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just like in VINCENT HUMPHRIES's story in Business Week

But more Chinese corporate interests have seen profits hit because of counterfeiting -- which may lead to a tougher response from Beijing. Li-Ning Co., China's No. 1 homegrown athletic footwear and apparel company, has gotten the ultimate compliment from counterfeiters: They're faking its shoes. So today, Li-Ning has three full-time employees who track counterfeiters.

As for the "this is a trademark, not a copyright issue" comments, when someone reverse engineers your product and sells an identical looking (but lower quality) knockoff down to the logos, then are violating trademark, patent, and copyright law.

One of the most well know examples of fraud is the Huawei example mentioned above. They didn't steal the Cisco name, but they stole everything else down to the typo's in the user manual. http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/corp_012303.html

"bubble keep going up". Bubbles don't always go up. That's why they are called bubbles.

Everyone in the financial industry knew two things: 1) The bubble would collapse, and 2) The U.S. government, led by the Federal Reserve Bank, composed of former financial industry executives, would make the taxpayers give money to the financial institutions.

You didn't read the Rolling Stone article linked in the grandparent comment, did you? Or anything else about Goldman Sachs and the financial collapse?

Note that the "Federal Reserve Bank" is not a bank, it is not federal, and there is nothing in reserve. Three lies in three words, in the name!

This Slashdot comment, The Investment Banking cohorts JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are the **huge** winners, discusses some of the new ways Goldman Sachs will make money in the future using the power of government. That Slashdot comment links to the Rolling Stone article, but that copy of the article has been removed. See the link to the article in the grandparent comment.

The corruption is not new. For example, see the May 13, 2002 article in Business Week, How Corrupt Is Wall Street? New revelations have investors baying for blood, and the scandal is widening Quote: "Consider Enron, which has paid $323 million to Wall Street in underwriting fees since 1986, according to Thomson. Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS ) pocketed $69 million of that..." Enron, of course, went bankrupt when it was discovered the company was dishonest.

Beginning in 2002, Warren Buffett began very publicly calling derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction". That particular part of the corruption was allowed by the removal of laws designed to prevent fraud, at the beginning of George W. Bush's first term. Nothing was done to reinstate the laws, and that's why we are suffering now. Why was nothing done? Numerous articles say the corruption was allowed to happen because Goldman Sachs people, and other financial company executives control the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.

If the past is any guide, Intel will be fined a trivial sum like $100 million, and the corruption and anti-competitive activity against AMD will continue.

Part of loving the U.S. is becoming aware of, and trying to stop, the corruption in government.

I thought I'd revisit this old-ish thread and support my arguments with a link:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/eyeonasia/archives/2009/10/even_nintendo.html

Quote: "Sales of the DS, the top-selling portable game machine, were just shy of 113.5 million units at the end of the second quarter, but they're not as strong as they used to be, either. The DS's problem has been competition from Apple's iPhone, now a popular gadget for games."

In the modern world we don't need 100 reporters at a White House press conference. The job can be done by three or four, and then aggregated and translated.

3 or 4 reporters can't turn into an ugly mob when a gov't official starts shoveling shit down their throats.
So lets keep the large press conferences and press pools.
Or do you really think 3 or 4 people can represent 300 million Americans?

Which is largely why professional 'reporters' are losing out to people with knowledge about the subject matter but with only amateurish reporting skills. If the journalist is merely a conduit, well, then frankly a blog page can do that.

Copyediting? Ship the Work Out to India
http://www.businessweek.com/print/globalbiz/content/jul2008/gb2008078_678274.htm

Journalists aren't losing out to bloggers.
Sooner or later the USA is going to outsource everything.

Hmm? According to 2005 data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), New Jersey is actually one of the safest states to drive in. New Jersey is number 10 on this list, behind Utah, Iowa, Georgia, Kentucky,Idaho, Nebraska,West Virginia, Indiana, and Maine.

Also interesting, but not directly related to New Jersey drivers, is an Allstate study of driver safety by city.

That's pretty old news, actually. The European Union already convinced phone makers to agree on a standard charger a few months ago.

Do you have idea what the carbon footprint of a human is?

