Domain: bizjournals.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to bizjournals.com.
Comments · 527
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Re:FLYOVER
I find it odd that you would bring up pets.com from 14 years ago. Is there no better example of the waning importance of Silicon Valley?
This just underscores my point of how folks have been incorrectly predicting the decline and fall of SV for a long time now. Going out on a limb, IMHO, a lot of this is rooted in a desire to see SV taken down a notch. In other words, I believe such negative assessments are based more on emotion than any real evidence the bay area is slowing down. The failure of pets.com in 2000 might make for a sensational story, but it's unwise to write off the bay area as "a little bubble", "too confident" or "arrogant". To do so in 2000 would have meant missing out on things like the transformation of Apple, the ascension of Google, the success of startups like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
I've lived in both Austin as well as SV. Both places are great, but from a tech perspective, IMHO Austin doesn't hold a candle to SV. I just now googled some stats on VC funding in Austin vs SV. In Austin it surged from 81.7 million in Q1 2013 to 213.8 in Q1 2014. Not bad.
http://www.bizjournals.com/aus...
But this compares with 2.2 billion invested in Silicon Valley in Q1 2013 and 4.7 billion in Q1 2014 (or about 1/2 of the world-wide venture capital investments).
http://www.mercurynews.com/bus...
For good measure, I looked up VC stats for the entire state of Texas. In all of 2013, Texas got 1.3 billion. 50% went to Austin startups. This compares with 12.3 billion for Silicon Valley for 2013.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap...
There's a reason VCs choose to invest their money in bay area startups. They believe in the place...its past, present and future...and are willing to bet substantial amounts of money on it.
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GDP growth != more jobs created
The great recession of 2009 became the justification of many companies to lay off workers despite healthy revenue and increasing profits. While this may contribute to the GDP, it doesn't do much for employment.
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Re:The Count
Apparently you can already buy printers with Bitcoin: http://www.bizjournals.com/bos... Other sources: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoi...
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Re:All because they don't want to pay people
1. Salaries in technology are rising at a rate of 7.5% or so per year. That's not really fast enough to stimulate the supply of people they need, but it's indicating that they can't get what they want for the price they were originally offering.
2. According to the BLS, they're projecting a 22% increase in demand for developers. The supply has gone up, but not by that much.
3. Unemployment among techies is about 4.4%, half the national average, and as low as 0.5% for DBAs. So very few who bill themselves as techies are out in the cold. -
Re:Really missed his chance
I'm curious why you seem to have a problem with them running rsync, while you don't seem to have the same (and more) problems with the FTP server.
Why do you think rsync would be a problem?
FTP obviously has its faults, but it is a known, standard way of sharing files with other companies. It's highly likely that a company pushing files to the BBC will send them via FTP, and vice versa (The BBC did a deal with Signiant to handle some external file transfers, but obviously sharing material with some companies will still need an open and common standard like FTP)
I'd be very surprised that any company that is happy to use rsync would be unable to use rsync over ssh. I'm unsure why you'd want to use rsync to transfer a couple of files either, rather than scp.
It's most likely that rsync is used in this case to keep multiple servers synced from a master, in which case blocking access at a firewall level should be happening.
The fewer services exposed to the public, the fewer lines of attack.
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Re:Tesla is a danger
Sure thing El-ron.
Texas law dictates that only franchised dealers can sell cars in the state.
Tesla, of course, has no dealers. It markets its cars through company-owned stores or galleries (think: Apple Store) and buyers complete the sale online through company headquarters in California."
The current iron-clad Texas franchise law is the result of years of lobbying by the powerful and well-connected Texas Auto Dealers Association (TADA), founded and run for 30 years by legendary Texas lobbyist Gene Fondren.
In 2012, dealership interests "invested" more than $2.5 million in the Texas legislative elections, according to the the watchdog group Texans For Public Justice. Sixty percent of Texas lawmakers received checks from TADA in 2012.
Two elderly billionaire car dealers, Tom Friedkin and Red McCombs--the latter is also chairman of the former Blackwater security firm--kicked in more than a million dollars between them.
Tesla, meanwhile, made no direct political contributions.
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2013/11/06/tesla-left-out-of-texas-new-electric.html
Texas will start offering $2,500 rebates for electric or compressed natural gas vehicles, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Except, of course, if you're buying a Tesla.
