they pay makers of Angry Birds to have Chrome-only HTML5 version of their game
make websites that purposely only work with Chrome
There is no such thing as "Chrome-only HTML5" - those sites are just HTML5, that will work with Chrome. The sites will also run on other browsers if they support HTML5; it's hardly Google's fault if other browsers do not support HTML5, is it?
They game and spam other search engines [zdnet.com] like Bing too.
Interesting article! Did you bother to read it? In fact, it's the complete opposite of trying to game and spam search engines:
Google has demoted its Chrome home page in results for a search using the keyword "browser" following an effort to have bloggers promote the Google browser that backfired. Now, there is no Chrome ad at the top of the results or link to the Chrome page anywhere on the first page of results on Google. It's ranked in position 50, according to Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, which first reported this news.
Google's statement, according to SearchEngineLand, is:
"We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site's PageRank for a period of at least 60 days.We strive to enforce Google's webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."
Two browsers are affected by preview-type requests - Chrome and Safari.
Chrome
Further to a significant number of user requests, we are now adjusting our browser stats to remove the effect of prerendering in Google Chrome. From 1 May 2012, prerendered pages (which are not actually viewed) are not included in our stats.
Some points to note:
Prerendering was announced by Chrome in June 2011. This change did not have any significant impact on our stats.
Chrome is currently allowing the detection of prerendering behavior via its Page Visibility API.
Google specifically states:
"Important: This is an experimental API and may change-or even be removed-in the future, especially as the Page Visibility API standard, which is an early draft, evolves."
This means that in the future it may not be possible to track/remove the effect of prerendering on Chrome.
If other browsers adopt prerendering then it may not be possible to track/remove the effect of prerendering on those browsers. In that case, the fairest solution would be to include all page views (prerendered or not) for all browsers rather than only excluding prerendering in Chrome. That scenario would require us to revisit this methodology change in the future.
Safari
The Top Sites feature in Safari shows preview thumbnails of frequently visited sites. These preview thumbnails are refreshed by Safari periodically. Unfortunately, it is not possible to exclude these previews from being tracked. To get a bit technical, this is because the "X-Purpose: preview" header is only sent with the request for the base page. The header is not sent as part of requests for images, CSS or JavaScript that have to be downloaded and executed as part of the Top Sites preview. With online web analytics (as provided by StatCounter) the relevant header information is not passed so these preview requests can't be detected and therefore can't be removed. Ideally Safari will change this to ensure to send the "X-Purpose: preview" header with all Top Sites HTTP requests, however this is not the case at present.
The patent is not limited to Exchange - it covers any implementation of meeting requests on a mobile device. Exchange is only given as an example of the broader class of "personal information managers (PIMs)" that the patent applies to:
PIMs typically comprise applications which enable the user of the mobile device to better manage scheduling and communications, and other such tasks. Some commonly available PIMs include scheduling and calendar programs, task lists, address books, and electronic mail (e-mail) programs. Some commonly commercially available PIMs are sold under the brand names Microsoft Schedule+ and Microsoft Outlook and are commercially available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. For purposes of this discussion, PIMs shall also include separate electronic mail applications, such as that available under the brand name Microsoft Exchange.
A government that has the power to ban your competitor's products also has the power to ban your products. Perhaps, at some point, someone will get a patent injunction against some essential features of Windows or Office and then refuse to license the patent...
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can." - Bill Gates
the US is not wrong in adding tariffs onto Chinese made panels.
'Wrong' is a moral judgement; the only effect of tariffs will be to increase the cost of solar panels in the U.S. Is that wrong? As Churchill said, "Will the shutting out of foreign goods increase the total amount of wealth in this country? Can foreign nations grow rich at our expense by selling us goods under cost price?"
Your final paragraph is interesting since I've addressed the issue before: if the goal is to help domestic solar production and adoption, then there is no need to subsidize export panels, the government only needs to subsidize domestic consumption.
I think this issue is actually quite complicated, as there are many factors involved. One is a desire for national energy security and independence, reducing reliance on fossil fuels etc. Another is a desire to build a profitable manufacturing base, creating jobs etc. If the goal is to ramp up production quickly, then the fastest way to do that is to give money to the people building factories. Subsidizing consumption will only work when there are consumers to subsidize; I'd imagine that in China the consumer in this case is the national electricity generation company. It is very difficult to separate out the effects of subsidies here anyway; isn't a consumption subsidy in effect also a production subsidy? Let's hypothetically suppose that China had subsidized consumption by guaranteeing that the state electricity company would buy $30 billion of solar panels. This investment would have led to new factories being built, increased economies of scale, more efficient processes etc. which would in turn result in a fall in the manufacturing cost, which would cause a fall in the end user price. More production = more supply = lower cost. So, when the subsidy is based on consumption, and the consumer happens to be the state electricity producer, can you really say that this is not also a production subsidy?
