Amen, brother. Amen. God the retarded reponse this article is getting truly annoys the piss out of me. "Oooh, but...but...1984! And.... Racism!". That pretty much sums it up. They don't really have any real point, just random comparisons to 1984.
There is no problem with this, people just like to make cheesy comparisons to 1984. You are absolutely correct in each of your points - just because something has the potential for harm doesn't mean it shouldn't be used. Just keep an eye on it and make sure it's used properly.
But please stop being rational. I must insist you immediately bash this by waving your hands about and mumbling vague comparisons to 1984 and/or some other book about a dystopian future. Also, if possible, rouse some rabble by mentioning how racist this is and that "they" will probably use this to embarass political opponents and/or randomly target innocent people for the fun of it.
What is this, solipsism 101? There's a difference between "wanted, based on concrete evidence, of child murder" and "gee, anyone has some dark part of them capable of terrible things". What kind of retarded logic would have us not arrest/pursue someone suspected of a crime based on their presumption of innocence? You have a right to due process, due process presumes you report for trial. If you don't, then of course you must be tracked down. If that's "embarassing", tough shit.
Why is it that people always fall back on facile comparisons to old books to make their "points"? Do you have some kind of rational, concrete issue with this plan that you can articulte without just waving your hands and saying "1984!!!"?
Guh? So wait. A man is seen by 3 people going into a liquor store and murdering the clerk and kidnapping a patron. The government should be worried about his privacy over the life of the kidnap victim? Or let's say he didn't kidnap, let's say he walked in and just killed a bunch of people then fled across state lines. His privacy is more important than the potential future victims'?
Also, I've shit things more subtle than your "enemies of the state" implication. Seriously, almost any government power can be used for evil. Doesn't mean we should just throw it out entirely.
So apparently it's OK for the FBI to go to the person's work, their family, post wanted pictures, etc... (which they do now) but they should not post a big picture of them because "it's mean"? Or maybe they just shouldn't look for the person because they might be innocent and they could embarass them?
I really can't grasp what your point is. If it's "watch out for this and make sure it's used properly" then I'm all for it and I agree. But your point seems to be "don't embarass criminals, they may be innocent!".
Pander much? I think you, like many of the other paranoid posters in this thread, have seen too many movies and have some romanticized notion of there being this "big brother" out to get you.
The person's reputation is "smeared" when the government starts looking for them. Claims of slander or libel are laughable. Government posts picture of person. "We want this person". Person sues. Government says "We truly did want this person", shows warrant - case dismissed.
Private citizens with a warrant for their arrest have no right to privacy. Easy-peazy, that one.
Posting a picture of someone is not removing their presumption of innocence. Nice try, though.
Boring implication of political corruption ignored as silly. Sure, it could happen. And Pat Buchanan could show up at my house in a ski mask and rape me. I'm not too worried (yet).
Implication of racism. Oooh, that's a crowd pleaser. We all know police are framing every minority and that criminal statistics are all made up by clandestine KKK members. Please go pick up your "enlightened citizen of 2007 award" asap, it's clear you're truly on top of the racist conspiracy in this country - good job.
So let me get this straight. Rather than embarass a potential child murdered/rapist, the police should limit their publicity of the presemed perp (who would be "on the run" if this were done) just in case it's a 1/1000 instance where some evil white woman is perpetrating a fraud? I say we go a step further and just lock up all the evil white women pre-emptively.
FFS, did you just say "convicted monopolist"? Give me a break, that phrase means less than nothing.
What should determine a monopoly is the ability of a company to either be the sole source in a given market, or to unduly control price in said market. In other words, the goal of anti-trust law is to prevent a critical product from being single sourced and over-priced due to a single entity selling the product. See: Oil, Steel, etc... Applying monopoly law to intellectual property is, first of all, stupid. Secondly, Microsoft is not by any stretch the only supplier of computer operating systems, or even narrowly defined "x86 operating systems". Finally, Microsoft can not set the price of their competitor's operating systems by manipulating the market. As an example of this, look how expensive XP/Vista are. When has MS lowered prices below cost to harm a competitor? The answer is never - they can't. Linux is free, MacOS comes with the hardware, and there are dozens of other free OS's.
It is impossible to make an argument from first principals that MS is a monopoly. Let's say aliens came and offered free steel during US Steel's heyday. Can you argue that US steel could have been a monopoly if there was _free_ steel from another source? Or maybe even not steel - let's say there's this hot new free material called "Lineel" that's better, according to all, than steel. Do you have the gall to say that it's possible for a company to have a monopoly in Steel at that point?
