Differences in speed increase congestion terribly.
You can see this most visibly if you live near a tunnel. For some reason everyone seems to slow down by 20 mph when there's a tunnel, which typically puts them at 10mph below the speed limit. The difference in speed between the people going through the tunnel at -10mph and the people coming toward the tunnel at +10mph end up creating severe congestion.
If you think that summary *isn't* a blatant swing at Apple
So far as I know, none of my statements alluded to whether or not I thought this was a swing at Apple. That's just another example of a reader jumping to conclusions, which isn't surprising if you already jumped to conclusions once. I wouldn't have worded the summary the way it was worded...perhaps the first sentence would have been the same, to help the audience identify who Charlie Miller is (because I certainly didn't recognize his name, being someone who doesn't give two shits about Apple), but that last parenthetical sentence is certainly out of place and useless.
I will agree that the summary should have stated the device and platform that was having NFC hacked and the omission is conspicuous. That is in fact the fault of the submitter. The lack of this detail allowed people to jump to conclusions, but it didn't push anybody; people jumped to conclusions on their own, and that is the fault of those people, not the submitter. But no one wants to admit they jumped to conclusions, because that means they made a mistake, so instead they just blame the submitter to avoid feeling bad about their own actions.
After all, you said it yourself. The iPhone doesn't have NFC and this is fairly well known. So how on earth could someone be confused that he's hacking an Apple device with NFC, when there isn't one?
Also, speaking of misleading...
yet the other 66% of the summary heavily mentions Apple. Mmm. Seems legit.
First sentence: 26 words. Second sentence: 32 words Third sentence: 9 words
35 words contained in sentences referencing Apple. Those sentences also involved identifying who the hell Charlie Miller is, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and we'll just say all those words are directed at Apple.
32 words involve the actual story of the danger of NFC devices.
This means at most, 52% of the summary was devoted to Apple.
Nowhere did the summary say Charlie Miller is hacking NFC in an Apple phone. In fact, nowhere in the summary does the string "expos" appear, so when you quote "exposing them", who are you quoting?
The summary said "Apple's hacker nemesis Charlie Miller". It's merely identifying Charlie Miller as a somewhat infamous Apple hacker. Any allusion to him hacking Apple devices in the summary is entirely the fault of people who are jumping to conclusions.
This would be like saying "Sony's hacker nemesis George Hotz is now showing how NFC can be dangerous".
refrain from declaring us doomed if we don't shut down our civilization post haste
I wanted to make a separate response to this.
No one - not a single serious climatologist in the whole world - is saying that "we must shut down civilization post-haste". This is a terrible strawman argument being perpetrated by people who don't want you to actually read the scientists' actual proposals, for fear that you might realize that "chicken little" is a gross caricature of the actual scientists.
Economic assessments of proposed policy to put a price on carbon emissions are in widespread agreement that the net economic impact will be minor. The costs over the next several decades center around $100 per average family, or about 75 cents per person per week, and a GDP reduction of less than 1%. Moreover, the benefits outweigh the costs several times over, as real-world examples illustrate.
Where I live, the unusually mild winter has lead to a dramatic increase in ticks.
Frighteningly, some ticks seem to be able to transmit a meat allergy to their victims. Yeah, you read that right; getting bit by the Lone Star Tick can make you allergic to meat.
But enough anecdotes.
I'm sorry but I simply don't have any confidence that anyone has succesfully modelled our climate to the point that they can predict the weather a week from now, let alone years from now.
Climate is not weather. That is a rather epic fail on your part.
Example: I can't tell you whether it will rain in the Sahara desert on September 9th (weather). But I can tell you that it will be hot and dry most of the time (climate).
This article summarizes an interesting study that points to warmer temperatures in roman times.
Did you actually read the source from the journal, or did you read the summary/Register article that's been blasted to pieces in the comment thread? You may want to make sure that the actual journal article says what you think it says, rather than some journalist's attempt to make an article that uses a graphic that didn't even come from the original source...
