"Microsoft couldn't bundle the card with their OS..."
Sure they could. Just throw it in the box with the OS, same as bundling any other product.
"If you choke somebody so they don't have any R&D money left to develop the thing, what else can you do?"
Choke? Microsoft didn't choke Netscape... Netscape was one of the first dot-bombs... they blew through their financing like it was candy.
"Remember Netscape used to sell their browser for commercial use."
Maybe so, but they encouraged people to download it for free and never really were in a position to obtain money for the browser. Andreesen in his usenet postings said that Netscape intended on giving the browser away for free, and making money on the servers. Mosaic was always free.
"Microsoft just bundled it with their OS (for which you have to pay so they got $$$ anyway)."
Bundling assumes that it was a seperate product to begin with. It was simply an enhancement to the OS, from the start. I'll simply point out that No operating system on the market today is sold without a web browser included, obviously indicating that being able to view HTML is a fundamental feature that consumers are expecting.
Besides, Netscape was going to make their money by selling the server. If you'll remember correctly they started off by breaking whatever HTML common standards there were by locking their client to the server. That is, in order to get some of the advanced features of the server to work, you had to use their client. (I recall they introduced forms in this manner)
This is why IE still to this day uses the word Mozilla in it's browser tag, because early versions of IE 2 and IE 3 had to pretend to be a Netscape browser so that the server would let them work.
Basic problem was Netscape hadn't really thought out their business model very well.
"Remember that the last DOJ probe into Microsoft was derailed by the change from Clinton to Bush"
Actually no. It was derailed by the Appeals court overturning Judge Jackson's conclusions of law.
Clinton/Bush wouldn't have mattered... the case brought by the DOJ was fundamentally flawed(They should never have focused on Netscape), and Jackson didn't help matters with his obvious ineptitude and bias.
There's nothing in the ruling that prohibits a company from licensing the information from Microsoft and selling a version for Linux.
That you won't get the resulting product for free is irrelevant to creating genuine competition in the marketplace. The important point is that the capability for interoperation exists.
I think it's high time the open source "community" wake up and start supporting the software marketplace instead of trying to tear it down.
"This "reasonable and non-discrimantor" rule allows for charging of royalties and restricting distribution and sub-licensing of the intellectual property."
This is a choice that people who adopt Open Source software have willfully made. That is, they feel having the source code and free distribution rights is far more important than having functionality.
You cannot blame Microsoft for your own choices.
The same choice is also what has created the problem of a lack of hardware drivers for Linux. In some cases they exist, but only as binaries. If you don't like that, then you are free to not use them.
"It seems to me that it's not fair to change the rules in the middle of the game."
Ok, on the surface this sounds like a valid argument, it even has a certain liberal tone to it.
But who are you being fair to? Candidates, or the voters?
It sounds like you think we should be fair to the candidate, that he entered the race expecting to compete against Mr. White... but now Mr. White has dropped out. So Mr. Pink steps up to the plate. Well that's not fair because our anti-White candidate doesn't know how to compete against Mr. Pink?
That's not fairness, that's simply incompetence on the part of the anti-White candidate.
Exactly how was the NJ decision a "political" decision?
Ruling in strict adherence to the law would have meant that the law trumped the voter's rights. Is that what you want? Is that what the Justices want? Such a decision would be pretty damn partisan if you ask me.
By bending the law slightly, they threw the decision back into the hands of the voters where it rightfully belongs. This is one of the fundamental purposes of a Democracy.
I'm from Minnesota, and as such we're pretty familiar with this issue. We've lost candidates twice now in the past 15 years only two weeks prior to an election. Once because the IR candidate for Governor dropped out when it was found he engaged in pedophilia, and then again just this past week when our DFL Senator died in a plane crash.
BTW, our Minnesota Court just overturned an election law to provide absentee voters a chance to vote. Due to time constraints it's probably not going to be very practical, but it was the intent that counted. The law was in place so that voters wouldn't play games, but in this case the circumstances were outside of the voters control and it was unfair to penalize them for that.
I actually read the report, and am familiar with the Loadrunner tool they used.
