I read it regularly. Based on your response, though, It's clear that you suffer from reading comprehension issues, so I'm not surprised you'd read stories about a handful of bad actors and assume that those bad actors are representative of the hundreds of thousands of other corporations not being dragged into court.
I said "society's fruits", specifically to avoid the weaselly term
So you use one weaselly term to avoid another weaselly term. How weaselly.
Let's assume then, that all income regardless of source is treated as taxable. Consider: 1) Capital gains taxes are only paid on income from investments, not total assets invested; 2) "regular folks" also pay capital gains taxes - more and more so since the ascendancy of Defined Contribution (401k, 403b) plans versus Defined Benefit (pension/annuity) plans; You going to start nailing somebody's 401k with a high tax rate, too? And if so, are you prepared to support a generation of paupers because they simply will not have the money to survive in retirement because the 10-25% more of their 401k income than they planned for is being devoured by taxes? 3) Declaring that people must pay tax based on "their wealth" suggests that you're going to start forcing rich people to sell a portion of their wealth off each year so they pay a certain amount of capital gains taxes - this means that, every year, the companies in which those investments are held will lose billions of dollars in investment capital as rich people sell off their stocks to pay their mandatory taxes-as-percentage-of wealth; 4) Loopholes will still abound, and armies of lawyers and accountants will STILL find a way to minimize the tax rates of the rich; Because paying a lawyer $150k / year to save you 20 million a year is still a good value; 5) If you only wish to tax income, then you can bet the very rich will find ways to minimize their taxable income by selling off their lagging stocks every year, as well, to make their taxable investment income much lower on paper than it actually is;
It's not as clear-cut as you seem to want it to be.
They're extracting value that would otherwise be lost to inefficiency and "friction" in the market. I'm not certain I'd declare them parasitic and unfit to exist - they serve a purpose, and there most definitely needs to be some oversight, but HFTs & algorithmic trading are not inherently evil (nor inherently good).
Finally, let's not forget that income taxes are not the only form of taxation. It is well known that the poor pay a higher proportion of their income in sales taxes than the wealthy do.
Indeed, and that's the main reason I wouldn't ever support a sales/consumption tax scheme - you either create a million loopholes for low-income people to avoid being overly taxed, or you penalize low-income households disproportionately. The former invites all kinds of games and idiocy to figure out ways for the rich to "appear low-income" on their tax returns, and the latter is monstrously unfair.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do find it abhorrent that people like Warren Buffet pay a lower proportion of their income in taxes than anyone else in their offices. Don't you?
Well, there's the rub. Most of Warren Buffett's income is from investments, which are taxed at capital gains rates instead of income tax. Now, we COULD jack up the rates on investment income, but then you start squeezing the retirement savings of pretty much all of middle-class america who has a 401k or 403b - those are (will be) taxed as investment income when you start drawing down your retirement. Knowing that you'd be taxed at a higher-than-when-you-worked tax rate in retirement is... well, sort of a bummer. And would really destroy a lot of retirement plans. I'm not sure I find it "abhorrent," that he pays a lower percentage - the tax system is set up to encourage the rich to reinvest in businesses because that has proven time and again to be the key to economic growth. Doing something to discourage that investment is going to have a lot of unintended (and mostly negative) side effects.
You could also tie investment tax rate to AGI or some similar measure, but again, that's just going to prompt rich people to game the system to appear poorer on paper than they actually are.
What I find most obnoxious, honestly, is Warren Buffett thumbing his nose at the government, saying "you didn't take enough from me last year." If Mr. Buffett feels that he's underpaying on his tax return, he's perfectly capable of writing a very large check above and beyond his minimum due, but instead, he seems to prefer pointing out that he's paying very little, advocating tax increases, and then saying, "but I'm not paying another red cent until I'm required to by law." I'd have much more respect for his argument if he accompanied his op-eds with a rather large check to the IRS.
Top 1% earned 17% of the taxable income, and payed 37% of federal tax receipts. (From the Kiplinger's article linked above).
