Except that at least in parts of the world the ToS does not constitute a legally binding agreement and thus unless they receive your permission by other means they're still not permitted to do these things
A very large part of that is because wartime research is obviously focused on producing a working device. Admirals and Generals don't want to hear about how peer reviewed your theoretical physics paper, they want to know when they'll be getting their operational nuclear device. They want to know how soon you can have a working prototype for showcasing and how soon after that it can be put into mass production. So they keep throwing money on research groups that can show a pretty enough powerpoint presentation and who can woo their audience.
Huge amounts of money were "wasted" during WW2 on projects that were never going to bear fruit within a reasonable time frame, for example the German transatlantic rocket propelled bomber. The inventor knew that it would not bear fruit in the next 20 years or so at least but he told Hitler and the generals that it would be operational soon and no peers were around to tell them otherwise, and so they threw money at him until they were defeated. It's one of the reasons Nazi Germany was defeated, they wasted huge amounts of resources on unfeasible or outright impossible projects such as the Landkreuzer P 1000 Ratte which was set to dwarf even the already incredibly impractical Panzer VIII Maus.
But yes actual scientific knowledge of value other than the resulting device(if a device was even produced) is created during wartime and when the war is over you can go about getting it peer reviewed and all the other niceties of traditional empirical research but when the war is in full swing the only thing anyone ever cares about is producing weapons, preferably working weapons.
That's because public transportation in most places is not wholly subsidized by taxpayer dollars, only partially and your ticket fare covers the remaining part.
Actually it's not, who do you think those 100 million users would blame if instead of youtube or google they get redirected to a page saying "due to the recent actions of Microsoft we have been forced to block all windows 8/windows 7 users, if you would like to access youtube or google again please mail the turds in Redmond and explain your unhappiness, you can reach them at this mail address:"
Nah Google can just use the same bullshit arguments that the **AA's use, Since those users have access to all the content on youtube you can therefore just multiply the number of users with the amount of content on youtube to reach a suitably ridiculous level of inflicted "damage". Google probably just needs there to be 1 Windows Phone user to successfully claim damages that would put MS out of business 10 times over.
Laws do not have to be possible to comply with or even logical, you still have to obey them the same. If complying with privacy laws concerning handling and collecting of sensitive data is impossible or prohibitively expensive the answer is easy, don't collect or handle the data at all, problem solved.
You can't just keep going in the same old track and claim that complying with the law is impossible or prohibitively expensive so you won't bother complying.
Only when the government requires you to do things you normally wouldn't do can you complain that it's impossible or prohibitively expensive.
If the government demands that you climb a 50 foot vertical flat glass surface you can complain that it's impossible but if the government merely says u can't use equipment X to climb up a 50 foot vertical glass wall your option is to either stop climbing 50 foot glass walls or find other permissible equipment that will let you do the task.
Lets not forget that Israel assassinated high UN officials who dared suggest the two state solution or any solution that didn't involve giving (what would come to be Israel) all the land. Yes this was before Israel was formed but David Ben Gurion rewarded the assassin by making him his closest adviser and confidante which cannot be seen as anything other than endorsement of the act.
Read the party manifest of Likud and the other right wing parties they formed a government with, they say very similar things to what the Hamas charter does only in much more politically correct terms. Instead of talking about eradication of a people they say that the greater Israel(which includes occupied areas or areas not under their control) is the god given birthright of the Jewish people and that no other people have a right to the land or to form a state within this area.
The past and current ruling parties of Israel uses very similar underlying rhetoric that Hamas does, only they do it in less politically and emotionally charged terms, they never had any intention of allowing the two state to become reality. When u spend the last 60 years oppressing a people can you be surprised that they want to eradicate every last one of the oppressors?
Google is usually just the intermediary and in that case they have to take down the content indicated the take-down notice, notify the owner of that content and if they reply that they don't believe the content infringes Google reinstates the content and passes the reply from the owner back the the notice sender.
In this case Google is the end recipient so they can just reply with a "no we don't believe that this infringes your rights and we won't take down the content. Shut up or take us to court, your move **AA." Then the **AA's can either take Google to court in a costly process that is in no way guaranteed to go their way or they can back down.
