I dunno... I haven't calibrated the touchscreen on either of my smart phones yet... 5 years and counting now. (I still use the old one on wifi... and it still hasn't needed to be calibrated.)
I do remember having to calibrate touchscreens years ago, but its about as common now as adjusting the choke to start a car.
If someone builds a car around that $3 chip, is Google suddenly entitled to $1000 for use of that chip?
a) I'm reasonably confident google would be interested in licensing the patent, and would be more than happy to negotiate a per unit price perhaps based on the average smartphone, perhaps based on what the car manufacturer prices the 'built-in-phone option' for the car at.
b) a) If google didn't budge on that price during negotiation, the car would simply not include that peripheral functionality. Or perhaps they'd go to court (if it was a FRAND patent... ) as I can see all kinds of arguments the car company could make.
a) Neither Microsoft nor Apple has attempted to negotiate. Just because that's Motorola's standard offer, doesn't mean that's anywhere near the average final settlement.
b) From the article you posted "Apple, in its own case, said the technology is worth, at most, $1 per unit."
Ah, well then, we'll just let Apple pay whatever they think its worth then, right? That seems much more 'fair and reasonable' than any sort of negotiation could be.
Furthermore, and I *am* going to be somewhat hyperbolic here: if the technology is worth at most "$1 per unit" then why not just not include the technology then? It clearly isn't of significant value.
So let the consumer decide if they are willing to spend $20 more for an iphone with 4G/LTE or whatever instead of 3G or whatever. Its not like apple was ever going to bear the cost anyway.
If you get to charge whatever you want to charge, then that throws that *FAIR* and *REASONABLE* right out the fucking window doesn't it?
So I guess fair and reasonable means apple can decide what they are worth? I doubt it.
Fair and reasonable needs to pass a series of litmus tests...
Which part of FAIR and REASONABLE do you not understand?
What do you think fair and reasonable means? Wikipedia defines it well enough:
"Fair" terms means terms which are not anti-competitive and that would not be considered unlawful if imposed by a dominant firm in their relative market.
I'm pretty sure 2.25% easily falls within a legal reading of 'fair'.
"Reasonable" relates to whether the rate would make the market uncompetitive. Are you really arguing that this is the case here?
And then there is non-discriminatory, which you didn't mention, which states that the terms offered can't discriminate against a licensee. But that doesn't mean the terms offered to all licensees must be the same; cross licensing, sales volume, even credit worthiness can be taken into account. Is apple being discriminated against? So far they haven't even tried to negotiate... until now, when they finally countered the 2.25% offer from Google with an offer of $1 per unit which is approximately 0.16%.
Perhaps they'll find some meeting point in the middle, and settle.
Again, Motorola has already been shown to be unfair. Microsoft pays $6mil/year for 2300 H264 patents. And Motorola wants $4billion for their 50 H264 royalties?
Motorola made an offer. Microsoft didn't even try to negotatiate. Rumor is that behind all the court bluster they are negotiating and will likely reach a settlement.
Fucking fanbois.
I'm writing this on a mac book pro, and even I can see the idiocy in how apple has been handling it.
Together, the mother and father can ensure that the child receives a quality education and good nutrition and health care.
Meh.... 2 fathers and no mothers. a mother and a much older brother. a father and an aunt. a father and an uncle.
The reality isn't a message isn't about a "father and a mother"; its that 'more is better'.
More attention and care from more diverse individuals is better. Doesn't really matter what the biological relationships or genders are; although its probable that exposure to both genders is ideal - for the inherent diversity that entails. But that could provided by an aunt/uncle or grandparent in a gay couple, or single parent scenario.
Fukushima showed all you need to lose are the diesel generator building and the high-tension wires into the plant site, and it's all over melty like s'mores and Seascape and Chernobyl.
Fukushima showed off how an older design could fail, and as I recall it was built wrong even for it's design which aggravated the problem.
Any evidence that this would affect the 26 plants the article talks about in the states? Or is it just FUD?
Libertarians believe that bankers will behave when they're accountable to their customers,
What makes them think that?
rather than to the regulators who have failed spectacularly for all of the 20th and this portion of the 21st century.
So the regulators failed spectacularly. We agree on that. But you think the banks would have acted differently in the complete absense of regulations?
