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Here are some numbers not from someone's ass.

Windows and Office are major, Server is a rather distant third (judging by history, it looks like the the top of the purple part is mistakenly cut off at the end), online services are a loss, and "entertainment and devices" is a small positive (at the moment.)

And, for fun, here's a similar graph for Apple.

I find it interesting that you managed to spell "business" wrong yet got the rest of the URL right. Must be a Chrome user with broken copy and paste.

I don't know if I'd trust that list though.
Steve Jobs Loser #7

http://www.businessinsider.com/techloser/steve-ballmer

They already use akamai and in fact use them even more now. http://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-gets-more-of-netflixs-business-but-at-a-very-low-price-2010-3

You must be pretty young. The economy did pretty well under GWBush with a Republican controlled congress. However, as I've stated repeatedly, I don't think the Prez has a whole lot to do with it.
I don't remember the economy ever doing well under Bush. It just sort of limped along. It did quite well under Clinton, however.
Here's a chart of GDP growth if you don't believe me: http://www.businessinsider.com/gdp-under-different-parties-2010-11
The section where George Bush has a Republican congress stands out as having lower than average growth compared to most everywhere else on the chart.

Being "Social" means respecting other's boundaries while interacting with them.

A site which breaks down those boundaries to the point of discomfort of it's users is bordering anti-social.

Not surprising given it's founder's attitude.

"Microsoft Sues Motorola Over Android Patent Infringement" "Microsoft says Motorola is violating nine patents "that are essential to the smartphone user experience, including synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power."

So this has nothing to do with Linux. Those are features of Android. And, from some other patent agreements, the "synchronizing mail" thing applies only to synchronizing with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange.

All ASUS has to do is remove Microsoft Outlook and Exchange compatibility from their version of Android. Encourage users to use Google's "cloud" apps instead. Or ordinary IMAP. Microsoft will love that.

You haven't gone back far enough. http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating-income-by-division-2010-2#comment-4b73deb8000000000031ec9b

http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-biggest-tariffs-2010-9

You're really shooting yourself in the foot if you think tariffs are the answer. Google for "Economics in One Lesson" and read it.

I think he's dismissing him because he's already proven himself several times to be a bald faced liar. Who cares if he knows the truth, if he doesn't speak it.

Not sure if you have read the copious logs of IMs, emails, and interviews published by his former "friends" regarding the early stages of Facebook, but even he hasn't disputed that he was contracted by others at Harvard to build a social networking site. And then somehow he magically came up with his own. If he just wanted to "build something" and it wasn't about the money, why not be happy with building the site he had promised?

Answer: because he WAS in it for the money (either that or he really *did* just want to F someone in the ear...)

It's possible that this is an urban myth, possibly fabricated. I'll let you judge for yourself.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-ghost-fleet-off-the-coast-of-singapore-2009-9 You forgot to take into account how many ships are currently underutilized and how much it costs to build a new desalination plant. Might make economic sense in the short term to ship and then build when the ships can make more shipping other stuff.

Mac sales are more than a blip, but you're right, consumer gear is king right now. And that graph was made pre-iPad.

Remind me, why do we have such a fragile system at the very core of modern civilisation?

Define 'core of civilization.' I don't view stock markets as that kind of thing. Regardless, I believe the reasoning they allow it is that -- like everything else in that crazy place of Wall Street -- it can help you make or lose money. This wasn't the only investigation where an algorithm screwed up. I submitted a story that wasn't accepted about an algorithm that lost one company a million dollars in five seconds.

So, you know, before you sign up to let a high frequency trader manage your trades, take note of the risks you are accepting. In the story I reported, the company that lost the money just fired the guy who wrote the algorithm and keeps doing it.

If it's like margin trading where people were taking loans and lost it all and everything died because everyone was doing it, then it's bad. The question is whether or not these micro translations are going to suddenly force everyone all at once to realize their losses. I don't think that's the case but the 'flash crash' might be proof otherwise.

In defense of high frequency trading, I don't see it as anymore of a gamble than regular trading. You are shifting money around to make more money. So you shift tinier amounts faster and for shorter periods of time to get better returns. I'm not doing it so if it turns out to be bad for the people doing it then I'm going to benefit. If it turns out to be good for the people doing it then I bitch because I don't have that same benefit. If the HFTs are putting everyone at risk, I'd like to hear precisely how that logic follows because right now it's looking like it sporadically injects chance volatility that we've dealt with before.

