Slashdot Mirror

and those propsing the same kind of "banking" will never get promoted again.

Also LOL. Property-backed CDOs are on the rebound. This time will be different!

How about some actual numbers?

TARP as a whole still has $41 billion in outstanding loans. If every current loan defaulted today, TARP would only lose about $31 billion (accounting for current profits). Projections from October (which don't count AIG's sale) were that TARP would lose $24 billion overall, having disbursed over $418 billion through its lifetime. Reality is that loss was always expected, as housing assistance was not intended to be recovered. Current estimates are for a slight profit on everything intended for recovery.

The billions that will be lost went to individuals, not the banks, auto industry, or any other big company.

I have dsl in dc from verizon now, and service started getting worse about two years ago, and is now really bad. There are half days and sometimes full days when the connection drops and cannot be maintained, tho it will connect again for a minute or so, which is enough to get mail. My understanding from the bloomberg articles by Susan Crawford http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-25/merger-made-comcast-strong-u-s-web-users-weak.html is that it's a capacity problem caused by monopoly collusion between Verizon and Comcast: Verizon makes more money from smartphones, so Verizon is letting its dsl capacity go to hell while increasing wifi capacity. Of course, Verizon stopped extending fiber in dc before it reached my neighborhood (same lousy collusion), so that's out. I was taking online classes in Japanese, and sometimes it seemed to help if I called Verizon and begged them to "shift me to the good network" -- I'd have an hour or so to take my class. Unfortunately, I believe my only alternative is Comcast, which I believe is limiting capacity and trying to force everyone to use its movies, which don't count against the monthly limit. I really hate that -- I'm old, I remember IBM, Ma Bell, AOL, all the other monopolists (now I think Google and Facebook are heading that way). It's a case study in Acemoglu and Robinson's "Why Nations Fail" -- the U.S. won't modernize to fiber because of powerful economic groups with congressmen in their pockets. Sorry about the rant, but this is a very sore point with me!

Solendra, look it up. Just because you are lazy or stupid doesn't mean it didn't happen.

ok, lets look it up: Solyndra recieved $535M in a federal subsidy, and in response, China put up $35 Billion to subsidize their own solar research and industry.

It appears that both an agressive foreign entity and a softening PV market played roles in Solyndra's demise.

what do you mean by 'look it up', exactly? i don't read publications that exist exclusively inside your political 'bubble'.

The article says differently, but I suspect you may be right. Like many I don't regularly read articles. For the most part I find the comments much more informative, but with Nokia stories I can't help it. I just can't get rid of the hope that the maker of the best phone I've ever owned (N900) will come to its senses and market another and perhaps even freer one despite its deal with the devil.

Anyway, a little searching turned up this Bloomberg article that seems to back your assertion.

"University-led research projects to investigate graphene and the functioning of the human brain each won 1 billion euros ($1.35 billion) in European Union funding, the European Commission said.

Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University will lead a project to investigate graphene, the thinnest and toughest material ever produced which conducts electricity 30 times faster than silicon. Royal Philips Electronics NV, Alcatel- Lucent SA, Thales SA (HO) and Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) are among companies involved in the program. Another project simulating the way the human brain works is led by researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale of Lausanne, Switzerland, and includes SAP AG (SAP), Cray Inc. (CRAY) and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) "

Here in ermer'ka, we don't have to chew the air because of the EPA.

No chewing required. For the most part we just swallow whatever industries put in the air because of what they put in politicians' piggy banks. It goes down easier when you don't have to chew... which is probably why you didn't notice.

Thanks for the obvious strawman and not addressing anything I wrote. Should I take this to mean you will not be parroting your bogus and unsubstantiated supplier report anymore?

But sure, I'll take this opportunity to add some more links. How about NPD's report on Holiday sales, showing that average selling price of PCs actually increased over the Holidays even though net total shipments were down. Further "Sales of Windows notebooks under $500 fell by 16 percent while notebooks priced above $500 increased 4 percent." So if people are buying fewer cheap Windows notebooks, how do you think that looks to a manufacturer who has a reputation for selling almost exclusively cheap Windows PCs? Acer's definition of Windows being a success is if it lifts the entire PC industry.... but Windows 8 was never designed to do that; Windows 8 is designed to sell more high end touch screens and tablets, and it looks to be doing exactly that. People are shifting away from cheap systems, and Acer, known for selling cheap systems, is hurting. Big surprise there.

