But what's the problem? Now that apple has transitioned to x86, they could introduce an AMD lineup any time they want to without any technical problems at all. Apple might lose a discounted rate on Intel chips*, but their customers historically are willing to pay a premium for their product anyways.
* I have no idea what their pricing agreement with Intel is, so this may or may not be the case.
Intellectual Ventures is a kinder gentler patent troll?
Yes, I did RTFA. It's just a puff piece that drops the words "new" and "controversial" to snag the uninformed reader. From the second paragraph:
In the past year or so, Intellectual Ventures has emerged as one of the more controversial companies in the tech industry. The company is filing patents, but also buying patents from defunct companies, independent inventors and others.
One telling excerpt reveals the truth:
The company is filing about 300 patent applications a year, but so far has only been granted one patent. Typically, the company will not seek royalties until the patent is granted. Lawsuits have also not been filed. Some deals may be announced in a few months.
So they haven't started shooting the lawsuit shotgun because they don't have enough ammo yet. And yes, I did read the part about how they work with some big names actively developing their ideas. But these are people who would be inventing anyways. This company is just a convenient way of outsourcing the legalese.
Q2. You and ONLY YOU own the data, provided it's original content, and you didn't steal, commingle, crib or cobble and simply repackage the work of others' legitimate copyrighted/patented work. If your "work" is novel, imaginative, timely and useful, you'll probably get payback on it and deprecate it once the competition is up or the usefulness down. SaaS should NEVER, EVER "own" your data. NEVER. Shoot the CEO AND the investors if they push bullshit leveraging their position to "own" your data. This could apply to various "art" advertising and hosting websites, too. They NEED to be "crescent-wrenched" over the forehead for some of the crap they pull wherein the EULA says YOU own your data, but then the service agreement says they have fully-paid-up, royalty-free, in-perpetuity rights to recreate, modify, use, advertise or archive and process through third parties your work in any medium known or unknown throughout the universe...
In some cases, the customer (of the SaaS customer) owns the data. i.e. If my credit card company outsources its database management to a SaaS firm, I still own (some of) my data. But that's only for certain types of data.
Of course your intended point still stands: the SaaS provider never owns the data - unless the client is exceptionally stupid.
Do constantly delayed shipping dates qualify as "breathing room"? How about shipping late bug fixes as service packs - or as completely new retail versions? 98SE anyone?
That means that Chinese people have the right to complain "to any state organ or functionary", NOT to the Chinese public.
Read it again very carefully. It says that if you have a beef with a government body, you have the right to complain to the government, and they have the duty to deal with it as they see fit.
The kind of efficiencies that technology gives make it feel like you are getting less done. (Note that worker perception was the metric used - not an objective standard of actually accomplishing fixed tasks.)
If I exchange a couple quick e-mails with a coworker in another building, that feels like I did a lot less than if I had to play phone tag for two hours before getting ahold of her to talk. Same amount of work - less perceoved work.
If I transfer a couple sums of money online between my accounts, it feels like I did a lot less work than actually going to the bank and doing the transactions face to face (possibly with a wire transfer thrown in). Same amount of work - less perceoved work.
The separate issue glossed over in the article - about how management has changed - is IMHO the only significant question. Unfortunately, it got sidelined by the sensationalism of the headline
I didn't say we are there right now. There are definitely some ISPs that are worse than others. I didn't know there were still some that have one computer policies - that's so 90's.
Also, I should have said that traffic volume is all that a competitive (in the economic sense) ISP would care about. By lording the server clause over you, they are attempting to price discriminate - i.e. be non-competitive. It will take some legal wrangling to invalidate the server clauses, but I believe it will happen in the next 5-10 years. As your ISP so paleolithically illustrates, we're not there yet.
On a more general note, situations like this illustrate why I'm wary of judges like Alito who put too much faith in the power of contract law to protect the common good. The problem (especially with utility-type goods liek ISPs and telcos) is the asymmetric market in which the contract is enforced. But that's a bigger discussion...
The term "server" will very soon be completely antiquated. As the line blurs between a data request and actual data, (to Google, a data request is data) the legal distinction between uploading and downloading will disappear.
The legal line will get blurred very soon. (The content companies will make sure of this.) That will make any server clauses completely void. The only meaningful contract language left will be bandwidth limits and volume of data traffic per billing cycle. And if you think about it, that's all the ISPs really care about anyways.
when Homer worked as a greeter at Sprawl-Mart (Not a parody of Wal-Mart).
All the old employees had taken their compliance chips out years ago, but they stayed (apparently) docile. Then at night they would steal everything that wasn't nailed down.
Clearly you were modded down by a know nothing moron who doesn't have a clue about investments. It was painful to read your simple, honest, corect point - only to look up and see that somebody had the bad sense to mod you down.
