Slashdot Mirror

> the closing price ends up at the same price as the IPO price?

but only because it was proped up by the underwriters: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-18/facebook-underwriters-said-to-support-stock-at-near-38-a-share.html

The Chinese government subsidizes all solar cells in order to gain market dominance. They are doing this in other ways as well.

The Chinese know energy is where the money is long term. And the China government thinks long term.
This is the same reason they are putting roads into African Countries that have copper mines. This way the look good to the government, make contacts, and be in place to get the copper. Something that will be worth more then gold in 100 years, btw.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-02/china-cuts-subsidies-for-pilot-solar-projects-on-declining-costs.html

And of course labor there is very cheap and often subsidized.

My brother is in the Solar Industry, and they make cutting edge cells and China undermining the US market is killing RnD.

His point is that there is no evidences that any of t is getting into the water table

If it can't possibly affect the water table, why do drilling companies end up shipping water to people such as Mr. Ira Haire, who live near their fracking sites?

Why are the horses and pets in Dimock, PA, losing their hair?

Why is the EPA detecting fracking chemicals in the aquifers of Pavillion, Wyoming?

How about this Oklahoma Geological Survey report (PDF) that suggests the recent uptick in earthquakes were caused by fracking?

What about waste treatment plants that fail to successfully reduce the levels of contaminants before discharging the water into a river?

How about the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition admitting that fracking has contaminated the drinking water in PA?

And what happens to the chemicals *after* they're pulled out of the ground? Sometimes they just dump it, like the case of Josh Foster.

Fracking can be done right. But it's expensive and requires the cooperation of many disparate companies and enforcement of regulations (or any regulations at all; I'm looking at you, Halliburton Loophole). And expensive is not profitable.

That's rather ignorant. The US economy, while not robust by historical standards is pretty much the only big one not in recession at this point. Look at the world currency markets. The USD has been gaining on most everything.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/341754/20120516/euro-zone-greek-government-austerity-forex-dollar.htm

The US stock market has been outperforming everything major this year as well.

http://www.yardeni.com/pub/PEACOCKGLSTKYTD.pdf

Oh, and FYI the Chinese stopped buying US bonds over a year ago and started reducing their holdings. Didn't have any effect.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-17/china-trims-u-s-bond-holdings-for-fifth-month-as-debt-approaches-ceiling.html

And as far as the first car goes, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot of France built the first automobile in 1769.

The REAL invention that made cars attractive was efficient production of gasoline, and that was due to an American, William Meriam Burton who invented thermal cracking.

The whole program that Solyndra got the loan guarantee from was over $16 billion. The Solyndra default is 3.3% of that. The program had a budgeted default rate of over 12%. So far there have been 2 defaults, Solyndra and Beacon Power that amounts to a total default rate is only 3.6%. 90% of the loan guarantees went to wind and solar projects that have contracts with utilities and are unlikely to default.

It's just a made up controversy being used to make political hay.

You don't see real American rich people renouncing citizenship.

Actually, the number was way up in 2011. A total of 1,780. It may not seem like a lot, but in 2008 it was 235.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-01/wealthy-americans-queue-to-give-up-passports-in-swiss-capital.html

This seems to weaken their "algorithmically neutral" defense against antitrust scrutiny regarding the placement of Google services on the search results page. Perhaps they're testing the waters for abandoning that position in favor of this one, sidestepping antitrust charges entirely by citing free speech protection. I'm not sure governments would find that convincing, especially the EU. Honestly, if Google toned down the pushing of Google+ and other services in search results (or included clearly relevant results like Twitter and Facebook), they'd probably be in less hot water, but they seem to feel they have no other way to compete with social networking.

Well, if you're going to put it that way, then yeah, I'll agree with you, with the addendum "only little people get caught"

http://bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-12/dimon-vows-fight-moynihan-lost-over-claims-from-mortgages.html

What my reaction was:

We are arguing over mouldy bread and bad wine just before the French Revolution.

A friend's reaction was:

In short: contempt for rule of law and fair dealing is embedded like rebar in concrete with BigBanks. It's institutionalized sociopathy, starting at the very top. I cannot think of one exception, but I will be happy to entertain suggestions for the BigBanker Teddy Bear Award.