Some manufacturers have embraced Windows 8 and have released some really innovative laptop designs that take advantage of its strengths, rather than releasing just another laptop with Windows 8 installed. Let's see what they have to say about it. Dell says Windows 8 demand is high. Lenovo is enthusiastic after huge tablet demand. Lenovo also says they didn't realize how big touch screen demand would be. Coincidentally, these are bigger manufacturers than Acer and especially Fujitsu, who are actually taking Windows 8 seriously. It's not surprising they're getting all the demand.

Or maybe you care to look at actual physical Windows 8 adoption instead of what CEOs have to say. According to Statcounter, Windows 7 was growing at a rate of .027 percentage points per day in the months leading up to Oct 26. Windows 7 hit a wall on Oct 26 and has been declining since. Today, Windows 8 is growing at a rate of... wait for it... .025 percentage points per day, statistically the same rate. So to say Windows 8 is experiencing terrible growth is to say that Windows 7 was experiencing terrible growth.

So that "megabomb"? It sold 60m copies in 2 months and earned Microsoft 6 billion dollars. I'd love to have that kind of "megabomb".

New arable land won't just crop up, pardon the pun. You also see to have no grasp of how hard industrial agriculture already pushes the existing land we have to produce as much food as we do today. We do not have a magic fairy improvement wand.

Why not? There's a lot of land in the northern hemisphere that's just too cold to grow things. Warm those places up and you remove the primary obstacle to farming.

And we do have a magic fairy improvement wand called "modern technology".

When the US military, the insurance industry, and the mother effin' Maldives are looking at mitigation plans for this generation, I'm of a mind to think it's demonstrated. Contrarian forum nerdrage is hardly a counter argument.

I fail to be impressed. The insurance industry is milking the climate change cow in order to generate a pretext to raise rates and increase its profits. I see no evidence that they will experience in the next few decades higher costs from AGW or any other sort of global climate change. The US military's boss, President Obama is a guy who's pushing the climate change meme for his benefit. Maldives might have a reason to care, but if things flood out, they can always move with plenty of time to spare.

'hundreds of billions'? No. That's just wrong. At it's peak in 1995, climate funding in the US was $2.4 billion, and that included NASA's work in supporting satellite observation. It has gone down ever since. If it's a scam, it the world's worst ever.

You also have to include renewable energy and the recent and very expensive fad of reparations. The EU, for example, has huge funds committed to solar and wind power, carbon emissions credit markets, and foreign aid to help third world countries adapt to "climate change". So does the US and Japan.

Consider also the currently poorly funded "Green Climate Fund" which some are trying to get funded at $100 billion a year. They aren't going to get squat, if people think that AGW is a problem that we don't have to start to deal with for a century.

And don't forget those insurance companies who are looking for any excuse to increase their profits. Being forced to charge higher premiums for non-existent climate change costs is quite their speed.

"They've been bankrupt for a long time already, and it just gets worse."

Yeah, they've just got a budget _surplus_ ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-10/california-to-post-851-million-budget-surplus-brown-projects.html ). It's so much worse... And your typical misinformed right-wing nut rant is just that - a misinformed rant.

It's still surprising when we get a bit more data on exactly *how much* of a dick he was. I wish some of this stuff had come out while he was alive.

It DID come out when he was alive. In August 2009, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ahgf6sIeFZ4c including that exact quote by Ed Colligan.

What wasn't revealed was the exact nature of the threat that Steve Jobs made. One could have assumed it related to their patents. Now we know it did.

More like the captain of the football team keeping a wary eye on the strange loner in a trench coat that seems to keep stirring up trouble, hangs out with bad people, spends a lot of time in a private workshop, and muttering under his breath "someday you'll all be sorry."

It is pitiful that you are trying to paint Iran as an innocent victim. Most Gulf countries live in fear of Iran and its ambition of hegemony, and it drives large arms purchases.
 

