If this is all true, why did GM misrepresent the car?
Because hybrids like the Prius were already on the market, and "eventually, we'll get around to releasing a slightly-better hybrid on much the same model" isn't the kind of sales pitch that gets people to buy a conventional GM car now while deferring purchasing a hybrid for later.
Sending the message "we are going to real soon now come out with an electric car that will make hybrids obsolete" is somewhat better as an effort to slow the success of the existing, already-on-the-market hybrids.
"Technology debt" (or "technical debt") is referred to as a debt because it has effects that are very similar to financial debt. First, it has a cost to resolve, which is analogous to the principal of a financial debt. Second, it has imposes ongoing costs until it is resolved, which works like the interest on a financial debt. Thirdly, the starting value of the cost to resolve -- the principal -- is often greater than the costs which could habe been paid out of pocket initially instead of incurring the debt, making it analogous to the various initial costs associate with many financial debts.
To me this sounds like the kind of thing a dumb manager would say: "You mean that price we paid for our software 6 years ago isn't the only thing it cost! Holy shit we have software debt!"
The "technical debt" terminology was invented by people who understood the technical problems and the consequences (mostly, of trying to minimize the initial costs of developing or acquiring technology-based solutions to business problems) as a means of explaining the issue to managers and executives, who generally understand financial concepts like "debt" much better than they understand technical processes.
I notice that you forgot all the costs that precede writing the code -- the business analysts and subject matter experts time who goes into analyzing the business need and developing the specifications for the code -- whether well in advance of the code being written in the waterfall model or in meetings alongside developers in short iterations in agile methodologies.
Of course, that's perhaps appropriate, because a lot of the "technology debt" is a direct result of other people neglecting the importance of that part of the equation.
Britain abolished slavery decades before the United States, so clearly there's one group who would have been better off under British rule.
Had Britain kept the colonies that became the United States, and thus had the Southern, slave-driven plantation economy as a key part of its economy, it might well not have abolished slavery as early as it did. And, even had it tried to, local resistance to the idea would probably have resulted in a war much like the Civil War -- which colonies that, in our reality, didn't become slave states might have supported if it wasn't perceived as much as a slavery vs. anti-slavery issue as a Britain dictating to the colonies issue. Making, in effect, the American Revolution later, and, if it was successful, the institution of slavery more durable.
Because 1) CEOs proposed it and everyone knows they're all evil 2) The outcry of lobbyists in the industries that depend on the government wastefulness to pad their bottom line will put out the message that this is "killing private business and costing citizens their jobs."
Have you considered that, if the numbers presented here are self-serving propaganda by the tech companies at issue (which, you know, efforts to promote the products provided by an industry presented by industry groups frequently include), that this itself is precisely "lobbying by an industry dependent on government wastefulness to pad their bottom line"?
The only way to reduce the national debt is by selling more stuff to other nations than you buy from them.
No, that's how you generate a trade surplus. There is a difference between a trade surplus/deficit and a budget surplus/deficit (the former is exports vs. imports, the latter is government revenue vs. government expenditures.) You reduce the national debt by generating a budget surplus (and you reduce the debt as compared to an alternative policy even by generating a smaller budget deficit), to which the balance of trade is orthogonal.
If the cash-strapped U.S. government enacted all the recommendations in the advocacy group's report, it could save between $920 billion and $1.2 trillion by 2020, the group said.
Since the deficit is the annual difference between expenditures and revenues, reducing spending by ~$1 trillion between now and 2020 doesn't reduce the deficit by ~$1 trillion, it reduces the deficit by ~$100 billion.
Of course, this ignores the question of whether the money would actually be saved; one should be rather sceptical from a recommendation from an industry group saying that amounts to "if the government spent more money on our services, it would save money overall".
To quote Adam Smith on the attitude that should be applied to proposals of government action from groups engaged in a particular area of trade: "The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it." (An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 11, emphasis added.)
But the real question is why does it take so long to come up with these standards?
Because it should. The problem is the idea that you shouldn't implement a standard until its done. The reverse is true: a standard shouldn't be done and frozen until, at a minimum, there exist independently-developed, interoperable implementations that acheive the purpose for which the standard was developed.