--
BMO

.. I suspect we can ultimately fix almost all our patent problems by returning the patent office to central funding. Funding the patent office from patent fees has got to be our greatest mistake.

I have spent an instructive afternoon reviewing the nature of US Patent Office Funding:

• * www.uspto.gov/about/stratplan/budget/fy13pbr.pdf (United States Patent and Trademark Office FY 2013 President's Budget)
• * http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-112publ29/content-detail.html (Public Law 112 - 29 - Leahy-Smith America Invents Act)
• * http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v30/n2/full/nbt.2110.html (Nature paper on patent office funding.)
• * http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-05/congress-must-ensure-patent-office-funds-university-leaders-say.html (Bloomberg article on Patent Fee diversion.)

My initial impression that there was a 'greatest funding mistake' is way too optimistic. There is just no bottom to the Patent's office barrel of broken funding bits. But, let me list just a few:

• * Congress loves to steal the Patent office fees to fund other stuff.
• * Page 37 of the budget: "..More than half of all patent fee collections are from issue and maintenance fees, which essentially subsidize examination activities." They charge a small fee to file, and a much larger fee once your patent is granted. The ratio is about 3 to 1. Roughly 1/3 of all patent applications are granted. So, inherent in the design is a perverse financial incentive to grant patents regardless of the merits.
• * Page 12 of the budget: Currently they are backing up patent applications much faster than they clear them. 506924 patents filed last year. 669625 backlogged patents. So, they are currently trying to clear 1,176,549 patents using about 6600 examiners (178 patents per examiner per year.)
• * Page 60 of the budget: "Gap Assessment: Meeting this commitment assumes efficiency improvements brought about by reengineering many USPTO management and operational processes (e.g., the patent examination process) and systems, and hiring about 3,000 patent examiners in the two-year period FY 2012 and FY 2013 (including examiners for Three-Track Examination)." So, the plan is to streamline the process even more and hire many more inexperienced patent examiners. Yea! More crap patents!

So, we have a monstrous machine for issuing patents. It has to issue patents to stay alive. It is currently in severe pain because it can't issue patents fast enough. We need to 'fix' the situation by issuing patents faster.

Seems like the real fix would be:

• * Collect most of the money up front.
• * Force simpler patent applications
• * Say no a lot more often.
• * And slap any silly congresscritter that thinks this should be a money-making operation.

Miles

Stories are that Patti Hart also falsified her educational credentials too:
bloomberg.com - Questioning Hart's Background

"Loeb said that Patti Hart, a Yahoo board member who chairs the search committee, inflated her degree too. Hart, who also serves as CEO of International Game Technology (IGT), is listed in filings as holding a “bachelor’s degree in marketing and economics” from Illinois State University, Loeb said. “However, we understand that Ms. Hart’s degree is in business administration. She received a degree in neither marketing nor economics.” "

According to the USDA, it is the cost of an average family to raise a child born in 2010. Linkypoo Actual study linkypoo

Just because content owners have their own motives doesn't invalidate legitimate cyber threats, nor does it mean that very real military, industrial, and academic cyber threats don't exist. Also, anyone paying attention realizes that the lines between governments, criminals, espionage, and activists blurs in the cyber realm. Responding to cyber threats, no matter where they originate or why, takes the same form.

I'm sure it's better to have zero coordination because the slashdot crowd thinks it's a plot to take away their ability to pirate copyrighted content.

That's mostly due to people fleeing other currencies for the "safe" haven of US dollars during the financial crisis of 2008-2009.

Yeah I didn't really understand that bit.
1) A lot of the "exploding" stuff was in the USA.
2) The federal reserve was "printing" trillions of US dollars, and refusing to say where it was going. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aatlky_cH.tY ).

State and local governments are responsible for the actions of Microsoft and Apple because they passed the laws making such tax avoidance possible. It's unreasonable to think that any company or individual would not try to pay the lowest legal amount.

