Funny how only corporations get offered deals like that.
In reality, settlements where the paying party doesn't admit guilt are reasonably common in civil cases regardless of whether the parties are individuals or corporations.
Of course, the cases that make the news are big money cases, and those skew disproportionately toward corporations-as-parties independently of whether they go to trial or are settled.
(And FTC actions, specifically, skew toward corporations because of their area of jurisdiction, regardless of size.)
Shareholders would be the first to demand the cell carriers stop handing over cell records to any tin-star sheriff if that were legally possible. It ads cost, and has no possible upside.
You know what else adds costs? Refusing, and then having the "tin-star sheriff" seek subpoenas, and then paying lawyers to fight to quash the subpoenas, and then losing a percentage of the cases and still bearing the costs of handing over the data in those cases.
Also, there are PR costs when the refusal is painted (accurately or not) by the "tin-star sheriff" as a contributing factor in the inability to prevent a substantive crime.
Moreso, there are even bigger costs to shareholders if the event of the type describe in the previous paragraph creates enough off a PR stain that it leads to less favorable reception to the corporations interests by politicians.
The thought of Google paying Apple to make it stop bullying it gave me a good laugh.
Either this is posted in the wrong thread, or you have confused Apple with the US Government, which was the party with whom Google settled in this case.
Google's profit is in the billions! How exactly is 22.5 million justice?
Well, given the contribution of what was alleged to Google's profits, the $22.5 million is probably way too much for any kind of justice. But that's pretty much beside the point when it comes to an out of court settlement. What it is probably more relevant is that it is both:
more than (the net amount the FTC would be likely to make stick through administrative process and appeals) times (the probability of the FTC prevailing) minus (the cost the FTC would bear if it failed) * (the probability of the FTC losing) and
less than (the net amount that Google would have had to pay in fines and costs if it lost) times (the probability of the FTC prevailing) plus (the costs Google would bear if the FTC failed) times (the probability of the FTC failing).
Hence, the settlement with no admission of liability. It's win-win for everyone except the lawyers, etc., who would make money from extended litigation.
There are no laws that restrict who you can vote for.
Sure there are, at least if you want your vote to count. There are laws that restrict who can be elected to each and every elected public office in the country. Sometimes, the restrictions are things like age, citizenship, and duration of residency in a particular region, but sometimes they are more involved.
Also, the private sector uses that information to serve me.
They use the information to serve their stockholders. Sometimes, that also involves serving the people from whom the information is gathered, sometimes it involves using are distributing that information in ways that are against the interests of the people from whom it was gathered.
Not really all that different from government, really.
Microsoft gets money that way? Bing isn't profitable
Bing, while it may be one of the venues in which Microsoft displays ads, isn't Microsoft's online advertising business. Now, admittedly, that unit isn't very profitable, because while giant piles of money come in through it, giant piles of money also go out. But its clearly in Microsoft's interest to find ways to leverage other offerings to improve the profitability of that business.
Google's biggest problem is that they aren't diversified.
Sure, that seems to be the case.
Android is their diversification
Not really; Android is a mechanism for ensuring that the core business doesn't get locked out in favor of vendor-preferred offerings from other mobile OS vendors. It also supports some of their "diversified" offerings, but it isn't really part of their diversification itself, because, as you note "they basically serve it up for free and get people to use their search engine more."
Everything Google is built around search just like everything Microsoft is built around Windows
That's not really true. Everything Google is built around the infrastructure that they had to build to support search. A lot of it is related to search, too, but not all of it: App Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud Engine, BigQuery, Cloud SQL, and a number of Google's cloud services, are all pay services (some of which have free tiers available) which re-sell the distributing computing infrastructure which Google had to build for Search, bur aren't all that search-centered.
Bad or good don't figure into it. DNT by default in the client favors those people who make money on tracking (for instance, advertising vendors) that do not respect DNT on the backend, and gives them a competitive advantage against those people who make money by tracking that do respect DNT on the backend.
Microsoft is a firm that makes money by tracking and doesn't respect DNT on the backend.
Microsoft is also a major browser vendor, and is implementing DNT-by-default on the client.
Connecting the dots isn't hard.
You might also say Google is making *some* money by something other than ads
I might, but it wouldn't be relevant to discussion of MS's DNT-by-default-in-IE decision, since the way that Google is relevant, at all, to that is as one of the many people Microsoft competes against in the advertising space that does respect DNT on the backend. Google has other lines of business, but they aren't really relevant to the DNT discussion.
but less successfully so than Microsoft or Apple or others who create actual products.
