If you are doing man-in-the middle attacks and access hacks, I suspect that owning the equipment that is being used to request the data in question is about as good as owning the equipment being used to send it from the data center. Might even be more useful if it provided ways to more easily associate the data with specific users.
Everyone rags on the FDA when there is some process or equipment that they personally want. But if some sub-par unregulated hearing aid destroyed the remaining hearing in their ears or the ears of someone they care about hell would be raised over the lack of oversight.
Medical issues and equipment tend to be very permanent. Some more transparency would be nice, but anyone who thinks the FDA does more harm than good is nuts. For that matter, anyone that thinks the FDA does enough harm to even consider compromising the amount of good it does is probably nuts.
Everyone rags on the FDA when there is some process or equipment that they personally want. But if some sub-par unregulated hearing aid destroyed the remaining hearing in their ears or the ears of someone they care about hell would be raised over the lack of oversight.
Because, despite many misleading headlines and voluminous nerdrage, this has never been about tablets in general. Apple didn't sue Samsung for making a tablet. Apple sued Samsung for making a tablet with some very specific features and designs that they claimed were stolen from protected Apple designs. After looking at the case, the courts have agreed that those very specific features were indeed used improperly.
But all the headlines are "Apple claims they own all tablets" and then we get posts like yours.
For a lot of years all the tech companies, but particularly the phone manufacturers, have existed in a state of what they believed was mutually assured destruction. After all, the products did have to be compatible on at least a basic level for there to be a market at all. So almost all patents were either cross-licensed or available under RAND terms.
Apple has since entered the market and really kicked over the wasp's nest. They had no long term investment in past patents and gradual product development. So they came onto the scene with the iPhone 1, licensed all the basic standards and then refused to cross-license with anyone.
Because apparently they believe that the situation is not mutually assured destruction. So the war has gone from a cold one to a hot one.
It's arguable who started the actual legal battles. Nokia and Motorola were dicking around with patents that were supposed to be under RAND terms for standards reasons in order to try and force Apple to cross-license their patents. Apple has been on the warpath about their multi-touch and design IP.
It will be interesting to see if Apple can get out of this without some form of mandatory cross-licensing being imposed. If they can it should be a very interesting shake-up. It would be the first time in the phone industry that a major company would be using their patents to secure limited monopoly of developments instead of simply being a legal bargaining chip.
But, has extremely poor storage density.and requires bulky physical media.
Sometimes two giant advantages can outweigh many smaller ones depending on the situation. When it is convenient I enjoy reading dead-tree books. But for daily use digital is simply the way for me and many others.
Instead of replying fast and furiously in chatrooms we are replying fast and furiously to phone texts. Same thing, different generation. And more useful for finding each other at noisy bars.
The 16GB version is selling... at about £200 ($325), with the 32GB version coming in at around £230 ($370). So this is perhaps the sort of price point they should have been selling at.
Except that the parts cost alone is higher than those price points. Unfortunately you can't compete with apple at a loss. Even if you only lose $100 a machine it will cost you $2 billion just to catch up with Apple's current sales numbers. And if Apple decides to price match you you are screwed in all sorts of unpleasant ways.
Nooooo. And besides, it's a doomed long term strategy. iSuppli figured HP spent a little over $300 on just material costs. Figure the other cost of manufacture ad shipping bring it to $350 a unit. At $150 sale price they would have planned to take a 50 million dollar loss just on their initial 250,000 units. And god help them if it did become popular. The iPad has sold 30m units. For the Touchpad to have matched that HP would have lost 6 Billion dollars. 6 Billion just to get their foot in the door!
And then what? They are stuck at that price point. So when they decide to stop losing money they either triple the price for the same product (it would never fly) or make the next version a fraction as capable for the same price (also never fly).
Apple is currently fed by conspicous consumers constantly buying the current season's product. They buy it just to show it off. They might not even use it.
You haven't been out in public in the last few years, have you? Walking around in the sea of white headphones should have been the first clue that these are products that get used. For that matter, any public area where laptops and other portables are common the percentage with glowing fruit on the back is much higher than Apple's 10% estimated market share. I'd say that shows that the people who buy their computers for real world use tend to buy Apple, not the other way around.
