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Except that he only pretended to release the mosquitos...

He only pretended to release a jar of mosquitoes. Which is actually kinda disappointing.

More to the point, Denny's is giving away free Grand Slam breakfasts from 6:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. (local time) today.

Time to see if the /. effect works IRL and DoS Denny's.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2008/db2008108_844949.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

The author of the book was Edwin Black. He sued IBM at exactly the same time that he released the book and the suit was dismissed. Unfortunately for some strange reason, the dismissal of the lawsuit did not get nearly the same amount of media coverage that the initial suit timed with the book release got.

An interesting and little known fact about Mr Black is that before writing this book, he was publisher of "OS/2 Professional" when it went out of business due to IBM's killing off of the doomed OS. He seemed to have no problem with IBM's past while he was making money from a financial association with them.

Also, at least one historian who specializes in the Holocaust has called into question many of his accusations.. Again, few people care to listen to the other side, and prefer to simply assume everything Mr Black says is true.

It was always about the cash for production. From Businessweek at about the time of the G1G1 promotion opening:

"While the highly quotable Negroponte has been a master at getting publicity for OLPC, this effort is mostly about cash: "It has become important for us to raise money this way," says Negroponte. "I have met with about 30 heads of state. They're all enthusiastic. But there's a huge gulf between a head of state shaking your hand and a minister making a bank transfer." Negroponte won't predict how many laptops might be sold through Give 1 Get 1, but factory capacity presents no limitations: Quanta Computer in Taiwan can produce 1 million XO Laptops a month, if need be. "

If he truly had wanted that to work he would not have restricted the program in any way. Just from the above clip the factory production wasn't an issue so what else could it have been? Hmm?

He personally chose to restrict the sale of those laptops. Since his stated goal was cash for production he shot himself in the foot - nobody else did it for him.

These H1B holders are well-educated.

Except for the ones that lied about their education and experience: http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2008/db2008108_844949.htm

When I worked for FNMA I wondered how most of my H1 coworkers had no previous knowledge of computers, and why even though they supposedly had degrees in EE they had no knowledge of any basic principles of that field. They were very popular with management because they always said yes, and were continually afraid of 'causing problems'. The ones I talked to also made 20-30% less than I did.

Certainly not the case everywhere, but I'd say H1B1 visa holder = undereducated indentured servant in far too many places.

Unfortunately for your argument, CRA loans had tighter regulations and were less likely to be securitized.

At the very least, you have to accept that its far from a foregone conclusion that the Community Reinvestment Act was a major contributor to the propagation and securitization of subprime mortgages.

I hope developments like these can help SONY. In my opinion, SAMSUNG has of late, been chipping away at SONY's lunch [and market share] for a while now with interesting products on the home entertainment front.

BusinessWeek even ran a story for SONY at SAMSUNG.

Where did SONY go wrong?

This touches on a significant male rights issue that the press refuse to report on. Male cancers lag far behind the cancers that are specific to women in terms of awareness and research. Few people even know that prostate cancer is actually more common than breast cancer. More men than women die of cancer each year.

Despite this, feminists would probably argue that they are campaigning in order to raise awareness of female cancers. A woman might mention to her colleagues that she is going to have a lump in her breast examined. Most men would find it difficult to raise the subject of a lump in their testicles when chatting with their closest friend.

Well, using the desktop suite means that you fully control the access to your documents. On the other hand, a "server-based suite" like Google's forces you to relinquish the control of your documents to a third party, which means that you explicitly give vital information on your business to an external party subject to the control of a foreign country. Having economic espionage fresh in the collective memory, including ECHELON, that is a very dumb thing to do.

So yes, users do really need an open source desktop suite, no matter how cheap broadband is at the moment. It's all about control.

Apparently your company has no problem finding qualified people, just finding qualified people willing to settle for what you want to pay them.
This, unfortunately, is where the H-1Bs are currently being used - to artificially depress the wages your company needs to pay for desirable skills by letting them bring in an indentured servant. See also http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back407.html , and go watch the presentation by a law firm on how to disqualify Americans in order to legally hire H-1Bs instead.

(If you'd prefer a less-biased source: "'They don't have the usual rights that U.S. workers have,' says Eileen Appelbaum, a professor of labor economics at Rutgers University. 'You're essentially an indentured servant.'" from http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/jun2003/ca20030610_2638_ca014.htm ; or take a few H1-Bs out for coffee and ask them about how their green card applications were going and what would happen if they switched employers. )

The program is fundamentally operating on lies. It has some safeguards in the law, but clearly they lack sufficient teeth, because average wages aren't really being paid and Americans are really being displaced. A very minimal amount of looking into it should show that there is an actual problem, and it's not just some bitter laid off guy whining.

