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Comment: Re:I'll believe it when I see it... (Score 1) 219

by mr_death (#29674575) Attached to: Microsoft, EU Reach Antitrust Accord

It is, first and foremost, a political body,

No, it is not. It is an administrative body.

Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioner_for_Competition states that the Commissioner is appointed by the EU Parliament. Politicians tend to make sure that their appointees share their views, which makes it a rather political position.

A change in government will not affect the EU antitrust commission.

Until, of course, the next EU Parliament is seated.

EU forced Microsoft to distribute browsers built by their competitors, regardless of merit or customer desire.

Cry me a river. Look, MS started the game, by forcing its users to accept their own browser, regardless of merit or customer desire.

Forced? Did Microsoft "force" their TCP/IP stack on customers? Does Microsoft preclude other browsers from being installed? The 30% of the market held by Firefox shows that there is good competition in the browser market, and further demonstrates that Opera, with its minuscule percentage of the market, sucks badly on the desktop.

I'm no fan of Microsoft (100% Mac and iPhone at home), but is it really harmful for MS to add features to the O/S (e.g., browsers, IP stacks, mouse drivers) over time?

Amazon (free shipping declared illegal at the behest of French bookstores)

Check your facts. Was this really the EU? Because I just put a few orders on Amazon, and not all for books, and they all included free shipping. And Germany is certainly part of the EU.

My bad -- this was the French government, not the EU.

And, of course, the EU has no problems with huge Airbus subsidies, now declared illegal by the WTO. I hope that the US Government will find its gonads and slap EADS with huge tariffs and penalties. Then, maybe, the EU will be a little less eager to meddle with US companies.

Yeah, because nothing like that has ever happened the other way around. Please.

Really. Name one merger of EU companies that has been blocked by the US Department of Justice. Name one time that the US Government loaned billions to Boeing to build a new passenger aircraft that didn't have to be repaid if the aircraft wasn't successful.

Comment: Re:Can o' worms (Score 1) 177

by mundanetechnomancer (#29674531) Attached to: Court Rules For Software Ownership Over Licensing

or he was trying to use the can of worm in a way that differs slightly with the *very* specific conditions for which they designed the can to operate under (These conditions are, btw, unspecified but assumed to be what you are going to be using, despite the many possible variations. Any conditions other then the *proper* conditions will result in the assumption that the can of worms is, in fact, stolen.)

Comment: Re:That essay provided bugs me. (Score 1) 441

by turing_m (#29674443) Attached to: MIT Axes the 500-Word Application Essay

Also, most large organisms including humans and cows, contain more bacteria cells than human (or cow) cells.

In the muscle tissue itself? On the surface and in the intestinal tract, yes. The meat the hamburger begins "life" as should be sterile. Of course, in the process of being ground up the meat will receive a small amount of bacteria from the surfaces of the equipment and the air, but those surfaces would be washed regularly.


Comment: Re:Here's why (Score 1) 814

by Xest (#29667531) Attached to: Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa

There's quite a fundamental difference between Dell and Apple. Dell has much stronger ties to the enterprise than Apple, it provides services as well as just hardware, but of the hardware it sells it provides blade servers, networking equipment and so on.

Dell is still profitable, but is much more vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy due to it's large investment in business divisions that Apple simply doesn't even have. Similarly, Apple has a near monopoly in the portable media player market, whilst Dell is not really in this market at all. Apple's strength in portable media players nets it a vast amount of it's revenue, but clearly has no bearing on the quality of it's PCs. iTunes also brings in a lot of money for Apple.

Rather than simply speculating if you're interested in finding out whether Apple's computer hardware business model is better than Dell's you could probably get hold of both companies accounts and compare the strengths of those specific divisions of both companies if they offer accounts in such a form, rather than trying to compare both companies as a whole.

Comment: Re:And why should they care? (Score 1) 441

by rastilin (#29666671) Attached to: MIT Axes the 500-Word Application Essay

I hope you're not planning to apply for a statistics degree with that little essay. It would be the definition of fair if they refused you. There's variability in which standardized questions any particular applicant is exposed to. The coverage of material is not exactly the same from test to test, and might impact one student differently than another. It's also possible to cross validate subjective appraisals, if one is willing to go to enough trouble. It's possible that the variability in the subjective appraisal is on roughly the same scale as variability due to test composition. That hardly strikes me as the definition of unfair. Usually we reserve the strong definition of "unfair" to systemic effects rather than random, impersonal, not every day is equal effects. Is the testing supposed to be less variable than life itself? In 500 words, explain how.


Also, it took me 3 attempts to parse that, I hope you're not planning to apply for anything with that little essay.

Comment: Re:Awesome. (Score 0, Offtopic) 498

by spun (#29663923) Attached to: London Stock Exchange Rejects .NET For Open Source

It's from the SNL skits featuring Scarlett Johansson. They are a spoof of cheap late night commercials for family run businesses, with Scarlett as the daughter, Lexi, who has a 'deer-in the-headlights, God I hope I get through this without screwing up' look on her face the entire time she's pointing to the pictures of columns or fountains or whatever and saying, woodenly, "You could buy this one. Or that one. Or this one.

I found them hilarious. I think others must have too, because googling 'marble columns' or 'porcelain fountains' returns the skits as the top hits.

Comment: Re:Get rid of Vista for $17? (Score 1) 406

by CCFreak2K (#29647179) Attached to: Hidden Fees Discovered For "Free" Windows 7 Upgrade
There's also the technical aspect: unlike Linux, Windows isn't a moving platform. If you make it work in Windows 2000, for example, it continues to work in Windows XP, Windows Vista, and so on, up to a point. Take a piece of Linux software in 2001, where you have only the binaries and not the source (Tribes 2, as an example), and it's generally hit-or-miss, usually having something to do with which version of glibc you have versus which the binary was linked against. I can't say the same for any other OS, save for Mac OS, due to lack of knowledge knowledge and experience with them.

Comment: Re:c-c-c-c (Score 1) 148

by CCFreak2K (#29527015) Attached to: Aussie Data Centres Brace For Dust Storm Barrage
Living in California, I'd have to say that the "more fires" thing isn't JUST climate change; it's also a result of overgrowth. Fires burn out the vegetated areas, and they regrow. Every year it doesn't, the danger grows higher (I was temporarily displaced by this one actually). The San Joaquin valley, though...that's probably turning into a desert, and probably for the same reason as the dust bowl.

Comment: Re:Already there (Score 1) 75

by CCFreak2K (#26071917) Attached to: Activision Wants To Bring <em>Guitar Hero</em> To Arcades
That pretty much goes for any Konami bemani game. Half are usually in-house as you say (anything by Naoki, for example), and the other half tend to be covers, although most if not all of the covers come from the Dancemania collection of albums (and there's a lot), and I'd say about 80% of THOSE in themselves are covers.

Them as has, gets.