This company pays only 1.8% in federal taxes! Why is noboby outraged? Im from Russia so honestly I dont give a damn
You probably should give a damn, a large quantity of money is flowing out of Russia to enrich a foreign corporation which dosn't even pay its fair share of taxes.
you Americans should be taking to the street. Shit like this doesnt fly in Russia. If companies this big didnt pay taxes here their CEO's would be found with their throats cut.I mean that literally.They would be killed by our FSB friends.
If the situation were reversed and Americans were paying lots of money to a Russian corporation which paid the same level of taxes then those CEOs would be asking to be arrested, for protection against the CIA.
Firestone would tell Ford that they have to outfit everything with firestone tires. Then Ford would put out a bid to the other manufacturers to provide a replacement for Firestone's tire. One of them would undercut Firestone, if for no other reason, than to keep them from taking over Ford's tires, and that'd be that. This is what happens in a competitive market, unlike what we see in the O/S market.
Of course Firestone would never try this, because they'd be throwing away a contract to supply Ford and thus wind up sued by their shareholders. In a competitive market suppliers take what they can get. Since the customer tends to be in a more powerful position.
Imagine the same action taken by a large publisher in the bookselling industry.
Barnes and Noble: "Our contract with HarperCollins stipulates we can no longer sell blank journals or college ruled notebooks. Customers will have the following options:
1. Purchase a book published by HarperCollins.
2. Purchase a book published by another publisher.
For the analogy to hold option 2 probably wouldn't exist. With books, which are physical items volume discounts actually make sense. But what are Microsoft actually selling? It's more of an abstract permission to use but a permission to the "End User". Who may be several steps removed from their "sale" to the OEM (assuming Microsoft actually ship anything to OEMs now). The whole idea behind selling EULAs associated with retail products is very strange when you look at it (and it gets even stranger when the customer is a corporate entity). Also Microsoft try and have their cake and eat it. In that they foist customer support onto the OEM. Even where the customer has no connection to them through the usual path of a retail contract.
Many times, apps that have a naturally small display can use the resolution set down to make them fill the screen. Good examples are emulators and TV tuner apps (fundamentally limited to the 525 lines of the NTSC standard),
How many lines are actually displayed here? Also NTSC is a colour encoding standard, the number of lines predates it and it is prefectly possible to use NTSC on a 625 line picture or PAL or SECAM on a 525 line picture. Anyway with Linux it's possible to have both custom screen sizes and to choose which screen sizes are available to the end user. With Windows you are stuck with what the driver writer thinks is appropriate and if the monitor dosn't quite plug and play correctly you can end up with a pile of modes it cannot display.
Sure, but what they should do is save in the oldest format that covers all the features you actually used in the document.
Or ever an administrator set option for the default format. As well as an option of the form "if the file was in this format when opened than by default save it in this format".
You can get away with that with Win9x (it'll redetect all hardware, reboot, and let you get on with life),
Sometimes it will, other times it will sulk or even BSOD. Depends on the exact combination of hardware in question. Also if the Windows set up files are on the HDD or not. In the latter case it can easily wind up doing a "chicken and egg" with CDROM or network drivers.
Why are everyone's views of the US so schizophrenic? First, we're imperialists, then we're isolationists, then we're forcing our laws on everyone else. I think you all need to get together and figure out what the frick you actually think about the US instead of contradicting each other.
The US government is highly imperialistic. US based transnational corporations are also rather imperialistic. The vast bulk of the US populaation tend towards being isolationists. Hence the apparent contradition.
The current problem about DMCA and EUCD is due to the WIPO treaty signed in 1996. These laws have been signed by our executive chiefs, US one and European ones.
However who lobbied for and quite possibly wrote the treaty? Most of whom appear to been in the US.
But it's true we (french) have another conception of author's rights. We do not call this copyright but "le droit d'auteur" (the author's right).
This includes things which do not translate into other copyright laws, such as those in the US. So much for the claims of "harmonization".
Yes, learning another language is mandated in public schools (at least in New York state). You have to realize that learning another language (and overwhelmingly almost all european languages!) isn't as important in N. America.
When did Canadian French and American Spanish cease to be spoken in North America?
Second, while it is true that the US may not be the only country in which politicians follow agendas that may be in contrast with the will of the public, it is nonetheless the case that politicians in the US are extravagantly prone to imposing unwarranted restrictions on technologies of this kind.
It's easier to lobby when you only have 2 political parties to persaude that your POV is the right one. AFAIK there are no transnational political parties represented in the European Parliment.
Libertarians (and anarchists:) tend to oppose just about any regulation of the internet, and particularly even "mild" limits on speech, this which the author of this article favors.
Conservative congressmen write things like the DMCA and this P2P hacking garbage, which he also opposes.
