People don't take for their own beliefs that other people hold but are ashamed of.
You realize that many of the beliefs you or I would consider "decent, right-thinking" beliefs today were, at one point, held by a small minority of people who did so secretively, and at great expense to their public image if they were found to hold them, right? Sexually active women were regularly branded sluts, whores, adulteresses; people who argued that gay people should enjoy the same rights as straight people were viewed as abominations in the sight of god; people who believed that black people deserved equal rights were viewed as crazy people who just didn't understand the white man's burden to educate and uplift the backwards and ignorant races of the world; people who doubted religion and the supremacy of the king, pope, czar, prophet... were excommunicated, and publicly shunned (or worse); The mainstream ideas of today were beliefs people were publicly shamed for holding to 200 years ago.
We were not "shamed" into accepting that other races are equal - we were convinced that we, as a society, were wrong. We were not "shamed" into accepting that gay people deserve equal treatment under the law - we were convinced that we, as a society, were wrong. And in many respects, that evolution of ideas continues today, and there will likely never be a perfect endpoint where "everybody believes in equality, and there's no such thing as racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. etc."
People change their minds when they are convinced they're wrong. Not when they're shamed into issuing a grudging apology and sent home to brood over how they've been wronged. In fact, public shaming has never proven an effective deterrent against adopting new ideas, even those that are iconoclastic in the current mainstream mindset. Calm and rational discussion is the way to combat ignorance. Mockery and shame simply provide the proponents of ignorance a convenient cover - "If you think you're so right, why do you have to attack people who don't agree with you? What are you so afraid of?" Don't give the ignorant that excuse, expose their ideas as empty and fraudulent, and their ideas will die.
I am not saying, and I said nowhere, that you should attack people. Their opinions, however, are fair game.
And I haven't once said that "everybody's opinions are valid." If you disagree, by all means, disagree. But the way to disagree - if you claim to be the standard bearer for the intellect - is not through mockery. It is through calm, rational discourse with the person who is espousing ignorant ideas.
Let's look at the fallout from Rush Limbaugh's comments on Sandra Fluke. Do you think he's "learned" anything, and become less ignorant, from his public shaming? Not one whit. His comments after days of mockery: "I acted too much like the leftists who despise me. I descended to their level, using names and exaggerations. It's what we've come to expect from them, but it's way beneath me."
Congratulations, you've just created a persecuted martyr. He doesn't believe what he said was wrong, he's paying lip service to the idea because the mockery has cut into his bottom line a bit. Is there anybody in the world who is surprised that he's not embracing the viewpoint of his opponents? And is it any surprise that this is the sort of rhetoric he embraces, when the self-proclaimed "right thinking" people proclaim that fighting fire with fire is the appropriate way to combat his ignorance?
If you care about reducing ignorance, you engage people in a rational, calm discussion. You don't call them names and hope that public shaming will magically "correct" their thinking.
you need to make the emotionally prone to supporting your ideas
Nobody in history has ever been made *more receptive* to an argument against their beliefs or misconceptions by being belittled and disparaged. People tend to double down on their beliefs when they're publicly humiliated over them - if they own the humiliation, then they have to also own the fact that their beliefs are wrong. So they become even firmer believers because then that humiliation fuels the "minority victim" status they can create for themselves in their head.
You can't truly believe that a grudgingly silenced dissent - "I better pretend I believe this, otherwise I'll be ostracized" - is the same as understanding & acceptance of a new point of view. Is the racist guy who still crosses the street to avoid being near black people less racist because he doesn't *say* that's why he's crossing the street? Is he less racist because he only makes racist jokes in the privacy of his own home, where only his friends can hear him? No, you're just allowing him to fashion an image of himself as a repressed minority who's being silenced by an oppressive mob - you've created a martyr with a persecution complex, who also happens to espouse irrational beliefs.
But your feelings of superiority and the approval of your same-thinking friends on account of your enlightened views does nothing to eliminate a single shred of the ignorance that you claim you're fighting.
The purpose of mockery is to let others see just how ridiculous the ideas being mocked are, and hopefully to prevent the ideas from spreading.
No, the purpose of mockery is to announce to others that you're a superior, discerning person with superior, discerning tastes, hopefully leading to the rest of the world to validate you for having a different "right-thinking" opinion on a matter.
Anybody who accepts others' mockery of an idea as a substantial critique of its value is one of the irrational ignoramuses you seem to think you're fighting by mocking them and their ideas. This line of thinking is exactly why partisan echo chambers have become so prevalent - why argue ideas on their merits, when you can just dismiss an entire segment of society as silly and inferior with a joke, right?
For someone who's ostensibly speaking on behalf of a group of people who like to claim that intellectual rigor and rationality are their thing, your argument rings pretty hollow.