The reality is that the support for AGW caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rests on very crude computer models
Crude? Something tells me you haven't actually looked at the models, and you're just pulling the word "crude" out of thin air. If they were crude, someone skilled in programming but unskilled in climatology (such as me or perhaps you) could probably recreate the computer models. I have a sneaky suspicion, however, that the creation of such models is beyond our ability without years of education in climatology.
that will probably be the subject of horse laughs 50 years into the future.
The fact that you had to go out fifty years says it all.
Keep in mind that not even 60 years ago, Franklin, Crick, and Watson discovered the structure of DNA. Not even 60 years ago, there was no such thing as a silicon transistor.
I'm pretty sure more CO2 in the atmosphere is very beneficial to plant life and will help it flourish in forests and agriculture
Only if CO2 is the limiting factor. If e.g. water or nitrogen are the limiting factor in plant growth, excess CO2 will lead to extremely minor benefits, if any.
The one issue I have with the global warming chicken littles is that there is no inherent reason that recent CO2 levels or temperatures are some kind gold standard that must be maintained at all costs.
What the "chicken littles" are saying is that our life and society has already adapted to existing CO2 levels. Anything much higher or much lower than existing levels will probably require further adaptations. For instance, the location of high-yield arable land can change.
Oh, and to address the total red herring about using the official name, my problem isn't that they aren't using PPACA.
My problem is that they SHOULD call it Baucuscare. But they aren't. And you know why; because everybody knows they hate Obama, and nobody knows who Sen. Max Baucus is. Calling it Baucuscare isn't going to get the base all riled up.
A government takeover will hurt everyone long term.
No, a private, corporate takeover - like what we have now - is what hurts everyone long term.
Our government currently spends as much per capita on health care as most other nations with universal health care. And then we the citizens end up paying about as much AGAIN out of our pocket. We're paying twice as much for health care that's not as good as the others are receiving. So your claim that "government takeover of health care hurts everyone long term" not only lacks evidence, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
And besides, this is hardly a government takeover. A government takeover would be single payer Medicare for EVERYONE. Forcing people to buy private insurance is about as far from government takeover as you can get; it's hard to believe that you're not being facetious or trolling.
Single payer is the way to go. Why? Bulk discounts for one (you know, like the kind of bulk discounts that the Republicans refused to write into Medicare Part D). Reduced administrative overhead, because there will be one system, you won't need a stack of forms to fill out, you won't have hospitals fighting insurance companies, etc.
They just can't come out and say what they really stand for, or they'd never win an election.
I just got into a debate with my wife's brother over those new Voter ID laws. I have to give him kudos, he doesn't even pretend it's about voter fraud. He's quite honest about the fact that he thinks people who don't have ID don't deserve to vote because they "obviously aren't contributing to society".
Yes. He actually came out and said "not everyone deserves to vote". I was quite stunned.
And when you can't pay the fine, because you can't afford that either, you'll go to jail
This is straight from the law itself, under section 5000a, page 131:
‘‘(2) SPECIAL RULES.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law— ‘‘(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.—In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure. ‘‘(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.—The Secretary shall not— ‘‘(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or ‘‘(ii) levy on any such property with respect to such failure.’’.
I've owned many Steam games for years. I have never had any problem at all with them. While what you say is technically true, experience has shown me that it's more of a conspiracy theory than anything substantial to worry about.
Valve is no EA, they're no Ubisoft, they're no Activision/Blizzard. I trust Valve. And I think Valve knows that a lot of their company is built on goodwill and trust from gamers.
Until I see Valve treat their customers like shit, I'm going to keep buying games on Steam in preference to every single other form of distribution. Why? Because I can have access to AAA titles for $5 on sale when that same title costs $20 in the store.
The USA Patriot Act came from Congress, not the President. The President does not have the ability to force legislation through Congress.
