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Both. 50 years of people cynically saying "all politicians are crooks". And now we have legitimate sleazeballs running the country and nobody believes it. On t

Both. 50 years of people cynically saying "all politicians are crooks". And now we have legitimate sleazeballs running the country and nobody believes it. On the one hand, Google is huge and needs competition. On the other hand: not this way. Antitrust and monopoly laws exist for a reason, but if you look at telephones in the 80's and microsoft & intel in the 90's, better lawyers get you around that. We need trustbusters with teeth. Especially for tech. I wish the EFF was 100x larger.

akhilcacharya 7y ago
One of the most jarring things about the impeachment saga was Trump supporters defending him by saying "all presidents do it". Fundamentally the issue is norms are easy to break if a bunch of people don't know what they are and don't care enough to find out.
- eldude 7y ago
  You may be missing the point. When you look past the double standard, the criminality (collusion, corruption, embezzlement, lies, favorable pardons and lack of prosecution) is disproportionately on one side. And of course there’s the tiny detail that Trump had to conquer the corruption of the Republican Party first to even broach the Democrats. See all the #nevertrump senators that prioritized #resisting Trump in spite of their constituents and his support amongst the party.
  - dwmcqueen 7y ago
    You mean "increase," not "conquer." No conquering has occurred.
    - eldude 7y ago
      Lol. Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, both president Bushes and Jeb, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, James Comey, Robert Gates, Schwarzenegger, and literally dozens of Republican Congressmen all prove you wrong. When exactly did you realize you were living in a Fake News echo chamber where obvious facts don’t matter to you?
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, both president Bushes and Jeb, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, James Comey, Robert Gates, Schwarzenegger, and literally dozens of Republican Congressmen all prove you wrong. In what way are those “the corruption of the Republican. party” that Trump has “conquered”? While there might be some sense that that phrase makes sense, it certainly isn't in reference to the people you name, whom are neither particularly corrupt (certainly not the scale of Trump) nor has Trump conquered them (he certainly has conquered the Republican Party at their expense, but that doesn't justify the claim about corruption.)
        eldude 7y ago
        If you read the parent, its emphasis is on no conquering occurring. Obviously I made clear in the OP that I feel the corruption of the GOP was included in that. The justification that the McCains, Bushes and Romneys are more corrupt is available for anyone with a memory that extends beyond 2016, and there’s no need for you to emphasize your point that Trump is more corrupt. Your position is clear.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > > Trump had to conquer the corruption of the Republican Party > You mean "increase," not "conquer." “Conquer”, as in “forcibly assume control of”, seems quite accurate. Insofar as there was corruption in the Party before Trump, that corruption is now firmly in service to Trump.
scarface74 7y ago
The government caused the phone monopoly and the slap on the risk had nothing to do with Microsoft's missteps when it came to the internet and later mobile. Microsoft still has the same dominance on the desktop that they had during the 90's.
- criddell 7y ago
  The action in the 90's wasn't to break up their desktop dominance, it was to prevent them using that power to dominating the internet too.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    That might have been their goal, but do you really think that it had anything to do with the rise of Google, Facebook, Amazon and the resurgence of Apple? What had more effect on IE being toppled by Chrome, the government or the most popular website advertising it on their front page and bundling it with third party downloads?
    - dhimes 7y ago
      If Microsoft had built adblockers into IE from the beginning there would be no Google. But that was a strategic error, not due to law. And people were definitely on the Google bandwagon in part because of Microsoft. The "do no evil" motto was a direct shot at MS, and everybody felt relief.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Only the geeks cared about the “do no evil”.
        dhimes 7y ago
        Fair point.
  - 2J0 7y ago
ticmasta 7y ago
how many hands do you have :) The story could largely be reduced to: Giant Multinational sues Giant Multinational; both gain support of other Giant Multinationals while World's Most Powerful Government sides with plaintiff Giant Multinational. The EFF needs to 100,000x larger to influence this level of game.
- foobar_ 7y ago
  Throw shoes at Ellison. 10000s of shoes with flyers in them about FSF ;) This is just another iteration of BSD vs UNIX. This is so silly. It's like every toy compiler has to pay a license because it looks like "C", even if you make money and other software with it. As long as they did not "literally" steal the code, I don't see any reason to bother with Oracle's defense. The same thing happens with MPAA and others, where the actual creators hardly get much but "abstract" corporates get a lot. How long should the copyright law hold? No more than the lifetime of the author. They have made a corporation an abstract person, giving it all sorts of inalienable rights. Lulz ... if that's how you want to go, every time someone in a company commits suicide, the entire corporation needs to be charged with murder and the entire team needs to be thrown in jail and be charged for murder. Every privacy violation would be espionage charges .....
  - 2J0 7y ago
    Actually as a corporate person companies are restricted in a very important way: they cannot represent themselves in court, whereas a general partnership can present a partner in court. The fact that directors are employees and only some shareholders may be members actually divided the powers innate to a real person and causes it to be impossible to present a single individual capable of acting in full cognisance and responsible liability for the incorporated company. This saves the law from unimaginable pain.
    - foobar_ 7y ago
      > they cannot represent themselves in court So a corporation can screw many people with legalese, pretending to be everyone's friend and no one gets blamed. It sounds like a convenient loophole to me. What the fuck is the CEO for then? Its comical because most people treat corporations as the CEO. A vs B is very different from naming names.
jorblumesea 7y ago
> now we have legitimate sleazeballs running the country and nobody believes it I don't think "no one believes it", just enough ignorant partisans or malicious people to enable it. Either they get their news from Fox News, Breitbart and other highly biased sources, or they know exactly what they're doing, and want to loot the country for gain.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Partisanship cuts both ways and if you're too ignorant to see your own bias and through the narrative spin on your own side of the aisle, then you're like a fish that doesn't know its wet.
  - jorblumesea 7y ago
    If you honestly believe that Trump is in any way on the same "corruption level" as any previous sitting President you're delusional. I'm sorry that reality is getting in the way of the narrative, but it's fairly obvious that he's far worse than any side has elected within living memory. Maybe Nixon is a distant second?
    - skrowl 7y ago
      Partisanship bias confirmed! Obama had plenty of evidence of corruption, and that's just ONE past president. - Benghazi - Ordering IRS to target conservative groups - AP Phone Records Scandal - Obamacare / You can keep your doctor - NSA PRISM Surveillance System - ATF Fast and Furious - Rosengate - Holder committing perjury multiple times - VP Biden forcing Ukraine to fire that prosecutor... If you haven't heard of some or all of these, you need to bust out of your echo chamber / comfort zone and start looking at more diverse news sources.
      - okaram 7y ago
        Except that ... Benghazi was an error, no corruption ; the IRS did not target conservative groups, Obamacare did not mandate you change doctors in any way .. Normally I assume it is stupidity rather than malice, but now ...
ta999999171 7y ago
It's been continuously escalating, like a ratchet strap, and I don't understand how you see this as much different than what previous administrations have done. They just don't care about hiding shit anymore because nobody understands/does anything significant to revolt.