This is about as logical as asserting that: the doctor failed to cure you; therefore if you didn't have a doctor, you would have been just fine. Sure! why not?
Libertarians believe that companies who "doctor" their drugs will fail by popular opinion.
Libertarians are complete and utter fools then, but that was my assessment going in so that's hardly a revelation. I mean we'd all just switch to the other mega conglomerate doing exactly the same things we didn't like about the first one, because that would cause the first one to fail, allowing one of the remaining ones to pick it up at a discount ensuring that the next time a drug goes wrong there are even fewer alternatives... until there is a monopoly.
Or maybe will see a bunch of start ups? Without the FDA gumming up the works my neighbor can sell tic-tacs as discount medicine online... sure the market will sort it out eventually, and she won't get many repeat customers. People will stop buying from her when they realize they don't work, or perhaps they'll just die because they needed actual medicine, but either way her revenue from that customer will dry up. She can just keep selling them under new names and a different post office boxes for different ailments. Will she go bankrupt? Probably not; her overhead is low and there's always someone looking for discount pills. Maybe she eventually makes enough money that she opens an actual lab and starts sending out experimental drugs made by meth cooks she recruited off the street as possible cures for cancer... who knows one of them might even work right?
What libertarians don't seem to get is that every enterprise tends towards monopoly over time. Start out with a competitive market and gradually one by one the participants will get saddled with bad management, bad luck, or make some other misstep and be gobbled up by the others. New entrants will not take their place because they can't compete with the economies of scale, brand recognition, and vertical integration enjoyed by the incumbents. One by one they fall until there is a stable equilibrium... whether its monopoly, duopoly, or some slightly larger variant doesn't really matter.
And if the two biggest companies in a field colluded, in a Libertarian society, they wouldn't be able to collude for long. Number three would wipe its' arse with their remains, in very short order.
That's pretty naive, but even if were true, lets see where that leads: We start with a field of say 10 large companies... then companies 1 and 2 collude, company 3 "wipes its arse with their remains", and as they fail the pieces get bought out by companies 3, 4, 5.
So now instead of a field of 10 large companies, its a field of 8 even larger companies. Well that's progress. A few more iterations and then... well I've made my point.
By the way, I work a government. Too many of the people I work with are real shitheads for me to believe that the government works on the behalf of its citizens
Yes, yes, no one is challenging your argument that the 'government' is an inefficient and corrupt blob monster.
So yes, it would probably take longer than 24 hours to use this up, but a 250gb limit is ridiculous for your fastest and most expensive package.
I agree, if that were the entire story, but its not. If you read the fine print on that rogers plan, the overage rate is specified as:
"50 cents/GB to a maximum of $100"
That changes *everything*. Their 'fastest and most expensive package' is actually something of a flex plan that scales based on actual usage from:
150Mbps/10Mbps 250GB @ $130/mo to 150Mbps/10Mbps 450GB (unlimited?)* @ $230 / mo
Adding 50 cents/GB to the $100 maximum takes us to 450GB @ 230. However, it appears only the billing caps at $100 extra not the bandwidth, meaning that at the $230 price point you have an essentially unlimited plan.
Based on what one of their cable competitors "Shaw" offers; this is a reasonable interpretation; Shaw also offers a very fast unlimited plan up around $190.
TFA also doesn't understand that sometimes you don't care that much about MITM, just that the traffic is encrypted to make the current session opaque.
Others have already weighed in, but I have to pile on too. You need to realize this is an absurd position.
What is the point of an 'opaque session' if you are having it with an unknown party?
If you are willing to talk to anyone who presents themselves as the endpoint and you don't authenticate them, what does it matter if someone else can't listen in... for all you know you are having a nice encrypted session with the very 'someone else' you don't want listening in.
Want to see it in action? Log into Win8 with an MS account on any machine - your apps, data, settings, everything will magically appear...
So if my friend comes over to my house, he can log into my PC, and all his crap, applications, pictures of his dog, his porn... that all gets dumped on my PC?
See, this is one of the features of Win8 I honestly don't know much about, but it... worries me. I'm not sure its a feature I want, indeed its a feature I'd probably want to seriously lock down both to prevent my data from leaking out (I currently have no plan to log in with Windows Live - and bypassed that when I set up Windows 8 on my HTPC to trial it) and also to prevent others from being able to dump there crap into my computers as I outlined above.
