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Most doctors don't spend a significant amount on malpractice insurance. Nationwide, malpractice insurance accounts for 2% of spending, and defensive medicine accounts for another 5%.

Apparently Frederic Mitterrand is in to having extra-marital sex with asian boys according to this Bloomberg piece: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-23/strauss-kahn-new-york-case-may-curb-libertine-ways-of-powerful-french-men.html

I'm not surprised he doesn't have a problem with Roman Polanski.

Well, not really. I worked in the industry that trades that information, and provides it to private investigators, law enforcement, and collections companies. Others provide it to anyone willing to pay. I know what some use for data sources. I still know people involved with those companies. They talk about their data sources, what they can provide to anyone who wants it.

Have you ever searched for yourself on intelius.com? How about looked at the current value of your house on zillow.com? Maybe searched for someone on zabasearch.com? Where do you think they get their information? Yes, they buy it.

I've also worked with people who have worked in other business segments of the same industry. For example, one company handles information used by marketing companies. They sell customized lists. You could get every independent car dealership within 100 miles of a particular city. Another company only trades in email lists. The more details with those email addresses the better. Want the email address for everyone in Middletown, Kansas? They'll be happy to provide it? Add to the list from Foursquare would then give you every person residing in the town, *and* those who "check in" there.

Those companies buy access to the credit reports. Not just hand picked ones, but all of them. They're expensive to buy, but they are out there. Does it show on your credit report? Then it's accessible. Search for "Experian File One" or "TransUnion TUCS file". You're looking at a 7-figure price, plus a whole stack of qualifications, but for the right price, they're more than happy to sell information on every person in the country.

They also buy lists or access to the lists of anything they can. Some it was perfectly legal, and some not so legal. For example, and unhappy and underpaid employee of a cell company may just happen to copy off the list of subscribers, and sell it for tens of thousands of dollars. Some random hacker gets a dump of the Sony database. They may not be in it for the credit card numbers. They may have wanted a verified list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers. The card numbers will stop working pretty quickly if they attempt to use them. The rest of the information is worth a fortune. How big was that data breech again? Oh ya, only 100 million users. That'll have a nice price tag on it when it goes to market. Of course, it will be filtered to remove seeds, and handed through so many people, it'd be easier to find the Holy Grail than the source.

If there is information available online, no matter how tedious it is to click through the forms, they have programs diligently pulling down ever bit they can. You can't guess every name on Facebook, but you can crawl through it pretty quickly. How hard would be be to write a script to request (through various anonymous proxies, with changing USER_AGENT strings):

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1
through
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2100000000

It'd take a while to run through 2,100,000,000 pages (that's the upper limit I found by changing the id number by hand, without redirecting automatically back to the front page). That's if you have one computer doing them one at a time. How about 100 servers with 100 crawler processes each? 210,000 seconds, or 2.43 days. It may seem like a lot of horsepower to do it, but it's very profitable if even a small percentage have their profiles open for anyone to see.

But what about Foursquare, since that was the topic?

https://foursquare.com/user/1
through

Are you sure about that? Steve Jobs wasn't able to board his private plane in Japan because he was carrying ninja stars.

It's not clear yet if the tsunami was the main reason. Besides, one of the Swiss nuclear power plants is not in good shape. Also, there have been reports the controlling instance for nuclear safety is not independent enough (their boss getting money from the nuclear power plant operators and such).

Meanwhile, you have the CEO of the company dismissing this whole thing as a "hiccup," which pretty aptly demonstrates just how seriously Sony apparently takes its security. No way I want my CC number or private info involved in their next "hiccup."

And also saying he can't promise you security after this attack. "It's the beginning, unfortunately, or the shape of things to come. It's not a brave new world — it's a bad new world" is what he said exactly. So is he preparing us for an endless number of "hiccups"?

