The key difference here is that in a car you need to be able to remove the old cd player in order to put the new one in. With windows you can just install firefox, change your default browser and you are good to go even though the old browser is still there. (and dont complain about disk space, in this day and age the amount of space IE takes up is negligable)
The reason you cant totally remove IE isnt because MS is secretly hoping you will change your mind and start using IE again. Its because windows needs an html renderer to function correctly and they are trying to prevent the users from shooting themselves in the foot. There is nothing sinister going on there.
So what is your definition of a PC laptop then? A computer running windows? Of course 100% of the computers that ship with windows will ship with windows.
Apple runs its OS on the same kind of computer windows runs on. Its just a different operating system.
I dont think I have ever seen an MS fanboy talk like that.
Currently there are over 75 posts in this topic and several are pro-MS. (although obviously they are in the minority and modded below comments like yours) Can you point to a single one that has the sentiment "Bill Gates will just buy his way out of this with pocketchange LOL!"?
I dont get this whole idea that including applications with your OS is somehow evil. There are certain things that the average user expects to be able to do with a PC out of the box. Things like browsing the internet, playing a media file, etc.
(warning car analogy ahead)
It is kind of like telling auto manufacturers that they cannot include built in AC, CD player, or any other ameneties with their cars because it kills the third party market even though these are things that consumers expect to come with their cars.
That review mainly gave the XO the edge because it was based on the idea that you are living in third world conditions (no power outlet) and the XO wins on being able to recharge in different ways. This is not an issue that anyone living in the US is going to face.
That video has an adult in the background clearly giving them advice. A random 8 year old with parents who dont know anything about computers will be very unlikely to be able to replicate that.
Furthermore, why assume that an American kid should get the cheapest laptop available. (ie not consider anything over $250) When I said the best cost to value ratio that meant getting the most you can for the money you have not necessarily buying the cheapest thing you can find. There are laptops out there that are only slightly more expensive than the XO and superior in prettymuch every way.
If you really believe that the XO is the best thing since sliced bread then why is it that companies arent lining up to buy them for their employees? If it really was the best deal wouldnt everyone want them?
I think you are seeing conspiracies where there are none. The closest thing might be that the district would get a discount if they purchased enough at the same time. (any company in any industry will give you a discount if you purchase 10,000 copies of something as opposed to 200)
Also, Microsoft doesnt generally sell operating systems directly to the schools. They sell them to companies like Dell who then sell their computers to the schools. And it is quite common to see schools that have computers from both dell and other brands.
Every time someone tries to sell something to the government they spin it as "patriotic". When Halliburton sells to the government they make noise about how "patriotic" it is that they are selling to them. The same is true of everyone who builds anything from roads to aircraft carriers to now laptops. Maybe I am being cynical, but I do get tired of seeing the word "patriotic" used so many different ways for so many different reasons that it really doesnt seem to have the meaning that it used to.
It actually is a good strategy, US State/municipal/national governments are notorious for wasting money. There is a chance they will actually be able to push their laptops over commercial products which give a better cost/value ratio. They could never sell it to a commercial enterprise because they actually have to answer to investors/shareholders who dont like to see money being wasted unnecessarily. As long as he hires some good lobbyists he has a shot.
Well, I am not looking to get into a debate about whether or not violating copyrights should be illegal or not. But if you are going to make violating copyright illegal it only seems logical that serving copyrighted files you dont own to the entire world should be illegal also.
The library puts a photocopier out that will instantly print out a complete copy of "Tales of the ACME company" at the touch of a button. It does this in spite of the knowledge that the author of the book holds the copyright and doesnt want you spitting extra copies out of your little machine. In this case the author would have a pretty good case for a lawsuit against the library.
Just because a photocopier CAN be used for copyright infringement doesnt mean that it actually is, and most of its use in a library falls under fair use. Copying entire songs on the internet does not fall under fair use.
Well, if it isnt illegal (and I suspect that it is illegal) then it really should be. I am sure that if this goes through then the RIAA lobbyists will go to congress and point out how ridiculous it is that this is legal. So either way it wont be a legal loop hole for long. (nor should it be)
I am pretty sure that in your example you would still go to jail for attempted murder if you had tried to kill the victim. The same way that the RIAA will sue you if attempt to commit copyright infringement if you post material that they own the copyrights on onto the internet.
People always use analogies in ways that are not analagous around here.
