I think you will be surprised to know that the overwhelming majority of iPod owners have a Microsoft OS on their computers, whose hardware was also not made or sold by Apple. So, if you could kindly explain how that constitutes monopoly leveraging, I'd be interested to hear.
Apple's potential antitrust abuse does not include their OS at all. They have about 70% of the portable digital music player market. If the courts rule this constitutes monopoly influence on that market, then their bundling iTunes and tying to the iTunes Music Store service are both antitrust violations and Apple will have to open up the iPod APIs to work with other software and other music services on equal footing, possibly including licensing their DRM.
The real issue hinges on what the average consumer considers while making a purchase and if media capable cell phones are alternatives. In the EU, with their more strict laws about cell phone locking, the answer is probably that Apple does not have monopoly influence and both their move away from DRM and towards converging phones and music players are both making the issue less significant. Nonetheless an EU commissioner made mention a while ago that they were looking into it.
Remind me how Microsoft has EVER stopped me from downloading and installing whatever browser I damn well choose?
What makes you think this is about you? You're a wronged party only in that Web browsers and the Web itself sucks compared to what it would be if it was not broken by MS. In any case you have to use IE whenever a Web page only works in IE and MS intentionally leveraged their Windows monopoly to break as many pages as possible as revealed by their internal memos discovered last time they went to court over this same crime.
And Windows never once gave me any hassle in downloading, installing, or using any of those.
Originally, Windows did give you trouble using them since MS intentionally broke the public APIs used by Web browsers, while using secret ones for IE. Since then, WEb pages have given you trouble I imagine and MS intentionally caused that trouble.
I'm selling a calculator app I made, it's a bit better than the one in windows. Maybe if I complained, I could get the EU to force MS to release a version sans-calculator so people will buy my product! You have to agree with the above sentiments if you think that competition is a right.
Actually, no you don't, but I actually do agree MS should be forced to unbundle their calculator program. There were and are other companies making better ones and there is no reason they should be less used just because MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's. OEMs should be the ones putting together software packages to ship to end users, not MS and OEMs should be considering what is out there and picking the best one in their opinion.
If you actually write such an application (which I highly doubt) go ahead and complain to the EU. It could very well benefit people overall by getting them better calculator apps. Finally, it isn't about competition being "right". This isn't a moral argument. It is about competition resulting in better, cheaper products and innovation which benefits everyone. We have laws insuring competition in the face of monopolies because we lived through the disaster and horror that existed before we made such laws.
No, Windows is a monopoly in the desktop OS market as several courts have already ruled. Since it is illegal to tie products from separate, pre-existing markets with products from a monopolized market, bundling IE with Windows is blatantly illegal.
Why isn't the EU going after Apple? And on that note, why am I FORCED to use Safari on my iPod Touch?
They're considering it with regard to iPods and iTunes, but iPods probably don't constitute a monopoly in the EU.
Me thinks the EU needs to take a good long look at Apple if they are going to sanction Microsoft!
They are looking, but since the case against Apple is fairly weak, while the one against MS is open and shut and has lasted longer, expect to see them convict MS first by several years at least.
Note: I am an Apple user. If the EU required MS to bundle other browsers, then should they force Apple to do the same?
The law says you can't bundle a monopolized product with a product from a separate, pre-existing market. Do you think OS X or Safari qualifies as a monopoly?
And yes, I know Safari is not tied into the OS like IE is.
Okay, I'm really concerned. In the last three or four articles we've seen on this topic, we see dozens of posts all repeating the same nonsense that was debunked in the first discussion. Every time the topic comes up people immediately reference legal bundling by other companies (OS X and Safari or Linux and Mplayer). Are people really so incapable of learning and ignorant that they don't understand even the most basic aspects of antitrust abuse? And they all did not see any of the umpteen explanations in previous discussions?
I'm beginning to hope there is some serious astroturfing going on because the alternative is worse.
It still amazes me how Internet Explorer is such a big deal for the EU. IE is free. Microsoft is bundling their browser with their OS. KDE bundles Konqueror. Gnome has Epiphany.
FAIL!
I'm sorry, but if you're going to post about a proposed remedy to antitrust abuse, you should know what antitrust abuse is and why it is illegal in the first place. If you're amazed, please go educate yourself so you know what you're talking about.
If you want to go after Microsoft, then go after them for the things that are truly evil... The embrace, extend and extinguish.
The "embrace, extend, extinguish was a comment revealed in the US court case about MS's strategy of bundling IE to break standards and prevent the Web from being a way to bypass Windows.
Forcing vendors to bundle other browsers won't do anything. Do you really think Microsoft fears this?
If you understood why the action was illegal or how their embrace, extend, extinguish strategy worked, you'd understand that this can help repair the market and make the Web better for everyone. It also has the potential to make Web apps work a lot better and allow people to be platform independent. MS fears that greatly.
Why is the EU so hooked up on what browser is being used? Why not e.g. the productivity tools being bundled, or the kind of media center/player to play videos and music?
First, the EU already convicted them for the bundling of their media player. Second, the media player market is horribly broken anyway because of certain cartels and forcing MS to change will make less of a difference especially with Apple leveraging their near monopoly to promote a different player.
With the Web however you have just Microsoft as the stumbling block preventing fair competition. You have an open and shut case with fairly straightforward remedies available. You have a complaint from effected competitors. You have already discovered evidence of MS's intent to maliciously break the market. It is an ideal market to fix and actually help both other companies and the people in general.
How does this action satisfy the Opera folks who requested it?
It doesn't completely, but it does help them significantly. Bundling Firefox with Windows means developers can count on all new machines shipping with a reasonably standards compliant browser and they can instruct people on how to switch to using it if they visit a age using IE without them having to download and install software. This promotes standards on the Web and means Opera can start spending less development money on working around the intentionally broken Web and more making real improvements to their products. If you recall, intentionally subverted standards were a big part of Opera's complaint.
Funny how much people got bent out of shape when Eminent Domain was used to seize their property in order to benefit business. But when the same is done with their money they're all too willing.
I support eminent domain and taxes, both with the provision that they are actually being used for the good of the people instead of for the benefit of corporations.
