Simple, because their workers are incredibly unproductive. The US has the most productive labor force in the world, with only Norway in serious competition with us. Neither the Chinese nor Indian worker is able to compete on productivity grounds. They compete in other ways. The Chinese manipulate their currency and have basically no workers rights or safety regulations.
Of course it's going to be attractive for firms to move overseas, we can't and shouldn't compete with them in that race to the bottom. Corporations in the US are spoiled rotten as it is.
As for fascism, of course they care about that. Fascism is a system of government where corporations are well taken care of even as the citizens are subjugated. To suggest that corporations are indifferent to that is asinine.
Fascism is founded upon FUD, xenophobia and corporatism. I'm not sure how one can possibly believe that corporations don't like fascism without doing so in an ironic fashion.
The theory is inaccurate. I'm sure to some extent they do, but they also get a much better assurance that the money will be paid than they would otherwise. Checks for instance, the person cashing a bad check historically has had to pay a huge amount of money to their bank for the privilege of learning that the check was for one reason or another declined. Not to mention the added expense of processing them.
With a credit card you know ahead of time in most cases whether or not it's been declined. The worst thing tends to be charge backs, but in those cases the more or less worst case for most vendors is that they lose the cost of the item. With checks they could end up paying more than that.
On top of that, businesses that don't take credit cards have to deal with turning away customers that don't carry cash or won't pay for things in cash.
Oddly enough, PayPal manages to find a way to best both in terms of pain-in-the-assedness.
I was wondering when somebody would point that out. That is indeed true. But what makes this particular situation worse, is that MS has been abusing our Visa program to get themselves cheap foreign labor and has been benefiting from US tax breaks.
US companies doing that to foreign markets isn't as bad. Nor is it that bad when foreign companies do it to US customers. But when a US company takes the cash and dicks over US consumers that's clearly unacceptable.
And that's why I won't be buying this. Which is unfortunate because I'm sure it's going to be a great game, I just don't want to put up with that sort of garbage. One shouldn't have to connect to the internet in order to play except in the case where one is playing multiplayer over the net.
It's this kind of garbage that leads me to never buy games from EA or via MS.
At that point, you just crack the protection. The DMCA does have a provision for that eventuality, it's hard to say how well it would hold up in court, but it should be a valid defense. And the actual software itself falls under 1st amendment protection, provided that it isn't actually cracked within the US' borders.
That aside, the DLC abuse was the last straw on MS getting anymore of my money. If they can't get that right and refuse to acknowledge that they can give refunds then I don't want any more to do with it. Especially since they've been blatantly lying about not being able to get the right number of points without leftovers.
Because the patent covers the extensions to the format that allow for the information to be made more readily available as a form for a database. And ODF doesn't in and of itself do that. Unfortunately neither does docx. From what I gather it's the fact that it's an extension to the docx format that's in question.
That's possibly true, as I don't believe that MS has ODF proper fully functional support yet. I suspect this probably has to do with their XML version as I'm pretty sure that Word didn't have any support at all for ODF until relatively recently.
Technically speaking, patents can be unfairly anti-competitive or part of a healthy market. It all depends upon how they're used, how long they're in place and what they're allowed to cover.
There's a difference between blocking patents which exist primarily to make it impossible for other companies to work in an area, and patents on important processes that are genuinely being used an exploited as an end.
And that's the problem. If prison were about rehabilitation either instead of or in addition to punishment, the recidivism rates would be far lower than they are at present. You get a lot of conservatives up in arms whenever there's a program that uses tax payer dollars to try and prevent future problems. And a conservative movement up in arms whenever any method other than increasingly strict punishment is used.
The problem is that prison doesn't work like that. Prison only deters people that think they're going to be caught. It does deter some people, but they're generally the ones that would've been deterred with a fine or public embarrassment anyways. The people that do wind up in prison tend to need rehabilitation badly.
