Posts by Don Jefe

Re: Premium ?

Premium is a worthless marketing term, like 'professional quality' or 'select'.

In the retail world, 'premium' means the most, or among the most, expensive product within a product category. The term implies quality, but only for people unable to assess a product based on its merits, suitability or even their own preference: They have to have a 'score' to determine a products worthiness.

So, in retail parlance the iPhone is a premium product.

Re: And they expect to get it?

That's not how prior art works. The legalese gets dense, so a summary definition follows.

To be considered prior art the subject of the patent must be either:

- Already widely used to the point that an industry subject matter expert cannot identify a unique and substantial difference between the thing already in use and the patent subject. Alternatively, if the patent subject is deemed to be recognizable by the general public (i.e. You can't patent a refrigerator as an entire system, only a distinct part of it).

- Another patent with identical or nearly identical properties already exists, which is where the term 'prior art' comes from. It's actually an internal term for the USPTO. This is the most important consideration, if the patent office doesn't have it on file it is not considered to have prior art.

Prior art isn't what people think it is. When you're filing your application you want as much prior art as possible as you reference it in your application to demonstrate the unique properties of your invention. Prior art makes it easier to get your patent approved.

Just mentioning the idea in a paper or website doesn't count as prior art.

Re: A communist hotel

Yes, they have a ginormous hotel (the shell of one anyway) with several revolving reasturants at the top. It would have been the largest hotel in the world but it never opened.

A Russian wireless telco struck a deal to put antennas on the roof and be the sole provider of mobile service for the price of finishing the exterior of the hotel to make it look presentable.

I've never been to North Korea but have a friend who goes a few times a year in his role with the UN. He's got a collection of tourist brochures that have the hotel obviously edited out then reappearing at a later date after it was improved.

Re: Good riddance

Fool! By subscribing to that service you were only fueling the fires with which the oppressors of the common man forge the chains of bondage and servitude.

Your contributions to the slavery of your fellow man shall henceforth be used against you and your gutless coconspirators. Only through just punishment will the pig-dogs of capitalism learn the error of your ways. Your inconvenience will be great and the mouse clicks of your struggles will echo through the halls of freedom for at least five minutes. Verily will the relentless and endless sounds of digitally enhanced on-hold music and menu options resonate as you contact the temple of your false gods to reestablish your identity and remove any illegitimate charges to your credit card. Tremble in fear, ye jester of greed, the voices of the bored and privelaged will no longer go unheeded.

Sentencing isn't that straightforward. Even if you turn evidence and plead guilty they'll often give you the maximum sentence but reduce the time to parole, ease parole and probation restrictions and keep you out of the more awful prisons.

The idea of a plea bargain is that it saves the State resources in your prosecution. The more evidence they have against you the less of an impact your guilty plea will have, as you really aren't saving much in the way of resources.

You're going to be punished if you swipe people's credit cards and get caught. You should be punished. But pleading guilty greatly reduces some of the nasty side effects of a sentence and plays well with the board when you come up for your parole hearing. If you plead not guilty but are found guilty you're likely to get the full nastiness of a sentence and the parole board won't be very impressed. Generally you aren't allowed to change your plea after the punishment starts so you only get one chance to affect events years later at your parole hearing. Better get it right...

If you can see where taxes are spent and approve of that then you are in the wrong field. Get started on your political career today as it's hard to break into that racket if you wait too long.

Seriously though, lawyers are the driving force behind the legal size paper and file folder industry as well as the fax industry. Without lawyers all the machines that make those things as well as the people that put them in shipping boxes would be out of jobs. What have you got against machines and warehouse workers :)

Re: Pure gut feeling

The patent spats are a seperate business from their electronics products. Legal 'stuff' happens off in a corner and rarely involves executives other than to answer in a well rehearsed way. You've got to look at legal battles in context, corporate legal fights don't create the same animosity as say, if your neighbor sued you. The lawyers you're paying have to do something and suing customers is a bad idea.

Anyway, the Apple vs Samsung rivalry couldn't be any more productive. They are both feeding off each other's ideas and building better products because of it. In any industry you must have real competition or something is terribly, terribly wrong. Without competition things become institutionalized and while the price to the consumer generally drops, so does any innovation. Things trundle along for so long that changing anything becomes a real risk (moving a 'Start' button is a good example).

Without competition there is no justification for continuous product development so you focus on cutting costs and eventually you're left with an unexciting product made as cheaply as possible that does the bare minimum to get by. When things get to that point they tend to stay that way for ages.

New players and ideas never materialize because it is nearly impossible to dislodge the institutionalized standard. Its become so embedded in the psyche of the consumer that they don't want anything different, it's just too much trouble to change (again, Windows is a good example).

I hope Samsung and Apple maintain their rivalry for a long time. It's good for both of them, and they know it, so I expect it will.

Re: Hello, is this Bullshit?

