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I have yet to see a nation or government take the official stance that Occupy are terrorists.

  Business Insider: British Police Label Occupy London Terrorists

It's great being a famous billionaire with a private jet and plenty of fanboys - get to knock out all those poor kids who also need livers out of the way so you can continue with your life of creating consumer electronic toys.

The doctors who gave Jobs and David Crosby their livers should be ashamed of themselves.

You do realize that SJ himself recognized the ridiculous fact that his wealth enabled the prolongation of his life because he could "be anywhere in hours" which is what is needed to maximize odds for a liver transplant? He noted that and used his influence to make it more likely that those without his means might have increased chances for a healthy life [1].

No it doesn't make what he did more ethical (cancer patients have the lowest survival rate for liver transplants), but in comparison to some rich and powerful folks who are secretive, private and never give back, this was a noble gesture to counterbalance what he did. In a lot of ways, that might be more important than his dying early and offering a single person in Tennessee a liver sooner.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-steve-jobs-got-sick-2010-04

Actually I'd say that's true of all "isms" including capitalism as we see what a corrupt mess we have in DC now. The problem with scaling an ism to nation size is it lets power concentrate and where power is concentrated its more easily purchased. I do find it kinda funny though that the right uses the word socialist like kiddie fiddler when we've had socialism for the rich in this country for decades. just look at how the banks can treat Wall Street like Las Vegas and keep their profits win they win (using tricks like double dutch and Irish whip tax dodges) and pass the "losses" onto the American people with a too big to fail bailout. Being able to never lose money must be nice, too bad it doesn't work for the peasants.

As for TFA since every company that can is either sending jobs overseas as fast as they can close the factories, to the tune of 21,000 factories in a single decade or using the "how NOT to hire an American" as a how to video I really don't think it matters whether the Chinese bought it directly or they got it from Dell do you? Nearly 10% of the Chinese farmland is so poisoned by heavy metals the food coming from them is toxic, their rivers are so filled with toxins I'm waiting for one to catch fire, and 9 out of the 10 most cancerous places to live on the planet are in China, that last one on the list an abandoned Soviet chemical factory town. Ain't capitalism grand? Kinda hard to compete with those that will drink cancer straight from the tap and send their kids out to play wearing gas masks while taking $200 a month wages for the top workers isn't it? Welcome to the race to the bottom folks, enjoy your place in the unemployment line.

People use infrastructure. Terrorists are people. Therefore terrorists use infrastructure. Therefore we must destroy infrastructure.
  You gotta love that kind of reasoning.

As of October, Twitter had 100,000,000 active users. Denying something like 5 accounts to continue using Twitter means that the other 999,999,995 users are still using Twitter, and none of Twitter's servers have been effected. That doesn't really constitute "destroying infrastructure". You've gone way off the tracks here with your "reasoning".

As I recall, the US didn't allow the Imperial Japanese or Nazi Germans to directly transmit from American radio stations in WW2. Did that constitute destroying the American radio infrastructure too?

The money breakdown on a hypothetical $1 app purchase is:

Developer: 70c
Credit-card company: 16c
Apple: 13c
Storage/network costs: 1c

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-cost-of-an-app-2011-7

While I was going on about not liking my credit card info to be in company databases in a post above, I forgot why I warn parents about adding their credit card to an app store. The kids can ring up huge bills in no time. Remember the free fish keeping game that charged $99 to revive the fish in the tank if they died? http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-13/news/30510883_1_skewers-valuable-lesson-money-lessons

You seem to have forgotten that Apple is only suing Samsung, not other tablet makers.

Erm, Apple had also sued HTC over phones, with the same modus operandi - seeking a ban on device sale rather than e.g. royalties and damages. They have also sued Motorola (over Xoom and Droids).

FTFA: "iPad and iPhone shoppers account for 90% of all mobile purchases; " Quite a bit different than the summary, eh?

All this means, dear summarizer, is that 90% of all mobile purchases are done by people with iphones. It's no indication that the iphone is dominating anything, except maybe people with money to burn.

[0] - http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-15/tech/30400455_1_ios-iphone-smartphone-market

AJ I'm not sure where you are getting this from.

http://static.arstechnica.net/2011/10/18/apple_4q11_results_006-4e9e18f-intro.png
http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4e25f4d049e2aee37d070000/chart-of-the-day-apple-revenue-by-product-july-2011.jpg

To pick two example graphs from reputable sources of revenue graphs.

