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Didn't Andy Grove famously write a few years back about how scaling up innovations into mass production was a serious obstacle which was bleeding jobs and product ideas overseas to countries more efficient at this?

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_28/b4186048358596.htm

I'm surprised Slashdot is only just coming around to the issue just now.

So pilots will soon be able to fight staying at home, while Yahoo employees now must stay at their workplace.

The difference is labor laws. In America, for example, you can actually fire someone.

Depending on how they implement the "no used games" feature, it may be contrary to European law. There was a ruling against Oracle last year saying it is perfectly fine to resell second-hand software:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-16/second-hand-software-sales-set-to-soar-on-oracle-ruling

However: in these newer cases, they're just making it really damn difficult to re-sell the game. They're not saying "You're not allowed", they're simply making it impossible to do.

If you were legally allowed to resell your car, but had to do a one-time calibration of your thumb to start the ignition (never to work again), they would be legally allowing you to resell the car, but physically preventing you from doing it.

It's a fine point, but one which they'll ride as long as they can.

Depending on how they implement the "no used games" feature, it may be contrary to European law. There was a ruling against Oracle last year saying it is perfectly fine to resell second-hand software:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-16/second-hand-software-sales-set-to-soar-on-oracle-ruling

I rest my case.

Kareem Serageldin, a 39-year-old U.S. citizen who lives in London, is accused of distorting the value of mortgage securities in 2007. U.S. authorities say actions by Serageldin and two others contributed to a $2.7 billion writedown in Credit Suisse's results for 2007.

In February, a grand jury in New York indicted Serageldin on three charges of conspiracy, false record-keeping and wire fraud. Former colleagues David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui each pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy count and agreed to cooperate with investigators.

Bloomberg Business Week

E-mails from former Washington Mutual Inc CEO Kerry Killinger read aloud during a congressional hearing this week illustrated clients' concerns about working with Goldman.

In 2007, Killinger discussed hiring Goldman or another investment bank to help Washington Mutual find ways to reduce its credit risk or raise new capital, according to one of the e-mails, which Michigan Democratic Sen Carl Levin read during the hearing.

"I don't trust Goldie on this," Levin quoted one of Killinger's e-mails as saying. "They are smart, but this is swimming with the sharks. They were shorting mortgages big-time while they were giving (Countrywide Financial Corp) advice."

Reuters

Usually people examine evidence and build a case before they rest it.

I do, and that it is utterly ridiculous to claim that in 14 days it "turned a corner" - and I repeat - whatever that means.

How about you stop being an idiot and actually figure out the meaning of phrases first? Here's what turn the corner means:

to pass a critical point in a process

The dictionary above gives an example of its use.

The patient turned the corner last night. She should begin to show improvement now.

It doesn't meant the process is finished, merely that it has passed a significant threshold or milestone.

Here, the process is bringing four nuclear reactors eventually to a stable point, "cold shut down". If one looks at the first two weeks, there was a lot of crazy stuff going on, including three meltdowns, at least one fire in a fuel rod pool, two evacuations of all personnel from the site and a number of substantial releases of radioactivity into the air.

Since, the worst problem to the outside world has been the slow leaking of contaminated water from the site and steady progress towards that final stage, "cold shut down" was made to the point that all of the reactors achieved cold shut down by early last year. The critical point was passing the stage of emergency and great danger.

If your position had any integrity you would not have engaged me.

Defending myself from accusation is now proof that I don't have integrity? I think I'll link this gem in the future in case I should have to deal with your bullshit.

I think it'll be instructive to look back on this program at the ten year mark and see what actually happened or didn't happen as the case may be. I think by that time, the failure rate will be so pronounced, it'll be highly embarrassing for defenders.

Specifically, I predict that Dr khallow will be unable to be specific about the prediction he has made in this thread.

Since there is the possibility that this could be highly instructive for you, I'll elaborate on what I mean by "failure". I think failure will be such things as bankruptcy, absence of any meaningful infrastructure built or technology acquired as a result of the loans, or creation of a continuing money sink which can pay its guaranteed loans, but only by consuming considerable public funding.

And glancing through the list of outstanding loans as of mid-2012, they're pretty big for the projects they're covering.

For example, there's a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for a NRG Energy/Brightsource solar plant that generates 392 MW. That's about $4 per watt of generating capability. From what I understand, $1 per watt for solar is considered barely competitive with natural gas or other current peaking load power generation. Now maybe that particular loan will buy other things than just the plant, but as it stands, it seems around a factor of four too costly for what is obtained.

