Agreed, Apple is perfectly entitled not allow non-iPod devices to ID themselves as iPods. Why did Palm ever think they'd get away with this?
And, more to the point, why do most of the posters in this thread think that Apple is the new MS? Seriously, I'd like to hear the strongest arguments out there. Nothing in this thread so far makes any kind of rational case.
Good point, this has been going on for a while. For what is essentially the same discussion, take a look at this from 1987:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac/browse_thread/thread/33d60f18748a1a81/fd97b00ea88f94b7?lnk=st&q=mac+ram+cost+upgrades+apple+expensive#fd97b00ea88f94b7
From the post:
"If you don't mind doing things on the cheap and being self-sufficient, then
you can save some money over the Apple upgrade. But.
If you rely on your machine. If you can't afford your machine to be down
for a couple of days (to a couple of months, perhaps, as different companies
finger point at each other). If you can't or won't track down flakey RAm
chips. If your machine is an integral part of your business.
Why take chances?"
Don't get me wrong, I think Apple should reconsider their policy. It just has a history is all.
How I understand it is a bit different. The Act (which is what it would become if passed) would allow ministers of the crown (i.e. elected MPs given jobs by the Prime Minister) to change existing primary and secondary legislation without reference to Parliament, Parliament being the House of Commons and the House of Lords together.
The government asserts, and some of the provisions of the bill back-up this up, that thi legislation will be used to amend and even abolish legislation that is no longer relevant, particularly relating to business regulation, and the regualtion of other markets.
As I understand it, the argument goes, the modern world moves so fast that the legislative machinery of state is not nimble enough to keep up with changes in the global market place in other circumstances. To compete with the emerging market economies, the UK must be able to change as and when needed. Rather than the (at least) 18 month process that is now required to change legislation, it would take a matter of days. Kind-of convincing.
If the politics is right, then OK, this might be reasonable.
But, executive power is currently approved of by fewer and fewer voters and citizens (not always the same group). As dissolutionment with politics becomes all the more rife, checks on executive power diminish as fewer people get involved in the political system. To me, this is a very dangerous precident and one any government, particulary a Labour government, should shy away from until the question about the security of the future of participatory politicis in the UK is resolved. My 2p.
That's not the word he used in his blog, which is the point.
So we're talking about "Islamism" then. Or are we talking about "militant Islam"? Or are we talking about "Wahhabism"? Or maybe "Islamic Fundamentalism"?
I don't really understand the meanings of all these differing terms and don't really need to at the moment.
The point I am trying to make is that chucking around irrelevant labels for these people who have killed in cold-blood in London today (body-count up to 33 now) is distorting to people's opinions. It somehow makes these murderers' behaviour explicable as part of a wider political movement when, first and foremost, their choices are personal ones. They're vying for power in order to be able to implement their extreme political programme (if this does turn out to be the case). It belittles what these people have done.
Put it this way. I'm quite tall. Let's imagine I got together with a few other tall people and came up with a political programme to take power back from the short people who dominate my town. To do this, I set off a bomb on Main Street and killed some short people because my mates and I think this will help our cause.
In this political act, am I expressing my tallness? Fundamentally no, I am expressing my political programme, my craving for the power to implement it, and most importantly my personal paucity of ethics. My tallness is incidental to my actions.
So, let's not start a religious campaign against tall people (or rather, dispensing with my weak analogy, Muslims, Islamists, or Wahhabists) but instead a campaign against unethical personal acts. On both sides. If this makes me an "ignorant liberal" in you eyes, then so be it.
"Islamic" is an adjective, "Islam" is a noun, and "Muslim" can be either. This is my understanding. They are all derived from the same root, "Salâm" (which means "peace").
"Everybody blames america for what is happening around the world. I'm tired of it!"
There's a lot I don't like about that States, and there are many things that, if I was US president (which is unlikely I know) I would do very differently, but I don't blame America. I blame the people who did it; I blame the people who bank-rolled them; I blame the poeople who helped them; and I blame the people who tacitly co-operated with them, among others.
It has to be remembered that personal choice, when chosing such extreme courses of action, is the primary motivator.
I've never seen this guy's blog before, but I've had a read and it worries me that he, and possibly others, are seeing this predominantly as "Islamic Terror". He makes the statement "there isn't room enough on the planet for Islamic terror and civilization."
Although I accept that these attacks were almost certainly committed by people that consider themselves Islamic freedom fighters, the important hallmark of this barbaric action is the pursuit of an extreme political agenda through cold-blooded murder. This is not new and has nothing to do with Islam. It is a question of who sets the global political agenda. It's big power (US and it's allies) vs. not-quite-so-big power (Osama and devotees to his cause).