So are we to assume that you'd support reducing their taxes to 17% of federal tax receipts, and issuing them an apology for making them pay far more taxes than they should have been for so long? And what will you say to the lower ends of the tax scale who are paying FAR less in taxes - do you support increasing their taxes, too? Or are you advocating cutting taxes on the top end, and then drastically cutting government spending as a result? Or running even larger deficits?
I'm not sure you've thought through your position, friend.
First, incorporation isn't "selling shares to shareholders."
Second, why is doing profitable work inherently an evil pursuit? Do you work for your employer at a loss? Do you pay other people to let you work for them?
Most people understand that when publicly held corporations say they seek to maximize shareholder value, the unwritten subtext is "within the boundaries of reasonable business ethics and the law." Incorporating, and accepting outside investment - neither of these is evil. Breaking the law and behaving unethically are, and it's actually pretty clear that the vast majority of corporations - both publicly and privately held - act in a law-abiding fashion. Unless you'd care to present some data showing us that more than 50% of corporations are breaking the law willfully, knowingly, and in significant fashion (I don't mean, "The C-level officers speed to work occasionally! THE CORPORATION IS EVIL!"), asserting that "hurr durr, incorporation, or accepting outside investment means you're teh evilzorz," is just obnoxious bullshit.
I'll grant that point - my source attributed the 200-250k figure to 2003 census data, the numbers appear to have changed.
Point still remains: even 343k per year is not exactly "fuck you" money, where you light your illegal cuban cigars with $100 bills while hookers serve you cocaine from solid gold spoons. The majority of that 1% is still largely educated professionals - engineers, doctors, lawyers, and the like, and small business owners. Not fat cat ceo's drinking the blood of underage sweatshop workers imported fresh daily from China while they dine on Bald Eagle buffalo wings and Endangered Species shish kebabs.
And as somebody else noted, from your own source - that "parasitic" 1% is paying 37% of all federal tax receipts. Exactly how much more should that top 1% be paying, out of curiosity? Or let me ask it this way: assuming no political consequences for any changes you make, everybody accepts it and says "thanks for fixing the tax system" - what does your ideal "blue sky" tax system look like? Honest question, no hidden agenda or trap waiting to be sprung - I'm genuinely interested in hearing how you would fix the tax system, because I think it's very easy to say "those people who are not me need to pay more," but actually quite difficult to come up with an equitable system that doesn't require massive spending cuts or vastly higher tax rates on anybody middle-class-and-above.
Occupy had no idea what they were talking about, though. The rhetoric they aimed at "The 1%" was more realistically aimed at the "0.05% who have billions of dollars and live off their investment income." Most of "The 1%" is not living very differently from the protesters. MOST of "The 1%" is working a full time professional job, just like the protesters.
"The 1%" includes most *households* in the US with an income somewhere between $200-250k, which is easily achieved these days by a 2-professional household with a few years of industry experience in their respective fields. If you're a professional with 5+ years of experience, and your SO is as well, there's a good chance you're part of "The 1%." Even if you're not quite in the 200k range, if you have a "professional" job, you're almost certainly in the top 5%. Those people are certainly comfortable, but please, go find a professional couple and get them to tell you how much money they're wasting fueling their campfires with stacks of $100 bills.
The "1% vs 99%" rhetoric was primarily a way for unemployed, unemployable people with master's degrees in ancient roman handweaving techniques to bitch about how they weren't "getting their fair share," defined as "anybody who has more than I do owes me some of their money." If they really cared about solving the problem of corporate buyouts of government bodies, they wouldn't propose that centralizing more power and authority in the hands of the federal government (the very reason those gov't agencies have become takeover targets) was the solution.
In what way is Apple's contract with Samsung for screens "monopolistic"? Samsung can set prices with other customers however they see fit, and they are also free to spin up new plants to produce more screens for other customers - there is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing that, and suggesting that it's some sort of "monopolistic" behavior that's stopping them is just plain foolish.
No, the last two paragraphs of the article clearly explain why Judges Silverman and Tallman disagree with the majority ruling.
