It may seem ludicrous such a common word can be trademarked, but apparently this is a valid claim as Apple is now serving notices to app developers.
As Apple isn't the legal authority responsible for deciding the validity of trademark claims, the fact that Apple has chosen to act in this way has absolutely no value whatsoever as evidence that the trademark claim at issue is valid against the applications these notices are directed against. At best, it might show that Apple thinks that the risk of the claim be valid in at least one case in some jurisdiction, and the cost that they might incur if they continued (via the App Store) to sell an infringing product somewhere outweighs the cost they expect will result from the disruption they cause app developers by taking the vigorous approach they are taking in regards to the claim.
This could be true, in part, because they think that they won't actually experience any cost, since the effected developers will just rename the apps and continue to sell them, and if any do drop off there any lost App Store sales, just sales that go to different games instead. With a near zero expected cost of responding the way they have to avoid any legal action, the perceived likelihood of the validity of the legal claim doesn't have to be high at all.
OK, then who would appropriate such a negatively charged name for their religion?
Anton Szandor LaVey, for one. Aleister Crowley probably should get at least honorable mention in this area, since even though he didn't adopt such a negatively charged name for his religion, per se, he did for at least one of his own assumed titles.
Chrome needs to be dumped on its ass and the best bits folded into Android. These two operating systems have so much overlap that it makes no sense to keep them both going.
Android is the current, and well-establish Google operating system for mobile phones and tablets, which is the #1 OS in that area.
ChromeOS is the far less mature and established OS that represents Google's long-term OS goal, but whose current incarnations are more focussed on traditional keyboard-and-pointing-device type of environments than touch devices. It doesn't make sense to disrupt Android by forcing it to take on ChromeOS's role as well as its own, and it doesn't make sense to hold ChromeOS back by forcing it to take on Android's role. Chrome browser on Android is already the tool for bringing the parts of ChromeOS that work well with Android to Android (just as Chrome browser on Windows, MacOS, and Linux serves as the vehicle for those platforms.)
Google's long-term goal -- that they've stated many times -- is to converge Android and ChromeOS. But they have pretty good reasons not to be in a hurry to do that.
I have always thought of chromebooks being pretty much dependant on a web connection to do anything useful, but the C7 has a pretty serious amount of local storage. does that mean it could be used to do most things offline?
ChromeOS supports a variety of APIs which allow web apps to be stored locally and to store data locally, so, yes, any Chromebook can do "most things offline" (provided that you mean things that make sense offline) -- provided that there are web apps that make use of the appropriate offline APIs for the functions you want to do. As with traditional general purpose OS's, the limits to what it can do are largely about what apps are available, not the OS itself.
document editing? playing audio and video? photo editing?
Google Docs supports offline document editing. I'm think there are applications that support offline photo editing in Chrome (and, therefore, ChromeOS). I haven't heard of any that support offline audio/video playback, though there all that is really required to do that is use offline storage for audio/video files, since the "playback" is just a basic browser feature that doesn't require anything special from the app.
Even if they replaced Luke with Mickey, Han with Buzz Lightyear, Chewie with Shrek, Jar Jar with Donkey & Amidala/Leia with Pocahontas, it couldn't be any worse than Eps1-3!
(yes, I know most of those aren't even fucking Disney's!)
Well, Mickey is Disney, Buzz is Disney/Pixar, and Pocahontas is historical-but-featured-in-a-Disney film, while Shrek and Donkey aren't Disney. So, assuming you are referring to the characters from well-known animated films, 3 out of 5 are Disney, so "most aren't Disney's" doesn't work.
Which is not the same thing as judgement being entered.
The motion for judgment as a matter of law is an attempt to have the original trial judge overturn the verdict as unsustainable.
True.
Basically the motion says that no reasonable jury could possibly come to this conclusion based on the evidence presented.
Well, that's the dictionary definition of a judgement as a matter of law, but the actual Samsung motion isn't a simple JMOL, it is, strictly speaking, a motion for a judgement as a matter of law, new trial, and/or remittitur. The parts specifically seeking a JMOL as one of the alternative remedies necessarily -- because that's the standard for a JMOL -- argues that no result other than the judgement it seeks is proper under any reasonable view of the facts presented at trial. But the first part of that motion isn't seekign a JMOL with a new trial as an alternative remedy for the same error, its a straight-up request for a new trial based on jury misconduct, which isn't at all about what could be reasonably found based on the evidence presented, but arguing that jury misconduct warranting a new trial independently of what could or could not reasonably be concluded from the evidence presented at trial occurred and must result in a new trial unless one of the other elements of the motion supporting a JMOL is granted.