Certainly, at some point, it becomes hard to "be the better person," and just walk away from someone who insists on espousing completely irrational beliefs. But, if they are dead-set on being ignorant, and refuse to engage in a calm and rational discussion in an attempt to become less ignorant, or convince you of the correctness of their own beliefs, then all you can really do to that person is agree to disagree, walk away, and let reality be the final judge of who's correct.
If somebody irrationally clings to a belief that they can fly by jumping off a cliff and flapping their arms, despite all your arguments and rational demonstration to the contrary, then they are either blindly irrational and ignorant, or they are mentally ill.
Mocking the mentally ill is generally considered rude and insensitive; Mocking someone who is irrational and ignorant is sort of like running into a farmer's field to insult a cow for not having opposable thumbs. The sad fact is that no matter how much you yell, the cow isn't going to feel stupid.
People who feel the need to announce to the world their superiority over the irrational and the ignorant - as if being "smarter than an ignorant person" says something profound about their own intelligence - are really saying more about their own deep-rooted insecurity and need for external validation than they are about other people's ignorance.
Problem is, mockery simply exacerbates the problem: it makes the person being mocked dig their heels in, and gives them a "victimized minority" status to cling to in their irrationality and ignorance.
If your goal is eliminating ignorance, the only way to do that is by engaging in calm, rational discourse. If your goal is to make yourself feel smugly superior to anybody who holds a view you consider "silly," without actually changing anything about the situation, then yeah, keep mocking.
My parents are both fairly conservative catholics, I'd consider myself an agnostic - I consider my parents' set of beliefs to be well-meaning, but pretty irrational, and I don't share them. But we still manage to have discussions about religion and belief without me shouting at them, rolling my eyes, and calling them names, and they pay me the same courtesy. And honestly? Those discussion are far more satisfying and interesting than "LOL U LOVE UR SKY DADDY YOU IDIOT SHEEPLES LOL".
Mockery does nothing to eliminate ignorance, so any argument in support of mockery is simply an argument in favor of divisiveness. As somebody else noted above: STOP. BEING. DICKS.
I guess you like ready selectively, too! The full passage is this:
Koh frequently remarked on the similarity between each company's tablets. At one point during the hearing, she held one black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.
"Not at this distance your honor," said Sullivan, who stood at a podium roughly ten feet away.
"Can any of Samsung's lawyers tell me which one is Samsung and which one is Apple?" Koh asked. A moment later, one of the lawyers supplied the right answer.
The lead counsel - you know, the person who's supposed to be your vigorous advocate before a court, the person who's supposed to sell god, the court, and every witness in hearing distance on the righteousness of your cause - couldn't tell the difference. Ten feet is not a big distance. To replicate it... lay on the floor in a room with average dimensions. See that ceiling? That's about 10 feet away. Think you could tell the difference between an iPad and a Nook at that distance? iPad and a Playbook? iPad and a Kindle Fire? iPad and an Asus Tab? iPad and a Xoom? Because I'm pretty sure I could. One of Samsung's lawyers could; one of them couldn't. What's that tell you about the similarity in their designs, if one of the people who is specifically there defending the "uniqueness" of the product's design can't distinguish it from the plaintiff's tablet?
I would suggest that "the color black" and a "thin brushed AL edge around that black screen" are matters of form or normal consumer expectations.
Yes, they're matters of form - of aesthetics and "look." The argument was "form follows function," implying that "black" and "thin brushed aluminum edge" were somehow inescapable natural conclusions for any tablet design - and this is obviously and trivially not true, because other tablets have been designed that don't use those elements that we're told work just as well - nay, better! - than an iPad.
What color would I suggest? Blue. Green. Red. Gray. Silver. White. Brown. Even black - because it's not about a single unique element of the design, it's the overall design that's in question. Your reductionist "logic" says that this suit is "just" about a single element of the complaint, and it's not. It's about a host of design decisions all resulting in a device so similar that the defense's lead counsel couldn't tell the difference between them from a few short steps away.
How else do you propose that I affix the back to the screen in a durable way, that doesn't involve a crack/seam that would allow "crud" to collect in it? I guess i could wrap the screen glass the other way, but glass is known to chip where as brushed AL is much more durable in when at the thicknesses desired.
And the only way to produce an aluminum frame is by leaving a brushed metal look? Anodize it and then dye it a color that complements the front color, and you might have a distinctive, attractive design that's your very own, rather than just aping the iPad's look. Again, you're arguing that aesthetic decisions - what color something is - is some inescapable logical consequence of designing the tablet, and you've got an uphill battle to be able to prove that assertion.
I did, and in my head i had a 3 sided device with pointed corners, that was pea soup green, and had half of the screen on each side, was unlocked with a physical key, and offered no apps as square icons in a grid, just a pile of randomally strewn triangles for each app that simply had the name of the app on them. There was also no AL, or glass to be seen. it was all plastic, and had no bezel around the screen whatsoever.