Tesla Motors Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA), based in Palo Alto, Calif., makes high performance, 100-percent electric cars. Because the cars are sold directly from the manufacturer, rather than from a franchise dealership, they don't qualify for the Texas incentive.It's the latest blow in the Texas versus Tesla war thatâ(TM)s been brewing ever since the car-maker charged onto the scene with its two-seat roadster in 2008.
Dealerships lobbied hard during the legislative session to prevent Tesla-friendly laws from passing and were successful. The state's franchise laws limit what Tesla salespeople and technicians can do in the state, leaving it up to Tesla owners themselves to offer test drives and spread the word about the car.
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Re:Allow me to burn som Karma by saying
Actually, California's debt load is $132 billion, about a quarter of your $400 billion. Still too high and it will take some time to pay down. But at least it's going down.
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Re:Watch out
Don't know what you mean by stating "Too bad the link is dead." It works for me.
Here's the link from Wikipedia's source:
http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2012/05/29/spacex-success-brings-pittsburgh-space.html -
Re:When would Space-X launch a moon expedition ?
When will Space-X do that ?
I mean, let's start up some REAL COMPETITION !
If you believe this news report, in either 2015 or 2016, as a part of the Google Lunar X-Prize competition.
The launch was earlier listed on the SpaceX manifest, although it currently isn't on that page. Plenty of other interesting flights are on the books though.
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Re:Cold warriors
Don't tell the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA and the Department of Defense that. Of course the NSA is part of that too. They have programs and payrolls to maintain. Just think of Terrorism as the new Beltway jobs program. Once the cold war ended, how else were we going to keep the DC economy going?
Don't believe me? Just look at home real estate prices over the past few years. While most of the nation suffered home price stagnation or depreciation, there was
one area of the country that didn't suffer nearly as bad as the rest of the nation, DC. While there was a net decline in overall Federal Employment all those other programs and deficit spending the Feds have put into place, Obamacare etc. have netted a housing price boom. Up 24% since 2009 while the rest of the nation is down 21% from 2007 highs. All those bureaucrats, NSA snoopers and lobbyists have to have a place to live.If the god of Plate Tectonics could see fit to put DC over a hot spot I wouldn't shed a tear. Especially K Street North...
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New York State of Health AWOL
tried the Sherpa link...got nothing for my state. But then, NY doesn't need to be shown how to steer folks to health insurance options. Newyorkstateofhealth has been delivering the questionable ACA goods for a while now.
Why would a guy with no insurance call it "questionable"? It used to offer 170$/mo plans with 1200$ deductibles to guys in my category but now that any strung out hooker or dipsomaniac can be assured medical care, the cost is 300/month and the deductible is 3000$.
Where is the incentive to be personally responsible for your own health and its costs in a scheme like this? -
Kittens don't scale
In clearly related news, "kittens, it was quickly discovered, do not scale" as Kittens-on-demand, $20 for 15 minutes of snuggling, melts down.
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State Sites Also
The Washington State's exchange website, for which the state paid $54 million to Delloite LLC, hasn't been a rollicking success either. I'm trying to wrap my head around why it costs $54 million to set up a pretty straight-forward website (costs evidently do not include hardware, just people/time/software). I believe that cost was over half what the state received from the feds to set up the exchange. Details here (such as they are).
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Re:Another story about Bitcoin and illegal acts
When will we see a postive story about Bitcoin's usefulness? Oh right, there really ISN'T any news on that front.
There is news on that front; it just doesn't get reported here as often.
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Re:Oracle gains speed
Well, they can always cheat to go faster...
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Re:Wow
America's cup is watched by millions....barely.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2013/08/21/tiny-audience-for-americas-cup-tv.htmlThe semifinals are averaging 50-80,000 viewers.
The races just off San Francisco with the most effete/trendy/hipster crowd imaginable, averaged 800-900,000.This is somewhere around the ratings received by NBC's "Last Call" at midnight.