Then please tell me why the GOP calls it Obamacare. I've been saying this for a long time; it was Sen. Max Baucus (or rather, his aides) who wrote the health care bill. It should be called, if anything, Baucuscare.
But the GOP won't use that technically correct term because there's no built-in animosity in their based toward Sen. Baucus the way there is built-in animosity toward Obama.
If my friend commits a crime and I know about it and I don't turn them in, I can be considered an accessory.
When a police officer commits a crime, and the fellow officers don't turn them in, they too should be accessories. When the police cover up the crime, it should be considered a conspiracy.
Instead, do you know what we have? Whenever the DA does manage to prosecute cops for being bad - like the NYPD Ticket Fixing Scandal (1,600 criminal counts) - you have all those boys in blue coming to back up their buddies, saying it's their God-given right to fix tickets for their wife's uncle's cousin, that they were "Just Following Orders".
A cop who doesn't arrest other cops when they commit crimes is just as rotten as the criminal cop himself.
Israel contains land that Muslims consider holy. Yes? (in case you doubt me, Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven in Jerusalem)
Do you really think Iran would bomb land that their people consider holy? If I were you, I'd be much more worried about India and Pakistan, or an Israeli nuclear first strike against Iran Iran knows if they do shit to Israel, the US will come down on them hard. Iran also knows that if Israel does shit to Iran, the US will use their Security Council veto to stop Israel from suffering any repercussions, aside from "international outrage".
But with India and Pakistan, there is no world superpower that sits behind either of them, with the power to wipe the other out.
There are just so many reasons that Iran is NOT going to nuke anyone that I have a hard time taking people who say such things seriously.
Right. Uh-huh. Because Iran, a nation run by religious nut jobs, will detonate a nuclear weapon on their own holy land.
(in case you didn't know, like the last fellow that I had to tell this to, Jerusalem is also a holy site in Islam, it's where Mohammed ascended to heaven)
Think rationally about this. If Iran nukes Israel, what's going to happen? Iran won't be around much longer...they will piss off three major religions (Jews, Christians, and Muslims). Either Israel, or the US will end up making Iran a hole in the ground, with the fervent support of the entire international community.
If Israel nukes Iran, what's going to happen? International outrage, and then...nothing. The US will use their veto at the UN Security Council to prevent any action from being taken against Israel. And even if Iran did retaliate in some manner, see the previous paragraph.
Those who say Iran is a danger to Israel have fallen for propaganda designed to thrust the US into another war for profit. Make no mistake, Iran is a shitty country, but if you want to destroy them the least you could do is, you know, come up with legitimate reasons for destroying them.
You seem to misunderstand what people like me mean when we say "profiting from others pain" - while your pain is relieved, the profit premium can make drugs unaffordable to some others. If you could afford the drug without profit, but cannot afford it with profit, then Big Pharma is profiting from your pain.
Consider the case in India regarding a compulsory license for a kidney and liver cancer drug.
"For the first time since re-instating patents on pharmaceuticals, India has granted just such a compulsory license, covering a kidney and liver cancer drug marketed under the name Nexavar. Indian generic drug company Natco requested a license, noting that Nexavar was in short supply in India and exceptionally expensive. A typical dosage costs around $70,000 per year in India -- something Bayer says is necessary to recoup the drug's R&D costs. However, reports show that it cost less than $300 million to develop this drug (not to mention that the US government subsidized the process) and Bayer has already made billions selling the drug around the world."
"Cipla, another Indian manufacturer of generics, has announced that it too is coming out with a version of Nexavar, pricing it at $125 for 120 tablets. That's even cheaper than Natco's price of $163, to say nothing of Bayer's $5,128 for the same course."
5128 / 125 = 41.024. That means that Bayer was charging over 41 times as much for a drug that had already recouped all development costs multiple times over.
Tell me with a straight face that Bayer is not trying to profit from kidney and liver cancer at the expense of treating people who are sick.
