Or you dump 1/10th of that money ($100 million) into creating your own app that does the exact same thing and is tied to Facebook.
And the 30,000,000 people using Instagram will immediately go, "Gosh! I'll just dump that ol' Instagram and use this instead!"
Like Instagram is the only one out there doing this. There are bunches of these. Somehow, they haven't managed to be as successful as Instagram by doing the exact same thing Instagram does.
Don't get me wrong--paying $1 Billion for Instagram is ridiculous, IMHO. But saying, "They could have done it themselves cheaper" isn't really the case either.
So if Massachusetts wants to mandate the purchase of hospital insurance, they can. I think that's anti-freedom idea but, per the 10th, they have the authority. The central government does not.
Okay, this makes sense. Here's the work-around: Tie the requirement to some hunk of money from the Federal Government. Highway funds, or the like. "Don't have medical insurance? No highway funds!"
Well, the first reason, of course, is you sue the people with money. Apple has lots of it.
The second reason is that Apple profited from it. Remember that, as the agent, Apple collects 30% of In-App purchase money. So, of that $200, Apple made $60. An analogy: I steal your iPhone and sell it to a pawnbroker for $50. The Pawnbroker has a good reason to believe that this is stolen merchandise, but does nothing to investigate it and just turns around and sells it to someone for $75. The pawnbroker is now in trouble because he is purchasing stolen merchandise. So the questions would be, (a) is it reasonable to say this App was a "scam" and (b) should Apple have recognized this and refused to accept the App?
The third reason is that Apple claims that it's review system protects it's customers from scams and ensures quality software. If this is App is a "scam," and that's debatable, then Apple's review system should not have allowed it. See, you can't have it both ways by claiming that you're protecting customers and then, when the customer is scammed, say, "Gosh, how were we supposed to know?" I think this is one reason why Google's App Store accepts everything and only removes things when there's an issue. Google doesn't claim that they will keep the scam apps away--only that they will do something afterwards. You're still responsible.
In this case, though, I have no doubts that Reason #1 is firmly in play.
I think you missed it. I believe he was referring to the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory, which is generally discredited (and, thus, his silly example where both Mantle and Marrow start with 'M').
Of course, if you have to explain it, it isn't funny.
After all the jokes about exploding toilets and bashing the GSA, I'm just curious about something. I read the article and came across this:
[Supervisory Property Manager Chris] Litsey put out an announcement that the restrooms had closed and purged the system of compressed air that had been flowing into the building’s water tank. [...] Litsey’s theory was that someone had turned the compressor on manually and “left it unattended.”
Now, I'm not a plumber, nor have I ever played one on television. But why would you have compressed air flowing into the building's water tank? And if this is a good idea, why would it be a manual thing that you would turn on and off?
I'm sure there's a good reason, I'm just curious as to what it is.
Am I the only one bugged out when I see middle-schoolers having phones and other gadgets that are worth more than my car? Criminy, my mom wouldn't let me have a phone in my room on the main home line, never mind my OWN phone number.
Doesn't really bother me for a few reasons.
First, being able to communicate with your children when they're out and about is convenient. Especially with the disappearance of the pay-phone. I remember that I'd give Mom a call using the pay-phone when the movie was over and she'd come and get me. That can be tough to do now-a-days. Not to mention the whole germophobe thing--"Use a public phone?! How do you know that the person who last used it didn't have the plague?!?"
Second, these "fancy" smart phones aren't all that expensive with a family plan. I can get a free iPhone 3GS or a $99 iPhone 4 if I want to "fashionably cool." Heck, I gave my old iPhone 3GS to my roomate's nephew and he was ecstatic! There are also plenty of low/no cost phones and if you have a family plan, it's not that big of a deal.
