First of all, I want to thank all these responses for allowing to me to add to my friends and foes list (ie, logical thinkers vs illogical thinkers). Secondly, in response to the "pseudo-libertarian" jab and the fallacy that we don't know what coercion is: As soon as I don't have a choice between processors, you may have a point. But I DO have a choice. My laptop has an Intel Pentium M, and my "big rig" has an AMD 64 San Diego. I CHOSE these processors because they played to their strengths. I could have gone the other way, but then I wouldn't be choosing the best cpu's for me or my applications. Now, as far as being a victim of "marketing" etc...SO WHAT? If consumers get suckered into choosing processors because of marketing...that's not the free markets fault, it is the fault of consumers that don't research their purchasing decisions (or more likely, don't care enough to research them).
But people always have a choice when it comes to buying anything in a REAL free market. Even though microsoft has a "monopoly," you have as much choice as ever to choose another operating system. It is ONLY when the government or the courts get invovled do our choices diminish! The government FORCES you with true COERCION to overpay for milk, many crops, telecommuncations, and hundreds of other items and services. Hell, in some states, the government FORCES barbers to charge X amount. I'm sure there are other service industries forced by your state that do the same. If the government stayed out of business like the Constitution dictates, then everything would be cheaper, and I garauntee, you would have more choices every day.
But back to AMD & Intel. My main point was, SO WHAT if Intel makes deals with other companies or uses their "excessive" income to leverage a bigger marketing budget to "fool" "dumb" consumers out of their money? At the end of the day, it is YOU that can choose not to buy their products, period. You always have the choice to vote with your almighty dollar, and as some of you have accurately pointed out, it is the dollar that companies are after. If companies don't provide you with the products, ethics, tactics, etc that you don't like, you can vote them out of business by not supporting them! And so can the rest of the public. This is not a matter for the courts, and shouldn't be. The courts suck MY tax money up, slow business progress, and forge false markets that drive prices upwards and choke supplies.
It is the government that knows what coercion is, not businesses. You are in the wrong battle fighting the wrong enemy.
I agree with you. I liked the fact that Google essentially chose an open source solution, and now they will consider implementing something closed source to combat "hacking". This is not a win.
I really don't think so. Even MY shitty open commerce site has been using a recommendation script that suggests additional products based on previous views and shopping cart contents. In fact, hundreds of online stores have been doing this for years. This is no different from sales people seeing you try on X product and walking up to you and suggesting Y because of it, or buying X product at the counter, and suggesting you try Y because of it. This is not a new idea, and there is NO way in hell that amazon could sue other stores for using such a "technology" since it has been around since sales transactions have begun. I think the parent is right in that amazon got this essentially absurd patent just to fend off equally absurd and frivilous lawsuits.
Amazon will not be suing other businesses for suggesting products based on a user's previous product views, because they'd have to sue me for what my store has been doing for years (and they'd have to sue ten thousand other stores as well) and they would lose every time because this is NOT new, and it certainly wasn't Amazon's invention.
Forget about Amazon. The patent office really needs a HUGE paradigm shift. They need to get some smart tech people in there to revolutionize the whole goddamned place because it's starting to look like the rabbit hole from alice in wonderland. They should issue public statements saying that all absurd patents will be rejected immediately, and a full review of existing web patents will result in thousands of existing patents to be trashed as well. We need to restore confidence in the patent process, because if we don't, some of the other posters will be right...people will start respecting patents about as much as we respect media compyrights today.
Wild wild west, here we come! Hmmm...maybe that's not such a bad thing...
Sorry, but one of the reasons Apple chose Intel was for their mobile laptop chips. Intel's Pentium M is a great processor, and by far much better than the mobile offerings from AMD. Apple itself has stated that they were worried about the future of their laptops because of IBM's lackluster interest in devoting many resources to mobile chips for their powerbooks.
Regarding AMD's lawsuit, this has really soured my perception of AMD. Companies that start lawsuits instead of competing in the marketplace lose my respect very quickly.
I find it amazing that as soon as a company files a lawsuit against another company claiming unfair competition, everyone immediately and blindly begins backing the plaintiff without considering the fact that the government really should have no place in telling companies or consumers how to run their businesses or which products they are allowed to manufacture or which businesses they are allowed to form partnerships with. If you don't like the deals businesses make with each other, then don't buy their products, period. You can even go as far as creating big groups to boycott their products and use the power of persuasion to change their "evil" ways. But please leave the goddamn government and the courts (and my tax money) out of it.
These lawsuits are spiraling out of control and they destroy huge amounts of investment money and invester confidence, yet the uneducated masses think they are a good thing. I say, grow up and learn how to compete in the free market like an free-thinking adult. If you can't stand the heat of competition, you don't deserve to compete, and you certainly shouldn't be allowed to sue another competitor out of the race because they are ahead of you.
