Here is a list and commentary on MS's campaign contributions. Notice what happens in 98 when they go on trial and then, again, the huge increase in the 2000 election year, just before all the people who successfully convicted MS were replaced by new appointees who let MS off the hook with no punishment and without being broken up.
Just because no one can prove these contributions resulted in favorable treatment doesn't mean we're all idiots and can't put two and two together. American politicians have been for sale for many years and these big companies aren't giving this money away as a charity. They do it because it works to get whatever it is they want, be it legislation that gives them and advantage over the competition or allows them to make money at the people's expense or they want out of their legal troubles.
Apple does not get 'away' with this because the 'market is broken'. Apple gets away with this because this is business, and they are there to make a profit.
I take it you never took economics? We're talking about the invisible hand of competition. It is why capitalism resulted in better products (in general) than extreme socialism. Companies like Apple are trying to make a profit, of course, but in general they have to compete against others, which means they make a profit (in a free market) by providing the best product for the best price. In free market capitalism, companies win when consumers win. In a broken or monopolized market, companies can win when consumers lose, which is why we have antitrust laws. Because they have not been effectively enforced against MS it causes this same situation to expand into a large number of other markets that are related (like computer hardware).
There is no 'market' in terms of Apple, because they are the designers and creators of their technology, AND thus its their market to do with whatever they wish.
A market is simply the group of companies competing for consumer dollars in a space. Apple currently competes in the "computer systems" market against other vendors like Dell and Sony. Despite being the creator of the second most popular desktop OS, they don't compete in the "desktop OS" market because they refuse to sell their OS to other hardware OEMs (like Dell). They refuse to do this, because the desktop OS market is broken and they can't make money there and only by bundling can they make money. If the desktop OS market was not broken, then such bundling would inconvenience the end user, losing them sales increasingly until they stopped said bundling.
They are entitled to control and sell it how they see fit.
Yes they are. The point is, because of the broken desktop OS market, what makes them the most profit is different than what it would be if we were in a true free market capitalist system. As a result, consumers suffer from numerous problems, including higher prices due to lack of fair competition.
You don't have to buy an Apple at all. The market for computers is vast, and is not restricted in any way for the consumer.
I think you're missing the point. I'm not arguing that Apple is doing anything "wrong". I'm arguing that because of the broken market (which is not Apple's fault) normal consumers are getting a worse deal and if the market was restored, Apple would end up charging less on these parts (because that is what would maximize Apple's profit).
As for you MS court bribery nonsense, what rot.
So lets see. MS is convicted by the courts. MS goes from not donating to political parties to being one of the largest contributors to both parties. The elections occur and the politicians to whom MS donated money come into power. The prosecutors in the case are replaced with new ones, appointed by said politicians. These new prosecutors decide to basically let MS off the hook with no real punishments at all and they stop investigating the other complaints numerous companies brought against them. US companies start going directly to the EU courts with regard to MS (another american company) because they have lost all confidence in the US courts ability to act.
You can call that a coincidence and believe that the lobbying dollars really didn't have any influence (as politicians keep claiming) but if you buy that crap, frankly I think you're very naive.
Now that is nonsense. You are absolutely free to buy memory and hard drives wherever you want, and they are easy enough to install yourself.
Of course I can. I'm not reflective of the market. The average home computer buyer will not purchase the computer and part separately or try to install them by themselves. It is too inconvenient for the average user and Apple being the only one to offer not only these components, but OS X pre-installed allows them to leverage the work they put into OS X to charge more for hardware. A user want to use OS X so they buy from Apple who is the only one selling computers with it. If they want a couple gigs of RAM, they order that in the computer and end up paying more because figuring out what they need, ordering separately, paying for shipping, and figuring out how to install it is too hard.
If there were multiple good desktop OS's the lack of hardware selection from Apple would drive away more customers and they'd have to unbundle the two. People would be less willing to buy their hardware from the same vendor as is selling their OS and would comparison shop for the best price, and Apple would have to lower prices to compete.
Anecdotal evidence: all the dells I've used (7-8) never needed a repair in the first year.
Umm, okay. Anecdotal evidence is not really useful compared to a formal study by an independent company. Actually, Dell has made great strides with their laptops recently. Within the last year and a half they've gone from way below average, to near the top (although still quite a bit worse than Apple).
The RAM that comes in the Apple products is the SAME RAM that comes in the Dell products.
And did they pass the same level of quality assurance testing? Now I'm not saying Apple RAM actually is better quality (although Consumer Reports seems to think Apple's hardware in general is based on the lower failure rate than Dell) but you haven't presented any evidence to support your assertion that they are not of different quality or even that the installation by Apple is not more reliable.
Gee what a brilliant "study." They compare a bunch of components, but don't even bother to see if anything they're comparing is the same quality or even from the same vendor. You can go to an online store right now and find wildly different prices for hardware from different vendors, with different levels of quality. The only component Cnet actually knows the vendor for is the processor, which they say are priced just about the same.
Now I'm not saying Apple isn't charging more for the same quality of upgrades or charging more than the difference in quality warrants. They probably are. But couldn't Cnet go to the bother of actually finding out and comparing upgrade prices to a vendor who actually does use the same brand of components? This is just plain lazy.
The last time I checked (Consumer Reports), the only thing Apple has over other vendors is better customer service: not technology.
What? Consumer Reports showed them as having a very significantly lower failure rate during the first year than any other vendor (as of early 2007). That was the last real study I saw them publish on the subject.
It sounds like we need to redesign what antitrust is for.
Not really. We just need to enforce our existing antitrust laws. Apple gets away with this sort of stuff because the market is so broken. If there were multiple, practical alternatives for desktop OS's with fast paced innovation driven by competition, Apple would not even be able to bundle their OS and hardware without losing money. The only way they get away with charging as much as they do for some of their upgrades is by leveraging OS X. Fix the market and they'll unbundle those products out of economic necessity.
