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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_11/b4170032321836.htm

This is something of a counterpoint. Amanda Bennett wrote an article about her husband's death. He had cancer and was expected to live a year or 2 more. Aggressive, and expense, treatment, meant that he live for 7 more - some of them good - some of them bad. So he beat the odds and thus can be considered a success. On the other hand, Bennett tries to weigh the cost of treatment, quality of life, and how the health care system should be structured. She does not come to concise answer, but she writes very well about the struggle.

No.. you obviously skipped the conversion from yuan to USD.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-17/huawei-2010-profit-gains-30-on-higher-international-sales.html

Although, you are right about Google and Amazon: Google $1B in sales more than Huawei in 2010, and Amazon had $6 billion more than Huawei.

But if you take it a step further...

The nickel costs 11.18 cents to produce,[1] so we're now actually looking at a dime and a penny. According to a rather dated Business Week article[2], it costs 3 cents to make a dime. So we can now cut it back down to 4.6 cents. At this point, we round back to the nickel which drops us into a circular situation.

1. http://news.coinupdate.com/cost-to-make-penny-and-nickel-rises-1139/
2. http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/07/money/source/4.htm

Did it occur to anybody besides me that violent behavior is something that *should* be encouraged in a soldier? I'm not seeing how a drug with these observed effects gets anybody off the hook for that Afghan massacre -- not Bales, not his squad mates, nor his commanders. The massacre was the result of failure to manage Bales, period. He's a trained killer, and one with a history of deceiving people for monetary gain predating his enlistment in the military. It also looks like the military ignored some red flags, including his propensity for violent confrontation, about him long before he deployed to Afghanistan, if the stories about his security clearance are even close to accurate.

How does the presence of this drug, with its documented behavioral side effects that is routinely supplied to soldiers, coupled with what looks like malfeasance on the part of the military in not acting on information that was publicly available on Bales, exculpate anybody for this senseless tragedy?

I'd be curious if any big companies are doing this. This seems like the kind of thing a small shop would do. It seems legally dubious enough that big companies would fear lawsuits.

Well the Virginia State Police is not a company at all, but they are a pretty large employer. They don't ask you to turn over your passwords, but they do require you to log into your account so they can check out your postings. In fact, from what I have seen, it appears that most of the organizations doing this are government organizations like police departments and government agencies.

So this whole thing is misguided, as they are targeting private companies for the restriction, when in fact all of the examples of employers do this that I have seen are actually government bureaucrats themselves, which of course are always exempted.

They initially did try to make the caps really low:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090331_726397.htm

Traffic from Netflix has surpassed traffic from piracy:
http://consumerist.com/2011/05/study-shows-netflix-surpasses-piracy-in-online-traffic.html

After initial public reaction to really low caps, the cable companies did raise the caps to what are currently reasonable rates. But they've also shown no sign of changing those caps. As the quality of the video improves in coming years, it's also going to take up more and more bandwidth. So the higher caps got the public off their back for now, and isn't hurting Netflix at the moment, but it's pretty obvious how this will play out in a few years time.

Theres a good article at Businessweek about Elop and the direction change.

The article states they negotiated for Android, but got no quarter from Google on special access to Android or direction on features. They didn't want Nokia to be Just Another Android Vendor. Whether that's false pride that will cause them to disappear, or a stroke of genius that allows them to be different, though much smaller, only time will tell. MS did throw some cash at them, this seems to be a partnership of weakness, where both sides have a weak hand and need each other to succeed. I kind of want Windows Phone to survive - it's an interesting new OS, one I'm sure I'll never own a device that runs it. But it will never succeed in any stretch.

Of course you could argue that any moves toward Android were just cover for a long term strategy with MS Windows Phone.

Had they went to the "printed" edition on eReader, I don't think their ad revenue would have dropped off. Heck, Amazon can afford to sell a Kindle for $30 less for what must be the least obtrusive ad system ever (the "screen saver" when the unit is not in use and a banner on the main menu).

