I'm an atheist. Struggling to weigh the good against the bad is how I have created my moral code. In any given topic I can quantify the benefits and drawbacks and explain how weighted each one is. It's very hard to rationaly talk to people when they don't seem to have this. There are situations that the writers of the Bible didn't forsee. To take a stance on some Bible scripture out of context seems like a cop-out to me. Rather than debate, they quote the Bible and try to claim the moral high ground.
there are quotes from the bible that support the anti-abortion rights movement...Firstly, nothing in the bible directly addresses the issues here
If there was never a serious discussion in the Bible about it, how are there passages that confirm any point of view? Given any book I could find quotes out of context to support my views.
Do we know we are right? Of course not, but we think we are. We hope we are. That's all we can do.
Fair enough. So rather than quoting bible passages, holding rallies, and trying to pass laws why don't you just say that? If you can admit this is just your opinion and that the topic is complicated, how does passing laws to force your opinion on this topic on the rest of us seem fair? Especially if we can't hold an honest pro/con discussion about it. Consider maybe your view is wrong. I'll consider that maybe mine is.
A person cannto quantify morality
I disagree. A society cannot function without it. We quantify morality every day. Murder, rape, incest, fraud are all moral issues. We weigh the benefits against the cost and draw up rules for what is ok and what is not. We then quantify the penalty for those crimes based on how negative we view the cost.
With a quantified morality you can seriously discuss the issue of things like stem cells. Without the ability to quantify what it is that you believe makes one human, we can't come up with a consensus on what is wrong. Nearly every sperm could become a child, should we protect those? You need to draw a line somewhere. Leaving it vague just serves to fuel the controversy.
I suspect that is part of the point on the christian side. For the purposes of this argument any quantification would probably show that there are some situations where it should be ok. By keeping it vague we don't have to discuss the what-if's.
This is a good point. It is much harder to "stick to your guns" when the consequences are personal.
This is what I'm referring to. Innately we are all quantifying our morals every day. We don't kill disobedient children because we realize that may be a little too harsh for the crime. If you would receive the benefit the moral gauge shifts. Reality adjusts the equation. I'm perfectly healthy, but I can imagine being unhappy if I was suffering some some permanent ailment. I recognize the conflict. I wouldn't support growing fully functional clones to harvest them for organs, but on this level it seems a no brainer to me. I eat a cow without a second thought, to me that has more moral problems attached to it. The cow doesn't want to die, the cells at this point have no consciousness.
It's not moral weakness, it's compassion. It's supposed to be a virtue.
So, while not opposing protection for animals, they do point out that human protections should be at least equal to, if not greater than, protection given to other animal life.
For the love...
We eat baby cows and chicken fetuses. We kill pregnant pigs and use their unborn children to teach biology to high school kids. We go to other countries and start wars because we think our way of life is better than the one they have.
This is blatant mirepresentation of the facts. We protect the sea turtle eggs because they are an endangered species. Not because we value their children above our own.
most Christians would say that humans were the only animal made in God's image, and the only ones that posses a soul.
Right, because that couldn't be interpreted any other way. Of course it also says that animals don't have a soul, right? Where was that part? I don't really recall the attitude that everything in the garden was there for Adam to pillage to the point of extinction because it was less worthy. Must have misread it.
Of course isn't genesis the book that has several different retellings of the same story. All with different versions? Which version did we pick for this?
Exodus 21, starting with verse 22:
Ok. Get this. Your Bible has little-to-nothing to do with the system of law we have, despite what religious folks love to spout. We do not practice eye for an eye. We are allowed to worship all the false idols we want. We do not kill you for coveting another man's wife. We do not kill disobedient children. Banking is allowed. That the two have even passing familiarity is because it is hard to have a stable society if people are allowed to kill each other.
This does not completely prove that God meant at the moment the cells start dividing, but it is safe to say that after 8 weeks a mother and father would know that the mother is pregnant
Conjecture, conjecture, conjecture. It does not say that. You made up the 8 weeks part. Pulled it out of your butt. That's not the word of god. It's the world of Aqualung812. It especially doesn't say that the women is not allowed to self-terminate the pregnancy. I could interpret this to mean god doesn't want you interfering in the woman's right to choice.
I'm not saying you aren't entitled to your opinion. I am annoyed that you feel the need to search for obscure passages to validate your opinions as being that of god. You are interpreting and misrepresenting. To make it worse, where things are spelled out you ignore it.
I'm sorry that's a stretch. Maybe he was referring to the 3rd trimester? Maybe the passage was written by a human being who didn't know how the process worked. Maybe it was part of a greater moral lesson and you are taking it out of context. How do duplicating cells "know" anything? Bacteria know as much. Those "lowly" animals know more.
While abortion is not directly spoken about
This is what I'm talking about. The Bible doesn't cover it. You got a gut reaction and went looking for some small clip that could be taken out of context to support your opinion as though it came from God.
Not that the Bible is an authoritative source on anything. Christians commit adultery all the time. We go to war and kill others. Those are spelled out. There's no exception I've ever read for that killing thing.
No concern at all. Human life is greater than animal or plant life.
That scare the bejesus out of me. You have no morality other than that expressly spelled out in the bible? Except the parts you want to ignore of course. How about rape? Where's that in your commandments?
You have never been to an anti-abortion rally then.
What do women at anti-abortion rallies have to do with disabled folks supporting stem-cell research? I'm going to ignore that many of them (*cough* roe *cough*) have had abortions. I know several women who have had abortions and still claim to be pro-life. We call those hipocrits.
Women who feel this way I am willing to listen to. It affects them one way or another. However to assume the number of women who oppose abortion is anywhere near close to the number who support it, is a flat out lie. I've never seen any study by anyone that even hints at that.
Then we're back to feelings. Just because someone feels something you are doing is wrong does not make it so. The women at anti-abortion rallies are not ever asked to get an abortion. We aren't knocking women over the head and dragging them into clinics. We are saying that the choice should be the womans to make. Everyone has different morals and stations in life. This is obviously not clear cut. Who are you to tell someone else that your feeling in this matter is more valid than theirs?
The movement is largely Christian families who have a desire to save lives of those who are otherwise unprotected.
There's another word for these people. Bigots. The religious right in this country has fought any social liberation. They opposed the liberation of slaves, quoting the Bible, which does spell out that slavery is OK. They opposed women's sufferage. Prohibition.
This isn't about the lives of those who are unprotected. It's about thrusting your value system on others. What about the millions who die of starvation every year? What about the thousands of already born children who are lost in the foster care system?
I may feel people who hold these values to be bigots. You don't see me trying to pass a law labeling them as such.
the difficulties related to dealing with both stem cells and cloning remain.
Isn't that the reason they want to do the research? The difficulties are the reason we need to do more research. It's a chicken egg thing. If we don't do research on it, it will never get easier to do.
It would appear that these yo-yo's are needlessly diving headlong into a moral morasse
It isn't a moral morass for them. You have a problem with it. They are not using your sperm/eggs. They are not asking for your money. They are not asking you to use the treatments or knowledge that might come from it. They aren't asking for your support in any way. They are entitled to their morality just as you are.
It's unfair to assume your morality is more valid than theirs.
one of the supposed "smartest people in the world, and the best in the field" was recently pointed out to have failed miserably with cloning.
Of the thousands of scientists doing reputable research all over the world, we should punish them all because 1 did something he shouldn't have? Lots of people drink and drive. Should we outlaw alcohol and motorized vehicles to balance it out? There are people who do this sort of thing in every aspect of every social/business system. Are you advocating we outlaw accounting? Hardly an argument.
So while your gut is busy dismissing my "unsupportable feeling" (an irony in and of itself)
I wasn't the one trying to convince you my way was better. I was dismissing your attempt to thrust your sense of values on others and myself. You are entitled to not use or research these stem cells. I object to your belief that your values should somehow supersede mine.
If these scientists didn't do this research I wouldn't care either. This is their decision to make. Not yours and not mine.