Feds Say All-Caps Street Signs Cause Accidents -- And Tells NYC To Spend $28 Million To Replace Them http://www.businessinsider.com/feds-say-all-caps-street-signs-cause-accidents-and-tells-nyc-to-spend-28-million-to-replace-them-2010-9

New meme inbound: Geek Terror

I wonder how long it will be until the FBI wants to monitor all the engineers, developers and assorted other technical types out there to keep the children safe from terrorists?

Android is not an iPhone alternative; it simply doesn't offer the same benefits. No, no, no it doesn't. The social benefits (the app store and its cleanliness) are not equivalent; not even close.

An alternative has to match everything? Sure, Android is not perfect, but offers a lot of alternatives in hardware choice. Want a hardware keyboard for your phone? Nope, the iPhone does not do the job. Shitty AT&T coverage coverage near your home or office? iPhone does not do the job for you.

While I agree that there are irrational haters, there are legitimate reasons to not like Apple too. The reasons being barely any choice in hardware, and the total locking down of the software ecosystem and treating developers like crap on their mobile devices and tablets. The next biggest reason is a profileration of Apple fanbois(who are otherwise very intelligent and geeky) but who absolutely worship anything coming out of Apple, demonize alternatives regardless of merits and try to justify and downplay any shortcomings. They get very touchy about any criticism, and have been known to give out death threats to people who may be seen as exposing Apple's flaws(remember the OS X wireless exploit?).

Is someone a 'hater' because they come to know something like this http://www.businessinsider.com/latest-app-store-rejection-outrage-apple-rejects-app-that-teaches-kids-to-program-2010-4 and decide that iPads are something that don't do the job for them?

Meanwhile, the hero of airline pilots Captain "Sully" Sullenberger testified before Congress that he doesn't get paid enough as a pilot to make a living and had to get a side job to pay the rent. I'd say that the union workers are the lucky ones, and I don't begrudge people that want to get honest pay for honest work. The unions are not the problem here. Over-paid executives I have a problem with - over-paid pilots I have no problem with, since my life is in their hands every time I fly and I'd rather they're happy and well-paid rather than poor and worrying about how they're going to pay their bills when they should be concentrating on flying the plane.

I absolutely agree with you though, about growth being the only important metric in business today. There's another name for uncontrolled growth: cancer.

"Hero pilot Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed the US Airways airbus on the Hudson, has a tough message for Congress: Pilots are getting so shafted by their employers that the good ones are leaving to do something else."

"Sully, for one, is paid 40% less than he was a few years ago and is maintaining a middle-class existence only because he started a consulting company on the side. Folks on the Hudson flight are no doubt glad he didn't decide to start consulting full time."

http://www.businessinsider.com/capt-sullenberger-stop-cutting-pilot-pay-or-next-time-plane-will-crash-in-river-2009-2

So if using Android is "like peeing in your pants to stay warm", what would be the appropriate urine-based analogy for this attempt to compete with Android?

Paying a million bums $10 each to pee on you, instead of in their own pants?

Strawman. I was talking about some simple programming ON it, not FOR it. Apple explicitly bans any and all programs on the iPad that *may* be construed as being programming tools(even if they're not).

See http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/08/30/0027210/iPhone-App-In-App-Store-Limbo-Open-Sourced
http://www.businessinsider.com/latest-app-store-rejection-outrage-apple-rejects-app-that-teaches-kids-to-program-2010-4

"Atleast with MS, you can run what you want, but with iPads? http://www.businessinsider.com/latest-app-store-rejection-outrage-apple-rejects-app-that-teaches-kids-to-program-2010-4 [businessinsider.com]"

The rules said they'd reject this type of app and they rejected it??!?!?1 I'm outraged!!!!1!!

I recently saw that that the a 'Restoring Truthiness' (Stephen Colbert rally) charity on DonorsChoose.org was requesting iPads.

http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=439788&challengeid=39361

My students need iPads to assist them in English, Social details
Studies and Creative Writing!

