Slashdot Mirror

So, I did a little sleuthing around to follow up on this. This writeup walks through several topics in more detail, but the most relevant thing on that page is this quote from EU regulations, which elaborates specifically on the processing of photos:

The processing of photographs should not systematically be considered to be processing of special categories of personal data as they are covered by the definition of biometric data only when processed through a specific technical means allowing the unique identification or authentication of a natural person.

I.e. Only when the processing of an image results in data that can be used to uniquely identify the individual is it considered sensitive data. Similarly, the official site would seem to indicate the same, since it says that biometric data is considered sensitive when it's "processed solely to identify a human being".

A photo, obviously, could be used to do so in theory, but if the processing doesn't actually do so and they aren't passing it along to any other systems that might do so, then they wouldn't seem to be collecting "sensitive data". And if they aren't collecting sensitive data, they only need to meet a lower bar for lawful processing (e.g. only a legitimate interest would be necessary, rather than user consent, from what I understand).

Also worth noting, even if it had been classified as sensitive data, explicit consent is NOT the only way to lawfully process it. There are four other ways to do so as well.

For the record, they're targeting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, not Anopheles which is the species which carries malaria. Ae aegypti carry yellow fever virus, dengue virus chikungunya virus and Zika viruses. Interestingly Ae aegypti are considered invasive species originally native to Asia. So eradicating them, really shouldn't impact the environment.

Ok, caffinated bacon/Crimson Tsunami; you just can not stop lying.
Here is Europe's Edgar. America went from 21 tonnes in 2000 to 15.5 in 2016 . BTW, 2018 is supposed to be around 12-13. EU-28 went from 9 in 1990 down to about 6.75 in 2016. And Europe is expected to go up in 2018

BTW, China went from 2 tonnes in 1990 to 7.45 in 2016, and are expected to jump heavily in 2018. Personally, I say, wait for a year after OCO3 comes on-line. Then we will see China jump massively, just like they did after OCO-2 came on, and they admitted that real coal being burned was another 17% higher (and it still was not enough).

Ah ... sorry.
Was not aware about that.

Strange ... as I live in Europe (mostly).

I guess this is fraud: https://www.eea.europa.eu/them... ??

To bad we have no weapons as weapons are banned here, or should I say "firearms" to go after those pretenders ...

Idiot!

The EU's explanation of the ruling is quite enlightening: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...

Imagine, you want to look for a product online. You type the product into the Google search engine. What you will see right at the top of the page is a box with Google Shopping's results, with pictures and a selection of deals from different retailers. They are placed above the results that Google's generic search algorithms consider most relevant.

At the same time, Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results. The evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival appears on average only on page four of Google's search results. Others appear even further down.

(emphasis mine)

Google abused its position as the dominant search engine by artificially down-ranking rivals and giving its own service top billing. In the EU this is illegal as it leads to massive monopolies and a lack of fair competition.

Note that the solution proposed by Google and accepted by the EU is to auction slots in the special shopping area at the top of the search results page, not to offer anything for free.

China alone is responsible for more than 1/2 of the plastic in the oceans
As shown by Edgar, Americans are #16 in 2016. Not even close to the top of the most CO2 per capita. In fact, Americans went from #7 in 2000 with more than 20 tonnes to #16, in 2016 with 15.5 tonnes.
However, Chinese went from near the bottom, i.e. 100-150, in 1990 with 1.97 tonnes, to #41 in 2016 with 7.4 tonnes
By end of 2018, you Chinese should be somewhere in the upper 20s, while Americans will likely be in the lower 20.

Even better, would be a map showing which nations are actually taking CO2 serious and doing something about it.
Here is the growth/decline of CO2 per capita from 1990-2016. We see Chinese emissions grew by 5-10 tonnes per capita, while Americans fell by 1-5 tonnes per capita.

Caffeinated Bacon(Crimson Tsunami) quit lying you bloody git.