A single failed product that requires a large pre-sales readiness investment can tank almost any specialty manufacturer. Apple is most definitely a specialty manufacturer.

The general rule of thumb is a 2.5x multiplier on investment to forecast actual losses for a failed product. The base investment only covers actual cash out. It does not take into account the costs of staff hires for the project, supplier commitments (you have to pay, at least big parts of, for (x) boxes, manuals, headphones, etc... even if they're never actually made). Warehouse space, shipping contracts, parts from dozens or hundreds of different suppliers all those things represent huge losses not just in direct penalties, but you've got to pay people to do the negotiation. On top of all that, and literally hundreds or thousands of other issues you're on the hook for spares and warranty support for at least two years so the losses aren't a one time thing. They stick around. Losing money is really, really expensive.

People who have never been involved in the global launch of a new product think it is just some press releases and adverts. It takes months and sometimes years to get everything lined up and ready. The marketing materials are the end result of thousands of people working towards a common goal.

"I don't see any progress that couldn't have been accompished by a team of 30 people."

That single sentence sums up why most people fail at scaling a business. It's also the same concept that makes going into space so hard. The larger something becomes, the more resources it requires to do the same thing it was doing before.

Five people added to a 50 person organization will experience a large increase in productivity. Those same five people added to a 200 person organization might see a measurable increase in productivity. Those some five people added to a 1,000 person organization will see no overall increase in productivity. Small tasks will be lifted from a few people, but that only allows them to focus on their primary task, they had already worked those small tasks into their workload, so removing them creates no overall gain.

There are management formulas for employee productivity to scale but they're all bunk, best case scenarios. Actual productivity increases are always less than best case. That's where machines and computers come in. But that's a bigger issue.

In short, a team of 30 people, no matter how talented or resource enabled will be equal to five (maybe) in a large organization. Complications scale faster than HR can compensate for directly. What you're proposing is how middle managers get shown the door and projects miss deadlines and budgets.

Re: yeah right.

Probably not rubbish. Apple has historically been a niche manufacturer and stepping outside your niche is incredibly expensive. With their very limited product catalog adding another device is a really, really big deal.

Most companies that experience incredibly large growth spurts do so on the back of a single risky product. If it succeeds then yay. If it doesn't then you're out your huge investment and have pretty much blocked yourself from a second attempt in that product category for at least a generation of Humans. Many companies don't survive those failed attempts. Highly diversified companies won't have the same level of risk, but the payoff is smaller.

The great risk/great rewards cliches are, generally, true.

Although the effects can be obnoxious and overbearing, and lots of good ideas get left out to die, the US has a sales and marketing culture and infrastructure that simply doesn't exist anywhere else.

A good idea or a great product is worth exactly zero if it isn't sold well. Tax structures can be managed and supply chains can be assembled anywhere, but you've got to have a sales centric environment to get people to give you their money. There's no such thing as a product that sells itself: Even feminine hygiene products have sales people and nearly half the planet uses that stuff.

There are shed loads of great ideas, great designs and great people in Europe (and the UK for you sepretatists) but there's a great gaping hole in sales capabilities. The people who invent are rarely the people who can sell, and coming to the US gives those people an opportunity to get their inventions sold. I believe it is largely a cultural thing and Europeans (and Canadians) simply have better manners, but getting your products up in people's faces is highly effective. There's no better place in the world to find people who will ram things down people's throats than here in the US.

Re: How do they know I emigrated?

Until recently patent applications at USPTO required you to disclose your country of origin if you weren't a US citizen. Maybe the USPTO reports back to your government or it could be included in one of the trade agreements, not really sure. But I do know the USPTO knows where patent filers are from.

Re: Hawaii sounds good

Thomas Edison was an epic dick and the original patent troll. He pioneered the same hyper-aggressive IP enforcement/extortion schemes still used today. So instead of a lightbulb or a stock ticker, he should be remembered as the grandfather of Prenda law and the RIAA.

But trying 231 different things is still often more effective than trying to plan or model the best solution. I like 'push the big red button and see what happens' form of discovery. It has worked well for me, and Edison too (except he had a lackey push the button).

The study uses the inventors country of habitation and country of origin based on information in patent applications (required in most countries patent applications) so where they go afterward isn't factored in (as near as I can tell) only the fact that they were mobile when the application was filed.

Re: Micrososft FUD machine in full swing.

FUD campaigns are, and always have been, a part of marketing. FUD was part of marketing before people knew that they were marketing. Computer operating systems, mobile phones, game consoles and automobiles have a unique distinction in that their fanbase delivers a better response than a marketing firm ever could.

For example: You have just participated in furthering Microsoft's name recognition (don't expect a commission check). In marketing it is generally considered a positive if your name is mentioned at all. Even if it is bad. If you really want to have a positive effect on your brand of choice it is best to mention only that brand, not the competing brand. Nothing in (anti)marketing is as effective as silence.

There's a very old saying: "No matter what they say, so long as they talk". It still holds true today.