But the lengths to which Apple, Microsoft, and the other tech giants have gone to influence these laws is what offends me. The tech lobby's biggest priority is to allow high-tech firms to bring back profits from overseas operations that were established precisely to avoid taxes in the first place. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-18/technology-companies-lobby-u-s-lawmakers-for-lower-corporate-taxe-rates.html

Companies download software from countries with lower tax burdens, claim their profits there, and now are pushing hard to be allowed to bring that money home free from U.S. tax. It's nice that Apple and Microsoft help Ireland pay for its schools, but not while Cupertino's and Seattle's are cutting educational spending to the bone and beyond.

And if the tiny city of Cupertino has the temerity to ask Apple for something as modest as citywide free wireless, Apple threatens to move out of town, neglecting to point out that, to a large extent, it already has.

Please vote.

Since we're taking on the tech giants, here's Google.

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html

If the US lowered their tax rate to be roughly equal with the jurisdictions companies are allowed to shift profits to, they would have no reason to shift those profits.

That's a nice idea in theory, but in practice the only tax rate any corporation is happy with is basically zero. Take Google in Ireland for example. Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5%. But Google doesn't want to pay that. So it uses the Double Irish and the Dutch Sandwich to dodge several billions owed, bringing Google's effective tax rate down to 2.4% (ie, only ~20% of the theoretical value). You really think that if the US lowered its above-the-line corporate tax rate to 12.5%, mega-corporations such as Apple wouldn't still be trying to think of ways to get out of paying the full rate?

This discussion has been contaminated by reputation management experts.

Treat any posting here with contempt and ridicule, even those appearing sincere. They are all participating in the gaming and consequent destruction of tech discussion sites.

Do not contribute to these poisoned topics.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/facebook-enlists-pr-firm-burson-marsteller-to-pitch-google-privacy-story.html
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-12/tech/30002042_1_burson-marsteller-burson-marsteller-facebook

Wake up. Almost all corporations do this. HP does this. IBM does this. Dell does this. It's not called 'hating America,' it's called 'loopholes.' If you were beholden to shareholders and you were in charge of a corporation, you would do it too, I bet. And if not...you would never be in charge of a corporation for long.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.

> The US Treasury and the Fed bailed out both of them. Your distinction is driven by political ideology.

Nonsense. The idea that the economic crash is due to Freddie and Fanny has been debunked many times including in the links I posted plus many more. Many conservative economists know that it is a wrong idea. Even the Republican members of the congressional commission that investigated it know it to be false.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-21/romney-gingrich-bid-to-pin-crisis-on-government-ignores-culprits.html

Tell me - what did Freddie and Fanny have to do with the collapse of Lehman, the event everyone points to as the beginning of the collapse?

And what culpability do the banks have for selling flat out fraudulent mortgages to F&F?

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20120222/REAL_ESTATE/120229979

He's right, though. Stories about fraudulent loan applications are so common that if you haven't read any, you must not read the news.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aN2DPRuRs93M

Really? U.S net oil exporter for first time since 1949. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/u-s-was-net-oil-product-exporter-in-2011.html

There are better sources at BBC News or Bloomberg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26/wall-street-tracks-wolves-as-may-1-protests-loom.html This post reminds me of this article. The banks are doing the investigations and identifying people who they feel may be a threat and passing the information on to police. I guess it's totally legal for them to do this, but if you were arrested for a crime, would your conviction be based on evidence gathered by police or by the "firms"?

They're still trying to earn their dirt money.

This discussion is contaminated. Treat all commenters here with contempt for being involved with such sleazy sly tactics.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/facebook-enlists-pr-firm-burson-marsteller-to-pitch-google-privacy-story.html
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-12/tech/30002042_1_burson-marsteller-burson-marsteller-facebook

The terms Apple wanted were better than the FRAND terms offered.
Apple wanted the same terms as the members of the GSM Alliance get - these are patent holders of GSM (and other mobile technology) patents who have pooled their patents and cross-license them. Obviously, if you are offering something then you get something back. If you're not putting patents into the pool then your licensing costs are going to be higher as you're not contributing.

See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-14/nokia-apple-payments-to-nokia-settle-all-litigation.html for the similar Nokia - Apple case where Apple were found to be infringing on Nokia's patents where Apple demanded better than FRAND terms.

We're already sanctioning Iran because they will take Euros or Yen for oil.