Depends on the human ... if it's Al Gore, with his mansion, or his private jet(s), I guess it would be a lot.

Doesn't sound below average to me, at all.

Well, nevertheless it is:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/10/does_rd_spendin.html

And almost all of that "R&D" spending is "D", not "R".

Where do you think the new products they produce in a steady stream come from, a nearby magic forest?

Yes: the "nearby magic forest" is called "Silicon Valley". Apple takes the best ideas from the Valley and turns them into products. They leave the research to others.

Unlike Apple, Nokia, IBM, Microsoft etc. actually do good research, they just can't figure out how to turn them into decent products.

where are you getting your "industry average" numbers?

The numbers come from Booz Allen Hamilton and Business Week:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/10/does_rd_spendin.html

Apple's R&D to sales ratio is 5.9%, computer industry average is 7.6%.

Apple is no lightweight in the R&D department and NONE of those other companies are expanding their R&D spending as fast as Apple.

Apple spends money development, but not much on research; Apple's research output according to the usual objective measures (publications and citations) is non-existent.

Your model omits some readily available data that would seem relevant. Population growth among non-immigrants of advanced, wealthy nations such as the US, Japan and parts of western Europe has plateaued at or below replacement. The "western" world has, despite an abundance or food, energy and space (in the case of North America,) tamed its population growth. This has occurred without coercive government control of breeding behavior.

Apparently there are more factors involved in the growth curve than Malthusians such as yourself choose to allow. It is certain that our international governance is equally blind; the next global treaty on the environment that acknowledges this success and, heaven forbid, incorporates population growth into its protocol bean counting will be the first.

It matters quite a bit. For one thing, currency exchange rates don't reflect the respective cost of living. For another, China manipulates the currency market to make it's goods seem artificially cheap. If they weren't, the juan would be worth more and the spending in China would be quite a bit more. For example, the average salary in China is $160 per month. In the US, you're looking at probably $3,200 per month (a factor of 20 difference. The cost of living is so much less in China that using the currency markets is very deceptive for any sort of spending.

So lets say we changed the US military budget to double that of China's. Using China's official budget, ($50 billion military spending) that would equate to $100 billion in US military spending at the official exchange rate. Again, China has been manipulating the exchange rate, so if it were actually allowed to float, China's spending would be much more than $50 billion. If we used cost of living (based off of that average office worker), we would be looking at ~$2 Trillion in US military spending.

The purchasing power of one USD in the US is very different from one USD in China.

Silverjet was just that, but they only lasted for about a year (killed off by the oil crisis). I think it was founded by the guy who owns Virgin, so he obviously had a clue of how to run an airline.

- Among other incidents, at the school with the largest number of African-American students in the Ivy League, nooses and racial epithets have been anonymously scattered around professors' offices.

- Differential prosecution and punishment of drug offenses and other minor nonviolent offenses (with black men incarcerated at eight times the rate of white men).

- Black Americans were specifically targeted to receive sub-prime loans, even when they could have qualified for prime-rate loans, with a differential result that probably pushed a lot of African American families into losing their homes. (another on higher rates: here.)

- The USAF considers it still necessary to actively recruit minorities into the officer corps, which is over 80% white.

I could go on, but I've done enough research for you so far. Similar results can be found for differential treatment of other minorities, as well as women (who are actually a slim majority, but still the disempowered group).

Note that these are mostly instances of institutionalized racism or sexism -- where there is officially no difference on the law books or in the policies, but organizations still have cultures that privilege whiteness and maleness, and corresponding values and attitudes, above women and people of color. This is the kind of racism and sexism that is alive and well today, but is all the more insidious, because most of us white males are trained not to be even remotely aware of its existence, or (when confronted with it) to brush it off as isolated incidents, a few bad apples, etc. The biggest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist, as they say.

Also, this is all without getting into stereotypical portrayals in the media. For instance, when was the last time you saw a movie with an Asian American hero who didn't either (1) know kung fu or (2) flail helplessly in the clutches of his own geekery? When have you seen an Asian American love interest? (Outside of Harold & Kumar, which was explicitly intended as a corrective to that attitude in media portrayals). Have you ever noticed that if there's a black character in an action movie, he's almost certainly one of the first to die, and nearly guaranteed to be dead by the end? (c.f. Battlestar Galactica, with plenty of other instances easily discoverable). I won't go on, but these sorts of cases have a powerful effect on society's perception of people of color, and on PoC's perceptions of themselves, too.

Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps thinks that e-reader prices need to come down even more if the devices are going to become mainstream products, however. She suggested $99 as a price that would be much more likely to lure consumers. She said people "have somewhat unrealistic expectations of how much consumer electronics in general, and e-readers in particular, should be."

Considering that every consumer gadget falls in price dramatically over time, I'll just wait for when I can get an ebook reader at Walmart or Target for $49 or less. I remember when the MP3 players came out for hundreds of dollars and now you can get them for under $50 and they play CDs too.

As these things become more popular, more factories will open up to produce the screens, the cost will drastically come down from its current $60.

It will happen. You just need to be patient and let the first adopters get killed and pay for the manufacturing expansion.

The problem is the fact that IPv6 was built in an incredibly fucking stupid way.

Those responsible should be hanging their heads in shame. Instead they seem to be living on another planet.

You should listen to your customers, but do so understanding most requests aren't for what they're asking for, it's for a more fundamental desire...

That's fine. But the Innovator's Dilemma is a wholly unrelated to that form of customers not knowing what they want. Here is an excellent introduction to the Innovator's Delemma. The article talks about the rapid changes in the hard drive industry over.

This article isn't about customers not knowing what they want. It's about how over time, who your customers are can radically change as brand new markets emerge. For example, hard disk business with mainframes was all about cost per megabyte. But in the new desktop computer market, the criteria by which things are judged is totally different than just cost per megabyte. Overall cost for the unit is more important, and physical size. A mainframe customer wouldn't be interested in a drive that costs more per megabyte but is smaller and has an overall lower price per unit-- but a desktop customer would be interested. The topic of the article is that if you exclusively listen to your customers without contemplating how the world is changing, you can sink yourself. Same situation with the newspaper industry: over-focus on existing markets and existing business lines can cause you to not see the opportunity in emerging markets, as the Rocky Mountain News learned.

You are totally clueless.

Operating profit per console of $6, for a console that costs $250 is 2.4%. Operating profit is calculated before interest costs and taxes. Depending on Japanese taxes this might be (let's be very generous) a contribution of 2%. If you can put money in the bank and receive 0.5%, then a risky gamble of 2% return, or less than that when dividends are taxed, is idiotic. Hence, following those rules Nintendo would not have been able to fund production in the first place because nobody would have given them money. And all of that assumes Nintendo has zero debt incurred to fund production. In fact, it also ignores that projects that succeed must cover the cost of all projects that fail.

Wait, you're calling this guy clueless? Have you ever noticed the price trend in technology components?

Nintendo made $6 per Wii... in September 2006. Technology prices fall rapidly, so it was certainly higher than that in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Nintendo managed to keep the Wii the same price for three years, before finally dropping it to $200 five days ago.

For comparison, Microsoft was losing $71 per unit on the $399 Xbox 360 in at launch in 2005. By the end of 2006, the same model was now at break-even.

Electronic Arts pre-tax profit margin -25.2%

Either they are selling games at too high a price to sell enough, or they are not charging enough for the games they are selling, because they aren't making a profit!

Ubisoft net profit margin 6.5%

Not much profit...

Nintendo net profit margin 15%.

Of course, they actually make physical things as well (Wii).

Melinda Gates is hardly a supermodel. But she's still quite attractive. It's not all about physical beauty. It's a lot easier for you to be a woman of exceptional character, than one of exceptional physique. And character stays with you your entire life.

This article has some interesting details on the ratings, and people's behavior of what and how they rate movies (from the target database of the netflix contest) - http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2009/tc20090921_645345.htm

Between these revived, yet still pernicious models and Wall Street's darling new death bonds, we look poised to blow another bubble, destroy another decade of growth, and funnel more money into the hands of the obscenely wealthy when the system flies apart.

We cannot allow that to happen. Finance needs to be returned to a staid utility that forms a relatively minor part of our economy. We need to be deeply skeptical of innovation in the financial sector: it's been around for a long time, and we've already explored most of the beneficial ideas. What remains is deception and fraud.