It really boggles my mind the arguments you people make.
Right. And neither Google nor Microsoft can control the market for their products. Microsoft, of course, cannot force Linux based OS's to change their price, nor can it force Apple to do so. In fact name one non-MS operating system over which MS has pricing control?
Open standards are, of course, a meaningless strawman when your competitors get together to define these "open standards". And monopoly doesn't mean what you think it does. It literally means exclusive control of a market. I know it's cool to be revisionist and claim it means something else, but look it up. Regardless, by any kind of rational definition MS does not and can not have a monopoly by definition because they cannot control the price in the OS market (Linux is free) and because they do not have any kind of control over SUPPLY in the OS market.
Unless/Until Google is the single source for advertising on the Internet or until they have very strong pricing power over the Internet advertising market, they don't have a monopoly either.
The amish argument is a non sequitur. I'm not sure what you're saying, there. Had the Amish wanted to buy oil, they would have had to go through Standard.
And geeks who run alternate OS's are most certainly not forced to buy a copy of MS Windows. 1995 called, it wants its complaint back. I can not only go to any of numerous alternate-source manufacturers, I can go to plain old Dell.com and buy myself a Linux desktop. If a company bundles a product, talk to the source company - e.g. Samsung, or don't buy their products.
It's a little sad to see MS whining like this. Google actually could be a real monopoly (as opposed to MS, who cannot be due to free alternatives) because they could conceivably get to a point where someone looking to advertise on the Internet must go through Google. Microsoft, on the other hand, will never be a single point of supply for OS's. Ergo, MS cannot be a monopoly.
Regardless, Google isn't a monopoly and won't be one anytime soon so MS should shut up and quit whining like their own competitors whine.
First, you act as if they were "convicted" of being a monopoly. Of course, they weren't. It's not like being a convict where suddenly you have this special "monopoly" status. All it means is the next whiny ass competitor to come to court can claim they have a monopoly and refer to the finding of "fact".
Second, Microsoft has no control over alternative OS's. That's where the comparison falls flat. Ask any anti-MS dweeb what OS they run - it ain't an MS OS. Ergo, Microsoft does not in any way control what OS's I or any other consumer can use. US Steel and Standard Oil had a stranglehold on Supply. MS, factually, absolutely has no stranglehold which would control what OS a consumer runs on his x86 based (using a narrow market) computer.
Furthermore, you've confused pricing power. Linux is free. Microsoft has no real impact on Apple's OS pricing, on Linux, or for that matter on any other OS. Of _course_ they have pricing power over their own product, to claim otherwise would be nonsensical.
In other words, yes, they certainly do have pricing power over XP and Vista, want a cookie? In the end for you people it all boils down to "but, poor Joe Schmoe doesn't know any better and the computers come with Windows!". I would call this a ridiculous argument generally not even worthy of a rebuttal. People are lazy/dumb, so company X should be effectively siezed and dispositioned. Yeah, that's rational.
So fall back on "law" if you must, but law is often irrational and capricious. In fact, it seems the dweebs love it when the law goes against MS, but then lament how silly the "law" is when they seem to find things Microsoft's way. Microsoft simply isn't a monopoly in any rational, meaningful way and no finding of anything by anybody will change that.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. Read that again. Demonstrably they do not have pricing power in the OS market, and demonstrably there are alternative OS's available for users at many different price ranges.
I miss the days when "monopoly" actually meant something. e.g. if my oil company is the only place I can buy oil, or if one steel company is the single source of steel for the country. Good times. Nowadays monopoly basically means any company whose competitors are too inefficient to compete in a few very narrowly defined markets.
By "legacy hardware", I assume you mean "the processor"? You can address more than 32 bits of physical ram with the newer x86 chips in hardware, but you have to map them to a process address space. You'll find, of course, that Windows XP and Vista 32-bit and this other OS called "Linux" with a 32-bit kernel won't let you access anything past 4GB in a single process, either. In face, you'll peter out at 3 point something gigs per process.
This isn't true because of some "law" that says x86 must be power hungry, it's true because nobody's really sat down and done an x86 processor for the embedded market, or at least not donw well. Check out Silverthorne, it has power use comparable to MIPS/ARM.
Hey fuckhole, maybe the interesting part isn't the patent but the implementation of ClearType? Crazy ass shit, I know, that someone would actually focus on a real product. Who cares what the patent is for, the implementation of ClearType is what gives value.
Lol, this isn't interesting. I'm sorry, which part of that Apple rant has anything to do with fonts? If I develop a paper plane, does that mean I can sue Boeing for developing fighter jets?