For the record, the parent is right. Anyone who makes investment decisions based on the dollar price of stocks should be asking for a refund on their lobotomy, as there was obviously too much removed.
Some people actually believe that pure market solutions aren't always optimal. Shocking, isn't it? These loopy liberal loons go on to claim that subsidizing (and sometimes even taking over production of) things that get overpriced by the market (like public goods, education, etc.) can actually stimulate economic growth! Sounds CRAZY, doesn't it?
It's so good to see that there are people like you out there who know better...
The current generation of teens/(very) young adults is taking a step backwards as far as the amount of functional knowledge. Generation X will be looked upon by history as the high point of digital innovation. Gen X will be to network-driven innovation what the Apple II/C64 generation was to computer hardware development: the initial blossoming of innovation before the chilling onset of a corporate homogenization of methods and implementations (an ice age, if you will).
So many people honestly believe that they aren't complete morons for paying a dollar (or more) for a fucking ringtone! (And a ringtone that has terrible sound quality at that.) The current young generation's attitude towards learning is far more apathetic than gen X's. The prevailing attitude is, "Why should I learn about something when I can just google it on demand?"
What I think is really going to define the social dynamics of the Gen Y job market and society is a new kind of digital divide. Not the 'digital divide' that refers to some people not having access to technology. The real digital divide will be between those people who have made technology their masters (by refusing to actually learn anything - relegating knowledge to the machines - and elites), and those who instill in their children the importance of being the masters of technology. That will be the real digital divide.
This is the very same education ethic you refered to when you said Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college? The difference will be that getting the access to the physical hardware isn't the barrier to success. It's going to be the inquisitive epiphany that "I should pull that compliance chip off my motherboard and figure out what's happening inside that $30 computer? After all, if the hardware's so cheap, what is it about computers that makes them the key to making a lot of money in the (idustrialized) world?"
And that epiphany is going to become something that is less and less spontaneous as companies like MS, Apple, Google, etc. start pumping more and more of their advertising budgets into building a "just use it - don't worry about how it works" culture.
Not so fast with the linguistic sleight of hand. If a judge has ruled that a party is infringing, then they ARE infringing. Infringing is a legal technical term which means precisely that a judge has ruled that something is infringing.
You should distinguish more clearly the difference between legally infringing and morally infringing (there's probably a better way to say it, but I think you know what I'm trying to get at.) If a judge has ruled that you are infringing, then you are infringing - in the legal sense. There is no debating that you are in the class of infringing parties. Period. If you appeal, and get that ruling overturned, then you are no longer infringing (and depending on the nature of the case and the reasons for overturning the verdict, it might be found that you never were to begin with).
Just like if you are convicted of a crime, you are legally guilty - whether you did it or not. That is independent of whether you are morally (or actually) guilty. It's the same word for two very different meanings.
Oh - and yes, the court is the "end-all-be-all determiner of all things" - at least legally. You're right that they can't order everyone to see things the way they do. However, when it comes to making statements about settled cases, there is a lot that a court can do. It's not that hard for a person whom the court has ruled in favor of to get an injunction preventing the other party from making certain statements about the case (at least from making certain statements when acting in their professional capacity - i.e. corporate press releases).
Finally, in the interest of good writing, "allegedly infringing" is not fine. "Allegedly infringing" is a precisely defined legal term. In this case, it was chosen for that very reason - to convey the impression that the claims being made are allegations (and only allegations). This is simply not the case. If you want to use legal jargon, then the best term to use is the most applicable one:"infringing". If you don't want to discuss the legal status, but rather that the ruling might be wrong, then a much better choice would be something like "wrongly found to be infringing".
Thanks for the clarification. I really don't know much about who is how big in the search advertising industry, but it was definitely my impression that google is at least a market leader. I hoped I made it clear I was being very tentative about the word monopoly, and your info confirms what I suspected.
As a market leader, they are still free to extract a lot of the consumer surplus - if not as much as a true monopoly - that they couldn't have in a competitive market.
Like you, I've been amazed that there hasn't been a significant rival - expecially given that advertising (even targeted advertising) on any other medium is such a mature industry.
True. I really had contemplated putting a disclaimer about such cases (like markets where parts of an invoice follow a standard 'cost plus' model). I neglected it for fear of sounding too tentative about my point.
It is definitely an important distinction, though. Also, I was in "economics terminology" mode - meaning I was including opportunity costs on the cost side of the profit calculation when I said "no profit". But I guess that's just be another way of saying what you said.
The author of TFA is more than a little ignorant of simple economics.
In the long run, every time companies increase the value of their online businesses, they end up handing over all that added value to the search engines. Any gain is temporary; once competing sites improve their profit-per-visitor enough to increase their search bids, they'll drive up everybody's cost of traffic.
