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I don't recommend reading it. There is absolutely nothing in this article about the actual engineering problems behind scaling for this number of users and how these problems are solved. In fact, there is nothing technical at all in this article except for some vague descriptions of the "bootcamp".

Your specific question (if robots, why China?) was answered directly a few years ago by Terry Gou, Chairman of Foxconn. According to Terry, the US has "too many lawyers." Linky here.

AMD has a long history of poor managment decisions.

Back in the late 1990s AMD's CPU busines was a money pit, and the company was kept afloat by their profitable NOR flash joint-venture, but they spent way too much money on their CPU business (for example, those two huge fabs in Dresden that they just divested), and there was nothing left to foster new flash technologies. In the 2000s, NAND became the flash architecture of choice, and since AMD was caught without spare cash, they couldn't afford a crash-course investment in the new chip tech, they spun the unit off as Spansion and left it to slowly rot. Last time I checked, Spansion had only offered competitive NAND THIS YEAR, because they didn't have the cash, and they're still making mostly NOR products. Spansion's sales have dropped to about a quarter of the peak since the spinoff with no end in sight, and they can thank AMD for putting them in that spiral of doom.

Intel (also a MASSIVE NOR flash maker) did not see NAND flash coming, but once they realized their mistake they had the massive piles of cash to make a quick transition. Now just seven years later they are one of the world's premiere NAND providers, all because of their diverse portfolio (and common sense on where they should spend their money).

AMD *had* the money to fix Spansion before they went on their fab spree chasing Intel. And given the peak revenue of over 1.5 billion yearly (nearly as high as their CPU revenues today!) it was worth saving. But they spent the earnings from Spansion on Fabs 36 and 38. They wasted 2.5 billion on Fab 36 alone! And then they spent way too much money (that they didn't have) on ATI, which really has not improved their fortunes.

Or are you laying off staff and diverting that workload that you should be paying staff to do in order for your executive board to pocket the fees in massive bonuses and now granting every application that hits your inbox?

From this article:

Unlike most government agencies, the USPTO isn’t allocated funds by Congress. It gets all of its money from the fees paid by those seeking patents and trademarks. Congress hasn’t allowed the USPTO to keep all of those fees. Over the past two decades, Congress has siphoned off more than $800 million, according to the agency.

So, unless things have changed since that article was written a year ago, the fees you are paying are being swallowed by Congress rather than being spent on reviewing patents.

...so far (the latter even "to die on Mars, just not on impact"), and how two guys are going to start a population together shall remain the greatest mystery of Mars. ;-)

Don't expect much. MVNOs typically only have rights to sell ancient tech... eg. 2G phones when 3G was new, and now 3G phones while LTE is rolling out.

That's why it was such a huge deal that Sprint recently allowed MVNOs to use their LTE network... Imagine cheap, pre-paid 4G LTE ala Boost / Virgin Mobile. It could have a huge impact in driving down consumer costs, and driving more customers to Sprint, potentially growing them to the point that they aren't disadvantaged when competing with AT&T and Verizon.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-03/tings-lte-victory-could-the-iphone-be-next

Amazon response to grt is http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-10/ebay-and-amazon-eye-same-day-delivery

The military-industrial complex needs enemies.

It is more correct to say that the nature of America's enemies determines the resources devoted to military procurement. That has changed considerably over time, and is presently around 5%.

. . . defense spending was 37.5% of GDP in 1945 (WWII), in 1953 (Korea) it was 14.2%, and at the peak of Vietnam (1968) it was 9.4%. -- Defense Spending Already Below Average

Defense Spending as Percentage of GDP Well Below Historical Average

The "Military-Industrial Complex" doesn't seem very successful if it is supposed to be driving defense spending - the resources devoted to it have had a strong negative trend since WW2. Heahthcare takes up something like 3-4x the resources spent on defense at present, and total social welfare spending also dwarfs the defense budget.

Health-Care Spending to Reach 20% of U.S. Economy by 2021

Spending on hospital visits, medications and other health care rose an estimated 3.9 percent in 2011 and consumed about 17.9 percent of GDP, the same as the previous two years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said yesterday. The increases in such expenditures will continue to outpace economic growth projections, jumping 7.4 percent in 2014, when much of the insurance expansion created by the health law begins.

The key observation is that, in most things in life, the dynamic range between average quality and the best quality is, at most, two-to-one. For example, if you were in New York and compared the best taxi to an average taxi, you might get there 20 percent faster. In terms of computers, the best PC is perhaps 30 percent better than the average PC. There is not that much difference in magnitude. Rarely you find a difference of two-to-one. Pick anything.

