The public doesn't necessarily have to understand science. It's not their job.
The median US citizen goes to school for 12 years. During that time, they all have to take at least one course on science. If after spending an entire course studying science (and probably many more than one class) they don't have an understanding of what science is and how it works, then I'd say the average US citizen has failed in their duty to become a rational and thinking being.
Science is one of the most basic and important mental tools for forming opinions based upon reason instead of irrational methods. Everyone should understand science, as well as some other, basic, tools for reasoning such as mathematics, logic, and critical evaluation. These should be core elements of every education.
So bcause two of you don't understand the meaning of "exact same" I'm supposed to simplify my language even more? No thanks.
It appeared to me that you were saying that both points were wrong.
Why when I only talked about one of them? What misled you?
You need to be more specific and stop blaming people for not completely understanding your one word response.
See, and there you go with overstatement. If you don't mean "exact" don't write "EXACT" and expect others to realize you're not saying what you mean because it's not inflammatory enough. Please cite this "one word response" you mention. Oh wait, I made no such response so you're being as hyperbolic as the original poster.
No, Apple just refuses apps from developers who develop using other platforms.
That's also untrue. Apple cares about the developer tools being used and the limitations that places on their ability to make changes that make their way rapidly into end user applications. For example, you can develop applications in HTML5/javascript, compile them into apps using PhoneGap, and publish them into Apple's app store using any platform you darn well please. If they were concerned about the platform developers are running (for some inexplicable reason) they would not have made the commitment to support PhoneGap going forward. Apple cares about bottlenecks to their platform caused by developer tools other than Apple's. This can be very annoying for developers and might be enough to drive many of them to other platforms... but that is not the same as what you describe.
You seem a little confused on what "the EXACT same thing" means. If someone claims "12" is exactly the same as "52", it perfectly appropriate to say, "no the '5' and '1' are not the same." If someone then claims that is only half right because they did not address the second digit, I tell them they're on crack.
I once saw a great write up on how much it would cost if every cable subscriber dropped their cable subscription, pooled a monthly fee, and paid directly for television shows to be created and burned on DVD then mailed to every home. You'd be surprised by how cheap it is to get the equivalent of every show on mainstream TV ad free. I wish I'd saved the article for the numbers. Still, the major networks all have revenue in the billions and profit in the hundreds of millions per quarter. That's with the absurd waste and executive salaries.
With luck Hulu will die and the networks will find more and more shows going it alone and distributing outside their approved little walled gardens. If we can get to a more competitive market for mainstream TV we can get lower prices, avoid paying for crap we don't want anyway, and direct numbers will prevent hugely popular and profitable shows from being killed by the idiotic whim of some clueless executive somewhere who has nothing to do with the project.
There has to be a victim and the victim has to be able to prove that an individual harmed them by their actions. Harm can be physically quantified, it can be financially quantified, psychological is a bit more difficult.
I think what you're describing is a court case, not the requirements for a law to be constitutional. You judge harm to gauge the punishment, after the conviction.
Copyright law does not necessarily have to benefit society
Constitutionally, copyright laws can only be created if they "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" as a way to bring benefits to the citizenry. So yes, they do have to benefit society to be constitutional.
And it does not necessarily have to restrict free speech.
Yes it does. That is what a copyright IS. It's a legal restriction on free speech, in order to make someone money so they will be motivated to create more. All copyright is a restriction on free speech, by definition.
You can copy word for word something from a book, you just cannot profit from your activity because the holder has the exclusive right to that.
The noncommercial exception was removed in 1976. Additionally, just because it only limits you some of the time does not mean it is not a restriction. Hate speech laws only limit your speech sometimes. Slander laws only limit your speech in certain cases. That doesn't mean they aren't restrictions on free speech.
Yes they now want to change the meaning of copyright to say that you cannot copy anything even for personal use but its debateable as to whether or not that is beneficial to society.
Um, what?
Whatever. I'm a bit burned out on this discussion. I really don't think you know what you're talking about and every time I address your points you just twist your pet theories a bit further rather than reevaluate your beliefs. The upshot is, most of the hate speech laws on the books and a good number of the ones proposed are just as constitutional of restrictions on free speech as hundreds of other laws, some of which have existed and been applied consistently as long as we've had our constitution (some like copyright being written into it). Despite your hyperbolic claims, these laws don't "Kill" freedom of speech, rather they just limit speech in purely constitutional ways, that you don't seem to understand or agree with. I think you need to hit the books and understand the concepts involved fully before forming your opinions.
What's to stop the FLOSS movement from setting up their own software repository for Windows?
Not much at this point, although it will of course be at a disadvantage to MS's built in one if the latter is bundled with the OS. Of course if we can get a nice and functional system of repositories and data feeds as I describe, it would be a boon to Linux as well. Honestly though, I think we need standards and buy in from major players. The way to really pull this off is to get Apple, Redhat, and Canonical playing ball together, maybe with a few major computer makers on board as well. Establish a standard for the repositories, packages, and data feeds at the outset then all commit to implementing them.