Unless over 40% of their total cost is for printing and distributing, print is still carrying more than it's share of the load.

From their financials:
cost of goods sold 957.5
selling general & admin expenses, total 1,006.0
depreciation & amortization, total 116.5

So if you assume that COGS is mostly printing costs and you lump all of the other costs away from print, and even if we don't include depreciation & amortization (which is probably mostly print equipment and delivery equipment), print is 46% of costs. Of course, "selling general & admin expenses" is going to include a LOT of print expenses, so in reality print costs are much higher.

The really sad thing is that print scales really well up, but not down. At a certain point you are spending a ton of money on the print infrastructure and the delivery network but not getting much return. They respond by making their print subscriptions really, really expensive, which of course leads to fewer subscribers, which leads to... well, their current unsustainable situation.

is because of work ethics and skills.

Or it's because the boss says so.

because the produce more than the standard 40 hour workers

The research says they don't. After 40 hours they start making mistakes. After a lot more than 40 hours, their mistakes start doing actual damage to the company.

farse

That's farce.

If wages and taxes for US labor dropped about 10% to 15%

The income story in America is deeply troubling. Inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers (a category that encompasses 80% of the workforce and leaves out higher-paid managers and supervisors) rose by an anemic 0.1% a year from 1979 to 2007, according to the EPI.

... and then the economy crashed. ( http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2010/pi2010025_902249.htm ) Take home pay has barely moved for decades. Meanwhile, employee productivity over the same time period doubled. In other words, employees were paid half as much for the same amount of work, and worked twice as much to keep the same pay.

US businesses would be able to hire more workers and sell more domestically made goods.

To who? The people with 15% less money to spend on your domestically made goods?

I haven't had mod points in a week or two. Wish I had some here.

Small businesses employ more than half of all American workers. Here's the first link I found that supports my claim, that doesn't require any special literary skills to understand: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/nov2009/sb20091112_157141.htm

So - who in the hell ARE these small business people? Well, I was one. I went into a partnership, which was later dissolved for personal/family reasons. Poor people, who scrounge for the cash to purchase tools, equipment, and supplies, and to rent building space. Poor people who hire other poor people. And, if they keep up the struggle for long enough, and if they are smart and lucky, then they move further up the food chain, so that they are no longer poor.

I've seldom had a rich man give me a break. Poor folks are always willing to give another poor man a break! Even hardened criminals are more likely to lend a hand when you need it, than some rich sumbitch with a yacht.

Actually, they shouldn't be on the list. They both have limits to the number of hours they can work to prevent fatigue on the job. Here's an article that mentions some of the requirements.

You know, really depressing thing I've found is that there appears to be no proof of this allegation. The accusation enough seems to have been sufficient to stop anyone from even trying to prove it.

Because there isn't anything to prove, it's basic physics. But to appease shills like you, they did do that test.

The real reason to go all digital for money is because it makes it much easier for the government to control what you can and cannot buy. It also makes it easier for the government to control who can and cannot go into business.

It may not be the original intention, but the reasons can shift over time--if the potential for abuse is ignored. The temptation for monstrous abuse creating an unforgiving living hell could occur when considering a completely cashless ubiquitous system being combined with an effective and relative inexpensive analysis software developed by a company such as Palantir. The appropriate organizations, when it's fully developed and implemented (doing a decent job presently, if the articles are to be believed) should be able to successfully know--and control--just about anything, on anyone, anywhere.

BusinessWeek, Jan. 10, 2011: China Could Game the U.S. in Intellectual Property: Now China may do with intellectual property what it did with capitalism: adapt our system and beat us at our own game.

The mine owners may be forced to sell then mine to someone with enought foresight to know that the prices won't stay low forever.

And that will be the Chinese, as they're the only one able to concentrate enough money (through state-owned companies) to buy up the mines.

Just a few examples.

Libertarian, busted you are.

Risk = Reward. If the Chinese can buy up all the mines in the world to corner the market on NEW materials, then they deserve the monopoly... wait, monopolies are illegal in this and many other countries. I wonder how that will play out.

