Amount of storage space does not different hardware make, though I take your point that there are, in fact, 3 SKUs. I didn't count them, just as I didn't count carrier-specific implementations or minor variants of the Blackberry series (at least 3-4 variants per main model). The ultimate point remains, though, that unit sales for the iPhone exceed unit sales for any other single hardware unit (including carrier branding or 8300-8310 variation as a unit) in the smartphone market in North America.
Actually, according to your own link, the iPhone *is* the best-selling phone in North America.
There's more than one Blackberry (four, last time I checked). There's only one iPhone.
You also seem to be mistaking "truly competitive and flexible" for what you would like companies to compete for. My bet is that the iPhone SDK will do just fine. The posturing here is completely fabricated. Mobile browsers using desktop plugins? Doubtful. Plugins of any kind aren't that common for mobile browsers. VOIP over EDGE? Worthless. Apps that run in the background, ignoring calls to quit by the OS memory manager? There's a stability problem just waiting to happen.
It's not that you can't multitask, it's that they want to encourage coding practices that don't rely on background services, and applications that save state when they're not active so that the user doesn't lose any data, and that returning to the app is as seamless as possible. With the exception of things like IM and file downloads, you don't need background processes sitting in RAM. Mobile applications should launch quickly and go away when they're told. Windows Mobile developers should take a clue on that, as a user.
Nothing. You can't force people to watch the same things you watch, which is why I said a 1.0 ratio was an unrealistic expectation for any such hypothetical service.
A 1:1 ratio for users is not impossible, unless each and every user watches each and every program. Unless you're talking about a 1:1 ratio per download, which is indeed impossible and illogical, all it requires is that a given user contribute at least as much data as he has taken over a specified period (two weeks, a month, whatever).
Maintaining such a ratio isn't impossible. If you download 3 hours of content, you have to upload at least 3 hours of that content, whether it's 3 people downloading the same one-hour program, 3 people each downloading one of those programs, or 7 people downloading some combination thereof.
That said, I don't think it's a good idea to have a requirement that high for consumer, legal distribution, but it absolutely would work at shifting upload costs. It's dumb to have a blanket requirement in a diverse market because there's no guarantee that your upload services will be needed for a given program, and with uploads far slower than downloads, it would interfere with the use of consumer Internet connections. 0.5 per month would probably be about the highest reasonable ratio, with perhaps a higher class of service for those with ratios above 1.0.
The thing is that backlog seems like the major hold up.[...] Once the plane lands I am ready got go. The second part is the direct cause of the first, and opening a second door would not relieve that pressure. Once it is cleared, there is more than enough capacity through a single door. The backlog is a result of people piling up behind a closed door, and once the door is opened, it clears quite quickly. Any further obstruction is the result of an aisle blockage. A second door might clear that initial rush 30 seconds or at most a minute faster, so it's not really worth it.
Think of it this way: a person can exit at the rate of 1-2 seconds per through a single door. If you built a wall with a single door and put 350 people on one side, all immediately ready to proceed, you could get it done in 5-7 minutes.
If people actually waited until the plane parked and the doors were disarmed, cross-checked, and open, the process would be a lot faster, but the backlog in the aisles prevents people from getting to their bags in overhead compartments and means that people in outboard seats take longer to get out, because they have to negotiate a crowded aisle instead of an empty one.
The dictionary says you're wrong. It really doesn't.
" The exclusive right to possess, use, and enjoy a determinate thing (either a tract of land or a chattel); the right of ownership . -- Also termed bundle of rights. 2. Any external thing over which the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment are exercised" --Black's, 8th.
"The law of property is the law of proprietary rights in rem, the law of proprietary rights in personam being distinguished from it as the law of obligations. According to this usage a freehold or leasehold estate in land, or a patent or copyright, is property; but a debt or the benefit of a contract is not.... Finally, in the narrowest use of the term, it includes nothing more than corporeal property -- that is to say, the right of ownership in a material object, or that object itself." --John Salmond
"designates those things commonly recognized as the entities in respect of which a person or group has exclusive rights." -- first damn sentence of Wikipedia article
"Broadly speaking, the right to exclude all others is the essence of a property right, be it over tangibles or intangibles, including patents and all other types of IP. Beyond the right to exclude, this article highlights the availability of a number of other possibilities and opportunities that are available to an owner of IP assets, be they owned by enterprises, large or small." --WIPO
Any first year casebook would have cleared this up for you.
Your statement shows you're immoral as well; by your definition, ownership doesn't exist and there's nothing wrong with your stealing something from me. That's dead wrong, but unsurprisingly stupid. Ownership does exist, but your use of the term is overly broad, because ownership is the exercise of dominion. It exists because you possess the legal rights to a given thing. Stealing is wrong, and only a complete invalid could arrive at the conclusion that "ownership doesn't exist" from those words. Granting ownership is the same thing as granting a property right.
Your boneheaded interpretation asking the Framers to "grant ownership" has already been met, because an exclusive right is exactly what one owns when they own a thing. Property rights can and do devolve from the owner (i.e. your rights in the sale of a copy).
You must be a lawyer. Nobody but a lawyer argues about the meaning of common words like "is", "sex", "property", or "ownership". Normal people (as well as us nerds) use the dictionary to settle arguments about the definitions of words. Heaven forbid that you should know what you're talking about when you interpret the law (e.g. the Constitution). This is exactly my point. 'Normal people' don't have a fucking clue what the Constitution actually means, including you nerds. But that never stops you from prattling on like jackasses and getting it completely wrong.