Did you read either of our posts? As I said, when the GP said "Gee Mr Coder, this appears to be an office suite.. we don't like competitors in our store."
Except that's not the part of the post I was addressing. Claiming I'm half right implies I'm half wrong, but since I did not address one of the two points at all and only made reference to one, that part does not apply so you'd have to be claiming I'm half wrong about the point I did address. Therein begins the confusion.
Yeah to draw a more proper parallel to Apple's method of App store lock-in: All Apps must be made in.NET
I don't know that is a good parallel. Apple supports C, C++, and objective C, as well as javascript+HTML5. So aside from objective C, all the languages Apple supports are well established standards independent of Apple..NET, on the other hand, is partly implementable on Linux, but is pretty Microsoft specific. Well, and then there's the whole thing where Microsoft has monopolized the desktop OS market and Apple has not monopolized the mobile OS market.
Because of backwards compatibility constraints, it wouldn't seem that Windows is ever going to require applications to be signed in the near future. It would make it impossible to run existing applications which is sort of a no-no for Microsoft.
It would clearly need to be implemented in a more gradual way, but I don't think anyone would suggest making unsigned applications impossible to run. Rather, severely sandboxing unsigned applications would be a reasonable default, and MS can certainly sign all their apps and roll out updates anytime they feel like it.
The existence of steam and apple's store is what allows microsoft to do this. Microsoft is in a position that if they do something first and are successful they can get labeled a monopoly.
You're almost exactly backwards on this one. MS is labelled a monopoly. Legally speaking, they have a monopoly on desktop OS's and although not legally proven yet, probably several other markets. Being a monopoly is not illegal. MS is forbidden from leveraging their monopoly against separate, existing markets That means if anyone is already offering a store, MS is breaking the law by bundling it with Windows, however, if no one has a competing store, MS can bundle it with Windows without legal repercussions.
Also microsoft has never limited 3rd parties from making apps for it's OS. I fail to see how this is a concern.
The fear is that MS will leverage their monopoly on desktop OS's to hurt application developers, especially those competing with MS's own apps like MS Office. That's a pretty understandable concern given MS's track record. If MS is willing to intentionally break Java and fight it out in the courts for years in a bid to prevent cross platform apps from being viable, who's to say they won't prevent some cross platform apps from being available in their app store, or even at all on Windows by locking it down to only apps from the store? I don't think tey will, but it's certainly a rational and valid concern.
...even though the fact you use an alternative counters your own monopoly claims.
Monopolies are about market power. In this case MS's power over computer OEMs and large organizations buying site licenses. What a specific end user is running is only vaguely relevant. What is relevant in deciding monopoly influence is "if you're CEO of Dell, how much power does MS have to force you to do things in MS's best interest, instead of your own?"
How about we have real security, and sandbox all apps so they can't do any damage without the user's permission? Then we wouldn't need any of this "trust" bullshit.
We're certainly moving to default sandboxing, but we still need to know how much to trust an app because we have to configure the sandbox. Do you trust it to access your.doc files? Do you trust it to access the internet? Do you trust it to access the clipboard? Do you trust it to install a kernel module?
Signing doesn't really prove that something is safe to run anyway
No, but it allows the source of software to be determined making it a lot harder to anonymously spread malware for profit and allowing signatures to be revoked when something is determined to be malware, essentially eliminating it in one fell swoop.
Whether it's one company or 10, it's still someone else deciding what you can and can't do on the computer you bought.
Not at all. It's you deciding who you want to listen to then making decisions based upon that as to how much access a particular app is allowed. For the uninformed, completely sandboxing all unsigned apps probably makes sense whereas for more technical users they can make decisions on a per app and per control basis.
Unless the speech can be proven to harm someone it cannot be restricted in my opinion.
"Harm" is a vague term and the level of indirection is also relative. Is telling someone I'm a cop so they don't stop me when I take their car "harming" them or is it just enabling harm?
Copyright exists to protect the economic interests of whoever owns the copyright. This is a property rights issue not a freedom of speech issue.
All copyright is a restriction on free speech for the sake of the copyright holder's profit, ostensibly as a way to create long term benefit to society. Free speech means I can say what I want, even if it is quoting word for word what someone else said. Copyright stops me from being able to do that. Copyright is always a free speech issue.
Ummm, that's like saying it's possible to kill people using guns and rocks so we shouldn't have laws regarding weapons.
I don't believe in gun control. I believe in murder control.
What does that have to do with it? Do you think we should legally be unable to say, pass a law that says convicted murderers are not allowed to carry concealed knives, or do you think the fact that you can kill someone with a rock for some reason precludes such a law from being constitutional. If the latter, please explain why you think that.