I do find it interesting that dell has ditched the overly conservitive look... but maybe they are just figuring out that looks do sell. Then again this might be what you get when you Put a designer from Nike and a 25 year veteran from wireless industry in the room to build a computer (Ed Boyd and John Thode).

You could be right, given this Business Week story: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2008/12/steve_jobs_will.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_byteoftheapple IDG basically pre-announced Steve Jobs giving the keynote, and that kind of behavior has always resulted in retaliation by Steve Jobs.

Dyson is a physicist, not a climatologist. Neither are half the names given on the page you link — which is a blog by an oil state Senator! At best you have a list of maybe a dozen scientists, half of whom are not experts in climate. And all of them characterize themselves as dissidents from the mainstream of scientific thought on global warming.

Your whole argument is just parroting blogosphere BS. That's dumb enough when it's a random shoot-from-the lip blog. But this is a blog by a politician with a vested interest in denying climate change and a history of demonizing anybody who disagrees with him, and routinely makes arguments that not even his fellow "skeptics" care for. That's way beyond dumb.

There are lots of important techs that were developed without government funds.

Here we go.

The steam engine

James Watt studied in London and settled at the University of Glasgow. He developed the steam engine at his leisure while at the University, which was founded at the request of King James II of Scotland.

the internal combustion engine

Credited to Benz. Who also studied mechanical engineering at a public University.

iron, steel

The refinement of iron manufacturing has been going on for thousands of years, mostly driven by warfare, which is usually paid for by the government.

powered flight

One exception, though the money to fund further development since then and until today continues to be from government coffers.

guns

Quite broad. The most difficult problems of firing naval guns were entirely solved by government investment, just like the development of early computers was entirely geared towards artillery math. The invention of the gun in China was probably done for war, paid by government. I hope you're seeing a pattern.

electric power transmission

Tesla studied at Technische Universitat Graz, a public university, though he didn't finish. You'll notice that almost everyone you read about in the history books went to some sort of university. The obvious exception would be art.

the light bulb

Humphrey Davy had the earliest lightbulb. He was a professor. Edison made it commercially viable.

most modern materials

NASA

most modern advances in computer hardware and software.

Really? Give me one. Be specific.

That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's a lot more.

I'm sure that you haven't studied the subject, and you're full of shit.

And furthermore, just because technologies were developed with government money doesn't mean they couldn't have been developed with different funding. Also, I can't think of a single major commercial airframe in use today that was originally designed for military use (not so say there isn't one

You would not have any modern commercial airframes today without government subsidy, period. It takes an incredible amount of money and time and man hours to perfect jet engines and subsonic flight, money that no private company would dare spend without being a welfare client of a state.

but certainly none of the Boeing 7X7 lines or the airbus A3X0 lines were

Totally and completely false. Check the article above.

Meeting people and getting your foot in the door does not require an education. You can meet people in the field.

Sure, sure. And I can win the lottery too, or get rear ended by a millionaire. You want our next generation to have a good chance of success, not a crap shoot, right?

Degrees serve primarily as a barrier to entry, since employers use them to weed out potential candidates. You will not be prepared for your job by your degree, and you will likely use less than 10% of what you learn (much less what you crammed before the test and promptly forgot afterward).

I believe a good education in the basics of your field are essential in addition to apprenticeship. We have no formal apprenteceship program in the US, but for every job where you can ruin someone's life - doctor, lawyer, plumber, electrician, architect - there is required apprenticeship and required degrees for very, very good reasons. I'm not saying you need an EE degree to wire a house. But you do need one to build a datacenter.

If you want me to believe that a real cyberwar (in this case more aptly named "computer espionage") is up and going you better give me or assure me that you have some sort of evidence (like captured transmissions showing that the attackers know what they are looking for in terms of intercepted/exfiltrated data) showing that you're actually being attacked by foreign governments or skilled people with an actual terrorist agenda. There is nothing in TFA except buzzwords, hyperbole and "x declined to comment".

Actually, if you check out some of the linked articles, you'll see that reporters have reviewed documents outlining the attacks. There is certainly assurance that these things are going on.

I've participated in some of the investigations mentioned in that article. I have a pretty good familiarity with how particular attacks happened and what information was transferred and to where (or at least the first hop). And nothing I read in that article counters the facts that I have first-hand knowledge on.

Having said that - I don't know it all. I know how data was handled and where it was handed off to. I don't know who was on the other end (or how many additional hops were involved after that first one). But I also do know that these attacks are really unlike many past "skiddie" (and even more sophisticated) attacks seen in the past. For one thing - the amount of data being transferred is something very new.

Shocking, isn't it? I have no idea what's been going on. The US dollar has apparently rallied against most major world currencies except the Japanese yen. Here's an article speculating about why. Apparently, risk adverse investors are dumping less "reliable" currencies in favor of "safe" ones like the US dollar and the yen. No, I don't get it either.