It's abhorrent but it's not Islamic.
BTW, I'm sitting in an office in London Bridge trying to do some work, but I just can't concentrate.
Now that's provocative! But I'll leave that for now. I want to address the reasons why BT are so utterly useless at fulfilling the needs of customers or potential customers.
BT is pretty much a wholesale monopoly supplier of telecommunications, although they do have limited competition from NTL/Telewest (cable, 50% coverage), the mobile telecos (although this is in the early stages, 30% odd coverage, not evry fast), and (if we push the concept of competition to its limit) the statelite companies. BT remains the only nationwide telecoms network that is capable, by and large, or supplying broadband to the entire UK population at affordable prices.
This needs to be differentiated from resale competition which is widespread and fairly healthy; this competition comes from the BT selling wholesale packages to ISPs who then tweak them and resell the service; a service for which you pay BT line rental. So, price competition is largely non-existant in this environment as all the prices are set by BT. There is Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), but this is something BT are very keen to stifle as it is eating into their core business. Again, LLU is somewhat dependent on BT for its success as the local lines from the exchanges to residences must be transferred from BT to the LLU supplier (like Bullbog or Easynet), something that doesn't happen too readily.
The only way the benfits of competition will be felt across the UK is through true wholesale competition, a problem that is being felt across many countries.
My point is this; the situation is one that has evolved over a period of years for manifold reasons; political, social, and cultural, and cannot be boiled down to some weak (and excuse my rudeness, but ignorant) generalisations about taxation, TV licensing, mandatory healthcare (whatever that is) and speed cameras. In my opinion, the keys are competition in the wholesale market, sustained retail competition, greater demand through better applications, and better regulation. What is not needed is a complete redrawing of the UK social and political environment. Granted, things need to change, but those you mention, IMHO, are largely irrelevant.
Yea, good point. I haven't seen the stats for the countries you mention, although I reckon the new member states will not be as progressed as, say, the Netherlands or the UK.
Turkey is probably at the bottom of any list you care to draw-up on this, but then again, they're not going to be given membership until at least 2015, if at all. As a broad rule of thumb, I would guess the further east you go, the lower the market penetration is in terms of usage and availability. But I have no figures to back this up. Anyone?
I see one of the major differences between the US market and the European market as the density of potential customers for the telecos, cable companies, and even satelite companies.
The US is home to around 270 million people spread across roughly 3.5 million square miles. The EU is now home to about 450 million people, after the recent expansion, spread over only 1.4 million square miles (http://www.eubusiness.com/guides/enlarged_EU/).
I'm no mathematician, but to me this gives the EU a much higher population density than the US, and therefore a built in advantage.
keiferb, would you say this was the predominant reason or am I missing something?
Slashdot Mirror
And, more to the point, why do most of the posters in this thread think that Apple is the new MS? Seriously, I'd like to hear the strongest arguments out there. Nothing in this thread so far makes any kind of rational case.
J
Good point, this has been going on for a while. For what is essentially the same discussion, take a look at this from 1987: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac/browse_thread/thread/33d60f18748a1a81/fd97b00ea88f94b7?lnk=st&q=mac+ram+cost+upgrades+apple+expensive#fd97b00ea88f94b7 From the post: "If you don't mind doing things on the cheap and being self-sufficient, then you can save some money over the Apple upgrade. But. If you rely on your machine. If you can't afford your machine to be down for a couple of days (to a couple of months, perhaps, as different companies finger point at each other). If you can't or won't track down flakey RAm chips. If your machine is an integral part of your business. Why take chances?" Don't get me wrong, I think Apple should reconsider their policy. It just has a history is all.
The government asserts, and some of the provisions of the bill back-up this up, that thi legislation will be used to amend and even abolish legislation that is no longer relevant, particularly relating to business regulation, and the regualtion of other markets.
As I understand it, the argument goes, the modern world moves so fast that the legislative machinery of state is not nimble enough to keep up with changes in the global market place in other circumstances. To compete with the emerging market economies, the UK must be able to change as and when needed. Rather than the (at least) 18 month process that is now required to change legislation, it would take a matter of days. Kind-of convincing.
If the politics is right, then OK, this might be reasonable.
But, executive power is currently approved of by fewer and fewer voters and citizens (not always the same group). As dissolutionment with politics becomes all the more rife, checks on executive power diminish as fewer people get involved in the political system. To me, this is a very dangerous precident and one any government, particulary a Labour government, should shy away from until the question about the security of the future of participatory politicis in the UK is resolved. My 2p.
So we're talking about "Islamism" then. Or are we talking about "militant Islam"? Or are we talking about "Wahhabism"? Or maybe "Islamic Fundamentalism"?