One day your average IT worker will find the idea of saving personal data directly to a device actually most amusing I suspect, and the shift in thinking has already started.
Yes, because nobody has 'private' data. We'd all like our tax returns, financial records, and the naugty pics we took of our spouse entrusted to Microsoft Windows Live security.
6) If you use multiple computers (most of us, probably, just like I imagne most use multiple monitors when posible), the ability to use Lindows Live for single-sign-on and profile roaming is excellent.
I'm not sure I actually want this. I don't want the same desktop background, and other settings on the htpc as my home office pc, or much of anything from either on the laptop I use... am i unusual here? how many people want roaming profiles at home?
I'm also extremely unlikely to spend the several hundreds of dollars it would take to upgrade my computers. So while the next laptop i get next year might be win 8 as I have no objections to the OS, that roaming profile support is not going to do me much good anytime soon, even if i wanted it.
With the constant "civilian shielding" enemies use
You mean, in that the "enemies" are living out their lives in their own country far away from any direct military conflict with us?
Did you know our very own generals often sleep in the very same house as their families? If the 'enemies' decided to attack them directly for leading the attacks on their countries, why, we're shielding them with civilians: women, even children. -gasp-
I dont see one good solution here.
Realizing that the "war on terror" isn't won by killing people indiscriminately who are thousands of miles from our borders would be a good start.
ere's a lot of twelve year olds that scream bitch at you when they beat you. I doubt this has anything to do with the game and more with the baseline of the gamer group. Ask a group of children the same question and you'll get similar answers.
So you think a lot of 12 year old games of the 'scream bitch at you when they beat you' level of intellect were watching the debates?
No, she's a child. There is a reason why, in civilised countries, you have reduced rights and responsibilities until you reach the age of majority.
Your point?
The transition from childhood to adulthood doesn't magically happen on your birthday. Do you advocate treating them like a 5 year old until they move out?
A 13 year old is old enough to have some privacy and independence. Do you still watch her shower to make sure she gets behind her ears? Do you still watch her change to make sure she puts on clean underwear? I sure don't.
And we likely agree on this; and we likely agree that between 10 and 18 we gradually start treating them like the adults they are becoming.
We may disagree on where exactly that cut off is; I think monitoring every movement of a 13 year old and checking their auditing their bank account transactions to over the line. Where do you think the cut off is? 15? 17?
So you regularly monitor your kids location via GPS, and audit her bank transactions.
Does she know you do this? Personally, I think you are crossing a line, and invading her privacy. If she wanted you to know what she was buying and where she was going she would tell you.
If you feel the (legitimate) need to be able to find your daughter if something bad happens as a duty of a good parent, fine, but I'd hardly call monitoring her location and auditing her transactions even when "nothing is wrong" to be over the top.
Do you track your wife's every move too, and audit every transaction, just to make sure...? Why or why not?
Trust is having access to your daughter's diary and not reading it, being able to track her movements but not doing it.
IMO, you do not trust your child.
If I located my teenage children using the gps tracking on their phone; I'd only do it if they were actually "missing" from where they were expected to be (even if just a few hours); and I'd tell them I'd done it when they got home.
I think that your level of monitoring is entirely approrpriate for a 5 year old, maybe an 8 year old, probably not for a 10 year old, and crossing the line on a teenager.
That's my opinion, I respectfully disagree with what you are doing, and am genuinely curious why you think its right.
Yeah, I was thinking Greg Egan as well; Schild's Ladder in particular, along with Permutation City pop to mind.
And much of the work under the moniker of "Hard SF" might appeal to the submitter, since it tends to be backed by real math, physics, and chemistry and often delves into the details.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure I could drive my car through my neighbors living room without ever touching a public road...
I dunno... I haven't calibrated the touchscreen on either of my smart phones yet... 5 years and counting now. (I still use the old one on wifi... and it still hasn't needed to be calibrated.)
I do remember having to calibrate touchscreens years ago, but its about as common now as adjusting the choke to start a car.
