Discussions

@elmer: you are pretty late to the party:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/XBOX-ONE-vs-PS4#cd1f485a8ee334a42af40a1c6002aec79

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/24-hours-to-Xbox-3?page=5

8 hours ago, cheong wrote

*snip*

I don't know... I can resell books... even if it contains multi-route fictions ("Turn to page 11 if you select the first choice, page 15 if you select the second one") 

There's an obvious difference between physical objects and digital ones. Books, for instance, accumulate some wear-and-tear, and become unusable after some time; buyers have the choice between paying the full price of a new copy or buy at a discount ignoring the cracks on the spine and the peanut butter smudge on page 42.

With digital content, "used" copies are literally as good as new and that makes a lot of difference. The same goes for "hybrid" situations, such as installable games.

Ironically, I bet that Microsoft, Apple and Amazon would be just happy to provide a used section in their respective marketplaces for digital content, as they would still get their cut on the transaction.

6 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

So? If Google closes their London Headquarters, it'll make literally zero impact to the UK government, because they don't pay any taxes here.

Agreed, except that I wasn't talking about subsidiaries (if you could move a subsidiary elsewhere, there wouldn't be a reason to have a subsidiary in the first place).

The argument that "Oh, we'll just leave then" completely doesn't hold water if you're not actually putting anything back into the economy.

The main contribution of a large corporation to the community is in terms of employment (and employees pay income taxes). It's not just the direct headcount of the corporation itself: there are legions of smaller businesses that work almost exclusively for that corporation and its employees. These can employ at least as many people as the corporation they cater for, and often a lot more.

The employees that work at Google aren't going to suddenly find themselves unemployed just because Google close their office there either. We're not talking about employees living on the breadline.

Similarly if Microsoft said "Come on, boys, we're off to Switzerland", then most of their employees would quit and join Amazon or Google or other companies in Redmond, and Microsoft will be left a withered husk of its previous self.

The US would lose some of its political clout, perhaps, for being the place where Microsoft is registered, but it'll lose bugger all in terms of taxation (since Microsoft pays so little tax), the employees will by-and-large find other companies to work for, or will start new small companies, and literally none of the developers who currently works at Microsoft will be queuing up outside the homeless shelters asking for soup when there's such a high demand for their skillset in the USA.

I seriously doubt that Amazon and Google combined could absorb more than a small percentage of Microsoft's workforce, let alone "most of it". Just look at what happened with the first few rounds of layoffs.

There are other things I strongly disagree with in your post, but it would be pointless to discuss them: neither Microsoft nor Google nor Apple are going anywhere, simply because the US government will bend over backwards to make sure they don't.

This is all corporate FUD. Society doesn't need multinationals half as much as they need us. And if you're not going to pay tax or you'll move to Switzerland, then get out and stay out. And we'll tax your products when you try and sell your products to our citizens at the border via customs like we do with other foreign goods.

It's not a matter of how valuable individuals are to society, it's a matter of contractual power. Rich as you may be, your income tax is probably little more than a rounding error in the fiscal budget of your country, which means that your government is not particularly interested in cutting you a better deal.

As for import duties, good luck with that (hint: they don't work).

To sum it up: I am not happy that large corporations - who benefit from all sorts of services rendered by their respective governments - don't think it's right to contribute back. But that's the way things are and there's very little governments can do. They'll apply some pressure, of course, and be content when they get some results (such as Apple announcing they are bringing back some of their manufacturing, for instance). Rinse and repeat. But don't expect an indictment or a drastic change in legislation.

@evildictaitor: the difference is that if you decided to move to a place with low or zero income taxes, your current government wouldn't even bother to send you a "we'll miss you" card.

If a corporation the size of Microsoft, Apple or Google ever decided to jump ship and move the whole campus to - say - Switzerland, they would cause a collapse in the local economies of the area where they currently operate. Try to imagine how much money it would cost to clean up that mess and you'll see why the US government is willing to bark, but not to bite.

5 hours ago, fanbaby wrote

@cheong:Very true. I have other examples, starting with C (with the bad hack of mapping \n to \r\n), ...

That wasn't a hack, nor was it bad: it was a perfectly compliant implementation of the C standard.

@spivonious: I had a chance to try the iPad Mini, and it's quite good for pretty much anything you would use the iPad for. Except it's a lot easier to carry around, which makes it a brilliant form factor.

If Acer got the same sweet spot in terms of size, this might be a good device.

@Bass: that's true, but I think this is more a matter of perception than privacy. The fact someone can take pictures on the sly doesn't make openly waving a camera any more socially acceptable.

39 minutes ago, cheong wrote

Maybe some day we'll see "No Google Glass allowed" sign on door of restrooms.

In case you missed it, someone already did and not just on restroom doors.

Might seem premature, but the problem is real. Aside of the obvious places, like restrooms and changing rooms, I can't think of public places where people would feel comfortable having someone pointing a camera at them.

2 hours ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

Gotta wonder how the folks in Oslo are taking this news?

I would think this was good news for Microsoft as an opportunity for those concerned to move away from the newly forming unknown.

According to the FAQ, Opera is also moving to the new rendering engine, so I guess they are pretty happy.

@figuerres: that's unfortunately the way things are. And we are just digging ourselves in a deeper hole by using (and abusing) old protocols in all sort of devices.

Mitigation is all we can hope for at the moment; for instance, I wonder if it wouldn't be a good thing to allow SMTP servers to reject messages unless they originate directly from one of the IP addresses of the sender's domain (something that is specifically forbidden in the current RFC). That alone would make the whole header spoofing business irrelevant and it would improve the effectiveness of blacklisting.