A "standard" that isn't implemented at all, doesn't have interoperable implementations, or which has interoperable implementations but doesn't meet the needs for which it was developed, isn't meaningfully done, and if its treated as "done" it will likely only ever be "done" in the sense of "dead" rather than "complete and worth using."
Switching from 1600x1200 to wide 1680x1050 to HD 1600x900 we are losing more and more vertical space thus becoming less and less simple to read a full A4 page or a web page or a function call. What's the solution for retaining the screen height we need to be productive?
Simple solution: Don't switch. You can still get 1600x1200 ~20" monitors fairly reasonably. They are a bit more expensive than when I got mine several years ago, because 4:3 aspect ratio monitors aren't as popular with the masses, but they aren't ridiculously expensive like 2048x1532 monitors are.
Second simple solution: rotation. Most video drivers nowadays support screen rotation, and many of the bases that come with flatscreen monitors make rotation easy (and, if yours doesn't, add-on mounts that do are available.) So if you have to use a widescreen monitor but need more screen height, then rotate the screen.
Third simple solution: accept 16:9, keep it landscape, and get a bigger monitor. ~23" 16:9 2048x1152 monitors have very close to the same horizontal resolution as ~20" 4:3 1600x1200 and are generally cheaper.
I think this trend has more to do with the size and shape of laptops than anything else.
No, the trend has more to do with computer monitors and TVs using the same technology and, frequently, being used to consume the same media, which means it makes sense for manufacturers to make them in the same sizes (and, really, essentially the same product, but for things like tuners and type and number of external connections) to realize economies of scale while meeting the needs of the largest segment of the market.
I'm not missing your point. It's true that I focussed my response on some of insulting and false statements you made alongside what you consider to be your main point, which is also false.
My whole point is that Windows XP will not be usable when IPv6 is out and we're out of v4 addresses.
And that point is wrong. Windows XP supports IPv6. It would remain usable for many purposes if the rest of the world used IPv6 exclusively. Because the IPv6 support doesn't include some functionality that some people might want (e.g., DHCPv6) IPv6 prevalence may be a factor which convinces some XP users to switch either to a newer Windows version or some other OS, but many XP holdouts won't need what it doesn't include, and some of what it doesn't include may be filled by third-party software.
With regard to XP, Vista, and 7, you seem to be mistaking your personal preferences as to what is (or would be, in hypothetical future situations) good enough for what is good enough for everyone else, both when you suggest that XP holdouts are wrong now in deciding that first Vista and now 7 don't offer value that, for them, justifies the upgrade cost, and when you suggest that XP would be unusable in an IPv6 world.
Yeah, it just works. For now. Most individual users who won't upgrade to Windows 7 either fear change or are still stuck in the notion that Windows Vista sucks (even though it doesn't) so Windows 7 must suck, too.
I'm not upgrading to Windows 7 for many Windows XP boxes because its expensive, money is tight, and Windows XP does everything I need windows to do. (In fact Windows 7 was out when I bought my most recent XP machine -- the netbook I'm using right now -- but it was more expensive to buy a less capable machine bundled with the more-limited Win 7 Starter than to get a more capable machine with XP Home.)
If Windows upgrades were free, then it would be a no-brainer to upgrade whenever a new one came out once it was clear that the new version worked at least as well as the old version. But they aren't, so not only do they have to be as good, they have to offer enough value to justify the upgrade cost.
Lets do some cypherin' shall we? 4,366,386 * 100 = $436,638,600 in fines, plus what? a few grand in court fees and filing fees? So the punitive damages caused to Facebook was $632,290,121.46?!
No. The US court award was USD 873 million at the time of the award, based on an even split of statutory and punitive damages ($100 in statuory and $100 in punitive damages per message.)
But, even though your number is wrong, sure there was a lot of punitive damages.
Did it really cause that much damage?
No. If it did those would be actual, rather than punitive, damages. Punitive damages are essentially the civil equivalent of a criminal fine, they are an amount determined over and above actual damages (or in this case, statutory damages, which serve in the place of actual damages) for the purpose not of making the victim whole but of punishment. Unlike actual damages, which require only that the act was wrongful, punitive damages usually require the act to be willful and malicious. (They've also been called "exemplary damages", recognizing that part of their purpose is to make an example to discourage others.)
