Given the tone of so many of these reviews, I can't tell if the first reviewer ("Obi Wan") is being serious/delusional or if s/he's using the pagination of the text to subtly(?) mock the other reviewers. https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates...
Surprised the article made no mention of the EV Rieu translation published by Penguin Books. I would have thought that was one of the, if not 'the', most well known one.
What a ridiculous inquiry. There are 400 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute and these people think that Google should inspect each and every one of them for hate content. Why don't they go after all of the UK ISP's and carriers that serve hate content from UK based IP addresses?
Although the idea of a 'United Democracies' or whatever it gets called sounds appealing, it has many flaws.
One of which you highlighted regarding what constitutes a democracy - some could even argue that the Electoral College in the USA means it isn't a true democracy!
Others are what legitimacy it would have in relation to countries that aren't members. Why should those countries care or co-operate with the organisation? Likely it would end up with UD trying to impose its will by force, which is a backwards step.
Furthermore, just because a country is a democracy doesn't mean it is automatically superior to every respect and entitled to adopt the high ground. Many democratic countries around the world have engaged in human rights abuses, started wars and interfered with other sovereign countries to install leaders who push their interests over that of the citizens. There is the danger that said countries in the UD would end up turning a blind eye to each other abuses because they, by definition, "wouldn't do that sort of thing".
One of the more positive aspects of hereditary monarchies is that their rulers are invested in the long-term success of their kingdoms. Democratically elected rulers have no such incentive. Instead, they promise favors to donors and their electorate, start never-end wars (wars on drugs, wars on poverty, wars on hunger, wars on literacy) for which the costs are socialized and the profits privatized (particularly by companies in which they have interest). Democratically elected politicians remind me of people who strip the appliances and wiring out of their homes as they are being evicted.
> One of which you highlighted regarding what constitutes a democracy - some could even argue that the Electoral College in the USA means it isn't a true democracy!
After disabling my adblocker to visit the site I was greeted with an auto-play video (with sound) that took up half the page. This is not what I would term 'ad light'.
Hmm. Somewhat biased presentation in the article with use of the words "the latest in a growing number of competition investigations targeting American technology companies."
Gives the impression the EU is deliberately going after US companies when in fact the majority that are investigated for anti-competitive acts are European.
It certainly seems most American media sites are reporting it in that way - despite the fact that China and South Korea have either penalized them already or are investigating them now, too.
Maybe it's a conspiracy to "go after American companies" from all of these regions. Or maybe Qualcomm did indeed do something bad.
We all profit from having a free market, for that to be existing consumers need to have a choice; the market has to be either free of monopolies, or we have to make sure the monopoly on one market (say, web search) doesn’t quickly turn into a monopoly for other markets (say, mobile OS, web maps, etc), too.
"We have to make sure there are no monopolies" (or that monopolies don't "spread") is a dangerous approach, since it leads to the politician's fallacy. It may not even be possible to keep a relatively free market while making sure of that.
The question to ask is: are these EU investigations effective at reducing the number and spread of monopolies? And if they aren't, what should we do?
Because looking at the Microsoft case, the effectiveness seems dubious.
In the Microsoft case, the effectiveness was still noticeable.
The concept of the Microsoft case: Make sure that Microsoft can not get a monopoly in the web.
How it was done: Install no browser by default, let people pick. People chose what they had heard of, often Firefox or Chrome.
Result: It led to an almost instantaneous drop in IE market share on new windows installs.
And it most definitely helped end IE’s monopoly over the market.
With Google, it will be far more problematic, and might even end up with Google getting broken up into several companies, or even banned from some markets, or even forced to operate like a governmental monopoly, and integrate competing products equally as they integrate their own.
Well, I think it just as strongly implies that American technology companies are increasingly engaging in illegal behavior. (Though this implication is no better then the one you've gotten from it.)
It's of course available, but not installed by default, and when e.g. you git commit from console, it by default launches Nano with its counterintuitive shortcuts.