There was no sentence yet! This 50 year thing is pure worse-case speculation Also, "Prosecutors Intended Six-Month Sentence for Aaron Swartz" http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-17/prosecutors-intended-six-month-sentence-for-aaron-swartz.html

The problem is not that they can. As they can target everyone, they could pick specifically the people that causes them trouble (and maybe pick others to not be so obvious). Or maybe not the visible leaders, that maybe could have cash enough in a way or another for a good defense, but the followers (or take their houses anyway).

Automobiles. Auto accidents kill more people than guns, though that may change around 2015 if trends continue the way they have been.

Personally, I think stupidity probably kills far more than anything else, but we don't have statistics for that.

You're wrong, a prosecutor's job is to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.

Really? So was St. Jude's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?

“Medical device and pharmaceutical companies can use post-market studies legitimately to obtain information about how their products work in the field, but they cannot use those studies, and the honoraria associated with them, to induce physicians to select their products. Cardiologists and electrophysiologists should make their decisions on which pacemaker or defibrillator to implant in a patient based on their independent medical judgment, not based on how much the manufacturer is paying them to implant the device,” said Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

Was anyone found guilty of anything? "St. Jude officials said they weren’t admitting liability"

How about GlaxoSmithKline?

“We will not tolerate corporate attempts to profit at the expense of the ill and needy in our society -- or those who cut corners that result in potentially dangerous consequences to consumers,” Carmen M. Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, said at yesterday’s news conference.

But hey, at least someone was found guilty this time. His name was SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc. I don't think he had to serve any time in prison, though.

Or Forest Laboratories?

“Forest Pharmaceuticals deliberately chose to pursue corporate profits over its obligations to the F.D.A. and the American public,” Carmen Ortiz, the United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement Wednesday.

Someone was found guilty this time, too. His name was Forest Laboratories. No time served in prison, although there was one felony count - lying to FDA officials.

You know, if I squint really hard, I think I can see the impression left by the book that Ortiz threw at Mr. Forest Laboratories and Mr. SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc.

You're wrong, a prosecutor's job is to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.

Really? So was St. Jude's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?

“Medical device and pharmaceutical companies can use post-market studies legitimately to obtain information about how their products work in the field, but they cannot use those studies, and the honoraria associated with them, to induce physicians to select their products. Cardiologists and electrophysiologists should make their decisions on which pacemaker or defibrillator to implant in a patient based on their independent medical judgment, not based on how much the manufacturer is paying them to implant the device,” said Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

Was anyone found guilty of anything? "St. Jude officials said they weren’t admitting liability"

How about GlaxoSmithKline?

“We will not tolerate corporate attempts to profit at the expense of the ill and needy in our society -- or those who cut corners that result in potentially dangerous consequences to consumers,” Carmen M. Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, said at yesterday’s news conference.

But hey, at least someone was found guilty this time. His name was SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc. I don't think he had to serve any time in prison, though.

Or Forest Laboratories?

“Forest Pharmaceuticals deliberately chose to pursue corporate profits over its obligations to the F.D.A. and the American public,” Carmen Ortiz, the United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement Wednesday.

Someone was found guilty this time, too. His name was Forest Laboratories. No time served in prison, although there was one felony count - lying to FDA officials.

You know, if I squint really hard, I think I can see the impression left by the book that Ortiz threw at Mr. Forest Laboratories and Mr. SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc.

28 per day is complete bullshit, try 120 in the last decade.

Our government killed far more innocent children. Through the illegal trade of guns.

Quoth another AC.

There are rules for "us" where the government is allowed to do what it wants, when it wants to us without us being allowed to question. There is no limit because we now have over 200 dead in Mexico, many being school aged teenagers, along with a border guard because of a gun running program from the ATF. We are not allowed to ask questions because it makes Obama and Holder look bad. The original whistleblowers have been fired from the ATF and no questions to this day have been answered.

Just so you don't think its government officals only. David Gregory [npr.org] knowingly committed a gun related felony on national TV and will not be charged. Because his set of rules are different than they are for you. However, you get pulled over in DC with just the same clip in your car while passing through you WILL be charged.

