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User: Richard_at_work

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Comments · 7,308

  1. Re:small change... on Microsoft's Price Fixing Penalty, 9M Euros · · Score: 1

    People seem to misuse the term 'strawman argument' these days, and generally they are extremely bad at it.

    No, my argument is not a strawman, it purposefully outlines that the DoJ does not shy away from fining foreign companies, and that those actions are far from malicious. My argument is not constructed specifically for the purpose of being destroyed later in my own comment. Hence it is not a strawman.

    In 30 minutes of research, I can find no evidence for your supposition that the EU are maclicious toward American companies, especially considering they levied the biggest fine given to a private company to date against an European firm (price fixing in the automobile glass industry), while the largest fines the US DoJ have issued have been against foreign companies. I can also find no evidence that American companies make up a statistically significant number or value of fines given in the past 15 years above the average.

    However, let us play your game on your rules for the moment, and see just how many European companies I can cherrypick in order for it to seem like the DoJ are being malicious against European companies, shall we?

    F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd, 1999, $500m
    Air France-KLM, June 2008, $350m
    British Airways, 2007, $300m
    BASF AG, 1999, $225m
    Infineon Technologies AG, 2004, $160m
    SGL Carbon AG, 1999, $135m
    Cargolux, 2009, $119m
    Bayer AG,September 2004, $66m
    Bilhar International Establishment, 2002, $54m
    ABB Middle East & Africa Participations AG, 2001, $53m
    Haarmann & Reimer Corp, 1997, $50m
    SAS, June 2008, $50m
    HeereMac v.o.f., 1998, $49m
    Odfjell Seachem AS, 2003, $43m
    Martinair, June 2008, $42m
    Hoechst AG, 1999, $36m
    Bayer Corporation, 2004, $33m
    Philipp Holzmann AG, 2000, $30m
    Arteva Specialties, 2003, $29m
    Statoil, 2006, $21m
    Jo Tankers, B.V., 2004, $20m
    Dockwise N.V., 1998, $15m

    Oh my, the DoJ are being malicious against European companies! How naughty and evil of them...

  2. Re:small change... on Microsoft's Price Fixing Penalty, 9M Euros · · Score: 1

    You do realise that that doesn't matter, right? The DoJ regularly fines non-American companies, totaling billions of dollars a year - its a perfect example of why claiming that the EU are being malicious when doing the same thing is a pile of crap.

  3. Re:small change... on Microsoft's Price Fixing Penalty, 9M Euros · · Score: 1

    Probably the EU getting into the US Department Of Justices act...

    2007 - British Airways, $300m
    2008 - Air France and KLM, Cathay Pacific, Dutch airline Martinair and Scandinavia's SAS, $504m
    2008 - JAL, $110m
    2009 - LAN Cargo, $88m
    2009 - Aerolinhas Brasileiras SA (ABSA), $21m

    I could provide significantly more examples, if you wish?

  4. Re:Good thing they kept it so secret on Project OXCART Declassified From Area 51 · · Score: 1

    Not just mothballed, actually put on public display.

  5. Re:OXCART on Project OXCART Declassified From Area 51 · · Score: 1

    The YF-12A was scrapped because of the lack of a requirement for a Mach 3 interceptor - neither sides Mach 3 bombers made it to production, so the need to intercept them evaporated.

  6. Re:The A-12 is better known as the SR-71 on Project OXCART Declassified From Area 51 · · Score: 1

    The CIA operated the A-12 because of the political ramifications about a military aircraft invading the airspace of the USSR, which was a hold over from the original U-2 operations - ironic when you consider that the A-12 or the SR-71 never conducted USSR overflights.

  7. Re:xp does the job well on 83% of Businesses Won't Bother With Windows 7 · · Score: 1

    Vista was upgraded to the Windows Server 2008 kernel during the Service Pack 1 update, and I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 7 is based on the Server 2008 codebase.

  8. Re:Legitimate uses on Privacy In BitTorrent By Hiding In the Crowd · · Score: 1

    I think it goes deeper than that - what are the legitimate:nonlegitimate traffic ratios on trackers? Its not as simple as saying 'BitTorrent has legal uses' if a particular popular tracker has no legitimate torrents.

  9. Re:2Mbps By 2012? on Can Mobile Broadband Solve the UK Digital Divide? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Uhm, no - the UK is falling behind because Ofcom (the telecommunications regulator) regularly tells BT (the primary telecoms company in the UK) what it can and cannot do, because the other telecoms companies in the UK would not be able to compete.

    It did this in such ways as forcing BT to sell wholesale at lower cost than it would take to recoup investment.

    Thankfully, Ofcom have come to their senses with regard to BTs new Fibre to the Cabinet upgrade plan - BT will be able to set a wholesale rate which would recoup costs within 3 to 4 years, rather than the 15 years Ofcom usually limited them to.

  10. Re:Wait.. on Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP · · Score: 1

    If the Government funded its creation, then Governmental copyright rules should apply (in the US that means its Public Domain, in the UK that means its Crown Copyright).

    But if the Government are just purchasing licenses of an off the shelf product, then no, it should not be open sourced.

  11. Re:Wait.. on Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP · · Score: 1

    But again, why should the source code become available when copyright expires? When copyright expires on pieces of music, you don't suddenly get the sheet music, backing tracks, individual instrumental tracks and lyrics become available do you? No, you dont, because you never bought those - you bought a piece of music.