China alone is responsible for more than 1/2 of the plastic in the oceans
As shown by Edgar, Americans are #16 in 2016. Not even close to the top of the most CO2 per capita. In fact, Americans went from #7 in 2000 with more than 20 tonnes to #16, in 2016 with 15.5 tonnes.
However, Chinese went from near the bottom, i.e. 100-150, in 1990 with 1.97 tonnes, to #41 in 2016 with 7.4 tonnes
By end of 2018, you Chinese should be somewhere in the upper 20s, while Americans will likely be in the lower 20.

Even better, would be a map showing which nations are actually taking CO2 serious and doing something about it.
Here is the growth/decline of CO2 per capita from 1990-2016. We see Chinese emissions grew by 5-10 tonnes per capita, while Americans fell by 1-5 tonnes per capita.

Caffeinated Bacon(Crimson Tsunami) quit lying you bloody git.

I think the case may be more nuanced than this. It would appear that there were some seriously complex details discussed during this case, and it's not over since all that happened was guidance that referred it back to the lower court. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/legal_... I'm sure it worked in France's favour that the PMU is also setup as a not for profit body.

In general the EU frowns upon all monopolies that have no reason for being so, and while Slashdot gets in uproar over the occasional story that makes it here, there are actually a lot of such rulings each year.

Now I do wonder if there's something else here too. The French ruling was referred back to the lower court. I haven't found any details here but with the little information we have it looks more absolute. I wonder if this has to do with the current falling out between Hungary and the EU precisely due to the issue of independence of courts from the government. The fact that the EU and Hungary are fighting actively on this issue is no secret, so maybe there was politics involved as much as I like to hope there wasn't.

1. Without prejudice to Article 3(1) and (2) of Directive 2001/29/EC, online content sharing service providers that store and provide perform an act of communication to the public. They shall therefore conclude fair and appropriate licensing agreements with right holders.

2. Licensing agreements which are concluded by online content sharing service providers with right holders for the acts of communication referred to in paragraph 1, shall cover the liability for works uploaded by the users of such online content sharing services in line with the terms and conditions set out in the licensing agreement, provided that such users do not act for commercial purposes. [See Council’s paragraph 1, subparagraph 3 (row 238)]
2a. Member States shall provide that where right holders do not wish to conclude licensing agreements, online content sharing service providers and right holders shall cooperate in good faith in order to ensure that unauthorised protected works or other subject matter are not available on their services. Cooperation between online content service providers and right holders shall not lead to preventing the availability of non-infringing works or other protected subject matter, including those covered by an exception or limitation to copyright.
2b. Members States shall ensure that online content sharing service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place effective and expeditious complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case the cooperation referred to in paragraph 2a leads to unjustified removals of their content. Any complaint filed under such mechanisms shall be processed without undue delay and be subject to human review. Right holders shall reasonably justify their decisions to avoid arbitrary dismissal of complaints. Moreover, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, Directive 2002/58/EC and the General Data Protection Regulation, the cooperation shall not lead to any identification of individual users nor the processing of their personal data. Member States shall also ensure that users have access to an independent body for the resolution of disputes as well as to a court or another relevant judicial authority to assert the use of an exception or limitation to copyright rules. [See Council’s Article 13(7) (row 252)

3. As of [date of entry into force of this directive], the Commission and the Member States shall organise dialogues between stakeholders to harmonise and to define best practices and issue guidance to ensure the functioning of licensing agreements and on cooperation between online content sharing service providers and right holders for the use of their works or other subject matter within the meaning of this Directive. When defining best practices, special account shall be taken of fundamental rights, the use of exceptions and limitations as well as ensuring that the burden on SMEs remains appropriate and that automated blocking of content is avoided.

Source: http://data.consilium.europa.e...
But who gives a crap about what they actually approved of, right?

I guess the UK government is looking for emergency revenue sources now that the rest of the economy is going to be going away.

Awkward

What? The track record shows it's a good match.

Oh and apparently the EU gave the green light.

Graph of EU emissions since 1990: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/...

As you can see the recent small increase is a correction from the large drop due to the financial crisis. You have used the classic climate change skeptic technique of cherry picking years to make your point.

Of course we need to keep pushing hard, but don't use this as an excuse for not acting or a target for your what-about-ism, and don't pretend great efforts are not being made.