It's funny that you seem to have overlooked the third-to-last paragraph, where the Judge Kozinski offered this: "Basing criminal liability on violations of private computer use polices can transform whole categories of otherwise innocuous behavior into federal crimes simply because a computer is involved," he said. "Employees who call family members from their work phones will become criminals if they send an email instead."
What the minority opinion is saying - and you seem to be agreeing with - is that corporate Acceptable Use Policies should be given the weight of Federal criminal statute. If the corporate AUP says "You may not use work email for personal use," the scenario above would create a whole new class of *criminals* - not just an HR issue. There are already laws against misuse / misappropriation of confidential data.
So what's better: EMS knows, driving up to the scene, "side impact with rollover and airbag deployment, 2 occupants, one with seatbelt, one without, at 60mph, windshield compromised, with peak deceleration of X..." or "um... some people got in an accident?"
The more information EMS has driving up, the better prepared they will be to render aid.
And you see no way for police (or a service like OnStar!) to read out this data before EMS arrives, and provide it to the EMS service to let them know what they can expect to see when they arrive on scene?
Item (D) doesn't say "Only EMS can read this out," it says, "you can't read this out unless you're doing so to assist EMS in responding to a crash."
These can all be placed on the quick-access toolbar, or you can customize the ribbon so that "Mr. Z's Favorite Commands" shows up in the ribbon as a tab, which you can easily customize to add whatever items you wish to.
It requires some time and attention to get these things set up, but I don't see anything you're saying "I wish I could..." that's impossible with the ribbon interface, or even all that difficult with the ribbon interface. Anecdotally, I find the Ribbon much easier to customize than the old menu system was.
Care to explain what error was present in the original that you reproduced in quoting in this phrase? Because I don't see it:
your car's black box will mostly be used to protect the people who crashed into you.
I fail to see what's incorrect about "car's" in this sentence - it is the possessive form, meaning "the black box belonging to your car," which appears to be exactly what was intended, and entirely grammatically correct.
Yes, things like affected areas of the vehicle (front end collision? side collision? rollover? any ejections?) airbag deployments, whether seatbelts were fastened or not, what area(s) of the car were impacted more than others, how many people were in the vehicle - none of this is useful information for an EMS dispatch.
We should just have a big g-force sensor in the car, because by gum, that's the only information anybody could ever possibly need.
They have created mobile OSes quite well, as demonstrated by N9's success despite conspicuously absent marketing.
N9's success? Nokia lost money last year, even with the N9's "success." Their profits have been in free fall since the release of iOS and Android. And despite the fact that they had 5 years, they failed to reverse (or even appreciably slow) that decline.
You would have people believe that but all your arguments for this have been blatant lies or logical fallacies.
Funny, I've provided data directly from Nokia supporting the fact that they've been in a marked decline since 2007. (What happened in 2007 again? Refresh my memory?)
You're the one who's making up fairy tales about the "success" of the N9. Pro tip: losing money isn't a recipe for success. Nokia is taking a "bet the company" risk, and it's pretty much the only one that will halt their slide into irrelevancy in the phone market. If it pays off, they'll have pulled off a huge turnaround in a highly competitive market. If it doesn't pay off, they'll have lost absolutely nothing they weren't already poised to lose.
They had Maemo/MeeGo and those phones sold quite well without any marketing behind them - 3:1 compared to the heavily marketed Lumias in the same markets.
For some value of "sold quite well," I'm sure. Maemo/MeeGo were dysfunctional as platforms, and Nokia showed no indication that they had any ability to deliver a coherent platform. Their revenues were declining, their profits were cratering, and they had no plan for moving forward.