The real problem I see here is MS has bribed the US courts and the EU courts have been trying to be super diplomatic to MS. Top that off with all the courts being painfully slow compared to high tech industry and we see these sorts of inefficient, consumer unfriendly behaviors in dozens of markets peripheral to the desktop OS market.
Kind of. If you have a newer macbook or ibook running 10.5.3 you won't be able to play the OSX version of diablo2 or starcraft. They still use the old drawsprocket APIs, and unfortunately apple broke backwards compatibility -- calls to DSpFindBestContext() always fail, for example. If you have a macbook from early 2007 or earlier you're probably fine.
I bought a Core 2 Duo MacBook in November of 2007 and it runs Diablo 2, although you can't run it fullscreen (just in a window).
I don't think so. That installer simply "carbonizes" it, ie, let's run on OS 9 and 10.2, so I assume it's PowerPC only.
You are incorrect. It runs fine on my Intel MacBook with one exception... it can't handle the widescreen resolution needed, so it won't run fullscreen.
What a dreadful idea. More firepower to whoever has the most money, as if power in the US wasn't already dangerously concentrated into the hands of a few, very wealthy people.
The best way to control crime is to promote responsible gun ownership.
I disagree. Not that I don't think promoting responsible gun ownership is not worthwhile. I just don't think it will have a strong affect upon levels of violent crime in an area. The most effective way to combat violence is by attacking the justification for it. Sociology has pretty well demonstrated that the most effective deterrent is moral. The strongest moral justification for violent crime (wealth disparity) also happens to be the single strongest correlation with violent crime in the world. Reduce wealth disparity and violent crime drops dramatically. Sadly, that means certain things most libertarians oppose.
Basically, wealth is consolidating. The more money a person has, the more likely they are to make more money, because they can leverage their existing wealth to make more. Disparity constantly increases and each generation gives money to the next making it hereditary. Some countries have solved this with wealth taxes or very high inheritance taxes. It gives people a more even amount of money going into life, so people don't feel life is so unfair and consequently they commit fewer acts of violence. The other main solution, is socialism. It taxes the rich more than the poor (or should) and provides wealth (like healthcare) to everyone.
Welcome to socialism. Sorry, but all government programs take your money at gunpoint, including funding the police and IRS who will do the taking. And really, socialism is somewhat necessary to prevent capitalism from collapsing under wealth condensation... as it slowly is in the US because of the way our socialism is misdirected to provide more benefit to the wealthy.
To me it makes very simple sense. Ban handguns. I try and think of legitimate users of handguns, and I can think of two.
1) Law,
2) Target and collectors, but really they make up, what, part of one percentage point of the population?
The onus is on the government to prove their is a reason not to have them, not the other way around. As for legitimate uses, I have some friends up in Alaska who climb telephone poles out in the wild to service power lines. Ever tried to climb a telephone pole with a rifle? Care to spend a year in an area with regular bear attacks without having a firearm on you? Self defense is a very valid reason for pistol ownership in many, many cases.
The thing with handguns is that you can conceal them. So criminals love that shit. Make it illegal to have one, and all you have to do is catch them with one to arrest them. Also take enough out of circulation, and it will become very hard to obtain one.
In almost all cases, it is already illegal to carry a concealed pistol, and the police do just arrest people they find with them (unless they have a special permit). It doesn't stop criminals at all because criminals just ignore those laws. This whole thing came about because of the complete handgun ban in Washington DC. They're still one of the most violent cities in the US and it is getting worse (unlike much of the rest of the country). You think aping their failed model for the whole country would help?
Anyway thats my take. Get rid of 'em. I have never fired one, nor will I, for what use do I have for one? Heck if you want to, have a program to trade in your handgun for a rifle or shotgun. Just get rid of them.
Why? There is basically no evidence to support the theory that reducing the umber of handguns leads to decreased violent crime. If people want to decrease violent crime in the US, they should try a proven method. Mimicking Canada is fine so long as you pick traits that actually correlate with violent crime. Reducing wealth disparity, decriminalizing some drugs, and instituting socialized healthcare would all slash violent crime rates in the US. That's my take on it.
When wearing seatbelts became mandatory, people were (and some still are!) arguing against it because "if you have an accident you are trapped".
Okay, you obviously don't believe they are safer without seat belts. Neither do I. Is it possible we're wrong? If the law banned wearing a seatbelt would you argue it was wrong based on the statistical likelihood, or because you had the right to make decisions for yourself when you disagreed with the law? I argue against seatbelt laws because I think they are unconstitutional. Laws should mediate rights between citizens, not try to protect citizens from themselves.
This reminds me a lot of this discussion where people say that if they don't own a gun then crime will be higher.
It is a valid argument, if a bit weak. In truth, there is little or no correlation between gun ownership rates and violent crime.
How come this argument isn't true in many other countries? Plenty of countries where gun ownership is extremely restricted and funnily enough they have a lower crime rate (especially on gun crime) than the US. Just look at most European countries.
Plenty of countries have similar gun ownership rates and gun control laws as the US, but have drastically lower crime. Plenty of countries have higher crime and less gun ownership than the US. Why would you assume gun control laws or gun ownership rates were the important factor? The number one, strongest correlation with violent crime rates is wealth disparity. Maps of Gini coefficient and violent crime levels are eerily similar in many cases. Any moderately intelligent person looking to actually decrease violent crime in the US (instead of scare people into voting for them) would look first at wealth disparity (increase taxes to the wealthy, implement socialized healthcare and addiction management programs with it, decrease taxes for the poor) the prohibition on drugs (decriminalize drugs, but don't completely legalize them) and try to reduce the influence of race and religious differences with education programs (by removing government benefits for religious institutions). All of those are very obvious ways to reduce violent crime that have worked well in other countries. You'll note in many cases they sound like a description of those european countries you mentioned earlier.