I recall seeing a model of political position which used left/right as one axis and libertarian/authoritarian as a different axis. Which can make a whole lot more sense than the usual one dimensional thinking.
European military forces were doing their fair share around the world (unless you count threats to remove foreign leaders because you happen not to like them,
The new development is the US actually announcing they intend doing this. Previously they just did it, in the case of Chile or tried and failed, in the case of Cuba.
European governments do not throw their weight around the way the current US administration does.
Except for the UK government. At the request of the US, often opposed by the British people, press and even a good portion of parliment.
but the large corperations who own 95% of the internet traffic's eyeballs can certainly push a, for example, free-market WTO-approved political mindset and sell it to people inside the borders of another country via their slant on world issues and news.
I doubt the kind of market these corporates want is in any way shape or form "free".
Their constitution, which I consider the best among those I've seen, guarantees the right for the public to challenge government-proposed laws by collecting a certain number of signatures. The government is then constitutionally required to hold a binding referendum. This applies to all laws, federal and local. The public can also create their own laws in the same manner, and the government doesn't have the power to stop them. Truly elegant. I wish we had the same in the EU.
Would this work in a country much larger than Switzerland? AFAIK no one is complaining about lack of effective democracy in Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxenberg anyway.
Switzerland is a member of WIPO though, and thus will most likely not be spared. I don't know how the initiative and referendum laws deal with international treaties.
Assuming a DMCA like law is the only way to cover the WIPO treaty. Which self evidently isn't the case, since the treaty is considerably shorter and easier to understand than the volume the US Congress managed to pass.
As for choice A and B, countries with a parliamentary system typically at least have a choice of A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.
Quite often in the latter case choices H, I & J can appear fairly quickly. As was recently demonstrated in the Netherlands. There is however the apparent paradox that the larger the country the fewer the number of candidates available to voters.
But that doesn't come close to citizens having ultimate power over each and ever law, like in Switzerland, obviously.
This isn't the only way in Switzerland differs from the rest of Europe though.
I just hope it will take a lot longer to adopt that law, and I will fight it with tooth and nail if I must. Dutch politics is pretty immune to lobbying. Unlike the UK and the USA, we have a multi-party (that is, more than 2) 'democracy'.
Possibly more important is that new Dutch political parties can come from nowhere and get candidates elected. Which is practically impossible in the US since any such party would simply be ignored by the mainstream media. It is somewhat more possible in the UK because of strict rules on the impartiality of the media in covering political parties.
Of course the fault lies with the citizens. To take an example from the US, only something like 35% of *registered* voters actually voted in the last major election (I can't remember the actual numbers, but I know they were much lower than 50%). How many of those are uninformed and/or believe everything they hear on TV instead of actually researching what they are voting on and who they are voting for? Maybe 50%? So, only ~17% of the registered voters in the US made informed decisions as to how are government would be run for the next 2-4 years.
It's quite possible that a proportion of those who do not vote do so because they are informed. If all of the candidates have a position opposed to that of the voter which candidate should they vote for?
How is it spyware if they tell you it's sending data to the copyright holder?
More likely it's actually communicating with a central service. With that service (allegedly) informing the copyright owner. Since the file itself cannot possibly know who it's current copyright owner might be.
This is why the US has BILLIONS to give to nations crippled by socialism and communism.
Assuming the US actually has that money in the first place. The US currently has a budget deficit measured in the trillions of dollers. Also the first time I have heard Israel described as "crippled by socialism and communism."
This is why any time there is a problem in the Middle East, the World looks to the US.
Not usually to provide money, probably more often top stop providing money.
My understanding is that should the games or DVDs you are buying today ever reach the public domain,
The only way these are likely to have much chance of getting into the public domain is if someone had broken the DMCA at some point or other. Since the lifespan of the media is less than the current length of copyright. Also AFAIK there is no "copyright library" or obligation on the publisher to keep an archive copy when it comes to games and DVDs.
This is why the founding fathers were a bit more radical than they are given credit for.
"A bit more" should probably read "a lot more". Were these people around today they would probably be called "communists", "anarchists" and even "terrorists".
They would not have agreed with the statement "If Congress passes a law, then it stands as the law of the land no matter what."
But might wonder exactly what was going on in both houses of Congress....
If the law attempts to abridge your God given rights,
Not all of these people were Christian, so they'd probably say "inate" rather than "God given".
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This company pays only 1.8% in federal taxes! Why is noboby outraged? Im from Russia so honestly I dont give a damn
You probably should give a damn, a large quantity of money is flowing out of Russia to enrich a foreign corporation which dosn't even pay its fair share of taxes.
you Americans should be taking to the street. Shit like this doesnt fly in Russia. If companies this big didnt pay taxes here their CEO's would be found with their throats cut.I mean that literally.They would be killed by our FSB friends.
