After all it's the applications that require Internet Explorer that ties users to Windows and Internet Explorer. European users/admins will just have to download and install Internet Explorer after installing Windows. I know I will have to.
I think the type of users that would grab a bootleg upgrade are not the same type of user as you. I'm picturing more of the normal home user, who has Windows 7 because they were told it was new and cool and now want to keep using it, but aren't confident of their ability to do a fresh re-install. They don't need IE for any applications they use and probably mostly use Web applications and a few games, which are unlikely to need IE.
Do you mean to say that Microsoft has a monopoly on determining which programs to ship with their own OS?
No. MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's, or "PC Operating Systems" technically. Stop with the strawman attacks and actually read about the topic already before making assertions from your ignorance.
THere are other things that MS can get smacked for, but the browser thing is simply stupid all around.
People who don't have a clue what they're talking about telling the experts why they're stupid is just ignorant and pathetic.
No, why would a company want to have to deal with the hassle of incorporating the install of competitors' products into their own install process?
Why would armed robbers want to return the bank's money and spend years in prison?
It's easier to just not install IE or any other browser than deal with all the mess that providing for multiple competitors' browsers...
This is a false dichotomy. Just because MS says they aren't shipping IE, doesn't mean the courts won't still order them to ship a variety of browsers. Criminals rarely get to choose their own reparations and punishment and the fact that MS is trying is the height of arrogance. Besides, MS doesn't do what is easy, they do what they think will be most profitable.
Besides, it's not like anyone will be buying that version anyway... just like XP-N
MS says they aren't selling any other version in the EU. You should better inform yourself before making assertions.
Seriously? If I install Firefox as a non-administrator I can't update it if I'm running Windows? I never run Windows as a non-administrator because it is unnecessary given my security setup. Is Windows really that crippled for non admins?
While upgrading is convenient, won't this actually give European users a better start with Windows 7? Windows is always better when it's clean and recently installed.
Perhaps Microsoft's hope is that EU users will simply grab the upgrade from bittorrent in the states to save themselves the hassle and in the process get IE, helping to keep it ubiquitous.
You're probably an astroturfer so I'm not wasting a lot of time here. Please learn what antitrust abuse is before coming here and telling us why it should be legal. With a few minutes of reading on the topic you can understand why what MS is doing is a crime and what Apple/RedHat are doing is not. If you don't take the time to educate yourself and haven't read one of the hundreds of posts explaining this in other articles, why should we bother with you?
Why would Microsoft cripple it this way? Just to try and point fingers at the European Union? Because the EU didn't tell them to remove IE, they only told them to offer other browsers to be installed during setup.
Actually the EU has not ordered MS to take any specific action. They do seem to favor multiple browsers installed by default as a remedy, but haven't "told" MS anything other than that they think MS is committing a crime and are looking into it. MS's announcement that they are excluding IE in Windows 7 was a preemptive strike by MS in the hopes the EU would not order a more effective remedy, but the EU basically told them they weren't dropping the case and were going to investigate and determine the most effective remedy regardless of what MS does at this point.
Assuming all the above premises hold, it seems likely this is just MS being lazy and incompetent and not wanting to expend effort to write an upgrader for Europe that won't install IE.
Given that I'm a strong environmentalist my bias is unabashedly strong, but as a confirmed atheist even I can say that if we loose this species by way of our ignorance and greed we may have grounds for establishing original sin in our kind.
Depending where you loose it, it is probably a crime as well.
No, Mac OS X is not a competitor. Dell and HP and Sony have no option to license OS X for the computers they ship, so its existence does nothing to reduce MS's ability to coerce them.
Are you also saying that google chrome is not a viable competing good?
Not yet it isn't and because applications are not portable, it will not be a competing good for a signifiant amount of time, if ever. The market needs to evolve significantly before it is a real factor.
How is it MS fault Apple/Google cannot produce competing goods
In general it isn't, but whether or not a company is a monopoly in a market has nothing to do with blame, since being a monopoly is legal. It is, however, illegal to abuse a monopoly and that is MS's fault and they are to blame. On a lesser note, MS broke the law to prevent Java and the Web from being viable vehicles for cross platform applications and has lost in court on both cases, so they did in fact prevent both Linux and OS X from having much of the needed opportunity to be direct competitors.
Being the most popular is not enough to be conisdered a monopoly.
Legally and economically, monopolies are companies that have overwhelming share of a market such that they have a dangerous amount of influence on buyers in that market. Having 30% of a market while 7 other companies have 10% each is not even close. The courts generally start looking into the legal aspects when companies gain about 70% of the overall market, but that's just a rule of thumb. It's about how much power they have over the buyers, since that is what potentially can be used to undermine the capitalist free market
I think Wii is the most popular game console (it could be PS3 or Xbox depending on which report you read) - does that make Nintendo a monopoly? No.
This is a straw man argument. No one else claimed that being the leader in a market was the same thing as being a monopoly.
While MS did some bad things in the past (using their power to ensure retailers only sold their OS) this has pretty much gone the way of the doe-doe[sic] bird.
On the contrary. MS is still in the process of committing numerous antitrust abuses and the courts continue to slowly prosecute them for the most egregious of them.
Linx, OS-X, Chrome(yet to be proven) are all viable products.
You're considering this too much from a technological standpoint and not enough from an economic one. Antitrust is about undermining markets. OS X does not compete in the desktop OS market at all as it is only sold bundled with computers. Linux, including Chrome may eventually compete, but have no significant market share to date, such that they provide viable options for OEMs. Hopefully that will change, but it will take a huge amount of change for MS's influence in the market to decrease to a level where they are not subject to antitrust regulation.