But, in the field that I was interested in -- originally, hardware design -- I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1.

Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. That's what I've tried to do.

(Steve Jobs, In the Company of Giants)

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/news/coladvice/book/bk981106.htm

If there is a possiblity of conflict of interests (and with that, a bias towards the case), how could this person be chosen as juror to begin with?

Good question, and if this article is accurate, Samsung really dropped the ball on not getting him excluded:

"Velvin Hogan, foreman of the nine-member panel, told the court during jury selection last month that he spent seven years working with lawyers to obtain his own patent, one covering "video compression software," a hobby of his."

How could they not see the bias he would have?

this guy Horowitz comes across as the biggest asshole not featured on a .cx TLD.

Not exactly uncommon; see, for example, this article which encourages CEOs to fire people: Three Types of People to Fire Immediately: "I wanted a happy culture. So I fired all the unhappy people." - A very successful CEO.

(Spoiler - it's people who complain, are overworked, are realistic about project prospects, or are already knowledgeable; "The best innovators are learners, not knowers.")

Strawman argument. The US has a $3.7 TRILLION manufacturing sector and it is growing. Just in case that isn't clear, measured by value the US has manufactures more than any other country in the world by a wide margin.

Google does not seem to agree. Even if it's true in some sense surely that's because the same product gets a higher value coming out of a US factory gate than it would from a Chinese one. Can someone who seriously understands these things look up "Phantom GDP Growth" which was first covered in Businessweek and give us some real way to understand these numbers in terms of actual products produced?

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-comeback-story-2010-10?op=1
http://macdailynews.com/2009/04/14/steve_jobs_engineered_apples_resurrection/
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-return-19972011-10062011.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

I could go on forever on this one. It's very well documented that in 1997 Apple was extremely close to bankruptcy (some speculate days away) when Steve Jobs, then brought back to Apple as an "interim CEO", negotiated with Bill Gates to have Microsoft invest in Apple to the tune of $150M.

Thank you, that's exactly the only-reading-the-headlines garbage I was expecting you to come up with.

So let's look at the facts, shall we? I already linked you to Apple's quarterly filings.

The CNet article you cited in which Microsoft promised $150,000,000 was published August 6, 1997.
Apple's quarterly report Filed 08/11/97 for the Period Ending 06/27/97 showed that Apple had $1,018,000,000 on hand.

Look at those numbers again:
150,000,000 - Amount Apple got from MS
1,018,000,000 -- Amount Apple had sitting in the bank

The number on top is less than 15% of the number on the bottom. That's not rescuing a company from bankruptcy. That's a bad tip at a restaurant.

You may want to review this important lesson on honestly representing the difference between millions and billions.

Of course, Steve Jobs' ego knew no bounds, and he loved to say that he single-handedly rescued Apple with Bill Gates' money. But that's just not true. The benefit Apple got from BillG's pocket change was that it satisfied Microsoft that Apple was no longer a threat, so that Apple could build itself up to where it was a threat.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-comeback-story-2010-10?op=1
http://macdailynews.com/2009/04/14/steve_jobs_engineered_apples_resurrection/
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-return-19972011-10062011.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

I could go on forever on this one. It's very well documented that in 1997 Apple was extremely close to bankruptcy (some speculate days away) when Steve Jobs, then brought back to Apple as an "interim CEO", negotiated with Bill Gates to have Microsoft invest in Apple to the tune of $150M.

> As an american, i can't imagine being made bankrupt and
> homeless by healthcare costs, That just doesn't happen, but
> good argument i suppose.

Just doesn't happen, eh ?

From that well known communist daily, Bloomberg's BusinessWeek:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009064_666715.htm

You may be right wing, but you don't get to have your own facts. The real world always impinges.

Knight lost the money, there was no parachute.

You're right.. but how about some details?

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-09/knight-says-it-may-face-more-burdensome-costs-from-trade-error

Knight was saved from collapse on Aug. 6, when it received a $400 million cash infusion through the sale of convertible securities to a consortium of investors.

Getco LLC, Blackstone Group LP, brokerages Stifel Nicolaus & Co. and TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., as well as Stephens Inc. and Jefferies Group Inc. invested in the rescue funding for knight, according to the Jersey City, New Jersey-based company. The investment will give the firms a 73 percent stake in Knight once the shares are converted into common stock.

So there you go... they were forced to give away control of their company to a number of outside investors.

WE are fucked.

No we're not.

Chic-Fil-A is a private company serving the interests of a private owner. Microsoft soft is a publicly held company which primarily exists to serve the interests of their shareholders.