I've never been a particularly big fan of Sony, mind you. But even I am shocked by the level of security incompetence they've shown over this whole thing. This is a major corporation, for fuck's sake! Do they even *have* a full-time security staff in there online division? Their press releases make it sound like they only stumbled on the whole PSN hack by accident and had to run out and contract for a bunch of security people. Surely to god they had SOMEONE monitoring security, right?

As one of the effected users, I'm just glad I never gave them my credit card number (fortunately, I never bought anything on PSN). Now, I wouldn't give them a credit card number on a *dare*. Hell, I won't even give them my real *name* ever again. No online system is secure, but theirs looks like a complete joke.

Meanwhile, you have the CEO of the company dismissing this whole thing as a "hiccup," which pretty aptly demonstrates just how seriously Sony apparently takes its security. No way I want my CC number or private info involved in their next "hiccup."

First: Bloomberg's writeup

Browns Ferry could have been testing these valves but wasn't (not unlike me not testing those hot water heater emergency valves once a year). From the article above quoting the TVA guy, it would have taken an improbable scenario (involving Matthew Broderick no doubt) for it to "cause damage to the core". Regardless, they should just add it to their undoubtedly busy schedule. Something like Fukushima is more unlikely for it. I heard it was designed for around ~350 mph winds (those pesky tornadoes!) but I see stuff on the internet ~200 (older articles, before it was put online in the GWBush era, cite less wind protection). I don't know what they did for earthquake proofing due to the proximity to New Madrid Fault Zone ~Memphis, TN area. Map of 1812 Quake

Yet another take

Many things are made by Foxconn. Also from what I've read, their suicide rate is quite a bit lower than the average suicide rates in Chinese/Taiwanese manufacturing plants. We only hear/care about this one because they make i-devices. I mean come on, the very title of this summary should be a glaring indicator why anyone cares. Foxconn is not a "chinese iPad factory," its a massive global technology company manufacturing pipeline.

because only apple workers commit suicide http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-13/samsung-electronics-two-factory-workers-commit-suicide-korean-police-say.html
oh wait, your just over-generalizing on topics you know nothing about, about cultures you obviously know nothing about. That's right.

That's probably why you don't see a lot of white collar people selling drugs.

Excuse me? How many brothers you know making that kind of money?

here are a couple of things for you to take a gander at:

(This is the for the relation between the more somatic (external) and internal 'self' and nervous systems. and indeed the truth (or lack their of) in Buddhist teaching)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-28/broken-heart-burns-like-hot-coffee-study-of-ex-lovers-shows.html (check out the actual science not the 'news' write up crap about 'ex-lovers')

any kind of rejection, for instance the rejection of your ideas by yourself or someone else or science. again the different nervious systems and regions in play.

Looking back, This probably didn't help the relationship....or was a sign it was over.

ATA operations cost about $1.5 million per year, Pierson said, and the SETI science campaign at ATA costs another $1 million annually.

So, 20 years of operation cost about the same as one extra F/A-18E/F? Nice.

Except there is a little problem...WE ARE BROKE...The taxes on the top 1% have never been lower in our nation's history and they will NOT be going up anytime soon, or IMHO ever, thanks to the legalized bribery SCOTUS gave us by equating money with speech and making corps people (they're just like you...only better).

Meanwhile the high tech jobs promised by our new tech economy are are finally here...they are all in India and the new tech corps like Google pay a pittance thanks to the double dutch and other loopholes, oh and in case you haven't heard China is getting ready to dump its dollars so you can ALL say hello to the great depression part II that many of us have been saying for years would come thanks to selling off of this country by offshoring, illegal immigration (currently 85% of illegals with anchor babies are on welfare) and H1-Bs making college pointless for many in the tech sector.

So you want to go back into space? the top tax rate MUST go back to 90% which despite all the rich hoarding and squawking NEVER in our history has more jobs been tied to lower taxes, in fact EVERY boom has had high taxes on the rich (because instead of hoarding they have incentive to invest) along with HIGH tariffs on those shipping our jobs to third world countries that allow pollution so thick you can detect it on the west coast AND a closing of ALL bases and walking away from the two pointless Jihad fests we have going on and instead using those troops to CLOSE THE LEAKING BORDER and repealing the law allowing anchor babies.

