The data is also being collected near air conditioners, on parking lots, and has been so mucked up that NASA had to rearrage the 'hottest years' list..
Some of it is potentially compromised while much of it is not. That's going to be true for any topic studied. The point being, of the peer reviewed articles based upon all the disparate data sources, there is a clear consensus. That's what the peer review process is about, finding flaws so false data can be discarded. Finding that some subset of studies relied on data that could have been compromised in no way challenges my point nor does it imply that the opposite of the scientific consensus is in any way likely to be true.
For reasonable people to conclude that manmade global warming is not a significant factor driving a trend towards rapid overall global temperature there need to be significant numbers of scientific studies with data backing them up demonstrating that hypothesis, and those same studies need to stand up to peer review in scientific journals. That hasn't happened and wishful thinking based upon anecdotes isn't going to change that.
Jabber is a nice open IM protocol. So it's interoperable, but other than that what big advantages does it have over Skype, MSN, etc?
As you mention jabber is open and interoperable which addresses the biggest problem people have with IM today. But you can make the same argument with regard to Wave. Why not just use your existing and already in use e-mail, IM, and photo services in conjunction? I think Wave does bring some compelling features to the table, but I don't think compelling features are enough in our current walled garden climate.
...if people like it, and if the entrenched players do not provide it, they will lose users pretty fast.
How? If it isn't not pre-installed and easy to use from the default setup on people's computers and phones, it won't go anywhere. Who's going to switch to it if their friends are still using AIM or MSN and they won't be able to talk to them anymore? Users might like the features of Wave, but I don't think that will trump access to actual people. There might be gateways, but unless those are already set up to work with the services offered over the Web, they might as well not exist for 90% of people.
The real hopes I have for Google Wave are the Web service embedded in pages becoming a popular tool and partnerships Google makes with other companies to get this implemented for existing IM services (AOL IM via a partnership like they did with Jabber) and software providers (built into ichat as Jabber was). Beyond that the normal person isn't going to decide to abandon their existing IM and e-mail client/service and walk away from their contacts and established workflow until Google gains significant traction and market share with Wave. That's the tricky part for Google.
Wave is surely an interesting concept and application, but if there's any web app that just makes you want to scream for a native implementation, it's Wave.
I think focusing on making one cross platform Web application that can be embedded into Web pages is probably the most effective use of their resources. No one is going to bother downloading a client unless there is some significant use of Wave first or it is being deployed in a corporate/large organization setting. Google needs to get it out there and a Web app makes a lot of sense as a first attempt.
Why is Google spoiling good concepts by tying them to the browser exclusively? They just need to develop for the three major platforms, Windows, Linux and OS X.
Again, I disagree. For geeks, maybe this would make sense if Google had the resources to accomplish it at the same time as creating the Web application, but for normal users this isn't going to happen. Most users just don't install things like this or they'd have a Jabber client by now. How many people with Jabber clients right now do you think have ichat compared to all the other clients out there. What Google needs to do is push this as a Web app and then partner with other companies to get them to develop native clients to be pre-installed on their respective platforms and Web services. By open sourcing the Web client Google potentially gets AOL, Yahoo, and MS to expand their chat and e-mail clients both on the Web and the desktop. By talking to Apple they might get this on OS X and/or the iPhone by default. Someone will write a native Linux client no matter what Google does. There will eventually be clients for Windows and OS X, but very few people will use them if they aren't pre-installed with their computer or unless Wave really takes off on the Web first.
Wave will become popular, because it is independent of Google. Every company, every ISP and even every small group of people who might not even want their waves to leave their LAN can set up their own wave server.
I'd say Wave and Jabber are in similar situations in this regard. Both are open (even sharing the same protocol partly) and people do run their own Jabber servers, but as with Jabber there are already entrenched server vendors and service providers for communication and that's a lot of momentum to overcome. I'd like to think that major vendors like Microsoft, Apple, Sun, AOL, and Yahoo will all jump on the Wave bandwagon and expand their existing clients and services to use it interoperably with Google and a magical new era of efficient and cool communication will emerge. That said, when Google got behind Jabber with GTalk I hoped for the same thing, and it is has been slow in coming. Apple jumped on board partly dragging AOL with them. Corporations jumped on board in limited but noticeable numbers. Everyone else decided they would rather stick with their existing business plans and technologies and that interoperability was not in their best interest. Wave brings a bit more to the table, especially as it will work as an embedded HTML5 application in Web pages, but there are a whole lot of gatekeepers to block the way here.