And now we can see why you're not a tablet designer - don't quit your day job. If Motorola, HP, Amazon, B&N, and RIM can all introduce a rectangular touchscreen tablet device and not get sued by Apple, why can't Samsung? (Answer: Samsung is the only tablet maker who has copied a substantial enough portion of Apple's design to arguably be infringing on that design.)
Sure. But do you really mean to suggest that "the color black" and a "thin brushed-aluminum edge around that black screen" are matters of "form" rather than "aesthetics"? We're talking *design* patents here, not *functional* patents. As such the look of the device is absolutely important. If it were simply a case of "anybody with a roundrect tablet is infringing," then Apple would have a lot more lawsuits - they don't, so it's clearly not the case that they're simply claiming "anything rectangular is ours."
When your own lead counsel in the suit over the design patent can't tell the difference between your device and the competitor's device that you're alleged to have infringed from a few paces away, that looks pretty bad for your case for "not copying." Design patents last 14 years - in 14 years, Samsung can make as many iPad knockoffs as they wish; until then, they should probably at least make a token effort to avoid infringing - give the device a different color front bezel, and coat or anodize the visible part of the aluminum frame around the screen, and I bet anybody could easily tell them apart.
And to your argument about jeans and mugs and cups: if those were invented today, you can bet your ass they'd have design patents, too - and before you argue that you can't patent clothes, consider that Teva sandals had/have at least one design patent. In the area of clothes and pottery, of course, these things were invented centuries ago, and so any claim of IP protection would have already run out on them long before denim pants or a clay cylinder for holding coffee were created.
Again, if you want to argue that design patents are silly, overly broad, or should be eliminated, then I'll probably happily agree with most of your arguments there. I think the standard US courts use, basically that "a reasonable person might be confused into thinking one product was the other," is probably too lax. But this case is about more than just a "roundrect" - It's the entirety of the device and the trade dress that comes into play, and just comparing the two side-by-side, it's pretty hard for Samsung to claim they didn't borrow liberally from Apple's design, because it's clearly not just a matter of "Well of course a rectangular device mirroring a book or a piece of paper held in the hand makes sense in this type of device."
A fair warning? Yes, a fair warning to devs that "if you engage with Android, and then make a business decision to end support for Android as a platform, we'll talk shit about you, your capability as a developer, and the quality of your code, even though up until the moment you announced you were discontinuing support, the overwhelming majority of people who had bought your product were quite happy with it."
With a fair warning like that, don't be surprised when other developers make similar decisions to discontinue support for a bunch of spoiled children. In fact, this behavior is the exact definition of "sour grapes" - pretending that something you value quite highly is suddenly inconsequential and useless because you discover you can't have it.
Their argument does have substance if you ignore the rhetoric.
No, it doesn't. It's a bunch of unsubstantiated speculation and wild-ass guessing, punctuated by "Monopoly R teh badz, mmkay?"
Apple is suing Samsung to set a precedent where if they win, it gives the ability to go after other manufacturers who have similar designs and demand licensing fees with a threat of a lawsuit if those companies don't pay for the licensing fee.
And here's the thing: if you can't design a product that looks different enough from your competition's product such that your lead counsel in the lawsuit can't tell the difference without help and a close inspection, perhaps there's something to the charge that your product is a little too similar. There are lots of manufacturers of tablets out there... most of which have - gasp - roundrect shapes. And yet Apple isn't suing all of them. In fact, they would have been better off suing a poorer competitor than Samsung if this was about "establishing a precedent" to go after other companies with. Get your verdict cheap, then go club the more successful companies with it.
But they're not even doing that. This entire assertion that they're doing it to "set a precedent" they can use as a club on competitors is foolish. Apple has specifically suggested that Samsung should change the device to make it look different, they haven't asked for "licensing" terms. They're not looking for a payout from Samsung, they're looking to stop Samsung from producing what they're claiming are knockoffs.
What they ended up porting to Android was such a bug-ridden POS that it didn't seel at all.
Battleheart's Google Play page indicates that it's been downloaded 50,000 - 100,000 times. It has an average rating of 4.7/5 stars, based on 5,374 user ratings, and the overwhelming majority of those reviews are 5-star reviews.
And if you sort reviews by latest, you can see that at least a couple dozen of those 1-star ratings were given today, in an apparent fit of "sour grapes" where users are giving the app a 1-star review with comments like, "The developer will no longer update this app. They stated that Android development is too hard for them and will no longer update their apps. Since when is objective C easier to write than java? Disgusting and Lazy!"
Yep, sounds like a poorly written, buggy piece of shit to me. I'm sure the developer is just lazy, incompetent, and shilling for Apple. It couldn't be that Android has legitimate shortcomings that Android device manufacturers could learn from to improve their platform.