Most European countries don't have lower violent crime rates because they have stricter gun laws, but because they have relatively homogeneous, stable, and older cultures.
Actually, while racial and religious diversity is a correlating factor, it isn't the biggest one by far. Say hello to "wealth disparity." The difference in real wealth between the top and bottom of the economic pool is the best predictor of violent crime levels. In the US, it is easy to mistake race as being the main factor, but that is just because wealth in the US is distributed largely along racial lines due to the history of african americans.
I really don't understand why people who have any livelihood to care about carry guns when you consider the huge liability.
Have you researched the rates of death and violence for members of households who have guns and who don't? And no, the rates of firearm violence in said home is not a useful statistic. I'll give you a hint, it doesn't support your implication.
In the last few months I have heard of two accidental gun discharges inside supermarkets, either the guns were fumbled or dropped. In one case, some children were hit.
Interesting. The rate of accidental deaths from firearms is significant, I think it is 1/10th as risky as having a backyard pool. The number of people injured accidentally outside the home, however, is very very small and anything not a hunting accident is so rare as to be statistically insignificant. It would be very rare for a person to drop a firearm, it to go off when dropped, and for it to hit a person.
When you consider how fond the USA is of suing people, I would have thought that carrying a handgun into a public place was too risky for ordinary citizens. After all, if you slip and shoot me by accident, should I survive, I will likely sue and sue big. Should I die, my family will sue.
I'm a thousand times more likely to be sued because someone walking past my house slipped than because I somehow accidentally discharged a firearm.
I've done a little more research. This article supports my point: States With Higher Levels of Gun Ownership Have Higher Homicide Rates, January 11, 2007
Hmm, that's an interesting study and one I had not yet read. It is not, however, not the first of it's kind. It is not, however one that studies the causality, only the correlation. In fact, the study itself points this out "Although causal inference is not warranted on the basis of the present study alone, our findings suggest that the household may be an important source of firearms..." There are just as many studies finding the opposite results with similar or larger sample sizes. They certainly tried to normalize for a lot of factors, including wealth disparity. Sadly, they also attempted to normalize for violent crime levels (using aggravated assault numbers) making the study much less useful.
Your point on Sweden is misleading because Swedes have compulsory military service, and their firearms are rifles with a small clip and the guns are difficult to conceal. Further, citizens undergo regular training throughout their life on firearm use.
Sweden was one example that demonstrates how the correlation does not hold. All of the large studies and meta studies that look at worldwide data will show you the same thing. Wealth disparity, drug criminalization, religious and racial diversity, and socialized drug addiction management are all strongly correlative with violence, while gun control laws are not.
The Brady Campaign (while clearly supporting the assertion that guns are problematic) is telling...
The Brady campaign is not a reliable source of data. They are a group defined by their stance against guns for normal people and, reject anything that conflicts with that world view. They have repeatedly been caught out intentionally spreading misinformation, everything from hollow point bullets being able to go through bulletproof vests, to citing statistical studies that were entirely fabricated.
There are plenty of fairly rational groups that oppose gun ownership, but that certainly is not one of them.
In particular, the USA has over 11,000 firearm homicides a year, compared to (for example) Canada's 184. That's 44 firearm deaths per million citizens in the USA per year, compared to 6.1 per million in Canada. Statistically, the USA is economically superior to Canada in virtually every way, including the distribution of wealth (as measured by per capita income).
Distribution of wealth is not measured by per capita income, but by a Gini coefficient or the like. The last numbers I saw placed Canada at.31 while the US was at a whopping.42. To put that in perspective, income disparity in Canada is about the same as France, while in the US it is about the same as Iran. Add on top of that, that Canada has socialized healthcare while the US does not making the real disparity actually much higher. Then add in that Canada has decriminalized many drugs and offers free drug treatment programs, while the US does not.
I'll tell you what, go find another country with those same qualities as Canada and (regardless of gun laws) I bet you find very similar rates of violent crime. Find another country with similar rates of gun ownership as Canada, and it is anyone's guess.
However, I think those statistics may fail to reveal something sinister. There seems to be a racial or class segregation in the USA, and the per capita income fails to illuminate the number of people who are essentially destitute in the USA. I expect that gun violence (and the fear of gun violence) reinforces this segregation.
What reinforced racial and class segregation is the huge difference in income between them. Both groups have similar rates of gun ownership. I really wish you'd stop using terms like "gun violence". It reinforces the logical misstatement I mentioned before. I don't believe
That's informative (taken at face value, it seems well founded); thank you. I'm in no way an expert, but I grew up in a gun-free society, where violent crime was more-or-less non-existant (domestic violence notwithstanding).
We all are coming from slightly different perspectives. The real trick is not to make assumptions about the causality within a given society.
Your emphasis on wealth disparity is insightful, and probably correct (or at least strongly correlates). It's interesting that gun advocates don't emphasize that point more.
Gun advocates within the sociology and criminology communities do. For society as a whole, however, the issue is heavily politicized and politicians are generally more interested in making people mad about their opponent than they are in informing people that the laws in dispute are not really a big issue. One side wants people afraid of having guns and the other wants them afraid of not having them.
I do not believe gun laws reduce violent gun crime. I believe reducing the number of guns does. Many gun laws are about reducing the number of guns as a way of reducing crime. Strict gun control laws do reduce the number of "violent gun crime." They make it harder for people (al people) to gain access to guns and fewer guns are used both to defend people and attack people. The problem is, they also increase the number of violent crimes without guns... increase them more than the same laws tend to reduce crimes with guns. Thus overall violent crime goes up. Don't be fooled by studies that discuss "gun crime" because they're ignoring the overall increase in crime which is very dishonest at this stage of the game.