Instead what we are gonna have is a full on collapse, we will be NO different than the PIIGS in Europe, mark my words. After a few years in the collapse and Egyptian style riots we will have a new party rise, most likely militant nationalist, the only question now in my mind is whether we shall become xenophobic (preferred) or whether we will take Poland (aka South America) like the last heavily armed nationalist bunch. Shit is about to hit the fans folks, and these bozos are talking moon bases. No wonder our credit rating is becoming as bad as our citizens, which BTW student loan debt has surpassed CC debt and thanks to the rules against bankruptcy not clearing it student defaults have NEVER been higher. Kinda hard to pay for that degree for that job that got sent to Bangalore on a McJob you know?

Still, in terms of growth, while Apple profit doubled, HTC profit tripled.

Or to put it in better context. HTC profit "soared" from $170 million to $511 million.

http://www.eurodroid.com/2011/04/htcs-profits-triple-thanks-to-androids-rise/

Apple's year over year profit went from

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL&fstype=ii

$3.074 Billion 1st quarter 2010 to $5.987 Billion.

HTC's profit went up $337 million year over year. Apple's profit went up $2,913 million during the same time period.

The CEO of Motorola Mobility said he expects a loss because of the iPhone coming to Verizon.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-26/motorola-mobility-predicts-a-loss-this-quarter-as-competition-increases.html

So two of the big 3 big Android makers (the third being Samsung) are not doing that great.

First, is that "10 trillion" number even remotely accurate? The only recent info I can find suggests somewhere on the order of ~1.2 trillion in cash reserves, suggesting that "10 trillion" is overstating the case by an order of magnitude.

Second, do you really think that these companies keep their cash reserves in the form of gold coins sitting around in a giant vault doing nothing? Of course not - they're invested back into the market, where they provide capital for other companies to finance growth, research & development, capacity expansion, and yes, even hiring.

Oh, and the agreement is only about credit and grants, not use in trade, which makes it particularly pointless. None of these countries are major investors in each other, or likely to be anytime soon. Is the Chinese government going to stop building plants in China to start building them in India?

You may want to check your facts before jumping to conclusions. Foxconn in Talks on $12 Billion Brazil Plant, Rousseff Says

Really?

Yes, really.

These online sites had no regulation.

Unlike these money launderers, who do.

We just don't enforce it on them, even though it involves hundreds of billions.

Well since what Marx proscribed is evidently authoritarian, isn't calling a regime "authoritarian marxist" using a useless adjective. Like saying a "vehicular car".

Public ownership of content distribution would take away all incentives, except for a single one : propaganda. The only incentive there would be for film or tv makers would be to please their political overlords. Or, at least, that's the only thing that would be rewarded. Have you watched some Soviet films ? They're not "all bad" so to speak, but the influence of this (and of the censors) is clear and present. And this makes the films ... a lot less exciting, to say the least.

Continued communism is, of course, mutually exclusive with democracy. Why ? Because communism destroys the incentive for economic activity, indirectly eradicating economic activity. The very best possible a communist society can do is keep the same GDP as it has, it can never improve. At some point the economic deterioration will push people back towards capitalism (legal or otherwise)

What defines communism is the taking of all resources from individuals. They will not let this happen without a fight, and communism takes everything from everyone. This will, obviously, not carry the public's approval beyond a certain point. Even Marx himself clearly pointed out that continued violence against everyone would be necessary, and has a much better explanation of why the violence is necessary than I could ever hope to give here.

So democracy and communism - doesn't work. It may work for a very, very short period, a period where the delusions of people (like you) drown out the real world's influence through stripping buffers built up during a capitalist past, but that's my opinion. Marx himself thought it could never happen, even for a second.

So Obama both spent a billion dollars in 2008 (liar), and is a cheap whore? You're not just a liar, you're insane.