That is precisely what Apple's doing with their iPad design. You're simply an Apple apologist. If this was Microsoft, not Apple, you'd be calling for heads to roll.
I never shared my opinion on the validity or usefulness of these patents. I supplied facts about the case to explain to the slow learners that the case isn't about "round rect with a black front." There are a host of claims that go much deeper than "round rect with black front." In fact, Samsung could have come up with a different design that would have trivially avoided the claim: color the plastic in the front bezel anything but black, and voila, the devices are easily distinguished.
That is precisely what Apple's doing with their iPad design. You're simply an Apple apologist. If this was Microsoft, not Apple, you'd be calling for heads to roll.
Nope, I'd be calling the design patent system stupid, and arguing that reform of that system is the solution. I don't particularly care who's doing it.
I see. So you're saying you don't think that the lead counsel for the defendant being unable to distinguish between the two products at a fairly close distance is a pretty strong argument that the two devices are at least flirting with the defendant's device being a knockoff?
You don't think it would have been relevant for them to spend time poring over both devices and highlighting the similarties and the differences, so that they could identify which device was which, and demonstrate in court how different the devices clearly were? At best, the lead counsel was woefully unprepared and handed Apple a victory. At worst, the devices are knockoffs, and the lawyers are scarecely able to tell the difference, but are attesting under oath that they are clearly different devices.
What I'd like to know is how Samsung's lawyers could be unable to tell the difference between an Apple and a Samsung product from ten feet away, yet you assume that the casual viewer will totally know the difference.
If the only way you can tell between an "authentic" Louis Vuitton purse and a $10 streetcorner bargain made by "Louise Vitton" is through close inspection of the packaging, labels, and finish, then you have produced what is commonly known as a "knockoff." And that's precisely what Apple has alleged - that Samsung's new tablet "slavishly" copies their design so that only a close inspection will allow you to tell the two apart.
Again, you can certainly argue whether or not design patents should be allowed, and you can certainly argue that Samsung's device is not "too similar" to Apple's, but let's at least get the substance of the allegations right. Apple is not saying that they "own roundrect tablets with a black front." They are alleging that the specific design of the specific tablets from Samsung violates Apple's design patents by copying a substantial portion of Apple's trade dress.
You see, we know we don't have to take anything you say seriously because you assert that Apple has a "monopoly" in the tablet space with a straight face.
Apple is claiming that they own the patent and/or copyright to a rectangular tablet with a screen on the front
Except that's not what they've claimed at all. They have a specific "design patent" on a specific design, look, packaging for a specific device. And when somebody (ESPECIALLY SAMSUNG) copies that design in extreme detail, Apple alleges in court that Samsung has infringed on its design patent.
Their position is that "Samsung, specifically, is using a suite of design cues covered by our patent to make their tablets look like knockoffs of ours - confusing customers into thinking they're buying an Apple device."
You might try understanding the legal issues before you spout off about them - whether or not you agree with Apple's arguments that the devices are "too similar," or with the idea of design patents in general, misrepresenting the actual facts of the case just makes you look rather slow and dim-witted. Do try to keep up.
What's stopping you from selling your Ipad and buying a real computer that is designed to do real work?
This presumes that "real work" requires dual 30" displays, 64 GB of RAM, and an attached 40 TB RAID array. This whole argument presumes that "creating anything" requires those things too. Unfortunately for your argument, those things aren't required to create a whole lot of things. There are a ridiculously small number of things that require that much computing power, and if you're one of the very few people who actually DO require that power, then great, don't buy a tablet.
But for the other 95% of the computer-using public, that much power is ridiculous overkill. In fact, even for many "creative" endeavors, that much computing power is ridiculous overkill. Your "MUST HAVE LOTS OF GEE BEES" fetish aside, I'd like you to answer the very simple question I posed: what prevents someone from writing the next great novel on an iPad or Galaxy Tab? Do you NEED dual 30" monitors for that? Do dual 30" monitors somehow streamline the process? Do you you require 3 AMD GPU's to display text in a word processor? Does any word processor in the world require 64 Gigs of RAM, or an attached 40TB RAID array?
My initial question was an attempt to try and understand what about "creation," specifically, creation of a novel, requires a "real computer" like the monster you've just described. So far, all I've heard are shouty mad fuckers screaming about how "WITHOUT THE MOST GEE BEES THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE, YOU CAN'T CREATE." And so I can only conclude that there is no actual limitation preventing you from creating something like a novel, it's simply a form of neo-luddism masquerading as patronizingly dismissive idiocy.
I'd still like a real answer from somebody who ACTUALLY writes for a living, though. What, specifically, is preventing you from using a tablet device to write pieces on? Is it a limitation of the form factor, is software missing, or is it just "too different" from what you're used to?
