Microsoft's edge has always been their ability to buy companies' products (and companies themselves) and sell them at profit and the locked-in nature of their clients. They are a business company that deals in technology rather then a technology company doing business.
There are exceptions, like their entry into the gaming arena, but don't forget their primary nature.
Yeah, I was thinking somewhere in the EU like Sweden, Ireland, or maybe Germany.
Of course, I'm pretty sure even that won't be out-of-range, but the impact should be less.
Mr. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers.
Mr. Assange hasn't leaked anything. He runs a service to help others leak information.
Mr. Manning is probably the leak, and so he is an American who leaked information that other Americans need to know.
The "Spanish IP laws" item I got via Boing Boing, which in turn got it from a paper El Pais, who is one of the wikileaks recipients. You're right, it's not on Wikipedia yet. I should go translate that and post it. Or... it's entirely made up. Yeah, I really need to go verify that.
The under reporting of deaths is of course part of the Afghan war logs, and not the cable leaks. Duh.
There's the Copenhagen. They cut out the detail about cutting millions in aid. Now it's "threatening to". So either the weasels are out in force, or yeah, it was only a threat.
On the same page, just a little further down, is where Dyncorp who hasn't been prosecuted in the least, engaged in youth sex slave trade.
Or does that have "nothing to do with misconduct"?
The rest is also in there. So... try opening your eyes or something.
[Ellsberg didn't release four volumes on the] diplomatic efforts of the United States to resolve the war.
Yeah, because undermining an effort to stop a war is a bad thing. That's a diplomatic action that's, you know, doing good in the world. These recent cables on the other hand, reveal the shady underhanded diplomacy of the USA.
-Shoving USA-style IP laws onto Spain
-Bribing, threatening, and then withholding millions in aid to Ecuador and Bolivia so they'd agree to the Copenhagen Accord. But Saudi Arabia gets a free pass, because we need their oil.
These cables were not about stopping a war. Getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't hinge on Russia or China. It's mostly just saving face for politicians in the USA.
I like America. It's a nice place. But we're supposed to be the good guys. That's WHY I like America. If the USA is being shady, then we need to fix that. And the first step is to know that it's being shady. So simply because these cables are "diplomatic", doesn't mean that they get a free pass.
TFA:
[the leaks] which appears to demonstrate no misconduct by the U.S
Floyd apparently hasn't read much of the actual leaks. In addition to the above, there's also:
-DynCorp, funded by USA taxpayers, bought young male sex slaves for Afghan cops in a "batca bazzi" party. It's a tradition over there apparently.
-They're moving prisoners out of Guantanamo to foreign prisons.
-Under reporting deaths in Afghanistan. It's not going nearly as well as they've said it has. That's lying to the American people.
-Diplomats know that the Saudi Arabians are the primary donors to Al-Queada. Aren't they an ally? Isn't our "strong military presence" in the area supposed to stop that sort of thing?
-The CIA pressured Spain into dropping investigations into the killing of José Couso, a Spanish journalist, in Iraq by American troops.
Plus there's plenty of examples of the USA knowing that others are doing blatantly illegal things, like
The Shell Oil Company claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to every movement of politicians. Ann Pickard, then Shell's vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa boasted that the Nigerian government had "forgotten" about the extent of Shell's infiltration and was unaware of how much the company knew about its deliberations.
Or that China was indeed behind the attacks on Google. Which, of course, most of slashdot was aware of. And here's the thing. Even though we-in-the-know would bet good money that it was China, the ignorant masses would tell us to prove it, and say our claims were unsupported gossip. Which it was. But now we have evidence.
The Mississippi river flows through Louisiana. You ain't getting to the gulf from Iowa without going through Louisiana.
There are three power grids in the USA. East, West, and Texas. You want to sell power over the grid, you have to hook up to the one in your area. They don't overlap. No body is stopping you from laying down your own transmission lines. Go for it... Oh look, it's ludicrously expensive.
There is only so much space in the RF spectrum. If two signals get sent out on the same frequency, neither will be received. Now, that's not a monopoly, but it's a limited resource.