At the moment that's correct, we're both in an economic slump, but the US has massive debts. Not sure how much debt the Canadians have, but it's probably much less.
The absolute value of Canada's national debt is smaller, but its a tiny bit higher as a proportion of GDP.
But it'll change as we pull out of the recession and stop throwing money down the Afghan/Iraqi hole we'll pay off the debts and productivity will return and we should be back to the status quo.
Unlikely that we'll pay off debts; except for a brief period during the Clinton administration, the US debt has expanded in absolute terms every year since, IIRC, the last prior surplus in the Kennedy Administration.
Assuming policy isn't totally bungled, its likely that the debt-to-GDP ratio will drop as the US recovers and returns to growth, not because the US will payoff the debt but because GDP growth will exceed the expansion of the debt.
You pay for the benefits of wired access over OTA access (including access to channels that aren't available OTA.) You don't, except for PPV content and premium channels that you purchase, pay for the content you watch. That you pay for with the commercials, just like OTA broadcast.
Why is it that we as a society feel we need to put warning labels on things for the dumbest of society?
"We as a society" generally don't. Most warning labels aren't specifically mandated by social consensus. (Even those that are mandated by government are often mandated by regulatory bodies heavily influenced by the regulated industry as part of a package that includes limits on liability if the rules are complied with.)
The people putting the warning labels do so, because warning labels are very cheap, whereas lawsuits over injury or wrongful death are expensive to fight, and have the risk of very large damage awards, so the minimal cost associated with a warning label is seen as worthwhile by manufacturers if there is an expectation that it will reduce the risk of any of (1) consumers engaging in usage patterns that result in injuries, (2) lawsuits being filed if the injury occurs, and/or (3) large awards if a lawsuit is filed.
To sum up the article: Google wants to let users avoid commercials for $2.00. In case you folks haven't noticed, your average "hour long" prime time TV show is about 45-50 minutes, the rest is nothing but commercials. We are already forced to watch commercials, this just gives people the option to skip them at a fee. In otherwords, things aren't changing, we're just being given the option to opt-out for two bucks.
More specifically, the Google patent proposes a mechanism by which content providers (who need revenue) could be more flexible with consumers about how those consumers receive content while meeting the provider's revenue requirements.
Used well this is good for consumers (those who prefer paying, or one of the other options the provider gives, to sitting through ads have that option), good for content providers (the ability to be flexible to consumer preferences means they can reach more consumers, and, reduces the revenue per consumer point at which they break even -- which, in a competitive market, is another benefit for the consumer, since it reduces the price).
Actually, it went to the countries that chose to by the systems.
They took money and work from the community, then they sold themselves to microsoft
No, they didn't sell themselves to anybody.
and achieved none of all their goals.
"None of all" is a kind of weird construction, but they did, in fact, acheive much of what they set out to do in terms of getting computers, software, and content into the hands of students outside of the first world to enable education on the constructivist model.
So the entire idea of the "Israel created this to attack Iran" idea is based on finding the date May 9, 1979 hidden in the code - and that because it's the first day the current theocratic asshats running Iran beheaded the first Jew of their despotic regime? Really?
No, from TFA, there are several bases for that: 1) Israel having the motive in its stated interests, 2) The facilities affected in Iran, 3) The sophistication of the code and Israel's capacity in that regard, 4) Various reference in the code and filenames, including both the date you mention and a reference to Myrtus.
So what you're saying is that corporate lobbying isn't really the problem
No.
I'm not saying anything about what is or isn't a problem.
Try reading.
So much for a generic "corporate lobbying" being the issue.
I never said anything about "generic corporate lobbying" being "the issue".
I said, in regard to your statement that the Tea Party movement was a counterexample to the claim that loose, social-media style networks were insufficient on their own to sustain an extended movement without centralized, top-down organizations, that the Tea Party movement failed as a counterexample to that claim because the movement was organized, funded, and promoted by established, top-down, centralized lobbying and mass media organizations from very early in its existence, and thus is not an example of an movement sustained by loose, social-media style networking without centralized, top-down institutions playing a central role.