In what way are Google Cloud SQL, Google Compute Engine, Google Apps, Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google Drive, and Google Fiber (just to pick a few of Google's paid, non-advertising, offerings) not actual products?
Marriage is a contract that a State chooses to recognize or not recognize.
Its a legal state some of whose effects are similar to effects which could be acheived through contract, and some of whose effects cannot be acheived through contract. Calling it a "contract" is misleading, at best.
The federal government has NOTHING to do with it.
Actually, as well as the state law consequences of marriage, there are federal law consequences as well. So, the federal government has quite a bit to do with it.
MS makes money by selling stuff, and then locking people in. Google for example makes money by advertisement, which made more valuable by tracking people.
MS also makes money by advertisement, though they've been less successful at it than Google. Of course, since unlike Google they don't respect DNT on the backend, their competitive position in advertising with respect to Google's would change if one of the major browsers went DNT by default so that Google wouldn't track its users, while MS would continue to.
As it happens, MS also happens to be a major browser vendor, and, surprise surprise, their browser is going DNT-by-default.
I actually see it more as a "fuck you" to Google. Do not track screws with anyone who's revenue comes from tracking people & their online interactions.
No. Microsoft gets revenue that way, but DNT by default doesn't screw with them because -- unlike Google -- they don't actually support DNT at all on the backend.
Which is a big factor in why they are overly enthusiastic in supporting it in their browser. It screws with their competitors that actually respect DNT preferences based on the DNT design, which is opt-out-of-tracking, not opt-in.
With DNT by default in IE, Microsoft gains a major competitive advantage over Google in advertising.
That's obviously the reason. The key point to keep in mind is that while Microsoft is going overboard with DNT-by-default, they also don't support DNT at all on their own sites, whereas Google does support DNT on their sites (and does so because DNT is supposed to be used as off-by-default, as an opt-out mechanism for tracking.)
IE going DNT-by-default means Google will either have to: 1. Abandon existing DNT support on their sites (leading to, at best, adverse PR, and possibly complaints of bypassing privacy controls in browsers that support DNT), 2. Use browser-sniffing to detect IE10 and ignore DNT from that browser (leading to similar consequences to the above, with perhaps a better PR defense, but possibly worse position with regard to regulatory complaints since they will be specifically targetting a particular competitors browser), 3. Be in a disadvantageous competitive position with firms (like Microsoft) that do tracking but do not respect DNT at all
This will effectively KILL the do-not-track project.
And, in the meantime, give trackers that don't support DNT on the backend (like Microsoft) an temporary advantage over those that do (like Google.)
Don't you think it was DOA anyways? The system depended upon honest advertisers, which is an oxymoron if I ever heard one.
The system depended on the advertising industry thinking that adhering to the voluntary system was at least as good of a deal as what they'd get under a regulatory regime, since the whole purpose of the voluntary system was to stave off threats of regulation.
Its unlikely that the industry would see a an opt-in requirement imposed in a regulatory regime, though an opt-out requirement would be quite likely. It therefore makes no sense for the industry to prefer an opt-in voluntary scheme, though an opt-out voluntary scheme is certainly worthwhile.
Considering that arresting end users is pretty much the DEA's bread-and-butter
It is not a valid conclusion that they are targetting end-users because the charges are possession. Possession is a lot easier to prove than sale or manufacture, and sale and manufacture generally also involve possession (its theoretically possible to sell, but not manufacture, without ever having possession, of course.)
Harddisks and CPU wilays cost money and you will be paying for them.. only you won't own them
Even if you choose to use the dynamic server provisioning facilities that define cloud computing, nothing stops you from buying your own servers and running your own software (free software, even!) for those services. (That's what "private cloud" systems are.)
Or even doing a "hybrid cloud" system where your main system is a private cloud system and you use a public cloud system to provide extra capacity to deal with processing spikes.
The cloud doesn't make you stop owning things. It adds more options, one of which is the option to run your own cloud. You have the option of remote hosting dependent on someone else, but you had that option before cloud computing, too.
the difference is that in the case of proportional representation, the mob is the political party, whereas in a democracy the mob is the people
In the real world, proportional representation is the name for a feature of certain systems of democracy (and there are several different ways of acheiving it) in which the representation in the legislature is proportional to the support for particular views in the electorate. You are probably thinking, in making this complaint, of specifically the party-list-proportional system, which does this directly by assigning seats in the legislature to parties who assign seats off their own lists which are set prior to the election. While this does reduce the direct accountability of individual members to the general electorate, it in practice produces governments which much higher popular satisfaction that first-past-the-post, single-member district systems like that in the US. This is because it is more effectively democratic.