I do not know about you guys but this time I have pretty high expectations.
I've become a cynic. There is hope, but I'm not as optimistic as you are.
Anyone know how on earth Google expects to make money off of this thing? It looks amazing, but how do you make money off of this if it's open sourced, free, and took a ton of development time to build (and presumably support in the future)?
Obviously they plan to make money the same way they do with GMail. They'll offer a free in the cloud service to normal users and either provide ads alongside the client and/or robotically harvest the conversations to better target online ads to their users. They might even sell corporate Wave hosting services to corporations or sell servers with it pre-installed and ready to go to corporations.
just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer, but rather *out there* somewhere, that you can *probably* get access to...
So far the only implementation is a Web app. Is there any reason you can't store waves locally using a desktop client when someone writes one?
here are serious privacy issues as well, no doubt google will be surfin the "waves" looking for terms to market to you, but perhaps it is more shady than that even.
Similarly, you shouldn't use e-mail or Jabber for conversation because Google's free implementations are harvested for marketing data?
then again.. it's cool technology, and now that it's being open sourced, it means feasibly you can run your own "waveserver" and mitigate the issues above somewhat.
Even before they open sourced their implementation they had open, published protocols so others can write interoperable implementations. Having an open source reference implementation is obviously a boon to this process though. I see this just like GTalk. It's based upon the well known XMPP protocol and corporate america will probably implement internal, interoperable servers or outsource service from someone and the results will be just as private as e-mail and Jabber servers are now.
Many people have responded to your post with links, but I know people are really, really, really lazy. So Google Wave is kind of a nifty new communications paradigm designed to replace e-mail, IM, IRC, and other collaboration tools. The basic idea is to create communications centered around a conversation with as many participants as needed, rather than trying to take a two way communication like a letter and expand it to sort of work for more people.
If you're the only person in the conversation (or wave) online, it works like e-mail. As soon as a second person is online at the same time, it works like IM. It is sort of timestamp version controlled so you can rewind conversations and see how the conversation branched and you can embed the conversations in generic Web pages. It's extensible so you can add additional communications to it, and they've added a way to post images and host them as photo galleries.
In short it's new, but similar in ways to IM and e-mail and it's fairly cool, but watching a video makes more sense than reading a lengthy explanation.
A majority of the secret data? a majority of the data that can not see the light of day?
Nope, the majority of published peer reviewed data. Heck they just declassified US satellite photography as per the article published today. Do you even read the peer reviewed journals on this topic. The data is there.
The most supported model is clearly manmade global warming via CO2
No. The correlation is actually quite low.
I strongly disagree and meta-analysis of studies in the field support my position.
Why do you trust them?
I don't trust any individual studying the issue. I do trust extensive peer review via scientific publications.
I'm eagerly awaiting the CERN study with regards to Svensmark's hypothesis - as well as the paper on the quality of surface stations soon to be published. Those two will make incredibly strong arguments against the current AGW hypothesis - or not
You see, here's exactly the problem I pointed out. The scientific method is not to make up your mind and then wait for studies you hope will undermine the hypothesis you don't believe to be published. You've presented zero evidence to support any competing theory and it is clear from your comments that you aren't interested in objectively weighing the support for different theories, just for finding ways to attack the theory whose implications you don't like.
...of course the EU did this thinking they were helping the end customer, but in reality they just played to Microsoft's hand as OEMS get ZERO choice...
That was the EU's intention. Since they believe the OEMs will be forced by MS and the broken market to make choices that will continue to hurt the market and themselves in the long term, the EU removed the choice from the OEMs so my can't use their leverage over the OEMs.
The US settlement was much the same way leaving Microsoft to deal with just one committee that reduces the influence of it's actual OEM customers concerns...
Excepting, of course, that the EU commissioners are not political shills appointed by people MS gives millions in campaign donations to.
I did address them, but not in the way you wanted, by pointing out that the majority of the masses of asses will still go with IE because it's all they know and are terrified of trying something new.
No, that's called sidestepping the point. For example, I pointed out a technical difference between Opera and Firefox that potentially results in the effect upon them being different. Your reply pointed out how things work with Firefox and concluded that the same then applies to Opera, never addressing the difference I pointed out. You addressed exactly zero of my points, instead you basically repeated your previous post and ignored everything I had written. In a rhetorical argument, that's tantamount to losing, but since we're much less formal here I though I'd give you the opportunity to actually go back and address them.
