"The Court held that a business corporation is organized primarily for the profit of the stockholders, as opposed to the community or its employees. The discretion of the directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to the reduction of profits or the nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to benefit the public, making the profits of the stockholders incidental thereto.
Because this company was in business for profit, Ford could not turn it into a charity. This was compared to a spoliation of the company's assets. The court therefore upheld the order of the trial court requiring that directors declare an extra dividend of $19.3 million."
>OK, I didn't accuse you but I did accuse another poster of being an MS shill. I'll admit I could have been more diplomatic. Still, as I recall, the person I accused was a professional "evangelist" (or something similar) for MS by their own admission writing an article about, what do you know, hatred of MS.
Sounds like an interesting thread, care to link to it? I have been an avid HN reader, but I don't remember seeing a thread like this and suspect it may not exist.
>The striking thing is how the two companies peaked are almost precisely the same time and how that moment (end of 2010) was not related to the entry timing of their nominal disruptor[iPhone].
Could it be that it was Android that hurt Blackberry and Nokia more than the iPhone did? Low end Android phones definitely replaced a lot of Symbian phones in the marketplace. It would certainly explain the timing of the change.
>The idea that Apple is vulnerable to the low end is a relic of an idea.
Not seeing how this follows from the data and analysis and seems to be a rather bold claim. There is a real chance of smartphones getting commodotized and it has already happened to a certain extent in China and India, where local OEMs are calling the shots.
The reason it's not happening in the US to the same extent is that the carriers hide the true cost of the flagship phones into two year data contracts, unlike, say PCs. However, the contract free prepaid market is growing at a record pace [1] and we may see a real change in the marketplace if the trend continues. Is the upgrade to S4 or the 5s from the S3 or 4S worth $500?
>Increasing the speed at the merge-point will not decrease the queue. It will only decrease the density of the queue but move it back further in traffic. Your time to cross the merge-point will be basically the same.
I have to disagree with this. If you increase the speed at the merge point, someone who is newly joining the queue will definitely cross the merge point in lesser time than with lesser speed at the merge point.
>The advert was apparently done by a Microsoft affiliated marketing firm, so it made sense (to me) to include it.
Reference?
>In regards to your second point, Google and others often make mistakes in their adverts.
So when Google claims the Chromebox has a Core processor, it's an unintentional mistake, but when Microsoft says a 10.1" screen is bigger than a 9.7" one, it's a deliberate lie.
>Much like your post, to be honest. Have you considered a job on Microsoft's marketing department? I believe they are desperately seeking talent.
>Suppose you’re on a 2-lane (each way) highway and one lane is closed up ahead due to construction. Now the flow rate of your lane is cut in half (or there are twice as many cars in line in front of you, depending on how you want to look at it).
What I observe is that the speed is reduced to one twentieth of the speed, not just half. This is because people are merging very slowly while jostling resulting in needless braking. If everyone could agree upon a proper zipper merge, the speed for everyone would go up many times.
Or imagine a traffic signal at the merge point that only lets one lane go through for a minute each. The overall flow rate would be much higher than what it is without such a signal.
Discounting this based on theoretical flow rate (as if removing one lane reduces real traffic flow by only 50%) shows that the author totally ignores real traffic scenarios completely at odds with the title of the article.
Also, two of your links leads to the ad which wrongly compares the screen size of diagonal length is bigger.
However, when Google wrongfully claims a Chromebox with a Celeron is running a Intel Core(TM) Processor, no one cares or makes big blog post on HN about it.
The stats are sales over the last 3 months, not install base. However, Statcounter tries to measure usage, not unique devices. Netmarketshare tries to measure individual browsers/devices.
For example, if you browse 10 sites in a day on an Android phone, but your neighbor browses 990 sites a day on her iPhone, the Statcounter numbers with just you both being counted will be 1% Android and 99% iPhone even though the install base is 50% each.
This is the reason that Statcounter and Netmarketshare browser share numbers are so different from each other, with Statcounter showing Chrome in the lead and Netmarketshare showing IE in the lead.
I would have expected that putting this through a machine learning algorithm( or one of the face recognition ones) trained with a very huge dataset might improve the odds.
>I really dont know, but will say seems crazy that Nokia didn't have at least a small team dedicated to making an android OS 'port' for their devices. It seems like even if they thought it was a 1% chance of windows mobile not working out for them the hedge would have been worth it.
Elop did have such a team working on an Android port.
Kantar Worldpanel - July 2013 Windows Phone Share by country
Germany: 8.8% (+2.6% YoY)
GB: 9.2% (+5% YoY)
France: 11% (+7.4% YoY)
Italy: 7.8% (-0.5% YoY)
Spain: 1.8% (+0.1% YoY)
USA: 3.5% (+0.5% YoY)
China: 2.4% (-2.2% YoY)
Australia: 7.4% (+2.4% YoY)
Mexico: 12.5% (+10.5% YoY)
>The biggest and most impressive individual gains were seen in Mexico (12.5%) and France (11%) where double digit Windows Phone sales figures were finally reached.
I really doubt an ethernet connection can push a full HD video frame in 1ms. The <1ms is for ping, which uses a really small network packet. Pushing 1080p HD video is a totally different matter.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/31/engadget_reddit_spat...