Slide Show

do people who play wow make up a small number of the population(on the internet) or people who play other games that distribute over bittorrent? There are a number of other services that have legitimat downloads that use bittorrent. I would say that Linux distros is probably the smallest use of bittorrent. So tell me how many people play World of Warcraft? 1 2 3 examples of bittorent use there is also vuse and I think bittorrent.com might even have some legal download thing now too(I can't browse p2p stuff at work to check) bittorrent might be used for file transfer but so is direct download. Bittorrent is just easier on the servers that distribute the software it allows for a large cloud download. This is just a new technology that is just now starting to catch on with other companies as a way to distribute things(legally). Can it be used for illegal downloading and yes that's probably the number one use at the moment, but with game developers and content providers looking for ways to send large files and high definition content over the internet there is not a better way to do it. To remove that would be hampering the buisness model of these companies. If you think that it should be banned I think your wrong because there are a number of people who rely on this technology for legitimat use and even if it was 1% of the use I would still say you shouldn't hurt thoughs that are using it legitimatly. These corperations are only going to hurt themselves by doing this they are the ones that need to be using legal content downloads and the best distribution method is going to be torrents.

I would normally say "it's an Acer", but if you do a little research, you'll find something interesting about WalMart products. Virtually every product in WalMart, is made specifically for WalMart. They are made slightly cheaper so WalMart can lower the final cost and always undercut their competition.

    I found this out with Sony HandCams. One place I worked had about a dozen of them for live web broadcasting (make assumptions, you're probably right). Two broke, so we went to a Sony authorized repair shop. He looked at them, or more specifically at the model, and heard our complaint. He then told us "I can't fix that". He wasn't trying to be difficult, so he explained that this model was a WalMart model. The broken component was something that breaks very quickly. He can't get replacements for it. If it had been another model from another retail outlet, he would have been more than happy to fix it, but it probably wouldn't have broken anyways.

    We had saved $50/ea on them. If I recall correctly even though they were simply sitting on tripods, attached by RCA cable to digitizers, 90% of them had some sort of failure within a year. I took one of the few surviving ones, just because we retired all of them. I left it charging on my desk, and one day it just started opening the tape door on it's own. I could close it, and sometime in the next few days it would just open it like someone hit the eject button.

    If you want something that will survive, don't buy it at WalMart, even if it looks just like the item being sold somewhere else, and only has a very subtle variation on the model number. WalMart makes their money selling crap at a price lower than the other stores can sell their slightly better crap. They know when it breaks, you will probably go back to WalMart and buy another one, blaming the manufacturer, not WalMart business practices.

    Read this story about Snapper discontinuing business with WalMart

    or this Business Week piece on lower quality Walmart products

Conservatives love to point fingers at the CRA, because then they can blame liberals and poor people instead of the rich assholes on Wall Street, but the fact is that it had almost nothing to do with the current crisis. Here's what BusinessWeek has to say about it:

From http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html

Fresh off the false and politicized attack on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, today we're hearing the know-nothings blame the subprime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act -- a 30-year-old law that was actually weakened by the Bush administration just as the worst lending wave began. This is even more ridiculous than blaming Freddie and Fannie.

Iceland is bankrupt. They could pick it up for the cost of the debt. http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2008/10/iceland_goes_ba.htmlIcelandGoesBankrupt

Baidu is listed on the NASDAQ so ownership info is publicly available.

This does not appear to indicate any government ownership but I am unsure of the disclosure requirements of government stakes.

Although oil prices have crashed (a temporary situation), the oil companies are still raking in record profits. Not only records for their industry, but setting new records for any industry on the planet.

If there is ever a situation where a windfall profits tax was desirable, it would seem to apply now.

Apparently, Ed Felten is interested, while Lessig isn't.

I'm all for solar power. But I've become convinced that all the people trying to "help out" with their spending on home solar crap are wasting their money. And under "home solar crap" I even include those who spend big bucks covering their roofs with solar cells. Not only are they absurdly expensive for the power they provide, but they cost serious energy to manufacture and install — in most cases more energy than they'll ever generate.

To succeed, alternative energy needs to operate on a big scale. Huge thermal solar plants, windmill farms, tidal engines, geothermal engines and so on. If you want to throw your money at the problem, invest in those. Though there is some danger you'll actually make a profit, but I think most people can live with that.

Another thing: stop looking for little gimmicks that serve only to assuage your environmental guilt. There's no way you can make a real difference without making some basic changes. If you think you're green because you have some solar powered gadgets and you recycle your water bottles, you're fooling yourself.

Most people opposed the $700 billion bailout. I've yet to find a serious economist or capitalist who believes that no action was a valid alternative--we were a hair away from a complete financial halt in the credit/security market which would have quickly halted our entire economy. But, of course, most people haven't taken basic economic courses (much less advanced ones).