1. They tested both version 1.0 and 1.1 of.Net to show the difference.
2. They actually used Windows 2000 machines for J2EE, it's mentioned on Page 15. They stated they benchmarked both linux and Win2k, and then picked the best result. For App server A, Win2k performned better. For App server B, they were both the same(i.e. equally bad from the looks of the results).
3. I encourage you to rewrite the app using this new technology and run some benchmarks to prove your hypothesis.
4. The people running the benchmark were familiar with the J2EE world and did involve other experts to aid in tuning both J2EE and.NET.
5. According to the test lab configuration on Page 12, there were two Proliant 8500s for the database servers and another 8500 for the web/app server. I'm going to assume you meant web and app on the same server, or you just don't know how to design n-tier apps. BTW,.NET is also designed for distributed computing.
6. Except for the Middleware group's experts. Check their website, they are a well regarded Java training/consulting company.
I remember the same type of outrage when the Mindcraft benchmark showed IIS faster than Apache. Everybody claimed they were biased, they did it wrong, whatever.
The truth was... They were right, and some intelligent people in the Linux community looked at the bottlenecks and tried to fix them.
You certainly can't through theft of their property, for in so doing you succumb to their rules.
Like I said, the only way to fight this issue is to spend your money on the alternatives. Then the industry will look at it and say "Well if we could attract these guys back we could make $X billion".
I heard a song the other day by someone named Norah Jones which I very much liked. I decided to stop by Best Buy and buy it. The CD cost me $11.99.
Then I was looking at the list of upcoming releases, and thought I'd stop back next week and buy the new Tori Amos album. It too is only $11.99.
Then I thought of a couple of other albums I didn't yet have I wanted. For instance "Heart Shaped World" by Chris Isaak, I checked and it is $9.99. Also "Warning:" by Green Day, I checked and it is $15.99.(Wow that's the first one I've seen close to your price range)
Then I thought... You know, I really need to broaden my horizons and stop listening to off beat music and pick up some top-40. So I looked up the latest album from Eminem. I found it for $12.99. Then I decided to find Pink, her album is $13.99.
I've been buying music since 1987 when I purchased my first CD player. Back then the first CD I bought was the Top Gun Soundtrack, and I paid $16.99 for it. Now if you go look at the historical value of the dollar, you'd find that $16.99 in 1987 is worth $26.48 today. But I'm not paying $26 for my music, I'm paying an average $12-14 for it, or about half the price. You should also note that in 1987 I could buy a Cassette for about $6-7, today they are $10.
Basically it seems like you have two problems.
First, you don't understand what the value of money really means. In 1987 I was working as a student and receiving $4/hour. Want to take a guess as to how much students receive now for working on campus?(Try $8-10/hour) It's called inflation, go look it up.
Second, if you are paying $16-20 for your CDs, then you are a really really stupid consumer and PT Barnum was correct. There are manyplacestobuymusiccheaper than that.
And as far as DVDs go... You know what, just quit yer whining and go back to playing Nintendo. (BTW, want to take a guess as to what I paid for Atari 2600 video cartridges?)
I think you need to ask yourself... What is it that you really want?
The Bolshevik's had a purpose behind their revolution. They knew what they were trying to accomplish when they set out. What I hear being argued here is that you want to hurt the music industry, and your going to do so by stealing the music that they market to you.
You've already lost this argument as long as you keep consuming the music that has been marketed towards you. You don't effect change in a capitalist society through theft. You effect change by spending your money on alternative products.
Money is the motivator. Nobody is going to change their business model unless they see a profit opportunity. You can't explain to them that there is a profit opportunity through words, either... You have to show it.
Start buying all your music from mp3.com, then you'll have a point to make.
"However, an improvement from 0.01 acceptable to 0.5 acceptable isn't going to impress anyone, even if it's a 50-fold improvement. "
Is this sort of like the reporting that Linux has gone from 1 user to 50 users, representing a 5000% increase in marketshare?
"Insecurity. Sure, MS is currently putting lots of money into securing all their products, but the only reason this huge drive was nesescary is that most any MS product is shock-full of security holes! "
Of course the sad fact is... all software is shock-full of security holes. Only Microsoft seems to be receiving criticism for it, and so they are doing something about it.