These motions are hardly ever granted
Which, if the granting of such motions were completely random, would justify the characterization of the case as one Samsung is likely to lose at trial, but still wouldn't justify the characterization of the case as one Samsung has already lost. Of course, granting of JMOL motions isn't random, so the overall frequency with which they are granted, standing on its own, doesn't even justify the "likely to lose" characterization, much less the "lost" characterization.
Less abstractly, its worth noting that jurors hardly ever go bragging to the media about how they convinced the rest of the jury to use specific legal standards in coming to a verdict which were not the standards in the jury instructions after the verdict but before the process in the trial court is complete, which may have some significant relationship to the frequency with which motions of the type at issue here (motions for a new trial based on jury misconduct) are granted by trial courts.
and Samsung is probably looking past this decision and attempting to lay the groundwork for a successful appeal based on jury misconduct.
Of course they are. Any litigant in a case of any importance is looking beyond the trial court decision and attempting to lay the groundwork for prevailing on claims at appeal before the case even gets to the point of trial. That's just fundamental trial practice. And on some of the parts of the motion for judgement as a matter of law, new trial, or remittur that address a JMOL in the narrow sense (i.e., other than the remittitur claims or the new trial issue relating to juror misconduct), which largely address legal questions on which they the trial court has already sided with the other side at least once, they probably are primarily building an appellate record. OTOH, on the issues which have not yet been addressed by the trial court -- such as the jury misconduct issue -- there is no justification for the claim that they aren't primarily interested in getting a favorable ruling by the trial court.
The judge herself has been widely perceived as having a bias.
Any improprietory or error Samsung (or Apple, for that matter) believes occurred in the trial court can be (and, rest assured, will be) raised on appeal. Until that, the trial court judge is responsible for the case.
Samsung hasn't lost the suit filed by Apple. You lose the suit when a court enters judgement against you, and no judgement has yet been entered by the trial court in Apple v. Samsung. A jury verdict has been returned on which the trial court has not yet entered judgement; the judgement in the case might follow the jury verdict, or it might dispense with it. In fact, the entire issue over juror misconduct relates to one of the grounds on which the trial court is being urged not to enter a judgement which reflects the jury verdict, and, if it succeeds, Samsung will not lose the case. This is not an appeal of a case they have lost, it is part of the process of case in the original trial court prior to a judgement being issued.
I don't think Florida has been called yet (although Obama currently has the slight edge there). And I could have sworn that he had Florida leaning slightly towards Romney for quite some time, but now his website shows a slight lean towards Obama?
Switched to a slight Obama lean in the last update.
NO ONE can predict an election more than a few weeks in advance. You can predict probabilities (and give Silver credit, that's what he was doing), but assurances? No way.
Well, to be fair, all of Silver's predictions back to June on the electoral vote result were correct to within their stated margin of uncertainty. Of course, even the update the morning of the election had a narrow Romney victory as within the stated margin (the prediction was 313-225, +/- 48.)
Now, calling every State correctly (and each congressional district in the States that use them to split EVs) was still impressive, because few people -- even if they predicted the overall outcome -- would have done that, even just before the election. Note that even Silverm though, only did that with the last update (when Florida flipped from slightly favored for Romney to slightly favored for Obama.)
And give the Obama campaign all the credit in the world; see the other story here on Slashdot about Obama's "data machine." They deserve a world of credit. But believe me, they worked their butts off the weekend before the election. And if they hadn't, Romney WOULD have won and Nate Silver would have been WRONG.
Maybe if the Obama team had done less impressive of a job, they would have lost, but presumably that "less impressive of a job" would also have showed up in the results that Silver was tracking. Its not like Silver's model is independent of the actual support the candidates are receiving.
What you describe is the reason why such systems turn into two-party systems. I don't think that is a very democratic system. There are different variations of voting systems that can improve that situation. The instant runoff [wikipedia.org], which you mentioned, is probably the best.