akhilcacharya 7y ago

One of the most jarring things about the impeachment saga was Trump supporters defending him by saying "all presidents do it". Fundamentally the issue is norms are easy to break if a bunch of people don't know what they are and don't care enough to find out.

eldude 7y ago
You may be missing the point. When you look past the double standard, the criminality (collusion, corruption, embezzlement, lies, favorable pardons and lack of prosecution) is disproportionately on one side. And of course there’s the tiny detail that Trump had to conquer the corruption of the Republican Party first to even broach the Democrats. See all the #nevertrump senators that prioritized #resisting Trump in spite of their constituents and his support amongst the party.
- dwmcqueen 7y ago
  You mean "increase," not "conquer." No conquering has occurred.
  - eldude 7y ago
    Lol. Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, both president Bushes and Jeb, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, James Comey, Robert Gates, Schwarzenegger, and literally dozens of Republican Congressmen all prove you wrong. When exactly did you realize you were living in a Fake News echo chamber where obvious facts don’t matter to you?
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, both president Bushes and Jeb, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, James Comey, Robert Gates, Schwarzenegger, and literally dozens of Republican Congressmen all prove you wrong. In what way are those “the corruption of the Republican. party” that Trump has “conquered”? While there might be some sense that that phrase makes sense, it certainly isn't in reference to the people you name, whom are neither particularly corrupt (certainly not the scale of Trump) nor has Trump conquered them (he certainly has conquered the Republican Party at their expense, but that doesn't justify the claim about corruption.)
      - eldude 7y ago
        If you read the parent, its emphasis is on no conquering occurring. Obviously I made clear in the OP that I feel the corruption of the GOP was included in that. The justification that the McCains, Bushes and Romneys are more corrupt is available for anyone with a memory that extends beyond 2016, and there’s no need for you to emphasize your point that Trump is more corrupt. Your position is clear.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > > Trump had to conquer the corruption of the Republican Party > You mean "increase," not "conquer." “Conquer”, as in “forcibly assume control of”, seems quite accurate. Insofar as there was corruption in the Party before Trump, that corruption is now firmly in service to Trump.

