --> Net Profit: 6k
Expenses: 4k Gross Profit: 10k --> Net Profit: 6k
Expenses: 10k Gross Profit: 20k --> Net Profit: 10k
Of course this drastically oversimplifies things, as it ignores the risks of having greater amounts tied up in the venture, and the opportunity costs of what else you could be doing with that money, but you get the idea. Assuming you have the money to invest, you're better off with a 2x return on a much bigger investment than a 4x return on a much smaller investment.
if you just happen to do everything the same way a competitor does then it certainly looks like you're trying to cause consumer confusion
Is there any evidence that consumer confusion is actually happening? I haven't seen any. But then I'm hardly a market analyst so feel free to correct me.
and it's not innovation. It's the exact opposite
I think it's a bit disingenuous to focus on every minor detail where Samsung copies Apple, ignore every minor detail where they don't and then claim, well all Samsung is doing is slavishly copying Apple. I look at an iPhone and I look at a Galaxy Nexus and I have no trouble telling the difference between them, and they don't seem any more similar to me than a Mac OSX desktop and a Windows desktop. But all that aside, not being innovative is not the same thing as a crime.
so it's not Apple is some how damaging the market by defending their design patents.
No they're damaging the market by attempting to use strong arm legal tactics to stifle competition and limit consumer choice.
Whether you like it or not you can patent a design. Should be able to? Probably not
Oh, so you're argument is that they shouldn't be allowed to do what they're doing, but since the law allows it, one can't blame them for looking out for #1? Sorry, that's not the impression I got from your previous comments.
but then again most software patents shouldn't exist either.
Well I won't argue with that.
They do exist and they're certainly within their right to defend it
And I think I'm within my rights to call them petty dicks for doing it. Free speech and all that...
Unlike most android fanboy fud they didn't patent rectangles or rounded corners. Otherwise they could after virtually every single tablet there is. They patented their specific design of the ipad
But what is it exactly that they have patented? Because honestly I'm having trouble figuring that out. All I keep hearing is a few very general things like "slide to unlock" or "look and feel of the packaging" along with the sort of hand-wavy argument that, "well yes, any of these individually wouldn't be a problem but taken all together it infringes on the on Apple's overall product presentation". But the thing is can't (or at least you shouldn't be able to) patent something as nebulous as the "overall" presentation. Patents are supposed to cover very specific concrete things. So far I haven't heard anything that would lead me to believe that Apple couldn't sue every tablet manufacturer if they so chose.
To put it another way, what's the list of specific concrete changes that Samsung could make so that they wouldn't be accused of violating Apple's patents?
Defending your patents against one unit is hardly a story in comparison to Motorola holding back FRAND patents against numerous companies which, imo, deserves more attention than being a little note at the bottom.
Well I don't claim to know all the ins and outs of what Motorola has or hasn't been holding back on, but if they agreed to a particular license arrangement as part of having one of their patent adopted as part of a standard, and they're not honoring that agreement, then they deserve to get their buts handed to them. However I will say that it seems kind of backwards to me that if you do a bunch of R&D, come up with something sufficiently ingenious that it's use is pretty much essential to a functioning technology, and you're kind enough to license that technology to everyone, then you get a pittance. But invent "slide to unlock" and you get to block a competitors entire product line! Remind me, how does this foster innovation again?
So you're deciding to stick with your stupid side of the argument and pick the least offensive thing in the picture to use as a way to dismiss the fact it's blatant copying
No I was just being glib. But if you want me to give a line by line account I'll give it a shot
There are a total of 11 pictures in that link.
Picture 1 is a booth at a convention. The contention is that the icons in the background are Apples. Assuming that's true (I have no idea) and assuming that someone from Samsung put them there (it's hard to tell from that picture, but it looks like the icons are on wall behind Samsung's booth) I'll concede that it's a bit of a dick move, but I fail to see how it's particularly big deal. Should they have done it? No. Is it going to cause confusion in the market place, or harm to Apple's brand? No.
Images 2-4 show a side by side comparison of an Apple and Samsung USB-AC adapter plug. Is it a shameless copy of Apple's USB plug? Sure. But you know what, lots of consumer products look really similar to each other. Walk into any electronics store and look at the flat screen TVs. If you covered up the logos would you be able to tell one from the other? I sure wouldn't. Does that mean only one brand of TV should be allowed to be sold? Of course not. Because everyone realizes that so long as there is no patent violation and there is no (or at least limited) potential for consumer confusion, then stealing basic ideas from a competitor is not a problem. I hardly think there's anything sufficiently revolutionary going on in the design of a square USB adapter to warrant a patent. And the promenant "Samsung" logo makes it pretty hard to argue consumer confusion.