Liberty just doesn't seem to exist in the world anymore, and the saddest part is that most people don't think about it or seem to care.
Funny. To be perfectly honest with you, I'll have to agree with you on this one. If you are running a slower processor and 256MB of Ram or less, you will be in hell when using winxp and office (well, any application really). Windows just doesn't know how to handle application processing priorities very well and in my opinion has made the mistake to rely on raw processing power to "solve" the problem rather than making their software run on older machines with less ram more efficiently.
However, my point wasn't that windows is a superior solution, just that all the tired extremist statements about windows being completely unusable are off the wall and fairly baseless considering that it is the OS chosen by more than 85% of the population.
Believe it or not, this technique is used pretty commonly at swap meet type arenas. When I was 16, I used to run a small quickie-computer repair tent at a swap meet with an older friend (which by the way, is a fairly profitable business during your high school years).
Anyway, every weekend, in the space next to ours, a group of sly chinese guys would setup their tent to sell those items you see on infomercials really early in the morning. They had different crap every week, but it was always "as seen on tv" stuff. Moving on...when their crowd was waning, or when they had lots of hesitant gaurded customers, on of their brothers that sort of hovered across the aisle, would walk over and show lots of interest and "buy" the products. All the other hesitant customers seeing these "buyers" would then go ahead with their purchases as well. I got a kick out of watching how dumb people are all day long (when I wasn't fixing Windows 95 on 486's).
I'm getting tired of people assuming that if you run windows, you spend most of your time protecting against or fixing viruses etc. This notion is just absurd. People that haven't got a clue how to use or update their computers get viruses because they haven't spent time learning how to use the delete and cancel buttons (or why they should). People that know how to delete emails with dubious attachments, and hit the cancel button on fishy websites don't get viruses. Yes, there are lots of people that use Windows and as a result, some of those people infect their systems...but please grow up and stop generalizing.
I somehow suspect that if 90% of the world used Macs, there would be just as many mac viruses designed and deployed. Adware/spyware hackers don't care which OS you run, they just want their software on your machine and they will try every trick in the book to get you to install it. Most people run Windows, so most viruses are for windows because that's where the market is. If the tables were turned, there would be tons of Mac bashers that generalized about Mac's security "holes" as well, instead of realizing that it is ultimately untrained and nonchalant users that are to blame for pressing "open attachment" and "Yes".
At the very least, as insane as it sounds, we need a mechanism to ensure that they even read the entire bill that they vote for, supposedly representing the millions of people in their state.
As a matter of fact, there is a group trying to get a law passed that requires this exact thing: that all congressmen READ laws in their entirety outload before passing them (and only the ones present for the full reading may vote):
While I disagree of your assessment of it beign a "slashvertisement", who cares if it is? I for one, am glad someone let me know about this cool technology. What's wrong with promoting a product that people might want to hear about?
I think you're right. But that is about the only "advantage" of the cinema as previous posters pointed out. I just read this great article the other day, about how basically hollywood is being forced to release their movies globally at the same time, and releasing their dvd's much faster than they used to etc...because they don't want pirated versions to beat them to the "market." Anyway, the article went on to suggest that sooner or later, Hollywood is just going to have to release everything simutaneously, and in every format possible (theature, dvd's, online, etc) in order to
maximize profits.
The article suggested that if they spent less on their advertising campaigns (sometimes they spend as much as 50 mil!) just trying to have huge opening weekend, they'd easily be able to offset the "lost" revenue by not being able to artificially delay/staggar release dates. It's really all the wasted advertising money that puts movies at risk of being in the red. If movies are released in every medium possible on the same day, the market penetration will be so wide, they wouldn't need to spend a fraction of what they spend now on marketing.
There is nothing unconstitutional about this law, it is completely permitted under the powers granted to Congress in the Constitution. It is absolutely legal that the government do this.
Sorry, you're gonna have to explain this one. Have you even read the Constitution? Particularly articles IX and X?
I agree that Congress completely ignores the Constitution (as do most Americans), but please don't try to tell me or anyone else here that Congress has the right to force businesses to become their personal law enforcement spies.
The costs will always be in the hands of the consumers no matter how you structure it. Customer's are ones that pay the taxes that fund all of our politician's exploits! How do you think the government got so big and powerful? With your tax money! If you want your freedom back, you need to dramtically reduce taxes so the assholes in government can't afford to implement or maintain their Big Brother tactics.
If you really want to kill the government's overeaching powers, abolish the income tax altogether. That's the only way to do it. Cut off their money supply.
The "terrorists" just wanted the US to stay out of their countries. It's the US politicians that wants to take away your liberties and your privacy...not the "terrorists."
Man, I hate your points...because they are so spot on and scary. We really are moving into a bleak totalitarian future.