Third, and I understand the feeling, but times change. Back when I was a kid, we had one phone in the house and it was on a "Party Line" with the old couple down the street. This was back in the days of the The Phone Company, where an extra extension cost money (although my Dad did eventually get ahold of another phone and rigged it up in the kitchen without The Phone Company's knowledge). I remember when calling "Long Distance" was a big deal. Now? I call the other side of the country without a second thought--it comes with my calling plan.
I am very conscious of what apps my children use and I vet them all.
So, let me get this straight. If your daughter wanted to play some game, you would buy it, download it, and play it a few dozen times before letting her even come near it? Or would you probably just check out the description and screen shots in the App Store and figure, "Yeah, looks okay."
The point is that the description didn't say anything about In-App purchases. The price of the game was marked as "Free." It's a reasonable assumption that he's not going to have pay anything more for the game.
Don't get me wrong--the whole "Class Action Lawsuit" thing is pure BS. And I believe Apple has made changes to solve this "problem." I believe Apple may have reimbursed him for his charges. So why bother with the lawsuit other than to get money?
If he couldn't trust his daughter to not buy "in-app" upgrades, she shouldn't have a friggin iPhone to start with.
In his defense, he bought his daughter what, I assume, looked like a fun and free game for a child. It said "Free" on Apple's App Store, after all. I assume he didn't check beforehand to see how the game worked (ie, it required purchasing trinkets).
I can understand where the guy is coming from and I think it behooves Apple to note games that use In-App purchases right there next to the price. Maybe even give an "average purchase price" of how much people who've bought the game have spent on In-App purchases.
That said, a $5 million class-action lawsuit?! That's getting a bit ridiculous.
although admittedly the article was sketchy on what policies those were that would actually deny the repair.
I'm sure the two people representing Apple were also sketchy as to what those policies are. Remember that courts are fairly open and Apple doesn't discuss these policies in the open.
It isn't that Australians want to keep their data in Australia so much as they're being told that remote storage--especially in the US--is risky. And they're right. The US just doesn't want people to know this and the last thing they want is people from Australia's Ministry of Defense running around and telling people this.
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those, "In order to avoid lawsuits."
We have electric cars and hybrid cars and cars with really quiet internal combustion engines. And yet, somehow, the number of people getting run over hasn't appreciably increased. But it could happen. And if it did, it would be, "Oh, if only the car had made noise, that person would be alive today! It's the automaker's fault! Let's sue them for billions of dollars!"
Well, it's the Most-Favored-Nation Issue AND the Agency Model.
Basically, Apple says, "We get the cheapest price." Which means that I can't set the price on Apple's bookstore to be $14.99 and sell it via my own website for $10.99. Makes perfect sense.
The problem is, Amazon does not use an Agency model. It uses a wholesale model. Which means Amazon buys, say, 1,000,000 copies of "Hunger Games"--both the "E" and "Print" version--at half the retail price, which we'll say is $8.99. So Amazon writes them a check for $8,990,000 and can then go and sell it for however much they want after that. So we'll say that Amazon sells it for $9.99, making $1. Normal everyday economics.
With this agreement, the publisher of "Hunger Games" would have to immediately lower their price in Apple's store to $8.99 (which means the publishers get $6.29 for each sale) because they sold an "E" version of the book for $8.99 to Amazon.
I'm not convinced that the wholesale model makes sense for digital goods, don't get me wrong. But the above situation where publishers have to match Agency and Wholesale prices equally seems like a problem.
Let's face it. Nobody likes to think. Therefore, we want one solution for everything. That's a car.
Need to get to work 8 miles away? A car will do that. Need to get to work 150 miles away? Need to visit family members 83 miles away? A car will do that. Need to visit in-laws 298 miles away? A car will do that.
Actually thinking about your destinations, where you drive, and how you drive? Nah. That requires thinking. Just get a car.
"So I'm driving along and I wonder what traffic is like. So I hop out of my car and check the phone booth. The first thing I see is that some asshole jumped out of his car right on this street and traffic is slowed down. Fortunately, I'm past it.
Oh wait. It just cleared up. Hey! Where's my car?!"