Yet another way Democrats and Republicans have devised to drive voters to register (and vote) as independents.
Democrats and Republicans already vote as independents -- or, perhaps more importantly, vice versa. "Independents" are just about as consistent in voting for members of major parties (and as consistent in which major party they vote for) as actual party members.
Do you really live in fear of NRA members and (or) people who disagree with you politically?
Based on what GP actual said, I'd think he's afraid of people who both have a membership that indicates a high probability of gun ownership and act in a manner which indicates paranoia directed at him personally. He didn't say the problem was that the person was an NRA member, but that that he was "that fellow that accuses you of stealing mail when you give him the NRA pamphlet the mailman mis-delivered." (I have highlighted the key part of the sentence you seem to have overlooked.)
How many of your nearest thousand neighbors have you shared your political affiliation with?
All of them that are interested in, when I registered. And again every time I've donated to a candidate.
Its true that people who have never engaged in any activity for which this information is useful may not realize this information exists and is public, but this information has been public information and widely used by political activists and marketers for a very long time, including the ones that happen to live near you.
Generally, a corporation having access with data means they'd be able to better market and serve you. I really fail to see what is creepy about companies being able to better to serve me.
Corporations -- unless you are a major stockholder -- aren't interested in serving you. They are interested in figuring out how to extract money from you. If they think the most efficient way for them to do that is providing something of real and lasting value, they'll do that, but its not because they care about you. If the most efficient way to extract money from you is to use precisely targetted propaganda to mislead you into perceiving value from their product, they'll do that instead.
There is a VAST difference between making governments' accountable through transparency, and revealing an individual's private information.
Information that is already public information available, and regularly used by, every political campaign and many corporations is not "private information".
If you are upset that this isn't "private information" your issue should be with the state governments who make this information public.
Bands of roving thugs using these apps to break windows of all registered republicans, democrats, whatever, is unacceptable. And really, what else could it possibly be good for?
The same thing that they've been used for the whole time the information has been public. One campaign getting the information and providing it in a form (and with usage controls) optimizing it for use for that purpose on their side is just a way of reducing the costs of having every local campaign office paying the cost of getting paper records from the local government, and every party-friendly-but-independent effort doing the same thing.
Corporations are significant concentrations of power and the "executive class" use them to get their way.
Actually, the executive class are just the best-paid agents of the capitalist class (the two overlap, which can confuse the issue, but its membership in the latter class that is the real source of power.)
Corporations are simply orginizations. They are owned and operated by individuals, who themselves bear responsability for their actions.
No, actually, the people that own it aren't. The whole point of the corporation form is that it is a mechanism by which the government allows stockholders to have the financial benefits of "ownership" of a business operation without, except in the most extreme circumstances, bearing any responsibility other than the financial risk of the up-front investment (unlike an operator of a sole proprietorship or member of regular partnership, who can be held liable for all liabilities of the business entity even if they far exceed the amount voluntarily invested in the business.)
"Independent" is an identification too, and one that will actually get you more attention than being with a party. Whoever gets the indy vote wins.
Most studies of voting behavior I've seen have shown that independents are, on average, as consistent in voting for one party or the other as registered members of a party. While there are swing voters and they matter to winning elections (though turning out the base is also important to winning elections) there's not a whole lot of evidence that "independents" and "swing voters" are the same thing.
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In reality, settlements where the paying party doesn't admit guilt are reasonably common in civil cases regardless of whether the parties are individuals or corporations.
Of course, the cases that make the news are big money cases, and those skew disproportionately toward corporations-as-parties independently of whether they go to trial or are settled.
(And FTC actions, specifically, skew toward corporations because of their area of jurisdiction, regardless of size.)
You know what else adds costs? Refusing, and then having the "tin-star sheriff" seek subpoenas, and then paying lawyers to fight to quash the subpoenas, and then losing a percentage of the cases and still bearing the costs of handing over the data in those cases.
Also, there are PR costs when the refusal is painted (accurately or not) by the "tin-star sheriff" as a contributing factor in the inability to prevent a substantive crime.
