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Ah, but MY point being that if MS offers companies advertising for less money, or offers web sites more money for carrying their ads- or some combination of the two, then Google has a problem.

It would certainly seem that for the Geek at least his perception of reality is the only reality.

Otherwise, how else could he ignore Microsoft's standout performance in fiscal 2008? 20% growth in the Windowa client division alone.

Microsoft's results contrast with disappointing forecasts from technology companies such as Apple Inc., Intel Corp. and Motorola Inc. The Standard & Poor's 500 Information Technology Index has fallen 12 percent this year, the second-worst performance of 10 industry groups tracked by the S&P.

About 75 percent of the Windows programs sold last quarter were the higher-priced versions. Unearned revenue, which tracks signings of multiyear corporate contracts for Microsoft software, rose $500 million more than CFO Chris Liddell had forecast. Sales in Microsoft's business unit, which includes the Office applications, advanced 37 percent. Microsoft Shares Rise on Profit, Forecast Increases [January 25]

"Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that."

Microsoft Profit Tops Estimates on Xbox; Shares Rise (bloomberg.com) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2fCzio_sChs&refer=home

Microsoft Reports Record Second Quarter Results (microsoft.com) http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/jan08/01-24fy08Q2earnings.mspx

I'm sure there are many other articles out there, but here is a pretty thorough article on the upcoming Canadian auction.

For those who are still in the dark about capitalism, businesses are run by and for their management. Don't believe it? Take a look at the how the "finance capital" companies operate:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aPXU4y.z8E9o&refer=us

"Wall Street's five biggest firms are paying a record $39 billion in bonuses for 2007, a year when three of the companies suffered the worst quarterly losses in their history and shareholders lost more than $80 billion."

"Shareholders in the securities industry endured their worst year since 2002, as Merrill and Bear Stearns slumped more than 40 percent in New York trading and the chief executive officers at both firms gave up their jobs. Morgan Stanley fell 21 percent and Lehman dropped 16 percent. Only Goldman rose, gaining 7.9 percent.

``Wall Street firms have always been run, and likely always will be run, for the upper-level management, not for the shareholders,'' said James Ellman, who manages about $200 million, including stock in Morgan Stanley and Merrill, at San Francisco-based SeaCliff Capital."

The important thing is to make more profit so you, the manager, can take higher compensation. Heck you should take that higher compensation even if the company loses money. Shareholders? Who?

There's no such thing as a goatse, except free sex.

Give 'em a break. Despite the financial clusterfuck they're in right now, GM's not doing that poorly.

They're clearly fixing what is wrong. The new CTS is Car of the Year in the US (Chevy Malibu was second pick (or third ?)), the Opel Astra is one of the best selling cars in Europe, and Buick's doing very well in China. It's hard to talk about reliability, but Buick's been doing pretty well in that area. The Holden Commodore holds the top selling spot in Australia, as I could imagine (having not looked at any numbers) does Daewoo in its home market. Overall, they're having record sales and solid profits around the world, except the US. Saabs have been historically some of the safest cars around, and most recent GM cars are doing fine too.

Now that we got this out of the way... of course, most of the concepts are bound to remain just that, concepts. Just look at some of the past concepts. Still, I think Volt has a pretty good chance of being the real thing, since it's not that far fetched. The driverless car, on the other hand... probably not, but we might see some elements appearing in production vehicles. BTW, you might want to check out Green Car of the Year, you'll be surprised by the winner.

"That's what pie-in-the-sky greenies want. Most Americans don't want a diesel of any sort."

All Americans need money to live. For most, this means a job. For most of those, this means transport to and from said job. If fuel prices are high compared to disposable income, they will take the highest mpg vehicle they can get, or bicycle to work, irrespective of the technology.

It's got nothing to do with being a "pie-in-the-sky greenie". The only thing pie in the sky is the belief that lim e^x as x-> infinity (i.e., human population growth) is less than the same limit for mx+b (supply of oil, where m = 0 using the dinosaur theory, or some positive real number for abiotic theory), c is a real number.