I will also note that other nations also subsidize production - the U.S. subsidizes production of oil and nuclear, and (usually) taxes consumption, many nations subsidize production of food rather than consumption - so the leaders of these nations must also see some benefit to subsidizing production rather than consumption. The main benefit being, that your nation now has the means of production, and therefore gains some degree of independence and creates some jobs. You can export and sell the excess, but taxing your people and using their money to subsidize production for other nations is not going to increase the total wealth of your nation in the long term. The monopoly argument does not hold - the entire cost of the Solyndra plant was only $733 million. The U.S. budget this year is $3.7 trillion. If the U.S. ever wants to get back in the solar manufacturing industry, it has the means to do so, and if it is a national energy security issue then $733 million is chump change compared to the cost of oil wars.
How many GM cars are sold in China? What is the number 1 selling car in China, and what does it look like?
The top selling car right now is the Buick Excelle manufactured by GM Daewoo and assembled in China by Shanghai General Motors Company Limited. This is a legitimate arrangement.
This is why you won't see a Chinese manufacturer open a plant in America.
The United States successfully ignored international copyright and patent claims for over a century; it is hardly surprising that other nations that do not have a developed IP industry would follow the same route: An Economic History of Copyright in Europe and the United States
The U.S. was long a net importer of literary and artistic works, especially from England, which implied that recognition of foreign copyrights would have led to a net deficit in international royalty payments. The Copyright Act recognized this when it specified that "nothing in this act shall be construed to extend to prohibit the importation or vending, reprinting or publishing within the United States, of any map, chart, book or books... by any person not a citizen of the United States." Thus, the statutes explicitly authorized Americans to take free advantage of the cultural output of other countries. As a result, it was alleged that American publishers "indiscriminately reprinted books by foreign authors without even the pretence of acknowledgement." The tendency to reprint foreign works was encouraged by the existence of tariffs on imported books that ranged as high as 25 percent.
The United States stood out in contrast to countries such as France, where Louis Napoleon's Decree of 1852 prohibited counterfeiting of both foreign and domestic works. Other countries which were affected by American piracy retaliated by refusing to recognize American copyrights. Despite the lobbying of numerous authors and celebrities on both sides of the Atlantic, the American copyright statutes did not allow for copyright protection of foreign works for fully one century. As a result, American publishers and producers freely pirated foreign literature, art, and drama.
So manipulating your currency and selling products at a loss is out competing?
If your aim is to establish a nation of manufacturing and high employment, rather than one which maximises profits, then yes, it is outcompeting.
The U.S. also has the power to devalue its own currency, which should stimulate manufacturing, jobs and exports at the cost of profits and perhaps quality of life (as imports become more expensive). The fact is that Americans don't want to compete with China on those terms. The U.S. could lower the average American income (and quality of life) to compete against the average Chinese factory worker (~$250/month), build huge factory campuses for the young people to work 100 hour weeks in etc. There don't seem to be many Americans arguing that the U.S. should do that.
If you try to compete in manufacturing, where cost of human labor is significant, against a country where the cost of a person is one-tenth the cost of your country, and those people are working more than double the hours in the week, then of course you are going to be non-competitive. Westerners are not willing to do what it would take to be competitive in these jobs.
There is a basic assumption here that China is subsidising the cost of domestic solar production in order to force non-Chinese producers into bankruptcy, and therefore monopolise the future market.
But that is just an assumption; there is another hypothesis - that the Chinese government is subsidising the cost of solar to stimulate R&D and investment in an important sustainable energy source - exactly the same reasons given by governments elsewhere. Forcing the U.S. solar manufacturing industry to collapse wasn't the goal, it was just a side effect of Chinese manufacturers being more successful than U.S. manufacturers.
The basic allegation is that Chinese manufacturers get "unfair" government support in the form of low-cost access to land, bank loans, research grants and tax breaks. Do other countries not also do this? One of the Chinese manufacturers has already pointed out that China’s subsidies are lower than those in Germany. And is this even wrong? The U.S. subsidises oil and gas by almost $5 billion a year (and that doesn't include the cost of the U.S. military), nuclear is subsidised by $3.5 billion a year, solar at $1.3 billion. And yet, when China subsidises its energy production, suddenly such subsidies are "unfair".
