Well I would guess that when a doctor checks the, 'Generics okay,' box, that means that the pharmacist can fill the prescription with any drug that has the same active ingredient(and purpose and a raft of other prerequisites that I am unaware of). The choosing a more expensive option part is when the ethics get weird.

What are the absolute numbers for each market? 13% of 100 people is a whole lot less than 1% of 10,000. Also, do your numbers count all registered developers? I might know a guy who is registered but not currently offering anything for sale. Does this number include people who produce only free applications? As has been said before, "There are three types of lies. Lies, Damned Lies, and statistics." --Samuel Clemens

Some words I have to look up over and over again, like tautology. You are correct though. my statements where circular on the face. Companies seem to me to be saying(advertising), "Ours is the best!" Then they seem to build the worst experience instead.

I will assume your use of, "lock-in," in your response is a allusion to any of, iTunes, iTunes Music Store, iOS App store, or any number of other products created by Apple(maybe you aren't even being that specific, maybe you really meant in general). This is not an inaccurate assessment of these products, but lock-in implies that they are there to prevent a cutomer from switching away from the crappy service or product they already own, such as a low-interest/high-fee bank account, or an ETF for shitty wireless service. In the case of Apple, the services I mention above seem to create the very reason why going with Apple products and services are a good thing. Leave aside your hang-ups about not being able to run any app you want or loading your own OS on the iOS hardware(I would wager that less than 1% of people who own or can afford to own the devices care about the standard slashdot arguments against iOS devices). The fact is that the hardware is well made and backed by a warranty that is reported to be fairly well executed. Even if you do have objections about the hardware, too slow, not as many cores as you would like, not enough ram, camera or whatever else. All of the tablets on the market today have roughly similar hardware specs. The thing that differentiates each companiys' offerings is the software behind it and, as many have aregued here, the advertising.

So what I was saying is that companies see Apple produce a $600 tablet and say, "Hey, we can do that." So they make $600 of hardware and ship it to Best Buy and then wonder why it doesn't sell. Which is your point. What I was saying is that a company has to do every aspect of creating a tablet well-enough. They cannot just make the best hardware. If we say that Apple makes middling Hardware and software, and advertises reasonably well. Then a competitor cannot make amazing hardware and shit software with crappy advertising and expect to do better. They must do as well as Apple in all categories and better in at least one.

Anyway, I don't think that Apple's products and services are lock-in for the sake of keeping customers so much as a set of things that are worth more together than the sum of their individual parts(but let us not trot THAT word out).

Okay, so you(and [some of] your antecedents in this thread) admit that people want to be like other people. So I fail to see how an Apple product being popular is a bad thing in this scenario. What I see as the problem is a corporate mentality that thinks building a better widget is going to sell more than building a popular widget.

So you listen constantly to music you don't like? Maybe you should just turn the speakers off and save yourself the money(if you're actually paying anthing int the first place). Car analogy time. Imagine renting Yugos over and over again, just hoping that you will accidentally get a DB Vanquish. Save your time and just buy music you like and if you just think you like music but in reality do not then stop listening to music.

I would take my sample and teach them something new, then see if they picked up that skill. Or I would throw a bunch of parallelograms and triangles on a table and overlay them over a silhouette of a paper crane. then I'd flip the page to a different silhouette, and look at the test subject and time them to see how long it takes for them to get the clue. Then I would call it an Intelligence Quotient test and I would call the median test results at 100 and call people who fall more than a standard deviation or two above the standard geniuses, and those who fall one or two below, developmentally disabled. I would think that the ability to learn in general, not just rote memorization that tests involve. would be a good way to find genes that helped with learning. But I'm American and definitions of intelligence differ among cultures.

This theoretical child analogy breaks down because economics("capitalism") is based on infinite grows potential. So at 8 if this child is 1.2m tall(I don't normally use metric but it makes the math easier) and weights ~25kg and grows at a rate of 2.5% per year, then at 20 he or she would be ~1.61m tall and weigh, 33kg, which IIRC is sort of short but quite skinny. This is all well and good but there is no maturity in this economic model. So the same person at 30 would be 2.07m and 43.04kg, . At 40 years old try on 2.64m 55.10kg. and at 55(retirement, Social Security age anyway)3.83m 79.80kg. So now this person is enormously large and yet only has the mass to support a frame of someone who is 2 meters tall. This sort of grow now and hope for more money in the future is an untenable ideal. We keep stretching and expecting people to somehow pick up the slack. Like a child who grows without limit and hopes that the actual body mass will catch up someday.

Come on old man! Rockin is not that obscure of a phrase. Even I know what people mean when they say they are rockin something. Look at the third definition, it is most apt.

Maybe you get that feeling because your superiority complex would give you that feeling anyway? Maybe you are truly an idiot savant who doesn't realize his knowledge of computers makes him a one percenter? I think the real question is, do you realize that your elitism and unwelcoming behavior does more to hurt the open source community in the consumer space than anything Microsoft or any other major manufacturer could ever do(wether you are trolling or not)?

OOOoooh, gotcha. Carry on then. Though, I'm afraid our friend is in need of some other uniformed men that s/he will likely also dislike.

Don't speak for me. I can make up my own mind about who to like or dislike or even hate.

Slashdot has always run stories from other sources, I think the book reviews where the first original content that was posted here. Go back and look at old stories, they are third/fourth-hand knowledge almost every time.

"No. No, it's not."

Not subjective? Okay try this one on. Assume it is a bad thing to lie. Now assume you are Oskar Schindler and smuggling a hundred Jews out of Germany on a boat during WWII. Nazis board you boat and ask if you have any Jews on board. Are you saying that there is no subjective room to wiggle in a gigantic lie at this point?

Yes, I am well aware of Godwin's Law.

What are you four? Learn to read the caller ID or here's a thought, don't answer your phone when you don't want to talk. I take youth comment back, old people are the same way, they think just because a phone rings in earshot it must be answered. Anyway, keep your hair on grandpa, and learn how to silence a phone when you don't want to be bothered.

This is not some mundane detail Michael!