The Europeans, like the US, say that they are sanctioning Iran due to its outlaw nuclear program. But lets go with what you assert, that it is about dollars versus euros. So are the Europeans sanctioning Iran because they take Euros for oil too? Wouldn't that be kind of stupid for the Europeans to do, to punish Iran for accepting their currency to pay for oil? And that's what you claim? Shouldn't they be punishing the Iranians for accepting their currency for other goods besides oil too? Or do they think it is OK for Iran to take European currencies for other goods, but only punish them for taking their currency for oil? If they were looking out for their own interests, why would they be punishing Iran for taking their currency at all? Hmmmm. Maybe I'll believe the Europeans, that this is about Iran's nuclear program after all, otherwise you have to believe something that is transparently stupid.

This is another straw for the camel; the American public is tired of invading Middle Eastern countries to keep the price of Texas oil high, so we need them to attack us.

I thought that the story was that the US invaded oil rich countries to get cheap oil, not to make oil more expensive? Do you think you could at least settle on a consistent line of bull? I guess after Chinese and European companies got so many oil contracts in Iraq that you can't really try to claim that bull any more, eh?

Blood is already in the water, the sharks are circling.

Excellent! A fresh supply of shark fins for soup, and aphrodisiacs to sell to China for a profit! And then there are all the other valuable parts of the shark.

You are sort of the "Professor Backwards" of disaster.

Now facebook can monitor you even more effectively.

No, it's just the Axis partners aligning themselves for another battle.

Microsoft and Facebook have formed gang to beat on Google. This time, Microsoft paid for the ammunition, but Facebook will be pulling the trigger. Interestingly enough, there are hints that Apple may be piling on too.

http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000850.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/some-of-the-anti-google-tea-party-is-astroturf/6496
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/facebook-enlists-pr-firm-burson-marsteller-to-pitch-google-privacy-story.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google-deflects-pr-firms-attack-gmail-privacy/story?id=13566971#.T5XZdFRUTrE
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/13/business/seeking-to-fix-damaged-image-apple-hires-burson-marsteller.html
http://www.burson-marsteller.com/Innovation_and_insights/blogs_and_podcasts/harold_burson_blog/default.aspx

Bloomberg, the same one that predicted that the iPhone would be an utter failure?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRelVKWbMAv0

"The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant."

America and Europe are confronted with an aging population. In the Netherlands (where I live) there's about 40.000 men in the age-group of 40-45. There are 30.000 in the age-group of 20-25. Assuming that being a good programmer is something a certaint percentage of the population has, there are a lot less younger programmers available. 25%, to be exact. Market mechanisms mean these young whippersnappers will ask for more money, but the product they deliver will not necessarily be more valuable. In ten year times it will be cheaper to hire a bunch of us old farts instead of one of those young bright sparks.

I'm not sure this works the same for programmers, but /me as a sysadmin has no trouble finding a new job every 1.5-3 years. Experience and insight in what I do gets me higher up the ladder every time for the last 25 years.

I have a sense of humor, but using communist as a slur is not funny.

You're right; how insensitive of me to potentially offend communist nations by comparing them to a place like Kalifornia.

My bad.

Nor is it constructive to attack the very parts of our nation that make us one of the wealthiest nations in history.

Citation needed.

Considering that Kalifornia is constantly on the verge of fiscal default, thanks in large part to mostly unfunded social welfare (not that I have a problem with social welfare in principle, only in how it's distributed in places like Kalifornia), I would refrain from touting the states fiscal success if I were you.

HTC:

http://www.businessinsider.com/htcs-shares-tumble-cfo-change-samsung-launch-weigh-2012-4

Motorola
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-motorolamobility-idUSTRE80P23W20120126

LG:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-28/lg-electronics-profit-falls-33-after-company-falls-behind-in-smartphones.html

and

Sony:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/sony-ericsson-posts-surprise-loss-in-its-final-quarter/67399

The only mobile company making real money from Android is Samsung.

There also has to be consequences for you actions, like stealing from your customers.

They were talking about how much more Liquid Natural Gas Japan was burning last year just yesterday. There's some stats about how much more oil and coal they were burning too this year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-16/japan-utilities-use-record-lng-in-2011-on-idle-reactors.html

Natural gas may be a bit cleaner, but the other two, oil and coal won't be nice to the environment in Japan. I wonder what effects this will have on the health of people as well.