If someone builds a car around that $3 chip, is Google suddenly entitled to $1000 for use of that chip?
a) I'm reasonably confident google would be interested in licensing the patent, and would be more than happy to negotiate a per unit price perhaps based on the average smartphone, perhaps based on what the car manufacturer prices the 'built-in-phone option' for the car at.
b) a) If google didn't budge on that price during negotiation, the car would simply not include that peripheral functionality. Or perhaps they'd go to court (if it was a FRAND patent... ) as I can see all kinds of arguments the car company could make.
a) Neither Microsoft nor Apple has attempted to negotiate. Just because that's Motorola's standard offer, doesn't mean that's anywhere near the average final settlement.
b) From the article you posted "Apple, in its own case, said the technology is worth, at most, $1 per unit."
Ah, well then, we'll just let Apple pay whatever they think its worth then, right? That seems much more 'fair and reasonable' than any sort of negotiation could be.
Furthermore, and I *am* going to be somewhat hyperbolic here: if the technology is worth at most "$1 per unit" then why not just not include the technology then? It clearly isn't of significant value.
So let the consumer decide if they are willing to spend $20 more for an iphone with 4G/LTE or whatever instead of 3G or whatever. Its not like apple was ever going to bear the cost anyway.
If you get to charge whatever you want to charge, then that throws that *FAIR* and *REASONABLE* right out the fucking window doesn't it?
So I guess fair and reasonable means apple can decide what they are worth? I doubt it.
Fair and reasonable needs to pass a series of litmus tests...
Which part of FAIR and REASONABLE do you not understand?
What do you think fair and reasonable means? Wikipedia defines it well enough:
"Fair" terms means terms which are not anti-competitive and that would not be considered unlawful if imposed by a dominant firm in their relative market.
I'm pretty sure 2.25% easily falls within a legal reading of 'fair'.
"Reasonable" relates to whether the rate would make the market uncompetitive. Are you really arguing that this is the case here?
And then there is non-discriminatory, which you didn't mention, which states that the terms offered can't discriminate against a licensee. But that doesn't mean the terms offered to all licensees must be the same; cross licensing, sales volume, even credit worthiness can be taken into account. Is apple being discriminated against? So far they haven't even tried to negotiate... until now, when they finally countered the 2.25% offer from Google with an offer of $1 per unit which is approximately 0.16%.
Perhaps they'll find some meeting point in the middle, and settle.
Again, Motorola has already been shown to be unfair. Microsoft pays $6mil/year for 2300 H264 patents. And Motorola wants $4billion for their 50 H264 royalties?
Motorola made an offer. Microsoft didn't even try to negotatiate. Rumor is that behind all the court bluster they are negotiating and will likely reach a settlement.
Fucking fanbois.
I'm writing this on a mac book pro, and even I can see the idiocy in how apple has been handling it.
His antics are DIFFERENT because he is a PERSON
Corporations are people too. Hadn't you heard?
You *NEED* FRAND patents to make a smart phone.
Then perhaps they are worth more than a dollar, to the maker of a $500+ phone that incorporates them and can't exist without them.
Don't forget the moose attacks!
http://www.theprovince.com/Moose+attacks+police+with+Prince+George+Mountie+inside/7447294/story.html
Together, the mother and father can ensure that the child receives a quality education and good nutrition and health care.
Meh.... 2 fathers and no mothers. a mother and a much older brother. a father and an aunt. a father and an uncle.
The reality isn't a message isn't about a "father and a mother"; its that 'more is better'.
More attention and care from more diverse individuals is better.
Doesn't really matter what the biological relationships or genders are; although its probable that exposure to both genders is ideal - for the inherent diversity that entails. But that could provided by an aunt/uncle or grandparent in a gay couple, or single parent scenario.
Fukushima showed all you need to lose are the diesel generator building and the high-tension wires into the plant site, and it's all over melty like s'mores and Seascape and Chernobyl.
Fukushima showed off how an older design could fail, and as I recall it was built wrong even for it's design which aggravated the problem.
Any evidence that this would affect the 26 plants the article talks about in the states? Or is it just FUD?
I'm thinking FUD.
I first assumed this app would connect directly to my XBox via Bluetooth
That'd be pretty slick given your xbox doesn't have any bluetooth support.
Heh, it appears you missed the AC post above the parent. Its one of those insipid FTFY posts that mouth-breathing ACs like so much.
Libertarians believe that bankers will behave when they're accountable to their customers,
What makes them think that?
rather than to the regulators who have failed spectacularly for all of the 20th and this portion of the 21st century.
