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Oh please. Apple's own engineers warned Jobs of the issue right from the earliest design meetings, but were overruled. When users -shock- began complaining soon after launch, Jobs personally dismissed the "non-issue", telling them to "avoid holding it in that way."

Even when Apple *finally* accepted there was a problem at the 16 July press conference (only after a damning confirmation of the issue from Consumer Reports), there was no "mea cupla". They claimed the problem was common to all internal antenna phones, something which competitors and reviewers were quick to dispute, but they would begrudgingly issue free cases as a band-aid fix.

It never ceases to amaze me the infinite reserve of benefit-of-doubt that Apple commands from its fans! :]

Oh please. Apple's own engineers warned Jobs of the issue right from the earliest design meetings, but were overruled. When users -shock- began complaining soon after launch, Jobs personally dismissed the "non-issue", telling them to "avoid holding it in that way."

Even when Apple *finally* accepted there was a problem at the 16 July press conference (only after a damning confirmation of the issue from Consumer Reports), there was no "mea cupla". They claimed the problem was common to all internal antenna phones, something which competitors and reviewers were quick to dispute, but they would begrudgingly issue free cases as a band-aid fix.

It never ceases to amaze me the infinite reserve of benefit-of-doubt that Apple commands from its fans! :]

A country?

My first thought was "so what? What says the writer of the article agrees with the leaders of the country in general?", but then I saw that it was the paper of the communist party. And yeah, those are probably the people who want to lock down the Internet. Not "the country."

The same newspaper of the Communist party that is censoring calls by Premier Wen Jiabao for greater political openness?

I know most people see this article and think that American's are getting screwed. Actually, the article makes the case that as American taxpayers we are getting screwed. The article also only gives one side of the argument, basically saying 'close the loop holes and tax the hell out of them'. However a better answer to raising the taxes or more vigorously applying them is to drastically lower or remove them all together. I link you to the following article from Bloomberg.com http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-12/stimulus-of-1-trillion-adds-nothing-to-deficit-frank-aquila.html To summarize the article he states the companies would no longer have a reason to hide the money, which they would in turn bring back into the US and use somehow. Whatever way that is, it will almost assuredly be taxable, whether it be more jobs (tax on income), more infrastructure, dividends to investors, what-have-you. If companies are going to great lengths to avoid high taxes, in turn withholding tax revenue, how does making them pay more/up make any sense?

How Google Avoided Paying $60 Billion In Taxes

Yeah, unless you read the article that says:

Such income shifting costs the U.S. government as much as $60 billion in annual revenue, according to Kimberly A. Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

That's $60 billion total per year. Not just from Google but from every American business using these tax loopholes (Microsoft and Facebook included). The article clarifies:

Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Emphasis mine. So you can see that it's on average a billion a year that Google saves doing this. Not $60 billion. Do I still feel like they're shafting me? Yes. But not 15% of their stock market worth. That's just unimaginable. Here's a bigger survey of companies using these loopholes with more details.

Bloomberg recently posted a 48 minute video of Apple's history here. A lot of Sculley's interview comments made it into this video as well.

What? Doctors have to be convinced to follow evidence-based medicine? What were they practicing before? And why are they against it?

You know, there's never been a randomized control trial of the effectiveness of parachutes versus placebo when jumping out of planes at high altitude. Would you care to volunteer?

Some things are just obvious or can be deduced from retrospective analysis or theoretical modeling. And some times it would be unethical or impractical to conduct a randomized control trial of a treatment (e.g., testing an AIDS drug versus placebo).

I'm saying people should use evidence-based medicine and you're saying that sometimes you can't collect evidence. You're missing the point.

Evidence-based medicine: where there's evidence of effective treatment, you should use it in the practice of medicine.

Whatever you're talking about is off point. And also wrong. The trials of the FIRST AIDS drug was versus a placebo because it was not obviously safe or effective. The phase 2 trials for most truly novel drugs are randomized, controlled for safety. There are instances when a study is cut short because of overwhelming efficacy (cut short because it would be unethical to keep an obviously effective treatment from the control group). But it's rare. And people do die while in the control group.

After an existing drug become the standard of care, then it's less likely for new drugs to be compared against placebo, but rather compared to standard care.

But I, like you, digress.

The idea that doctors are ALLOWED to prescribe drugs for off-label use horrifies me (it's off-label because there's no proof it works for the off-label condition).