Check out these while you are at it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/

The whole world is about to learn the very real difference between "want" and "need", Americans included.

Paramount already denied this:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aQMGgh2LV_bU&refer=japan

There's only a clausule that it is permitted for Paramount to drop hd-dvd if they think it's needed.

This is old news.

With respect to Blu-Ray, you've just been slightly overruled (see http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a1CPtUYPjrBQ). As long as nobody knows who'll win the "battle of the DVDs", there's no incentive to switch to either, as neither of them is so superior as to make it a no-brainer for masses of end-users. But once either Blu-Ray or HD DVD has won - be it on technical grounds or on purely commercial and power ones - the winner will start to push the good old traditional DVD out of the market. My bet is on Blu-Ray.

it depends on whether or not the company is a monopoly. If they are, then the gov't has every right to force them to lower their prices. As of one year ago, the market share was such:

Rank - Brand - Unit Share
1 -- Apple -- 72.7%
2 -- Sandisk -- 8.9%
3 -- Microsoft -- 3.2%
4 -- Creative Labs -- 2.9%
5 -- Samsung -- 2.0%
source

No question, the ipod is by far the most dominant MP3 player. So I still say that they are overpriced due to monopolistic practices. The example in TFA is exactly the type of thing that happens when you have a monopoly. Look at vista - how much is the difference in price for M$ to produce the basic vs ultimate version? And how much is the price difference to customer pays? Same thing here.

An additional benefit is that it has a rather sobering effect on local know-it-all's when they see that their work is in fact inferior to what we can get from a third world sourcing partner. After this sort of ego bruising they are more ready to accept modern and mature practices.

1. Stan O'Neal at Merrill Lynch walked away with no explicit severance, but with salary, stock, and retirement benefits, left with 160+ million after steering the company to at least a 4-5 billion dollar loss (source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aPxzn5U8zNBo/).
2. Mitchell Caplan cost E*Trade billions, and they had to get a 2.5 billion dollar cash infusion (for 17% of the company). Can't find an exact severance, but he was paid over 14 million in total compensation in 2003 alone (source: http://swz.salary.com/execcomp/layouthtmls/excl_execreport_103364.html/, so I don't feel too badly for him.
3. Citigroup is writing down billions in assets. Chuck Price left, but according to the WSJ (Link here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119403363814780742.html/ will walk away with about $31 million or so.

You want to know what OIL costs? http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/ Or any of the other market quote sites. OPEC is full of shit, they might conspire to change price on some level at the beginning, but(OUR PRICE) is dictated on Wall Street. They will be happy to watch it go to $100 and way over. Next for the peak oil psychopaths. Which of you out there can PROVE that OIL comes from FOSSILS? Until then, I'm sorry buddy but there is no such thing as "fossil fuel" because fuel does not come from fossils. Whenever you hear fossil fuel, think, "I am being subliminally manipulated." Say, someone is spreading misinformation again, and I really need to scrutinize what's being said, is it just the entity saying it that is misled or is it from the beginning of the myth in the first place. Next for the vehicle manufactures "change or die" argument. Perhaps it's time you die, if you can't change to using hydrogen. Just as long as when you die, the taxpayer don't have to bail your ass out again. And finally for the proposed 35MPG and the timetable 2020. What pure bullshit. 35MPG is way too low. And 2020 is way too late. This isn't even worth wasting our government's time. We already fucking have cars that get 35MPG!! The dirty little secret is that since the 1970's (you know back when 1GAL regular gas was a quarter) they pushed this energy crisis crap on the people. Some of you reading are actually old enough to remember the fist fights in the filling station parking lots, got scary for a while there, and if that happens again expect the public to react the same way. Anyway, some inventors got concerned (Stan Meyer)did make a water powered car. (There have been others since then.) All the current "electrolysis takes too much energy" naysayers can go back up and join with the peak oil/fossil fuel disinformation crowd. a.) you haven't tried to BURN STEAM in PLASMA on the fly. b.) even if you were storing the hydrogen on the vehicle in tanks (A bad idea) you could still make the stuff off the grid. c.) Either method would burn cleaner solving this pollution problem. But what will happen is our corrupt corporate government will bring back nuke plants and all the crap pollution that goes with that. I just can't wait until all that wonderful nuclear waste has some accident that makes it impossible to live, how about you? Wouldn't you like to have it stored in an earthquake fault zone right near your home? Your children's, children's ... children's, children's won't be living there for hundreds of thousands of year. We can't even protect something for 1000 years let alone 100,000. Give me a break. It's going to take the underground to modify their cars, and stop buying fuel. You can find the information out there if you look, you can avoid the naysayers when they flap their lips, and you can refuse to do business with the same. We don't need this corporate crap anymore, it's destroyed everything now, all at the expense of profit. If you got a god you should probably pray to it, whatever that might be. Pray for the voting machines that tabulate votes electronically to be destroyed, pray that the oath breakers get tossed in prison. Pray that we get some real leaders (like our original founders) that can solve these problems and restore our constitution. Pray that a law get's passed to stop the abuse of power from ever happening again. Pray that our children fighting in IRAQ, AFGANISTAN, and BUSHSHITISTAN all are brought home asap. Pray that our most secret agencies go through a security background check and those that are corrupt are prisoned. Pray that McCarthyism version 2.0 isn't rolled out in your own face before you finally get it.

