It's hard to credit the behavioural science claim.
Especially as studies of deception, phishing, online fraud, and so on are often conducted by social scientists in computer science departments with funding that is nominally directed towards computer science. Anyone who is actually working on these areas is likely to be either in a computer science department or in an interdisciplinary team working with computer scientists, so will not have a problem getting funding.
The US political funding rules allow any organisation to buy 'issue' adverts that aren't specifically pushing a single candidate, with no limits. Why not use this in the next election to run prime-time ads listing exactly which corporate interests each candidate has taken bribes from and their amounts, and the legislation that it bought. If taking money from certain organisations starts costing more votes than it buys, then politicians will be a bit less eager to take it...
He is wanted in the UK for violating bail. Judges should only interact with criminals in the court where everything said is a matter of public record (and subject to strict accounting). Allowing judges to talk to criminals in other settings sounds like a good recipe for legalised bribery.
I am aware of that. I'm also aware of the ThunderX box that we have on the FreeBSD test lab network, but I don't remember exactly how long it's been there.
the US is a different matter entirely that would need a court's approval, and that court would be the one in Sweden, not the UK
Are you sure about that? Doesn't the extradition treaty between Sweden and the UK explicitly prevent extraditing people who have already been extradited? Sweden would have to deport him before he could be subject to further extradition requests.
Hmm, this sounds like a US bank thing (cheques are pretty much gone this side of the pond). The main feature of the app is that it can be the second factor in two-factor authentication for the web-based banking, so you don't have to carry around the chip reader device. It's also a bit more convenient for quickly paying someone that you've paid before or checking your balance on the go.
The markets are different. Google Play doesn't have the same stranglehold on app distribution in China as it does in the EU, so it's far easier to launch a successful phone in China without the Play store than in the EU.
Xeons aren't really the competitors for those, they're replacements for Cavium's existing MIPS64 offerings that end up in filer and network appliances. Apparently (according to a somewhat biased source at Cavium) they're competitive with current Xeons in aggregate performance per Watt, doing better on parallel workloads but less well on single-threaded ones. They really shine on anything I/O-intensive though, due to the integration of the ethernet and SATA controllers on the die (and the design of the DMA engines). They're not likely to be in general-purpose servers, but companies in the same markets as NetApp and Juniper are very interested in them (hence Cavium's investment in getting FreeBSD supported on them).
8 core 64 bit ARM chips with GPU built in are fairly common and 10 core chips already announced (Mediatek), with 16-48 core vaguely hinted at for servers by other vendors
Sucking at HCI doesn't make you evil (if it did, a lot of open source projects would be evil too). Though given their network settings UI, I can't help wondering if there's a little bit of malice in there...
I switched to DuckDuckGo a while ago. I periodically check Bing and Google (adding !bing or !google to the DDG search line will send you to either) if I don't find results that I want. On one occasion in the last year, I've found a useful result on Bing that I didn't get with DDG or Google. The last time I had anything useful from Google was about 18 months ago. Note that Google and Bing may be fine for most searches - I only try either if I don't quickly find what I'm looking for on DDG. I had one fairly obscure search a couple of days ago (FPGA synthesis problem) where DDG only returned six results (one of which was helpful), so I tried the others to see if there was something more useful. Google gave 10 completely irrelevant results (pages that didn't even include my search term), Bing returned no results at all.
The EU also fines more EU companies than US ones, but those tend not to make the news in the US either. Actually, most of them don't make the news anywhere, it's only when it's a household name that it is considered newsworthy at all, and when it's a household name that's considered American then it becomes more newsworthy in the US press because they can run with the tired old 'EU picking on US companies and jealous of their success' narrative rather than bothering with any real journalism.
But what can they do to be more open than they already are
They can allow OEMs to install Google Play without requiring that they install the entire suite of Google apps and without preventing them from installing competing apps.
Yes, the Chinese population is a rounding error when talking about the EU market, which is the only thing over which the EU regulator has jurisdiction. How many devices that are only sold in China are sold in the EU?
I've seen some examples of Wikipedia editors refusing to accept books as sources, only accepting other online sources that anyone can access as passing the verifiable criterion.
There have been allegations in the UK of voter intimidation after postal ballots became easy to obtain: people would require dependents to hand over their ballots, fill them all in, and post them back. Now, it may be that this didn't happen or wasn't statistically significant, but if people are not required to turn up and vote in such a way that they can't prove to someone else how they voted then there's the potential for doing this on a large scale.