And in case you weren't aware, those are three examples where there is heavy regulation. Not because the government goes around regulating things willy nilly, but because without fair rules to play by, boats would crash into each other, we'd have constant blackouts, and radio would be garbled.
Are they perfectly fair? No. But they do try. The resource is limited, the position unchangeable, or the bar to entry is way too high, and so they're natural monopolies.
It's deeper then that. Anyone that thinks NN is strictly about regulation had it explained to them by someone with bad intentions.
We have network neutrality (mostly). It's in production. It's live. It's been the de facto standard. The Internet was created on the premise of NN. People develop for the Internet and use the Internet with the expectation that it is neutral.
Network neutrality regulation would enforce ISPs to keep it that way.
Like Comcast choosing to send false NAK packets to people using particular protocols just to hinder their connection?
Been there, done that, only the Slashdot crowd really cared.
And we have it. Mostly. There have been a few cases of people breaking the neutral nature of the Internet, but honestly it's pretty rare.
is granting control over the Internet to political appointees the way to go? Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the Internet remain free from regulation?"
OH! Network neutrality regulations! Yeah, that's a good question. At first I didn't think that we really needed laws to ensure that we maintained a neutral and fair network that was a level playing field for startups and giant corporations alike. If anyone tried it, I thought we'd simply jump ship and they'd suffer for it.
But then Comcast broke NN. And only a few people really cared. And I realized that the ISP market was consolidating and even if I wanted to pay more, I couldn't buy broadband from someone else. (So now I'm on DSL). And so yeah, the idea of regulating ISPs to FORCE them to actually provide a connection to the real, unfiltered, uncensored, unthrottled Internet-that-I-paid-for doesn't sound all that crazy anymore.
But you just assumed that "Network Neutrality" meant legislation and regulation. Huh. I wonder who it was that explained it to you.
But they can slow down anything going to port 80 that contains Flash objects, because you didn't pay to watch youtube videos.
They could block any encrypted data, because you didn't buy their AV software, and you just can't be trusted otherwise.
They could do a lot of shit.
Sorry, I could have said "so discriminating against competitors' traffic is ok?"
As, you know, the fact that it belongs to a competitor is certainty a "type of traffic".
I pointed out the problem with your example, as far as my responding to it. You ignored that.
Oh geez, I'm sorry. You see, black people used to be slaves over here. There was a war, and the slave owners were forced to free them. The white people in the south held a grudge. For a long time after wards, the rich and powerful whites disliked the blacks. The "Jim Crow laws" were underhanded legal work arounds to oppress black people. The north and the majority of the populous of the country agreed that it was a pretty bad situation and needed to be fixed.
There, now you know just about as much as I do. I'm not southern either.
I am interested in young boys being abandoned by the public school systems
Yeah, I got that. It's not like I'm ignoring you. Because they are NOT being "abandoned" IF it's not a zero-sum game. I don't think it is. You disagree apparently.
If you provide a free-ride scholarship to group X, do you think that the university will simply refuse to take the money of any other group? Don't you think Universities ever expand? Did your college grade on a cut-throat bell curve where 20% MUST fail out?
And Jesus fucking christ, I'm not actually talking about you and your bank account personally funding the scholarship. It's a bloody example.
Now, sure, Princeton, Oxford, Yale. Those places are "exclusive" or whatnot. But then again, simply having the cash doesn't mean much either. I'm pretty sure you have to be someone's son or be naturally brilliant.
So, I don't see education as a zero-sum game. If you add to one group in a system, the average of the system increases. If you encourage girls, I don't think you're doing it at the cost of lobotomizing boys.
That said, yeah, there are crazy nazi-feminists who would try to pull that shit. It's wrong and should be blocked.
Then after admitting it is unfair you...
Ah, you must have missed that whole "pointless" libertarian comment. Yeah, it's unfair the individuals, but it's an attempt to be fair to the groups. That's "looking at the groups on the whole", as I mentioned. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
...unproven assertion that females are historically disadvantaged...
I dunno dude, you complained about a previously disadvantaged group being given an advantage. That seems, you know, unfair to everyone else. And it is. It's not like the individuals had anything to do with what their grandfathers did. But this isn't some sort of libertarian utopia where the individual is paramount. Sometimes you do have to look at the groups on a whole. And no one is being punished here unless it's a zero-sum game, which it isn't. Nothing is holding back boys.