This is a marginal sport irrelevant to 99.9999% of the population, and in which the only participants are giant conglomerates or kajillionaires. Granted, formula one racing, etc are likewise only for the big-money teams, but pretty much everyone drives. Sailing as a regular activity is already a marginal sport performed only by the tiniest rind of enthusiasts, that 'pro sailing' is like the margin of the margin of the margin. I don't doubt that it takes tremendous ability, intelligence, and teamwork. It's just that the bulk of us can neither see it nor appreciate it if we could.
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Re:OP or tune it ee
pp. 13-14 in mine.
That aside, the points are well-made, and well taken. Thanks. It's easy to get mechanical, less easy to keep in mind that a good mechanic does his work just so.
On the foreign worker thing, Wolfram Alpha gives total IT jobs in U.S. at around 4 million - from CIS research scientists to "miscellaneous computer specialists." David North, at Center for Immigration Studies, gives an estimate (2009) in a small report from 2011 of ~650,000 H1B workers in the country. Link, http://www.cis.org/estimating-h1b-population-2-11. The reason for estimates is that apparently no one is keeping a running tally; it's a short report and worth the reading. I found http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2013/04/19/federal-plan-could-double-h1b-visas.html?page=all worthwhile also.
Of the 10,000/day retiring, how many work in IT? The cited article from the summary doesn't say. Without good numbers to work with.... it's another fun and interesting water-cooler conversation.
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Re:The car Mitt Romney derided...
I'll have to look that up, but are you sure he wasn't referring to the failure that was Fisker Karma. Cause that was one of the worst wastes of money.
Okay, guess he did. But Romney was a dweeb. Even Republicans didn't want to vote for him.
http://upstart.bizjournals.com/money/loot/2012/11/02/elon-musk-to-romney-no-cash-for-you.html(And no, the Republicans did NOT elect Romney, he was selected by the party. And many manipulations were used. By the time many if not most Republicans had a chance to vote in the primary. He had already been given the nomination by default. It's manipulation of the timed primaries (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada. A few other low populace states are used to set the party agenda of the Republicans and Democrats. We are then handed two selected politicians, we can hypothetically refer to them as Twiddly Dee and Twiddly Dumb, each election cycle. And lauded that we voted. But the truth is, there is little difference from elections in the U.S. today, and those we criticized of the Soviet Union and their one party system.
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was predicted from Moses lake CF factory
Note BMW opened a few years back a factory in Moses lake WA to mass produce CF parts.
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Re:Again, it's not 3D. It's stereovision.Actually it is loosely defined in the audioholics link as "potentially hours every day." I quickly Googled it and multiple legitimate sources said that an occasional 3D experience is not harmful.
My favorite is this one: http://www.geteyesmart.org/eyesmart/living/3-d-movies-glasses.cfm
Here's another: http://www.allaboutvision.com/parents/children-computer-vision-syndrome.htm#3dnews
And another: http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2011/05/26/study-parents-think-3d-hurts-kids-eyes.html
Thank you for inspiring me to research a little more than I had. Like you, I parent cautiously, but 3D once in a while doesn't make a blip on my threat radar. Happy parenting!
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Re:Oh, look! Just what the economy needs!
5 painful health-care lessons from Massachusetts - June 16, 2010
Massachusetts struggles to rein in health care costs - Apr 30, 2011It’s a serious problem: Massachusetts boasts that 98 percent of its residents have health insurance, but the state is stricken by the highest health care costs in the country.
Danger ahead? Massachusetts health costs are rising – fast. - February 9, 2013
Massachusetts health care costs out of control as ObamaCare provision hits small business - Mar 4, 2013 -
Re:Was I the only one?
As a long time patron of Tiger Direct I understand what you are referring to regarding their marketing but I have never had anything but excellent experiences with their web store. ( The more recent retail outlets are a different matter.) I have had a few defective parts over the years and I HATE dealing with returns but TD always made it as painless as possible for me and never questioned the return. I'd say all of the systems I have built have included at least one part sourced through them. It doesn't speak to Fiorentino's actions but more to the company overall. Their rebate scandal a few years back was unfortunate (I don't know any company who's rebate program isn't designed to make it hard to redeem) but I will continue to do business with them as long as they continue to be a good source. That doesn't mean I don't check Newegg and Monoprice before I proceed to checkout.
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Re:Insightful video
Astroturfer or ignorant?
Microsoft tracks you everywhere for contextual ads as well. And they value your privacy far less than Microsoft.
