On the other hand, when I went looking for stuff to run some CAT-5 in my house HD had everything needed, including 2 models of switches (4 and 8 port both 10/100). This was in late 2000.
Not surprising. Lots of folks run wire and cable. Doesn't mean they also wold buy a MB.
the same audience that purchases a $2500 Generator when the lights go out for more than 5 minutes.
Except that sale is based on calming a fear; i.e. they will be out of power for a while. What fear or need does a MB fulfill that can be articulated in a way that the person who drops 2.5k$ for a generator will see the value of a MB? Just because someone can drop several K$'s on something doesn't mean they will drop it on any item.
What can I say? What about all of us who dropped thousands on PCs back before they were practically sold in blister packs?
Most of those sales however were through either specialty retailers who had a customer base that self selected rather than being sold along side a bunch of none related items. It wasn't until the PC moved past the early adopter stage did they start appearing in more conventional retail outlets. MBs are still a hobbyist early adopter product targeted at people who are willing to put up with many restrictions and tinker to make it work. That demographic probably has little overlap with Home Depots. More to the point, MBs don't yet answer the "what useful things can it do that make my job quicker or easier" question in a way to appeal to the non-hobbyist.
the same audience that purchases a $2500 Generator when the lights go out for more than 5 minutes.
Except that sale is based on calming a fear; i.e. they will be out of power for a while. What fear or need does a MB fulfill that can be articulated in a way that the person who drops 2.5k$ for a generator will see the value of a MB? Just because someone can drop several K$'s on something doesn't mean they will drop it on any item.
Does the Home Depot force Makerbot to eat the returns?
Probably. Given their size they can, and do, pretty much dictate terms.
Custom cases for phones/electronics projects (Raspberry Pi comes to mind), prototypes of all sorts of things (custom rings is one I saw in their twitter feed, heck I read a story about a surgeon in the UK who used 3D printing to make models of bones and organs to practice surgery procedures on saving several thousand pounds and several weeks vs traditional hand made models.
The question is "How much overlap is there between the MakerBot market and the Home Depot shopper market?" My anecdotal experience says there is not a lot of overlap. The pros are buying in bulk at a discount and for them time is money. Waiting hours to make a widget isn't what they are looking for. The average homeowner wants to fix a problem or do some upgrades and needs help and advice. Tinkering with a MB machine isn't really what they want either. Sure, some MB hobbyist also shop at HD but do enough do this to but what is essentially a bleeding edge toy vs a really useful tool for regular work. Toys are nice but the market is limited.
It seems oddly contradictory to a capitalist society that you would legislate specifically to keep prices high. And it seems odd that people would want their elected representatives to do so. After all, if most people want the corner book shop to exist, even though it keeps prices high, they are entitled to vote with their wallet. I mean, what's next, airliners are banned because the SS France will be put out of business?
It's not that odd or unusual. Many areas of the US have liquor laws that require purchase through a distributor and some even set minimum pricing, all of which protectors the entrenched interests and is why the fight tooth and nail against mail order alcohol sales.
So you are saying that Amazon has somehow found a way to actually ship items for free, to both the user and itself?
No, I'm saying that the cost of shipping cannot be accounted for as an integral part of the product price, rather it must be accounted for separately. If it is nevertheless accounted for as part of the price, then Amazon would be doing a bunch of illegal things.
How you charge for it and how you account for the cost of shipping are two separate items. As long as the accounting makes clear that it is an expense related to sales volume and thus scales with sales I think you have accounted for that expense in a proper manner. You can price a product so that shipping costs are included, even if the exact cost may be more or less for that particular item; the goal is to ensure the variations even out so you maintain desired margins. It's no different than the shopkeeper or tradesman who quotes you a price and then delivers goods to your location. I fail to see what is illegal about it, unless a specific law prevents that in your location.
When was the last time the government auctioned off seized money? Wouldn't they just add it to their accounts instead?
But instead they auctioned bitcoins, as an object. Now they claim they're money. All in the same case.
Everyone focuses on the money aspect but in actually the ruling focuses on the transfer of funds, and funds is a broad concept per the ruling. What I find ironic is the judge referred to online references to using Bitcoin as currency to refute the defense's claims.
Finally, the feds routinely auction of seized currency when the collectors value is greater than the face value. In Bitcoins case, auctioning them was simpler than attempting to convert them over time and possibly drive the market price down significantly.
Google doesn't publish any of the information it indexes.
Google cache. Google news. Enough said.
Fair enough, I should have been clear that I was only referring to search results, not news aggregation sites which could be held to a different standard just as print news.