The kind of insane that thinks that any programme can run at all with no idea whether it will be funded next year. The kind of insane that thinks the government of a third of a billion people, plus its global effects over six billion people, can be audited and rebudgeted every year. The kind of insane that thinks that each budget can stand alone, rather than being packged for strategic effect with other programmes.

So insane that you don't notice that spending $TRILLIONS invading countries for no reason other than spending $TRILLIONS on cronies and keeping the power to do so, while exempting corporations and their rich owners from paying for the benefits that stream to only them, is the reason we have to borrow money to fund it.

You're the insane mayor of Sim City. Who evidently thinks that sharia law is coming soon to the US. Who thinks that "The Media" has "lefty masters" - like Rupert Murdoch, GE, Disney and Viacom, I suppose.

Some current events to consider:

Slashdot article, some Japan Atomic engineers (among others) lay out a long slog to fix this.

And Bloomberg's reporting.

I never doubted the money would be huge. 30 years is worse than I expected.

And my sources included engineers with long experience in both accidents and decommissioning.

It's a mess, and worse than TEPCO has yet admitted to. The best-case scenario seems to be decades of cleanup, giving up on reactors 5 & 6, no discussion of the seawater problems or leaks.

Of course, the JA engineers aren't casting aspersions on their TEPCO brethren, are they?

Yes, this is what I read here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-15/nokia-board-faces-calls-for-management-change-after-77-billion-lost-value.html
Basically, the large shareholders were unhappy in 2010 about the display of insecurity in spreading the R&D over Maemo, Symbian and then Meego, and jealous of the relatively larger successes of Apple and RIM (quote from the article: "Investors say it's not enough" instead of something like "researchers say it's not enough").
Also they apparently wanted a CEO from the USA instead of another boring Finn.
And now, the've got what they wanted: a CEO from North America who manages by the old tune of "It's a panic situation! Something must be done!!!!11! This is something, therefore it must be done! No time to think^Hlose!"
(Sidenote: talking about that management style, I'm glaring at you, Jan Peter Balkenende! Please become CEO of Microsoft. Thank you.)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-04/google-enters-pact-to-buy-nortel-networks-patents-for-900-mln.html

Relevant quote:

“One of a company’s best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services,” Google General Counsel Kent Walker said in a blog post today.

As far as the public goes, the parts who know and care at least, hundreds of millions of people are being persecuted globally because a few overprivileged rich guys want their stupid business models protected.

That sounds a lot like the Federal Reserve banking system.

$4 million? A pittance! Apparently a paid registration system costs ten times that.

So did the NYTime pay wall.

Considering their market cap (second highest of ALL companies, not just computer companies), and the fact that WWDC just sold out in less than TEN HOURS, methinks YOU'RE the one who is seriously in need of an attitude adjustment, not them.

Right, cause everything that's popular is quality, just like Twilight or Britney Spears, amirite?

Umm, yea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/ex-taylor-bean-official-ragland-to-enter-plea-in-1-9-billion-fraud-case.html

And this dude is in court right now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Rajaratnam

Theres alot of cases going on, have ended in pleas if you just google.

Um, because more than one in ten of your website visitors is likely to be running OS X, and there is no other hardware that can LEGALLY run OS X?

No, this Apple policy should prevent people from running their software at all. I don't understand how developers can stomach Apple's modes of control: that the company won't allow their systems to be virtualized, if only for development testing, is egregious.

The only problem with that is who can police such a policy? Once Apple allows ANY use of OS X on other hardware; then there are no amount of license terms that can keep the floodgates closed.

Further, then they INSTANTLY get in the same trickbag that Windows (and Linux) have always been in: Hardware and driver-compatibility issues. And no amount of "Approved hardware list" would stop a metric buttload of angry slashdot posters then whining about how OS X crashes on this config, and I can't get my WiFi to work, my Sound won't work, I can't find a driver for my Graphics Card, blah, blah, blah. Seriously, have you ever stopped to think about the fact that an OS is much more than just the fucking KERNEL?