"Breaches of privacy. MS is all for BoP! Hell, that's their middle name! They do everything they can to screw over their customers any way they can! "
This is where this gets strange. There have been lot's of accusations over the years. Ever since the Win95 beta asked to send information about your system during the registration process. But there's never been any proof that Microsoft has violated any consumer privacy. Rather they seem to do their utmost to insure that they are not collected personal information. Even the Windows XP activation does not require you to register the product with your name/address.
Microsoft is one of the few companies I've ever given my address to that has not turned around and sold it to someone else. One of the advantages of giving slight variations on your address when registering or subscribing.
There's plenty of real examples of companies that violate privacy... Just read the news.
http://www.state.ia.us/government/ag/consumer/pr es s_releases/USBank-release.html
It just seems a shame to attack a company for trying to do the right thing, while ignoring companies who are flagarant violators. It dilutes your entire argument.
"So just HOW do you suppose the GOP managed to fake Algore blatantly stating to Larry King that he invented the internet?"
Simple. He never said that.
Another lie that started out from the Republicans was to claim Al Gore discovered the Love Canal. This came out after a meeting Gore had with some children at a school. The Children themselves came out and confirmed the Republicans were lying.
Senators don't invent or discover. They listen and react. In the case of Al Gore when the scientists came showing what they were doing and asking for money, he took the initiative to press for a bill that would give them money.
Republicans on the other hand lie and distort, because if they told the truth nobody would vote for them.
"The fact that it could have been very straightforward and standardized suggests that the process is difficult because it is in the Rep's interest to make it difficult. "
Yes, but then that would have required purchasing software supporting Zip+4 address lookup, which means they'd need funding. And it's not a one time purchase either, Zip+4 databases are quarterly subscriptions.
If you've never worked in Government before, getting funding to do something automated that can be done manually is extremely difficult. They'd be more likely to hire someone to sit on the other end of the web page and look it up in a book then to purchase a database.
As much as I'm into technology, kids will learn material far better by reading a book, listening to a lecture, and doing the homework. I don't even agree with the use of calculators prior to high school.
Most computers purchased for educational use are simply wasted money. Same with televisions and other audio-video equipment.
Yeah yeah, I know... keep the kids engaged. Whatever, you can also keep the kids engaged by having a teacher who knows what the fuck they are talking about and thus make the class interesting. Best class I ever had in high school was World History my junior year. Not one film strip, not one movie, not one poster. We read books and the teacher lectured and not one person in that class left without knowing what the Magna Carta meant or what year it was signed.
Ok, I don't think you are understanding. Maybe I was being a bit obtuse in my writing, anyway I thought the little brother example would have made it clear but maybe in Australia you don't pick on little brothers.
The guy was complaining because the US citizens didn't respond to criticism well. My point was, can you really blame them?
In the US we nitpick each other all the time. We have long drawn out battles, at times these have even resulted in shooting at one another in wars. But if Canada had decided to invade the US during the Civil War, I'll bet you $20 that the two sides would have forgotten their differences for a short enough period of time to kick the Canadians back out of our country.
The same exact thing happened in China when Japan invaded during WWII... The Chinese abandoned their civil war and turned their attention to attacking the Japanese.
Germany and France have much stronger support for Freedom of the Press, according to yesterday's article.
What was interesting was the bias this report introduced, as they considered Freedom to be how free someone was to publish stuff which wasn't currently outlawed by the government.
I'm not clear why you think the S&L scandal did not receive decent coverage here in the states, as it was pretty much all over the news back 12 years ago when it happened.
But the news media today is fairly weak. They don't go into much depth, and they don't report on interesting international events.
Largely this has to do with ratings. They only report things people want to hear about, in a way they want to hear about it. Thus they make giant scandals out of shark attacks and other nonsense. This phenomena all coinciding with our right-wing whackos running around daily claiming the news media had a liberal bias. I think the news media unfortunately believes this BS and started backing away from stories.
You definately see it now with CNN, as they are trying to compete with Fox News for the populist audience.:(
As an American, I have the right to criticize my country and my government.
If you are not an American, you do not have that right.
Your user info indicates you are from Sweden, and maybe you just don't understand the rules yet. It's sort of like being the older brother in a family. It's ok for you to pick on your younger brother, but it's not ok for the neighbor kid to do so.