Unless you're opposed to all corporate lobbying, including that given to the (D) party candidates.
I haven't said anything in this thread about being opposed to anything. "Other organizations share that feature, so you have to oppose them to" isn't much of a counter argument when someone argues against a group you support because of some feature of that group, but its even worse when presented as a counterargument to the mere factual description of a feature of an organization without even the suggestion that the fact is bad.
Like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Tea Party movement has been sustained by centralized, top-down organization, funding, and communication. This is not an argument against either the NAACP efforts in Montgomery or the Tea Party Movement.
The only thing its an argument against is the use of the Tea Party Movement as an example of an organization which was sustained for an extended effort without centralized, top-down institutions providing organization, funding, and communications to keep the movement going.
The Tea Party is the kind of grassroots, high-tech, anarchistic, viral-meme, spontaneous-organization happening/. & Wired types have been predicting for some time.
Whatever you call it, its certainly not an example of a movement sustained by social media without traditional, centralized, top-down communications media and funding organizations playing a major role, which is the issue relevant to this thread.
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Oracle makes money selling software that uses Java.
People working on improving Java without Oracle having to pay them is, therefore, in Oracle's interest.
Because hybrids like the Prius were already on the market, and "eventually, we'll get around to releasing a slightly-better hybrid on much the same model" isn't the kind of sales pitch that gets people to buy a conventional GM car now while deferring purchasing a hybrid for later.
Sending the message "we are going to real soon now come out with an electric car that will make hybrids obsolete" is somewhat better as an effort to slow the success of the existing, already-on-the-market hybrids.
"Technology debt" (or "technical debt") is referred to as a debt because it has effects that are very similar to financial debt. First, it has a cost to resolve, which is analogous to the principal of a financial debt. Second, it has imposes ongoing costs until it is resolved, which works like the interest on a financial debt. Thirdly, the starting value of the cost to resolve -- the principal -- is often greater than the costs which could habe been paid out of pocket initially instead of incurring the debt, making it analogous to the various initial costs associate with many financial debts.
The "technical debt" terminology was invented by people who understood the technical problems and the consequences (mostly, of trying to minimize the initial costs of developing or acquiring technology-based solutions to business problems) as a means of explaining the issue to managers and executives, who generally understand financial concepts like "debt" much better than they understand technical processes.
I notice that you forgot all the costs that precede writing the code -- the business analysts and subject matter experts time who goes into analyzing the business need and developing the specifications for the code -- whether well in advance of the code being written in the waterfall model or in meetings alongside developers in short iterations in agile methodologies.
Of course, that's perhaps appropriate, because a lot of the "technology debt" is a direct result of other people neglecting the importance of that part of the equation.
Had Britain kept the colonies that became the United States, and thus had the Southern, slave-driven plantation economy as a key part of its economy, it might well not have abolished slavery as early as it did. And, even had it tried to, local resistance to the idea would probably have resulted in a war much like the Civil War -- which colonies that, in our reality, didn't become slave states might have supported if it wasn't perceived as much as a slavery vs. anti-slavery issue as a Britain dictating to the colonies issue. Making, in effect, the American Revolution later, and, if it was successful, the institution of slavery more durable.
Because the information he tried to sell wasn't within the scope of the Espionage Act.
Have you considered that, if the numbers presented here are self-serving propaganda by the tech companies at issue (which, you know, efforts to promote the products provided by an industry presented by industry groups frequently include), that this itself is precisely "lobbying by an industry dependent on government wastefulness to pad their bottom line"?
No, that's how you generate a trade surplus. There is a difference between a trade surplus/deficit and a budget surplus/deficit (the former is exports vs. imports, the latter is government revenue vs. government expenditures.) You reduce the national debt by generating a budget surplus (and you reduce the debt as compared to an alternative policy even by generating a smaller budget deficit), to which the balance of trade is orthogonal.
Since the deficit is the annual difference between expenditures and revenues, reducing spending by ~$1 trillion between now and 2020 doesn't reduce the deficit by ~$1 trillion, it reduces the deficit by ~$100 billion.