I know this is crazy talk, but maybe there's a simple explanation. Microsoft put it in the OS as an option so that people who want to use it (hmm...government contracts?) can if they so choose. So maybe Microsoft sees the NSA as a "customer" and decided they were important enough to include it for their use and for other government use.
Design by committee rarely works well. You're proposing something even worse. Let's allow Microsoft's competitors to define "standards" then force Microsoft to follow them. That's really a recipe for innovation. When some little company develops software and it has to follow all these "standards", you're limiting what they can do thats new. The market will sort out which "standards" are important and which aren't.
Oooh, yeah, I'm sure he's a "shill". Actually, I tend to call everyone who disagrees with me on _anything_ a shill, just like you. My grandma and I got into an argument about Ron Paul, I claimed he wanted out of Iraq, she said we should stay. I called her a fucking George Bush shill and donkey punched her.
Because you have to take specific steps to share media in both cases. In this case, user plugs in device, uses it as intended and voila - they're sharing protected content. They're taking the laziest CYA approach they can to prevent some clueless asshole user from blaming them when they get sued for copyright violation.
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Amen, brother. Amen. God the retarded reponse this article is getting truly annoys the piss out of me. "Oooh, but...but...1984! And.... Racism!". That pretty much sums it up. They don't really have any real point, just random comparisons to 1984.
But please stop being rational. I must insist you immediately bash this by waving your hands about and mumbling vague comparisons to 1984 and/or some other book about a dystopian future. Also, if possible, rouse some rabble by mentioning how racist this is and that "they" will probably use this to embarass political opponents and/or randomly target innocent people for the fun of it.
What is this, solipsism 101? There's a difference between "wanted, based on concrete evidence, of child murder" and "gee, anyone has some dark part of them capable of terrible things". What kind of retarded logic would have us not arrest/pursue someone suspected of a crime based on their presumption of innocence? You have a right to due process, due process presumes you report for trial. If you don't, then of course you must be tracked down. If that's "embarassing", tough shit.
Why is it that people always fall back on facile comparisons to old books to make their "points"? Do you have some kind of rational, concrete issue with this plan that you can articulte without just waving your hands and saying "1984!!!"?
Also, I've shit things more subtle than your "enemies of the state" implication. Seriously, almost any government power can be used for evil. Doesn't mean we should just throw it out entirely.
So apparently it's OK for the FBI to go to the person's work, their family, post wanted pictures, etc... (which they do now) but they should not post a big picture of them because "it's mean"? Or maybe they just shouldn't look for the person because they might be innocent and they could embarass them?
I really can't grasp what your point is. If it's "watch out for this and make sure it's used properly" then I'm all for it and I agree. But your point seems to be "don't embarass criminals, they may be innocent!".
No.
The person's reputation is "smeared" when the government starts looking for them. Claims of slander or libel are laughable. Government posts picture of person. "We want this person". Person sues. Government says "We truly did want this person", shows warrant - case dismissed.
Private citizens with a warrant for their arrest have no right to privacy. Easy-peazy, that one.
Posting a picture of someone is not removing their presumption of innocence. Nice try, though.
Boring implication of political corruption ignored as silly. Sure, it could happen. And Pat Buchanan could show up at my house in a ski mask and rape me. I'm not too worried (yet).
Implication of racism. Oooh, that's a crowd pleaser. We all know police are framing every minority and that criminal statistics are all made up by clandestine KKK members. Please go pick up your "enlightened citizen of 2007 award" asap, it's clear you're truly on top of the racist conspiracy in this country - good job.
So let me get this straight. Rather than embarass a potential child murdered/rapist, the police should limit their publicity of the presemed perp (who would be "on the run" if this were done) just in case it's a 1/1000 instance where some evil white woman is perpetrating a fraud? I say we go a step further and just lock up all the evil white women pre-emptively.
But they're simply not. There is no such thing as a "convicted" monopoly. The two words go together like "gray turbulance" or "blind paperclip".
What should determine a monopoly is the ability of a company to either be the sole source in a given market, or to unduly control price in said market. In other words, the goal of anti-trust law is to prevent a critical product from being single sourced and over-priced due to a single entity selling the product. See: Oil, Steel, etc... Applying monopoly law to intellectual property is, first of all, stupid. Secondly, Microsoft is not by any stretch the only supplier of computer operating systems, or even narrowly defined "x86 operating systems". Finally, Microsoft can not set the price of their competitor's operating systems by manipulating the market. As an example of this, look how expensive XP/Vista are. When has MS lowered prices below cost to harm a competitor? The answer is never - they can't. Linux is free, MacOS comes with the hardware, and there are dozens of other free OS's.