Let me ask you this: why assume that if someone is opposed to embryonic stemcell research, they're religious
Because there don't seem to be many rational arguments against it. Oh, and religious organizations are pretty loud about it.
I can't give you a scientific reason. I can't give you logical reason. Hell, I probably can't give you a "rational" reason. It just *feels* wrong.
You will forgive the rest of us then. We based our reasons on rational and logic.
What does that make me?
Irrational and dangerous. Feeling something, anything, doesn't make it so. Worse, you expect others to feel the same. Laughable, you expect us to set aside our logic and reason and pay equal homage to your feelings.
just because we *can* do something, should we do it?
You make it sound like they are slaughtering human beings. These are clumps of cells no more human than a kidney. A cow has more feelings and IQ than an embryo at this stage. Where's your compassion for them?
Do we research things even if our gut tells us "this isn't right"?
I think it's safe to assume none of the scientists involved have your feelings. Are you proposing your feelings are more valid than theirs somehow?
Should science and morality be seperate?
No. But your morality should be based on some frame of logic by which you can judge new realities as they come. Not some dogmatic system of unsupportable feelings.
So let's tackle the issues of triger and control with the already available Adult Stem Cells and leave cloning alone.
Weird how Harvard employed these yo-yo's and not you. I'm going to go out on a limb here and just purely speculate that the guys working at harvard are some of the smartest in the world, and some of the best in their field. Further I will assume you are neither.
My gut tells me they have a clue and you have an unsupportable feeling.
I'd like to see most medications tested for at least 2 generations before being released
Spoken by someone not dying of the virus/disease during that 2 generations.
It's not quite that black and white. Sometimes patients are the ones pushing these things. Better to try something new and experimental then just lay back and die.
SO now we cure certain problems, and new ones will arise.
Are you advocating stopping scientific progress because some unforseen event might occur in the future? That even might happen if you do your science or not. Not much of a way to live.
Then, as Malcolm from Jurassic Park, says: Nature finds a way to control what is being done
Dude, it was a book/movie. Crichton doing what he does best, telling a good story. I don't think I would include quotes from hollywood movies as evidence of a position in science is all I'm saying. The book would have been really boring if Nedry hadn't shut the system down:P
You actually seem like someone calm and rational, and I have a question for someone with your position. What does your religion actually say about this? I'm assuming you are christian. I've never heard anyone quote anything from the Bible on this topic. So doesn't that mean that the religious groups just made up a gut-reaction and started touting that as the "moral" one?
If the Bible doesn't say anything, then someone recently just made this up. If that is the case then there really shouldn't be any religious reason. I don't recall the passage that says "though shall make up new rules for me when it is convenient to support your feelings". Without such a passage it seems pretty arrogant to make up new rules as you go and spout that as the word of god.
Morality is always a weird line. How do you feel about animal testing? Or killing animals to extract medical benefits? They are alive. Does morality only kick in based on an IQ? I mean really that's the primary seperation between you, and say, a cow. If that's the case then we should be clear on the embryos. They have no IQ yet.
The problem with your position, from my perspective, is you won't quantify what actually bothers you. There is no crusade against animal insulin. If you can use one, why not the other? Why does a clump of cells that could become a human have more rights than a fully grown cow? The cells at that point are no more a fully functional human than my liver is. It clearly doesn't care at this stage in development about anything. The cow, however, fears death.
I agree there is a line. The later in the 9months we get the more ify it gets for me. But at this stage there is no human. It's just a clump of cells reproducing. If we don't even protect fully grown animals why are we protecting this clump of cells? Especially if they could be used to help or save a fully grown person.
I also can't help but notice there aren't many people in wheel chairs, or suffering from major physical problems, that are against this. Listening to an otherwise healthy person tell me about the immorality of stem-cells is like listening to an old white man tell me abortion should be illegal. A lot easier to have a moral position on something that you wouldn't see any immediate benefit from anyway...
If it's not illegal how did they cross the line? Businesses make money as efficiently as possible within the constraints of the law. Mostly because if you don't, someone else will.
If it's genuinely unfair, change the law and make sure they follow the new law.
How the fuck do you think their employers are able to afford to pay for that stuff? Answer: Through revenue generated by sale of CDs and music downloads.
True. But because you made money doing something last year, does not automatically ensure you can make money doing the same thing the next.
Innovate or get out of the way.
Everytime a new medium comes out it makes the process easier and cheaper for the studios. Somehow I always end up paying the same or more. There is a lot of profit built into this business. A LOT. If there was no profit why are they guarding the market so jealously? The old way of doing things may have required all these people. The new way may not.
it seems like the average slashdotter thinks that software is produced by coders alone
I code for a living. What used to take a team of people a few days to complete I can do by myself in 10 minutes. See me whinning that my job has changed? I don't get to make money doing what I was doing 3 years ago, the same way I was doing it 3 years ago. Why should they? I grew with the times.
You people really need a wake up call.
Hate to say I don't think we need the wake-up call. We aren't the ones trying to convince everyone that water flows up hill. Either the studios will change and learn how to prosper with these new realities, or they won't and will die. Someone else will step up to the plate and do it for them when they're gone.
We aren't the ones living in the fantasy world.
The thing that really gets me is that they won't even try something like allofmp3. It's already easy to pirate the content, why not at least try something like this to see how it goes? I mean it can't get worse. Maybe people will like it. What are they so terrified of? They're so worried Apple has all this power now because they insisted on all the DRM. Seems like there's an easy fix there to me.
They are never going to win in this manner or with this attitude. Stop whinning and try something different.
Until a standard emerges how would a commercial company do this? So many distributions do things differently. So many different libraries and methods of doing the same thing, but just different enough that they aren't all compatable. Heck different copies of the same OS have library compatability problems. There isn't even a standard desktop.
GNU/Linux has come a long way. It is also still a crazy wild west. Seems like any commercial vendor would go crazy trying to get a product working in that world.
Now if 1 product would take over a huge chunk of the market, that would change things. If Ubuntu 6 for example became 90% of all linux installations, then commercializm becomes viable. Sure you can still run any of the other distros, libraries, and GUI's you wanted. But everyone would at least then know what was required to make a standard linux app work.
"I want your product, but don't want to pay for it".
Isn't the opposite true? If no one was pirating their material they would assume the product was the problem, not the distribution. This shows that everyone doesn't hate all the products, they just want a different distribution method.
Sites like allofmp3 show that people are willing to pay you for it. The non-drm, pick-your-own-format style are what people really love. The price for such a service could be a little higher (though not $.99). These industries just currently refuse to take my money.
People have a very innate sense of value and fairness. Copying has been easy since cassettes and vhs. But people would only work so hard to get a illegitamate copy. There was a quality consideration, and at a certain point it becomes more work that the few dollars was worth to get the copy.
They just need to adjust prices for things like downloads to a place where it is no longer worth my time to spend all this time and energy getting illegal copies.
If the prices and restrictions weren't so outrageous no one would bother. I mean pirating music is still really easy and still people are buying up iTunes and allofmp3 in mass. So stop the tired old "/.'ers refuse to pay for anything". We will pay. But we won't be suckered either.
I've been playing with beta2 for about a week now (msdn). It seems to behave exactly like xp, except now there are dialogue boxes when I try to install stuff. As long as I click "yes" to everything it does whatever the software wanted to do.
How is that ever going to be secure?
I don't care how "security first" you are thinking if clicking "yes" a few times circumvents it all.
Maybe I want that piece of spyware-ish software running (for whatever reason). As a user it might be nice to make it happen if I wanted. Doesn't mean the other users should have to deal with it, or that the system should be running the software when I'm not logged in.
The dialogues shouldn't really have anything to do with it becoming "more secure". The problem was every user had full admin access to everything, and that all the apps all-tied together, used the same libraries, and had root access themselves.
The average joe user doesn't need to be able to install some app that runs services at boot-time. If he wants to install some word processor, he should be able to do that in some user available folder. If he wants to install some active-x control, and isn't an admin, he should be able to install it in his local space in a place that doesn't affect the system as a whole with minimul fuss.