Grove is supposed to be a management guru - he's certainly not shy about sharing his opinions - but Business Week has a story mentioning Intel as one of several big companies that headhunters tend to avoid when recruiting talent. Seems that Intel in particular has a reputation for instilling a "paranoid", reactive mentality up and down the ladder. Gee, where could they have gotten that from ?

The main point of a patent is to give the inventor a chance to recover the development costs and make a profit from their hard work before anybody else is allowed to copy them. If you think that this can be done in such a short time, you have a very simplistic idea of the costs of research and development.

Alright, let's do some calculations, shall we?

Source.

The 16GB iPhone 3GS only costs the company three percent more to make than last year's model, with a bill of materials totalling $172.46 plus $6.50 in manufacturing costs, says the company.

Apple's US carrier, AT&T, sells the 16GB iPhone 3GS at a subsidized $199, but industry watchers reckon that AT&T and other carriers cough up around $600 per phone. In the UK, Apple's carrier of choice, O2, sells a pay as you go 16GB iPhone 3GS for a whopping $719.85.

Apple claims it sold a million iPhone 3GS phones in the three days following its launch, which would equate to a cool $420 million profit if iSuppli's numbers are accurate.

And how about the cost of R&D?

In absolute terms, Appleâ(TM)s R&D investment is up $59 million in Q4 2005 over Q4 2004. For all we know this might be a good, sustainable R&D investment rate for them.

Assuming that's per quarter, that means that exactly one model of iPhone, in exactly three days, paid for Apple's entire R&D budget for over a year and a half -- "entire" meaning "not limited to iPhones".

Now, not everything's an iPhone, but you see the point -- from the first public release of a product to a profit doesn't have to take a long time. In cases where it does, chances are the inventor's doing something wrong, and deserve to lose their protection.

In either case, notice again that competition doesn't necessarily kill the device in question, nor do cheap imitators actually prevent innovation.

They were developed by companies that definitely wouldn't have done it if it weren't for the IP rewards.

And your proof for this is . . .? Actually you can have no proof because we have always lived under an increasingly suffocating patent/copyright/trade-mark blanket. Big Pharma is the most profitable industry in the world, surely some restriction on their ability to print money wouldn't harm innovation in the field, in fact maybe the exact opposite is true!

Business week has the rate of per capital GDP growth which is a pretty good all around (at least economically) measure of productivity growth which is essentially technology and its application.

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/long_15361_image001.gif

You can see that if anything the last 50 years outpaced the previous 50 slightly.

Except the male/female split is 45/55, and men and women tweet at the same rate. (Source) (critique of source) Another study has a 47/53 split (source 2).
Dunno, I think it'd be cool if the washing machine sent a twit (or any alert) when it's done so that I know when to run to the basement to check on it.

What??? Mac users are gay?

Are these gay? http://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/steve-jobs-3g-iphone1.jpg
Is this gay? http://images.businessweek.com/mz/04/44/0444_20innova.jpg

iDon't think so, troll!

where the hell SCO is getting the money from to pay for a decade of litigation. How has SCO managed to survive two recessions and continue to base a business model solely around endless litigation? Dear SCO: I have a great idea for a futile court case, who is your angel investor? PS: Your money would have been better spent hiring engineers and developing new products.

Apparently they got the money from an investment fund called BayStar.

So I just googled "study of apple marketing" and nothing on the first couple of pages shows me any sort of statistically significant study indicating why people who chose to buy Apple products did so. I did see a lot of "case studies" and glorified opinion pieces.

If we were going to accept anecdotal evidence, I could tell you that none of the many developers I know who have switched from Windows to Mac in the past couple of years give a shit about brand - they just want to get their work done in the easiest way possible - for them that turned out to be a mac.

Of course, we would both be idiots to assume that our personal group of acquaintances were representative of the many millions of people who buy Apple products every year.

I do agree that marketing can be quite powerful. I also agree that there are probably people out there buying Apple products just for the brand. However, I think you're crazy if you think that the vast majority of Apple customers are buying Apple just for the brand, regardless of any advantage in hardware or software quality.