And Abengoa SA, which has received about $1.5 billion in loan guarantees looks to me like a WorldCom style failure waiting to happen. It's high debt, low cash flow, and probably using whatever assets it purchases as collateral for future loans. But it'll probably keep building up debt until the US and EU cuts back on renewable energy subsidies.

Actually most of the products you can identify in movies have either had the rights paid for by the movie company or if the movie is a big name flick will often get money from the company in return for showing their product in a favorable light. Why do you think every person that uses a laptop in a movie is always using a MacBook when IRL that is less than 10% of the population? Product placement.

Apple has repeatedly said/claimed that they don't pay for product placement, so your implication that Apple pays for the placement is incorrect.

Some marketing company calculated the screen time of Apple gear on the latest Mission Impossible was worth about $23 million. Whatever the secret, money-less deals are, they're obviously working great for Apple.

Even in shows that don't obviously show the logo or other markings (Big Bang Theory covers the logo and name with a circular patch), it's obvious they are Apple devices.

The beer may be decent, but it's not the only attraction.

When you sleep with Ballmer, don't be astonished to wake up with crabs...

The total cost of hiring a 30 cent a day worker is 30 cents day.

Plus the cost of management, lighting, heating, A/C, restrooms, cafeterias, downtime for breaks and shift changes, and dealing with the defects caused by human workers.

then China would be using more robots.

China is using more robots.

It looks like we just have to introduce them to Popeye's chicken and set the retirement age to 72. Louisiana was ranked 49th in life expectancy, followed by Mississippi.

Unfortunately a very small number of gun deaths in the US are committed with rifles.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-18/american-gun-deaths-to-exceed-traffic-fatalities-by-2015

From a nested link in the link you posted, gun deaths outnumber blunt object deaths 17 to 1 in 2011. The other years in the article were similar.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-11

Interestingly enough however, I buy the same shit from walmart that is sold by Amazon, BestBuy, Target and places in 'the mall'.

Interestingly enough, you're likely not.

But have fun with your cut-rate garbage and the extra fifty cents you saved.

How about we just close the loopholes? If you have a US based company that is clearly operating a subsidiary, that subsidiary (even foreign) will be subject to US taxation. Far simpler strategy.

You miss the whole point of the story. This story isn't JUST about US tax being avoided.

paid Irish taxes of about $4.64 million on its entire non-U.S. profits of $1.344 billion

The problem here is that Ireland offers ridiculously low tax rates to attract investment and employment.
They realize that the spending and the taxes Ireland gains from income taxes and sales taxes paid by the employees and the jobs that are created helps Ireland more than the corporate tax. So they set crazy low rates cor corporate taxes and Facebook and Google set up data centers there.

I'm hard pressed to declare this a totally bad idea. If it works for Ireland, good for them. If it works for Facebook and Google, how can you blame them for doing exactly what the law was set up to encourage?

The US can fix their tax laws too. They could easily make it more profitable to keep the investment mostly at home. Irish tax and legislation isn't exactly secret sauce. Washington State gives Boeing and Microsoft and Amazon astounding tax breaks just to keep its citizens employed. So do a lot of other states.

Side note: There is a school of thought that says taxing corporations is counter productive, and taxing the compensation AND THE PERKS of people that work for the corporations makes more sense. (Lets not start the corporate owned cars, planes, yachts and houses rant m'Kay? I said "compensation"). When you get right down to it, the reasons corporations are taxed is to gain some measure of government control over them, not to gain any real tax revenue that would not otherwise be collected from shareholders or employees.

Le Monde had an in depth article on Bitcoin just a few days ago. I think if you really researched it you'd find the same to be true for most countries. Bitcoin has entered public consciousness.

http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2012/11/29/payer-et-vendre-sans-les-banques_1798066_1650684.html

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/dollar-less-iranians-discover-virtual-currency
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628925.200-virtual-economy-looms-as-digital-cash-grows-up.html?full=true
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20510447
http://www.ftd.de/finanzen/maerkte/:kunstwaehrung-das-bitcoin-virus/70118697.html

See the sad case of Prof. John Roth, of the University of Tennessee.

Have you ever seen how much yellow pages charges each of the companies to be listed in it? It's not craigslist.. those listing can be expensive.