They COULD have bet heavily on Android, and in all likelihood, would have continued to decline. Instead, they decided to place a bigger bet on WP7 in the hopes that would differentiate their products - Microsoft needed a showpiece, and Nokia needed a lifeline. So they partnered up, and are making a go of a third platform. It doesn't mean they'll be successful, but Nokia was in decline years before Microsoft arrived. Their decline is not "because" of WP7, their decline is due to their inability to compete and offer a successful platform - they dicked around with Maemo & MeeGo while iOS and Android ate their markets, and then were left with the choice of jumping into Android (and being a small player with declining revenues and profits), or going with WP7, and hopefully being the first mover (and thus more profitable share) of what they hope will eventually be a winning platform.
My honest opinion is that Nokia is doomed in the phone market, and these are just part of the slow slide to oblivion - Android or WP7, I think they've declined too far to rally. But trying to pin their failure on Windows misses the significant pre-WP7 history where they were failing.
Yes, it's clear that Motorola, Samsung and HTC have bet big on WP7, each producing a few models that they've spent about $20 on marketing for. Nokia have demonstrated a huge lack of ability to deliver software for their phones already (see: their flailing inability to deliver a coherent strategy built around Maemo/Meego/Symbian, while Android and iOS ate their lunch). Microsoft has stepped in and said, "we can do that." So Nokia can focus on the thing they do well: designing the hardware.
They are betting big on WP7, hoping that it becomes "the next thing" - the corollary to that is that they expect Android to end up less successful than WP7.
What all of these "hurr they could have just used Android" points gloss over is the simple fact that Nokia was in a death spiral years before they signed this agreement with Microsoft. Jumping on the Android bandwagon would not have changed that trajectory, because Android (along with iOS) was a major *cause* of it. Nokia would have floundered at creating a working platform out of Android just as they floundered with Symbian, Maemo, and Meego.
Make no mistake: Nokia was already dying. Android would not have changed that.
No, what they have is something new and unproven, which they are hoping will turn out to be a ferocious right hook, but which right now is a pretty weak jab.
Instead of doing the same thing Samsung, HTC, Motorola and the rest have done - with not a lot of profits to show for it, they are making a bet that WP7 will be a better long-term platform for them. If that turns out to be the case, then they'll win big by being the first one to embrace WP7 in a major way. If WP7 turns out to be a complete dud, then Nokia will probably end up getting snapped up by some other manufacturer and cannibalized.
Doing the same thing everybody else in the market is doing is a good way to ensure yourself a 5th place also-ran irrelevance. Doing something different, you could still end up an irrelevant also-ran, but the upside potential is much greater. Nokia was already well on their way to irrelevance in the phone market before they signed on with WP7 - if this bet doesn't pay off, they lose nothing they weren't already poised to lose, and the people cursing Microsoft will get a little satisfaction out of seeing them fail. If it does pay off, then all the people complaining abut how Nokia's being mismanaged into oblivion will have to come up with a new reason to hate Microsoft.
Explain to me how this is not possible - today - with Android (because it is).
Not that it's not possible, but simple inertia will explain why it's going to be a lot harder for Apple or Android to do it (on a large scale) first - neither Apple nor Linux have a massive (70-80%) desktop OS market share.
Doesn't mean they can't make it happen, but a successful Windows hybrid (i.e., a dockable "brain" for a laptop + mobile phone when undocked) would certainly fit in well with the vast numbers of people already running Windows.
You're right that Thunderbolt will make it easier, and the price on those thunderbolt devices & connections will only come down... but not having to move all your data off a windows device can't be discounted as a competitive advantage.
Except that nokia was very far away from the "brink"
Yes, in much the same way that a 2-engine plane in a nose-dive from 30,000 feet with 1 of its engines on fire and failing hydraulics is very far away from "crashing."
Look at their financials over the past 5-6 years. 2011 wasn't an anomaly, it was a continuation of a trend - flat or declining revenues, weakening profit margins on those revenues, and simply put, no viable strategy for moving forward.
When you lose a billion euro on net sales of 38.7 billion, and are warning of continuing problems, that 10 billion in cash sitting in your accounts isn't going to last long, and your ability to secure additional funding through stock and bond issues is pretty much non-existent if you can't present a pretty impressive turnaround plan.