And the same huge number of users when asked "what OS do you want on your new PC, Windows or Google Chrome?", will say "Windows" because they don't have a clue what an OS is and "Windows" sounds vaguely familiar.
Amen. Pre-installed by a vendor and sold as a finished device is the only way OS's gain any real market.
As far as I can tell, Google Chrome is a glorified web dumb terminal that some people will happen to run Linux apps on.
On this I disagree. Google is selling a glorified dumb terminal, but they're selling more than that too. They're partnering to sell it tailored to portable hardware and with Web services taking the place of applications and enabled to run as local applications using offline Web technologies.
Businesses won't flock to it because it will lack Windows application compatibility.
For the most part I agree, but I don't rule out some businesses deciding to go with an all in one solution including GMail and Google Apps, for those businesses looking to cut costs or who are not already entrenched in Windows.
Clueful home users won't use it for the same reason ("Hey, why can't I use iTunes on this laptop or pull pictures from my Kodak camera using their Windows application???")
Now this is a really interesting point because, why can't you run iTunes on it? Apple doesn't support Linux today, but there is basically no market for Linux for home users today and it is only attractive if they want to target niche power user geeks. If Google gets Chrome OS in front of a few million home users, Apple and other vendors likely will respond by making iTunes and similar applications available for the platform, especially considering that doing so is easiest creating a Web application that is cross platform going forward and adds value for mobile devices and other desktops going forward.
I like open source just as much as the next guy here and I'd love to see a competitor to Windows, but my need to get work done supersedes my desire to make a statement about open software.
That goes for most Slashdot users, but we're not representative of the mainstream market. My mother bought a cheap Toshiba netbook a few weeks ago. All the apps she uses are Web apps already with the exception of a really old and discontinued word processor. The same is true for many people and for some organizations. These kinds of devices might work well for gradeschool students and a subset of businesses as well.
With what we currently know, the Google Chrome OS is as much a competitor to Windows as Google Docs and Gmail is to Microsoft Office and Outlook/Exchange.
This is pretty much true. The thing is, Google Docs and GMail are slowly gaining a little traction against MS. Further, every additional monopoly of MS, which Google can target removes one more stumbling stone to Google's attempts to market other products. Right now to sell a user on Google Docs, Google has to either work around the limitations of IE or convince a user to download an alternative browser and start using it and to download Google Gears and navigate to the Google Docs page. That's three or four levels of actions from the end user after they buy a computer, to market and convince the user to do, just to get their Word processing on front of an end user. The only reason they are getting any use is because they provide it for free and it works in a pseudo crippled way on IE.
Now imagine a user buying a netbook that ships with Google Docs on the desktop. They don't have to fight IE being there by default and they don't have to fight to get the user to Google Docs. Further, because they control the browser, it can have Google Gears and run in offline made just fine and can be much more functional than IE allows. I think the Google OS is part of the solution to Google's lack of traction in other markets. MS does really well because t
This "let's make shit up and pretend like it is real," stuff annoys me. There is no basis to any of this. What's more, I find it rather unlikely Apple is going to try for a PDA type device. Why? As mentioned, the iPhone. If you do some shopping around these days you discover that dedicated PDAs, as in devices that aren't part of a phone, are rather rare.
I mostly agree with you on this. If these rumors have any truth to them, I suspect Apple is planning on releasing a larger version of the iPhone, under a different name, and paired with service from Verizon. It's vaguely possible it won't make cell calls directly, but do it over data using some sort of a VoIP service Apple cobbled together, but it's doubtful.
The problem isn't competitors. The problem is fraud.
Then have you sued the people committing the fraud? Are you alleging Google is committing a trademark violation by running ads from other companies? The courts have already decided on that one for all other mediums. Go after the company placing the ad. You can even subpoena the records of who they are from Google.
We occasionally see ads on Google that are specifically designed to look like they are from us, using our exact name.
So what, I see people trying to run all sorts of scams over the internet. I don't sue the company hosting their page. I don't sue craigslist if someone tries to use their service to commit a crime. You sue the criminal, not the company being used just because they happen to have more money.
If I am a long-time Google user and expect a high level of quality operation and privacy from them, then if a different company that hides behind Google's trademarks tricks me into using its own services, then I, as the consumer, will be confused and possibly frustrated or harmed by this rogue company.
That's why we have trademarks in general. I don't see how that applies in this case. No one is hiding behind anyone else's trademark or being confused that I can see. If Some other company has ads on the same page as a trademarked name you do a search for are you really confused and tricked into thinking it is for them?
Obviously, it's also bad for the business that built up its good name and goodwill just to have a competitor snatch away customers by masquerading as the well-known company.
And it's illegal for one company to masquerade as another. That's not what's happening here though. No one is pretending to be another company, they just want to put ads on the same page as a trademarked word. The company that owns the trademark doesn't want them to be able to advertise, even if it isn't confusing, so they sue. Or they hope Google will pay them to go away, so they sue. It's simply barratry in my opinion.
I agree that it is not good to stifle competition, but your statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding about how markets work. Cheaper, faster, and better does not necessarily result in a more successful product. More effective advertising often makes an inferior product more successful.
I understand that fully, but I don't see how it is the government's job to restrict free speech to insure the more expensive marketing campaign results in more market success. How is that in the best interests of society? Restrictions on free speech such as trademarks need to demonstrate a real and pressing public interest that overrides the danger of restricting fee speech. Preventing consumers from being misled qualifies. Ensuring that money spent on advertising is effective, not so much.
Allowing Google to put trademark keywords up for sale enables companies with greater funding to use another's trademarks to sell their own products.