If this new and improved network will benefit a businesses bottom line then let them pay for it?
It won't benefit them directly and that's not the point. The point is to redistribute money in such a way that jobs are created and people benefit as well as economic growth is encouraged.
As far as the wealthy causing the recession. I seem to remember a lot of the "lower half" taking out mortgagees they couldn't afford. It was also the "lower half" that ran up credit card debts just to live like the Jones, then defaulted on the principals. The "lower half" before the shit hit the fan had the lowest savings rate in the free world.
Yeah, the lower half took out tons of credit because banks were giving it to them. Banks were giving it to them because they did not have enough people with any real wealth or prospects to lend to anymore. Look, when you're born into the lower class and have zero wealth, borrowing is your most realistic way to get ahead. Borrowing money to buy a house is a smart move. Instead of housing being an expenditure it becomes an investment with returns down the line. The problem being, it also destabilized the economy because the people at the top were born with the capital and they're the ones profiting from all the interest you have to pay (they also profit if you rent because they were born with the property. Either way a huge portion of your earnings is going to the wealthy simply because of circumstances of birth. The whole unstable debt issue happened because the government and banks were trying to prevent the economy from declining when the wealth distribution had gotten so bad that there were no other ways. The wealthy politicians took out huge loans on behalf of the people to foreign powers and encourages lending institutions to extend credit to individuals beyond where it made sense.
Now I'm not saying there is not plenty of irresponsible money management among the poor, nor that they are not to blame for their own situations in many cases. What I'm saying is, they never had the financial power and as a result their actions were unable to cause a recession. What caused the recession was simply enormous wealth disparity caused by wealth condensation and tax laws increasingly favoring the wealthy. Now our wealth is so inequitably distributed we're screwed unless we do something drastic to remedy it. Socialized healthcare combines with very progressive taxes would be a good start. Frankly, I don't have a lot of faith in the "ruling classes" to understand economics enough to realize the alternatives. When poor people become desperate and wealth disparity goes up, so does violent crime and more than once a recession has been ended by a revolution, either political or military. When a hundred people come into your house, beat you to death, and take your stuff home with them, that's your own poor economic policy.
What I don't understand is how this could be considered economic stimulus. Sure, it'll help in certain marginal ways, but the only thing that can fix the US economy is if the government quits taking half of what everyone earns and lets the earners of the money figure out the best way to spend it.
Actually, that is exactly the opposite of what they need to do. The recession is happening for the same reason the great depression did. If you don't progressively tax the wealthy, the wealth condensation effect pools larger and larger shares of the wealth into fewer hands. Eventually those on the bottom have nothing and live on credit, until that too collapses. That's where we are now. It's not that the US is poor, it's just that the bottom 50% has a net worth of zero. With no money they can't invest and pay huge amounts of their income paying interest just to get by. It's like a tax on being poor that goes to the wealthy instead of the government. When all the wealth consolidates the economy becomes unstable.
The solution to this is to take more of the taxes from the very wealthy and less from the very poor, ideally while creating jobs for the unemployed. It doesn't help the unemployed if you don't tax the income they don't have, you need to create jobs in the US. Public works projects are a traditional way to do this and spending money on broadband can create a lot more jobs than in other areas because it enables new telcos to form and existing internet businesses to expand, if it is implemented well anyway.
If you give tax breaks to the lowest earners, they buy more tv's and mcdonald's...
The low earners are already not paying any taxes because they have no income or not enough to count.
...give the tax breaks to the middle and upper class, and they end up investing in new business and current business expansion.
Tax breaks to the middle help. Tax breaks to the upper class, not so much. That's what they've been trying for the last 8 years. It's called "trickle down economics" and even the die hard supporters are admitting it is a failure. Everything they invest is a tax write off anyway, so taxing them less does not really motivate them to invest more and lot of what they invest in creates jobs overseas instead of in the US.
If the greedy bastards in DC would quit thinking of tax revenue as their "income" and just cut taxes across the board, including corporate and capital gains taxes, I'd bet you a non-free beer that you would see IMMEDIATE stock market growth, followed by strong GDP growth, dropping unemployment, and REAL opportunity.
It's been tried historically and it did not work. The problem is wealth disparity more than anything else. Tax cuts across the board do nothing to redistribute the wealth, so it will continue to consolidate and we'll have continued instability.
Tax dollars spent on infrastructure do stay in circulation. They go to pay wages to people who are currently unemployed. Bill Gates pays a thousand times less taxes than I do (as a percentage of income). He can afford to pay a much, much larger share and still eat and live normally and if he has to that money can do a lot to solve the debt problems of the very poor so they don't lose their houses and so they can have jobs building infrastructure that grows the economy overall. It helps the US economy a lot more than letting him give it to Africans and invest in creating more jobs in India.
Basically, I don't think you've really studied the economics of recession and the great depression specifically. There are some good books out there that are informative and entertaining. You might want to check one out.
I can appreciate that many rural areas do not have access to broadband internet, and I certainly don't prejudice rural residents, but I don't see the dire necessity of faster internet where it already exists.
This is about making a system that will bring both faster and cheaper internet to all US residents. Those residents save money and get better services which opens up new business opportunities. It's pretty hard for NetFlix to get customers in paces where there is no high speed internet. Ditto for Amazon and for tons of new businesses. A small investment in infrastructure can result in new telecos offering access and expanded markets for all those businesses. This is good for citizens (because they have better access and are not falling behind technologically) and it is good for the economy. Best of all, it can be paid for with taxes on the very wealthy, redistributing wealth to the lower half of our economy and countering the wealth consolidation that caused the recession.
Is this the time to be spending $6B on supplementary services which otherwise are not economically viable?
Yes. And it's not just a matter of it not being economically viable. If it is done right it is about opening up competition and removing power from the duopoly that is making more money now by exploiting their position than satisfying customers.
I can tell you why previous financial incentives did not achieve the intended results - they have better things to spend the money on!
The previous packages were just handouts. The US paid billions to build things, then sold them for pennies to people who gave them large re-election donations. It was corruption plain and simple.