Umm, do you know what science is?
Prove through statistics that violent speech correlates with violent action. Prove through statistics that restricting violent speech results in a decrease in violent action.
Okay, clearly you don't understand science. Science never, ever proves anything. It provides evidence to support or falsify theories. Thats deductive testing to provide inductive support for a belief. It never proves a belief to be correct. Of course all of this is just evidence that your previous use of the term "scientific" was just a misguided misuse of the word. Lets just move on shall we?
Slander can restrict the liberty of another individual by making it harder for them to find a job or conduct their business.
Sure it can and sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. I don't see your point.
Yeah, because different laws for different people is such a great idea. Can I be the one deciding if you're dangerous and you speech needs to be limited?
Different situations, different people, different laws.
Also known as "rule by man". You haven't answered my question. Are you comfortable with me being the one who decided if you're dangerous and need to have our rights restricted instead of it being a matter of law.
You can't learn everything in class.
No, but you can learn the fundamentals of our legal system.
Hate speech isn't what kills people.
No hate speech leads to people being killed, it does not kill people directly. But then, my posing as a police officer may not drive your car away, it just enables me to do so more easily. Does that mean it should be legal to pose as a police officer? To defraud people with lies? Slander doesn't prevent someone getting a job, it just leads to people not getting a job because it causes people to believe lies about you. That doesn't mean we should get rid of slander laws. Or is that your opinion?
I'm saying if these hate speech laws pass, then there will be wars to decide how to interpret the different speech.
Most states already have hate speech laws on the books. Federal hate crime statutes exist as well. Speech is interpreted by the jury as what they perceive the intent of the speaker was.
In general if hate speech is illegal the interpreter has the power to conduct a witch hunt on anybody.
How is this any different than libel laws or criminal conspiracy laws? Juries interpret the intent of the speakers and they are convicted or not, just like any other law.
I think going forward, most OS's are going to have an App Store built in. It's simply to convenient and brings to many advantages to the average user. It's also almost certain to be abused to reduce consumer choice and make the application market less competitive. So rather than complaining about it, I propose we modify the app store so we get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
A central "store" app for downloading, buying, upgrading, and registering software does not really exist on any desktop today. Some handle noncommercial downloading, some handle nothing, some handle commercial titles only. The real hurdle is in getting some of the benefits (like vetted software and remote disable of malware) without getting the drawbacks (like a single gatekeeper and fewer choices due to artificial restriction). We can't trust any single vendor and we shouldn't have to. Rather we need a model where one app can manage multiple repositories, all with signed software, updates, and the ability to transfer payments for registration purposes. Then we need a separate component that vets the apps, verifies the sources and ACLs, and lets the user know how much they can trust the app. This info can come from multiple parties and be weighted to give an overall trust rating the OS can use to apply default security restrictions automatically. The multiple parties might be the OS vendor, a security company, and an open project akin to ClamAV and together they build a greylist for your apps.
The benefit here is competition and better quality as a result. If MS is deciding all by themselves what software is trustworthy, they have little motivation to fix problems in a timely fashion or work hard at it. If, however, three or four parties are offering a for pay service, they're all competing for your money and are directly motivated to do the best job possible, resulting in fewer mistakes and better data for end users.
No, they don't, unless you use the new age hippie definition of "monopoly".
Yeah, it's all those hippie economists and lawyers always smoking the Mary Jane and discussing economic theory while at their beancounter love ins.
You do know you can get a _free_ operating system to run on your computer right? Or you can buy e.g. Apple computers, or computers with all variety of free operating systems.
Please note the extreme cluelessness of Mr. RighSaidFred. I mean seriously, if you're going to go on a rant about competition in the market, of all things, don't you think you should at least know who the buyers in the relevant market are? The people MS is squeezing are OEMs who buy Windows licenses as a component of the computer systems they sell. They are NOT average consumers who are buying computers. And yes, sure, Dell can ship Linux computers instead of Windows ones, but if they try to move to that as their business model they're fighting an enormous uphill battle against lock in due to application incompatibility and MS has lost in court over illegally breaking that compatibility. If the CEO of Dell were to stop doing business with MS and stop buying Windows licenses then he'd be out of a job within the week, so no, buyers in the market do not have a viable other choice right now for mainstream computing.
Congratulations on fundamentally misunderstanding the market you're complaining about, genius.
so they wont say go kill them, they'll instead give a map, list of names and addresses, and racial information, and say they are pedophiles, criminals, "hate criminals" or whatever.
That's fine, so long as they aren't telling people those people are evil and need to be killed. That's where they cross the line from violating someone's privacy (not currently a constitutional issue) to violating their right to life and liberty, which certainly is. So long as you're not inciting violence and hate against people, you can give others all the directions you want, although usually nothing will then happen other than them being confused.