This is a simple fact of economics: There is no profit in a competitive market. (That is the economics definition of competitive - not the pedestrian definition.) The point is that you have to differentiate yourself from the competition in order to (successfully) charge a premium for your product - either through website improvement, or having a different product that you're selling.
The fact that the proliferation of auction models has made many markets more competitive is a fabulous thing. If you draw the conclusion that the author should have drawn, it becomes ainfully clear: search engines make it harder to be a retail "squatter" and make money. (That is, to run a site that doesn't have any innovation in either site design or product.)
There is one valid economic objection that the author could have made (but didn't). That is that the web advertising market is asymmetric. Google has a near monopoly (AFAIK), which allows it to extract (close to) the full consumer surplus for the ads it sells (the site makes $4 per visitor. Given these assumptions, the site can pay up to $3.99 for each click on its search engine ads...) This wouldn't be the case if there were substantial competition for Google (and I might honestly be wrong about the lack of competition - I just haven't heard of any).
My point is that there might have been a substantial argument to be made about the search market, but if there was, the author failed to make it.
Slashdot Mirror
* I have no idea what their pricing agreement with Intel is, so this may or may not be the case.
No offense intended. Utopian techno geek circles are fine places to bat ideas around for fun - just not great places to forge inspiring rhetoric.
In the past year or so, Intellectual Ventures has emerged as one of the more controversial companies in the tech industry. The company is filing patents, but also buying patents from defunct companies, independent inventors and others.
One telling excerpt reveals the truth:
The company is filing about 300 patent applications a year, but so far has only been granted one patent. Typically, the company will not seek royalties until the patent is granted. Lawsuits have also not been filed. Some deals may be announced in a few months.
So they haven't started shooting the lawsuit shotgun because they don't have enough ammo yet. And yes, I did read the part about how they work with some big names actively developing their ideas. But these are people who would be inventing anyways. This company is just a convenient way of outsourcing the legalese.
In some cases, the customer (of the SaaS customer) owns the data. i.e. If my credit card company outsources its database management to a SaaS firm, I still own (some of) my data. But that's only for certain types of data.
Of course your intended point still stands: the SaaS provider never owns the data - unless the client is exceptionally stupid.
Do constantly delayed shipping dates qualify as "breathing room"? How about shipping late bug fixes as service packs - or as completely new retail versions? 98SE anyone?
Don't forget that they are hard on consumeers too!
Read it again very carefully. It says that if you have a beef with a government body, you have the right to complain to the government, and they have the duty to deal with it as they see fit.
I know it's a lot to ask, but...
If I exchange a couple quick e-mails with a coworker in another building, that feels like I did a lot less than if I had to play phone tag for two hours before getting ahold of her to talk. Same amount of work - less perceoved work.
If I transfer a couple sums of money online between my accounts, it feels like I did a lot less work than actually going to the bank and doing the transactions face to face (possibly with a wire transfer thrown in). Same amount of work - less perceoved work.
The separate issue glossed over in the article - about how management has changed - is IMHO the only significant question. Unfortunately, it got sidelined by the sensationalism of the headline
Also, I should have said that traffic volume is all that a competitive (in the economic sense) ISP would care about. By lording the server clause over you, they are attempting to price discriminate - i.e. be non-competitive. It will take some legal wrangling to invalidate the server clauses, but I believe it will happen in the next 5-10 years. As your ISP so paleolithically illustrates, we're not there yet.
On a more general note, situations like this illustrate why I'm wary of judges like Alito who put too much faith in the power of contract law to protect the common good. The problem (especially with utility-type goods liek ISPs and telcos) is the asymmetric market in which the contract is enforced. But that's a bigger discussion...
The legal line will get blurred very soon. (The content companies will make sure of this.) That will make any server clauses completely void. The only meaningful contract language left will be bandwidth limits and volume of data traffic per billing cycle. And if you think about it, that's all the ISPs really care about anyways.
All the old employees had taken their compliance chips out years ago, but they stayed (apparently) docile. Then at night they would steal everything that wasn't nailed down.
I was wondering about that... Dammit, I'm a fool. I saw the lack of moderation, and the brainfart just continued. 0wn3d!
For the record, the parent is right. Anyone who makes investment decisions based on the dollar price of stocks should be asking for a refund on their lobotomy, as there was obviously too much removed.
Some people actually believe that pure market solutions aren't always optimal. Shocking, isn't it? These loopy liberal loons go on to claim that subsidizing (and sometimes even taking over production of) things that get overpriced by the market (like public goods, education, etc.) can actually stimulate economic growth! Sounds CRAZY, doesn't it?
It's so good to see that there are people like you out there who know better...
