"I can't think of a single good reason why law enforcement would need identifying information of someone who posted a recording of police brutality..."
I wonder if all of these fits and false starts are to get the opposition tired of emailing and calling. I called once. Twice. How many more times will I need to do it? Then the second it falls off... wham.
"Really, if Apple's products were Better, don't you think they could have gotten more than 8% of the PC market?"
Currently 12.5% US, and rising.
But back in the day, they weren't THAT much better, and Sculley insisted that Apple matain their premium prices. Microsoft shipped Windows, and to penny-pinching corporations, one machine with windows and a mouse looked pretty much like another machine with windows and a mouse. And since one was significantly cheaper...
Then people started using computers at home, and they got what they already knew and used at work.
"They appealed more to a subset of the population who wanted..."
Who wanted to actually get things done, instead of fighting with the machine.
"...remove the ability for corporations to contribute directly to any politican's coffers or campaign..."
Forget directly, how about at all? First, no Super-PACs. All contributions must be able to be sourced, and no PAC or political organization can donate to another PAC.
Second, no corporation or business or organization shall have the right to contribute more money to a politician or party or PAC than may an individual, and limit individuals to $2K.
Re: Retailers COLLECT sales tax - they do not pay it!
Do you not realize that states collect sales tax and cities and towns collect additional sales tax? IIRC, the rate for one side of Denver (just to give an example) is different than the other side due to the municipalities involved. And downtown is yet another rate due to the money they spent on building stadiums.
You can't even go strictly by zip code, as some span city and county lines.
Plus the rate often varies based on WHAT is purchased. Food vs consumer goods vs luxury goods and so on. As stated above by someone who supposedly works for a big box retailer... it's a friggin' mess.
And while Amazon may be able to do it, it's a INTERNET sales tax, not an AMAZON sales tax. What about the little mom and pop web site that sell handcrafted whatsit's online? They don't have a IT department to track and disperse funds owed to 50 different states.
Pay a service to do it? Many businesses are marginal enough already. Let's add even more rules and regulations and reporting to the mix.
Let the Feds do it? Oh, there's a BRILLIANT idea. Let's get the Federal government involved in tracking and recording every single internet transaction in the entire country. (Remember, different goods, different taxes.)
Yeah, what could go wrong with that? Not like there'd be any privacy issues there...
Try to wrap your little head around the idea that, yes, it is a complex problem. Or in other words...
"It wouldn't be all that hard to have a service that maps zip+4 to a state/local tax rate, collects it, and redistributes it."
Well, there is the sort of minor thing about how many jurisdictions have different rates FOR DIFFERENT PRODUCTS.
Food, alcohol, clothing, durable goods, appliances, cars... can all be taxed at different rates. What's exempt here may not be exempt there. And so on.
"The electronic efficiencies should be enough of a competitive edge."
Like the big box stores that have massive electronic supply chain management systems, warehouses, and distribution systems?
If you want to hand more money over to the state, feel free to calculate the use tax on all of your own internet purchases, write 'em a check, and send it in...
"But I see 5 or 6 Fedex, UPS, and USPS trucks driving around my neighborhood every day."
First, this is as opposed to a 100 or so cars and SUVs traveling to a 100 or so different destinations in order to buy the same thing. So 5 or 6 trucks following optimized delivery routes use much LESS infrastructure than the alternative.
And as already said above, local delivery companies already pay gas, parking tickets, payroll, tolls, landing tax's for the their planes, and so on.
The local infrastructure thing is a diversion. Several states like Texas have already stated that they're somehow losing "billions." When in fact, they're simply trying to extract billions more from their citizens.
Actually, Xerox granted Apple and Apple's engineers to a three-day "pass" at PARC in return for the right to purchase $1,000,000 worth of Apple's pre-IPO stock. It was agreed that Apple could develop new products based on what they saw.
The PARC Alto was the basis for much of what became the Lisa and the Mac OS, but Apple added quite a few things over and above the original design, and simplified many others.
Apple's patents were based on their innovations.
Apple's copyrights on design were another matter, but one has only to look at the original Alto to see just how much the Mac OS diverged.
"... it's not nearly as revolutionary as a lot of people like claim it is ..."
Right. That's why the smartphones sitting on the shelf in the store today look exactly the same as they did prior to the release of the iPhone.
