Outcompeting them in what areas, exactly? Casual toilet gaming? Being able to ask consumers to pay ludicrous price for their stuff?
One point where Apple is outcompeting Xbox without even trying: In the last few quarters, Apple sold more units of AppleTV than Microsoft sold Xbox units. And I don't even want to know what you are doing in the toilet.
Quite a bold statement that the console market isn't profitable, where is your source for this? MSFT posted Q1 2013 earning for the Entertainment and Devices Division:
You'd be surprised what products are reported as part of "Entertainment and Devices Division". Rumor is that all Macintosh software created by Microsoft is part of "Entertainment and Devices Division", most likely to make it look more profitable.
I don't know what you would call someone who fully believes in Illuminati conspiracy theory and makes statements intimating that they're going to walk out the door to start the revolution and then follows it up with, yes song quotes but song quotes about lopping off heads and sharpening axes?
Just saying: If I fully believed in the Illuminati conspiracy theory, then I would never, ever post about it on Facebook. I'd be very, very quiet, and if I was an ex-marine, I would prepare for action and then act. But why on earth would I post on Facebook, where the whole world including Illuminati can read it and make sure they get rid of me?
People seem to be willing to call this "commercial" use too readily in this article's comment section here. I find the trend towards calling browse-only internet service disconcerting. I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to run a noncommercial box or series of boxes at home that provide myself, family, and friends, with access. Either you have internet connectivity or you don't. Arbitrarily determining that use is "commercial" simply because the average user does not use their connection the same way is asinine.
My understanding is that with a non-commercial service you pay for the service you get, with no guarantees, so if your service is down for half a month they refund half a month worth of fees. With a commercial service, most of the money I pay is for _guaranteed_ service. So basically, for a business you can be cheap and use the non-commercial service, but don't come crying if the service is down and your business loses money.
Well, it was in fact terrorism because what makes it terrorism is not the seriousness of the crime, but the intent. On the other hand, I don't see "fear and stupidity". I can see some degree of stupidity, but certainly not fear.
Generally the goverment doesn't decide who is and who isn't a troll. The Attorney General can only sue based on current law, and the judge getting the case can only decide based on current law. "Patent Troll" is not a legal term, and MPHJ doesn't get sued for being a patent troll, but for fraudulently representing what they are selling (licenses to patents they claim to have exclusive rights on, which they don't have, for instance).
According to the article, they are in trouble because they threatened to sue people for patent infringement, when they had (1) not checked whatsoever if patent infringement had been committed, and when (2) they had no intent whatsoever to take anyone to court but only were interested in settlement payments.
They would have been fine if they actually had checked that there was at least a likelihood for patent infringement, and if they then had taken people to court.
For a lawyer to cook up this operating scheme strongly suggests that what he is doing is technically legal in the sense that it is likely within the letter of the law.
If you look at Prendalaw, it more suggest that the lawyer thought he could get away with it. They often can. Sometimes they can't.
A graphics driver isn't "slow" or "fast" per se. The developers benchmark important apps, look for things that keep the speed down in these important apps, and try to improve things. The effect is limited by (1) what the graphics card can do, (2) time invested by the developers, and sometimes (3) the willingness to cheat in public benchmarks. (3) shouldn't be a big factor; if ATI and NVidia posted benchmarks, I'd watch out for that.
Now an important factor is that this process will improve apps that the developers believed to be important; other apps will get less improvements. An app that nobody cares about might run into a speed bump that could easily be fixed, but it doesn't get fixed because nobody cares. And here we run into a problem with the posted benchmarks: They are all apps that are primarily used on Linux, and that no MacOS X user has ever heard of. Therefore, we may assume that no OpenGL developer at Apple has ever looked at these apps and has tried to remove speed bumps in these apps. Therefore, these apps might very well be non-typical.