IANAL
Unfortunately yes, the burden of proof ought to be the same, beyond reasonable doubt, but unfortunately you only needs a "51%" likelihood to be found guilty in civil court
How about every competitor in the browser market for PC's? Microsoft is leveraging their dominant market share in the OS market to gain an advantage in the browser market. That is blatantly in contradiction with EU antitrust legislation and so they get punished. Opera obviously felt they were being hurt by Microsoft's actions, thats how this entire thing got started.
The EU Commission can fine a corporation up to 10% of their global annual revenue for every single infraction if they so chooses so keep breaking the laws and the Commission will loose their temper and if you don't stop they will have fined and seized your entire corporation.
Actually the manufacturer inherits that obligation if the shop goes out of business etc. Also Apple is obligated to refund the shop when they're forced to refund the customer. The reason the link is not directly to Apple is because it's easier for the customer to go to the shop and for the shop to then go to Apple. But Apple does not get out of the 2 year obligation.
it's 1% of Microsoft's global revenue last year, still it probably doesn't hurt very badly but the EU Commission has the possibility of leveraging a 10% of a corporations global revenue with every single infraction so if Microsoft continues to misbehave the Commission will loose patience and start handing out those 5billion euro fines like advertisers hands out fliers.
The EU has a very good track record of handing out bigger fines to domestic companies, a quick search will tell you that the biggest fine they've handed out so far was to a German corporation. This is not someone favoring domestic companies, this is the government saying if you do not obey the law there are going to be consequences and eventually it's gonna hurt so badly you are going to stop, your choice when to stop breaking our laws.
So basically what you're saying is that governments shouldn't enforce their laws?
The EU was clear enough towards Microsoft, about implementing the browser choice, Microsoft then managed to have a "technical malfunction" for 14 months after the release of Win7 SP1.
Even if you believe even for a second(which I don't) that it was a honest mistake by Microsoft you can't expect to go free when you promise a Government to do something and then fail to comply for whatever reason. The only reason the fine is not 10 times higher(The EU commission can fine corporations up to 10% of their global annual revenue which in Microsoft's case would have been 5.6 billion euro) is probably because the Commission gives Microsoft the benefit of a doubt as to whether the "failure" was intentional or not.
But yes Microsoft could choose to exit from the European market entirely but that would probably result in a mass of lawsuits against the board for mismanagement. The EU is not out to milk Microsoft for as much as it can. But neither is it there to let Microsoft do whatever it wants within it's jurisdiction. Microsoft has an obligation to comply with all laws and regulations they are subject to when operating within the European Union, as well as any agreements they make with the government.
I don't trust the consumers to know whats good for them but I do have some limited trust that the EU Commission will slap Microsoft with another huge fine if they bring the no used sales "feature" to the European version, the courts have concluded that the user have the right to sell their used game regardless of the wishes of the producer. Microsoft can either choose not to do business in the EU(and it's a big market so that would be a bad idea) or change to be in compliance with EU laws.
Apparently Microsoft wants to tango with the EU Commission again, the results while predictable should be entertaining, the Commission will slap MS with another huge fine and MS will remove the infringing feature and pay the fine eventually.
The courts here have concluded that you have a right to sell your used game whether Microsoft wants you to or not, if this feature stays in the European release Microsoft is going to get the Commission after them again.
Yes but either way I don't think you should ever sentence anyone for cheating based on statistics says he plays like a 300+ computer. IF he cheats he will have some sort of device on him that gives him signals or someone in the audience with a device that somehow signals him.
Instead of sentencing someone based on statistics, use the statistics to indicate him/her as a cheater and then find the devices. If he/she cheats there has to be a pretty powerful computer somewhere sending signals, which can be intercepted, detected or blocked.
It will be bulky enough that he can't hide the entire device on his/her person, so the signal has to be transmitted wirelessly to him/her.
Thus either a Faraday cage or a signal jammer in the wireless spectrum would cause problems for his/her cheating and if it's somone in the audience giving him/her signals they either have to sit in his/hers field of vision or have a way to project whatever information somewhere in his/her field of vision, if so then anyone else can see the same thing under the right circumstances.
Well to be honest I am one of those commie pinko lefty Europeans, and I do think we should invest time and research money into finding viable alternatives to oil derivatives and I do think we should move away from fossil fuels to whatever reasonable extent and pace we can. But I just happen to be quite aware that at the moment there exists no large scale replacement so we can't just go about tossing fossil fuels out the door before we have something that can on a long-term actually replace it on the massive scale necessary.