    Its the same thing when it comes to software - the distributable binaries and the source code are two separate things, and you only possess one. By all means, reverse engineer it or decompile it, but I don't think there should be any entitlement to the actual source code when you never owned that.

  12. Re:Wait.. on Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP · · Score: 1

    But then if you have the source code you can hire someone else to fix it if necessary. If you paid money to Microsoft for their software it's not unreasonable to expect them make sure it actually works and to fix it if they screwed something up.

    Most people didn't pay money to Microsoft, most people paid money to Dell. And guess what - Dell stop supporting the hardware after a period of time as well...

  13. Re:Wait.. on Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP · · Score: 1

    there's always copyright laws - if software was regulated by copyright (instead of patents) then after the lifetime of the copyright ran out (50 years IIRC, and the music industry hasn't had it extended) then the source could be made publicly available.

    Why should copyright expiring trigger the source being made publicly available? Copyright expiring should only affect what you have.

  14. Re:Better than a refund, and maybe not planned on Star Trek Premiere Gets Standing Ovation, Surprise Showing In Austin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because the movie was about to be released for-reals, so they'd need to be given a print?

    But you're right, I'm thinking it was planned, except that doesn't explain the film melting which the blog says the owner was surprised and upset over, or having the writers for Khan there who started an impromptu Q&A session between when the film melted and Nimoy showed up. So either this was all theatrics (certainly possible at the Alamo) with some rough execution (also possible ;), or the only intended surprise was Nimoy's visit but the owner managed to work something out.

    Either way, it sounds pretty cool to me. :)

    The problem is, the movie isnt due for release for another month - there is no reason at all for a cinema which is not doing one of the premier screenings around the world to have a full copy of the show on site a full month ahead of its release, that would be a security risk.

    I don't think there can be any doubt that this was planned well ahead of schedule.

  15. Re:Better than a refund, and maybe not planned on Star Trek Premiere Gets Standing Ovation, Surprise Showing In Austin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why would they have had the entire film print there, just in case? It doesn't make sense...

  16. Re:Idea shortage in LA on Star Trek Premiere Gets Standing Ovation, Surprise Showing In Austin · · Score: 1

    I personally think David Webers Safehold series would be excellent for a movie series :)

  17. Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog on Google CEO Warns Newspapers Not To Anger Readers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That analogy would be correct if the automotive industry were using the buggy whip makers product either in whole or in part in their own product. They aren't, so the analogy is a bad one.

  18. Re:Wait.. on Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP · · Score: 1

    My reasoning is because even though it is not 'current', the codebase is still highly useful for other applications that the owner may wish to use it for - Windows 3.11 was sold as an embedded operating system right up until November 2008 for example.

    Then there is the patent and third party copyright issue - Microsoft does not own 100% of the Windows codebase, they license a lot of it from other companies who specialise in certain applications, and they license a lot of patents. Simply 'opening this up' would be a nightmare.

  19. Re:Wait.. on Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That does raise an interesting discussion... if a company is officially going to stop supporting a product that is still heavily in use, should they have an obligation to open up the source? I think so.

    No. No such obligation should ever exist.

  20. Re:Why not open it up on Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP · · Score: 2, Informative

    The problem with that is, even though XP has run out of life (or some some claim), the codebase certainly will have not for Microsoft.

  21. Re:Few companies work as hard to make bad decision on Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At this stage in XPs life, I highly doubt any end user or consuming business will actually come across any non-security related bug that they need fixing, and if they do then their vendor will probably have several customers also with the same issue, and pony up themselves (think Oracle, Sun or Novell finding a bug which affects their products - they will be the ones to approach MS for a fix and offer payment).

  22. Re:flawed by design on AP Says "Share Your Revenue, Or Face Lawsuits" · · Score: 1

    What makes you think any market was built with business models in mind? The internet is absolutely no different to any other place someone can do business, only people like you think it is.

  23. Re:Cloud Storage .... on Netscape Alums Tackle Cloud Storage · · Score: 1

    This isn't new - data vaulting has been around for quite some time and is highly popular, especially in the disaster recovery arena.

  24. Re:Elite 2: Frontier on Strange Glitches In Games · · Score: 1

    The other glitch in Frontier was incredibly helpful - if you loaded up with trash, and took your ship out to space, you could dump an infinite amount of trash by clicking underneath the 'dump' button for the trash. This had the side effect of never decreasing the trash stockpile, but at the same time freeing up space in your cargo hold. If you continued to do it, you could increase your cargo capacity beyond all other ships, allowing you to both take on huge amounts of cargo, and add the really massive weapons to your small ship (the big weapons usually required big ships to add them to as they used cargo space).

    So you could have the bog standard ship with the best weapons and lots of cargo space. Combine that with the planet which gave you money to take precious stones away (it was treated as trash on this planet) and you could make a fortune in just one trip. Fantastic.

  25. Re:So your point is? on After Sweden's New Law, a Major Drop In Internet Traffic · · Score: 1

    Why shouldnt you be? Theres still an initial investment to be recouped, regardless of the fact that *you* never made that initial investment in the creation of the original.

    Just because its free to *you* doesn't make it *free*.