Marketing can guarantee a strong opening weekend for a shitty movie, but once people figure out that it sucks the attendance drops dramatically. People would not continue to pay a premium for products costing multiple hundreds of dollars if the quality wasn't there.

If I had to guess, I'd suggest that people are continuing to buy Apple products because they consistently boast the highest customer satisfaction rates in both computers and cell phones, and nothing sells products like positive word of mouth:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2008/08/mac_customer_sa.html
http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/14/iphone-vs-pre-satisfaction-bakeoff/

So in the absence of any real evidence, we both have our theories. I just happen to think it's a lot more likely that people are rationally choosing superior products based on positive word of mouth than it is that people are irrationally spending lots of extra money because of some commercials they saw on TV.

Lack of government healthcare != able to get help.

Right. We all remember Bush's answer to the healthcare crisis: let them go to the emergency room. ER care is significantly more expensive than proper preventive and general practice care.

It simply means that things are more expensive for those without healthcare in the short term if they need it.

Right. 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007 were caused by health problems and 78% of those filers had insurance. Citation That doesn't just make things more expensive for those with healthcare, it makes them more expensive for policy holders, anyone who wants a loan, small businesses, investors, and stockholders. And it's not just over the short term, it has an overall detrimental effect on our nation's economic well being which continues to mount.

In general there are a lot of "reactionary" people here in the US who will go to the doctor for -anything-, heck, wasn't it just a few years ago where because of the prevalence of people geoing to the doctors for every little thing was going to create more drug resista lnt illnesses?

it's not people going to the doctors that causes drug resistance, it's the repeated treatment of the same bacterial infections with a broad spectrum of antibiotics. This has a lot to do with tort liability, a subject I'm not as well versed on as I would like to be. I do think that tort reform should be a part of any comprehensive medical reform, but I think that we have to be careful.

In general, if it makes someone sick with obvious symptoms, they are going to get help here in the US. Its just the common reaction, not sure about in other countries (the US is the only country I've lived in for an extended period of time, though I have traveled to many different countries) but in the USA, a lot of people go to the doctor or even the emergency room for every thing.

"in general" is a stretch in this case. Lots of conditions can't be taken care of in an emergent care setting. This may be true for broken limbs, allergic reactions, and like conditions, but it doesn't address the situation with regard to chronic conditions, diabetes, cancer, and so on. This is the situation that most urgently needs to be addressed. If there was a law like the 1986 "patient dumping" law that applied to chronic care as well as ERs it would cost the medical industry billions. as is they are only required to "stabilize." and then they can ask for your insurance card and or show you the door.

The link in the post above points here:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_24/b4088072611398_page_2.htm

Is that the correct article? That one seems to be about bank issued credit cards--was this intended?

This bullshit accusation comes up every time anyone mentions IBM and is a great way to get guaranteed mod points on oh-so-politically-correct-slashdot. Here's what "Foobar of Borg" doesn't tell you:

- the book was written by the former publisher of "OS/2 magazine", Edwin Black, who profited from his association with IBM for many years until its folding in 96
- Black also "co-incidentally" launched a high profile lawsuit against IBM that was summarily thrown out of court, but the press did not cover this fact.
- Many people have questioned the authenticity and accuracy of the accusations, which while juicy, do not stand up to close scrutiny.

Ultimately Black's assertions are like claiming that gun manufacturers are responsible for the murders that are committed with their products, or that manufacturers of crowbars are responsible for breakins, or that people who write Linux are morally responsible for the many people who die when it is used by the US military.

- Anonymous, because I will almost certainly be accused of being anti-semitic, even though I am jewish.

Perfect example. I got pissed off with the phone fees so I switched to Vonage. They offer better service, more reliable and cheaper. There will always be competition that springs up if the price by a near monopoly gets too high.

Vonage wasn't even around when this fee went on. In fact, it wasn't until recently that Vonage was even considered a telecommunications service. Then this has been disproven by a court ruling saying they are not. Showing them as an example pf getting around the fees doesn't really prove your point. But because they got out from under the fees doesn't mean they weren't subject to them at some point. That's why it went to court. You were subject to the fee for at least 4 years before vonage or VOIP providers came about in 2001-2002.