In your two examples the person who is being robbed clearly did not intend to get his stuff stolen, you did not deliberately go out of your way to make the car available to be stolen. If you rip copyrighted mp3s and put them up on a file sharing network you are clearly intending for someone to copy them illegally. A better analogy might be if you put your car by the side of the road with a sign that said "take me please I am free". But even that isnt really a valid analogy because it is your car in the example given and you can do whatever you want with it. Intellectual property is completely different and not really analogous.
You know back in the days of Napster everyone was screaming about how horrible it was to go after Napster because it was clearly the individual sharers that were breaking the law. Now we hear everyone getting excited because there is the possiblity that someone who admitted to deliberately sharing copyrighted material online might get off on a weird technicality.
I think that some people just got on one side of the issue because the RIAA wanted to criminalize file sharing in general and now they instinctively take the opposite side of the RIAA every time no matter what. I mean, to a person on the street a guy who admitted that he deliberately made copyrighted material available for distribution online from his computer would be an open shut case.
A lot of people on websites like this arent capable of looking at individual cases objectively and so they take this guys side even when he is obviously guilty and the RIAA is obviously in the right. Effectively people have already reached the conclusion they want (that he should get off) and then rationalize the reason why he should get off. (weird legal technicality)
No, because the "real" money (ie the money created by the government) also grows. That was one of the inaccuracies of the google video that really bugged me.
The reason it has a bunch of flags isnt because it is controversial, the reason it has a bunch of flags is because its total nonsense. There are many things in there that contradict basic, noncontroversial economics. It reads like it was written by conspiracy theorists who dont like the federal reserve, international bankers, or anyone who actually understands the implications fractional reserve lending.
I am going to bookmark this page so I can link to it whenever someone asks me for an example of a page where wikipedia is spreading misinformation.
Yeah, you are forgetting that there is debt that weighs on the other side of that. Debt represents negative money, so in your final listing of what people have you need to add in that Alice owes $90, and Jack owes $80. And when you subtract those off, guess what there is still only $100. Banks dont create money, they just move it around.
So basically, what you are saying here is that its unethical for a company to create a website that has lots of links to the website it wants to promote. This is because the search results are this holy thing that the end user sees and its integrity must be preserved at all costs!....but it is ok for google to charge money to put your company right up top next to those links? (and we all know that 90% of users dont realize that the sponsored links are different from links that were put on top as a result of the pagerank algorithm)
I mean really, putting up some links to your own website or using some invisible keywords is immoral? Come on.:) I think google is just spinning its own business interests as morality and people are falling for it.
Of course what really just happened is that they have triggered a massive run on the banks now. Is it better to wait for all the different banks to fail or ban them causing everyone to withdraw their money at once? You are giong to see every bank going the way of Ginko in the very near future now. (even that tiny minority that wasnt offering ponzi scheme style interest rates)
The wiki spam is kind of a corner case though. Much more common is placing links on sites that you own to sites that you want to optimize, using "invisible" keywords in the website text, showing different text to bots than human readers, etc. The vast majority of the so called "black hat" stuff involves modifying only your own website(s).
Actually that is exactly what he is talking about. SEOs (white hat and black hat) market their ability to increase a site's pagerank for certain keywords. A fast food company would be willing to pay for increasing their pagerank for things like "fries" and "shakes". Do your really believe that the SEOs that google has labeled as being "black hat" are getting paid to optimize for totally unrelated keywords? Thats just nuts.:)
Some of the more extreme stuff black hat SEOs do may be unethical. (ie setting up spam bots to make their clients think they are getting a lot more traffic than they really are) But a lot of it is just Google getting upset that they arent making things easy for their pagerank algorithm. (ie setting up dummy websites that link to websites you are trying to optimize)
It just seems a little presumptuous to me that Google has set up this "moral code" (which they reserve the right to change whenever they want) about how people should design their website and a lot of that "moral code" is basically "make things easy for our algorithm". If they want to remove websites that arent designed according to how they want that is certainly their right, but all this blustering about how not making things easy for them leads to criminal behaviour just seems like nonsense to me.
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The key difference here is that in a car you need to be able to remove the old cd player in order to put the new one in. With windows you can just install firefox, change your default browser and you are good to go even though the old browser is still there. (and dont complain about disk space, in this day and age the amount of space IE takes up is negligable)
The reason you cant totally remove IE isnt because MS is secretly hoping you will change your mind and start using IE again. Its because windows needs an html renderer to function correctly and they are trying to prevent the users from shooting themselves in the foot. There is nothing sinister going on there.