I realize that this could have the effect on a single user machine of being the same as it is now, just at the user level. First that would be a lot easier to clean up. Create new user, copy files you want, delete old user. Even the most horrid over-run problem solved. Make starting a process at boot-time, or user log-in time a pain in the arse. That way you know the user really wants it. It seems this is the area most abused. Without boot-time access most of the worms/virii would become impotent anyway.
Dialoging common actions, in user space, will have the effect of getting everyone to just ignore the dialogues. Then a serious problem in the system space might be occuring, and we will all be accustmed to clicking "ok".
Think "Are you sure you want to install to C:\Program Files\x\cmd.exe" vs "Are you sure you want to install to C:\Windows\cmd.exe". I bet most wouldn't catch something subtle like that (just an example). One should generate a dialogue, one should not.
For compatability create something like Altiris Software Virtualization tool. It can pretend to let your old software do whatever it wants. When in fact it is just doing these things in a virtual user space. Then I tell windows to zap this program, not ask the program to delete itself (this is also heavily abused). Windows has been tracking everything this program has been doing, shuts down all it's processes, and sucks EVERY file and folder back out that the orginial install and it's children put in.
I think the whole concept that you can protect users from themselves is flawed. Users are going to do dumb things. No matter how many dialogue boxes you throw up little jimmy is going to install Kazaa and all the spyware it comes with. Letting him click "ok" to suddenly give everything the run of the system is just stupid. Make it so dumb things means they break their account, not the system.
That's what makes this a regional issue, and not a federal one.
On a regional level I can't do anything about the tiering AT&T does to Google if the tiering isn't occuring locally. Any local rules created can easily be side-stepped by just moving where the tiering is located (geographically).
I've got plenty of providers to choose from
But I and most of America don't. I already have to buy a phone line I don't want if I buy DSL. I know for a fact they love to bundle. Not mandating this seperation is a slippery slope.
there isn't, and won't be, some solid wall between the content and infrastructure worlds
Who is implying there should be? If BellSouth wanted to go create Boogle tomorrow to compete with google I'd say more power to them. Where I get muddy is when they abuse their control over the last mile to my home to shove their product down my throat regardless if I want it. If their product is good it will handle itself. If it is not good, they would like a tiered internet infrastructure to allow them to alter the balance.
Two identical businesses shipping exactly the same items in the same quantities can wind up paying wildly different rates
Different site ISP's I have worked with have had often wildly different prices/offerings. Again, if the poor ISP can't make any money why are they there in the first place?
shipping exactly the same items in the same quantities can wind up paying wildly different rates because of the relative mix of the destination demographics
Except in this case only one person is paying. The end-customer is already paying the ISP for the delivery service. It's akin to saying Amazon just has to get the package to UPS. I already pay UPS monthly to deliver packages to my door. UPS shouldn't get to charge Amazon the full price of delivering a package to my door, and then charge me a monthly fee for delivering packages to my door.
That would never work in an open market. It will only work here, again, because most people don't have a choice.
I'm more interested in the third party pipes that have to have relationships with all of the parties involved. But some ISPs are also, more or less, backbone providers
Maybe I just missed something. I worked for a VoIP provider for a while. We had several connections with several providers to improve our QOS. We paid all of them for every connection. I never met a provider who would let me connect and move data across their network for free. In fact they would meter the data and give us better deals the more data we pushed to them. Who are these carriers giving away network access?
If the poor last-mile ISP's really can't make any money with any of this, why are they fighting sharing the wire so hard? Their actions imply to me they are actually making a great deal of money.
You make a good point in that this has been going on for years (to a certain degree) between different groups. Obviously Google had no problem setting up infrastructure to improve their connectivity to a given ISP. Google spent money on their 1/2 to improve delivery of their content (selfish). The ISP spent their 1/2 of the money to improve Google's quality to their customers, creating cheaper connections for them, and more incentive for a customer to buy their service (selfish). Google only balked when the ISP then said "we also think you should pay us directly to do this".
Say what?
Google should have to pay the customers ISP to improve the ISP's value to the customer? Only a monopoly with a long history of government subsidies could imagine such a thing being rational.
There is no monopoly unless your local people cause it to be so.
It is not economically feasible to run pipes to everyone. Most places in the US have such an arrangement (tax subsidies/etc). Once the pipes are in place however the carriers want to start abusing the situation. Since possession is 9/10-ths, for the most part they get their way.
It is disingenuous to imply that anyone could go out tomorrow and just recreate much of this infrastructure with private funds.
The several competing providers who have chosen to set up in my area are trying very hard to win me over, always offering better deals and counter-deals on bandwidth.
Understand your situation is unique, not the norm. I have lived in several major cities, and several different urban areas in the last few years. The most I have ever seen in any place at once is 2. The phone carrier (about whom you had no choice), and the cable operator (who you also had no choice about). Most places I have lived had just one choice.
ou have only your locally elected people to blame for a less competitive environment
To be fair, it has more to do with population density than elected officials. When your local government subsidizes pipe because it is uneconomical for a company to do it, it is not reasonable that the company then gets a monopoly over it. Through lobbying, and because it is prohibitively expensive to lay down extra lines, most companies have managed to get a monopoly in any given area.
Recognizing that a third party is routing an enormous portion of their traffic over your finite network, and making a lot of money doing so, does make talking to that user about traffic optimization a very legitimate objective.
This logic is flawed. Without their content no one would want your pipes. It seems to me equally fair that the ISP should have to pay Google for helping it's customers find what they want on the network. Google is providing your customers incentive to buy your product at no cost to you. How is that fair? If all these terrible content production companies were not creating content, no one would want your network.
A common carrier like UPS, you mean?
Exactly like UPS. UPS does not get to double charge everyone. One side pays the price, they deliver the product. UPS does not get to collect my $10 shipping fee, then tell Amazon that if they do not also pay them they will intentionally delay the delivery of my package. If it costs more to deliver my package to me in one place than another, UPS will charge me more, not go to Amazon.
You suffer from the delusion that Google is the local ISP's customer. They are not. The user requesting the information is your customer, and he is already paying you for that service. Google owes you nothing.
If your customers want Google to be tiered then that is between you and the customers. It is in your best interest to give your customers better access to the content they want, not visa-versa.
The reason ISP's want this is for the opposite reason. It gives them bundling control many of them are traditionally used to having. Bundling phone service for example. Either Vonage pays us to provide phone service to our customers (and we make money by leveraging one product for another), or we drop you and get someone else (or themselves) to do it.
It is never in the customers best interest to be told what is best for them based on who gives the carrier the most amount of money. The only reason they can get away with this is because most of them do have a monopoly in any given area so the customers can't choose something less draconian. If this were not the case I would agree that market forces would work this out.
noticing that a substantial part of your overhead is going into packets to/from a particular third party's network (say, eBay)
Does that really make any sense to you? You act as though accepting users $$ every month to provide a service is a terrible burden those poor ISP's must bear. If anything I would think you would be grateful that this 3rd party has created a value for your product, which entices people to buy your product, at no cost in development to you.
If there is no content why would people be buying these pipes to begin with?
You pay your typical residential ISP to get you onto their network
Are you high? I pay my provider for access to eBay, Google, email, etc. Why would I pay this much money to sit on my ISP's network all day if it wasn't connected to the others? That's just a stupid thing to say.
not to provide any particular, exact flavor of peering to any specific other network in a particular way
Again. That's actually EXACTLY their job. I have no use for their network if it isn't hooked up to the others, and reasonably fast.
This is one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard for this tierd internet idea. Get it through your skull that the network needs the information more than the information needs the network. You shouldn't get to charge the other end, because without the other end you would have nothing to sell to begin with. They are the ones providing you an ability to charge people to access their content for FREE.