Therefore the gun violence in DC is explained by the easy access to guns nearby.
Unless you can get rid of guns worldwide, there will always be a source. In some cases they are smuggled from other states or nearby nations or stolen or bought from police and military. In some places where availability is very low you still see incredibly high violence rates. Consider Brazil, where gun crimes are fairly low, but people murdered with clubs, knives, bombs, and molotov cocktails are alarmingly high. There simply is no evidence that reducing access to guns reduces violent crime and some small evidence that it actually increases violent crime. If there are no guns in a society a large man practiced at violence has little to fear attacking citizens he selects. In a society with guns, any one of those people might have a gun and that may well be enough to dissuade that person from many violent acts.
I am convinced that a society without prevalent access to guns is less likely to have violent crime...
In practical terms, I don't see it as supported by the research to date.
Frankly, it may be noted, I think guns are cool. Just incredibly dangerous, with little benefit.
Reducing violent crime seems useful to me. I used to live in a wilderness area with a lot of bears and my quarter of a mile walk through the forest to my car every day would have been a lot more dangerous without a firearm. It all depends upon who you are and where you live. I certainly don't recommend gun ownership for all people and certainly not without proper training. Neither do I think it is necessarily a negative thing. Unless you can remove weapons from the hands of government agents, there is a strong argument for firearm ownership as a way of empowering citizenry. It is certainly a debatable point.
Analysis - Owning a gun is not a preventative measure for the vast majority of gun deaths.
You have logically misstated the problem. Most of us are a lot more concerned about being killed, more so than being killed with just a gun. The statistic that is relevant is if owning a gun is more likely to result in you or a member of your family dying than not owning one. For example, if a person breaks into your house and murders your whole family with an axe because you don't own a gun, and you are considering this in terms of "gun deaths" well that is not counted as a negative, despite whether or not owning a gun would have prevented it.
The consequence is obvious, and statistically correlates: - You are four to ten times as likely to die of a gun-inflicted injury in the United States than other Western countries.
Again, you're misinterpreting the data. Take Sweden. They have very similar gun ownership rates to the US, but still some of the lowest violent crime rates in the world. If you look at violent crime rates and strict gun control laws in general, you'll find there is basically no correlation at all. Well, overall there is a very slight, barely significant correlation between strict gun control and increased violent crime.
I believe that the rampant gun violence in the United States promulgates a society of fear, insularity and obstinate entitlement. It is wholly evil and backwards.
Your fixation on guns is blinding you. The US has a culture of violence that causes a lot of problems, but blaming it on guns is not supported by the evidence. The strongest global correlation with violent crime is wealth disparity. The US's wealth disparity is higher than most industrialized nations and increasing. Violent crime is right about where you'd expect if you factor in the problems of criminalized drug usage.
So what to do? Effectively removing guns from the streets ought to be a carrot-and-stick approach. The punishment for having a gun during a crime should be higher than without (but not so high that the perpetrator would choose to fight-to-the-death), but there should be an amnesty to turn guns and maybe even a minor reward for it.
All of these programs are already in place in DC, but it doesn't seem to have had much impact on crime. You know what would have an impact on crime? Socialized healthcare would reduce wealth disparity and likely decrease violent crime significantly. You don't see politicians trying to explain this though, because the causality is not simple and it doesn't prey on people's fears and get people emotional and afraid.
I think what SCOTUS has done has been an assault on State sovereignty, as they have undermined the ability of States to self-govern. I believe they have misconstrued the Constitution of the United States, to the detriment of the ability of states to control peace and security, and to the benefit of gun manufacturers and their lobbyists.
That's a fine opinion, although I disagree with it. I think anyone who tries to sell gun control and an anti-violence measure has either not not looked at the numbers or bought into intentionally misleading "gun crime" studies that misstate the problem in an attempt to spread fear and misinformation.
Personally I think concealed carry is bad for that reason. I would very much like to walk down the street or through the mall with a gun on my hip in plain site.
There is something to be said for criminals not knowing who is armed and who is not. It allows a smaller portion of the populace to be armed while still providing deterrence to criminals.
I live in a country with strict gun control. Its surprising how often we manage to not get robbed by anyone with a gun.
Who cares if you're robbed with a gun or a knife? Likewise who cares what weapon is used to assault or kill you? The problem is violent crime and murder. Statistically, places with strict gun control end up with very slightly higher violent crime and murder rates.
The fear surrounding a gunless society is absolutely bonkers.
This is entirely true. The same goes for the fear of a society with guns. Both are sold to people as ideas, primarily on emotional factors and unreasonable fears. People who live in places with strict gun control are just as unreasonable about believing it is somehow making their life safer, despite the best statistical evidence which shows it has little or no effect, or actually increases violent crime and death.
"If a mugger knew I didn't have a weapon" Um, how does he know this? 'Cause it's illegal? Well, it's illegal and *he has one...
In Florida they actually got rid of rental car plates because criminals were waiting till people left the airport in a rental (knowing they were probably unarmed tourists) and then ran them off the road and robbed them. So sometimes criminals do have ways of figuring out who is likely to be unarmed and do target them.
Isn't the crime rate in DC really high anyway? So it seems as if banning guns didn't work.
No one in their right mind would think they would work in the first place. There has long ben a consensus that strict gun control laws have very little correlation with rates of violent crime. More recently, they have shown a slight increase in violent crime (just barely statistically significant). The point being, gun control laws aren't passed because politicians look at the problem of violent crime and ask the experts what the best way to reduce it might be. No honest person possessing the facts would think gun control could be an effective solution. Drug addiction management programs, sure. Socialized services to reduce real wealth disparity (healthcare, housing subsidies, etc.) sure. Better outreach training and support for police, another good option. All these are statistically shown to be beneficial, without any doubt, whereas gun control is neutral or worsens the problem.