The fact that Apple only has 15% of the market while Google basically owns the rest of it? Because the specific charge the EU is levelling against Google is abuse of dominant market position and this is how they define it:

http://ec.europa.eu/competitio...

The US spends about $700 billion a year on defense. Clearly not all of that is spent on oil and the Middle East, but let's say it is. The EU gets about 20% of its petroleum from the Middle East, and the US gets about 16% from the Middle East. Assuming that oil runs about 30% of the economy of a region (transport, pharma, power, manufacturing, plastics, etc) that means about $7 trillion in annual economic activity is dependent upon the US military in the Middle East. And assuming that all US military spending is in the Middle East, that would be about a 10X return.

Now, we could always slash all our involvement in the Middle East, and turn off the spigots. The US currently has a net import of oil around 30% of its consumption (we do produce a massive amount domestically), and most of our imports are from Canada and Mexico. The EU has a net import of oil around 85% of its consumption - meaning it would have essentially no way of replacing oil (at least for now). So, ultimately, we're spending those hundreds of billions of dollars to protect and ensure the delivery of power predominantly for our allies in the EU. And that's generating around 10-15X returns in terms of economic activity. Is that worth the cost?

The US spends about $700 billion a year on defense. Clearly not all of that is spent on oil and the Middle East, but let's say it is. The EU gets about 20% of its petroleum from the Middle East, and the US gets about 16% from the Middle East. Assuming that oil runs about 30% of the economy of a region (transport, pharma, power, manufacturing, plastics, etc) that means about $7 trillion in annual economic activity is dependent upon the US military in the Middle East. And assuming that all US military spending is in the Middle East, that would be about a 10X return.

Now, we could always slash all our involvement in the Middle East, and turn off the spigots. The US currently has a net import of oil around 30% of its consumption (we do produce a massive amount domestically), and most of our imports are from Canada and Mexico. The EU has a net import of oil around 85% of its consumption - meaning it would have essentially no way of replacing oil (at least for now). So, ultimately, we're spending those hundreds of billions of dollars to protect and ensure the delivery of power predominantly for our allies in the EU. And that's generating around 10-15X returns in terms of economic activity. Is that worth the cost?

"The rest of the world" have been acting quite responsibly.

Europe has reduced its emissions since 1990 by 30%.

It is the US who has kept the CO2 output on the increase, after generating most of it anyway.

Hypocritical much, asshole?

A lie by a manipulating shitbag looks like this:

"EU is increasing emissions, LOL, decrease of emissions unpossable!11!!!".

The actual reality looks like this:

US emissions, 1990-2016: emissions growing or flat throughout the period. (https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2018-04/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-1990-2016.png)

EU emissions, 1990-2016: almost a 30% decrease, consistently going down.
(https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Greenhouse_gas_emission_statistics_-_emission_inventories)

Why are you lying, irresponsible sack of shit?

Here are the official stats: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/...

As you can see, there is a consistent downward trend. In the last couple of years things have stalled a little as parts of Europe start high levels of growth after the financial crash. So really it was artificially low post 2010, and this is something of a correction. But still, the overall trend is down.

We are on track to meet our Paris commitments as long as we keep working at it. We need to go even further than Paris of course.

The study was published in a MDPI journal. MDPI has some serious reputational problems (more here).

The concentrations given were around a thousand of times a normal neotame dose (equivalent to dozens of milligrams for an adult human, where normal daily neotame intake is in the dozens of micrograms) (or over a hundred times a normal dose if you accept their 12,5x human:mouse exchange factor, although that seems misguided since they're testing effects on bacteria, not direct effects on the animal). One thing that's notably absent IMHO is the glaring omission of discussion of the mice's food consumption. It's not even clear whether the pelleted diet is ad libitum or whether just the water is ("standard pelleted rodent diet and tap water ad libitum"). If the pelleted diet is ad libitum then it seems utter incompetence to not discuss changes in dietary consumption when doing a gut flora study.

Here's the official data: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/...

EU CO2 emissions have been falling for a long time. There has been a bit of a stall recently due to a bit of a transition, but we are still on track for some very aggressive targets. The IEA is predicting wind to be the dominant source of electricity in 2027, with coal down to just 10%.

https://arstechnica.com/scienc...