As for your estimates of profit. Apple gives 70% of the revenue from the app store to developer and somewhere between 65-75% of revenue from music sales to the labels. So right off the bat their base profit couldn't be much higher than 30%. Then there is management costs for the app store and for music they run a lot of specials and advertising promotions. 20, 25% maybe.

Apple's gross profits on iPhones are under 70%. Now there are expenses like warranty that come out of that. But no they are way over the 30-40% you were worried about.

For iPad's the gross margin is pretty low (around 20%) for units sold through retailers like Best Buy (about 1/2 of them), and just under 50% for units sold direct to consumers (the other 1/2).

As a platform - the important thing - Apple's star is waning. You can't compete with the rest of the industry just because some fan boys prefer how the screen scrolls when you swipe it, or whatever.

As a platform....

1. iOS still accounts for 2/3rd's of Google's mobile searches

http://9to5mac.com/2011/09/21/google-23rds-of-our-mobile-search-comes-from-apples-ios/

2. The Apple app store generates 4x the revenue of the Android app market....

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-app-store-2011-12

3. And Apple generates more profit on the iPhone than the rest of the industry combined.....

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/

Right now, it's illegal (per FAA regs) to use drones for commercial purposes. There are reports that someone has tried it anyway, but those who don't wish to draw the FAA's ire are waiting until the regs describing how and where drones can be used for commercial uses are finalized (expected some time in 2012, although that may be delayed with the recent arrest and subsequent resignation of Randy Babbit).

Why is that that the first time I hear about massive protests in Kazakhstan is a post on /. about hactivists doing an end run around an internet shutdown?

Oh, yeah, I remember now... because I live in the good old USA where we have freedom of the press. That is freedom of the 6 (or is it 5 now) media corporations to ignore whatever they want.

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-time-magazine-covers-explain-why-americans-know-nothing-about-the-world-2011-11

I really don't see how Microsoft is more of a monopoly today than in the '90s. It's gradually becoming irrelevant

There are 1.25 Billion Windows machines. It will take a while before Microsoft is irrelevant.

I'm told that in the rest of the world Time magazine is still a reputable source of news reporting. Perhaps this will help you understand better. http://www.businessinsider.com/these-time-magazine-covers-explain-why-americans-know-nothing-about-the-world-2011-11

Well, first, we're talking about the smartphone market, so we shouldn't include them. But, second, it really doesn't change things that much.

If we look at shipments for Q3 2011, we see 60,490,400 Android phones shipped versus 17,295,300 iPhones shipped. Now, let's start with some assumptions for entertainment value.

Let's assume 509,600 Android tablets and non-phone devices were sold in that quarter, just to round Android's numbers up to 61 million. Let's also assume that Apple didn't sell a single iPod nano or iPod shuffle in Q3--that all iPod sales are iPod touches.

According to Apple, they sold 11.12 million iPads and 6.62 million iPods. Now, again, if we assume that all those iPods were iPod touches, we come up with 17.74 million. If we add that to the number of iPhones sold, we come come up 35,035,300. This causes Apple's market share to jump from 16.6% to 26.2% and puts Android at 45.7%. iOS is still a ways off.

Why are there billions (with a B) of dollars worth of drug demand?
Sounds like demand will not go away at any price even if we try to kill supply. Why not then regulate consumption and treat it as a health issue among addicts?

Instead of the DEA laundering money the government will have legit reasons to tax it if it were regulated.

Think about it, this idea has to eventually sink in with US conservatives. The question is when.

My current startup is two years old and going strong with less than $30K at its start, and I financed its unprofitable beginning using my savings. And I moved out of my mom's basement during the first .com boom!

Congratulations - at the risk of sounding condescending, I'd like to point out that dozens of people per month win millions in the various lotteries around the country. I really wish that "our system" allowed more startups to succeed like you have. My first job out of school was with a $10M funded startup, it sputtered along and re-invented itself at least two times in the ensuing 12 years, I ended up leaving when it went to "volunteer only status" in 2003. It didn't manage to hook into .com cash directly, but .com did give it an infusion that ran it until 2003. I keep telling myself that what I do has better odds than playing the lottery, but I think if I actually ran the numbers, it's a close thing. At least I've had decent salaries along the way - that's another thing that keeps me out of the basically un-funded startups.