So the question is, yet again: what's *stopping* you from embracing this as a computer for creating things with? If a tablet is just a slim/light "CPU" that you hook a couple peripherals up to to do your heavier duty text entry and writing, what is it that you're objecting to?
Does the fact that some people in marketing are trying to call it something other than "PC" really offend you that much that that's your only real objection? And did the notion of using a Laptop rather than a desktop pc or a typewriter offend you in similar fashion?
I'm looking for concrete specific "I can't do X with a tablet, but I can do X with a PC," objections that specifically block you from doing long-form writing on a tablet form factor, because I'm really trying to understand this objection as something more than neo-luddism, and I'm struggling to find anything other than some sort of, "Sure, I could pair a physical bluetooth keyboard with it, but it doesn't COME WITH a physical keyboard," objection.
Slashdot Mirror
If he's wrong that you can't have privacy on the internet... does that mean he's wrong about sex in the champagne room?
Because I swear, that stripper was TOTALLY digging me... she even asked to see me again at the club sometime!
You realize that many of the beliefs you or I would consider "decent, right-thinking" beliefs today were, at one point, held by a small minority of people who did so secretively, and at great expense to their public image if they were found to hold them, right? Sexually active women were regularly branded sluts, whores, adulteresses; people who argued that gay people should enjoy the same rights as straight people were viewed as abominations in the sight of god; people who believed that black people deserved equal rights were viewed as crazy people who just didn't understand the white man's burden to educate and uplift the backwards and ignorant races of the world; people who doubted religion and the supremacy of the king, pope, czar, prophet... were excommunicated, and publicly shunned (or worse); The mainstream ideas of today were beliefs people were publicly shamed for holding to 200 years ago.
We were not "shamed" into accepting that other races are equal - we were convinced that we, as a society, were wrong. We were not "shamed" into accepting that gay people deserve equal treatment under the law - we were convinced that we, as a society, were wrong. And in many respects, that evolution of ideas continues today, and there will likely never be a perfect endpoint where "everybody believes in equality, and there's no such thing as racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. etc."
People change their minds when they are convinced they're wrong. Not when they're shamed into issuing a grudging apology and sent home to brood over how they've been wronged. In fact, public shaming has never proven an effective deterrent against adopting new ideas, even those that are iconoclastic in the current mainstream mindset. Calm and rational discussion is the way to combat ignorance. Mockery and shame simply provide the proponents of ignorance a convenient cover - "If you think you're so right, why do you have to attack people who don't agree with you? What are you so afraid of?" Don't give the ignorant that excuse, expose their ideas as empty and fraudulent, and their ideas will die.
And I haven't once said that "everybody's opinions are valid." If you disagree, by all means, disagree. But the way to disagree - if you claim to be the standard bearer for the intellect - is not through mockery. It is through calm, rational discourse with the person who is espousing ignorant ideas.
Let's look at the fallout from Rush Limbaugh's comments on Sandra Fluke. Do you think he's "learned" anything, and become less ignorant, from his public shaming? Not one whit. His comments after days of mockery: "I acted too much like the leftists who despise me. I descended to their level, using names and exaggerations. It's what we've come to expect from them, but it's way beneath me."
Congratulations, you've just created a persecuted martyr. He doesn't believe what he said was wrong, he's paying lip service to the idea because the mockery has cut into his bottom line a bit. Is there anybody in the world who is surprised that he's not embracing the viewpoint of his opponents? And is it any surprise that this is the sort of rhetoric he embraces, when the self-proclaimed "right thinking" people proclaim that fighting fire with fire is the appropriate way to combat his ignorance?
If you care about reducing ignorance, you engage people in a rational, calm discussion. You don't call them names and hope that public shaming will magically "correct" their thinking.
Nobody in history has ever been made *more receptive* to an argument against their beliefs or misconceptions by being belittled and disparaged. People tend to double down on their beliefs when they're publicly humiliated over them - if they own the humiliation, then they have to also own the fact that their beliefs are wrong. So they become even firmer believers because then that humiliation fuels the "minority victim" status they can create for themselves in their head.
You can't truly believe that a grudgingly silenced dissent - "I better pretend I believe this, otherwise I'll be ostracized" - is the same as understanding & acceptance of a new point of view. Is the racist guy who still crosses the street to avoid being near black people less racist because he doesn't *say* that's why he's crossing the street? Is he less racist because he only makes racist jokes in the privacy of his own home, where only his friends can hear him? No, you're just allowing him to fashion an image of himself as a repressed minority who's being silenced by an oppressive mob - you've created a martyr with a persecution complex, who also happens to espouse irrational beliefs.
But your feelings of superiority and the approval of your same-thinking friends on account of your enlightened views does nothing to eliminate a single shred of the ignorance that you claim you're fighting.
Let me restate the relevant part of what I wrote for you, specifically, the part I borrowed from another poster:
STOP. BEING. DICKS.