"Denialists" What a great word. What a lovely set of implications it has. Are the climate change "denialists" related to Holocaust deniers by any chance?
Insomuch as they are both denying an opinion supported by the majority of experts in a field and supported by the majority of data, yes. But regardless of the negativity index of said word, you're the one who has brought a "Godwin" into this argument.
Seems to me, if climate change science were based on solid and irrefutable scientific evidence, then there would be no need to use verbal trickery to influence opinion.
Using a word you don't like is verbal trickery? But calling use of the word "denialists" trickery is using the negative words "trickery" and "propaganda" to describe it, that itself being trickery and propaganda of the same order.
Basically, you're not making any sort of relevant argument here. How someone else refers to you does not have any bearing on whether or not manmade global warming is happening or how transparent the process should be.
No, basically nothing in your post is "true" in any scientific version of that word:)
Your post seems to be trying to find flaws so you can jump to the conclusion you want. That's not the scientific method. You have took at the available data and experiments and models and conclude that them most supported model is most likely true. The most supported model is clearly manmade global warming via CO2 and a few other factors. You can't just claim some portion of the data might be flawed and so we'll conclude the opposite of whatever that model says. You have to present an alternative model and show more evidentiary and experimental evidence for it.
The fact that you make claims about what is "true" in science shows you're either ignorant or dishonest. Science doesn't prove things, it presents evidence so scientists can form beliefs based upon a formal method that has been proven to work objectively.
I'm not a big fan of Negroponte, but both Intel and Microsoft went out of their way to kill this project
This is only according to those stricken with Linus's so-called Microsoft-Hater Disease.
What! You don't have to be a Microsoft hater to see both MS and Intel partnered with with the XO team then stabbed them in the back. When you become a partner and donate money, then get ahold of internal sales info and use it to go sabotage deals and sell your own product, it doesn't matter if one of the companies was Microsoft, it was dirty pool.
You've been modded troll which is probably unfair. You did not, however, address any of the points I made in my post. I explained why this will indirectly help Opera and you basically replied with "nuh uh".
but now Dell can legally add Firefox, Opera, or Chrome right to the desktop and Microsoft can't sanction them for it!
Theoretically this is true, but realistically, how do you know what they can do? One of the questions on the survey the EU sent to OEMs asked if MS was pressuring them to not ship with a different browser by default and after getting the results the EU decided to implement a choice that made such pressure irrelevant. And even if, MS were not to say a word to OEs about browsers going forward, years of criminal abuse has already resulted in tons of IE only Web pages which by themselves provide OEMs with direct financial motivation to ship IE by default. There's more to curing a stab wound than just removing the knife.
The rest of us already have tried several other browsers and have decided what we want. Most of us did NOT choose Opera and putting a box to select a different browser will probably not increase Opera's market share much, if at all.
I agree that it won't directly help much, but I think it will help Opera indirectly in several ways. One of Opera's biggest weaknesses is the inability to handle nonstandard pages written for IE as well as Firefox and Safari do. The more alternative browsers that are in use, the fewer such pages will exist and the less this hurts them. Opera spends a lot of money working around those kind of pages both in their regular browser and compromisingly on their mobile browser. This means they can spend less money on that and more on making their browser better and they can make more money licensing their mobile version and services to mobile device OEMs. As you point out, many users don't know they have a choice in browsers, this makes that perfectly clear to them and even if they don't pick Opera from the list, they might consider evaluating different browsers in the future. This isn't an automatic win for Opera, but if gives them an opportunity to compete on even ground, which is all they really want. With the ballot situation users might end up using whichever browser is best, motivating all makers to work hard to be the best.
It will put the Opera name in front of millions of users who probably never heard of it
And the majority of users will simply ignore it and click on a name they've heard of.
Ahh, but some small number of users will choose Opera for one reason or another and that benefits Opera. And some other subset of users will choose anything other than IE which means they'll be running a standards compliant browser that is mostly interoperable with Opera and thus Web developers are more likely to use said standards which means users who do use Opera will have a better Web experience. Further, every user who isn't using IE is learning they have choices, which might mean they actually look into other browsers and start to decide which to use based upon actual merits of the browser.
I love it; anything remotely wrong with the iPhone is AT&T's fault. Anything remotely wrong with the iTunes system is the RIAA or the MPAA's fault. It's a great defense. Apple does everything in the users' interests.
