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http://www.pharmalive.com/News/index.cfm?articleid =358237&categoryid=40

http://www.pharmalive.com/News/index.cfm?articleid =357725&categoryid=63

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&si d=aPX.u.Fy7cqM&refer=australia

The requests for phone taps were put in seven months before 9/11.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory &refer=conews&tkr=7974:JP&sid=au6z1KDVwCZc

The federation is also considering using a new Chinese law that came into effect July 1 that fines distributors of illegally copied music, movies and other material over the Internet as much as 100,000 yuan ($12,500). As of today, Chinese search engines operated by Yahoo China and Baidu.com provide links to other Web sites hosting illegally copied songs.

The law says a Web site is jointly liable with the host of the pirated files for infringement ``if it knows or should know that the work, performance or sound or video recording linked to was infringing.''

Today's prime rate is 8.25%

And 10-year municipal bonds are currently 5.125% - which is the rate this would actually be financed at. http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates/index.html

Monthly payments over 10 years of $16/month on initial capital of $1,500. http://money.guardian.co.uk/calculator/form/0,1456 ,603156,00.html

Could be... But based on what I've seen in the past week with the A380, these days it seems that all Boeing needs to do to get an advantage over Airbus is to sit back and wait for EADS incompetence, overconfidence and corruption to bollocks things up for them. No corporate espionage required.

Airbus executive exercises millions in stock options weeks before A380 delays announced
Airbus May Lose $3 Billion A380 Order After Delays
Crisis talks on Airbus focus on production

I just submitted the following story:

Suddenly and unexpected, the corporate vice president of Windows Live and MSN, Martin Taylor has left Microsoft. "We've made the difficult decision to part ways with Martin, but we don't comment on personnel matters," Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday. Taylor, the former Global General Manager of Platform Strategy rose to prominence as the face behind Microsoft's "Get the Facts" anti-Linux campaign. You can read the Slashdot interview with Martin Taylor here.

All a new commer has to do is to talk Apple's customers into give up their iPods and around $2bn of purchased content, after that they can sell on the basis of better devices and new sales/subscription models.

Personally, I'd never invest in a music collection that only worked on one brand of player.

The Democrates always try and pork barrel funds into their states through surreptitious "park programs"...

Yes, and it's a blessing that the Republicans are in charge because they NEVER try to get their own pork barrel projects passed into law.

Now that Intel has it's first non-technical CEO, all they can talk about is vaporware of furture unreleased chips, while Shares of Intel have fallen 33 percent since Otellini succeeded Craig Barrett in May last year. Should the board/shareholders really allow someone with a background like Otellini's to run a company like Intel? You see how well medieval studies people worked out at HP. IMHO they need to get the tech people back in charge at Intel if they want it to compete in a tech market. At least in the past they succesfully defended their market share with their *existing* products even when they were inferior. This new strategy of basically saying "don't by our current stuff because our roadmap is even nicer" could only come from a MBA.

See, I know exactly what I'm talking about:
http://about.bloomberg.com/about/media/magazines.h tml

Read some of the trash they put out. Markets == God. Workerers == Terrorists. Seriously.

See, you actually have no idea where Bloomberg makes their money. Hint: it's not the TV, and it's not radio, and it's not newspaper editorials.

http://about.bloomberg.com/about/professional/inde x.html

Mod this puppy WAY up.

This half porn/half terrorism is rediculous. Next they'll be saying hate speech, or arson investigations, or whatever - must... retain... records...

Can = will with the government, which is why record retention is so damned scary. Just like with the Wired article about the surveilance (sp?) conference recently - if they CAN spy on you, they WILL, which has been proven time and again in the very, very recent past.

Child porn my ass. Control the populace - call it what it is.

A better article is here
 
  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&si d=aGb9SiTZ4trI&refer=top_world_news
 
Basically the article says that it will not cost MORE than $220, so in essence, Nintendo gave a ceiling price. It almost feels like Nintendo is trying to be like Ronco. "Not $220, nor $210, not even $200, but for $199!"
 