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I read it regularly. Based on your response, though, It's clear that you suffer from reading comprehension issues, so I'm not surprised you'd read stories about a handful of bad actors and assume that those bad actors are representative of the hundreds of thousands of other corporations not being dragged into court.
"vast majority" =/= "there are no bad actors".
"vast majority" == "most, but not all"
Do try to keep up.
So you use one weaselly term to avoid another weaselly term. How weaselly.
Let's assume then, that all income regardless of source is treated as taxable. Consider:
1) Capital gains taxes are only paid on income from investments, not total assets invested;
2) "regular folks" also pay capital gains taxes - more and more so since the ascendancy of Defined Contribution (401k, 403b) plans versus Defined Benefit (pension/annuity) plans; You going to start nailing somebody's 401k with a high tax rate, too? And if so, are you prepared to support a generation of paupers because they simply will not have the money to survive in retirement because the 10-25% more of their 401k income than they planned for is being devoured by taxes?
3) Declaring that people must pay tax based on "their wealth" suggests that you're going to start forcing rich people to sell a portion of their wealth off each year so they pay a certain amount of capital gains taxes - this means that, every year, the companies in which those investments are held will lose billions of dollars in investment capital as rich people sell off their stocks to pay their mandatory taxes-as-percentage-of wealth;
4) Loopholes will still abound, and armies of lawyers and accountants will STILL find a way to minimize the tax rates of the rich; Because paying a lawyer $150k / year to save you 20 million a year is still a good value;
5) If you only wish to tax income, then you can bet the very rich will find ways to minimize their taxable income by selling off their lagging stocks every year, as well, to make their taxable investment income much lower on paper than it actually is;
It's not as clear-cut as you seem to want it to be.
...yes. That's what I just said.
Thanks for coming along to explain the joke, though.
They're extracting value that would otherwise be lost to inefficiency and "friction" in the market. I'm not certain I'd declare them parasitic and unfit to exist - they serve a purpose, and there most definitely needs to be some oversight, but HFTs & algorithmic trading are not inherently evil (nor inherently good).
Indeed, and that's the main reason I wouldn't ever support a sales/consumption tax scheme - you either create a million loopholes for low-income people to avoid being overly taxed, or you penalize low-income households disproportionately. The former invites all kinds of games and idiocy to figure out ways for the rich to "appear low-income" on their tax returns, and the latter is monstrously unfair.
Well, there's the rub. Most of Warren Buffett's income is from investments, which are taxed at capital gains rates instead of income tax. Now, we COULD jack up the rates on investment income, but then you start squeezing the retirement savings of pretty much all of middle-class america who has a 401k or 403b - those are (will be) taxed as investment income when you start drawing down your retirement. Knowing that you'd be taxed at a higher-than-when-you-worked tax rate in retirement is... well, sort of a bummer. And would really destroy a lot of retirement plans. I'm not sure I find it "abhorrent," that he pays a lower percentage - the tax system is set up to encourage the rich to reinvest in businesses because that has proven time and again to be the key to economic growth. Doing something to discourage that investment is going to have a lot of unintended (and mostly negative) side effects.
You could also tie investment tax rate to AGI or some similar measure, but again, that's just going to prompt rich people to game the system to appear poorer on paper than they actually are.
What I find most obnoxious, honestly, is Warren Buffett thumbing his nose at the government, saying "you didn't take enough from me last year." If Mr. Buffett feels that he's underpaying on his tax return, he's perfectly capable of writing a very large check above and beyond his minimum due, but instead, he seems to prefer pointing out that he's paying very little, advocating tax increases, and then saying, "but I'm not paying another red cent until I'm required to by law." I'd have much more respect for his argument if he accompanied his op-eds with a rather large check to the IRS.
Top 1% earned 17% of the taxable income, and payed 37% of federal tax receipts. (From the Kiplinger's article linked above).
So are we to assume that you'd support reducing their taxes to 17% of federal tax receipts, and issuing them an apology for making them pay far more taxes than they should have been for so long? And what will you say to the lower ends of the tax scale who are paying FAR less in taxes - do you support increasing their taxes, too? Or are you advocating cutting taxes on the top end, and then drastically cutting government spending as a result? Or running even larger deficits?