Why are prices higher in Australia than the United States? Because it's a very small market. The entire population of Australia (22.5 million) is only somewhat more than the population of the York York City metro area (19 million). Plus extra shipping and handling costs. It's the same problem that we have here in Canada. Despite being right next door we frequently pay somewhat more for products than they do in the USA.
it would be infinitely better for all parties involved in the production of 3D Graphics Hardware - embedded and otherwise - to make the specifications of their hardware publicly available, such that the Free Software Community could help with the incredibly complex job of writing OpenGL (and other standard) Libraries once and only once (gallium3d).
For all the parties involved? I can see why it would be better for the parties that insist on fully open systems but I don't see the same level of advantages for the manufacturers. Doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice of course, but acting like lack of open Linux drivers is somehow standing between Intel or Nvidia or AMD and market success is blatantly incorrect. They don't need the permission or acceptance of a fringe market. They just don't. And acting like they do will never bring them to the table.
Now, as more Android-based devices start hitting the market some of the OEMs might be able to make a stronger case for open support. Easier for them to bring products to market if supported public libraries already existed. Someone on the desktop side with some connections might finally be able to put together a coherent business case and get the attention of the companies involved. But it really is up to the Open Source world to justify the effort to the manufacturers. They don't owe you anything.
Given that WebM was specifically designed to not infringe any patents, I for one would be very surprised if it "steps all over" a large number of patents.
Except that WebM wasn't designed to be patent free. It was designed to be license free. Neither WebM or the related VP8 or Matroska projects were ever designed to be patent free. They were all built around free licenses, not patents. Not the same thing at all.
Under current rules, I doubt that it is possible to create an image or video format that is patent free. Doesn't mean I am defending the current situation, but it is the reality on the ground at the moment, and likely for the foreseeable future.
WebM is not patent free. It was never patent free. In this day and age of lawyers storming the battlements with swords and giant axes I don't think ANYTHING is patent free. And there is no way the relevant patents get globally licensed without WebM ending up in exactly the same terms as h.264.
Who does this surprise? And I'm not talking about patent trolls or other attacks just looking to make a quick buck. I mean who is surprised that WebM steps all over patents associated with h.264 and other video standards? Anyone?
The one and only argument I have ever seen in favor of WebM is that it doesn't have licensing restrictions. That's it. From a code point of view h.264 is at least as open source seeing as many of the best tools and compressors are (and always have been) open and in many cases free. WebM doesn't do things significantly different from a technical point of view or an implementation point of view. It is substantially the same technology.
So if you have two projects that are effectively identical, but one has licensing restrictions on some streaming content and the other doesn't. Why would patents that cover one not cover the other?
This was always a stupid, meaningless fight. Everyone big enough to ever care about future licensing issues is big enough that it is meaningless. Everyone else is too small to bother. And all the implementation and tools have been Open Source from the start.
This stuff is like the JPG and GIF patents. Made zero real world impact and by the time everyone was finished arguing over them the patents had already expired. This is meaningless in-fighting.
That extra competition will do nothing for Android pricing. Right now Android tablets are already facing full competition pressure from the iPad. Android prices aren't high because makers are ignoring the iPad and only pricing against each other. Android prices are high because Apple is buying components they took options on years ago in lots of ten million. Android makers are buying components based on current availability in lots of hundred thousands or even ten thousands.
Yes. Based on our understanding of how the universe works we predicted this particle existed. We have now proven that it does exist. Thus we have additional evidence that things work the way we think they do at very, very low levels.
Calibre is an interesting bit of software. It's code may be open source but it's user experience is one of the most locked down and formalized that I've ever seen. Makes iTunes look customizable and flexible.
At the same time, with so many services revolving around network services there is an argument to be made for an almost thin client. A pudgy client? Thin client with a bit of padding.