If the situation were reversed and Americans were paying lots of money to a Russian corporation which paid the same level of taxes then those CEOs would be asking to be arrested, for protection against the CIA.
Firestone would tell Ford that they have to outfit everything with firestone tires. Then Ford would put out a bid to the other manufacturers to provide a replacement for Firestone's tire. One of them would undercut Firestone, if for no other reason, than to keep them from taking over Ford's tires, and that'd be that. This is what happens in a competitive market, unlike what we see in the O/S market.
Of course Firestone would never try this, because they'd be throwing away a contract to supply Ford and thus wind up sued by their shareholders. In a competitive market suppliers take what they can get. Since the customer tends to be in a more powerful position.
Imagine the same action taken by a large publisher in the bookselling industry.
Barnes and Noble: "Our contract with HarperCollins stipulates we can no longer sell blank journals or college ruled notebooks. Customers will have the following options:
1. Purchase a book published by HarperCollins. 2. Purchase a book published by another publisher.
For the analogy to hold option 2 probably wouldn't exist.
With books, which are physical items volume discounts actually make sense.
But what are Microsoft actually selling? It's more of an abstract permission to use but a permission to the "End User". Who may be several steps removed from their "sale" to the OEM (assuming Microsoft actually ship anything to OEMs now). The whole idea behind selling EULAs associated with retail products is very strange when you look at it (and it gets even stranger when the customer is a corporate entity). Also Microsoft try and have their cake and eat it. In that they foist customer support onto the OEM. Even where the customer has no connection to them through the usual path of a retail contract.
Many times, apps that have a naturally small display can use the resolution set down to make them fill the screen. Good examples are emulators and TV tuner apps (fundamentally limited to the 525 lines of the NTSC standard),
How many lines are actually displayed here? Also NTSC is a colour encoding standard, the number of lines predates it and it is prefectly possible to use NTSC on a 625 line picture or PAL or SECAM on a 525 line picture.
Anyway with Linux it's possible to have both custom screen sizes and to choose which screen sizes are available to the end user. With Windows you are stuck with what the driver writer thinks is appropriate and if the monitor dosn't quite plug and play correctly you can end up with a pile of modes it cannot display.
About the only one of those three that MS-Windos has over linux would be the ability to switch display modes quickly.
I think most people would find CTRL-ALT-Plus and CTRL-ALT-Minus quicker than anything using a mouse.
Have you ever tried swapping motherboards on Windows? How much hair did you lose? Try doing it with Linux.. It's almost painless.
The only kind of OS where something like this is very painful is Windows.
Sure, but what they should do is save in the oldest format that covers all the features you actually used in the document.
Or ever an administrator set option for the default format. As well as an option of the form "if the file was in this format when opened than by default save it in this format".
You can get away with that with Win9x (it'll redetect all hardware, reboot, and let you get on with life),
Sometimes it will, other times it will sulk or even BSOD. Depends on the exact combination of hardware in question. Also if the Windows set up files are on the HDD or not. In the latter case it can easily wind up doing a "chicken and egg" with CDROM or network drivers.
BeOS didn't have software, because Microsoft threatened to yank windows licenses completely from any OEM that dared sell a BeOS system.
Which is exactly the same issue as appears to apply to Dell now.
Why are everyone's views of the US so schizophrenic? First, we're imperialists, then we're isolationists, then we're forcing our laws on everyone else. I think you all need to get together and figure out what the frick you actually think about the US instead of contradicting each other.
The US government is highly imperialistic. US based transnational corporations are also rather imperialistic. The vast bulk of the US populaation tend towards being isolationists. Hence the apparent contradition.
With the US becoming more and more isolationist over time, it's hardly surprising others are reacting in the same way.
Thing is that whilst the US population is fairly isolationist the US government is anything but.
The current problem about DMCA and EUCD is due to the WIPO treaty signed in 1996. These laws have been signed by our executive chiefs, US one and European ones.
However who lobbied for and quite possibly wrote the treaty? Most of whom appear to been in the US.
But it's true we (french) have another conception of author's rights. We do not call this copyright but "le droit d'auteur" (the author's right).
This includes things which do not translate into other copyright laws, such as those in the US. So much for the claims of "harmonization".
Yes, learning another language is mandated in public schools (at least in New York state). You have to realize that learning another language (and overwhelmingly almost all european languages!) isn't as important in N. America.
When did Canadian French and American Spanish cease to be spoken in North America?
Second, while it is true that the US may not be the only country in which politicians follow agendas that may be in contrast with the will of the public, it is nonetheless the case that politicians in the US are extravagantly prone to imposing unwarranted restrictions on technologies of this kind.
It's easier to lobby when you only have 2 political parties to persaude that your POV is the right one. AFAIK there are no transnational political parties represented in the European Parliment.
