Generally, even though big corporations have a lot of lawyers on their payrolls, they will still hire an outside lawfirm or a few outside lawfirms to handle complex and specialized litigation like this dispute between Apple and Samsung.
Sounds kinda too in-the-box film-school-style thinking.
The key part of having a character the audience is able to relate to is the personality, having relatable motivations and such. How much of a difference does it make if they don't look human, maybe a bit to some, but probably not too much to many.
NYC subways for whatever reason seems to present a very different ecosystem than the rest of the country.
From looking around, you'd think that Sony PSP are absolutely dominating the Nintendo DS. However, in reality the DS has sold more than twice as many as the PSP.
In the real world, people get upset and offended when they discover that the price differential between what they paid for something and what it cost to make is too large. It's not economically rational, it's just human nature.
I get tired of the "Get off my lawn, the past was so much better." No, not the case actually. Games are great these days. You can have graphics AND gameplay and indeed there are games that do. Name the kind of game you like, I can give you a few examples of ones that do it really well.M
Overall, I agree with your post, I do think it's mostly curmudgeonism. However, some truly great games of the past are in genres that are now effective dead.
Examples: Star Control 2: Closest thing I can think of out now is Eve Online, which is totally not the same thing. Multiplayer is not always better, 3D is not always better, and Eve is completely lacking that adventure/epic story element. XWing/Wing Commander: Action space sims just completely died, and I'm not really sure why. Seem like a gold mine to me.
I'm curious if anyone knows of any success stories of using this strategy with large animals.
It definitely seems to work on smaller scales, like buying praying mantis eggs to control garden pests. But I'm not sure I've ever heard of a success involving anything much bigger than that.
It'll take longer, but a gene that is truly neutral and confers no advantages will eventually be wrecked by mutations, like your vitamin C example. Mutations happens all the time, but if they hit something important, that individual won't survive for long. However, in the case of a gene coding for a neutral protein, mutations won't be corrected out, eventually causing the gene to no longer code for the same protein.
Is this for real? Wouldn't it be better to prefer to work with another platform that does not have to receive negative feedback in the first place? All companies and people make mistakes, but I don't recall any development platform that has made missteps this bad and drawn this much negative press in recent memory.
Also, you say, "That's why I prefer to work with iOS development, because they do listen to developers and take into account feedback or concerns, and really change fundamental policy instead of continuing said policy just because it exists as so many other companies would do..." Has there been any fundamental policy shift before today? If not, what were you saying prior to today on why you prefer to work with iOS development?
I think this line from the guidelines is pretty funny: "If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."
So basically, don't snitch.
To the contrary, however, in the past, it seems like running to the press and trashing them can really help get your app approved.
No, it's not thanks to legal precedent. Legal precedent is when a case establishes a rule that can be used in future cases, and is, in effect, creating a new law.
This is setting an example, where if you do something that screws over a lot of people in a very small way, you can't get away with it just because nobody is damaged enough to care. Instead, all the aggregated damages are counted together, and that tends to be enormous.
And it's not really that big a problem that 99% of the people in the class are too lazy to care they've been screwed. As long as they can get together a few people that care, and get lawyers to represent them, then they can bring a class action on behalf of all of them.
I see this sentiment a lot whenever class action lawsuits are discussed, but as a lawyer that has absolutely nothing to do with class action lawsuits, I would like to point out that one of the biggest purposes of class action lawsuits that people normally overlook when complaining about them is the deterrence effect.
Class action lawsuits are basically one of the most, if not the most, expensive form of litigation a company can endure. Even though due to the number of plaintiffs, in the end each person might only get a $10 gift card, the combined cost to the company of that are staggering.
In this case, it would be taking Sony to task, and hopefully Sony would see the error of its ways and back down. Even if that is not the eventual outcome, it sends a message to all the other bad guys out there, if you engage in this type of shenanigans, you should think twice because it will cost you dearly.
In a way, the lawyers who bring the suit are acting as private attorney generals, punishing wrong doing that may not rise to the criminal level, but affecting large swaths of the populace in a tortious fashion nonetheless. While no doubt the lawyers involve need to be incentivized to engage in this activity somehow, whether they should be rewarded as richly as they are for it currently is another issue entirely...
I don't see this as killing the electronic photo-book market at all. This thing at cheapest is 3 times the highest end of the range you quoted. Many people are not in the market for this thing but would like to display pictures.
It's also an eBook reader with a traditional LCD display that burns your eyes as you stare at it for hours, as opposed to all the actual eBook readers that use e-ink displays which are frontlit, like paper, or a book.
That's what's impressive about this Nokia solution. It's the first free solution that allows for downloading the map database to your phone for offline usage.