So the regulators failed spectacularly. We agree on that. But you think the banks would have acted differently in the complete absense of regulations?
This is about as logical as asserting that: the doctor failed to cure you; therefore if you didn't have a doctor, you would have been just fine. Sure! why not?
Libertarians believe that companies who "doctor" their drugs will fail by popular opinion.
Libertarians are complete and utter fools then, but that was my assessment going in so that's hardly a revelation. I mean we'd all just switch to the other mega conglomerate doing exactly the same things we didn't like about the first one, because that would cause the first one to fail, allowing one of the remaining ones to pick it up at a discount ensuring that the next time a drug goes wrong there are even fewer alternatives... until there is a monopoly.
Or maybe will see a bunch of start ups? Without the FDA gumming up the works my neighbor can sell tic-tacs as discount medicine online... sure the market will sort it out eventually, and she won't get many repeat customers. People will stop buying from her when they realize they don't work, or perhaps they'll just die because they needed actual medicine, but either way her revenue from that customer will dry up. She can just keep selling them under new names and a different post office boxes for different ailments. Will she go bankrupt? Probably not; her overhead is low and there's always someone looking for discount pills. Maybe she eventually makes enough money that she opens an actual lab and starts sending out experimental drugs made by meth cooks she recruited off the street as possible cures for cancer... who knows one of them might even work right?
What libertarians don't seem to get is that every enterprise tends towards monopoly over time. Start out with a competitive market and gradually one by one the participants will get saddled with bad management, bad luck, or make some other misstep and be gobbled up by the others. New entrants will not take their place because they can't compete with the economies of scale, brand recognition, and vertical integration enjoyed by the incumbents. One by one they fall until there is a stable equilibrium... whether its monopoly, duopoly, or some slightly larger variant doesn't really matter.
And if the two biggest companies in a field colluded, in a Libertarian society, they wouldn't be able to collude for long. Number three would wipe its' arse with their remains, in very short order.
That's pretty naive, but even if were true, lets see where that leads: We start with a field of say 10 large companies... then companies 1 and 2 collude, company 3 "wipes its arse with their remains", and as they fail the pieces get bought out by companies 3, 4, 5.
So now instead of a field of 10 large companies, its a field of 8 even larger companies. Well that's progress. A few more iterations and then... well I've made my point.
By the way, I work a government. Too many of the people I work with are real shitheads for me to believe that the government works on the behalf of its citizens
Yes, yes, no one is challenging your argument that the 'government' is an inefficient and corrupt blob monster.
But Not having it is even worse.
So yes, it would probably take longer than 24 hours to use this up, but a 250gb limit is ridiculous for your fastest and most expensive package.
I agree, if that were the entire story, but its not. If you read the fine print on that rogers plan, the overage rate is specified as:
"50 cents/GB to a maximum of $100"
That changes *everything*. Their 'fastest and most expensive package' is actually something of a flex plan that scales based on actual usage from:
150Mbps/10Mbps 250GB @ $130 /mo to
150Mbps/10Mbps 450GB (unlimited?)* @ $230 / mo
Adding 50 cents/GB to the $100 maximum takes us to 450GB @ 230. However, it appears only the billing caps at $100 extra not the bandwidth, meaning that at the $230 price point you have an essentially unlimited plan.
Based on what one of their cable competitors "Shaw" offers; this is a reasonable interpretation; Shaw also offers a very fast unlimited plan up around $190.
TFA also doesn't understand that sometimes you don't care that much about MITM, just that the traffic is encrypted to make the current session opaque.
Others have already weighed in, but I have to pile on too. You need to realize this is an absurd position.
What is the point of an 'opaque session' if you are having it with an unknown party?
If you are willing to talk to anyone who presents themselves as the endpoint and you don't authenticate them, what does it matter if someone else can't listen in... for all you know you are having a nice encrypted session with the very 'someone else' you don't want listening in.
killing people indiscriminately who are thousands of miles from our borders would be a good start.
FTFY
That sounds like perpetrating terrorism to me.
Do you see any Generals shooting from the windows of their house?
So your implyng a compound in Pakistan is within bedroom window firing range of America?
Which victim of a drone strike was within bedroom window firing range of America?
None of them? You mean they were all well outside of being a direct immediate threat to America, and at most were suspected of organizing things?
How is that different from an american general again?