I order a product from Amazon.com. I pay fedex $10 for 3-day delivery. What right does fedex have to ever ask Amazon.com for money? This is akin to suggesting to Amazon.com that if they don't toss them some money they will intentionally delay my package by several days. I paid you to deliver the package, you agreed to do it by a set time, you have no right to go to amazon.com about it (if even just because i, as the customer, have no control whether amazon.com agrees to pay it or not). They could make the exact same argument:
1. Amazon.com is making money off of their delivery "network" and doesn't pay them a dime for it.
2. It is not the same price to deliver a package to NY as it is to an igloo in canada.
Point 2 is completely valid. Which is why if you choose to live in an igloo in the middle of nowhere you have to pay more for shipping to your location. How does the problem get fixed by double charging for shipping? Basically you are just attempting to push your extra costs onto everyone except the guy living in the igloo, and abusing the fact that Amazon.com depends on you to do business.
If a site passes the paid for limit the isp will shut them down. If the client is downloading too much than the ISP needs to deal with that. Everyone in the middle is paid for their piece of the pie.
This is a simple attempt to extort money through near-monopoly of the last mile. After all, how many options does the average end-user really have? Two? If they're lucky?
it's gaining an UNFAIR advantage by saying, for example, they won't allow Google to be the search engine
Using that definition how could they ever do anything unfair? As long as there was a possiblity of working around anything, nothing would be an exclusion.
How hard does it have to be to work around something before it becomes unfair? What does that measuring stick look like? How about changing the hosts file, is editing a text file too much work? What if they make a dialogue box somewhere in settings to change the hosts file? Is that now more fair? How buried does that option have to be before it is unfair? Who makes that choice MS? I'm assuming you think IE won it's perspective market fair and square? You always had a way of going around them. They never required you to use it, just pay for it and have it installed.
If this follows formula then the price of MSN will eventually just be bundled into the cost of the OS. It will be yet another field that no one else can make money in, but MS collects it's toll at OS purchase time, making them money, and keeping everyone else out.
but do you seriously expect an OS to come without a browser today?
I have a vast array of options in linux. The default Ubuntu comes using Gnome and Firefox as the default browser. Kubuntu comes with KDE and Konqeror (can't remember if firefox is in that). First your open source person is a little better informed anyway. Leaving that aside the point is I can get the distro that is set up the way I like it. Sending money to Ubuntu says i appreciate that way of doing things.
The average user today is basically stuck with windows. If we were to agree that an OS must ship with a browser, then it would be nice if the monopoly side was forced to offer versions of the OS pre-installed with the browser of my choice (obviously from a pre-defined list), giving that chunk of the cost to the creator of that browser. Then MS and IE could do whatever they wanted, as there was no longer any leveraging. It would also open the browser market back up to commercial-level competition.
I only have a problem because each step after OS purchase automatically signs you up for the rest. It's leveraging, plain and simple.
It's no more tying or forced bundling then having calculator or notepad come with the OS
So the argument is that since they bundle some software they should be allowed to bundle anything they want? It's an... interesting... argument.
as long as MS stays away from things like exclusive licensing, cliff pricing, bundling and tying
This is tying. The others come later, after they run out the competition. The rising cost will then just be hidden in the price of the OS.
Nope, you don't have to use it. You do, however, have to buy it (i'll get into that more).
but I simply don't see why the creator of the product should have to kow-tow to competitors and give them an equal footing
Firefox/Opera/Safari don't. That's what happens when you have a monopoly, especially one that arguably is leveraging "the product" you are pushing. It's completely unfair to the competition and bad for the customer, which is why we have laws against it.
This is NOT like forcing vendors to install IE
That's what is so delicious about this. It's exactly like IE. They leveraged Windows to allow them to run all competing browsers out of the market and supplant them with IE. It is now next to impossible for anyone to create a browser for profit. Really all browsers now are IE or open source. You simply can't make any (serious) money selling the browser anymore thanks to microsoft. Only companies like Google who have another revenue stream can compete in this space. There are very few companies who want to get into this kind of fight when there isn't any immediate profit in it. Microsoft extracts it's profit by charging you for it through Windows. They get to have their cake and eat it too.
So now they basically own the browser market (85%) and they can now use this to start leveraging themselves into new web-based markets. Make the MS-Office-Online work just a little better with microsoft's products through IE. Why not just set up everyone to default use the MS-online tools when they start rolling out? Sure people could switch to others offering if they wanted! Make MSN the default search tool, etc...
Windows is now the standard OS. Use that to make IE the standard browser. Use that to move into whatever you want from there. Every purchase of windows is giving MS more power to fight Google with MSN. That's not how it's supposed to work.
They are not exluding anybody, they are not forcing their service on anybody
They force you to buy their browser, set up to use their search service, when you purchase an OS. You have no choice.
It's exclusion through omission. Sure if you go out of your way to do something you can do it. Firefox shows that maybe up to 15% of the computer user population cares enough to get involved. The vast majority won't understand the difference, and those are who MS is hoping to exploit. They don't need to control the whole market right away, just chip at Google slowly. They have a monopoly propping them up for the long haul. Google will reach a breaking point because the fight is in their primary income space.
I'm not an anti-MS guy. I'm really not. I do most of my development and daily functions in windows. I do see Google's complaint however. This is how microsoft runs people out, and i recognize that this is going to hurt google and they really have no recourse because of ms's monopoly. If I want to make a search engine I shouldn't have to make an OS that can challenge windows, and get it established so I can have equal footing to make a search engine. I think one of netscape's biggest mis-steps was that they waited until it was over to cry foul. By the time they were complaining there was nothing that would save them. Google is shouting out immediatly, while there's still time to make things right.
If IE made you the offer of choosing on first launch, and everyone chose MSN, then I would sadly wave good-bye to google along with everyone else and go on with my life. This default is purposely designed to give them a strong advantage. MSN as a department could go virtually indefinitely without going cash positive. That's awefully hard to compete with. Ultimately all the little advantages microsoft can throw MSN will be what tips the scales.
I think most users are apathetic actually. I believe people go to google now because they know it and think it's the best, and they basically have to go out of their way to search with anyone. A default box at the top for searches is a really nice feature and most people won't understand the difference or know how to change it.
that's not MS's fault
That's disingenuous. It's not their fault, but they are exploiting their monopoly to take advantage of it. We're not arguing who's fault the apathy is, we're arguing about weather MS is unfairly leveraging their monopoly to grow into another market.
It's outlandish to my sensibilities to think that some third party should have control over a simple default in my software application.
Google agrees. A simple dialogue on first launch that allows you to choose from a list of the top available search engines would be just fine by them. MS doesn't want to do this because they know this will nullify the advantage. Most people would choose Google given the choice. If this is really such a non-issue you have to ask why MSN hasn't chosen the most popular search engine as the default.
This is NOT the same thing that MS has done in the past
It is exactly the same thing, just one level removed. They installed IE and made it the default browser for the OS. Then proceeded to win because they could leverage the monopoly, spend basically unlimited amounts of money on r&d, and starve the competition out as users had to know and put effort into going out of their way to use the competition. Apathy did most their work for them (let's be honest, IE was horrid when it first came out, and didn't really take off until they included it in the OS). The names of the products have changed, but the strategy is the same.
Since Google is the clear choice of users, what measuring stick did Microsoft use to decide MSN should be the default? Even Yahoo has more marketshare than MSN does. They want a bigger piece of the pie and know this will do that. Let's not pretend who MS is watching out for. Choosing the 3rd most popular search engine on the criteria that they own it is hardly looking out for the users. The windows monopoly pretty much makes them immune to any kind of consequence from traditional competitive forces.
This won't win the war, but it's a decisive advantage, and will unfairly grow their marketshare in a way Google can't compete with. Often that's all it takes.
Right, but they have no access to the default browser installed on the most popular OS. Because it is owned by the creator of that OS.
This is always step 1 when microsoft goes to move a competitor out of the market. Everyone buys windows, they use that to extend and fund whatever else they want. They don't have to figure out a way to subsidise IE development, they just force you to pay for it when you buy windows (via monopoly). Control of windows gives them the ability to force you to fund their war against google, and the best way to win that war is to make users go out of their way to bring business to the competition.