Without a doubt the market for standalone GPS units will survive, but the question is in what form. It would be a huge loss for Garmin et al if they're reduced to making rugged specialty GPS devices while smartphones take over the lucrative in-car navigation that represents 99% of consumer usage.
The advantages of a GFS device with a data connection are numerous. Live traffic, live updates, live information (such as gas prices). Those are all download-oriented, but many of the promising usages are bidirectional communication-oriented. Live display of other cars on the road, live traffic tracking through precise vehicle placement. Plus all sorts of other Big Brotherish stuff that is less pleasant.
These advantages are compelling enough that we've already seen movements towards getting a cellular radio in standalone GPS units. However, those haven't seen much traction because who wants to pay another monthly fee for their GPS. Once the smartphone based GPS applications become mature, the standalone manufacturers are in a world of trouble.
Sure, I would absolutely love a computer that has one of those things, no one seems remotely interested in producing a powerful computer (non-netbook) that uses one.
I have also seen nary a word on an external monitor that uses one.
That's why I'm (for now) hoping someone could hack an e-reader to use it as an external monitor.
Absolutely! A lot of these e-readers are running Linux of some flavor such as Android, and I remember reading news about both the Nook and the Kindle having been rooted.
Something that would pretty much instantly open my wallet would be if one of these could be setup with a driver to connect it to a computer and used as an external display. To compensate for the slow refresh, maybe every time a certain key combo was pressed, the contents of the window with focus would be mirrored onto the e-ink display.
I do pretty much 99% of my reading on my computer now. I would definitely pay to have a less eye-strain inducing supplementary display.
It's not, but it's probably also tilting at windmills to complain about it.
And in regards to not just complaining, but pushing for legal changes, why is it perfectly acceptable to treat everyone, including the innocent, as a criminal in order to protect an outdated business model?
The line for Motion picture and sound recording industries has been constant from 2003-2007 (with information from 2008 still not entered) at 0.3%.
Bono claims, "music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product". Assuming no tectonic shift in profits, that would suggest that video games are producing nearly 3.7% of GDP, but the line for all Publishing industries (includes software) floats at around 1% of GDP. So even including "real" software like Windows as well as books, we're not even close to 4%.
Another factor which he neglects to consider is the scale of damage that would be done, both in terms of freedoms as well as innovation. Even if America and all of its best buddies were to enact this type of draconian censorship regime he advocates, I doubt that America's enemies would be as eager to join in. That would suggest a net effect of simply forcing innovation to move abroad to places that don't sign on or enforce. One of the few areas where America is truly a global leader still seems to be in Internet services. If foreign Internet services provide more to consumers that they want than American services, I don't doubt that American services on the Internet would be abandoned in a flash. While I don't discount the importance of the export of America's pop culture abroad, the price to protect outdated business models seems like a weighty one. Bono talks a lot, but I wonder how much depth he really puts into his thinking.
I don't think it necessarily has to be the way you're describing.
Seems to me the easiest way to implement such a policy at Apple would be to draw up a set of rules for reviewers to follow, something like this: 1. If an app is a dialer, deny it because it duplicates dialer functionality 2. If the app contains Apple logos, deny it because it infringes our trademarks etc. with an entry for X. If the app contains a way to place the user's friends on a map, deny it because it duplicates functionality.
No need for reviewers to know about about patents, no need for lawyers to look at each submission.
"Obviously if Apple is working on their own version of Google Latitude (or owns the IP rights to this functionality), they'd be hesitant to put an app with the same functionality on their devices from another company."
That's not obvious at all to me. It harms the vibrancy of their marketplace, it harms the goodwill of the developer community, and ultimately, it would appear to harm the competitiveness of the device by hindering competition for improved functionality. The only reason they can get away with this BS is because they're Apple, the 900 lb gorilla of the new generation smartphone market at the moment.
Can't quite get through to the site already, but just an idea.
In terms of awesome eye candy this would make just above the coolest desktop widget (for MacOS, Vista, or Yahoo! Widget Engine or whatever). A view of the Earth from space that reflects continuous conditions as they're seen.
You could see it snow outside your window and then 2 hours later you see that your region is now covered in a sheet of white on the map. During the Persian Gulf War I wonder if this had been around if you would have been able to see all the smoke burning oil fields.
Not sure if such a thing would be possible due to technical limitations, but if so I would be the first to run it on my desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
Generally, even though big corporations have a lot of lawyers on their payrolls, they will still hire an outside lawfirm or a few outside lawfirms to handle complex and specialized litigation like this dispute between Apple and Samsung.
Sounds kinda too in-the-box film-school-style thinking.
The key part of having a character the audience is able to relate to is the personality, having relatable motivations and such. How much of a difference does it make if they don't look human, maybe a bit to some, but probably not too much to many.