Movie tickets have actually kept pace with inflation pretty well. Compared to what I paid in 1990, movie tickets are only about a dollar overpriced now. Cinema equipment is also much better and facilities nicer (albeit sometimes sticky), so I'm okay with that. The ticket price has doubled from $6 to $12 here. The student discount didn't even exist back then, or it was promotional. Students went to the matinees if they wanted to save a buck.
What has gone down, however, is the relative price of a video rental. They used to be the same price as a movie ticket, and they've fallen quite a bit as ticket prices have increased. As it stands, a 5% increase in revenue without adjusting for inflation is lackluster at best and possibly right at par.
It hasn't been my experience that theaters raise prices all that often, at least around here. They tend to move in $0.50 or $1 every year or two, which isn't really all that unfair. But now that DVD rentals are here (and BD, if you've got the player) and the age of home theaters has arrived, the increase in quality and decrease in price has made it pretty compelling. Staying in and doing "movie night" can be a good experience these days. 20 years ago, not so much.
I still personally feel like being at home doesn't compare, even though I have an extremely nice (read: jealousy-inducing) setup. It's about the experience, not only of the film, but socially. It's a different kind of night with friends than having them over, which is a different kind of fun. Different strokes, though, of course.
If you rent a home, you have exclusive right to that home but you don't own it. Then that's not an exclusive right in the sense that you're using it. It's an exclusive right in the legal sense (but right back at the point: the right to exclude is the fundamental definition of property.
If the founding fathers meant that one could own content, it would have read "granting ownership" instead of "securing for limited times the exclusive right". 'Ownership' is a word difficult to parse. When you "own" a three-hole-punch, that's really just a metonymic relationship with the power that enforces that relationship. In our society, that's the law. You don't really 'own' the three-hole punch, or the land your house is built on, or your car. The only direct relationship you have with a tangible item is occupancy. "Ownership" is instilled by law, and what you "own" are the legal rights that allow you to protect that item.
The granting of an exclusive right is the granting of property. It is at the root of all Western civilization--a proprietary right to something is one granted by the law. It is the right to exclude. It is property. You do have property rights in a home you're renting, but not a complete panoply. The owner retains exclusive rights as well, otherwise he would not be the owner.
The efforlessness of reproduction does not nullify the ownership of content, but the US Constitution does. Upon expiration of that exclusive right, absolutely. Up until that point, it creates and enforces it.
This is precisely why Slashdot is a poor place for this kind of thing: it's merely preaching to the choir, regardless of accuracy or actual insight, understanding, or rationality. Your description is a prime example of how you can get it exactly wrong based solely on what you want to see.
I have never noticed this problem except at the very beginning of the unloading process, which is a result of the backlog of passengers, not the inadequacy of doors. I will admit that a wheelchair or some sort of jetway obstruction will hold things up, but this is the exception and not the rule (and also, as you say, during deplaning only).
Because the jetway isn't the congestion point. The aisles on the plane are. Putting 300 people down the jetway is no problem; the stream of passengers can split in half at the entrance at the same rate as two jetways would provide. Blockages in the aisles is what slows people down. The hold-up is rarely at the entrance to the plane itself.
Because planes are not a uniform length, and the jetways are absurdly expensive to begin with--far too expensive to replace with new double-ended ones. The alternative, open air-stairs, is no good in inclement weather and the overall cost in terms of security and remodeling boarding gates to accomodate more flow through the staff door would be cost-prohibitive.
There really is no good system. The inverse pyramid section-number situation really would work best overall if people obeyed and if gate crews enforced it. Instead, people scramble to be first in line when their number is called so they can get to their seat first...I guess because they like getting up two or three times to let people slip past, thus blocking the whole aisle and generally slowing everything down.
The fundamental problem isn't the infrastructure. It's not even the inconvenient configuration of the aircraft. It's the damn passengers. I was on a widebody that boarded (nearly full) in under 20 minutes once. The flight had been delayed four or five times over the span of six hours, and because of the weather, the crew informed the passengers that if they didn't get their asses in the seats quickly and without incident, we'd miss the only takeoff slot likely available. It worked.
First, there needs to be some intent to harass, rather than to just engage in the conduct.
And you're basing this on...?
Second, there is a legitimate purpose: to advertise goods or services.
It doesn't work that way. The classic case of harassment is abusive debt-collection practices. That has a "legitimate purpose" based on your understanding too--to get money owed.
Allow me to quote: "Words, conduct, or action (usu. repeated or persistent) that, being directed at a specific person, annoys, alarms, or causes substantial emotional distress in that person and serves no legitimate purpose. Harassment is actionable in some circumstances, as when a creditor uses threatening or abusive tactics to collect a debt." --Black's, 8th.
"To irritate or torment persistently." --American Heritage
If 400 people a day randomly dialed my phone in order to sell me something, I would call that phenomenon telemarketing, which would be kind of funny, since that's what everyone else already calls it.
Cute, but telemarketers don't wardial, and they don't call 400 times a day in some willy-nilly fashion. There's a reason they're calling you, because calling you costs time and money. Telemarketers, too, are limited in what they can do, and if they did what spammers do, they'd be fined heavily for--wait for it--harassment.
Nor does that mean that all spam is inherently legitimate; just that some uses of the medium can be legitimate.