No, there is often tons of proof. Off-label just means that the manufacturer hasn't gone through the (expensive, time-consuming) process of proving its effectiveness to the FDA. If the patent has expired there's often no financial incentive to go through the trouble.

That's begging the question. There's rarely any proof. And by proof, I mean scientific (randomized, controlled) proof. That's because it's easier and cheaper to NOT do the studies and just say it's obviously/intuitively correct. Or do a 8 person "study" and call it proof.

The FDA frowns on off-label marketing: Pfizer, based in New York, struck the largest off-label promotion settlement to date in September 2009, agreeing to pay $2.3 billion for unauthorized marketing of its recalled painkiller Bextra and three other drugs

And there's evidence that there's often lots of financial incentive to go through the trouble:
Botox approved to treat migraines

Dell's former CEO, Kevin Rollins, and James Schneider, the company's former chief financial officer, agreed to pay fines of $4 million and $3 million, respectively. Schneider was suspended from appearing or practicing before the SEC as an accountant for five years. The SEC, as urged by the company in its settlement proposal, spared Michael Dell similar punishment.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-13/dell-s-settlement-of-sec-accounting-fraud-claims-approved-by-u-s-judge.html

Indeed, other countries have been able to build quickly.

Really? If that's what you really think you haven't seen many reports about construction delays. Try this one: Hooked on Subsidies:
"Investors are also wary of nuclear plants because of the construction delays and cost over-runs that have historically plagued the industry. For instance, the Areva/Siemens nuclear power plant being built for TVO in Finland-the first nuclear power plant to be built in a relatively free energy market in decades-once scheduled to be operational within 54 months, is now two years behind schedule and 60% over budget. Nor have these construction delays had anything to do with regulatory obstruction or organized public opposition."

"The General Electric ABWR was the first third generation power plant approved. The first two ABWR's were commissioned in Japan in 1996 and 1997. These took just over 3 years to construct and were completed on budget. Their construction costs were around $2000 per KW. Two additional ABWR's are being constructed in Taiwan. However these have faced unexpected delays and are now at least 2 years behind schedule."

"CEZ Declines for Second Day as Czech Utility Delays Nuclear Investment
"The company postponed the selection of suppliers for two additional reactors at Temelin until 2011, supervisory board member Eduard Janota said today. Construction may be delayed by as much as several years, Hospodarske Noviny newspaper reported, citing a CEZ employee it did not name. CEZ will also reduce investments in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, the newspaper said."

Those were in the Czech Republic, Finland, and Taiwan not the US, so US environmental regulations can't be blamed. People say how France gets a lot of energy from nuclear power, yet it was the French company Areva which is majority owned by the French government, that was building Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant.

Falcon

In other news, the government is making credit card companies notify you when they invoke the fine print in the contract you signed, forcing people to pay for health insurance even if they think they "never get sick", and charging a fine for leaving your own car unlocked.

The planet and ring gears can also optionally by driven by the engine and a second assist electric motor when needed. . . . not previously known was that the engine can directly give torque to the wheels under certain circumstances (without going through a generator).

I read a Bloomberg article earlier today in which the notion that there is any mechanical linkage between the ICE and the wheels is denied by both a GM spokesman and somebody from 2953 Analytics.

Nick Richards, a GM spokesman, said the Volt always runs on electricity and has no mechanical link from the gasoline engine to the wheels.

The car’s four-cylinder gasoline engine powers a secondary electric motor, which turns the wheels, Tony Posawatz, the Volt’s vehicle line director, said in an interview. The car’s gas engine doesn’t directly power the wheels, he said. GM never disclosed that fact because the engineers saw it as a benefit that boosted the car’s fuel economy, he said.

And later:

“In a Prius, there is no mechanical linkage between the engine and the wheels -- it goes through a motor,” he said. “They use the engine to drive a direct-drive generator to drive the motor. The Volt does the same thing, it’s just that the Volt can run with electric power without an engine longer than pretty much any hybrid right now can.” [Attributed to Jim Hall of 2953 Analytics}

I didn't know that about the Prius. I thought that there was a mechanical linkage between the wheels and the engine. Guess that I was wrong.

This Bloomberg video on the Chinese neodymium monopoly starts off as bleak as your post, but the last 45 seconds show that US industry shouldn't be counted out just yet. There is hope. Want to help? I suppose you could buy Molycorp stock.