Consider a situation where a developer can use two techniques A and B, which should in theory run equally fast. And for some reason A runs faster on MacOS X, and B runs faster on Linux. So Mac app developers tend to use A, and Linux app developers tend to use B. As a result, Mac driver developers will try to improve A, while Linux driver developers will try to improve B. Which makes the speed difference bigger, Mac and Linux developers will even more tend to use on technique over the other, driver developers will optimise more and make the difference bigger. After a while, an app using A will run considerably faster on a Mac, while an app using B will run considerably faster on Linux. If you then port the Linux app to MacOS X, it will make you believe that the Linux drivers are faster.
Did anyone really expect the MPEG-LA to offer license terms that were amenable to FOSS goals? That would eliminate their ability to exert and enforce control over the market.
That isn't really about FOSS, it is about MPEG-LA vs. Google. Google is trying to extort multi-billion dollar payments over h.264 patents formerly owned by Motorola from one of the biggest MPEG-LA licencee, so MPEG-LA isn't going to be happy with that.
I am an analyst and I often write requirements, test code and write user documentation. I've been in the industry for 20+ years. I have never met a single developer who doesn't have bugs in code. I've read some of the posts in this thread and many of you are comparing building contractors to software developer contractors and I honestly think you're comparing apples to oranges.
A friend of mine built a house. One contractor drove a nail through a water pipe. Well, mistakes happen. He then wrapped a plastic bag over the hole and plastered over it. Everything actually looked fine for a month (must have used an excellent plastic bag) until a dark spot developed and became bigger and bigger.
I must laugh when people say there are fewer bugs in different professions.
You're not a programmer are you? There's no such thing as bug-free code. Just like no writer can proof read his own novel, no programmer can truely find every bug in his own code.
There is no bug-free anything. Ask someone to put up wallpaper in your living room, and it must be done absolutely perfect. Not one fault. It will take them three times as long. Since you don't pay for that, you will have faults. Ask a gardener to cut back a tree. Bug-free would mean that each single twig is cut to the exact right length. It's not going to happen. Everybody makes mistakes.
As an employed software developer, it's up to my boss to decide where on the time / quality scale he wants me to be (I prefer more time / higher quality myself). Reducing the amount of bugs increases the amount of time. There is an optimum, which also depends on the cost of bugs, but the decision is up to my boss.
The original poster apparently wants the number of bugs down to a level that would make development cost unreasonably costly, while not actually paying for it. My boss also makes an estimate: How expensive to leave the bug unfixed, how expensive to fix the bug? The original poster doesn't seem to want to make that judgement call, because he doesn't want to pay for the cost. On the other hand, his contractors don't want to pay either:-)
Years ago when I worked for a company that contracted out their services, they just sold X hours of development time at Y per hour. At one point I worked as a contractor; I also charged an hourly rate. I did a good job because that's what I do; I pressed more towards quality because higher quality = more hours = more money which I believe benefited the company as well, but there is no way ever I would sign an f***ing contract where someone else can determine how much work I need to do for a fixed amount of money.
The non-contract-subsidized price of an iPhone 64B is $900 (you can get it discounted to $850). The cost of parts for that phone is about $188 [huffingtonpost.com], cost of labor $8 [techinsidr.com], Apple mark-up $700 or so.
Anyone who thinks the difference between cost of parts and sales price is profit is a complete idiot. And anyone who cannot even quote the article they are referring to correctly is a double idiot. You quoted the sale price for the most expensive iPhone, but the cost of parts was for a two year old and much cheaper iPhone.
AT my last employer, the difference in premiums between the $1000/yr deductible plan and the $5000/yr deductible plan was $4000/yr. You could not possibly come out ahead on the low deductible plan - but of course most of my coworkers chose it, being bad at math.
The rate can be that low because (a) with $5000/yr deductible there is a much higher chance that the insurance will never hear of you all year and just takes your money, and (b) you are likely to try to avoid cost because the first $5000 come out of your pocket, so most likely your annual health cost will lower.
While the quoted article says "... committee claims...", the summary here is headlined "... committee finds... ". A subtle change that completely changes the meaning.
She argued with the cop, and eventually got *physically confrontational* with the cop. Like, she shoved the cop. Ya follow?