And legitimate uses can conform to the regular requirements we already place on distributors of junk mail without causing problems. Requiring the same of spammers does not cause a problem.
If it's not a real inbox, then where the hell would it go? Either to nowhere, in which case, why do we particularly care,
You're completely missing the point. The machine pumps out spam. Most of it never gets delivered, but it's the blanket coverage that invades privacy and causes the problem. I can't just carpet bomb a small town, either, hoping some of the flyers land in mailboxes and on porches, and it's not just because we have convenient laws against littering.
It would also be unconstitutional; people have a right to talk at you, they just don't have a right to force you to listen. Try again.
They don't have a right to force their way in. If they asked for permission to send email first, which is exactly what we require of bulk mail distributors, it would curb the problem. Spammers have no constitutional right to force their way into my inbox any more than your street-corner advertisers have a right to force their flyers into my briefcase.
Your argument falls flat on its face when you consider the postal requirements for doing the same thing. Their right to speech does not outweigh my right to privacy. Their knocking at the door does not include constantly and repeatedly stuffing flyers in. It does not include a right to advertise at my expense by filling my mail server with crap. It does not include a right to drown out legitimate communication to the point where the only alternative is an unworkable whitelist.
In the real world, we have common courtesy and small numbers that allow for enforcement. Advertisers can be sent away as they come. Signs can be placed near entries and mailboxes. The same does not hold true for an email inbox whose abusive harassment cannot be stopped. Your "solution" is the same as locking your lobby to the public rather than addressing the abuses of illegitimate companies. No legitimate company would have any difficulty complying with getting a license, just as they enter bulk rate arrangements for each postal route. They would have no difficulty getting express permission through site signups and terms specifically declaring your information will be shared with marketers.
If we apply the same rules to spammers as we do to canvassers and bulk mail houses, we are not preventing anyone
it's not all that difficult to build a full-featured machine into a small chassis without making too many compromises. And Apple did just that with the MacBook, just as Dell has done with some of its XPS line, Sony, HP, and Lenovo have several of those as well. You're welcome to buy one of those, but to suggest that it's adequate for everyone is simply not the case. A five-pound MacBook isn't what everyone wants.
None of them are ultraportables, though.
Again, you're presumptively mocking the situations where thin and light matters more than it does to you. Two and a half pounds doesn't sound like a lot to you, but it's a 45% weight reduction. A minimum 0.3" thickness reduction doesn't mean much to you, but it packs essentially the same machine into half the volume. These things aren't worth another $700 to you the same way one of those monstrous 17" Dell laptops with two hard drives and desktop CPUs aren't worth another $1000 to you. To speak about footprint is again to miss the critical point--all folios and briefcases will accommodate a notebook--the footprint is similar to a sheet of paper. It's thickness and weight that they compete on.
If you want something with a smaller, more PDA-like footprint, you're also shopping in the wrong segment, though plenty of companies offer that, too. The OQO products are excellent examples of subnotebooks(note their price: ~$1800; you get "even less" than a MacBook Air).
It's just an inconvenience. Harassment implies some sort of malice. Harassment is words, conduct, or action (usually persistent) that annoys with no legitimate purpose. Spam certainly falls under that. If it were legitimate advertising or marketing, companies would not have problems being associated with it, and there would be clear and consistent means to disengage oneself.
Well, they don't know you're there. I bet they get a lot of houses with no one home. That's not the point. They get your house. A spam bot doesn't know if you're reading your inbox, either, but the difference is that the spam bot doesn't know or care if it's got a real inbox or not.
AFAIK, that's not illegal. So why should it be here? Because it's not wardialing, because you don't have approve it before it costs you bandwidth and occupies your server space. You can't block it effectively, and the sheer volume interferes with legitimate business. If 400 people a day randomly dialed your desk phone and it was a widespread phenomenon, you can be damn sure there'd be legislation about it.
Anyway, there wasn't a telephone equivalent either until the DNC list was created. Yeah, there was. It was called interrupting them and demanding not to be called again. A person had to be doing the calling, and a person had to be paying for the call. The same is not true of email. The Do Not Call list was a response to increasing volumes of calls which made it impractical for them to be dealt with individually. The same impetus is behind both: computer automation. Email needs a solution. Requiring bulk licenses or express invitation would do it.
If you don't want spam, then don't use email; no spammer could ever invade your privacy then! That is not a practical solution. The free speech right of a spam bot does not outweigh my free speech right to communicate electronically. My email inbox is not a public forum. Spam does not have a right to be there uninvited.
I don't mind a law that requires spammers to mark their spam with some tag that can be easily searched for at all levels of the email system so that it can be blocked. But I have to defend their right to send mail unsolicited No, you don't. Anyone who would comply with a mandatory spam-tag are the same companies that currently have removal-options. They are not the problem. I don't see any problem with requiring them to adhere to the same standards already required of junk mail companies (which must either obtain individual permission or comply with postal regulations on how and when they may send mail), and I don't see your argument as any more than a fallacious misapplication of how privacy should function in the digital age.
No, it's like if you have a powerful vacuum cleaner with you, I'm sorry; you already used your quota of bad analogies. The street corner was no good, nor does my mail server "suck" anything into it.
No one can ever spam you without you having participated in some way. That is flatly untrue, and if you actually believe that, you clearly lack an appreciation for the pervasiveness of the problem.
It is somewhat regulable, but the state doesn't have an absolutely free hand. Of course it doesn't. Nothing in my comment was meant to imply otherwise.