Bizarre. I care about quality, which is probably why I'm not interested in using CD-R for video recording. I've been experimenting lately with recording video from my WinTV card to my harddrive, and in order to get reasonable quality I need to record at around 640x480 streaming at somewhere around 4 Mbps. That results in about 2 Gigs for a one hour program.
Can you fit 2 Gigs on a single CD-R? Didn't think so. What I could fit on a CD-R would look like crap on my 51" HDTV set.
As far as the Microsoft comment. The sad thing is, as poor quality as software is these days Microsoft software is higher quality then the competition.
"So, don't jump to conclusions before you know the whole story."
I don't care what the justification is. You cannot have Freedom of the Press if you outlaw the printed expression of certain viewpoints, no matter how much you disagree with those viewpoints.
That's why I found it quite odd to see Germany and France listed above the US when they do not have Freedom of the Press.
"Well, that depends on whether you consider Mein Kampf to be journalism or some other work. "
Actually no it doesn't depend upon that.
"as I pointed out, it's about the freedoms of journalists"
Then it isn't about Freedom of the Press, so the title is incredibly disceiving.
As I said, they don't understand what "Freedom of the Press" means. It doesn't mean Journalism, it means printing PRESS as in printing anything and everything. A listing showing which countries banned printed materials would be far more interesting, and I would be surprised if it did not result in the US being #1.
I call it America-bashing, because the criteria was obviously weighted such that the US would not do well.
BTW, the moderation attempt to censor my opposing opinion pretty much proves my point. How can you be for freedom of the press when opposing positions must be censored?
Slashdot Mirror
"Microsoft couldn't bundle the card with their OS..."
Sure they could. Just throw it in the box with the OS, same as bundling any other product.
"If you choke somebody so they don't have any R&D money left to develop the thing, what else can you do?"
Choke? Microsoft didn't choke Netscape... Netscape was one of the first dot-bombs... they blew through their financing like it was candy.
"Remember Netscape used to sell their browser for commercial use."
Maybe so, but they encouraged people to download it for free and never really were in a position to obtain money for the browser. Andreesen in his usenet postings said that Netscape intended on giving the browser away for free, and making money on the servers. Mosaic was always free.
"Microsoft just bundled it with their OS (for which you have to pay so they got $$$ anyway)."
Bundling assumes that it was a seperate product to begin with. It was simply an enhancement to the OS, from the start. I'll simply point out that No operating system on the market today is sold without a web browser included, obviously indicating that being able to view HTML is a fundamental feature that consumers are expecting.
Besides, Netscape was going to make their money by selling the server. If you'll remember correctly they started off by breaking whatever HTML common standards there were by locking their client to the server. That is, in order to get some of the advanced features of the server to work, you had to use their client. (I recall they introduced forms in this manner)
This is why IE still to this day uses the word Mozilla in it's browser tag, because early versions of IE 2 and IE 3 had to pretend to be a Netscape browser so that the server would let them work.
Basic problem was Netscape hadn't really thought out their business model very well.
"Remember that the last DOJ probe into Microsoft was derailed by the change from Clinton to Bush"
Actually no. It was derailed by the Appeals court overturning Judge Jackson's conclusions of law.
Clinton/Bush wouldn't have mattered... the case brought by the DOJ was fundamentally flawed(They should never have focused on Netscape), and Jackson didn't help matters with his obvious ineptitude and bias.
Movies are a luxury item.
You make it sound as though they are a life necessity more important than food, clothing or shelter.
There's nothing in the ruling that prohibits a company from licensing the information from Microsoft and selling a version for Linux.
That you won't get the resulting product for free is irrelevant to creating genuine competition in the marketplace. The important point is that the capability for interoperation exists.
I think it's high time the open source "community" wake up and start supporting the software marketplace instead of trying to tear it down.
"This "reasonable and non-discrimantor" rule allows for charging of royalties and restricting distribution and sub-licensing of the intellectual property."
This is a choice that people who adopt Open Source software have willfully made. That is, they feel having the source code and free distribution rights is far more important than having functionality.
You cannot blame Microsoft for your own choices.
The same choice is also what has created the problem of a lack of hardware drivers for Linux. In some cases they exist, but only as binaries. If you don't like that, then you are free to not use them.