But again, like people have said, even if all the mines are not producing, that will mean a HUGE market for recycled materials, increased research into alternatives and alternative supply chains.

So, yeah, China could bank if they could buy out the world's mines, buy out the future potential mines, outbid all other investors for those last few mines, prevent alternative sources from being found, and finally, prevent alternative materials from being discovered... yeah, then they could corner the market and reap huge rewards. However, that's a very VERY risky venture that, let's face it, won't pay out.

Sure, others have tried and some do quite well at it. DeBeers, for example, have a controlling chunk of the diamond market. However, the more they raise prices, the more alternative sources of diamonds are discovered. OPEC controls oil prices, but every time they cut production, more sources of oil are found.

There are laws of economics. The free market is based on those laws. Governments can bend the market one way or the other, but the laws may not be broken. When governments try to bend it too far one way or the other, a thriving black market will take over, which runs on... you guessed it... FREE MARKET principles.

I'm not recommending a free market. It's unavoidable. You may not break the laws of economics no more than you may break the laws of physics. You may try to manipulate them one way or the other and may even make a bit of progress, but in the end, the laws of supply and demand will win out. The trick is to not fight it. Know how the laws work and you can predict the future to make sure you are on the winning end every single time.

(yes, there are times when government intervention is required, like regulating natural monopolies such as utilities and insulin providers, but less is almost always better. Subsidies are almost never a good idea and if it really looks like China is about to corner the market on critical materials, then the US government can always declare the area around the mine a "national park" like ANWR to prevent anyone from owning it. Then the government would actually lease the rights to mine there.)

And that will be the Chinese, as they're the only one able to concentrate enough money (through state-owned companies) to buy up the mines.

No. Actually, US private sector is much larger than the Chinese government. The US private sector is larger than the US government. For that matter, US banks have more money than the Chinese government.

Sorry, but government only takes a percentage of GDP. That means that GDP is larger than government as long as tax rates are under 50%. All liquid money ends up in banks. Yeah, you may have put it in the stock market, but the company you invested in put it in the bank. If they spent it, whoever they spent it on put it in the bank.... all money goes through the banks. The banks in the second largest economy in the world can easily outbid the government of the third largest economy in the world (EU is first according to Wikipedia).

By the way, the US economy is still 2-3 times larger than the Chinese.

The mine owners may be forced to sell then mine to someone with enought foresight to know that the prices won't stay low forever.

And that will be the Chinese, as they're the only one able to concentrate enough money (through state-owned companies) to buy up the mines.

Just a few examples.

Libertarian, busted you are.

While unemployment is an ordeal for anyone, it still appears to be more traumatic for men. Men without jobs are more likely to commit crimes and go to prison. They are less likely to wed, more likely to divorce, and more likely to father a child out of wedlock. Ironically, unemployed men tend to do even less housework than men with jobs and often retreat from family life, says W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

Or http://books.google.ca/books?id=YNB14HvzcnUC&pg=PA212&lpg=PA212&dq=unemployed+men+do+less+housework+than+their+working+wives&source=bl&ots=Vyxd4vG2-2&sig=R6mtEy0XA8-wbRKgnyw_TSdYpTk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JmtCT7jYGsTt0gG-rJzoBw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=unemployed%20men%20do%20less%20housework%20than%20their%20working%20wives&f=false

How do you account for that? The fact is, men do less of the housework, even when both partners work outside the home an equal amount.

#2 - what does a study of lesbians have to do with how men and women interact? Really?

#3 - No, it's not a "fair summary". A "fair summary" would be that a dirty car is a possible indicator or poor overall hygiene, and a clean car is a possible indicator of good overall hygiene. Given ONLY that variable, women would conclude that the guy with the slob car is probably a slob. Or would you conclude otherwise - that the guy with the clean car is more likely to be a slob?