So hate speech is really a STUPID and RIDICULOUS excuse to kill freedom of speech.
You include an implicit statement that I reject. Hate speech laws in general no more "kill freedom of speech" than copyright law, slander law, of truth in advertising law "kills freedom of speech". It's just limiting freedom of speech where it conflicts with other basic legal rights, the same and numerous areas of law have been limiting freedom of speech throughout the entire existence of our nation.
Yes there are individuals who have enough power to get anyone killed whether they use what we interpret as hate speech or ordinary speech.
Ummm, that's like saying it's possible to kill people using guns and rocks so we shouldn't have laws regarding weapons.
So the idea of hate speech is dumb from a scientific perspective.
Umm, do you know what science is?
Instead we should classify speech by level of danger, based more on whos giving the speech than what the content is.
So serial killers should be made mute while average people should be allowed to commit slander or plot murder? That's not only idiotic, but it completely violates the basic concept of rule by law upon which our whole legal system is premised.
If a known mafia don is giving a speech and everyone hangs on his every word then maybe that speech is x100 more dangerous than the speech of some dumbass neo nazi kid on the internet.
Yeah, because different laws for different people is such a great idea. Can I be the one deciding if you're dangerous and you speech needs to be limited?
When powerful people use words their words are more likely to kill, so maybe we should regulate THEIR words.
On the upside, it's not really different than what Ubuntu does with software repositories... except that they'll presumably be charging for it.
Ubuntu is moving to the same model anyway, with the next version of the package manager supposedly incorporating a commercial app store.
As long as Microsoft doesn't block installs from outside the store, I don't see a problem.
Technically, to be in compliance with the law, MS would have to play on even ground and offer their store as separate download while at the same time publishing the APIs so other apps stores can have the same access to the OS as MS's store. If it comes pre-bundled most people will end up using it and most developers will have to target it, regardless of the quality of the software therein, the accuracy of the reviews, the level of vetting etc. This could (and probably will) lead to an inferior user experience compared to several competing stores all of which are on a level playing field. But hey, MS is long past worrying about casual antitrust abuses.
Isn't that the EXACT same thing Apple is doing with their App Store?
No. Apple does not refuse to carry apps from developers that have versions for other platforms. And even if they did, it would still be different because Apple is only one player in a competitive market. Don't like Apple's methods, but a Blackberry or an Android and you can still have a huge selection of apps. Apple doing this would be like Dell or Toshiba doing it. If you can't grasp the difference between a monopolist leveraging their monopoly into another market versus a non-monopolist bundling products, well you haven't been paying attention here or you willfully refuse to understand.
All that said, it's pure speculation that MS would make such draconian restrictions upon their application store.
ate speech does not harm others. It's annoying but it doesn't harm.
"Hate speech" is a vague term, but some hate speech can lead to harm happening to others, for example a cleric exhorting his followers to kill jews. That currently falls under hate speech law in most states. While the speech itself does not hurt anyone, neither does intentionally mislabeling rat poison as sweetener or telling Vlad to go kill that meddling DA and his whole family. Free speech is not some unlimited right that cannot be governed by law and restricted when said speech endangers the lives and rights of others.
The example you gave is not about hate, it makes it illegal to incite violence whether the target is a social or ethnic group, or "people that work for BP", or "that guy over there".
Actually, your last example is not apt. There are already laws covering telling someone or a group to go kill a specific individual. Laws about inciting violence not against a specific person, but a social group, however, have not traditionally existed. Such laws have appeared more recently in response to individuals and groups who tell their followers to go "kill blacks" or "kill jews" or "kill faggots" or what have you. They are referred to as "hate speech" laws because they are about stopping a specific kind of hate speech that is likely to cause violence against some group by drumming up hate against that group. In fact, these type of "hate speech" laws are the most common, but because both individuals and the media don't differentiate when speaking about the laws, it all gets lumped together and people are confused about the issue. I don't know why you think hate speech laws only apply to ethnic minorities or something and that people can't hate "people that work for BP". Hate speech laws are about stopping speech that leads to violence against a group by inciting hate for that group. What the group is, is not the defining characteristic of hate speech.
Not quite. Your employer can order you to do anything. As a human being responsible for your own freedom, you don't have to listen. If you do, it'll be your ass on the line in front of a judge and jury.
What are you smoking? If your boss tells you to kill people and you do, both your butts are going to prison, not just you. It's "conspiracy to commit murder" among other things. Do you actually think mafia bosses can blithely order their minions to kill people and are not prosecuted for it? I don't think you know what you're talking about.
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The public doesn't necessarily have to understand science. It's not their job.
The median US citizen goes to school for 12 years. During that time, they all have to take at least one course on science. If after spending an entire course studying science (and probably many more than one class) they don't have an understanding of what science is and how it works, then I'd say the average US citizen has failed in their duty to become a rational and thinking being.