John Corzine [bloomberg.com] STOLE between $600 Million and $1.2 Trillion from 401k investors where he took their money and bet on EU currencies and lost big time. Thats right, he took money out of 401Ks, gambled with it without their permission, lost big time and declared bankruptcy and the 401Ks are gone. He will not be charged despite this being a textbook case of SOX violations.

Get off your high moral horse of saving everyone else's kids, and start respecting your fellow man. I will not stand for having my liberty, life, freedom, and dignity stripped. I already live above the lawlessness of this forsaken country.

No one deserves to be a slave or a walmart employee. No one deserves to be treated like cattle and expect a sheppered to protect them. We all have a right to our own individual self defense. Many of us need or desire weapons for that.

Guns are used for many things.

The NRA is pushing its own bullshit agenda. Theres many not in the NRA that support fully armed and dangerous people.

I do not fear guns, I fear those who expect others to do their dirty work for them. And live inside white lies.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-14/mit-probes-role-in-case-leading-to-web-activist-s-death.html

There are rules for "us" where the government is allowed to do what it wants, when it wants to us without us being allowed to question. There is no limit because we now have over 200 dead in Mexico, many being school aged teenagers, along with a border guard because of a gun running program from the ATF. We are not allowed to ask questions because it makes Obama and Holder look bad. The original whistleblowers have been fired from the ATF and no questions to this day have been answered.

Just so you don't think its government officals only. David Gregory knowingly committed a gun related felony on national TV and will not be charged. Because his set of rules are different than they are for you. However, you get pulled over in DC with just the same clip in your car while passing through you WILL be charged.

John Corzine STOLE between $600 Million and $1.2 Trillion from 401k investors where he took their money and bet on EU currencies and lost big time. Thats right, he took money out of 401Ks, gambled with it without their permission, lost big time and declared bankruptcy and the 401Ks are gone. He will not be charged despite this being a textbook case of SOX violations.

doing it as a "solution" would make the USA look like they are playing silly lawyer-ball games

- what it would do is make it crystal clear to the world that USA cannot and will not pay its debts.

be even worse -- having the US government default on its debts. It's one thing to cut spending, but it's quite another for the US Congress to decide it's simply going to refuse pay the bills for money it has already spent.

- it's the same exact thing.

There is no difference between defaulting on the debts (and USA is a deadbeat debtor, don't act all surprised, USA does not pay debts) and printing an arbitrary bill with whatever number of zeros on it to "pay" the debts.

Here - that's the equivalent. 100 Trillion Zimbabwe dollars. Do you think that by printing a bill like that you PAY your debts? :))))))

Really? :)))))

Then you have bought this nonsense idea hook line and sinker, you don't understand value of money, you don't understand money and that's exactly what the system wants you to be - somebody who doesn't understand value, somebody who doesn't understand money. That's why charlat..... "economists" like Krugman are touted by the system, while people who actually know what they are talking about, predicted all of these issues for decades, made serious money by taking their own advice, those people are shunned and laughed at by the establishment whenever possible.

disruption of vital services

- the difference between pretending to pay with fake money (inflation) and defaulting honestly (paying cents on a dollar) is actually huge. If USA defaults honestly (and it won't), it will recover much faster than if it takes the low route and prints (mints bazillion dollar coins, whatever).

Either of these is a default, printing money and paying with new cash is a default, but it's more insidious, it's worse than an honest bankruptcy and restructuring.

precipitous drop in their credit rating - do you realise that printing fake money (and all US dollars created by gov't or the Fed are fake, counterfeit) is what causes real rating agencies to drop US credit rating (and now SEC is suing that agency)? Do you realise that the 'fiscal cliff' was a deal by the gov't to try and balance the budget in the future in exchange for the S&P and Moody's not dropping the US rating back in 2012?

endless legal red tape

- yeah, restraining the gov't spending, that's 'terrible'.

higher interest rates for the foreseeable future

- imagine where USA interest rates will be once the country has its own 'Greek moment' (and there is no Germany big enough in the world to bail out USA).

Even the threat of that happening last year was enough to drop the nation's credit rating.

- USA credit rating was dropped not because of a possibility that USA will not borrow more to shift its debt from one credit card to another, the credit rating was dropped because USA is seen as high risk of default but it is also seen as high risk of attempting to print its troubles away.