Gun control is about getting votes. People get scared and emotional. A lot of people are scared of guns as a concept. A lot of people are scared of the government and crime and of not having guns. A lot of people are scared criminals will attack them using guns. Instead of the facts, politicians on both sides try to suppress reasoned discourse and make people as emotional and scared and angry as possible to get people to vote for them and ignore all the more important issues. To confuse the issue people try to put together bullshit studies about "gun crime" (as if anyone is happier to have been beaten to death with a baseball bat instead of shot).
Slashdot Mirror
Cite please?
Here is a list and commentary on MS's campaign contributions. Notice what happens in 98 when they go on trial and then, again, the huge increase in the 2000 election year, just before all the people who successfully convicted MS were replaced by new appointees who let MS off the hook with no punishment and without being broken up.
Just because no one can prove these contributions resulted in favorable treatment doesn't mean we're all idiots and can't put two and two together. American politicians have been for sale for many years and these big companies aren't giving this money away as a charity. They do it because it works to get whatever it is they want, be it legislation that gives them and advantage over the competition or allows them to make money at the people's expense or they want out of their legal troubles.
Apple does not get 'away' with this because the 'market is broken'. Apple gets away with this because this is business, and they are there to make a profit.
I take it you never took economics? We're talking about the invisible hand of competition. It is why capitalism resulted in better products (in general) than extreme socialism. Companies like Apple are trying to make a profit, of course, but in general they have to compete against others, which means they make a profit (in a free market) by providing the best product for the best price. In free market capitalism, companies win when consumers win. In a broken or monopolized market, companies can win when consumers lose, which is why we have antitrust laws. Because they have not been effectively enforced against MS it causes this same situation to expand into a large number of other markets that are related (like computer hardware).
There is no 'market' in terms of Apple, because they are the designers and creators of their technology, AND thus its their market to do with whatever they wish.
A market is simply the group of companies competing for consumer dollars in a space. Apple currently competes in the "computer systems" market against other vendors like Dell and Sony. Despite being the creator of the second most popular desktop OS, they don't compete in the "desktop OS" market because they refuse to sell their OS to other hardware OEMs (like Dell). They refuse to do this, because the desktop OS market is broken and they can't make money there and only by bundling can they make money. If the desktop OS market was not broken, then such bundling would inconvenience the end user, losing them sales increasingly until they stopped said bundling.
They are entitled to control and sell it how they see fit.
Yes they are. The point is, because of the broken desktop OS market, what makes them the most profit is different than what it would be if we were in a true free market capitalist system. As a result, consumers suffer from numerous problems, including higher prices due to lack of fair competition.
You don't have to buy an Apple at all. The market for computers is vast, and is not restricted in any way for the consumer.
I think you're missing the point. I'm not arguing that Apple is doing anything "wrong". I'm arguing that because of the broken market (which is not Apple's fault) normal consumers are getting a worse deal and if the market was restored, Apple would end up charging less on these parts (because that is what would maximize Apple's profit).
As for you MS court bribery nonsense, what rot.
So lets see. MS is convicted by the courts. MS goes from not donating to political parties to being one of the largest contributors to both parties. The elections occur and the politicians to whom MS donated money come into power. The prosecutors in the case are replaced with new ones, appointed by said politicians. These new prosecutors decide to basically let MS off the hook with no real punishments at all and they stop investigating the other complaints numerous companies brought against them. US companies start going directly to the EU courts with regard to MS (another american company) because they have lost all confidence in the US courts ability to act.
You can call that a coincidence and believe that the lobbying dollars really didn't have any influence (as politicians keep claiming) but if you buy that crap, frankly I think you're very naive.
Now that is nonsense. You are absolutely free to buy memory and hard drives wherever you want, and they are easy enough to install yourself.
Of course I can. I'm not reflective of the market. The average home computer buyer will not purchase the computer and part separately or try to install them by themselves. It is too inconvenient for the average user and Apple being the only one to offer not only these components, but OS X pre-installed allows them to leverage the work they put into OS X to charge more for hardware. A user want to use OS X so they buy from Apple who is the only one selling computers with it. If they want a couple gigs of RAM, they order that in the computer and end up paying more because figuring out what they need, ordering separately, paying for shipping, and figuring out how to install it is too hard.
If there were multiple good desktop OS's the lack of hardware selection from Apple would drive away more customers and they'd have to unbundle the two. People would be less willing to buy their hardware from the same vendor as is selling their OS and would comparison shop for the best price, and Apple would have to lower prices to compete.
You should see a doctor about getting that sand out of your vagina. It sounds really itchy :)
If you're fourteen years old, welcome to Slashdot and I hope you learn a lot here. If you're over fourteen, grow up.
Seriously - you've made your point about 15 times in this discussion. It seems like this article is getting personal to you.
Really? Please cite one instance where I made this same point about Cnet's methodology.
Anecdotal evidence: all the dells I've used (7-8) never needed a repair in the first year.
Umm, okay. Anecdotal evidence is not really useful compared to a formal study by an independent company. Actually, Dell has made great strides with their laptops recently. Within the last year and a half they've gone from way below average, to near the top (although still quite a bit worse than Apple).
The RAM that comes in the Apple products is the SAME RAM that comes in the Dell products.
And did they pass the same level of quality assurance testing? Now I'm not saying Apple RAM actually is better quality (although Consumer Reports seems to think Apple's hardware in general is based on the lower failure rate than Dell) but you haven't presented any evidence to support your assertion that they are not of different quality or even that the installation by Apple is not more reliable.
Gee what a brilliant "study." They compare a bunch of components, but don't even bother to see if anything they're comparing is the same quality or even from the same vendor. You can go to an online store right now and find wildly different prices for hardware from different vendors, with different levels of quality. The only component Cnet actually knows the vendor for is the processor, which they say are priced just about the same.