Yes it does. I don't see why the government should get involved to prevent this and you haven't presented any reason why you think they should as representatives of the public's interest and defenders of freedom.
There is a difference between referencing a trademark in your advertisement and using that trademark to sell your product.
But these are not mutually exclusive so it is not a valid, legal distinction.
For example, it is acceptable to say my shoes are better than Nikes, but it is not acceptable for me to sell my shoes under Nikes name.
Ahh, but the distinction there is that in the former case you're not tricking customers into thinking your product is made by a competitor, while in the latter you are. That's the purpose of trademark law, to prevent customers from being tricked into thinking they're buying products from one company when they are in fact from another.
IMHO, allowing Google to redirect trademark searches to a competitors site is a trademark violation.
That's bullcrap. Google's actions aren't confusing anyone and aren't tricking consumers. This is just an attempt to use the courts to misuse trademarks and thereby stifle the free speech of competitors.
But do competitors have the right to profit using your own trademark?
Yes! They absolutely do. I can tell you Microsoft sucks go with RedHat and thereby profit by making a commission while using the trademark "Microsoft". So long as I'm not confusing anyone into thinking RedHat is made by Microsoft, MS should have no ability to use the courts to limit my free speech.
It's that they are using the name recognition of the Rosetta Software to peddle their own product.
So? Do they have some inherent right to control and stop any and all free speech with regard to their trademarks? Google Docs is like MS Office but free and in a Web page. You should pay me money to implement it at your company. There I just used MS's trademarked term again using their brand recognition to profit using a competitor. Are you telling me that should be illegal? What justification is there for suppressing my free speech in such a case? I don't see it at all.
The problem is NOT Google infringing upon the trademarks that Rosetta Stone holds. The issue is that Google is now willingly allowing Joe Schmuck, a competitor, to use trademarks to their own benefit. This seems like a pretty obvious infringement issue.
How is that obvious infringement? These are trademarks, not copyrights. If the public is not being confused into thinking a product is actually made by a different company, there is no justification for trademark infringement. If Crest pays to show ads when I do a search for Colgate, that's a good thing. And no, I don't think anyone is being tricked into thinking Crest is made by the same company as Colgate.
These overly litigious barrators should be slapped down by the courts. Make your products better and cheaper. Stop trying to prevent customers from seeing ads from competitors and crapping on free speech to do it.
I notice you fail to answer several of my hard questions, including providing citations for your quotes.
I think it's the right result, reached the wrong way.
The problem being you just assumed it was the wrong way without actually reading the study in question.
It all depends on how to you define "human rights", and what means you advocate to achieve them. For example, my personal definition of human rights includes freedom OF speech, specifically including speech that is hateful and offensive. Other people define human rights to include freedom FROM that kind of speech.
You're presenting a false dichotomy. All free speech is limited in the cases where it infringes upon other individual freedoms. The question as to what situations a given freedom trumps another is simply a sliding scale where different legal systems have made different determinations. The term "hate speech legislation" is an overly broad an ill defined categorization used as a talking point so fanboys from one political party or another can have sound bites without having to think.
You advocate free speech, which is admirable, but I doubt you can honestly advocate unlimited free speech. For example, if all the major news networks were paid billions to run television ads the day before an election slandering one candidate and claiming they murdered babies and ate them, would you think they should be protected because free speech is protected? Should a mafia don ordering a murder be found innocent of conspiracy to commit murder because he was just speaking and free speech is protected? If I rig a bomb to function via a voice control then say, "detonate" killing hundreds should I walk because my right to free speech trumps other people's right to live? Currently almost every country has laws that place other human rights above free speech in these instances and make such speech illegal.
"Hate speech" legislation deals with where the line is drawn for free speech for groups that have been known to use violence against various minorities. Some of it goes further than I think is justified while other such legislation does not go far enough in stopping violent criminals and those who directly advocate and direct those violent crimes. It's a matter of balancing free speech against other protected freedoms a much more nuanced problem than you're presenting. Oversimplification can lead people to make very, very poor conclusions.
I work in internet advertising (one of the very numerous google adwords certified individuals and so on) and see problems from this nearly weekly. Your competitor (or even a scam site) begins advertising when people search for your company? Not much you can do about it. They even reference to your company in ad description? Still not much you can do about it......So, yeah. The problem does exist.
I can see why this is a problem for you, but not why it is a problem for society in general. I mean, it's a problem for me, when competitors offer to do the same job better and for less, but that doesn't mean there should be a legal method for me to stifle competition. Your competitors have the right to advertise competing products to people and they have the right to reference your products by name. It's freedom of speech and it makes for more competitive markets. The solution is to stop trying to find a way to keep your customers from learning about competitors and start making your product better and cheaper.
Look if you do enough research to look up sample bias and self selection, surely you can do enough research to actually follow the link and read the methodology of the study you're claiming is suffering from them. For example, they control for self selection in the study using statistics on contact methodology between respondents and the public. Your claim that the AAAS is a "liberal" organization is likewise a completely subjective opinion based upon the stated goals of the organization and your own, arbitrary definition of "liberal" as it is a decidedly not affiliated with any political party. Finally, your comments about anyone being able to join are misguided as the study was not of the general membership and weeded out nonscientists using survey questions and the information the AAAS had on its members, for example eliminating all primary and secondary education professionals.
Basically, it looks to me like you have a belief you're trying to support, so you're looking for anything that might support it without looking too deeply. A real scientist forms opinions logically and rationally, rather than simply using those as methods to defend an opinion already formed.
It took "scientists" 1,000 years to discover that the earth was not flat
The scientific method came into use (was not named as such) in the 5th century AD. The discovery that the earth was flat is well documented as early as the 4th century BC. So I'd say it was closer to negative 1000 years, since the discovery predates what we call science.