As far as the sheriff goes, the man is deeply, deeply in need of some rehabilitation himself, as he seems to have found a way of co-opting the legal system to let him engage in the sadism he so badly wants to commit.
Don't forget that the way that bit torrent works, it's more likely that she provided partial copies, rather than full ones. Meaning that the RIAA could presumably nail the say 4 people seeding a song individually for a sum that greatly exceeds the theoretical harm by a substantial amount.
Well, assuming she really did do it, which personally I'm extremely skeptical of given the RIAA's dodgy history of investigation.
It appears better for the people if the court does its job and considers the constitutional question, although the common law grounds should also indicate that the verdict is outrageously over sized for the alleged wrong doing.
What I'm really not clear about is why the DoJ is sticking its nose in this at all. If they're not going to be arguing for an adherence to the constitution, I'm not really sure that they ought to have any involvement at all in it. I realize that the Presidents official line is that they have to step in and defend Federal law more or less unconditionally, but at some point one has to recognize that the law is sufficiently far beyond what is actually defensible that an attorney shouldn't even consider defending it.
In this case I see no reason why they need to be defending the size of penalty rather than just the existence of a penalty for the alleged infringement.
And don't forget that you'll only be able to install it 3 times and will be required to submit to a cavity probe to identify you as the sole user.
I'm seriously hoping that they don't go through with it because I'm completely unwilling to buy anything from them any more. I'm always puzzled that they can feign outrage at piracy even as they make it less and less tenable to buy their products.
Hmm, and where exactly did you get those clearly classified photos from. I'm not sure that they'd take kindly to this leak, what with all the effort taken to hide the place to begin with.
Because advertising doesn't make any difference in the number of people using the medications. If advertising it actually worked, I'd support banning it, but the reality is that any increase in sales is statistically insignificant.
You mean was discontinued after Apple observed that it was almost impossible for other companies to take much of their market share away. It's not an accident that Apple steadfastly refused to license Fairplay to any other companies while negotiating exclusive online distribution rights.
I'm curious how they think that's going to fly. Apple was able to behave the way they were because the DoJ wasn't taking antitrust regulation seriously and Apple had a huge market of people with iPods to sell to. Without the huge market and with the DoJ more concerned with the law, I'm not sure how this has any chance at all.
OTOH when it's inevitably cracked, I'm sure it will be convenient for piracy.
You're missing the point. A lot of one hit wonders released albums with plenty of good music on it. Or at least good enough to justify listening to the album. What caused the problems was when the studios decided that they could just manufacture recording stars and throw enough money at it to make them popular via MTV (And yes MTV used to play music videos, crazy I know) and focus almost entirely on the singles. It's kind of eerie how much the late 90s into now echos the late 70s into the early 80s.
The problem is that by neglecting the rest of the tracks on the CD and focusing so heavily on the singles, you're left with people being asked to pay for an entire album if they want the couple of good songs or to go for the overpriced single. A shock really that people think that paying $18 for that on a piece of media that only costs them a couple dollars tops to manufacture are going to feel ripped off. Admittedly that doesn't justify piracy, but it sure as hell doesn't make people want to pay money for CDs. And from a practical sense, pirated CD, unpurchased CD, very little difference to the bottom line.
Despite what the article says, it isn't a bad design. The goliath bird-eating spider is very close to the limit for size on a creature with an exoskeleton. Exoskeletons tend to get weaker the larger the body and at a point just a bit bigger than this creature the exoskeleton is no longer able to handle it.
And yes, it does happen, a drop of pretty much any tarantula, even from waist level is going to prove to be fatal. I'm not sure how this is a bad design since we'd probably be killed falling out of a tall tree. And from an evolutionary standpoint dead is dead, dying quietly 3 weeks later isn't that much different than blowing up if it prevents you from procreating.