You, on the other hand, appear to have not taken basic Logic courses, much less advanced ones. What you're claiming here is a false dichotomy - no action is not the only alternative to the bailout plan. In fact, there were plenty of highly respected economists - including Nobel Prize winners - that opposed the bailout plan without advocating a no-action policy.

Besides, Paulson hasn't even started applying the bailout in the voted form yet - instead, he's using the first tranche of the money for a 'new and improved plan' - buying stakes in banks. Now the trick question is, where is that specified in the bailout plan? It was about illiquid mortgage-derived assets, right? the government was going to buy them to inject liquidity in what was a frozen market so that the assets can be priced again and marking them to market is no longer a huge liability for the banks ... and so on - right? Well, it's probably in the part that gives the Treasury sweeping powers to expand the program to whatever other assets it sees fit. Apparently preferred shares qualify. I'll wait for you to explain to me now how this action is better than initial plan, worse, or it is in fact the original plan and the toxic MBSs had tried to escape in the clever disguise of preferred shares in the nation's largest banks.

You probably recall the famous protestations of SBC/AT&T's CEO that Google, et al, where using "our pipes" for free. Those comments were made at about the same time that SBC/AT&T acquisition closed. (Note: The Business Week article has a publication date in November. I don't know BW's practices per se, but it's quite reasonable to expect that the article was printed a week before that, and that it was written another week before that.)

I remember reading speculation that SBC wanted to misdirect regulators' attention -- their complaints were a straw-man intended to shift attention away from more sensitive issues. The FCC would balk at the straw-man; SBC and FCC would negotiate a settlement ("AT&T must stand by its current peering agreements!"); the FCC could walk away with the feeling that it achieved something; and SBC wouldn't have to negotiate real, sensitive issues.

Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this theory, and I can't comment on its validity.

John Maynard Keynes was an economist who used his understanding of economics to make himself wealthy. He spent a couple of hours a day on his investments, leaving himself the rest of the day to amuse himself. He lost most of his money in the 1929 crash, but quickly recouped his losses. I'd say that the fact that Keynes found making a fortune fairly easy by putting is economic ideas into practice (as opposed to making a fortune by selling the ideas) probably counts as reasonable evidence that he understood how the economy of his day worked. Naturally, nobody can predict everything; there is a degree of randomness and chaos.

I think the key is that the randomness and chaos is most powerful over the short term. Over the long term, various economic parameters like stock market indices tend to be fractal: the closer you look, the more detail there is to see. This means nobody is ever fully the master of their economic fate. However, by investing in a way that offsets the variability in various indices, you can "understand" the economy quite well. David Swenson, who manages Yale's endowment, has a very simple system: you just keep rebalancing your portfolio regularly. When stocks are up and bonds are down, you take money out of stocks and put it into bonds and vice versa. What this means is that you are continually buying low and selling high.

Does this confer on him the ability to predict something like the credit crisis that plays bloody hell with everything? No. But that certainly wasn't beyond human reason. What it was, was beyond human emotion to accept. Consider this timeline of articles:

2002, September: Housing Bubble Lurks Among the Levered:"The people who say that the housing market can't be seeing a bubble argue that it's more heterogeneous, whereas the equity market is more homogeneous, in terms of money flowing back between different securities. ... It is true that real estate is more of a regional market, but it can still turn into a bubble."

Could this be that this is the classic glass half empty/half full dichotomy? I don't think so; the glass half full people are saying that empty space cannot exist in the glass, which doesn't seem right...

2002 October Housing boom breeds new mortgage deals:"Jennifer Scutti, a mortgage industry analyst at CIBC World Markets, wonders about the impact on delinquencies when some of the back-loaded costs of the new flexible mortgage deals hit home."

Looks like Ms. Scutti was right. Just how right? She goes on to say there might be problems in "three to five years"...

2002 October Where the Risk Went: With respect to credit default swaps, "[The banks] have shifted the risks to institutions that are less-equipped to handle them--from insurers to highly leveraged hedge funds. And because disclosure is limited, it's not always clear just who is exposed. ... Who's bearing the risk that has been redistributed by all of those securitizations and derivatives? Surprisingly, some of it has stayed in the banking system. ... The danger is that if the financial system's health is impaired, consumers and businesses will be starved of credit, and the economy will slump."

OK, so mortgage practices are getting dangerous... at the same time the banking system is overextending itself by insuring securities, risking a complete collapse. What does that mean with respect to mortgage backed securities?

2003, January: How TCW Galileo Gets Stellar Returns: how? "In general, mortgage-backed securities funds are much less volatile than other types of bond funds because they're less sensitive to changes in interest rates." Hmm. Just thr

John Maynard Keynes was an economist who used his understanding of economics to make himself wealthy. He spent a couple of hours a day on his investments, leaving himself the rest of the day to amuse himself. He lost most of his money in the 1929 crash, but quickly recouped his losses. I'd say that the fact that Keynes found making a fortune fairly easy by putting is economic ideas into practice (as opposed to making a fortune by selling the ideas) probably counts as reasonable evidence that he understood how the economy of his day worked. Naturally, nobody can predict everything; there is a degree of randomness and chaos.