After all, Facebook and G+ and e-mail and a dozen other things that eat up a huge chunk of time are not much good when there is no network. So a clent that caters to those kinds of services is going to essentially be a thin client anyways. Build in some local caching so that things automatically sync when the network becomes available again. Some space to keep a selection of music and movies local. Perhaps the music streaming service keeps a few hours of music local and replaces it from the cloud as it gets played.
Somalia is anarchy, not libertarian. Libertarianism requires the rule of law to enforce contracts.
Yet another one of those annoying liberal memes that gets repeated all the time even though it is so blatantly wrong.
The reason it "gets repeated all the time even though it is so blatantly wrong" is that libertarians tend to only want the rule of law to apply to laws they agree with. Taxes you don't like? It's fighting back for your natural liberties. Not getting the services you think you deserve? Violation of your rights and the government better step in.
Libertarianism is anarchy where you expect the government to provide the guns for you.
The whole point of Google+ over facebook is that it natively lets you separate your work life from your friends from your family from your old school buddies. Now, if you don't to identify yourself by name to any of those groups then social networking of any sort is not for you. Fair enough. But don't blame the tool for acting as designed.
Yeah, but it's a much smaller bill. Turns out that any level of 'government inefficiency' is a drop in the bucket beside the waste of having every company involved take its 50% off the top, plus executive salaries, plus lack of preventative medicine because that is an 'expense'.
Here is an excellent graphic from National Geographic comparing spending to life expectancy. Despite having worse outcomes than almost every nation on the chart, the US is spending so much more that they had to be placed outside the graph. In fact, most industrialized nations are spending less than half as much as the US for better outcomes. The only countries with worse outcomes are spending less than a quarter as much per person as the US does.
So while the citizens as the United States of America may not be able to afford it, I suspect the rest of the world will do just fine.
And that assumes that this causes a net rise in health costs. My guess is that, when all is said and done, replacing damaged organs will prove much cheaper than long term treatment and complications do now.
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If you are doing man-in-the middle attacks and access hacks, I suspect that owning the equipment that is being used to request the data in question is about as good as owning the equipment being used to send it from the data center. Might even be more useful if it provided ways to more easily associate the data with specific users.
Everyone rags on the FDA when there is some process or equipment that they personally want. But if some sub-par unregulated hearing aid destroyed the remaining hearing in their ears or the ears of someone they care about hell would be raised over the lack of oversight.
Medical issues and equipment tend to be very permanent. Some more transparency would be nice, but anyone who thinks the FDA does more harm than good is nuts. For that matter, anyone that thinks the FDA does enough harm to even consider compromising the amount of good it does is probably nuts.
Everyone rags on the FDA when there is some process or equipment that they personally want. But if some sub-par unregulated hearing aid destroyed the remaining hearing in their ears or the ears of someone they care about hell would be raised over the lack of oversight.
Because, despite many misleading headlines and voluminous nerdrage, this has never been about tablets in general. Apple didn't sue Samsung for making a tablet. Apple sued Samsung for making a tablet with some very specific features and designs that they claimed were stolen from protected Apple designs. After looking at the case, the courts have agreed that those very specific features were indeed used improperly.
But all the headlines are "Apple claims they own all tablets" and then we get posts like yours.
For a lot of years all the tech companies, but particularly the phone manufacturers, have existed in a state of what they believed was mutually assured destruction. After all, the products did have to be compatible on at least a basic level for there to be a market at all. So almost all patents were either cross-licensed or available under RAND terms.
Apple has since entered the market and really kicked over the wasp's nest. They had no long term investment in past patents and gradual product development. So they came onto the scene with the iPhone 1, licensed all the basic standards and then refused to cross-license with anyone.
Because apparently they believe that the situation is not mutually assured destruction. So the war has gone from a cold one to a hot one.
It's arguable who started the actual legal battles. Nokia and Motorola were dicking around with patents that were supposed to be under RAND terms for standards reasons in order to try and force Apple to cross-license their patents. Apple has been on the warpath about their multi-touch and design IP.
It will be interesting to see if Apple can get out of this without some form of mandatory cross-licensing being imposed. If they can it should be a very interesting shake-up. It would be the first time in the phone industry that a major company would be using their patents to secure limited monopoly of developments instead of simply being a legal bargaining chip.