The drug dealers still need to pay their rent and buy their groceries, and they cannot do that with Bitcoin.

The big boys just use stuff like Wachovia/Wells Fargo and Bank of America: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html
A few more details here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs

Wachovia admitted it didn't do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That's the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross domestic product.

Must have been really difficult to notice the flow of 378 billion over 3 years?

Or maybe not:

"It's the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy," says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia's branch network.

If you're going to make those drugs illegal you should make the money laundering illegal AND enforce those laws. No wrist-slaps. You see the Feds doing anything that would make the Banks change?

"There's no capacity to regulate or punish them because they're too big to be threatened with failure," Blum says. "They seem to be willing to do anything that improves their bottom line, until they're caught."

That's complete bullshit. All you have to do is throw those involved into prison. Keep the bank running and let others take over the jobs. I'm sure the bank can figure out who was involved in the 300 billion. If the bank can't then the people responsible for keeping track should go to prison, just for criminal negligence.

They seem able to throw the small fry into prison:

All three Oropezas pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Brownsville to drug and money-laundering charges in March and April 2008. Oscar Oropeza was sentenced to 15 years in prison; his wife was ordered to serve 10 months and his daughter got 6 months.

So in my opinion this shutting down of narcotics stores is just an expensive and pointless show.

Direct foreign aid not so much. The US is sending money to Europe in secondary ways. The FED did give trillions to other financial institutes around the world, including Europe.

Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window” lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion. Bloomberg

There are also large US bases around the world, including in Europe, which supports the local economy.

They would probably just increase their already massive weapons export business to compensate. Maybe we ought to be paying attention to stopping that. They have also allegedly been caught selling donated food, but I can't find a link to that on a legitimate website. If anything maybe we should increase the food donations to a level that embarrasses the North Korean govt. Like saying "We can afford to feed your entire mismanaged starving country from our extras, in your face (literally and figuratively)". Make sure the people know where the food is from. Allow nothing else in or out of the country. Their leaders would lose face, lose funding for the army, and nobody would starve (ok, maybe only in my world).

*cough* The U.S. is a net exporter of Oil this year. (First time since 1949)

citation: e.g. Bloomberg News

Other companies also calling in loses like Sharp and Best Buy. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-11/sony-sharp-shares-plunge-on-record-annual-losses-tokyo.html Is the point of posting this type of news just to bash Sony or a company that you like to hate?

Apparently, a reactor not too far along the coast had just finished building far higher sea walls and substantially better safety features as demanded by the engineers. Fukushima might have stopped working even with the add-ons, but it wouldn't have catastrophically failed. Ultimately, it did so because those running it were cheap. Nor were reactors the only places with adequate sea defenses.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-25/tsunami-risk-well-known-to-nuclear-engineers-regulators-who-failed-to-act.html
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/05/japanese-mayor-built-a-huge-sea-wall-and-saved-his-village-from-the-tsunami/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12923699

I conclude that the reactor being taken out was probably unavoidable but that the meltdown and explosions were.

No Samsung supplies screens: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-13/samsung-supplies-apple-with-touch-screen-for-new-ipad.html

Why is it that the only antitrust enforcement I hear about in the EU is against non-EU based companies?

Technically every enforcement action is against an EU based corporation - in order to legally do trade within the EU, you need an EU corporate presence. The European Commission regulates violations of trade law within the EU. The EU didn't levy fines against Microsoft US for antitrust violations within the borders of the United States, it levied fines against Microsoft Europe for antitrust violations within the EU borders.

I would guess that you haven't heard about other enforcement actions because you don't read the EU antitrust news? You chose to read US oriented news, which doesn't report on enforcement actions of foreign regulatory bodies against foreign companies? Also, the EU is made up of many nation states, each of which has its own antitrust regulatory body. The EU only gets involved in antitrust when the scale of the illegal activity exceeds the ability of the national courts to handle, or where the national courts have erred or require clarification. This is usually difficult cases, or those with international scope that involve large transnational corporations. EU-level enforcement actions are, by their nature, more likely to be against a large corporation trading internationally, which for tax and trade reasons may well be headquartered in the U.S. (although increasingly companies are choosing to be headquartered in Ireland or Luxembourg for tax purposes, see Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Is it really that case that no corporations inside the EU are big enough to be anti-competitive?