Now I'm not saying Apple isn't charging more for the same quality of upgrades or charging more than the difference in quality warrants. They probably are. But couldn't Cnet go to the bother of actually finding out and comparing upgrade prices to a vendor who actually does use the same brand of components? This is just plain lazy.
The last time I checked (Consumer Reports), the only thing Apple has over other vendors is better customer service: not technology.
What? Consumer Reports showed them as having a very significantly lower failure rate during the first year than any other vendor (as of early 2007). That was the last real study I saw them publish on the subject.
It sounds like we need to redesign what antitrust is for.
Not really. We just need to enforce our existing antitrust laws. Apple gets away with this sort of stuff because the market is so broken. If there were multiple, practical alternatives for desktop OS's with fast paced innovation driven by competition, Apple would not even be able to bundle their OS and hardware without losing money. The only way they get away with charging as much as they do for some of their upgrades is by leveraging OS X. Fix the market and they'll unbundle those products out of economic necessity.
The real problem I see here is MS has bribed the US courts and the EU courts have been trying to be super diplomatic to MS. Top that off with all the courts being painfully slow compared to high tech industry and we see these sorts of inefficient, consumer unfriendly behaviors in dozens of markets peripheral to the desktop OS market.
Kind of. If you have a newer macbook or ibook running 10.5.3 you won't be able to play the OSX version of diablo2 or starcraft. They still use the old drawsprocket APIs, and unfortunately apple broke backwards compatibility -- calls to DSpFindBestContext() always fail, for example. If you have a macbook from early 2007 or earlier you're probably fine.
I bought a Core 2 Duo MacBook in November of 2007 and it runs Diablo 2, although you can't run it fullscreen (just in a window).
I don't think so. That installer simply "carbonizes" it, ie, let's run on OS 9 and 10.2, so I assume it's PowerPC only.
You are incorrect. It runs fine on my Intel MacBook with one exception... it can't handle the widescreen resolution needed, so it won't run fullscreen.
What a dreadful idea. More firepower to whoever has the most money, as if power in the US wasn't already dangerously concentrated into the hands of a few, very wealthy people.
I disagree. Not that I don't think promoting responsible gun ownership is not worthwhile. I just don't think it will have a strong affect upon levels of violent crime in an area. The most effective way to combat violence is by attacking the justification for it. Sociology has pretty well demonstrated that the most effective deterrent is moral. The strongest moral justification for violent crime (wealth disparity) also happens to be the single strongest correlation with violent crime in the world. Reduce wealth disparity and violent crime drops dramatically. Sadly, that means certain things most libertarians oppose.
Basically, wealth is consolidating. The more money a person has, the more likely they are to make more money, because they can leverage their existing wealth to make more. Disparity constantly increases and each generation gives money to the next making it hereditary. Some countries have solved this with wealth taxes or very high inheritance taxes. It gives people a more even amount of money going into life, so people don't feel life is so unfair and consequently they commit fewer acts of violence. The other main solution, is socialism. It taxes the rich more than the poor (or should) and provides wealth (like healthcare) to everyone.
Welcome to socialism. Sorry, but all government programs take your money at gunpoint, including funding the police and IRS who will do the taking. And really, socialism is somewhat necessary to prevent capitalism from collapsing under wealth condensation... as it slowly is in the US because of the way our socialism is misdirected to provide more benefit to the wealthy.
The onus is on the government to prove their is a reason not to have them, not the other way around. As for legitimate uses, I have some friends up in Alaska who climb telephone poles out in the wild to service power lines. Ever tried to climb a telephone pole with a rifle? Care to spend a year in an area with regular bear attacks without having a firearm on you? Self defense is a very valid reason for pistol ownership in many, many cases.
The thing with handguns is that you can conceal them. So criminals love that shit. Make it illegal to have one, and all you have to do is catch them with one to arrest them. Also take enough out of circulation, and it will become very hard to obtain one.In almost all cases, it is already illegal to carry a concealed pistol, and the police do just arrest people they find with them (unless they have a special permit). It doesn't stop criminals at all because criminals just ignore those laws. This whole thing came about because of the complete handgun ban in Washington DC. They're still one of the most violent cities in the US and it is getting worse (unlike much of the rest of the country). You think aping their failed model for the whole country would help?
Anyway thats my take. Get rid of 'em. I have never fired one, nor will I, for what use do I have for one? Heck if you want to, have a program to trade in your handgun for a rifle or shotgun. Just get rid of them.Why? There is basically no evidence to support the theory that reducing the umber of handguns leads to decreased violent crime. If people want to decrease violent crime in the US, they should try a proven method. Mimicking Canada is fine so long as you pick traits that actually correlate with violent crime. Reducing wealth disparity, decriminalizing some drugs, and instituting socialized healthcare would all slash violent crime rates in the US. That's my take on it.
Okay, you obviously don't believe they are safer without seat belts. Neither do I. Is it possible we're wrong? If the law banned wearing a seatbelt would you argue it was wrong based on the statistical likelihood, or because you had the right to make decisions for yourself when you disagreed with the law? I argue against seatbelt laws because I think they are unconstitutional. Laws should mediate rights between citizens, not try to protect citizens from themselves.
This reminds me a lot of this discussion where people say that if they don't own a gun then crime will be higher.It is a valid argument, if a bit weak. In truth, there is little or no correlation between gun ownership rates and violent crime.
