gibwell

Are you trying to minimize the seriousness of what had been done here?

Samsung illegally distributed information that was only disclosed under court protection for the purpose of a trial to it's executives, who used it to gain an advantage in negotiation.

They did precisely what the court did not permit them to do.

> Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this.

Either you don't understand what Samsung have done, or you don't understand what discovery is, because obtaining trade secrets is clearly not the reason for it.

Even if Apple's patents were invalidated it would do nothing to excuse what you are calling 'sneaky tactics' by Samsung.

What they are accused of is deeply illegal, and that isn't going to change.

Apple hasn't done anything illegal and their patents aren't 'fake'. If they were fake, why wouldn't Samsung have had them reviewed?

It seems as though you are trying to defend Samsung by smearing Apple.

How is that relevant to the linked article?

Predatory pricing and monopolistic practices are not good for consumers. That's why they are illegal.

We're taking about people who sell PCs, not component vendors. If we include windows, we also should include intel and everyone else in the supply chain. But since this whole topic is about manufacturers who ship complete phones to purchasers, the analogy in the PC market is with companies that ship complete PCs.

MS keeping the desktop rather than losing it to Linux contradicts your thesis. You can dismiss it as a 'surprise' or acknowledge that your reasoning doesn't accord with reality.

Your example case relates to browsing activity. That is very different from email.

That isn't in dispute. The problem isn't advertising. It is reading people's email.

No it doesn't. Free email existed long before Google started reading people's email.

The email scanning just makes extra profits for google and their advertisers at the expense of people's privacy.

That's fine for you, because you understand the trade offs.

The allegation is that many users have been duped.

Illegal activity doesn't magically become legal just because the proceeds are used to give something away for free.

As stated in the case, most users don't know what the assistant is doing. So by your analogy the assistant is reading the mail without permission and then secretly using what they learn to make money for themselves.

In such a case, we would certainly blame the assistant.

The _only_ reason muggers take wallets at gunpoint is so that they can make money. Not every way of making money is desirable for society. Why is this so complicated to understand?

6% is also false.

There is a word for market share without profits. Failure.

Value is measured in money. Apple creates 45% of the value in the PC industry.

According to the judge, quite possibly not because it's not instrumental in providing the service.

And also because such an interpretation would allow any business model based on exploiting the contents of the users email for profit, which is clearly not the intent of the wiretapping statute.

Then you didn't read the judge's opinion. The wiretapping statue apparently does make such a distinction.

According to the judge the wiretapping statutes allow only interception that is 'instrumental' to providing the service to the end user, and she specifically stated the opinion that the exception is not intended to be broad enough to permit any arbitrary business model.

That's why people keep mentioning it.

You are contradicting yourself. You say that fill stack companies are hard to keep going and yet you say that non-full stack companies come and go even more easily.

By your logic, non-full stack companies are even harder to keep going.

Sorry - this has nothing to do with the profits being shared by a plethora of companies. Apple receives almost half of the profits in the PC market. The rest is divided between your plethora. Apple chose not to serve the unprofitable part of the market.

Apple makes 45% of all profits in the PC market. Nobody else comes close. That isn't a small segment - they are the clear winner.

It's highly relevant. If we say Google can scan your email just to support an arbitrary business model, how can we make an argument that the NSA should be prevented from doing it in the name of national security.

It isn't a good thing for Google to try to make loss of privacy seem like business as usual.

One is to provide a feature for the end user's benefit. The other is taking the user's private communication and using it to make money for Google.

If this business model is allowed, imagine all the other kinds of profile that communications providers would be able to sell about you based on the contents of your email.

Launched products are disruptive when they start taking over functionality that other products were once doing. Google Glass is, for now, a publicity vehicle to show that Google is forward thinking.

Only when the product is launched will we learn whether it is disruptive.

Whilst I agree that Nokia and Blackberry were disrupted by Android, not the iPhone, Apple is gaining customers everywhere. 'Marketshare' is a flawed concept because it assumes a unified market of undifferentiated customers. Apple is simply not in the market of commodity devices. It never had any of that market to lose. Claiming that apple is losing those customers is clearly incorrect.

If the story does unfold as it did with Mac/Windows, Apple will again be the clear winner, just as they are in the PC market.

Sure, but this thread is about Samsung's routine use of deceptive practices - not whether they beat a particular other device.

Why do they need to act any different? Their current tactics are working very well.

It secretly 'guarantees' that the benchmarks don't run under real-world conditions. That is fraud.

This is nothing like that. The note doesn't have two modes that the user or the software can choose from. The adjustments are made secretly, and only when specifically named benchmarks are run.

A good reason to find deliberate deception ok.

In this case it's not the theoretical maximum. It isn't available to regular apps because the OS and CPU don't allow it, for good reason - to conserve power. The reason benchmarking apps can do it is that Samsung added code to specifically detect them.

Your car spec analogy is a good one. If the car maker removed the seats and carpet as well as inessential engine components before testing, that would be the equivalent of what Samsung have done here.

It would also be fraud.