Open standards and free use of software are what have made possible a lot of the technology we rely upon today. Disallowing even virtualization of a proprietary OS is much further than even Microsoft will go.

And if Apple wanted to charge the $500 that MS does for a decent (read even usable) version of Windows, again, the intarweb troglodytes would bitch about how Apple was profiteering on OS X, blah, blah, woof, woof. And STILL, there would be the compatibility problems listed above, and instead of a few bleating Linux whiners, Apple would get the same black eye that Windows has gotten (and if Linux actually HAD any real presence, would have too), with users bitching about how it doesn't run fast on their $100 sucktastic box they got a WallyWorld. Again, et frickin' cetera. THINK.

We need to demand openness from software companies. When a company like Apple doesn't want to participate in this, people (especially developers) should avoid the company's products. Choose to run one of the many fine open systems (Openindiana, BSD, or a Linux distribution), and tell this company to shove it.

Considering their market cap (second highest of ALL companies, not just computer companies), and the fact that WWDC just sold out in less than TEN HOURS, methinks YOU'RE the one who is seriously in need of an attitude adjustment, not them.

Oh well, 40 million bucks (40-50 estimation from this bloomberg article) doesn't buy much of a wall these days I guess.
I wonder how many times did they have to re-write it from the scratch, what amount was spent on "market studies" ("Would you pay us $50 a month of online access? No? Whyyyy?") and how many pennies were spent on actual QA.

Just wondering...

Given the data, it doesn't appear that Apple is even close to the "most wanted" brand of smartphone, let alone phones in general.

Apples status = Told.

Instead of inferring customer's desire from current market share numbers, wouldn't it be more accurate to survey them directly about which smartphone they would want to buy? And somebody helpfully did:

Apple Inc.'s iPhone is the most desired device among users shopping for smartphones, beating the BlackBerry and Google Inc.'s Android as consumers prepare for the holiday season, according to Nielsen Co.

In a survey of U.S. shoppers looking for a smartphone, 30 percent said they wanted to buy an iPhone, according to a Nielsen survey from August through October. Phones running Google's Android software placed second with 28 percent.

Apples status = Real.

Apple vs Nokia ended in "Nokia did not infringe Apple's patents", too. Why is it not mentioned?http://www.osnews.com/story/23987/ITC_Staff_Sides_with_Nokia_in_Apple_Complaint

Probably because it doesn't come from a credible source. Please see Bloomberg

For those who don't want to click the link, the ITC judge will make a ruling on whether Nokia violated Apple patents on June 24.

Hopefully (yeah right, by now it should be clear that used car salesmen have have an infinitely greater ethical superiority over the nuclear industry) .... Hopefully, engineers aren't covering up flaws in the containment like the Japanese engineers on reactor 4:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/fukushima-engineer-says-he-covered-up-flaw-at-shut-reactor.html

Male and female brains do differ structurally.

So do gay and straight brains

And if I must be lynched, please do it with this one, immediately and repeatedly.

Apple applied to register App Store as a trademark in the U.S., and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved the application, Apple said in the lawsuit.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has opposed the registration and the matter will be the subject of proceedings before a trademark appeal board, Apple said in the court filing.

The people who registered `Windows' think `App Store' is unworthy of a trademark registration?

Customer Satisfaction results seemed to be very positive. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-26/microsoft-says-it-shipped-2-million-windows-phones-last-quarter.html Details are still a little sketchy, but as of January it seems to be "well-regarded" by most users.

Being near sea level, the radiation levels in Tokyo are normally about 35 nanoSieverts per hour (nSv/h). This doesn't include dietary sources of radiation.

According to this chart, the radiation level for the past couple days has been 50 nSv/h. (the chart uses microGrays per hour (uGy/h), but 1 uGy = 1 uSv)

Mexico City, being about 2.2 km elevation, has a higher background radiation because the atmosphere is thinner. They average 90 nSv/h there, almost double what's in Tokyo for the past two days.