Show me the patent that a farmer has on tomatoes, potatoes, corn, or any other food. Maybe Monsanto has patents on seeds, but food itself is not patented and anyone can grow it.
Drugs are not the same. Patents are used to prevent competition that would allow the free market to set the price for drugs at a level where there are people who can no longer afford the drug.
Maybe you are confusing 'macro evolution' which hasn't been proven with 'micro evolution' which we see all around us every day.
Macro evolution has been shown in the lab. One characteristic of E. coli is the inability to metabolize citrate. After over 31,000 generations, one set of E. coli evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, thus becoming a new species.
You're right about one thing, they aren't cheap knock-offs. They're expensive knock-offs. As far as "making great products", that's your opinion. My Archos is, IMO, a much better product than the corresponding Apple crap. It has more features, is less frustrating to use, doesn't tie me to any particular piece of software, and it's less expensive to boot.
So let me get this straight. You're allowed to copy a competitor's product, so long as it's more expensive? But if you copy the product and it's less expensive well then you're a thief!
By the way, this case is about Moto, not iMacs. Are you telling me that the Droid is a cheap knock-off of the iPhone, just because it uses "slide to unlock"?
Not direct proof, no; no one is privy to the actual deals except Apple and Motorola themselves, but it sure did take Motorola a long time to come along with this supposed "unlicensed" patent
How on earth could Apple infringe on a patent that they have a license to? Do you realize how nonsensical this sounds? We may not be privy to the details of licensing but knowing whether there is a license or not is something we should be able to discover.
As far as why they waited so long, that's because Moto was trying to get Apple to license their patents and Apple was dragging their feet for years. Just like they did with Nokia. Moto's been trying to get Apple to license their patents for quite some time. I'm sure had Moto gone straight for the lawsuit, you'd be here decrying how they should try to get a licensing deal before going to court.
Can you point me to anywhere that Apple says they believed they were covered? Because I'm not seeing any of it in the ruling.
It breaks the entire FRAND system if one of the pool owners can decide at any time to demand an "infringing" party pay over the odds for its use.
It breaks the entire FRAND system if anyone can use the patents from the pool without licensing them. If you have a license to the pool, then there's no way you can be sued.
demanding excessive royalties (in the words of the presiding judge)
I keep seeing people say that, but I haven't found it anywhere in the Judge's opinion that Moto was asking for "excessive royalties". Can you tell me what page of the opinion you read that on?
The argument I saw was that Moto was suing for damages, but they couldn't convince the Judge on how they would use the licensing fees to determine reasonable damages. Nothing I read in the opinion said that Moto's rate was excessive or unfair; the Judge's argument is only in reference to calculating damages.
You could try page 20 of the Ruling...
But Apple’s refusal to negotiate for a license (if it did refuse—the parties offer competing accounts, unnecessary for me to resolve, of why negotiations broke down) was not a defense to a claim by Motorola for a FRAND royalty. If Apple said no to 2.25 percent, it ran the risk of being ordered by a court to pay an equal or even higher royalty rate
The bolded part implies that Moto's 2.25% rate is reasonable for licensing fees.
Moto was asking for 40%-50% of the portfolio royalty rate for licensing just one patent from the portfolio. So instead of $18.75, it would be more like $9.37.
Slashdot Mirror
Except there is no injunction against the Nexus, just the Tab 10.1
Except there was http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/06/30/028234/sale-of-galaxy-nexus-banned-in-the-us.
Keyword: was. Your slashdot article is dated June 30. This engadget article is dated July 6. So, as GP said, there is no ban on the Nexus.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/06/samsung-gets-temporary-stay-on-galaxy-nexus-ban/
Wrong again.
Differences in speed increase congestion terribly.
You can see this most visibly if you live near a tunnel. For some reason everyone seems to slow down by 20 mph when there's a tunnel, which typically puts them at 10mph below the speed limit. The difference in speed between the people going through the tunnel at -10mph and the people coming toward the tunnel at +10mph end up creating severe congestion.