I asked for alternatives. I gave you a specific example to work with. I asked you to think about it. So far, you haven't. I'm shrugging off insults and snide remarks, while you're just complaining.
Do try to work on that.
Sigh, yeah. All of the TWO minutes you spent thinking about it. Minus what it took you to type that up. Apparently you did well in your highschool "computer science" class.
Yup, you're never going to get that back...
Sadly, sitting around doing nothing doesn't fix much.
No one is necessarily pissed at anyone. And you're not being screwed over anymore then the mafRIAA is being robbed by lost sales. In this case, someone other then you is being helped out. Cry me a river.
Come on, be creative. Let's say it's 1880. You're a Yankee law-maker sent south to "fix the problems". Jim-crow laws are getting made and passed. The problems are systematic, cultural, and really really deep-set.
...ah. Well I didn't do that. I guess I'll take your expert opinion on cloning. I think I might need a firefox extension that will slap me whenever I tack on kneejerk reactions like that.
I think that was around 500BC, what with the whole "eye for an eye" thing. It's actually a pretty old tradition. One of those things that we as a "civilized" group are trying to get away from, but it's a pretty solid rule to fall back to.
But if you have an sociological "issue" on your hands, and enough of the right people agree that it needs to be "fixed", and you're in charge of doing something about it... What do you do?
Then don't don't write the article. And don't post it.
Furthermore, "two Facebook imitators"!? I'm sorry, have you completely forgotten MySpace and Friendster? Do you consider Wolfenstein a "Doom-clone"?
I've got to chaulk this one up to the cash cult. Someone makes a buck and so they must be a god.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's edge has always been their ability to buy companies' products (and companies themselves) and sell them at profit and the locked-in nature of their clients. They are a business company that deals in technology rather then a technology company doing business.
There are exceptions, like their entry into the gaming arena, but don't forget their primary nature.
But in softer non-falsifiable sciences,
That line made my head hurt all by itself. If it's non-falsifiable, I don't think it's really science.
Damn, Slashdot needs a +1 Rational
Yeah, I was thinking somewhere in the EU like Sweden, Ireland, or maybe Germany.
Of course, I'm pretty sure even that won't be out-of-range, but the impact should be less.
Or if the bridezilla demanded a refund before taking it down.
Mr. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers.
Mr. Assange hasn't leaked anything. He runs a service to help others leak information.
Mr. Manning is probably the leak, and so he is an American who leaked information that other Americans need to know.
The "Spanish IP laws" item I got via Boing Boing, which in turn got it from a paper El Pais, who is one of the wikileaks recipients. You're right, it's not on Wikipedia yet. I should go translate that and post it. Or... it's entirely made up. Yeah, I really need to go verify that.
The under reporting of deaths is of course part of the Afghan war logs, and not the cable leaks. Duh.
There's the Copenhagen. They cut out the detail about cutting millions in aid. Now it's "threatening to". So either the weasels are out in force, or yeah, it was only a threat.
On the same page, just a little further down, is where Dyncorp who hasn't been prosecuted in the least, engaged in youth sex slave trade.
Or does that have "nothing to do with misconduct"?
The rest is also in there. So... try opening your eyes or something.
[Ellsberg didn't release four volumes on the] diplomatic efforts of the United States to resolve the war.
Yeah, because undermining an effort to stop a war is a bad thing. That's a diplomatic action that's, you know, doing good in the world. These recent cables on the other hand, reveal the shady underhanded diplomacy of the USA.
-Shoving USA-style IP laws onto Spain
-Bribing, threatening, and then withholding millions in aid to Ecuador and Bolivia so they'd agree to the Copenhagen Accord. But Saudi Arabia gets a free pass, because we need their oil.
These cables were not about stopping a war. Getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't hinge on Russia or China. It's mostly just saving face for politicians in the USA.
I like America. It's a nice place. But we're supposed to be the good guys. That's WHY I like America. If the USA is being shady, then we need to fix that. And the first step is to know that it's being shady. So simply because these cables are "diplomatic", doesn't mean that they get a free pass.