Earlier this year, ATT sold part of it's Yellow Pages operation for close to a billion dollars. The division is valued at $3.9billion:
http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.aspx?post=ec6803ce-4128-42be-bc43-eb1534853efd

Look at the chart on this page:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-22/the-golden-allure-of-the-yellow-pages

revenue:
att: 3.3 billion
dex: 1.5b
supermedia: 1.6b
yell group: 1.5b

share of TOTAL US ad spending: ~8%

... and have been doing just fine ever since...

October 26th 2012 - Ericsson Profit Drops 43%
July 18th 2012 - Ericsson Profit Drops 64%

Besides, is one party really any more cut off than the other? It's just two separate networks at that point. You can make arbitrary distinctions such as which network is bigger but it's really just two fragments of a former whole with neither side being a more valid network than the other

You really need to be more specific as any answer you get can be handwaved away by a simple moving of the goalpost. Is the country that cuts the internet off small? If so, it has already happened so just read the recent bitcoin history books. Is the country large? How large? Iran large? Japan large? USA large? China? Each one of those scenarios has the potential for a significantly different outcome. State your scenario in detail and you will probably get a better answer.

For a currency that is supposed to be immune to government intervention, it seems this is an area where it suffers significantly.

Don't look now but Bitcoins may be more useful than you realize in the face of government interference.

This submission spams a boring blog, with a link to the real article.

When shit eventually hits the fan, those fingers will be pointing blame... at someone.

The US Army Corps of Engineers maybe ?

Please don't link to paywalled sites, especially when so many others aren't yet have the same content.

The point of my post was entirely to identify a negative and inflammatory statement embedded in the lead article. I don't like remarks like that; I find they stifle original thought and are generally counter-productive. However, by the negative and inflammatory remarks found in your reply, you appear to disagree. You are welcome to. You should know however, that the "put-other-people-down because their opinion differs from mine" kind of attitude will win you no followers except the blind. Personally, I want to converse with people who can think, and will expend the energy to fashion well-informed opinions for themselves. I really don't want to have to hold your hand, or lead you to water you don't want to drink. Who mentioned autism? Not me. So why are your ranting about it? Before you spend more energy trying to argue this or other points that I did not make, follow this bouncing ball: SOME vaccines CAN have dangerous side-effects, including death, by the CDC's OWN admission: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm That is my entire point. If you would like to argue that, please argue with the CDC. Thank-you. And if you want to argue that the side-effects are always minor compared to what they prevent, please note that Guillain-Barré Syndrome has been caused by the flu vaccine, and the Yellow Fever vaccine, and it's no joke. Personally, I'd rather risk the flu than a vaccination that could give me GBS. But hey, as long as you have -all- the facts, you personally are welcome to take that risk. And I personally should be free to inform others that the risk exists, and that people who rate vaccinations in the "less-than-perfect" category are not "anti-science," and are not evil. So thanks for ranting so as to to be an example to others of the dangers of spewing predefined opinions and giving me yet another chance to re-iterate how potentially destructive it is to have such a closed mind, especially about vaccinations, which as of October, 2012, can still be a dangerous thing: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-24/italy-bans-novartis-flu-vaccines-citing-side-effects

Yeah. Speaking of invisible hand:
Q) How many free market economists does it take to change a light bulb?
A) Free market economists don't change lightbulbs, they write their papers in the darkness while waiting for the Invisible Hand to do it.

As far as I see collapse is inevitable every now and then, it's a matter of how bad it is. Good regulations reduce the impact and how often the collapse happens. After all banks that didn't do crazy stuff didn't collapse, and it was quite obvious that some stuff was crazy- the greedy people didn't care - there was little risk to them. There's so much regulation can do though - if you run out of resources you can't regulate your way out of it.

BTW Iceland had a rather different bailout approach - instead of bailing out the banks they let the banks suffer and bailed out the citizens. Maybe Iceland is different, but they seem to be doing better now.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-12/imf-says-bailouts-iceland-style-hold-lessons-for-crisis-nations
Look what Forbes said back then: http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2011/04/11/icelands-stand-against-bailout-repayment-will-hurt/
Forbes thinks Iceland won't be able to raise money any more? Sure Iceland is clearly riskier now, but there's plenty of evidence that higher risk never stopped greed. Whereas losing your life savings can put a halt to lots of things.

I became a bit of a valve fanboi when I read about their no-manager system. See Here.
To my credit though, they do seem to be doing cool stuff lately.

