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Valve and five PC game publishers fined a total of €7.8m for breaching EU antitrust rules.
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Valve and five PC game publishers fined a total of €7.8m for breaching EU antitrust rules.
It's not exactly a secret round here that I'm no fan of the EU (and especially the commission) overall, BUT I've also often said it's not a black and white issue. This is an example of where the market power of the bloc has a very tangible benefit. Good on you, EC.
I think EU are fins in its original purpose ( a organization for trade )
What it have evolved into a am firmly against.
and i think that's been the issue with Brexit too. Once you strip away the ignorant "hate foreigners over here" element the key issue has been sovereignty of parliament and the political control. I haven't met a sane person who was against free trade and harmonised standards etc nor ability to work in other countries. The EU made it pretty clear though trade=free movement and the whole EU political harmonisation/centralisation package. It's a shame, but the blame lies on successive governments for not holding the referenda at the times the various treaties were signed. At that point there was possibly time and influence to help shape things in better directions. Equally the original concept always had political integration and harmonisation at its core IIRC so maybe it was just an inevitable clash. Anyway we are where we are and we can watch on the side lines how things go in the EU and how we fare outside of it, (not great is my prediction).Quote:
Originally Posted by Gentle Viking
Lols at the moaners in the news grumbling about things taking longer to arrive from Europe and with loads of duties and unpaid taxes they have to front up. HAHAHA what did you think was going to happen? It doesn't say which way they voted, but anyone who says they didn't see that coming is naive.
I'm sure it's not as bad as what Epic are doing, though.....!!
The silly thing is that a lot of those people thought that the EU was the cause of ANY foreigners over here and I bet that in the future when we have more immigration from outside the EU as a result of the reduced immigration from inside the EU they will complain all the more and wish instead they had people from the EU who are a lot more similar to us in ideals, history...and of course skin colour.Quote:
Originally Posted by ik9000
Equally silly was the whole thing of returning sovereignty but every time anybody tried to get it all done through a vote in parliament (which is actually what sovereignty in this country looks like) they complained that brexiteers were trying to derail it.
It's the idiocy of modern politics retreating to partisanship and tribalism. It is meant to be a house of reasoned debate, discussing legislation on its merits. What we have instead are poorly qualified, career politician, greasy-pole climbers playing childish debating games on stuff they often don't properly understand, and trying to grab soundbites, while kow-towing to a party whip, rather than doing a sensible job and voting according to their constituents' will, nor even their own moral conscience at times. It's madness and sadly not something that is easily fixed without some crazy reform that I'm not sure would even be practicable.Quote:
Originally Posted by ilh
It was always originally about trade, first and foremost. Don't make the mistake of confusing the EEC with what it morphed into.Quote:
Originally Posted by ik9000
Part of that problem stems from the parliament not having full control over the laws in this country, politicians have had an easy ride on many subjects by virtue of blaming the EU legislation as the easy way out of doing their job. Now they're all just a little bit more accountable. Baby steps.Quote:
Originally Posted by ik9000
I'm not, SFAIK. I think you're referring to the original ESCS and even that had supranational / political unification undertones, if not overtones. The EEC amplified those and the EU even more again. (Note we didn't join the ESCS, it had morphed into the EEC before we came on board)Quote:
Originally Posted by Iota
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/bo...n-unification/
yes, and they're already doing their best to sidestep any scrutiny/accountability it would seem. Unsurprisingly given the lies/distortions and half-truths that helped lead to Brexit to begin with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iota
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iota
I'm referring to the EEC (as quoted, which is when we joined), which was founded with the Treaty of Rome, it morphed with the Maastricht Treaty and the Treaty of Lisbon. The actual original intent of the ESCS was Franco-German co-operation to avoid potential further conflicts as far as I'm aware.Quote:
Originally Posted by ik9000
as the article I previously linked to:Quote:
Originally Posted by Iota
Quote:
On July 1, 1967, the Merger Treaty came into force, combining the institutions of the ECSC and EURATOM into that of the EEC. Collectively, they were known as the European Communities. The Communities still had independent personalities although they were increasingly integrated. Future treaties granted the Community new powers beyond simple economic matters, edging closer to the goal of political integration and a peaceful, united Europe.
This is exactly why I voted Brexit....ohh wait
I would think what Valve and co will do is increase the price in the listed countries to match the rest of Western Europe. Call my cynical, but I doubt they'll go the other way.
I agree it's not right, but it's what we've seen insurers do (men vs women rates) and other equivalents. Tbh in this instance it ought to be one price anyway, and as we see with GPUs idiots will pay if they want it bad enough, and if enough people are idiots? Well that be the price then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scryder
Valve have never been ones for following the law. They seem to think that their T's and C's are above the law. IIRC they also got fined for refusing refunds they were legally required to offer. I'm not sure what the position currently is on second hand software.
I'd argue that that isn't a good example to use.Quote:
Originally Posted by ik9000
Insurance is normally based on an extensive analysis of risk, as derived from (claim) statistics. And IF those statistics show that, by one characteristic or another, risk goes up, then it's eminently fair that so does the cost of the insurance.
That logic is why a 17-yr old is going to pay more (one hell of a lot more, probably 5 times as much) for a 1 litre Fiat than I would for a BMW M3 (that example being the one searded into my memory when I found out what a friend's son was paying for his Fiat) based primarily on age difference, and I guess by implication, my extra experience and lack of claims. So multiple factors went into that difference (probably including an alarm and tracking system that cost as much as his car, but then, so did my car stereo) but a prime one was age.
So it is with rates for men versus women. If it had been based on anecdotal and old-fashioned sterotypes, it would be different but it was based on sheer statistics. And they, of course, not only vary from company to company, but willvary over time, as claims history updates.
Many years ago, a guy I knew (a highly trained police driver) commented to me that when he saw careless driving, odds were it was a woman but when he saw reckless driving the odds were is was a man with a strong likelihood of him being under 30 or even under 25.
Part of the reason is that in those days (and it was a good number of years, like about 50, ago) it was relatively unusual for women to be driving at all, and for the older ones, even more unlikely that they had the same level of experience as their male counterparts. And, in those days, hence his rather crass (by today's standards) gender stereotype.
But current day insurance statistics are just that, and if they show that one gender is a higher risk than another, just as if living in area A is riskier than area B, or people with blonde hair are riskier than those with red hair, or people whose nme begins with A-M rather than N-Z, then I would expect insurance rates to reflect that.
Unfortunately for the insurance industry, they fell foul of the politically correct perspective of politicians who stuck their heads firmly where neither the view nor smell were very good 9as per usual) and decided that gender was a protected characteristic for discrimination laws. And where that was based on baseless bias (lot of B's in that phrase) of anecdotal preconceptions or outright discrimination, I can understand it. But that wasn't the case with insurance and, while statistics might have showed women to be a higher risk of careless 10 years ago, those same statistics could well show men are now. Or vice versa. But whatever, premiums based on statistical risk assessment isn't discrimination, no matter that laws claim it is.
/rant over. Phew.