Now I know they're reaching. Why in the world would I want traffic updates in a phone booth?!
Actually, NeXT boxes were made in the good ol' U.S. of A--I believe Steve Jobs built a factory up in Fremont, California. Of course, it was mostly automated...
Titanic works for both men and women. For women, it's pretty obviously a love story about the poor little rich girl who falls in love with a man beneath her social stature and the trials and tribulations that they go through to be together.
For men, it has explosions, breasts, and a snobs versus the slobs storyline--think "Caddyshack on the High Seas."
Actually, I've been pretty impressed with OpenStreetMap and the places I've been. That said, I've also occasionally run into missing and incorrectly labeled things.
One of the cool things with OSM, though, is that you can fix the issues. Go buy an inexpensive bike GPS (I use a Garmin Edge 205), ride around your neighborhood and map the streets. It's a pretty entertaining way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. Getting the data into it can be a little tricky if you're not good with the various file formats, but it's pretty well documented. I would imagine that there are smartphone apps for doing this as well (the person above mentionedWaze)
If you're more of a couch potato, you can actually go through satellite images and add mapping information from those. Or you can just go through existing maps and enhance them with some local intelligence--I went through and added bike lanes to the streets that I knew had them and added appropriate connections from bike paths to streets. About the only issue you need to be concerned with (from a legal standpoint) is that you should avoid copying information from other maps (eg, Google) until you actually read the terms of service.
Unlike a lot of open projects, you don't need to be a computer science major to contribute. In this case, you don't even need to be an expert cartographer. So rather than complaining that nobody has updated your area since 2003, go ahead and do it!
Slashdot Mirror
Diggin' My Ride From Outer Space
Or you dump 1/10th of that money ($100 million) into creating your own app that does the exact same thing and is tied to Facebook.
And the 30,000,000 people using Instagram will immediately go, "Gosh! I'll just dump that ol' Instagram and use this instead!"
Like Instagram is the only one out there doing this. There are bunches of these. Somehow, they haven't managed to be as successful as Instagram by doing the exact same thing Instagram does.
Don't get me wrong--paying $1 Billion for Instagram is ridiculous, IMHO. But saying, "They could have done it themselves cheaper" isn't really the case either.
So if Massachusetts wants to mandate the purchase of hospital insurance, they can. I think that's anti-freedom idea but, per the 10th, they have the authority. The central government does not.
Okay, this makes sense. Here's the work-around: Tie the requirement to some hunk of money from the Federal Government. Highway funds, or the like. "Don't have medical insurance? No highway funds!"
Hey, it worked for the drinking age...
If an app has-in app purchases this is mentioned in the app store along with the app description.
Not at the time--that's what the whole thing is about--there was no way for the parent to know this.
I don't think that's a reasonable assumption. A lot of apps have no cover charge and yet you can buy things inside the app.
Well, again, at the time this wasn't mentioned. But I would also argue that if you're not much of a game player, you wouldn't know this.
Well, the first reason, of course, is you sue the people with money. Apple has lots of it.
The second reason is that Apple profited from it. Remember that, as the agent, Apple collects 30% of In-App purchase money. So, of that $200, Apple made $60. An analogy: I steal your iPhone and sell it to a pawnbroker for $50. The Pawnbroker has a good reason to believe that this is stolen merchandise, but does nothing to investigate it and just turns around and sells it to someone for $75. The pawnbroker is now in trouble because he is purchasing stolen merchandise. So the questions would be, (a) is it reasonable to say this App was a "scam" and (b) should Apple have recognized this and refused to accept the App?
The third reason is that Apple claims that it's review system protects it's customers from scams and ensures quality software. If this is App is a "scam," and that's debatable, then Apple's review system should not have allowed it. See, you can't have it both ways by claiming that you're protecting customers and then, when the customer is scammed, say, "Gosh, how were we supposed to know?" I think this is one reason why Google's App Store accepts everything and only removes things when there's an issue. Google doesn't claim that they will keep the scam apps away--only that they will do something afterwards. You're still responsible.