Put your self in his position..
You have been with MS for 24 years.. you pull down roughly 8.5 mill a year with pay and stock options
He probably has a nice pile of cash and stock to last him a lifetime or two.

The stress may be higher than the rewards and you got that last major release off your solders.

Time to step back, have fun with the family and find a new direction.

On November 1, 2012, a version of the UniDict® iOS software revealed a bug that has embarrassed both our users and our company. We are sincerely sorry for the uproar and the bad feelings our customers have experienced. To everyone affected, we offer our humble apologies.

The story and tech details

On the morning of November 1, customers had an unpleasant surprise if they opened the app and let it go to sleep before it was closed. Upon waking, a dialog box showed "Run in Safe Mode" then the app disabled itself and performed an auto soft close. A notification appeared locally on the device and if the user had authorized the app to access their Twitter account, a tweet of the notification was sent out under their account with a hash tag #softwarepiracyconfession. This tweet only happened if the user tapped a send confirmation button.

As soon as we realised there was a problem, we corrected it by removing the anti-piracy module and working with Apple to get the patched version online for download. It was available before close of business on November 1. At no time was the device itself or personal information compromised; there was no virus, no unofficial APIs, no hacking and no malware involved. Nevertheless, a number of users with certain system configurations were affected during this time period. Some may still be if they haven't updated to the fixed version. If you are not running the latest version, we urge you to update your app immediately to avoid the potential embarrassment of an unexpected tweet.

Why this happened

Combatting piracy is challenging. As a small family-owned company with few employees every lost sale impacts our livelihood and our ability to continue developing apps that we are passionate about. Piracy of Enfour products happens at an astonishing rate. We have seen a 1:100 ratio of legal to pirated copies of our software. Ouch. We can't thwart truly determined hacker & crackers, but we wanted to possibly shame those who were opportunistically stealing our software. Just like installing a shop-lifting alarm in a store, we thought we were being creative with a notification and a timed tweet for users of a cracked app.

In retrospect, this was not the wisest choice. The bug that revealed this creative indiscretion was a screwup and we accept full responsibility. We have tried to reach as many affected people as possible using social media via our personal accounts as well as via our website and also the iTunes store -all in multiple languages. We have taken all possible steps to ensure that our customers are never affected again.

Piracy is a hot issue. Despite what some believe about piracy being acceptable and harmless, we know piracy does cost us money and affects us directly. It's far too large and personal a topic for us to pontificate upon, but if you are interested in a perspective that fits our opinion, there is a good article in Bloomberg Business Week. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-01/piracycuts-into-paid-app-sales

Thank you We appreciate the time you took to read this letter and if you would like to discuss the issue further, we are available for comment.
Tracey Northcott
VP International Communications
Enfour, Inc.
3F Kouju Bld 3-52-8 Sendagaya
Shibuya-ku Tokyo 151-0051 JAPAN
tracey@enfour.co.jp
http://www.enfour.com/
https://itunes.apple.com/artist/enfour-inc./id284965604?l=en
TEL: +81-3-5411-7738
FAX: +81-3-5411-7704

I'm not a user of their software, or apple products for that matter, but if I were affected by this bug I would def

My bet is that they came to an agreement because HTC hold some LTE patents that Apple need:

• HTC Patents Challenged by Apple Probably Valid, Judge Say
• Apple faces uphill challenge invalidating HTC LTE patents

HTC recorded net income of $137 million so burning millions on unnecessary lawyer fees is in the 1-10% range of their net income.

He said revenue.
You counter with net income.
He's talking Yearly.
You counter with Quarterly.

Lets keep the discussion about the same thing, mkay?

HTC still has revenue of 2,339.2 million /quarter or 9.3 Billion yearly. Source.

HTCs problems stems from Management's batshit crazy investment pattern in technologies and partnerships that drain cash and return nothing. (Beets Audio). The 13 million (USD) they lost on that stuff plus the 41 million lost fighting Apple patent suits are significant, and bring down earnings from 189.6 million to 134.4. (Quarterly numbers)

They should be plowing that money into sales efforts even if it means "bribing" the purchasing agents and management of the major carriers like some of the manufacturers do. (You didn't for a minute assume carriers choose phones based on specs/looks/price alone did you?). Even with the fanciest gear, if a Carrier won't feature your phone because you didn't fly them to some exotic vacation resort you can't make any headway.

So much of the infrastructure in NYC (and the rest of the East Coast) is so ancient that it is a wonder it functions from day to day in perfect weather, let alone a storm.