Creating writing on iPads with one of the worst input methods among electronic devices? But it worked, they collected $10,000+. In some countries you can build a school with that instead of contributing to Apple's really fat margins.

Atleast with MS, you can run what you want, but with iPads? http://www.businessinsider.com/latest-app-store-rejection-outrage-apple-rejects-app-that-teaches-kids-to-program-2010-4

Sigh, the things that shiny baubles can get people to do....

Do you still remember the term "netbook"? That's a good use for Chrome OS. Though it will be nice if we could see Android and Chrome OS for different tablet devices. After all, "tablet" is going to be meaning something like "computer," and having different OSes for different tablets isn't that bad.

Also, Google itself have admitted that Android currently isn't the OS for tablets. They say version 3.0 will be their "tablet-friendly" Android. Maybe that's why Motorola says it won't enter tablet market until 2010. They say they want to deliver a device thats "competitive in the marketplace." I guess that means they can't compete with iPad with Android 2.2.

"if those android game devs were deveoping on apple's platform they'd be SOL."

Um, Gameloft does make iPHone games, a lot of iPhone games, making $25 million from iPhone apps in 2009.

"I've certainly heard enough horror stories about the review process to turn me off from ever trying to sell anything on the iphone."

Sure there's a review process, but judging from how many apps make it obviously it's not bad, and with 200,000+ apps I'd be shocked if there wasn't somebody complaining about the process.

I'm sure you won't be missed, plenty of developers are becoming millionaires off iPhone apps, you don't have to be one of them. How many Android millionaires are there? After 2 years not one Android developer has made a million dollars from apps. In fact Android developers celebrate making "up to" 100k a year

Besides Android has it's own major problems, like a 24 hour return on apps: according to one Android developer, you can return any Android app for a full refund within 24 hours. Talk about fail, no wonder Android developers are broke when users can instantly download apps, use them, and then return it for a full refund and repeat the process anytime they want.

Sorry but Android is a joke, Google does not make money from Android while the iPhone is Apple's cash cow. If the iPhone vanished tomorrow Apple would be in serious pain, but if Android vanished tomorrow Google wouldn't even notice, so Apple will fight tooth-and-nail to make sure the iPhone maintains it's Jesusphone status while Google will continue to ignore Android.

The point I was (vaguely) alluding to is that you can't give people freedoms; they need to make their own freedom. Italy is a mess financially(possibly worse than Greece), human-rights wise, and racially. Italians don't seem to care or even want to fix their problems.

It's great when the US defends people that can't defend themselves, but they don't do it to give non-Americans more freedoms ( and I don't think they should ). Trying to credit the US military for fostering freedom and rights in other countries is dangerous; in reality, they both hurt and help.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5101348,00.html (race)
http://www.businessinsider.com/european-debt-maturity-profile-2010-5 (debt)

Uh there are many typically legal jobs out there that are dangerous and pay worse (assuming you meet the necessary prerequisites ;) ) and have worse working conditions.

Take coal miners for instance, or most other sorts of miners too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident

If your electricity comes from coal, you share a small part of the blame.

And in the USA, mining is probably not as dangerous a job as driving a taxi:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-15-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-2010-3/no-11-taxi-drivers-and-chauffeurs-5

I doubt that _legal_ prostitution has that high a fatality rate per 100k. Even considering AIDS etc. Most of high death reports are about illegal prostitutes.

Illegal prostitution is very dangerous (very high death rates - 200/100K), and often the women have no choice (as in really no choice at all) - they are kidnapped and enslaved.

If people want to be a prostitute, they better stick to where it is legal. Customers will tend to be better behaved, and you will avoid more of the evil people who get their kicks from abusing women or worse, and thus your life expectancy will go up.

Just look at miners in China for an example of how poor/no regulation sucks for workers. They die in the thousands per year! Whereas in the US where it is regulated it is much safer. If you voluntarily work in an illegal mine you're probably stupid, if someone kidnaps you and forces you to mine, the fact that mining is regulated contributed little to your problem.

... tracking you too. And that with Google Analytics. What a bunch of hypocrits.