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/microsofts-new-outlook-mail-welcome-hotmail-replacement-917473
https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013
Microsoft has been caught selling DATA to advertisers, which is the worst offense.
http://rt.com/usa/yahoo-microsoft-campaign-political-862/
And they have a patent specifically covering selling your personal private data to advertisers, allowing advertisers to bid on that data.
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Re:self representation = not smart
Written by lawyers for lawyers:
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2004/02/09/focus9.html?page=all
The important thing to take away from this is that YOU need a lawyer if it ever comes down to it, being a sheeple and all.
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Re:This is news?
http://rt.com/usa/yahoo-microsoft-campaign-political-862/
Microsoft has been caught selling DATA to advertisers.
And they have a patent specifically covering selling your personal private data to advertisers, allowing advertisers to bid on that data.
It is only bad business if the media calls them out on it, which hasn't really happened. That is why Microsoft spends a small fortune on astroturfing, shifting the focus on Google for privacy concerns.
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Blame the OEMs ..
"Microsoft made a bet on PC hardware and capabilities, and the PC industry pulled the rug out from under it
.. Microsoft .. didn't trust OEMs to deliver on the promises the silicon vendors were making"
This is retrospective arse-covering by some Microsoft apologist. Microsoft got the OEMs to put a 'Vista Capable' label on the PCs and when people tried to upgrade - Vista couldn't run ... ref ref -
Re:As someone who employs programmers...
If "programmers" were overpaid and arrogant wouldn't a large group of people want to go out and become programmers because it is easy and highly paid. That hasn't been the case for the last 10 years and that is why salaries are going up. The market is now just adjusting itself,people are realizing Computer Science could be a good field to be in. If salaries do not stay that way, then people are going into other fields. http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/print-edition/2012/01/27/number-of-computer-grads-on-rise-after.html?page=all Software development is a profession, it takes years of education and experience to do an effective job, and should demand a higher salary.
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They've already selected their "pot czar"
This wasn't mentioned in the article or the summary, but Washington State has apparently already completed the selection process. The contract was awarded to BOTEC Analysis, a consulting firm run by drug policy analyst and blogger Mark Kleiman. You can watch a CNN interview with Kleiman here. Kleiman's blog posts on drug policy are archived here.
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Harris Corp CEO
My, my, my........
"Harris Corp. President and CEO William M. Brown was appointed to President Barack Obama's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee on Tuesday, Florida Today reports."
http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/morning_call/2012/11/harris-corp-ceo-appointed-to-obama.html
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Re:Goodbye USPS
So explain the Denny's across the street from NYC city hall? http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2013/03/27/dennys-plan-to-open-manhattan.html If they can get in so can walmart, Personally, I think its a brilliant idea.
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Re: I wonder who's legally liable?
Do you know the FAA has no legal authority over what happens below 400' above private land far enough away from an airport.
You should really let the FAA know that. Four days ago they grounded an aerial photographer in Minnesota for using an r/c aircraft commercially.
FAA grounds Twin Cities aerial photographer over use of dronesIt makes me think that hiring an aerial photographer would be like hiring an escort. Someone would find a photographer with whom they can share common interests, maybe have them over for dinner, become friends, and then maybe if the photographer really likes you, he'll leave you with a parting gift of some photography...
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Re: I wonder who's legally liable?
Do you know the FAA has no legal authority over what happens below 400' above private land far enough away from an airport.
You should really let the FAA know that. Four days ago they grounded an aerial photographer in Minnesota for using an r/c aircraft commercially. FAA grounds Twin Cities aerial photographer over use of drones
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Re:I would just like to say...
oh wow. Someone on
/. not trolling. Inconceivable. -
Re:Anti-DMCA activism?
Could this also be a case of anti-DMCA activism, where someone is fabricating this scenario just to demonstrate how abusable the system is?
No, it's an Indian medical researcher who hired a reputation management company to downplay the fact that he was thrown out of Duke for lying on his resume and falsifying cancer research results.
Of course if it's not, I'm sure this will give some people that kind of idea.
There is no need for activism in that area. Using a DMCA request for trying to take down content that affects your reputation is a very common tactic. Most of the time, it doesn't do anything because the content is posted by back up after a little while.