The OPs point is not valid. There are already multiple data lines going into most houses.
Yeah, but only two with no more possibility of other competitors and one is highly regulated in one way and the other is moderately regulated in a different way.
So, the argument that the market can only support one data line going into a house is demonstrably false.
He didn't say the market couldn't support more than one and neither did I. That is a straw man. He said it was not the most desirable course and I explained the practical reasons of reliability and local laws which make that so.
The same goes for the engineering side of it. As for the fact that the laws restrict who can lay wire, that is exact the the opposite of a NATURAL monopoly.
True, but I don't think it was his intent to claim it was a natural monopoly. Rather, the nature of how lines are laid results in local geographic monopolies forming both because of reliability and risks and aesthetics and these become the subject of local laws if the feds do not intervene and leave it to the "market".
If it really were a natural monopoly, there wouldn't need to be laws to restrict it to a monopoly. It would happen without laws.
But from the perspective of the federal government it is the same thing, because if they don't regulate it, the market becomes a series of local duopolies in 90% of the country... which is what we have now.
When the government invests X billion into something, they should come up with a list of specific items to be accomplished by the investee, put it into the contract, and send auditors to check up on the progress on a regular basis.
They often do. The problem is, if the government gives a company a few billion, it is cheaper for them to spend a small amount of that on paying lobbyists to basically bribe politicians to do away with those items, than it is to accomplish those items. So long as we let corporations lobby, this will probably be the norm.
Seriously, why is the answer to mismanagement of money (tax payer or private money as the recent market troubles have shown) always to give away tax payer money?
Your mistake is believing this is an attempt to solve the previous mismanagement of money. That is not the case. This and the other public works projects are about wealth redistribution. Basically, the idea here is to take money from the few, incredibly wealthy people who have gained ever larger shares of the wealth, in order to move some wealth to the huge portion of the US that has none and save the economy from total collapse.
I'm so glad that the Democrats are so generous with MY money. Of course, the Republicans before them were basically the same, as were the Democrats before those Republicans, and so on going back quite a ways.
This election we did have a clear economic choice with the two parties. Both parties understood the need to move wealth to the poor in order to save the economy. Both (I think) understood that trickle down economics and moving more wealth to the wealthy was a failure. Both claimed to want tot trim government spending but understood the realities of how small of cuts they could really make without making the economy even worse.
The clear difference was the Democrats want to increase taxes for the ultra-wealthy and move that to the poor. The Republicans wanted to borrow more money from foreign powers and move that to the poor and hope that our currency would hold value anyway and we'd find a way to pay it off somewhere later on.
Make bad choices in the marketplace? Here is some tax payer money. When is this going to stop?
The problem we have now is we can't realistically let the failed economic ventures collapse because it will take the whole show down with them. After we solve this crisis, there is one simple thing we can do to help prevent it from happening again... but I doubt you'd get more than a few votes for it. Ban foreign and corporate lobbying and put strict controls on favors given to civil servants or people who recently were civil servants. People have rights to give their money to political parties and candidates, but corporations and foreign power have no inherent rights and it is absurd that this legalized bribery is tolerated. If you really want this to stop, push that agenda has hard as you can locally and in your state.
This is true, but the intent of the original poster is easy to understand. It's a problem to put in lots of competing wires because every time someone digs they risk breaking already laid wires. Every time someone strings wires it reduces the reliability of all the others because the weakest wires fall first and damage others. Almost everywhere there are laws restricting the laying of wires to one phone one cable and one power because it does solve a lot of problems. It's not a natural monopoly in the traditional sense, but neither does it invalidate the point.
What I meant more was, where did it start? How? Is there some reason atoms like to join and become larger molecules?
Ahh, that's not actually part of the theory of evolution of species at all. You're thinking of the various theories of abiogenesis. Atoms don't "like" anything by themselves. They do combine in many different ways of course and there is no reason why they could not combine into self replicating chains by happenstance given enough time. That's actually the theory with the most scientific backing at this point, but it is not the theory of evolution. A big part of the problem with educating people about evolution is that a large number of people arguing it should not be taught don't even know what it is (and is not) and, hence, what they are arguing against.
The schools should obviously present micro-evolution: things do change. Ffs, look at genetic mutations. When it goes on to the origins of modern life, whatever "theory of evolution" they've come up with should, can, and will be taught to the students, but at the same time remind them to think for themselves a bit. It's a theory. It's a theory that works. It's a theory that doesn't work. Why?
As a biochemist mentioned to me to today, the whole micro/macro evolution argument is completely artificial and unscientific. changes happen. We can estimate the rate fairly well. Why would anyone think that lots of smaller mutations over time would not add up to more change? There is no scientific distinction between the two.
Students should always be encouraged to think for themselves, but questioning whether evolution "works" is a lot lot questioning whether atomic number theory works. They're both the basis of an entire branch of science and incredibly well supported.
I'm guessing from the other comments in this thread that you're in America. I'm not particularly worried about Muslim fundamentalism in the US.
I am in the states and I worry more about the conglomeration of christian and muslim fundamentalist alliances to push through restrictive social policies here.
The Muslim community in Europe is much different--much more insular, much less secular.
Legally speaking, most of Europe is less secular. There are, however, a much larger percentage of first and second generation muslim immigrants in Europe than in the US. The cultural differences are significant between Europe and the US, I'll grant.
In the more wealthy, more industrialized nations I find that muslims are not particularly any more likely to push creationism than christians, it is just they are largely concentrated in less wealthy and advanced places. You mention Turkey, but I still consider them more than a little backwards, given the state of democracy, levels of blatant corruption, and median wealth there. If there were a widespread conflict and an influx of African christians into Europe in the same levels, they would probably be pushing many similar and backward ideas as well.
My question is this, are evolutions potential weaknesses worth discussing or are they more akin to those of gravity, where it's really an irrelevant detail (I know for advanced physics it's not irrelevant but for HS it is) to a general understanding of the theory. I really don't know the theory of evolution well enough to make that decision, it's not my field and I've only been exposed to it in two HS and one college introductory class.