China's solar subsidies are estimated at $34 billion. It sounds like a lot, but put it in context: China currently produces 2GW by solar, but has a domestic solar power goal of 15GW by 2015, and 50 GW by 2020. Within 8 years, China has to manufacture 25 times more panels than it ever has, expanding its solar capacity to the equivalent of 50 nuclear power plants. Of course, for this to be achievable they need to significantly ramp up panel production, which requires them to heavily invest (i.e. subsidise) their industry. It is very shortsighted to assume that China is building a solar industry in order to dominate and destroy Western manufacturers, when in fact they have some of the most ambitious domestic targets in the world.
In the original release of Windows 95, you could change your time zone by clicking on the map, and the time zone you selected would highlight. Similarly, you could change your Region Settings by clicking on the world map. This was one of those little touches that made Windows 95 that much more fun to use.
But we had to remove those features within months of release, even though we based both of the maps on the borders officially recognized by the United Nations.
In early 1995, a border war broke out between Peru and Ecuador and the Peruvian government complained to Microsoft that the border was incorrectly placed. Of course, if we complied and moved the border northward, we'd get an equally angry letter from the Ecuadorian government demanding that we move it back. So we removed the feature altogether.
The time zone map met a similar fate. The Indian government threatened to ban all Microsoft software from the country because we assigned a disputed region to Pakistan in the time zone map. (Any map that depicts an unfavorable border must bear a government stamp warning the end-user that the borders are incorrect. You can't stamp software.) We had to make a special version of Windows 95 for them.
Google Inc.'s popular online mapping service has become entangled in a long-running territorial dispute between China and Taiwan.
Until recently, Google's maps described Taiwan as a "province of China." That sparked protests from Taiwan's government, which has considered its island an independent state since ending a civil war with China more than a half-century ago.
Shortly after Taiwan's foreign ministry formally complained, the China reference abruptly disappeared from Google's Taiwan map last week. That change has provoked cries of dismay in China and talk of a possible boycott of Google's service in that country, according to Chinese media.
If I recall correctly, Microsoft also faced the same issue after they suggested Taiwan was somehow an independent nation in locale settings, but they changed it after the Chinese government complained.
Slime Design Mimics Tokyo's Rail System: Efficient Methods of a Slime Mold Could Inform Human Engineers "The model captures the basic dynamics of network adaptability through interaction of local rules, and produces networks with properties comparable to or better than those of real-world infrastructure networks... The work of Tero and colleagues provides a fascinating and convincing example that biologically inspired pure mathematical models can lead to completely new, highly efficient algorithms able to provide technical systems with essential features of living systems, for applications in such areas as computer science."
Most people are emotionally attached to whatever belief system was presented to them when they were children.
I would bet, though, that that there are many more atheists who were raised in some religious belief system and ultimately rejected it, than there are those who were raised as atheists and continued on due to some emotical attachment. Completely anecdotal, but out of about 10 atheists I know personally and can think of right now, only 1 was actually raised that way. Didn't you go to Church when you were a kid? Sunday school? Given a Bible as a gift, or at least have one in the house? I would have thought that some kind of religious upbringing was most common.
Developing for Android looks like a bit of a nightmare
It isn't as bad as it seems. For most app developers, you just set the minimum SDK level that you want to support in Eclipse, and then it won't allow you to use any earlier APIs. As for fragmentation, it is no worse than Windows - where you need to support various combinations of: 32-bit / 64-bit, XP (release+SP1,SP2,SP3) / Windows 7 (release+SP1), various hardware manufacturers Dell/Lenovo/HP/Acer/Toshiba... the testing departments of large companies doing Windows development test and certify across many platform combinations. Undoubtedly, this is harder than having a single hardware/software platform, but it is not impossible or unmanageable.
Should everyone have calorimeters, spectrometers, drop-test rigs, electron microscopes, and other testing gear in their basement to ensure quality?
Fakes are everywhere. The only way to ensure you don't get a fake is either to use a trusted supplier, or to test the item yourself. If you buy from any source, and trust that the product is authentic just because it has a logo stamped on it, then you are going to be sadly disappointed. Example: fake Sandisk memory cards from Ebay.
5 years is plenty for normal movies. The thing with JK Rowling is that she didn't set out to make movies, or even to write movie scripts. She wrote books, and under a 5 year copyright term, she would've profited handsomely from those books and still become a millionaire. After 5 years, anyone would have been free to make a movie version of her books, which, in the end, could benefit society - movies that are not possible to make now, because the rights can't be acquired, would become possible to make.