Well, according to this, Nintendo has apparently increased their production to 1.8M per month, from 1M per month last holiday season, and plans to hold those production numbers for a while into 2008. I think that's reasonable. Apparently no one knows how well the Wii is going to do, not even Nintendo. That sucks from the consumer's end, and probably isn't a comfortable position for Nintendo, either, but a glut on the market can be worse than a shortage (for both the company and the consumer).

Not to support the war (I don't), but Japan can't afford it - it has by far the largest public debt in the World at $6.8 trillion. That's 25% more than the US's, but with less than half the population, and the population shrinking and rapidly aging. Personal debt is only a couple percent less than the US's, on average.

Japan is just addicted to public spending, they build stupid shit everywhere, especially in the countryside. The seashore of Japan is almost entirely surrounded by huge concrete jumping jacks (waves are dangerous y'know), every po-dunk village has a huge cultural performance building, every ravine or river has a modern bridge built across it, right next to the old bridge that was perfectly serviceable. Perhaps it's the political system on croney-ism, perhaps it's that votes in the country-side are worth 2 or 3 times that of a vote in Tokyo, and the only jobs in the countryside are public works and heavily-subsidized farming.

Well, he's sort of correct, in that it is still pegged, just China has been moving the peg at a decent clip. It hasn't moved as fast as, say, the Euro has. It probably needs to move faster, and I get the feeling China will do so when they are more confident that the dollar has started to rise in value again, whenever that may be (6 months? 20 years? I won't take sides on that.)

Keeping the yuan pegged to the dollar doesn't hurt as much as GP suggested, however, since China, although a big import market, is hardly the largest, and there is plenty of room in this world for U.S. imports alongside Chinese imports. Also, China is enjoying this fall in the value of the dollar, since the yuan is effectively falling against other currencies as well.

What the fall in the value of the dollar/yuan means is:
A)China will continue to grow exports to the U.S.
B)The U.S. will now be able to compete better against the rest of Asia (Signapore, Taiwan, S. Korea, Japan), Europe, Latin America, and Africa.
C)China will continue to grow more competitive against the regions listed in B as well.

Here's a quote or two for you:
Europe's trade deficit with China jumped 22 percent to a record in the first half of this year. Euro-region officials published a statement late yesterday saying that ``it is desirable'' that ``effective exchange rates move'' in China and other emerging economies.

The U.S. government is showing little inclination to encourage an appreciation of the dollar. While Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may tell his G-7 counterparts that he continues to back a ``strong dollar,'' he may resist an explicit criticism of the currency's weakness because it is helping to support the U.S. economy.
  ``As far as the dollar is concerned, you'll see more of the same, with Paulson reiterating support for a strong dollar but that not being followed by any action,'' said Adam Boyton, a senior currency strategist in New York at Deutsche Bank AG.