One of my customers is Y-Combinator darling Heroku, who did quite well on their small bit of seed money. I'm more of a fan of the web based startup nowadays, have actually had worse luck at the $1M+ startups. But I can see your point that a single patent wouldn't be very expensive if you're in that environment, and that success on a small budget is pretty unlikely for most companies.

There's obviously a line, I think bare minimum file-it-yourself patent costs are $5K (used to be in 1995 when I last checked, at least.), and if your total operating budget is $50K, that's a huge chunk. Once you've gotten to the $1M round, it _might_ be time to think about patents.

Thanks for the flame-free discussion, can't remember the last time I went several messages deep into something at Slashdot without a condescending message to be found.

You too.

My current startup is two years old and going strong with less than $30K at its start, and I financed its unprofitable beginning using my savings. And I moved out of my mom's basement during the first .com boom! One of my customers is Y-Combinator darling Heroku, who did quite well on their small bit of seed money. I'm more of a fan of the web based startup nowadays, have actually had worse luck at the $1M+ startups. But I can see your point that a single patent wouldn't be very expensive if you're in that environment, and that success on a small budget is pretty unlikely for most companies.

Thanks for the flame-free discussion, can't remember the last time I went several messages deep into something at Slashdot without a condescending message to be found.

This came out during the week, but was overshadowed by the news that Falcone And Friends got Wells Letters, SEC notices that are basically game-over. Investors in Harbinger Capital Partners, Falcone's hedge fund, are likely to flee, but they'll be limited in their ability to withdraw funds. This has happened before to Harbinger in 2009, and Goldman Sachs seems to have gotten preferential treatment in exiting.

The LightSquared bit is juicier, though, because of the hints of corruption that have squeaked out through the press. Air Force General William Shelton, testifying before Congress about LightSquared and the interference that its plans could cause GPS, complained that the White House had told him to change his testimony to make it seem that he was less opposed to LightSquared's plans. There are also allegations of $30,400 donations being given to the Democratic Party by Falcone and LightSquared's CEO on the days of meetings and on days when meetings were arranged.

Here, in handy picture form.

Here it is in handy picture form. Anyone who thinks Apple sells devices cheap to make it up on software and content is grossly misinformed.

Are you kidding? Some are predicting the Kindle fire to sell 3.9 million this quarter http://recombu.com/news/amazons-kindle-fire-sales-second-place-to-ipad-set-to-vaporise-other-android-tab-sales_M15995.html, and others are predicting Apple to sell in the order of 13 million iPads http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-28/tech/30449262_1_ipads-piper-jaffray-apple-stores .100,000 Xooms is less than a rounding error. To put it in perspective, Windows mobile 7 has more of the phone market than any of the non-kindle android tablets have of the tablet market.

Actually MS tries to diversify: Bing, for example, and Xbox.

Xbox: no one thought that would work when they first launched it. They lost a lot of cash. But, it pulled in $8.3B in 2010.

And Bing just proves MS has a really hard time giving up. This is like their millionth time implementing a search engine.

MS now has over a dozen divisions w/ 1+ Billion in revenue

What is there to "win" in Afghanistan?

According to headlines over a year ago, almost a trillion dollars of mineral wealth was 'discovered'. I say 'discovered' because there are some skeptics.

Apple does do both of the things you claim they don't. Maybe not on their website (that I know of), but definitely during their public keynotes. For instance, they have shown graphs comparing the speed of their latest device to that of Android devices already on the market, and they do compare app store numbers. They even had the balls to put WebOS apps on the graph with only 18 apps, when the store had been open for a grand total of three days... Apple's app store had been open for over a year at that point. Pretty shady if you ask me. Note that I am not an Android fanboy, just pointing out the errors in your post. My family owns three Macbooks, two iPhones, two iPods, and an iPad. Those are just the two examples I could quickly find in the few minutes I typed up this post, I'm sure there are many more.

Winning all the way to the poorhouse :

Motorola Mobility revenue misses, net loss narrows
Samsung phone sales drop 14%, profit drops 30%
HTC Is In Big Trouble: It Just Slashed Revenue Guidance Again

Just like PC vendors did under Windows' dominance.

