WHat innovation is this discouraging? Samsung copied a feature someone else created and patented 8 years ago. How is doing that innovation. Do you own a dictionary? Now they get to be real innovative and come up with their own way of doing it.
So, Samsung owners aren't supposed to do a local search on their phone, something old POS desktops have been able to do for years, because it's on a phone? Seriously? How again is the patent system not broken?
The reason for the fragmentation is that the phone manufacturers and carriers don't want old phones updated. That would cut into sales of newer shinier phones.
Is it really about making money on newer, shinier new phones? It's not like you can go and buy a cheap data & voice plan from Verizon or AT&T if you already have a phone and don't need a subsidized one. I think it's probably more a problem with the U.S. having a pretty saturated mobile market, and carriers spending most of their marketing dollars to lure customers away from other carriers with a new shiny phone. That's an easier business model for the suits to implement than, oh, I don't know, having great service at a reasonable price. I think a lot of Americans are going to follow the shiny while complaining about the mobile service.
There will be consequences.
Case closed.
Nice pun.
Sigh. Like the new transatlantic cable for high speed trading, another project created solely to shave off time on automatic trades and thus print money. Does this do anything? Am I the only one who sees this as driving up transaction costs because you have "investors" who really don't invest in companies trying to take almost microscopic profit automatically? Where is the benefit to the financial system? What about the economy? I wonder how long people would stand for an extra layer being added to some other industry that does nothing but get paid for doing nothing?
These trades are like taxes, but they don't pay for any roads, health care, retirement, of national defense. They just make a few DBs who don't manufacture or invent anything rich. It will never happen, but I would like some politicians to get into an ethical debate on the socioeconomic benefits of this type of activity. Seriously. How defensible is this type of activity under Western Judeo-Christian ethical frameworks? Most American jurists publicly support natural law, at least while going through public confirmation hearings, so where exactly does this fit?
Their credit cards are a terrible deal too and they are hitting on those.
I disagree. Credit offers can be great if you're smart about using them. Personally, I love my BB credit card. You get no interest financing for 18 months, and the last computer I bought was online through the BB Marketplace and I still got the financing deal. Here's my simple two-step method for not getting stuck with a the "terrible deal interest." 1. Get irst statement. 2. Set up automatic payments to pay off the computer before the 18 month expiration. It's that simple.
...not attacking us; there's no point. They want to challenge our force projection and protection of other countries, especially those they want land and resources from. They could care fuck-all about North America. They want oil, rare earth metals, and territory buffer/control near them. We've been a thorn in their side, protecting Japan and a whole lot of the rest of Asia from them.
I'm out of mod points, but this is right on. Whether China has a blue water navy is irrelevant. The point is to make our navy hesitant to get involved in regional conflicts against Chinese interests. It doesn't take many ship killing cruise missiles to keep carrier battle groups away from danger and hence out of action.
Hacking stuff you own is perfectly legal.
It is until the government makes it illegal. The number of federal crimes has ballooned from around 3,000 in the 1980s to an estimated 4,500 today. wsj.com The Feds seem to make all kinds of things illegal today, so I wouldn't hang my hat on whether it's illegal or not. Where would one even look? Have you ever seen the United States Code? It's a nightmare. New bills that come up for a vote that amend an existing statute, for instance to add a crime to an existing statute, don't republish the whole statute, the bill shows the changes to the statute, and they show that they add a sub-paragraph here or remove a word there. It's really very difficult to figure out what's going on, even for our legislators.
NPR had a fascinating story a couple of years ago about a spider silk tapestry that had been woven. NPR.org Fabric as soft as silk but stronger than steel, the possibilities are fascinating even if I have to wait a while to have a "that guy" suit made out of the stuff.
This is CHINA we're talking about here. The United States would never "cancel" degrees or otherwise dictate to colleges/Universities, private or otherwise, what classes or degree plans they can and can't offer. . . .