On an aside, note that this sentiment by Paulson is *exactly* the sort of noise that comes out of China.

US: Criticize Chinese imports, while not really doing anything about it. Talk about a strong currency, but enjoy the benefits of a weak one.
China: Criticize the U.S. dollar's fall, while not really doing about it. Talk about a strong currency to reduce exports, but enjoy the benefits of a weakening one.

Frankly, in terms of China and the U.S., what we are witnessing is two shrewdly run Central Reserve Banks dominating the world financial system without the world financial system having a clue about it.

None of this, of course, undermines what I said in my GGP post. But the Chinese/U.S. dynamic is incredibly complex, quite positive, and hardly a cause of concern for either superpower.

The threat's been building for over a decade, but now it's built up to a head where there is now a moratorium on construction of aircraft carriers.

So here's the scenario: the U.S. and/or Israel is belligerent with Iran and/or outright attacks it. Iran fires a Sizzler missile at an aircraft carrier -- perhaps an old one like Enterprise that the U.S. sticks out in the Gulf and wants to get rid of anyway. The U.S. retaliates by nuking Iran. World War III begins.

The Supreme Court in the states has ruled that patents that are combinations of existing inventions or would have come about anyway are not valid. Geez! Didn't Sun Tzu demonstrate the 'divide and conquer' method like millenia ago? Just because you combine it with a computer network does not make it new or novel.

You mean months before [bloomberg.com] 9/11 right?

MS is doing well recently: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aX2oXuvy4Vc8&refer=home

Personally, I'm quite interested in what they're doing in the mobile department. CE can be configured to be smaller than linux and the .NET micro framework looks promising too.

"Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States" ...
"why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008," he said.

"This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem,"

The Sub-Prime Market imploded, which has been very bad for US banks, like NetBank (which was just shut down by the FDIC).

The budget defecit swelled to 117 billion dollars in August. For those keeping track, that's up 80% year over year, with spending up 30% month over month.

Oh, and for icing on the cake - it looks like housing sales in some areas are down 46% year over year, or 25% month over month.

So, please, we have enough problems - let's not go deliberately taunting the biggest superpower in the world (at least any more - with our 9 trillion in debt, we're not going to be the "world police" much longer.) Also, the "but our GDP grows faster than our debt" argument doesn't cut it when the GDP is shrinking, the currency is in the toilet, and we still get to pay the interest on all that debt.

"Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States" ...
"why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008," he said.

"This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem,"

The Sub-Prime Market imploded, which has been very bad for US banks, like NetBank (which was just shut down by the FDIC).

The budget defecit swelled to 117 billion dollars in August. For those keeping track, that's up 80% year over year, with spending up 30% month over month.

Oh, and for icing on the cake - it looks like housing sales in some areas are down 46% year over year, or 25% month over month.

So, please, we have enough problems - let's not go deliberately taunting the biggest superpower in the world (at least any more - with our 9 trillion in debt, we're not going to be the "world police" much longer.) Also, the "but our GDP grows faster than our debt" argument doesn't cut it when the GDP is shrinking, the currency is in the toilet, and we still get to pay the interest on all that debt.

Here's the official press release. There's additional articles on Bloomberg and TradingMarkets.

This news was predicted after TomTom bought Tele Atlas last July, NAVTEQ's main competitor.

Maybe in Kentucky $60k/yr is a decent family income, but you would be hard pressed to afford a $200k house on that.

Wow, you're pretty off-base, I'd say. First, let's look at median state incomes: I count 32/51 states+DC that have a median income less than $60k. Even California's median income is less than $65k. If you look here instead, you get much lower numbers -- I don't know why.

Anyway, I live in Louisville, Kentucky. It is, according to the US Census Bureau, the 27th largest city in the US (I point that out just to make it clear I'm not in a rural area, where (I'm fairly sure) housing is much cheaper by $/sqft).