"It seems to me that it's not fair to change the rules in the middle of the game."
Ok, on the surface this sounds like a valid argument, it even has a certain liberal tone to it.
But who are you being fair to? Candidates, or the voters?
It sounds like you think we should be fair to the candidate, that he entered the race expecting to compete against Mr. White... but now Mr. White has dropped out. So Mr. Pink steps up to the plate. Well that's not fair because our anti-White candidate doesn't know how to compete against Mr. Pink?
That's not fairness, that's simply incompetence on the part of the anti-White candidate.
Exactly how was the NJ decision a "political" decision?
Ruling in strict adherence to the law would have meant that the law trumped the voter's rights. Is that what you want? Is that what the Justices want? Such a decision would be pretty damn partisan if you ask me.
By bending the law slightly, they threw the decision back into the hands of the voters where it rightfully belongs. This is one of the fundamental purposes of a Democracy.
I'm from Minnesota, and as such we're pretty familiar with this issue. We've lost candidates twice now in the past 15 years only two weeks prior to an election. Once because the IR candidate for Governor dropped out when it was found he engaged in pedophilia, and then again just this past week when our DFL Senator died in a plane crash.
BTW, our Minnesota Court just overturned an election law to provide absentee voters a chance to vote. Due to time constraints it's probably not going to be very practical, but it was the intent that counted. The law was in place so that voters wouldn't play games, but in this case the circumstances were outside of the voters control and it was unfair to penalize them for that.
"The thing is Microsoft can just kill ANY software product that needs a profit to survive."
It's interesting because we obviously have the example of Quicken.
Maybe Intuit's Quicken doesn't suck? Could that be the difference between them and Netscape?
"But I don't love them leveraging that so wipe competition."
Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up and knows that it will have to outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
And, every morning in Africa a lion wakes up and knows that it will have to outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
So, in Africa, it doesn't matter if you are the lion or the gazelle. When that sun comes up, you had better be running.
The very thing you want to prevent is actually what we call competition.
I actually read the report, and am familiar with the Loadrunner tool they used.
.Net to show the difference.
.NET.
.NET is also designed for distributed computing.
1. They tested both version 1.0 and 1.1 of
2. They actually used Windows 2000 machines for J2EE, it's mentioned on Page 15. They stated they benchmarked both linux and Win2k, and then picked the best result. For App server A, Win2k performned better. For App server B, they were both the same(i.e. equally bad from the looks of the results).
3. I encourage you to rewrite the app using this new technology and run some benchmarks to prove your hypothesis.
4. The people running the benchmark were familiar with the J2EE world and did involve other experts to aid in tuning both J2EE and
5. According to the test lab configuration on Page 12, there were two Proliant 8500s for the database servers and another 8500 for the web/app server. I'm going to assume you meant web and app on the same server, or you just don't know how to design n-tier apps. BTW,
6. Except for the Middleware group's experts. Check their website, they are a well regarded Java training/consulting company.
I remember the same type of outrage when the Mindcraft benchmark showed IIS faster than Apache. Everybody claimed they were biased, they did it wrong, whatever.
The truth was... They were right, and some intelligent people in the Linux community looked at the bottlenecks and tried to fix them.
Great. Now how are you going to prove this point?
You certainly can't through theft of their property, for in so doing you succumb to their rules.
Like I said, the only way to fight this issue is to spend your money on the alternatives. Then the industry will look at it and say "Well if we could attract these guys back we could make $X billion".
I heard a song the other day by someone named Norah Jones which I very much liked. I decided to stop by Best Buy and buy it. The CD cost me $11.99.
Then I was looking at the list of upcoming releases, and thought I'd stop back next week and buy the new Tori Amos album. It too is only $11.99.
Then I thought of a couple of other albums I didn't yet have I wanted. For instance "Heart Shaped World" by Chris Isaak, I checked and it is $9.99. Also "Warning:" by Green Day, I checked and it is $15.99.(Wow that's the first one I've seen close to your price range)
Then I thought... You know, I really need to broaden my horizons and stop listening to off beat music and pick up some top-40. So I looked up the latest album from Eminem. I found it for $12.99. Then I decided to find Pink, her album is $13.99.
