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Posts by Swordmaker

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  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    04/06/2024 10:09:36 PM PDT · 86 of 86
    Swordmaker to annalex

    No problem, go ahead.

  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    04/03/2024 7:58:54 PM PDT · 84 of 86
    Swordmaker to annalex
    carbon-14 found on the weave may have been significantly affected by the weather, the conservation methods employed throughout the centuries, as well as the volatile carbon generated by the fire that damaged the shroud while in Savoy custody at Chambéry. As well as other similar theories including that candle smoke (rich in carbon dioxide) and the volatile carbon molecules produced during the two fires may have altered the carbon content of the cloth.

    • None of the researchers alleged that C14 testing was not viable in testing the Shroud. However, if a radiation event caused the creation of the image, it is possible the C14 level of the Carbon in the Shroud could be affected. That is an unknown.
    • This claim is a red herring falsification of the actual proof the 1988 carbon 14 testing was disproved. Those who have falsified the 1988 C14 testing scientifically never challenged it on those grounds. What was alleged and proven by THREE different modalities in Peer-reviewed and duplicated papers was that the SAMPLE taken from the Shroud broke protocols by ignoring the agreed protocols—which requirement eight sample taken from eight different areas of the Shroud—which at the last moment took ONE sample from the one area of the Shroud that the original STURP scientists all agreed should be avoided for any C14 testing because it reacted both chemically and physically different than all other portions of the Shroud. Error 1.

    • What WAS alleged and PROVED was that poorly considered Shroud Sample was a rewoven combination of more modern 16th Century dyed COTTON and original possible first Century pure FLAX LINEN fibers, which varied in mixture between the five subsamples of between ~40% Flax Linen to ~60% dyed Cotton to between ~60% Flax Linen to 40% dyed Cotton, depending on how close the subsample was to the selvage edge that particular subsample originally was located on the body of the Shroud before it was cut from the Sample and before the Sample was cut from the Shroud.

      Dr. Harry Gove, the inventor of the C14 method used to date small samples as used in the Shroud tests, when presented with these percentages of the known approxmately patching date when the cotton was applied in the French Invisible Reweaving Technique, was asked the potential date for what the date would be for the unknown Flax Linen carbon source would have to be to skew to the dates returned for the various mixes as the known diagonal border seen on the retained fifth subsample. Dr. Gove put those criteria into his calculator and he came to the conclusion that the original non-Cotton material had to have been dated to first century, plus or minus 100 years. He explained the amount of C14 in the newer contaminating material was skewing the date farther forward in time. Error 2

    • Statistically, not one of those subsample’s error ranges overlapped any other subsample’s error range. The sample’s within the main sample failed the Tau Squared test applied to ALL C-14 tests and should have raised a HUGE RED BANNER to any C14 tester, but they ignored it. This test is a test that shows if what is being testing is homogenous to what is intended to be tested. Yet, every single subsample was SO FAR OUT OF PASSING THE TAU SQUARE TEST they could NOT be said to be at all the same thing as the subsample that was right next to each other. That alone falsified the entire C14 test. Statisticians were crying foul within months based on that alone once they saw the raw data. The labs kept that data hidden for years and it required a law suit under Freedom of Information to get it released. That implies the people involved, including Ramsey knew they had a huge problem with their testing. Error 3

    • This was material that had been ADDED to the body of this portion of the shroud intentionally, and not environmentally added such as Carbon Monoxide, dust, insect dung (from insects eating some of the Flax which actually would have shared the same Carbon dating from when the Flax was grown and made little difference in dating), or other environmental contamination. The fact is that to skew the date enough into the 14th Century as the test seemed to show, the amount of contamination required would be approximately 50% to 60% to remaining original first century material… and that would be obvious under a light microscopic examination, and that was not seen, much less observed under the electron microscopic examination and electron spectrographic work done by STURP in 1978. Ergo, that much contamination could simply not be there. But Ramsey set himself up with a red herring, strawman in 2005 to deny the findings of very QUALIFIED scientists who were not alleging those things at all in their actual falsifications of the C14 test of 1988. He shot down things NOT alleged and claimed victory to protect his 1988 work. Error 4