The EU have issued over €12 billion of fines in the last 5 years against illegal cartels. How many of those cases did you read about in the U.S. press? This is not some conspiracy - it is entirely understandable, their readers (Americans) generally don't care about the EU fining a Belgian glass manufacturer, or Frankfurt Airport. They only feel an emotional connection when the target of the fine is the subsidiary of a U.S. corporation.
2011/03/03 Siemens AG fined €397 million by EU antitrust
2012/03/29 Telefonica fined €152 million.
2011/10/25 Solvay fined €23 million
2011/06/22 Telekomunikacja Polska S.A €127 million
2008/11/12 Largest every cartel fine from the EU - over €1.3 billion against a Japanese/US/English/Belgian cartel.

How many things actually happened in the entire history of commercial flights before the TSA existed? And why do they still exist in light of that? Sheesh.

Highjackings became a significant problem in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, although they still occur from time to time. Various militant groups, including Palestinian and Communist terrorist organizations, we commonly involved. The rate slowly considerably as airports put in metal detectors, started searching bags, sky marshals took to the air, and police forces with automatic weapons started patrolling the airports. (Sound familiar?) The occasional commando force storming a plane and killing the hijackers also helped dampen the enthusiasm for it, not the mention the famous Operation Thunderbolt - the raid on Entebbe.

That is why you don't keep seeing headlines like these so often:

Mexico Police Storm Hijacked Airplane, Free Crew

17 Killed in Airport Raids by Terrorists at Rome, Vienna : 116 Wounded in Attacks Apparently Aimed at El Al; Palestinians Blamed
December 28, 1985

ROME — Two terrorist teams firing assault rifles and throwing grenades struck minutes apart at the international airports in Rome and Vienna early Friday, leaving 17 dead, including an 11-year-old American girl and three other Americans. At least 116 people were wounded in the bloody attacks.

Officials and eyewitnesses said the attacks appeared aimed at facilities of El Al, the Israeli national airline. Meir Rosenne, Israel's ambassador to the United States, blamed the Palestine Liberation Organization for the slaughter. PLO officials in Vienna, Rome and at PLO headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, denied responsibility and condemned the attacks.

In Spain, a caller claiming to belong to the "Abu Nidal group," a breakaway faction of the PLO blamed for many earlier terrorist assaults in Europe, telephoned a radio station in Malaga, claiming responsibility for the attacks in the name of his group. There was no way to confirm the claim.

Abu Nidal has been described as a bitter opponent of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who he is said to consider to be overly moderate in the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . more

The terrorist I knew - Christopher Hitchens sheds no tears for Abu Nidal, but admits to a small twinge of nostalgia.

The official story - that he had shot himself several times in the head . . .

Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), aka Fatah Revolutionary Council, the Arab Revolutionary Brigades, or the Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims

Belgium: Murders committed for Abu Nidal

true, but it does make it so any FRAND licensing from the IP holders for current SIM tech becomes worthless.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/03/apples-us-patent-application-61481114.html
As long as Nokia adheres to FRAND licensing obligations, the Finnish company's position that it wants to cash in on its SIM card-related patents is just as legitimate, from a shareholder value point of view, as Apple's proposal that everyone adopt a royalty-free standard. But Nokia's desire to monetize standard-essential patents is not in the public interest unless its proposal offers major advantages that offset the cost of licensing and the higher transaction cost (which in connection with FRAND patents sometimes involves litigation as I see all the time now).

Nokia could really use the money. no wonder they're fighting against it.. even pomoting their own "standard" which I'm sure they have no intentions of giving away. RIM is also against the nano-SIM - wonder why.. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-29/rim-earnings-sales-fall-short-as-blackberry-demand-wanes.html

Greek lawyer: These temples don't pay for themselves, bitch.

As a matter of fact, Eurozone countries are already paying back the Greek for the privilege. They just do it under a false pretext.

US corporate tax rate is about 40%

Wrong.

The official tax rate is 15%-35% depending on profit. But no company pays 35%. The enormity of tax deductions companies can take means they pay well under 35%.