Of course one solution would be to allow individuals to vote repeatedly but only count their last vote, though if you capture someone else's voting credentials then it's very easy to vote en mass with everyone's details at one second to the closing deadline...
Mobile phones that run Android make up the majority of new mobile phones sold. Mobile phones that run Android and don't have the Play Store installed are such a tiny fraction that they're effectively a rounding error. If your microbrewery provides beer for 70% of all restaurants and enforces a contract that, if you want to stock their beer, you can't sell any other beer and must also sell their line of soft drinks then (first, it's not really very micro, and second) I'd expect it to come under antitrust scrutiny.
None of their competitors even OFFER the option to have an "F-Droid" or to remove their respective equivalents of play services
I'm not sure what your point is. 'Other people are worse' is not a defence in an antitrust investigation, unless those others have enough of a market impact that you're probably not going to be in the antitrust regulator's jurisdiction anyway.
Simple example: I want to sell an Android phone. Not a problem, I can download AOSP and run it. Except that a lot of apps (e.g. almost all mobile banking apps) are only available via Google Play. Okay, so I'll license Google Play for my device. Here's where the problems start: I can only license Google Play if I also preinstall a load of other Google apps (and don't install any competing apps in a few categories and in a way that allows the user to hide them from the UI, but not actually remove them and reclaim the space).
Google is using the fact that they effectively have a monopoly on application distribution (yes, I know about F-Droid and the Amazon store. Most apps I want come from F-Droid, but I'm hardly a typical user and the rest come from Play because they're not in the Amazon store) to gain market share in other areas.
Someone else who doesn't understand antitrust law. WinPhone: trivial market share, no impact on the market. iPhone: larger market share, due to Apple's marketing able to influence the market to a larger degree than market share alone would imply, but still not a dominant player. Android: As a result of controlling the app distribution channel that almost everyone uses, Google is able to force vendors to install other Google apps and services, thereby exploiting one near monopoly to gain market share in other areas.
OTOH, our reason for being in Afghanistan was that one of their best buddies leveled a couple office buildings
I think you are confusing Afghanistan with Saudi Arabia.
It's hard to credit the behavioural science claim.
Especially as studies of deception, phishing, online fraud, and so on are often conducted by social scientists in computer science departments with funding that is nominally directed towards computer science. Anyone who is actually working on these areas is likely to be either in a computer science department or in an interdisciplinary team working with computer scientists, so will not have a problem getting funding.
The US political funding rules allow any organisation to buy 'issue' adverts that aren't specifically pushing a single candidate, with no limits. Why not use this in the next election to run prime-time ads listing exactly which corporate interests each candidate has taken bribes from and their amounts, and the legislation that it bought. If taking money from certain organisations starts costing more votes than it buys, then politicians will be a bit less eager to take it...
He is wanted in the UK for violating bail. Judges should only interact with criminals in the court where everything said is a matter of public record (and subject to strict accounting). Allowing judges to talk to criminals in other settings sounds like a good recipe for legalised bribery.
I am aware of that. I'm also aware of the ThunderX box that we have on the FreeBSD test lab network, but I don't remember exactly how long it's been there.
Fake likes are ones where the recipient didn't pay Facebook for them.
the US is a different matter entirely that would need a court's approval, and that court would be the one in Sweden, not the UK
Are you sure about that? Doesn't the extradition treaty between Sweden and the UK explicitly prevent extraditing people who have already been extradited? Sweden would have to deport him before he could be subject to further extradition requests.
Hmm, this sounds like a US bank thing (cheques are pretty much gone this side of the pond). The main feature of the app is that it can be the second factor in two-factor authentication for the web-based banking, so you don't have to carry around the chip reader device. It's also a bit more convenient for quickly paying someone that you've paid before or checking your balance on the go.
What have cheques got to do with mobile banking apps?
The markets are different. Google Play doesn't have the same stranglehold on app distribution in China as it does in the EU, so it's far easier to launch a successful phone in China without the Play store than in the EU.
