Something Funny

Ok, now, I am sure that many of you have, by now, heard about the Samsung vs Apple lawsuit, right? With Apple trying to sue Samsung for making a product that was similar to theirs? If you haven't I would recommend looking it up. (Actually, this sums it up quite nicely.)

Yeah, this post is pretty much my opinion about a sales report I read online regarding the aftermath of this lawsuit.

It was hilarious, I mean, seriously. Samsung lost the case, yet they proceeded to make a huge profit anyways. It was something along the lines of a weekly increase of 7% for their sales, and then after they lost, the Galaxy S3 gained a sales increase of about 15% for that report. After which Samsung's sales sort of "flat-lined," no real increase or anything, right up until Apple announced their latest iphone. which once again caused Samsung to have another sales spike, again about 14% increase, after which it went back to the 7% average.

There is a logical cause and effect which can be inferred from this: such as, after Samsungs court defeat, the people wanted to be sure that they got a Galaxy S3(which some consider to be a better phone) before they were taken off the market as some feared; or it could be that the lawsuit just acted as free advertising for both companies, and as it may be possible that the GS3 was a better phone, at least in the public eye, that it increased sales figures for both companies.(I do not know if this is the case however, as I have not had the fortune to stumble across a sales report for the iphone models over the same time period.)

Another thing was with the release of the newest version of the iphone. People expected it to be better than it was, I guess. People with money, who wanted to buy a new phone, who had been holding off until the iphones release, who were dissapointed in the lack of improvements that they had been hoping for. These people would then go out to buy that phone that they still wanted, so they went with what was already out, and that they new worked for what they wanted. Thus, sales spike for the GS3.

Either way, I found it amusing that every time that Apple made a move that would surely put them ahead of Samsung, Samsung just went right ahead and made a larger profit. It's like, if business was a somewhat high-stakes game of chess, and every time Apple tried to put Samsung in check, Samsung takes it's king out of danger and puts them in check instead, and it does so slightly better than Apple does.

That is just how I am seeing it though, it may be nothing like that at all.
C'est la vie

Alberta Election

Alright. First off, I wish to apologize about my being a month late with my updates. I allowed myself to become distracted by other things. But I promise that I will do my best not to let this happen again in the future. But anyways. The provincial election for Alberta recently ended.

Bill C-10

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein

 I feel that this very nearly sums up bill c-10, passed by the Stephen Harper led Conservative government. This is an omnibus bill, that is to say a bill that contains several smaller bills, that covers things from "violent offenses," to Internet crime, to sex offenders. In my opinion though, the new laws proposed in this bill are blanket laws that will increase the amounts of criminals going to jail, and not really doing anything about them.This seems to be, from the Conservative party's standpoint, a good thing, dangerous people being taken off the streets, apparently for good. 

This seems like a good idea in theory, but there are several problems with it:

• The first problem is that as a general rule, you will get more people who will become criminals even with tougher laws in place, and good people will make stupid mistakes. Both of those groups of people will be caught up in this system and be added to the soon to be growing overall criminal population.
  
• Second problem is that we had a system that was proven to be effective, our crime rates were at their lowest in years, the system we are adopting part of is proven to be ineffective by the government of the United States. Take Texas for example, you probably know what their system was like, and they were having too many criminals for the system to handle, so they tried doing what we used to do in Canada, with rehabilitation programs, and they were actually able to close some prisons as they were no longer needed.
• Third, is money. Lets face it, keeping people in jail is reasonably expensive, about $200per prisoner per day, not only that but it is taxpayers money going towards paying for the continued upkeep of a huge building filled with people who did bad things. This also means that you have to take funds away from other areas, potentially including healthcare, education, government funded rehabilitation programs, etc. The loss of which could cause negative repercussions, or they would have to increase taxes, which would make things difficult for many people.
• Rehabilitation costs about a tenth of the cost of imprisonment, not only that, but it does reduce amount of crime as a notable amount of time they will in fact be capable of becoming contributing members of society again.

 That is not to say that this is entirely bad, as some criminals cannot be rehabilitated and this would take some risk out of the system, but I do disagree with what the government has done. I do hope that this was actually a wise decision. Only time will tell.