The same sex marriage debate is divisive and there are strong beliefs on both sides. Does a public company exist to sell a product and provide a profit to its shareholders, or help enact social change even if it means the cost of business? Even if it hurts shareholders?

It simply does not make sense to take sides on a on a highly divisive social issue.

In Chic-Fil-A's case, Rahm Emmanuel shot his mouth off saying "Their values are not our values" and supported his alderman's postion to stop Chic--Fil-A from building a restaurant based on Chic Fil A's president stance on opposing same sex marriage. Which subsequently led to the anti-boycott and Chic-Fil-A's single biggest sales day in the history of the company Aug 1

Are you his spokesperson? How do you know what he meant?

By having the sense to look up what he actually said, instead of relying on media soundbites. Here's what he told Business Week in 1988:

Q: Did you do consumer research on the iMac when you were developing it?
A: No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they're supposed to be on top of these things.

So now we're seeing breathless media reports saying "Apple does research into their installed base, proving that Jobs was lying when he said that Apple did not do this!!!" Except of course that Jobs specifically said that Apple did do that. If you look at the context of Jobs' statements about Apple not doing market research, you'll see that all of them are in the context of how Apple designs new products, as opposed to how they improve existing ones.

The cries of the uneducated. An M.B.A. is the single greatest investment somebody can make in their career. Those who rail against it are generally ignorant of business constructs, or filled with hate.

On the other hand, those that tout it as the best thing since sliced bread seemed to be equally filled with hate for those that would attempt to tarnish their prize.

The facts are (as usual) somewhere in the middle. The immediate payback is a bit suspect and of course there is a presumption that the career you intend to follow is in one of the high-compensation areas where MBAs tend to cluster. If you do not intend to follow those career paths, you are just changing careers and that's not any different than going back to school and doing a reset for a different career path (e.g., lawyer quitting, going to medical school). That's not an "investment in their career,", it's an investment in another career.

Although I haven't seen a study on this, I'm pretty sure that an MBA won't pay back too much if you are a mid-level tech manager that wants to be a tech manager (say going into the EVP level of engineering or CTO) versus if you wanted to transition to a career path to a tech-oriented managing director (say going to partner) at an investment firm.

I've seen a few MBA tech managers, and it's often funny to see them try to apply their MBA-fu to schedules and people allocation as if engineering is some sort of 1-year factory optimization problem. I don't think it did much for their career trajectory (at least a couple of them are still middle level managers after 20+ years)...

On the other hand I've seen a couple tech managers w/o MBAs grow into do well as general managers all the way up to the P&L of a division. One of them, after a couple of years as a GM, spend some time to go back for an MBA (night-school) and then tell me it was a waste of time from a learning point of view, except for the business contacts that they made at school and that she could have better spent the time earning the MBA just quitting to run her own business and reading up on the MBA lingo w/ her spare moments on the loo. Apparently, according to her, most of what you learn is only really valued by other MBAs and mostly only applicable to the Finance world.

Other engineers I know that went back for MBAs mostly just use their MBA-fu for analysing investments on the side and it doesn't have any use in their engineering day-job. It doesn't appear that the MBA helped them any more in the current economy than my silly invest in ETFs strategy.

Of course one person I know went straight into B-school (wharton) right after university (graduated w/ a BSEE) and is doing really well as a managing partner of an investment firm. When he was in university, he couldn't design a circuit to save his life in the senior project lab course, and probably would have been a horrible engineer, but he was mostly a straight-A student (took lots of math and theoretical classes and the project grader for senior project lab took pity on him and gave him a B). The MBA path probably saved him (and the world) from a career in engineering.

As always, your milage may vary...

Source for your quote.

They had 3 MeeGo phones on the roadmap by 2014, with one already one the way. This was written in June 2011, referring to events that transpired Jan 2011. Between Jan 2011 and 2014, I'll be willing to bet that Apple won't have released more than 3 models of phones (including the 4S, which was more of a dot refresh rather than a completely new model).

It sounds like they had trouble with the iPhone's one-generation-one-phone strategy. They were too stuck in their old ways of releasing several different models of high-end, mid-range, and low-end "smartphones" to capture the entire market. What they probably should've done was offered one high-end, one mid-range, and one low-end phone. That's 3 phones. And they could've rolled it out slowly, so that the high-end came first, the mid-range one generation later, and the low-end replacing all the existing Symbian phones out there after one more refresh.

Instead, they squandered all of the in-house talent they spent years acquiring and developing. They wrote off all of their recent major business acquistions. They went from an industry leader and standards setter to the lackey of the biggest back-stabbing software company there ever was. And the worst part is, they did so knowingly and intentionally, because they felt they couldn't compete with Apple and Google.