Taser is supposed to be used as a better alternative to deadly force. So if the police officer can say "if I hadn't had my taser with me then I would have shot her", then using a taser is acceptable. If not, then it is totally unacceptable. Assuming he had both a gun and a taser, he could have 1. shot her. 2. used the taser. 3. walked away. With the possibility of walking away without harming anyone, using a taser means he should go to jail for that. Obviously my opinion is not law where you live. And obviously in the freest of all countries saying that opinion might get you tasered as well.
According to later comment from AC from Latvia, the police/publisher warned him several times before raiding his computer.
Personaly i think this is horrible but the issue is with the copyright law and not with the police course of action.
It seems that what happened is exactly what should have happened according to copyright laws in all western countries as well. If I get the story right, he copied a book and put it on his website, with the intent that others should download it. If he also was warned about it several times, then it is just inexcusable stupidity to leave the book on his website.
We have seen lots of cases in the USA where the RIAA got or tried to get huge penalties because of some "making available" theory. This is a case where the guy _did_ _intentionally_ make the book available. This is as if Jammie Thomas had created a website, uploaded 24 songs, and posted "here are 24 songs that I found and like, please download them for free! ". Nobody would have any sympathy for her.
which is, most countries tax profits made within their borders. That is, if Google made money in France, then they must pay taxes in France. So, demanding that these companies pay taxes twice, on the same overseas profits, is not reasonable. Which, IIRC, was the point of why the tax exception was written that way.
Two complications: Just assume that France had the same law: "You pay taxes on your income, but you can deduct the amount of tax you paid elsewhere (for example in the USA)". It couldn't work. If a company had to pay $1,000,000 in France according to French tax law, and $1,100,000 in the USA according to US law, then we get two equations "payment in France = $1,000,000 minus payment in the USA" and "payment in USA = 1,100,000 minuse payment in France" which have no solution.
The other complication: When profits are artificially moved from one country to another country where the tax rate is higher. For example, Starbucks UK makes zero profit because they purchase their coffee beans at excessive prices from a Starbucks subsidiary somewhere on the continent where the tax rate is lower.
Wow, I'd like a 35% tax rate; ours in NL starts at around that percentage, and goes up to 52%... with that upper bracket kicking in real fast at around â55.000 taxable income.
"Taxable income" is the important term. Talking about the tax rate is pointless when you don't add what "taxable income" is. In one country, the cost of driving to work is deducted from your income to calculate "taxable income". In another country, they are seriously thinking about adding the benefit of having a free parking space where you work to your income to calculate "taxable income". In one country, mortgage payments are deducted from your income, in another country they aren't.
"Tax rate" on its own is meaningless. What you need to know is how much tax people in comparable situations actually pay.
This represents a serious change in Apple's direction. They have avoided the business/enterprise market because they haven't been interested in competing in other, existing markets and certainly never wanted to be held to the same standards as the likes of Dell. But now the government/military market? This is a long way from trying to tie everything together with iTunes.
As mentioned before, you could for many years now buy an "Enterprise" developer license, which allows you to make your apps available to any unmodified iOS device without going through Apple's app store. (The license requires you to make sure that apps will _only_ be downloaded to devices belonging to that enterprise). So this license is specifically for enterprises who want to develop apps for their employees.
Good for Apple and Google. The government didn't earn the money they want to take. The people at Apple and Google worked hard to earn that money, why should it be stolen from them to pay for giveaways to non-workers?
For example, the government pays for police that will arrest people going to an Apple Store with guns and taking whatever they want.
Slashdot Mirror
Outcompeting them in what areas, exactly? Casual toilet gaming? Being able to ask consumers to pay ludicrous price for their stuff?
One point where Apple is outcompeting Xbox without even trying: In the last few quarters, Apple sold more units of AppleTV than Microsoft sold Xbox units. And I don't even want to know what you are doing in the toilet.