Apple paid $1.7M for an acre adjoining their current datacenter FOR EXPANSION. Apple is not building a 500,000 square foot data center on a one acre lot as the post above would have you believe - to do so would require that Apple build the datacenter at least 12-14 stories tall, since one acre of land is only 43,560 square feet, and after taking in to consideration easements ten largest foot print for the building would be, say, 30,000 square feet (give or take)...

Thanks CaptainDefragged for link to actual Bloomberg piece on this purchase: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-05/apple-s-data-needs-mean-1-7-million-jacuzzi-for-carolina-pair.html?cmpid=yhoo

The actual article is at Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-05/apple-s-data-needs-mean-1-7-million-jacuzzi-for-carolina-pair.html

The article linked in the summary is just a blog post condensing the Bloomberg article, which contains much more information including the tax incentives that NC's state and local governments used to attract Apple, the revenue prospects those incentives were designed to entice, Apple's purposes in building the data center, and, for the human interest angle, more on the family involved and their plans for the proceeds from the land sale. Really, why in the world would anyone have submitted a crummy, abbreviated blog post over a decent article from a reputable source?

Blog spam. Here is the actual story.

these guys would love it! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-08/lahood-weighs-urging-u-s-ban-on-all-driver-phone-use-in-cars.html

i think a good navigation system helps safety.

though you're not alone in this thinking and our benevolent, good intentioned, rulers/overlords are right behind you. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-08/lahood-weighs-urging-u-s-ban-on-all-driver-phone-use-in-cars.html

1) They have already printed trillions. As I said in my post, google for: federal reserve trillions.

Example: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=armOzfkwtCA4
And they've been trying to hide it: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-03-19/fed-loses-bid-for-review-of-disclosure-ruling-on-u-s-bank-bailout-records.html

Quote: "Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the public's right to learn basic information," Golden wrote in court filings

So printing money to pay off China wouldn't make a big difference. The US only owes China 2 plus trillion.

2) And even though the US might fuck itself and its citizens by printing trillions, theoretically this is not a necessary/guaranteed result.

When you create money, in effect you are taxing those who already hold net positive amounts of it (whether as cash or as a net creditor). What they hold or are owed becomes worth less.

In Zimbabwe, when Mugabe did that, he and his cronies were basically transferring wealth from the other Zimbabwe citizens to themselves. The rest of the world was mostly unaffected, some even laughed at Zimbabwe.

BUT in the US case, the rest of the world holds trillions of US dollars, and they use it to buy and sell oil, other raw materials and finished goods. So no they won't be laughing.

When the US Gov creates US dollars, the US Gov gets richer, and most of the world living in US's "Zimbabwe" become poorer. If the US Gov doesn't use the created money for the benefit of the US citizens, then yes the US citizens are fucked too. Otherwise, no they aren't fucked - they'd be like Mugabe's cronies, not as rich as Mugabe, but better than the rest of Zimbabwe.

If after a while the rest of the world decide that they are getting screwed more than it's worth, then they will leave the "US Zimbabwe" and use different currencies for trade.

When that happens the US is "fucked" BUT only in relative terms:
Before: the US gets to fuck everyone whenever the US feels like it via the petrodollar.
After: the US doesn't get to fuck everyone else that way anymore.

If the US was doing things right, they would have used their advantageous position to build up a lead that would persist.

If China sells you stuff cheap, and you pay them in borrowed money that you can create trillions of, you're actually in a better situation than China. BUT if you buy cheap toys and trinkets and don't put the savings to good use, then you're wasting that temporary advantage.

The US is holding good cards. What they do with them is another matter.

1) They have already printed trillions. As I said in my post, google for: federal reserve trillions.

Example: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=armOzfkwtCA4
And they've been trying to hide it: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-03-19/fed-loses-bid-for-review-of-disclosure-ruling-on-u-s-bank-bailout-records.html

Quote: "Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the public's right to learn basic information," Golden wrote in court filings

So printing money to pay off China wouldn't make a big difference. The US only owes China 2 plus trillion.

2) And even though the US might fuck itself and its citizens by printing trillions, theoretically this is not a necessary/guaranteed result.

When you create money, in effect you are taxing those who already hold net positive amounts of it (whether as cash or as a net creditor). What they hold or are owed becomes worth less.