Well, duh they couldn't compete with Apple and Google, and quite frankly, I don't think switching to Microsoft did anything but make them less competitive. They were late to the game two years ago with MeeGo, and all this time spent transitioning made them even later to the game. I especially like how the article quotes the Art of War at the end, as if that somehow vindicates Elop's actions. I like it because Elop's excuse for turning to Microsoft was that he didn't--couldn't--believe in Nokia's existing software engineering talent in the first place. What a crock of bull.

I think that one of the main original articles which pointed this out was this 2007 article about offshoring and GDP businessweek. I don't know of anything which has contradicted this and this 2009 article seems to suggest that the effect is still real. Whilst the 2009 article suggests that the US has better measures of it's economy and so the figures may be worse elsewhere, the obvious point is that this could only apply to places with increasing imports. Anyone know more?

I think that one of the main original articles which pointed this out was this 2007 article about offshoring and GDP businessweek. I don't know of anything which has contradicted this and this 2009 article seems to suggest that the effect is still real. Whilst the 2009 article suggests that the US has better measures of it's economy and so the figures may be worse elsewhere, the obvious point is that this could only apply to places with increasing imports. Anyone know more?

I'm pretty sure she's referring to the Asian Carp becoming a massively annoying and costly invasive species in the Mississippi River. It is like she said, in the 1970s a bunch of fish farmers in the south brought in carp to clean their ponds (they feed on plankton and algae and microorganisms). But the carp thrived, and various factors including flooding caused them to escape the ponds and enter the Mississippi, where they have been swimming upstream and infesting other rivers and lakes for decades. The U.S. government has spent a decade trying a bunch of different tactics to prevent their entry into the great lakes - dams, gates, electrified fences, and mass poisonings. According to this article, in the Illinois River, which is connected to the lakes, 9 out of every 10 fish are Asian Carp. They wreak havoc on fishing and tourism, and are only eight miles away from Lake Michigan. One way of stopping them, closing the Chicago Lock, would cause at least a billion dollars in lost or wasted money from barges having to transfer loads back onto land. There has been a hundred million dollars spent in the past few years to examine the issue nationwide (they are now found in 23 states), to attempt to mitigate or remove them. All because some fish farmers tried to save a bit of money cleaning their ponds by changing one element of the local ecology.

Sorry I blew your cover, whoever wanted to hide that they live by any of the thousands of miles of rivers and lakes effected.

This was the prevailing ideology leading up to the financial crisis, where drastic deregulation to get government "out of the way" paved the way to disaster.

Funny, and here I thought that the amended Community Reinvestment Act (as amended in 1991 and 1994, and heavily enforced by regulators beginning in 1994) forced banks to relax lending standards to such an extent that they had to find new and exciting (read: untested and dangerous) ways to get said loans off their books. I was under the impression that this began the rapidly snowballing practice of handing out loans to people who weren't the least bit qualified (from a strictly financial perspective) and that it was heavily encouraged by both President Clinton and (far moreso) by President George W. Bush via Housing and Urban Development.

Further, I kinda figured that several years of practically free money flowing from the quasi-government entity known as the Federal Reserve fueled all kinds of terrible investments (like a housing bubble?). And you know, I didn't think it was helpful that a pair of government-sponsored entities (who were under the direction of the US Congress, had the implicit backing of the Full Faith and Credit of the United States, and who've been taken into conservatorship by the US Federal government) kept prices and rates artificially low at great cost to the US taxpayer and who - together - account for about 60% of the US mortgage market. Doesn't that sort of thing usually spawn... a bubble?

Not really sure what led me to believe all of that stuff. Does the narrative even make sense? Congress changes an existing law and the President changes enforcement to pressure those who give mortgages to hand out more loans to the "economically disadvantaged" in their communities in the mid-1990s which causes lenders to put a ton of loans on their books that don't look very good? I mean, I guess the banks and such would already be lending to people who were qualified for loans; there's no reason not to, right? If you're qualified, the bank makes money through the life of the loan, you get a house, and everybody wins, yeah? So I suppose if Congress had to force banks to make a bunch of loans, it'd probably mean that those loans weren't so great. Now from what I know of banks, they've got to answer to the bean counters and stock holders and all sorts of other people who get fussy when the books start looking scary. I guess if that started to happen, "the government made me do it" probably wouldn't cut it for very long. So on the one side, you've got the government pressuring the lenders to create loans they wouldn't normally create, and on the other hand, you've got people who are like "hey, if you go out of business, I lose a lot of money, so don't do that!" After a little while of that and not seeing things get any better, I know I'd be looking for another way out. Which is interesting, because the US government invented a neat way to get loans off your books back in 1970 with what are called "Mortgage-backed securities" (courtesy of Ginnie Mae). More than half the mortgages in the US have been turned into those, (including $3 Trillion worth in 2003 alone in a $12 Trillion total market) so that's pretty neat.