Instant run-off is the pretty much the single-winner preference voting system that does the least to mitigate the problems with first-past-the-post elections that preference voting systems are usually offered to resolve. About the only criterion I can think of under which it is arguably the best is ease of understanding for people whose only prior experience with voting systems are with variations on first-past-the-post like plurality and majority-runoff. (Which, to be fair, isn't completely unimportant.)
Okay. I'll concede California. I haven't considered it part of the actual United States for a long time anyway.
The same is true in every state. I just have where to find California law memorized, so it was the easiest example to present in detail. For instance, in North Carolina, votes for a named candidate on the ballot are legally votes for the electors nominated by that candidate's party (for a party candidate) or by that candidate (for an unaffiliated candidate), per North Carolina General Statutes Sec. 163-209:
The names of candidates for electors of President and VicePresident nominated by any political party recognized in this State under G.S. 16396, or nominated under G.S. 1631(c) by a candidate for President of the United States who has qualified to have his or her name printed on the general election ballot as an unaffiliated candidate under G.S. 163122, shall be filed with the Secretary of State but shall not be printed on the ballot. In the case of the unaffiliated candidate, the names of candidates for electors must be filed with the Secretary of State no later than 12:00 noon on the first Friday in August. In place of their names, there shall be printed on the ballot the names of the candidates for President and VicePresident of each political party recognized in this State, and the name of any candidate for President who has qualified to have his or her name printed on the general election ballot under G.S. 163122. A candidate for President who has qualified for the general election ballot as an unaffiliated candidate under G.S. 163122 shall, no later than 12:00 noon on the first Friday in August, file with the State Board of Elections the name of a candidate for VicePresident, whose name shall also be printed on the ballot. A vote for the candidates named on the ballot shall be a vote for the electors of the party or unaffiliated candidate by which those candidates were nominated and whose names have been filed with the Secretary of State.
What voters are choosing at the polls in a "Presidential election" is, as it is in every state, the slate of electors who will cast their State's electoral votes.
How's that Prop. 35 coming?
That's a weird non-sequitur, but election results are available online.
In Apple v. Samsung, Samsung was found liable of infringing Apple's patents.
No such ruling has been issued by the court in Apple v. Samsung. A jury verdict is not a judgement. And, on the whole statement this was intended to support (Apple as a monopolist in touch-screen smartphones) a speculation about what a future consequence of a jury verdict might be if it were incorporated into a judgement is pretty far from a fact.
The distinction you are trying to make doesn't really apply to California.
It does in Presidential elections; it doesn't in the "general election" for other California partisan elections which are governed by the the new rules under which what is called primary elections" are actually open majority-rule general elections with no preceding party primary and "general elections" are actually runoffs for the top-two in the (normally expected) case where the primary doesn't result in a majority winner (although, in that system, doing anything but voting for a candidate from the top two in the general election isn't a wasted vote, but actually a legal non-vote.) But it does in the "primary election" for those new-system elections.
You're both wrong, from both a factual and procedural point of view.
Actually, we're both right and you're wrong.
PEOPLE vote for CANDIDATES.
To the extent that's true, the "candidates" are the candidates for positions as electors, who are proposed by the parties and elected, in most states, as a statewide slate.
People do not vote for electors. That's just wrong. That's not the way it works.
Repeating an assertion four times in the same post doesn't make it true. Presidential elections are governed by State law. As a concrete example, here's the online index to the California Election Code. Note the title of Division 6, Part 2 ("ELECTIONS FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS"). Now look at Chapter 1 of that Part, an particularly Section 6902: "At the general election in each leap year, or at any other time as may be prescribed by the laws of the United States, there shall be chosen by the voters of the state as many electors of President and Vice President of the United States as the state is then entitled to." (emphasis added)
The current system favours extremists in swing states and discriminates minority parties beyond the duopoly.
That was nonresponsive to the post it is offered in response to, which stated: The US election system isn't set entirely (or even mostly) by the Constitution, as many of the key details are set in statute and regulation. So, even if we assume that the problem is that the election system is broken, you need to make a much more specific argument about how it is broken and what structure should replace it to support the contention that it is broken in a manner which requires a Constitutional fix rather than a less-drastic remedy.