Google makes no claim to the veracity of their information, beyond trying to keep obvious attempts to game result sour of searches.
Which causes all sorts of potential slander and defamation headaches. Slander can be as simple as repeating an untruth, thereby sullying someone's reputation. As a private company without any special legal status, I would expect they should embrace the possibility that a simple request for removal from their index might prevent a more protracted legal proceeding. In fact, refusing to remove material when reasonably requested would likely qualify easily as obstruction.
Not really, they are following an accepted practice since the start of the internet [...] If you don't want them to crawl your site, a simple HTML tag will stop them unlike window washers who you may have to pull a weapon on to convince them to leave your property alone.
Except that, because Google is indiscriminate, they will repeat and amplify, for profit, any untruths that they happen to find on obscure websites. Suppose I accuse you by name of being a terrorist. You can attack me legally, but most likely my blog isn't worth the effort. But Google enhances and duplicates my outrageous claims to anyone, especially if I've been clever about it. So now you have a problem. While technically I originated the terrorist claim, Google is slandering you in this case orders of magnitude more than I. And both legally and practically, you really need to tell Google to stop.
Actually, the onus should be on the original publisher to remove the material, not on the indexer. That ensures any link to the original information is now gone, not just the search engine results; which really ensures it is "forgotten." Google et. al. may make it easier to to find the information but since they are not the originator they have no liability for what is said.You do have a good point in that Google i stye easy target to go after rather than actually ensuring information is forgotten. However, the EU could require the hosting site to remove the page or, if they are a non-EU site not to serve it to EU IP addresses.
So while it may be practical to stop Google (and any other research engine that has a physical EU presence) I do not think Google should be legally liable for any material they index simply because they make it easier to find something someone does not like.
I would say that is one POV. Independent of wether or not you consider Google to publish information, the challenge is how to decide what is legitimately able to be removed. When is their a demonstrable public interest in the information that outweighs a right to privacy?
I disagree with this interpretation. Google is an unregulated private company. They have neither an obligation to the public, nor any higher binding standards that are imposed by law on them. They are solely responsible to their shareholders, to maximize returns within the ordinary bounds of the law.
The problem of deciding what is legitimate or not isn't a problem for Google to solve, it is a problem for the courts to decide on a case by case basis. But since that is obviously highly impractical, I feel that gving the subjects of the information the right to censor it from Google searches is the next best solution. The same requirement about data should apply to all ordinary private companies without special status.
I would propose just the opposite - obtain a court order to remove the material from the search and then Google would comply. This would assure that Google doesn't just wind up removing results simply because someone somewhere in the EU requests it; rather it would ensure there really is a valid reason to remove it. If the EU wants to assert a right they should provide the mechanism to ensure it is applied in a reasonable manner.
Alternatively, if Google is to get special privileges to use other people's data in ways that can harm them, then Google should become a public agency, legally regulated, and probably owned and controlled by the state. Think NASA. At least that way there is a real social contract and tradeoff.
Should the press be shutout from Google searches because what they publish could be embarrassing, damaging, and possibly wrong? Get a bad review? Take it down. This path, taken to an extreme, means no negative information would be searchable, no matter if it is true or not.
I would imagine that much of the press would like this, as it means that they regian control over the information they produce. People will have to visit their sites rather than reading the stories for free through Google.
However, consider what your argument really implies. Google would have to merely institute a policy on content to deal with the deep linking problem. You don't get to search web pages deep within a news site, instead you are presented with the front door of the site only. Once you enter, your dealings are directly with the news site. If they slander you, you can complain to the source. If you read their articles, they get feedback and show you ads, etc. It's really much more logical to not have a third party processing the content and offering an alternative presentation of it without assuming the responsibility of the content.
Here is where we fundamentally differ in viewpoint. Google search is really no different than a card catalogue. It points to where information can be found but makes no claim to the value or veracity of the information. To require them to become keepers of the truth is,IMHO, unreasonable and diminishes the value of the search if anyone can decide what needs to be removed and get it removed by a simple request. If Google then must decide what is a valid request they are put into a legal position where a court could hold them responsible for providing a link to information that had been subject to a removal request. If you want Google to be the gatekeeper I think they should also have a safe harbor provision that lets them be the final arbitrator of what to remove and require a person to obtain a court order against the original publisher of the material requiring them to delete it from their site.
Finally, how do you address cases where a company has no presence in the EU, but is reachable from the EU? Should they comply with removal requests? Should EU based companies with no presence in China remove material the Chinese find offensive, threatening or otherwise want removed?