My fiance and I have a combined income of $70k, and just bought our first home. We were approved for a mortgage of up to $300k. Granted, I thought that was a little ridiculous, but I later realized we *could* have afforded to pay it. We got our loan at 5.875% (30-year fixed) due to good credit, and we're fairly frugal people, but it would not have required much effort -- maybe a bit of attention to how often I upgrade my computer equipment, and that sort of thing. According to this, a 95% loan on a $300k house would cost less than $1,700/month. Add on property taxes and home insurance, and we'd be looking at around $2k/month. The amount of money we put into savings each month plus the amount we're actually paying for our mortgage easily tops that (well... it doesn't really stay in savings because I usually dump it back into the mortgage as additional principle payments). Now, I admit would couldn't afford that if we had 2 children, and we're making $70k instead of $60k, but on the other hand I'm talking about a $300k house, as opposed to $200k.

But let's back up a minute -- this begs the question (yes, it really does, you grammar Nazis -- it "fails to consider the question") of whether you need a $200k house in Kentucky. I can promise that you don't. See, I don't know what $200k will get you in the San Francisco area, but with just a quick search out here you can get a 9-room ranch-style house (4-bedroom, 2-bath) with an unfinished basement on 16 acres of partially wooded land (with pond(s), a stream, a deck, and a 2-car carport) with an asking price under $180k. With a bit of effort looking around and some negotiating, I'm sure you can get more for a full $200k.

Telecommute for the win.

Warren Buffet thinks there is a little money to be made in transmission: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aq3kc7fAgq6k&refer=home. Presumably, the costs will be born by customers. The demand growth is huge in Texas but hopefully we'll see about 12 MW of solar going in at 2005 rates over the next year and that will have some some small effect on Buffet's bottom line. I don't think he'll miss it much given his shift to really big projects.

Ahh, parent poster is a Troll, eh? Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard would probably agree with AC. Is he a troll too? I saw far too many kids there for the party myself... the 'life experience' they called it. We even have online encyclopedias citing which schools paaar-tay the hardest. I'm sure that image doesn't hurt enrollment numbers and the government money flowing into universities. I wouldn't be surprised if universities quietly encourage that 'rep' via PR firms. College is big business. So big in fact that university finances have begun drawing the scrutiny of congress. We've even begun exporting American-style higher education. It may not be the best in the world, but it sure makes a shitload of money.

In the meantime, there's a lot of kids leaving college with a worthless degree and lots of debt. The university was enriched by the process, but you can't say that for all their graduates. I'll bet if the OP had mentioned something about outsourcing the post would be +5 Insightful.

No, I refuse to buy their products due to their policy of firing longer term, higher paid employees then offering to rehire them at starting wages (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aw.zhHEzMpZU&refer=home), as well as their established history of racism (http://lw.bna.com/lw/19980929/971372.htm) and other, shall we say, shady behaviors.

FFS, read what the original post was about. It was some jerk-off saying that nobody should comment on Bush's leadership if they weren't American citizens.

Also, the US did NOT have a mandate from the UN. Quite the contrary.So go f*ck yourself back. Oh, sorry, you already did. fortunately, China and Japan won't fund your Iran ambitions ... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&si d=aNgW4Fu_8.tI&refer=home

Nobody asked you to go to Iraq - quite the contrary, world opinion was that sanctions and inspections were working. Iraqis want you out - NOW. And forget about Iran ... you haven't got the money to go to war - the US is broke, and the countries that hold half your debt (China, Japan) are slowly selling it off because your dollar is going down the tubes.

Current statutory debt limit: 8.965 trillion. Current debt: 9,009,410,075,859.67. Source - the treasury department : http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?applicat ion=np The US government has been "more than broke" since August 13th. Then again,. its been morally bankrupt since before it first took office.

We're not mad at the American people - its not like people actually voted Bush into office ....

Is http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/ this worth it? These soldiers died because you have a criminal for a commander-in-chief. They deserved better leadership.