In my opinion, there is less reason to discuss the weaknesses of evolution compared to those of gravity. With gravity there are valid differences about the core mechanism. With evolution, the core mechanism is well known and observed and only the minor points and edge cases are significant matters of discussion.
Personally, I think the more appropriate way of dealing with disputes among theories is to direct students to the library with a list of authors and book/paper titles so that those who are interested can really get into the subject matter.
The main difference being that with most theories you have mostly scientific papers. With evolution and to lesser extent with global warming you have well funded misinformation campaigns being waged to try to push unscientific results upon the average person, or at very least confuse the issue. Tey won't find much dissension in real scientific publications, but people have a tendency to look at a lot of opinion pieces and pop culture, even if there is no substance.
The only problem with this is whether the teacher will direct the students appropriately or will they try to push their personal agendas on them.
That's about 50% of the problem with the other 50% being that most kids don't actually gain a good understanding of how to apply the scientific method and experience with it, or even with critical thinking.
Even in Biology, which is the only place that evolution gets mentioned, the textbooks have been very evolution-friendly for years.
Yeah, they've also been "gravity friendly" and friendly to lots of other theories that are ridiculously well supported.
Of course in that, they have been focused on lots of aspects of evolution that have been disproven, like human fetuses having gills and other similar things.
I've seen this claim many times from opponents of evolution, but every attempt to examine it has resulted in it being disproved, so far. Even the decade old textbooks I looked at in the used book store did not mention humans having gills or references to the drawings of Earnst Haeckel.
And of course, the real control over this content lies with the teachers, who for the most part teach science and the scientific method, which really doesn't support most of the conclusions that evolution-science come to since they aren't based on observation.
The real control is in the hands of the teachers, many of whom would rather teach memorization of theories rather than understanding of the scientific method. As for the scientific method not supporting the theory of evolution, maybe you were not taught it properly either. Evolution made oodles of useful predictions about everything from the existence of a physical mechanism for transferring traits (DNA) to the types of fossils that would be discovered from different time periods to the genetic changes we would observe if we subjected species with rapid reproduction to stresses. It is one of the most tested theories in science and there is no alternative theory with anything close to the same level of support. It is the most likely truth according to the scientific method.
Whether or not intelligent design is discussed officially in the textbooks makes no difference in the end, but science does get taught properly in most classrooms.
I'd argue that ID should not be discussed for several reasons. First, if the teacher does a good job teaching the method, it should be obvious to students that ID is junk. Second, ID is a controversial topic and there is a huge PR campaign behind it. Trying to teach it opens the way for bad teachers and other influential people in their lives to undermine teaching of science in general. Attempting to teach that specific topic may result in students refusing to learn the scientific method at all since they don't want to learn things that result in social disapproval.
Science classes should first and foremost teach the scientific method using hands on experimentation and teach techniques for properly evaluating data. Then it should briefly cover important foundational theories that form the basis for entire branches of science (theory of evolution, theory of gravity, atomic theory, electrical theory, etc.). Finally, science classes should cover a few new and exciting theories which are competing as a way to allow students to test their skills and interest some of them in benefitting science going forward.
This is so sad, all ID says is we don't know how the universe was created, but it didn't evolve on it's on on this planet.
Really, is that the hypothesis of ID? Okay, what experiments have been performed? What predictions about new data has it made that have then been found to be true and did not falsify it?
Everyone should watch Expelled. It's sad how uneducated most of the people that read are, they just take what the media says and believe it.
I watched Expelled. I noted that for being a documentary about the supposed persecution of ID proponents in the scientific community it somehow failed to ever state the falsifiable, hypothesis of ID or mention any experiments. Those are requirements for ID to be science. I'm not taking what the media says and believing it. I'm looking at what appears to me to be a media propaganda campaign promoting ID, and seeing nothing behind it. There is a reason ID is not taken seriously in scientific journals. It has the same scientific backing as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That is to say, there is no formal, agreed upon hypothesis and have been no useful predictions made by it. It isn't science, just speculation that tries to disguise itself as science in an attempt to discredit what science has determined to be the most likely truth, because many people find the most likely truth to be inconvenient to their religious beliefs.
If by "The rest of the civilized world," you mean to exclude predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey, then yes, it's just an American problem.
I guess the definition of "civilized" can be somewhat vague. I have some Turkish friends.
This may become a problem in the UK and other parts of Europe, as Muslims will probably react to secularism much in the same way American Evangelicals have. We're starting to see it happen.
Maybe know different muslims than you do, but most of the ones I know accept evolution as a fact, sort of like most catholics. It is easy to confuse muslim fundamentalists with muslims in general, especially given what is reported in mainstream news. I think the fundamentalist muslim community is probably larger than the christian fundamentalist community, but I don't think either is larger than the more mainstream and progressive elements of their religion in relatively industrialized nations. The problem right now is their is a huge influx of muslim people from backwards nations to first world nations skewing the numbers.
But here's what would happen. Jim Bob would use that article as his talk on the weaknesses of evolution. No later than about two days he would be called to the principal's office and the discussion would go something like this: "Jim Bob, there have been some concerns about your commitment as a teacher. Do you feel you have the sort of character and motivation for teaching our youth?" And next round of contracts Jim Bob is asking whether you'd like fries with that. _That_ is how our honorable principal would handle the problem of Jim Bob bringing up actual science in discussion of Darwin.
I disagree. Generally you have principals with some sort of agenda, but discussing weaknesses of the theory of evolution generally don't cause problems for teachers at all. If you teach them in the proper scientific context then you are showing how they can refine and alter the theory in light of new evidence. I doubt any principal would have any problem with that unless they're looking for a way t get rid of you for some other reason. And here's where it gets tricky. If you're just pointing out flaws as a way to discredit all the scientific evidence that has gone into our current understanding of evolution and thus trying to discredit science and convince students it is bunk and they should look to "other methods" for finding the truth, methods like having faith in a really old book, then you aren't teaching science. This may result in problems for you, depending upon the agenda of the principal. Some of them would love it and some would look to replace you with a competent teacher.