In this case, though, I have no doubts that Reason #1 is firmly in play.
I think you missed it. I believe he was referring to the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory, which is generally discredited (and, thus, his silly example where both Mantle and Marrow start with 'M').
Of course, if you have to explain it, it isn't funny.
After all the jokes about exploding toilets and bashing the GSA, I'm just curious about something. I read the article and came across this:
Now, I'm not a plumber, nor have I ever played one on television. But why would you have compressed air flowing into the building's water tank? And if this is a good idea, why would it be a manual thing that you would turn on and off?
I'm sure there's a good reason, I'm just curious as to what it is.
Am I the only one bugged out when I see middle-schoolers having phones and other gadgets that are worth more than my car? Criminy, my mom wouldn't let me have a phone in my room on the main home line, never mind my OWN phone number.
Doesn't really bother me for a few reasons.
First, being able to communicate with your children when they're out and about is convenient. Especially with the disappearance of the pay-phone. I remember that I'd give Mom a call using the pay-phone when the movie was over and she'd come and get me. That can be tough to do now-a-days. Not to mention the whole germophobe thing--"Use a public phone?! How do you know that the person who last used it didn't have the plague?!?"
Second, these "fancy" smart phones aren't all that expensive with a family plan. I can get a free iPhone 3GS or a $99 iPhone 4 if I want to "fashionably cool." Heck, I gave my old iPhone 3GS to my roomate's nephew and he was ecstatic! There are also plenty of low/no cost phones and if you have a family plan, it's not that big of a deal.
Third, and I understand the feeling, but times change. Back when I was a kid, we had one phone in the house and it was on a "Party Line" with the old couple down the street. This was back in the days of the The Phone Company, where an extra extension cost money (although my Dad did eventually get ahold of another phone and rigged it up in the kitchen without The Phone Company's knowledge). I remember when calling "Long Distance" was a big deal. Now? I call the other side of the country without a second thought--it comes with my calling plan.
I am very conscious of what apps my children use and I vet them all.
So, let me get this straight. If your daughter wanted to play some game, you would buy it, download it, and play it a few dozen times before letting her even come near it? Or would you probably just check out the description and screen shots in the App Store and figure, "Yeah, looks okay."
The point is that the description didn't say anything about In-App purchases. The price of the game was marked as "Free." It's a reasonable assumption that he's not going to have pay anything more for the game.
Don't get me wrong--the whole "Class Action Lawsuit" thing is pure BS. And I believe Apple has made changes to solve this "problem." I believe Apple may have reimbursed him for his charges. So why bother with the lawsuit other than to get money?
If he couldn't trust his daughter to not buy "in-app" upgrades, she shouldn't have a friggin iPhone to start with.
In his defense, he bought his daughter what, I assume, looked like a fun and free game for a child. It said "Free" on Apple's App Store, after all. I assume he didn't check beforehand to see how the game worked (ie, it required purchasing trinkets).
I can understand where the guy is coming from and I think it behooves Apple to note games that use In-App purchases right there next to the price. Maybe even give an "average purchase price" of how much people who've bought the game have spent on In-App purchases.
That said, a $5 million class-action lawsuit?! That's getting a bit ridiculous.
although admittedly the article was sketchy on what policies those were that would actually deny the repair.
I'm sure the two people representing Apple were also sketchy as to what those policies are. Remember that courts are fairly open and Apple doesn't discuss these policies in the open.
Never used Mac OS X Server, I take it...
Don't forget Poland.
(I know it's an old bit, but I still enjoy it.)
It isn't that Australians want to keep their data in Australia so much as they're being told that remote storage--especially in the US--is risky. And they're right. The US just doesn't want people to know this and the last thing they want is people from Australia's Ministry of Defense running around and telling people this.
I think it's a reference to NATO, where the United States pays quite a bit of money.