Ok, so the lenders have a good way move the bad loans off their books, and by all accounts, they start doing just that. By 2002, President Bush was

I won't link to references - feel free to Google it for yourself. The summary, however, is this: Samsung and Motorola and various others invented technologies that they submitted to an industry standard for the cell phone business. By submitting it for inclusion in the industry standard, they a) helped establish an industry standard for all cell phone makers to use and b) agreed to license those patents under FRAND terms.

Now, FRAND licensing terms are simple - the patent holder _MUST_ license the technology to _ANYONE AND EVERYONE_ who wants to license it at Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory rates. They do not have the freedom to not license the technology to a competitor and they do not have the freedom to set whatever price they want for the patent - they are required, by the FRAND agreement, to license to everyone for a fair and reasonable rate. While this may result in a lower cost-per-license fee, it is made up for in volume due to the fact that everyone participating in the industry pretty much must license the patent since it's an industry standard. It's a tradeoff of a guaranteed, long term revenue stream versus control of the patent.

Samsung and Motorola are currently demanding higher-than-reasonable rates (which is not Fair and Reasonable) from Apple (which is not Non-Discriminatory) and are thus in violation of their FRAND agreements. It is why various trade organizations are beginning the process of investigating both Samsung and Motorola for abuse of FRAND patents (for example, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-29/google-said-to-face-u-dot-s-dot-probe-over-motorola-patents ).

Fines have to be of the right order of magnitude or they do precisely nothing to change behavior.

I mean, take a gander at these financials!
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp?ticker=CMCSA:US.

18.548 BILLION dollars gross profit in 2011, and that's not even their best year. So, do the math, and based on 2011 this is the amount of money that comcast makes in.... oh I see, less than 23 minutes.

>...

So long as we're talking about old tablets, let's pull out the good-old Knight-Ridder Tablet. Were you unaware of it, or did you post about all the others and not this one?

Same form factor? Check
Black bezel? Check
Simple, uncluttered design? Check
Oh, and rounded corners-Check (what else are they supposed to be? Razor sharp?)

Pictures

The Knight-Ridder was cited in a sane ruling by Judge Koh.

By the way, can anyone what brand of phone the current ruling's judge uses? Likely Apple.

It was about brain injuries from repeated concussions (and sure cheerleading has head injuries, but it doesn't have them at the frequency of football).

That's right. Unfortunately, in this society we don't treat head injuries as serioulsy as we should. "Oh, he just saw stars. No big deal!"

Yes, it is a big deal.

Even the "sissy" sport of soccer (football to the rest of the World) has issues with head injuries

Don't get me started on marial arts - like Karate. I've spent quite a few years doing that (local "champion" too ) and all I can say is, everything they (the schools who charge up the ass for their instruction) say about how martial arts improves every aspect of a kid's life is complete Bullshit. All it does is teach them to fight. Discipline? Cordination? ANY sport will teach them that.

Concentration? How about Yoga.

Teach your kids to meditate.

And most of all, teach them that hard work and discipline will help them maximize what they inherently have. All you can do is do your best. And sometimes that is not good enough. Teaching your kids to accept that is probably the best lesson they can learn. Teaching them the middle way that they have to work, that all the hard work in World may not make them "special" or "great" but it will maximize what they do have. And that's the key: where to say and know when to say, "I've worked really hard, but my talents end here."

I have worked my ass off at Physics because I had a dream of being an experiemental physicist, but the fact is, my talents do not lie there. But I enjoyed pushing myself and I gained confidence in my failure. And it helped me learn where to "wake up and smell the coffee".

There's a big difference between a "quitter" and someone who just will not accept reality. Or the other way, folks who give up too soon and will not apply themselves. The only person who can truly know is yourself.

Physics taught me that - NOT martial arts.

What's the future for Nokia?

Look at both of these URLs and you tell me.

http://ompldr.org/vZWQzcw/charting.the.charts.png

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-15/moodys-downgrades-nokia-to-junk-status

--
BMO

Meanwhile, Moody's gives Nokia a kick in the teeth, deservedly.

