America’s way of legalizing scams & bribery

It’s called out-of-court settlement. 

Yes, that's how any company in US can do anything, legally - but - it should be backed by a huge amount of money.

Case in point - Goldman Sachs settlement with SEC. Few months back, Goldman Sachs made a settlement with American regulators for $550m following an investigation into its practices that led to misleading its clients.
The $550million paid to regulators is a pittance in front of the $3 billion increase in its market value seen soon after the settlement of lawsuit.

Goldman’s acknowledgement in the settlement papers:
"Goldman acknowledges that the marketing materials for the ABACUS 2007-AC1 transaction contained incomplete information. In particular, it was a mistake for the Goldman marketing materials to state that the reference portfolio was "selected by" ACA Management LLC without disclosing the role of Paulson & Co. Inc. in the portfolio selection process and that Paulson's economic interests were adverse to CDO investors. Goldman regrets that the marketing materials did not contain that disclosure."


Why did SEC investigate only the Abacus product sold by Goldman? Most probably because the money-losing clients of Abacus included big names like Royal Bank of Scotland.
Who knows if lot of other clients lost (and are losing even now) a lot more money due to Goldman’s practices?

$300 million of the settlement money (i.e. more than half) goes to SEC. Giving the money to regulator in return for settling a lawsuit can be considered equivalent to bribery.

Lesson: A company can get its way through anything, as long as it has deep pockets.

Role of form factors

When personal computer (PC) was launched, it created a revolution. It was an instant hit with the large companies, especially with the clerical staff, who were involved in a lot of processing work and intra-office communication. This was in spite of the fact that PC had significantly lesser processing power than the existing computing machines i.e. mainframes. An important thing about PC was its form factor. It gained acceptance with individuals, largely because they could use it easily on their desks. 

Other revolutions led by form factors: 

  Laptop 

  Walkman 

  Portable music players (iPod, etc) 

  Portable memory (Floppy, CD, etc) 

  Portable hard drive (USB drive) 

What about phones?

A phone has retained its form factor almost completely during its entire history. Even today, it is a device that rings when a call arrives and the user pulls it out, presses a button or two to start the conversation. Though today, people do many more things on phones – browse internet, play games as well as use other applications. But still, all of it is over a single device which was designed to be a phone for voice calls. The form factor of this device has not changed.

Most probably it is because people are used to talking over phones in a certain way and no one wants to disrupt this human behaviour. But then, history has taught us, most of the development has happened due to disruptions only. 

Why do people need to carry around a separate device called mobile phone? 

Why cannot the mobile phone be part of the wrist-watch & connected to a bluetooth headset for calls? 

Why cannot the display be a foldable screen or a projector that is used only when needed? 

When it comes to creativity, sky is the limit.