Images 5-8 show...wait for it...two products that come in a white box with a picture of the product on the front. Again nothing innovative here, and promenant Samsung / iPad labels on the box make it pretty unlikely that there will be significant consumer confusion.
Images 9-10 are two adapter cables. Now first of all, I'm not sure what this is an adapter for. I'm pretty sure the Galaxy S2, Galaxy S3, Nexus S, and Galaxy Nexus all use standard micro USB cables. But, regardless, it strikes me as the same argument as the USB-AC power adapter. Who cares? All USB cables look the same to. There's nothing sufficiently innovative or distinctive here for this to concern anyone.
Image 11 shows two speech recording apps that use a microphone as a background image. Again, this doesn't seem like anything that's pushing the envelope of creativity.
Bottom line, in business your competitors are going to do their best to steal your good ideas. I don't know why this comes as a surprise to Apple, or why they think Apple products should be entitled to some kind of protection that isn't afforded to TVs, cars or toasters.
They spend hundreds of thousands in engineering a new feature, testing it and ensuring it will last long term. A company in a country that doesn't protect IP then buys the German product for, say, $1k and then copies it. Said company's R&D costs are now ~$1k.
So there are zero costs associated with performing the reverse engineering? There's no opportunity cost to being a late entrant to the market place competing against an established incumbent?
Innovation is important, but if a product can be blatantly copied and then sold to undercut the innovator, then why invest to innovate?
Innovation is important, but if you can use strong arm legal tactics to prevent anyone from making a product that's even remotely similar to yours, then why invest to innovate?
I think there has to be a balance here. No protection of innovative ideas probably stifles innovation. But too much protection of (questionably) innovative ideas does to.
If there is no incentive to innovate, then it's stupid to innovate, because innovation involves risk and investment. When everyone can just sit back and minimize their costs by not innovating, instead only copying others as necessary to offset competitive advantages, then nobody innovates.
But there's got to be a trade off at some point doesn't there? If I come up with one really innovative product, and can then legally block every single other company out there from producing something even remotely similar to my product, what's my incentive to keep innovating? I can just sit back and watch the money roll in because nobody is allowed to compete with me. And since my competitors aren't allowed to compete they don't innovate either! No one innovates and the entire market stagnates.
Patents are supposed to be about promoting innovation. Sure, allowing everyone to just shamelessly rip off every aspect of a competitors product will stifle innovation. But legally enforcing a one-vendor mono-culture across an entire product area also stifles innovation. There's got to be a balance. Now I'm not sure where exactly to draw that line, but I'm pretty sure Apple's crossed it.
Whoaa dude, take a breath. You're going to give yourself an a aneurysm.
Two things. First, regardless of what you think about "fixed beliefs", the implication the GP was making is fallacious. Even if we accept the axiom that "A does not imply B", it does not necessarily follow that "A implies not B". Replace "A" with "opposing a program call HOTS (TM)" and "B" with "opposes actual higher order thinking skills". Just because they oppose HOTS doesn't mean they oppose actual critical thinking. But conversely it doesn't necessarily mean they don't either.
Second, Reductio ad absurdum much? <sarcasm>Yes that's clearly what I was proposing</sarcasm>. Please. How about I characterize your argument as
"Why bother teaching any critical thinking skills at all. Whatever dumb-ass thing little Billy wants to believe is just fine. Think the world is flat? No problem! Convinced you'll catch cooties if you hold hands with a girl? Hey if you believe it, it must be true."
Look, critical thinking skills sometimes require you to think critically about your established beliefs. If you're not allowed to do anything that might challenge an established belief you're not going to get very far.
Specifically, opposing a "program" called "Higher Order Thinking Skills" abbreviated as "HOTS" is not the same as "opposing higher order thinking skills".
It isn''t necessarily the same thing, but if the reason you're opposing it is because it might "challenge the student’s fixed beliefs" then it very well could be.
Slashdot Mirror
Sheesh. Look, this is what I'm trying to get through peoples' heads: you don't HAVE to agree with that. You have no say in the matter. Nor does the market. Bitcoin was DESIGNED to have a built-in value standard, and that is what its standard is. You can't change that, I can't change that, and the market can't change that. The people who think they CAN are the ones who are going to lose a bunch of money.