One day, after my application for a Parental License is approved by the DOJ, I hope my kid doesn't ask me, "Daddy, what was freedom like like when you were a boy?"
Or the even worse question, "Why didn't anyone try to stop them from taking away your freedom?"
I guess I'll just have to reply, "The Ministry of Peace needed to combat terrorists."
Yeah, I think the big problem here is that the government has really learned how to exploit fear to gain support for these "safety" measures. However, I've never witnessed ONE government program that ever lived up to its promises. I mean really...do you feel safer today than you did in 2000? Look at the drug war. We dump over 20 billion a year (probably more now) over the war on drugs...but drug use and availability has steadily increased while drug prices have dramatically decreased! It's totally insane. The sooner people realize that government just doesn't work the better. I honestly would feel safer in the wild west that I do with our presently orwellian state. I would at least feel more free...and that's a little danger to me. I think we underestimate Americans. Yes, they are ignorant and don't generally know what's really going on...especially when the white house practically prints the news for them...but if they are informed properly, I believe they would make wiser, more freedom-inspiring decisions.
In the meantime, it would be nice if people knew that the whole reason we have terrorism and fear in the first place, is because our big government has been bombing, invading, and generally pissing other countries off all around the world for decades. If we had maintained our small isolationist government, we wouldn't have enemy terrorists to be afraid of (or use as an excuse to erode privacy and liberty).
But what are the politicians' answers to the problems of big government? Bigger government!
Article 9 and 10 of the Bill of Rights explicitly says that any rights not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved for states and the people. In other words, your right to privacy and your right are protected (or they are supposed to be).
I personally have no problem limiting my freedom a bit, for the sake of national security. But when the government abuses my goodwill, and uses it so shamelessly, I feel like being raped again and again.
That's why you should never allow the government to limit your freedom "a bit" because inevitably that "bit" will become full blown anal rape.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
This guy knew what he was talking about...so did the rest of the guys that drafted the Constitution. It's too bad most of their wisdom is ignored today.
Basically, the federal government is not allowed to pass laws that increase their power as those powers and freedoms are reserved to the states and the people. These ammendments are widely overlooked by most politicians, obviously.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally. Running over child molesting priests would be fun fun fun.
But people always have a choice when it comes to buying anything in a REAL free market. Even though microsoft has a "monopoly," you have as much choice as ever to choose another operating system. It is ONLY when the government or the courts get invovled do our choices diminish! The government FORCES you with true COERCION to overpay for milk, many crops, telecommuncations, and hundreds of other items and services. Hell, in some states, the government FORCES barbers to charge X amount. I'm sure there are other service industries forced by your state that do the same. If the government stayed out of business like the Constitution dictates, then everything would be cheaper, and I garauntee, you would have more choices every day.
But back to AMD & Intel. My main point was, SO WHAT if Intel makes deals with other companies or uses their "excessive" income to leverage a bigger marketing budget to "fool" "dumb" consumers out of their money? At the end of the day, it is YOU that can choose not to buy their products, period. You always have the choice to vote with your almighty dollar, and as some of you have accurately pointed out, it is the dollar that companies are after. If companies don't provide you with the products, ethics, tactics, etc that you don't like, you can vote them out of business by not supporting them! And so can the rest of the public. This is not a matter for the courts, and shouldn't be. The courts suck MY tax money up, slow business progress, and forge false markets that drive prices upwards and choke supplies.
It is the government that knows what coercion is, not businesses. You are in the wrong battle fighting the wrong enemy.
I agree with you. I liked the fact that Google essentially chose an open source solution, and now they will consider implementing something closed source to combat "hacking". This is not a win.
Amazon will not be suing other businesses for suggesting products based on a user's previous product views, because they'd have to sue me for what my store has been doing for years (and they'd have to sue ten thousand other stores as well) and they would lose every time because this is NOT new, and it certainly wasn't Amazon's invention.
Forget about Amazon. The patent office really needs a HUGE paradigm shift. They need to get some smart tech people in there to revolutionize the whole goddamned place because it's starting to look like the rabbit hole from alice in wonderland. They should issue public statements saying that all absurd patents will be rejected immediately, and a full review of existing web patents will result in thousands of existing patents to be trashed as well. We need to restore confidence in the patent process, because if we don't, some of the other posters will be right...people will start respecting patents about as much as we respect media compyrights today.
Wild wild west, here we come! Hmmm...maybe that's not such a bad thing...
Regarding AMD's lawsuit, this has really soured my perception of AMD. Companies that start lawsuits instead of competing in the marketplace lose my respect very quickly.
I find it amazing that as soon as a company files a lawsuit against another company claiming unfair competition, everyone immediately and blindly begins backing the plaintiff without considering the fact that the government really should have no place in telling companies or consumers how to run their businesses or which products they are allowed to manufacture or which businesses they are allowed to form partnerships with. If you don't like the deals businesses make with each other, then don't buy their products, period. You can even go as far as creating big groups to boycott their products and use the power of persuasion to change their "evil" ways. But please leave the goddamn government and the courts (and my tax money) out of it.