Yes. And the fact that they decided to pick on Google which, in spite of it's power has behaved in a generally ethical manner (especially considering how the rest of corporate America is operating with regards to privacy) is kinda silly. Furthermore, if they really want to make a difference, get Congress to go after the likes of Lexis-Nexis, Choicepoint and others. Those are the outfits that I worry about, privacy-wise.

... tracking you too. And that with Google Analytics. What a bunch of hypocrits.

No, not "cronyism". We all have cronies, have you ever tried to get any money out of them? Friends are friends but business is BUSINESS...

Checked the bottom lines of the newspaper and news magazine companies lately? You too can have your own magazine franchise or big city newspaper for $1.

Ads may generate some day to day revenue if you've got a single big scoop, but political favors generate access, which in turn gets you future exclusives and leaks to make even more revenue off of, not to mention the prestige points in the press pool based on your seating, access and whatnot. That's not to even get into the extortion potential - imagine the power you could have if you had dirt on the President, a governor or Congressman. All of that leverage is gone if you run the story... and as for proving extortion, well, you haven't run it yet since you were triple checking the facts because of the importance.

If all else fails and you go bankrupt, you simply ask for a newspaper bailout to save you from your deliberate failure to provide a check on the very powers that you cozied up to. Oh, and if you're lucky, you even get special protections, a "shield" if you will, to keep you from having to rat out the very cronies that passed the law to protect them from being prosecuted for the leaks they provided you.

No, not "cronyism". We all have cronies, have you ever tried to get any money out of them? Friends are friends but business is BUSINESS...

Checked the bottom lines of the newspaper and news magazine companies lately? You too can have your own magazine franchise or big city newspaper for $1.

Ads may generate some day to day revenue if you've got a single big scoop, but political favors generate access, which in turn gets you future exclusives and leaks to make even more revenue off of, not to mention the prestige points in the press pool based on your seating, access and whatnot. That's not to even get into the extortion potential - imagine the power you could have if you had dirt on the President, a governor or Congressman. All of that leverage is gone if you run the story... and as for proving extortion, well, you haven't run it yet since you were triple checking the facts because of the importance.

If all else fails and you go bankrupt, you simply ask for a newspaper bailout to save you from your deliberate failure to provide a check on the very powers that you cozied up to. Oh, and if you're lucky, you even get special protections, a "shield" if you will, to keep you from having to rat out the very cronies that passed the law to protect them from being prosecuted for the leaks they provided you.

Nooooo, someone had an iPhone prototype lost/stolen and sold off to a review site, remember?

sexual harassment is pretty serious. one would think we should be more sympathetic to jodie fisher, not hurd

I agree, sexual harassment is a very serious problem and should not be taken lightly. But could you present the evidence of sexual harassment? Larry Ellison said of it '"The H.P. board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false." Furthermore the reason Hurd was fired appeared to be "numerous instances where [Hurd's love interest, Jodie Fisher] received compensation and/or expense reimbursement where there was not a legitimate business purpose, as well as numerous instances where inaccurate expense reports were submitted by Mark or on his behalf that intended to or had the effect of concealing Mark's personal relationship with the contractor." If that's true, misuse of company funds is also serious but not on the level of sexual harassment.

oh right, his browsing history was used against him. therefore, we should be sympathetic to him (rolls eyes)

My concern here -- and what I think the general readership thinks -- is that Hurd did some questionable things or possibly made some enemies and so they tried to dig up anything they could on them. When the sexual harassment charges didn't stick well enough, they used a company policy that everyone is guilty of: using company resources and time to google silly things or read tabloids or do things unrelated to work. "Racy" means "Mildly risque, exciting." So he visited some mildly risque sites?

Basically this looks to be a scenario where Hurd upset someone and they simply looked through his browsing history in order to find a reason to terminate him. Are they constantly searching through browsing histories of all 304,000 employees to find which employment they should terminate? No, they are not. You speak so highly of ethics regarding sexual harassment but what about the ethics of terminating the employment of just one person when he is no more guilty than thousands of other employees -- which you also have the means and option to investigate.

Facebook's founder knows the importance of social media:

Mark used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. If the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them.

So in this case, the victims didn't even have the same password, but accidentally used the email password for Facebook. Combined with a malicious site (which Facebook was for them) this can lead to leaked passwords.