But, has extremely poor storage density.and requires bulky physical media.
Sometimes two giant advantages can outweigh many smaller ones depending on the situation. When it is convenient I enjoy reading dead-tree books. But for daily use digital is simply the way for me and many others.
Instead of replying fast and furiously in chatrooms we are replying fast and furiously to phone texts. Same thing, different generation. And more useful for finding each other at noisy bars.
Not entirely. I'd like to think that a better open solution will beat an equally 'better' closed solution.
The 16GB version is selling... at about £200 ($325), with the 32GB version coming in at around £230 ($370). So this is perhaps the sort of price point they should have been selling at.
Except that the parts cost alone is higher than those price points. Unfortunately you can't compete with apple at a loss. Even if you only lose $100 a machine it will cost you $2 billion just to catch up with Apple's current sales numbers. And if Apple decides to price match you you are screwed in all sorts of unpleasant ways.
Nooooo. And besides, it's a doomed long term strategy.
iSuppli figured HP spent a little over $300 on just material costs. Figure the other cost of manufacture ad shipping bring it to $350 a unit. At $150 sale price they would have planned to take a 50 million dollar loss just on their initial 250,000 units. And god help them if it did become popular. The iPad has sold 30m units. For the Touchpad to have matched that HP would have lost 6 Billion dollars. 6 Billion just to get their foot in the door!
And then what? They are stuck at that price point. So when they decide to stop losing money they either triple the price for the same product (it would never fly) or make the next version a fraction as capable for the same price (also never fly).
So, doomed all the way.
Apple is currently fed by conspicous consumers constantly buying the current season's product. They buy it just to show it off. They might not even use it.
You haven't been out in public in the last few years, have you? Walking around in the sea of white headphones should have been the first clue that these are products that get used. For that matter, any public area where laptops and other portables are common the percentage with glowing fruit on the back is much higher than Apple's 10% estimated market share. I'd say that shows that the people who buy their computers for real world use tend to buy Apple, not the other way around.
Why are prices higher in Australia than the United States? Because it's a very small market. The entire population of Australia (22.5 million) is only somewhat more than the population of the York York City metro area (19 million). Plus extra shipping and handling costs. It's the same problem that we have here in Canada. Despite being right next door we frequently pay somewhat more for products than they do in the USA.
it would be infinitely better for all parties involved in the production of 3D Graphics Hardware - embedded and otherwise - to make the specifications of their hardware publicly available, such that the Free Software Community could help with the incredibly complex job of writing OpenGL (and other standard) Libraries once and only once (gallium3d).
For all the parties involved? I can see why it would be better for the parties that insist on fully open systems but I don't see the same level of advantages for the manufacturers. Doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice of course, but acting like lack of open Linux drivers is somehow standing between Intel or Nvidia or AMD and market success is blatantly incorrect. They don't need the permission or acceptance of a fringe market. They just don't. And acting like they do will never bring them to the table.
Now, as more Android-based devices start hitting the market some of the OEMs might be able to make a stronger case for open support. Easier for them to bring products to market if supported public libraries already existed. Someone on the desktop side with some connections might finally be able to put together a coherent business case and get the attention of the companies involved. But it really is up to the Open Source world to justify the effort to the manufacturers. They don't owe you anything.
Given that WebM was specifically designed to not infringe any patents, I for one would be very surprised if it "steps all over" a large number of patents.
Except that WebM wasn't designed to be patent free. It was designed to be license free. Neither WebM or the related VP8 or Matroska projects were ever designed to be patent free. They were all built around free licenses, not patents. Not the same thing at all.
Under current rules, I doubt that it is possible to create an image or video format that is patent free. Doesn't mean I am defending the current situation, but it is the reality on the ground at the moment, and likely for the foreseeable future.
WebM is not patent free. It was never patent free. In this day and age of lawyers storming the battlements with swords and giant axes I don't think ANYTHING is patent free. And there is no way the relevant patents get globally licensed without WebM ending up in exactly the same terms as h.264.