There is no difference how you default, I don't want to hold US debt (not even s

here are the "games" china is playing. same "games" youll see with the diamond and oil industries, as well as canadian logging and even the US mint for coin collectors, but in this case we give a shit because, well, scary evil china.

In fact the top 10% of earners pay 70% of all taxes and the top 50% pay 98% (http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html).

Here's how that works. The top 10% have 74.5% of the wealth!

Granted, we're supposed to be taxed on income, not wealth (although I'm still not sure why that's the case), but if you feel it is wrong that 10% pays 70% of the taxes, I'd expect you to be equally upset that 10% owns 74.5% of everything.

To further highlight why your outrage is baseless (the result of 5 minutes spent on google, you should try it sometime) :

The top 10% got 45% of before-tax income.
The top 1% got 93% of income growth.

I think you mean the top 50% are getting tired of funding the bottom 50%.

The bottom 50% is tired of being exploited by the top 50%, but it seems that "being tired" of something isn't quite enough to make it stop.
If things keep going the way they're going, pretty soon the top 50% will be tired of getting chased by mobs armed with torches and pitchforks. It's happened before, and it'll happen again.

And here's what Michael Dell had to say about Windows 8: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/dell-says-interest-for-microsoft-s-windows-8-is-high.html

Dell sells about 3x more machines yearly than Fujitsu. Also, Dell was one of the big OEMs to really make a push on Windows 8, and it appears to be paying off. Fujitsu still does not offer Windows 8 on most of their systems, even their tablets and convertible tablet PCs, where arguably Windows 8 makes the most sense. Their tablets and tablet PCs range from $1000 to over $2000, while Dell is selling comparable systems for half that. It's no wonder they're not seeing the demand they expected.

As a more libertarian society (yes, we are, like it or not)...

I have some news for you:

"libertarian" does not mean the having the right to be put in jail, and being notable for being known as the country that sets a world record for jailing its own citizens (ref: U.S. Jails More People Than Any Other Country: Chart of the Day)

"libertarian" does not mean fighting a fanatical War on Drugs.

"libertarian" does not mean having the right to randomly search its citizens without a warrant ref: TSA 'Secured' Metrodome During Recent Football Game.

"libertarian" does not mean that the government gets to know what type of books its citizens like to read ...

  "libertarian" does not mean that people get to buy guns so that they can kill people in self defense (ref. http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/28/us/florida-music-shooting/index.html)

  "libertarian" does not mean that you get to put people in jail for making pornography (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hardcore)

  "libertarian" does not mean that banks can break the law but people who oppose banks breaking the law get to go to jail and be deliberately run over and beaten up by police officers (ref: occupy wall street)

etc and so on...

Yeah. America is Libertarian for politicians, police officers and corporations. For everybody else it is a penal colony unless you are willing to suck your local priest/politicians cock.

Then why is the yield on govt. bonds only 1.8%? If they were garbage (compared to whatever else is available, naturally) the government would have to pay much more to borrow money.

In what way? I actually contend the opposite, international trade helps most people. The less paid for an item the more money people have. That money can be used to buy other items, pay down debt, or be invested. Of course, until recently, people here in the US lived beyond their means. They continuously borrowed money the buy more stuff.

As for Walmart/Sam's, Walmart now has stores in China. And Chinese make enough money to buy from Walmart, as well as upscale stores. I don't recall what newspaper it was but one reported the first week Apple's new iPhone was available in China more than 1 million were sold there. Seeing as Apple products are only affordable to the wealthy, there are a lot of wealthy people in China. And those people buy American products sending money to the US. Another American company making money in China is Caterpillar, which builds construction equipment in Indiana employing thousands of people. John Deere based in IL does business in Brazil, China, and around the world. There are many other US based multinational businesses who also are in Brazil, China, India, and Russia (BRIC) helping employ more American workers.

And without international trade you would not be using a PC, or a cell phone. The US does not have a ready supply of a number of metals used to make these products. A major source of Coltan, columbite–tantalite, is Congo. Unfortunately it's mining fuels the conflict there.

GE leads a call to develop rare earth minerals in the US to reduce our dependence on Chinese suppliers. If China wanted to it could shutdown a number of US businesses by stopping exporting these minerals ton the US.