The best solution to this is to use a password manager like 1password, roboform or KeepassX. I find 1password useful because it matches my password with the domain, preventing inadvertent entries. It's also a boon if you are developing with dozens of test and staging sites which change passwords often.

"The SEC failed to catch Bernie Madoff largely because they are understaffed (a fact the SEC itself has admitted), under-funded, and simply lack the resources to adequately investigate his activities."

What a crock of pure BULLSHIT that statement is!

The SEC, and all of the other law enforcement agencies of the Federal government failed to catch Madoff and the other 10,000 crooks and fraudsters in the financial industry because they willfully and deliberately refuse to do their jobs. This guy, Harry Markopolos handed Madoff to the SEC on a silver platter repeatedly over the course of several years:

http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/busting-bernie-madoff-one-mans-10-year-crusade

As more evidence as to the mindset of our Federal government regulators, the FBI was talking about an "epidemic of fraud" in the mortgage industry as early as 2004, yet refused to act.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/the-two-documents-everyon_b_169813.html

The Federal government is NOT interested in applying the law to the politically well connected elites. Laws only apply to little people. We have the FBI, SEC, FDIC, OTS, OCC, and FRBs all with a mission to regulate various parts of the financial industry. However, most of the employees, from the Treasury Secretary on down are either former industry execs, or want to become industry execs after their government careers.

All of the whistle-blowing, crowd sourcing, blatant evidence of crime, etc. is TOTALLY USELESS when the government actively participates in the frauds and refuses to enforce the existing laws. That's why the whole "financial reform" bill is a joke as well. Write more laws and hire more regulators not to enforce them.

I'm really hoping that we get some whistle-blowers in the financial industry sharing data with wikileaks. The Feds won't do anything about it, but I want the people to know the full story of how the financial industry, with the full cooperation of the Federal government, raped the people of the U.S.

Interesting, he says this: "Of course it wasn't the CRA that caused everything. The CRA was a factor in lowering lending standards. This was a necessary, although not sufficient, cause for the mortgage mess."

Yes, and that exact phrase linked to this article: Oh Stop: Of Course The CRA Didn't Cause Everything. And that article is accompanied by a picture of a guy holding his fingers in his ears and shutting his eyes so he can't see/hear contrary evidence. Does that look like anyone that you see in the mirror every morning?

The article opens with:

"I'm amazed at the lengths people will go to in their attempts to dismiss any evidence of the role the CRA played in loosening lending standards. Perhaps the worst argument they make is directed against a claim that I've never heard anyone make--the imaginary claim that the CRA somehow caused the entire mortgage mess, financial crisis and economic depression." Near the end, the author adds all the other factors he thinks contributed:

"Just to make things clear, I think that to really blow things up we needed low interest rates, the growth of securitization, a glut of foreign savings pouring into the US, a lack of yield from other asset classes, ratings agencies operating with minimal knowledge but lots of optimism, a faith in the ever-rising housing market, high oil prices, consumers looking to flip high-interest unsecured debt into lower-interest home-equity debt, a short-term federal budget surplus eating into the availability of Treasury debt, Fannie and Freddie's mixed mission, the evaporation of profits from investment banking and brokerage, unrestrained shareholder demand for high profit margins, off-balance sheet financial innovations such as SIVs, unconvincing and non-influential risk managers, risk-pricing of MBS based on CDS pricing, a White House dedicated to expanding low-income and minority home ownership for partisan political reasons, economists touting the positive externalities of home-ownership, a poor understanding that heterogeneous populations have different responses to market movements and over-reliance on centralized and automated mortgage underwriting."

And he concludes:

But there really shouldn't be anymore room to doubt the significant role played by the CRA and the regulators charged with enforcing it.

I don't think any of these articles from partisan sources "prove" anything. But, I thought I'd let the author express his conclusion in his words.

No, they aren't. My little community bank (not a credit union, a bank) does not do mergers, acquisitions, or expansion. They serve one community and have for the last fifty years. They still follow the CRA, even though not following it would cost them nothing. And they are still in business.

That's nice that your little community bank has done so well. And I'm sure there are plenty of other community banks that have done well, and there are certainly plenty that have not. What happens to the ones that didn't do well? For the most part, they are acquired by solvent banks -- who had to comply with the CRA.