Now, the only reason you have an alternative as you pointed out is because Vonage doesn't meet the criteria, tell me how that will work for manufacturing costs of existing products. It won't and Yes, I can get VoIP from the telecoms for about the same price as Vonage.

Yea, that is Republican protectionism which is proven to not work. Agreements like NAFTA and the free trade in the EU remove these concepts. Eventually this will be worldwide.

Wow.. You are fucking delusional aren't you? Republican protectionism... The congress was control by democrats, in fact, most all of the tariffs imposed required both sides of the isle to come right along with it. Even with the trade tariffs after WWI which contributed heavily to the great depression was a democrat ordeal. But democrat or republican doesn't really matter here because it doesn't disprove the point, it just shows how delusional you are.

No but from my experience software programmers often dont have the social skills to communicate properly in a discussion. They resort to name calling and condescention instead of explaining the facts. They often do this to distract from the fact that they are making an argument about a topic they have no real clue about. You are sadly mistaken if you think name calling is the only way to get someones attention.

SO far, it seems like you are the one without a clue. How you reconcile that is beyond me.

I think you are fundamentally missing the point that US labour costs minimum $8/hr while labour in China is about 5cents per day. For labour intensive production like textiles and manufacturing, you simply cannot compete. Many import tarrifs are designed to help make this more balanced (but I generally disagree with any sorf of forced tariff). I cannot think of many forced fees that are not related to import protectionism issues, so in general I believe your argument is invalid.

Lol... No you are missing some key points here. When we inflate the costs of production, they are wanting to create tariffs in order to equalize the difference. But you are illustrating my point about the government inflating costs. The only way for it to be provided cheaper is to either move it off shore (in which the case with tax and trade wouldn't work because of the tariffs and the democrats want to put in place)

But lets look at some other numbers. Of the 50 US states, the states can increase the minimum wage to above the federal minimum of $7.25/hour. Of the 20 or so states which has done that, the 15 which are more then 20% higher are driving our current unemployment numbers. They had a higher unemployment first and were the first to reach double digits. We now have businesses that are relocating to other states in order to get out from under the artificial costs increases and businesses remaining in those states who can't afford to compete outside of them. The costs of similar items in these states are higher then costs in other states with lower costs, even at major chain

Not even close.

You are naive if you think Google is pure like the driven snow. I'm no lover of Microsoft, but I'm no lover of any large corporation. Google's not better than their competitors - they just haven't been big long enough to have done as much bad stuff.

What about patent trolling,

Overall, they're pretty good about this one, but remember - Google's a relatively young company. Their cry for patent reform is in their own interest, since they're much more likely to defend patent suits than prosecute them. They certainly aren't afraid to go after folks they feel have violated their patents. This air duct patent doesn't bode well.

bogus lawsuits,

How about suing Grupa Mlodych Artystow i Literatow for using gmail.pl? Or suing GMail, a pre-existing physical mail service in Europe? Then there's Android Data Services.

astroturfing using the names of dead people,

Oh yes they do. Google hired the very same company that sent letters from dead people.

bogus TCO studies,

They aren't afraid of misleading TCO studies, by counting unpatched, pirated IIS servers as affecting the TCO of Windows Server.

bogus benchmark studies,

They do that, too.

bribing public officials,

There've been allegations of this in China and of media bribery in the US. They're one of the top DNC contributors, as well, which in my view boils down to bribery.

outright lying to the US-DoJ,

Of course they do that.

and so much more.

Sharing board members with nominal competitors, swiping copyrighted work, the whole AdWord thing going on, and so much more.

• War on Poverty
• War on Hunger
• War on Illiteracy

So many wars to choose from... so little time.

Wow. I guess piracy really doesn't hurt the digital content industries.

Oh wait. Two caveats:
(1) "Sales of recorded music fell 6%" (which means other digital industries that don't involve giving concerts shouldn't expect comparible results).
(2) A recent (July 13, 2009) study of UK piracy says "The analyst firm published a study on Monday that showed the numbers of those who regularly file-shared had dropped by a quarter between December 2007 and January 2009. The trend was particularly pronounced among 14-18-year-olds -- at the earlier date, 42 per cent were file-sharing at least once per month but at the latter date only 26 per cent were doing so."
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2009/gb20090713_439306.htm

• How a $7 billion nonprofit is run
• "Is the Mayo Clinic a non profit org., or do you have to have insurance to go?"
• Wiki

I would only be wrong if the U.S. were the whole world, and it would still be debatable.