No-one else will make a deal with Ms Moss under better terms for book 5 because they can't do the group deal for books 2-4.
Assuming for the moment that this is correct (which is doubtful), how is this different from the existing system? Once a publisher has the rights to a book, they are under no obligation to give them back if later books are more successful.
From the sound of it, it was just 10-15 students they all accused of the same thing
I haven't seen a report saying that they are students. But, regardless, how do we actually know they are innocent? There have been numerous targeted bombings and assassinations of Iranian scientists and academics. Some organised "terrorist" group has murdered these people, and others have supplied that group with information, weapons, money, safehouses etc. If this were happening in the U.S. - if American scientists and academics were being murdered by a foreign terrorist group - then Americans would be demanding justice, including assasinations and detention without trial. Maybe this man is innocent, but this dirty war is not. There are spies operating in Iran, and they will obviously claim that they are innocent if they get caught.
Zahiri's accusation is contact with Mojahedin-e Khalgh Organization (completely unrelated to the Mossad).
It doesn't help the "we're innocent" argument when U.S. officials have openly called for MEK to not be classified as a terrorist group, and the U.S. military has allegedly provided MEK with material assistance and special forces training.
1) There are a lot of U.S. citizens on Slashdot, so it is hardly surprising that those people are going to discuss stories from a U.S. perspective, making it sometimes U.S. centric.
2) I think that, rather than being narcissistic, this is simply a case of "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." When your elected representatives, and certain media elements, endorse assassination without trial, imprisonment without trial, and torture without trial, then they lose the moral authority to criticise others.
And what is that figure today? 95%? I would lump "Server and Tools" in with Windows, but even if you account for it separately, MS still generates more than 90% of its profit from Windows and Office. That is why investors are restless - after many years and $ billions spent, Online Services are still in the red, and Entertainment & Devices is barely profitable. Microsoft has shown to be thoroughly incapable of diversification - the vast bulk of profit still comes from exactly the same sources as a decade ago, and the success or failure of these sources dominates overall profits: Microsoft profits jump 31% on strong Office salesMicrosoft profits stagnate as Windows sales fall. With increasing use of mobile devices, and online competition (Google Apps for Business), the Windows+Office monopoly is looking shakier than ever before.
Actually Otellini has been criticised for failing to compete with ARM in the tablet and smartphone market, which is the only market segment that has been showing big growth in recent years. Intel have been promising competitive x86 tablets and cell phones for years now, where are they? The market is still completely dominated by ARM. That is a big fail for the world's largest chipmaker - it wasn't even unpredicted - analysts have been saying for years that Intel needs to get competitive in the mobile game.
But in comparison, Microsoft did worse. They tried to compete in every market, and won in none. They missed or lost out in every important development of the last decade - video streaming (Netflix, Youtube), social networking (Facebook), search (Google), music devices (iPod), music streaming (Spotify), ebooks (Kindle) and mobile tablets/smartphones (iPhone and Android). The mobile situation really is terrible for them, while MS were happy ruling the desktop, people unexpectedly shifted their usage to mobile devices. MS did ok with Hotmail. They did well with the Xbox, but failed to anticipate the consumer switch to mobile and social network games. C# and.Net did ok, but didn't kill Java. Silverlight didn't kill Flash, and now looks like it's dying. Partnering for MSNBC was odd. Acquiring Skype might turn out to be a mistake - it didn't work out so well for ebay, and I suspect MS will face EU antitrust questions when they inevitably start blocking third party clients (Skype could get away with it - Microsoft the convicted monopolist, not so much). I doubt their carrier partners are going to be happy with a free-calls Skype being integrated into Windows Phone either.
I guess you are quoting desktop market share. That is the wrong statistic to account for the number of Firefox users on each platform. Most Linux users are probably using Firefox. Don't most Windows users still use IE? And most Mac OS users use Safari? So the total desktop market share won't correspond to the distribution of Firefox users on each desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
they pay makers of Angry Birds to have Chrome-only HTML5 version of their game
make websites that purposely only work with Chrome
There is no such thing as "Chrome-only HTML5" - those sites are just HTML5, that will work with Chrome. The sites will also run on other browsers if they support HTML5; it's hardly Google's fault if other browsers do not support HTML5, is it?
They game and spam other search engines [zdnet.com] like Bing too.
Interesting article! Did you bother to read it? In fact, it's the complete opposite of trying to game and spam search engines:
Google has demoted its Chrome home page in results for a search using the keyword "browser" following an effort to have bloggers promote the Google browser that backfired. Now, there is no Chrome ad at the top of the results or link to the Chrome page anywhere on the first page of results on Google. It's ranked in position 50, according to Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, which first reported this news.
