Defend Japan! For love!

Blog filler

Idiots vs markets

Its every so often that judges and lawmakers think they can do one better over the market. Sometimes they’re right. Often, not.

The EU courts decided that Microsoft violated their antitrust laws. How?

The court said Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, was unjustified in tying new applications to its Windows operating system in a way that harmed consumer choice.

Shockingly, despite Windows having more than 90% of the market, Windows Media Player has about 70% market share. Currently, users can (and many do) download RealPlayer, Quicktime+iTunes, Winamp, etc. Yes, they can’t uninstall Windows Media Player – but neither could you remove every part of Quicktime on Mac OS X.

Yes, Linux allows you to uninstall everything. Whoopee. Everything should be like Linux.

The Commission ordered the company to sell a version of Windows without the Windows Media Player application used for video and music, which few have bought, and to share information allowing rivals’ office servers to work smoothly with Windows.

Yet, remarkably, Windows still doesn’t dominate the server market. Even in enterprises. Is it difficult or impossible for enterprises to use, say, Linux server and Windows workstations? No. Sure, they can’t use new, snazzy server features of Windows, or bits like Exchange. But there are fully workable alternatives.

Red Hat’s profits this first quarter, for example, surged 17%. And their primary market is enterprise servers. Odd, because it is supposed to be stifled by Microsoft dearest.

Crap

This morning, I open Google Reader and saw this:

Meanwhile, elite schools are reporting that the number of economics majors is exploding. For the 2003–2004 academic year, the number of economics degrees granted by U.S. colleges and universities increased 40 percent from five years previously. Economics is seen by bright undergraduates as the path to a high-paying job on Wall Street or at a major corporation.

I picked econs on a balance of three important criteria – rarity, employability and randomness. Now I only have randomness (competition with loads of other econs graduates would hurt the employability bit).

Uhm, I have an excuse now!

I was writing how the new budget was a terrible joke (the new corporate tax structure, for example) when I got news from home. My grandmother’s funeral’s done, will be in sunny Kuala Lumpur until Wednesday morning.

Argh, waste of time

The title of course refers to be making this blog post and DAP bothering to prepare an shadow budget despite having no financial information to do so. One of the more interesting bits is that DAP wants to lower taxes on the rich but increase them with the lower-middle class.

Those taxi drivers, they’re so materialistic!

The CVLB said it won’t increase taxi metre rates despite the fact the low rates are forcing honest drivers out of the market, and present taxi drivers eke out a living by cheating. Why Because the quality of service didn’t increase.

Don’t they hire any economists in the government?