What difference does it make? Saying capitalism doesn't work because consumers are ignorant is no different than saying socialism doesn't work because people are greedy. Yeah, it'd be great if we could change behavior to make these systems work as intended, but that's not really an option. If the system doesn't work, it doesn't work, period. The reasons don't much matter unless you have a solution to match them.

I think you've got it more right than anyone else here. Features like an SD card and removable battery are nice, but very few people care. Just look at how well the iPhone does with neither. What really makes a difference is how you sell your product. Samsung and Apple sell the exact* same phone across all carriers. Then they advertise that single phone straight to consumers, knowing that the carrier they're on doesn't matter. HTC sells the One X exclusively on AT&T. They sell Evos on Sprint. They sell Droid Incredibles on Verizon. They can't advertise a single product line to consumers, leaving them pretty much reliant on the carriers to push their phones for them. What do they expect?

When people think Apple, they think iPhone. Samsung, they think Galaxy S. HTC, they think... well, probably nothing. None of their product lines have a strong brand identity, so people won't ask for them. And when people won't ask for you product, how do you plan to sell any when you're competing against the products people will ask for?

* I realize some internal components are different, but as far as the average consumer is concerned, they're exactly the same.

I don't see how you can really blame this on Samsung. The Galaxy Nexus was subject to an import ban over this feature and couldn't be sold til it was removed. Yeah, that ruling technically only applies to the Nexus, but the feature is exactly identical across their other products. I wouldn't expect them to wait for each product to be banned before making this change, especially when that puts them at risk for Apple to claim willful infringement (subject to much harsher penalties), since they now obviously know the feature is infringing.

If this gets upheld, Apple will be able to get an injunction on every Android phone because this is a core OS feature. I'd say that affects consumers. Plus, it seems like there's a pretty good chance that Google could find some patent between theirs and Motorola's that applies to the iPhone, which could lead to a counter ban. Maybe (hopefully) it won't get that far, but this is the patent armageddon that people have been worrying about with all these lawsuits.

It doesn't actually keep your open tabs in sync across different browsers, it just presents a list of all tabs you have open in each of your Chrome browsers. It shows up on the new tab screen in a popup menu along the bottom (or a tab on mobile). I agree with you that I wouldn't want my open tabs to actually stay in sync, but this implementation of it is really handy. You can totally ignore it if you want, but it's nice to have around.

Uh, yes? Do you think all of those exports, from cheap junk to high end tech products, come from a government not interested in capitalism?

Because we aren't a direct democracy. Majority opinion doesn't always become law, and it definitely doesn't happen immediately. That's by design. But it still lies with the people to select the government. If our government representatives aren't doing what we want, then we have the power to select new representatives. If they're not doing what we want but we're re-electing them anyway, then that's our fault. No amount of money and corporate friends can buy a place in Congress. Instead, all that cash buys votes, but it's our fault for putting our votes up for sale.

A beauracracy the size of the US government will always have corruption in it, but it still always comes back to us when we don't remove those responsible.

This is partially my point, though. This article says "sham" acupuncture is equivalent or better than the real thing, but leaves out that both are better than the usual treatment:

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2007/09/acupuncture-may-be-more-effective-for-back-pain-treatment-than-conventional-medicine.ars

So yeah, all of the magic behind acupuncture and placement points and whatever other junk may not be true, but that doesn't change that there's something about the process of acupuncture that seems to help. So there's no need to throw it out. It really does help, and science should work to figure out why so we can make it better, not throw it away because it doesn't work exactly like practitioners think it does.

True, but at the same time, let's not throw all of the "wooly theories" away out of hand. I sometimes think that a lot of people see something like "Eastern Medicine" and stop listening right there. But just because science didn't generate the theory doesn't meant the theory can't be correct. Let's test them and see how they work, then teach the ones that make sense. There's no reason to limit ourselves wholly to theories originating from science or non-science when the ultimate goal should be improving medicine, whatever the source.

I think this is an excellent idea. If other tech industry people could be convinced to write one, even better. The RIAA has chosen to go to the public and try to paint the tech industry as the bad guys. Fight fire with fire, especially when they're the bad guys to begin with.

The point of speed limits is usually not to keep you from going "too fast", it's to keep everyone going roughly the same speed. Driving gets more dangerous when cars are all going vastly different speeds. That's why highways also have minimum speed limits. Having someone going 25 on a 60+ mph highway is just as dangerous as having someone go 100.

This is less of an issue where there's not much traffic (parts of the Autobahn, for instance), and you could maybe make it work by having different lanes going different speeds, but there is a point beyond just making you drive slower than you're capable of doing.

Exactly. Filtering by type of traffic? Ok. Filtering by source or destination of traffic? Not ok.

Why shouldn't they pay the same tax, in both examples? Where you live should have no bearing on federal taxes, unless you're not in the country. Neither should kids. Kids are a personal choice, and if you can't afford them you shouldn't have them. But if you wanted to ease some of the burden, you could always create a deduction for the situation. Deductions make sense, especially in the case of something like charity, it's just the multiple types of income that bother me.

In the other case, presumably a retired millionaire has already paid taxes on the money he's earned, and he shouldn't be punished for saving a bunch of it in a bank account somewhere. And hey, if you wanted to reward someone for taking a low paying but very important job like school teacher, deductions are still there. There is still the question of the transition from one system to the other, but I'm only concerning myself with what the effect of either system in place would be.

Absolutely. I don't understand what's so hard about saying "regardless of its source, all of your income just counts as income, minus some deductions, and you pay a percentage in tax based on these brackets". No special taxes, no loopholes, you just take your total income, put it in brackets, and pay the percentages required. I'm far from an expert so maybe I'm missing something, but I'd love to hear it. This seems so clear cut and simple.

Or simple marketing. Being able to say your product is not manufactured in China is probably worth something these days, rightly or wrongly. There's also a possibility of environmental concerns. Though I admit ignorance as to whether Brazil is actually better in that area, China has quite a rep for pollution. Apple gets a well deserved bad rep for a lot of things, but I think they do legitimately care about the environment to some extent and, again, environmentally friendly is also good for marketing.