So it's not difficult to imagine that in the realm of email, it is your obligation to tell spammers to not spam you, whether directly, or in the form of notice. That implies a finding that an email address is publicly accessible. This is not always the case. I have received spam at internal addresses that have never been used in any public interface, have never been used to sign up for accounts anywhere, and absolutely should not be available to a spammer without either illicit access to an address book or without random guessing.
An email address is not like a postal address. I would contest any finding that says a spammer can harass you without your having consented to it. In terms of the door knock rule, I agree. But there, the individuals are canvassing a specific area on a street of homes with doors. They know you're there because they can see you, not because they walked up to a particular spot, knocked in thin air, and happened on a door. I do not see how the metaphor has any value here.
That no one has created a good mechanism for doing this does not strike me as all that relevant. That's precisely the point, though. There is no way for you to exercise your own right to exclude effectively, because the spam comes regardless, and my personal email inbox is not a public forum. There is no way to set up a notice system that says "no bulk solicitations" and no way to define that perimeter without the use of whitelists, which are a nuisance to legitimate individuals and largely untenable in a business where members of the public would indeed be contacting me without a prior relationship, with the legitimate hope of creating such a relationship. I do not believe might right to privacy and non-harrassment is in equipoise with a spammer's right to speak to me without permission, and I do not believe it fundamentally constrains their right to speak to limit their speech to them getting either (a) a bulk-license from a mail domain operator or (b) specific permission (by mailing list signup or what have you) from the individual.
t is akin to someone standing on the street, handing out flyers; he can't make you take one, but he can hold it out and ask you to. It is not. It is akin to surreptitiously putting said flyer in my private briefacse with the hope that I read it. I do not approve of that, either. If they want to stand "on the street" then they can use banner ads and web pages.
Well this Ferrari seems a bit lazy, but as to other ultraportables: yes.
It is no small feat (no pun intended) to reduce these machines. Whether it's a $2100 Vaio or an $1800 MacBook Air, every millimeter is a fight. Take the MacBook. It's one of the world's thinnest notebooks to begin with--barely over an inch thick overall. It is completely maximized for space as to "standard" notebook components.
Then look at the MBA. It is the same machine, only less than half the volume. It's 0.3" thinner at its very thickest, and averages about half an inch thick throughout. How do you do that? What makes it so that you can package a thinner machine? Keep in mind that most notebooks are 1.5" thick, and a notebook is already a complex miniaturization of a desktop system. The low-travel keyboard alone takes up about a third of the thickest part of the MBA and about a quarter of the thickness of a Vaio. How do you manage heat distribution when there is so little room for air circulation? How do you move heat away from components horizontally because radiating upward won't actually allow heat to escape? How do you further miniaturize an already-tiny CPU package (for the MBA, it involved new packaging--smaller and more expensive for the same thing)? How do you cram a whole motherboard into a space smaller than your typical PCI sound card? How do you make a battery small enough to fit in that height but last long enough (for the MBA, it's to remove all the bulky packaging and the space-wasting bay and put it directly in the case--it's not the first company to do so)?
Every millimeter is a fight. Removing the optical drive gets you maybe 1/3 of the way there for the MacBook Air. The rest of that makes a difference. There are plenty of people who would take the extra fifth of an inch back so they could keep the DVD drive. Sony makes a great Vaio for that, but it costs at least as much as the Air.
Is it really an extra $1000? The answer to that question is the same as the answer to "why is the very fastest CPU $500 more than the next best, and beats it by maybe 5%?" Because that's why they call it the bleeding edge. Early adopters pay the premium that makes things happen. The trickle-down effect takes over from there.
State courts have no jurisdiction over federal questions. False. Both state and federal courts have jurisdiction over federal questions, and the choice of venue is made by the plaintiff, depending on a variety of factors. State courts are courts of general jurisdiction. Their decisions are subject to appellate review, but they are free to interpret federal law and do so on a daily basis.
They can no more declare SPAM not protected than they can declare that you really only have to be 32 to be President. Sure they can, and the age requirement to be president isn't a federal question. It's a black-letter Constitutional provision. It is no more a "federal question" than claiming that there is no Amend. XVII.
strict scrutiny standard for this kind of thing won't let it through. Someone doesn't understand strict scrutiny. Regulation of commercial speech is exactly the kind of thing that has been permitted in the past, and demonstrating a compelling interest even without that lengthy history would not be difficult: free speech does not extend where you have not been invited. Spam does not respect those boundaries unless the spammer has entered into an agreement with the mailbox operator (e.g. working out a deal with Yahoo to transmit messages to its users), just as junk mail must be paid for on a bulk rate and must be delivered to "postal customers". They don't randomly generate mailing addresses, and the random generation of email addresses could easily be seen as an invasion of privacy. Spam from mailing lists you get on, just like junk mail addressed to you from the sale of your information, is different from the viral spam that just gets pumped into the Internet.
He indicated it was too much for his taste, but he also fairly indicated that this is the market's price range all around. You might think that a Wusthof is an overpriced knife and Farberware gets the job done fine. That clearly doesn't mean that Wusthof should lower its prices.
Who says you're getting less? You'd have to be extremely one-dimensional to make that claim. A 50% weight reduction might easily be worth more than a 15" screen. A loss of 3/4" in thickness could very well make sense for a slower CPU and fewer ports. If you don't need or want something, it doesn't have any value to you.