That's not true at all. IT will continue to grow until it fills the need, then it will stop growing. IT isn't magic, it can't continue to grow just because there's an economy to support. And when it hits that point, it definitely will be a zero sum game, it's just not cost effective or wise to continue to grow IT just because one can and at that point there definitely will be winners and losers.
What makes you think that the FTC doesn't care about spam? It's a difficult problem and without congress giving them the ability to directly fine companies who appear in spam messages, I'm not sure how exactly they're going to be able to solve it. Unless I'm missing something and they're able to do that without specific legislative approval.
I can pretty much guarantee that a significant amount of spam would go away if companies were fined for paying spammers to advertise. It's not going to deal with phishing or other similar spam related crimes, but it would at least dry up that area of activity.
As far as this topic goes, I'd like to see some sort of regulation that requires the approval of the customer whenever records are transferred as part of a merger or acquisition. And definitely a clear listing of who is an affiliate when authorizing third party data sharing. And while we're at it of who it is that's authorized to run scripts on pages that don't appear to come from the server itself.
Technically speaking, he's most likely a sociopath, a psychopath isn't likely to be still living with his parents. Psychopaths are driven to the point of ignoring the needs and wants of other people to get what they want. Sociopaths are largely similar, but far less organized and far more likely to be capable of interacting with others, providing that they have similar interests. But both are worth considering as dangerous and keeping an eye on.
Sigh, the Rodney King riots had very little if anything to do with Rodney King. They were much more heavily influenced by the murder of a black girl by a Korean shopkeeper than by anything that the police did. The verdict was just the last straw. It's not exactly a coincidence that the black community focused so heavily on Korean own establishments.
As much as I dislike a lot of the tactics which have led some to be rich by default, you're absolutely right. While it probably is true that on the grand scale, that the rich harm more people overall, it isn't personal and it does at least have the genuine motive of making oneself better off. And the rich typically give far, far more back to the community than those sociopaths do. Which is wholly different than fucking with people to this extent just to get some cheap laughs.
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Simple, because their workers are incredibly unproductive. The US has the most productive labor force in the world, with only Norway in serious competition with us. Neither the Chinese nor Indian worker is able to compete on productivity grounds. They compete in other ways. The Chinese manipulate their currency and have basically no workers rights or safety regulations.
Of course it's going to be attractive for firms to move overseas, we can't and shouldn't compete with them in that race to the bottom. Corporations in the US are spoiled rotten as it is.
As for fascism, of course they care about that. Fascism is a system of government where corporations are well taken care of even as the citizens are subjugated. To suggest that corporations are indifferent to that is asinine.
Fascism is founded upon FUD, xenophobia and corporatism. I'm not sure how one can possibly believe that corporations don't like fascism without doing so in an ironic fashion.
The theory is inaccurate. I'm sure to some extent they do, but they also get a much better assurance that the money will be paid than they would otherwise. Checks for instance, the person cashing a bad check historically has had to pay a huge amount of money to their bank for the privilege of learning that the check was for one reason or another declined. Not to mention the added expense of processing them.
With a credit card you know ahead of time in most cases whether or not it's been declined. The worst thing tends to be charge backs, but in those cases the more or less worst case for most vendors is that they lose the cost of the item. With checks they could end up paying more than that.
On top of that, businesses that don't take credit cards have to deal with turning away customers that don't carry cash or won't pay for things in cash.
Oddly enough, PayPal manages to find a way to best both in terms of pain-in-the-assedness.
I was wondering when somebody would point that out. That is indeed true. But what makes this particular situation worse, is that MS has been abusing our Visa program to get themselves cheap foreign labor and has been benefiting from US tax breaks.
US companies doing that to foreign markets isn't as bad. Nor is it that bad when foreign companies do it to US customers. But when a US company takes the cash and dicks over US consumers that's clearly unacceptable.
And that's why I won't be buying this. Which is unfortunate because I'm sure it's going to be a great game, I just don't want to put up with that sort of garbage. One shouldn't have to connect to the internet in order to play except in the case where one is playing multiplayer over the net.