You don't in any way have to be a real scientist to be a member of this organization. All you need to do is send them $146. School teachers are especially encouraged to join, and no one should confuse a grade K-12 school teacher with a real scientist.
It's interesting that you take another blog as the gospel here. Could it be that you want this study to be flawed, so you're looking for any tenuous excuse to discredit the methodology? I've seen this same argument repeated here numerous time. Did none of you bother to actually look at the study methodology? It specifically excluded AAAS members that were primary and secondary level educators.
The AAAS is a liberal organization with stated goals such as "Increase diversity in the scientific community," "Use science to advance human rights" (sometimes in collaboration with leftist-sympathizing Amnesty International), "Sustainable Development" and "Women's Collaboration".
I challenge you to support your claims. You have several quoted items there, but I sure don't see those quotes on the AAAS Website, so where are they from? The closest thing I see is the 6th of their stated goals which is "Strengthen and diversify the science and technology workforce;" which maybe you read as some sort of affirmative action or something, but which seems to be a practical goal, not a liberal agenda, to me. Diversity is a kind of strength, providing flexibility and range for organizations. Finally, although I don't see it listed as an AAAS goal, since when is advancing human rights a liberal agenda? I thought both liberal and conservative ends of the political spectrum were human rights advocates.
The environment is so complex that you can't just point at some melting/growing ice and say we're all doomed/saved.
Agreed.
How much is man influencing THIS warming trend and how much is part of the same natural cycle that has occured many times before?
The scientific consensus on this topic overwhelmingly supports the theory that man has a significant impact not only on the overall temperature, but more alarmingly upon the rate of change, which is potentially a much more dangerous aspect of the problem. I know it may seem to the layperson as if this is a topic of great uncertainty, but in reality it is not. There is simply a very large and well funded marketing campaign fighting to misinform the public.
Does warming help are harm the life on Earth? Can we conserve the life it harms, and prepare for the life it helps?
This is an important question. The cost to humans in particular is hard to quantify, but it is likely to be extreme. Look at the tragedy of Darfur, rooted in localized climate change. People desperate for water in one place migrate causing huge cultural upheavals with the people already there. Governments deal with the situation badly and thousands die in horrible ways. Now Darfur was not even caused by an overall temperature increase, just change. Other places had unexpected floods and too much water and suffered as well. Now obviously we could deal with climactic changes better than that, but human nature being what it is and with our history in mind, there's little reason to expect that.
Regardless of the long term effects, in the short term climate change will almost certainly cost the human race in massive amounts of resources and suffering.
Does increased CO2 in the atmosphere help or harm life on Earth?
The overall difference is the issue not any individual component. If we can't have CO2 increases without temperature increases and temperature increases result in millions of people dead in unnecessary wars over newly scarce resources, the overall problem is still too big of a negative.
The final concern is that the Earth will get SO hot that there will be a tipping point where there will be an effect called a "positive feedback loop" in which the heat will somehow cause the Earth to get hotter and hotter....
Actually, that's not the only concern. There is also a very real possibility of one of the buffers to temperature change could kick into overdrive and our climate could spiral into a mini ice age.
As almost all things in nature work in negative feedback with multiple buffers coupled with the fact that the Earth has been much hotter in the past, I find this scenario to be closer to Science Fiction than anything else.
I think you're missing a very real part of the equation. You complain about people oversimplifying, but you're only looking at temperature values not rates of change. Temperatures now are not unprecedented in history, but the rates of temperature change are. And that doesn't mean the Earth will change rapidly to a temperature it has never been in the past, but changing to a temperature the Earth has been in the past would still be a disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Even a relatively minor change could well be quite terrible.
84 percent of scientists say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity.
This is true but it's spun, worded with an agenda. Many of those same scientists believe that the amount we're adding to the natural cycle is minuscule, insignificant, or may actually help the environment.
According to the study 92% of scientist believe global warming is a serious problem. That more or less directly contradicts your opinion on the scientific consensus about global warming.
And if we also look at global warming with the same critical eye, can we really say that humans are responsible for global warming when all we can really show is a strong correlation?
But that's exactly what science does. It finds correlations, postulates causations and then, looks at that hypothesis with a critical eye by creating tests that would falsify the hypothesis. That's how the vast majority of science works. The hypothesis or theory with the most evidence that does failed to disprove it is the most likely true answer.
Science is never about showing an absolute proof of something. That's math. Science is a formalized method of determining what is the most likely truth based upon the information we have and the tests we can perform. It is about showing which correlation is most likely to be true. Experiments are deductive reasoning applied to one aspect of reality and each deduction provides inductive support for a theory or negates the theory requiring a new one.
There's no mathematical proof that global warming is being pushed rapidly and dangerously by manmade causes, but that is the most supported scientific theory at this time based upon all the evidence we have. Thus, a logical person believes it to be the most likely truth to base other decisions upon.
Let's focus on making this place a nice place to live. Clean air, clean water, clean land. These are things no one is going to argue with.
If only that were true. I've heard more than one fundamentalist christian argue that we shouldn't be making the earth nicer, we should be using it up so that the apocalypse comes and the good can be "raptured" and the unsaved tortured.
The fact that cell phones did this before having GPS in them does not mean that at any point when doing this they were using GPS.
Nor did the original poster claim they were. That was just your incorrect assumption. The only time he mentioned GPS was when he said GPS units used to have an advantage over smartphones, technically implicitly stated the smartphones were not GPS, which was, of course, correct.
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After all it's the applications that require Internet Explorer that ties users to Windows and Internet Explorer. European users/admins will just have to download and install Internet Explorer after installing Windows. I know I will have to.