In Zimbabwe, when Mugabe did that, he and his cronies were basically transferring wealth from the other Zimbabwe citizens to themselves. The rest of the world was mostly unaffected, some even laughed at Zimbabwe.

BUT in the US case, the rest of the world holds trillions of US dollars, and they use it to buy and sell oil, other raw materials and finished goods. So no they won't be laughing.

When the US Gov creates US dollars, the US Gov gets richer, and most of the world living in US's "Zimbabwe" become poorer. If the US Gov doesn't use the created money for the benefit of the US citizens, then yes the US citizens are fucked too. Otherwise, no they aren't fucked - they'd be like Mugabe's cronies, not as rich as Mugabe, but better than the rest of Zimbabwe.

If after a while the rest of the world decide that they are getting screwed more than it's worth, then they will leave the "US Zimbabwe" and use different currencies for trade.

When that happens the US is "fucked" BUT only in relative terms:
Before: the US gets to fuck everyone whenever the US feels like it via the petrodollar.
After: the US doesn't get to fuck everyone else that way anymore.

If the US was doing things right, they would have used their advantageous position to build up a lead that would persist.

If China sells you stuff cheap, and you pay them in borrowed money that you can create trillions of, you're actually in a better situation than China. BUT if you buy cheap toys and trinkets and don't put the savings to good use, then you're wasting that temporary advantage.

The US is holding good cards. What they do with them is another matter.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-05/stripper-s-college-degree-profitable-for-goldman-finds-70-000-was-wasted.html Seriously, tell them to get a real degree so when they are tired of making games, they can get another job (not as a dancer.)

Here are few important facts:
1. Waddell & Reed is the company whose aggressive selling triggered drop in S&P 500 futures price. The company is not HFT shop but rather long-term investment hedge fund. More here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-30/waddell-reed-e-mini-trades-are-said-to-have-helped-trigger-may-6-crash.html

2. According to SEC report, HFT traders played their intended role: smooth out short-term price volatility. However, due to enormous size of Waddell & Reed selloff (about $4 billion dollars in 75000 futures contracts during 20min.) they can do only that much. W&R just cut right through the order book on CME.

3. Slowing down the trading on NYSE did not help but rather hurt by locking up liquidity. Shitty NYSE Arca systems that handle ETFs overloaded and further exacerbated the problems.

4. At the end of day market returned to pre-crash levels. Long term investors were not hurt, W&R payed between 100 and 200 millions for their mistake.

5. Overall, market worked as expected.

MS has 25 million live subscribers. @ $50 each, that's $1.25bil.

I'm no expert in Xbox Live, but your cited article doesn't match your figures. It says that only half the 25 million users paid the $50 Gold subscription:

Microsoft says about half the service's 25 million users paid an annual fee to play games online like "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" in the year ended June 30. That would be about $600 million.

So rather than $1.85 billion dollars of sales that you estimate, it is more like $1.2 billion that your article estimates. Still nothing to be laughed at. I can only assume that the grandparent poster meant to say was that the Xbox Live service was laughed at by Playstation gamers. Which they would, I suppose.

MS has 25 million live subscribers. @ $50 each, that's $1.25bil. Plus, they have likely sold more than 600mil worth of downloads (citation), so call it 1.85 $bil/yr.

Sony has announced that they will also be adding a $50 subscription fee, so that benefit is gone. So MS might be losing small market share, but 'getting laughed at by gamers' might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Yeah, they bought Sun, but apparently SPARC isnt what they were really looking for...

anyway, bloomberg link to back this shit up:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/oracle-plans-to-buy-chip-companies-industry-specific-software.html

i wasnt trolling, that rumor showed up on some tech-news sites, just traced it back to bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/oracle-plans-to-buy-chip-companies-industry-specific-software.html

at this point AMD is just fingered as a target by a third party analyst, but it was enough to sink in deeply with me, since AMD is my prefered chip maker (and they provide much-needed competition to intel), so this would be horror for me too

If that were to happen, oracle will have taken over my two most favorite tech companies, and probably gut out the good parts and leave the burning carcas to rot... (or whatever, shitty metaphor, i know, it's late)

but I'm sure that most of the people committing these crimes have the option of becoming an investment banker.

Yeah but their conscience might bother them even more.

BTW, I wonder where that 9.7 trillion actually went: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok

9.7 trillion is a lot of money to take from taxpayers. USD30K per person?