This article, which is spinning the tax rate as high as possible for political reasons, claims effective tax rates of 27.7%.There's plenty of other sources that claim lower effective tax rates. And an enormous number of very profitable companies have negative effective tax rates.

Ready to eat humble pie and apologise yet?

http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-03-20-now-can-we-start-talking-about-the-real-foxconn/

that signature disturbs me

You should be even more disturbed by its originators. They will have chosen the sig very carefully to create an a particular set of associations in your mind.

For those who haven't been following, Burston Marsteller were hired by Facebook to run an anti-Google astroturf campaign. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/facebook-enlists-pr-firm-burson-marsteller-to-pitch-google-privacy-story.html [bloomberg.com]

Some of the sockpuppets they use here are:

DavidSell
ByOhTek
antitithenai
Bonch
TechGuys
Overly Critical Guy
CmdrPony
InsightIn140Bytes
InterestingFella
SharkLaser
jo_ham
DCTech
smithz
HankMoody

There are many others, including disposable accounts used to moderate and deflect discussions in directions they promote. If you see a post by any of the accounts in this list in a Slashdot discussion you know for certain that discussion is polluted and likely to contain misdirection and lies. Avoid feeding the astroturf machine by posting sensible comments in these threads.

At all times while reading Slashdot and other tech sites, be aware that you are being manipulated by professional reputation managers.

Some of the sockpuppets they use here are:

DavidSell
ByOhTek
antitithenai
Bonch
TechGuys
Overly Critical Guy
CmdrPony
InsightIn140Bytes
InterestingFella
SharkLaser
jo_ham
DCTech
smithz
HankMoody

There are many others, including disposable accounts used to moderate and deflect discussions in directions they promote. If you see a post by any of the accounts in this list in a Slashdot discussion you know for certain that discussion is polluted and likely to contain misdirection and lies. Avoid feeding the astroturf machine by posting sensible comments in these threads.

At all times while reading Slashdot and other tech sites, be aware that you are being manipulated by professional reputation managers.

Speculation is not the problem.

Go look at what happened in the Silver futures market.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange kept jacking up the margins on silver because they felt it was overheating.
Eventually, the margins were high enough that speculators pulled out and the market dynamic came back to reality.

I believe this was the first change in margins and then 6 months later

The side effect was that the increase in silver margins caused speculators to drive down the prices
for unrelated other commodities as they sold off those positions to cover the increased silver margins.

The safety net provided by government bailing out the biggest speculators (the big banks) is the problem.

This isn't the only textbook example of market dynamics, but it's the most recent one.
Blaming everything on the government is a bit cliched by now. There are other forces at work.

Speculation is not the problem.

Go look at what happened in the Silver futures market.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange kept jacking up the margins on silver because they felt it was overheating.
Eventually, the margins were high enough that speculators pulled out and the market dynamic came back to reality.

I believe this was the first change in margins and then 6 months later

The side effect was that the increase in silver margins caused speculators to drive down the prices
for unrelated other commodities as they sold off those positions to cover the increased silver margins.

The safety net provided by government bailing out the biggest speculators (the big banks) is the problem.

This isn't the only textbook example of market dynamics, but it's the most recent one.
Blaming everything on the government is a bit cliched by now. There are other forces at work.

Don't be silly, it won't be 200F in July.

If it was as much above normal in July, as it is currently in March here in Chicago, the daily high would be 127, with an overnight low of 94.

Fun stuff, isn't it?

I know it's kinda an interesting anecdote, but it's not as funny when heat waves kill tens of thousands.

We would be seeing similar problems in the US if we had a heat wave of 127 with a low of 94 for several days in a row. It's not the average Slashdotter that would have problems, it's the elderly, the already ill, the poor, the young, et cetera. Those who are already vulnerable to severe temperatures. And to say nothing of the brownouts due to a huge city like, say, Chicago all running the AC at full bore 24x7.

Unfortunately, the Corporate Apologists in America would be sure to point out that there is no climate change problem and it's "All Obama's Fault" (tm) in any case, so we'll get nowhere.

It's really starting to look like we won't wise up and do something about our environmental destruction until it's too late.