"Go to Best Buy or Staples and buy a P.C. laptop without Windows. Just go ahead and try. The barriers put in the way are amazing."
And here is a laptop from best buy that ships with linux:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8625295&type=product&id=1193452147742
So what is your definition of a PC laptop then? A computer running windows? Of course 100% of the computers that ship with windows will ship with windows.
Apple runs its OS on the same kind of computer windows runs on. Its just a different operating system.
"Go to Best Buy or Staples and buy a P.C. laptop without Windows. Just go ahead and try. The barriers put in the way are amazing."
Here you go:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8398673&type=product&id=1179877238756
I dont think I have ever seen an MS fanboy talk like that.
Currently there are over 75 posts in this topic and several are pro-MS. (although obviously they are in the minority and modded below comments like yours) Can you point to a single one that has the sentiment "Bill Gates will just buy his way out of this with pocketchange LOL!"?
And how on earth are they supposed to include the apps their users expect without "using your OS monopoly to out-compete other app vendors"?
I dont get this whole idea that including applications with your OS is somehow evil. There are certain things that the average user expects to be able to do with a PC out of the box. Things like browsing the internet, playing a media file, etc.
(warning car analogy ahead)
It is kind of like telling auto manufacturers that they cannot include built in AC, CD player, or any other ameneties with their cars because it kills the third party market even though these are things that consumers expect to come with their cars.
That review mainly gave the XO the edge because it was based on the idea that you are living in third world conditions (no power outlet) and the XO wins on being able to recharge in different ways. This is not an issue that anyone living in the US is going to face.
That video has an adult in the background clearly giving them advice. A random 8 year old with parents who dont know anything about computers will be very unlikely to be able to replicate that.
Furthermore, why assume that an American kid should get the cheapest laptop available. (ie not consider anything over $250) When I said the best cost to value ratio that meant getting the most you can for the money you have not necessarily buying the cheapest thing you can find. There are laptops out there that are only slightly more expensive than the XO and superior in prettymuch every way.
If you really believe that the XO is the best thing since sliced bread then why is it that companies arent lining up to buy them for their employees? If it really was the best deal wouldnt everyone want them?
I think you are seeing conspiracies where there are none. The closest thing might be that the district would get a discount if they purchased enough at the same time. (any company in any industry will give you a discount if you purchase 10,000 copies of something as opposed to 200)
Also, Microsoft doesnt generally sell operating systems directly to the schools. They sell them to companies like Dell who then sell their computers to the schools. And it is quite common to see schools that have computers from both dell and other brands.
Every time someone tries to sell something to the government they spin it as "patriotic". When Halliburton sells to the government they make noise about how "patriotic" it is that they are selling to them. The same is true of everyone who builds anything from roads to aircraft carriers to now laptops. Maybe I am being cynical, but I do get tired of seeing the word "patriotic" used so many different ways for so many different reasons that it really doesnt seem to have the meaning that it used to.
It actually is a good strategy, US State/municipal/national governments are notorious for wasting money. There is a chance they will actually be able to push their laptops over commercial products which give a better cost/value ratio. They could never sell it to a commercial enterprise because they actually have to answer to investors/shareholders who dont like to see money being wasted unnecessarily. As long as he hires some good lobbyists he has a shot.
Well, I am not looking to get into a debate about whether or not violating copyrights should be illegal or not. But if you are going to make violating copyright illegal it only seems logical that serving copyrighted files you dont own to the entire world should be illegal also.
A better analogy:
The library puts a photocopier out that will instantly print out a complete copy of "Tales of the ACME company" at the touch of a button. It does this in spite of the knowledge that the author of the book holds the copyright and doesnt want you spitting extra copies out of your little machine. In this case the author would have a pretty good case for a lawsuit against the library.
Just because a photocopier CAN be used for copyright infringement doesnt mean that it actually is, and most of its use in a library falls under fair use. Copying entire songs on the internet does not fall under fair use.
Well, if it isnt illegal (and I suspect that it is illegal) then it really should be. I am sure that if this goes through then the RIAA lobbyists will go to congress and point out how ridiculous it is that this is legal. So either way it wont be a legal loop hole for long. (nor should it be)
I am pretty sure that in your example you would still go to jail for attempted murder if you had tried to kill the victim. The same way that the RIAA will sue you if attempt to commit copyright infringement if you post material that they own the copyrights on onto the internet.