Obviously you're a snarky troll, but you make an interesting point (even if you didn't mean to). You see Apple does what is in Apple's best interests, but in the case of iTunes Apple's best interests are to do whatever it takes to make iPods easy for people to use so they'll buy more. This makes them one of the strongest and most effective consumer advocates fighting against their partners in the RIAA and MPAA. Apple is largely responsible for the removal of DRM from online music stores because it is what benefitted Apple. The same is true for the iPhone. Many of the things the iPhone does are compromises, concessions Apple managed to get from AT&T that would not be allowed in other phones AT&T sold and supported. Now with the iPhone a resounding success Apple has even more leverage to push against AT&T and other providers in the next round of bargaining and while Apple's goal is to make money and do what is good for Apple, the consumer's interests happen to align with Apple's right now.
Yet another iPhone discussion that includes "apple will not allow [X]"... They are starting to bore and depress me as they are rather futile. The Apple fans will always blindly support and back the Apple position... I have to wonder if there is ever anything "apple fans" ever complain or disagree with Apple about?
You're committing the no true scotsman fallacy here. You define Apple fans as people who will support anything Apple does and then question if Apple fans will ever complain or disagree. There are plenty of people who like a lot of what Apple does, but still are happy to complain about what Apple does that they don't like. If someone is complaining about Apple here, how do you know if they're an Apple fan on other topics?
Apple has restrictive and problematic policies that make it difficult or impossible for some applications to work properly. This is certainly a problem. At the same time, those same policies are preventing the iPhone experience form being overrun with a million really crappy applications that degrade the normal user's experience and present huge security and performance problems. Those people complaining that Apple is not competitive when you look at a laundry list of features other smartphones have are completely missing the point. That's not why Apple products become successful. Apple is good at creating a good user experience for normal people and providing only the subset of features they can do well and which contribute to making the overall experience better. Apple wants long battery life, apps sandboxed from one another for security, and apps quality and security checked through a single pipeline. So far a lot of normal users really like that. When they can do other things well enough they'll add those, but they aren't going to rush to add new things just because other phones have them, if Apple doesn't think it will be an overall benefit. If you don't like that, you're probably not their target market.
P.S. I don't have an iPhone and am not really their target market either. I can just appreciate the value of what they do for normal users.
Canada doesn't need any new laws, copyright law is already established, making illegal copies is already illegal. Why do we need any new laws?
The copyright system in most countries is fairly badly broken and the internet revolution has made that a more pressing issue. The point of copyright is to provide incentive for the creation of new artistic works. There are lots of ways copyright can be changed that will do a better job than what currently exists. Laws reducing the length of copyright, fixing how much of copyright can be transferred, etc.
I don't know what that means. What I do know is that, in the US, free speech has few limitations.
That's true, but it does have limitations and those limitations happen when free speech rights conflict with other individual rights.
Public nuisance and disturbing the peace laws restrict free speech for the simple convenience and comfort of the public.
That is not a free speech restriction, since it is based on manner of speech, not content.
I fail to see why that matters. It's still restricting your ability to speak freely even though it is not false or imminently dangerous. Sure you can whisper the same thing, but then people can't hear you and being able to be heard has long been legally recognized as a vital component for free speech in the US.
It's not my theory, it's the law of the land.
Except it isn't the law of the land since I presented you with an example of a law that limits speech and which does not meet your criteria.
I wouldn't have the first clue how to drive an automatic, I've never driven one...
It's just like driving a manual except, you just put it in drive once, when you want to go and let the car take care of the rest. Of course if you're used to a stick this means you're constantly stomping on the floor where there is no clutch pedal and constantly reaching for the shifter, even though you don't actually have to do anything. Basically, anyone who can drive manual can drive automatic, but most people who can drive automatic will be unable to drive a manual without significant learning.
It is all a sliding scale I suppose. I used to drive my brother's 54 International pickup and it had a granny clutch you had to shift out of gear then shift into the next gear with separate operations of the clutch. I imagine old timers used to wonder why you needed some newfangled clutch that made it all one action at the time.
Never mind change gear - maybe not an issue on the motorway, but everywhere else that's quite useful. Most people have manual cars, at least in the UK.
Wow! I find that quite surprising. In the US, manual transmissions account for only 5% of car sales. I don't see numbers on the UK, but numbers for the EU seem to be in line with your statement.
Personally, I miss having a manual transmission, but they are hard to find here, except on sports cars and really low end economy cars. The only thing I drive with a manual is my motorcycle. It also looks like semi-auto transmissions are starting to gain ground.