Who does this surprise? And I'm not talking about patent trolls or other attacks just looking to make a quick buck. I mean who is surprised that WebM steps all over patents associated with h.264 and other video standards? Anyone?
The one and only argument I have ever seen in favor of WebM is that it doesn't have licensing restrictions. That's it. From a code point of view h.264 is at least as open source seeing as many of the best tools and compressors are (and always have been) open and in many cases free. WebM doesn't do things significantly different from a technical point of view or an implementation point of view. It is substantially the same technology.
So if you have two projects that are effectively identical, but one has licensing restrictions on some streaming content and the other doesn't. Why would patents that cover one not cover the other?
This was always a stupid, meaningless fight. Everyone big enough to ever care about future licensing issues is big enough that it is meaningless. Everyone else is too small to bother. And all the implementation and tools have been Open Source from the start.
This stuff is like the JPG and GIF patents. Made zero real world impact and by the time everyone was finished arguing over them the patents had already expired. This is meaningless in-fighting.
That extra competition will do nothing for Android pricing. Right now Android tablets are already facing full competition pressure from the iPad. Android prices aren't high because makers are ignoring the iPad and only pricing against each other. Android prices are high because Apple is buying components they took options on years ago in lots of ten million. Android makers are buying components based on current availability in lots of hundred thousands or even ten thousands.
Yes. Based on our understanding of how the universe works we predicted this particle existed. We have now proven that it does exist. Thus we have additional evidence that things work the way we think they do at very, very low levels.
True. On the other hand, if random people were yelling insults at me while I was at work I'd be pretty tempted to fuck with them too.
China and India are not markets of 1.5 and 1 billion. That is their populations, not the number of people who are able to buy computers of any sort.
If you don't have any apps, what are you saving? The pictures you are not editing? The text files you are not writing?
Calibre is an interesting bit of software. It's code may be open source but it's user experience is one of the most locked down and formalized that I've ever seen. Makes iTunes look customizable and flexible.
At the same time, with so many services revolving around network services there is an argument to be made for an almost thin client. A pudgy client? Thin client with a bit of padding.
After all, Facebook and G+ and e-mail and a dozen other things that eat up a huge chunk of time are not much good when there is no network. So a clent that caters to those kinds of services is going to essentially be a thin client anyways. Build in some local caching so that things automatically sync when the network becomes available again. Some space to keep a selection of music and movies local. Perhaps the music streaming service keeps a few hours of music local and replaces it from the cloud as it gets played.
Somalia is anarchy, not libertarian. Libertarianism requires the rule of law to enforce contracts.
Yet another one of those annoying liberal memes that gets repeated all the time even though it is so blatantly wrong.
The reason it "gets repeated all the time even though it is so blatantly wrong" is that libertarians tend to only want the rule of law to apply to laws they agree with. Taxes you don't like? It's fighting back for your natural liberties. Not getting the services you think you deserve? Violation of your rights and the government better step in.
Libertarianism is anarchy where you expect the government to provide the guns for you.
The whole point of Google+ over facebook is that it natively lets you separate your work life from your friends from your family from your old school buddies. Now, if you don't to identify yourself by name to any of those groups then social networking of any sort is not for you. Fair enough. But don't blame the tool for acting as designed.
Yeah, but it's a much smaller bill. Turns out that any level of 'government inefficiency' is a drop in the bucket beside the waste of having every company involved take its 50% off the top, plus executive salaries, plus lack of preventative medicine because that is an 'expense'.
Here is an excellent graphic from National Geographic comparing spending to life expectancy. Despite having worse outcomes than almost every nation on the chart, the US is spending so much more that they had to be placed outside the graph. In fact, most industrialized nations are spending less than half as much as the US for better outcomes. The only countries with worse outcomes are spending less than a quarter as much per person as the US does.
So while the citizens as the United States of America may not be able to afford it, I suspect the rest of the world will do just fine.
And that assumes that this causes a net rise in health costs. My guess is that, when all is said and done, replacing damaged organs will prove much cheaper than long term treatment and complications do now.