As can be seen from the lawyer responce (the "concerning using crowdfunding to finance a project [PDF; Finnish]" link in Summary, while asking for money while giving nothing in return in Finland requires a license, on Kickstarter, people submitting money are actually making a pre-order of a product (the book in question), so that particular law does not apply.
You don't have to have a monopoly to be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Microsoft didn't have one, nor Nintendo when for "blocking competitive software from being sold" on the NES.
Except that Microsoft DID have a monopoly and afaik, Nintento won that suit.
Since when is anti-competitive behavior legal? Every antitrust suit that has been filed was for anti-competitive behavior.
If all anti-competitive behaviour was illegal, the first wave of suits would come directly at the federal goverment of the USA, since various subsidies, protectionism, tariffs and quotas all qualify as anti-competitive behaviour.
'As a matter of fact, to beat Apple, it has to work really well on Apple devices."
So what happens when it starts doing "too well" and gets banned from the AppStore for violating it's guidelines?
The DoJ will start looking at Apple for anti-competitive behavior. It's one thing to screw over a bunch of tiny App developers with your capricious and arbitrary rules, but quite another to screw over the second largest technology company in the world.
Anti-competitive behavior is perfectly legal, abusing monopoly powers isn't and Apple does not have a monopoly on smartphones (you could argue they do have a monopoly on tablets though). In fact, App Store guidelines specifically state that apps that directly re-implement a feature already offered by Apple are forbidden. The fact that there are popular apps on the App Store that do this simply means that Apple either hasn't had a pressing need or the guts (due to potential backlash) to shut them down, but they absolutely and definately can and it would be perfectly legal.
Microsoft did a similar thing with DirectX for graphics: They kept bringing out new versions which were incompatible with old versions, and it kept demanding rewrites.
Sorry, Jamie: your company has become largely a parasite. For the average American, you provide no more benefit than 10 banks 1/10th your size: when you get so big, you have negative economies-of-scale.
You have it backwards. Being Too Big To Fail is a fantastic benefit (for a bank) for being big.
The third world will carry on starving until they have enough education to limit the number of children they have, but the EU will just keep transferring money from the rich to subsidy for farm animal meat for the rest of us.
How naive. What do you think is a common cause of wars?
>>>Chick-Fil-A has a rather affectionate relationship with its customers. Hard to see the same thing happening at McDonalds, never mind Microsoft.
Interesting. Maybe I ought to try this Chick-Fil-A business. The ACLU has strongly criticized the mayors of Boston, Chicago, et cetera. They say if the government follows-through on blocking Chick-Fil-a then the ACLU will sue the local governments for discrimination against a business (or group) based upon its religious beliefs.
I don't know about the US, but where I live (Finland) "religious beliefs" are not a valid excuse to discriminate people based on sexual orientation.
During the period that Microsoft's market cap got lopped in half, Apple's multiplied by over ONE HUNDRED TIMES. So yes, I'd say that qualifies for a lost decade. Market cap is the world's picture of how much you are worth as a company.
Yes and at times that world's picture gets completely separated from reality. See Facebook and Zynga IPOs.
Only because the MSFT shares were ridiculously overpriced a decade ago and only recently the company has actually "grown into" deserving the valuation.
It was a failed IPO for speculators, it was an absolutely fantastic IPO for Facebook. The 2 parties are at odds with each other: the company that is having an IPO wants to sell it's share for a high price, to get as big of a cash infusion as possible, while the speculators want the IPO price to be as low as possible, so when there is a quick "pop" after the IPO, the speculators get rich quickly.
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook got about as good of a deal as they could've ever dreamed of and with Mark still retaining control over 50% of the shares, he doesn't have to give a damn about the rest of the shareholders even if every single one of them bunched up together to make demands.
Is multi-year log and data retention required by law, as it already is in the EU.
And if companies refuses to do business in the EU because they can't comply with this law I am pretty sure that that particular law will be adjusted.
You didn't get the point. Right now, if you are an ISP in EU, you keep logs for 2 years. As mandated by EU laws. The ISP behaviour described in the TFA will (as sad as it is) only lead to similar legislation being introduced in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
As can be seen from the lawyer responce (the "concerning using crowdfunding to finance a project [PDF; Finnish]" link in Summary, while asking for money while giving nothing in return in Finland requires a license, on Kickstarter, people submitting money are actually making a pre-order of a product (the book in question), so that particular law does not apply.
Eventually, devs will move back to the PC
No, eventually MS/Sony/Nintendo will release a new generation of consoles. But do keep dreaming.
In terms of sales the PC is the largest and fastest growing game platform every single quarter.
Boy are you confused. The fastest growing game platform, by far, is the iPhone.
You don't have to have a monopoly to be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Microsoft didn't have one, nor Nintendo when for "blocking competitive software from being sold" on the NES.
Except that Microsoft DID have a monopoly and afaik, Nintento won that suit.