These lawsuits are spiraling out of control and they destroy huge amounts of investment money and invester confidence, yet the uneducated masses think they are a good thing. I say, grow up and learn how to compete in the free market like an free-thinking adult. If you can't stand the heat of competition, you don't deserve to compete, and you certainly shouldn't be allowed to sue another competitor out of the race because they are ahead of you.
Liberty just doesn't seem to exist in the world anymore, and the saddest part is that most people don't think about it or seem to care.
However, my point wasn't that windows is a superior solution, just that all the tired extremist statements about windows being completely unusable are off the wall and fairly baseless considering that it is the OS chosen by more than 85% of the population.
Anyway, every weekend, in the space next to ours, a group of sly chinese guys would setup their tent to sell those items you see on infomercials really early in the morning. They had different crap every week, but it was always "as seen on tv" stuff. Moving on...when their crowd was waning, or when they had lots of hesitant gaurded customers, on of their brothers that sort of hovered across the aisle, would walk over and show lots of interest and "buy" the products. All the other hesitant customers seeing these "buyers" would then go ahead with their purchases as well. I got a kick out of watching how dumb people are all day long (when I wasn't fixing Windows 95 on 486's).
I somehow suspect that if 90% of the world used Macs, there would be just as many mac viruses designed and deployed. Adware/spyware hackers don't care which OS you run, they just want their software on your machine and they will try every trick in the book to get you to install it. Most people run Windows, so most viruses are for windows because that's where the market is. If the tables were turned, there would be tons of Mac bashers that generalized about Mac's security "holes" as well, instead of realizing that it is ultimately untrained and nonchalant users that are to blame for pressing "open attachment" and "Yes".
Now that is comedy.
As a matter of fact, there is a group trying to get a law passed that requires this exact thing: that all congressmen READ laws in their entirety outload before passing them (and only the ones present for the full reading may vote):
Make Congress Read the Bills Campaign
It's brilliant really. You gotta love the Libertarians.
Goddamn commies.
It was funny too.
The article suggested that if they spent less on their advertising campaigns (sometimes they spend as much as 50 mil!) just trying to have huge opening weekend, they'd easily be able to offset the "lost" revenue by not being able to artificially delay/staggar release dates. It's really all the wasted advertising money that puts movies at risk of being in the red. If movies are released in every medium possible on the same day, the market penetration will be so wide, they wouldn't need to spend a fraction of what they spend now on marketing.
Man, if there's one thing that would drive me to murder, it would be being forced to watch adverts on my own dvd. Death to hollywood.
Sorry, you're gonna have to explain this one. Have you even read the Constitution? Particularly articles IX and X?
I agree that Congress completely ignores the Constitution (as do most Americans), but please don't try to tell me or anyone else here that Congress has the right to force businesses to become their personal law enforcement spies.
If you really want to kill the government's overeaching powers, abolish the income tax altogether. That's the only way to do it. Cut off their money supply.
Yeah, until they make internet cafe's illegal too.
The "terrorists" just wanted the US to stay out of their countries. It's the US politicians that wants to take away your liberties and your privacy...not the "terrorists."
One day, after my application for a Parental License is approved by the DOJ, I hope my kid doesn't ask me, "Daddy, what was freedom like like when you were a boy?"
Or the even worse question, "Why didn't anyone try to stop them from taking away your freedom?"
I guess I'll just have to reply, "The Ministry of Peace needed to combat terrorists."
In the meantime, it would be nice if people knew that the whole reason we have terrorism and fear in the first place, is because our big government has been bombing, invading, and generally pissing other countries off all around the world for decades. If we had maintained our small isolationist government, we wouldn't have enemy terrorists to be afraid of (or use as an excuse to erode privacy and liberty).
But what are the politicians' answers to the problems of big government? Bigger government!
Sigh.
Article 9 and 10 of the Bill of Rights explicitly says that any rights not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved for states and the people. In other words, your right to privacy and your right are protected (or they are supposed to be).
Yes, but isn't it also the ISPs right to decide whether or not to keep logs and for how long?
I'd rather have a choice of 50 states to live in based on the freedoms they protect...than no choice at all.
That's why you should never allow the government to limit your freedom "a bit" because inevitably that "bit" will become full blown anal rape.
This guy knew what he was talking about...so did the rest of the guys that drafted the Constitution. It's too bad most of their wisdom is ignored today.Please read articles IX and X here: Bill of Rights.
Basically, the federal government is not allowed to pass laws that increase their power as those powers and freedoms are reserved to the states and the people. These ammendments are widely overlooked by most politicians, obviously.