You don't care about looks, size, or weight. So this isn't for you. A business traveler probably doesn't care about having a desktop on his shoulder. So your machine isn't for him. It's presumptuous to claim you're getting "less" in an ultraportable than in a flimsily built standard laptop.
Yeah, because that's exactly what you want on an ultraportable: a hot, battery-sucking video card so you can game on a 10-13" screen, packed in with a low-clocked, low voltage CPU. An ultraportable is not a desktop replacement. If you need a CAD workstation on the go, you're shopping in the wrong market segment. Who on earth modded this insightful?
For a group of people supposedly more "in the know" about technology than most, you seem to miss the point at a frightening frequency. Your 4GB, 2.6GHz dual-core CPU laptop with a 300GB hard drive and a 17" screen might be exactly what you want: maximum raw power. It's not what everyone else wants, and it's not what the lower 80% of computer users would ever come close to needing. Some people would rather spend that money on other things: size, aesthetics, convenience, true portability. Ultraportables under an inch thick are slim enough to fit in soft folios that are half the thickness of a laptop bag. Thin has its place. Specs are not king.
PS- the MacBook is $1100, not $1500, and it's also not a desktop replacement.
Umm.. did you miss the part where the Emperor said the second Death Star *wasn't* under construction and that it was all an elaborate trap? Yes, because that never happened.
Clearly either under construction or not identical to the first.
"Rather than rely on thermal exhaust ports to vent the reactor's incredible excess heat, the second Death Star would instead funnel the waste energy through a series of millimeter-wide heat dispersion ducts." -Starwars.com, http://www.starwars.com/databank/location/deathstarii/
And "true" is an adjective modified by that adverb. It's part of an adverbial phrase; that is, an adverb modifying a noun phrase. Your safari into adjectives is not grammatically on point. A statement's truth value is not determined by its mere existence. You seem to have talked yourself into another corner. Recall that you said "the phrase 'objectively true statement' indicates that there is objective truth to the statement itself"--but "statements themselves" are neither true nor untrue by themselves.
Well, if there's no value in it, I guess you wouldn't mind a change in the law that makes it legal for anyone to report as many of those statements as they want. Another clumsy turn of phrase. There's no value in reporting the "fact" because it's merely a hollow repetition of the expression. It does not follow that there is no value in the expression. Indeed, that's the whole point. But thanks for admitting that there's no value in those "facts".
Facts can be relevant or irrelevant to any particular conversation, but that's orthogonal to their factualness. Another amateur misuse. "Orthogonal to factualness" is either a misuse of orthogonality or factualness. Take your pick. Facts orthogonal to fact is, yet again, a null distinction. You admit that "what are the facts to this argument?" doesn't include a reconstruction of the words and the order used in that argument. In the same vein, the facts in an expression doesn't include the words and order used in that expression. Their "factualness" is a sophism. That sophistry has been outside the goal posts from the very beginning.
In English, adjectives usually appear immediately before the noun which they modify. Yet another argument wide of the mark, joining a phenomenally long list. 'Objectively' in your statement is an adverb.
As we both agree, words themselves are not facts, so I wouldn't have done that in the first place. Then why are you still prattling on? There's no value in reporting statements that have no significance outside identifying the list and order of words in an expression. You seem to be seriously confused about your sophistry. It's technically plausible, but substantively meaningless.
but since we both agree that words on their own aren't facts, your conclusion doesn't follow. As I stated, if we accepted your definition, that would be the contention. You're absolutely correct it doesn't follow--that's the point!
I would also not have listed facts like "the first word of his argument is 'the'" because, although they are facts, they aren't the facts that support the argument Ah, so factual relevance depends on context! That doesn't appear anywhere in your sorely inadequate definition. Context is determined by purpose and character. If the context of your recitation of fact is nothing beyond mere duplication of an expression, it's not relevant either!
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Amount of storage space does not different hardware make, though I take your point that there are, in fact, 3 SKUs. I didn't count them, just as I didn't count carrier-specific implementations or minor variants of the Blackberry series (at least 3-4 variants per main model). The ultimate point remains, though, that unit sales for the iPhone exceed unit sales for any other single hardware unit (including carrier branding or 8300-8310 variation as a unit) in the smartphone market in North America.
Actually, according to your own link, the iPhone *is* the best-selling phone in North America.
There's more than one Blackberry (four, last time I checked). There's only one iPhone.
You also seem to be mistaking "truly competitive and flexible" for what you would like companies to compete for. My bet is that the iPhone SDK will do just fine. The posturing here is completely fabricated. Mobile browsers using desktop plugins? Doubtful. Plugins of any kind aren't that common for mobile browsers. VOIP over EDGE? Worthless. Apps that run in the background, ignoring calls to quit by the OS memory manager? There's a stability problem just waiting to happen.
It's not that you can't multitask, it's that they want to encourage coding practices that don't rely on background services, and applications that save state when they're not active so that the user doesn't lose any data, and that returning to the app is as seamless as possible. With the exception of things like IM and file downloads, you don't need background processes sitting in RAM. Mobile applications should launch quickly and go away when they're told. Windows Mobile developers should take a clue on that, as a user.
Nothing. You can't force people to watch the same things you watch, which is why I said a 1.0 ratio was an unrealistic expectation for any such hypothetical service.
