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Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

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Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#531
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has the single market, and lots of English speakers. But it also has very conservative capital and tax and employment systems that make entrepreneurship difficult. Some of that is easy to fix, some hard to fix.

==But it also has very conservative capital and tax and employment systems that make entrepreneurship difficult.== The rate of new business creation is higher in Europe than the US. I would guess that the US has more venture-backed entrepreneurs, but more businesses are being start by Europeans than Americans. “The net rate of business creation among the EU economies has been over three times faster than in the USA a…

I haven't fully checked that source but whats the filtering criterion for "new business creation"?

I remember someone used to call Sweden an "top innovative country" and when I took a closer look, he based that argument on amount of new business creation (weighted with population)

Taking a closer look, it was evident that they didn't sort the business by size, or how long they stayed, revenue or amount of employer. And as a person who lived there I know a lot of people start businesses just to circumvent the high tax rate, very restrictive hiring laws/taxes, and essentially do consulting (freelance) job. This is a symptom of how the society was made: hiring and income are heavily taxed, but not the same can be said for businesses. The claim that the country was innovative based on number of business creation quickly fell apart.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#532
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every unemployed person could operate a buldozer. What would you have them do, lay bricks? Train them to use heavy machinery after working in hospitality services? Germany does this with some amount of succes but I don't know how they do it. German socialism seems to work at the expense of a zero point growth figure. They still pay the solidarity tax for East Germany.

Yes I actually would do this. Why can’t they lay bricks? Would they rather starve? There would need to be some training component for several jobs (bulldozer driver) but I think there could be a job that’s right for most. This is pretty similar to what the military does I believe, you get a job based on aptitude and such. I don’t know if it’s the perfect solution but it feels more appropriate than our current approac…

Just from experience, I'm not sure I'd trust a military-style assessment to accurately identify skills. For example, I scored off the charts on linguistic comprehension (the Defense Language Aptitude Battery DLAB) and had a job as far from that as you can imagine.

It might be worth considering who "they" are (from your insanely outraging "why can't they lay bricks?" akin to "let them eat cake"). And why wouldn't "they" sweat for a good wage? Seriously, do some soul searching.

Your world is to make people starve or lay bricks?

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#533
post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps monopoly abuse is not the right term, but Microsoft did buy their way into the gaming industry by selling millions of consoles at a loss. There is no way for any company that is not already a multi-billion dollar company to compete with that. The same happens in many other areas where large tech companies use their inertia and tons of existing capital to make it impossible for anyone but other tech giants to…

You might want to change your example, as while the tactic is reprehensible and common to VC-backed companies, selling consoles at loss is standard practice for I think all makers (they recoup it by license fees on games)

Nintendo doesn’t sell at a loss - only Sony and Microsoft do. Both are huge multi-billion dollar companies that entered the console market using money they had from other ventures. There is also effectively no other competition on this market besides those companies. I think my example is fine.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#534
post #233

Eric Schmidt is an overrated dumbass. The US is still a powerhouse of innovation and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Ripping off IP from US companies who outsource to China does not count as "innovation". Allowing this to happen on a massive scale is the sole reason why "China was able to catch up" so quickly. AI is an interesting one. On the one hand, paper output from China (as opposed to just Chinese au…

I believe people like you have very poor realisation of the gravity such statement carry. China been the factory of the world for the last 25 years. It has more than six to seven fold per-capita employment rate in technical professions than USA, and more than four times the population. With all that given, it hard to fathom what a nation needs to do for 25 years to not to become proficient in technology when circumst…

And it's not difficult to see why. For about 25 years (before Trump) the government of the United States made it easier to manufacture stuff in China than in the US, stripping the country bare of vital manufacturing capacity. The process is still ongoing in Europe, with no end in sight. Of course there won't be any manufacturing capacity remaining, and of course fresh grads wouldn't be interested in training for jobs that do not exist.

That's not because the Chinese are inherently smarter or more talented. That's because the US government had allowed the business establishment to ship everything overseas for a quick buck.

To say that China somehow "caught up" to the US using nothing but their own wits is, well, dim-witted.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effects of botnet in practice: https://imgur.com/mfFRgVj Citations: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/36048251?hl=en https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/fuf3gz/got_hundreds_of... https://old.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/f798iu/getting_spammed... https://old.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/ecokzw/i_am_getting_ba...

Of course there are link farms etc, but that doesn't mean the "Google search is controlled by large (Chinese) botnets". That's like saying email is controlled by spammers. There are countermeasures.

These countermeasures are ineffective against such vast botnets. Disavow tool doesn't really work

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of Android to Google is that it enables them to gather vast quantities of data from their users. Google uses this data to enhance the efficacy of its advertising, by predicting what people will click on.

I'd be curious to know what hard evidence you have to back this claim up with, otherwise its just hearsay.

>curious to know what hard evidence you have to back this claim up with

Wow buddy...that should be absolutely known by now, same with Chrome and every single Google-Service.

https://about.google/intl/en/how-our-business-works/

> But, when you use our products you trust us with your personal information.

Thanks you very much ;)

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#537
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the serious work was done before...you know the operating-system. Like with chrome..the serious work was made before...khtml.

No, not really. The vast majority of the OS was developed after Android was acquired. It wasn't even a shippable product before then. Source: I have a Sooner, the first ever android phone, abd I wrote software for it.

But when you had a phone and you could write software for it...that means it's shippable, no?

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#538
post #174

Funny that he says that, Google is probably the lamest most un-visionary Corp ever...ok maybe second after Facebook. From a Product standpoint they invented Streetview that's it.

Didn't they invent Bigtable?

Your are right, that was really the only invention i could think of, but since it's not a customer product i didn't listen it (with Customer product i mean Gmail/Maps etc).

Gosh imagine that, even a former online Bookseller (amazon) is more innovative than google.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PIE lacks the vocabulary for certain modern things like writing.

That's the best part! Modern languages already have words for things like a mouse, a screen or the Big Bang, but it's all stupid stuff like an analogy to how a computer mouse looks like an animal because of its long cord-tail, a reference to the white screen a projector casts it's projection on, or a vulgar put-down of a theory being like God's orgasm. If we take a dead language and start adding in vocabulary, we can…

Alien species: "So you remodeled your language, removing all traces of history and culture from it, because you were worried about the impression you'd make on aliens you didn't know, you didn't even know existed?"

"You're the most pathetic people in the known universe."

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#540
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China’s protectionism is fairly blatant, but Japan also engages in some aggressive protectionism as well.

Japan has a firewall?

No, I said Japan engages in protectionism.
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