I think the type of users that would grab a bootleg upgrade are not the same type of user as you. I'm picturing more of the normal home user, who has Windows 7 because they were told it was new and cool and now want to keep using it, but aren't confident of their ability to do a fresh re-install. They don't need IE for any applications they use and probably mostly use Web applications and a few games, which are unlikely to need IE.
Do you mean to say that Microsoft has a monopoly on determining which programs to ship with their own OS?
No. MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's, or "PC Operating Systems" technically. Stop with the strawman attacks and actually read about the topic already before making assertions from your ignorance.
THere are other things that MS can get smacked for, but the browser thing is simply stupid all around.
People who don't have a clue what they're talking about telling the experts why they're stupid is just ignorant and pathetic.
No, why would a company want to have to deal with the hassle of incorporating the install of competitors' products into their own install process?
Why would armed robbers want to return the bank's money and spend years in prison?
It's easier to just not install IE or any other browser than deal with all the mess that providing for multiple competitors' browsers...
This is a false dichotomy. Just because MS says they aren't shipping IE, doesn't mean the courts won't still order them to ship a variety of browsers. Criminals rarely get to choose their own reparations and punishment and the fact that MS is trying is the height of arrogance. Besides, MS doesn't do what is easy, they do what they think will be most profitable.
Besides, it's not like anyone will be buying that version anyway... just like XP-N
MS says they aren't selling any other version in the EU. You should better inform yourself before making assertions.
Browsers being run by non-administrators.
Seriously? If I install Firefox as a non-administrator I can't update it if I'm running Windows? I never run Windows as a non-administrator because it is unnecessary given my security setup. Is Windows really that crippled for non admins?
While upgrading is convenient, won't this actually give European users a better start with Windows 7? Windows is always better when it's clean and recently installed.
Perhaps Microsoft's hope is that EU users will simply grab the upgrade from bittorrent in the states to save themselves the hassle and in the process get IE, helping to keep it ubiquitous.
You're probably an astroturfer so I'm not wasting a lot of time here. Please learn what antitrust abuse is before coming here and telling us why it should be legal. With a few minutes of reading on the topic you can understand why what MS is doing is a crime and what Apple/RedHat are doing is not. If you don't take the time to educate yourself and haven't read one of the hundreds of posts explaining this in other articles, why should we bother with you?
Why would Microsoft cripple it this way? Just to try and point fingers at the European Union? Because the EU didn't tell them to remove IE, they only told them to offer other browsers to be installed during setup.
Actually the EU has not ordered MS to take any specific action. They do seem to favor multiple browsers installed by default as a remedy, but haven't "told" MS anything other than that they think MS is committing a crime and are looking into it. MS's announcement that they are excluding IE in Windows 7 was a preemptive strike by MS in the hopes the EU would not order a more effective remedy, but the EU basically told them they weren't dropping the case and were going to investigate and determine the most effective remedy regardless of what MS does at this point.
Assuming all the above premises hold, it seems likely this is just MS being lazy and incompetent and not wanting to expend effort to write an upgrader for Europe that won't install IE.
n incompetent user, on the other hand, will go ahead and use an out of date browser, and blame Microsoft for it when they get burned.
What browsers don't auto-update in the default configuration these days?
Given that I'm a strong environmentalist my bias is unabashedly strong, but as a confirmed atheist even I can say that if we loose this species by way of our ignorance and greed we may have grounds for establishing original sin in our kind.
Depending where you loose it, it is probably a crime as well.
OS-X is not a viable competing good?
No, Mac OS X is not a competitor. Dell and HP and Sony have no option to license OS X for the computers they ship, so its existence does nothing to reduce MS's ability to coerce them.
Are you also saying that google chrome is not a viable competing good?
Not yet it isn't and because applications are not portable, it will not be a competing good for a signifiant amount of time, if ever. The market needs to evolve significantly before it is a real factor.
How is it MS fault Apple/Google cannot produce competing goods
In general it isn't, but whether or not a company is a monopoly in a market has nothing to do with blame, since being a monopoly is legal. It is, however, illegal to abuse a monopoly and that is MS's fault and they are to blame. On a lesser note, MS broke the law to prevent Java and the Web from being viable vehicles for cross platform applications and has lost in court on both cases, so they did in fact prevent both Linux and OS X from having much of the needed opportunity to be direct competitors.
Being the most popular is not enough to be conisdered a monopoly.
Legally and economically, monopolies are companies that have overwhelming share of a market such that they have a dangerous amount of influence on buyers in that market. Having 30% of a market while 7 other companies have 10% each is not even close. The courts generally start looking into the legal aspects when companies gain about 70% of the overall market, but that's just a rule of thumb. It's about how much power they have over the buyers, since that is what potentially can be used to undermine the capitalist free market
I think Wii is the most popular game console (it could be PS3 or Xbox depending on which report you read) - does that make Nintendo a monopoly? No.
This is a straw man argument. No one else claimed that being the leader in a market was the same thing as being a monopoly.
While MS did some bad things in the past (using their power to ensure retailers only sold their OS) this has pretty much gone the way of the doe-doe[sic] bird.
On the contrary. MS is still in the process of committing numerous antitrust abuses and the courts continue to slowly prosecute them for the most egregious of them.
Linx, OS-X, Chrome(yet to be proven) are all viable products.
You're considering this too much from a technological standpoint and not enough from an economic one. Antitrust is about undermining markets. OS X does not compete in the desktop OS market at all as it is only sold bundled with computers. Linux, including Chrome may eventually compete, but have no significant market share to date, such that they provide viable options for OEMs. Hopefully that will change, but it will take a huge amount of change for MS's influence in the market to decrease to a level where they are not subject to antitrust regulation.