The defacto accepted approach to this problem is censorship, I believe. The underlying question you should be asking is: does it make more sense for Google to comply with data ownership laws while remaining accessible, or is it better to become completely inaccessible? The fact is that Google doesn't have the power in this relationship. Note that they faced exactly this problem in China a few years ago, and lost the market then. If they refuse to comply with EU laws, they could lose the EU market too.
I am not saying their shouldn't be a mechanism to address a right to privacy but in the absence of clear guidance it can have many unforeseen consequences.
Yes, we both agree on that point. Where we disagree is that I feel the right to censor one's information from private third parties where there is no direct business relationship is already a clear and practical way to address the problem.
Note again that if Google was a highly regulated public agency with a clear mandate to balance and advance the public good, as many people seem to think they are, but they are certainly not, in any way, then the problem would be more complex.
I think our main point of disagreement is how to do this. My concern is the EU directive essentially makes anyone a potential censor simply because they don't like something and thus have a way to limit the ability to find the information. If the EU wants Google to be the gatekeeper they should provide some clear guidance eon what should be removed so Google can act in a manner that balances a right to privacy with the public's right to know. For example, Google could say any criminal conviction more than X years old should not be indexed, statements made by political figures are not subject to removal, etc. Of course, that also means the EU politicians would actually have to think about the impact of their laws and regulations rathe than just be able to blame Google when something goes wrong. Unfortunately most politicians, anywhere, are loathe to do anything that may actually require them potentially subject themselves to criticism.
1. Apparently a final ruling has not been reached. While a court has found the operator guilty it's not clear if that will ultimately hold.
2. None of TFA provide any details of what the ruling was based on, beyond the TOT node being used for illegal activity by someone else. Without more details, it is impossible to conclude that merely running a TOR node is illegal; the only conclusion from TFA is someone was prosecuted for running one. A relationship between the operator and the user committing fraud, or if the operator new the user was using the node of illegal purposes, is vastly different than merely running a node where a user is using it for illegal activities. The former is much more reasonable to prosecute than the latter.
3. As others point out, in keeping with
It appears the "right to be Forgotten" rules apparently have no provision for appeal or to give the supplier of the information the right to decide if it was a valid request.
Why should there be a provision for appeal? It's the person's data, and Google isn't an organ of the state offering a social service. They're just some private company that collects data indiscriminately, whether true or false, and publishes it for profit. At best there should be strict identity checking to prevent fraud.
Google doesn't publish any of the information it indexes. A real world counterpart would be to expect every librarian to vet every article in very newspaper, magazine, encyclopedia,book or other document they catalogue for fraud. As unreasonable expectation for them as for Google. Google makes no claim to the veracity of their information, beyond trying to keep obvious attempts to game result sour of searches.
The best way to view this is like those car window washers at the red lights. They start washing your windscreen without asking, and then expect payment as if you'd agreed to this. Similarly, Google goes around publishing stuff about everyone without asking, and without quality control, to make money.
First of all, Google is not intruding an property without permission no taking any action to
Not really, they are following an accepted practice since the start of the internet, i.e. searching for specific terms and returning the results. Unlike Kibo and his all seeing grep; they use those sort results based on their algorithms and store information for quicker access. If you don't want them to crawl your site, a simple HTML tag will stop them unlike window washers who you may have to pull a weapon on to convince them to leave your property alone.
A more relevant real world example would be requiring publishers to remove material from their archives so it would be as if they never existed.
It's perfectly natural to be able to tell Google to stop publishing rumours and hearsay, or even true fact that are embarassing.
I would say that is one POV. Independent of wether or not you consider Google to publish information, the challenge is how to decide what is legitimately able to be removed. When is their a demonstrable public interest in the information that outweighs a right to privacy? Should the press be shutout from Google searches because what they publish could be embarrassing, damaging, and possibly wrong? Get a bad review? Take it down. This path, taken to an extreme, means no negative information would be searchable, no matter if it is true or not.
Finally, how do you address cases where a company has no presence in the EU, but is reachable from the EU? Should they comply with removal requests? Should EU based companies with no presence in China remove material the Chinese find offensive, threatening or otherwise want removed?
I am not saying their shouldn't be a mechanism to address a right to privacy but in the absence of clear guidance it can have many unforeseen consequences.
There definitely needs to be a legal mechanism in place to make appeals at no or very little cost. It's a shame Google didn't wait and work with the EU to get that in place, before processing all these requests.
My guess is they didn't want risk legal action once the court ruled. They can clarify later at while still complying even if their actions may be stricter than needed. Given the pace of getting a definitive answer and legal framework out if EU regulatory and legislative processes what Google did seems a reasonable approach.
Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