Where newer cities have buried virtually all electrical distribution, huge segments of it are hanging from polls, bridges, buildings, etc.
The push to get this stuff buried in waterproof pipe and tunnels has largely gone un-heeded, due to the sheer volume of the work to be done.

The local distribution systems are old, exposed, and vulnerable. Power lines run through trees, right-of-ways are unmaintained, and faults are fixed as fast as possible with little thought toward prevention.

Residential systems are deemed not critical. But when they short out, they trip other systems off line. When storms hit wide areas it is precisely these so called "non critical" residential feeders that cause the most problems. Large high-voltage lines are designed to handle severe weather, and their breaks or failures are easy to spot, quick to fix. But thousands of downed power lines in neighborhoods take excessive manpower, and a long time to fix.

I suspect that a cost-benefit analysis would not support a wholesale project to bury everything everywhere. After all, the humongous cost numbers of the lack of power are merely bean-counters adding up payroll numbers, speculating about lost business, and guessing.

Still, if every neighborhood that needed a major repair had its power system immediately trenched and buried the most vulnerable segments would be taken care of. Its a lot harder to trench in power in a populated place than it is when building a new subdivision, but its far from impossible. The convoys of mutual-aid power company vehicles rushing into the teeth of Sandy that I passes while I was driving west out of the path are testimony to the fact that the power companies do have a plan. But its the wrong plan. Its still focused on tacking the patchwork quilt back together AFTER the storm. Those trucks should each be pulling a Ditch Witch in fine weather, BEFORE of the storm.

Well, personally, I'd class mid-2003 through mid-2007 as the "mid-00's", so submitter is fine in my book, but since you are splitting hairs, maybe he was referring to Google's original purchase of Android Inc. which happened in August 2005? I'd saying being bought by Google, at a time when there was a fair bit of speculation that Google was interesting in mobile, would get a lot of people started with finding out something about this "Android" thing.

This isn't a bad thing. Good companies (not just apple) take risks and try out new things. It only takes one in ten to be a good product, and one in twenty to be a great product to keep the company going. The trick is to make sure they're not *too* ludicrous before you launch them, and if they don't work out, make sure you realise this quickly and fail fast If you don't keep moving and innovate, some other bugger out there will and you'll get left behind. I'm looking at you Microsoft. [standard imnotafanbois disclaimer; believe what you will; ymmv]

I think you're right that paying in cash is usually the best option, if for nothing else than relieving the business of the credit card fee.

I'd be surprised if it hasn't been factored into the cost of doing business. Since you have a great interest in taxes why are you paying with cash at all? After all, shouldn't the employer be the focus of taxes instead of the people who actually serve you (and it)? Why just tips? Were you waiting tables while you went to school and forced to itemize everything while someone else didn't and now you have this traumatic past experience looming over you? Are you at all familiar with Steve Buscemi's Character in Reservoir Dogs?

But I also think that "tipping in cash" implies tipping in cash on top of a credit card payment, usually for tax avoidance, and that's what bothers me.

You tip for service. I can tell you don't go to bars much, where a good attitude and a nice tip usually get you treated extremely well. You're still convinced that its explicitly for tax avoidance. If you're that concerned stick to cards and, like, make those people pay their fair share! *shakes fist*

Also, consider having your employer not run its money through a tax haven, which saves it BILLIONS. I don't see a petition or links on your blog about this important issue, why not?

There was not one prediction here, but several. For example Rasmussen missed 6 of 9 swing-state predictions, whereas Silverman and a few others nailed them all. So, while you're technically correct, the odds of this occurring purely by chance are quite small.

Small businesses no longer make up the majority of the economy. In boom times, they do very well. But during periods when expansion capital is hard to come by and sales are weak, they are much less competitive against larger companies who have significant cash/resources to fall back on. We've been in such a bad growth situation for small businesses for several years now, and there's no sign of it improving in the near future either.

If you want to criticize someone, please provide some arguments. Until then, the man did nothing bad. In fact, of the moderately rich people, he is one of the few that arrived to his riches with honest work.

Insider trading and embezzlement isn't honest work. To be clear we're not discussing moral behavior, but legal. Kim Dotcom's wiki page second sentence:

He rose to fame in Germany in the 1990s as a teenage internet tycoon, but was subsequently convicted of insider trading and embezzlement.