I've been buying music since 1987 when I purchased my first CD player. Back then the first CD I bought was the Top Gun Soundtrack, and I paid $16.99 for it. Now if you go look at the historical value of the dollar, you'd find that $16.99 in 1987 is worth $26.48 today. But I'm not paying $26 for my music, I'm paying an average $12-14 for it, or about half the price. You should also note that in 1987 I could buy a Cassette for about $6-7, today they are $10.
Basically it seems like you have two problems.
First, you don't understand what the value of money really means. In 1987 I was working as a student and receiving $4/hour. Want to take a guess as to how much students receive now for working on campus?(Try $8-10/hour) It's called inflation, go look it up.
Second, if you are paying $16-20 for your CDs, then you are a really really stupid consumer and PT Barnum was correct. There are many places to buy music cheaper than that.
And as far as DVDs go... You know what, just quit yer whining and go back to playing Nintendo. (BTW, want to take a guess as to what I paid for Atari 2600 video cartridges?)
I think you need to ask yourself... What is it that you really want?
The Bolshevik's had a purpose behind their revolution. They knew what they were trying to accomplish when they set out. What I hear being argued here is that you want to hurt the music industry, and your going to do so by stealing the music that they market to you.
You've already lost this argument as long as you keep consuming the music that has been marketed towards you. You don't effect change in a capitalist society through theft. You effect change by spending your money on alternative products.
Money is the motivator. Nobody is going to change their business model unless they see a profit opportunity. You can't explain to them that there is a profit opportunity through words, either... You have to show it.
Start buying all your music from mp3.com, then you'll have a point to make.
"However, an improvement from 0.01 acceptable to 0.5 acceptable isn't going to impress anyone, even if it's a 50-fold improvement. "
r es s_releases/USBank-release.html
Is this sort of like the reporting that Linux has gone from 1 user to 50 users, representing a 5000% increase in marketshare?
"Insecurity. Sure, MS is currently putting lots of money into securing all their products, but the only reason this huge drive was nesescary is that most any MS product is shock-full of security holes! "
Of course the sad fact is... all software is shock-full of security holes. Only Microsoft seems to be receiving criticism for it, and so they are doing something about it.
"Breaches of privacy. MS is all for BoP! Hell, that's their middle name! They do everything they can to screw over their customers any way they can! "
This is where this gets strange. There have been lot's of accusations over the years. Ever since the Win95 beta asked to send information about your system during the registration process. But there's never been any proof that Microsoft has violated any consumer privacy. Rather they seem to do their utmost to insure that they are not collected personal information. Even the Windows XP activation does not require you to register the product with your name/address.
Microsoft is one of the few companies I've ever given my address to that has not turned around and sold it to someone else. One of the advantages of giving slight variations on your address when registering or subscribing.
There's plenty of real examples of companies that violate privacy... Just read the news.
http://www.state.ia.us/government/ag/consumer/p
It just seems a shame to attack a company for trying to do the right thing, while ignoring companies who are flagarant violators. It dilutes your entire argument.
"So just HOW do you suppose the GOP managed to fake Algore blatantly stating to Larry King that he invented the internet?"
Simple. He never said that.
Another lie that started out from the Republicans was to claim Al Gore discovered the Love Canal. This came out after a meeting Gore had with some children at a school. The Children themselves came out and confirmed the Republicans were lying.
Senators don't invent or discover. They listen and react. In the case of Al Gore when the scientists came showing what they were doing and asking for money, he took the initiative to press for a bill that would give them money.
Republicans on the other hand lie and distort, because if they told the truth nobody would vote for them.
"The fact that it could have been very straightforward and standardized suggests that the process is difficult because it is in the Rep's interest to make it difficult. "
Yes, but then that would have required purchasing software supporting Zip+4 address lookup, which means they'd need funding. And it's not a one time purchase either, Zip+4 databases are quarterly subscriptions.
If you've never worked in Government before, getting funding to do something automated that can be done manually is extremely difficult. They'd be more likely to hire someone to sit on the other end of the web page and look it up in a book then to purchase a database.
They need books and teaching.
As much as I'm into technology, kids will learn material far better by reading a book, listening to a lecture, and doing the homework. I don't even agree with the use of calculators prior to high school.