The real kicker? Each cigarette contains at least 1000 nSv, smoked directly into the lungs. Every cigarette someone smokes is like spending at least 20 hours standing in downtown Tokyo right now.

IDK, The British are pretty good at it. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-10/u-k-lawmaker-says-rbs-s-goodwin-obtained-super-injunction-.html

...And, with that single link, you've not only gotten around the intent of this unicorn-farts-and-pixie-dust "superinjunction", but made an entirely new and previously uninterested group of people (consisting of at least me) aware of his status as an evil banker.

So, while the British might grasp the idea of wielding the law as a maul, they still don't grasp the full power of the Streisand effect.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-07/apple-ipad-parts-may-cost-as-little-as-260-isuppli-says-after-teardown.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20037865-64.html

The 32GB ipad costs 730 and according to these sources the parts cost at or below 300. So the gross margin before labor and FOB china is between $400 & $500. I stand by my original comment.

...it certainly isn't working for drugs.

<Yes it is>. Crime does pay... very handsomely

attempts to throw patent roadblocks in front of everything

I have to defend them on that one. As crazy as the patent system has gotten, if they don't defend their patents, they are essentially putting up a big sign for Apple, Sony et. al. saying "Come rape us!" In this crazy environment, if someone comes suing you over patents, you have to have some patents of your own to hit them back with. It's sad but true that the only way for a company like MS to stand is to have its own cache of patents to ward off other companies. Just ask Sony and LG.

One problem is CFL's production costs far exceed what normal light bulbs cost to make (easily a factor 10). In return you get somewhere near 40% savings on the power required for lighting (40%, as lots of things aren't fixed merely by changing the light bulb).

So they only become good for the environment after a number of hours of light, and that's over a year for better models, up to 3 years for sucky bulbs. Obviously the large majority fall at least halfway on the "sucky" scale.

In reality therefore, CFL's are only good for the environment in the places where the assumption that they burn a lot more than a year holds true. They won't survive much longer than 5 years in any case (burning or not), so any CFL burning less than 20% of the time (which is most every lamp in the house except those in the living room in my house) are a net-negative for the environment.

But it's a massive subsidy for firms who claim to be green, but obviously aren't. So politicians are happy : money for cronies. Lunatic lefties are happy : another government supported industry, heavily regulated. Loony greens are happy : "green" companies "do well". Socialists are happy : "jobs are created". And everyone suffers yet again to make lunatics feel good.

Of course, real jobs are lost. The environment has to bear the increased fossil fuel usage, the athmosphere has to swallow even more CO2 (but don't worry : it's mostly emitted in China, and thus Obama can look good while destroying the environment even more), and by forcing these companies out of America, gaia can find fewer polluted creeks : they can't report on those in China or Indonesia at all.

The result is of course, very predictable. The environment does bad so "more intervention is clearly needed". CO2 increases so "it's yet again even more worse than we thought !". Jobs are lost so "more regulation/stimulus is needed". And government cronies, "surprisingly" do well so "it's all really the fault of the rich Jewish bankers in wall street !".

Lunacy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

In reality things are simple : energy costs money. Transport cost money. Mining costs (lots and lots) of money. People cost money. All these things are bad for the environment. So you want to do what's best for the environment ? Really ? It's simple : save every last penny you have and DON'T BUY STUFF YOU DON'T NEED. Of course, greenies have become exactly what they accuse their "enemies" to be : they're little more than deluded spoiled rich kids, who feel an irresistible need to take other's toys to feel big, and throw a tantrum if they're asked to go a single day with an last year's model of the iphone. (because apple really is the worst brand you can buy for the environment, or labor laws, ...).