I'm not sure you've thought through your position, friend.
First, incorporation isn't "selling shares to shareholders."
Second, why is doing profitable work inherently an evil pursuit? Do you work for your employer at a loss? Do you pay other people to let you work for them?
Most people understand that when publicly held corporations say they seek to maximize shareholder value, the unwritten subtext is "within the boundaries of reasonable business ethics and the law." Incorporating, and accepting outside investment - neither of these is evil. Breaking the law and behaving unethically are, and it's actually pretty clear that the vast majority of corporations - both publicly and privately held - act in a law-abiding fashion. Unless you'd care to present some data showing us that more than 50% of corporations are breaking the law willfully, knowingly, and in significant fashion (I don't mean, "The C-level officers speed to work occasionally! THE CORPORATION IS EVIL!"), asserting that "hurr durr, incorporation, or accepting outside investment means you're teh evilzorz," is just obnoxious bullshit.
I'll grant that point - my source attributed the 200-250k figure to 2003 census data, the numbers appear to have changed.
Point still remains: even 343k per year is not exactly "fuck you" money, where you light your illegal cuban cigars with $100 bills while hookers serve you cocaine from solid gold spoons. The majority of that 1% is still largely educated professionals - engineers, doctors, lawyers, and the like, and small business owners. Not fat cat ceo's drinking the blood of underage sweatshop workers imported fresh daily from China while they dine on Bald Eagle buffalo wings and Endangered Species shish kebabs.
And as somebody else noted, from your own source - that "parasitic" 1% is paying 37% of all federal tax receipts. Exactly how much more should that top 1% be paying, out of curiosity? Or let me ask it this way: assuming no political consequences for any changes you make, everybody accepts it and says "thanks for fixing the tax system" - what does your ideal "blue sky" tax system look like? Honest question, no hidden agenda or trap waiting to be sprung - I'm genuinely interested in hearing how you would fix the tax system, because I think it's very easy to say "those people who are not me need to pay more," but actually quite difficult to come up with an equitable system that doesn't require massive spending cuts or vastly higher tax rates on anybody middle-class-and-above.
Occupy had no idea what they were talking about, though. The rhetoric they aimed at "The 1%" was more realistically aimed at the "0.05% who have billions of dollars and live off their investment income." Most of "The 1%" is not living very differently from the protesters. MOST of "The 1%" is working a full time professional job, just like the protesters.
"The 1%" includes most *households* in the US with an income somewhere between $200-250k, which is easily achieved these days by a 2-professional household with a few years of industry experience in their respective fields. If you're a professional with 5+ years of experience, and your SO is as well, there's a good chance you're part of "The 1%." Even if you're not quite in the 200k range, if you have a "professional" job, you're almost certainly in the top 5%. Those people are certainly comfortable, but please, go find a professional couple and get them to tell you how much money they're wasting fueling their campfires with stacks of $100 bills.
The "1% vs 99%" rhetoric was primarily a way for unemployed, unemployable people with master's degrees in ancient roman handweaving techniques to bitch about how they weren't "getting their fair share," defined as "anybody who has more than I do owes me some of their money." If they really cared about solving the problem of corporate buyouts of government bodies, they wouldn't propose that centralizing more power and authority in the hands of the federal government (the very reason those gov't agencies have become takeover targets) was the solution.
In what way is Apple's contract with Samsung for screens "monopolistic"? Samsung can set prices with other customers however they see fit, and they are also free to spin up new plants to produce more screens for other customers - there is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing that, and suggesting that it's some sort of "monopolistic" behavior that's stopping them is just plain foolish.
I have to disagree with this. I have an iPad, and I can assure you, it really, truly is MAGICAL.
Here's what casting a lightning bolt was like before my iPad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ04mfAY2BU
Here's what it's like AFTER the iPad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxYGT51JTfE
Apple is always explicitly literal in their advertising copy, and any suggestion that they aren't is just crazy talk.