From the first article that comes up:

Oh, please. that's The American Prospect, whose subtitle right in the banner at the top of the page is "Liberal Intelligence"

I'll offer an alternative: Here's How The Community Reinvestment Act Led To The Housing Bubble's Lax Lending. It's from the "Business Insider", which is hardly non-partisan -- but no more (or less) so than the "American Prospect".

The author admits to changing his mind (he previously agreed with you). The article addresses various defenses of the CRA, point-by-point. You probably won't agree with any of them, and frankly I find some of his conclusions a bit lacking in evidence. However, if you take the time to follow some of the linked evidence, there's a lot of interesting information.

$40 to $50 million by current estimates: http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-severance-2010-8.

Part of me wonders if it was actually in his contract that even on being fired for ethical/criminal reasons [i.e. not just fired because "we don't think you're pumping the stock quite enough"] he gets a severance or if the board just wants this over with / is such pals with him / whatnot that they gave it to him anyway. If the former is true -- the hiring committees really need to make better contracts (and stop being packed with the friends of the folks they're hiring... but I suppose that's what happens when boards keep cross-pollinating as they do).

No it is not. The statement is based on factual, financial reports and a bit of analysis.
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/22/apple-iphone-has-totally-dominated-the-smartphone-market/

It's also true of their computer sales:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-revenue-vs-operating-profit-share-of-top-pc-vendors-2010-3

You are flat out wrong about this.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1658137/infographic-of-the-day-bps-horrifying-safety-record

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-safety-record/story?id=10763042

http://www.businessinsider.com/bp-has-been-fined-by-osha-760-times-has-an-awful-track-record-for-safety-2010-6

There is every point in singling out BP for this. No one else even comes close to being as cheap about safety as BP. They had 760 willful, egregious safety violations in a three year period where the next worst oil company had 9.

The US government failed because George Bush inserted sleeper agents into Federal agencies. These were people that Bush appointees hired, so they are simply career bureaucrats and were not replaced when Bush left office. Their job was to stand in the way of enforcing regulations.

We create a demand for oil and gas. We do not create a demand for unsafe extraction of oil and gas. Plenty of oil companies make a fine profit while playing it safe. BP did not.

You know, I'm not a dualitic thinker by nature, and I understand that everything affects everything else, but trying to blame everyone but the criminals involved in this disaster is just taking that concept too far.

This whole idea that pensions and 401ks benefit from evil corporatist actions is true, but ultimately meaningless. Do you know what percentage of these stocks are owned by pensions and 401ks? Very, very little. In fact, the bottom fifty percent of Americans own zero point five percent of all stocks. http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4

Read the whole thing.

Having greedy bastards making money hand over fist for extracting resources from the ground with little oversight and no safety is hardly ideal for conservation. You see, they are likely to ignore all regulations, endangering workers and the environment in their quest to make next quarters profits slightly higher. In fact, BP racked up over 760 egregious and willful safety violations in a three year period, when Exxon, having learned it's lesson up in Alaska, had only one.

Profitable oil companies, bad. Oil extraction is inherently a natural monopoly, as it is utterly inefficient to have more than one company tapping the same source. And the oil business in general is a well protected oligopoly, there are very few suppliers world wide. Thus, it is not the sort of business that free market competition will make any more efficient. Therefore, it is in the public interest to manage it carefully for the public good rather than for individual profit. Nationalize it, tell the rich bastards that they haven't done good enough and they lose the privilege. Pay off that tiny 0.5% owned by the poor, the rich owners did not insists on safety from the boards they elected, they are culpable too. Keep the workers, they know what they are doing, but give them actual workplace safety.

See, if we do things right, the guilty get screwed, the innocent are protected, the public interest is served, and greedy bullies learn that being a bully is no longer profitable.

Here is where you are correct:

– Profits are more important than Revenue
– Profits are profits, doesn't matter whether they are from HW or SW
– Microsoft has greater profits than Apple still
– Both companies profits are increasing
– Making assumptions about the future is risky

However, I think that in the case of Apple vs. Microsoft predicting that Apple's profits will out grow Microsofts profits in the very near future is a pretty safe prediction. Here is one of the "Chart of the Day" charts showing quarterly profits from both companies. Microsofts profits are increasing in a roughly linear fashion. There is a certain amount of noise in their line, but I would expect a significant linear trend if we were to run the statistics on their quarterly revenue. For Apple on the other hand, their growth in profits is exponential.