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I think you will be surprised to know that the overwhelming majority of iPod owners have a Microsoft OS on their computers, whose hardware was also not made or sold by Apple. So, if you could kindly explain how that constitutes monopoly leveraging, I'd be interested to hear.
Apple's potential antitrust abuse does not include their OS at all. They have about 70% of the portable digital music player market. If the courts rule this constitutes monopoly influence on that market, then their bundling iTunes and tying to the iTunes Music Store service are both antitrust violations and Apple will have to open up the iPod APIs to work with other software and other music services on equal footing, possibly including licensing their DRM.
The real issue hinges on what the average consumer considers while making a purchase and if media capable cell phones are alternatives. In the EU, with their more strict laws about cell phone locking, the answer is probably that Apple does not have monopoly influence and both their move away from DRM and towards converging phones and music players are both making the issue less significant. Nonetheless an EU commissioner made mention a while ago that they were looking into it.
Remind me how Microsoft has EVER stopped me from downloading and installing whatever browser I damn well choose?
What makes you think this is about you? You're a wronged party only in that Web browsers and the Web itself sucks compared to what it would be if it was not broken by MS. In any case you have to use IE whenever a Web page only works in IE and MS intentionally leveraged their Windows monopoly to break as many pages as possible as revealed by their internal memos discovered last time they went to court over this same crime.
And Windows never once gave me any hassle in downloading, installing, or using any of those.
Originally, Windows did give you trouble using them since MS intentionally broke the public APIs used by Web browsers, while using secret ones for IE. Since then, WEb pages have given you trouble I imagine and MS intentionally caused that trouble.
I'm selling a calculator app I made, it's a bit better than the one in windows. Maybe if I complained, I could get the EU to force MS to release a version sans-calculator so people will buy my product! You have to agree with the above sentiments if you think that competition is a right.
Actually, no you don't, but I actually do agree MS should be forced to unbundle their calculator program. There were and are other companies making better ones and there is no reason they should be less used just because MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's. OEMs should be the ones putting together software packages to ship to end users, not MS and OEMs should be considering what is out there and picking the best one in their opinion.
If you actually write such an application (which I highly doubt) go ahead and complain to the EU. It could very well benefit people overall by getting them better calculator apps. Finally, it isn't about competition being "right". This isn't a moral argument. It is about competition resulting in better, cheaper products and innovation which benefits everyone. We have laws insuring competition in the face of monopolies because we lived through the disaster and horror that existed before we made such laws.
IE with Windows is a monopoly?
No, Windows is a monopoly in the desktop OS market as several courts have already ruled. Since it is illegal to tie products from separate, pre-existing markets with products from a monopolized market, bundling IE with Windows is blatantly illegal.
Why isn't the EU going after Apple? And on that note, why am I FORCED to use Safari on my iPod Touch?
They're considering it with regard to iPods and iTunes, but iPods probably don't constitute a monopoly in the EU.
Me thinks the EU needs to take a good long look at Apple if they are going to sanction Microsoft!
They are looking, but since the case against Apple is fairly weak, while the one against MS is open and shut and has lasted longer, expect to see them convict MS first by several years at least.
Note: I am an Apple user. If the EU required MS to bundle other browsers, then should they force Apple to do the same?
The law says you can't bundle a monopolized product with a product from a separate, pre-existing market. Do you think OS X or Safari qualifies as a monopoly?
And yes, I know Safari is not tied into the OS like IE is.
That has nothing to do with it.
Okay, I'm really concerned. In the last three or four articles we've seen on this topic, we see dozens of posts all repeating the same nonsense that was debunked in the first discussion. Every time the topic comes up people immediately reference legal bundling by other companies (OS X and Safari or Linux and Mplayer). Are people really so incapable of learning and ignorant that they don't understand even the most basic aspects of antitrust abuse? And they all did not see any of the umpteen explanations in previous discussions?
I'm beginning to hope there is some serious astroturfing going on because the alternative is worse.
It still amazes me how Internet Explorer is such a big deal for the EU. IE is free. Microsoft is bundling their browser with their OS. KDE bundles Konqueror. Gnome has Epiphany.
FAIL!
I'm sorry, but if you're going to post about a proposed remedy to antitrust abuse, you should know what antitrust abuse is and why it is illegal in the first place. If you're amazed, please go educate yourself so you know what you're talking about.
If you want to go after Microsoft, then go after them for the things that are truly evil... The embrace, extend and extinguish.
The "embrace, extend, extinguish was a comment revealed in the US court case about MS's strategy of bundling IE to break standards and prevent the Web from being a way to bypass Windows.
Forcing vendors to bundle other browsers won't do anything. Do you really think Microsoft fears this?
If you understood why the action was illegal or how their embrace, extend, extinguish strategy worked, you'd understand that this can help repair the market and make the Web better for everyone. It also has the potential to make Web apps work a lot better and allow people to be platform independent. MS fears that greatly.
In the case of search engines the courts decided even that was an abuse and offerings had to be listed in alphabetical order.
Why is the EU so hooked up on what browser is being used? Why not e.g. the productivity tools being bundled, or the kind of media center/player to play videos and music?
First, the EU already convicted them for the bundling of their media player. Second, the media player market is horribly broken anyway because of certain cartels and forcing MS to change will make less of a difference especially with Apple leveraging their near monopoly to promote a different player.
With the Web however you have just Microsoft as the stumbling block preventing fair competition. You have an open and shut case with fairly straightforward remedies available. You have a complaint from effected competitors. You have already discovered evidence of MS's intent to maliciously break the market. It is an ideal market to fix and actually help both other companies and the people in general.
How does this action satisfy the Opera folks who requested it?
It doesn't completely, but it does help them significantly. Bundling Firefox with Windows means developers can count on all new machines shipping with a reasonably standards compliant browser and they can instruct people on how to switch to using it if they visit a age using IE without them having to download and install software. This promotes standards on the Web and means Opera can start spending less development money on working around the intentionally broken Web and more making real improvements to their products. If you recall, intentionally subverted standards were a big part of Opera's complaint.
Funny how much people got bent out of shape when Eminent Domain was used to seize their property in order to benefit business. But when the same is done with their money they're all too willing.