It's happening in Texas, as the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board ("THECB") is now reviewing majors at state funded universities in Texas and cutting departments that don't graduate enough majors. The axe is not based on not enough students taking your courses, but not enough majors graduating. So, foreign languages are ending up on the chopping block, especially at smaller, regional schools where plenty of students may take a language as a requirement, but almost no one chooses that particular major. It's a shameful, arbitrary approach to determine which programs are more productive, and just another way to cut programs that the current administration doesn't agree with. The THECB commissioners are appointed by the governor, in this case Rick Perry.
I'm posting this as probably one of the last people who was still using a Palm Pilot. I only recently quit using my Palm Pilot because of the d--n Touchpad that I bought for next to nothing. I'm not in any way an HP fan, but this whole thing has me so disappointed. Let me get this straight, when I finally get ready to upgrade to a smartphone the nice OS that I've grown to love on the tablet that I bought on the cheap is probably dead? Maybe. Are you f--king kidding me? I buy one of your tablets (Thanks, Apotheker!); I grow to love the tablet; the tablet's simple interface which would be perfect for a phone is ALREADY ON A PHONE, BUT HP'S KILLING IT OFF? Maybe? Has anyone on the HP board even tried WebOS? I can almost, almost understand while Carly gutted the calculator line. Almost, since I've been using the same HP 32S for over 20 years, apparently oblivious to planned obsolescence and the need to sell me more s--t. But that's just it, they want to sell me more s--t. Maybe HP is psychologically incapable of making a decent piece of hardware that lasts and doesn't require expensive supplies (HP printer division, I'm talking to you).
I'm now essentially back to Android or iOS after having never considered WebOS until I used it, and it will probably be Android once I find the best phone for the best price which doesn't have too annoying a skin on it. Of course, since I'm not buying Apple there are CHOICES, and I'm going to have to actually "shop" for a phone unless I want to talk to phone salespeople. Sigh. If I had just bought a WebOS phone last year, I would be pissed that the OS was being killed off but at least I would have had a good year or two knowing that I could trade in my phone for a new one next year. Two years with a dying OS? That's a different story. If I had been an early adopter, I think that I would have been happier being hosed.
The real HP was spun off by Carly into Agilent. As far as I know they are still doing just fine doing all those things that the original HP used to do.
No, they're not. Half its business has been sold or spun off since it was spun off in an IPO. It's not like a whole new management team showed up when HP spun it off.
Netflix is really just screwing over busy familes.
I can't even see this as sensible business plan. The world is moving to streaming, so Netflix is going to create a new company that ships old discs? Do they really expect this business will still be growing in 5 years?
People keep saying this and trying to get people to switch to streaming content. Well, that totally blows for two kinds of people. The poor and the technologically inept. Netflix would still have had a solid dvd business for the next 5-10 years. Now they won't have a solid business between the two.
It doesn't just blow for the technically adept, it blows for anyone who likes HD movies and wants them at a reasonable price. I have the streaming service and the DVD service which is upgraded to Blu-ray. For my $10/mo Blu-ray subscription, I get at least one HD movie each week. AppleTV charges $3.99 for HD movies. There is no price comparison.
I suppose I was one of the few people who didn't really care about the price increase as I had already done the math on how much it would cost to changes services (and that's not including changing equipment). Netflix has been a one-stop shop for my family, and that's who this is really screwing over. Families. The streaming service has been nice because there is a pretty decent catalog of educational and children's content WITHOUT COMMERCIALS!!! Seriously, no fruity pebbles. No beer ads. No smoking substitutes with people acting so satisfied as they exhale mist. Netflix streaming is a great way to control some of the popular (ie LCD) culture your children get exposed to. Does it suck that Netflix lost Starz? Sure, but I don't care. It's hard to find time to watch one movie a week, let alone something on streaming. What I don't understand is why it makes since for me to now have to look at two places for movies. Wasn't the whole point to make it all easier and more convenient? Maybe next they'll take a page from Microsoft and add a *&^%ing ribbon to the website, too.
I wonder if anybody on Easter Island ever said, "Hey guys. Do you think we might be running out of trees?" But you know, after the fact I'm sure they were all like, "Oh man. Yeah, you were right. Now that we're all dead I can see that putting up idols for the gods was not as effective as managing our forests would have been."
A new book says that it was actually rats that caused the deforestation. A link to a book review is below.
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
