That's mostly because courts are slow and the mega corps are pretty good at stalling them as long as possible. Something that might work would be to make the fines increase as the process drags on (like that 2 million per day fine they got once) and if they're found guilty they have to pay that. Of course the fines stop increasing if the offending activity is stopped.
So even if those die MS would just have to create a puppet competitor that doesn't get anything done but is theoretically available? You don't need to eliminate every last competitor to be a monopoly, you just need the largest marketshare and the power to make people depend on you (when MS says "do this or we won't let you sell our products" most if not all retailers obey even though they could just become a Mac-only shop). MS's customers depend more on MS than MS depends on them.
But did people go out and say "considering all of its qualities I decide to use Internet Explorer" or did they just see the icon on their desktop and use it because it's there?
Opera complained that IE implements standards so badly that it made many web designers code to IE's broken renderer instead of using the standards everyone else uses. If IE wasn't bundled with the OS that broken renderer would have murdered its marketshare long ago.
Actually you'd want the slave to perform better than the master (because the master doesn't really need any boosts, he's not gonna use them anyway), just program him to consider his position the greatest thing ever. Keeping physical superiority isn't going to do much, I'm fairly sure weapons technology will always stay ahead of body enhancement tech enough to destroy even super-boosted humans with the right gun. Mind control is much bttersuited for the job.
For things like Flash it's easier to maintain a whitelist but I agree with your point, anything that can be loaded automatically by the browser in the default settings is seriously dangerous.
I really doubt he got those 1000 records by hand-selecting every single one. My money is on people selling their old record collections on eBay for dirt cheap and him buying a few of those collections in the hope of finding something good among them.
Depends on what you consider the "warmth". If it's something introduced by a reproduction error in the vinyl medium it'll appear no matter what the source is.
On the other hand, despite my fervent belief that they are a wonderful thing and that everyone should wear them (I never drive without one on), it's still my belief that it's a personal choice and should not be a LAW. If a person wants to do something dangerous then that's their business. A whole hell of a lot more things are dangerous and not illegal.
The problem is that when they get in an accident that wasn't their fault the other party pays their medical expenses and without seatbelts those expenses might be a lot higher than they would be otherwise. Of course you could say using no seatbelt means you have to pay your own expenses but then everyone will claim they were using the seatbelt. Also they'll take up medical attention that would have been better spent on people who didn't get injured by their own stupidity.
I'm not sure videogames are really a contributor for obesity tho, people who play loads of videogames (i.e. geeks) tend to be pretty skinny. I'd expect if games are such a big factor most videogame geeks would be much fatter. This may be a perception error on my part but I still find it strange.
Every area of the country is partially represented because in an area with a narrow split between votes you still have 49% (or more if there were more parties) of the area's voters unrepresented. The last election here I voted for the greens (some political questionnaire said that matches my oppinion best) and while they didn't win my area I could still contribute by using my proportional vote on them.
If you don't like the politicians a party is sending don't vote for that party and a party knows that a politician scaring away voters is a bad thing so they better get rid of idiots or risk losing votes. Local representation isn't any better, if someone who has your political stance is a jackass you don't vote for him but if there's a non-jackass on the other end of the country you can't vote for him either.
A party may have received 40% of the vote, but if only 10% of the areas in the country voted to be represented by a member of that party, why should they have more than 10% of the seats?
Because otherwise that leaves 30% of the voters unrepresented? Should someone's vote be ignored because the people around him don't agree/are enough that someone gets 51%? Why should areas get representation instead of people? And hell, if area representation is that important to you you can keep it without losing proportional representation, here in Germany we vote both for a candidate for the area and a party as a whole.
That's a good question, and is basically the difference between a pure democracy and a democratic republic. It would be possible for us to go down the pure democracy path, and rather than having elected leaders, having decisions decided democratically.
There's still some room between winner takes all and voting on every issue. Plenty of countries use systems where a 60-40 vote on two parties gives them a more-or-less 60-40 presence in the government. Sure, if you assume two parties and all party politicians voting the party line that's the same as 100-0 but these countries have a tendency to have more than two parties.
For some reason the election of the US Congress isn't described much on Wikipedia but from the few bits I can see it looks like every member is elected in a part of the country using a winner-takes-all approach, if this was instead done by tallying the total and giving each party a part of congress as large as their share of the vote that would already give each party a power proportional to the number of people who support their platform rather than the number of territories they can gain total control over. This would also make it easier for third parties to gain any power as they would only need a part of the national vote (5% minimum threshold or something) to enter congress instead of requiring 51% in one area.
What needs to be changed is the way representation is granted. There have been presidents that got elected over a few hundred votes. How is that acceptable, that in an election where millions of people vote it's enough to have a few hundred more to take 100% of the power? The vote was split almost exactly 50-50, why isn't the power divided the same way? Tens of millions voted for the other guy, how can it be acceptable that they get zero representation? That election system needs an overhaul badly, when it comes to representing hundreds of millions a change of a few hundred should not make a difference.
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That's mostly because courts are slow and the mega corps are pretty good at stalling them as long as possible. Something that might work would be to make the fines increase as the process drags on (like that 2 million per day fine they got once) and if they're found guilty they have to pay that. Of course the fines stop increasing if the offending activity is stopped.
Back then, yes. But if IE never got OS integration would it really have kept that position?