What you've offered is merely an assertion about the effects of the current system, which doesn't even attempt to link those effects to a particular source, whether in the Constitution or otherwise. So, even if we accept your characterization without question, it doesn't offer any reason to think that Constitutional change is necessary. Since Constitutional change is both the highest-risk course of change (hardest to fix if implemented wrong), and the hardest to implement at all, its really not a strategy you want to adopt without a clear reason to believe that it is necessary to make the change in the Constitution, rather than simply in state and/or federal election regulations and/or statutes.
This would be a really good time for Samsung to put the boot in.
Samsung already announced they wouldn't renew their supply agreement with Apple (apparently largely due to the declining volume of orders under it as Apple moved to other suppliers, including Sharp, for cost reasons), so its not exactly like they've got a boot left to put in. Obviously, if Apple loses access to some of the alternatives, and looks to work with Samsung again, Samsung can drive a hard bargain, but its not like they wouldn't do that anyway.
That announcement was made after (and based on) years of reduced Apple orders under the existing contract (as Apple moved volume to cheaper suppliers, mainly Sharp but I think also LG) that made it no longer worthwhile for Samsung to continue the relationship. I doubt (despite the popular association of the move with the Apple-Samsung patent dispute) that Samsung has any problem continuing to make money selling to Apple if there is sufficient volume to make it worthwhile (or higher prices at the reduced volume, but that's not likely to be relevant if Sharp isn't around.)
The share market lives on profit margins, that's just the way it is, end of story.
Well, no. The stock market lives on market perceptions of future resale value of the stock, which sometimes is based on profit margins, and sometimes not. How Wall Street looks at Apple is different than how Wall Street looks at Amazon.
I think a lot of people don't realize how unlikely this process is to ever change, or how unlikely it is that there will be a 3rd party president.
Lincoln was the last one. Don't see too many Whig candidates these days...
You didn't see any in 1860, either, the Whigs having collapsed through the 1850s, and ceased as a party by the election of 1860; while the North-South issues that would soon produce the Civil War confused things a bit more than was usually the case before or since (i.e., the "National" vs. "Constitutional" split of the Democratic Party, the Constitutional Union Party), there were two clear major parties in the election of 1860, and they were the (National) Democrats and the Republicans.
The only times you see new parties becoming competitive for the Presidency is after a national party has collapsed, not as "third party" candidates: Lincoln and the Republicans after the Whig collapse; the National Republican (later, Whig) Party itself several elections after the collapse of the Federalists and the era of only one national party of significance, the Democratic-Republicans.
Due to the way we choose the president, the system is heavily stacked to only have two parties.
The way we choose members of Congress (and most state legislators and other elected officials) has a bigger effect than the way we choose Presidents; even with our Presidential election system, if minor parties didn't face an insurmountable task to win seats in the state and federal legislatures and in state executive offices, we'd still have multiple viable parties though they might have to form (likely temporary) coalitions for Presidential campaigns.
And most of the barriers, outside of Presidential elections, could be addressed without Constitutional changes (those at the State level could be addressed without any federal law changes at all, which means that in the many states that have a citizen initiative process, they could be done without support from incumbent legislators.)
The people vote for who they want to win the election. Not for Electors. The Electors then decide who THEY will vote for. They are not bound by the choices of the people. Regardless, the people vote for political candidates, not electors.
Actually, the people vote for electors (because that who actually gets elected based on the popular vote), its just that every state has adopted a procedure under which the names of the candidates for whom the electors are pledged, rather than the names of the electors actually standing for election, are printed on the ballot, which makes people think they are voting for a Presidential/Vice Presidential ticket rather than a slate of electors.
I live on the west coast. So by the logic people use against 3rd parties, any vote not for whatever Democrat is running this time is also a wasted vote.
No, I think you misunderstand the argument. It is not that "when you choose to vote for a third-party candidate rather than some other option, the candidate you vote for is unlikely to win, so your vote is wasted." It is that "when you choose to vote for a third-party candidate, rather than some other option, the most likely impact of that decision is to increase the probability that the major party candidate that you are most opposed to wins rather than the major party candidate that you are least opposed to."
One of the biggest problems is it's considered anti-American to question the Constitution, the founding fathers, and this abstract notion of freedom that most Americans believe to be exclusively American.
A trend which was first noted within the life of the founders, and condemned by several of them (Jefferson certainly.)