The third generation iPod, with USB support, was announced at the same day as the iTMS, more than a year before the iTMS was available in any other country. Of course, a Windows user with a working Firewire connection could use the second generation iPod as well. So your argument really rests on that Firewire is Mac only and the U.S. is the whole world. You're wrong on both accounts.

But instead of arguments from mere speculation based on faulty premises, let's consider the facts:

In the first six months of this year -- after Apple (AAPL ) cut the price and added features -- iPod's market share climbed to 7.1%, estimates NPD analyst Tom Edwards. [...] The week of Aug. 26, Apple is rolling out an iPod for Windows-based PCs. Kevin Hunt, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners, estimates that iPod sales should jump 25% over the next two quarters.

That's from Businessweek, August 27, 2002. A slightly more biased source, Mac Observer, claimed the 'iPod is the king of portable music players, according to new dollar market share numbers'. New, as of March 12th, 2003.

So kindly fuck off. You're wrong, I'm right.

There is a multimillion dollar demand in Asian countries for, among other pieces of the tigers, the male tiger penis. It is seen in many Asian cultures as a sacred aphrodisiac.

The thing about a lot of Chinese herbal remedies is that the ones have a big fuss made over them, were the ones recommended for the Emperor and the aristocracy.

You know what's also supposed to be a good medicine for building yang in Chinese medicine? Walnuts. But that's clearly not good enough, not special and unique enough, for some royal bastard. You're an important guy, you have to go have some sentient being killed to prove it. And then because you are an important guy, everyone else wants to follow in your footsteps.

(Of course, the same applies in our culture. Know what's a good treatment for heart disease? A diet based around whole plant foods, exercise, and stress reduction. But that's clearly not good enough, not special and unique enough, for some master-of-the-universe type. You're an important guy, you have to go treat your body like shit until you need the bypass surgery -- despite the fact that its benefits are questionable. But at least with bypass surgery, your death or your case of "pump head" only directly affects you, whereas using tiger penis to treat your impotence has a hell of an impact on the tiger.)

    Totally off the real topic but Bill Gates actually rates well in the percentage of net
worth donated. http://www.businessweek.com/pdfs/2004/0448_philan.pdf

      The above link doesn't reflect my next unsubstatiated statement but Larry Elison has
historically done very poorly at giving significant percentages of his income.

millions needlessly dead,

...As opposed to people who would have died during Saddam's rule? Yes, the intelligence Bush got was faulty about the WMDs in Iraq, but you have to remember this is a dictator who not only invaded other countries but launched chemical warfare on his own people (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack ). The invasion of Afghanistan really should have happened sooner and with a more powerful attack. But after the 9/11 attacks, you couldn't exactly ignore a huge terrorist group that very successfully attacked the USA.

war over large parts of the planet

...Because two countries consist of a "large part of the planet"? One of which was already at war (Afghanistan).

mass alienation and destabilisation,

Of who? And of what?

worldwide economic collapse...

Which we all know Bush is to blame for everything... Really, it started with Clinton and Clinton's desire to have every American own a home. Sure, its a noble idea but it went way to far. For example, a person who would ordinarily qualify for a $150,000 loan would be bumped up to getting a $1750,000 loan... So then eventually they couldn't pay it back because they borrowed more than they could afford. (see http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/02/clintons_drive.html for an article on what I'm talking about).

Obama's plan seems to be lets spend our way out of an economic collapse! Mixed with tons of regulations. For example, I have a good friend who runs a home building business, he has been in business since 1982 and hasn't defaulted on a single loan and hasn't been late on any of his bills in the past 20 years. Today, he can't get a loan to build another house because Obama's administration says that he is "too big of a risk" WTF!?! This person has sold all of their houses, how exactly is he supposed to get any more money to build houses and sell them if he can't get a loan for it? It makes no sense at all.

in the US there are typically around 12 Doctors involved in the average Americans healthcare. have you ever been to a doctors office?