> Even attempting to break the law is not a crime. You have not committed a crime until you've broken the law. That's how it works.
Um, ok, sure. IANAL but I suspect that if I get a sniper rifle and shoot at the president "its ok I missed" wont stop me from getting thrown in jail.
People always use analogies in ways that are not analagous around here.
In your two examples the person who is being robbed clearly did not intend to get his stuff stolen, you did not deliberately go out of your way to make the car available to be stolen. If you rip copyrighted mp3s and put them up on a file sharing network you are clearly intending for someone to copy them illegally. A better analogy might be if you put your car by the side of the road with a sign that said "take me please I am free". But even that isnt really a valid analogy because it is your car in the example given and you can do whatever you want with it. Intellectual property is completely different and not really analogous.
You know back in the days of Napster everyone was screaming about how horrible it was to go after Napster because it was clearly the individual sharers that were breaking the law. Now we hear everyone getting excited because there is the possiblity that someone who admitted to deliberately sharing copyrighted material online might get off on a weird technicality.
I think that some people just got on one side of the issue because the RIAA wanted to criminalize file sharing in general and now they instinctively take the opposite side of the RIAA every time no matter what. I mean, to a person on the street a guy who admitted that he deliberately made copyrighted material available for distribution online from his computer would be an open shut case.
A lot of people on websites like this arent capable of looking at individual cases objectively and so they take this guys side even when he is obviously guilty and the RIAA is obviously in the right. Effectively people have already reached the conclusion they want (that he should get off) and then rationalize the reason why he should get off. (weird legal technicality)
No, because the "real" money (ie the money created by the government) also grows. That was one of the inaccuracies of the google video that really bugged me.
The reason it has a bunch of flags isnt because it is controversial, the reason it has a bunch of flags is because its total nonsense. There are many things in there that contradict basic, noncontroversial economics. It reads like it was written by conspiracy theorists who dont like the federal reserve, international bankers, or anyone who actually understands the implications fractional reserve lending.
I am going to bookmark this page so I can link to it whenever someone asks me for an example of a page where wikipedia is spreading misinformation.
Yeah, you are forgetting that there is debt that weighs on the other side of that. Debt represents negative money, so in your final listing of what people have you need to add in that Alice owes $90, and Jack owes $80. And when you subtract those off, guess what there is still only $100. Banks dont create money, they just move it around.
So basically, what you are saying here is that its unethical for a company to create a website that has lots of links to the website it wants to promote. This is because the search results are this holy thing that the end user sees and its integrity must be preserved at all costs! ....but it is ok for google to charge money to put your company right up top next to those links? (and we all know that 90% of users dont realize that the sponsored links are different from links that were put on top as a result of the pagerank algorithm)
:) I think google is just spinning its own business interests as morality and people are falling for it.
I mean really, putting up some links to your own website or using some invisible keywords is immoral? Come on.
Of course what really just happened is that they have triggered a massive run on the banks now. Is it better to wait for all the different banks to fail or ban them causing everyone to withdraw their money at once? You are giong to see every bank going the way of Ginko in the very near future now. (even that tiny minority that wasnt offering ponzi scheme style interest rates)
The wiki spam is kind of a corner case though. Much more common is placing links on sites that you own to sites that you want to optimize, using "invisible" keywords in the website text, showing different text to bots than human readers, etc. The vast majority of the so called "black hat" stuff involves modifying only your own website(s).
Actually that is exactly what he is talking about. SEOs (white hat and black hat) market their ability to increase a site's pagerank for certain keywords. A fast food company would be willing to pay for increasing their pagerank for things like "fries" and "shakes". Do your really believe that the SEOs that google has labeled as being "black hat" are getting paid to optimize for totally unrelated keywords? Thats just nuts. :)
Some of the more extreme stuff black hat SEOs do may be unethical. (ie setting up spam bots to make their clients think they are getting a lot more traffic than they really are) But a lot of it is just Google getting upset that they arent making things easy for their pagerank algorithm. (ie setting up dummy websites that link to websites you are trying to optimize)
It just seems a little presumptuous to me that Google has set up this "moral code" (which they reserve the right to change whenever they want) about how people should design their website and a lot of that "moral code" is basically "make things easy for our algorithm". If they want to remove websites that arent designed according to how they want that is certainly their right, but all this blustering about how not making things easy for them leads to criminal behaviour just seems like nonsense to me.