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The data is also being collected near air conditioners, on parking lots, and has been so mucked up that NASA had to rearrage the 'hottest years' list..
Some of it is potentially compromised while much of it is not. That's going to be true for any topic studied. The point being, of the peer reviewed articles based upon all the disparate data sources, there is a clear consensus. That's what the peer review process is about, finding flaws so false data can be discarded. Finding that some subset of studies relied on data that could have been compromised in no way challenges my point nor does it imply that the opposite of the scientific consensus is in any way likely to be true.
For reasonable people to conclude that manmade global warming is not a significant factor driving a trend towards rapid overall global temperature there need to be significant numbers of scientific studies with data backing them up demonstrating that hypothesis, and those same studies need to stand up to peer review in scientific journals. That hasn't happened and wishful thinking based upon anecdotes isn't going to change that.
Jabber is a nice open IM protocol. So it's interoperable, but other than that what big advantages does it have over Skype, MSN, etc?
As you mention jabber is open and interoperable which addresses the biggest problem people have with IM today. But you can make the same argument with regard to Wave. Why not just use your existing and already in use e-mail, IM, and photo services in conjunction? I think Wave does bring some compelling features to the table, but I don't think compelling features are enough in our current walled garden climate.
...if people like it, and if the entrenched players do not provide it, they will lose users pretty fast.
How? If it isn't not pre-installed and easy to use from the default setup on people's computers and phones, it won't go anywhere. Who's going to switch to it if their friends are still using AIM or MSN and they won't be able to talk to them anymore? Users might like the features of Wave, but I don't think that will trump access to actual people. There might be gateways, but unless those are already set up to work with the services offered over the Web, they might as well not exist for 90% of people.
The real hopes I have for Google Wave are the Web service embedded in pages becoming a popular tool and partnerships Google makes with other companies to get this implemented for existing IM services (AOL IM via a partnership like they did with Jabber) and software providers (built into ichat as Jabber was). Beyond that the normal person isn't going to decide to abandon their existing IM and e-mail client/service and walk away from their contacts and established workflow until Google gains significant traction and market share with Wave. That's the tricky part for Google.
Wave is surely an interesting concept and application, but if there's any web app that just makes you want to scream for a native implementation, it's Wave.
I think focusing on making one cross platform Web application that can be embedded into Web pages is probably the most effective use of their resources. No one is going to bother downloading a client unless there is some significant use of Wave first or it is being deployed in a corporate/large organization setting. Google needs to get it out there and a Web app makes a lot of sense as a first attempt.
Why is Google spoiling good concepts by tying them to the browser exclusively? They just need to develop for the three major platforms, Windows, Linux and OS X.
Again, I disagree. For geeks, maybe this would make sense if Google had the resources to accomplish it at the same time as creating the Web application, but for normal users this isn't going to happen. Most users just don't install things like this or they'd have a Jabber client by now. How many people with Jabber clients right now do you think have ichat compared to all the other clients out there. What Google needs to do is push this as a Web app and then partner with other companies to get them to develop native clients to be pre-installed on their respective platforms and Web services. By open sourcing the Web client Google potentially gets AOL, Yahoo, and MS to expand their chat and e-mail clients both on the Web and the desktop. By talking to Apple they might get this on OS X and/or the iPhone by default. Someone will write a native Linux client no matter what Google does. There will eventually be clients for Windows and OS X, but very few people will use them if they aren't pre-installed with their computer or unless Wave really takes off on the Web first.
Wave will become popular, because it is independent of Google. Every company, every ISP and even every small group of people who might not even want their waves to leave their LAN can set up their own wave server.
I'd say Wave and Jabber are in similar situations in this regard. Both are open (even sharing the same protocol partly) and people do run their own Jabber servers, but as with Jabber there are already entrenched server vendors and service providers for communication and that's a lot of momentum to overcome. I'd like to think that major vendors like Microsoft, Apple, Sun, AOL, and Yahoo will all jump on the Wave bandwagon and expand their existing clients and services to use it interoperably with Google and a magical new era of efficient and cool communication will emerge. That said, when Google got behind Jabber with GTalk I hoped for the same thing, and it is has been slow in coming. Apple jumped on board partly dragging AOL with them. Corporations jumped on board in limited but noticeable numbers. Everyone else decided they would rather stick with their existing business plans and technologies and that interoperability was not in their best interest. Wave brings a bit more to the table, especially as it will work as an embedded HTML5 application in Web pages, but there are a whole lot of gatekeepers to block the way here.