And the same huge number of users when asked "what OS do you want on your new PC, Windows or Google Chrome?", will say "Windows" because they don't have a clue what an OS is and "Windows" sounds vaguely familiar.
Amen. Pre-installed by a vendor and sold as a finished device is the only way OS's gain any real market.
As far as I can tell, Google Chrome is a glorified web dumb terminal that some people will happen to run Linux apps on.
On this I disagree. Google is selling a glorified dumb terminal, but they're selling more than that too. They're partnering to sell it tailored to portable hardware and with Web services taking the place of applications and enabled to run as local applications using offline Web technologies.
Businesses won't flock to it because it will lack Windows application compatibility.
For the most part I agree, but I don't rule out some businesses deciding to go with an all in one solution including GMail and Google Apps, for those businesses looking to cut costs or who are not already entrenched in Windows.
Clueful home users won't use it for the same reason ("Hey, why can't I use iTunes on this laptop or pull pictures from my Kodak camera using their Windows application???")
Now this is a really interesting point because, why can't you run iTunes on it? Apple doesn't support Linux today, but there is basically no market for Linux for home users today and it is only attractive if they want to target niche power user geeks. If Google gets Chrome OS in front of a few million home users, Apple and other vendors likely will respond by making iTunes and similar applications available for the platform, especially considering that doing so is easiest creating a Web application that is cross platform going forward and adds value for mobile devices and other desktops going forward.
I like open source just as much as the next guy here and I'd love to see a competitor to Windows, but my need to get work done supersedes my desire to make a statement about open software.
That goes for most Slashdot users, but we're not representative of the mainstream market. My mother bought a cheap Toshiba netbook a few weeks ago. All the apps she uses are Web apps already with the exception of a really old and discontinued word processor. The same is true for many people and for some organizations. These kinds of devices might work well for gradeschool students and a subset of businesses as well.
With what we currently know, the Google Chrome OS is as much a competitor to Windows as Google Docs and Gmail is to Microsoft Office and Outlook/Exchange.
This is pretty much true. The thing is, Google Docs and GMail are slowly gaining a little traction against MS. Further, every additional monopoly of MS, which Google can target removes one more stumbling stone to Google's attempts to market other products. Right now to sell a user on Google Docs, Google has to either work around the limitations of IE or convince a user to download an alternative browser and start using it and to download Google Gears and navigate to the Google Docs page. That's three or four levels of actions from the end user after they buy a computer, to market and convince the user to do, just to get their Word processing on front of an end user. The only reason they are getting any use is because they provide it for free and it works in a pseudo crippled way on IE.
Now imagine a user buying a netbook that ships with Google Docs on the desktop. They don't have to fight IE being there by default and they don't have to fight to get the user to Google Docs. Further, because they control the browser, it can have Google Gears and run in offline made just fine and can be much more functional than IE allows. I think the Google OS is part of the solution to Google's lack of traction in other markets. MS does really well because t
This "let's make shit up and pretend like it is real," stuff annoys me. There is no basis to any of this. What's more, I find it rather unlikely Apple is going to try for a PDA type device. Why? As mentioned, the iPhone. If you do some shopping around these days you discover that dedicated PDAs, as in devices that aren't part of a phone, are rather rare.
I mostly agree with you on this. If these rumors have any truth to them, I suspect Apple is planning on releasing a larger version of the iPhone, under a different name, and paired with service from Verizon. It's vaguely possible it won't make cell calls directly, but do it over data using some sort of a VoIP service Apple cobbled together, but it's doubtful.
The problem isn't competitors. The problem is fraud.
Then have you sued the people committing the fraud? Are you alleging Google is committing a trademark violation by running ads from other companies? The courts have already decided on that one for all other mediums. Go after the company placing the ad. You can even subpoena the records of who they are from Google.
We occasionally see ads on Google that are specifically designed to look like they are from us, using our exact name.
So what, I see people trying to run all sorts of scams over the internet. I don't sue the company hosting their page. I don't sue craigslist if someone tries to use their service to commit a crime. You sue the criminal, not the company being used just because they happen to have more money.
If I am a long-time Google user and expect a high level of quality operation and privacy from them, then if a different company that hides behind Google's trademarks tricks me into using its own services, then I, as the consumer, will be confused and possibly frustrated or harmed by this rogue company.
That's why we have trademarks in general. I don't see how that applies in this case. No one is hiding behind anyone else's trademark or being confused that I can see. If Some other company has ads on the same page as a trademarked name you do a search for are you really confused and tricked into thinking it is for them?
Obviously, it's also bad for the business that built up its good name and goodwill just to have a competitor snatch away customers by masquerading as the well-known company.
And it's illegal for one company to masquerade as another. That's not what's happening here though. No one is pretending to be another company, they just want to put ads on the same page as a trademarked word. The company that owns the trademark doesn't want them to be able to advertise, even if it isn't confusing, so they sue. Or they hope Google will pay them to go away, so they sue. It's simply barratry in my opinion.
I agree that it is not good to stifle competition, but your statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding about how markets work. Cheaper, faster, and better does not necessarily result in a more successful product. More effective advertising often makes an inferior product more successful.
I understand that fully, but I don't see how it is the government's job to restrict free speech to insure the more expensive marketing campaign results in more market success. How is that in the best interests of society? Restrictions on free speech such as trademarks need to demonstrate a real and pressing public interest that overrides the danger of restricting fee speech. Preventing consumers from being misled qualifies. Ensuring that money spent on advertising is effective, not so much.