Then answer me this: suppose I have a bitcoin. What can I do with it other than trade it to someone else in exchange for something? If the answer is nothing then a bitcoin has no intrinsic value.
If a bitcoin is only useful because other people are willing to give me stuff in exchange for it, then "the market" (the people that are doing the exchanging) absolutely control what a bitcoin is "worth". It's worth exactly what "the market" is willing to give me in exchange for it, no more, no less.
(Appologies for the double post. Forgot to login before hitting submit)
I'm not sure I'd agree with that. The computing time that goes into a bitcon is more akin to having a fixed production cost not an intrinsic value (although "fixed" migth also not be entirely accurate as the power of computing hardware, cost of electiricy and oppurtunity cost of what else that hardware could be doing probably varies drastically over time, but that's neither here nor there).
In this context intrinsic value means that you are able to use it for some practical purpose other than as a medium of exchange. In that sense I would argue that bitcoin has no intrinsic value. After all you can't take the bitcoin and extract from it the computing power that went into making it and use that computing power for some other purpose. If you want something with real intrinsic value think oil or wheat.
Now that's not to disparage bitcoin in any way. One of the things you actually look for in a medium of exchange is something that has limited intrinsic value. People tend to hoard currencies and you don't want actual useful stuff sitting around gathering dust in a bank vault.
How would you deal with a student that already knew the material?
Well I'm no expert in education but I expect the conversation would go something like this:
Professor:Hey Bob, I see on the computer here that you haven't been doing the required reading. Are you having trouble understanding something?
Bob:No, I've just already studied this subject in the past.
Professor:OK, great. Let me know if you have any questions.
That is of course assuming it was used properly. I highly doubt any Professor worth the name is just going to summarily flunk every student that the computer says didn't do the reading.
Hmmm well according to this something like two thirds of America's debt is owed to other Americans. Some of them will not be impressed if the government tries to welsh on the debt. And I highly doubt you're going to turn the army on them.
So you're saying that until near the end of your career, you're doing an incompetent job of teaching.
So you're saying that you don't improve with experience in your job?
I need an account at your bank
Step 1: myAccount.withdraw(-100000);
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
But seriously I think you're engaging in Reductio ad absurdum here. Most pragmatic people will totally agree that trivial code, where it's very obvious what the code does and why, doesn't need extra comments.
However the more complicated your code is the harder it becomes to make it "self documenting". ie I don't think anyone wants a method named
withdraw Positive Amount Or ThrowOverdrawnException IfAmount GreaterThan Balance Or ThrowInvalidArgument Exception IfAmount LessThan Zero (double amount)
Thank you Jello Biafra.
Your argument is a logical fallacy. Just because somebody benefited from something when they were young and naive does not logically preclude them from opposing it when they're older and wiser.
It isn't logically prohibited for people to change their views over time, but I wouldn't call it a logical fallacy to argue that such changes in opinion might be considered hypocritical and/or cynical.
Which is worse, somebody who wants to end Social Security for good reasons, or somebody who wants to continue it so they can selfishly continue to benefit from others' labor?
Speaking of logical fallacies are you familiar with the concept of a false dichotomy?
I think you and I are in furious agreement (not sure if you meant to reply to me or the GP).
If the "C" guy does everything then he's not specializing in a single task. He's doing two tasks, the C task and SQL task. Similarly if two "C" guys do the whole thing they're still doing half of two different task. But if you put the "C" guy and "SQL" guy together, now each of them can do one thing, and one thing only, and the whole job gets done faster.
Now, has the group performed more work than the "sum of the individual contributors". I would say hell yes (as you illustrate, the same job gets done in 10 man hours vs 25). However the argument that the GP was making (or at least what I understood him to be saying) was that if we define the output of group to be "the sum of the amount contributed to the group by each individual member of the group" then the output of the group can't be greater then the sum of the individual members of the group. Now to me this seems like a meaningless tautology, so I'm not sure why he would bring it up, but I suppose that it's factually true. Of course it's entirely possible that I've completely misconstrued what he was trying to say.
The more separate the tasks, the more efficient your process can be.
But I can't have each person specializing in a single task without a group to make sure that all tasks have somebody that can specialize in them. Thus having people work together as a group makes them more efficient, which was I think the original point.