If you think that summary *isn't* a blatant swing at Apple
So far as I know, none of my statements alluded to whether or not I thought this was a swing at Apple. That's just another example of a reader jumping to conclusions, which isn't surprising if you already jumped to conclusions once. I wouldn't have worded the summary the way it was worded...perhaps the first sentence would have been the same, to help the audience identify who Charlie Miller is (because I certainly didn't recognize his name, being someone who doesn't give two shits about Apple), but that last parenthetical sentence is certainly out of place and useless.
I will agree that the summary should have stated the device and platform that was having NFC hacked and the omission is conspicuous. That is in fact the fault of the submitter. The lack of this detail allowed people to jump to conclusions, but it didn't push anybody; people jumped to conclusions on their own, and that is the fault of those people, not the submitter. But no one wants to admit they jumped to conclusions, because that means they made a mistake, so instead they just blame the submitter to avoid feeling bad about their own actions.
After all, you said it yourself. The iPhone doesn't have NFC and this is fairly well known. So how on earth could someone be confused that he's hacking an Apple device with NFC, when there isn't one?
Also, speaking of misleading...
yet the other 66% of the summary heavily mentions Apple. Mmm. Seems legit.
First sentence: 26 words.
Second sentence: 32 words
Third sentence: 9 words
35 words contained in sentences referencing Apple. Those sentences also involved identifying who the hell Charlie Miller is, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and we'll just say all those words are directed at Apple.
32 words involve the actual story of the danger of NFC devices.
This means at most, 52% of the summary was devoted to Apple.
Nowhere did the summary say Charlie Miller is hacking NFC in an Apple phone. In fact, nowhere in the summary does the string "expos" appear, so when you quote "exposing them", who are you quoting?
The summary said "Apple's hacker nemesis Charlie Miller". It's merely identifying Charlie Miller as a somewhat infamous Apple hacker. Any allusion to him hacking Apple devices in the summary is entirely the fault of people who are jumping to conclusions.
This would be like saying "Sony's hacker nemesis George Hotz is now showing how NFC can be dangerous".
refrain from declaring us doomed if we don't shut down our civilization post haste
I wanted to make a separate response to this.
No one - not a single serious climatologist in the whole world - is saying that "we must shut down civilization post-haste". This is a terrible strawman argument being perpetrated by people who don't want you to actually read the scientists' actual proposals, for fear that you might realize that "chicken little" is a gross caricature of the actual scientists.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-limits-economy.htm
Economic assessments of proposed policy to put a price on carbon emissions are in widespread agreement that the net economic impact will be minor. The costs over the next several decades center around $100 per average family, or about 75 cents per person per week, and a GDP reduction of less than 1%. Moreover, the benefits outweigh the costs several times over, as real-world examples illustrate.
Where I live, the unusually mild winter has lead to a dramatic increase in ticks.
Frighteningly, some ticks seem to be able to transmit a meat allergy to their victims. Yeah, you read that right; getting bit by the Lone Star Tick can make you allergic to meat.
But enough anecdotes.
I'm sorry but I simply don't have any confidence that anyone has succesfully modelled our climate to the point that they can predict the weather a week from now, let alone years from now.
Climate is not weather. That is a rather epic fail on your part.
Example: I can't tell you whether it will rain in the Sahara desert on September 9th (weather). But I can tell you that it will be hot and dry most of the time (climate).
For more reading: http://www.skepticalscience.com/weather-forecasts-vs-climate-models-predictions.htm
This article summarizes an interesting study that points to warmer temperatures in roman times.
Did you actually read the source from the journal, or did you read the summary/Register article that's been blasted to pieces in the comment thread? You may want to make sure that the actual journal article says what you think it says, rather than some journalist's attempt to make an article that uses a graphic that didn't even come from the original source...