I think the key is that the randomness and chaos is most powerful over the short term. Over the long term, various economic parameters like stock market indices tend to be fractal: the closer you look, the more detail there is to see. This means nobody is ever fully the master of their economic fate. However, by investing in a way that offsets the variability in various indices, you can "understand" the economy quite well. David Swenson, who manages Yale's endowment, has a very simple system: you just keep rebalancing your portfolio regularly. When stocks are up and bonds are down, you take money out of stocks and put it into bonds and vice versa. What this means is that you are continually buying low and selling high.

Does this confer on him the ability to predict something like the credit crisis that plays bloody hell with everything? No. But that certainly wasn't beyond human reason. What it was, was beyond human emotion to accept. Consider this timeline of articles:

2002, September: Housing Bubble Lurks Among the Levered:"The people who say that the housing market can't be seeing a bubble argue that it's more heterogeneous, whereas the equity market is more homogeneous, in terms of money flowing back between different securities. ... It is true that real estate is more of a regional market, but it can still turn into a bubble."

Could this be that this is the classic glass half empty/half full dichotomy? I don't think so; the glass half full people are saying that empty space cannot exist in the glass, which doesn't seem right...

2002 October Housing boom breeds new mortgage deals:"Jennifer Scutti, a mortgage industry analyst at CIBC World Markets, wonders about the impact on delinquencies when some of the back-loaded costs of the new flexible mortgage deals hit home."

Looks like Ms. Scutti was right. Just how right? She goes on to say there might be problems in "three to five years"...

2002 October Where the Risk Went: With respect to credit default swaps, "[The banks] have shifted the risks to institutions that are less-equipped to handle them--from insurers to highly leveraged hedge funds. And because disclosure is limited, it's not always clear just who is exposed. ... Who's bearing the risk that has been redistributed by all of those securitizations and derivatives? Surprisingly, some of it has stayed in the banking system. ... The danger is that if the financial system's health is impaired, consumers and businesses will be starved of credit, and the economy will slump."

OK, so mortgage practices are getting dangerous... at the same time the banking system is overextending itself by insuring securities, risking a complete collapse. What does that mean with respect to mortgage backed securities?

2003, January: How TCW Galileo Gets Stellar Returns: how? "In general, mortgage-backed securities funds are much less volatile than other types of bond funds because they're less sensitive to changes in interest rates." Hmm. Just thr

#1 - The CRA expansion in 1995, which put 30% more people on the housing market than there should have been, creating an incredible sellers' market in which housing, which previously had roughly paced inflation, spiraled up until people were looking at "house value" increases of over 200%.

The homeownership rate went from 64.2% in 1995 to 69.1% at the peak in 2005. That is barely an 7-8% increase, nowhere close to a 30% increase. The Community Reinvestment Act had little to do with the current mess. See BIS Working Paper #259 or this BW article. Most of the subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA and much of the foreclosure problem lies in the 'burbs where the CRA did not apply.

i'm not assuming anything. i'm suggesting that it would be a good move on the part of both companies. that doesn't mean that i think either of them will go for it. in fact, it's very unlikely that such a deal would occur. and you seem to immediately contradict yourself right after your first sentence. first you imply that Sony would not accept a partnership with Amazon's ebook distribution system without offering any kind reason for thinking so. then you go on to state that the Sony reader has a nice design, but lacks content, whereas the Kindle looks homely but has "a MASSIVE selection of content and a terrific distribution system." well isn't that exactly what Sony needs/is missing? if a lack of content and distribution system is what's preventing the Sony Reader from succeeding, then why would they not partner up with Amazon? it seems like that would be the only logical thing for them to do.

the fact that the current Kindle doesn't use WiFi doesn't play any part in this deal. Sony Reader/PSP/Zune/iPhone users can just access the Kindle Store website. it's not like EVDO is required to purchase ebooks from the Kindle Store.

and while Apple is currently making most of its money from selling iPods, the iTunes store is quickly dominating the music retail industry. in 2007 they became the 3rd largest music retailer in the U.S. with 10% market share. in 2008 it accounted for 70% of worldwide digital music sales. and despite the RIAA's claims to the otherwise, iTunes has revitalized the music industry and driven net profits up. our indie record label now receives over 75% of our music sales from iTunes alone.

so while iPod sales generated $3.36 billion in revenue for Apple in 2007, the iTunes Store brought in $1.9 billion of Apple's $2.7 billion in total music-related revenue in 2007. and iPod sales appear to be tapering off while iTunes is experiencing continued growth. so it's not inconceivable that iTunes will become an even bigger revenue stream for Apple in the future.