#4 - that is not a "control group" - it didn't control for the variable that was being tested - the car itself. It put the same guy in a dirty car and a clean car. The dirty car was cheap, the clean car was expensive. To conclude that women were more attracted to the guy in the clean car because it was more expensive is not supported, since they didn't properly control for filth. If they had, they would have run the same test with an expensive dirty car and a clean cheap car.

Or they could have had two clean cars, one expensive, and one cheap. And two dirty cars, one expensive and one cheap. To conclude that "women care about cars while men don't" is not supported by the study, which is fatally flawed. It's "junk science." Then again, the NEJM did a study of double-blind studies, and found 1/3 of them to be fatally flawed (and this wasn't even a double-blind study).

So no, they did not have proper controls in the study. Saying that they did because they had men in the study is ridiculous.

#5 - You're the one who made a lot of assumptions. And nowhere does the study ask about difficulty in obtaining orgasm, contrary to what you just wrote. Did you actually READ the questions? Obviously not. It DID look at things like "opportunity lost" factors because they were relevant. Your attempt to misrepresent the results is just as bad as the original article, which was not supported by the research, and was just page hit bait.

#6 - No, it's not misdirection - the original point was that to classify women as gold-diggers is unfair, and not supported by the evidence, which shows women do more of the housework even when everything else is kept equal, and that may

Two Bitcoin exchanges have cited or hinted at regulatory pressure as part of their reasons for shutting down. ExchangeBitcoins (exchb) was rumored to have been shut down due to government pressure though that is not their official statement. Tradehill http://www.businessweek.com/technology/bitcoin-exchange-shuttered-nerds-rattled-02172012.html While the primary exchange has avoided troubles so far as it is based in Japan. Right now mtgox.com does 15 million a month in volume of which it takes 1%. I think the US will be scaring all kinds of businesses away that would have generated additional economic activity. I suggest that MTGOX start using a non .com domin name......

Point me to regulations for derivatives like Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that existed between 2000 and 2008.

Point me to regulations for Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) that existed between 2000 and 2008.

Hell, point me at any regulation that led to the crash. Any regulation at all. And by the way, I'm going to pre-empt your "Community Reinvestment Act" bullshit because the 30 year old law had nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis.

I know I can point at some that were missing which could have reduced the impact of the crash. Glass-Steagall, for instance. Or the SEC decision in 2004 that exempted the banks from regulations regarding reserves so that they could stack up even more debt (without which Bear Stearns wouldn't have been able to implode)

this is some crap Rollercoaster Tycoon-quality(in 2012!) games shop that got rich peddling its lousy wares off of Facebook's back. Zynga is a flea, and FB is the big dog - scratching Zynga off his balls with his muthafuckin' paws --

They were that, 5 years ago, but now Zynga is it's own thing, they don't need Facebook at all to survive. If Facebook vanished tomorrow Zynga would hardly notice. Zynga already has dozens of iPhone games and bought dozens of companies allowing Zynga to sell games on every platform.

In fact, Facebook relies on Zynga for 12% of it's revenue, taking a 30 percent cut from purchases of virtual goods within Zynga games.

Though what is interesting is, *for Apple to do this*, must mean that they are scared. Very scared. Can't compete with inferior tech, so let's litigate.

So is Motorola Mobility (aka Google).

I don't like it either, but I don't think it indicates anything besides that corporations are scumbags, which we already knew.

It sounds like this law firm just violated Model Rule 1.7(a)(1)

Ah ha! a voice of sanity, with a citation,

Pepper Hamilton LLP was wrong in so many way here and it's their business to of known this.

As Google stated "In short, Pepper Hamilton is accusing its own client of infringement"

Love this part: "Digitude is opposing the request to have Pepper Hamilton disqualified from the ITC case"
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-01/google-chafes-as-lawyers-it-hired-sue-company-s-android-partners.html
Linked from link, - Digitude is who is suing Google, Google has asked that Pepper Hamilton be "fired" (quotes their's).
Digitude is just stirring the pot.