It's this kind of garbage that leads me to never buy games from EA or via MS.
Unfortunately, the Parent poster isn't a troll. It wasn't just Republicans pushing for the DMCA and the extensions to the copyright term.
At that point, you just crack the protection. The DMCA does have a provision for that eventuality, it's hard to say how well it would hold up in court, but it should be a valid defense. And the actual software itself falls under 1st amendment protection, provided that it isn't actually cracked within the US' borders.
That aside, the DLC abuse was the last straw on MS getting anymore of my money. If they can't get that right and refuse to acknowledge that they can give refunds then I don't want any more to do with it. Especially since they've been blatantly lying about not being able to get the right number of points without leftovers.
Because the patent covers the extensions to the format that allow for the information to be made more readily available as a form for a database. And ODF doesn't in and of itself do that. Unfortunately neither does docx. From what I gather it's the fact that it's an extension to the docx format that's in question.
That's possibly true, as I don't believe that MS has ODF proper fully functional support yet. I suspect this probably has to do with their XML version as I'm pretty sure that Word didn't have any support at all for ODF until relatively recently.
Technically speaking, patents can be unfairly anti-competitive or part of a healthy market. It all depends upon how they're used, how long they're in place and what they're allowed to cover.
There's a difference between blocking patents which exist primarily to make it impossible for other companies to work in an area, and patents on important processes that are genuinely being used an exploited as an end.
And that's the problem. If prison were about rehabilitation either instead of or in addition to punishment, the recidivism rates would be far lower than they are at present. You get a lot of conservatives up in arms whenever there's a program that uses tax payer dollars to try and prevent future problems. And a conservative movement up in arms whenever any method other than increasingly strict punishment is used.
The problem is that prison doesn't work like that. Prison only deters people that think they're going to be caught. It does deter some people, but they're generally the ones that would've been deterred with a fine or public embarrassment anyways. The people that do wind up in prison tend to need rehabilitation badly.
As far as the sheriff goes, the man is deeply, deeply in need of some rehabilitation himself, as he seems to have found a way of co-opting the legal system to let him engage in the sadism he so badly wants to commit.
Don't forget that the way that bit torrent works, it's more likely that she provided partial copies, rather than full ones. Meaning that the RIAA could presumably nail the say 4 people seeding a song individually for a sum that greatly exceeds the theoretical harm by a substantial amount.
Well, assuming she really did do it, which personally I'm extremely skeptical of given the RIAA's dodgy history of investigation.
It appears better for the people if the court does its job and considers the constitutional question, although the common law grounds should also indicate that the verdict is outrageously over sized for the alleged wrong doing.
What I'm really not clear about is why the DoJ is sticking its nose in this at all. If they're not going to be arguing for an adherence to the constitution, I'm not really sure that they ought to have any involvement at all in it. I realize that the Presidents official line is that they have to step in and defend Federal law more or less unconditionally, but at some point one has to recognize that the law is sufficiently far beyond what is actually defensible that an attorney shouldn't even consider defending it.
In this case I see no reason why they need to be defending the size of penalty rather than just the existence of a penalty for the alleged infringement.
Technically speaking killing the undead isn't murder.
And don't forget that you'll only be able to install it 3 times and will be required to submit to a cavity probe to identify you as the sole user.
I'm seriously hoping that they don't go through with it because I'm completely unwilling to buy anything from them any more. I'm always puzzled that they can feign outrage at piracy even as they make it less and less tenable to buy their products.
Hmm, and where exactly did you get those clearly classified photos from. I'm not sure that they'd take kindly to this leak, what with all the effort taken to hide the place to begin with.
Because advertising doesn't make any difference in the number of people using the medications. If advertising it actually worked, I'd support banning it, but the reality is that any increase in sales is statistically insignificant.