but i agree with you that the PSP/iPhone are not the ideal ebook reader for everyone. my Dad, for instance, simply can't read text printed on the PSP. so he can't really use his PSP as a web browser or an e-book reader. but that doesn't stop millions of young people from using their PSPs and cellphones to read books (if they can read web pages, then why not e-books?). the Japanese have even created an entire literary genre of serial literature that's distributed and consumed entirely by cellphones.

for older users with poorer eyesight or who have to read long, dense technical materials, a dedicated ebook reader like the Kindle is definitely a must. but that's still a niche market. and for the majority of young people whom the PSP & iPhone are aimed at, being able to read e-books on their portable devices would be a huge value add--it's actually my favorite use for the PSP.

I think the article below does a better job of explaining both what cloud computing is, and what the future applications for cloud computing are.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2007/tc20071116_379585.htm

that depends on which European country you're talking about.

and it's not just an issue of advertised speed. it's an issue of quality of service--bandwidth caps, overselling, traffic throttling/shaping, packet monitoring & other usage restrictions. and all of these ultimately tie to _value_, which is what we need to compare.

we don't need to be faster than everyone else or as fast as Japan and Korea. that's not what i'm arguing. but we shouldn't be paying more for less. Japan is far and ahead of the U.S. because their government has focused on developing this vital infrastructure through government subsidies and technology initiative. in the U.S., we tax payers are still subsidizing the ISPs & telecoms but we're not getting anything out of it because our government cares only about business interests.

even BusinessWeek puts us at #16 out 46 surveyed countries. even countries like Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovenia are doing better than U.S. in terms of broadband quality. but more importantly, if we are to be a technology leader, or just continue to be relevant in the information age, we need more competitive broadband pricing. the current business model used by U.S. ISPs is basically preventing our broadband infrastructure from being upgraded in step with growing demand.

the blind greed of corporations is not driving technology forward. it's ever-growing consumer demand that is usually the driving force behind technological progress. but now ISPs are trying to suppress that demand by villanizing power users and manipulating internet usage. not only that, but the lack of industry regulation means ISPs can abuse their monopoly to artificially inflate broadband prices, thereby further manipulating bandwidth usage/demand economically.

If what you're telling us is true, then how come...

1. ...only about 20-30% of subprime loans in recent years were made by lenders fully subject to CRA supervision? (source; another)
2. ...mortgage-backed securities based on CRA mortgages aren't the worst performers in the crisis, because Fannie and Freddie had higher standards for subprime loans they would buy?
3. ...we had the CRA for well over 20 years, without any mortgage crashes, before the explosion of subprime lending by non-CRA institutions?
4. ...a lot of the problem mortgages aren't actually subprime (i.e., made to people with weaker credit histories), but rather, Alt-A (made to people with good credit histories, but without documenting their ability to pay)?

While I don't mean to suggest that the CRA is perfect, the recent criticism of it is opportunistic, agenda-driven, and not based on actual facts. The reason we have a CRA and non-discrimination laws for mortgage lending is that: (a) for decades, mortgage lenders refused to lend to some people, irrespective of their credit history, based on criteria like their race or the neighborhood they were looking to purchase in (redlining); (b) even today, minority borrowers have a harder time getting loans than white folks, even after you control for income and creditworthiness.

What policies like the CRA aim to achieve is to make lenders lend to minorities on the same terms. A black applicant looking to buy in certain neighborhoods has a lower chance of getting a loan compared to a white applicant with the same income and credit history, looking to buy in a different neighborhood. Policies like the CRA aren't aimed to forcing lenders to lend to that black guy. The point is that if a bank judges the black guy to be an unacceptable risk, then it should reach the same conclusion about the equivalent white guys that it gets applications from.

Not that this is terribly relevant, again, because the recent boom of subprime lending was due to institutions not subject to the CRA. The argument just fails to get off the ground because of this.

Finally, let me challenge this widespread assumption that your whole argument requires: subprime = poor folk = minorities. That just ain't so; being brown, black or poor doesn't automatically make you uncreditworthy (which is the whole damn point of programs like the CRA). To quote a really good blogger on this topic (Tanta from Calculated Risk):

The association of subprime lending with the brown people is just the most overtly disgusting bit of bigotry to arise from the great mess. The belief that subprime borrowers are "poor people" has taken root so deeply that you need a jackhammer to rip it out. The capacity C of traditional underwriting was, of course, always relative to the proposed transaction. A lower-income person buying a lower-priced property was, you see, not a case of subprime lending; assuming a reasonable credit history, it was a prime loan. People with quite good incomes and stellar credit histories who tried to buy way too much house got turned down by the prime lenders. That was back in the days when you could live within your means, and you were expected to do so.

The blog post in question is worth reading.

Which banks were those, exactly?

I should have said "lenders" instead of banks. My point is completely the same, of course.