The reality is that the support for AGW caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rests on very crude computer models
Crude? Something tells me you haven't actually looked at the models, and you're just pulling the word "crude" out of thin air. If they were crude, someone skilled in programming but unskilled in climatology (such as me or perhaps you) could probably recreate the computer models. I have a sneaky suspicion, however, that the creation of such models is beyond our ability without years of education in climatology.
that will probably be the subject of horse laughs 50 years into the future.
The fact that you had to go out fifty years says it all.
Keep in mind that not even 60 years ago, Franklin, Crick, and Watson discovered the structure of DNA. Not even 60 years ago, there was no such thing as a silicon transistor.
It means that the earth warms and cools on it's own. It means that humanity and all it's acts do not have as much impact as you profess
Non-sequitor, if there ever was one.
The earth warms and cools on its own. True.
Humanity can have an effect on the earth which exacerbates any warming or cooling trends. Also true.
Remember that the Romans weren't pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. We could very well be making a bad problem worse.
I'm pretty sure more CO2 in the atmosphere is very beneficial to plant life and will help it flourish in forests and agriculture
Only if CO2 is the limiting factor. If e.g. water or nitrogen are the limiting factor in plant growth, excess CO2 will lead to extremely minor benefits, if any.
The one issue I have with the global warming chicken littles is that there is no inherent reason that recent CO2 levels or temperatures are some kind gold standard that must be maintained at all costs.
What the "chicken littles" are saying is that our life and society has already adapted to existing CO2 levels. Anything much higher or much lower than existing levels will probably require further adaptations. For instance, the location of high-yield arable land can change.
Oh, and to address the total red herring about using the official name, my problem isn't that they aren't using PPACA.
My problem is that they SHOULD call it Baucuscare. But they aren't. And you know why; because everybody knows they hate Obama, and nobody knows who Sen. Max Baucus is. Calling it Baucuscare isn't going to get the base all riled up.
A government takeover will hurt everyone long term.
No, a private, corporate takeover - like what we have now - is what hurts everyone long term.
Our government currently spends as much per capita on health care as most other nations with universal health care. And then we the citizens end up paying about as much AGAIN out of our pocket. We're paying twice as much for health care that's not as good as the others are receiving. So your claim that "government takeover of health care hurts everyone long term" not only lacks evidence, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
And besides, this is hardly a government takeover. A government takeover would be single payer Medicare for EVERYONE. Forcing people to buy private insurance is about as far from government takeover as you can get; it's hard to believe that you're not being facetious or trolling.
Single payer is the way to go. Why? Bulk discounts for one (you know, like the kind of bulk discounts that the Republicans refused to write into Medicare Part D). Reduced administrative overhead, because there will be one system, you won't need a stack of forms to fill out, you won't have hospitals fighting insurance companies, etc.
They just can't come out and say what they really stand for, or they'd never win an election.
I just got into a debate with my wife's brother over those new Voter ID laws. I have to give him kudos, he doesn't even pretend it's about voter fraud. He's quite honest about the fact that he thinks people who don't have ID don't deserve to vote because they "obviously aren't contributing to society".
Yes. He actually came out and said "not everyone deserves to vote". I was quite stunned.
He also claims to be Libertarian.
And when you can't pay the fine, because you can't afford that either, you'll go to jail
This is straight from the law itself, under section 5000a, page 131:
‘‘(2) SPECIAL RULES.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law—
‘‘(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.—In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.
‘‘(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.—The Secretary shall not—
‘‘(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or
‘‘(ii) levy on any such property with respect to such failure.’’.
I've owned many Steam games for years. I have never had any problem at all with them. While what you say is technically true, experience has shown me that it's more of a conspiracy theory than anything substantial to worry about.
Valve is no EA, they're no Ubisoft, they're no Activision/Blizzard. I trust Valve. And I think Valve knows that a lot of their company is built on goodwill and trust from gamers.
Until I see Valve treat their customers like shit, I'm going to keep buying games on Steam in preference to every single other form of distribution. Why? Because I can have access to AAA titles for $5 on sale when that same title costs $20 in the store.