It' mentioned Pepper Hamilton has over 500 lawyers, and so so much patent litigation there's bound to be overlap.
So? Those aren't excuses for bad law.

Individual voter fraud is extremely rare. The sort of fraud that would be prevented by photo ID is almost nonexistent. On the other hand, the requirement to obtain a photo ID excludes a nontrivial percentage of the population, and creates an additional burden that falls disproportionately on poor and/or nonwhite voters. Voters who usually vote democratic, making this a partisan issue.

Much more likely than fraud by individuals is a systematic effort to exclude voters unlikely to vote for your party, and the usage of methods to purge legitimate voters from the rolls, add additional hurdles (the modern poll test), or gerrymander districts so voting doesn't work at all.

It's not a "special interest" to want democracy to work for everyone, not just the well off.

If import taxes is enough to encourage Foxconn to move plants to Brazil, then all the excuses made by Apple executives about China's construction advantages is meaningless.

No, like most people reading the article I quoted you seem to dismiss the third element mentioned. Even if the US created the supply chain, infrastructure and provided [adequate]low-cost factory workers, the US still would not be able to provide the huge number of engineers needed.

The US education system is not able to create the correct amount or type of workers. Never mind that this industry demands greater flexibility than most Western employees would accept. I don't know what the situation is in Brazil, I assume they are able to supply the factories. I believe they are going to offer training.

Even if you could somehow make Apple and everyone else produce in the US, it would hurt the corporations greatly because of the lost ability to move fast, keep low inventory and rapidly source from other suppliers. That could potentially destroy their current position(s) in the market.

China's own government is trying to develop domestic consumption, and rising wages is a part of that plan.

That domestic demand doesn't need any development any longer. It's much stronger in all areas, from cars to luxury items. The monied class in China is filled with countless billionaries (in US Dollars).

As it is, there's a shortage of labor in China...

The shortage is geographically limited to the coastal region where most production happens today. Why do you think Foxconn just created their massive super factories further inland? This is just the natural next move.

...and unions are growing stronger

That's hardly an accurate description from what I read, the Chinese unions strength is miniscule as they're limited and/or controlled by Beijing. They seem to be changing, not so much "growing". It has had an effect in companies from Honda to Foxconn, but it is not similar to how Western or American unions function, this short article is enlightening:

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP204.pdf

Foxconn is moving to countries like Vietnam and Indonesia

Yes, they are also moving to more expensive Asian countries such as Malaysia because they foresee rising wages in China.

The Chinese factories are already being refocused to supply the domestic market, while other Asian factories will supply the world market. The Chinese domestic market is growing much faster and unlike the West has stable, high growth.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_21/b4179011091633.htm

English coverage at http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-03/motorola-mobility-wins-second-german-ruling-against-apple.html

In its battle against a sluggish economy

Right... be sure to carefully avoid mentioning stupid huge budget deficits when discussing Japan and its science funding problems. They've only been running giant deficits since the '90s, accumulating debt equal to 200% GDP, a ratio worse than any of the European deadbeat PIIGS and twice as bad as the US. Why? Let's see what the Japanese themselves concluded 10 years ago:

lowered individual income tax ... two special tax cuts in FY 1998 ... permanent cuts in individual and corporate taxes ... frequent economic stimulus packages ... payments to the social security ... disposing of failed financial institutions

Sound familiar?

Japan has become so unproductive it now has a trade deficit. The first since 1981. Why? Just like us they're busy outsourcing their industrial base to China.

Deficit spending, 'stimulus', monetary easing and all that other gunk doesn't work. Endless tax breaks don't work. Pretending deficits don't hurt doesn't work. Evacuating the productive elements of your economy to third world hell-holes to avoid your own regulatory regime doesn't work. Stop electing the statists that govern this way.

If you like well funded government science you need to figure out how to reconcile yourself with the need for actual prosperity based on actual productivity, despite your banana training. Otherwise, live with the decline. Quietly.