I have a feeling it is going to be $199, like their previous 4 consoles.

Yes the new IM worm and a new "Word Exploit" of all things exploite exists.

Yet, on 4/28/2006, somebody unloaded upto 591 Million share of MSFT,
which was caught by both "short" and "long" programs and thus
sent the DOW, NASDQ et al. into a "correction." This "correction" is
not a market correction as usual, but, I posit, "someone bailed out!"

See for yourself at , http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/cbuilder?ticker1=M SFT:US.

Toodles!

I couldn't find the old article I found that described how often the radition detectors go off, but these two articles imply it and talk about the CIA operation.

http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/nuke -weapons/nonproliferation/42576.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&si d=a.6ODqglGQO0&refer=us

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewssto ry&refer=conews&tkr=PALM:US&sid=ae.rzYcC2VaQ

Enjoy.

but I'm not sure that ethanol is the solution. It is a short-term fix for a long-term problem. Removing the tariff on ethanol made with sugar is sensible, because it produces more energy per unit during combustion. Gasoline is corrosive, as is ethanol. Therefore, by putting it in a car engine, we are shortening the life-span of the car's engine. It would make a great deal of sense to have a more energy-efficient fuel in that car so that you get more 'bang for your buck'. I think what really needs to be addressed in the government, though, is the future of transportation/fuel sources in america. This isn't a battle over obscene profits for oil companies or getting a tariff removed, it's the realization that our fuel source for the past 100 years or so is not unlimited, and that the countries that hold large reserves of oil can (and will) leverage their position against us. Political grand-standing has focused most americans on ineffective issues, and it will likely be left to the states. Recognize that this problem will not ultimately be solved by saving 53 cents-per-gallon on ethanol, but by finding efficient alternative fuel sources and having the public embrace the change.

So would 40,000 others, apparently. Which may be a factor in Sun's recent losses; I wonder if your sentiment will still hold true after Sun has had to 25% of their current workforce. Sometimes technologists don't make the best buisnessmen, and "letting them drive" could be precisely why Sun is in the position it now is in.

I doubt that the Government and major companies pirated all the Microsoft Software they use.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&si d=a8xcRyjeh_YU&refer=top_world_news
As you can see Microsoft is making a big push to get people in China to stop pirating.
BTW some of the billions of dollars I was talking about was going to Intel and AMD. Via could be an option but I doubt that sending money to Taiwan makes China happier than sending it to the US.

The company's PlayStation home console and games accounted for 68 percent of total operating profit last fiscal year and 10 percent of revenue. Last quarter, the division contributed a third of operating profit and 13 percent of revenue.

read all about Schwartz to be new CEO, Scott will stay as chairman of board

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&si d=adOW2nqhjEKE&refer=us

  April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Bausch & Lomb Inc., the maker of a contact lens cleaner linked to a dangerous eye infection, withdrew the product from the U.S. market and offered refunds to consumers.

Wearers of contact lenses shouldn't use ReNu with MoistureLoc while the outbreak is being investigated, Rochester, New York- based Bausch & Lomb said today in a statement. The company asked retailers to remove the solution from shelves, a step already taken by many drug and department stores.

"...that several huge franchises that exist today started as small independent projects, silly games nobody knows like "Pokemon", "Metroid", "Prince of persia", "Doom" and that silly little project that was originally a small mac game RTS what was its name?."

This, IMHO, is where Nintendo has the edge on the competition. Let's play Count the Successful Nintendo Franchises, shall we? Pokemon, Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Mario Kart, Mario Party. Lesser franchises include Star Fox and Donkey Kong. When you look at that list, how many of those games require top-notch graphics and presentation? Metroid, maybe, but the others are games that consistently sell on their gameplay rather than their visuals. If Nintendo needs to print money, they announce a new Legend of Zelda game.

Once you have a brand name built up, you don't need to completely wow the consumer to sell it. Nintendo more than anyone has a library of possible titles that can be printed at low production costs while maintaining good gameplay. You could also say the same thing about Madden Football, or Dance Dance Revolution, each of which sells consistently whether or not the new versions are worth it. Anyone who thinks the little game isn't going to make it needs to tell it to Shiggy's bank account.