Whether you like their products or not, and many here on /. don't, it is obvious that Apple has captured the consumers imagination with their products in a way that no other PC manufacturer, or consumer electronics company has. All of Apples divisions are turning a profit, whereas only some of Microsofts are. Those they have that are profitable are insanely so, but they are wasting a lot of their effort on projects with little evidence of ever being money makers in their own right. Apple has managed, thus far, to pick only winners for those things that they bring to market thus wasting less of the profits they do make on ultimately futile R&D.

The only way I see Apple's growth slowing appreciably is if they make a major misstep, which could happen. According to some the whole "Death Grip" issue is such a misstep. I don't believe it is bad enough, but if they make too many more their house of cards could come tumbling down. They have a growing macintosh division, the iPod (still dominant), iPhone (still desirable and growing), and iPad (Demand out pacing supply for the foreseeable future). Even the death grip doesn't appear to have affected sales that I've seen.

The only way I see Microsoft's growth increasing is if they start doing more things right in divisions that are current break-even or loosing money. That means taking some of their R&D projects and turning them into profitable products people actually want. They've demonstrated over the last decade or so, that they are essentially incompetent at this translation step. You can argue that their vaporware announcements have been everything they claimed they are, but unless it can actually be purchased it is essentially pointless. Maybe Balmer will be replaced with someone that actually understand technology and can steward products from the R&D department to store shelves. Unfortunately though, I don't think that will happen soon. Balmer and all of the other board members at Microsoft know each other too well. And as you say, no one makes more money than Microsoft. However, how much money could they be making if they turned even 1/10th of their R&D projects into moderately successful commercial products?

Given that the xbox has done rather well for them

Only losing a couple million dollars is "rather well"? The XBox sells well because it's subsidized by the Office and Windows monopolies, but it's not exactly a profit center.

77% of iPhone users would give money again to Apple.

20% of Android users would do the same to any number of manufacturers

Is it any wonder Apple's cleaning up in the mobile industry?

The record figure for a single month was reported as T$18 billion which is roughly $570 million for the month of April

$0.57B is waaay less than $10B/3...

If you *really* want to see how Apple is blowing away the competition, look here for a graph of Apple profit vs the combination of {RIM, Motorola, Nokia, HTC, Sony Ericsson}... Now Samsung and LG aren't part of the group Apple is compared against on the graph, but when you're making huge amounts more *profit* (not revenue as you quote above) than a significant number of your competitors *combined*, you're doing something right.

Simon

False. 65000 iPhones activated a day. 150,000 android phones get activated every day.

And I could have 1,000,000 activations of my phone each day if I was to give it away for free. Number of activations don't mean anything with respect to profit.

Also, I believe he was referring to this article. http://www.businessinsider.com/you-cant-appreciate-how-completely-apple-has-humiliated-rim-nokia-and-the-rest-of-the-gadget-industry-until-you-see-these-charts-2010-7

http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5

• "Apple engineers were aware of the risks associated with the new antenna design as early as a year ago, but Chief Executive Steve Jobs liked the design so much that Apple went ahead with its development, said another person familiar with the matter."

So I guess both Bloomberg and the WSJ have anonymous sources who are full of shit.

It has been theorized that the accidents are more prevalent in Toyota vehicles because their brand positioning makes them likely to be driven by older people more prone to accidents, in addition to the selection bias that comes from this being a high profile issue.

Okay.

Graph of the "cliff."

Retail sales data put into a chart (with links to origin of graph and the sales data itself, which came from the government, in case the right-wing bias of hotair.com makes you want to disregard). Here is the original graph/blog and person that made it.. It also has a variety of other info, like the cost per ton of CO2 reduced, etc.

Encryption can work pretty well in at least this case http://www.businessinsider.com/brazilian-banker-has-invented-a-code-to-guard-his-files-that-is-impenetrable-to-the-police-2010-6 I guess it is a good thing the Spy's were not using Linux and HDD encryption.