The reasons behind the recent spate of problems with a technology invented by Sony more than a decade ago are complex and varied,

But Don Sadoway, a professor of Materials Chemistry at MIT who is an expert in advanced battery technologies, worries about off-shoring of a chemistry he asserts "needs to be treated with respect."

"I have 100% confidence in the Japanese battery manufacturers," he says. "And my guess is that they never had the problems they're seeing now when the same batteries were manufactured from start to finish in Japan."

• Here is a famous YouTube video of a Chery subcompact spectacularly failing a crash test in 2005.
  
• And another of the 2007 sedan Brilliance BS6 doing the same.
  
• A China Airlines jet blows up, and company officials paint the logo off of the wreckage.
  

Umm.. Greenspan was not a political figure though. His job was to be distanced from politics and to just crunch the numbers. Well, that was the job of the establishment that he headed. It was always a fear that putting monetary controls in the hands of the government might yield to political pressures. Of course, with anyone appointed by the current administration no chance at being corrupt has been passed, so... they do just that... yield to political pressure http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&si d=ac5M2fUfn77U&refer=germany. Again, off the point

The point being, of course, that economically Ayn Rand and Friedman were in sync. So it didn't particularly matter what Greenspan figured as his philosophy of life -- only how he calculated the most effective FED rate.

Again, I am not against what she has to say in spirit. Her heart is in the right place -- the world is bettered by those who try to better their own lives by being shrewd as long as they don't set out to do it at the expense of stealing from others... It's easy to argue with this image, of course, because these people are selfish and yet compassionate scoundrels. The ideal is full of controversy and these people are full of internal struggles and conflicts, but... it is the fact that they are human and they still manage to be disciplined enough to enrich themselves by creating rather than by fighting over what already exists that makes them better. Her romantic hero is worthy of admiration even though she makes him too flat. She just doesn't always make a compelling argument. I take an issue with her being given as the Libertarian icon. She is just not good enough -- that's all.

> The people who export oil don't want to be paid in worthless currency.

They may not have much choice due to signed agreements (backed by US military might).

> U.S. exports are about a trillion dollars a year,
> The U.S. is the single largest exporter, with even more exports than China!

Correction, the US is in second place, just behind Germany, but it is very close.

> the global market for oil is at about 300 billion dollars a year.

I wonder where you got this information from.

According to available sources, global oil import/export is a tad above 63 million barrels per day multiply it by the price per barrel (about $73.5/barrel at the time of the posting of this message) and by 365 days/year and you will get around $1.7 trillion.

FDR didn't destroy America, he renewed our country by investing in common people (not big business).

I'm sorry, but this is one of the instances where I disagree with the ACLU....Can't side with you.

Hmmmm... maybe you just need a slightly more convincing argument

Judd, shouldn't you be at the office, preparing for your SEC deposition? "Writerjudd" aka "WordBomb" and several dozen other aliases, is Judd Bagley, Director of Communications at Overstock.com. Bagley trolls the web smearing critics of Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. Both Byrne and Overstock are under investigation by the feds for lying to the media. See here and here. and here.

The TGV does indeed top out at 200MPH in service, but that is an authority-imposed rule. The TGV has a top speed of 357MPH, which would be more than enough. And considering the "Wide Open Space" nature of the US, it'd be fairly easy to run the lines "As the crow flies", with very few (If any) speed-sapping turns.

If you're travelling overland, why shouldn't it be? And if it's wheeled carriages that are making you wary, how about a MagLev system?

Yeah, I'm sure Steve Jobs is crying himself to sleep over the iPhone flop.

Before I comment on Apple's availability, it's interesting you say AT&T's website states that the iPhone is in stock, when there seems to be no way to check an AT&T retail store's personal stock (aside from AT&T putting out a news blurb that their retail stores are sold out). Buying from AT&T's website isn't a possibility, since they tell you to go to Apple.com, which is this link: http://www.apple.com/iphone/buy/ , which states you can only buy the iPhone at Apple's online store, Apple's retail stores, and AT&T's retail stores. Apple's stores still list ship times of 2-4 weeks. I'll just take it as a simple error on your part.