The magazine is not banned from the iPhone. It is banned from iOS.
Wouldn't it be more compact to carry around your phone and a spare battery rather than your phone and an mp3 player?
NYC subways for whatever reason seems to present a very different ecosystem than the rest of the country.
From looking around, you'd think that Sony PSP are absolutely dominating the Nintendo DS. However, in reality the DS has sold more than twice as many as the PSP.
On the other hand, it seems to me that a phone with a spare battery in your pocket is still smaller than a phone + a Gameboy or PSP.
In economics professor land what you say is true.
In the real world, people get upset and offended when they discover that the price differential between what they paid for something and what it cost to make is too large. It's not economically rational, it's just human nature.
I get tired of the "Get off my lawn, the past was so much better." No, not the case actually. Games are great these days. You can have graphics AND gameplay and indeed there are games that do. Name the kind of game you like, I can give you a few examples of ones that do it really well.M
Overall, I agree with your post, I do think it's mostly curmudgeonism. However, some truly great games of the past are in genres that are now effective dead.
Examples:
Star Control 2: Closest thing I can think of out now is Eve Online, which is totally not the same thing. Multiplayer is not always better, 3D is not always better, and Eve is completely lacking that adventure/epic story element.
XWing/Wing Commander: Action space sims just completely died, and I'm not really sure why. Seem like a gold mine to me.
I'm curious if anyone knows of any success stories of using this strategy with large animals.
It definitely seems to work on smaller scales, like buying praying mantis eggs to control garden pests. But I'm not sure I've ever heard of a success involving anything much bigger than that.
It'll take longer, but a gene that is truly neutral and confers no advantages will eventually be wrecked by mutations, like your vitamin C example. Mutations happens all the time, but if they hit something important, that individual won't survive for long. However, in the case of a gene coding for a neutral protein, mutations won't be corrected out, eventually causing the gene to no longer code for the same protein.
Is this for real? Wouldn't it be better to prefer to work with another platform that does not have to receive negative feedback in the first place? All companies and people make mistakes, but I don't recall any development platform that has made missteps this bad and drawn this much negative press in recent memory.
Also, you say, "That's why I prefer to work with iOS development, because they do listen to developers and take into account feedback or concerns, and really change fundamental policy instead of continuing said policy just because it exists as so many other companies would do..." Has there been any fundamental policy shift before today? If not, what were you saying prior to today on why you prefer to work with iOS development?
I think this line from the guidelines is pretty funny:
"If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."
So basically, don't snitch.
To the contrary, however, in the past, it seems like running to the press and trashing them can really help get your app approved.
See, e.g. http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/04/16/2327219/Bad-PR-Forces-Apple-To-Reconsider-Banning-Mark-Fiores-App
No, it's not thanks to legal precedent. Legal precedent is when a case establishes a rule that can be used in future cases, and is, in effect, creating a new law.
This is setting an example, where if you do something that screws over a lot of people in a very small way, you can't get away with it just because nobody is damaged enough to care. Instead, all the aggregated damages are counted together, and that tends to be enormous.
And it's not really that big a problem that 99% of the people in the class are too lazy to care they've been screwed. As long as they can get together a few people that care, and get lawyers to represent them, then they can bring a class action on behalf of all of them.
I see this sentiment a lot whenever class action lawsuits are discussed, but as a lawyer that has absolutely nothing to do with class action lawsuits, I would like to point out that one of the biggest purposes of class action lawsuits that people normally overlook when complaining about them is the deterrence effect.
Class action lawsuits are basically one of the most, if not the most, expensive form of litigation a company can endure. Even though due to the number of plaintiffs, in the end each person might only get a $10 gift card, the combined cost to the company of that are staggering.
In this case, it would be taking Sony to task, and hopefully Sony would see the error of its ways and back down. Even if that is not the eventual outcome, it sends a message to all the other bad guys out there, if you engage in this type of shenanigans, you should think twice because it will cost you dearly.
In a way, the lawyers who bring the suit are acting as private attorney generals, punishing wrong doing that may not rise to the criminal level, but affecting large swaths of the populace in a tortious fashion nonetheless. While no doubt the lawyers involve need to be incentivized to engage in this activity somehow, whether they should be rewarded as richly as they are for it currently is another issue entirely...
I don't see this as killing the electronic photo-book market at all. This thing at cheapest is 3 times the highest end of the range you quoted. Many people are not in the market for this thing but would like to display pictures.
It does seem like a good computer for mom though.
It's also an eBook reader with a traditional LCD display that burns your eyes as you stare at it for hours, as opposed to all the actual eBook readers that use e-ink displays which are frontlit, like paper, or a book.
That's what's impressive about this Nokia solution. It's the first free solution that allows for downloading the map database to your phone for offline usage.