    • Three different scientists (working from memory here) Pyrology Chemist Ray N. Rogers setting out to prove the fiber Reweaving theory wrong, found to his surprise working with sample threads taken from the extant fifth subsample, that that theory was correct when he found dyed cotton threads rewoven into the flax linen, and chemically tested the cotton, finding it was retted, alizarin dyed to match the naturally aged Linen, and cotton threads skillfully re-twisted into the extant threads of the Flax Linen. Every test showed there was an admixture of older and newer material, showing completely differing qualities which accounted for why the STURP scientists recommended avoiding that corner for further testing. Brown et al working with other threads taken from the same area had similar results when a thread bifurcated into two different threads, one, a Linen thread had a Z twist, and the other a Cotton thread, identified as a alizarin dyed, retted French Cotton, had an S twist and had been inter-wisted into the Linen thread. Microphotographs of the Main sample, taken by the Arizona Lab before it was destroyed in testing shows a distinct bifurcation line where the two different threads intermix. Error 5

    • ” These tests show no significant reaction – even though the sensitivity of the measurements is sufficient to detect contamination that would offset the age by less than a single year.”

      This is factually untrue. If we were to take the results of each of the subsamples tests by them selves, the results span a time period from 1140AD to 1390AD with not a single one of those subsample’s error bars overlapping any of the other subsample’s error bars. That is an impossibility (the Tau squared test) for an item that is supposed to be homogenous. To claim it would not skew the date by even one year is a complete lie, because the sampling data skews itself until the Oxford Lab, Ramsey, averaged the results. That is an impermissible thing to do with these data. Error 6

    • ” Furthermore you do realize that the pollen from Palestine theory has been widely discredited. Other studies and examinations have not been able to identify the pollen species with certainty.”

      Here we have another false claim. The identification of the pollen was done by one of the world’s top experts on Panynology… and done at the Source in Israel, Dr. Avinoam Danin, Professor of Botany, Department of Evolution, Systematics, and Ecology The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The claim it was discredited comes from non-Palynologists who have no expertise, mostly by a guy with a degree in Geology. I’ll go with the scientific publish papers over the popular press stories written by a dilettante skeptic. Error 7

    • ” One major study that examined the cloth has also concluded that the shroud's body image had been painted with a dilute pigment of red iron oxide. So yes there are paint pigment on the shroud.”

      Walter C. McCrone, a visible light microscopist is notorious for his claims back in 1979 for that claim. McCrone never examined the cloth. He had some microscopic slides and sticky tapes borrowed from STURP which he had to be sued to retrieve as he claimed they were “now his” in violation of his agreement. He refused to allow his work to be peer-reviewed and published his findings in his own publication, “The Microscopist,” of which he was publisher and editor. He also believed that everything could be done with a light microscope and even refused to allow his OWN in house electron microscopists to check his conclusions.

      However, his claim is the ONLY one who made that unsupported and unduplicated claim that was not supported by numerous other claims that found NO pigments on the shroud that rose to the level of visibility, and NO red ocher (the red iron Oxide), vermillion, and no egg albumin that McCrone claimed to have found in his 300 power microscope. At one point, McCrone claimed he had identified that the grind used in the Red Ochre was a specific type, but that fine grind had only been developed in the early 19th Century. McCrone ignored the work of ELECTRON Microscopists and Electron-microspectroscopy which is so accurate it could analyze the components of the vinyl baggies samples were placed in to the point the analysts could determine the specific manufacturers of those baggies. Those tests found NO pigments, no red ocher, no vermillion, egg albumin (McCrone claimed he could tell the exact dilution of the paint used!), and McCrone has been thoroughly debunked in all of the research applied to the Shroud in the past 55 years since he made his claims. McCrone was a laughing stock among Shroud researchers because he allowed his atheistic viewpoint to blind his scientific conclusions.