They don't want to tell though. Did it go to investment bankers or petty thieves?

It's not that simple. If the USA did print enough dollars to repay the debt to China, then it would seriously inflate the dollar.

Then the dollar should be seriously inflating now right? Because the US owes China "only" about 2 trillion. While it sure looks like the USA has created more than 2 trillion USD since 2008.

See: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=apx7XNLnZZlc
December 12, 2008
"The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral."

While some may claim there's a difference between creating 2 trillion dollars, and the Federal Reserve lending 2 trillion dollars, I think in this case it's not very different - I doubt the US taxpayers saw the figures in their bank balances immediately decreasing after those loans. ;)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok
February 9, 2009
"The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government's commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation's home mortgages. "

The Federal Reserve doesn't seem to want to say where it's going though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXlxBeAvsB8&feature=related

although it would make a lot of third-world countries happy - they'd be able to repay their debts easily all of a sudden

I wouldn't say "sudden", since there'll be a lag between the time the USD is printed, enough people realizing "somethings changed", their goods being sold for the new prices and them getting the money for it (so that they can repay the loans).

It's like Zimbabwe, when Mugabe prints money, he and his cronies immediately benefit. The rest of the people with net positive Zimbabwe Dollars get taxed immediately, the others holding debts in Zimbabwe Dollars need to get paid higher salaries first before they can pay back "easily". If the creditors start saying "the interest rates are much higher now", it doesn't work so well. I believe for some loans the creditors can change the interest rates. Worse if they end up not even getting a salary, it doesn't work at all.

Lastly, it was really kind of strange - seeing people "fleeing to the US dollar" after the 2008 US financial crisis. I asked a few finance people about this - they couldn't figure it out either (they weren't doing it)- and suggested maybe it was out of habit. When scared rush to the US dollar? Doh.

It's not that simple. If the USA did print enough dollars to repay the debt to China, then it would seriously inflate the dollar.

Then the dollar should be seriously inflating now right? Because the US owes China "only" about 2 trillion. While it sure looks like the USA has created more than 2 trillion USD since 2008.

See: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=apx7XNLnZZlc
December 12, 2008
"The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral."

While some may claim there's a difference between creating 2 trillion dollars, and the Federal Reserve lending 2 trillion dollars, I think in this case it's not very different - I doubt the US taxpayers saw the figures in their bank balances immediately decreasing after those loans. ;)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok
February 9, 2009
"The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government's commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation's home mortgages. "

The Federal Reserve doesn't seem to want to say where it's going though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXlxBeAvsB8&feature=related

although it would make a lot of third-world countries happy - they'd be able to repay their debts easily all of a sudden

I wouldn't say "sudden", since there'll be a lag between the time the USD is printed, enough people realizing "somethings changed", their goods being sold for the new prices and them getting the money for it (so that they can repay the loans).

It's like Zimbabwe, when Mugabe prints money, he and his cronies immediately benefit. The rest of the people with net positive Zimbabwe Dollars get taxed immediately, the others holding debts in Zimbabwe Dollars need to get paid higher salaries first before they can pay back "easily". If the creditors start saying "the interest rates are much higher now", it doesn't work so well. I believe for some loans the creditors can change the interest rates. Worse if they end up not even getting a salary, it doesn't work at all.

Lastly, it was really kind of strange - seeing people "fleeing to the US dollar" after the 2008 US financial crisis. I asked a few finance people about this - they couldn't figure it out either (they weren't doing it)- and suggested maybe it was out of habit. When scared rush to the US dollar? Doh.

Just in case you don't believe me:

* Bloomberg 8 Juli

* http://blog.quintura.com/2010/07/22/russia-to-create-linux-based-national-operating-system/

Haven't you heard?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-06/finance-s-mega-rich-are-meaner-than-rest-of-us-commentary-by-matthew-lynn.html

Ford wanted his workers to have a living wage, to be able to afford the products they made.

That may be the public messaging/myth, but closer analysis shows that Ford simply wanted to reduce turnover, and also to increase productivity by linking the wage increase to learning English, as well as their steering clear of alcohol and gambling (monitored in workers homes, no less...)

Moreover, Ford did not employ enough workers for their wage hike to have a significant impact on his own sales.

That said, wages in China are rising, cutting Flextronics' profits and forcing Foxconn to move more factories away from the high-cost coastal areas of China.