Groupon is dumping VC money directly to the founder's pockets and screwing the businesses that participate. That combination will result in failure.

I see armies of cocaine huffing, hooker bashing, Harvard educated RIAA trust-fund babies who've never wanted for anything in their life but a full head of hair, going on about how Limewire costs them the GDP of the entire world [oddballdaily.com] ($75,000,000,000,000 dollars) in lost revenue and also, simultaneously, claiming to have had one of their most profitable years ever [azoz.com]. How do you even rationalize that kind of blatant, intrinsic wrongness?

Here's the thing: the statistics you posted are from 2002. Also, it's a myth that the music industry is doing well. )I can imagine why pirates would have an interest in perpetuating this myth,) Here's the real numbers - all the way up to 2010. The music industry sales are in serious decline. They're roughly 30% of what they were 10 years ago - that's a 70% decline. In fact, you can find the peak year for music sales: 1999. Also, Napster was released in the middle of 1999, which I think it suggestive. There's also data showing that the top-selling albums can never get anywhere close to the sales numbers they were getting ten years ago. Top selling albums in 2010 are getting something like 1/3rd the sales that top selling albums were getting 10 years ago. Here's a chart showing the huge decline in music sales: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000/music-industry.jpg and here's related article: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-18/tech/30052663_1_riaa-music-industry-cd-era

I've run similar numbers for the movie industry, and while it hasn't been hit as hard, it's also seeing declines both in box-office revenue and DVD/BlueRay sales. (Box Office revenue peaked around 2001/2002.)

Hell if someone made a torrent on The Pirate Bay of my work I'd probably just feel proud that I'd made a book people really want to read.

When you heave neither fame nor money, it's easy to accept the idea of getting fame and no money. I think this is particularly pervasive among college students and recent college students because getting fame alone would be a step up from obscurity and poverty. However, I absolutely back the "getting paid" part of the equation because it sustains the industry - otherwise, you're going to lose people (like so many of my college graduate friends who studied history or psychology and are now doing other jobs - because they can't get paid for it). I wish that "I'll work for your approval but you don't have to pay me" worked for people in other spheres of life -- the company that mows my building's lawn wouldn't ask for money, they'd just do it for my approval. I think that's really devaluing their work and effort.

I see armies of cocaine huffing, hooker bashing, Harvard educated RIAA trust-fund babies who've never wanted for anything in their life but a full head of hair, going on about how Limewire costs them the GDP of the entire world [oddballdaily.com] ($75,000,000,000,000 dollars) in lost revenue and also, simultaneously, claiming to have had one of their most profitable years ever [azoz.com]. How do you even rationalize that kind of blatant, intrinsic wrongness?

Here's the thing: the statistics you posted are from 2002. Also, it's a myth that the music industry is doing well. )I can imagine why pirates would have an interest in perpetuating this myth,) Here's the real numbers - all the way up to 2010. The music industry sales are in serious decline. They're roughly 30% of what they were 10 years ago - that's a 70% decline. In fact, you can find the peak year for music sales: 1999. Also, Napster was released in the middle of 1999, which I think it suggestive. There's also data showing that the top-selling albums can never get anywhere close to the sales numbers they were getting ten years ago. Top selling albums in 2010 are getting something like 1/3rd the sales that top selling albums were getting 10 years ago. Here's a chart showing the huge decline in music sales: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000/music-industry.jpg and here's related article: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-18/tech/30052663_1_riaa-music-industry-cd-era

I've run similar numbers for the movie industry, and while it hasn't been hit as hard, it's also seeing declines both in box-office revenue and DVD/BlueRay sales. (Box Office revenue peaked around 2001/2002.)

Hell if someone made a torrent on The Pirate Bay of my work I'd probably just feel proud that I'd made a book people really want to read.

When you heave neither fame nor money, it's easy to accept the idea of getting fame and no money. I think this is particularly pervasive among college students and recent college students because getting fame alone would be a step up from obscurity and poverty. However, I absolutely back the "getting paid" part of the equation because it sustains the industry - otherwise, you're going to lose people (like so many of my college graduate friends who studied history or psychology and are now doing other jobs - because they can't get paid for it). I wish that "I'll work for your approval but you don't have to pay me" worked for people in other spheres of life -- the company that mows my building's lawn wouldn't ask for money, they'd just do it for my approval. I think that's really devaluing their work and effort.