Since when is anti-competitive behavior legal? Every antitrust suit that has been filed was for anti-competitive behavior.
If all anti-competitive behaviour was illegal, the first wave of suits would come directly at the federal goverment of the USA, since various subsidies, protectionism, tariffs and quotas all qualify as anti-competitive behaviour.
So what happens when it starts doing "too well" and gets banned from the AppStore for violating it's guidelines?
The DoJ will start looking at Apple for anti-competitive behavior. It's one thing to screw over a bunch of tiny App developers with your capricious and arbitrary rules, but quite another to screw over the second largest technology company in the world.
Anti-competitive behavior is perfectly legal, abusing monopoly powers isn't and Apple does not have a monopoly on smartphones (you could argue they do have a monopoly on tablets though). In fact, App Store guidelines specifically state that apps that directly re-implement a feature already offered by Apple are forbidden. The fact that there are popular apps on the App Store that do this simply means that Apple either hasn't had a pressing need or the guts (due to potential backlash) to shut them down, but they absolutely and definately can and it would be perfectly legal.
So what happens when it starts doing "too well" and gets banned from the AppStore for violating it's guidelines?
Microsoft did a similar thing with DirectX for graphics: They kept bringing out new versions which were incompatible with old versions, and it kept demanding rewrites.
...citation needed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
This sums up pretty well the general population's attitude towards both air travel and technology in general.
Good lucking having $100 million budget movies and games made in that universe of yours.
Sorry, Jamie: your company has become largely a parasite. For the average American, you provide no more benefit than 10 banks 1/10th your size: when you get so big, you have negative economies-of-scale.
You have it backwards. Being Too Big To Fail is a fantastic benefit (for a bank) for being big.
Microsoft Surface is not a 7" device...
The 2 countries most likely to starve both have nuclear weapons and EACH of them has an army that dwarfs all of EU combined.
The third world will carry on starving until they have enough education to limit the number of children they have, but the EU will just keep transferring money from the rich to subsidy for farm animal meat for the rest of us.
How naive. What do you think is a common cause of wars?
>>>Chick-Fil-A has a rather affectionate relationship with its customers. Hard to see the same thing happening at McDonalds, never mind Microsoft.
Interesting. Maybe I ought to try this Chick-Fil-A business.
The ACLU has strongly criticized the mayors of Boston, Chicago, et cetera. They say if the government follows-through on blocking Chick-Fil-a then the ACLU will sue the local governments for discrimination against a business (or group) based upon its religious beliefs.
I don't know about the US, but where I live (Finland) "religious beliefs" are not a valid excuse to discriminate people based on sexual orientation.
During the period that Microsoft's market cap got lopped in half, Apple's multiplied by over ONE HUNDRED TIMES. So yes, I'd say that qualifies for a lost decade. Market cap is the world's picture of how much you are worth as a company.
Yes and at times that world's picture gets completely separated from reality. See Facebook and Zynga IPOs.
Only because the MSFT shares were ridiculously overpriced a decade ago and only recently the company has actually "grown into" deserving the valuation.
So doubling your revenues and net income is now considered a "lost decade"?
It was a failed IPO for speculators, it was an absolutely fantastic IPO for Facebook. The 2 parties are at odds with each other: the company that is having an IPO wants to sell it's share for a high price, to get as big of a cash infusion as possible, while the speculators want the IPO price to be as low as possible, so when there is a quick "pop" after the IPO, the speculators get rich quickly.
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook got about as good of a deal as they could've ever dreamed of and with Mark still retaining control over 50% of the shares, he doesn't have to give a damn about the rest of the shareholders even if every single one of them bunched up together to make demands.
So, is this thing finally usable in production or is everybody who actually cares about data still stuck with ZFS?
Stop complaining about game prices, you only make yourself look stupid.
$50 in 2002 = $63.86 today
$50 in 1992 = $81.82 today
$50 in 1982 = $120.04 today
Games have actually gotten cheaper, not more expensive over the decades, because their prices have not kept up with inflation.
You don't seem to have a grasp of how many people routinely use 3d graphics packages out there in the real world...
Are you serious? Out of the entire computer using-population? A ridiculously tiny amount, 0,01% would probably be overtly generous.
99,999% of the userbase doesnt need the performance of an actual 3D graphics workstation and the money is with the 99,999%.
Is multi-year log and data retention required by law, as it already is in the EU.
And if companies refuses to do business in the EU because they can't comply with this law I am pretty sure that that particular law will be adjusted.
You didn't get the point. Right now, if you are an ISP in EU, you keep logs for 2 years. As mandated by EU laws.
The ISP behaviour described in the TFA will (as sad as it is) only lead to similar legislation being introduced in the US.
Is multi-year log and data retention required by law, as it already is in the EU.
You mean the Vista drives that barring a few exceptions all worked on Windows 7?