Clanscorpia

3 hours ago, Shreyas1 said:

" First Trillion Dollar Company "

 

I think the Dutch East India company was worth more 

Well I mean basically owning countries does make you worth a lot of money.

And just in, they did reach a market valuation of 1 trillion

20 hours ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

PetroChina called, they'd like you to know that they already hit $1t in 2007

That was an incorrect market in evaluation, its stock dropped by a huge amount very soon later, its basically

20 hours ago, Noctus said:

East India Trading Company from the 1600s called, said their 7.9 trillion still hasn't been beat yet.

.Cmon you know what I mean.

20 hours ago, Arika S said:

i would not say that's not a positive thing though.

They got well above predicted sales and are having very steady growth, theres almost nothing that can stop them from reaching 1 trillion unless the market crashes, and the results of that would be much much more disastrous than Apple not reaching an evaluation of 1 trillion. 

20 hours ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

One-upping you and proving @Clanscorpia) double wrong

The only semi reasonable example was the East India Company, which was basically an unregulated de facto state that basically owned the East Indies. Thats like if Apple literally owned the parts of China that produce its products, so really its a pretty bad example.

1 minute ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Removing essential features and upping the price of your products while not improving them compared to the competition?

Become the first company in the world to be worth a trillion dollars, which while it hasnt happened yet is certainly going to happen in under a year

24 minutes ago, Swatson said:

Again, it's not legal vs illegal. It's "Is apple legally obligated to offshore money to avoid paying taxes if the loophole used is legal"

 

Obligated vs not obligated, that's the answer we're looking for

If the majority of the shareholders want them to do it, they legally have to do it. That is the law, law is still law even in theoretical situations. You dont seem to understand how a publicly traded company works, they have to act as their shareholders say they want to. Its how Steve Jobs got fired, then rehired. A public company isnt just the company, its also all the people who own shares in it, and if the company doesnt act in the way their shareholders want to then they can be in big big trouble, and the board of directors who made the decision not to listen to the shareholders would almost certainly be kicked out of their positions by the shareholders. 

Sometimes I feel like the only person in this whole forum that likes mainstream stuff

Were going through one over in the colonies and Im struggling through rowing. I have to bike 9 kilometers to get there and by the time I get there Im literally dripping before a 2 hours practice. And the humidity, oh god the humidity. You could drink the air

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

 

Kinda depends on the context of why they're checking the time if you ask me.  If someone pulls out a phone and checks the time I don't see it as any different than checking the watch.  Moving on to doing other tasks is as rude as someone checking their watch because they're bored of the meeting, or checking their watch because for any reason to be rude.  What if my watch has a game built in and I started playing that rather than focusing on the meeting?  What if I have a smartwatch and started doing another task?  Point is if you're just checking time then nobody should really care.

Its because they dont know if youre just checking the time or not. Its not the fact that you are doing it, its that you might be doing it.

2 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Kinda stupid since both do the same task it just sounds snobby to me that people actually care.

I dont think its the whole checking the time thing, but the fact that a lot of people when checking the time on their phones will drift off and look at other things. In something like a buisness meeting, many would find it very unprofessional

4 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

I don´t get why people wear watches in 2018. We got smartphones a long time ago

Because checking the time on a watch is much more proffesional then pulling out a phone

1 minute ago, ZacoAttaco said:

While I agree, people can use their own judgement, personally it seems like an unethical move for the publisher to begin selling copies of a game without the public knowing when to expect it.

 

Studio can't get theatres to sell tickets for a new film without a release date, so why should gaming publishers be allowed to?

Sure its unethical but that doesnt mean they shouldnt be allowed. Lots of things are unethical but that doesnt mean they should be illegal because it might not be unethical to everyone or for every case. And its not that its not allowed they just dont do it.

2 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

We are talking about digital items with no set release date. Digital items that may be years away from being released. Digital items that do not have any limitation to the number of copies available.

Okay... And why is that a reason to ban it? If you dont agree with it dont buy it

55 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

They should be banned for any non physical, non limited run product. Period

Why? Whats the purpose of banning an item you dont like

Why would you ban them? Its not like preordering hurt anyone. Why get the government involved into something it doesnt need to be? Like seriously, what benefit comes from the government banning preorders. 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

 and the other is a private service you have paid exclusively for. 