No, the purpose of mockery is to announce to others that you're a superior, discerning person with superior, discerning tastes, hopefully leading to the rest of the world to validate you for having a different "right-thinking" opinion on a matter.
Anybody who accepts others' mockery of an idea as a substantial critique of its value is one of the irrational ignoramuses you seem to think you're fighting by mocking them and their ideas. This line of thinking is exactly why partisan echo chambers have become so prevalent - why argue ideas on their merits, when you can just dismiss an entire segment of society as silly and inferior with a joke, right?
For someone who's ostensibly speaking on behalf of a group of people who like to claim that intellectual rigor and rationality are their thing, your argument rings pretty hollow.
Certainly, at some point, it becomes hard to "be the better person," and just walk away from someone who insists on espousing completely irrational beliefs. But, if they are dead-set on being ignorant, and refuse to engage in a calm and rational discussion in an attempt to become less ignorant, or convince you of the correctness of their own beliefs, then all you can really do to that person is agree to disagree, walk away, and let reality be the final judge of who's correct.
If somebody irrationally clings to a belief that they can fly by jumping off a cliff and flapping their arms, despite all your arguments and rational demonstration to the contrary, then they are either blindly irrational and ignorant, or they are mentally ill.
Mocking the mentally ill is generally considered rude and insensitive; Mocking someone who is irrational and ignorant is sort of like running into a farmer's field to insult a cow for not having opposable thumbs. The sad fact is that no matter how much you yell, the cow isn't going to feel stupid.
People who feel the need to announce to the world their superiority over the irrational and the ignorant - as if being "smarter than an ignorant person" says something profound about their own intelligence - are really saying more about their own deep-rooted insecurity and need for external validation than they are about other people's ignorance.
Problem is, mockery simply exacerbates the problem: it makes the person being mocked dig their heels in, and gives them a "victimized minority" status to cling to in their irrationality and ignorance.
If your goal is eliminating ignorance, the only way to do that is by engaging in calm, rational discourse. If your goal is to make yourself feel smugly superior to anybody who holds a view you consider "silly," without actually changing anything about the situation, then yeah, keep mocking.
My parents are both fairly conservative catholics, I'd consider myself an agnostic - I consider my parents' set of beliefs to be well-meaning, but pretty irrational, and I don't share them. But we still manage to have discussions about religion and belief without me shouting at them, rolling my eyes, and calling them names, and they pay me the same courtesy. And honestly? Those discussion are far more satisfying and interesting than "LOL U LOVE UR SKY DADDY YOU IDIOT SHEEPLES LOL".
Mockery does nothing to eliminate ignorance, so any argument in support of mockery is simply an argument in favor of divisiveness. As somebody else noted above: STOP. BEING. DICKS.
I guess you like ready selectively, too! The full passage is this:
The lead counsel - you know, the person who's supposed to be your vigorous advocate before a court, the person who's supposed to sell god, the court, and every witness in hearing distance on the righteousness of your cause - couldn't tell the difference. Ten feet is not a big distance. To replicate it... lay on the floor in a room with average dimensions. See that ceiling? That's about 10 feet away. Think you could tell the difference between an iPad and a Nook at that distance? iPad and a Playbook? iPad and a Kindle Fire? iPad and an Asus Tab? iPad and a Xoom? Because I'm pretty sure I could. One of Samsung's lawyers could; one of them couldn't. What's that tell you about the similarity in their designs, if one of the people who is specifically there defending the "uniqueness" of the product's design can't distinguish it from the plaintiff's tablet?
Yes, they're matters of form - of aesthetics and "look." The argument was "form follows function," implying that "black" and "thin brushed aluminum edge" were somehow inescapable natural conclusions for any tablet design - and this is obviously and trivially not true, because other tablets have been designed that don't use those elements that we're told work just as well - nay, better! - than an iPad.
What color would I suggest? Blue. Green. Red. Gray. Silver. White. Brown. Even black - because it's not about a single unique element of the design, it's the overall design that's in question. Your reductionist "logic" says that this suit is "just" about a single element of the complaint, and it's not. It's about a host of design decisions all resulting in a device so similar that the defense's lead counsel couldn't tell the difference between them from a few short steps away.
And the only way to produce an aluminum frame is by leaving a brushed metal look? Anodize it and then dye it a color that complements the front color, and you might have a distinctive, attractive design that's your very own, rather than just aping the iPad's look. Again, you're arguing that aesthetic decisions - what color something is - is some inescapable logical consequence of designing the tablet, and you've got an uphill battle to be able to prove that assertion.
And now we can see why you're not a tablet designer - don't quit your day job. If Motorola, HP, Amazon, B&N, and RIM can all introduce a rectangular touchscreen tablet device and not get sued by Apple, why can't Samsung? (Answer: Samsung is the only tablet maker who has copied a substantial enough portion of Apple's design to arguably be infringing on that design.)