Xeons aren't really the competitors for those, they're replacements for Cavium's existing MIPS64 offerings that end up in filer and network appliances. Apparently (according to a somewhat biased source at Cavium) they're competitive with current Xeons in aggregate performance per Watt, doing better on parallel workloads but less well on single-threaded ones. They really shine on anything I/O-intensive though, due to the integration of the ethernet and SATA controllers on the die (and the design of the DMA engines). They're not likely to be in general-purpose servers, but companies in the same markets as NetApp and Juniper are very interested in them (hence Cavium's investment in getting FreeBSD supported on them).
8 core 64 bit ARM chips with GPU built in are fairly common and 10 core chips already announced (Mediatek), with 16-48 core vaguely hinted at for servers by other vendors
A bit more than hinting: Cavium is selling 24-48 core ThunderX (ARMv8) chips. I think the first one shipped a month or two ago.
Sucking at HCI doesn't make you evil (if it did, a lot of open source projects would be evil too). Though given their network settings UI, I can't help wondering if there's a little bit of malice in there...
I switched to DuckDuckGo a while ago. I periodically check Bing and Google (adding !bing or !google to the DDG search line will send you to either) if I don't find results that I want. On one occasion in the last year, I've found a useful result on Bing that I didn't get with DDG or Google. The last time I had anything useful from Google was about 18 months ago. Note that Google and Bing may be fine for most searches - I only try either if I don't quickly find what I'm looking for on DDG. I had one fairly obscure search a couple of days ago (FPGA synthesis problem) where DDG only returned six results (one of which was helpful), so I tried the others to see if there was something more useful. Google gave 10 completely irrelevant results (pages that didn't even include my search term), Bing returned no results at all.
The EU also fines more EU companies than US ones, but those tend not to make the news in the US either. Actually, most of them don't make the news anywhere, it's only when it's a household name that it is considered newsworthy at all, and when it's a household name that's considered American then it becomes more newsworthy in the US press because they can run with the tired old 'EU picking on US companies and jealous of their success' narrative rather than bothering with any real journalism.
Barclays is the one that comes to mind. They have two apps, but the one that is actually useful is only on Play.
But what can they do to be more open than they already are
They can allow OEMs to install Google Play without requiring that they install the entire suite of Google apps and without preventing them from installing competing apps.
Yes, the Chinese population is a rounding error when talking about the EU market, which is the only thing over which the EU regulator has jurisdiction. How many devices that are only sold in China are sold in the EU?
I've seen some examples of Wikipedia editors refusing to accept books as sources, only accepting other online sources that anyone can access as passing the verifiable criterion.
How many of those are sold in the EU? Hint: markets outside the EU are of no concern to the EU regulator.
There have been allegations in the UK of voter intimidation after postal ballots became easy to obtain: people would require dependents to hand over their ballots, fill them all in, and post them back. Now, it may be that this didn't happen or wasn't statistically significant, but if people are not required to turn up and vote in such a way that they can't prove to someone else how they voted then there's the potential for doing this on a large scale.
Of course one solution would be to allow individuals to vote repeatedly but only count their last vote, though if you capture someone else's voting credentials then it's very easy to vote en mass with everyone's details at one second to the closing deadline...
Mobile phones that run Android make up the majority of new mobile phones sold. Mobile phones that run Android and don't have the Play Store installed are such a tiny fraction that they're effectively a rounding error. If your microbrewery provides beer for 70% of all restaurants and enforces a contract that, if you want to stock their beer, you can't sell any other beer and must also sell their line of soft drinks then (first, it's not really very micro, and second) I'd expect it to come under antitrust scrutiny.
None of their competitors even OFFER the option to have an "F-Droid" or to remove their respective equivalents of play services
I'm not sure what your point is. 'Other people are worse' is not a defence in an antitrust investigation, unless those others have enough of a market impact that you're probably not going to be in the antitrust regulator's jurisdiction anyway.
Google is using the fact that they effectively have a monopoly on application distribution (yes, I know about F-Droid and the Amazon store. Most apps I want come from F-Droid, but I'm hardly a typical user and the rest come from Play because they're not in the Amazon store) to gain market share in other areas.
Someone else who doesn't understand antitrust law. WinPhone: trivial market share, no impact on the market. iPhone: larger market share, due to Apple's marketing able to influence the market to a larger degree than market share alone would imply, but still not a dominant player. Android: As a result of controlling the app distribution channel that almost everyone uses, Google is able to force vendors to install other Google apps and services, thereby exploiting one near monopoly to gain market share in other areas.