Of course, this ignores the question of whether the money would actually be saved; one should be rather sceptical from a recommendation from an industry group saying that amounts to "if the government spent more money on our services, it would save money overall".
To quote Adam Smith on the attitude that should be applied to proposals of government action from groups engaged in a particular area of trade: "The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it." (An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 11, emphasis added.)
Because it should. The problem is the idea that you shouldn't implement a standard until its done. The reverse is true: a standard shouldn't be done and frozen until, at a minimum, there exist independently-developed, interoperable implementations that acheive the purpose for which the standard was developed.
A "standard" that isn't implemented at all, doesn't have interoperable implementations, or which has interoperable implementations but doesn't meet the needs for which it was developed, isn't meaningfully done, and if its treated as "done" it will likely only ever be "done" in the sense of "dead" rather than "complete and worth using."
Switching from 1600x1200 to wide 1680x1050 to HD 1600x900 we are losing more and more vertical space thus becoming less and less simple to read a full A4 page or a web page or a function call. What's the solution for retaining the screen height we need to be productive?
Simple solution: Don't switch. You can still get 1600x1200 ~20" monitors fairly reasonably. They are a bit more expensive than when I got mine several years ago, because 4:3 aspect ratio monitors aren't as popular with the masses, but they aren't ridiculously expensive like 2048x1532 monitors are.
Second simple solution: rotation. Most video drivers nowadays support screen rotation, and many of the bases that come with flatscreen monitors make rotation easy (and, if yours doesn't, add-on mounts that do are available.) So if you have to use a widescreen monitor but need more screen height, then rotate the screen.
Third simple solution: accept 16:9, keep it landscape, and get a bigger monitor. ~23" 16:9 2048x1152 monitors have very close to the same horizontal resolution as ~20" 4:3 1600x1200 and are generally cheaper.
No, the trend has more to do with computer monitors and TVs using the same technology and, frequently, being used to consume the same media, which means it makes sense for manufacturers to make them in the same sizes (and, really, essentially the same product, but for things like tuners and type and number of external connections) to realize economies of scale while meeting the needs of the largest segment of the market.
I'm not missing your point. It's true that I focussed my response on some of insulting and false statements you made alongside what you consider to be your main point, which is also false.
And that point is wrong. Windows XP supports IPv6. It would remain usable for many purposes if the rest of the world used IPv6 exclusively. Because the IPv6 support doesn't include some functionality that some people might want (e.g., DHCPv6) IPv6 prevalence may be a factor which convinces some XP users to switch either to a newer Windows version or some other OS, but many XP holdouts won't need what it doesn't include, and some of what it doesn't include may be filled by third-party software.
With regard to XP, Vista, and 7, you seem to be mistaking your personal preferences as to what is (or would be, in hypothetical future situations) good enough for what is good enough for everyone else, both when you suggest that XP holdouts are wrong now in deciding that first Vista and now 7 don't offer value that, for them, justifies the upgrade cost, and when you suggest that XP would be unusable in an IPv6 world.
I'm not upgrading to Windows 7 for many Windows XP boxes because its expensive, money is tight, and Windows XP does everything I need windows to do. (In fact Windows 7 was out when I bought my most recent XP machine -- the netbook I'm using right now -- but it was more expensive to buy a less capable machine bundled with the more-limited Win 7 Starter than to get a more capable machine with XP Home.)
If Windows upgrades were free, then it would be a no-brainer to upgrade whenever a new one came out once it was clear that the new version worked at least as well as the old version. But they aren't, so not only do they have to be as good, they have to offer enough value to justify the upgrade cost.
No. The US court award was USD 873 million at the time of the award, based on an even split of statutory and punitive damages ($100 in statuory and $100 in punitive damages per message.)
But, even though your number is wrong, sure there was a lot of punitive damages.
No. If it did those would be actual, rather than punitive, damages. Punitive damages are essentially the civil equivalent of a criminal fine, they are an amount determined over and above actual damages (or in this case, statutory damages, which serve in the place of actual damages) for the purpose not of making the victim whole but of punishment. Unlike actual damages, which require only that the act was wrongful, punitive damages usually require the act to be willful and malicious. (They've also been called "exemplary damages", recognizing that part of their purpose is to make an example to discourage others.)