Googling "nintendo annual profit" gave a Bloomberg story http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&re fer=asia&sid=aKwSAyyfYBkM which reported this year's earnings (US$808 million) as 8.7 percent higher than last year. Which would make last year's profit US$738 million.

The pound symbol is indeed supposed to be a dollar sign.

Nobody would hire anybody

People get hired now? Where?

190k people got hired last month. That brings the total for the quarter to 603k new hires.

I know these are "stupid" questions, on many levels (especially in this venue), but does MSFT even make 200-million Euros a day in sales to the EU? No.

Stupid is relying on The Register as a source. It's Euros a day.

Does that really matter? No. What matters is that the law is enforced. What's your bright idea to get businesses to follow the law then, if not to fine them?

What if they don't pay?

Then they can expect even harsher penalties.

What if they said "screw you, I'm going home" and stopped officially selling product in the EU?

Then they don't have to follow EU laws. Fine by me.

As much as many do not like MSFT, this stinks of some sort of politicical extortion, plain and simple.

Bullshit. Or do you really think foreign companies shouldn't have to follow US laws in their US operations? They do. And there have been antitrust suits against foreign companies in the US. And in case you missed it, Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust violations in the USA too.

You assert that the thing is "political extortion" without any proof - as if it's obvious that any foreign court which takes action against an American interest must be doing so for purely political reasons. As if the USA had a monopoly on justice and fairness. That's a blindly nationalistic and xenophobic form of reasoning.

If you're interested in good quality economic analysis, yes a niche but its also an easy way to get some understanding of the economy from top sources, try the Bloomberg Economic podcast. They have a knowledgable host who interviews a range of economists about economic and finance stories of the week, updated around 3 times per week. Learning curve isn't too steep, and it surpasses most newspaper columns IMHO (as they should - interviews with leading names by the leading economic and financial data analysis company).

From Bloomberg

These NASA cuts are just the tip of what coming up. Americans have spent way too much money; http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&si d=amz.HoNLRL_0&refer=us

It's interesting that these cuts focus on earth science and the same satellites that keep us informed about climate changes. One of the thorny issues for this administration has been global warming, and this seems like another case of this administration's approach to problems. Rather than fix the problem, they try to make the problem disappear by attacking or dismantling those who publicize it. Remember Abu Ghraib? The administration's immediate response wasn't, "We're sorry, it'll never happen again." No, it was, "Who were those bastards who released the photos - let's get 'em!" How about the reclassification of thousands of declassified documents? Not to mention the recent censorship of NASA publications by a representative from the White House http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11240405/.

This administration's 'problem solving' and our financial situation highlighted in that article makes me feel like American power is crumbling from the inside out. While continuing to bark, we've lost our bite. http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/07/us.iran.ap/ index.html

These NASA cuts are just the tip of what coming up.

Americans have spent way too much money;
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&si d=amz.HoNLRL_0&refer=us

Closer to 36%, actually

All that is true, yet it doesn't matter, here's why. The reason is the U.S. has two center right parties that don't vary even an angstrom in the policies they support:

Does a 99-1 vote in favor of the Patriot act ring a bell?

Does Hilary Clinton calling for 60,000 more troops last summer ring a bell?

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050829 &s=berman

Does a bi-partisan Washington consensus in favorite of corporate globilization that hurts both American and Third World workers and the environment, not mention supporting the DMCA, WIPO, and other "intellectual property" laws ring a bell?

Does Kerry calling for more troops ring a bell?

" May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called for increasing the U.S. military by 40,000 troops, probably for a decade, in order ``to match its new missions'' in the war on terror and homeland security."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=71000001&re fer=us&sid=apQHTegvEtDo

Does Bill Clinton's Joint Terrorism Task forces spying on non-violent anti-war activists ring a bell? Note the JTTFs were created as part of Clinton's anti terrorism act in response to Oklahoma city and are the genesis of the Patriot Act, and NSA spying abuses.