Just because macrumors made a mistake, doesn't mean you can use that mistake as your "evidence".

Macrumors wrote iOS when they meant iPhones.

If you are comparing Android the operating system, please compare it to iOS the operating system.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-15/tech/29997318_1_ios-android-google says 130 mil devices in July 2011
http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/06/06/apple-ios-stats-200-million-devices-sold-25-million-ipads-14-billion-apps-downloaded-and-more/ says 200 mil devices in Jun 2011

Can you teach me how 130:200 can be turned into 3:1 ?

Thank you very much.

Yes, high speed rail is going to be expensive. Yes, it's now projected to cost much more than the original estimate. (The cost has largely increased due to delays (the longer it takes to build a project, the more it costs), particularly fuelled by NIMBY appeasement ("We don't want the train passing near our house!" "But it is much quieter than standard trains and will increase your property values by being near an HSR station." "Build a tunnel!" "Okay, we'll build a tunnel." "The costs on this project are ballooning!").)

But you have to compare the cost to the alternatives. California's freeways and airports are jammed. With increasing population and mobility, something to move people around will have to be built. And the estimated costs to add volume to airports and highways is estimated to be $100-billion as well.

And, to top it off, high speed rail runs on an operational profit. (This means that yearly revenues are higher than yearly costs.) Everywhere. Yes, high speed rail lines run an operational profit in Japan and France, Spain, Russia, Taiwan and car-loving-and-train-hating America. In Britain all rail is private, and for-profit companies are in fierce competition to pay for the rights to run rail services, which are barely at HSR levels if at all. It's a strongly held misconception that rail travel is unprofitable: HSR makes a profit all over the world, and it usually subsidizes local and regional rail transport (which the US has much of).

And though only the Tokyo-Osaka and Paris-Lyon line have paid off all their construction costs, that's because they're the oldest HSR lines; others are on track to in the future. Which modes of transportation don't pay off their construction costs? Oh, that's right, nearly all roads. Remember Carmageddon/The Carpocalypse, when an overpass outside LA was torn down, shutting traffic for the weekend? That was all so they could widen the highway through a mountain pass. Were the anti-HSR people asking for ridership studies for the Sepulveda Pass? Were they asking for the expansion to run an operational profit, let alone an overall profit? Of course not; only rail is subjected to such standards.

Add to this that a train is much more efficient in transporting this number of people, from an energy, environmental and economic perspective, and this is using studies that are assuming that gas prices will be relatively stable over the next few decades.

Obviously there still has to be overview of the project, making sure money is being spent efficiently and for best value. But the entire transportation sector needs to be looked at from this viewpoint. Airlines can work with rail to transport their passengers on their "last mile", freeing up their planes for more profitable medium- and long-haul routes, like done in Germany (Frankfurt Airport has two train stations). Road funds can be diverted to repairing our existing infrastructure as opposed to building more asphalt that needs to be maintained. And everyone will get to where they are going sooner. If this is done, North America will look back 20 years from now, not wondering "How could they do this?", but instead "How did they wait so long?"

"They made me use Windows"

I feel your pain.

Don't worry, they'll be first up against the wall after the Ballmer Collapse.
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmers-nightmare-how-microsofts-business-really-could-collapse-2011-11?op=1

I see plenty of comments on how reasonable or unreasonable the price is, and they are interesting. I generally agree it doesn't seem that out of whack price wise for a working application supported for some time period.

What I find more interesting is this story is being posted all over the web all of the sudden:

• IT World
• Free Republic
• Human Events
• Business Insider
• Gizmodo
• Big Government
• TPM

And of course here on /.

Hitting that range of sites (and more) with this sort of non-story story trying to push a narrative of the government is wasting your money? Someone behind the scenes is pushing this narrative, I suspect. Not news for nerds, but manufactured political outrage.

The recording/music industry boasted standard profits before taking iTunes into account. After taking it into account, they have sold more music and made more money than any other decade in history. When they say they are being harmed by digital sales, they are 100% lying.

I recommend reading this. Yes, the 90s and early 00s were good but they're now at an all-time low in inflation-adjusted dollars, below the vinyl and cassette era. And it's not like the cost of living has gone down from the last low in the 1980s either.

so basically, she made a completely moronic business decision, but the article's slant is that it is the fault of groupon? Is this woman not aware she could have set these at a price that would have been reasonable as opposed to bankrupting?