Quite a bold statement that the console market isn't profitable, where is your source for this? MSFT posted Q1 2013 earning for the Entertainment and Devices Division:
You'd be surprised what products are reported as part of "Entertainment and Devices Division". Rumor is that all Macintosh software created by Microsoft is part of "Entertainment and Devices Division", most likely to make it look more profitable.
and your 'int main()' takes an unspecified amount of arguments. to specify 0 you'd do 'int main(void)'.
Nope. That's only true in a function declaration, but not in a function definition.
I don't know what you would call someone who fully believes in Illuminati conspiracy theory and makes statements intimating that they're going to walk out the door to start the revolution and then follows it up with, yes song quotes but song quotes about lopping off heads and sharpening axes?
Just saying: If I fully believed in the Illuminati conspiracy theory, then I would never, ever post about it on Facebook. I'd be very, very quiet, and if I was an ex-marine, I would prepare for action and then act. But why on earth would I post on Facebook, where the whole world including Illuminati can read it and make sure they get rid of me?
People seem to be willing to call this "commercial" use too readily in this article's comment section here. I find the trend towards calling browse-only internet service disconcerting. I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to run a noncommercial box or series of boxes at home that provide myself, family, and friends, with access. Either you have internet connectivity or you don't. Arbitrarily determining that use is "commercial" simply because the average user does not use their connection the same way is asinine.
My understanding is that with a non-commercial service you pay for the service you get, with no guarantees, so if your service is down for half a month they refund half a month worth of fees. With a commercial service, most of the money I pay is for _guaranteed_ service. So basically, for a business you can be cheap and use the non-commercial service, but don't come crying if the service is down and your business loses money.
what part of 'unlimited' don't you understand ?
The customer is always right. But sometimes companies decide that they don't want you as a customer. As in this case.
Well, it was in fact terrorism because what makes it terrorism is not the seriousness of the crime, but the intent. On the other hand, I don't see "fear and stupidity". I can see some degree of stupidity, but certainly not fear.
Generally the goverment doesn't decide who is and who isn't a troll. The Attorney General can only sue based on current law, and the judge getting the case can only decide based on current law. "Patent Troll" is not a legal term, and MPHJ doesn't get sued for being a patent troll, but for fraudulently representing what they are selling (licenses to patents they claim to have exclusive rights on, which they don't have, for instance).
According to the article, they are in trouble because they threatened to sue people for patent infringement, when they had (1) not checked whatsoever if patent infringement had been committed, and when (2) they had no intent whatsoever to take anyone to court but only were interested in settlement payments.
They would have been fine if they actually had checked that there was at least a likelihood for patent infringement, and if they then had taken people to court.
For a lawyer to cook up this operating scheme strongly suggests that what he is doing is technically legal in the sense that it is likely within the letter of the law.
If you look at Prendalaw, it more suggest that the lawyer thought he could get away with it. They often can. Sometimes they can't.
A graphics driver isn't "slow" or "fast" per se. The developers benchmark important apps, look for things that keep the speed down in these important apps, and try to improve things. The effect is limited by (1) what the graphics card can do, (2) time invested by the developers, and sometimes (3) the willingness to cheat in public benchmarks. (3) shouldn't be a big factor; if ATI and NVidia posted benchmarks, I'd watch out for that.
Now an important factor is that this process will improve apps that the developers believed to be important; other apps will get less improvements. An app that nobody cares about might run into a speed bump that could easily be fixed, but it doesn't get fixed because nobody cares. And here we run into a problem with the posted benchmarks: They are all apps that are primarily used on Linux, and that no MacOS X user has ever heard of. Therefore, we may assume that no OpenGL developer at Apple has ever looked at these apps and has tried to remove speed bumps in these apps. Therefore, these apps might very well be non-typical.
Consider a situation where a developer can use two techniques A and B, which should in theory run equally fast. And for some reason A runs faster on MacOS X, and B runs faster on Linux. So Mac app developers tend to use A, and Linux app developers tend to use B. As a result, Mac driver developers will try to improve A, while Linux driver developers will try to improve B. Which makes the speed difference bigger, Mac and Linux developers will even more tend to use on technique over the other, driver developers will optimise more and make the difference bigger. After a while, an app using A will run considerably faster on a Mac, while an app using B will run considerably faster on Linux. If you then port the Linux app to MacOS X, it will make you believe that the Linux drivers are faster.