"Names and license numbers of peaceful demonstrators protesting NATO's bombing of Serbia In April, 1999, JTTF agent Tom Fisher, joined by two members of the Denver Intelligence Unit, monitored two peaceful demonstrations protesting the bombing of Serbia. According to the report, detectives followed one participant to her car three blocks away, apparently to get her license number so she could be identified."

http://www.aclu-co.org/spyfiles/fbifiles.htm

Does Madeline Albright saying 500,000 Iraqis dying from the sanctions ring a bell?

While the Republicans ARE more vicious in their campaign tactics, the victory of a Democrat gains you almost no real policy change. BOTH the Dems and Repigs are documented on record as supporting the same war mongering constitution violating policies. At this point we would be far better off uniting Libertarians, Pat Buchanan small republic supporting Paleo-Cons, Greens and lefty radicals to get BOTH the DNC supported Dems and the Republicans out of D.C. while we still have a Republic at all. If we don't hang together we will all hang seperatly.

I remain skeptical. While this CNet article matches what researches have been studying for years, for example, this paper from MIT published originally in 1991, it's only measuring people's perceptions, rather than hard economic data. The economic indicators of the last 5 years have shown huge boosts in worker productivity in the US (ignoring last quarter's results). That directly contradicts the CNet article.

Yes, the paper from MIT makes the case that there are many factors which can increase a person's productivity, and our gains in productivity could have come from other sources than technology, but the question remains: is this true, or simply a matter of perception?

I feel like I'm on the show "Sliders", GWB, Lovelock, and me agree on nuclear power, what's next, dogs having sex with cats?

Happy Friday.

... you should think "nuclear".

Fact: the US gets transportation primarily from oil, and power primarily from coal.
Fact: the oil will run out before the coal does.
Fact: nuclear power is more expensive than coal power
Fact: hydrogen can be used directly for transportation, but coal can't
Fact: shifting the transportation energy requirement onto coal-fired plants (coal -> power -> hydrogen) will mean the consumption of A LOT MORE coal

Conclusion: when oil hits $60/barrel and stays there, people will start wanting to build nuclear plants to allow the shift of some portion of the power and transportation sectors to hydrogen.

Oh, wait, that's already happened.

Despite all this noise about peak oil, oil futures remain reasonable, and oil prices are coming down in light of new supplies, suggesting that our access to oil isn't nearly as stripped as doomsayers want us to believe.

China and America have already begun investing in alternative sources of energy, all while new refineries are being built to increase supply. The futures market sees this as evidence that oil is heading for oversupply, just like it did in the mid to late 1990s.

If you're convinced that the market is mistaken, well, maybe you're right. But rather than argue with me, I have some simple advice for you: buy. Prove how convinced you are by putting your money where your mouth is, and if you're right, you'll amass a fortune. You can buy us all copies of Mad Max with the words "I told you so" painted on the front in sweet rare crude. Thales will tell you, there's nothing that says "I'm smarter than you" like money.

But if anyone was confident enough in their predictions of peak oil to bank on it, the futures market would adjust to reflect it. Why hasn't that happened?

It hasn't happened because this apocalyptic pessimism is shortsighted.

I'm sympathetic, it's easy to get worried when you're told something is finite, though its consumption is increasing. But in a market, if consumption is increasing, that's a good sign nothing's wrong. Consumption will increase only so long as it's unproblematic, then it will slow, a market is a proportional negative feedback system.

To further allay any fears, keep in mind the imminent end of oil has been predicted routinely for the last 125 years.

Before that, the exhaustion of coal was the fun thing to predict. While we're less reliant on coal these days, we still have mountains of it to mine. Cheap oil, not depletion, brought about the end of the coal era. And likewise, cheap x, not depletion, will bring the end of the oil era.

Even if all this analysis is wasted breath, if peak oil has certainly and suddenly hit and we're all staring at a future of expensive oil, even then, I'm still not worried. [R]ising oil prices are... an invitation to corn and coal and hydrogen. For anyone with a fresh idea, expensive oil is as good as a subsidy. Expensive oil only means we shift to something else, probably something cleaner, and I'm fine with that too.