Foxconn doubled base-wages for employees in Shenzhen in June, where it has around half its 900,000 workers, but said it would cut the headcount there by about 170,000 over five years.

Vicente Fox, the first non-PRI president in recent Mexican history (and the same dude that the GP alluded to) just said the same thing you just said.

Here ya go. Hopefully, the current administration agrees.

Citation please for police resources being used more often in wealthier neighborhoods than poor ones. I would be curious to see a police report break down in terms of volume and type of crimes. Are more police resources used in rich neighborhoods, or is it because the rich are sequestered away from the poor (and supported by their own private security forces?) which leads to less crime?

The majority of wear on roads is by trucks, not sports cars of the rich.
See http://www2.ku.edu/~iri/publications/HighwayDamageCosts.pdf One of the reaons we see more road wear in the US is because we build our roads cheaply and thinner than other countries.

The SEC is a FEE FUNDED agency funded by transaction charges made on trades similar to how the Patent Office is a fee funded agency funded by application charges, they are not a fully tax funded agency. In fact congress does not even return the entirety of fees back to them in their budget. The excess goes into the general fund!
see: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aCGM.3vStcjU

The wealthy already pay a disproportonate share of taxes simply because they have more money. Its hard to collect a lot of taxes from people that have no money.

According to this Bloomberg story, the New York Times is only accurate in that Google and Verizon negotiated net neutrality on everything but mobile networks, and hence Verizon will be allowed to do traffic discrimination on those lines.

But I find it a little odd to write up that story as "Google and Verizon negotiating an end to net neutrality" rather than as "Google and Verizon negotiating to preserve net neutrality on most internet connections."

It's not ending net neutrality based on what type of client is connecting ? Are you serious ?
This like being "mostly" a virgin. There's no such thing.

According to this Bloomberg story, the New York Times is only accurate in that Google and Verizon negotiated net neutrality on everything but mobile networks, and hence Verizon will be allowed to do traffic discrimination on those lines.

But I find it a little odd to write up that story as "Google and Verizon negotiating an end to net neutrality" rather than as "Google and Verizon negotiating to preserve net neutrality on most internet connections."

Somebody mixed up the books between this and laundered drug money.. And it's way more than 200 billion...

Yep. Half of that is about $400 billion dollars. That would be way more than a shot in the arm for the economy. And once you start paying down the debt, then the interest on said debt goes down, too.

The deficit is four times that.

So until you cut another $1.1 trillion dollars the debt will continue rising, as will interest payments. Especially given interest rates are at historic lows. What happens when the world realizes we do not have the economic growth to pay this back? Someone will blink first.

While halving the military budget will be a wonderful start, it's just that.

As for the War on Drugs that runs about $60B a year. I'd love to see that go as well, but even if we look at profits from taxation and reduction of incarceration we're still not close to eliminating our deficits, much less our debt.

We need across the board freezes and across the board cuts and across the board tax rises. This will never fly. We had some decent choices ten or twenty years ago, now we have none. And everyone will want to make the other guy pay first. I don't see any solutions but ultimately hyper-inflating our way out.

Maybe not this year or next, but it will happen, count on it.

But we, the consumers would lose. Without a healthy competition, there is no pressure to lower prices. And, there is no pressure to innovate on the existing iPad for Apple.

I disagree there is no pressure - there are a slew on Android tablets on the way and arriving. There's also now the Blackpad from Blackberry (yes that's the real name).

So the question is, how many competitors does the consumer really need? I think even one good one is sufficient, look at Android vs. iPhone in the smartphone market.

So then if the consumer is taken care of, we can turn to what helps Microsoft the most - I think that's what the original poster was trying to do. Does shipping more Windows on Tablets really help Microsoft? It hasn't for a decade, it would seem to be a giant money sink. So as the poster noted, Microsoft might be better served revenue wise from developing great software for the iPad, heck it could even be a kind of R&D for what works for productivity software on a tablet for an eventual Windows Phone 7 tablet (slate).

Microsoft already writes software for the Mac. So it's not so unthinkable they might want to expand Word/Excel to the iPad too, and in doing so potentially they could even show superior design skills over Pages and Numbers. Come to think of it, as a consumer why is it also not better to wish for competition in software in addition to hardware? Microsoft can deliver that software competition, currently I just don't see how they can really be competitive in the hardware space and if they are not successful, they really aren't exerting any pressure on Apple to improve.