Science is one of the most basic and important mental tools for forming opinions based upon reason instead of irrational methods. Everyone should understand science, as well as some other, basic, tools for reasoning such as mathematics, logic, and critical evaluation. These should be core elements of every education.
Sorry, dude. I have to agree with Sootman.
So bcause two of you don't understand the meaning of "exact same" I'm supposed to simplify my language even more? No thanks.
It appeared to me that you were saying that both points were wrong.
Why when I only talked about one of them? What misled you?
You need to be more specific and stop blaming people for not completely understanding your one word response.
See, and there you go with overstatement. If you don't mean "exact" don't write "EXACT" and expect others to realize you're not saying what you mean because it's not inflammatory enough. Please cite this "one word response" you mention. Oh wait, I made no such response so you're being as hyperbolic as the original poster.
No, Apple just refuses apps from developers who develop using other platforms.
That's also untrue. Apple cares about the developer tools being used and the limitations that places on their ability to make changes that make their way rapidly into end user applications. For example, you can develop applications in HTML5/javascript, compile them into apps using PhoneGap, and publish them into Apple's app store using any platform you darn well please. If they were concerned about the platform developers are running (for some inexplicable reason) they would not have made the commitment to support PhoneGap going forward. Apple cares about bottlenecks to their platform caused by developer tools other than Apple's. This can be very annoying for developers and might be enough to drive many of them to other platforms... but that is not the same as what you describe.
You seem a little confused on what "the EXACT same thing" means. If someone claims "12" is exactly the same as "52", it perfectly appropriate to say, "no the '5' and '1' are not the same." If someone then claims that is only half right because they did not address the second digit, I tell them they're on crack.
You're on crack.
I once saw a great write up on how much it would cost if every cable subscriber dropped their cable subscription, pooled a monthly fee, and paid directly for television shows to be created and burned on DVD then mailed to every home. You'd be surprised by how cheap it is to get the equivalent of every show on mainstream TV ad free. I wish I'd saved the article for the numbers. Still, the major networks all have revenue in the billions and profit in the hundreds of millions per quarter. That's with the absurd waste and executive salaries.
With luck Hulu will die and the networks will find more and more shows going it alone and distributing outside their approved little walled gardens. If we can get to a more competitive market for mainstream TV we can get lower prices, avoid paying for crap we don't want anyway, and direct numbers will prevent hugely popular and profitable shows from being killed by the idiotic whim of some clueless executive somewhere who has nothing to do with the project.
There has to be a victim and the victim has to be able to prove that an individual harmed them by their actions. Harm can be physically quantified, it can be financially quantified, psychological is a bit more difficult.
I think what you're describing is a court case, not the requirements for a law to be constitutional. You judge harm to gauge the punishment, after the conviction.
Copyright law does not necessarily have to benefit society
Constitutionally, copyright laws can only be created if they "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" as a way to bring benefits to the citizenry. So yes, they do have to benefit society to be constitutional.
And it does not necessarily have to restrict free speech.
Yes it does. That is what a copyright IS. It's a legal restriction on free speech, in order to make someone money so they will be motivated to create more. All copyright is a restriction on free speech, by definition.
You can copy word for word something from a book, you just cannot profit from your activity because the holder has the exclusive right to that.
The noncommercial exception was removed in 1976. Additionally, just because it only limits you some of the time does not mean it is not a restriction. Hate speech laws only limit your speech sometimes. Slander laws only limit your speech in certain cases. That doesn't mean they aren't restrictions on free speech.
Yes they now want to change the meaning of copyright to say that you cannot copy anything even for personal use but its debateable as to whether or not that is beneficial to society.
Um, what?
Whatever. I'm a bit burned out on this discussion. I really don't think you know what you're talking about and every time I address your points you just twist your pet theories a bit further rather than reevaluate your beliefs. The upshot is, most of the hate speech laws on the books and a good number of the ones proposed are just as constitutional of restrictions on free speech as hundreds of other laws, some of which have existed and been applied consistently as long as we've had our constitution (some like copyright being written into it). Despite your hyperbolic claims, these laws don't "Kill" freedom of speech, rather they just limit speech in purely constitutional ways, that you don't seem to understand or agree with. I think you need to hit the books and understand the concepts involved fully before forming your opinions.
What's to stop the FLOSS movement from setting up their own software repository for Windows?
Not much at this point, although it will of course be at a disadvantage to MS's built in one if the latter is bundled with the OS. Of course if we can get a nice and functional system of repositories and data feeds as I describe, it would be a boon to Linux as well. Honestly though, I think we need standards and buy in from major players. The way to really pull this off is to get Apple, Redhat, and Canonical playing ball together, maybe with a few major computer makers on board as well. Establish a standard for the repositories, packages, and data feeds at the outset then all commit to implementing them.