A 1:1 ratio for users is not impossible, unless each and every user watches each and every program. Unless you're talking about a 1:1 ratio per download, which is indeed impossible and illogical, all it requires is that a given user contribute at least as much data as he has taken over a specified period (two weeks, a month, whatever).
Maintaining such a ratio isn't impossible. If you download 3 hours of content, you have to upload at least 3 hours of that content, whether it's 3 people downloading the same one-hour program, 3 people each downloading one of those programs, or 7 people downloading some combination thereof.
That said, I don't think it's a good idea to have a requirement that high for consumer, legal distribution, but it absolutely would work at shifting upload costs. It's dumb to have a blanket requirement in a diverse market because there's no guarantee that your upload services will be needed for a given program, and with uploads far slower than downloads, it would interfere with the use of consumer Internet connections. 0.5 per month would probably be about the highest reasonable ratio, with perhaps a higher class of service for those with ratios above 1.0.
Think of it this way: a person can exit at the rate of 1-2 seconds per through a single door. If you built a wall with a single door and put 350 people on one side, all immediately ready to proceed, you could get it done in 5-7 minutes.
If people actually waited until the plane parked and the doors were disarmed, cross-checked, and open, the process would be a lot faster, but the backlog in the aisles prevents people from getting to their bags in overhead compartments and means that people in outboard seats take longer to get out, because they have to negotiate a crowded aisle instead of an empty one.
" The exclusive right to possess, use, and enjoy a determinate thing (either a tract of land or a chattel); the right of ownership . -- Also termed bundle of rights. 2. Any external thing over which the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment are exercised" --Black's, 8th.
"The law of property is the law of proprietary rights in rem, the law of proprietary rights in personam being distinguished from it as the law of obligations. According to this usage a freehold or leasehold estate in land, or a patent or copyright, is property; but a debt or the benefit of a contract is not.... Finally, in the narrowest use of the term, it includes nothing more than corporeal property -- that is to say, the right of ownership in a material object, or that object itself." --John Salmond
"designates those things commonly recognized as the entities in respect of which a person or group has exclusive rights." -- first damn sentence of Wikipedia article
"Broadly speaking, the right to exclude all others is the essence of a property right, be it over tangibles or intangibles, including patents and all other types of IP. Beyond the right to exclude, this article highlights the availability of a number of other possibilities and opportunities that are available to an owner of IP assets, be they owned by enterprises, large or small." --WIPO
Any first year casebook would have cleared this up for you. Your statement shows you're immoral as well; by your definition, ownership doesn't exist and there's nothing wrong with your stealing something from me. That's dead wrong, but unsurprisingly stupid. Ownership does exist, but your use of the term is overly broad, because ownership is the exercise of dominion. It exists because you possess the legal rights to a given thing. Stealing is wrong, and only a complete invalid could arrive at the conclusion that "ownership doesn't exist" from those words. Granting ownership is the same thing as granting a property right.
Your boneheaded interpretation asking the Framers to "grant ownership" has already been met, because an exclusive right is exactly what one owns when they own a thing. Property rights can and do devolve from the owner (i.e. your rights in the sale of a copy). You must be a lawyer. Nobody but a lawyer argues about the meaning of common words like "is", "sex", "property", or "ownership". Normal people (as well as us nerds) use the dictionary to settle arguments about the definitions of words. Heaven forbid that you should know what you're talking about when you interpret the law (e.g. the Constitution). This is exactly my point. 'Normal people' don't have a fucking clue what the Constitution actually means, including you nerds. But that never stops you from prattling on like jackasses and getting it completely wrong.
Movie tickets have actually kept pace with inflation pretty well. Compared to what I paid in 1990, movie tickets are only about a dollar overpriced now. Cinema equipment is also much better and facilities nicer (albeit sometimes sticky), so I'm okay with that. The ticket price has doubled from $6 to $12 here. The student discount didn't even exist back then, or it was promotional. Students went to the matinees if they wanted to save a buck.
What has gone down, however, is the relative price of a video rental. They used to be the same price as a movie ticket, and they've fallen quite a bit as ticket prices have increased. As it stands, a 5% increase in revenue without adjusting for inflation is lackluster at best and possibly right at par.
It hasn't been my experience that theaters raise prices all that often, at least around here. They tend to move in $0.50 or $1 every year or two, which isn't really all that unfair. But now that DVD rentals are here (and BD, if you've got the player) and the age of home theaters has arrived, the increase in quality and decrease in price has made it pretty compelling. Staying in and doing "movie night" can be a good experience these days. 20 years ago, not so much.
I still personally feel like being at home doesn't compare, even though I have an extremely nice (read: jealousy-inducing) setup. It's about the experience, not only of the film, but socially. It's a different kind of night with friends than having them over, which is a different kind of fun. Different strokes, though, of course.
The granting of an exclusive right is the granting of property. It is at the root of all Western civilization--a proprietary right to something is one granted by the law. It is the right to exclude. It is property. You do have property rights in a home you're renting, but not a complete panoply. The owner retains exclusive rights as well, otherwise he would not be the owner. The efforlessness of reproduction does not nullify the ownership of content, but the US Constitution does. Upon expiration of that exclusive right, absolutely. Up until that point, it creates and enforces it.
This is precisely why Slashdot is a poor place for this kind of thing: it's merely preaching to the choir, regardless of accuracy or actual insight, understanding, or rationality. Your description is a prime example of how you can get it exactly wrong based solely on what you want to see.
That's exactly the point he was making. Who's claiming that IP is like real property?