I don't doubt that you'll find Apple stores that aren't sold out. Analysts are showing figures of up to 1,000 iPhones per Apple retail store. With 168 retail stores, they have sold an estimated 128,000 units (not including AT&T store sales) on launch day. 168 stores times an estimated 1,000 units each gives about 168,000. source:Bloomberg Piper Jaffray has said sales of 200,000 units at launch (AT&T and Apple) were expected and met. Also, most of the sold-out Apple retail stores are in California, where if you were to separate the state from the rest of United States, it would still have the 5th largest economy in the world. I'm sure Apple's smart enough to realize this and place more stock in the California stores.

For first weekend figures, I must say that's pretty good, especially for a $499/$599 phone on a non-holiday shopping season. That's over $100 million in revenue in a couple days. Apple retail stores that are currently out of stock have stated that they should be receiving shipments in constant intervals. Instead of an artificial shortage, Apple seems to actually be prepared for demand.

Bloomberg quotes the number at 200k units for the first day.. 1800 stores at just under (averaging) 1000 units each, with another 72,000 units moved by AT&T stores. If you check the stock online right now on Apple's site, you'll see that around half of the stores are currently out of stock (90% of CA sold out). I can't say how many stores were restocked nationwide, by I know most California stores were restocked on Saturday for sure, and perhaps Sunday (i'm just guessing here, though). I don't think it's particularly unfair to assume 200k units for day one, 100k for day two, 50k for day three. At this point, as you said, I'm now pulling numbers out of my ass, but you don't have to develop a complex algorithm to see that there is still a lot of demand, and (if Apple has the stock) they can easily move 300k units this next week. JCR is even on my "enemies" list (apparently he's said some stuff before that I really didn't care for, haha, since I don't move many people to enemy status), but what he said here is perfectly fair IMO.

Surely you realize there's a difference between organizations who pass advertisements off as their own opinion, versus organizations who clearly indicate which content is advertising and which part is editorial. Maintaining a wall between editorial and advertising has long been recognized as a part of journalism ethics, and while that wall is breached from time to time, it's something that's important enough that there can sometimes be legal repercussions to breaching it.

Nintendo has so far sold about 2.37 million Wii consoles in the U.S., 2 million in Japan and 1.47 million in other regions, including Europe, since the November debut

It will come from a country where they know how to handle sparse resources: japan:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&si d=atw_4DmW_OjA&refer=asia"

Japan's `Mileage Maniacs' Hack Hybrids, Beat Toyota Engineers

By Terje Langeland

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp. says its Prius gasoline-electric hybrid car gets about 55 miles to the gallon, making it one of the most fuel-efficient cars on the road. That's not good enough for Takashi Toya.

Toya, a 56-year-old manager for a tofu maker in central Japan, puts special tires on his Prius, tapes plastic and cardboard over the engine and blocks the grill with foam rubber. He drives without shoes and hacks into his car's computer -- all in the pursuit of maximum distance with minimum gasoline.

Toya is one of about 100 nenpimania, Japanese for ``mileage maniacs,'' or hybrid owners who compete against each other to squeeze as much as 115 miles per gallon out of their cars. In a country where gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon, at least $1 more than the U.S. price, enthusiasts tweak their cars and hone driving techniques to cut fuel bills and gain bragging rights.

``My wife thinks I've joined some strange secret society,'' Toya said in January at a nenpimania gathering in Nagoya in central Japan.

Mileage maniacs aren't alone in pushing the limits of hybrid vehicles. As U.S. automakers General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. race to introduce their own models, first rolled out by Japanese companies in 1997, engineers at Toyota and Honda Motor Co. are trying to boost hybrid performance to maintain their advantage.

``With higher oil prices and tightening environmental regulations, people will focus more on hybrid technology,'' said Koji Endo, an auto analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo.

Hybrid Power

Hybrids combine a conventional gasoline engine with an electric motor. The motor powers the vehicle at low speeds, and the gasoline engine kicks in as the car accelerates. The motor uses the motion of the wheels to recharge the batteries.