I do not know about you guys but this time I have pretty high expectations.
I've become a cynic. There is hope, but I'm not as optimistic as you are.
Anyone know how on earth Google expects to make money off of this thing? It looks amazing, but how do you make money off of this if it's open sourced, free, and took a ton of development time to build (and presumably support in the future)?
Obviously they plan to make money the same way they do with GMail. They'll offer a free in the cloud service to normal users and either provide ads alongside the client and/or robotically harvest the conversations to better target online ads to their users. They might even sell corporate Wave hosting services to corporations or sell servers with it pre-installed and ready to go to corporations.
just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer, but rather *out there* somewhere, that you can *probably* get access to...
So far the only implementation is a Web app. Is there any reason you can't store waves locally using a desktop client when someone writes one?
here are serious privacy issues as well, no doubt google will be surfin the "waves" looking for terms to market to you, but perhaps it is more shady than that even.
Similarly, you shouldn't use e-mail or Jabber for conversation because Google's free implementations are harvested for marketing data?
then again.. it's cool technology, and now that it's being open sourced, it means feasibly you can run your own "waveserver" and mitigate the issues above somewhat.
Even before they open sourced their implementation they had open, published protocols so others can write interoperable implementations. Having an open source reference implementation is obviously a boon to this process though. I see this just like GTalk. It's based upon the well known XMPP protocol and corporate america will probably implement internal, interoperable servers or outsource service from someone and the results will be just as private as e-mail and Jabber servers are now.
Many people have responded to your post with links, but I know people are really, really, really lazy. So Google Wave is kind of a nifty new communications paradigm designed to replace e-mail, IM, IRC, and other collaboration tools. The basic idea is to create communications centered around a conversation with as many participants as needed, rather than trying to take a two way communication like a letter and expand it to sort of work for more people.
If you're the only person in the conversation (or wave) online, it works like e-mail. As soon as a second person is online at the same time, it works like IM. It is sort of timestamp version controlled so you can rewind conversations and see how the conversation branched and you can embed the conversations in generic Web pages. It's extensible so you can add additional communications to it, and they've added a way to post images and host them as photo galleries.
In short it's new, but similar in ways to IM and e-mail and it's fairly cool, but watching a video makes more sense than reading a lengthy explanation.
A majority of the secret data? a majority of the data that can not see the light of day?
Nope, the majority of published peer reviewed data. Heck they just declassified US satellite photography as per the article published today. Do you even read the peer reviewed journals on this topic. The data is there.
The most supported model is clearly manmade global warming via CO2
No. The correlation is actually quite low.
I strongly disagree and meta-analysis of studies in the field support my position.
Why do you trust them?
I don't trust any individual studying the issue. I do trust extensive peer review via scientific publications.
I'm eagerly awaiting the CERN study with regards to Svensmark's hypothesis - as well as the paper on the quality of surface stations soon to be published. Those two will make incredibly strong arguments against the current AGW hypothesis - or not
You see, here's exactly the problem I pointed out. The scientific method is not to make up your mind and then wait for studies you hope will undermine the hypothesis you don't believe to be published. You've presented zero evidence to support any competing theory and it is clear from your comments that you aren't interested in objectively weighing the support for different theories, just for finding ways to attack the theory whose implications you don't like.
...of course the EU did this thinking they were helping the end customer, but in reality they just played to Microsoft's hand as OEMS get ZERO choice ...
That was the EU's intention. Since they believe the OEMs will be forced by MS and the broken market to make choices that will continue to hurt the market and themselves in the long term, the EU removed the choice from the OEMs so my can't use their leverage over the OEMs.
The US settlement was much the same way leaving Microsoft to deal with just one committee that reduces the influence of it's actual OEM customers concerns...
Excepting, of course, that the EU commissioners are not political shills appointed by people MS gives millions in campaign donations to.
I did address them, but not in the way you wanted, by pointing out that the majority of the masses of asses will still go with IE because it's all they know and are terrified of trying something new.
No, that's called sidestepping the point. For example, I pointed out a technical difference between Opera and Firefox that potentially results in the effect upon them being different. Your reply pointed out how things work with Firefox and concluded that the same then applies to Opera, never addressing the difference I pointed out. You addressed exactly zero of my points, instead you basically repeated your previous post and ignored everything I had written. In a rhetorical argument, that's tantamount to losing, but since we're much less formal here I though I'd give you the opportunity to actually go back and address them.
"Denialists" What a great word. What a lovely set of implications it has. Are the climate change "denialists" related to Holocaust deniers by any chance?