Moreso, there are even bigger costs to shareholders if the event of the type describe in the previous paragraph creates enough off a PR stain that it leads to less favorable reception to the corporations interests by politicians.
Either this is posted in the wrong thread, or you have confused Apple with the US Government, which was the party with whom Google settled in this case.
Well, given the contribution of what was alleged to Google's profits, the $22.5 million is probably way too much for any kind of justice. But that's pretty much beside the point when it comes to an out of court settlement. What it is probably more relevant is that it is both:
Hence, the settlement with no admission of liability. It's win-win for everyone except the lawyers, etc., who would make money from extended litigation.
Sure there are, at least if you want your vote to count. There are laws that restrict who can be elected to each and every elected public office in the country. Sometimes, the restrictions are things like age, citizenship, and duration of residency in a particular region, but sometimes they are more involved.
They use the information to serve their stockholders. Sometimes, that also involves serving the people from whom the information is gathered, sometimes it involves using are distributing that information in ways that are against the interests of the people from whom it was gathered.
Not really all that different from government, really.
Bing, while it may be one of the venues in which Microsoft displays ads, isn't Microsoft's online advertising business. Now, admittedly, that unit isn't very profitable, because while giant piles of money come in through it, giant piles of money also go out. But its clearly in Microsoft's interest to find ways to leverage other offerings to improve the profitability of that business.
Sure, that seems to be the case.
Not really; Android is a mechanism for ensuring that the core business doesn't get locked out in favor of vendor-preferred offerings from other mobile OS vendors. It also supports some of their "diversified" offerings, but it isn't really part of their diversification itself, because, as you note "they basically serve it up for free and get people to use their search engine more."
That's not really true. Everything Google is built around the infrastructure that they had to build to support search. A lot of it is related to search, too, but not all of it: App Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud Engine, BigQuery, Cloud SQL, and a number of Google's cloud services, are all pay services (some of which have free tiers available) which re-sell the distributing computing infrastructure which Google had to build for Search, bur aren't all that search-centered.
Bad or good don't figure into it. DNT by default in the client favors those people who make money on tracking (for instance, advertising vendors) that do not respect DNT on the backend, and gives them a competitive advantage against those people who make money by tracking that do respect DNT on the backend.
Microsoft is a firm that makes money by tracking and doesn't respect DNT on the backend.
Microsoft is also a major browser vendor, and is implementing DNT-by-default on the client.
Connecting the dots isn't hard.
I might, but it wouldn't be relevant to discussion of MS's DNT-by-default-in-IE decision, since the way that Google is relevant, at all, to that is as one of the many people Microsoft competes against in the advertising space that does respect DNT on the backend. Google has other lines of business, but they aren't really relevant to the DNT discussion.
In what way are Google Cloud SQL, Google Compute Engine, Google Apps, Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google Drive, and Google Fiber (just to pick a few of Google's paid, non-advertising, offerings) not actual products?
Its a legal state some of whose effects are similar to effects which could be acheived through contract, and some of whose effects cannot be acheived through contract. Calling it a "contract" is misleading, at best.
Actually, as well as the state law consequences of marriage, there are federal law consequences as well. So, the federal government has quite a bit to do with it.
MS also makes money by advertisement, though they've been less successful at it than Google. Of course, since unlike Google they don't respect DNT on the backend, their competitive position in advertising with respect to Google's would change if one of the major browsers went DNT by default so that Google wouldn't track its users, while MS would continue to.
As it happens, MS also happens to be a major browser vendor, and, surprise surprise, their browser is going DNT-by-default.
No. Microsoft gets revenue that way, but DNT by default doesn't screw with them because -- unlike Google -- they don't actually support DNT at all on the backend.
Which is a big factor in why they are overly enthusiastic in supporting it in their browser. It screws with their competitors that actually respect DNT preferences based on the DNT design, which is opt-out-of-tracking, not opt-in.
With DNT by default in IE, Microsoft gains a major competitive advantage over Google in advertising.
That's obviously the reason. The key point to keep in mind is that while Microsoft is going overboard with DNT-by-default, they also don't support DNT at all on their own sites, whereas Google does support DNT on their sites (and does so because DNT is supposed to be used as off-by-default, as an opt-out mechanism for tracking.)