While I fully agree, Groupon is at least partially to blame here due to the way their sales force actually works. Groupon take a cut based on a sales of the discounted product. The incentive is for sales people to NOT recommend capped Groupon deals. This would seem to be completely moronic if it weren't for the fact that it is not an isolated case. Groupon are best placed to advise how their product works and it is beginning to be quite evident that they are not doing so with the customer's best interests at heart.

Perhaps the most telling statistic is that 50% of Groupon's customers would not use Groupon again. When any company gets dissatisfaction numbers quite that high then something is seriously foul with a company's product or service.

Hmmm.. we ruined people by telling them that their lives didn't have to be boring? Interesting... The other perspective: "Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About".

Well yes, he claims that it has always been Groupon's policy. Of course, that was stated in response to a particular case in which the business owner claimed that Groupon refused to allow a cap on the number of groupons sold.

We can't be sure what deals and limitations the various groupon salespeople actually present to retailers, but it's completely naive to think that Groupon is completely blameless in cases like this simply because the CEO issued a sympathetic press release.

That may be true, but the converse may also be just as true: Tax decreases are only a temporary solution at best. See "taxes on the nation's highest-earners are close to the lowest they've ever been." Has *your* income tax rate fallen 56% in the last 50 years? That was a huge decrease, and it's only now that people are realising that it might not have been sustainable... but it is also very difficult to reverse (much harder than, say, letting inflation erode the savings of millions of people, which is an issue the politicians should really be tackling...).

btw It's worth reading the rest of that Business Insider article, they do have some interesting points regarding the current economic situation.

That may be true, but the converse may also be just as true: Tax decreases are only a temporary solution at best. See "taxes on the nation's highest-earners are close to the lowest they've ever been." Has *your* income tax rate fallen 56% in the last 50 years? That was a huge decrease, and it's only now that people are realising that it might not have been sustainable... but it is also very difficult to reverse (much harder than, say, letting inflation erode the savings of millions of people, which is an issue the politicians should really be tackling...).

btw It's worth reading the rest of that Business Insider article, they do have some interesting points regarding the current economic situation.

As far as cars go? No we don't. What we have is a "branded" product where most of the guts come from somewhere else, often a LOT of somewhere elses, and then are simply thrown together here. Look at the Ranger which I drive, its a nice truck but frankly its more Mazda than Ford anymore and for everyone outside the USA it is ALL Mazda with a Ford decal.

And how much of that economy is fictional products, ala IP? I bet if you took California out of the equation we'd drop off the map and biggest thing cali has is Hollywood. Since digital makes it beyond simple to just copy anything you want (a friend went to Asia and said they have movies being sold on every street corner and you can buy Windows 7 all versions on a thumbstick. I wish he would have thought to buy me a Win 7 stick, it was only $6 US) I have to wonder how much longer THAt will last.

Finally here is a figure that will make you want to puke, in just the last decade the USA has lost 21,000 factories although I'd suggest that if you have eaten recently don't click on the link as the data they have will piss you off and ruin your digestion. We were ONCE a truly great nation, but sadly those days are long gone. The "get a better education and you'll compete!" lie has been driven through with a stake thanks to offshoring, H1-Bs, and so many college educated about to default on their loans simply because there is no way to EVER pay them back when everyone is having to compete with 300 other guys for scraps. I wonder if one day people will look back at the cold war years like they did with the old "the sun never sets on the British empire" days, because it is pretty obvious at least to me our good days are over and BRIC is coming to the top of the heap now.

I respectfully disagree. Generally I think most people can agree with the basic facts that OWS are highlighting. I'm sorry to keep posting the same link to the same thread, but I feel like many people would rather ignore it than spend a few moments actually reading, and that's a shame;
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

I also think 'ultra-socialist' is unfounded. Progressive taxation, uncorrupted politics and the rule of law (for banks and individuals) are not radical - they're the way the system is actually supposed to work.

CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About

Simple to understand, pictures and everything. With Firefox and NoScript, it's not a slideshow, so sorry if it actually is one.

OWS protesters don't intend to scare people. What should scare people is that the protesters are RIGHT.