Nokia downgraded to junk
HELSINKI (AP) â" Moody's ratings agency on Friday downgraded Nokia's debt grade to junk status, citing greater than anticipated pressure on the struggling cellphone maker's earnings after it announced plans for major cuts and global layoffs. It kept the outlook negative, meaning it could downgrade it again.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-15/moodys-downgrades-nokia-to-junk-status

(Just read that on another board).

--
BMO

> whats wrong with the real small claims court?


Real small claims court doesn't spend much time on investigating claims. To clear cases quickly the judge quickly weighs up sides and makes a snap decision. Under the adversarial system of justice its not about finding the truth, but about who deciding presents the best arguments. That's easier for the judge, but it shouldn't be confused with justice. In some jurisdictions you can't appeal or even be told the reasons. The judge makes a mistake (they are human so it happens) you won't even know.

Small claims court weren't created because they are better than the bigger courts, but as a way of offering the little people cheaper although less reliable justice. The bigger courts are worse though since they are extremely expensive charging rates that cannot be justified. Whoever has the most money to fund the most appeals and buy the better lawyers wins.

Arbitration is in theory a great idea, but a big problem is that the arbitration system is taken over by judges and lawyers charging the same rates. It's sold as a cheaper alternative, but it has many traps. One problem is a big company who nominates an arbitration company (yes, they are companies) will pick one that gives them favorable results or they won't get repeat business. I loved Erin Brockovich the movie, but the arbitration system they used has been severely critcized by some of their clients. If you loved the movie then don't read this:

http://www.salon.com/2000/04/14/sharp/
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8169252&page=1#.T875jlK6SSo
http://www.givemebackmyrights.com/bma-faq.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-21/consumers-may-see-new-limits-on-mandatory-arbitration
http://www.homeloanbasics.com/articles/FirstTimeHomeBuyers/MandatoryArbitrationClausesStripHomebuyersofSuitableRecourse
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x301912
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/website-aims-to-boost-50m-arbitration-industry-2351246.html

The justice system badly needs reform, but you have many politicians and lawyers doing very well out of the current system who won't give it up.

The Perter Principal Lives!

Ford was profitable in 09, 10, and 11.

So by "recent" I assume you mean 2008, when it lost 14.6 billion.

From TFA, each address is worth about $12.

So unless math has changed and 12 x 16million equals 14.6 billion... No, they could not have "averted their recent financial woes by auctioning off their addresses".

You clearly do not know the 101 of demand and supply ...

Scarcity drives the price up yadayda ...

They do NOT own 14.5B of $ value of ip adresses . Sorry.

Ford was profitable in 09, 10, and 11.

So by "recent" I assume you mean 2008, when it lost 14.6 billion.

From TFA, each address is worth about $12.

So unless math has changed and 12 x 16million equals 14.6 billion... No, they could not have "averted their recent financial woes by auctioning off their addresses".

Always link to the printable version in the future please! http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/26828-techshop-paradise-for-tinkerers (still have the splash, but then it's one page not 5 or whatever).

Looking for facts on the original infractions, I googled and found this. An excerpt:

Suing Tenenbaum were Sony Corp. (6758) and its Arista Records, Warner Music Group’s Warner Bros. and Atlantic labels and Vivendi SA’s (VIV) Universal Music Group. They said he made songs available on various sites including Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa and LimeWire, distributing songs to millions of other people. He continued after being sent a letter from the record companies, and blamed sisters, houseguests and even burglars, the companies said.

“Tenenbaum undertook these actions even though he was fully aware that they were illegal,” the record companies said. “In fact, his own father warned him that individuals were being sued for such conduct but he did not stop.”

I don't think anyone is disputing that he did the crime, but the question is whether or not the punishment fits the crime. $675K @ $30/hour is 22,500 hours of labor to pay it back. That's 937 days at 24 hours/day, or 2.5 years. Or, working 40 hours/week, that's nearly 11 years of labor.

What are the "real" damages to the recording industry? Especially when that same set of songs likely had dozens (or hundreds, or even thousands) of free download sources, they they weren't downloaded from Mr Tenenbaum, they would have been downloaded from someone else.

Looking for facts on the original infractions, I googled and found this. An excerpt:

Suing Tenenbaum were Sony Corp. (6758) and its Arista Records, Warner Music Group’s Warner Bros. and Atlantic labels and Vivendi SA’s (VIV) Universal Music Group. They said he made songs available on various sites including Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa and LimeWire, distributing songs to millions of other people. He continued after being sent a letter from the record companies, and blamed sisters, houseguests and even burglars, the companies said.

“Tenenbaum undertook these actions even though he was fully aware that they were illegal,” the record companies said. “In fact, his own father warned him that individuals were being sued for such conduct but he did not stop.”