IE going DNT-by-default means Google will either have to:
1. Abandon existing DNT support on their sites (leading to, at best, adverse PR, and possibly complaints of bypassing privacy controls in browsers that support DNT),
2. Use browser-sniffing to detect IE10 and ignore DNT from that browser (leading to similar consequences to the above, with perhaps a better PR defense, but possibly worse position with regard to regulatory complaints since they will be specifically targetting a particular competitors browser),
3. Be in a disadvantageous competitive position with firms (like Microsoft) that do tracking but do not respect DNT at all
This is rather directly aimed at Google.
And, in the meantime, give trackers that don't support DNT on the backend (like Microsoft) an temporary advantage over those that do (like Google.)
The system depended on the advertising industry thinking that adhering to the voluntary system was at least as good of a deal as what they'd get under a regulatory regime, since the whole purpose of the voluntary system was to stave off threats of regulation.
Its unlikely that the industry would see a an opt-in requirement imposed in a regulatory regime, though an opt-out requirement would be quite likely. It therefore makes no sense for the industry to prefer an opt-in voluntary scheme, though an opt-out voluntary scheme is certainly worthwhile.
Even if you choose to use the dynamic server provisioning facilities that define cloud computing, nothing stops you from buying your own servers and running your own software (free software, even!) for those services. (That's what "private cloud" systems are.)
Or even doing a "hybrid cloud" system where your main system is a private cloud system and you use a public cloud system to provide extra capacity to deal with processing spikes.
The cloud doesn't make you stop owning things. It adds more options, one of which is the option to run your own cloud. You have the option of remote hosting dependent on someone else, but you had that option before cloud computing, too.
In the real world, proportional representation is the name for a feature of certain systems of democracy (and there are several different ways of acheiving it) in which the representation in the legislature is proportional to the support for particular views in the electorate. You are probably thinking, in making this complaint, of specifically the party-list-proportional system, which does this directly by assigning seats in the legislature to parties who assign seats off their own lists which are set prior to the election. While this does reduce the direct accountability of individual members to the general electorate, it in practice produces governments which much higher popular satisfaction that first-past-the-post, single-member district systems like that in the US. This is because it is more effectively democratic.
Democrats and Republicans already vote as independents -- or, perhaps more importantly, vice versa. "Independents" are just about as consistent in voting for members of major parties (and as consistent in which major party they vote for) as actual party members.
Based on what GP actual said, I'd think he's afraid of people who both have a membership that indicates a high probability of gun ownership and act in a manner which indicates paranoia directed at him personally. He didn't say the problem was that the person was an NRA member, but that that he was "that fellow that accuses you of stealing mail when you give him the NRA pamphlet the mailman mis-delivered." (I have highlighted the key part of the sentence you seem to have overlooked.)
All of them that are interested in, when I registered. And again every time I've donated to a candidate.
Its true that people who have never engaged in any activity for which this information is useful may not realize this information exists and is public, but this information has been public information and widely used by political activists and marketers for a very long time, including the ones that happen to live near you.
Corporations -- unless you are a major stockholder -- aren't interested in serving you. They are interested in figuring out how to extract money from you. If they think the most efficient way for them to do that is providing something of real and lasting value, they'll do that, but its not because they care about you. If the most efficient way to extract money from you is to use precisely targetted propaganda to mislead you into perceiving value from their product, they'll do that instead.
Information that is already public information available, and regularly used by, every political campaign and many corporations is not "private information".
If you are upset that this isn't "private information" your issue should be with the state governments who make this information public.
The same thing that they've been used for the whole time the information has been public. One campaign getting the information and providing it in a form (and with usage controls) optimizing it for use for that purpose on their side is just a way of reducing the costs of having every local campaign office paying the cost of getting paper records from the local government, and every party-friendly-but-independent effort doing the same thing.
Actually, the executive class are just the best-paid agents of the capitalist class (the two overlap, which can confuse the issue, but its membership in the latter class that is the real source of power.)
No, actually, the people that own it aren't. The whole point of the corporation form is that it is a mechanism by which the government allows stockholders to have the financial benefits of "ownership" of a business operation without, except in the most extreme circumstances, bearing any responsibility other than the financial risk of the up-front investment (unlike an operator of a sole proprietorship or member of regular partnership, who can be held liable for all liabilities of the business entity even if they far exceed the amount voluntarily invested in the business.)
Most studies of voting behavior I've seen have shown that independents are, on average, as consistent in voting for one party or the other as registered members of a party. While there are swing voters and they matter to winning elections (though turning out the base is also important to winning elections) there's not a whole lot of evidence that "independents" and "swing voters" are the same thing.