Most computers purchased for educational use are simply wasted money. Same with televisions and other audio-video equipment.
Yeah yeah, I know... keep the kids engaged. Whatever, you can also keep the kids engaged by having a teacher who knows what the fuck they are talking about and thus make the class interesting. Best class I ever had in high school was World History my junior year. Not one film strip, not one movie, not one poster. We read books and the teacher lectured and not one person in that class left without knowing what the Magna Carta meant or what year it was signed.
Ok, I don't think you are understanding. Maybe I was being a bit obtuse in my writing, anyway I thought the little brother example would have made it clear but maybe in Australia you don't pick on little brothers.
The guy was complaining because the US citizens didn't respond to criticism well. My point was, can you really blame them?
In the US we nitpick each other all the time. We have long drawn out battles, at times these have even resulted in shooting at one another in wars. But if Canada had decided to invade the US during the Civil War, I'll bet you $20 that the two sides would have forgotten their differences for a short enough period of time to kick the Canadians back out of our country.
The same exact thing happened in China when Japan invaded during WWII... The Chinese abandoned their civil war and turned their attention to attacking the Japanese.
Germany and France have much stronger support for Freedom of the Press, according to yesterday's article.
What was interesting was the bias this report introduced, as they considered Freedom to be how free someone was to publish stuff which wasn't currently outlawed by the government.
Another thing that makes you go hmmm...
You're right, to a certain degree.
:(
I'm not clear why you think the S&L scandal did not receive decent coverage here in the states, as it was pretty much all over the news back 12 years ago when it happened.
But the news media today is fairly weak. They don't go into much depth, and they don't report on interesting international events.
Largely this has to do with ratings. They only report things people want to hear about, in a way they want to hear about it. Thus they make giant scandals out of shark attacks and other nonsense. This phenomena all coinciding with our right-wing whackos running around daily claiming the news media had a liberal bias. I think the news media unfortunately believes this BS and started backing away from stories.
You definately see it now with CNN, as they are trying to compete with Fox News for the populist audience.
It's pretty simple.
As an American, I have the right to criticize my country and my government.
If you are not an American, you do not have that right.
Your user info indicates you are from Sweden, and maybe you just don't understand the rules yet. It's sort of like being the older brother in a family. It's ok for you to pick on your younger brother, but it's not ok for the neighbor kid to do so.
Bizarre. I care about quality, which is probably why I'm not interested in using CD-R for video recording. I've been experimenting lately with recording video from my WinTV card to my harddrive, and in order to get reasonable quality I need to record at around 640x480 streaming at somewhere around 4 Mbps. That results in about 2 Gigs for a one hour program.
Can you fit 2 Gigs on a single CD-R? Didn't think so. What I could fit on a CD-R would look like crap on my 51" HDTV set.
As far as the Microsoft comment. The sad thing is, as poor quality as software is these days Microsoft software is higher quality then the competition.
"So, don't jump to conclusions before you know the whole story."
I don't care what the justification is. You cannot have Freedom of the Press if you outlaw the printed expression of certain viewpoints, no matter how much you disagree with those viewpoints.
That's why I found it quite odd to see Germany and France listed above the US when they do not have Freedom of the Press.
"The original is worthless if the secret modification is the standard."
How did it become the standard? Obviously to do so it must offer something which is compelling in the market place.
"His fear is not irrational in any way. You are irrational."
Interesting, but you still don't address the point as to how you lose the original work.
"Well, that depends on whether you consider Mein Kampf to be journalism or some other work. "
Actually no it doesn't depend upon that.
"as I pointed out, it's about the freedoms of journalists"
Then it isn't about Freedom of the Press, so the title is incredibly disceiving.
As I said, they don't understand what "Freedom of the Press" means. It doesn't mean Journalism, it means printing PRESS as in printing anything and everything. A listing showing which countries banned printed materials would be far more interesting, and I would be surprised if it did not result in the US being #1.
I call it America-bashing, because the criteria was obviously weighted such that the US would not do well.
BTW, the moderation attempt to censor my opposing opinion pretty much proves my point. How can you be for freedom of the press when opposing positions must be censored?
Try to buy a copy of Mein Kampf in Germany, next time you are over there.
The authors of this list obviously do not understand what Freedom of the Press means.