scarface74 7y ago

The government caused the phone monopoly and the slap on the risk had nothing to do with Microsoft's missteps when it came to the internet and later mobile. Microsoft still has the same dominance on the desktop that they had during the 90's.

criddell 7y ago
The action in the 90's wasn't to break up their desktop dominance, it was to prevent them using that power to dominating the internet too.
- scarface74 7y ago
  That might have been their goal, but do you really think that it had anything to do with the rise of Google, Facebook, Amazon and the resurgence of Apple? What had more effect on IE being toppled by Chrome, the government or the most popular website advertising it on their front page and bundling it with third party downloads?
  - dhimes 7y ago
    If Microsoft had built adblockers into IE from the beginning there would be no Google. But that was a strategic error, not due to law. And people were definitely on the Google bandwagon in part because of Microsoft. The "do no evil" motto was a direct shot at MS, and everybody felt relief.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Only the geeks cared about the “do no evil”.
      - dhimes 7y ago
        Fair point.
- 2J0 7y ago

ticmasta 7y ago

how many hands do you have :) The story could largely be reduced to: Giant Multinational sues Giant Multinational; both gain support of other Giant Multinationals while World's Most Powerful Government sides with plaintiff Giant Multinational. The EFF needs to 100,000x larger to influence this level of game.

foobar_ 7y ago
Throw shoes at Ellison. 10000s of shoes with flyers in them about FSF ;) This is just another iteration of BSD vs UNIX. This is so silly. It's like every toy compiler has to pay a license because it looks like "C", even if you make money and other software with it. As long as they did not "literally" steal the code, I don't see any reason to bother with Oracle's defense. The same thing happens with MPAA and others, where the actual creators hardly get much but "abstract" corporates get a lot. How long should the copyright law hold? No more than the lifetime of the author. They have made a corporation an abstract person, giving it all sorts of inalienable rights. Lulz ... if that's how you want to go, every time someone in a company commits suicide, the entire corporation needs to be charged with murder and the entire team needs to be thrown in jail and be charged for murder. Every privacy violation would be espionage charges .....
- 2J0 7y ago
  Actually as a corporate person companies are restricted in a very important way: they cannot represent themselves in court, whereas a general partnership can present a partner in court. The fact that directors are employees and only some shareholders may be members actually divided the powers innate to a real person and causes it to be impossible to present a single individual capable of acting in full cognisance and responsible liability for the incorporated company. This saves the law from unimaginable pain.
  - foobar_ 7y ago
    > they cannot represent themselves in court So a corporation can screw many people with legalese, pretending to be everyone's friend and no one gets blamed. It sounds like a convenient loophole to me. What the fuck is the CEO for then? Its comical because most people treat corporations as the CEO. A vs B is very different from naming names.

jorblumesea 7y ago

> now we have legitimate sleazeballs running the country and nobody believes it I don't think "no one believes it", just enough ignorant partisans or malicious people to enable it. Either they get their news from Fox News, Breitbart and other highly biased sources, or they know exactly what they're doing, and want to loot the country for gain.

chrisco255 7y ago
Partisanship cuts both ways and if you're too ignorant to see your own bias and through the narrative spin on your own side of the aisle, then you're like a fish that doesn't know its wet.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  If you honestly believe that Trump is in any way on the same "corruption level" as any previous sitting President you're delusional. I'm sorry that reality is getting in the way of the narrative, but it's fairly obvious that he's far worse than any side has elected within living memory. Maybe Nixon is a distant second?
  - skrowl 7y ago
    Partisanship bias confirmed! Obama had plenty of evidence of corruption, and that's just ONE past president. - Benghazi - Ordering IRS to target conservative groups - AP Phone Records Scandal - Obamacare / You can keep your doctor - NSA PRISM Surveillance System - ATF Fast and Furious - Rosengate - Holder committing perjury multiple times - VP Biden forcing Ukraine to fire that prosecutor... If you haven't heard of some or all of these, you need to bust out of your echo chamber / comfort zone and start looking at more diverse news sources.
    - okaram 7y ago
      Except that ... Benghazi was an error, no corruption ; the IRS did not target conservative groups, Obamacare did not mandate you change doctors in any way .. Normally I assume it is stupidity rather than malice, but now ...

ta999999171 7y ago

It's been continuously escalating, like a ratchet strap, and I don't understand how you see this as much different than what previous administrations have done. They just don't care about hiding shit anymore because nobody understands/does anything significant to revolt.