Well that comment sums up a life well-lived, doesn't it? Stay classy, champ.
I'm sorry. I guess I went off on a tangential story arc.
Sure. But do you really mean to suggest that "the color black" and a "thin brushed-aluminum edge around that black screen" are matters of "form" rather than "aesthetics"? We're talking *design* patents here, not *functional* patents. As such the look of the device is absolutely important. If it were simply a case of "anybody with a roundrect tablet is infringing," then Apple would have a lot more lawsuits - they don't, so it's clearly not the case that they're simply claiming "anything rectangular is ours."
When your own lead counsel in the suit over the design patent can't tell the difference between your device and the competitor's device that you're alleged to have infringed from a few paces away, that looks pretty bad for your case for "not copying." Design patents last 14 years - in 14 years, Samsung can make as many iPad knockoffs as they wish; until then, they should probably at least make a token effort to avoid infringing - give the device a different color front bezel, and coat or anodize the visible part of the aluminum frame around the screen, and I bet anybody could easily tell them apart.
And to your argument about jeans and mugs and cups: if those were invented today, you can bet your ass they'd have design patents, too - and before you argue that you can't patent clothes, consider that Teva sandals had/have at least one design patent. In the area of clothes and pottery, of course, these things were invented centuries ago, and so any claim of IP protection would have already run out on them long before denim pants or a clay cylinder for holding coffee were created.
Again, if you want to argue that design patents are silly, overly broad, or should be eliminated, then I'll probably happily agree with most of your arguments there. I think the standard US courts use, basically that "a reasonable person might be confused into thinking one product was the other," is probably too lax. But this case is about more than just a "roundrect" - It's the entirety of the device and the trade dress that comes into play, and just comparing the two side-by-side, it's pretty hard for Samsung to claim they didn't borrow liberally from Apple's design, because it's clearly not just a matter of "Well of course a rectangular device mirroring a book or a piece of paper held in the hand makes sense in this type of device."
A fair warning? Yes, a fair warning to devs that "if you engage with Android, and then make a business decision to end support for Android as a platform, we'll talk shit about you, your capability as a developer, and the quality of your code, even though up until the moment you announced you were discontinuing support, the overwhelming majority of people who had bought your product were quite happy with it."
With a fair warning like that, don't be surprised when other developers make similar decisions to discontinue support for a bunch of spoiled children. In fact, this behavior is the exact definition of "sour grapes" - pretending that something you value quite highly is suddenly inconsequential and useless because you discover you can't have it.
No, it doesn't. It's a bunch of unsubstantiated speculation and wild-ass guessing, punctuated by "Monopoly R teh badz, mmkay?"
And here's the thing: if you can't design a product that looks different enough from your competition's product such that your lead counsel in the lawsuit can't tell the difference without help and a close inspection, perhaps there's something to the charge that your product is a little too similar. There are lots of manufacturers of tablets out there... most of which have - gasp - roundrect shapes. And yet Apple isn't suing all of them. In fact, they would have been better off suing a poorer competitor than Samsung if this was about "establishing a precedent" to go after other companies with. Get your verdict cheap, then go club the more successful companies with it.
But they're not even doing that. This entire assertion that they're doing it to "set a precedent" they can use as a club on competitors is foolish. Apple has specifically suggested that Samsung should change the device to make it look different, they haven't asked for "licensing" terms. They're not looking for a payout from Samsung, they're looking to stop Samsung from producing what they're claiming are knockoffs.
Battleheart's Google Play page indicates that it's been downloaded 50,000 - 100,000 times. It has an average rating of 4.7/5 stars, based on 5,374 user ratings, and the overwhelming majority of those reviews are 5-star reviews.
And if you sort reviews by latest, you can see that at least a couple dozen of those 1-star ratings were given today, in an apparent fit of "sour grapes" where users are giving the app a 1-star review with comments like, "The developer will no longer update this app. They stated that Android development is too hard for them and will no longer update their apps. Since when is objective C easier to write than java? Disgusting and Lazy!"
Yep, sounds like a poorly written, buggy piece of shit to me. I'm sure the developer is just lazy, incompetent, and shilling for Apple. It couldn't be that Android has legitimate shortcomings that Android device manufacturers could learn from to improve their platform.
I never shared my opinion on the validity or usefulness of these patents. I supplied facts about the case to explain to the slow learners that the case isn't about "round rect with a black front." There are a host of claims that go much deeper than "round rect with black front." In fact, Samsung could have come up with a different design that would have trivially avoided the claim: color the plastic in the front bezel anything but black, and voila, the devices are easily distinguished.
Nope, I'd be calling the design patent system stupid, and arguing that reform of that system is the solution. I don't particularly care who's doing it.