So who's the jerk?

Falcon

... are experiencing record cold

Down to -50C: Russians freeze to death as strongest-in-decades winter hits

http://rt.com/news/russia-freeze-cold-temperature-379/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-25/russia-s-south-hit-by-record-low-temperatures-center-says.html

It is also worth considering why our political and financial elite are so keen with data retention laws:

National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2030 report, quotes:

"...major trends are the end of U.S. global dominance, the rising power of individuals against states, a rising middle class whose demands challenge governments, and a Gordian knot of water, food and energy shortages, according to the analysts."

"[enormous caches of data] will enable governments to ' figure out and predict what people are going to be doing' and 'get more control over society,'

We (collectively) pose a risk to the power of the 0.1% going forward, and bills like this are being pushed through in "democratic" nations worldwide to "get more control over society".

Yes, of course. However they are being asked to do it with a highly accelerated time table, far beyond what anyone else does, and it is, pretty much singly, what put them in the red. Prior to these new and specific requirements, they had surpluses in their budget.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/understanding-the-post-office-s-benefits-mess.html

That is not an article that I have read before, actually, I am going to read it now, previous ones I have seen have either come down on the post office side, as I took, or the "but the other agencies are the ones screwing people and this is exactly correct" side... this one, so far, looks a bit more middle of the road, it should be interesting.

However, the point is, this single change is what brought them from surpluses to deficits, not them losing in the market, or being replaced. They are still the largest carrier, moving the most packages of anyone around (unless somebody knows different? They were a few years back).

You're right, there is a need for more well paid psychiatrists:

Psychiatrists were among the highest-paid employees in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey, with total compensation $270,000 to $327,000 for top earners.

And California is leading the way:

The numbers are even larger in California, where a state psychiatrist was paid $822,000

Source

But close enough. It think we can safely assume most of the damage is in cleanup and paying compensation claims. According to another source I found in the meantime, Tepco "may have to pay more than 10 trillion yen to decontaminate areas around the plant and compensate those affected by the disaster":
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-07/fukushima-137-billion-cost-has-tepco-seeking-more-aid.html
And for that nuclear plant operators should be obliged to have adequate insurance coverage, like any car owner needs to have liability insurance.

The question is, how much is adequate? The 2.5 billion Euros in current German law are clearly not. Fukushima indicates $100 Billion may not be enough. Other estimates are even higher, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9608262. But even if legislators settle for $100 Billion in mandatory coverage, nuclear power will become a lot less attractive.

Congress has become government of the highest bidder, by the highest bidder, for the highest bidder. I assume the advertising industry donates quite a bit to Congress. I'd be quite surprised if they did anything to annoy a big donor, or do any harm to that business model. The example of the financial sector is illustrative. Trillions of dollars of FederalReserve and government spending (which the taxpayers will ultimately pay) have been funneled directly to the financial sector, and yet there's been no serious reform in that industry to avoid a crash in the future.

So - we'll see how this goes.

capital gains is probably the stupidest thing we can do

Bullshit. Capital gains taxes only hit when you sell your assets (stocks, bonds, businesses). When Reagan slashed them, workers suffered -- including me. It promoted an orgy of hostile takeovers by guys like Romney who were buying out businesses and selling the assets. I worked for Disney at the time, and our hours (and pay) were cut 25% to fend off the parasites who wanted to carve up Disney and sell all its assets.

  And we don't have to work for less - we have to stop expecting the government to give us free shit (free cell phones to the homeless in California).

I agree that the free cell phones for the poor (not just California) is a poor use of tax money, but I'd far rather have my taxes to go to some poor starving person who works for McDonalds than multimillion dollar grants to multinational corporations who take all their profits to offshore tax havens.

Jesus, dude, you swallowed the 1%'s bullshit hook, line, and sinker... or you ARE the one percent and are trying to feed your lying bullshit to us plebes.

If we were a rational society we would have raised the age of retirement from 65 - 67 in the 1970s and we would now be talking about when to raise it to 70.