I support eminent domain and taxes, both with the provision that they are actually being used for the good of the people instead of for the benefit of corporations.
If this new and improved network will benefit a businesses bottom line then let them pay for it?
It won't benefit them directly and that's not the point. The point is to redistribute money in such a way that jobs are created and people benefit as well as economic growth is encouraged.
As far as the wealthy causing the recession. I seem to remember a lot of the "lower half" taking out mortgagees they couldn't afford. It was also the "lower half" that ran up credit card debts just to live like the Jones, then defaulted on the principals. The "lower half" before the shit hit the fan had the lowest savings rate in the free world.
Yeah, the lower half took out tons of credit because banks were giving it to them. Banks were giving it to them because they did not have enough people with any real wealth or prospects to lend to anymore. Look, when you're born into the lower class and have zero wealth, borrowing is your most realistic way to get ahead. Borrowing money to buy a house is a smart move. Instead of housing being an expenditure it becomes an investment with returns down the line. The problem being, it also destabilized the economy because the people at the top were born with the capital and they're the ones profiting from all the interest you have to pay (they also profit if you rent because they were born with the property. Either way a huge portion of your earnings is going to the wealthy simply because of circumstances of birth. The whole unstable debt issue happened because the government and banks were trying to prevent the economy from declining when the wealth distribution had gotten so bad that there were no other ways. The wealthy politicians took out huge loans on behalf of the people to foreign powers and encourages lending institutions to extend credit to individuals beyond where it made sense.
Now I'm not saying there is not plenty of irresponsible money management among the poor, nor that they are not to blame for their own situations in many cases. What I'm saying is, they never had the financial power and as a result their actions were unable to cause a recession. What caused the recession was simply enormous wealth disparity caused by wealth condensation and tax laws increasingly favoring the wealthy. Now our wealth is so inequitably distributed we're screwed unless we do something drastic to remedy it. Socialized healthcare combines with very progressive taxes would be a good start. Frankly, I don't have a lot of faith in the "ruling classes" to understand economics enough to realize the alternatives. When poor people become desperate and wealth disparity goes up, so does violent crime and more than once a recession has been ended by a revolution, either political or military. When a hundred people come into your house, beat you to death, and take your stuff home with them, that's your own poor economic policy.
What I don't understand is how this could be considered economic stimulus. Sure, it'll help in certain marginal ways, but the only thing that can fix the US economy is if the government quits taking half of what everyone earns and lets the earners of the money figure out the best way to spend it.
Actually, that is exactly the opposite of what they need to do. The recession is happening for the same reason the great depression did. If you don't progressively tax the wealthy, the wealth condensation effect pools larger and larger shares of the wealth into fewer hands. Eventually those on the bottom have nothing and live on credit, until that too collapses. That's where we are now. It's not that the US is poor, it's just that the bottom 50% has a net worth of zero. With no money they can't invest and pay huge amounts of their income paying interest just to get by. It's like a tax on being poor that goes to the wealthy instead of the government. When all the wealth consolidates the economy becomes unstable.
The solution to this is to take more of the taxes from the very wealthy and less from the very poor, ideally while creating jobs for the unemployed. It doesn't help the unemployed if you don't tax the income they don't have, you need to create jobs in the US. Public works projects are a traditional way to do this and spending money on broadband can create a lot more jobs than in other areas because it enables new telcos to form and existing internet businesses to expand, if it is implemented well anyway.
If you give tax breaks to the lowest earners, they buy more tv's and mcdonald's...
The low earners are already not paying any taxes because they have no income or not enough to count.
...give the tax breaks to the middle and upper class, and they end up investing in new business and current business expansion.
Tax breaks to the middle help. Tax breaks to the upper class, not so much. That's what they've been trying for the last 8 years. It's called "trickle down economics" and even the die hard supporters are admitting it is a failure. Everything they invest is a tax write off anyway, so taxing them less does not really motivate them to invest more and lot of what they invest in creates jobs overseas instead of in the US.
If the greedy bastards in DC would quit thinking of tax revenue as their "income" and just cut taxes across the board, including corporate and capital gains taxes, I'd bet you a non-free beer that you would see IMMEDIATE stock market growth, followed by strong GDP growth, dropping unemployment, and REAL opportunity.
It's been tried historically and it did not work. The problem is wealth disparity more than anything else. Tax cuts across the board do nothing to redistribute the wealth, so it will continue to consolidate and we'll have continued instability.
Tax dollars spent on infrastructure do stay in circulation. They go to pay wages to people who are currently unemployed. Bill Gates pays a thousand times less taxes than I do (as a percentage of income). He can afford to pay a much, much larger share and still eat and live normally and if he has to that money can do a lot to solve the debt problems of the very poor so they don't lose their houses and so they can have jobs building infrastructure that grows the economy overall. It helps the US economy a lot more than letting him give it to Africans and invest in creating more jobs in India.
Basically, I don't think you've really studied the economics of recession and the great depression specifically. There are some good books out there that are informative and entertaining. You might want to check one out.
I can appreciate that many rural areas do not have access to broadband internet, and I certainly don't prejudice rural residents, but I don't see the dire necessity of faster internet where it already exists.
This is about making a system that will bring both faster and cheaper internet to all US residents. Those residents save money and get better services which opens up new business opportunities. It's pretty hard for NetFlix to get customers in paces where there is no high speed internet. Ditto for Amazon and for tons of new businesses. A small investment in infrastructure can result in new telecos offering access and expanded markets for all those businesses. This is good for citizens (because they have better access and are not falling behind technologically) and it is good for the economy. Best of all, it can be paid for with taxes on the very wealthy, redistributing wealth to the lower half of our economy and countering the wealth consolidation that caused the recession.
Is this the time to be spending $6B on supplementary services which otherwise are not economically viable?
Yes. And it's not just a matter of it not being economically viable. If it is done right it is about opening up competition and removing power from the duopoly that is making more money now by exploiting their position than satisfying customers.
I can tell you why previous financial incentives did not achieve the intended results - they have better things to spend the money on!
The previous packages were just handouts. The US paid billions to build things, then sold them for pennies to people who gave them large re-election donations. It was corruption plain and simple.