Allowing Google to put trademark keywords up for sale enables companies with greater funding to use another's trademarks to sell their own products.
Yes it does. I don't see why the government should get involved to prevent this and you haven't presented any reason why you think they should as representatives of the public's interest and defenders of freedom.
There is a difference between referencing a trademark in your advertisement and using that trademark to sell your product.
But these are not mutually exclusive so it is not a valid, legal distinction.
For example, it is acceptable to say my shoes are better than Nikes, but it is not acceptable for me to sell my shoes under Nikes name.
Ahh, but the distinction there is that in the former case you're not tricking customers into thinking your product is made by a competitor, while in the latter you are. That's the purpose of trademark law, to prevent customers from being tricked into thinking they're buying products from one company when they are in fact from another.
IMHO, allowing Google to redirect trademark searches to a competitors site is a trademark violation.
That's bullcrap. Google's actions aren't confusing anyone and aren't tricking consumers. This is just an attempt to use the courts to misuse trademarks and thereby stifle the free speech of competitors.
But do competitors have the right to profit using your own trademark?
Yes! They absolutely do. I can tell you Microsoft sucks go with RedHat and thereby profit by making a commission while using the trademark "Microsoft". So long as I'm not confusing anyone into thinking RedHat is made by Microsoft, MS should have no ability to use the courts to limit my free speech.
It's that they are using the name recognition of the Rosetta Software to peddle their own product.
So? Do they have some inherent right to control and stop any and all free speech with regard to their trademarks? Google Docs is like MS Office but free and in a Web page. You should pay me money to implement it at your company. There I just used MS's trademarked term again using their brand recognition to profit using a competitor. Are you telling me that should be illegal? What justification is there for suppressing my free speech in such a case? I don't see it at all.
The problem is NOT Google infringing upon the trademarks that Rosetta Stone holds. The issue is that Google is now willingly allowing Joe Schmuck, a competitor, to use trademarks to their own benefit. This seems like a pretty obvious infringement issue.
How is that obvious infringement? These are trademarks, not copyrights. If the public is not being confused into thinking a product is actually made by a different company, there is no justification for trademark infringement. If Crest pays to show ads when I do a search for Colgate, that's a good thing. And no, I don't think anyone is being tricked into thinking Crest is made by the same company as Colgate.
These overly litigious barrators should be slapped down by the courts. Make your products better and cheaper. Stop trying to prevent customers from seeing ads from competitors and crapping on free speech to do it.
I notice you fail to answer several of my hard questions, including providing citations for your quotes.
I think it's the right result, reached the wrong way.
The problem being you just assumed it was the wrong way without actually reading the study in question.
It all depends on how to you define "human rights", and what means you advocate to achieve them. For example, my personal definition of human rights includes freedom OF speech, specifically including speech that is hateful and offensive. Other people define human rights to include freedom FROM that kind of speech.
You're presenting a false dichotomy. All free speech is limited in the cases where it infringes upon other individual freedoms. The question as to what situations a given freedom trumps another is simply a sliding scale where different legal systems have made different determinations. The term "hate speech legislation" is an overly broad an ill defined categorization used as a talking point so fanboys from one political party or another can have sound bites without having to think.
You advocate free speech, which is admirable, but I doubt you can honestly advocate unlimited free speech. For example, if all the major news networks were paid billions to run television ads the day before an election slandering one candidate and claiming they murdered babies and ate them, would you think they should be protected because free speech is protected? Should a mafia don ordering a murder be found innocent of conspiracy to commit murder because he was just speaking and free speech is protected? If I rig a bomb to function via a voice control then say, "detonate" killing hundreds should I walk because my right to free speech trumps other people's right to live? Currently almost every country has laws that place other human rights above free speech in these instances and make such speech illegal.
"Hate speech" legislation deals with where the line is drawn for free speech for groups that have been known to use violence against various minorities. Some of it goes further than I think is justified while other such legislation does not go far enough in stopping violent criminals and those who directly advocate and direct those violent crimes. It's a matter of balancing free speech against other protected freedoms a much more nuanced problem than you're presenting. Oversimplification can lead people to make very, very poor conclusions.
I work in internet advertising (one of the very numerous google adwords certified individuals and so on) and see problems from this nearly weekly. Your competitor (or even a scam site) begins advertising when people search for your company? Not much you can do about it. They even reference to your company in ad description? Still not much you can do about it... ...So, yeah. The problem does exist.
I can see why this is a problem for you, but not why it is a problem for society in general. I mean, it's a problem for me, when competitors offer to do the same job better and for less, but that doesn't mean there should be a legal method for me to stifle competition. Your competitors have the right to advertise competing products to people and they have the right to reference your products by name. It's freedom of speech and it makes for more competitive markets. The solution is to stop trying to find a way to keep your customers from learning about competitors and start making your product better and cheaper.
Look if you do enough research to look up sample bias and self selection, surely you can do enough research to actually follow the link and read the methodology of the study you're claiming is suffering from them. For example, they control for self selection in the study using statistics on contact methodology between respondents and the public. Your claim that the AAAS is a "liberal" organization is likewise a completely subjective opinion based upon the stated goals of the organization and your own, arbitrary definition of "liberal" as it is a decidedly not affiliated with any political party. Finally, your comments about anyone being able to join are misguided as the study was not of the general membership and weeded out nonscientists using survey questions and the information the AAAS had on its members, for example eliminating all primary and secondary education professionals.
Basically, it looks to me like you have a belief you're trying to support, so you're looking for anything that might support it without looking too deeply. A real scientist forms opinions logically and rationally, rather than simply using those as methods to defend an opinion already formed.