And if the pollution causation were evenly distributed amongst the populace, you might have a point. Or if Global Warming cares where it comes from. Or if the pollution caused isn't preventable by half-assed attempts as reducing/containing/removing it.

I'll just leave you with this: India has the same population as China and only 1/4 their CO2 ( 2,454,968 source). If you want a better metric for comparing, do cities/regions with population densities for 'population pollution', and seperately factories to factories for Industrial. The China comparisons are entirely about lax environmental laws that make the USA look absolutely eco-hippie.

The Parliament cannot propose squat.
Of course it can.

the Parliament flunks it, then the Council of Ministers passes it anyway.
Are you retarded? No they don't. Because: THEY CAN'T.

Perhaps you like to read this:

The European Council defines the EU's overall political direction and priorities. It is not one of the EU's legislating institutions, so does not negotiate or adopt EU laws.

From: http://www.consilium.europa.eu...

I'm tired about people who have no clue how the EU works.
IT WORKS EXACTLY LIKE A COUNTRY!!! Parliament = EP, cabinet = european commission, and because the EU is a kind of federation, it also has the european council, consisting of heads of state or delegates of the governments of the states as European Council.

Germany is structured EXACTLY the same: parliament, cabinet, german federational council.
UK is structured exactly the same: parliament, cabinet, house of lords.

You are simply an idiot, why do I waste my time with you ....

What the fuck is wrong with you that you can not get that it is as democratic as possible on one side and involving the member states governments as maximal as possible on the other side? After all the european governments who put members into the european commission and european council: are voted for by the respective populations of those member states.

What kind of idiot are you?

You want to say, when An EU directive is proposed to the parliament, and the vote of the parliament is 55% against it 45% for it: they executed their veto right, but did not actually vote about it?
I think you are an idiot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://europa.eu/european-uni...

According to Eurostat, Bulgaria *is* on average the cheapest EU country when it comes to electricity. Perhaps in relative terms (normalized to income), the situation is different.

The EP can block any proposal from the EC, thinking that voting for the EP is worthless is just propaganda from people who want to take away your rights. Here is how the decision making in the EU is done: https://europa.eu/european-uni...

Why link to a blog post when you can go to the precise details of the vote itself?

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

By the way, if you actually read that blog you will note that she mentions that there is in fact an exemption. It appears to be mis-worded and will likely be corrected in future, stating "individual words" rather than the proposed exemption for snippets: http://www.consilium.europa.eu...

Which itself is based on this report that suggests an exemption is necessary because Germany and Spain tried forcing companies to licence snippets and it failed: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

Why link to a blog post when you can go to the precise details of the vote itself?

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

By the way, if you actually read that blog you will note that she mentions that there is in fact an exemption. It appears to be mis-worded and will likely be corrected in future, stating "individual words" rather than the proposed exemption for snippets: http://www.consilium.europa.eu...

Which itself is based on this report that suggests an exemption is necessary because Germany and Spain tried forcing companies to licence snippets and it failed: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

Why link to a blog post when you can go to the precise details of the vote itself?

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

By the way, if you actually read that blog you will note that she mentions that there is in fact an exemption. It appears to be mis-worded and will likely be corrected in future, stating "individual words" rather than the proposed exemption for snippets: http://www.consilium.europa.eu...

Which itself is based on this report that suggests an exemption is necessary because Germany and Spain tried forcing companies to licence snippets and it failed: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

I've been saying this for a long time: this is the kind of result one expects to see when most of the people who vote in EU elections are over 50. I mean, voter turnout has been low in EU elections consistently (43 % in the last elections, pathetic really) because people would rather nitpick about the Union than do anything to affect it, but it's especially low among the younger generations. (source. "Turnout was again highest among the oldest respondents. Some 51% of the 55+ group voted in the European elections, while only 28% did in the 18-24 age group.") Is it any wonder that when most of the people sitting in the parliament have little to no understanding of what the internet actually is, the lobbyists are able to spoonfeed them all kinds of bullshit and we end up with sub-par legislation like this?