More on that is:

Kim was arrested for insider trading and embezzlement in 2003, he bought shares worth €375,000 of bankrupt company LetsBuyIt and announced that he would buy shares worth €50 Million more which led to the price of share to increase by 300%. Kim neither had the funds nor any intentions to buy more shares of LetsBuyIt and sold his shares worth €375,000. He was held guilty for insider trading and embezzlement case in November, 2003.

Not to mention the whole business model based around copyright infringement. He had ~500 servers on US soil and a business presence in the US which directly profited from these activities. While these activities are not 'wrong' they aren't legal. While the FBI isn't everyone's favorite organization and there is a reason why they have a 90%+ conviction rate.

Nuke zealots actually think that their Magic Power Source has never killed anybody.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-17/fukushima-radiation-may-cause-1-300-cancer-deaths-study-finds

There's also the people who weren't hurt, but can never return to their homes or land:

http://www.japantoday.com/smartphone/view/opinions/pure-land-lost-for-fukushima-evacuees

And then there's the contamination issue:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/10/2012102510561941251.html

So how does this compared to the health problems created by the mining and burning coal? You realize that coal pollution is very slightly radioactive itself? Fun trivai fact - if you extracted the uranium from 1 ton of coal and used it in a reactor, it would produce more energy than burning the coal itself.

It's well known that Scott Forstall didn't get along with the others. He's been called a "mini-Steve (Jobs)" and described as "maddeningly political":

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorcerers-apprentice-at-apple-10122011.html

If he was ousted, it's probably due more to the others thinking he's an asshole. The Maps debacle provides a convenient excuse, but I doubt it's the real reason behind this. This is just another political backstabbing, that's all.

Nuke zealots actually think that their Magic Power Source has never killed anybody.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-17/fukushima-radiation-may-cause-1-300-cancer-deaths-study-finds

There's also the people who weren't hurt, but can never return to their homes or land:

http://www.japantoday.com/smartphone/view/opinions/pure-land-lost-for-fukushima-evacuees

And then there's the contamination issue:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/10/2012102510561941251.html

Demand from Apple went from 15 million to 1,5 million panels and they are in the process of eliminating Samsung as a supplier completely. They have invested in Toshiba plants for a reason. There is also an indication that the reason that Foxconn have invested in Sharp had something to do with Apple. Although I'm more convinced it has something to do with their IZGO panels then AppleTV.

That Samsung "terminated" the LCD contract has zero impact as Apple wanted to eliminate them from the process anyway and seeing how steadily demand dropped (1,5 million are peanuts if you take into account how many products have LCD panels) that process was already underway. The only thing here is that Samsung can save a little face.

So is this pure PR or even damage control. And it is understandable, if a big client like Apple announced it takes it business elsewhere as a company you gonna take a hit.

Superior now. But when amd were ahead intel bribed the major pc makers not to use amd chips. During that time most of dell's income came from intel payments, for example. This is what destroyed amd since they could and can no longer afford r&d.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc2009114_975298.htm

The solution would have been for them to pay amd at least 10 billion in damages instead of 1, but that ship has sailed.

I guessing you are unfamiliar with the incomes of the PBS and NPR CEOs, then. And those are small compared to some other non-profits that get a smaller, or no, bite of government funding.

And while I believe the Pope doesn't technically receive a salary, I bet he's never had to say, "Damn, I wish someone had gotten me a 3DS for Christmas!"

Yeah but none of those people would call themselves a "non-profit executive". They'd go straight to "I'm the CEO of PBS/NPR/The Pope, bitch!"

"Non-profit executive" sounds a bit like job title inflation to me.

I guessing you are unfamiliar with the incomes of the PBS and NPR CEOs, then. And those are small compared to some other non-profits that get a smaller, or no, bite of government funding.

And while I believe the Pope doesn't technically receive a salary, I bet he's never had to say, "Damn, I wish someone had gotten me a 3DS for Christmas!"

Dude, you gotta learn to use Google:

1 go to www.google.com

2 type in "forced ranking intel"

3 3 read the top 10 results in the first page.