I don't really understand the meanings of all these differing terms and don't really need to at the moment. The point I am trying to make is that chucking around irrelevant labels for these people who have killed in cold-blood in London today (body-count up to 33 now) is distorting to people's opinions. It somehow makes these murderers' behaviour explicable as part of a wider political movement when, first and foremost, their choices are personal ones. They're vying for power in order to be able to implement their extreme political programme (if this does turn out to be the case). It belittles what these people have done.
Put it this way. I'm quite tall. Let's imagine I got together with a few other tall people and came up with a political programme to take power back from the short people who dominate my town. To do this, I set off a bomb on Main Street and killed some short people because my mates and I think this will help our cause.
In this political act, am I expressing my tallness? Fundamentally no, I am expressing my political programme, my craving for the power to implement it, and most importantly my personal paucity of ethics. My tallness is incidental to my actions.
So, let's not start a religious campaign against tall people (or rather, dispensing with my weak analogy, Muslims, Islamists, or Wahhabists) but instead a campaign against unethical personal acts. On both sides. If this makes me an "ignorant liberal" in you eyes, then so be it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic/
"Islamic" is an adjective, "Islam" is a noun, and "Muslim" can be either. This is my understanding. They are all derived from the same root, "Salâm" (which means "peace").
I know nothing of the Shadow Government theory...what's the evidence? Can you give me a summary? I'm an ignorant Londoner.
There's a lot I don't like about that States, and there are many things that, if I was US president (which is unlikely I know) I would do very differently, but I don't blame America. I blame the people who did it; I blame the people who bank-rolled them; I blame the poeople who helped them; and I blame the people who tacitly co-operated with them, among others.
It has to be remembered that personal choice, when chosing such extreme courses of action, is the primary motivator.
Although I accept that these attacks were almost certainly committed by people that consider themselves Islamic freedom fighters, the important hallmark of this barbaric action is the pursuit of an extreme political agenda through cold-blooded murder. This is not new and has nothing to do with Islam. It is a question of who sets the global political agenda. It's big power (US and it's allies) vs. not-quite-so-big power (Osama and devotees to his cause).
It's abhorrent but it's not Islamic.
BTW, I'm sitting in an office in London Bridge trying to do some work, but I just can't concentrate.
BT is pretty much a wholesale monopoly supplier of telecommunications, although they do have limited competition from NTL/Telewest (cable, 50% coverage), the mobile telecos (although this is in the early stages, 30% odd coverage, not evry fast), and (if we push the concept of competition to its limit) the statelite companies. BT remains the only nationwide telecoms network that is capable, by and large, or supplying broadband to the entire UK population at affordable prices.
This needs to be differentiated from resale competition which is widespread and fairly healthy; this competition comes from the BT selling wholesale packages to ISPs who then tweak them and resell the service; a service for which you pay BT line rental. So, price competition is largely non-existant in this environment as all the prices are set by BT. There is Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), but this is something BT are very keen to stifle as it is eating into their core business. Again, LLU is somewhat dependent on BT for its success as the local lines from the exchanges to residences must be transferred from BT to the LLU supplier (like Bullbog or Easynet), something that doesn't happen too readily.
The only way the benfits of competition will be felt across the UK is through true wholesale competition, a problem that is being felt across many countries.
My point is this; the situation is one that has evolved over a period of years for manifold reasons; political, social, and cultural, and cannot be boiled down to some weak (and excuse my rudeness, but ignorant) generalisations about taxation, TV licensing, mandatory healthcare (whatever that is) and speed cameras. In my opinion, the keys are competition in the wholesale market, sustained retail competition, greater demand through better applications, and better regulation. What is not needed is a complete redrawing of the UK social and political environment. Granted, things need to change, but those you mention, IMHO, are largely irrelevant.
It's good to know I'm not failing to see the correct button. It's happened before. :)
Maybe I should have asked this question before I submitted the story :)
Turkey is probably at the bottom of any list you care to draw-up on this, but then again, they're not going to be given membership until at least 2015, if at all. As a broad rule of thumb, I would guess the further east you go, the lower the market penetration is in terms of usage and availability. But I have no figures to back this up. Anyone?
Do you need to make a certain number of posts?
Do you have any insights into why this is?
I don't know of anything that compiles data across the 25 Member States.
The US is home to around 270 million people spread across roughly 3.5 million square miles. The EU is now home to about 450 million people, after the recent expansion, spread over only 1.4 million square miles (http://www.eubusiness.com/guides/enlarged_EU/).
I'm no mathematician, but to me this gives the EU a much higher population density than the US, and therefore a built in advantage.
keiferb, would you say this was the predominant reason or am I missing something?