Obviously we're still a long way from implementation, from the article:

Clearly, this confusing back-and-forth hasn't instilled much hope in those the directive affects. Speaking to The Verge, executive director of digital rights association EDRi Joe McNamee said, "The system is so complicated that last Friday the [European Parliament] legal affairs committee tweeted an incorrect assessment of what's happening. If they don't understand the rules, what hope the rest of us?"

Despite today's outcome, though, we're still a long way from actual legislation. Today's decision will be subject to even more negotiations between politicians and member states, with a final vote by the EU Parliament in January. Individual member states can then interpret the directive as they see fit before turning it into law. If these provisions make it through the next round of debates, though, the internet could soon look like a very different place."

So whatever impact this will or will not have is still to be seen, and I personally hope the coming debates and negotiations will make it clear just how absurd the law in its current shape is and how hard (if not impossible) actual implementation and enforcement would be and reason will win, but we'll see.

We've got slightly over half a year to next EU elections people. To paraphrase Obama's recent speech to anyone else here in Europe who doesn't like it: 'If this pisses you off, don't hashtag, vote!"

generally the rules are about new content not existing content.

Not in this case. Read the proposal.

As somebody living in Europe, I do not understand that this is not done by some EU official website now.
Publish the paper to e.g. https://sciencepapers.europa.e... and have it available for all to see. Bit like patents.

Make up a licence that allows reproduction, but with some limitations. e.g. the conclusion should not be changed.

As a taxpayer, I would not mind paying for it. It concentrates the papers to one place, instead of scattering them all over. It will also make searching for papers a lot easier and searching in those papers as well.

A bit like a patent office (with obvious differences as well) website for free.

Denmark pretty much has the highest electricity prices in the EU.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/...

Do you even have CO2 emissions per KWH for those countries? If so please link or state them because I don't see them. I think you are making statements you cannot necessarily defend. This makes me question your statements.

https://www.eea.europa.eu/data...

buildings != homes/dwellings.
Europes Here is America's.

Note that most of Europe's construction is from the 70s on (sweden is a HUGE exception). br America's is about what I would expect. The rust belt has homes that are 45-65 years old, while the south east and west is generally under 30.

Ok, I worked some time in my past with lighting professionally, mainly in Measurement of General Lighting Appliances.

So what is actually banned now: two additional types of high voltage halogen reflector Lamps. Does this mean you get now halogen lighting anymore?
No, you still get low voltage (12 V usually) lamps with and without integrated reflector. These might be subject of another ban in the future, but chances are that they will stay with us in the future.

First of, if anyone has additional questions, feel free to get in touch, I will try to answer to the best of my knowledge.

I'll try to give some insight to the random topics I saw here.

Why banning this lamps?
You can read the exact parts here https://ec.europa.eu/energy/si...
The EU started off with banning most of the Halogen Incandescent used with mains voltage (eg. 230 V or 110 V). The Low Voltage Variants are not banned by this. The mains voltage lamps are practical but shit. The tungsten filament is thinner and longer compared to the low voltage variants and not as sturdy, which means that they have a lower colour temperature, worse optical characteristics, shortend lifetime and even worse efficacy.

Some basics on lighting:
What we perceive as light is electromagnetic radiation with a general wavelength range of 380 nm (blue) to 780 nm (red). We do not have a uniform distribution of the sensitivity. In measurement a fixed distribution is used to describe this sensitivity (v(lamda)), with Peak sensitivity at 555 nm (green).
Mixing light of several different bandwidths then gives the Impression of Colour, there are several systems for describing colours, in lighting the most common used is the CIE "triangle"/"horseshoe".

In general Lighting CCT (Correlated color temperature) is used to describe shades of white. When using Incandescent Lamps this is the actual temperature of the filament, with tungsten being one of the metals that can withstand 3000 K for a prolonged period. As Fluorescent Lamps / LED / HID Lamps use other methods for light generation a Correlated Colour Temperature is used. This takes the emitted spectrum of a lightsource and converts it into a value that has some resemblance of a Colour Temperature, it is still not the actual Colour Temperature.
Commonly this is coupled with a value called CRI (Colour Rendering Index) which compared the given spectrum to either an synthetic incandescent or daylight spectrum. So by default Incandescent lamps should have a CRI of 100.