In this case however, the reputation management company was smart enough to post duplicated content first. This means that the primary content may be dinged automatically by the google bot as a plagiarizer if it thinks the content was posted in India first, and so the google ranking of that content may be permanently affected as a result. Hopefully, the google bot is smart enough to figure out what truly happened.
Either way, because of the Streisand effect, I wouldn't want to be that Anil Potti right now.
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Latest news: Batteries not the problem in 787
TFA seems a little irrelevant since the news today says that the batteries are not the problem. Instead, the electrical systems and monitoring systems are now being scrutinized.
Here's one article, but the internet is full of it.
http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/morning_call/2013/01/batteries-not-a-problem-on-boeing-787.html -
Re:Thin margins
The dirty little secret is that the big bad oil companies are not taking in oddles of tax payer subsidies... the big boys were exempted from many of the tax advantages which are being vilified... or are things which are available to nearly all companies in nearly all industries.
"Among the top 10 most profitable companies, energy companies ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) and Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) were on the low end of the list, paying 8 percent, 4 percent and 2 percent, respectively, of their total earnings to the U.S. federal government."
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2012/08/06/conocophillips-exxon-chevron-paid.html?page=all
Doesn't look like they were exempted from much.
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Re:Gas guzzlers should be taxed out of existence.
FFS that was my gut reaction, then backed up by someone from the article itself. You want a *study* to back up an ill-conceived move?
But fine, I'll expand on that and do the math for you.
The most popular hybrid, the Toyota Prius, has only sold a cumulative total of 3.3 million *worldwide* as of October 2012.
In the US alone, hybrids and non-traditional fuel vehicles make up only 3% of car sales, or about 2 million since 2007. Oregon has a population of about 3.9 million, or 1.25% of the US population. Despite this, Oregon makes up about 2% of hybrid and electric-only sales.
So, let's say all hybrid and electric vehicles since 2007 are still on the road, 2% of 2 million sold is a mere 40,000. Rates were deliberately left out in the proposed Oregon legislation, but let's use Washington's flat rate option of $100 a year. If all hybrid/electric car owners go with that, or we assume this is the average even if they track them using GPS or whatever, the state pulls in a mere $4 million each year.
In the Oregon DOT's 2011-13 budget, they have a total annual revenue of almost $2.5 billion ($5 billion revenue over the budget's 2-year span).
$4 million is peanuts for a government operation. It wouldn't even cover the cost of government-contracted development of the necessary devices for tracking in-state usage (you know they won't just re-use anything that's already out there).
In fact, the revenue from this is far worse than $4 million--I just realized that the Oregon tax only kicks in for vehicles rated at 55 mpg or better, but the Prius' official EPA rating is 50 mpg. The EPA actually rates none of the 2012 hybrids as 55mpg or better. So, remove the most popular non-traditional fuel cars from all the stats above and recalculate--downward. Going back to this chart, only around 70,000 plug-in hybrids and extended range vehicles have been sold since 2007. 2% of *that* is 1400, so you're pulling in a mere $140,000 a year.
Sure, this'll increase as years go by, and they even claim this is planning for the future, but that doesn't change the accuracy of the statement that fuel-efficient vehicles are still (i.e. right now) nowhere near the numbers they need to be for this to even make sense from a bureaucratic/administrative perspective.
So there's your study. The state of Oregon has been invoiced $10,000 in consulting fees, which I'm pretty sure is a bargain over whatever their regular consultants are charging for a "study" like this.
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Re:Twitterization?
> And this works to the company's advantage because if they can take $50 from a million people through wrongful means, but none of those people will sue individually, then the company essentially just stole $50 million with no risk.
Sadly, all too true.
:-(i.e. Classmates.com
1. Scam thousands (millions?) of people out of $39
2. Lose the class-action lawsuit and $9 million. Victims gets a $2 or $3 check.
3. Company and Lawyers Profit the millions difference!References:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classmates.com#Membership_renewal_and_cancellation
* http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2010/03/classmates_paying_up_to_95m_in_settlement_president_resigns.html--
Classmates.com is a scam social site. -
Re:Let's see if Netflix moves to block this
Two reasons:
1) Studio heads who hear 'Linux' and think free
... hacker ... piracy.2) The possible purchase of Netflix by Microsoft.