      We now know WHAT the image is composed of, and it is not any kind of paint, dye, or other applied pigment made by man. It is not a photograph. The image exists in a layer of the starch 100 times thinner than a human hair on top of the surface only of the Linen fibers and does not penetrate into the body of the linen fibers at all. It is made up of aged starch fractions that has apparently aged more than the linen around it. Why? We have no idea. There are no DUSTINGS, no red ocher dusts, no dyes, no photo fixings, no chemical residues different from any other linen fibers… just the starch is aged more. Error 8

      To see what REAL science about the Shroud looks like, take a look at this overview is like from Shroud.com, a site run by a practicing Jew.

      An overview of current research on the Shroud as of 2004, by Ray N. Rogers

  • Innovative New High-Boost DC Power Converter Could Be A Game-Changer For Electronics

    04/01/2024 8:30:22 PM PDT · 12 of 12
    Swordmaker to Yo-Yo
    Back in the 1970s I subscribed to Electronics Magazine and they always had an April Fools article in the April issue.

    I recall an article about a revolutionary data iCompresson technique developed by Apple programmers that could store 10 megabytes of data in just one bit that was going to change computing forever. The method required a unique iDecompression key for each bit that was a mere 12 megabytes in size. Apple’s engineers were working on reducing the size of the iDecompression key they thought they’d have any day or decade.

  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/31/2024 7:07:17 PM PDT · 79 of 86
    Swordmaker to 21twelve
    Thank you for the size and the image. I just measured my bandana at 28” on the diagonal and it would work to keep my jaw shut. (Don’t tell my wife!)

    ROTFLMAO!

  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/30/2024 11:17:52 PM PDT · 76 of 86
    Swordmaker to 21twelve
    When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

    The cloth "around" his face in the original Greek actually is better translated as "encircling" or "about" his face. This describes a cloth twirled like a kerchief and used under the chin, around the head, tied above the crown of the head to keep the jaw closed.

    In modern burials, morticians sew the gums of the upper mandible to the lower mandible behind the teeth to achieve this same result. It would not be a good look for the deceased’s mouth to sudden drop open and gape during an open coffin viewing.

    In Jesus’ tomb, it was noted that the sudarium, literally a sweat cloth that would be rolled and then tied around the forehead to keep sweat from dripping into a worker’s eyes, was found rolled up, separate from the rest of the grave clothes. This was of significance to the New Testament chroniclers because to them it indicated that Jesus walked away, reached up, pulled off that jaw closure binding from about his face and dropped it near the entrance of the tomb on his way out. It was an important detail for them. They wrote it down after passing it down orally for almost two centuries.

    Some translation of the Bible call it a napkin… trying to relate the size of the cloth to cloths people knew in their daily lives. A napkin in that day and age was an apron, a covering used in a kitchen to protect clothing, fairly large, as was the sudarium at 33"X 21" napkin would be an excellent choice of words in olde English in the 15th Century to select describing an apron cloth of that size. Note that the distance across the diagonal of the cloth is 39" and would be more than enough to provide the binding for keeping the jaw closed in death.

    The Sudarium, the one supposedly found in the tomb, still exists today and is on display in the Cámara Santa of the Cathedral of San Salvador, Oviedo, Spain. It has been there since 600AD.


    The Sudarium of Oviedo
  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/30/2024 9:33:46 PM PDT · 74 of 86
    Swordmaker to grey_whiskers
    As I recall, the carbon dating results of each sample (each one given to a separate lab) were “C-14 apparent age, X years old +/- Y uncertainty” ... but the three labs’ results were outside of each others’ error bars.

    You get an A+ for this test and course work, grey_whiskers.

  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/30/2024 9:30:04 PM PDT · 73 of 86
    Swordmaker to 21twelve
    That famous guy Charles Spurgeon wrote a very good article (sermon?) about it - and gave those ideas. But he thought that Lazarus was bound like you said, according to custom, and hopped out like in a gunny sack race.

    If a body is buried in the manner as prescribed in the Mishnah, Lazarus would simply untie his leg bindings. They aren’t tight or even snug. Pull off the facecloth binding his mouth closed, and wiggle his wrists free; again, they aren’t meant to imprison a living, struggling person, just to keep a dead body from going slack and flopping with the effects of decomposition when rigor mortis passes, and the flesh no longer holds the bones in place.