Yep, you're either young and stupid or have never worked a day in your overpriveleged life. I'm 60, have been paying SS all my life, and guess what? I ain't as useful as I used to be. Young folks run circles around me. I really pity my friends who do construction, that heavy labor is killing those poor geezers. I also pity older programmers, try getting a programming job at my age! And I'm retiring in 2014 when I'm 62 (NOT 65, you need to be 65 for full benefits).

You're wither a fool or a sociopath. Or both. You make me sick.

Until Americans are willing to work for less like their asia counterparts and be a creditor nation rather than a debtor nation the slide will continue.

You sound like a trio of economists that taught an undergrad class I started to take in the late seventies who tried to say that by 1990 we would be earning no more than those in a third world country. I'd just gotten out of the Air Force and had spent a year in Thailand. At the time, Thailand was a third world country, dirt roads, no gas or electric infrastructure.

I could take a cab anywhere in the entire country for a dollar, a bus for a nickle, a tailored shirt for five bucks (including having it taken in/out when I gained/lost weight), dinner for four in a nice restaraunt for a buck. My bungalow was #30 per month, and it came with a woman. I pointed out price disparities, and their answer was "live under a bridge and eat peanut butter."

I walked out of the class to drop it after trying to explain it to these idiots, and half the class followed me out. I guess it must have been required for the other half's majors.

We are a rich nation, and I don't mean dollars, I mean natural resources, including renewables. There are few things that there aren't megatons of under the ground, including oil, copper, other metals.

The problem is the disparity in pay between the rich and the rest of us. We can thank stupid anti-union workers for that (see the linked article).

We have plenty, it's just that it is VERY poorly distributed.

...of the National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2030 report, where:

...major trends are the end of U.S. global dominance, the rising power of individuals against states, a rising middle class whose demands challenge governments, and a Gordian knot of water, food and energy shortages, according to the analysts.

[enormous caches of data] will enable governments to “figure out and predict what people are going to be doing” and “get more control over society,”

Make no mistake, we (collectively) pose a risk to the power of the 0.1% going forward, and bills like this are being pushed through in "democratic" nations worldwide. Sadly we as a group always seem to vote against our best interests, so being aware of the long term trend is probably not going to change anything (thanks corporate media).

They do pay taxes on their income. Unfortunately, their reported profits are much lower than their actual profits (courtesy of tax loopholes like the Double Irish strategy). Their are tons of articles on the internet that explains how this works. e.g., http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html

There's something wrong with your business model.

And what would that problem be? SpaceX just got NASA to pay for development of its Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 combination and several launches including two successful dockings with the ISS. And NASA still spent considerably less than it did on the Orion capsule prototype (which won't actually fly for a couple of years).

I also can't take your claims seriously when you're comparing the marginal cost of a Soyuz launch with all costs of the Dragon (and some Falcon 9 development) split between two craft. That's not just comparing apples to oranges, but is highly deceptive as well.

Exactly. And a Foxconn spokesperson agrees: “Supply chain is one of the big challenges for U.S. expansion,” Woo said. “In addition, any manufacturing we take back to the U.S. needs to leverage high-value engineering talent there in comparison to the low-cost labor of China.”

- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-06/foxconn-plans-american-expansion-as-clients-seek-made-in-u-s-a-.html

Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou, who founded the maker of iPhones, iPads, PlayStations and televisions in Taipei 38 years ago, wants to bring U.S. engineers to Asia to train them in manufacturing before deploying them back home, he said at a forum last month.."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-06/foxconn-plans-american-expansion-as-clients-seek-made-in-u-s-a-.html

It'll be a Foxconn plant though, not an Apple one.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-06/foxconn-plans-american-expansion-as-clients-seek-made-in-u-s-a-.html

...limnology? ? ? ?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/dupont-sends-in-former-cops-to-enforce-seed-patents-commodities.html

http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/11/21/why-so-secretive-the-trans-pacific-partnership-as-global-corporate-coup/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/frank-olson-cia-lawsuit_n_2206983.html