Get your discussion interpreter fixed.
I have never noticed this problem except at the very beginning of the unloading process, which is a result of the backlog of passengers, not the inadequacy of doors. I will admit that a wheelchair or some sort of jetway obstruction will hold things up, but this is the exception and not the rule (and also, as you say, during deplaning only).
Because the jetway isn't the congestion point. The aisles on the plane are. Putting 300 people down the jetway is no problem; the stream of passengers can split in half at the entrance at the same rate as two jetways would provide. Blockages in the aisles is what slows people down. The hold-up is rarely at the entrance to the plane itself.
Because planes are not a uniform length, and the jetways are absurdly expensive to begin with--far too expensive to replace with new double-ended ones. The alternative, open air-stairs, is no good in inclement weather and the overall cost in terms of security and remodeling boarding gates to accomodate more flow through the staff door would be cost-prohibitive.
There really is no good system. The inverse pyramid section-number situation really would work best overall if people obeyed and if gate crews enforced it. Instead, people scramble to be first in line when their number is called so they can get to their seat first...I guess because they like getting up two or three times to let people slip past, thus blocking the whole aisle and generally slowing everything down.
The fundamental problem isn't the infrastructure. It's not even the inconvenient configuration of the aircraft. It's the damn passengers. I was on a widebody that boarded (nearly full) in under 20 minutes once. The flight had been delayed four or five times over the span of six hours, and because of the weather, the crew informed the passengers that if they didn't get their asses in the seats quickly and without incident, we'd miss the only takeoff slot likely available. It worked.
First, there needs to be some intent to harass, rather than to just engage in the conduct.
And you're basing this on...?
Second, there is a legitimate purpose: to advertise goods or services.
It doesn't work that way. The classic case of harassment is abusive debt-collection practices. That has a "legitimate purpose" based on your understanding too--to get money owed.
Allow me to quote: "Words, conduct, or action (usu. repeated or persistent) that, being directed at a specific person, annoys, alarms, or causes substantial emotional distress in that person and serves no legitimate purpose. Harassment is actionable in some circumstances, as when a creditor uses threatening or abusive tactics to collect a debt." --Black's, 8th.
"To irritate or torment persistently." --American Heritage
If 400 people a day randomly dialed my phone in order to sell me something, I would call that phenomenon telemarketing, which would be kind of funny, since that's what everyone else already calls it.
Cute, but telemarketers don't wardial, and they don't call 400 times a day in some willy-nilly fashion. There's a reason they're calling you, because calling you costs time and money. Telemarketers, too, are limited in what they can do, and if they did what spammers do, they'd be fined heavily for--wait for it--harassment.
Nor does that mean that all spam is inherently legitimate; just that some uses of the medium can be legitimate.
And legitimate uses can conform to the regular requirements we already place on distributors of junk mail without causing problems. Requiring the same of spammers does not cause a problem.
If it's not a real inbox, then where the hell would it go? Either to nowhere, in which case, why do we particularly care,
You're completely missing the point. The machine pumps out spam. Most of it never gets delivered, but it's the blanket coverage that invades privacy and causes the problem. I can't just carpet bomb a small town, either, hoping some of the flyers land in mailboxes and on porches, and it's not just because we have convenient laws against littering.
It would also be unconstitutional; people have a right to talk at you, they just don't have a right to force you to listen. Try again.
They don't have a right to force their way in. If they asked for permission to send email first, which is exactly what we require of bulk mail distributors, it would curb the problem. Spammers have no constitutional right to force their way into my inbox any more than your street-corner advertisers have a right to force their flyers into my briefcase.
Your argument falls flat on its face when you consider the postal requirements for doing the same thing. Their right to speech does not outweigh my right to privacy. Their knocking at the door does not include constantly and repeatedly stuffing flyers in. It does not include a right to advertise at my expense by filling my mail server with crap. It does not include a right to drown out legitimate communication to the point where the only alternative is an unworkable whitelist.
In the real world, we have common courtesy and small numbers that allow for enforcement. Advertisers can be sent away as they come. Signs can be placed near entries and mailboxes. The same does not hold true for an email inbox whose abusive harassment cannot be stopped. Your "solution" is the same as locking your lobby to the public rather than addressing the abuses of illegitimate companies. No legitimate company would have any difficulty complying with getting a license, just as they enter bulk rate arrangements for each postal route. They would have no difficulty getting express permission through site signups and terms specifically declaring your information will be shared with marketers.
If we apply the same rules to spammers as we do to canvassers and bulk mail houses, we are not preventing anyone
None of them are ultraportables, though.
Again, you're presumptively mocking the situations where thin and light matters more than it does to you. Two and a half pounds doesn't sound like a lot to you, but it's a 45% weight reduction. A minimum 0.3" thickness reduction doesn't mean much to you, but it packs essentially the same machine into half the volume. These things aren't worth another $700 to you the same way one of those monstrous 17" Dell laptops with two hard drives and desktop CPUs aren't worth another $1000 to you. To speak about footprint is again to miss the critical point--all folios and briefcases will accommodate a notebook--the footprint is similar to a sheet of paper. It's thickness and weight that they compete on.
If you want something with a smaller, more PDA-like footprint, you're also shopping in the wrong segment, though plenty of companies offer that, too. The OQO products are excellent examples of subnotebooks(note their price: ~$1800; you get "even less" than a MacBook Air).