TFA:
[the leaks] which appears to demonstrate no misconduct by the U.S
Floyd apparently hasn't read much of the actual leaks. In addition to the above, there's also:
-DynCorp, funded by USA taxpayers, bought young male sex slaves for Afghan cops in a "batca bazzi" party. It's a tradition over there apparently.
-They're moving prisoners out of Guantanamo to foreign prisons.
-Under reporting deaths in Afghanistan. It's not going nearly as well as they've said it has. That's lying to the American people.
-Diplomats know that the Saudi Arabians are the primary donors to Al-Queada. Aren't they an ally? Isn't our "strong military presence" in the area supposed to stop that sort of thing?
-The CIA pressured Spain into dropping investigations into the killing of José Couso, a Spanish journalist, in Iraq by American troops.
Plus there's plenty of examples of the USA knowing that others are doing blatantly illegal things, like
The Shell Oil Company claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to every movement of politicians. Ann Pickard, then Shell's vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa boasted that the Nigerian government had "forgotten" about the extent of Shell's infiltration and was unaware of how much the company knew about its deliberations.
Or that China was indeed behind the attacks on Google. Which, of course, most of slashdot was aware of. And here's the thing. Even though we-in-the-know would bet good money that it was China, the ignorant masses would tell us to prove it, and say our claims were unsupported gossip. Which it was. But now we have evidence.
Please, Mr. Abrams, go read the wiki page on the actual content of the cable leak. (and all the fractured sub-sites that hopefully isn't some ruse to hide away the information)
The Mississippi river flows through Louisiana. You ain't getting to the gulf from Iowa without going through Louisiana.
There are three power grids in the USA. East, West, and Texas. You want to sell power over the grid, you have to hook up to the one in your area. They don't overlap. No body is stopping you from laying down your own transmission lines. Go for it... Oh look, it's ludicrously expensive.
There is only so much space in the RF spectrum. If two signals get sent out on the same frequency, neither will be received. Now, that's not a monopoly, but it's a limited resource.
And in case you weren't aware, those are three examples where there is heavy regulation. Not because the government goes around regulating things willy nilly, but because without fair rules to play by, boats would crash into each other, we'd have constant blackouts, and radio would be garbled. Are they perfectly fair? No. But they do try. The resource is limited, the position unchangeable, or the bar to entry is way too high, and so they're natural monopolies.
It's deeper then that. Anyone that thinks NN is strictly about regulation had it explained to them by someone with bad intentions.
We have network neutrality (mostly). It's in production. It's live. It's been the de facto standard. The Internet was created on the premise of NN. People develop for the Internet and use the Internet with the expectation that it is neutral.
Network neutrality regulation would enforce ISPs to keep it that way.
Like Comcast choosing to send false NAK packets to people using particular protocols just to hinder their connection?
Been there, done that, only the Slashdot crowd really cared.
is granting control over the Internet to political appointees the way to go? Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the Internet remain free from regulation?"
OH! Network neutrality regulations! Yeah, that's a good question. At first I didn't think that we really needed laws to ensure that we maintained a neutral and fair network that was a level playing field for startups and giant corporations alike. If anyone tried it, I thought we'd simply jump ship and they'd suffer for it.
But then Comcast broke NN. And only a few people really cared. And I realized that the ISP market was consolidating and even if I wanted to pay more, I couldn't buy broadband from someone else. (So now I'm on DSL). And so yeah, the idea of regulating ISPs to FORCE them to actually provide a connection to the real, unfiltered, uncensored, unthrottled Internet-that-I-paid-for doesn't sound all that crazy anymore.
But you just assumed that "Network Neutrality" meant legislation and regulation. Huh. I wonder who it was that explained it to you.
Babylon 5?
But they can slow down anything going to port 80 that contains Flash objects, because you didn't pay to watch youtube videos.
They could block any encrypted data, because you didn't buy their AV software, and you just can't be trusted otherwise.
They could do a lot of shit.
Sorry, I could have said "so discriminating against competitors' traffic is ok?"
As, you know, the fact that it belongs to a competitor is certainty a "type of traffic".