It took "scientists" 1,000 years to discover that the earth was not flat
The scientific method came into use (was not named as such) in the 5th century AD. The discovery that the earth was flat is well documented as early as the 4th century BC. So I'd say it was closer to negative 1000 years, since the discovery predates what we call science.
You don't in any way have to be a real scientist to be a member of this organization. All you need to do is send them $146. School teachers are especially encouraged to join, and no one should confuse a grade K-12 school teacher with a real scientist.
It's interesting that you take another blog as the gospel here. Could it be that you want this study to be flawed, so you're looking for any tenuous excuse to discredit the methodology? I've seen this same argument repeated here numerous time. Did none of you bother to actually look at the study methodology? It specifically excluded AAAS members that were primary and secondary level educators.
The AAAS is a liberal organization with stated goals such as "Increase diversity in the scientific community," "Use science to advance human rights" (sometimes in collaboration with leftist-sympathizing Amnesty International), "Sustainable Development" and "Women's Collaboration".
I challenge you to support your claims. You have several quoted items there, but I sure don't see those quotes on the AAAS Website, so where are they from? The closest thing I see is the 6th of their stated goals which is "Strengthen and diversify the science and technology workforce;" which maybe you read as some sort of affirmative action or something, but which seems to be a practical goal, not a liberal agenda, to me. Diversity is a kind of strength, providing flexibility and range for organizations. Finally, although I don't see it listed as an AAAS goal, since when is advancing human rights a liberal agenda? I thought both liberal and conservative ends of the political spectrum were human rights advocates.
The environment is so complex that you can't just point at some melting/growing ice and say we're all doomed/saved.
Agreed.
How much is man influencing THIS warming trend and how much is part of the same natural cycle that has occured many times before?
The scientific consensus on this topic overwhelmingly supports the theory that man has a significant impact not only on the overall temperature, but more alarmingly upon the rate of change, which is potentially a much more dangerous aspect of the problem. I know it may seem to the layperson as if this is a topic of great uncertainty, but in reality it is not. There is simply a very large and well funded marketing campaign fighting to misinform the public.
Does warming help are harm the life on Earth? Can we conserve the life it harms, and prepare for the life it helps?
This is an important question. The cost to humans in particular is hard to quantify, but it is likely to be extreme. Look at the tragedy of Darfur, rooted in localized climate change. People desperate for water in one place migrate causing huge cultural upheavals with the people already there. Governments deal with the situation badly and thousands die in horrible ways. Now Darfur was not even caused by an overall temperature increase, just change. Other places had unexpected floods and too much water and suffered as well. Now obviously we could deal with climactic changes better than that, but human nature being what it is and with our history in mind, there's little reason to expect that.
Regardless of the long term effects, in the short term climate change will almost certainly cost the human race in massive amounts of resources and suffering.
Does increased CO2 in the atmosphere help or harm life on Earth?
The overall difference is the issue not any individual component. If we can't have CO2 increases without temperature increases and temperature increases result in millions of people dead in unnecessary wars over newly scarce resources, the overall problem is still too big of a negative.
The final concern is that the Earth will get SO hot that there will be a tipping point where there will be an effect called a "positive feedback loop" in which the heat will somehow cause the Earth to get hotter and hotter....
Actually, that's not the only concern. There is also a very real possibility of one of the buffers to temperature change could kick into overdrive and our climate could spiral into a mini ice age.
As almost all things in nature work in negative feedback with multiple buffers coupled with the fact that the Earth has been much hotter in the past, I find this scenario to be closer to Science Fiction than anything else.
I think you're missing a very real part of the equation. You complain about people oversimplifying, but you're only looking at temperature values not rates of change. Temperatures now are not unprecedented in history, but the rates of temperature change are. And that doesn't mean the Earth will change rapidly to a temperature it has never been in the past, but changing to a temperature the Earth has been in the past would still be a disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Even a relatively minor change could well be quite terrible.
84 percent of scientists say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity.
This is true but it's spun, worded with an agenda. Many of those same scientists believe that the amount we're adding to the natural cycle is minuscule, insignificant, or may actually help the environment.
According to the study 92% of scientist believe global warming is a serious problem. That more or less directly contradicts your opinion on the scientific consensus about global warming.
And if we also look at global warming with the same critical eye, can we really say that humans are responsible for global warming when all we can really show is a strong correlation?
But that's exactly what science does. It finds correlations, postulates causations and then, looks at that hypothesis with a critical eye by creating tests that would falsify the hypothesis. That's how the vast majority of science works. The hypothesis or theory with the most evidence that does failed to disprove it is the most likely true answer.
Science is never about showing an absolute proof of something. That's math. Science is a formalized method of determining what is the most likely truth based upon the information we have and the tests we can perform. It is about showing which correlation is most likely to be true. Experiments are deductive reasoning applied to one aspect of reality and each deduction provides inductive support for a theory or negates the theory requiring a new one.
There's no mathematical proof that global warming is being pushed rapidly and dangerously by manmade causes, but that is the most supported scientific theory at this time based upon all the evidence we have. Thus, a logical person believes it to be the most likely truth to base other decisions upon.
Let's focus on making this place a nice place to live. Clean air, clean water, clean land. These are things no one is going to argue with.
If only that were true. I've heard more than one fundamentalist christian argue that we shouldn't be making the earth nicer, we should be using it up so that the apocalypse comes and the good can be "raptured" and the unsaved tortured.
The fact that cell phones did this before having GPS in them does not mean that at any point when doing this they were using GPS.
Nor did the original poster claim they were. That was just your incorrect assumption. The only time he mentioned GPS was when he said GPS units used to have an advantage over smartphones, technically implicitly stated the smartphones were not GPS, which was, of course, correct.