Google's statement, according to SearchEngineLand, is:
"We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site's PageRank for a period of at least 60 days.We strive to enforce Google's webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."
BROWSERS: Do you adjust your browser stats for prerendering/pre-loading?
Two browsers are affected by preview-type requests - Chrome and Safari.
Chrome
Further to a significant number of user requests, we are now adjusting our browser stats to remove the effect of prerendering in Google Chrome. From 1 May 2012, prerendered pages (which are not actually viewed) are not included in our stats.
Some points to note:
Prerendering was announced by Chrome in June 2011. This change did not have any significant impact on our stats.
Chrome is currently allowing the detection of prerendering behavior via its Page Visibility API.
Google specifically states:
"Important: This is an experimental API and may change-or even be removed-in the future, especially as the Page Visibility API standard, which is an early draft, evolves."
This means that in the future it may not be possible to track/remove the effect of prerendering on Chrome.
If other browsers adopt prerendering then it may not be possible to track/remove the effect of prerendering on those browsers. In that case, the fairest solution would be to include all page views (prerendered or not) for all browsers rather than only excluding prerendering in Chrome. That scenario would require us to revisit this methodology change in the future.
Safari
The Top Sites feature in Safari shows preview thumbnails of frequently visited sites. These preview thumbnails are refreshed by Safari periodically. Unfortunately, it is not possible to exclude these previews from being tracked. To get a bit technical, this is because the "X-Purpose: preview" header is only sent with the request for the base page. The header is not sent as part of requests for images, CSS or JavaScript that have to be downloaded and executed as part of the Top Sites preview. With online web analytics (as provided by StatCounter) the relevant header information is not passed so these preview requests can't be detected and therefore can't be removed. Ideally Safari will change this to ensure to send the "X-Purpose: preview" header with all Top Sites HTTP requests, however this is not the case at present.
PIMs typically comprise applications which enable the user of the mobile device to better manage scheduling and communications, and other such tasks. Some commonly available PIMs include scheduling and calendar programs, task lists, address books, and electronic mail (e-mail) programs. Some commonly commercially available PIMs are sold under the brand names Microsoft Schedule+ and Microsoft Outlook and are commercially available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. For purposes of this discussion, PIMs shall also include separate electronic mail applications, such as that available under the brand name Microsoft Exchange.
A government that has the power to ban your competitor's products also has the power to ban your products. Perhaps, at some point, someone will get a patent injunction against some essential features of Windows or Office and then refuse to license the patent...
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can." - Bill Gates
the US is not wrong in adding tariffs onto Chinese made panels.
'Wrong' is a moral judgement; the only effect of tariffs will be to increase the cost of solar panels in the U.S. Is that wrong? As Churchill said, "Will the shutting out of foreign goods increase the total amount of wealth in this country? Can foreign nations grow rich at our expense by selling us goods under cost price?"
Your final paragraph is interesting since I've addressed the issue before: if the goal is to help domestic solar production and adoption, then there is no need to subsidize export panels, the government only needs to subsidize domestic consumption.
I think this issue is actually quite complicated, as there are many factors involved. One is a desire for national energy security and independence, reducing reliance on fossil fuels etc. Another is a desire to build a profitable manufacturing base, creating jobs etc. If the goal is to ramp up production quickly, then the fastest way to do that is to give money to the people building factories. Subsidizing consumption will only work when there are consumers to subsidize; I'd imagine that in China the consumer in this case is the national electricity generation company. It is very difficult to separate out the effects of subsidies here anyway; isn't a consumption subsidy in effect also a production subsidy? Let's hypothetically suppose that China had subsidized consumption by guaranteeing that the state electricity company would buy $30 billion of solar panels. This investment would have led to new factories being built, increased economies of scale, more efficient processes etc. which would in turn result in a fall in the manufacturing cost, which would cause a fall in the end user price. More production = more supply = lower cost. So, when the subsidy is based on consumption, and the consumer happens to be the state electricity producer, can you really say that this is not also a production subsidy?
I will also note that other nations also subsidize production - the U.S. subsidizes production of oil and nuclear, and (usually) taxes consumption, many nations subsidize production of food rather than consumption - so the leaders of these nations must also see some benefit to subsidizing production rather than consumption. The main benefit being, that your nation now has the means of production, and therefore gains some degree of independence and creates some jobs. You can export and sell the excess, but taxing your people and using their money to subsidize production for other nations is not going to increase the total wealth of your nation in the long term. The monopoly argument does not hold - the entire cost of the Solyndra plant was only $733 million. The U.S. budget this year is $3.7 trillion. If the U.S. ever wants to get back in the solar manufacturing industry, it has the means to do so, and if it is a national energy security issue then $733 million is chump change compared to the cost of oil wars.