The current generation of teens/(very) young adults is taking a step backwards as far as the amount of functional knowledge. Generation X will be looked upon by history as the high point of digital innovation. Gen X will be to network-driven innovation what the Apple II/C64 generation was to computer hardware development: the initial blossoming of innovation before the chilling onset of a corporate homogenization of methods and implementations (an ice age, if you will).
So many people honestly believe that they aren't complete morons for paying a dollar (or more) for a fucking ringtone! (And a ringtone that has terrible sound quality at that.) The current young generation's attitude towards learning is far more apathetic than gen X's. The prevailing attitude is, "Why should I learn about something when I can just google it on demand?"
What I think is really going to define the social dynamics of the Gen Y job market and society is a new kind of digital divide. Not the 'digital divide' that refers to some people not having access to technology. The real digital divide will be between those people who have made technology their masters (by refusing to actually learn anything - relegating knowledge to the machines - and elites), and those who instill in their children the importance of being the masters of technology. That will be the real digital divide.
This is the very same education ethic you refered to when you said Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college? The difference will be that getting the access to the physical hardware isn't the barrier to success. It's going to be the inquisitive epiphany that "I should pull that compliance chip off my motherboard and figure out what's happening inside that $30 computer? After all, if the hardware's so cheap, what is it about computers that makes them the key to making a lot of money in the (idustrialized) world?"
And that epiphany is going to become something that is less and less spontaneous as companies like MS, Apple, Google, etc. start pumping more and more of their advertising budgets into building a "just use it - don't worry about how it works" culture.
If I had points...
That is the way it is right now. Code is NOT patentable. Actual source code is only protected by copyright.
You should distinguish more clearly the difference between legally infringing and morally infringing (there's probably a better way to say it, but I think you know what I'm trying to get at.) If a judge has ruled that you are infringing, then you are infringing - in the legal sense. There is no debating that you are in the class of infringing parties. Period. If you appeal, and get that ruling overturned, then you are no longer infringing (and depending on the nature of the case and the reasons for overturning the verdict, it might be found that you never were to begin with).
Just like if you are convicted of a crime, you are legally guilty - whether you did it or not. That is independent of whether you are morally (or actually) guilty. It's the same word for two very different meanings.
Oh - and yes, the court is the "end-all-be-all determiner of all things" - at least legally. You're right that they can't order everyone to see things the way they do. However, when it comes to making statements about settled cases, there is a lot that a court can do. It's not that hard for a person whom the court has ruled in favor of to get an injunction preventing the other party from making certain statements about the case (at least from making certain statements when acting in their professional capacity - i.e. corporate press releases).
Finally, in the interest of good writing, "allegedly infringing" is not fine. "Allegedly infringing" is a precisely defined legal term. In this case, it was chosen for that very reason - to convey the impression that the claims being made are allegations (and only allegations). This is simply not the case. If you want to use legal jargon, then the best term to use is the most applicable one:"infringing". If you don't want to discuss the legal status, but rather that the ruling might be wrong, then a much better choice would be something like "wrongly found to be infringing".
As a market leader, they are still free to extract a lot of the consumer surplus - if not as much as a true monopoly - that they couldn't have in a competitive market.
Like you, I've been amazed that there hasn't been a significant rival - expecially given that advertising (even targeted advertising) on any other medium is such a mature industry.
It is definitely an important distinction, though. Also, I was in "economics terminology" mode - meaning I was including opportunity costs on the cost side of the profit calculation when I said "no profit". But I guess that's just be another way of saying what you said.
In the long run, every time companies increase the value of their online businesses, they end up handing over all that added value to the search engines. Any gain is temporary; once competing sites improve their profit-per-visitor enough to increase their search bids, they'll drive up everybody's cost of traffic.
This is a simple fact of economics: There is no profit in a competitive market. (That is the economics definition of competitive - not the pedestrian definition.) The point is that you have to differentiate yourself from the competition in order to (successfully) charge a premium for your product - either through website improvement, or having a different product that you're selling.
The fact that the proliferation of auction models has made many markets more competitive is a fabulous thing. If you draw the conclusion that the author should have drawn, it becomes ainfully clear: search engines make it harder to be a retail "squatter" and make money. (That is, to run a site that doesn't have any innovation in either site design or product.)
There is one valid economic objection that the author could have made (but didn't). That is that the web advertising market is asymmetric. Google has a near monopoly (AFAIK), which allows it to extract (close to) the full consumer surplus for the ads it sells (the site makes $4 per visitor. Given these assumptions, the site can pay up to $3.99 for each click on its search engine ads...) This wouldn't be the case if there were substantial competition for Google (and I might honestly be wrong about the lack of competition - I just haven't heard of any).
My point is that there might have been a substantial argument to be made about the search market, but if there was, the author failed to make it.
I for one welcome our new cancer spreading special bone marrow cell overlords.
"A happy worker is a productive worker"
This is different because the car dealerships give full disclosure. Get a clue.