Libertarians (and anarchists :) tend to oppose just about any regulation of the internet, and particularly even "mild" limits on speech, this which the author of this article favors.
Conservative congressmen write things like the DMCA and this P2P hacking garbage, which he also opposes.
I recall seeing a model of political position which used left/right as one axis and libertarian/authoritarian as a different axis. Which can make a whole lot more sense than the usual one dimensional thinking.
European military forces were doing their fair share around the world (unless you count threats to remove foreign leaders because you happen not to like them,
The new development is the US actually announcing they intend doing this. Previously they just did it, in the case of Chile or tried and failed, in the case of Cuba.
European governments do not throw their weight around the way the current US administration does.
Except for the UK government. At the request of the US, often opposed by the British people, press and even a good portion of parliment.
but the large corperations who own 95% of the internet traffic's eyeballs can certainly push a, for example, free-market WTO-approved political mindset and sell it to people inside the borders of another country via their slant on world issues and news.
I doubt the kind of market these corporates want is in any way shape or form "free".
Their constitution, which I consider the best among those I've seen, guarantees the right for the public to challenge government-proposed laws by collecting a certain number of signatures. The government is then constitutionally required to hold a binding referendum. This applies to all laws, federal and local. The public can also create their own laws in the same manner, and the government doesn't have the power to stop them. Truly elegant. I wish we had the same in the EU.
Would this work in a country much larger than Switzerland? AFAIK no one is complaining about lack of effective democracy in Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxenberg anyway.
Switzerland is a member of WIPO though, and thus will most likely not be spared. I don't know how the initiative and referendum laws deal with international treaties.
Assuming a DMCA like law is the only way to cover the WIPO treaty. Which self evidently isn't the case, since the treaty is considerably shorter and easier to understand than the volume the US Congress managed to pass.
As for choice A and B, countries with a parliamentary system typically at least have a choice of A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.
Quite often in the latter case choices H, I & J can appear fairly quickly. As was recently demonstrated in the Netherlands. There is however the apparent paradox that the larger the country the fewer the number of candidates available to voters.
But that doesn't come close to citizens having ultimate power over each and ever law, like in Switzerland, obviously.
This isn't the only way in Switzerland differs from the rest of Europe though.
I just hope it will take a lot longer to adopt that law, and I will fight it with tooth and nail if I must. Dutch politics is pretty immune to lobbying. Unlike the UK and the USA, we have a multi-party (that is, more than 2) 'democracy'.
Possibly more important is that new Dutch political parties can come from nowhere and get candidates elected.
Which is practically impossible in the US since any such party would simply be ignored by the mainstream media. It is somewhat more possible in the UK because of strict rules on the impartiality of the media in covering political parties.
Of course the fault lies with the citizens. To take an example from the US, only something like 35% of *registered* voters actually voted in the last major election (I can't remember the actual numbers, but I know they were much lower than 50%). How many of those are uninformed and/or believe everything they hear on TV instead of actually researching what they are voting on and who they are voting for? Maybe 50%? So, only ~17% of the registered voters in the US made informed decisions as to how are government would be run for the next 2-4 years.
It's quite possible that a proportion of those who do not vote do so because they are informed. If all of the candidates have a position opposed to that of the voter which candidate should they vote for?
How is it spyware if they tell you it's sending data to the copyright holder?
More likely it's actually communicating with a central service. With that service (allegedly) informing the copyright owner. Since the file itself cannot possibly know who it's current copyright owner might be.
This is why the US has BILLIONS to give to nations crippled by socialism and communism.
Assuming the US actually has that money in the first place. The US currently has a budget deficit measured in the trillions of dollers. Also the first time I have heard Israel described as "crippled by socialism and communism."
This is why any time there is a problem in the Middle East, the World looks to the US.
Not usually to provide money, probably more often top stop providing money.
6K shower curtains, 5 million beachfront properties....19 million in "forgiven" loans...
:)
The beachfront properties probably also have very nice telephone systems
I've never read the full text of the DMCA (It's convoluted legalese and it's boring),
Apparenly the people who passed never actually read it all either.
My understanding is that should the games or DVDs you are buying today ever reach the public domain,
The only way these are likely to have much chance of getting into the public domain is if someone had broken the DMCA at some point or other. Since the lifespan of the media is less than the current length of copyright. Also AFAIK there is no "copyright library" or obligation on the publisher to keep an archive copy when it comes to games and DVDs.
This is why the founding fathers were a bit more radical than they are given credit for.
"A bit more" should probably read "a lot more". Were these people around today they would probably be called "communists", "anarchists" and even "terrorists".
They would not have agreed with the statement "If Congress passes a law, then it stands as the law of the land no matter what."
But might wonder exactly what was going on in both houses of Congress....
If the law attempts to abridge your God given rights,
Not all of these people were Christian, so they'd probably say "inate" rather than "God given".