Insomuch as they are both denying an opinion supported by the majority of experts in a field and supported by the majority of data, yes. But regardless of the negativity index of said word, you're the one who has brought a "Godwin" into this argument.
Seems to me, if climate change science were based on solid and irrefutable scientific evidence, then there would be no need to use verbal trickery to influence opinion.
Using a word you don't like is verbal trickery? But calling use of the word "denialists" trickery is using the negative words "trickery" and "propaganda" to describe it, that itself being trickery and propaganda of the same order.
Basically, you're not making any sort of relevant argument here. How someone else refers to you does not have any bearing on whether or not manmade global warming is happening or how transparent the process should be.
No, basically nothing in your post is "true" in any scientific version of that word :)
Your post seems to be trying to find flaws so you can jump to the conclusion you want. That's not the scientific method. You have took at the available data and experiments and models and conclude that them most supported model is most likely true. The most supported model is clearly manmade global warming via CO2 and a few other factors. You can't just claim some portion of the data might be flawed and so we'll conclude the opposite of whatever that model says. You have to present an alternative model and show more evidentiary and experimental evidence for it.
The fact that you make claims about what is "true" in science shows you're either ignorant or dishonest. Science doesn't prove things, it presents evidence so scientists can form beliefs based upon a formal method that has been proven to work objectively.
I'm not a big fan of Negroponte, but both Intel and Microsoft went out of their way to kill this project
This is only according to those stricken with Linus's so-called Microsoft-Hater Disease.
What! You don't have to be a Microsoft hater to see both MS and Intel partnered with with the XO team then stabbed them in the back. When you become a partner and donate money, then get ahold of internal sales info and use it to go sabotage deals and sell your own product, it doesn't matter if one of the companies was Microsoft, it was dirty pool.
You've been modded troll which is probably unfair. You did not, however, address any of the points I made in my post. I explained why this will indirectly help Opera and you basically replied with "nuh uh".
There is no browser market. There are two markets that Microsoft sells to: Average home users and businesses.
You don't know what a market is.
but now Dell can legally add Firefox, Opera, or Chrome right to the desktop and Microsoft can't sanction them for it!
Theoretically this is true, but realistically, how do you know what they can do? One of the questions on the survey the EU sent to OEMs asked if MS was pressuring them to not ship with a different browser by default and after getting the results the EU decided to implement a choice that made such pressure irrelevant. And even if, MS were not to say a word to OEs about browsers going forward, years of criminal abuse has already resulted in tons of IE only Web pages which by themselves provide OEMs with direct financial motivation to ship IE by default. There's more to curing a stab wound than just removing the knife.
The rest of us already have tried several other browsers and have decided what we want. Most of us did NOT choose Opera and putting a box to select a different browser will probably not increase Opera's market share much, if at all.
I agree that it won't directly help much, but I think it will help Opera indirectly in several ways. One of Opera's biggest weaknesses is the inability to handle nonstandard pages written for IE as well as Firefox and Safari do. The more alternative browsers that are in use, the fewer such pages will exist and the less this hurts them. Opera spends a lot of money working around those kind of pages both in their regular browser and compromisingly on their mobile browser. This means they can spend less money on that and more on making their browser better and they can make more money licensing their mobile version and services to mobile device OEMs. As you point out, many users don't know they have a choice in browsers, this makes that perfectly clear to them and even if they don't pick Opera from the list, they might consider evaluating different browsers in the future. This isn't an automatic win for Opera, but if gives them an opportunity to compete on even ground, which is all they really want. With the ballot situation users might end up using whichever browser is best, motivating all makers to work hard to be the best.
It will put the Opera name in front of millions of users who probably never heard of it
And the majority of users will simply ignore it and click on a name they've heard of.
Ahh, but some small number of users will choose Opera for one reason or another and that benefits Opera. And some other subset of users will choose anything other than IE which means they'll be running a standards compliant browser that is mostly interoperable with Opera and thus Web developers are more likely to use said standards which means users who do use Opera will have a better Web experience. Further, every user who isn't using IE is learning they have choices, which might mean they actually look into other browsers and start to decide which to use based upon actual merits of the browser.
I love it; anything remotely wrong with the iPhone is AT&T's fault. Anything remotely wrong with the iTunes system is the RIAA or the MPAA's fault. It's a great defense. Apple does everything in the users' interests.