That's because Germany has long have had an anti-nuclear stance, while actively promoting solar energy. Even they are reconsidering on keeping nuclear plants open for a longer time, in the wake of economic realities.

I think that 'actively promoting it' is understating the issue.

Germany Slashes Solar Subsidies, Threatening Industry (Update2)

Homes and businesses earn a government-guaranteed price of as much as 47 euro cents ($0.74) for each kilowatt-hour of solar power they generate,
The country has trimmed subsidized prices by 5 percent a year from about 1 euro per kilowatt-hour nine years ago to spur the industry to control expenses and improve efficiency.

I think it was Italy that they found a 'solar' site running generators at night to earn more money...

California state employees are paid too much, so the furlough days are sort of a workaround for not being able to cut their salaries across the board.

Gotta love blanket statements.

I am a state employee doing IT work and I am easily paid well below what I would make in the private sector doing the same work. Many people like myself trade lower salaries for the nice pension. Regarding pensions, which a lot of people have bashed as being unsustainable, most of the employers who abuse the system are county or city employees. Much less oversight. These people are good examples.

There are some state workers who make more than they would elsewhere, but you know in any place of employment it is easy to find someone who "makes more than they are worth". I've seen it in every job I've had - both private and public sector. It also doesn't help the "paid too much" complaints that approximately 50% of public sector employees have college degrees, versus approximately 25% of private sector employees.

Lol. You're full of shit. $100 in revenue a quarter? Whatever you're smoking, I want some.

$100 Million, indeed.

Plus the price of the hardware is only getting cheaper, it's more reliable, etc... Their revenue will accelerate.

I think it would be a very bad time to enter this market. LG and Nokia have just posted record losses: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-28/lg-electronics-profit-falls-33-after-company-falls-behind-in-smartphones.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10725887 BlackBerry is also losing business market share to iPhone and other smartphone makers: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65N5WC20100624 Microsoft would do better to build their reputation in the mobile marketplace with quality operating systems - for now. Consolidation in the marketplace seems inevitable. When there are fewer competitors and Microsoft is established and trusted in the market, that would be the time to launch microsoft hardware. But its devices would need to rival iPhone in quality and HTC in price.

Except for losing out to the Wii, having a... what is it? 55% failure rate?

Look, I'm trying hard to think of MS products that aren't widely ridiculed. That's kind of a short list, and I'll thank you to work with me on this difficult project.

You're going for funny of course, but we should be careful to mistake 'widely ridiculed' in an extremely niche audience like Slashdot and similar as reflecting reality in wider audiences. In most general surveys (both consumer and enterprise customer) I've seen Microsoft continue to be in the top on liked, trusted, high customer satisfaction, etc.

Microsoft Outpaces Apple in Customer Satisfaction

• Deny and minimize problems
• Emphasize your own power and importance.
• Make the story all about you
• Never apologize, and don't even pretend to learn from your mistakes.
• Hang onto your job even when it's clear you should go

And experience in negatively impacting an entire ecosystem. Perfect! (Also perfect that this article posted 14 minutes before the Slashdot article. ;-)

You're confused. Transocean Ltd employees are facing criminal investigations, not BP or it's employees. And the investigations relate to causes of the accident. A photo of BPs post accident response team is not relevant.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-20/well-boss-kaluza-was-bp-temporary-replacement-on-rig-refuses-to-testify.html

So rather let fact get in your way, you're just on a emotional anti-BP conspiracy theorist rant.

Hint: Original story, by Bloomberg.

RICO makes it legal. It's not about BP. The banks are much worse Just because we benefit from their actions, it does make them any less criminal. We have the right to put a stop to it, but apparently not the balls...

Sounds like engineering knew about it, but management blew them off:

Last year, Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert, informed Apple’s management the device’s design may hurt reception ...

As for the fix...

Apple has told its manufacturers to alter the iPhone production process to include an internal component that will insulate the defective antenna connection that has disrupted the phone's signal reception, said Kumar. This internal bumper will give Apple a non-cosmetic solution and will presumably avoid the need to change the appearance of the phone, said Kumar.

Claims that apple was aware of the problem during the design phase.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-15/apple-engineer-said-to-have-told-jobs-last-year-about-iphone-antenna-flaw.html