The OPs point is not valid. There are already multiple data lines going into most houses.
Yeah, but only two with no more possibility of other competitors and one is highly regulated in one way and the other is moderately regulated in a different way.
So, the argument that the market can only support one data line going into a house is demonstrably false.
He didn't say the market couldn't support more than one and neither did I. That is a straw man. He said it was not the most desirable course and I explained the practical reasons of reliability and local laws which make that so.
The same goes for the engineering side of it. As for the fact that the laws restrict who can lay wire, that is exact the the opposite of a NATURAL monopoly.
True, but I don't think it was his intent to claim it was a natural monopoly. Rather, the nature of how lines are laid results in local geographic monopolies forming both because of reliability and risks and aesthetics and these become the subject of local laws if the feds do not intervene and leave it to the "market".
If it really were a natural monopoly, there wouldn't need to be laws to restrict it to a monopoly. It would happen without laws.
But from the perspective of the federal government it is the same thing, because if they don't regulate it, the market becomes a series of local duopolies in 90% of the country... which is what we have now.
When the government invests X billion into something, they should come up with a list of specific items to be accomplished by the investee, put it into the contract, and send auditors to check up on the progress on a regular basis.
They often do. The problem is, if the government gives a company a few billion, it is cheaper for them to spend a small amount of that on paying lobbyists to basically bribe politicians to do away with those items, than it is to accomplish those items. So long as we let corporations lobby, this will probably be the norm.
Seriously, why is the answer to mismanagement of money (tax payer or private money as the recent market troubles have shown) always to give away tax payer money?
Your mistake is believing this is an attempt to solve the previous mismanagement of money. That is not the case. This and the other public works projects are about wealth redistribution. Basically, the idea here is to take money from the few, incredibly wealthy people who have gained ever larger shares of the wealth, in order to move some wealth to the huge portion of the US that has none and save the economy from total collapse.
I'm so glad that the Democrats are so generous with MY money. Of course, the Republicans before them were basically the same, as were the Democrats before those Republicans, and so on going back quite a ways.
This election we did have a clear economic choice with the two parties. Both parties understood the need to move wealth to the poor in order to save the economy. Both (I think) understood that trickle down economics and moving more wealth to the wealthy was a failure. Both claimed to want tot trim government spending but understood the realities of how small of cuts they could really make without making the economy even worse.
The clear difference was the Democrats want to increase taxes for the ultra-wealthy and move that to the poor. The Republicans wanted to borrow more money from foreign powers and move that to the poor and hope that our currency would hold value anyway and we'd find a way to pay it off somewhere later on.
Make bad choices in the marketplace? Here is some tax payer money. When is this going to stop?
The problem we have now is we can't realistically let the failed economic ventures collapse because it will take the whole show down with them. After we solve this crisis, there is one simple thing we can do to help prevent it from happening again... but I doubt you'd get more than a few votes for it. Ban foreign and corporate lobbying and put strict controls on favors given to civil servants or people who recently were civil servants. People have rights to give their money to political parties and candidates, but corporations and foreign power have no inherent rights and it is absurd that this legalized bribery is tolerated. If you really want this to stop, push that agenda has hard as you can locally and in your state.
Telecom is NOT a natural monopoly.
This is true, but the intent of the original poster is easy to understand. It's a problem to put in lots of competing wires because every time someone digs they risk breaking already laid wires. Every time someone strings wires it reduces the reliability of all the others because the weakest wires fall first and damage others. Almost everywhere there are laws restricting the laying of wires to one phone one cable and one power because it does solve a lot of problems. It's not a natural monopoly in the traditional sense, but neither does it invalidate the point.
What I meant more was, where did it start? How? Is there some reason atoms like to join and become larger molecules?
Ahh, that's not actually part of the theory of evolution of species at all. You're thinking of the various theories of abiogenesis. Atoms don't "like" anything by themselves. They do combine in many different ways of course and there is no reason why they could not combine into self replicating chains by happenstance given enough time. That's actually the theory with the most scientific backing at this point, but it is not the theory of evolution. A big part of the problem with educating people about evolution is that a large number of people arguing it should not be taught don't even know what it is (and is not) and, hence, what they are arguing against.
The schools should obviously present micro-evolution: things do change. Ffs, look at genetic mutations. When it goes on to the origins of modern life, whatever "theory of evolution" they've come up with should, can, and will be taught to the students, but at the same time remind them to think for themselves a bit. It's a theory. It's a theory that works. It's a theory that doesn't work. Why?
As a biochemist mentioned to me to today, the whole micro/macro evolution argument is completely artificial and unscientific. changes happen. We can estimate the rate fairly well. Why would anyone think that lots of smaller mutations over time would not add up to more change? There is no scientific distinction between the two.
Students should always be encouraged to think for themselves, but questioning whether evolution "works" is a lot lot questioning whether atomic number theory works. They're both the basis of an entire branch of science and incredibly well supported.
I'm guessing from the other comments in this thread that you're in America. I'm not particularly worried about Muslim fundamentalism in the US.
I am in the states and I worry more about the conglomeration of christian and muslim fundamentalist alliances to push through restrictive social policies here.
The Muslim community in Europe is much different--much more insular, much less secular.
Legally speaking, most of Europe is less secular. There are, however, a much larger percentage of first and second generation muslim immigrants in Europe than in the US. The cultural differences are significant between Europe and the US, I'll grant.
In the more wealthy, more industrialized nations I find that muslims are not particularly any more likely to push creationism than christians, it is just they are largely concentrated in less wealthy and advanced places. You mention Turkey, but I still consider them more than a little backwards, given the state of democracy, levels of blatant corruption, and median wealth there. If there were a widespread conflict and an influx of African christians into Europe in the same levels, they would probably be pushing many similar and backward ideas as well.
My question is this, are evolutions potential weaknesses worth discussing or are they more akin to those of gravity, where it's really an irrelevant detail (I know for advanced physics it's not irrelevant but for HS it is) to a general understanding of the theory. I really don't know the theory of evolution well enough to make that decision, it's not my field and I've only been exposed to it in two HS and one college introductory class.