You can see this error - not knowing what our President has done - even in your own post.
Obama didn't write the ACA. That was Senator Max Baucus and his aides.
The USA Patriot Act came from Congress, not the President. The President does not have the ability to force legislation through Congress.
Then please tell me why the GOP calls it Obamacare. I've been saying this for a long time; it was Sen. Max Baucus (or rather, his aides) who wrote the health care bill. It should be called, if anything, Baucuscare.
But the GOP won't use that technically correct term because there's no built-in animosity in their based toward Sen. Baucus the way there is built-in animosity toward Obama.
Exactly.
If my friend commits a crime and I know about it and I don't turn them in, I can be considered an accessory.
When a police officer commits a crime, and the fellow officers don't turn them in, they too should be accessories. When the police cover up the crime, it should be considered a conspiracy.
Instead, do you know what we have? Whenever the DA does manage to prosecute cops for being bad - like the NYPD Ticket Fixing Scandal (1,600 criminal counts) - you have all those boys in blue coming to back up their buddies, saying it's their God-given right to fix tickets for their wife's uncle's cousin, that they were "Just Following Orders".
A cop who doesn't arrest other cops when they commit crimes is just as rotten as the criminal cop himself.
Iran is run by religious nutjobs. Yes?
Israel contains land that Muslims consider holy. Yes? (in case you doubt me, Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven in Jerusalem)
Do you really think Iran would bomb land that their people consider holy? If I were you, I'd be much more worried about India and Pakistan, or an Israeli nuclear first strike against Iran Iran knows if they do shit to Israel, the US will come down on them hard. Iran also knows that if Israel does shit to Iran, the US will use their Security Council veto to stop Israel from suffering any repercussions, aside from "international outrage".
But with India and Pakistan, there is no world superpower that sits behind either of them, with the power to wipe the other out.
There are just so many reasons that Iran is NOT going to nuke anyone that I have a hard time taking people who say such things seriously.
Right. Uh-huh. Because Iran, a nation run by religious nut jobs, will detonate a nuclear weapon on their own holy land.
(in case you didn't know, like the last fellow that I had to tell this to, Jerusalem is also a holy site in Islam, it's where Mohammed ascended to heaven)
Think rationally about this. If Iran nukes Israel, what's going to happen? Iran won't be around much longer...they will piss off three major religions (Jews, Christians, and Muslims). Either Israel, or the US will end up making Iran a hole in the ground, with the fervent support of the entire international community.
If Israel nukes Iran, what's going to happen? International outrage, and then...nothing. The US will use their veto at the UN Security Council to prevent any action from being taken against Israel. And even if Iran did retaliate in some manner, see the previous paragraph.
Those who say Iran is a danger to Israel have fallen for propaganda designed to thrust the US into another war for profit. Make no mistake, Iran is a shitty country, but if you want to destroy them the least you could do is, you know, come up with legitimate reasons for destroying them.
You seem to misunderstand what people like me mean when we say "profiting from others pain" - while your pain is relieved, the profit premium can make drugs unaffordable to some others. If you could afford the drug without profit, but cannot afford it with profit, then Big Pharma is profiting from your pain.
Consider the case in India regarding a compulsory license for a kidney and liver cancer drug.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120312/02424818071/putting-lives-before-patents-india-says-pricey-patented-cancer-drug-can-be-copied.shtml
"For the first time since re-instating patents on pharmaceuticals, India has granted just such a compulsory license, covering a kidney and liver cancer drug marketed under the name Nexavar. Indian generic drug company Natco requested a license, noting that Nexavar was in short supply in India and exceptionally expensive. A typical dosage costs around $70,000 per year in India -- something Bayer says is necessary to recoup the drug's R&D costs. However, reports show that it cost less than $300 million to develop this drug (not to mention that the US government subsidized the process) and Bayer has already made billions selling the drug around the world."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/03175119032/generics-drive-down-drug-prices-india-tpp-trying-to-stop-that.shtml
"Cipla, another Indian manufacturer of generics, has announced that it too is coming out with a version of Nexavar, pricing it at $125 for 120 tablets. That's even cheaper than Natco's price of $163, to say nothing of Bayer's $5,128 for the same course."