  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/30/2024 2:48:29 AM PDT · 60 of 86
    Swordmaker to Maringa
    The issue I have with the shroud is that it represents a 2D image as if the shroud would be completely flat, like photo paper…if the shroud were had been wrapped in a 3D body, when you unwrapped it and layer it flat, the 3D image would begin to warp, spread, widen as the shroud is flattened. You would tell that the image is still a person, but it would look more disfigured.

    That is one of the mysteries of the image creation modalities. It was not light, as it attenuated very quickly. It also did not penetrate the linen. Its effect is there down to the ability of our instruments to detect it, though. The intensity of the image is proportional to the distance of the body to the surface of the linen fibers. . . And there is no image affect under the bloodstained areas. So, blood stain first, image effect next.

    There are no image affects inside the fibers are inside fiber bundle of threads, however, in some most intense areas, a shadow image does appear on the obverse side of the Shroud where the body touched the cloth, but only on the exterior surface. Between the touching area and the obverse, where both areas show discoloration, in between fibers and threads do not. It is as if the causal affect discolored the entry surface, passed through with zero visible or detectable effect, and exited but then discolored the surface on exit. This implies an electrical charge.

    However, as you mentioned, the other oddity is the pure detailed focus. This works only in the vertical direction with minimal angular deviation from the starting point, implying a maser or laser like collimating beam. What’s more, this has a positive and negative directional component in the Y axis, equally collimated and acting similar affect and effect.

    This implies the potential for a localized Birkeland current and plasma phenomena and the intense magnetic fields.

  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/30/2024 2:27:56 AM PDT · 59 of 86
    Swordmaker to ArtDodger
    Perhaps the face belongs to the shroud’s possible creator, the greatest human trickster of the ages. Leonardo Davinci. Master of anatomy. Of course, I would wish for the shroud to be the real thing, but there is Occam’s Razor to contend with.

    Neat trick. The Shroud was first put on Display around 1350AD in Lirey France. There are credible artistic images of it in the twelfth century. Verbal descriptions in 944AD. Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452 AD, more than 100 years after the first modern appearance of the Shroud in France. An obsessive note taker, and one who documented all of his discoveries and inventions, there is not a single mention of the Shroud in Leonardo’s workbooks, or the Time Machine he used to go back and create it, or all the time he spent researching the facts he’d need to know to include on the Shroud to fool scientist with sophisticated instruments 500 years later. Strange, that.

  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/30/2024 2:10:55 AM PDT · 57 of 86
    Swordmaker to Adder
    They are more powerful than the reasons to doubt.

    Especially as several of the reasons not to believe are false statements. For example:

    1 In 1988, an international team of scientific experts performed radiocarbon dating on snippets of the Shroud and concluded it was manufactured between 1260 and 1390. They said the Shroud was nothing more than a medieval hoax.

    Science is done by doing procedures with proper protocols. The 1988 Carbon 14 test had agreed protocols requiring a minimum of eight exemplar samples taken from a minimum of six locations from the main body of the Shroud with the only limitation that no samples be taken from areas where image would be affected. In addition, eight controls samples were to be provided of known provenance to be simultaneously tested as a blind.

    At the very last moment, these protocols were tossed out unilaterally, and a single master sample was taken from the Shroud from a corner which the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project scientists had unanimously agreed should be avoided in any Carbon 14 testing due to it not testing homogeneity like any other portion of the Shroud in chemical, physical, or ultraviolet light photography and was suspected to have been patched. That single sample was cut into five sub-samples, four of which were distributed to three C14 testing laboratories instead of the original protocol six.

    The labs were supposed to get the samples, both Shroud and Controls, rendered down to fibers, but instead received woven swatches easily identified as to source, as only the Shroud was known to be three over one twill. The other control samples were simple linen one over one, thus breaking the blind test.