. Turns out the scum at MPEG-LA rounded up some patents for an attack and Google has made some effort to allow use of those patents.
Interesting that you call MPEG-LA scum, while Google _is_ _actually_ suing Microsoft over the use of h.264, right here, right now. So who is the scum?
Did anyone really expect the MPEG-LA to offer license terms that were amenable to FOSS goals? That would eliminate their ability to exert and enforce control over the market.
That isn't really about FOSS, it is about MPEG-LA vs. Google. Google is trying to extort multi-billion dollar payments over h.264 patents formerly owned by Motorola from one of the biggest MPEG-LA licencee, so MPEG-LA isn't going to be happy with that.
I am an analyst and I often write requirements, test code and write user documentation. I've been in the industry for 20+ years. I have never met a single developer who doesn't have bugs in code. I've read some of the posts in this thread and many of you are comparing building contractors to software developer contractors and I honestly think you're comparing apples to oranges.
A friend of mine built a house. One contractor drove a nail through a water pipe. Well, mistakes happen. He then wrapped a plastic bag over the hole and plastered over it. Everything actually looked fine for a month (must have used an excellent plastic bag) until a dark spot developed and became bigger and bigger.
I must laugh when people say there are fewer bugs in different professions.
You're not a programmer are you? There's no such thing as bug-free code. Just like no writer can proof read his own novel, no programmer can truely find every bug in his own code.
There is no bug-free anything. Ask someone to put up wallpaper in your living room, and it must be done absolutely perfect. Not one fault. It will take them three times as long. Since you don't pay for that, you will have faults. Ask a gardener to cut back a tree. Bug-free would mean that each single twig is cut to the exact right length. It's not going to happen. Everybody makes mistakes.
:-)
As an employed software developer, it's up to my boss to decide where on the time / quality scale he wants me to be (I prefer more time / higher quality myself). Reducing the amount of bugs increases the amount of time. There is an optimum, which also depends on the cost of bugs, but the decision is up to my boss.
The original poster apparently wants the number of bugs down to a level that would make development cost unreasonably costly, while not actually paying for it. My boss also makes an estimate: How expensive to leave the bug unfixed, how expensive to fix the bug? The original poster doesn't seem to want to make that judgement call, because he doesn't want to pay for the cost. On the other hand, his contractors don't want to pay either
Years ago when I worked for a company that contracted out their services, they just sold X hours of development time at Y per hour. At one point I worked as a contractor; I also charged an hourly rate. I did a good job because that's what I do; I pressed more towards quality because higher quality = more hours = more money which I believe benefited the company as well, but there is no way ever I would sign an f***ing contract where someone else can determine how much work I need to do for a fixed amount of money.
The non-contract-subsidized price of an iPhone 64B is $900 (you can get it discounted to $850). The cost of parts for that phone is about $188 [huffingtonpost.com], cost of labor $8 [techinsidr.com], Apple mark-up $700 or so.
Anyone who thinks the difference between cost of parts and sales price is profit is a complete idiot. And anyone who cannot even quote the article they are referring to correctly is a double idiot. You quoted the sale price for the most expensive iPhone, but the cost of parts was for a two year old and much cheaper iPhone.
AT my last employer, the difference in premiums between the $1000/yr deductible plan and the $5000/yr deductible plan was $4000/yr. You could not possibly come out ahead on the low deductible plan - but of course most of my coworkers chose it, being bad at math.
The rate can be that low because (a) with $5000/yr deductible there is a much higher chance that the insurance will never hear of you all year and just takes your money, and (b) you are likely to try to avoid cost because the first $5000 come out of your pocket, so most likely your annual health cost will lower.
Ok, so Apple took advantage of tax loopholes and routed income offshore. The real question is: was it illegal?
Actually, no. Apple didn't route US income anywhere. They actually _had_ a lot of genuine income outside the USA.