In my opinion, there is less reason to discuss the weaknesses of evolution compared to those of gravity. With gravity there are valid differences about the core mechanism. With evolution, the core mechanism is well known and observed and only the minor points and edge cases are significant matters of discussion.
Personally, I think the more appropriate way of dealing with disputes among theories is to direct students to the library with a list of authors and book/paper titles so that those who are interested can really get into the subject matter.
The main difference being that with most theories you have mostly scientific papers. With evolution and to lesser extent with global warming you have well funded misinformation campaigns being waged to try to push unscientific results upon the average person, or at very least confuse the issue. Tey won't find much dissension in real scientific publications, but people have a tendency to look at a lot of opinion pieces and pop culture, even if there is no substance.
The only problem with this is whether the teacher will direct the students appropriately or will they try to push their personal agendas on them.
That's about 50% of the problem with the other 50% being that most kids don't actually gain a good understanding of how to apply the scientific method and experience with it, or even with critical thinking.
Even in Biology, which is the only place that evolution gets mentioned, the textbooks have been very evolution-friendly for years.
Yeah, they've also been "gravity friendly" and friendly to lots of other theories that are ridiculously well supported.
Of course in that, they have been focused on lots of aspects of evolution that have been disproven, like human fetuses having gills and other similar things.
I've seen this claim many times from opponents of evolution, but every attempt to examine it has resulted in it being disproved, so far. Even the decade old textbooks I looked at in the used book store did not mention humans having gills or references to the drawings of Earnst Haeckel.
And of course, the real control over this content lies with the teachers, who for the most part teach science and the scientific method, which really doesn't support most of the conclusions that evolution-science come to since they aren't based on observation.
The real control is in the hands of the teachers, many of whom would rather teach memorization of theories rather than understanding of the scientific method. As for the scientific method not supporting the theory of evolution, maybe you were not taught it properly either. Evolution made oodles of useful predictions about everything from the existence of a physical mechanism for transferring traits (DNA) to the types of fossils that would be discovered from different time periods to the genetic changes we would observe if we subjected species with rapid reproduction to stresses. It is one of the most tested theories in science and there is no alternative theory with anything close to the same level of support. It is the most likely truth according to the scientific method.
Whether or not intelligent design is discussed officially in the textbooks makes no difference in the end, but science does get taught properly in most classrooms.
I'd argue that ID should not be discussed for several reasons. First, if the teacher does a good job teaching the method, it should be obvious to students that ID is junk. Second, ID is a controversial topic and there is a huge PR campaign behind it. Trying to teach it opens the way for bad teachers and other influential people in their lives to undermine teaching of science in general. Attempting to teach that specific topic may result in students refusing to learn the scientific method at all since they don't want to learn things that result in social disapproval.
Science classes should first and foremost teach the scientific method using hands on experimentation and teach techniques for properly evaluating data. Then it should briefly cover important foundational theories that form the basis for entire branches of science (theory of evolution, theory of gravity, atomic theory, electrical theory, etc.). Finally, science classes should cover a few new and exciting theories which are competing as a way to allow students to test their skills and interest some of them in benefitting science going forward.
This is so sad, all ID says is we don't know how the universe was created, but it didn't evolve on it's on on this planet.
Really, is that the hypothesis of ID? Okay, what experiments have been performed? What predictions about new data has it made that have then been found to be true and did not falsify it?
Everyone should watch Expelled. It's sad how uneducated most of the people that read are, they just take what the media says and believe it.
I watched Expelled. I noted that for being a documentary about the supposed persecution of ID proponents in the scientific community it somehow failed to ever state the falsifiable, hypothesis of ID or mention any experiments. Those are requirements for ID to be science. I'm not taking what the media says and believing it. I'm looking at what appears to me to be a media propaganda campaign promoting ID, and seeing nothing behind it. There is a reason ID is not taken seriously in scientific journals. It has the same scientific backing as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That is to say, there is no formal, agreed upon hypothesis and have been no useful predictions made by it. It isn't science, just speculation that tries to disguise itself as science in an attempt to discredit what science has determined to be the most likely truth, because many people find the most likely truth to be inconvenient to their religious beliefs.
If by "The rest of the civilized world," you mean to exclude predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey, then yes, it's just an American problem.
I guess the definition of "civilized" can be somewhat vague. I have some Turkish friends.
This may become a problem in the UK and other parts of Europe, as Muslims will probably react to secularism much in the same way American Evangelicals have. We're starting to see it happen.
Maybe know different muslims than you do, but most of the ones I know accept evolution as a fact, sort of like most catholics. It is easy to confuse muslim fundamentalists with muslims in general, especially given what is reported in mainstream news. I think the fundamentalist muslim community is probably larger than the christian fundamentalist community, but I don't think either is larger than the more mainstream and progressive elements of their religion in relatively industrialized nations. The problem right now is their is a huge influx of muslim people from backwards nations to first world nations skewing the numbers.
But here's what would happen. Jim Bob would use that article as his talk on the weaknesses of evolution. No later than about two days he would be called to the principal's office and the discussion would go something like this: "Jim Bob, there have been some concerns about your commitment as a teacher. Do you feel you have the sort of character and motivation for teaching our youth?" And next round of contracts Jim Bob is asking whether you'd like fries with that. _That_ is how our honorable principal would handle the problem of Jim Bob bringing up actual science in discussion of Darwin.
I disagree. Generally you have principals with some sort of agenda, but discussing weaknesses of the theory of evolution generally don't cause problems for teachers at all. If you teach them in the proper scientific context then you are showing how they can refine and alter the theory in light of new evidence. I doubt any principal would have any problem with that unless they're looking for a way t get rid of you for some other reason. And here's where it gets tricky. If you're just pointing out flaws as a way to discredit all the scientific evidence that has gone into our current understanding of evolution and thus trying to discredit science and convince students it is bunk and they should look to "other methods" for finding the truth, methods like having faith in a really old book, then you aren't teaching science. This may result in problems for you, depending upon the agenda of the principal. Some of them would love it and some would look to replace you with a competent teacher.