The absolute value of Canada's national debt is smaller, but its a tiny bit higher as a proportion of GDP.
Unlikely that we'll pay off debts; except for a brief period during the Clinton administration, the US debt has expanded in absolute terms every year since, IIRC, the last prior surplus in the Kennedy Administration.
Assuming policy isn't totally bungled, its likely that the debt-to-GDP ratio will drop as the US recovers and returns to growth, not because the US will payoff the debt but because GDP growth will exceed the expansion of the debt.
That's not true at all. The recent weak US dollar vs. foreign currency has not coincided with (much less been caused by) strong inflation in the US.
The most recent example I can find is the $2.3 billion dollar fine as part of the off-label marketing fraud settlement against Pfizer in late 2009.
You pay for the benefits of wired access over OTA access (including access to channels that aren't available OTA.) You don't, except for PPV content and premium channels that you purchase, pay for the content you watch. That you pay for with the commercials, just like OTA broadcast.
"We as a society" generally don't. Most warning labels aren't specifically mandated by social consensus. (Even those that are mandated by government are often mandated by regulatory bodies heavily influenced by the regulated industry as part of a package that includes limits on liability if the rules are complied with.)
The people putting the warning labels do so, because warning labels are very cheap, whereas lawsuits over injury or wrongful death are expensive to fight, and have the risk of very large damage awards, so the minimal cost associated with a warning label is seen as worthwhile by manufacturers if there is an expectation that it will reduce the risk of any of (1) consumers engaging in usage patterns that result in injuries, (2) lawsuits being filed if the injury occurs, and/or (3) large awards if a lawsuit is filed.
More specifically, the Google patent proposes a mechanism by which content providers (who need revenue) could be more flexible with consumers about how those consumers receive content while meeting the provider's revenue requirements.
Used well this is good for consumers (those who prefer paying, or one of the other options the provider gives, to sitting through ads have that option), good for content providers (the ability to be flexible to consumer preferences means they can reach more consumers, and, reduces the revenue per consumer point at which they break even -- which, in a competitive market, is another benefit for the consumer, since it reduces the price).
What is there not to like here?
Actually, it went to the countries that chose to by the systems.
No, they didn't sell themselves to anybody.
"None of all" is a kind of weird construction, but they did, in fact, acheive much of what they set out to do in terms of getting computers, software, and content into the hands of students outside of the first world to enable education on the constructivist model.
No, from TFA, there are several bases for that:
1) Israel having the motive in its stated interests,
2) The facilities affected in Iran,
3) The sophistication of the code and Israel's capacity in that regard,
4) Various reference in the code and filenames, including both the date you mention and a reference to Myrtus.
No.
I'm not saying anything about what is or isn't a problem.
Try reading.
I never said anything about "generic corporate lobbying" being "the issue".
I said, in regard to your statement that the Tea Party movement was a counterexample to the claim that loose, social-media style networks were insufficient on their own to sustain an extended movement without centralized, top-down organizations, that the Tea Party movement failed as a counterexample to that claim because the movement was organized, funded, and promoted by established, top-down, centralized lobbying and mass media organizations from very early in its existence, and thus is not an example of an movement sustained by loose, social-media style networking without centralized, top-down institutions playing a central role.
I haven't said anything in this thread about being opposed to anything. "Other organizations share that feature, so you have to oppose them to" isn't much of a counter argument when someone argues against a group you support because of some feature of that group, but its even worse when presented as a counterargument to the mere factual description of a feature of an organization without even the suggestion that the fact is bad.
Like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Tea Party movement has been sustained by centralized, top-down organization, funding, and communication. This is not an argument against either the NAACP efforts in Montgomery or the Tea Party Movement.
The only thing its an argument against is the use of the Tea Party Movement as an example of an organization which was sustained for an extended effort without centralized, top-down institutions providing organization, funding, and communications to keep the movement going.
Whatever you call it, its certainly not an example of a movement sustained by social media without traditional, centralized, top-down communications media and funding organizations playing a major role, which is the issue relevant to this thread.