This gives a good analysis of the sub-prime loan/CRA relationship.

Yes, there was plenty of greed involved. But that, by itself, would not have caused the current train wreck. It's not as if bankers and investors suddenly got greedy in the last 10 years. It's just that in the past, their GREED required sound loan underwriting. Then the feds decided they were being mean to poor people, hence the CRA.

So you're asserting that the CRA somehow weakened lending standards so the banks suddenly didn't need sound loan underwriting? Because that's the only way what you're saying has any consistent logic. And of course, that assertion would be wrong. I dare you to find anything in the CRA mandating lenders to lend to high-risk borrowers. Unfortunately these CRA arguments usually go nowhere, because I'm usually the only person in the argument that's actually read the CRA.

Do you understand yet? The free market HAD good lending practices precisely BECAUSE the bankers were greedy. The government decided to tell them to "loosen up." What the gov't demands, it generally gets.

Since when? The government may demand things, but unless they actually make a law mandating certain behavior businesses will ignore it if it's to their advantage.

And I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the CRA is. It didn't lower standards and it didn't say that banks were required to lend to high-risk borrowers--all it said was if they're doing business in a neighborhood, they must provide loans to people in that neighborhood. The thing is, loans made under the CRA were made more responsibly than the standard sub-prime loans, had lower rates than other sub-prime loans, and were less likely to be rolled into

I mean, look at it logically; independent mortgage companies aren't subject to the CRA. Why then were all these independent mortgage companies making subprime loans?

I for one use it as a starting point if I really need to research something, but never as a source itself.

And this is precisely why Wikipedia forbids to accept original research and unverified claims. Those are marked with [citation needed] tags.

From Wikipedia's article on Wikipedia:

Co-founder Jimmy Wales stresses that encyclopedias of any type are not usually appropriate as primary sources, and should not be relied upon as authoritative.[55]

[55] # ^ Helm, Burt (2005-12-14). "Wikipedia: "A Work in Progress"", BusinessWeek. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.

And this is why I don't take the "Professor Wikipedia" video as an insult to wikipedia, but as educational humour.

Electric Cars are coming from everywhere, in different sizes and shapes, with different concepts. Some will append the electric motor to a a ignition engine generator (making it a hybrid). Some are tricycles using solar back-up power. Others are super-sport cars. It is all very interesting.

And they will all go straight to Europe, Asia, and even South America. But I tell you not a bloody one of them will ever see large deployments here in the US. The market has been brainwashed against them, the laws and regulations are stacked against them, and the US has a failing Ford, GM, and Chrystler. The best the US will get is a 10-20% fuel economy increase on its passenger vehicles. In fact the US has already received an installment on that very thing with the 2008/09 model years.

Even in the high efficiency gas/diesel market I do not believe the US won't see anything in the near term. For example Ford came up with a really nice 65 MPG Fiesta for the 2009 model year. Trouble is, it burns diesel. In the US diesel is taxed heavily under the assumption that the primary market for diesel is the trucking industry, the major contributors to wear and tear on the highways. Recognizing this Ford didn't even plan for a US deployment and set up shop in Great Britain. Factoring the higher labor costs as well as importation expeses and you have a sure guarentee that this car will never see the US shores.

EEStor is another interesting electric-car-related Kleiner Perkins investment http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/dealflow/archives/2005/09/kleiner_perkins_1.html. They have patented technology for super capacitors with over ten times the energy density of lead acid batteries. Being capacitors without electrochemistry, the power density (charge/discharge rates) is also very high.

The trick is that they use a doped barium titanate dielectric with a very high permittivity structured as a sub-micron grain composite interspersed with thin Aluminum oxide and glass layers to lower the breakdown voltage. http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:EEStor. The big gain over normal capacitors happens because the energy content of a capacitor goes as the voltage square, and the overall relative permittivity exceeds 10000.

The internal combustion engine is obsolete.

"Expect to see more Sorny goods if this goes ahead!"

Maybe not. Maybe: "Expect to see a lot of counterfeit products labeled Sony, in the same kind of packaging Sony uses."

Ever since the days of the DOS operating system, when it was only the Taiwanese who supplied computer parts, the Chinese have been extremely dishonest. They would deliver computer parts until a distributor got established. They would get paid when a load was delivered to a ship in Taiwan. But, the would eventually deliver a huge load of junk, stuff that had failed testing but had been saved for that purpose. That would put the U.S. distributor out of business.

At the same time, there would be a Chinese distributor in town that just began doing business, selling the same items.

Now that everyone has paid to build factories and complicated procedures in China, they are very vulnerable to Chinese control.

Here are a few stories, chosen from thousands. The Chinese governments, in Taiwan and mainland China, have always pretended to be interested in stopping counterfeiting:

FBI and Chinese seize $500 million of counterfeit software.