The evil here is MSN doesn't have to make money right away, this strategy is designed to starve google as much as help microsoft. Because everyone is buying windows they can play the game forever, they force you to pay for whatever they don't make anyway.
Goolge makes it's money from searches. There is no monopoly behind it fueling it for this fight.
It's foolish to assume Google can't be ruined. This strategy has ruined many of it's former competitors.
Bob's PC world doesn't own his own OS, design his own hardware, etc.
That's exactly my point. Bob installs the OS his customers want, not the one he created. Google doesn't own any of the other pieces. If Safari made MSN the default tomorrow there's not a thing google could do about it. They have to compete with everyone else in their space for that honor.
Microsoft owns all the other pieces. They control windows and therefore force you to buy IE. They own IE, force you to buy it, then they go ahead and set you up with MSN.
Using Windows to leverage IE won them the browser wars and gave them the Office space. Is it so hard to see the unfair advantage this will give them?
You can believe Microsoft does, otherwise why would they fight it at all? Most people would choose Google given a choice, but not know better otherwise. They are banking on it because they want a bigger piece of that pie.
Slashdot Mirror
there are quotes from the bible that support the anti-abortion rights movement...Firstly, nothing in the bible directly addresses the issues here
If there was never a serious discussion in the Bible about it, how are there passages that confirm any point of view? Given any book I could find quotes out of context to support my views.
Do we know we are right? Of course not, but we think we are. We hope we are. That's all we can do.
Fair enough. So rather than quoting bible passages, holding rallies, and trying to pass laws why don't you just say that? If you can admit this is just your opinion and that the topic is complicated, how does passing laws to force your opinion on this topic on the rest of us seem fair? Especially if we can't hold an honest pro/con discussion about it. Consider maybe your view is wrong. I'll consider that maybe mine is.
A person cannto quantify morality
I disagree. A society cannot function without it. We quantify morality every day. Murder, rape, incest, fraud are all moral issues. We weigh the benefits against the cost and draw up rules for what is ok and what is not. We then quantify the penalty for those crimes based on how negative we view the cost.
With a quantified morality you can seriously discuss the issue of things like stem cells. Without the ability to quantify what it is that you believe makes one human, we can't come up with a consensus on what is wrong. Nearly every sperm could become a child, should we protect those? You need to draw a line somewhere. Leaving it vague just serves to fuel the controversy.
I suspect that is part of the point on the christian side. For the purposes of this argument any quantification would probably show that there are some situations where it should be ok. By keeping it vague we don't have to discuss the what-if's.
This is a good point. It is much harder to "stick to your guns" when the consequences are personal.
This is what I'm referring to. Innately we are all quantifying our morals every day. We don't kill disobedient children because we realize that may be a little too harsh for the crime. If you would receive the benefit the moral gauge shifts. Reality adjusts the equation. I'm perfectly healthy, but I can imagine being unhappy if I was suffering some some permanent ailment. I recognize the conflict. I wouldn't support growing fully functional clones to harvest them for organs, but on this level it seems a no brainer to me. I eat a cow without a second thought, to me that has more moral problems attached to it. The cow doesn't want to die, the cells at this point have no consciousness.
It's not moral weakness, it's compassion. It's supposed to be a virtue.
For the love...
We eat baby cows and chicken fetuses. We kill pregnant pigs and use their unborn children to teach biology to high school kids. We go to other countries and start wars because we think our way of life is better than the one they have.
This is blatant mirepresentation of the facts. We protect the sea turtle eggs because they are an endangered species. Not because we value their children above our own.
most Christians would say that humans were the only animal made in God's image, and the only ones that posses a soul.
Right, because that couldn't be interpreted any other way. Of course it also says that animals don't have a soul, right? Where was that part? I don't really recall the attitude that everything in the garden was there for Adam to pillage to the point of extinction because it was less worthy. Must have misread it.
Of course isn't genesis the book that has several different retellings of the same story. All with different versions? Which version did we pick for this?
Exodus 21, starting with verse 22:
Ok. Get this. Your Bible has little-to-nothing to do with the system of law we have, despite what religious folks love to spout. We do not practice eye for an eye. We are allowed to worship all the false idols we want. We do not kill you for coveting another man's wife. We do not kill disobedient children. Banking is allowed. That the two have even passing familiarity is because it is hard to have a stable society if people are allowed to kill each other.
This does not completely prove that God meant at the moment the cells start dividing, but it is safe to say that after 8 weeks a mother and father would know that the mother is pregnant
Conjecture, conjecture, conjecture. It does not say that. You made up the 8 weeks part. Pulled it out of your butt. That's not the word of god. It's the world of Aqualung812. It especially doesn't say that the women is not allowed to self-terminate the pregnancy. I could interpret this to mean god doesn't want you interfering in the woman's right to choice.
I'm not saying you aren't entitled to your opinion. I am annoyed that you feel the need to search for obscure passages to validate your opinions as being that of god. You are interpreting and misrepresenting. To make it worse, where things are spelled out you ignore it.
I'm sorry that's a stretch. Maybe he was referring to the 3rd trimester? Maybe the passage was written by a human being who didn't know how the process worked. Maybe it was part of a greater moral lesson and you are taking it out of context. How do duplicating cells "know" anything? Bacteria know as much. Those "lowly" animals know more.
While abortion is not directly spoken about
This is what I'm talking about. The Bible doesn't cover it. You got a gut reaction and went looking for some small clip that could be taken out of context to support your opinion as though it came from God.
Not that the Bible is an authoritative source on anything. Christians commit adultery all the time. We go to war and kill others. Those are spelled out. There's no exception I've ever read for that killing thing.
No concern at all. Human life is greater than animal or plant life.
That scare the bejesus out of me. You have no morality other than that expressly spelled out in the bible? Except the parts you want to ignore of course. How about rape? Where's that in your commandments?
You have never been to an anti-abortion rally then.
What do women at anti-abortion rallies have to do with disabled folks supporting stem-cell research? I'm going to ignore that many of them (*cough* roe *cough*) have had abortions. I know several women who have had abortions and still claim to be pro-life. We call those hipocrits.
Women who feel this way I am willing to listen to. It affects them one way or another. However to assume the number of women who oppose abortion is anywhere near close to the number who support it, is a flat out lie. I've never seen any study by anyone that even hints at that.
Then we're back to feelings. Just because someone feels something you are doing is wrong does not make it so. The women at anti-abortion rallies are not ever asked to get an abortion. We aren't knocking women over the head and dragging them into clinics. We are saying that the choice should be the womans to make. Everyone has different morals and stations in life. This is obviously not clear cut. Who are you to tell someone else that your feeling in this matter is more valid than theirs?
The movement is largely Christian families who have a desire to save lives of those who are otherwise unprotected.
There's another word for these people. Bigots. The religious right in this country has fought any social liberation. They opposed the liberation of slaves, quoting the Bible, which does spell out that slavery is OK. They opposed women's sufferage. Prohibition.
This isn't about the lives of those who are unprotected. It's about thrusting your value system on others. What about the millions who die of starvation every year? What about the thousands of already born children who are lost in the foster care system?
I may feel people who hold these values to be bigots. You don't see me trying to pass a law labeling them as such.
Isn't that the reason they want to do the research? The difficulties are the reason we need to do more research. It's a chicken egg thing. If we don't do research on it, it will never get easier to do.
It would appear that these yo-yo's are needlessly diving headlong into a moral morasse
It isn't a moral morass for them. You have a problem with it. They are not using your sperm/eggs. They are not asking for your money. They are not asking you to use the treatments or knowledge that might come from it. They aren't asking for your support in any way. They are entitled to their morality just as you are.
It's unfair to assume your morality is more valid than theirs.
one of the supposed "smartest people in the world, and the best in the field" was recently pointed out to have failed miserably with cloning.