White LEDs:
There are no white LEDs. The most common construction today is a blue LED coated with phosphors which convert the blue light to longer wavelengths, similar to a fluorescent lamp. Close to all "white" LED Lamps has a blue peak at about 450 nm, their CCT / CRI depend on the coating used, sometimes in COBs (Chip on Board) red LEDs are added to boost the CRI.

Blue Light Hazard:
Light/Radiation is not good for eyes, but dosage makes poison. Modern Incandescent Lamps/Fluorescent/HID Lamps have effective UV Block Coating and blue light is generated there in low dosage by design, but especially Fluorescent and HID might be blue light hazard. LEDs in general lighting mess with us on several levels. Their peak at 450 nm messes with our chronobiology and the the blue light causes more cell damage. Incandescent Lamps and daylight have a more uniform distributed spectrum and our bodies were designed for latter. So nothing compares actually to daylight and it is far from understood what light controls in our body (e.g. we now know about 12 different functional spectra in our organism, from seeing, to chronobiology, to cell regeneration).

Lifetime:
In general the lifetime of a LED is superior, but LED Lamps used on mains are complicated beasts and have a lot more components which might die long before the LEDs. Also LEDs don't like to be driven outside their designed range. They will degrade fast when

Exactly. This all happened last year, not recently -- unless there is a development that I'm not aware of and is neither referenced in the Slashdot post nor its source article. Here's the European Parliament's case history about this: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

You are wrong because you claim that EU parliament only has a veto power. EU Parliament has the right according to treaties to approve or deny any legislation that is being worked on by the EU. You are also wrong when you claimed that all EU laws must come from the European Commission. The other body that can issue laws for approval or rejection is Council of the European Union (ministers of the EU member states) based on suggestions by the European Commission.

This is all explained here.

https://europa.eu/european-uni...

The EU has similar measures to let you compare the efficiency and running costs of various appliances. For example a vacuum cleaner has to have a sticker that shows how well it cleans on carpet and on hard floors, how much noise it makes, how well it cleans the air before expelling it (really important for people with allergies) and how much it costs to run.

https://ec.europa.eu/energy/si...

This new proposal is a great idea. The manufacturer will have to list the lowest MTBF of all components in the machine based on a standardized usage pattern. So if a washing machine has a belt with an MTBF of only 5 years then the label has to say "5 years" on it.

Video games should be interesting. "Servers guaranteed to run until 2019" could be pretty interesting on the next EA Sportsball game.

This is wrong. All legislation must be approved by the EU parliament before it can have any legal force. European Commission only has power suggest laws to the EU parliament.

You can read about EU law processes here.

https://europa.eu/european-uni...
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

There is also some legislative power in Council of the European Union.

https://europa.eu/european-uni...

This is wrong. All legislation must be approved by the EU parliament before it can have any legal force. European Commission only has power suggest laws to the EU parliament.

You can read about EU law processes here.

https://europa.eu/european-uni...
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

There is also some legislative power in Council of the European Union.

https://europa.eu/european-uni...

This is wrong. All legislation must be approved by the EU parliament before it can have any legal force. European Commission only has power suggest laws to the EU parliament.

You can read about EU law processes here.

https://europa.eu/european-uni...
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

There is also some legislative power in Council of the European Union.

https://europa.eu/european-uni...

Huawei has registered "P30" for use in the European Union (at least): https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearc....

It's interesting how numbers come up. According to the EU's 2010 budget, PDF downloadable from https://publications.europa.eu... subsidies are 43.8 billion Euros, your Wiki article claims 57 billion. Perhaps Reuters is counting how much individual countries spend as well. Does the US numbers include State spending?
Anyways, your country is applying tariffs on Canada and Mexico due to their high agriculture tariffs that don't seem to exist excepting Canada having some on dairy to prevent the subsidized Americans from dumping. Mexico seems to have about 1.3 Billion in subsides that due to corruption goes to drug lords and large businesses and Canada has about $80 million.
Mexico is a sad story as NAFTA allowed massive dumping of corn and such, putting many Mexican farmers out of business and leaving them little choice but to try to sneak into the States for survival. Mixture of a shitty trade deal and shitty government there.