I last went to my Doc's office 3 days ago, on Thursday and I had 2 different appointments. Next Thursday I have 2 more appoints. Each of these appoints are with specialists, counselors or therapists who cost less than my doctor does. I am both disabled and a diabetic, yet I doubt I'll see half of your dozen docs this year. You'd have to go back more than 10 years before you can count 10 docs I've seen in an official capacity.

having worked in the medical field as a healthcare professional for a while i've seen firsthand the fiasco that is the US heathcare system. sorry folks, you arent getting "the best healthcare in the world" not even close. in fact

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

the US fares pretty abysmally.

France, which is listed number 1 in your list, is still having trouble with "runaway health-care inflation". Canada, which comes in 8 places before the US, still has people coming to the US for surgeries. For those who can afford it the US has about the best medical care in the world. Of course in part because of, and in part caused by, medical tourism other nations are catching up. Why have surgery in the US when you can have it done in India quicker and cheaper? Ah, a freer market.

Falcon

Ironically, Google all but owns Firefox. Google's contributions account for almost 90% of Mozilla's revenue. Excellent article on it here.

There is a long article in Rolling Stone magazine this month, The Great American Bubble Machine, alleging that banks control the U.S. government and that Goldman Sachs is one of the leaders of the corruption. Anyone wanting to know more about how the financial corruption of the U.S. government is operated should read the article. The article alleges that Goldman Sachs will use any manipulation whatsoever to get money.

This Slashdot comment, The Investment Banking cohorts JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are the **huge** winners, discusses some of the issues. The Slashdot comment links to the Rolling Stone article, but that copy of the article has been removed.

According to the Rolling Stone article, Goldman Sachs makes money mostly through corruption, not investment insight. Your tax money may be their profit: Goldman Sachs takes $12B Bailout, Hands out $14B Bonuses. (The article lists British pounds, the Digg article lists dollars.)

The corruption is not new. For example, see the May 13, 2002 article in Business Week, How Corrupt Is Wall Street? New revelations have investors baying for blood, and the scandal is widening Quote: "Consider Enron, which has paid $323 million to Wall Street in underwriting fees since 1986, according to Thomson. Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS ) pocketed $69 million of that..." Enron, of course, went bankrupt when it was discovered the company was dishonest.

Beginning in 2002, Warren Buffett began very publicly calling derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction". That particular part of the corruption was caused by the removal of laws designed to prevent fraud, at the beginning of George W. Bush's first term. Nothing was done to reinstate the laws, and that's why we are suffering now. Why was nothing done? Numerous articles say the corruption was allowed to happen because Goldman Sachs people control the U.S. government's Federal Reserve Bank. To give a small indication of the level of corruption, the "Federal Reserve Bank" is not federal, there is nothing in reserve, and it is not a bank.

Isn't it the other way around, with Porsche buying VW? This means they will also own Bentley, another top of the range luxury brand.

Phillip.

Found an article about companies and taxes.. it was one of the sources in the Amazon.com WP article i think.

Nvidia at 2.2% tax: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/22.htm

Boeing at 3.2% : http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/18.htm

Amazon.com at 4.1% : http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/15.htm

Found an article about companies and taxes.. it was one of the sources in the Amazon.com WP article i think.

Nvidia at 2.2% tax: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/22.htm

Boeing at 3.2% : http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/18.htm

Amazon.com at 4.1% : http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/15.htm

Found an article about companies and taxes.. it was one of the sources in the Amazon.com WP article i think.

Nvidia at 2.2% tax: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/22.htm

Boeing at 3.2% : http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/18.htm

Amazon.com at 4.1% : http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0423_corporate_taxes/15.htm

At *most* Congress will hold some show hearings, make a big production out of berating the Sony CEO briefly (during which he will offer the traditional "We're just following the law" defense), let a few Senators fire off some brief criticism of Sony, then completely forget about the whole thing and go on with business as usual. Sony will be briefly embarrassed, then continue on without a single change or reform.

Don't believe it? Just ask Jerry Yang if *HE* changed anything (or faced any real punishment) after getting this treatment.