    The Tau Square test on each of the sub-samples should have raised a huge 🚩 flag on the Shroud sample testing as none of these sub sample returned dating that was within the ranges of reliability of the statistical testing… by a long stretch…. Despite these sub-samples being cut from the small piece adjacent to each other. This Tau Squared test is an indicator that the items tested are homogeneous to each other. Yet in the space of four centimeters, the ages varied by almost 270 years! The managing lab at Oxford ignored that and impermissibly averaged the data and dates. The sub-samples date as old as 1160AD +/- 20 years, while the youngest was 1390AD +/-20 ears. None of the tested sub-sample data ranges overlapped any other. Statistically, by the Tau Squared test, there was zero chance that these sub-samples were homogeneous enough from the same thing to date each other, much less equivalent or homogeneous to date the Shroud which they were supposed to be representing.

    By 2005, the 1988 Carbon 14 testing had been falsified by four different means, including the examination of the retained fifth sub-sample which proved to be a rewoven melange of original flaxen Linen of unknown dating, and a larger portion of dyed, Cotten from a French cotton source, skillfully interwoven into the original weave. The cotton threads had an ‘S’ spin while the original Flax was a ‘Z’ spin. The cotton had been retted with a substance used primarily in France, developed around the twelfth century, and dyed to match the tonality of the aged linen with an alizarin dye.

    Ergo, while the C-14 laboratories did excellent technical work, they dated a hopelessly contaminated sample, improperly sampled, thus falsifying all conclusions about the age of the Shroud.

    3 The conclusion of a 2018 study in blood pattern analysis was not supportive of the claimed authenticity of the Shroud. The study said the apparent blood splatters could only have been produced by someone moving to adopt different poses, rather than lying still.

    From the study: "Borrini said some of the results showed that the man whose image is imprinted on the shroud would have had to be standing vertical, rather than horizontal, for the blood flow patterns to make sense." The author seems to forget that Jesus spent a long time vertices on the Cross, then horizontally on the ground as the nails were removed, then in multiple bent and folded positions as He was carried to the Tomb.

    Over 124 years, numerous experiments with cadavers, human volunteers, and mannequins have been performed by numerous other forensic pathologists far more qualified than Borrini, and they have found the blood flow is consistent with human blood laden with bilirubin caused by extreme trauma which prevents it from clotting and increases its fluidity, all ignored by Borrini. This is not the first article in which Borrini has attempted with questionable science to deny authenticity. He’s been around for awhile. One outlying study in a non peer-reviewed publication from 8 years ago, and no support since, is a lack of a reason for it to be given weight.

    4 The Turin Commission concluded in 1979 that stains on the garment are likely pigments, not blood.

    This is just completely false on its face. The STURP scientists determined that while there was a scattering of pigments on the Shroud, they were not enough to be visible and were likely environmental and due to other Artist pressing shroud copies up to the genuine Shroud to attempt to impart some contact imprimatur. The blood had been determined by the blood specialists on the team to seem to be likely real blood and reacted with human blood antigens. They found no pigments in the blood stained area.

    One microscopist, not affiliated with STURP, was granted access to sticky tape slide samples from the Shroud. Walter C. McCrone claimed to have found pigment everywhere he looked on the sticky tapes, identifying red ocher, vermilion, and other Artist’s pigments used in the 14th century. He declared the Shroud a fake, a painting, and the blood, mere paint. He refused his own staff electron microscope department permission to check his work, declaring everything can be seen by his expert eye, only.

    However, prior to his claims, electron microscopy including electron micro-spectroscopy had been done on the Shroud, using a technique that could determine the material of the inert baggies the samples were placed before testing it is so sensitive. These tests found nothing that McCrone claimed to have seen in his 300 power light microscope. What the did find were the old, ancient descendent compounds of hemoglobin, bilirubin, iron, the components of blood. . . Meanwhile, McCrone was claiming he could tell the dilution of the egg albumin used in the pigment. No chemist could figure out any way a microscopic image could possible tell the exact dilution of any remnant residue. McCrone later went on to claim the red ocher he found on the Shroud was a specific grind, but that grind was only developed in the early 1800s.

    So much for this claim.