Well a big part of those taxes comes from taxes on fuel, or at least it does here in Sweden where the current gas price is roughly 8.5 $/gallon mostly thanks to the 40-60% tax on gasoline and diesel.
Ok so what replacement do you suggest? The truth is that we don't have anything that can replace oil derivatives on any sort of large industrial scale.
Pumping the black stuff out of the ground is convenient and currently the only reasonable alternative. Replacing oil derivatives with fuels derived from grown crops will simply take up too much of the available arable land on the planet for it to be a reasonable large scale replacement(unless we accept massive starvation is an acceptable cost, and even then we'll eventually run into other problems such as diminishing sources of fertilizers, currently known sources of phosphate rock is expected to last no more than 75 years at the current consumption rate(and is located mainly in China...) and phosphate fertilizers is necessary for modern high efficiency crop production).
Same thing goes for electric cars, there are simply not enough of the metals and other materials(in currently known or estimated deposits) required for high energy density batteries to replace even 10% of the global car park.
I'm not so sure the prices they get over here on the other side of the big pond is that much higher, sure the current price at the pump is roughly 8,50 $/gallon but a really significant(40-60%) part of that is taxes, then there's also the cost of shipping it here.
When it comes to EU Microsoft is considered to be a monopoly in browsers and OS and as I understand it they don't differentiate between platforms all that much, Microsoft calls it Windows 8 on both ARM, x86 and x64, so for all intents and purposes I think the EU Commission considers all of them part of the same market, one which Microsoft has a "dominant market share" in, as well as browsers(although that's probably not technically true anymore). How the Commission and the courts determines exactly whats considered a "market" seems pretty fluid, it doesn't seem to be clearly defined.
To be considered a "monopoly" by EU standards all u need to have is a dominant market share(determined on a case by case basis), so far the lowest determined "dominant market share" was 37.5% so once u pass that line depending on your actions and the nature of the market you could possible be considered to be covered by EU antitrust legislation.
IANAL
Slashdot Mirror
Except that at least in parts of the world the ToS does not constitute a legally binding agreement and thus unless they receive your permission by other means they're still not permitted to do these things
A very large part of that is because wartime research is obviously focused on producing a working device. Admirals and Generals don't want to hear about how peer reviewed your theoretical physics paper, they want to know when they'll be getting their operational nuclear device. They want to know how soon you can have a working prototype for showcasing and how soon after that it can be put into mass production. So they keep throwing money on research groups that can show a pretty enough powerpoint presentation and who can woo their audience.
Huge amounts of money were "wasted" during WW2 on projects that were never going to bear fruit within a reasonable time frame, for example the German transatlantic rocket propelled bomber. The inventor knew that it would not bear fruit in the next 20 years or so at least but he told Hitler and the generals that it would be operational soon and no peers were around to tell them otherwise, and so they threw money at him until they were defeated. It's one of the reasons Nazi Germany was defeated, they wasted huge amounts of resources on unfeasible or outright impossible projects such as the Landkreuzer P 1000 Ratte which was set to dwarf even the already incredibly impractical Panzer VIII Maus.
But yes actual scientific knowledge of value other than the resulting device(if a device was even produced) is created during wartime and when the war is over you can go about getting it peer reviewed and all the other niceties of traditional empirical research but when the war is in full swing the only thing anyone ever cares about is producing weapons, preferably working weapons.
That's because public transportation in most places is not wholly subsidized by taxpayer dollars, only partially and your ticket fare covers the remaining part.
Actually it's not, who do you think those 100 million users would blame if instead of youtube or google they get redirected to a page saying "due to the recent actions of Microsoft we have been forced to block all windows 8/windows 7 users, if you would like to access youtube or google again please mail the turds in Redmond and explain your unhappiness, you can reach them at this mail address:"
Nah Google can just use the same bullshit arguments that the **AA's use, Since those users have access to all the content on youtube you can therefore just multiply the number of users with the amount of content on youtube to reach a suitably ridiculous level of inflicted "damage". Google probably just needs there to be 1 Windows Phone user to successfully claim damages that would put MS out of business 10 times over.