The biggest fine was 1 billion for behavior much worse than Google's...

You've got that backwards. Abuse of dominance is a bit more insidious than price fixing and/or market sharing.

...over a much longer period of time.

As if duration of infringement was the sole metric. What about the value of the affected market? Why is Google's market cap 11x Daimler's? Complete irrationality, or a much larger value for the search/information market?

1 billion Euro out of an 850 billion USD market cap or 1 billion Euro out of a 75 billion market cap, which is the worse fine?

Point disproved.

They run a highly profitable trade surplus with the USA and are angry it's coming to an end. Lashing out at a symbol of America like Google is par for the course. It was a gigantic fuck you to be sure.

Fact free Trump worshipper part 2..

It's mentioned in the summary of this article, which also cites the ruling:

3. has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").

Cite: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...

Um, that doesn't say what you seem to think it says. They are restricting forks of Android, and Android is a trademark. This says nothing about selling a Ubuntu phone or one that uses a modified version of AOSP. This is not remotely the same as Microsoft breaking a deal if someone sells a computer with Linux of OS/2. It would be like Microsoft saying you can't sell machines with Windows 10 if you're selling machines with Windows 7, or modified versions of Windows 10 to remove the telemetry.

It's mentioned in the summary of this article, which also cites the ruling:

3. has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").

Cite: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...

Your post is a perfect example of why people should not trust random Slashdot posters.

Your link to Eurostat goes to their home page. The actual data is here: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...

That could have been a genuine mistake on your part, but unfortunately I've seen a lot of people using this trick where they post a link that they assume no-one will actually check to give their post credibility, even though the link is broken/wrong/doesn't support their argument.

Note that it's 50-75% of Germany's *gas* imports. Trump said "energy", but gas makes up less than 20% of Germany's energy mix.

Also, note that this doesn't mean Germany is "totally controlled" by Russia as Trump claims, any more than I am "totally controlled" by the supermarket I get 60% of my food from. It just means that if Russia did decide to squeeze Germany's natural gas supply I'd have to shop somewhere else or eat fewer avocados.

NO, the numbers of eurostat are NOT 60 - 70 procent. Eurostat says that three quarters of the imports from Russia into the EU are gas products -- but that import only amounts to 7.8% of EU imports.

And that article is a perfect example why people should not trust the NY Times.
Lets look at its major claims:
That Trump lied about the amount of natural gas using the numbers 60 to 70 percent : The journalist did not even try to do basic research, and kind of admits that. The numbers from eurostat are 50 to 70 percent http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/. Trump was well in range, so ignorance to the times and its readers. If anything Trump is low because he was also talking about a new pipeline still in discussion that Russia is pushing for.

That Germany is not captive of Russia: According to the Eurostat in addition to that 50 to 70 percent of natural gas Germany gets over 50 of their oil from Russia. The article then gives some opitions, I thought that was a news piece not editoral, however the new york times does not need facts. The "journalist" then ignores what happened in Ukraine when they were dependant on Russia for fuel. Also as trump said, and what he was talking about, they are planning for the new pipe which will increase the amount of energy that comes from Russia. Anyone with a free thinking mind that was in an economic condition where they were dependant on someone for 70% and they being pushed to increase that amount would say they are "have no freedom to choose alternatives" the very definition of captive.

The EU has Public Consultations regularly, even if they only occasionally get Slashdot coverage. There are 21 open consultations this very moment, if you feel that you have something to offer.

As for other matters... well, you're asked to select your representatives every 5 years for the EU Parliament and (I suspect) every 4 years for your national assembly and thus also the EU Council of Ministers. You can reach out to your representatives at any time, or work to replace them at the next election. And if you have a problem with the fact that idiots and criminals keep getting elected (and don't we all?), I'm afraid the only real solution is to convince your fellow EU citizens to vote for someone else. Personally I've put my vote behind the European United Left for EU parliament, along with supporting similar reform parties nationally, but you can pick your own poison. ;-)