Now here's a great book about my fave subject written by a most astute and intelligent lady:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/fashion/naomi-wolf-on-her-new-book-vagina.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Mod me troll if you like, but: 1) The original article would have read perfectly well without including the inflammatory and derogatory phrase "contrary to opinions from the anti-science crowd." Go back and read it and see. So, the article itself begged to be called out as flamebait, which I did. I find it hypocritical of /. to allow inflammatory comments to be embedded directly within an article. 2) There are instances in which vaccines have had effects other than which they are purported to create. For example, in October this year, Italy banned all flu vaccines because of their documented side-effects. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-24/italy-bans-novartis-flu-vaccines-citing-side-effects.html . I'm not saying that all vaccines are bad, or -good-, but let's not put down people who question their veracity, because it is true that not all vaccines are good. 3) I am particularly sensitive to anything which purports to be "news" and contains spin. This article pushed my hot button because it contained a wealth of good information, and yet managed to wrap it with tainting bias. Enough already. Be news, or be irresponsible. There is no crossover in my mind. If the reporting is irresponsible, it should be recognized as such. There are too many people in the world who do not recognize it for me to let it go. We all need an education in what is really information, and what is unfounded speculation. /. needs to maintain a sterling reputation for knowing the difference, and labeling speculation for what it is. The entire gamut of science is based on ensuring there is no bias in our assertions, so let's all keep an open mind.

Well the problem is not just Ireland, Google doesn't pay much taxes there either, even though the corporate tax rate is lower.
It all shifts out of Europe to Bermuda via a Dutch sandwich.

AGW mitigation is coupled with all sorts of stuff that restricts competition in the fossil fuel industry, such as regulation that has prevented any new refineries from being built in the US for decades.

Yet somehow, despite these onerous regs you don't cite, we are exporting more oil than we are importing for the first time in over 60 years and are on track to become the world's #1 exporter in another ten.

Exactly. Medicare and Medicaid have done a far better job containing costs than the private insurance market, which have almost uniformly failed to contain costs. Medicare and Medicaid simply have price controls.

The hell they have -- the total cost of Medicare is skyrocketing! And the only reason they're "price controlling" at all is because they pretty tell the hospitals "fuck what it actually costs, this is what I'm going to pay you". And then stuff like this happens: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-05/doctor-shortage-looms-as-teaching-hospitals-fight-for-funding.html

You don't control costs by arbitrarily setting prices. You control costs by inducing competition (something the government has eliminated from the healthcare market in spectacular fashion).

he ACA sets about to change that, and over time, it has an ok chance of succeeding - by gradually controlling prices via the IPAB, by paying for services that are only proven to be effective, and by limiting payments for procedures that are not medically sound,

The free market does those things automatically if consumers are given transparency and choice.

well, your link is wrong, Ballmer Never said that SALES were modest, the quote is a " widely distributed mistranslation ".

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/japan-sets-safe-limits-for-consuming-radiation-contaminated-food-table-.html Prescribed safe limit from Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare for radioactive cesium in drinking water is 200 Becquerel per kilogram.

According to Samsung Electronics, two-thirds of their $6 billion in profits last quarter came from their smartphones.

This is about the same percentage for Apple, the iPhone, and their $8 billion in profits last quarter.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/samsung-profit-beats-estimates-on-surging-sales-of-phones.html

Is this so? "More than two-thirds of the earnings were generated by the telecommunications business" - so is this their (smart) phones, or is this their Samsung Telecommunication Systems Business division, "one of the world’s leader in 4G wireless technology and network infrastructure.

It provides cutting-edge LTE solutions to more than 30 mobile network operators and Mobile WiMAX solutions to about 60 operators worldwide.* Samsung partners with leading 4G operators around the globe, including Sprint and Clearwire in the U.S., UQ Communications in Japan, YTL Communications in Malaysia and Mobily in Saudi Arabia."

a) did not disclose fully the extent of his patent dealings, referenced one more recent issue but failed to disclose the more serious prior issues

Which he was not required to, since it was more than 10 years prior, as per the (claimed) court instructions.

b) provided false, misleading evidence contrary to judges instructions to manipulate the jury

Something like this is the one that the appeal will most likely rest upon.

c) had prior conflict with subsidiary of Samsung

Which Samsung's lawyer's didn't enquire after?

According to Samsung Electronics, two-thirds of their $6 billion in profits last quarter came from their smartphones.

This is about the same percentage for Apple, the iPhone, and their $8 billion in profits last quarter.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/samsung-profit-beats-estimates-on-surging-sales-of-phones.html