How come this argument isn't true in many other countries? Plenty of countries where gun ownership is extremely restricted and funnily enough they have a lower crime rate (especially on gun crime) than the US. Just look at most European countries.Plenty of countries have similar gun ownership rates and gun control laws as the US, but have drastically lower crime. Plenty of countries have higher crime and less gun ownership than the US. Why would you assume gun control laws or gun ownership rates were the important factor? The number one, strongest correlation with violent crime rates is wealth disparity. Maps of Gini coefficient and violent crime levels are eerily similar in many cases. Any moderately intelligent person looking to actually decrease violent crime in the US (instead of scare people into voting for them) would look first at wealth disparity (increase taxes to the wealthy, implement socialized healthcare and addiction management programs with it, decrease taxes for the poor) the prohibition on drugs (decriminalize drugs, but don't completely legalize them) and try to reduce the influence of race and religious differences with education programs (by removing government benefits for religious institutions). All of those are very obvious ways to reduce violent crime that have worked well in other countries. You'll note in many cases they sound like a description of those european countries you mentioned earlier.
Actually, while racial and religious diversity is a correlating factor, it isn't the biggest one by far. Say hello to "wealth disparity." The difference in real wealth between the top and bottom of the economic pool is the best predictor of violent crime levels. In the US, it is easy to mistake race as being the main factor, but that is just because wealth in the US is distributed largely along racial lines due to the history of african americans.
Have you researched the rates of death and violence for members of households who have guns and who don't? And no, the rates of firearm violence in said home is not a useful statistic. I'll give you a hint, it doesn't support your implication.
In the last few months I have heard of two accidental gun discharges inside supermarkets, either the guns were fumbled or dropped. In one case, some children were hit.Interesting. The rate of accidental deaths from firearms is significant, I think it is 1/10th as risky as having a backyard pool. The number of people injured accidentally outside the home, however, is very very small and anything not a hunting accident is so rare as to be statistically insignificant. It would be very rare for a person to drop a firearm, it to go off when dropped, and for it to hit a person.
When you consider how fond the USA is of suing people, I would have thought that carrying a handgun into a public place was too risky for ordinary citizens. After all, if you slip and shoot me by accident, should I survive, I will likely sue and sue big. Should I die, my family will sue.I'm a thousand times more likely to be sued because someone walking past my house slipped than because I somehow accidentally discharged a firearm.
I've done a little more research. This article supports my point: States With Higher Levels of Gun Ownership Have Higher Homicide Rates, January 11, 2007
Hmm, that's an interesting study and one I had not yet read. It is not, however, not the first of it's kind. It is not, however one that studies the causality, only the correlation. In fact, the study itself points this out "Although causal inference is not warranted on the basis of the present study alone, our findings suggest that the household may be an important source of firearms..." There are just as many studies finding the opposite results with similar or larger sample sizes. They certainly tried to normalize for a lot of factors, including wealth disparity. Sadly, they also attempted to normalize for violent crime levels (using aggravated assault numbers) making the study much less useful.
Your point on Sweden is misleading because Swedes have compulsory military service, and their firearms are rifles with a small clip and the guns are difficult to conceal. Further, citizens undergo regular training throughout their life on firearm use.
Sweden was one example that demonstrates how the correlation does not hold. All of the large studies and meta studies that look at worldwide data will show you the same thing. Wealth disparity, drug criminalization, religious and racial diversity, and socialized drug addiction management are all strongly correlative with violence, while gun control laws are not.
The Brady Campaign (while clearly supporting the assertion that guns are problematic) is telling...
The Brady campaign is not a reliable source of data. They are a group defined by their stance against guns for normal people and, reject anything that conflicts with that world view. They have repeatedly been caught out intentionally spreading misinformation, everything from hollow point bullets being able to go through bulletproof vests, to citing statistical studies that were entirely fabricated.
There are plenty of fairly rational groups that oppose gun ownership, but that certainly is not one of them.
In particular, the USA has over 11,000 firearm homicides a year, compared to (for example) Canada's 184. That's 44 firearm deaths per million citizens in the USA per year, compared to 6.1 per million in Canada. Statistically, the USA is economically superior to Canada in virtually every way, including the distribution of wealth (as measured by per capita income).
Distribution of wealth is not measured by per capita income, but by a Gini coefficient or the like. The last numbers I saw placed Canada at .31 while the US was at a whopping .42. To put that in perspective, income disparity in Canada is about the same as France, while in the US it is about the same as Iran. Add on top of that, that Canada has socialized healthcare while the US does not making the real disparity actually much higher. Then add in that Canada has decriminalized many drugs and offers free drug treatment programs, while the US does not.
I'll tell you what, go find another country with those same qualities as Canada and (regardless of gun laws) I bet you find very similar rates of violent crime. Find another country with similar rates of gun ownership as Canada, and it is anyone's guess.
However, I think those statistics may fail to reveal something sinister. There seems to be a racial or class segregation in the USA, and the per capita income fails to illuminate the number of people who are essentially destitute in the USA. I expect that gun violence (and the fear of gun violence) reinforces this segregation.
What reinforced racial and class segregation is the huge difference in income between them. Both groups have similar rates of gun ownership. I really wish you'd stop using terms like "gun violence". It reinforces the logical misstatement I mentioned before. I don't believe
We all are coming from slightly different perspectives. The real trick is not to make assumptions about the causality within a given society.
Your emphasis on wealth disparity is insightful, and probably correct (or at least strongly correlates). It's interesting that gun advocates don't emphasize that point more.Gun advocates within the sociology and criminology communities do. For society as a whole, however, the issue is heavily politicized and politicians are generally more interested in making people mad about their opponent than they are in informing people that the laws in dispute are not really a big issue. One side wants people afraid of having guns and the other wants them afraid of not having them.