It is impossible to make an argument from first principals that MS is a monopoly. Let's say aliens came and offered free steel during US Steel's heyday. Can you argue that US steel could have been a monopoly if there was _free_ steel from another source? Or maybe even not steel - let's say there's this hot new free material called "Lineel" that's better, according to all, than steel. Do you have the gall to say that it's possible for a company to have a monopoly in Steel at that point?
It really boggles my mind the arguments you people make.
Open standards are, of course, a meaningless strawman when your competitors get together to define these "open standards". And monopoly doesn't mean what you think it does. It literally means exclusive control of a market. I know it's cool to be revisionist and claim it means something else, but look it up. Regardless, by any kind of rational definition MS does not and can not have a monopoly by definition because they cannot control the price in the OS market (Linux is free) and because they do not have any kind of control over SUPPLY in the OS market.
Unless/Until Google is the single source for advertising on the Internet or until they have very strong pricing power over the Internet advertising market, they don't have a monopoly either.
And geeks who run alternate OS's are most certainly not forced to buy a copy of MS Windows. 1995 called, it wants its complaint back. I can not only go to any of numerous alternate-source manufacturers, I can go to plain old Dell.com and buy myself a Linux desktop. If a company bundles a product, talk to the source company - e.g. Samsung, or don't buy their products.
Regardless, Google isn't a monopoly and won't be one anytime soon so MS should shut up and quit whining like their own competitors whine.
In other words, yes, they certainly do have pricing power over XP and Vista, want a cookie? In the end for you people it all boils down to "but, poor Joe Schmoe doesn't know any better and the computers come with Windows!". I would call this a ridiculous argument generally not even worthy of a rebuttal. People are lazy/dumb, so company X should be effectively siezed and dispositioned. Yeah, that's rational.
So fall back on "law" if you must, but law is often irrational and capricious. In fact, it seems the dweebs love it when the law goes against MS, but then lament how silly the "law" is when they seem to find things Microsoft's way. Microsoft simply isn't a monopoly in any rational, meaningful way and no finding of anything by anybody will change that.
I miss the days when "monopoly" actually meant something. e.g. if my oil company is the only place I can buy oil, or if one steel company is the single source of steel for the country. Good times. Nowadays monopoly basically means any company whose competitors are too inefficient to compete in a few very narrowly defined markets.
By "legacy hardware", I assume you mean "the processor"? You can address more than 32 bits of physical ram with the newer x86 chips in hardware, but you have to map them to a process address space. You'll find, of course, that Windows XP and Vista 32-bit and this other OS called "Linux" with a 32-bit kernel won't let you access anything past 4GB in a single process, either. In face, you'll peter out at 3 point something gigs per process.
This isn't true because of some "law" that says x86 must be power hungry, it's true because nobody's really sat down and done an x86 processor for the embedded market, or at least not donw well. Check out Silverthorne, it has power use comparable to MIPS/ARM.
Hey fuckhole, maybe the interesting part isn't the patent but the implementation of ClearType? Crazy ass shit, I know, that someone would actually focus on a real product. Who cares what the patent is for, the implementation of ClearType is what gives value.
Lol, this isn't interesting. I'm sorry, which part of that Apple rant has anything to do with fonts? If I develop a paper plane, does that mean I can sue Boeing for developing fighter jets?
Insane - I know, they must be "out to get us".
Design by committee rarely works well. You're proposing something even worse. Let's allow Microsoft's competitors to define "standards" then force Microsoft to follow them. That's really a recipe for innovation. When some little company develops software and it has to follow all these "standards", you're limiting what they can do thats new. The market will sort out which "standards" are important and which aren't.
Oooh, yeah, I'm sure he's a "shill". Actually, I tend to call everyone who disagrees with me on _anything_ a shill, just like you. My grandma and I got into an argument about Ron Paul, I claimed he wanted out of Iraq, she said we should stay. I called her a fucking George Bush shill and donkey punched her.
Their irrational hatred of MS far exceeds any other political or moral leanings they may have. It's really kind of pathetic.
Oh, wait - it's not. You're giving something (information to them) to get something (free OS). Nothing wrong with that.
Because you have to take specific steps to share media in both cases. In this case, user plugs in device, uses it as intended and voila - they're sharing protected content. They're taking the laziest CYA approach they can to prevent some clueless asshole user from blaming them when they get sued for copyright violation.