Laws do not have to be possible to comply with or even logical, you still have to obey them the same. If complying with privacy laws concerning handling and collecting of sensitive data is impossible or prohibitively expensive the answer is easy, don't collect or handle the data at all, problem solved.
You can't just keep going in the same old track and claim that complying with the law is impossible or prohibitively expensive so you won't bother complying.
Only when the government requires you to do things you normally wouldn't do can you complain that it's impossible or prohibitively expensive.
If the government demands that you climb a 50 foot vertical flat glass surface you can complain that it's impossible but if the government merely says u can't use equipment X to climb up a 50 foot vertical glass wall your option is to either stop climbing 50 foot glass walls or find other permissible equipment that will let you do the task.
Lets not forget that Israel assassinated high UN officials who dared suggest the two state solution or any solution that didn't involve giving (what would come to be Israel) all the land. Yes this was before Israel was formed but David Ben Gurion rewarded the assassin by making him his closest adviser and confidante which cannot be seen as anything other than endorsement of the act.
Read the party manifest of Likud and the other right wing parties they formed a government with, they say very similar things to what the Hamas charter does only in much more politically correct terms. Instead of talking about eradication of a people they say that the greater Israel(which includes occupied areas or areas not under their control) is the god given birthright of the Jewish people and that no other people have a right to the land or to form a state within this area.
The past and current ruling parties of Israel uses very similar underlying rhetoric that Hamas does, only they do it in less politically and emotionally charged terms, they never had any intention of allowing the two state to become reality. When u spend the last 60 years oppressing a people can you be surprised that they want to eradicate every last one of the oppressors?
Google is usually just the intermediary and in that case they have to take down the content indicated the take-down notice, notify the owner of that content and if they reply that they don't believe the content infringes Google reinstates the content and passes the reply from the owner back the the notice sender.
In this case Google is the end recipient so they can just reply with a "no we don't believe that this infringes your rights and we won't take down the content. Shut up or take us to court, your move **AA." Then the **AA's can either take Google to court in a costly process that is in no way guaranteed to go their way or they can back down.
IANAL
Unfortunately yes, the burden of proof ought to be the same, beyond reasonable doubt, but unfortunately you only needs a "51%" likelihood to be found guilty in civil court
How about every competitor in the browser market for PC's? Microsoft is leveraging their dominant market share in the OS market to gain an advantage in the browser market. That is blatantly in contradiction with EU antitrust legislation and so they get punished. Opera obviously felt they were being hurt by Microsoft's actions, thats how this entire thing got started.
The EU Commission can fine a corporation up to 10% of their global annual revenue for every single infraction if they so chooses so keep breaking the laws and the Commission will loose their temper and if you don't stop they will have fined and seized your entire corporation.
Actually the manufacturer inherits that obligation if the shop goes out of business etc. Also Apple is obligated to refund the shop when they're forced to refund the customer. The reason the link is not directly to Apple is because it's easier for the customer to go to the shop and for the shop to then go to Apple. But Apple does not get out of the 2 year obligation.
it's 1% of Microsoft's global revenue last year, still it probably doesn't hurt very badly but the EU Commission has the possibility of leveraging a 10% of a corporations global revenue with every single infraction so if Microsoft continues to misbehave the Commission will loose patience and start handing out those 5billion euro fines like advertisers hands out fliers.
The EU has a very good track record of handing out bigger fines to domestic companies, a quick search will tell you that the biggest fine they've handed out so far was to a German corporation. This is not someone favoring domestic companies, this is the government saying if you do not obey the law there are going to be consequences and eventually it's gonna hurt so badly you are going to stop, your choice when to stop breaking our laws.
So basically what you're saying is that governments shouldn't enforce their laws?
The EU was clear enough towards Microsoft, about implementing the browser choice, Microsoft then managed to have a "technical malfunction" for 14 months after the release of Win7 SP1.
Even if you believe even for a second(which I don't) that it was a honest mistake by Microsoft you can't expect to go free when you promise a Government to do something and then fail to comply for whatever reason. The only reason the fine is not 10 times higher(The EU commission can fine corporations up to 10% of their global annual revenue which in Microsoft's case would have been 5.6 billion euro) is probably because the Commission gives Microsoft the benefit of a doubt as to whether the "failure" was intentional or not.