Now does that mean that the group can produce more than "the sum of each person". I guess that depends on how you define "the sum of each person". I was taking it to mean "the amount that could be produced by a single person completely by themselves, multiplied by the number of people in the group". Your definition seems to be "the sum of the amount contributed to the group by each individual member of the group".
However using your definition means that it is mathematically impossible to have a group produce more than sum of it's members (because that's the definition of what the groups produces) even without the Ringelmann effect, so it's not fair to say that the Ringelmann is the cause and I'm not sure why you brought it up.
Sorry to disappoint you, but a group cannot produce more than the sum of each person.
Not sure I agree with that. Having a team means you can take advantage of things like specialization of labor. So even if each individual team member is not working as hard, the overall output can still be increased.
There's a reason that assembly lines are much more efficient than having each individual build each unit from start to finish
Excuse me ? Are you telling me you know better than I how *my* conversations went ?
I can assure you it absolutely is true.
Is there a -1 pedantic mod somewhere? While what you say is technically true it completely misses the point. Was implication of what you said not supposed to be "Pretty much everyone that's not emotionally invested in the results are 'pro' jury and think the result was fair, as evidenced by the fact that everyone I've talked to believes this"?
Because if that's what you were going for then the the GPs reply is right on point. If that's not what you were going for, I would counter and say: Why should anyone care about your useless personal anecdote?
One of the reasons this trial ever happened was because consumers was mislead by Samsung into believing that they actually bought an Apple device instead of a Samsung. That's why consumers will benefit.
Oh please. Show me one person that even claims to have inadvertently bought a Samsung when they intended to buy an Apple. It says Samsung right on the freaking box!
1. If there are no government laws that should put people in prison, but some people (eg violent criminals) should still go to prison then who exactly decides what rules these theoretical private courts and police should enforce?
2. If the courts and the police are all private entities, who hires them? Who ensures their objectivity (or do you even care about that)? Who makes sure they don't abuse their authority? Hell, who defines what authority they even have?
3. If someone steals from you and can't repay the value + damages (that you seem to have arbitrarily defined without need for any laws that specify what those damages should be) what then? Death? They work it off slave labor style? What do you do if the thief declines to show up for his forced labor? What happens if I'd rather not have hardened criminals doing work around my home or business?
4. If private prison sentences are to be paid for by liability insurance who ensures that criminals will keep up on their insurance premiums? Because you know I'm sure that violent criminals (the only people that should go to jail remember) wouldn't dare walk around without paying for their insurance.
In short, I think this plan could use some more work.
Irrelevant. They ship it in refrigerated trucks. In case you haven't noticed, your neighborhood UPS or Fedex delivery truck is not refrigerated.
<sarcasm>Yes and it's such a shame that all present and future online grocery delivery businesses are contractually obligated to use UPS or Fedex for delivery. And it's practically criminal that UPS and Fedex are fundamentally incapable of introducing new types of trucks into their fleet to meet new demand requirements...Yes-sir-ee what an intractable problem we've been delt.</sarcasm>
Are you really that stupid? I'm sorry, I have to ask because if you don't understand this simple concept you should get help.
Ummm...how complicated is it to make a refrigerated truck full of ice cream? They drive through my neighborhood all the time. Sometimes they ring little bells.
Are you by an chance a member of the Judean People's Front?
Wow, I don't know who taught you to debate, but if you paid them you should demand a refund.
You uneducated fuck.
Ad hominem attack.
There is no viable argument against capitalism as the good far outweighs any of the, more news worthy, bad.
Completely unsubstantiated assertion.
It is not like infrastructure at all. What corporations are taking care of infrastructure for us? How many are independently researching and manufacturing drugs?
Completely missing the point (or deliberately ignoring it). He's arguing that it's as important as vital infrastructure, and thus should not be trusted to for-profit corporations, in the same what the critical infrastructure is not. Now the extent to which this is actually true is debatable, and one might question whether it's wise to argue this course of action given the state of some of our publicly maintained "critical infrastructure". But you did neither of those things.
I'm not fan-boy'ing for pharma, I'm just saying your diarrhea of the brain needs some remedy.
More ad hominem attacks. Keep it up I'm sure you're really winning him over.
If you are going to rant on something at least come to the keyboard with a half-stable argument.
The phrase "practice what you preach" comes to mind.