It's already been stated outright that Windows Phone 7 will use the closed app-store model (where Microsoft approves all entries).
Yes, but we aren't talking about their mobile app store but the desktop one we just learned about.
Did you read either of our posts? As I said, when the GP said "Gee Mr Coder, this appears to be an office suite.. we don't like competitors in our store."
Except that's not the part of the post I was addressing. Claiming I'm half right implies I'm half wrong, but since I did not address one of the two points at all and only made reference to one, that part does not apply so you'd have to be claiming I'm half wrong about the point I did address. Therein begins the confusion.
Yeah to draw a more proper parallel to Apple's method of App store lock-in: All Apps must be made in .NET
I don't know that is a good parallel. Apple supports C, C++, and objective C, as well as javascript+HTML5. So aside from objective C, all the languages Apple supports are well established standards independent of Apple. .NET, on the other hand, is partly implementable on Linux, but is pretty Microsoft specific. Well, and then there's the whole thing where Microsoft has monopolized the desktop OS market and Apple has not monopolized the mobile OS market.
Because of backwards compatibility constraints, it wouldn't seem that Windows is ever going to require applications to be signed in the near future. It would make it impossible to run existing applications which is sort of a no-no for Microsoft.
It would clearly need to be implemented in a more gradual way, but I don't think anyone would suggest making unsigned applications impossible to run. Rather, severely sandboxing unsigned applications would be a reasonable default, and MS can certainly sign all their apps and roll out updates anytime they feel like it.
You're only half right. Apple does indeed block apps which duplicate the functionality [google.com] of Apple's included apps:
The GP was referring to blocking apps that are cross platform, not which duplicate the functionality of apps made by the OS vendor.
The existence of steam and apple's store is what allows microsoft to do this. Microsoft is in a position that if they do something first and are successful they can get labeled a monopoly.
You're almost exactly backwards on this one. MS is labelled a monopoly. Legally speaking, they have a monopoly on desktop OS's and although not legally proven yet, probably several other markets. Being a monopoly is not illegal. MS is forbidden from leveraging their monopoly against separate, existing markets That means if anyone is already offering a store, MS is breaking the law by bundling it with Windows, however, if no one has a competing store, MS can bundle it with Windows without legal repercussions.
Also microsoft has never limited 3rd parties from making apps for it's OS. I fail to see how this is a concern.
The fear is that MS will leverage their monopoly on desktop OS's to hurt application developers, especially those competing with MS's own apps like MS Office. That's a pretty understandable concern given MS's track record. If MS is willing to intentionally break Java and fight it out in the courts for years in a bid to prevent cross platform apps from being viable, who's to say they won't prevent some cross platform apps from being available in their app store, or even at all on Windows by locking it down to only apps from the store? I don't think tey will, but it's certainly a rational and valid concern.
...even though the fact you use an alternative counters your own monopoly claims.
Monopolies are about market power. In this case MS's power over computer OEMs and large organizations buying site licenses. What a specific end user is running is only vaguely relevant. What is relevant in deciding monopoly influence is "if you're CEO of Dell, how much power does MS have to force you to do things in MS's best interest, instead of your own?"
How about we have real security, and sandbox all apps so they can't do any damage without the user's permission? Then we wouldn't need any of this "trust" bullshit.
We're certainly moving to default sandboxing, but we still need to know how much to trust an app because we have to configure the sandbox. Do you trust it to access your .doc files? Do you trust it to access the internet? Do you trust it to access the clipboard? Do you trust it to install a kernel module?
Signing doesn't really prove that something is safe to run anyway
No, but it allows the source of software to be determined making it a lot harder to anonymously spread malware for profit and allowing signatures to be revoked when something is determined to be malware, essentially eliminating it in one fell swoop.
Whether it's one company or 10, it's still someone else deciding what you can and can't do on the computer you bought.
Not at all. It's you deciding who you want to listen to then making decisions based upon that as to how much access a particular app is allowed. For the uninformed, completely sandboxing all unsigned apps probably makes sense whereas for more technical users they can make decisions on a per app and per control basis.
Unless the speech can be proven to harm someone it cannot be restricted in my opinion.
"Harm" is a vague term and the level of indirection is also relative. Is telling someone I'm a cop so they don't stop me when I take their car "harming" them or is it just enabling harm?
Copyright exists to protect the economic interests of whoever owns the copyright. This is a property rights issue not a freedom of speech issue.
All copyright is a restriction on free speech for the sake of the copyright holder's profit, ostensibly as a way to create long term benefit to society. Free speech means I can say what I want, even if it is quoting word for word what someone else said. Copyright stops me from being able to do that. Copyright is always a free speech issue.
Ummm, that's like saying it's possible to kill people using guns and rocks so we shouldn't have laws regarding weapons.