Toya said he switched to a hybrid after years of driving sports cars, trading muscle ``for the fun of maximum mileage.'' Nicknamed ``The Shogun,'' Toya said he drove 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) on a single 13-gallon (49-liter) tank 17 times last year, an average of 79 mpg. At the advertised efficiency rate, a driver would get 715 miles per tank.

Toya isn't the best, though. A woman from Akita prefecture, nicknamed ``Teddy-Girl,'' is cited on mileage maniac Web sites as getting almost 116 mpg. That's enough to drive from New York to Wichita, Kansas -- 1,386 miles -- without refilling.

By comparison, a 2007 two-wheel drive Ford F-150 pickup running at peak efficiency burns through five times as much gasoline over the same distance.

Mileage Varies

While the nenpimania may take things to extremes, there is a long history of car owners tinkering with their machines to improve gas mileage.

``The Gas Mileage Bible'' (Infinity Publishing, 2006) promises to help drivers improve fuel efficiency by more than 30 percent. It is the latest in a line of books stretching back to at least 1942, when an American author named Lee Richter published a 64-page pamphlet on increasing tire and gas mileage to help save resources for the U.S. war effort.

Since the 1997 release of the Prius, the first mass-market hybrid, owners in Japan and elsewhere have fiddled with their cars to raise mileage and shared tips, including the best driving techniques, over the Internet. The mileage maniacs strive to perfect what they call the ``pulse and glide'' driving method.

On a chilly Saturday afternoon in Aichi prefecture, a short drive from Toyota's world headquarters in Toyota City, Toya removes his right shoe to demonstrate. Pulsing and gliding demands sensitivity when pushing or releasing the accelerato

Even though some people have access to rumours earlier and have a better circle of friends, you can get yourself a Bloomberg and Reuters terminal and here you go you will have the same real-time news than the other traders !

It often comes down to the fact that some people are better at spotting/evaluating opportunities ...

...

The country's[China's] greenhouse gas emissions reached 5.6 billion tons in 2004, of which 5.05 billion tons were carbon dioxide, the commission said in the report. U.S. emissions that year reached 7.12 billion tons, according to the Department of Energy.

When the Kremlin threatens nuclear annihilation against Eastern Europe, the very least that we can do is to expel Russia from the G-8. Expulsion from the G-8 does not terminate relations between Russia and the West. Those relations shall continue. However, expulsion does send a strong, symbolic message that we Westerners condemn the authoritarian impulses of the Russian government.

Yes, ditto on the suggestion to contest it with your card company. If you've already made a good-faith effort to settle it with XM, then contest the transaction every month and it should be reversed. Every chargeback costs $15 or so, it's quite a disincentive for trying to charge $10 or so on a monthly rate when it comes back as a $15 instead, and if there are too many chargebacks (I heard 1% chargebacks are not tolerated), the merchant account gets pulled. Once it's pulled, it's hard to convince a bank to give you a merchant account.

The XM merger will have a hard time going through on other accounts, The Sirius CEO got a very lucrative of a bonus, too lucrative for a company in trouble: here, and XM admitted that some 40% of their retransmission antennas were not located in their approved locations, heights or power ratings: here.

Brazil will save $30 million this year by purchasing the generic, compared with $42.9 million it would otherwise pay Merck. Brazil will spend 4.2 billion reais ($2.07 billion) on the purchase of all medicines this year, which accounts for 12 percent of the ministry's total budget, Temporao said.

This is a drop in the bucket for Brazil's budget. By satisfying their short term budget needs, they have seriously jeopardized the incentive of pharmaceutical companies to produce useful drugs over the long term.

The Microsoft v. AT&T ruling got mentioned in the fifth paragraph of the article of the previous story and quite a bit of the Slashdot discussion was either about the Microsoft case or both patent cases, although they did get mixed up a few times.

What do you mean Vista is selling?

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/151221 6
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/27/tech -vistasales.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&si d=aQ.oZSDrncbk&refer=us

You must mean why Vista is selling *at all* which is also related to issues other than security.