5128 / 125 = 41.024. That means that Bayer was charging over 41 times as much for a drug that had already recouped all development costs multiple times over.
Tell me with a straight face that Bayer is not trying to profit from kidney and liver cancer at the expense of treating people who are sick.
Show me the patent that a farmer has on tomatoes, potatoes, corn, or any other food. Maybe Monsanto has patents on seeds, but food itself is not patented and anyone can grow it.
Drugs are not the same. Patents are used to prevent competition that would allow the free market to set the price for drugs at a level where there are people who can no longer afford the drug.
Maybe you are confusing 'macro evolution' which hasn't been proven with 'micro evolution' which we see all around us every day.
Macro evolution has been shown in the lab. One characteristic of E. coli is the inability to metabolize citrate. After over 31,000 generations, one set of E. coli evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, thus becoming a new species.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.abstract
You're right about one thing, they aren't cheap knock-offs. They're expensive knock-offs. As far as "making great products", that's your opinion. My Archos is, IMO, a much better product than the corresponding Apple crap. It has more features, is less frustrating to use, doesn't tie me to any particular piece of software, and it's less expensive to boot.
So let me get this straight. You're allowed to copy a competitor's product, so long as it's more expensive? But if you copy the product and it's less expensive well then you're a thief!
By the way, this case is about Moto, not iMacs. Are you telling me that the Droid is a cheap knock-off of the iPhone, just because it uses "slide to unlock"?
Not direct proof, no; no one is privy to the actual deals except Apple and Motorola themselves, but it sure did take Motorola a long time to come along with this supposed "unlicensed" patent
How on earth could Apple infringe on a patent that they have a license to? Do you realize how nonsensical this sounds? We may not be privy to the details of licensing but knowing whether there is a license or not is something we should be able to discover.
As far as why they waited so long, that's because Moto was trying to get Apple to license their patents and Apple was dragging their feet for years. Just like they did with Nokia. Moto's been trying to get Apple to license their patents for quite some time. I'm sure had Moto gone straight for the lawsuit, you'd be here decrying how they should try to get a licensing deal before going to court.
Can you point me to anywhere that Apple says they believed they were covered? Because I'm not seeing any of it in the ruling.
It breaks the entire FRAND system if one of the pool owners can decide at any time to demand an "infringing" party pay over the odds for its use.
It breaks the entire FRAND system if anyone can use the patents from the pool without licensing them. If you have a license to the pool, then there's no way you can be sued.
demanding excessive royalties (in the words of the presiding judge)
I keep seeing people say that, but I haven't found it anywhere in the Judge's opinion that Moto was asking for "excessive royalties". Can you tell me what page of the opinion you read that on?
The argument I saw was that Moto was suing for damages, but they couldn't convince the Judge on how they would use the licensing fees to determine reasonable damages. Nothing I read in the opinion said that Moto's rate was excessive or unfair; the Judge's argument is only in reference to calculating damages.
You could try page 20 of the Ruling...
But Apple’s refusal to negotiate for a license (if it did refuse—the parties offer competing accounts, unnecessary for me to resolve, of why negotiations broke down) was not a defense to a claim by Motorola for a FRAND royalty. If Apple said no to 2.25 percent, it ran the risk of being ordered by a court to pay an equal or even higher royalty rate
The bolded part implies that Moto's 2.25% rate is reasonable for licensing fees.
GP was even more disingenuous than you think.
Moto was asking for 40%-50% of the portfolio royalty rate for licensing just one patent from the portfolio. So instead of $18.75, it would be more like $9.37.