Or not. iPhone was an inflection point in the industry. A shift away from the small-screen keyboard-heavy stylus-based WCE and Palm and Blackberry designs into what's NOW the modern touch-based smartphone.
And it was a major paradigm shift in the consumer space, which prior to iPhone was dominated by the RAZR and other flip and candy-bar styled feature phones.
Pre-iPhone. Post iPhone.
iPhone quite literally changed -- revolutionized -- an entire industry.
"...the MP3 was a success long before the iPod, remember the RIO?"
LOL. The RIO? A success? Barely an hour's worth of music on a 32MB Flash device that cost $200? Yep. That sucker really flew off the shelves.
Might as well talk about the "success" of the Creative NOMAD Jukebox. It weighed nearly a pound with it's 2.5" 6GB drive, ran for an astounding 4 hours [sarcasm] on it's NiCad battery, and retailed for $500.
"I don't think there is a rational mind out there..."
No true Scotsman, much?
Regardless, I think "most rational people" would be upset if they worked one a project for three years, had a friend and advisor in another field that knew about it, and even provided services for it... and who then turned around and copied all of your best ideas they could so they could jump into the market with you.
That's right. They made a new UI/UX with a different presentation, that groups things differently, that thinks about apps differently, that behaves differently.
WebOS has a different design and set of behaviors too, though it doesn't diverge as much as WP7.
Just shows that you can innovate and create something new... or clone the hell out of something once someone else has done all of the work.
"I've talked about many of these standout Android features before: turn-by-turn directions, widgets, extensive voice commands..."
Turn-by-turn is a navigation app bundled with the system. Voice commands didn't appear until 2.2 Froyo (and a year after the iPhone 3GS shipped with them).
Widgets? Hey, yeah they added widgets. Wow. Innovation at it's finest. But it's lipstick on a pig. The number of UI/UX elements and behaviors copied verbatim far outweighs the changes.
On the post: SOPA: A Bad Cop's Best Friend
Umm... as a witness?
On the post: Lamar Smith Says 'Just Joking...' About Tomorrow; SOPA Markup Postponed
Re: Re:
I wonder if all of these fits and false starts are to get the opposition tired of emailing and calling. I called once. Twice. How many more times will I need to do it? Then the second it falls off... wham.
On the post: Lamar Smith Says 'Just Joking...' About Tomorrow; SOPA Markup Postponed
Re:
On the post: Senator Briefly Brings Fake Driver's License App To The Public Eye Before Having It 'Taken 'Round Back And Shot'
It's not like we have massive unemployment or a national economy that's in shambles and that needs serious attention...
On the post: Steve Jobs' Real Genius: Tweaking, Curating, Editing & Remixing To Make Things Better
Re: Re: What Edison did best.....
You mean like Ive?
On the post: Steve Jobs' Real Genius: Tweaking, Curating, Editing & Remixing To Make Things Better
Re:
Currently 12.5% US, and rising.
But back in the day, they weren't THAT much better, and Sculley insisted that Apple matain their premium prices. Microsoft shipped Windows, and to penny-pinching corporations, one machine with windows and a mouse looked pretty much like another machine with windows and a mouse. And since one was significantly cheaper...
Then people started using computers at home, and they got what they already knew and used at work.
"They appealed more to a subset of the population who wanted..."
Who wanted to actually get things done, instead of fighting with the machine.
On the post: We, The People, Are Sarcastic And Not Easily Mollified By Bland Political Non-Answers
Re: Re: Re:
Forget directly, how about at all? First, no Super-PACs. All contributions must be able to be sourced, and no PAC or political organization can donate to another PAC.
Second, no corporation or business or organization shall have the right to contribute more money to a politician or party or PAC than may an individual, and limit individuals to $2K.
And that $2K includes money, goods, and services.
On the post: The Coming Fight Over Sales Tax For Online Retailers
Re: Retailers COLLECT sales tax - they do not pay it!
You can't even go strictly by zip code, as some span city and county lines.
Plus the rate often varies based on WHAT is purchased. Food vs consumer goods vs luxury goods and so on. As stated above by someone who supposedly works for a big box retailer... it's a friggin' mess.
And while Amazon may be able to do it, it's a INTERNET sales tax, not an AMAZON sales tax. What about the little mom and pop web site that sell handcrafted whatsit's online? They don't have a IT department to track and disperse funds owed to 50 different states.
Pay a service to do it? Many businesses are marginal enough already. Let's add even more rules and regulations and reporting to the mix.