Of the thousands of scientists doing reputable research all over the world, we should punish them all because 1 did something he shouldn't have? Lots of people drink and drive. Should we outlaw alcohol and motorized vehicles to balance it out? There are people who do this sort of thing in every aspect of every social/business system. Are you advocating we outlaw accounting? Hardly an argument.
So while your gut is busy dismissing my "unsupportable feeling" (an irony in and of itself)
I wasn't the one trying to convince you my way was better. I was dismissing your attempt to thrust your sense of values on others and myself. You are entitled to not use or research these stem cells. I object to your belief that your values should somehow supersede mine.
If these scientists didn't do this research I wouldn't care either. This is their decision to make. Not yours and not mine.
Because there don't seem to be many rational arguments against it. Oh, and religious organizations are pretty loud about it.
I can't give you a scientific reason. I can't give you logical reason. Hell, I probably can't give you a "rational" reason. It just *feels* wrong.
You will forgive the rest of us then. We based our reasons on rational and logic.
What does that make me?
Irrational and dangerous. Feeling something, anything, doesn't make it so. Worse, you expect others to feel the same. Laughable, you expect us to set aside our logic and reason and pay equal homage to your feelings.
just because we *can* do something, should we do it?
You make it sound like they are slaughtering human beings. These are clumps of cells no more human than a kidney. A cow has more feelings and IQ than an embryo at this stage. Where's your compassion for them?
Do we research things even if our gut tells us "this isn't right"?
I think it's safe to assume none of the scientists involved have your feelings. Are you proposing your feelings are more valid than theirs somehow?
Should science and morality be seperate?
No. But your morality should be based on some frame of logic by which you can judge new realities as they come. Not some dogmatic system of unsupportable feelings.
Weird how Harvard employed these yo-yo's and not you. I'm going to go out on a limb here and just purely speculate that the guys working at harvard are some of the smartest in the world, and some of the best in their field. Further I will assume you are neither.
My gut tells me they have a clue and you have an unsupportable feeling.
Spoken by someone not dying of the virus/disease during that 2 generations.
It's not quite that black and white. Sometimes patients are the ones pushing these things. Better to try something new and experimental then just lay back and die.
SO now we cure certain problems, and new ones will arise.
Are you advocating stopping scientific progress because some unforseen event might occur in the future? That even might happen if you do your science or not. Not much of a way to live.
Then, as Malcolm from Jurassic Park, says: Nature finds a way to control what is being done
Dude, it was a book/movie. Crichton doing what he does best, telling a good story. I don't think I would include quotes from hollywood movies as evidence of a position in science is all I'm saying. The book would have been really boring if Nedry hadn't shut the system down :P
*claps*
If the Bible doesn't say anything, then someone recently just made this up. If that is the case then there really shouldn't be any religious reason. I don't recall the passage that says "though shall make up new rules for me when it is convenient to support your feelings". Without such a passage it seems pretty arrogant to make up new rules as you go and spout that as the word of god.
Morality is always a weird line. How do you feel about animal testing? Or killing animals to extract medical benefits? They are alive. Does morality only kick in based on an IQ? I mean really that's the primary seperation between you, and say, a cow. If that's the case then we should be clear on the embryos. They have no IQ yet.
The problem with your position, from my perspective, is you won't quantify what actually bothers you. There is no crusade against animal insulin. If you can use one, why not the other? Why does a clump of cells that could become a human have more rights than a fully grown cow? The cells at that point are no more a fully functional human than my liver is. It clearly doesn't care at this stage in development about anything. The cow, however, fears death.
I agree there is a line. The later in the 9months we get the more ify it gets for me. But at this stage there is no human. It's just a clump of cells reproducing. If we don't even protect fully grown animals why are we protecting this clump of cells? Especially if they could be used to help or save a fully grown person.
I also can't help but notice there aren't many people in wheel chairs, or suffering from major physical problems, that are against this. Listening to an otherwise healthy person tell me about the immorality of stem-cells is like listening to an old white man tell me abortion should be illegal. A lot easier to have a moral position on something that you wouldn't see any immediate benefit from anyway...
If it's genuinely unfair, change the law and make sure they follow the new law.
Guess I don't see what the big deal is.
True. But because you made money doing something last year, does not automatically ensure you can make money doing the same thing the next.
Innovate or get out of the way.
Everytime a new medium comes out it makes the process easier and cheaper for the studios. Somehow I always end up paying the same or more. There is a lot of profit built into this business. A LOT. If there was no profit why are they guarding the market so jealously? The old way of doing things may have required all these people. The new way may not.
it seems like the average slashdotter thinks that software is produced by coders alone
I code for a living. What used to take a team of people a few days to complete I can do by myself in 10 minutes. See me whinning that my job has changed? I don't get to make money doing what I was doing 3 years ago, the same way I was doing it 3 years ago. Why should they? I grew with the times.
You people really need a wake up call.
Hate to say I don't think we need the wake-up call. We aren't the ones trying to convince everyone that water flows up hill. Either the studios will change and learn how to prosper with these new realities, or they won't and will die. Someone else will step up to the plate and do it for them when they're gone.
We aren't the ones living in the fantasy world.
The thing that really gets me is that they won't even try something like allofmp3. It's already easy to pirate the content, why not at least try something like this to see how it goes? I mean it can't get worse. Maybe people will like it. What are they so terrified of? They're so worried Apple has all this power now because they insisted on all the DRM. Seems like there's an easy fix there to me.
They are never going to win in this manner or with this attitude. Stop whinning and try something different.
GNU/Linux has come a long way. It is also still a crazy wild west. Seems like any commercial vendor would go crazy trying to get a product working in that world.
Now if 1 product would take over a huge chunk of the market, that would change things. If Ubuntu 6 for example became 90% of all linux installations, then commercializm becomes viable. Sure you can still run any of the other distros, libraries, and GUI's you wanted. But everyone would at least then know what was required to make a standard linux app work.
Isn't the opposite true? If no one was pirating their material they would assume the product was the problem, not the distribution. This shows that everyone doesn't hate all the products, they just want a different distribution method.
Sites like allofmp3 show that people are willing to pay you for it. The non-drm, pick-your-own-format style are what people really love. The price for such a service could be a little higher (though not $.99). These industries just currently refuse to take my money.
People have a very innate sense of value and fairness. Copying has been easy since cassettes and vhs. But people would only work so hard to get a illegitamate copy. There was a quality consideration, and at a certain point it becomes more work that the few dollars was worth to get the copy.
They just need to adjust prices for things like downloads to a place where it is no longer worth my time to spend all this time and energy getting illegal copies.
If the prices and restrictions weren't so outrageous no one would bother. I mean pirating music is still really easy and still people are buying up iTunes and allofmp3 in mass. So stop the tired old "/.'ers refuse to pay for anything". We will pay. But we won't be suckered either.
How is that ever going to be secure?
I don't care how "security first" you are thinking if clicking "yes" a few times circumvents it all.
Maybe I want that piece of spyware-ish software running (for whatever reason). As a user it might be nice to make it happen if I wanted. Doesn't mean the other users should have to deal with it, or that the system should be running the software when I'm not logged in.
The average joe user doesn't need to be able to install some app that runs services at boot-time. If he wants to install some word processor, he should be able to do that in some user available folder. If he wants to install some active-x control, and isn't an admin, he should be able to install it in his local space in a place that doesn't affect the system as a whole with minimul fuss.
I realize that this could have the effect on a single user machine of being the same as it is now, just at the user level. First that would be a lot easier to clean up. Create new user, copy files you want, delete old user. Even the most horrid over-run problem solved. Make starting a process at boot-time, or user log-in time a pain in the arse. That way you know the user really wants it. It seems this is the area most abused. Without boot-time access most of the worms/virii would become impotent anyway.
Dialoging common actions, in user space, will have the effect of getting everyone to just ignore the dialogues. Then a serious problem in the system space might be occuring, and we will all be accustmed to clicking "ok".
Think "Are you sure you want to install to C:\Program Files\x\cmd.exe" vs "Are you sure you want to install to C:\Windows\cmd.exe". I bet most wouldn't catch something subtle like that (just an example). One should generate a dialogue, one should not.