Actually, according to your numbers, your company would be far better off spending 2k$ a year on marketing because the ROI is 4x, while in your second example the ROI is 2.5x and in the third it is 2x. Perfect example of the fact that "more" != "better".
But generally you're looking to maximize total profit not ROI. Assuming everything else is equal
Of course this drastically oversimplifies things, as it ignores the risks of having greater amounts tied up in the venture, and the opportunity costs of what else you could be doing with that money, but you get the idea. Assuming you have the money to invest, you're better off with a 2x return on a much bigger investment than a 4x return on a much smaller investment.
if you just happen to do everything the same way a competitor does then it certainly looks like you're trying to cause consumer confusion
Is there any evidence that consumer confusion is actually happening? I haven't seen any. But then I'm hardly a market analyst so feel free to correct me.
and it's not innovation. It's the exact opposite
I think it's a bit disingenuous to focus on every minor detail where Samsung copies Apple, ignore every minor detail where they don't and then claim, well all Samsung is doing is slavishly copying Apple. I look at an iPhone and I look at a Galaxy Nexus and I have no trouble telling the difference between them, and they don't seem any more similar to me than a Mac OSX desktop and a Windows desktop. But all that aside, not being innovative is not the same thing as a crime.
so it's not Apple is some how damaging the market by defending their design patents.
No they're damaging the market by attempting to use strong arm legal tactics to stifle competition and limit consumer choice.
Whether you like it or not you can patent a design. Should be able to? Probably not
Oh, so you're argument is that they shouldn't be allowed to do what they're doing, but since the law allows it, one can't blame them for looking out for #1? Sorry, that's not the impression I got from your previous comments.
but then again most software patents shouldn't exist either.
Well I won't argue with that.
They do exist and they're certainly within their right to defend it
And I think I'm within my rights to call them petty dicks for doing it. Free speech and all that...
Unlike most android fanboy fud they didn't patent rectangles or rounded corners. Otherwise they could after virtually every single tablet there is. They patented their specific design of the ipad
But what is it exactly that they have patented? Because honestly I'm having trouble figuring that out. All I keep hearing is a few very general things like "slide to unlock" or "look and feel of the packaging" along with the sort of hand-wavy argument that, "well yes, any of these individually wouldn't be a problem but taken all together it infringes on the on Apple's overall product presentation". But the thing is can't (or at least you shouldn't be able to) patent something as nebulous as the "overall" presentation. Patents are supposed to cover very specific concrete things. So far I haven't heard anything that would lead me to believe that Apple couldn't sue every tablet manufacturer if they so chose.
To put it another way, what's the list of specific concrete changes that Samsung could make so that they wouldn't be accused of violating Apple's patents?
Defending your patents against one unit is hardly a story in comparison to Motorola holding back FRAND patents against numerous companies which, imo, deserves more attention than being a little note at the bottom.
Well I don't claim to know all the ins and outs of what Motorola has or hasn't been holding back on, but if they agreed to a particular license arrangement as part of having one of their patent adopted as part of a standard, and they're not honoring that agreement, then they deserve to get their buts handed to them. However I will say that it seems kind of backwards to me that if you do a bunch of R&D, come up with something sufficiently ingenious that it's use is pretty much essential to a functioning technology, and you're kind enough to license that technology to everyone, then you get a pittance. But invent "slide to unlock" and you get to block a competitors entire product line! Remind me, how does this foster innovation again?
So you're deciding to stick with your stupid side of the argument and pick the least offensive thing in the picture to use as a way to dismiss the fact it's blatant copying
No I was just being glib. But if you want me to give a line by line account I'll give it a shot
There are a total of 11 pictures in that link.
Picture 1 is a booth at a convention. The contention is that the icons in the background are Apples. Assuming that's true (I have no idea) and assuming that someone from Samsung put them there (it's hard to tell from that picture, but it looks like the icons are on wall behind Samsung's booth) I'll concede that it's a bit of a dick move, but I fail to see how it's particularly big deal. Should they have done it? No. Is it going to cause confusion in the market place, or harm to Apple's brand? No.
Images 2-4 show a side by side comparison of an Apple and Samsung USB-AC adapter plug. Is it a shameless copy of Apple's USB plug? Sure. But you know what, lots of consumer products look really similar to each other. Walk into any electronics store and look at the flat screen TVs. If you covered up the logos would you be able to tell one from the other? I sure wouldn't. Does that mean only one brand of TV should be allowed to be sold? Of course not. Because everyone realizes that so long as there is no patent violation and there is no (or at least limited) potential for consumer confusion, then stealing basic ideas from a competitor is not a problem. I hardly think there's anything sufficiently revolutionary going on in the design of a square USB adapter to warrant a patent. And the promenant "Samsung" logo makes it pretty hard to argue consumer confusion.