Slashdot Mirror
As Apple isn't the legal authority responsible for deciding the validity of trademark claims, the fact that Apple has chosen to act in this way has absolutely no value whatsoever as evidence that the trademark claim at issue is valid against the applications these notices are directed against. At best, it might show that Apple thinks that the risk of the claim be valid in at least one case in some jurisdiction, and the cost that they might incur if they continued (via the App Store) to sell an infringing product somewhere outweighs the cost they expect will result from the disruption they cause app developers by taking the vigorous approach they are taking in regards to the claim.
This could be true, in part, because they think that they won't actually experience any cost, since the effected developers will just rename the apps and continue to sell them, and if any do drop off there any lost App Store sales, just sales that go to different games instead. With a near zero expected cost of responding the way they have to avoid any legal action, the perceived likelihood of the validity of the legal claim doesn't have to be high at all.
Anton Szandor LaVey, for one. Aleister Crowley probably should get at least honorable mention in this area, since even though he didn't adopt such a negatively charged name for his religion, per se, he did for at least one of his own assumed titles.
Android is the current, and well-establish Google operating system for mobile phones and tablets, which is the #1 OS in that area. ChromeOS is the far less mature and established OS that represents Google's long-term OS goal, but whose current incarnations are more focussed on traditional keyboard-and-pointing-device type of environments than touch devices. It doesn't make sense to disrupt Android by forcing it to take on ChromeOS's role as well as its own, and it doesn't make sense to hold ChromeOS back by forcing it to take on Android's role. Chrome browser on Android is already the tool for bringing the parts of ChromeOS that work well with Android to Android (just as Chrome browser on Windows, MacOS, and Linux serves as the vehicle for those platforms.) Google's long-term goal -- that they've stated many times -- is to converge Android and ChromeOS. But they have pretty good reasons not to be in a hurry to do that.
ChromeOS supports a variety of APIs which allow web apps to be stored locally and to store data locally, so, yes, any Chromebook can do "most things offline" (provided that you mean things that make sense offline) -- provided that there are web apps that make use of the appropriate offline APIs for the functions you want to do. As with traditional general purpose OS's, the limits to what it can do are largely about what apps are available, not the OS itself.
Google Docs supports offline document editing. I'm think there are applications that support offline photo editing in Chrome (and, therefore, ChromeOS). I haven't heard of any that support offline audio/video playback, though there all that is really required to do that is use offline storage for audio/video files, since the "playback" is just a basic browser feature that doesn't require anything special from the app.
The Sith didn't name the Dark Side, the Jedi did. The Sith just reappropriated the name.
Well, Mickey is Disney, Buzz is Disney/Pixar, and Pocahontas is historical-but-featured-in-a-Disney film, while Shrek and Donkey aren't Disney. So, assuming you are referring to the characters from well-known animated films, 3 out of 5 are Disney, so "most aren't Disney's" doesn't work.
Which is not the same thing as judgement being entered.
True.
Well, that's the dictionary definition of a judgement as a matter of law, but the actual Samsung motion isn't a simple JMOL, it is, strictly speaking, a motion for a judgement as a matter of law, new trial, and/or remittitur. The parts specifically seeking a JMOL as one of the alternative remedies necessarily -- because that's the standard for a JMOL -- argues that no result other than the judgement it seeks is proper under any reasonable view of the facts presented at trial. But the first part of that motion isn't seekign a JMOL with a new trial as an alternative remedy for the same error, its a straight-up request for a new trial based on jury misconduct, which isn't at all about what could be reasonably found based on the evidence presented, but arguing that jury misconduct warranting a new trial independently of what could or could not reasonably be concluded from the evidence presented at trial occurred and must result in a new trial unless one of the other elements of the motion supporting a JMOL is granted.
Which, if the granting of such motions were completely random, would justify the characterization of the case as one Samsung is likely to lose at trial, but still wouldn't justify the characterization of the case as one Samsung has already lost. Of course, granting of JMOL motions isn't random, so the overall frequency with which they are granted, standing on its own, doesn't even justify the "likely to lose" characterization, much less the "lost" characterization. Less abstractly, its worth noting that jurors hardly ever go bragging to the media about how they convinced the rest of the jury to use specific legal standards in coming to a verdict which were not the standards in the jury instructions after the verdict but before the process in the trial court is complete, which may have some significant relationship to the frequency with which motions of the type at issue here (motions for a new trial based on jury misconduct) are granted by trial courts.