Dangerous Fakes: How counterfeit, defective computer components from China are getting into U.S. warplanes and ships.

YouTube videos about Chinese counterfeiting

The World's Greatest Fakes: Chinese Copies Are Making Their Way Back To U.S.

Heparin Find May Point to Chinese Counterfeiting

Chinese Product Counterfeiting Causes US Job Layoffs

I suspect that this system, and others like it, really annoy the traditional makers of high end mini notebooks.

This is something that has been extensively and well discussed in this book. Traditional companies always have a lot of difficulty trying to compete with new products that come from "below", i.e. have less features but are cheaper than the current products.

Mini-computers killed almost all of the old mainframe manufacturers, just like personal computers put the mini-computer sellers out of business. Now it's the time for the PC manufacturers to feel the heat, I expect a big restructuring of the whole industry in the next few years.

You need to inform yourself. First of all, the housing bubble was primarily fueled by errors on Wall Street, not Washington. The explosive growth of the mortgage-backed security industry created an environment that gave people lots of incentive to do really stupid things, like loan people money without requiring them to invest significantly in what they were purchasing or demonstrate that they had the money to pay back the loan. Secondly, here is just one of many available articles explaining that the really big hit has come from borrowers with good credit ratings and sufficient cash flow who simply do not wish to continue to pay the mortgage on a house that is no longer worth nearly what they paid for it. It turns out that you can default on your mortgage and all they can take is your house, not your other assets (who knew?).

Anyway, it's certainly not "authoritative," but here is a funny and true cartoon that does a pretty fair job of explaining how the screwed up incentives turned normal people in financial fuck-up machines.

Why is it that the article submitters never provide enough links. Maybe we'd like to look at the affected site.?!

If no competitor comes into the game to challenge the #1 player, then the consumers lose out because the player can just sit down and do nothing and the consumers will have no choice but to deal with it.

And when Google returns bad results, people can switch to other providers. Whether that's in searches or in advertizing. Google got big by providing a better service and they shouldn't be punished for that. They should only be punished if they use their strengths to try to dominate another business sector. And I haven't heard about any cases where they were. Besides Google I use other search engines as well. And if I ran a business, I hope to start one in photography, I could use other ad agencies. If I wanted to place ads on Facebook I'd have to buy ads from Microsoft. Yahoo! bought the ad agency Overture, which before Google came along was a big online ad business.

Falcon

Interesting article on businessweek.com. Ford is selling 65mpg cars in Europe, but not the US.

"Americans see hybrids as the darling," says Global Insight auto analyst Philip Gott, "and diesel as old-tech."

According to the article, the reason diesel fuel is more expensive in the US: "Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline."

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm?ch...

Here is another article that I came across today regarding a Ford diesel that they are only going to sell in Europe. They are claiming 65mpg. It's ridiculous that they won't offer this thing in the United States. I wonder who the hell does their market research for them. Americans will buy huge turbo diesel trucks that crappy gas mileage but they won't spend an extra $1500 for a 65mpg Ford diesel because it isn't a big enough improvement over a ~45mpg Toyota Prius to justify the extra $1500?! http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5 Right now I drive a 1992 Volvo that gets ~25mpg. I put regular 87 octane in it. If I had a car that got twice as many miles per gallon, I could suck it up and spend the extra 30 cents per gallon when I fill it up.

Take a look at this car:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm

Either make that a hybrid or import it as is.

Not like it matters... DRM is going down the drain. Sony BMG, one of the most avid supporters os DRM from the start, is dropping it completely. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc2008013_398775.htm

You know its not all milk and honey. Theres a good pile of evidence that this Texas wind thing is one giant con so that Oil man Mr. Pickens can use newly created government power of eminent domain to snatch up land and sell his water pet project under the radar. Like they always say, follow the money.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089040017753.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories
for those who won't read it Pickens has been buying rights to a massive water reserve in Texas and has been having trouble building a pipeline through peoples property, so he is buying the law instead "In January, 2007, the Texas Legislature convened.. helped win Pickens a key new legal right. It was contained in an amendment to a major piece of water legislation. The amendment, one of more than 100 added after the bill had been reviewed in the House, allowed a water-supply district to transmit alternative energy and transport water in a single corridor, or right-of-way." and then "Pickens still needed the power of eminent domain if he was going to build his pipeline and wind-power lines across private land. And by happy coincidence, the legislators passed a smaller bill that made that all the easier. The new legislation loosened the requirements for creating a water district."
Long story short he's creating a new water and power district to sell this and is using public feel good green hype to get subsidy's and push through his new project that will drain a water resource that is very slow to renewal, out from under everyone else around it, to sell at low prices to Dallas, which is one of the most wastfull cites in Texas when it comes to water. Anyone who thinks someone who was part of the 80's raiders and swift boating can actually do something without a hidden con is a fucking idiot.