I don't believe in gun control. I believe in murder control.
What does that have to do with it? Do you think we should legally be unable to say, pass a law that says convicted murderers are not allowed to carry concealed knives, or do you think the fact that you can kill someone with a rock for some reason precludes such a law from being constitutional. If the latter, please explain why you think that.
Umm, do you know what science is?
Prove through statistics that violent speech correlates with violent action. Prove through statistics that restricting violent speech results in a decrease in violent action.
Okay, clearly you don't understand science. Science never, ever proves anything. It provides evidence to support or falsify theories. Thats deductive testing to provide inductive support for a belief. It never proves a belief to be correct. Of course all of this is just evidence that your previous use of the term "scientific" was just a misguided misuse of the word. Lets just move on shall we?
Slander can restrict the liberty of another individual by making it harder for them to find a job or conduct their business.
Sure it can and sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. I don't see your point.
Yeah, because different laws for different people is such a great idea. Can I be the one deciding if you're dangerous and you speech needs to be limited?
Different situations, different people, different laws.
Also known as "rule by man". You haven't answered my question. Are you comfortable with me being the one who decided if you're dangerous and need to have our rights restricted instead of it being a matter of law.
You can't learn everything in class.
No, but you can learn the fundamentals of our legal system.
Hate speech isn't what kills people.
No hate speech leads to people being killed, it does not kill people directly. But then, my posing as a police officer may not drive your car away, it just enables me to do so more easily. Does that mean it should be legal to pose as a police officer? To defraud people with lies? Slander doesn't prevent someone getting a job, it just leads to people not getting a job because it causes people to believe lies about you. That doesn't mean we should get rid of slander laws. Or is that your opinion?
I'm saying if these hate speech laws pass, then there will be wars to decide how to interpret the different speech.
Most states already have hate speech laws on the books. Federal hate crime statutes exist as well. Speech is interpreted by the jury as what they perceive the intent of the speaker was.
In general if hate speech is illegal the interpreter has the power to conduct a witch hunt on anybody.
How is this any different than libel laws or criminal conspiracy laws? Juries interpret the intent of the speakers and they are convicted or not, just like any other law.
I think going forward, most OS's are going to have an App Store built in. It's simply to convenient and brings to many advantages to the average user. It's also almost certain to be abused to reduce consumer choice and make the application market less competitive. So rather than complaining about it, I propose we modify the app store so we get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
A central "store" app for downloading, buying, upgrading, and registering software does not really exist on any desktop today. Some handle noncommercial downloading, some handle nothing, some handle commercial titles only. The real hurdle is in getting some of the benefits (like vetted software and remote disable of malware) without getting the drawbacks (like a single gatekeeper and fewer choices due to artificial restriction). We can't trust any single vendor and we shouldn't have to. Rather we need a model where one app can manage multiple repositories, all with signed software, updates, and the ability to transfer payments for registration purposes. Then we need a separate component that vets the apps, verifies the sources and ACLs, and lets the user know how much they can trust the app. This info can come from multiple parties and be weighted to give an overall trust rating the OS can use to apply default security restrictions automatically. The multiple parties might be the OS vendor, a security company, and an open project akin to ClamAV and together they build a greylist for your apps.
The benefit here is competition and better quality as a result. If MS is deciding all by themselves what software is trustworthy, they have little motivation to fix problems in a timely fashion or work hard at it. If, however, three or four parties are offering a for pay service, they're all competing for your money and are directly motivated to do the best job possible, resulting in fewer mistakes and better data for end users.
No, they don't, unless you use the new age hippie definition of "monopoly".
Yeah, it's all those hippie economists and lawyers always smoking the Mary Jane and discussing economic theory while at their beancounter love ins.
You do know you can get a _free_ operating system to run on your computer right? Or you can buy e.g. Apple computers, or computers with all variety of free operating systems.
Please note the extreme cluelessness of Mr. RighSaidFred. I mean seriously, if you're going to go on a rant about competition in the market, of all things, don't you think you should at least know who the buyers in the relevant market are? The people MS is squeezing are OEMs who buy Windows licenses as a component of the computer systems they sell. They are NOT average consumers who are buying computers. And yes, sure, Dell can ship Linux computers instead of Windows ones, but if they try to move to that as their business model they're fighting an enormous uphill battle against lock in due to application incompatibility and MS has lost in court over illegally breaking that compatibility. If the CEO of Dell were to stop doing business with MS and stop buying Windows licenses then he'd be out of a job within the week, so no, buyers in the market do not have a viable other choice right now for mainstream computing.
Congratulations on fundamentally misunderstanding the market you're complaining about, genius.
so they wont say go kill them, they'll instead give a map, list of names and addresses, and racial information, and say they are pedophiles, criminals, "hate criminals" or whatever.