Obviously you're a snarky troll, but you make an interesting point (even if you didn't mean to). You see Apple does what is in Apple's best interests, but in the case of iTunes Apple's best interests are to do whatever it takes to make iPods easy for people to use so they'll buy more. This makes them one of the strongest and most effective consumer advocates fighting against their partners in the RIAA and MPAA. Apple is largely responsible for the removal of DRM from online music stores because it is what benefitted Apple. The same is true for the iPhone. Many of the things the iPhone does are compromises, concessions Apple managed to get from AT&T that would not be allowed in other phones AT&T sold and supported. Now with the iPhone a resounding success Apple has even more leverage to push against AT&T and other providers in the next round of bargaining and while Apple's goal is to make money and do what is good for Apple, the consumer's interests happen to align with Apple's right now.
Yet another iPhone discussion that includes "apple will not allow [X]"... They are starting to bore and depress me as they are rather futile. The Apple fans will always blindly support and back the Apple position... I have to wonder if there is ever anything "apple fans" ever complain or disagree with Apple about?
You're committing the no true scotsman fallacy here. You define Apple fans as people who will support anything Apple does and then question if Apple fans will ever complain or disagree. There are plenty of people who like a lot of what Apple does, but still are happy to complain about what Apple does that they don't like. If someone is complaining about Apple here, how do you know if they're an Apple fan on other topics?
Apple has restrictive and problematic policies that make it difficult or impossible for some applications to work properly. This is certainly a problem. At the same time, those same policies are preventing the iPhone experience form being overrun with a million really crappy applications that degrade the normal user's experience and present huge security and performance problems. Those people complaining that Apple is not competitive when you look at a laundry list of features other smartphones have are completely missing the point. That's not why Apple products become successful. Apple is good at creating a good user experience for normal people and providing only the subset of features they can do well and which contribute to making the overall experience better. Apple wants long battery life, apps sandboxed from one another for security, and apps quality and security checked through a single pipeline. So far a lot of normal users really like that. When they can do other things well enough they'll add those, but they aren't going to rush to add new things just because other phones have them, if Apple doesn't think it will be an overall benefit. If you don't like that, you're probably not their target market.
P.S. I don't have an iPhone and am not really their target market either. I can just appreciate the value of what they do for normal users.
Canada doesn't need any new laws, copyright law is already established, making illegal copies is already illegal. Why do we need any new laws?
The copyright system in most countries is fairly badly broken and the internet revolution has made that a more pressing issue. The point of copyright is to provide incentive for the creation of new artistic works. There are lots of ways copyright can be changed that will do a better job than what currently exists. Laws reducing the length of copyright, fixing how much of copyright can be transferred, etc.
I don't know what that means. What I do know is that, in the US, free speech has few limitations.
That's true, but it does have limitations and those limitations happen when free speech rights conflict with other individual rights.
Public nuisance and disturbing the peace laws restrict free speech for the simple convenience and comfort of the public.
That is not a free speech restriction, since it is based on manner of speech, not content.
I fail to see why that matters. It's still restricting your ability to speak freely even though it is not false or imminently dangerous. Sure you can whisper the same thing, but then people can't hear you and being able to be heard has long been legally recognized as a vital component for free speech in the US.
It's not my theory, it's the law of the land.
Except it isn't the law of the land since I presented you with an example of a law that limits speech and which does not meet your criteria.
I wouldn't have the first clue how to drive an automatic, I've never driven one...
It's just like driving a manual except, you just put it in drive once, when you want to go and let the car take care of the rest. Of course if you're used to a stick this means you're constantly stomping on the floor where there is no clutch pedal and constantly reaching for the shifter, even though you don't actually have to do anything. Basically, anyone who can drive manual can drive automatic, but most people who can drive automatic will be unable to drive a manual without significant learning.
It is all a sliding scale I suppose. I used to drive my brother's 54 International pickup and it had a granny clutch you had to shift out of gear then shift into the next gear with separate operations of the clutch. I imagine old timers used to wonder why you needed some newfangled clutch that made it all one action at the time.
Never mind change gear - maybe not an issue on the motorway, but everywhere else that's quite useful. Most people have manual cars, at least in the UK.
Wow! I find that quite surprising. In the US, manual transmissions account for only 5% of car sales. I don't see numbers on the UK, but numbers for the EU seem to be in line with your statement.
Personally, I miss having a manual transmission, but they are hard to find here, except on sports cars and really low end economy cars. The only thing I drive with a manual is my motorcycle. It also looks like semi-auto transmissions are starting to gain ground.