The patents were probably beyond their best before date.

BB died because they came too late to the App ‘fad’ and stubbornly refused to support independent app development until it was too late and they had already lost.

Their Playbook used the QNX system. Too little too late.

RIM/BB was a pure Canadian company. We do things differently up here. If RIM/BB had been sold, it would have been purchased for the patent portfolio, not the manufacturing capability. That is what pretty much happened to Northern Telecom/Nortel assets in the end liquidation.

Pure Friedman - the goal is not to provide product or services, the goal is to maximize profit. The financialization of business.

The biggest miss-step RIM made was to assume the consumer would put rock solid security ahead of consumer functionality. They did not move in the direction of smart phone apps because they introduced too many security vulnerabilities. However it turned out that the consumer will accept down time and system crashes if there are enough toys. Automobiles don’t have the same tolerance.

Pure Friedman - all income, minimal expenditure - absolute highest profit margin. That was the direction a lot of big American companies took - close down and sell off manufacturing (minimize expenditures), make the profit on portfolios and licensing (maximize income).

With that kind of patent portfolio they could have survived and prospered on licensing fees alone. A pure Friedman company - all income and almost no expenditure, almost pure profit margin. Can’t get more Friedman than that.

Fusion Power doesn’t even exist yet and they are making money from it.

We must bear in mind that this was said by a pious and devout Roman Catholic about a Muslim country.

The Middle East is not just about Jewish vs Muslims. The entire Crusades were about Roman Catholics vs the Muslims as well. It just gets obfuscated by the ‘Jewish/Israeli/Palestinian’ thing and the Catholics get a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card.

Canada has had a really rough go with democracy ever since it was formed as a nation. From the very beginning, the primary factor that has kept Canada together is not democracy, but external threat. Whatever form of democracy we have, exists as an illusion to try to keep everything together - the default option. The war between the British and the French ended in a truce and a treaty with a shared power structure between the two factions, not a decisive victory and conquest of one side over the other. Since no region would ever consent to an autocratic government by any other region, and not having a form of governance would mean the regions of Canada were easy pickings for the States, our form of Parliamentary Democracy with clear division of powers ( a split of power between local homogeneous regions and an overall Federal governance for defense and self-protection) appears to be a barely workable solution.

It is you who insists that the Chinese people are so backward as an ethnic group and as a people that they are (or should be) allowing themselves to be oppressed. It is clear that your opinion of them seems that they are so primitive as a people that they must allow themselves to be ruled by White Western ideology in order to be ‘civilized’. It is clearly my position that the Chinese peoples have gained their collective freedom from White Western colonial tyranny and are no longer suffering from being oppressed by anyone, let alone their own government. The peoples of China are almost unanimously behind their government and its form of governance. The peoples of colonial Taiwan (having been pushed to the Island by the Chinese revolution that overthrew the racist White Western colonial rule that so bitterly oppressed the Chinese) and the former tyrannical government of the colonial Hong Hong (which beyond all doubt, clearly oppressed the typical ‘citizen’ of the Hong Kong colony) were so dehumanized by Western money that they had lost all sense of what it means to be a part of the thousands of years old Chinese society and culture. The Chinese people collectively, and almost unanimously, have chosen to return China to its historical humanist cultural glory, and they have chosen Xi to lead them there. And they are not going to allow the racist oppressors of the White West to prevent them from doing so no matter what the lies you try to spread about them.

even if they were rude to me.

That line says it all.

I am talking about the blatant racism against ethnic Chinese that is so rampant in parts of Canada. Worse, about how it is commonly accepted without being confronted, and how it is cleverly masked as criticism of the regime when it is obviously directed at the Chinese as a race.

This is not about racism.

Being ‘all White’ does not lead to a homogeneous culture. America was at its greatest risk of self-annihilation during the American Civil War, but it must be remembered that this was a clash between two mutually exclusive homogeneous White cultures, each claiming to be democratic, yet democracy completely failed to prevent the civil war. In fact, democratic decisions made WITHIN each of these factions lead to the decision to go to war. This goes directly to the root of my point - does trying to maintain multiple cultures in a democratic nation potentially lead to a polarization of two mutually exclusive factions, leading to the collapse of the democracy? The American Civil War never did end, it continues in the background festering away, and that has lead to the threat to American democracy that we see today. Democracy within each side in the Civil War worked well because the two cultures were homogeneous in their destination, and the vote was used to determine the path each separate culture would take. But democracy completely collapsed into adversarial fighting when the two cultures tried to work as one Nation. The American Civil War should never have happened - each side should have been given the democratic freedom to chose their own destination. The Civil War resulted because the North refused to allow the South to determine their own destination in a democratic process, over-ruling the democratic decision of the South through military means.