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Not just Detroit
GM is bringing a lot of tech jobs back to the US, but not just in Detroit:
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2012/09/07/general-motors-to-open-500-worker.html
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Re:Jerks
i can top that.
like many cities san jose was and is struggling its budget and has laid off workers, cut worker wages, cut pensions and benefits, and cut city services. that didn't stop them from building a new $400M city hall right at the peak of the economic downturn.
the old offices were *fine* (i live across the street from them), and if they needed more space there were (and still are) literally hundreds of large vacant office buildings in san jose that could have been had for cheap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose_City_Hall
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2002/04/29/story2.html?page=all -
A Better Measure of Apple's Power
In May I stopped by the Sunnyvale Main Post Office (which has been at its current location since 1975 and had a lease on the building through 2016) and found notices posted on the doors stating that they were moving to the northern edge of the city in two weeks. Turns out Apple was in such desperate need of additional office space they signed a build-to-suit agreement with the landlord, who presumably was paid enough money to make it worthwhile to exercise a termination provision in the lease and kick the Post Office out. I forgot about this and drove over there again a couple weeks after their last day to find the site already leveled! Gone. I don't see why they couldn't have just taken Palm's old HQ across the street... HP's not doing anything useful with it.
Anyone ever have Microsoft or Exxon level their city's main post office? -
Re:Notes from part time developer
Microsoft hires Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn
Mark Penn is the current CEO of astroturf and online sockpuppet firm Burson-Marsteller.
Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it has added Mark Penn as the company's corporate vice president, strategic and special projects.
Penn is expected to focus on consumer initiatives in his new role, reporting to Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO and enthusiastic bottom Steve Ballmer. Penn, 58, is currently CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and CEO of polling firm Penn Schoen Berland LLC.http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2012/07/19/microsoft-hires-burson-marsteller-ceo.html
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Re:Fantastic first impressions
Microsoft uses Burson Marsteller. They're very influential, and responsible for much of the big end of astrotuf and sock-puppetry.
http://www.jongreerconsulting.com/burson-marsteller-outed-as-microsofts-sock-puppet
http://www.prwatch.org/topics/public-relations/astroturf?page=6
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2012/07/19/microsoft-hires-burson-marsteller-ceo.html
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Re:Billionaire.
Mom and Pop type investors should be in mutual funds, not directly buying stock.
You mean like when T Rowe Price purchased half a billion dollars worth of Facebook shares for with mutual fund money? I haven't check to see if any of my funds purchased Facebook. Have you?
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Re:Damn unfortunate
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Re:NG is mostly methane
They are cutting production at the moment.
e.g.
http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/blog/2012/01/chesapeake-cutting-natural-gas.htmlPrices will hit bottom round about now. Sure they'll re-open wells but only as a result of demand.
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Re:Amazing discovery(ies)
At least they're spending that $10B investment from Berkshire on something cool.
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Re:An Ode to Zune
What can brown do for anybody?
Plenty; for one thing it can get you into the Advertising Walk of Fame:
United Parcel Service Inc.'s slogan "What Can Brown Do For You" has delivered a major award.
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Re:Hardly a fair comparison
Three dollars, eight dollars, you guys are both missing the point.
People buy cheaper books on Kindles and Nooks BECAUSE THEY CAN.
Nobody will print a three dollar book for long, and fewer book stores will stock it, and even Amazon does not carry it for long due to the cost of warehouse space. These inexpensive books from new authors or older titles from known authors simply disappear from the market in printed form.
But these books can remain in ebook form forever, taking up on average half of a floppy disk work of computer storage someplace in the Amazon cloud/
Then there is the whole issue of residual value, which has been thrashed about on Slashdot in the past. You can sell your paper books, donate them to libraries, or what ever. But the publishers (with Amazon and Barnes and Noble's reluctant acquiescence) have circumvented the first sale doctrine and essentially limited your ownership rights to digital books.
This is being looked into (a year too late) by the DOJ and the EU but action is probably far off.
While that percolates, people are less apt to pay full price for a book they can't own. The market is slowly realizing this and placing a value on that residual ownership as people hold off buying this year's best sellers while they read last year's best sellers. The net result is a lower price that people are willing to pay for a damaged title. (see what I did there?).