That's fine, so long as they aren't telling people those people are evil and need to be killed. That's where they cross the line from violating someone's privacy (not currently a constitutional issue) to violating their right to life and liberty, which certainly is. So long as you're not inciting violence and hate against people, you can give others all the directions you want, although usually nothing will then happen other than them being confused.
So hate speech is really a STUPID and RIDICULOUS excuse to kill freedom of speech.
You include an implicit statement that I reject. Hate speech laws in general no more "kill freedom of speech" than copyright law, slander law, of truth in advertising law "kills freedom of speech". It's just limiting freedom of speech where it conflicts with other basic legal rights, the same and numerous areas of law have been limiting freedom of speech throughout the entire existence of our nation.
Yes there are individuals who have enough power to get anyone killed whether they use what we interpret as hate speech or ordinary speech.
Ummm, that's like saying it's possible to kill people using guns and rocks so we shouldn't have laws regarding weapons.
So the idea of hate speech is dumb from a scientific perspective.
Umm, do you know what science is?
Instead we should classify speech by level of danger, based more on whos giving the speech than what the content is.
So serial killers should be made mute while average people should be allowed to commit slander or plot murder? That's not only idiotic, but it completely violates the basic concept of rule by law upon which our whole legal system is premised.
If a known mafia don is giving a speech and everyone hangs on his every word then maybe that speech is x100 more dangerous than the speech of some dumbass neo nazi kid on the internet.
Yeah, because different laws for different people is such a great idea. Can I be the one deciding if you're dangerous and you speech needs to be limited?
When powerful people use words their words are more likely to kill, so maybe we should regulate THEIR words.
You need to retake civics class.
On the upside, it's not really different than what Ubuntu does with software repositories... except that they'll presumably be charging for it.
Ubuntu is moving to the same model anyway, with the next version of the package manager supposedly incorporating a commercial app store.
As long as Microsoft doesn't block installs from outside the store, I don't see a problem.
Technically, to be in compliance with the law, MS would have to play on even ground and offer their store as separate download while at the same time publishing the APIs so other apps stores can have the same access to the OS as MS's store. If it comes pre-bundled most people will end up using it and most developers will have to target it, regardless of the quality of the software therein, the accuracy of the reviews, the level of vetting etc. This could (and probably will) lead to an inferior user experience compared to several competing stores all of which are on a level playing field. But hey, MS is long past worrying about casual antitrust abuses.
Isn't that the EXACT same thing Apple is doing with their App Store?
No. Apple does not refuse to carry apps from developers that have versions for other platforms. And even if they did, it would still be different because Apple is only one player in a competitive market. Don't like Apple's methods, but a Blackberry or an Android and you can still have a huge selection of apps. Apple doing this would be like Dell or Toshiba doing it. If you can't grasp the difference between a monopolist leveraging their monopoly into another market versus a non-monopolist bundling products, well you haven't been paying attention here or you willfully refuse to understand.
All that said, it's pure speculation that MS would make such draconian restrictions upon their application store.
ate speech does not harm others. It's annoying but it doesn't harm.
"Hate speech" is a vague term, but some hate speech can lead to harm happening to others, for example a cleric exhorting his followers to kill jews. That currently falls under hate speech law in most states. While the speech itself does not hurt anyone, neither does intentionally mislabeling rat poison as sweetener or telling Vlad to go kill that meddling DA and his whole family. Free speech is not some unlimited right that cannot be governed by law and restricted when said speech endangers the lives and rights of others.
The example you gave is not about hate, it makes it illegal to incite violence whether the target is a social or ethnic group, or "people that work for BP", or "that guy over there".
Actually, your last example is not apt. There are already laws covering telling someone or a group to go kill a specific individual. Laws about inciting violence not against a specific person, but a social group, however, have not traditionally existed. Such laws have appeared more recently in response to individuals and groups who tell their followers to go "kill blacks" or "kill jews" or "kill faggots" or what have you. They are referred to as "hate speech" laws because they are about stopping a specific kind of hate speech that is likely to cause violence against some group by drumming up hate against that group. In fact, these type of "hate speech" laws are the most common, but because both individuals and the media don't differentiate when speaking about the laws, it all gets lumped together and people are confused about the issue. I don't know why you think hate speech laws only apply to ethnic minorities or something and that people can't hate "people that work for BP". Hate speech laws are about stopping speech that leads to violence against a group by inciting hate for that group. What the group is, is not the defining characteristic of hate speech.
Not quite. Your employer can order you to do anything. As a human being responsible for your own freedom, you don't have to listen. If you do, it'll be your ass on the line in front of a judge and jury.
What are you smoking? If your boss tells you to kill people and you do, both your butts are going to prison, not just you. It's "conspiracy to commit murder" among other things. Do you actually think mafia bosses can blithely order their minions to kill people and are not prosecuted for it? I don't think you know what you're talking about.