You mean was discontinued after Apple observed that it was almost impossible for other companies to take much of their market share away. It's not an accident that Apple steadfastly refused to license Fairplay to any other companies while negotiating exclusive online distribution rights.
I'm curious how they think that's going to fly. Apple was able to behave the way they were because the DoJ wasn't taking antitrust regulation seriously and Apple had a huge market of people with iPods to sell to. Without the huge market and with the DoJ more concerned with the law, I'm not sure how this has any chance at all.
OTOH when it's inevitably cracked, I'm sure it will be convenient for piracy.
You're missing the point. A lot of one hit wonders released albums with plenty of good music on it. Or at least good enough to justify listening to the album. What caused the problems was when the studios decided that they could just manufacture recording stars and throw enough money at it to make them popular via MTV (And yes MTV used to play music videos, crazy I know) and focus almost entirely on the singles. It's kind of eerie how much the late 90s into now echos the late 70s into the early 80s.
The problem is that by neglecting the rest of the tracks on the CD and focusing so heavily on the singles, you're left with people being asked to pay for an entire album if they want the couple of good songs or to go for the overpriced single. A shock really that people think that paying $18 for that on a piece of media that only costs them a couple dollars tops to manufacture are going to feel ripped off. Admittedly that doesn't justify piracy, but it sure as hell doesn't make people want to pay money for CDs. And from a practical sense, pirated CD, unpurchased CD, very little difference to the bottom line.
Despite what the article says, it isn't a bad design. The goliath bird-eating spider is very close to the limit for size on a creature with an exoskeleton. Exoskeletons tend to get weaker the larger the body and at a point just a bit bigger than this creature the exoskeleton is no longer able to handle it.
And yes, it does happen, a drop of pretty much any tarantula, even from waist level is going to prove to be fatal. I'm not sure how this is a bad design since we'd probably be killed falling out of a tall tree. And from an evolutionary standpoint dead is dead, dying quietly 3 weeks later isn't that much different than blowing up if it prevents you from procreating.
That's not true at all. IT will continue to grow until it fills the need, then it will stop growing. IT isn't magic, it can't continue to grow just because there's an economy to support. And when it hits that point, it definitely will be a zero sum game, it's just not cost effective or wise to continue to grow IT just because one can and at that point there definitely will be winners and losers.
What makes you think that the FTC doesn't care about spam? It's a difficult problem and without congress giving them the ability to directly fine companies who appear in spam messages, I'm not sure how exactly they're going to be able to solve it. Unless I'm missing something and they're able to do that without specific legislative approval.
I can pretty much guarantee that a significant amount of spam would go away if companies were fined for paying spammers to advertise. It's not going to deal with phishing or other similar spam related crimes, but it would at least dry up that area of activity.
As far as this topic goes, I'd like to see some sort of regulation that requires the approval of the customer whenever records are transferred as part of a merger or acquisition. And definitely a clear listing of who is an affiliate when authorizing third party data sharing. And while we're at it of who it is that's authorized to run scripts on pages that don't appear to come from the server itself.
Technically speaking, he's most likely a sociopath, a psychopath isn't likely to be still living with his parents. Psychopaths are driven to the point of ignoring the needs and wants of other people to get what they want. Sociopaths are largely similar, but far less organized and far more likely to be capable of interacting with others, providing that they have similar interests. But both are worth considering as dangerous and keeping an eye on.
Sigh, the Rodney King riots had very little if anything to do with Rodney King. They were much more heavily influenced by the murder of a black girl by a Korean shopkeeper than by anything that the police did. The verdict was just the last straw. It's not exactly a coincidence that the black community focused so heavily on Korean own establishments.
As much as I dislike a lot of the tactics which have led some to be rich by default, you're absolutely right. While it probably is true that on the grand scale, that the rich harm more people overall, it isn't personal and it does at least have the genuine motive of making oneself better off. And the rich typically give far, far more back to the community than those sociopaths do. Which is wholly different than fucking with people to this extent just to get some cheap laughs.