Without a doubt the market for standalone GPS units will survive, but the question is in what form. It would be a huge loss for Garmin et al if they're reduced to making rugged specialty GPS devices while smartphones take over the lucrative in-car navigation that represents 99% of consumer usage.
The advantages of a GFS device with a data connection are numerous. Live traffic, live updates, live information (such as gas prices). Those are all download-oriented, but many of the promising usages are bidirectional communication-oriented. Live display of other cars on the road, live traffic tracking through precise vehicle placement. Plus all sorts of other Big Brotherish stuff that is less pleasant.
These advantages are compelling enough that we've already seen movements towards getting a cellular radio in standalone GPS units. However, those haven't seen much traction because who wants to pay another monthly fee for their GPS. Once the smartphone based GPS applications become mature, the standalone manufacturers are in a world of trouble.
Sure, I would absolutely love a computer that has one of those things, no one seems remotely interested in producing a powerful computer (non-netbook) that uses one.
I have also seen nary a word on an external monitor that uses one.
That's why I'm (for now) hoping someone could hack an e-reader to use it as an external monitor.
Absolutely! A lot of these e-readers are running Linux of some flavor such as Android, and I remember reading news about both the Nook and the Kindle having been rooted.
Something that would pretty much instantly open my wallet would be if one of these could be setup with a driver to connect it to a computer and used as an external display. To compensate for the slow refresh, maybe every time a certain key combo was pressed, the contents of the window with focus would be mirrored onto the e-ink display.
I do pretty much 99% of my reading on my computer now. I would definitely pay to have a less eye-strain inducing supplementary display.
It's not, but it's probably also tilting at windmills to complain about it.
And in regards to not just complaining, but pushing for legal changes, why is it perfectly acceptable to treat everyone, including the innocent, as a criminal in order to protect an outdated business model?
I really wish that newspapers would cite their information so we could understand what they're basing their claims on.
Looking at the US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis Numbers, they seem to paint a very different picture than what he suggests:
http://www.bea.gov/industry/gpotables/gpo_action.cfm?anon=343982&table_id=24753&format_type=0 [bea.gov]
The line for Motion picture and sound recording industries has been constant from 2003-2007 (with information from 2008 still not entered) at 0.3%.
Bono claims, "music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product". Assuming no tectonic shift in profits, that would suggest that video games are producing nearly 3.7% of GDP, but the line for all Publishing industries (includes software) floats at around 1% of GDP. So even including "real" software like Windows as well as books, we're not even close to 4%.
Another factor which he neglects to consider is the scale of damage that would be done, both in terms of freedoms as well as innovation. Even if America and all of its best buddies were to enact this type of draconian censorship regime he advocates, I doubt that America's enemies would be as eager to join in. That would suggest a net effect of simply forcing innovation to move abroad to places that don't sign on or enforce. One of the few areas where America is truly a global leader still seems to be in Internet services. If foreign Internet services provide more to consumers that they want than American services, I don't doubt that American services on the Internet would be abandoned in a flash. While I don't discount the importance of the export of America's pop culture abroad, the price to protect outdated business models seems like a weighty one. Bono talks a lot, but I wonder how much depth he really puts into his thinking.
I don't think it necessarily has to be the way you're describing.
Seems to me the easiest way to implement such a policy at Apple would be to draw up a set of rules for reviewers to follow, something like this:
1. If an app is a dialer, deny it because it duplicates dialer functionality
2. If the app contains Apple logos, deny it because it infringes our trademarks
etc.
with an entry for
X. If the app contains a way to place the user's friends on a map, deny it because it duplicates functionality.
No need for reviewers to know about about patents, no need for lawyers to look at each submission.
"Obviously if Apple is working on their own version of Google Latitude (or owns the IP rights to this functionality), they'd be hesitant to put an app with the same functionality on their devices from another company."
That's not obvious at all to me. It harms the vibrancy of their marketplace, it harms the goodwill of the developer community, and ultimately, it would appear to harm the competitiveness of the device by hindering competition for improved functionality. The only reason they can get away with this BS is because they're Apple, the 900 lb gorilla of the new generation smartphone market at the moment.
Can't quite get through to the site already, but just an idea.
In terms of awesome eye candy this would make just above the coolest desktop widget (for MacOS, Vista, or Yahoo! Widget Engine or whatever). A view of the Earth from space that reflects continuous conditions as they're seen.
You could see it snow outside your window and then 2 hours later you see that your region is now covered in a sheet of white on the map. During the Persian Gulf War I wonder if this had been around if you would have been able to see all the smoke burning oil fields.
Not sure if such a thing would be possible due to technical limitations, but if so I would be the first to run it on my desktop.