Let the Feds do it? Oh, there's a BRILLIANT idea. Let's get the Federal government involved in tracking and recording every single internet transaction in the entire country. (Remember, different goods, different taxes.)
Yeah, what could go wrong with that? Not like there'd be any privacy issues there...
Try to wrap your little head around the idea that, yes, it is a complex problem. Or in other words...
Be f*cking real.
On the post: The Coming Fight Over Sales Tax For Online Retailers
Re:
Well, there is the sort of minor thing about how many jurisdictions have different rates FOR DIFFERENT PRODUCTS.
Food, alcohol, clothing, durable goods, appliances, cars... can all be taxed at different rates. What's exempt here may not be exempt there. And so on.
"The electronic efficiencies should be enough of a competitive edge."
Like the big box stores that have massive electronic supply chain management systems, warehouses, and distribution systems?
If you want to hand more money over to the state, feel free to calculate the use tax on all of your own internet purchases, write 'em a check, and send it in...
On the post: The Coming Fight Over Sales Tax For Online Retailers
Re: A smaller benefit?
First, this is as opposed to a 100 or so cars and SUVs traveling to a 100 or so different destinations in order to buy the same thing. So 5 or 6 trucks following optimized delivery routes use much LESS infrastructure than the alternative.
And as already said above, local delivery companies already pay gas, parking tickets, payroll, tolls, landing tax's for the their planes, and so on.
The local infrastructure thing is a diversion. Several states like Texas have already stated that they're somehow losing "billions." When in fact, they're simply trying to extract billions more from their citizens.
On the post: Dear US Chamber Of Commerce: If A Site Advertises That It's Selling Fakes, How Is That Fooling Anyone?
Re:
On the post: Dear US Chamber Of Commerce: If A Site Advertises That It's Selling Fakes, How Is That Fooling Anyone?
Re:
"Your comment has been queued for moderation by site administrators and will be published after approval."
Any bets on whether or not dissenting opinions will be "moderated" and suppressed? That's "freedom" for you.
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re:
No, Steve saw the Alto interface while it was still under development at PARC. The commercial release of the Star came about two years later.
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Re: Jobs = Hypocrite
The PARC Alto was the basis for much of what became the Lisa and the Mac OS, but Apple added quite a few things over and above the original design, and simplified many others.
Apple's patents were based on their innovations.
Apple's copyrights on design were another matter, but one has only to look at the original Alto to see just how much the Mac OS diverged.
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: What a cheap and dishonest article
Right. That's why the smartphones sitting on the shelf in the store today look exactly the same as they did prior to the release of the iPhone.
Or not. iPhone was an inflection point in the industry. A shift away from the small-screen keyboard-heavy stylus-based WCE and Palm and Blackberry designs into what's NOW the modern touch-based smartphone.
And it was a major paradigm shift in the consumer space, which prior to iPhone was dominated by the RAZR and other flip and candy-bar styled feature phones.
Pre-iPhone. Post iPhone.
iPhone quite literally changed -- revolutionized -- an entire industry.
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Wow the haters don't fact check.
LOL. The RIO? A success? Barely an hour's worth of music on a 32MB Flash device that cost $200? Yep. That sucker really flew off the shelves.
Might as well talk about the "success" of the Creative NOMAD Jukebox. It weighed nearly a pound with it's 2.5" 6GB drive, ran for an astounding 4 hours [sarcasm] on it's NiCad battery, and retailed for $500.
Yep. People bought those things in droves too...
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: missing the point
No true Scotsman, much?
Regardless, I think "most rational people" would be upset if they worked one a project for three years, had a friend and advisor in another field that knew about it, and even provided services for it... and who then turned around and copied all of your best ideas they could so they could jump into the market with you.
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
WebOS has a different design and set of behaviors too, though it doesn't diverge as much as WP7.
Just shows that you can innovate and create something new... or clone the hell out of something once someone else has done all of the work.
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Re: The iPhone is the Real Rip Off
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Totally missing the point...
Turn-by-turn is a navigation app bundled with the system. Voice commands didn't appear until 2.2 Froyo (and a year after the iPhone 3GS shipped with them).
Widgets? Hey, yeah they added widgets. Wow. Innovation at it's finest. But it's lipstick on a pig. The number of UI/UX elements and behaviors copied verbatim far outweighs the changes.
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