They've been claiming for awhile that they had a work-around. I think the news now is that they claim to have tested the work-around

Here's another article

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&si d=a63OizUWrfYI&refer=canada

OK.

If you're against the war, you agree with bin Laden: linky
If you agree with bin Laden, you're a terrorist.
If you're a terrorist, you should be watched.
58% of the public thinks the president lied about WMD, agreeing with bin Laden.

At least half of the public should be under surveillance, Q.E.D.

It's simple, really.

Because what consumers really need another online music store. Of course, if it's anything like their poorly received video store, I don't think that Apple has a lot to worry about.

They already have a very good music search feature, why not just grow that service and use the same click-through ad model? It even has links to music download services, which makes it much easier to evaluate which music store has the music you want. It'd be nice if they could grow this service using the same click-through model for ad revenue that they've used in the past.

Why yet another music store? How many damn music services do I have to subscribe to? Imagine how people would react in the 80's & 90's if the CD's you bought from Tower Records could only be played on your Tower Records CD Player, and you needed a seperate Rockaway Records CD Player for other tracks. Yet for some reason we accept it in the online world.

Because this shutdown wouldn't affect the government members that might actually move to do something about it, it's not going to change anything there. If anything, with all the execs seeing how it could hurt their competition, it's going to fuel even more patent attacks.

I Don't Think So Tim.

"Washington is BlackBerry central. Members of Congress were issued the contraptions after 9/11, when cell phones died but BlackBerries kept working, and no political operative or reporter can be seen without one."

You know there's more to this story than just piracy legislation. Also in the news today, Ukraine's Yushchenko Wants to Join EU. That's a trend; Yushchenko is a pro-Western, mostly anti-Russian leader. Is there any doubt that the US is going to help a nation trying to reform its democracy as Ukraine is doing? This is just one of the ways the US will help.

Since I know practically zip about this litigation and these patent issues, the first place I went after reading the headline was to google for a briefing. Here, I found the following:

NTP, which has no employees, convinced a jury in Spencer's Richmond, Virginia, courtroom in 2002 that Research In Motion had infringed patents related to wireless e-mail.

I know the assininity (is that a word?) of this has been phrased and rephrased many times in many discussions, but... WTF?!? Aren't patents supposed to protect inventors/innovators? I may be jumping to conclusions about NTP, but how can a company that exists solely to litigate patent-infringers get away with what it does?

I envision a land where there are "justices" appointed because they are "just", and "judge" based on the heart behind a simpler code of "justice," rather than human turing machines stripped of the power to truly judge, trying to apply an ugly and endless stream of spaghetti-legislation to human, nonlinear situations?

Did such an idealized system of law ever exist? May it yet? I don't know, but the more I learn about politics and legislation the more similarities I see between the modern process of developing laws and the process of developing software... I don't doubt that there are some legislators who would, if given a machine with the ability, replace human judges altogether in favor of a more predictible expert system.


Tangent? Yes. Rant? Yes. Tinfoil hat? Maybe. Relevant? You decide.

  Abramoff's tribal clients continued to give money to Democrats even after he began representing them, although in smaller percentages than in the past.

The Saginaw Chippewas gave $500,500 to Republicans between 2001 and 2004 and $277,210 to Democrats, according to a review of data compiled by Dwight L. Morris & Associates, a Bristow, Virginia-based company that tracks campaign-finance reports. Between 1997 and 2000, the tribe gave just $158,000 to Republicans and $279,000 to Democrats.

"A motion to compel compliance with a subpoena, filed yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California, said the government seeks the data to enforce the Child Online Protection Act, designed to protect minors from pornography."

Google has been sued for not releasing the requested information.

The gub'ment just sued them:

Gonzales v. Google Inc

bloomberg

Well if Disney (ABC) buys Pixar that would make Steve Jobs the largest share holder of Disney and give Steve Jobs a seat on Disney's board. I bet there will be more content on iTunes if that is to happen. I also wonder how that will play into Apples home entertainment system. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&si d=a9UW8SKESpVU&refer=us