While the quoted article says "... committee claims...", the summary here is headlined "... committee finds... ". A subtle change that completely changes the meaning.
She argued with the cop, and eventually got *physically confrontational* with the cop. Like, she shoved the cop. Ya follow?
Taser is supposed to be used as a better alternative to deadly force. So if the police officer can say "if I hadn't had my taser with me then I would have shot her", then using a taser is acceptable. If not, then it is totally unacceptable. Assuming he had both a gun and a taser, he could have 1. shot her. 2. used the taser. 3. walked away. With the possibility of walking away without harming anyone, using a taser means he should go to jail for that. Obviously my opinion is not law where you live. And obviously in the freest of all countries saying that opinion might get you tasered as well.
According to later comment from AC from Latvia, the police/publisher warned him several times before raiding his computer. Personaly i think this is horrible but the issue is with the copyright law and not with the police course of action.
It seems that what happened is exactly what should have happened according to copyright laws in all western countries as well. If I get the story right, he copied a book and put it on his website, with the intent that others should download it. If he also was warned about it several times, then it is just inexcusable stupidity to leave the book on his website.
We have seen lots of cases in the USA where the RIAA got or tried to get huge penalties because of some "making available" theory. This is a case where the guy _did_ _intentionally_ make the book available. This is as if Jammie Thomas had created a website, uploaded 24 songs, and posted "here are 24 songs that I found and like, please download them for free! ". Nobody would have any sympathy for her.
which is, most countries tax profits made within their borders. That is, if Google made money in France, then they must pay taxes in France. So, demanding that these companies pay taxes twice, on the same overseas profits, is not reasonable. Which, IIRC, was the point of why the tax exception was written that way.
Two complications: Just assume that France had the same law: "You pay taxes on your income, but you can deduct the amount of tax you paid elsewhere (for example in the USA)". It couldn't work. If a company had to pay $1,000,000 in France according to French tax law, and $1,100,000 in the USA according to US law, then we get two equations "payment in France = $1,000,000 minus payment in the USA" and "payment in USA = 1,100,000 minuse payment in France" which have no solution.
The other complication: When profits are artificially moved from one country to another country where the tax rate is higher. For example, Starbucks UK makes zero profit because they purchase their coffee beans at excessive prices from a Starbucks subsidiary somewhere on the continent where the tax rate is lower.
Wow, I'd like a 35% tax rate; ours in NL starts at around that percentage, and goes up to 52%... with that upper bracket kicking in real fast at around â55.000 taxable income.
"Taxable income" is the important term. Talking about the tax rate is pointless when you don't add what "taxable income" is. In one country, the cost of driving to work is deducted from your income to calculate "taxable income". In another country, they are seriously thinking about adding the benefit of having a free parking space where you work to your income to calculate "taxable income". In one country, mortgage payments are deducted from your income, in another country they aren't.
"Tax rate" on its own is meaningless. What you need to know is how much tax people in comparable situations actually pay.
This represents a serious change in Apple's direction. They have avoided the business/enterprise market because they haven't been interested in competing in other, existing markets and certainly never wanted to be held to the same standards as the likes of Dell. But now the government/military market? This is a long way from trying to tie everything together with iTunes.
As mentioned before, you could for many years now buy an "Enterprise" developer license, which allows you to make your apps available to any unmodified iOS device without going through Apple's app store. (The license requires you to make sure that apps will _only_ be downloaded to devices belonging to that enterprise). So this license is specifically for enterprises who want to develop apps for their employees.
So is he a bare-faced liar, or is the article summary bollocks? Sources please.
Given the choice "X, or the article summary is bollocks", the correct answer is _always_ "the article summary is bollocks". You should know that.
Now the truth is that Apple is indeed not funnelling domestic profits overseas. What they are doing, they are keeping overseas profits overseas.
Good for Apple and Google. The government didn't earn the money they want to take. The people at Apple and Google worked hard to earn that money, why should it be stolen from them to pay for giveaways to non-workers?
For example, the government pays for police that will arrest people going to an Apple Store with guns and taking whatever they want.