Canada has tried to avoid this clash of cultures through the invocation of ‘distinct nation’ status to Quebec, in a system that allows the people of Quebec to determine their own destination. For instance, civil law in Quebec follows the Napoleonic Code, whereas civil law in the rest of Canada follows the British Common Law system.

Also, being of one race is not necessary for a homogeneous culture. Early Roman Catholicism unified much of Europe into one homogeneous culture driven by the Catholic religion, even though it covered people of many races and ethnicities.

On the contrary, it is your response that verges on racism towards the Chinese. You completely deny that they have the intelligence and the mental ability to create a great nation on their own, that because of their backwardness they can not be trusted nor allowed to determine their own form of governance, but that they need the wisdom and guidance of the White West to tell them how to run their own country. Painting the Chinese as ‘just another oligarchy’ is to deny their entire thousands of years old history, culture and identity, dismissing it because it is not a superior ‘White narrative’.

You are repeatedly putting words in my mouth that I did not say, deliberately changing my narrative with false claims to make your point. I never used the phrase ‘common sense’ nor did I ever claim that a homogeneous society needs to be of the same race or ethnicity. The predominance of Catholicism throughout Europe during the late Roman Empire led to a homogeneous society, while it governed over many ethnic groups and races. Catholicism itself is decidedly NOT democratic, but it can be claimed that the origins of the concept of Statehood and early democracy had its roots in the clash between two autocratic homogeneous religions during the Thirty Years War.

It is not the ratio of population to councilors that results in the Law of Diminishing returns, it is the overall number of councilors. Toronto had reached a point of absurdity in their meetings with 47 councilors all wanting to put in their two cents worth on every issue. Politicians by their nature demand to be heard and thrive on posturing in front of the public.

You are trying to make my comments fit your racist narrative. It is obvious from your comments that you are anti-Chinese. You denigrate their entire culture and society in your blanket statements over the form of government they chose. It is very evident that you consider them not smart enough to determine their own destination and that only the White West has the intelligence to create a ‘proper’ government for them, that only the White West has the ability to form a ‘free society’. The Chinese peoples themselves have collectively and of their own free will decided on the governance system they want, and Xi has their overwhelming collective support and backing. But according to you those poor misguided inferior Chinese need the White West to determine what the Chinese want for themselves, and to force the White ideals onto the backwards Chinese. Oh, wait, that DID happen to the Chinese during the opium wars. Mao completely undid that bondage to Whites, and the Whites have never forgiven him for freeing the Chinese from White oppression. Taiwan is nothing more than the last vestiges of this colonialism.

Incidentally, recent polls in Taiwan indicate that as the evidence for the success of the mainland Chinese government become evident in improving the lifestyle of the Chinese, the illusion of the benefits of so-called ‘democracy’ in Taiwan is losing its luster . https://www.taiwanplus.com/news/taiwan-news/taiwan-china-relations/260616005/poll-finds-smaller-majority-opposing-beijings-one-china-principle

And I never claimed that homogeneity would lead to democracy, but that perhaps democracy could only function in a homogeneous society. They are not the same statement. Stop twisting my words to fit your narrative. There are far more countries tending towards homogeneity in the world than there are multicultural, with a mix of democratic vs autocratic governments among them. Iran vs Iraq, for instance.

“adore”???

I am afraid that the only thing this would result in is even more political posturing and politicking by three times as many politicians. The more diverse the political spectrum represented in the HoC, the less likely that any decisions would be made. How do you get that many MP’s to decide on anything? Toronto suffered this fate when the number of counselors rose to unmanageable levels.

And the cost of implementation would be enormous. You are talking about a huge supporting infrastructure, the cost of just the MP salaries alone would be triple the current expenditure. The Law of Diminishing Returns gone ballistic.

I believe I made clear that my position was that democracy can only thrive when the population is homogeneous with a common goal and the only thing that is to be decided is the path. When the population is on the same wavelength of the government, then all the people believe the government is going in the right direction. When the population is diverse, there will always be the majority that thinks the government is going in the wrong direction, although this majority will never agree to what the right direction is. Thus, the majority who feel the government is not going in the right (their desired) direction, will consider that their vote has no effect on public policy. This is inevitable in a diverse society.

I am sure that your denial of what is actually happening in China is so persuasive to you. I can see how this would happen. You confuse an autocratic leader with a decisive effective leader. I can see how you might think that a leader that oversees the implementation of the will of the people in a decisive manner as ‘autocratic’, but you miss my point. If the homogeneous society as a whole wants exactly what Xi is delivering, and Xi is delivering exactly what the society wants, and the society is solidly behind him, that is not autocratic, that is completely bureaucratic in its efficiency. When the destination is completely agreed upon, the most efficient way to get there is through bureaucracy, and Xi s the penultimate bureaucrat in the penultimate bureaucratic system. But bear no illusion, when Xi stops delivering what the people want and demand, he is toast.