Want to see it in action? Log into Win8 with an MS account on any machine - your apps, data, settings, everything will magically appear ...
So if my friend comes over to my house, he can log into my PC, and all his crap, applications, pictures of his dog, his porn... that all gets dumped on my PC?
See, this is one of the features of Win8 I honestly don't know much about, but it ... worries me. I'm not sure its a feature I want, indeed its a feature I'd probably want to seriously lock down both to prevent my data from leaking out (I currently have no plan to log in with Windows Live - and bypassed that when I set up Windows 8 on my HTPC to trial it) and also to prevent others from being able to dump there crap into my computers as I outlined above.
One day your average IT worker will find the idea of saving personal data directly to a device actually most amusing I suspect, and the shift in thinking has already started.
Yes, because nobody has 'private' data. We'd all like our tax returns, financial records, and the naugty pics we took of our spouse entrusted to Microsoft Windows Live security.
6) If you use multiple computers (most of us, probably, just like I imagne most use multiple monitors when posible), the ability to use Lindows Live for single-sign-on and profile roaming is excellent.
I'm not sure I actually want this. I don't want the same desktop background, and other settings on the htpc as my home office pc, or much of anything from either on the laptop I use... am i unusual here? how many people want roaming profiles at home?
I'm also extremely unlikely to spend the several hundreds of dollars it would take to upgrade my computers. So while the next laptop i get next year might be win 8 as I have no objections to the OS, that roaming profile support is not going to do me much good anytime soon, even if i wanted it.
Sure, but that's just another way of agreeing with the original article.
With the constant "civilian shielding" enemies use
You mean, in that the "enemies" are living out their lives in their own country far away from any direct military conflict with us?
Did you know our very own generals often sleep in the very same house as their families? If the 'enemies' decided to attack them directly for leading the attacks on their countries, why, we're shielding them with civilians: women, even children. -gasp-
I dont see one good solution here.
Realizing that the "war on terror" isn't won by killing people indiscriminately who are thousands of miles from our borders would be a good start.
ere's a lot of twelve year olds that scream bitch at you when they beat you. I doubt this has anything to do with the game and more with the baseline of the gamer group. Ask a group of children the same question and you'll get similar answers.
So you think a lot of 12 year old games of the 'scream bitch at you when they beat you' level of intellect were watching the debates?
No, she's a child. There is a reason why, in civilised countries, you have reduced rights and responsibilities until you reach the age of majority.
Your point?
The transition from childhood to adulthood doesn't magically happen on your birthday. Do you advocate treating them like a 5 year old until they move out?
A 13 year old is old enough to have some privacy and independence. Do you still watch her shower to make sure she gets behind her ears? Do you still watch her change to make sure she puts on clean underwear? I sure don't.
And we likely agree on this; and we likely agree that between 10 and 18 we gradually start treating them like the adults they are becoming.
We may disagree on where exactly that cut off is; I think monitoring every movement of a 13 year old and checking their auditing their bank account transactions to over the line. Where do you think the cut off is? 15? 17?
So you regularly monitor your kids location via GPS, and audit her bank transactions.
Does she know you do this? Personally, I think you are crossing a line, and invading her privacy. If she wanted you to know what she was buying and where she was going she would tell you.
If you feel the (legitimate) need to be able to find your daughter if something bad happens as a duty of a good parent, fine, but I'd hardly call monitoring her location and auditing her transactions even when "nothing is wrong" to be over the top.
Do you track your wife's every move too, and audit every transaction, just to make sure...? Why or why not?
Trust is having access to your daughter's diary and not reading it, being able to track her movements but not doing it.
IMO, you do not trust your child.
If I located my teenage children using the gps tracking on their phone; I'd only do it if they were actually "missing" from where they were expected to be (even if just a few hours); and I'd tell them I'd done it when they got home.
I think that your level of monitoring is entirely approrpriate for a 5 year old, maybe an 8 year old, probably not for a 10 year old, and crossing the line on a teenager.
That's my opinion, I respectfully disagree with what you are doing, and am genuinely curious why you think its right.
Yeah, I was thinking Greg Egan as well; Schild's Ladder in particular, along with Permutation City pop to mind.
And much of the work under the moniker of "Hard SF" might appeal to the submitter, since it tends to be backed by real math, physics, and chemistry and often delves into the details.