Images 5-8 show...wait for it...two products that come in a white box with a picture of the product on the front. Again nothing innovative here, and promenant Samsung / iPad labels on the box make it pretty unlikely that there will be significant consumer confusion.
Images 9-10 are two adapter cables. Now first of all, I'm not sure what this is an adapter for. I'm pretty sure the Galaxy S2, Galaxy S3, Nexus S, and Galaxy Nexus all use standard micro USB cables. But, regardless, it strikes me as the same argument as the USB-AC power adapter. Who cares? All USB cables look the same to. There's nothing sufficiently innovative or distinctive here for this to concern anyone.
Image 11 shows two speech recording apps that use a microphone as a background image. Again, this doesn't seem like anything that's pushing the envelope of creativity.
Bottom line, in business your competitors are going to do their best to steal your good ideas. I don't know why this comes as a surprise to Apple, or why they think Apple products should be entitled to some kind of protection that isn't afforded to TVs, cars or toasters.
Your move. Explain to me why I'm wrong.
Yes, shamelessly copying Apple's innovative designs like a white box with a picture of the product on the front.
Man, I bet Apple's engineers must have put in a lot of late nights coming up with that one!
They spend hundreds of thousands in engineering a new feature, testing it and ensuring it will last long term. A company in a country that doesn't protect IP then buys the German product for, say, $1k and then copies it. Said company's R&D costs are now ~$1k.
So there are zero costs associated with performing the reverse engineering? There's no opportunity cost to being a late entrant to the market place competing against an established incumbent?
Innovation is important, but if a product can be blatantly copied and then sold to undercut the innovator, then why invest to innovate?
Innovation is important, but if you can use strong arm legal tactics to prevent anyone from making a product that's even remotely similar to yours, then why invest to innovate?
I think there has to be a balance here. No protection of innovative ideas probably stifles innovation. But too much protection of (questionably) innovative ideas does to.
If there is no incentive to innovate, then it's stupid to innovate, because innovation involves risk and investment. When everyone can just sit back and minimize their costs by not innovating, instead only copying others as necessary to offset competitive advantages, then nobody innovates.
But there's got to be a trade off at some point doesn't there? If I come up with one really innovative product, and can then legally block every single other company out there from producing something even remotely similar to my product, what's my incentive to keep innovating? I can just sit back and watch the money roll in because nobody is allowed to compete with me. And since my competitors aren't allowed to compete they don't innovate either! No one innovates and the entire market stagnates.
Patents are supposed to be about promoting innovation. Sure, allowing everyone to just shamelessly rip off every aspect of a competitors product will stifle innovation. But legally enforcing a one-vendor mono-culture across an entire product area also stifles innovation. There's got to be a balance. Now I'm not sure where exactly to draw that line, but I'm pretty sure Apple's crossed it.
Whoaa dude, take a breath. You're going to give yourself an a aneurysm.
Two things. First, regardless of what you think about "fixed beliefs", the implication the GP was making is fallacious. Even if we accept the axiom that "A does not imply B", it does not necessarily follow that "A implies not B". Replace "A" with "opposing a program call HOTS (TM)" and "B" with "opposes actual higher order thinking skills". Just because they oppose HOTS doesn't mean they oppose actual critical thinking. But conversely it doesn't necessarily mean they don't either.
Second, Reductio ad absurdum much? <sarcasm>Yes that's clearly what I was proposing</sarcasm>. Please. How about I characterize your argument as
"Why bother teaching any critical thinking skills at all. Whatever dumb-ass thing little Billy wants to believe is just fine. Think the world is flat? No problem! Convinced you'll catch cooties if you hold hands with a girl? Hey if you believe it, it must be true."
Look, critical thinking skills sometimes require you to think critically about your established beliefs. If you're not allowed to do anything that might challenge an established belief you're not going to get very far.
Specifically, opposing a "program" called "Higher Order Thinking Skills" abbreviated as "HOTS" is not the same as "opposing higher order thinking skills".
It isn''t necessarily the same thing, but if the reason you're opposing it is because it might "challenge the student’s fixed beliefs" then it very well could be.