I do not believe gun laws reduce violent gun crime. I believe reducing the number of guns does. Many gun laws are about reducing the number of guns as a way of reducing crime. Strict gun control laws do reduce the number of "violent gun crime." They make it harder for people (al people) to gain access to guns and fewer guns are used both to defend people and attack people. The problem is, they also increase the number of violent crimes without guns... increase them more than the same laws tend to reduce crimes with guns. Thus overall violent crime goes up. Don't be fooled by studies that discuss "gun crime" because they're ignoring the overall increase in crime which is very dishonest at this stage of the game. Therefore the gun violence in DC is explained by the easy access to guns nearby.Unless you can get rid of guns worldwide, there will always be a source. In some cases they are smuggled from other states or nearby nations or stolen or bought from police and military. In some places where availability is very low you still see incredibly high violence rates. Consider Brazil, where gun crimes are fairly low, but people murdered with clubs, knives, bombs, and molotov cocktails are alarmingly high. There simply is no evidence that reducing access to guns reduces violent crime and some small evidence that it actually increases violent crime. If there are no guns in a society a large man practiced at violence has little to fear attacking citizens he selects. In a society with guns, any one of those people might have a gun and that may well be enough to dissuade that person from many violent acts.
I am convinced that a society without prevalent access to guns is less likely to have violent crime...In practical terms, I don't see it as supported by the research to date.
Frankly, it may be noted, I think guns are cool. Just incredibly dangerous, with little benefit.Reducing violent crime seems useful to me. I used to live in a wilderness area with a lot of bears and my quarter of a mile walk through the forest to my car every day would have been a lot more dangerous without a firearm. It all depends upon who you are and where you live. I certainly don't recommend gun ownership for all people and certainly not without proper training. Neither do I think it is necessarily a negative thing. Unless you can remove weapons from the hands of government agents, there is a strong argument for firearm ownership as a way of empowering citizenry. It is certainly a debatable point.
You have logically misstated the problem. Most of us are a lot more concerned about being killed, more so than being killed with just a gun. The statistic that is relevant is if owning a gun is more likely to result in you or a member of your family dying than not owning one. For example, if a person breaks into your house and murders your whole family with an axe because you don't own a gun, and you are considering this in terms of "gun deaths" well that is not counted as a negative, despite whether or not owning a gun would have prevented it.
The consequence is obvious, and statistically correlates: - You are four to ten times as likely to die of a gun-inflicted injury in the United States than other Western countries.Again, you're misinterpreting the data. Take Sweden. They have very similar gun ownership rates to the US, but still some of the lowest violent crime rates in the world. If you look at violent crime rates and strict gun control laws in general, you'll find there is basically no correlation at all. Well, overall there is a very slight, barely significant correlation between strict gun control and increased violent crime.
I believe that the rampant gun violence in the United States promulgates a society of fear, insularity and obstinate entitlement. It is wholly evil and backwards.Your fixation on guns is blinding you. The US has a culture of violence that causes a lot of problems, but blaming it on guns is not supported by the evidence. The strongest global correlation with violent crime is wealth disparity. The US's wealth disparity is higher than most industrialized nations and increasing. Violent crime is right about where you'd expect if you factor in the problems of criminalized drug usage.
So what to do? Effectively removing guns from the streets ought to be a carrot-and-stick approach. The punishment for having a gun during a crime should be higher than without (but not so high that the perpetrator would choose to fight-to-the-death), but there should be an amnesty to turn guns and maybe even a minor reward for it.All of these programs are already in place in DC, but it doesn't seem to have had much impact on crime. You know what would have an impact on crime? Socialized healthcare would reduce wealth disparity and likely decrease violent crime significantly. You don't see politicians trying to explain this though, because the causality is not simple and it doesn't prey on people's fears and get people emotional and afraid.
I think what SCOTUS has done has been an assault on State sovereignty, as they have undermined the ability of States to self-govern. I believe they have misconstrued the Constitution of the United States, to the detriment of the ability of states to control peace and security, and to the benefit of gun manufacturers and their lobbyists.That's a fine opinion, although I disagree with it. I think anyone who tries to sell gun control and an anti-violence measure has either not not looked at the numbers or bought into intentionally misleading "gun crime" studies that misstate the problem in an attempt to spread fear and misinformation.
There is something to be said for criminals not knowing who is armed and who is not. It allows a smaller portion of the populace to be armed while still providing deterrence to criminals.
Who cares if you're robbed with a gun or a knife? Likewise who cares what weapon is used to assault or kill you? The problem is violent crime and murder. Statistically, places with strict gun control end up with very slightly higher violent crime and murder rates.
The fear surrounding a gunless society is absolutely bonkers.This is entirely true. The same goes for the fear of a society with guns. Both are sold to people as ideas, primarily on emotional factors and unreasonable fears. People who live in places with strict gun control are just as unreasonable about believing it is somehow making their life safer, despite the best statistical evidence which shows it has little or no effect, or actually increases violent crime and death.
In Florida they actually got rid of rental car plates because criminals were waiting till people left the airport in a rental (knowing they were probably unarmed tourists) and then ran them off the road and robbed them. So sometimes criminals do have ways of figuring out who is likely to be unarmed and do target them.
No one in their right mind would think they would work in the first place. There has long ben a consensus that strict gun control laws have very little correlation with rates of violent crime. More recently, they have shown a slight increase in violent crime (just barely statistically significant). The point being, gun control laws aren't passed because politicians look at the problem of violent crime and ask the experts what the best way to reduce it might be. No honest person possessing the facts would think gun control could be an effective solution. Drug addiction management programs, sure. Socialized services to reduce real wealth disparity (healthcare, housing subsidies, etc.) sure. Better outreach training and support for police, another good option. All these are statistically shown to be beneficial, without any doubt, whereas gun control is neutral or worsens the problem.
Gun control is about getting votes. People get scared and emotional. A lot of people are scared of guns as a concept. A lot of people are scared of the government and crime and of not having guns. A lot of people are scared criminals will attack them using guns. Instead of the facts, politicians on both sides try to suppress reasoned discourse and make people as emotional and scared and angry as possible to get people to vote for them and ignore all the more important issues. To confuse the issue people try to put together bullshit studies about "gun crime" (as if anyone is happier to have been beaten to death with a baseball bat instead of shot).