No, the last two paragraphs of the article clearly explain why Judges Silverman and Tallman disagree with the majority ruling.
It's funny that you seem to have overlooked the third-to-last paragraph, where the Judge Kozinski offered this: "Basing criminal liability on violations of private computer use polices can transform whole categories of otherwise innocuous behavior into federal crimes simply because a computer is involved," he said. "Employees who call family members from their work phones will become criminals if they send an email instead."
What the minority opinion is saying - and you seem to be agreeing with - is that corporate Acceptable Use Policies should be given the weight of Federal criminal statute. If the corporate AUP says "You may not use work email for personal use," the scenario above would create a whole new class of *criminals* - not just an HR issue. There are already laws against misuse / misappropriation of confidential data.
So what's better: EMS knows, driving up to the scene, "side impact with rollover and airbag deployment, 2 occupants, one with seatbelt, one without, at 60mph, windshield compromised, with peak deceleration of X..." or "um... some people got in an accident?"
The more information EMS has driving up, the better prepared they will be to render aid.
And you see no way for police (or a service like OnStar!) to read out this data before EMS arrives, and provide it to the EMS service to let them know what they can expect to see when they arrive on scene?
Item (D) doesn't say "Only EMS can read this out," it says, "you can't read this out unless you're doing so to assist EMS in responding to a crash."
These can all be placed on the quick-access toolbar, or you can customize the ribbon so that "Mr. Z's Favorite Commands" shows up in the ribbon as a tab, which you can easily customize to add whatever items you wish to.
It requires some time and attention to get these things set up, but I don't see anything you're saying "I wish I could..." that's impossible with the ribbon interface, or even all that difficult with the ribbon interface. Anecdotally, I find the Ribbon much easier to customize than the old menu system was.
World's largest billboard.
Care to explain what error was present in the original that you reproduced in quoting in this phrase? Because I don't see it:
I fail to see what's incorrect about "car's" in this sentence - it is the possessive form, meaning "the black box belonging to your car," which appears to be exactly what was intended, and entirely grammatically correct.
Yes, things like affected areas of the vehicle (front end collision? side collision? rollover? any ejections?) airbag deployments, whether seatbelts were fastened or not, what area(s) of the car were impacted more than others, how many people were in the vehicle - none of this is useful information for an EMS dispatch.
We should just have a big g-force sensor in the car, because by gum, that's the only information anybody could ever possibly need.
Shouldn't be a problem as long as you arrive with less than three ounces of fluids in the vehicle.
Good lord, you're tedious.
N9's success? Nokia lost money last year, even with the N9's "success." Their profits have been in free fall since the release of iOS and Android. And despite the fact that they had 5 years, they failed to reverse (or even appreciably slow) that decline.
Funny, I've provided data directly from Nokia supporting the fact that they've been in a marked decline since 2007. (What happened in 2007 again? Refresh my memory?)
You're the one who's making up fairy tales about the "success" of the N9. Pro tip: losing money isn't a recipe for success. Nokia is taking a "bet the company" risk, and it's pretty much the only one that will halt their slide into irrelevancy in the phone market. If it pays off, they'll have pulled off a huge turnaround in a highly competitive market. If it doesn't pay off, they'll have lost absolutely nothing they weren't already poised to lose.
For some value of "sold quite well," I'm sure. Maemo/MeeGo were dysfunctional as platforms, and Nokia showed no indication that they had any ability to deliver a coherent platform. Their revenues were declining, their profits were cratering, and they had no plan for moving forward.
They COULD have bet heavily on Android, and in all likelihood, would have continued to decline. Instead, they decided to place a bigger bet on WP7 in the hopes that would differentiate their products - Microsoft needed a showpiece, and Nokia needed a lifeline. So they partnered up, and are making a go of a third platform. It doesn't mean they'll be successful, but Nokia was in decline years before Microsoft arrived. Their decline is not "because" of WP7, their decline is due to their inability to compete and offer a successful platform - they dicked around with Maemo & MeeGo while iOS and Android ate their markets, and then were left with the choice of jumping into Android (and being a small player with declining revenues and profits), or going with WP7, and hopefully being the first mover (and thus more profitable share) of what they hope will eventually be a winning platform.