    5 John’s Gospel records “strips of linen” (John 20:5) being used to wrap the body of Jesus, not a single burial sheet. (Although other versions translate this as linen ‘clothes’, ‘wrappings’ or ‘cloths’.)

    Sigh… this old chestnut. This has far more to do with translation of Greek into English and choices made by the translators. One must dig into (excuse the pun) first century Jewish burial practices, discount long standing conflation of Egyptian burials and mummies with anything at all to do with Jewish burials, and burials clothes, and cloths, and bindings. All of the Jewish burial ritual and customs were covered in the Mishnah, and the idea that bodies were bound up in strips of bandages is not there. A shroud was used, the jaw was bound clasped, and the arms and legs were bound to keep the body from flopping akimbo. Shards of pottery or a weight was put on the eyelids to keep the eyes closed. All else is about cleansing and ritually anointing the body, and packing herbs and aromatic plants around it. It had to be interred by sundown. Simple, not elaborate. In the first century, the Greek habit of using small coins on the eyes was adopted. That’s not in the Mishnah, but numerous skulls in a first century Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem were found with such coins in the eye sockets.

    After a year, the family would return, collect the bones, and put them into a central ossuary bone pit in the tomb where all of the ancestor’s bones were collected, or, alternately, in a ossuary bone box. This allowed the tomb’s shelves to be reused.

    About 30 years ago, in that Jerusalem cemetery, in a section that was destroyed in a first century earthquake, an I disturbed grave of a man was discovered still in the shelf niche. With him were the remnants of a full shroud, binding cloths, etc. this demonstrates the falsity of the strips argument.

    I’m not going to go into the various meanings of “othonia" and "sindon" and the other Greek words used for the grave cloths. I’ve done it before on FreeRepublic in detail.

  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/30/2024 12:23:39 AM PDT · 56 of 86
    Swordmaker to SkyDancer; doodlebug
    >ping< I attended a three day seminar on the Shroud and it’s as authentic as possible; the dating was taken from a 13th. century repair job and not from the actual shroud itself.

    While essentially correct, one slight correction. The repaired areas the flawed 1988 carbon dating Shroud sample was extracted was a 16th Century repair. This repair used a technique developed during the fourteenth Century called "French Invisible Reweaving" which was used to repair moth eaten, torn or otherwise worn tapestries or arrases, replicating the missing cloth and making the cloth appear to match the area surrounding where the damage had been by expertly dying thread, skillful re-intertwining broken ends of new to old threads, and matching weave patterns.


    Exemplar of modern French Invisible Reweaving
  • Is this the face of Jesus? (Shroud of Turin)

    03/29/2024 11:53:19 PM PDT · 55 of 86
    Swordmaker to DoodleBob; Alamo-Girl; albee; alrea; Ambrosia; AnalogReigns; AnAmericanMother; Angelas; AniGrrl; ...
    is this the face of Jesus?—PING!


    SHROUD OF TURIN PING!

    If you want on or off the Shroud of Turin Ping List, Freepmail me.

  • What would happen to Washington, DC if attacked by a nuclear bomb?

    03/23/2024 11:05:34 PM PDT · 124 of 153
    Swordmaker to ChicagoConservative27

    Hmmmm, I’d miss the Smithsonian Institution. But a host of Deep State apparatchiks …. Ah, not so much.

  • Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit

    03/21/2024 12:33:52 PM PDT · 103 of 133
    Swordmaker to posterchild
    I moved to mac long before there were ‘apps.’ I went through MS-DOS, DR-DOS, early linux versions, minix, trying to get Solaris to run on a 386 processor, etc. When Mac came out with os x (2001?), which was based on BSD, i switched. FInally a solid Unix/posix system that also did all the consumer stuff well (browser, audio, graphics, word processing). I have an iphone now just because it works well with my mac.

    …because it works well with my Mac.” Posterchild, if you heard Merrick Garland, that is one of the very things the DOJ is accusing Apple of being in criminal violation of the anti-trust anti-competitive actions that are the basis of this suit. Apple Products work well together with other Apple products to the exclusion of other non-Apple products and that is a criminal act. Apple should make the iPhone and its other products work equally well with every other product, regardless of how safe and secure they might be. Insane leftist thinking.

  • Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit

    03/21/2024 12:27:16 PM PDT · 102 of 133
    Swordmaker to PrairieLady2
    Those are the kinds of issues that need correction.

    Why? It’s a free market. Buy a product that offers those features you want, do not buy a product that does not have them. Do not buy one that doesn’t and then complain when it doesn’t and expect all other consumers to have to kowtow to your desires, accepting a less secure device, merely so YOU can have an open, freely mutable device.

  • Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit

    03/21/2024 11:50:31 AM PDT · 97 of 133
    Swordmaker to DoodleBob
    Where in the Constitution is the Executive Branch - or any Branch - explicitly empower to “bust trusts?”

    The SCOTUS found it in two 1937 cases that the Preamble’s “Promote the General Welfare phrase” allowed the Constitution with Congressional Acts with the Presidential approval to do almost anything that “promoted the general welfare.” Once that horse was out of the stall and escaped the barn, everything “promoted the general welfare” including anything an imaginative leftist could come up with that benefited anyone any where or the government or the state, or an imaginary benefit could be justified. It first of all found that Social Security taxes and payments promoted the general welfare.

  • Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit

    03/21/2024 11:41:13 AM PDT · 95 of 133
    Swordmaker to xp38
    Oh and that is the US market. In China Apple ain’t so hot and it varies no doubt from country to country.

    Actually, Apple is the top dog in the China scramble for market share in the last market share statistics with 17.3% among literally hundreds of makers in the China market. Admittedly that is lower than 2022’s 20.2% top position, but the market overall is down 5% year over year.

    IMG-3552

  • Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit

    03/21/2024 11:25:33 AM PDT · 89 of 133
    Swordmaker to Vendome
    No one is making you purchase a $1000-$1500 phone....

    A brand new iPhone SE from Apple starts at $429. So even that was a mis-representation from Merrick Garland when he claimed that Apple IPhones cost $1600 and that Apple forces people to make their relatives buy an iPhone so they can send them anything but a grainy video. That, also, is false.

  • Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit

    03/21/2024 11:11:52 AM PDT · 86 of 133
    Swordmaker to xp38
    Last quarter smarphone market share for Apple was 61%. Next was Samsung at 22%. The rest were Google Motoroloa and others in the single digits. Apple is dominant but I wouldn’t say it’s a monopoly. If they get into the 90 percent plus range then maybe.

    That 61% market share was hard won but only in the United States and only recently. In the world market share, Apple has not topped 25%. So the facts do not support a finding of monopoly which has traditionally been a 90% or higher market share. The DOJ though found that Apple had a monopoly before in ebooks before they even STARTED selling them when Amazon which had a 90% plus market share in ebooks brought a complaint against Apple for daring to open a new ebook store with an option for authors to set a range of prices for their work when Amazon was setting prices at $9.99. Apple wanted AUTHORS to choose prices at either $9.99, $14.99, or at $29.99 for more complex works in the ebook market. Amazon accused Apple of PRICE FIXING and a Federal Judge found Apple guilty of AntoTrust and imposed a fine and put a monitor on the entire Apple business to prevent anti-competitive practices at the behest of the ACTUAL monopoly business. That judge ruled, when Apple claimed that Amazon was the true monopolistic price setter, that Amazon was not. Remember, this suit was brought before Apple sold a single ebook. The lawsuit continued while Apple had less than a 10% market share. So reality does not matter to these Leftist Judges.

  • Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit

    03/21/2024 10:57:53 AM PDT · 82 of 133
    Swordmaker to Theo
    And I recognize that Apple steals a lot of ideas from Android phones.

    And Vice Verse… starting with the original Android phones back in 2010.

    Nor is Apple by any stretch a monopoly. Here is the data as of the fourth quarter 2023, the latest currently available, on iPhone sales worldwide which proves that:

    IMG-3550

    iOS has not reached 25% of the world market, but Merrick Garland and the DOJ has decided that less than one quarter share is a “monopoly”!