So even if those die MS would just have to create a puppet competitor that doesn't get anything done but is theoretically available? You don't need to eliminate every last competitor to be a monopoly, you just need the largest marketshare and the power to make people depend on you (when MS says "do this or we won't let you sell our products" most if not all retailers obey even though they could just become a Mac-only shop). MS's customers depend more on MS than MS depends on them.
But did people go out and say "considering all of its qualities I decide to use Internet Explorer" or did they just see the icon on their desktop and use it because it's there?
Opera complained that IE implements standards so badly that it made many web designers code to IE's broken renderer instead of using the standards everyone else uses. If IE wasn't bundled with the OS that broken renderer would have murdered its marketshare long ago.
And what does their income distribution look like?
The general rule applies but they can only punish MS for specific infractions and right now they're trying to figure out which are actual infractions.
Actually you'd want the slave to perform better than the master (because the master doesn't really need any boosts, he's not gonna use them anyway), just program him to consider his position the greatest thing ever. Keeping physical superiority isn't going to do much, I'm fairly sure weapons technology will always stay ahead of body enhancement tech enough to destroy even super-boosted humans with the right gun. Mind control is much bttersuited for the job.
I'm going to have the skills, the money, and the knowledge to take advantage of this new technology
Or that's what YOU think.
For things like Flash it's easier to maintain a whitelist but I agree with your point, anything that can be loaded automatically by the browser in the default settings is seriously dangerous.
These days they'd evacuate the whole building because the note might explode.
Isn't that what appeals are for? A judge that does not act impartial can probably be removed from office as well.
I really doubt he got those 1000 records by hand-selecting every single one. My money is on people selling their old record collections on eBay for dirt cheap and him buying a few of those collections in the hope of finding something good among them.
Depends on what you consider the "warmth". If it's something introduced by a reproduction error in the vinyl medium it'll appear no matter what the source is.
On the other hand, despite my fervent belief that they are a wonderful thing and that everyone should wear them (I never drive without one on), it's still my belief that it's a personal choice and should not be a LAW. If a person wants to do something dangerous then that's their business. A whole hell of a lot more things are dangerous and not illegal.
The problem is that when they get in an accident that wasn't their fault the other party pays their medical expenses and without seatbelts those expenses might be a lot higher than they would be otherwise. Of course you could say using no seatbelt means you have to pay your own expenses but then everyone will claim they were using the seatbelt. Also they'll take up medical attention that would have been better spent on people who didn't get injured by their own stupidity.
A videogame has 0 calories.
I'd like to contest that claim. We should capture some McDonald's execs and feed them shredded DVDs to see how many calories they can extract.
Should've gone for the +1, Perl vote.
I'm not sure videogames are really a contributor for obesity tho, people who play loads of videogames (i.e. geeks) tend to be pretty skinny. I'd expect if games are such a big factor most videogame geeks would be much fatter. This may be a perception error on my part but I still find it strange.
IMO the bigger issue is that gerrymandering can change anything.
Every area of the country is partially represented because in an area with a narrow split between votes you still have 49% (or more if there were more parties) of the area's voters unrepresented. The last election here I voted for the greens (some political questionnaire said that matches my oppinion best) and while they didn't win my area I could still contribute by using my proportional vote on them.
If you don't like the politicians a party is sending don't vote for that party and a party knows that a politician scaring away voters is a bad thing so they better get rid of idiots or risk losing votes. Local representation isn't any better, if someone who has your political stance is a jackass you don't vote for him but if there's a non-jackass on the other end of the country you can't vote for him either.
A party may have received 40% of the vote, but if only 10% of the areas in the country voted to be represented by a member of that party, why should they have more than 10% of the seats?
Because otherwise that leaves 30% of the voters unrepresented? Should someone's vote be ignored because the people around him don't agree/are enough that someone gets 51%? Why should areas get representation instead of people? And hell, if area representation is that important to you you can keep it without losing proportional representation, here in Germany we vote both for a candidate for the area and a party as a whole.
That's a good question, and is basically the difference between a pure democracy and a democratic republic. It would be possible for us to go down the pure democracy path, and rather than having elected leaders, having decisions decided democratically.
There's still some room between winner takes all and voting on every issue. Plenty of countries use systems where a 60-40 vote on two parties gives them a more-or-less 60-40 presence in the government. Sure, if you assume two parties and all party politicians voting the party line that's the same as 100-0 but these countries have a tendency to have more than two parties.
For some reason the election of the US Congress isn't described much on Wikipedia but from the few bits I can see it looks like every member is elected in a part of the country using a winner-takes-all approach, if this was instead done by tallying the total and giving each party a part of congress as large as their share of the vote that would already give each party a power proportional to the number of people who support their platform rather than the number of territories they can gain total control over. This would also make it easier for third parties to gain any power as they would only need a part of the national vote (5% minimum threshold or something) to enter congress instead of requiring 51% in one area.
What needs to be changed is the way representation is granted. There have been presidents that got elected over a few hundred votes. How is that acceptable, that in an election where millions of people vote it's enough to have a few hundred more to take 100% of the power? The vote was split almost exactly 50-50, why isn't the power divided the same way? Tens of millions voted for the other guy, how can it be acceptable that they get zero representation? That election system needs an overhaul badly, when it comes to representing hundreds of millions a change of a few hundred should not make a difference.
Will these cars have an artificial arm dangling from their side?
At least in Japan they will.
I would assume someone perpetrating #1 would be liable for perjury or something and the derivative victims would be able to recover damages from him.