The are :

http://american-business.org/383-forced-ranking-systems.html

http://www.faceintel.com/discharge.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZT57xSrPJ5YC&pg=PA172&lpg=PA172&dq=intel+forced+ranking&source=bl&ots=BWTYfQm01x&sig=O61ae4i3pKexc_C5-yyCf5hVXdw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=j5d5UIyhM83ryAHc4oHACw&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=intel%20forced%20ranking&f=false

http://www.markedbyteachers.com/university-degree/business-and-administrative-studies/despite-the-fact-that-intel-has-become-the-most-successful-company-in-the-microprocessor-industry-with-90-percent-market-share-it-still-has-some-problems-one-example-of.html

http://www.sibson.com/publications/perspectives/Volume_11_Issue_2/e_article000162170.cfm

http://business.highbeam.com/137618/article-1G1-116862343/forced-ranking-good-bad-and-alternative-one-out-five

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-01-08/the-struggle-to-measure-performance

http://books.google.com/books?id=9G1F5ymrYQgC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=intel+forced+ranking&source=bl&ots=C_Yp3z06bj&sig=Ioi8YTP1sHT4H2utqbAqo84Gu0E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=j5d5UIyhM83ryAHc4oHACw&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=intel%20forced%20ranking&f=false

http://www.halogensoftware.com/resources/reference-library/profiling-or-stack-ranking.php

and so on and so forth

---> BIGGEST. FAIL. EVAH.

YOU WIN!!! You WIN!!!!

Jack, what do we have for the guy who can't Google?

Well Dave, we have a free lobotomy followed up with an all expenses paid five weeks recovery in beauuutiful downtown DEEEEE-TROIT! !

Wow that's great jack.. well it's like the old saying .. those who already have, only get more!!!

Thanks for playing "I Post On Slashdot!!!"

Slashdot posted this story earlier,

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-04/facebook-the-making-of-1-billion-users

Interesting read on how Facebook, arguably the largest website challenge so far this century updates daily.

Businessweek: What's possible at a billion-plus users that wasn't possible at, say, 500 million?

Mark Zuckerberg: There are two ways that I look at this. There's what we can build internally and then there's what can be built externally using Facebook. I'll start with the external stuff... when we were at half a billion people, you got these large-scale services like Skype or Netflix (NFLX) that also had big user bases. And we weren't yet at the point where the majority of their users were Facebook users, so they couldn't really rely on us as a piece of critical infrastructure for registration. A lot of startups did, but the bigger companies couldn't. Now really everyone can start to rely on us as infrastructure.

http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/74456-facebooks-next-billion-a-q-and-a-with-mark-zuckerberg

The problem isn't that the data exists. (As others are pointing out with phonebook analogies.) The problem is that the data--your data--isn't safe. Not that it's totally safe anywhere, but FB seems to have had more than their share of problems.

Microsoft is pushing record revenue numbers. [google.com] Sure, not as much as Apple.. but then thats just cherry picking the guy at the top.

Wow - speaking of cherry-picking! Seems you do a bit of that yourself up there. After all, why did you reach back to April for MSFT numbers? We have a perfect comparison to make in this recent quarter, after all:

Microsoft just recently reported a quarterly loss this last period. Sure, they had to write-down a $6.2bn bite in the advertising arse (because, well, they admitted that a part of their company was, as I said, weak), but...

Meanwhile, in spite of eating a larger ($12.5bn) write-down on their part from buying Motorola, Google actually grew their revenue by 35 percent YoY over the same period (21% if it was minus Moto) (same link, BTW).

Seriously... your buddies in Redmond have a lot ot worry about, and the sooner they actually do something about it, the better.

Say goodbye to the corporate research lab pioneered by Edison, Steinmetz, Westinghouse.

We already have.

How much of a debt does the geek owe to AT&T and Bell Labs, Xerox and PARC?

See above. Time to stop dreaming about the glory days, because they're gone and not coming back.

Tobacco products complying with the world’s first plain-packaging laws started arriving in Australia’s stores around Oct. 1.

New government standards set out the images and health warnings that must cover 75 percent of the front of cigarette packs. Among them: a gangrenous foot, a tongue cancer, a toilet stained with bloody urine, and a skeletal man named Bryan who is dying of lung cancer. Further warnings must appear on the sides and cover 90 percent of the back.

The High Court of Australia in August dismissed a claim by British American Tobacco (BTI), Philip Morris (MO), Imperial Tobacco, and Japan Tobacco International that the law illegally seizes their intellectual property by banning the display of trademarks. Appeals have also been lodged by Honduras, Ukraine, and the Dominican Republic at the World Trade Organization, claiming the law restricts the tobacco trade.

Cigarette makers are right to fear the regulations, says David Hammond, an expert in tobacco rules at the University of Waterloo in Canada: “Once tobacco control measures are established in one country, they spread.”