Of course they are. Any litigant in a case of any importance is looking beyond the trial court decision and attempting to lay the groundwork for prevailing on claims at appeal before the case even gets to the point of trial. That's just fundamental trial practice. And on some of the parts of the motion for judgement as a matter of law, new trial, or remittur that address a JMOL in the narrow sense (i.e., other than the remittitur claims or the new trial issue relating to juror misconduct), which largely address legal questions on which they the trial court has already sided with the other side at least once, they probably are primarily building an appellate record. OTOH, on the issues which have not yet been addressed by the trial court -- such as the jury misconduct issue -- there is no justification for the claim that they aren't primarily interested in getting a favorable ruling by the trial court.
Any improprietory or error Samsung (or Apple, for that matter) believes occurred in the trial court can be (and, rest assured, will be) raised on appeal. Until that, the trial court judge is responsible for the case.
Samsung hasn't lost the suit filed by Apple. You lose the suit when a court enters judgement against you, and no judgement has yet been entered by the trial court in Apple v. Samsung. A jury verdict has been returned on which the trial court has not yet entered judgement; the judgement in the case might follow the jury verdict, or it might dispense with it. In fact, the entire issue over juror misconduct relates to one of the grounds on which the trial court is being urged not to enter a judgement which reflects the jury verdict, and, if it succeeds, Samsung will not lose the case. This is not an appeal of a case they have lost, it is part of the process of case in the original trial court prior to a judgement being issued.
Switched to a slight Obama lean in the last update.
Well, to be fair, all of Silver's predictions back to June on the electoral vote result were correct to within their stated margin of uncertainty. Of course, even the update the morning of the election had a narrow Romney victory as within the stated margin (the prediction was 313-225, +/- 48.) Now, calling every State correctly (and each congressional district in the States that use them to split EVs) was still impressive, because few people -- even if they predicted the overall outcome -- would have done that, even just before the election. Note that even Silverm though, only did that with the last update (when Florida flipped from slightly favored for Romney to slightly favored for Obama.)
Maybe if the Obama team had done less impressive of a job, they would have lost, but presumably that "less impressive of a job" would also have showed up in the results that Silver was tracking. Its not like Silver's model is independent of the actual support the candidates are receiving.
Instant run-off is the pretty much the single-winner preference voting system that does the least to mitigate the problems with first-past-the-post elections that preference voting systems are usually offered to resolve. About the only criterion I can think of under which it is arguably the best is ease of understanding for people whose only prior experience with voting systems are with variations on first-past-the-post like plurality and majority-runoff. (Which, to be fair, isn't completely unimportant.)
The same is true in every state. I just have where to find California law memorized, so it was the easiest example to present in detail. For instance, in North Carolina, votes for a named candidate on the ballot are legally votes for the electors nominated by that candidate's party (for a party candidate) or by that candidate (for an unaffiliated candidate), per North Carolina General Statutes Sec. 163-209:
What voters are choosing at the polls in a "Presidential election" is, as it is in every state, the slate of electors who will cast their State's electoral votes.
That's a weird non-sequitur, but election results are available online.
No such ruling has been issued by the court in Apple v. Samsung. A jury verdict is not a judgement. And, on the whole statement this was intended to support (Apple as a monopolist in touch-screen smartphones) a speculation about what a future consequence of a jury verdict might be if it were incorporated into a judgement is pretty far from a fact.
It does in Presidential elections; it doesn't in the "general election" for other California partisan elections which are governed by the the new rules under which what is called primary elections" are actually open majority-rule general elections with no preceding party primary and "general elections" are actually runoffs for the top-two in the (normally expected) case where the primary doesn't result in a majority winner (although, in that system, doing anything but voting for a candidate from the top two in the general election isn't a wasted vote, but actually a legal non-vote.) But it does in the "primary election" for those new-system elections.
Actually, we're both right and you're wrong.
To the extent that's true, the "candidates" are the candidates for positions as electors, who are proposed by the parties and elected, in most states, as a statewide slate.