Please get your facts straight - google walked away after examining the books. There was no way that groupon was worth 6 billion - it's a huge ponzi scheme.

Sure, people put their money into it knowing it was bogus - they figured there would be even greedier, bigger fools around to hold the bag.

More info: Robert Brumley, the CEO, is a lawyer and ex-Marine, and held various political-lawyer type jobs in the Reagan Administration. He was CEO of TerreStar, a satellite company, from 2005 to 2008. (TerreStar went bust in 2010, but that may not have been his fault.) His company, Pegasus Global LLC, has one (1) employee, him, according to Dun and Bradstreet.

This skeptical Santa Fe, New Mexico newspaper article from last October is probably the best one on the subject.

Yes, it couldn't possibly be adversaries, and people want to do harm to the United States, in an environment where people like you firmly believe that everything must be a "false flag" operation designed to somehow take away your rights.

...

Or, it could be this:

Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation
http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2009/NorthropGrumman_PRC_Cyber_Paper_FINAL_Approved%20Report_16Oct2009.pdf

Occupying the Information High Ground: Chinese Capabilities for Computer Network Operations and Cyber Espionage
http://www.uscc.gov/RFP/2012/USCC%20Report_Chinese_CapabilitiesforComputer_NetworkOperationsandCyberEspionage.pdf

How China Steals Our Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/opinion/how-china-steals-our-secrets.html

China's Cyber Thievery Is National Policy—And Must Be Challenged
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203718504577178832338032176-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html

FBI Traces Trail of Spy Ring to China
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203961204577266892884130620-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNzEwNDcyWj.html

NSA: China is Destroying U.S. Economy Via Security Hacks
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+China+is+Destroying+US+Economy+Via+Security+Hacks/article24328.htm

Chinese Espionage Campaign Targets U.S. Space Technology
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-18/chinese-espionage-campaign-targets-u-dot-s-dot-space-technology

Report: Hackers Seized Control of Computers in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/jet-propulsion-lab-hacked/
http://oig.nasa.gov/congressional/FINAL_written_statement_for_%20IT_%20hearing_February_26_edit_v2.pdf

Chinese hackers took control of NASA satellite for 11 minutes
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/chinese-hackers-took-control-of-nasa-satellite-for-11-minutes-20111119/

Chinese hackers suspected of interfering with US satellites
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/27/chinese-hacking-us-satellites-suspected

Former cybersecurity czar: Every major U.S. company has been hacked by China
http://www.itworld.com/security/262616/former-cybersecurity-czar-every-major-us-company-has-been-hacked-china

China Attacked Internet Security Company RSA, Cyber Commander Tells SASC
http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/27/china-attacked-internet-security-company-rsa-cyber-commander-te/

Chinese Counterfeit Parts Keep Flowing

Er... you do know the Soviet Union was dissolved twenty years ago, right?

Yessss, and that's why the country is the living embodiment of peace-loving, productivity.

Yes, they are getting brain damage. No, this isn't really a surprise to anyone. But I have to ask, isn't this why they get paid the big bucks? No one is forcing them to play this game. A quick breakdown finds that your average NFL player makes 1848% what Average Joe does. And no, that's not a typo.

Average US salary: $41,673.83

Avergage NFL Salary: $1.9 million

Median NFL Salary: $770,000.00

Average NFL career: 3.5 years

In that 3.5 years the average NFL player, at MEDIAN salary, will earn $2.7 million or roughly the amount that Average Joe will pull in after 65 years. (160 years if the NFL player gets the average salary.) IMHO they are selling their health later in life for the riches now.

Soccer causes head injuries too.

>but he's putting in no effort to fix them and busy getting rid of anyone that can

What a fairy tale, Elop inherited a big mess. More details here http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm

Maybe, but posting misguiding rage comics and lame graphics which omit the big picture does not make a good discussion.

For example, AAPL went from $34 when Jobs took over in 1998 to 14 in 2003 under him as CEO. Did that Jobs was a sucky CEO and should have been fired in 2003 based on a rage comic on it's stock by a immature lame, armchair joker analyst like you who knows nothing about companies except to look up the stock price on Yahoo Finance? Turnarounds take time, Nokia had it's head under the sand till he took over. More details here http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm

Are you referring to the Enron that engaged in massive fraud under the Clinton administration and was prosecuted under the Bush administration?

Are you referring to the Solyndra that was known to be circling the drain when the Obama administration pumped in $500 million more dollars so their favored investors could benefit?

Just checking. . . . Looks to me like you are pretty comfortable with the current administration's culture of corruption.