I see. So you're saying you don't think that the lead counsel for the defendant being unable to distinguish between the two products at a fairly close distance is a pretty strong argument that the two devices are at least flirting with the defendant's device being a knockoff?
You don't think it would have been relevant for them to spend time poring over both devices and highlighting the similarties and the differences, so that they could identify which device was which, and demonstrate in court how different the devices clearly were? At best, the lead counsel was woefully unprepared and handed Apple a victory. At worst, the devices are knockoffs, and the lawyers are scarecely able to tell the difference, but are attesting under oath that they are clearly different devices.
You see, we know we don't have to take anything you say seriously because you use the phrase "iFanboy" with a straight face.
Try making an argument that has substance, and maybe you won't be dismissed as a crank.
What I'd like to know is how Samsung's lawyers could be unable to tell the difference between an Apple and a Samsung product from ten feet away, yet you assume that the casual viewer will totally know the difference.
If the only way you can tell between an "authentic" Louis Vuitton purse and a $10 streetcorner bargain made by "Louise Vitton" is through close inspection of the packaging, labels, and finish, then you have produced what is commonly known as a "knockoff." And that's precisely what Apple has alleged - that Samsung's new tablet "slavishly" copies their design so that only a close inspection will allow you to tell the two apart.
Again, you can certainly argue whether or not design patents should be allowed, and you can certainly argue that Samsung's device is not "too similar" to Apple's, but let's at least get the substance of the allegations right. Apple is not saying that they "own roundrect tablets with a black front." They are alleging that the specific design of the specific tablets from Samsung violates Apple's design patents by copying a substantial portion of Apple's trade dress.
You see, we know we don't have to take anything you say seriously because you assert that Apple has a "monopoly" in the tablet space with a straight face.
Except that's not what they've claimed at all. They have a specific "design patent" on a specific design, look, packaging for a specific device. And when somebody (ESPECIALLY SAMSUNG) copies that design in extreme detail, Apple alleges in court that Samsung has infringed on its design patent.
Their position is that "Samsung, specifically, is using a suite of design cues covered by our patent to make their tablets look like knockoffs of ours - confusing customers into thinking they're buying an Apple device."
You might try understanding the legal issues before you spout off about them - whether or not you agree with Apple's arguments that the devices are "too similar," or with the idea of design patents in general, misrepresenting the actual facts of the case just makes you look rather slow and dim-witted. Do try to keep up.
He'd have to be rather obtuse to miss it.
Am I right?
This presumes that "real work" requires dual 30" displays, 64 GB of RAM, and an attached 40 TB RAID array. This whole argument presumes that "creating anything" requires those things too. Unfortunately for your argument, those things aren't required to create a whole lot of things. There are a ridiculously small number of things that require that much computing power, and if you're one of the very few people who actually DO require that power, then great, don't buy a tablet.
But for the other 95% of the computer-using public, that much power is ridiculous overkill. In fact, even for many "creative" endeavors, that much computing power is ridiculous overkill. Your "MUST HAVE LOTS OF GEE BEES" fetish aside, I'd like you to answer the very simple question I posed: what prevents someone from writing the next great novel on an iPad or Galaxy Tab? Do you NEED dual 30" monitors for that? Do dual 30" monitors somehow streamline the process? Do you you require 3 AMD GPU's to display text in a word processor? Does any word processor in the world require 64 Gigs of RAM, or an attached 40TB RAID array?
My initial question was an attempt to try and understand what about "creation," specifically, creation of a novel, requires a "real computer" like the monster you've just described. So far, all I've heard are shouty mad fuckers screaming about how "WITHOUT THE MOST GEE BEES THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE, YOU CAN'T CREATE." And so I can only conclude that there is no actual limitation preventing you from creating something like a novel, it's simply a form of neo-luddism masquerading as patronizingly dismissive idiocy.
I'd still like a real answer from somebody who ACTUALLY writes for a living, though. What, specifically, is preventing you from using a tablet device to write pieces on? Is it a limitation of the form factor, is software missing, or is it just "too different" from what you're used to?
So the question is, yet again: what's *stopping* you from embracing this as a computer for creating things with? If a tablet is just a slim/light "CPU" that you hook a couple peripherals up to to do your heavier duty text entry and writing, what is it that you're objecting to?
Does the fact that some people in marketing are trying to call it something other than "PC" really offend you that much that that's your only real objection? And did the notion of using a Laptop rather than a desktop pc or a typewriter offend you in similar fashion?
I'm looking for concrete specific "I can't do X with a tablet, but I can do X with a PC," objections that specifically block you from doing long-form writing on a tablet form factor, because I'm really trying to understand this objection as something more than neo-luddism, and I'm struggling to find anything other than some sort of, "Sure, I could pair a physical bluetooth keyboard with it, but it doesn't COME WITH a physical keyboard," objection.