My honest opinion is that Nokia is doomed in the phone market, and these are just part of the slow slide to oblivion - Android or WP7, I think they've declined too far to rally. But trying to pin their failure on Windows misses the significant pre-WP7 history where they were failing.
Yes, it's clear that Motorola, Samsung and HTC have bet big on WP7, each producing a few models that they've spent about $20 on marketing for. Nokia have demonstrated a huge lack of ability to deliver software for their phones already (see: their flailing inability to deliver a coherent strategy built around Maemo/Meego/Symbian, while Android and iOS ate their lunch). Microsoft has stepped in and said, "we can do that." So Nokia can focus on the thing they do well: designing the hardware.
They are betting big on WP7, hoping that it becomes "the next thing" - the corollary to that is that they expect Android to end up less successful than WP7.
What all of these "hurr they could have just used Android" points gloss over is the simple fact that Nokia was in a death spiral years before they signed this agreement with Microsoft. Jumping on the Android bandwagon would not have changed that trajectory, because Android (along with iOS) was a major *cause* of it. Nokia would have floundered at creating a working platform out of Android just as they floundered with Symbian, Maemo, and Meego.
Make no mistake: Nokia was already dying. Android would not have changed that.
No, what they have is something new and unproven, which they are hoping will turn out to be a ferocious right hook, but which right now is a pretty weak jab.
Instead of doing the same thing Samsung, HTC, Motorola and the rest have done - with not a lot of profits to show for it, they are making a bet that WP7 will be a better long-term platform for them. If that turns out to be the case, then they'll win big by being the first one to embrace WP7 in a major way. If WP7 turns out to be a complete dud, then Nokia will probably end up getting snapped up by some other manufacturer and cannibalized.
Doing the same thing everybody else in the market is doing is a good way to ensure yourself a 5th place also-ran irrelevance. Doing something different, you could still end up an irrelevant also-ran, but the upside potential is much greater. Nokia was already well on their way to irrelevance in the phone market before they signed on with WP7 - if this bet doesn't pay off, they lose nothing they weren't already poised to lose, and the people cursing Microsoft will get a little satisfaction out of seeing them fail. If it does pay off, then all the people complaining abut how Nokia's being mismanaged into oblivion will have to come up with a new reason to hate Microsoft.
Ahahaha, you're an illiterate one!
I didn't say "diversity," I said "differentiated from the competition."
The difference between any one of those Android phones and the WP7 phones is much greater than the difference between any two of the Android phones.
differentiation is the word I used. Not diversity.
Not that it's not possible, but simple inertia will explain why it's going to be a lot harder for Apple or Android to do it (on a large scale) first - neither Apple nor Linux have a massive (70-80%) desktop OS market share.
Doesn't mean they can't make it happen, but a successful Windows hybrid (i.e., a dockable "brain" for a laptop + mobile phone when undocked) would certainly fit in well with the vast numbers of people already running Windows.
You're right that Thunderbolt will make it easier, and the price on those thunderbolt devices & connections will only come down... but not having to move all your data off a windows device can't be discounted as a competitive advantage.
Yes, in much the same way that a 2-engine plane in a nose-dive from 30,000 feet with 1 of its engines on fire and failing hydraulics is very far away from "crashing."
Look at their financials over the past 5-6 years. 2011 wasn't an anomaly, it was a continuation of a trend - flat or declining revenues, weakening profit margins on those revenues, and simply put, no viable strategy for moving forward.
When you lose a billion euro on net sales of 38.7 billion, and are warning of continuing problems, that 10 billion in cash sitting in your accounts isn't going to last long, and your ability to secure additional funding through stock and bond issues is pretty much non-existent if you can't present a pretty impressive turnaround plan.