But yes Microsoft could choose to exit from the European market entirely but that would probably result in a mass of lawsuits against the board for mismanagement. The EU is not out to milk Microsoft for as much as it can. But neither is it there to let Microsoft do whatever it wants within it's jurisdiction. Microsoft has an obligation to comply with all laws and regulations they are subject to when operating within the European Union, as well as any agreements they make with the government.
The older ones will just bring an appropriately long cane.
I don't trust the consumers to know whats good for them but I do have some limited trust that the EU Commission will slap Microsoft with another huge fine if they bring the no used sales "feature" to the European version, the courts have concluded that the user have the right to sell their used game regardless of the wishes of the producer. Microsoft can either choose not to do business in the EU(and it's a big market so that would be a bad idea) or change to be in compliance with EU laws.
Apparently Microsoft wants to tango with the EU Commission again, the results while predictable should be entertaining, the Commission will slap MS with another huge fine and MS will remove the infringing feature and pay the fine eventually.
The courts here have concluded that you have a right to sell your used game whether Microsoft wants you to or not, if this feature stays in the European release Microsoft is going to get the Commission after them again.
Yes but either way I don't think you should ever sentence anyone for cheating based on statistics says he plays like a 300+ computer. IF he cheats he will have some sort of device on him that gives him signals or someone in the audience with a device that somehow signals him.
Instead of sentencing someone based on statistics, use the statistics to indicate him/her as a cheater and then find the devices. If he/she cheats there has to be a pretty powerful computer somewhere sending signals, which can be intercepted, detected or blocked.
It will be bulky enough that he can't hide the entire device on his/her person, so the signal has to be transmitted wirelessly to him/her.
Thus either a Faraday cage or a signal jammer in the wireless spectrum would cause problems for his/her cheating and if it's somone in the audience giving him/her signals they either have to sit in his/hers field of vision or have a way to project whatever information somewhere in his/her field of vision, if so then anyone else can see the same thing under the right circumstances.
Well to be honest I am one of those commie pinko lefty Europeans, and I do think we should invest time and research money into finding viable alternatives to oil derivatives and I do think we should move away from fossil fuels to whatever reasonable extent and pace we can. But I just happen to be quite aware that at the moment there exists no large scale replacement so we can't just go about tossing fossil fuels out the door before we have something that can on a long-term actually replace it on the massive scale necessary.
Well a big part of those taxes comes from taxes on fuel, or at least it does here in Sweden where the current gas price is roughly 8.5 $/gallon mostly thanks to the 40-60% tax on gasoline and diesel.
Ok so what replacement do you suggest? The truth is that we don't have anything that can replace oil derivatives on any sort of large industrial scale.
Pumping the black stuff out of the ground is convenient and currently the only reasonable alternative. Replacing oil derivatives with fuels derived from grown crops will simply take up too much of the available arable land on the planet for it to be a reasonable large scale replacement(unless we accept massive starvation is an acceptable cost, and even then we'll eventually run into other problems such as diminishing sources of fertilizers, currently known sources of phosphate rock is expected to last no more than 75 years at the current consumption rate(and is located mainly in China...) and phosphate fertilizers is necessary for modern high efficiency crop production).
Same thing goes for electric cars, there are simply not enough of the metals and other materials(in currently known or estimated deposits) required for high energy density batteries to replace even 10% of the global car park.
I'm not so sure the prices they get over here on the other side of the big pond is that much higher, sure the current price at the pump is roughly 8,50 $/gallon but a really significant(40-60%) part of that is taxes, then there's also the cost of shipping it here.
When it comes to EU Microsoft is considered to be a monopoly in browsers and OS and as I understand it they don't differentiate between platforms all that much, Microsoft calls it Windows 8 on both ARM, x86 and x64, so for all intents and purposes I think the EU Commission considers all of them part of the same market, one which Microsoft has a "dominant market share" in, as well as browsers(although that's probably not technically true anymore). How the Commission and the courts determines exactly whats considered a "market" seems pretty fluid, it doesn't seem to be clearly defined.
To be considered a "monopoly" by EU standards all u need to have is a dominant market share(determined on a case by case basis), so far the lowest determined "dominant market share" was 37.5% so once u pass that line depending on your actions and the nature of the market you could possible be considered to be covered by EU antitrust legislation. IANAL
Yes I know, I meant that the behavior is hopefully illegal in the United States as well. As in "getting caught again"