Repeating an assertion four times in the same post doesn't make it true. Presidential elections are governed by State law. As a concrete example, here's the online index to the California Election Code. Note the title of Division 6, Part 2 ("ELECTIONS FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS"). Now look at Chapter 1 of that Part, an particularly Section 6902: "At the general election in each leap year, or at any other time as may be prescribed by the laws of the United States, there shall be chosen by the voters of the state as many electors of President and Vice President of the United States as the state is then entitled to." (emphasis added)
The voters are choosing slates of electors.
That was nonresponsive to the post it is offered in response to, which stated: The US election system isn't set entirely (or even mostly) by the Constitution, as many of the key details are set in statute and regulation. So, even if we assume that the problem is that the election system is broken, you need to make a much more specific argument about how it is broken and what structure should replace it to support the contention that it is broken in a manner which requires a Constitutional fix rather than a less-drastic remedy.
What you've offered is merely an assertion about the effects of the current system, which doesn't even attempt to link those effects to a particular source, whether in the Constitution or otherwise. So, even if we accept your characterization without question, it doesn't offer any reason to think that Constitutional change is necessary. Since Constitutional change is both the highest-risk course of change (hardest to fix if implemented wrong), and the hardest to implement at all, its really not a strategy you want to adopt without a clear reason to believe that it is necessary to make the change in the Constitution, rather than simply in state and/or federal election regulations and/or statutes.
Samsung already announced they wouldn't renew their supply agreement with Apple (apparently largely due to the declining volume of orders under it as Apple moved to other suppliers, including Sharp, for cost reasons), so its not exactly like they've got a boot left to put in. Obviously, if Apple loses access to some of the alternatives, and looks to work with Samsung again, Samsung can drive a hard bargain, but its not like they wouldn't do that anyway.
That announcement was made after (and based on) years of reduced Apple orders under the existing contract (as Apple moved volume to cheaper suppliers, mainly Sharp but I think also LG) that made it no longer worthwhile for Samsung to continue the relationship. I doubt (despite the popular association of the move with the Apple-Samsung patent dispute) that Samsung has any problem continuing to make money selling to Apple if there is sufficient volume to make it worthwhile (or higher prices at the reduced volume, but that's not likely to be relevant if Sharp isn't around.)
Well, no. The stock market lives on market perceptions of future resale value of the stock, which sometimes is based on profit margins, and sometimes not. How Wall Street looks at Apple is different than how Wall Street looks at Amazon.
You didn't see any in 1860, either, the Whigs having collapsed through the 1850s, and ceased as a party by the election of 1860; while the North-South issues that would soon produce the Civil War confused things a bit more than was usually the case before or since (i.e., the "National" vs. "Constitutional" split of the Democratic Party, the Constitutional Union Party), there were two clear major parties in the election of 1860, and they were the (National) Democrats and the Republicans. The only times you see new parties becoming competitive for the Presidency is after a national party has collapsed, not as "third party" candidates: Lincoln and the Republicans after the Whig collapse; the National Republican (later, Whig) Party itself several elections after the collapse of the Federalists and the era of only one national party of significance, the Democratic-Republicans.
The way we choose members of Congress (and most state legislators and other elected officials) has a bigger effect than the way we choose Presidents; even with our Presidential election system, if minor parties didn't face an insurmountable task to win seats in the state and federal legislatures and in state executive offices, we'd still have multiple viable parties though they might have to form (likely temporary) coalitions for Presidential campaigns. And most of the barriers, outside of Presidential elections, could be addressed without Constitutional changes (those at the State level could be addressed without any federal law changes at all, which means that in the many states that have a citizen initiative process, they could be done without support from incumbent legislators.)
Actually, the people vote for electors (because that who actually gets elected based on the popular vote), its just that every state has adopted a procedure under which the names of the candidates for whom the electors are pledged, rather than the names of the electors actually standing for election, are printed on the ballot, which makes people think they are voting for a Presidential/Vice Presidential ticket rather than a slate of electors.
No, I think you misunderstand the argument. It is not that "when you choose to vote for a third-party candidate rather than some other option, the candidate you vote for is unlikely to win, so your vote is wasted." It is that "when you choose to vote for a third-party candidate, rather than some other option, the most likely impact of that decision is to increase the probability that the major party candidate that you are most opposed to wins rather than the major party candidate that you are least opposed to."
A trend which was first noted within the life of the founders, and condemned by several of them (Jefferson certainly.)