As long as people prefer deluding themselves to facing the truth, things won't change, and obviously lunatics are attracted by fringe parties that want to change everything to their design. Nothing new there. Forcing others is all leftist greens have left. Green policy intents have been reduced over the years to amassing power, and destroying the environment in order to justify putting more power in their hands. Furthermore : lunatics only find fault in others, and not in their own behavior. That's why they needed 3 full airports, with expanded parking space, to put all the private jets at the latest "anti-co2" conference.

If we were to put a huge import tax on lightbulbs (and smartphones, perhaps ?), they would have to be produced cheaply inside America, under our stringent environmental laws. Now *that*

You mean something like this?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-10/meet-motorola-s-mighty-morphin-laptop-phone-duo-tech-by-rich-jaroslovsky.html

From Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-02/nokia-microsoft-must-join-forces-to-fight-iphone-berenberg-analyst-says.html

and one quote in particular:
        Nokia Oyj and Microsoft Corp. need to join forces to avoid the dinosaur fate of mainframe makers,
        Berenberg Bank analyst Adnaan Ahmad wrote in an open letter to the chief executive officers of the two companies.

What does a bank analyst know about technology? Nokia and Microsoft aren't going to save each other. The upper management at both companies appear to be inept. Steve Jobs once did a deal with Microsoft to keep Apple alive. Now, do you think Steve Jobs would have made the same decision as Stephen Elop? Nokia is no where near in bad a shape as Apple was when Steve took over. Apple's share price was $12. But Steve got to working on a very long range plan and brought in people to execute it. That seemed to work out for them.

Nokia started to muck with QT badly with Meego. I have a long history of developing with QT. I started to look into it and found that they were "branding" the code. The new slogan was going to be "QT everywhere except Meego." I think the embedded Linux base that Trolltech did for their GreenPhone would have been a good place to start. People complained that performance was lacking. The newer ARM processors would work very well now. Nokia has/had a large contingent of developers in the KDE/QT communities that could develop for their platform. Now all they are going to offer is developing in a MS sandbox using Silverlight and no native code. That means nothing interesting would be developed.

So Elop will probably become a Harvard Business study in how to take the largest mobile cell company down.

This decision is a disaster. Apparently, the market agrees with me. NOK is down %15 as I write this.

While they're by no means the only state with budget problems, it is kind of coincidental that we're seeing this from Texas in the midst of a budget deficit. With $10 billion in lost revenue, they're starting to get creative like demanding university offer a $10k bachelors degree. Oh the abuse of the educational system, both lower and higher education. It's probably going to come down to just cuts across the board. My friends from Texas have often bragged about it but Texas doesn't have income tax so it's sort of asking a lot to do all this on 6.25% sales tax. You can make promises like "no new taxes" and "more tax cuts" but it looks like they'll run Amazon out of town on this one. Well, they were right that taxes hurt businesses! Bye bye Amazon!

Globalization means you can't not invest in China. For example, GM now sells more cars and trucks in China than the US. The Asia-Pacific region has been Caterpillar's fastest-growing geographic market in recent years. GE's China sales are rising at about 20 percent annually. And IBM is a partner in this new datacenter project.

AND listen to experts in specific fields and let them what they do best.

Oh, he listens to experts? I seem to remember otherwise: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-15/apple-engineer-said-to-have-told-jobs-last-year-about-iphone-antenna-flaw.html

Apple has many talented people, but a frontman and driver? That's going to be hard to get.

Bill Gates, any of the Google founders. Pretty much every top tech company has (or had in Gates' case) the "front-man and driver" combo you speak of.

If I have learned one thinking (sic) from Steve Jobs, it's to be a control freak/egomaniac. That's how you run a successful company.

... when banks are involved.

They can help run drugs with impunity.

Alan Eustace, Senior VP of Google Engineering & Research, started off 2010 by touting Google's 'guiding Privacy Principles', but would later have to apologize for the company's Street View privacy breach, saying that the company was 'mortified' by the 'mistake'. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Google gave Eustance a $10 million equity award in 2010 for his efforts.

So Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio didn't win? Seems the Tea Party helped republicans win back the house.

Or as you like to say, a citation is needed to back your claim.