An email address is not like a postal address. I would contest any finding that says a spammer can harass you without your having consented to it. In terms of the door knock rule, I agree. But there, the individuals are canvassing a specific area on a street of homes with doors. They know you're there because they can see you, not because they walked up to a particular spot, knocked in thin air, and happened on a door. I do not see how the metaphor has any value here. That no one has created a good mechanism for doing this does not strike me as all that relevant. That's precisely the point, though. There is no way for you to exercise your own right to exclude effectively, because the spam comes regardless, and my personal email inbox is not a public forum. There is no way to set up a notice system that says "no bulk solicitations" and no way to define that perimeter without the use of whitelists, which are a nuisance to legitimate individuals and largely untenable in a business where members of the public would indeed be contacting me without a prior relationship, with the legitimate hope of creating such a relationship. I do not believe might right to privacy and non-harrassment is in equipoise with a spammer's right to speak to me without permission, and I do not believe it fundamentally constrains their right to speak to limit their speech to them getting either (a) a bulk-license from a mail domain operator or (b) specific permission (by mailing list signup or what have you) from the individual. t is akin to someone standing on the street, handing out flyers; he can't make you take one, but he can hold it out and ask you to. It is not. It is akin to surreptitiously putting said flyer in my private briefacse with the hope that I read it. I do not approve of that, either. If they want to stand "on the street" then they can use banner ads and web pages.
Well this Ferrari seems a bit lazy, but as to other ultraportables: yes.
It is no small feat (no pun intended) to reduce these machines. Whether it's a $2100 Vaio or an $1800 MacBook Air, every millimeter is a fight. Take the MacBook. It's one of the world's thinnest notebooks to begin with--barely over an inch thick overall. It is completely maximized for space as to "standard" notebook components.
Then look at the MBA. It is the same machine, only less than half the volume. It's 0.3" thinner at its very thickest, and averages about half an inch thick throughout. How do you do that? What makes it so that you can package a thinner machine? Keep in mind that most notebooks are 1.5" thick, and a notebook is already a complex miniaturization of a desktop system. The low-travel keyboard alone takes up about a third of the thickest part of the MBA and about a quarter of the thickness of a Vaio. How do you manage heat distribution when there is so little room for air circulation? How do you move heat away from components horizontally because radiating upward won't actually allow heat to escape? How do you further miniaturize an already-tiny CPU package (for the MBA, it involved new packaging--smaller and more expensive for the same thing)? How do you cram a whole motherboard into a space smaller than your typical PCI sound card? How do you make a battery small enough to fit in that height but last long enough (for the MBA, it's to remove all the bulky packaging and the space-wasting bay and put it directly in the case--it's not the first company to do so)?
Every millimeter is a fight. Removing the optical drive gets you maybe 1/3 of the way there for the MacBook Air. The rest of that makes a difference. There are plenty of people who would take the extra fifth of an inch back so they could keep the DVD drive. Sony makes a great Vaio for that, but it costs at least as much as the Air.
Is it really an extra $1000? The answer to that question is the same as the answer to "why is the very fastest CPU $500 more than the next best, and beats it by maybe 5%?" Because that's why they call it the bleeding edge. Early adopters pay the premium that makes things happen. The trickle-down effect takes over from there.
He indicated it was too much for his taste, but he also fairly indicated that this is the market's price range all around. You might think that a Wusthof is an overpriced knife and Farberware gets the job done fine. That clearly doesn't mean that Wusthof should lower its prices.
Who says you're getting less? You'd have to be extremely one-dimensional to make that claim. A 50% weight reduction might easily be worth more than a 15" screen. A loss of 3/4" in thickness could very well make sense for a slower CPU and fewer ports. If you don't need or want something, it doesn't have any value to you.
You don't care about looks, size, or weight. So this isn't for you. A business traveler probably doesn't care about having a desktop on his shoulder. So your machine isn't for him. It's presumptuous to claim you're getting "less" in an ultraportable than in a flimsily built standard laptop.
Yeah, because that's exactly what you want on an ultraportable: a hot, battery-sucking video card so you can game on a 10-13" screen, packed in with a low-clocked, low voltage CPU. An ultraportable is not a desktop replacement. If you need a CAD workstation on the go, you're shopping in the wrong market segment. Who on earth modded this insightful?
For a group of people supposedly more "in the know" about technology than most, you seem to miss the point at a frightening frequency. Your 4GB, 2.6GHz dual-core CPU laptop with a 300GB hard drive and a 17" screen might be exactly what you want: maximum raw power. It's not what everyone else wants, and it's not what the lower 80% of computer users would ever come close to needing. Some people would rather spend that money on other things: size, aesthetics, convenience, true portability. Ultraportables under an inch thick are slim enough to fit in soft folios that are half the thickness of a laptop bag. Thin has its place. Specs are not king.
PS- the MacBook is $1100, not $1500, and it's also not a desktop replacement.
Lacy, Lemons, and Koontz. 10 seconds on Google would have gotten you the answer.
http://blogs.starwars.com/static/img/image-selector/full/original-trilogy/episode-vi/02.jpg
Clearly either under construction or not identical to the first.
"Rather than rely on thermal exhaust ports to vent the reactor's incredible excess heat, the second Death Star would instead funnel the waste energy through a series of millimeter-wide heat dispersion ducts."
-Starwars.com, http://www.starwars.com/databank/location/deathstarii/
Sucks to be you.
Reposed.
This is over.