How many GM cars are sold in China? What is the number 1 selling car in China, and what does it look like?
The top selling car right now is the Buick Excelle manufactured by GM Daewoo and assembled in China by Shanghai General Motors Company Limited. This is a legitimate arrangement.
This is why you won't see a Chinese manufacturer open a plant in America.
Suntech Opens New U.S. Manufacturing Plant
China offshores manufacturing to the U.S.
Chinese Open First Car Plant in Europe
IP created in China belongs to the people
The United States successfully ignored international copyright and patent claims for over a century; it is hardly surprising that other nations that do not have a developed IP industry would follow the same route: An Economic History of Copyright in Europe and the United States
The U.S. was long a net importer of literary and artistic works, especially from England, which implied that recognition of foreign copyrights would have led to a net deficit in international royalty payments. The Copyright Act recognized this when it specified that "nothing in this act shall be construed to extend to prohibit the importation or vending, reprinting or publishing within the United States, of any map, chart, book or books ... by any person not a citizen of the United States." Thus, the statutes explicitly authorized Americans to take free advantage of the cultural output of other countries. As a result, it was alleged that American publishers "indiscriminately reprinted books by foreign authors without even the pretence of acknowledgement." The tendency to reprint foreign works was encouraged by the existence of tariffs on imported books that ranged as high as 25 percent.
The United States stood out in contrast to countries such as France, where Louis Napoleon's Decree of 1852 prohibited counterfeiting of both foreign and domestic works. Other countries which were affected by American piracy retaliated by refusing to recognize American copyrights. Despite the lobbying of numerous authors and celebrities on both sides of the Atlantic, the American copyright statutes did not allow for copyright protection of foreign works for fully one century. As a result, American publishers and producers freely pirated foreign literature, art, and drama.
So manipulating your currency and selling products at a loss is out competing?
If your aim is to establish a nation of manufacturing and high employment, rather than one which maximises profits, then yes, it is outcompeting.
The U.S. also has the power to devalue its own currency, which should stimulate manufacturing, jobs and exports at the cost of profits and perhaps quality of life (as imports become more expensive). The fact is that Americans don't want to compete with China on those terms. The U.S. could lower the average American income (and quality of life) to compete against the average Chinese factory worker (~$250/month), build huge factory campuses for the young people to work 100 hour weeks in etc. There don't seem to be many Americans arguing that the U.S. should do that.
If you try to compete in manufacturing, where cost of human labor is significant, against a country where the cost of a person is one-tenth the cost of your country, and those people are working more than double the hours in the week, then of course you are going to be non-competitive. Westerners are not willing to do what it would take to be competitive in these jobs.
There is a basic assumption here that China is subsidising the cost of domestic solar production in order to force non-Chinese producers into bankruptcy, and therefore monopolise the future market.
But that is just an assumption; there is another hypothesis - that the Chinese government is subsidising the cost of solar to stimulate R&D and investment in an important sustainable energy source - exactly the same reasons given by governments elsewhere. Forcing the U.S. solar manufacturing industry to collapse wasn't the goal, it was just a side effect of Chinese manufacturers being more successful than U.S. manufacturers.
The basic allegation is that Chinese manufacturers get "unfair" government support in the form of low-cost access to land, bank loans, research grants and tax breaks. Do other countries not also do this? One of the Chinese manufacturers has already pointed out that China’s subsidies are lower than those in Germany. And is this even wrong? The U.S. subsidises oil and gas by almost $5 billion a year (and that doesn't include the cost of the U.S. military), nuclear is subsidised by $3.5 billion a year, solar at $1.3 billion. And yet, when China subsidises its energy production, suddenly such subsidies are "unfair".
China's solar subsidies are estimated at $34 billion. It sounds like a lot, but put it in context: China currently produces 2GW by solar, but has a domestic solar power goal of 15GW by 2015, and 50 GW by 2020. Within 8 years, China has to manufacture 25 times more panels than it ever has, expanding its solar capacity to the equivalent of 50 nuclear power plants. Of course, for this to be achievable they need to significantly ramp up panel production, which requires them to heavily invest (i.e. subsidise) their industry. It is very shortsighted to assume that China is building a solar industry in order to dominate and destroy Western manufacturers, when in fact they have some of the most ambitious domestic targets in the world.