This is the key thing many people are missing here. It is a private service. You have no right in the Constitution to have access to an ISP, as you said, its just a service. While I dont agree with ISPs limiting content at all, they are a private business supplying a private service that you pay for, something you dont have the right to.

1 hour ago, BuckGup said:

We have trains that span the entire US already though. Also countries like China have donated Billions to the US to help us build it but we didn't do anything with it

The difference between the US and Europe is the distance the trains are taking. The US is only slightly smaller than the continent of Europe, meaning the trains are going much much greater distances. You also have to take into consideration where the population is. On both sides of the US theyre generally in between mountains and the ocean, with little room to grow except up. This means putting trains in is almost impossible because of space limitations. Same thing on the west coast, where there is huge spans of mountains separating everything

20 hours ago, BuckGup said:

Nah how about bullet trains in the US. Travel across the country in 2 hours AND you don't have to do anything.

Because the geography of the US makes is literally impossible to do, and the fact that it would cost trillions on trillions of dollars to route it in a way that didn't destroy property in the process

Because not everyone wants to customize their phone. I thought I'd want to change everything, but really everything is so much easier when it just works, and it works amazing. Sure theres a few flaws, but considering I used my iPhone 4S up until 6 months ago, those flaws are a lot less apparent then a Samsung phone from the same time. The camera thing is also quite true if you go back a few years, which most people are at unless youre rich. My friend has an S7, and his photos look god awful compared to the camera in my 6s. iPhone cameras are very forgiving, and make life very easy. Apple just works, and thats why everyone who has no interest in diving deep into their phones gets one. Also the thing about specs... it really doesnt matter with an iPhone, because everything is so well optimized, you dont need to throw in 6 gigs of RAM because you'd never use it, and the iPhones have never been generations behind Androids, with the only real reason being the different release cycle between them. 

8 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Yeah, because that means oh so much.

 

Given the world's refusal to move non Chinese industry out of China, there is no reason to care. They can cripple half of the world's economy.

That isn't nearly as impactful as one thinks when, again, a country doesn't share in western values.

 

The geneva convention is a fucking joke, and to potential enemies (like China, Russia, the Middle East), just a metaphorical piece of paper to wipe one's ass with.

The whole point isn't that it doesn't limit things, its the aftermath of the war and the consequences that would come with them. A country isn't stopped right when it break the convention, it's the aftermath that causes actual impact. There's a reason there's such a massive reaction to any use of chemical weapons. Any formal breaking of international law would cripple any country like China that is still trying to get a hand in the world stage.

7 hours ago, Trixanity said:

Well, nothing has happened to the US for violations, so don't count on China getting anything but a stern look.

The US has never technically violated the Geneva convention. China using a weapon that purposefully blinded people would get a very harsh reaction.

4 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

ELI5 what would be lost? o_o

Because China is a permanent member of the UN security council, they have a veto on any type of military action the UN might take. Basically they can shut down anything that happens in the UN that has to do with the military. You might remember Russia using this power when the UN was going to take action in Crimea. They would lose this power which is a huge asset. The Treaty of Versailles ruined post war Germany, making them pay extreme debts, and limiting any type of economic activity they might try. China would surely lose their spot as one of the top economies in the world with the amount of sanctions that would be against it for breaking such a universally accepted treaty.

16 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

It's only useful if you're a civilized country with traditionally western values.

 

The Middle East fails on the first stipulation, China the second.

Violating the Geneva Convention would also mean extreme post war retaliation, likely far worse than the Treaty of Versailles to Germany. Because they are international law, they'd be extremely strict about it, and likely strip all of Chinas advantages in the UN such as being a permanent member of the UN security council.

3 minutes ago, Raggou said:

If you had to estimate how many people do you think were there?

Dudeeee how far were you digging lmao

18 hours ago, Eduard the weeb said:

tbh like I get they have a strangle hold on social media for like those born in the mid to early 80 and older but isn't all this collection the reason younger millennials and my Generation ( gen Z ) are staying away from Facebook because generally we understand the value of are personal data more? 

Thats not the reason why, Instagram and Snapchat do the exact same thing, Facebook just generally has a rep for being for old people and family. If anything, older people are more concerned about data collection, and basically noone in Gen Z cares.

Spotify is the best 10 dollars a month I spend, definitely worth much more than my $50 that goes into my RRSP, who needs retirement savings when you can have good music