Hey, it made me buy the magazine...
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those, "In order to avoid lawsuits."
We have electric cars and hybrid cars and cars with really quiet internal combustion engines. And yet, somehow, the number of people getting run over hasn't appreciably increased. But it could happen. And if it did, it would be, "Oh, if only the car had made noise, that person would be alive today! It's the automaker's fault! Let's sue them for billions of dollars!"
If 49% of the population is men, and men have an equal rate to become nurses as women, 49% of nurses should be men.
But we all know they're not.
Just make a sign.
Well, it's the Most-Favored-Nation Issue AND the Agency Model.
Basically, Apple says, "We get the cheapest price." Which means that I can't set the price on Apple's bookstore to be $14.99 and sell it via my own website for $10.99. Makes perfect sense.
The problem is, Amazon does not use an Agency model. It uses a wholesale model. Which means Amazon buys, say, 1,000,000 copies of "Hunger Games"--both the "E" and "Print" version--at half the retail price, which we'll say is $8.99. So Amazon writes them a check for $8,990,000 and can then go and sell it for however much they want after that. So we'll say that Amazon sells it for $9.99, making $1. Normal everyday economics.
With this agreement, the publisher of "Hunger Games" would have to immediately lower their price in Apple's store to $8.99 (which means the publishers get $6.29 for each sale) because they sold an "E" version of the book for $8.99 to Amazon.
I'm not convinced that the wholesale model makes sense for digital goods, don't get me wrong. But the above situation where publishers have to match Agency and Wholesale prices equally seems like a problem.
Then an electric might not be for you.
Here's sort of the issue that we all run into.
Let's face it. Nobody likes to think. Therefore, we want one solution for everything. That's a car.
Need to get to work 8 miles away? A car will do that. Need to get to work 150 miles away? Need to visit family members 83 miles away? A car will do that. Need to visit in-laws 298 miles away? A car will do that.
Actually thinking about your destinations, where you drive, and how you drive? Nah. That requires thinking. Just get a car.
In a Phone Booth!??
"So I'm driving along and I wonder what traffic is like. So I hop out of my car and check the phone booth. The first thing I see is that some asshole jumped out of his car right on this street and traffic is slowed down. Fortunately, I'm past it.
Oh wait. It just cleared up. Hey! Where's my car?!"
Now I know they're reaching. Why in the world would I want traffic updates in a phone booth?!
Actually, NeXT boxes were made in the good ol' U.S. of A--I believe Steve Jobs built a factory up in Fremont, California. Of course, it was mostly automated...
Titanic works for both men and women. For women, it's pretty obviously a love story about the poor little rich girl who falls in love with a man beneath her social stature and the trials and tribulations that they go through to be together.
For men, it has explosions, breasts, and a snobs versus the slobs storyline--think "Caddyshack on the High Seas."
See? It has everything!
Actually, I've been pretty impressed with OpenStreetMap and the places I've been. That said, I've also occasionally run into missing and incorrectly labeled things.
One of the cool things with OSM, though, is that you can fix the issues. Go buy an inexpensive bike GPS (I use a Garmin Edge 205), ride around your neighborhood and map the streets. It's a pretty entertaining way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. Getting the data into it can be a little tricky if you're not good with the various file formats, but it's pretty well documented. I would imagine that there are smartphone apps for doing this as well (the person above mentioned Waze)
If you're more of a couch potato, you can actually go through satellite images and add mapping information from those. Or you can just go through existing maps and enhance them with some local intelligence--I went through and added bike lanes to the streets that I knew had them and added appropriate connections from bike paths to streets. About the only issue you need to be concerned with (from a legal standpoint) is that you should avoid copying information from other maps (eg, Google) until you actually read the terms of service.
Unlike a lot of open projects, you don't need to be a computer science major to contribute. In this case, you don't even need to be an expert cartographer. So rather than complaining that nobody has updated your area since 2003, go ahead and do it!