Why isn't my time zone highlighted on the world map?
In the original release of Windows 95, you could change your time zone by clicking on the map, and the time zone you selected would highlight. Similarly, you could change your Region Settings by clicking on the world map. This was one of those little touches that made Windows 95 that much more fun to use.
But we had to remove those features within months of release, even though we based both of the maps on the borders officially recognized by the United Nations.
In early 1995, a border war broke out between Peru and Ecuador and the Peruvian government complained to Microsoft that the border was incorrectly placed. Of course, if we complied and moved the border northward, we'd get an equally angry letter from the Ecuadorian government demanding that we move it back. So we removed the feature altogether.
The time zone map met a similar fate. The Indian government threatened to ban all Microsoft software from the country because we assigned a disputed region to Pakistan in the time zone map. (Any map that depicts an unfavorable border must bear a government stamp warning the end-user that the borders are incorrect. You can't stamp software.) We had to make a special version of Windows 95 for them.
Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject.
Google gets entangled in Taiwan-China dispute
Google Inc.'s popular online mapping service has become entangled in a long-running territorial dispute between China and Taiwan.
Until recently, Google's maps described Taiwan as a "province of China." That sparked protests from Taiwan's government, which has considered its island an independent state since ending a civil war with China more than a half-century ago.
Shortly after Taiwan's foreign ministry formally complained, the China reference abruptly disappeared from Google's Taiwan map last week. That change has provoked cries of dismay in China and talk of a possible boycott of Google's service in that country, according to Chinese media.
If I recall correctly, Microsoft also faced the same issue after they suggested Taiwan was somehow an independent nation in locale settings, but they changed it after the Chinese government complained.
Systembolaget in Glasgow? Now that would be an interesting experiment...
Humans build systems to suit humans. The commonality is humans.
The commanity is physics and math; research on slime has shown that, when faced with the same constraints as the rail network, it will grow into almost exactly the same network structure.
Slime Design Mimics Tokyo's Rail System: Efficient Methods of a Slime Mold Could Inform Human Engineers "The model captures the basic dynamics of network adaptability through interaction of local rules, and produces networks with properties comparable to or better than those of real-world infrastructure networks... The work of Tero and colleagues provides a fascinating and convincing example that biologically inspired pure mathematical models can lead to completely new, highly efficient algorithms able to provide technical systems with essential features of living systems, for applications in such areas as computer science."
Most people are emotionally attached to whatever belief system was presented to them when they were children.
I would bet, though, that that there are many more atheists who were raised in some religious belief system and ultimately rejected it, than there are those who were raised as atheists and continued on due to some emotical attachment. Completely anecdotal, but out of about 10 atheists I know personally and can think of right now, only 1 was actually raised that way. Didn't you go to Church when you were a kid? Sunday school? Given a Bible as a gift, or at least have one in the house? I would have thought that some kind of religious upbringing was most common.
Developing for Android looks like a bit of a nightmare
It isn't as bad as it seems. For most app developers, you just set the minimum SDK level that you want to support in Eclipse, and then it won't allow you to use any earlier APIs. As for fragmentation, it is no worse than Windows - where you need to support various combinations of: 32-bit / 64-bit, XP (release+SP1,SP2,SP3) / Windows 7 (release+SP1), various hardware manufacturers Dell/Lenovo/HP/Acer/Toshiba ... the testing departments of large companies doing Windows development test and certify across many platform combinations. Undoubtedly, this is harder than having a single hardware/software platform, but it is not impossible or unmanageable.
I wouldn't buy a soft drink from a dubious source and trust that it was authentic just because it had a Cola logo on it.
Should everyone have calorimeters, spectrometers, drop-test rigs, electron microscopes, and other testing gear in their basement to ensure quality?
Fakes are everywhere. The only way to ensure you don't get a fake is either to use a trusted supplier, or to test the item yourself. If you buy from any source, and trust that the product is authentic just because it has a logo stamped on it, then you are going to be sadly disappointed. Example: fake Sandisk memory cards from Ebay.
How do you check the quality of food, electronics? unwieldy.
If you trust the quality of something because it has a logo stamped on it, then you're an idiot.
5 years is plenty for normal movies. The thing with JK Rowling is that she didn't set out to make movies, or even to write movie scripts. She wrote books, and under a 5 year copyright term, she would've profited handsomely from those books and still become a millionaire. After 5 years, anyone would have been free to make a movie version of her books, which, in the end, could benefit society - movies that are not possible to make now, because the rights can't be acquired, would become possible to make.