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

They aren't protesting capitalism - they are protesting the government having been totally corrupted by capitalism, to the point where the entire game is rigged. You can malign the OWS as much as you want, and please, by all means, have fun telling whatever stories you want about them. But if some kind of change doesn't happen, the situation for the 99% is only going to get worse.

I cannot believe you just actually wrote that. Google goes so far as to send C and D letters to small time modders to make sure that their proprietary apps are not included without paying up.

This is what I said. If you want the full Android experience you have to go through Google.

You basically have it completely backwards. Furthermore you are double clueless as there are quite a few phones that come equipped with Bing as the default search and they are still "Android certified". You are spreading FUD.

I stand corrected. Verizon did in fact make Bing the default on some phones. Seems like biting that hand that feeds you to me though. And it doesn't change the rational Google, in my opinion, had for creating Android in the first place.

"because they have no freaken clue what they are debating against they are going to be there for a long time, and their only goal is to protest against...Something..."

This is BS. If you're going to comment on something, make a token effort at least to educate yourself on the topic at hand. The truth is this "they have no agenda" meme is a right-wing talking point and an excuse for wholesale ignoring the many points that have been put forward by the movement.

A good place to start educating yourself might be here;
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

"the press tends to get sensitive whenever they are barred from anywhere and tend to make a big deal out of it" "The press will only get in their way of doing their job" You're joking me, right? The free press is an essential part of a functioning democracy. They are a proxy for us, the citizens, as witnesses as to what is done with the power that we have collectively vested in our government. "Of the people, by the people, for the people" does that ring any kind of bell? The police are doing things in our name, with our implicit consent. If what they are doing is in violation of law, is denying people their rights, is violent in ways that are inappropriate, we have a right to know. We pay the police's salary. We (some of us anyway) elected the mayor and the city council.

http://www.businessinsider.com/fracking-may-be-allowed-within-1000-feet-of-nyc-water-supply-2011-7
What could possibly go wrong?

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/U.S.-Government-Confirms-Link-Between-Earthquakes-and-Hydraulic-Fracturing.html
Seems like the US army knew something was not good back in 1966.
By 1990 they seemed to understand a bit more “Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established.”
By 2011 more data seems to have made the post Gasland (movie about fracking) US oil industry re think the way they view the US public.
Question the wisdom of fracking, welcome to the world of "insurgency" and enjoy some psy ops from oil industry staff with a military background.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-09/news/30376767_1_download-cnbc-oil-industry-conference

do you think an auto mechanic could get an appointment with his US Senator?

Absolutely, yes! You would get one if you tried. If you were to arrive at your senator's office in Washington and there were a lobbyist there with a check for $10k who do you think your senator would see first? You.

All marketeers know that word of mouth is the best advertisement. Imagine you were choosing a new car to buy, would you trust more the advertisements or the opinion of someone you knew who had one? Your senator knows that any voter who is motivated enough to travel all the way to DC to meet him is an active member of his community and will bring more votes than a lot of advertising.

The recent financial meltdown was a result of deregulation (Glass-Stegall repealed).

No, it was a result of regulations to avoid discrimination by banks against people living in low-income neighborhoods. In a free market the junk mortgage bubble would have never happened.

The problem is when an industry writes its own regs

Which is always. When there's a commission in Congress to write a regulation, are you there? No, because you do not have time to be in Washington all the time. Lobbyists are paid to be there.

Your argument about advertising isn't true, because people do not sell their votes to advertisers like that. You don't sell your vote, why do you think other people would? But regulations are a different matter.

It's not a question of buying votes, the trick is to be there when the details are written into the regulation. No matter who is elected, the people in Congress have too many issues to know intimately every detail. When it comes to cross the t's and dot the i's there will be a corporation lobbyist there to "help".

And the more regulations there are, the more "help" your congressman will need.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-07/europe/30368594_1_shale-gas-fracking-process-tremors

Check the facts. Private R&D investment has been stagnant since the '60's, but government R&D investment is down by about 66%!

Yeah, top research schools charge bloated undergraduate tuition to support research. Do you think gutting non-tuition sources of support for R&D is likely to improve that situation?

Yes, MIT is selfishly arguing in its own best interests. Why should we listen? Because the institution exemplifies the qualities we need to forge a brighter future.