No, you're quite wrong about Halliburton. They must have done good work there. Look what they just won: Halliburton gets letter of intent for Iraq oil

It's a rich tradition of ridiculous stupidity that we can all be proud of. Well... absolute fucking retards like the fawning worshipers of right-wing Jeebus at your local ultra-conservative church can be proud of it.

Now don't be too hasty, you don't seem bright enough that you should be excluded from that pride. Besides, you're one of those fellows who does his "best" thinking with his pants around his ankles, aren't you?

Good job submitter, on getting the rabit, rambling and incoherent anti-Nokia troll Tomi Ahonen's article as the main link instead of the many other saner sources of the same news. I am just glad that it's not a rambling ten page mess as his usual articles tend to be.

> I'm just wondering how Eliop got a worse deal than that past the Nokia board and lawyers though?

If you don't think Elop was specifically hired by the board to do precisely what he did, then you're really naive. The board realized that the strategy of trying to create another incompatible ecosystem and trying to attract developers was doomed to fail from the get go and installed Elop as the CEO to do what he did.

Atleast now, Nokia gets lots of advertising dollars and an outright $1bn/yr platform support from Microsoft, a luxury that RIMM does not have.

If you want more details, they are here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm

Bad loans were the core of the housing bubble. To understand the reason behind it all, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Why would lenders make loans that are unlikely to be repaid?" Answering that question leads to the answer behind the bubble. It was a bubble in supposedly AAA-rated mortgage debt.

Here's how it worked:
1) Securitization of mortgages into MBS (mortgage-backed securities).
2) Banks made money from selling the loans to securitizers and getting them off their books, not keeping them and collecting interest.
3) Demand for these securities skyrocketed, as they were thought to be safe and reliable income streams.
3) This led to the utter deterioration of loan quality, as banks basically just needed to get warm bodies to make loans to, create the loan and sell it. You started seeing things like NINJA loans (No Income No Job or Assets - NINJA) and option ARM loans made to risky borrowers. All included in securities rated AAA.
4) Investment companies bought these loans, ratings agencies stamped a AAA rating on them and the securities were then sold off. Buyers hungry for safe and reliable high interest returns couldn't get enough of it. Thus a bubble was formed.

Basically, for mortgage originators, it was like printing monopoly money, and then turning it in for actual currency. When borrowers started defaulting en masse, the whole house of cards came tumbling down.

Reading recommendations:
1) The Economist magazine cover story, "House of Cards", from 2003. Check out the multiple links to the separate sub-stories that make up the issue under the "In this special report" heading.

Viewing recommendations:
1) The Inside Job - Oscar-winning documentary on the financial crisis.
2) William K. Black interviewed on Bill Moyers.

Why is it that the only antitrust enforcement I hear about in the EU is against non-EU based companies?

Technically every enforcement action is against an EU based corporation - in order to legally do trade within the EU, you need an EU corporate presence. The European Commission regulates violations of trade law within the EU. The EU didn't levy fines against Microsoft US for antitrust violations within the borders of the United States, it levied fines against Microsoft Europe for antitrust violations within the EU borders.

I would guess that you haven't heard about other enforcement actions because you don't read the EU antitrust news? You chose to read US oriented news, which doesn't report on enforcement actions of foreign regulatory bodies against foreign companies? Also, the EU is made up of many nation states, each of which has its own antitrust regulatory body. The EU only gets involved in antitrust when the scale of the illegal activity exceeds the ability of the national courts to handle, or where the national courts have erred or require clarification. This is usually difficult cases, or those with international scope that involve large transnational corporations. EU-level enforcement actions are, by their nature, more likely to be against a large corporation trading internationally, which for tax and trade reasons may well be headquartered in the U.S. (although increasingly companies are choosing to be headquartered in Ireland or Luxembourg for tax purposes, see Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Is it really that case that no corporations inside the EU are big enough to be anti-competitive?

The EU have issued over €12 billion of fines in the last 5 years against illegal cartels. How many of those cases did you read about in the U.S. press? This is not some conspiracy - it is entirely understandable, their readers (Americans) generally don't care about the EU fining a Belgian glass manufacturer, or Frankfurt Airport. They only feel an emotional connection when the target of the fine is the subsidiary of a U.S. corporation.
2011/03/03 Siemens AG fined €397 million by EU antitrust
2012/03/29 Telefonica fined €152 million.
2011/10/25 Solvay fined €23 million
2011/06/22 Telekomunikacja Polska S.A €127 million
2008/11/12 Largest every cartel fine from the EU - over €1.3 billion against a Japanese/US/English/Belgian cartel.