How about letting the customers decide if the product is good or not. You don't need to sue, just don't buy it. Choose the alternative which is better and buy that one instead. Or in case of free SW, select the product which gets patched/maintained/is good in the first place.
Slightly offtopic, but a little education isn't harmful...
Again, there is no such thing as Scandanavia. There is Scandinavia which is a peninsula, not a country. Countries in Scandinavian peninsula include Norway and Sweden. Some would include Denmark into Scandinavia but it really isn't part of the peninsula. It is a part of scandinavian region though.
Sorry, let's try again
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
Sorry all, can't resist. Here's another example of loudness war ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/quotes ):
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. Wha
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
How's that a real puzzle? There is only one kind of pieces there which connect to any other piece. See, all the politicians are the same. They connect with any other politician or people as long as it is beneficial to themselves, relatives, friends or associates!
With every vaccine there are side effects; sometimes minor and sometimes major. Depending on the disease it may be worthwhile to do the vaccinations or not.
It may be a good idea to vaccinate against whooping cough but sometimes the disease itself is easier on you than the vaccinations. This was the case for example in Finland and Sweden with the swine flu vaccinations. Of those who got swine flu less than 0.02% died. That would be around less 10 deaths in Finland. Of these people none were really healthy in the first place. They were in the risk group so basically they would have died anyway of common cold, flu etc. In this case it happened to be the swine flu. BUT regarding the vaccinations: Pandemrix and Arepanrix vaccines contained immunologic adjuvant that triggered narcolepsy on several dozen (a hundred?) children. These children have the narcolepsy for the rest of their lives. Narcolepsy of course occurs also naturally but it has been clearly proven that the vaccine (or the adjuvant) multiplied the narcolepsy cases 4 to 9 fold! That is statistically significant. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix . There is also speculation regarding the connection of other autoimmune diseases and vaccines. But these are more or less speculation still.
During the swine flu outbreak the government and the health officials here in Finland basically said that you are crazy if you don't take the A(H1N1) vaccine! People should _think_ if taking a particular vaccine is better than suffering the disease. Mandating the vaccinations by law is stupid but I guess in the US people like laws and lawyers...
Skynet has become self-aware.
You are quite right. Statistics need to be interpreted correctly. There is still good growth for consoles also. It is just not as great as the growth of the other platforms and the gaming market is just expanding.
...or potato chips for that matter!?
Don't forget to get your coat...
You are basically right. Google is practically using a classical dumping strategy here. Well, almost, when the product or service is dumped there usually is a certain price tag but considerably lower price than that of the competitors. Now the price is zero.
The end product is offered for free for consumers although Google certainly has expenses on the map service. This is therefore unfair competion and the end result will be monopoly. On the other hand Google also has an advantage in its service that it may couple advertising into it as well as other free and non-free services.
So, is the unfairness in price or in that the product or service is better than the competitor's products or service?
This is true they don't need to show passports due to the Schengen agreement. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement .
And it is not even clear that they reside in Europe at all.
US has had some very good programming and embedded systems related magazines like C/C++ User's Journal, Dr.Dobbs and Embedded Systems Programming. Ten years ago there were many good articles on each of these magazines and in every issue. I found the magazines to be of great quality. I was a fresh engineer and I enjoyed each and every issue very much. All of them had excellent people writing to them like Herb Sutter, Michael Barr, Jack Crenshaw and many others.
But then there was steady decline: paper quality, number of pages, quality articles all went down slowly but steadily.
And now the situation is:
- Dr.Dobbs had its final issue on 2009. They still publish it in pdf format. Website is there: http://drdobbs.com/
- C/C++ User's Journal was discontinued on 2006. The own website is gone, but Dr.Dobbs hosts old content and some new articles at: http://drdobbs.com/cpp . Again, not quite the same.
- Embedded Systems Programming is now named Embedded Systems Design. Most of the editors still write to the mag. The website is alive and well on http://www.eetimes.com/design/embedded . This has somehow managed to maintain most of its quality.
But for the UK or euro alternatives: There is practically none I know of. So the situation in this field is quite bad.
Now we get to a question: which is better: A press that does exist but only spreads propaganda or simply non-existing press? When the press does not exist it doesn't at least spread propaganda.
Friction is a drag.