For compatability create something like Altiris Software Virtualization tool. It can pretend to let your old software do whatever it wants. When in fact it is just doing these things in a virtual user space. Then I tell windows to zap this program, not ask the program to delete itself (this is also heavily abused). Windows has been tracking everything this program has been doing, shuts down all it's processes, and sucks EVERY file and folder back out that the orginial install and it's children put in.
I think the whole concept that you can protect users from themselves is flawed. Users are going to do dumb things. No matter how many dialogue boxes you throw up little jimmy is going to install Kazaa and all the spyware it comes with. Letting him click "ok" to suddenly give everything the run of the system is just stupid. Make it so dumb things means they break their account, not the system.
On a regional level I can't do anything about the tiering AT&T does to Google if the tiering isn't occuring locally. Any local rules created can easily be side-stepped by just moving where the tiering is located (geographically).
I've got plenty of providers to choose from
But I and most of America don't. I already have to buy a phone line I don't want if I buy DSL. I know for a fact they love to bundle. Not mandating this seperation is a slippery slope.
there isn't, and won't be, some solid wall between the content and infrastructure worlds
Who is implying there should be? If BellSouth wanted to go create Boogle tomorrow to compete with google I'd say more power to them. Where I get muddy is when they abuse their control over the last mile to my home to shove their product down my throat regardless if I want it. If their product is good it will handle itself. If it is not good, they would like a tiered internet infrastructure to allow them to alter the balance.
Two identical businesses shipping exactly the same items in the same quantities can wind up paying wildly different rates
Different site ISP's I have worked with have had often wildly different prices/offerings. Again, if the poor ISP can't make any money why are they there in the first place?
shipping exactly the same items in the same quantities can wind up paying wildly different rates because of the relative mix of the destination demographics
Except in this case only one person is paying. The end-customer is already paying the ISP for the delivery service. It's akin to saying Amazon just has to get the package to UPS. I already pay UPS monthly to deliver packages to my door. UPS shouldn't get to charge Amazon the full price of delivering a package to my door, and then charge me a monthly fee for delivering packages to my door.
That would never work in an open market. It will only work here, again, because most people don't have a choice.
I'm more interested in the third party pipes that have to have relationships with all of the parties involved. But some ISPs are also, more or less, backbone providers
Maybe I just missed something. I worked for a VoIP provider for a while. We had several connections with several providers to improve our QOS. We paid all of them for every connection. I never met a provider who would let me connect and move data across their network for free. In fact they would meter the data and give us better deals the more data we pushed to them. Who are these carriers giving away network access?
If the poor last-mile ISP's really can't make any money with any of this, why are they fighting sharing the wire so hard? Their actions imply to me they are actually making a great deal of money.
You make a good point in that this has been going on for years (to a certain degree) between different groups. Obviously Google had no problem setting up infrastructure to improve their connectivity to a given ISP. Google spent money on their 1/2 to improve delivery of their content (selfish). The ISP spent their 1/2 of the money to improve Google's quality to their customers, creating cheaper connections for them, and more incentive for a customer to buy their service (selfish). Google only balked when the ISP then said "we also think you should pay us directly to do this".
Say what?
Google should have to pay the customers ISP to improve the ISP's value to the customer? Only a monopoly with a long history of government subsidies could imagine such a thing being rational.
It is not economically feasible to run pipes to everyone. Most places in the US have such an arrangement (tax subsidies/etc). Once the pipes are in place however the carriers want to start abusing the situation. Since possession is 9/10-ths, for the most part they get their way.
It is disingenuous to imply that anyone could go out tomorrow and just recreate much of this infrastructure with private funds.
The several competing providers who have chosen to set up in my area are trying very hard to win me over, always offering better deals and counter-deals on bandwidth.
Understand your situation is unique, not the norm. I have lived in several major cities, and several different urban areas in the last few years. The most I have ever seen in any place at once is 2. The phone carrier (about whom you had no choice), and the cable operator (who you also had no choice about). Most places I have lived had just one choice.
ou have only your locally elected people to blame for a less competitive environment
To be fair, it has more to do with population density than elected officials. When your local government subsidizes pipe because it is uneconomical for a company to do it, it is not reasonable that the company then gets a monopoly over it. Through lobbying, and because it is prohibitively expensive to lay down extra lines, most companies have managed to get a monopoly in any given area.
Recognizing that a third party is routing an enormous portion of their traffic over your finite network, and making a lot of money doing so, does make talking to that user about traffic optimization a very legitimate objective.
This logic is flawed. Without their content no one would want your pipes. It seems to me equally fair that the ISP should have to pay Google for helping it's customers find what they want on the network. Google is providing your customers incentive to buy your product at no cost to you. How is that fair? If all these terrible content production companies were not creating content, no one would want your network.
A common carrier like UPS, you mean?
Exactly like UPS. UPS does not get to double charge everyone. One side pays the price, they deliver the product. UPS does not get to collect my $10 shipping fee, then tell Amazon that if they do not also pay them they will intentionally delay the delivery of my package. If it costs more to deliver my package to me in one place than another, UPS will charge me more, not go to Amazon.
You suffer from the delusion that Google is the local ISP's customer. They are not. The user requesting the information is your customer, and he is already paying you for that service. Google owes you nothing.
If your customers want Google to be tiered then that is between you and the customers. It is in your best interest to give your customers better access to the content they want, not visa-versa.
The reason ISP's want this is for the opposite reason. It gives them bundling control many of them are traditionally used to having. Bundling phone service for example. Either Vonage pays us to provide phone service to our customers (and we make money by leveraging one product for another), or we drop you and get someone else (or themselves) to do it.
It is never in the customers best interest to be told what is best for them based on who gives the carrier the most amount of money. The only reason they can get away with this is because most of them do have a monopoly in any given area so the customers can't choose something less draconian. If this were not the case I would agree that market forces would work this out.
Does that really make any sense to you? You act as though accepting users $$ every month to provide a service is a terrible burden those poor ISP's must bear. If anything I would think you would be grateful that this 3rd party has created a value for your product, which entices people to buy your product, at no cost in development to you.
If there is no content why would people be buying these pipes to begin with?
You pay your typical residential ISP to get you onto their network
Are you high? I pay my provider for access to eBay, Google, email, etc. Why would I pay this much money to sit on my ISP's network all day if it wasn't connected to the others? That's just a stupid thing to say.
not to provide any particular, exact flavor of peering to any specific other network in a particular way
Again. That's actually EXACTLY their job. I have no use for their network if it isn't hooked up to the others, and reasonably fast.
This is one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard for this tierd internet idea. Get it through your skull that the network needs the information more than the information needs the network. You shouldn't get to charge the other end, because without the other end you would have nothing to sell to begin with. They are the ones providing you an ability to charge people to access their content for FREE.
I order a product from Amazon.com. I pay fedex $10 for 3-day delivery. What right does fedex have to ever ask Amazon.com for money? This is akin to suggesting to Amazon.com that if they don't toss them some money they will intentionally delay my package by several days. I paid you to deliver the package, you agreed to do it by a set time, you have no right to go to amazon.com about it (if even just because i, as the customer, have no control whether amazon.com agrees to pay it or not). They could make the exact same argument:
1. Amazon.com is making money off of their delivery "network" and doesn't pay them a dime for it.
2. It is not the same price to deliver a package to NY as it is to an igloo in canada.
Point 2 is completely valid. Which is why if you choose to live in an igloo in the middle of nowhere you have to pay more for shipping to your location. How does the problem get fixed by double charging for shipping? Basically you are just attempting to push your extra costs onto everyone except the guy living in the igloo, and abusing the fact that Amazon.com depends on you to do business.
If a site passes the paid for limit the isp will shut them down. If the client is downloading too much than the ISP needs to deal with that. Everyone in the middle is paid for their piece of the pie.