No-one else will make a deal with Ms Moss under better terms for book 5 because they can't do the group deal for books 2-4.
Assuming for the moment that this is correct (which is doubtful), how is this different from the existing system? Once a publisher has the rights to a book, they are under no obligation to give them back if later books are more successful.
From the sound of it, it was just 10-15 students they all accused of the same thing
I haven't seen a report saying that they are students. But, regardless, how do we actually know they are innocent? There have been numerous targeted bombings and assassinations of Iranian scientists and academics. Some organised "terrorist" group has murdered these people, and others have supplied that group with information, weapons, money, safehouses etc. If this were happening in the U.S. - if American scientists and academics were being murdered by a foreign terrorist group - then Americans would be demanding justice, including assasinations and detention without trial. Maybe this man is innocent, but this dirty war is not. There are spies operating in Iran, and they will obviously claim that they are innocent if they get caught.
Zahiri's accusation is contact with Mojahedin-e Khalgh Organization (completely unrelated to the Mossad).
Mossad Caught Running MEK Assassinations of Iranian Scientists
Mossad hit-squads behind Iran scientists' murders - US official
Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News
It doesn't help the "we're innocent" argument when U.S. officials have openly called for MEK to not be classified as a terrorist group, and the U.S. military has allegedly provided MEK with material assistance and special forces training.
1) There are a lot of U.S. citizens on Slashdot, so it is hardly surprising that those people are going to discuss stories from a U.S. perspective, making it sometimes U.S. centric.
2) I think that, rather than being narcissistic, this is simply a case of "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." When your elected representatives, and certain media elements, endorse assassination without trial, imprisonment without trial, and torture without trial, then they lose the moral authority to criticise others.
Apple's problems wasn't that they were doing it; it's that they were selling it.
Apple 'suing' Wired for tutorial on 'Hackintosh' netbook tutorial. It was a Cease and Desist order rather than a court case, and Wired caved and removed the video. But Brian Chen wasn't selling Hackintoshes, and Apple still unleashed the lawyers.
Closer to 10% now
No, still only 5%...
MSFT profits came from 100% Windows & Office
And what is that figure today? 95%? I would lump "Server and Tools" in with Windows, but even if you account for it separately, MS still generates more than 90% of its profit from Windows and Office. That is why investors are restless - after many years and $ billions spent, Online Services are still in the red, and Entertainment & Devices is barely profitable. Microsoft has shown to be thoroughly incapable of diversification - the vast bulk of profit still comes from exactly the same sources as a decade ago, and the success or failure of these sources dominates overall profits: Microsoft profits jump 31% on strong Office sales Microsoft profits stagnate as Windows sales fall. With increasing use of mobile devices, and online competition (Google Apps for Business), the Windows+Office monopoly is looking shakier than ever before.
Actually Otellini has been criticised for failing to compete with ARM in the tablet and smartphone market, which is the only market segment that has been showing big growth in recent years. Intel have been promising competitive x86 tablets and cell phones for years now, where are they? The market is still completely dominated by ARM. That is a big fail for the world's largest chipmaker - it wasn't even unpredicted - analysts have been saying for years that Intel needs to get competitive in the mobile game.
But in comparison, Microsoft did worse. They tried to compete in every market, and won in none. They missed or lost out in every important development of the last decade - video streaming (Netflix, Youtube), social networking (Facebook), search (Google), music devices (iPod), music streaming (Spotify), ebooks (Kindle) and mobile tablets/smartphones (iPhone and Android). The mobile situation really is terrible for them, while MS were happy ruling the desktop, people unexpectedly shifted their usage to mobile devices. MS did ok with Hotmail. They did well with the Xbox, but failed to anticipate the consumer switch to mobile and social network games. C# and .Net did ok, but didn't kill Java. Silverlight didn't kill Flash, and now looks like it's dying. Partnering for MSNBC was odd. Acquiring Skype might turn out to be a mistake - it didn't work out so well for ebay, and I suspect MS will face EU antitrust questions when they inevitably start blocking third party clients (Skype could get away with it - Microsoft the convicted monopolist, not so much). I doubt their carrier partners are going to be happy with a free-calls Skype being integrated into Windows Phone either.
I guess you are quoting desktop market share. That is the wrong statistic to account for the number of Firefox users on each platform. Most Linux users are probably using Firefox. Don't most Windows users still use IE? And most Mac OS users use Safari? So the total desktop market share won't correspond to the distribution of Firefox users on each desktop.
(Also, Mac OS only recently got 5% market share. Not 12%.)