I pointed out the problem with your example, as far as my responding to it. You ignored that.
Oh geez, I'm sorry. You see, black people used to be slaves over here. There was a war, and the slave owners were forced to free them. The white people in the south held a grudge. For a long time after wards, the rich and powerful whites disliked the blacks. The "Jim Crow laws" were underhanded legal work arounds to oppress black people. The north and the majority of the populous of the country agreed that it was a pretty bad situation and needed to be fixed.
There, now you know just about as much as I do. I'm not southern either.
I am interested in young boys being abandoned by the public school systems
Yeah, I got that. It's not like I'm ignoring you. Because they are NOT being "abandoned" IF it's not a zero-sum game. I don't think it is. You disagree apparently.
If you provide a free-ride scholarship to group X, do you think that the university will simply refuse to take the money of any other group? Don't you think Universities ever expand? Did your college grade on a cut-throat bell curve where 20% MUST fail out?
And Jesus fucking christ, I'm not actually talking about you and your bank account personally funding the scholarship. It's a bloody example.
Now, sure, Princeton, Oxford, Yale. Those places are "exclusive" or whatnot. But then again, simply having the cash doesn't mean much either. I'm pretty sure you have to be someone's son or be naturally brilliant.
So, I don't see education as a zero-sum game. If you add to one group in a system, the average of the system increases. If you encourage girls, I don't think you're doing it at the cost of lobotomizing boys.
That said, yeah, there are crazy nazi-feminists who would try to pull that shit. It's wrong and should be blocked.
Then after admitting it is unfair you...
Ah, you must have missed that whole "pointless" libertarian comment. Yeah, it's unfair the individuals, but it's an attempt to be fair to the groups. That's "looking at the groups on the whole", as I mentioned. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
...unproven assertion that females are historically disadvantaged...
Heh, you're shitting me right?
Well I'd vote for you.
So discriminating against competitors' protocols is ok? Unless, you know, a little money changes hands and you pay to play.
Naw dude, naw.
. . . I called you a good typist?
I dunno dude, you complained about a previously disadvantaged group being given an advantage. That seems, you know, unfair to everyone else. And it is. It's not like the individuals had anything to do with what their grandfathers did. But this isn't some sort of libertarian utopia where the individual is paramount. Sometimes you do have to look at the groups on a whole. And no one is being punished here unless it's a zero-sum game, which it isn't. Nothing is holding back boys.
I asked for alternatives. I gave you a specific example to work with. I asked you to think about it. So far, you haven't.
I'm shrugging off insults and snide remarks, while you're just complaining.
Do try to work on that.
Sigh, yeah. All of the TWO minutes you spent thinking about it. Minus what it took you to type that up. Apparently you did well in your highschool "computer science" class.
Yup, you're never going to get that back...
Sadly, sitting around doing nothing doesn't fix much.
No one is necessarily pissed at anyone. And you're not being screwed over anymore then the mafRIAA is being robbed by lost sales. In this case, someone other then you is being helped out. Cry me a river.
Come on, be creative. Let's say it's 1880. You're a Yankee law-maker sent south to "fix the problems". Jim-crow laws are getting made and passed. The problems are systematic, cultural, and really really deep-set.
What do you do?
Think about it a while.
...ah. Well I didn't do that. I guess I'll take your expert opinion on cloning. I think I might need a firefox extension that will slap me whenever I tack on kneejerk reactions like that.
I think that was around 500BC, what with the whole "eye for an eye" thing. It's actually a pretty old tradition. One of those things that we as a "civilized" group are trying to get away from, but it's a pretty solid rule to fall back to.
But if you have an sociological "issue" on your hands, and enough of the right people agree that it needs to be "fixed", and you're in charge of doing something about it... What do you do?
Then don't don't write the article. And don't post it.
Furthermore, "two Facebook imitators"!? I'm sorry, have you completely forgotten MySpace and Friendster? Do you consider Wolfenstein a "Doom-clone"?
I've got to chaulk this one up to the cash cult. Someone makes a buck and so they must be a god.
I came to the comments to help me with the same problem. Got the end and only left with confusion.