This is a simple attempt to extort money through near-monopoly of the last mile. After all, how many options does the average end-user really have? Two? If they're lucky?
Using that definition how could they ever do anything unfair? As long as there was a possiblity of working around anything, nothing would be an exclusion.
How hard does it have to be to work around something before it becomes unfair? What does that measuring stick look like? How about changing the hosts file, is editing a text file too much work? What if they make a dialogue box somewhere in settings to change the hosts file? Is that now more fair? How buried does that option have to be before it is unfair? Who makes that choice MS? I'm assuming you think IE won it's perspective market fair and square? You always had a way of going around them. They never required you to use it, just pay for it and have it installed.
If this follows formula then the price of MSN will eventually just be bundled into the cost of the OS. It will be yet another field that no one else can make money in, but MS collects it's toll at OS purchase time, making them money, and keeping everyone else out.
but do you seriously expect an OS to come without a browser today?
I have a vast array of options in linux. The default Ubuntu comes using Gnome and Firefox as the default browser. Kubuntu comes with KDE and Konqeror (can't remember if firefox is in that). First your open source person is a little better informed anyway. Leaving that aside the point is I can get the distro that is set up the way I like it. Sending money to Ubuntu says i appreciate that way of doing things.
The average user today is basically stuck with windows. If we were to agree that an OS must ship with a browser, then it would be nice if the monopoly side was forced to offer versions of the OS pre-installed with the browser of my choice (obviously from a pre-defined list), giving that chunk of the cost to the creator of that browser. Then MS and IE could do whatever they wanted, as there was no longer any leveraging. It would also open the browser market back up to commercial-level competition.
I only have a problem because each step after OS purchase automatically signs you up for the rest. It's leveraging, plain and simple.
It's no more tying or forced bundling then having calculator or notepad come with the OS
So the argument is that since they bundle some software they should be allowed to bundle anything they want? It's an... interesting... argument.
as long as MS stays away from things like exclusive licensing, cliff pricing, bundling and tying
This is tying. The others come later, after they run out the competition. The rising cost will then just be hidden in the price of the OS.
Nope, you don't have to use it. You do, however, have to buy it (i'll get into that more).
but I simply don't see why the creator of the product should have to kow-tow to competitors and give them an equal footing
Firefox/Opera/Safari don't. That's what happens when you have a monopoly, especially one that arguably is leveraging "the product" you are pushing. It's completely unfair to the competition and bad for the customer, which is why we have laws against it.
This is NOT like forcing vendors to install IE
That's what is so delicious about this. It's exactly like IE. They leveraged Windows to allow them to run all competing browsers out of the market and supplant them with IE. It is now next to impossible for anyone to create a browser for profit. Really all browsers now are IE or open source. You simply can't make any (serious) money selling the browser anymore thanks to microsoft. Only companies like Google who have another revenue stream can compete in this space. There are very few companies who want to get into this kind of fight when there isn't any immediate profit in it. Microsoft extracts it's profit by charging you for it through Windows. They get to have their cake and eat it too.
So now they basically own the browser market (85%) and they can now use this to start leveraging themselves into new web-based markets. Make the MS-Office-Online work just a little better with microsoft's products through IE. Why not just set up everyone to default use the MS-online tools when they start rolling out? Sure people could switch to others offering if they wanted! Make MSN the default search tool, etc...
Windows is now the standard OS. Use that to make IE the standard browser. Use that to move into whatever you want from there. Every purchase of windows is giving MS more power to fight Google with MSN. That's not how it's supposed to work.
They are not exluding anybody, they are not forcing their service on anybody
They force you to buy their browser, set up to use their search service, when you purchase an OS. You have no choice.
It's exclusion through omission. Sure if you go out of your way to do something you can do it. Firefox shows that maybe up to 15% of the computer user population cares enough to get involved. The vast majority won't understand the difference, and those are who MS is hoping to exploit. They don't need to control the whole market right away, just chip at Google slowly. They have a monopoly propping them up for the long haul. Google will reach a breaking point because the fight is in their primary income space.
I'm not an anti-MS guy. I'm really not. I do most of my development and daily functions in windows. I do see Google's complaint however. This is how microsoft runs people out, and i recognize that this is going to hurt google and they really have no recourse because of ms's monopoly. If I want to make a search engine I shouldn't have to make an OS that can challenge windows, and get it established so I can have equal footing to make a search engine. I think one of netscape's biggest mis-steps was that they waited until it was over to cry foul. By the time they were complaining there was nothing that would save them. Google is shouting out immediatly, while there's still time to make things right.
If IE made you the offer of choosing on first launch, and everyone chose MSN, then I would sadly wave good-bye to google along with everyone else and go on with my life. This default is purposely designed to give them a strong advantage. MSN as a department could go virtually indefinitely without going cash positive. That's awefully hard to compete with. Ultimately all the little advantages microsoft can throw MSN will be what tips the scales.
I think most users are apathetic actually. I believe people go to google now because they know it and think it's the best, and they basically have to go out of their way to search with anyone. A default box at the top for searches is a really nice feature and most people won't understand the difference or know how to change it.
that's not MS's fault
That's disingenuous. It's not their fault, but they are exploiting their monopoly to take advantage of it. We're not arguing who's fault the apathy is, we're arguing about weather MS is unfairly leveraging their monopoly to grow into another market.
It's outlandish to my sensibilities to think that some third party should have control over a simple default in my software application.
Google agrees. A simple dialogue on first launch that allows you to choose from a list of the top available search engines would be just fine by them. MS doesn't want to do this because they know this will nullify the advantage. Most people would choose Google given the choice. If this is really such a non-issue you have to ask why MSN hasn't chosen the most popular search engine as the default.
This is NOT the same thing that MS has done in the past
It is exactly the same thing, just one level removed. They installed IE and made it the default browser for the OS. Then proceeded to win because they could leverage the monopoly, spend basically unlimited amounts of money on r&d, and starve the competition out as users had to know and put effort into going out of their way to use the competition. Apathy did most their work for them (let's be honest, IE was horrid when it first came out, and didn't really take off until they included it in the OS). The names of the products have changed, but the strategy is the same.
Since Google is the clear choice of users, what measuring stick did Microsoft use to decide MSN should be the default? Even Yahoo has more marketshare than MSN does. They want a bigger piece of the pie and know this will do that. Let's not pretend who MS is watching out for. Choosing the 3rd most popular search engine on the criteria that they own it is hardly looking out for the users. The windows monopoly pretty much makes them immune to any kind of consequence from traditional competitive forces.
This won't win the war, but it's a decisive advantage, and will unfairly grow their marketshare in a way Google can't compete with. Often that's all it takes.
This is always step 1 when microsoft goes to move a competitor out of the market. Everyone buys windows, they use that to extend and fund whatever else they want. They don't have to figure out a way to subsidise IE development, they just force you to pay for it when you buy windows (via monopoly). Control of windows gives them the ability to force you to fund their war against google, and the best way to win that war is to make users go out of their way to bring business to the competition.
The evil here is MSN doesn't have to make money right away, this strategy is designed to starve google as much as help microsoft. Because everyone is buying windows they can play the game forever, they force you to pay for whatever they don't make anyway.
Goolge makes it's money from searches. There is no monopoly behind it fueling it for this fight.
It's foolish to assume Google can't be ruined. This strategy has ruined many of it's former competitors.
Well I thought it was funny :)
That's exactly my point. Bob installs the OS his customers want, not the one he created. Google doesn't own any of the other pieces. If Safari made MSN the default tomorrow there's not a thing google could do about it. They have to compete with everyone else in their space for that honor.
Microsoft owns all the other pieces. They control windows and therefore force you to buy IE. They own IE, force you to buy it, then they go ahead and set you up with MSN.
Using Windows to leverage IE won them the browser wars and gave them the Office space. Is it so hard to see the unfair advantage this will give them?
You can believe Microsoft does, otherwise why would they fight it at all? Most people would choose Google given a choice, but not know better otherwise. They are banking on it because they want a bigger piece of that pie.