Also, for those of you that believe Japan's debts are inconsequential because most of it is held by its own citizens; who do you think is going to take the inevitable "hair-cut?" How much less hesitation will their statists have disappearing that savings when the time eventually comes due to the lack of diplomatic consequences? Retirements, endowments ... poof. Gone to money heaven.

"Mandriva is about to go bankrupt for the second time"

Why do you keep mentioning Mandriva? They do not have the business model that you think that they do. Neither does Canonical, who offers Ubuntu, a community developed operating system for laptops, desktops, and servers; and Ubuntu Advantage that combines systems management tools, technical support, access to online resources, training, and legal assurance. Its services include custom engineering, hardware certification, support, training, and application packaging. The point is that nobody does operate on such a business model, so the question is absurd, and the claim that Mandriva's woes are some kind of indication that said model is no longer viable is equally absurd.

Madoff. One word suffices. He was detected a decade before he finally took himself down, and the SEC went out of their way to not investigate. Why? Because he was an insider. The only reason he was caught was that the market went down, and his investors started needing their money. The SEC only got wise after it was far too late.

Enron. Again, only one word is needed. They were cooking the books for many years before they folded. Once again the SEC was asleep at the switch, and only found out when it was far too late.

Long Term Capital Management. Not as well known as the others, and somewhat earlier, it was the prototype of the modern trading failure and bailout. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_term_capital_management They got in way over their head with too much leverage and had to be bailed out by the US government. No lessons were learned.

The current world wide recession/depression. The greed and stupidity of Wall Street is at least as great as it was before the depression of the 1930's. All of the structures put in place as a result were negated, and the SEC led the way. Harvey Pitt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Pitt#Criticism Donaldson http://mobile.businessweek.com/magazine/destruction-at-the-sec-09012011.html and Cox http://seekingalpha.com/article/96487-5-failures-of-sec-chairman-cox all sat around with their thumbs in their butts while the biggest fraud in the history of the world was in progress. They all had their marching orders, which was to do absolutely nothing to rock the boat, and they did exactly what they were told.

(Not that the SEC is doing a better job at the current time. The current focus on insider trading is like writing parking tickets while a riot is in progress. It is a deliberate attempt to avoid the big picture and look busy while the economy sinks.)

It would be better if no one at the SEC went in to work. They should all just stay home and collect their pay and do nothing. Then there would be no pretense that there was anyone protecting investors, which is the true situation. Wall Street has one purpose these days, which is to funnel as much money as is humanly possible into the hands of insiders. The upper management steals from their clients, their investors and their workers. A deaf, mute, blind and toothless SEC is just one medium sized cog in the mechanism that enables the massive ongoing looting of the US and world economy.

Google's current CEO, Larry Page, took Steve Jobs' advice to heart and is cutting the bloat (e.g. Google Wave, Google Labs, etc. have all been cut in the last several months). That means less 20%-time projects from engineers who have no experience with product development and more polished projects from the top management and PMs.

Where do I even start with this? Okay, 20% time still exists. Eliminating projects that resulted from it just means those engineers can move on to new ideas or join other projects. Saying 'less 20%-time projects' doesn't really make any sense. That perk still exists ... it's possible his strategy was to disassemble those bigger teams so that they get more engineer hobby projects to pick from. If Page was taking Steve Jobs' advice, the 20 percent perk would be eliminated completely and Page would be walking around instructing people what the consumer wants.

The fact that you think that engineers have 'no experience with product development and more polished projects from the top management and PMs' makes me think you are either management or you live in a fantasy world where management has tricked you. I am a software developer, I do agile development. Guess what? The engineers can do all of what you just listed too! Not having that BS middle management means we get paid more although we have more responsibilities but those responsibilities were already foisted upon us when something went wrong anyway! What does 'more polished projects' mean exactly? Who has always done the polishing and development? It wasn't management and I've often found their direction is a coin flip.

Google's current CEO, Larry Page, took Steve Jobs' advice to heart and is cutting the bloat (e.g. Google Wave, Google Labs, etc. have all been cut in the last several months). That means less 20%-time projects from engineers who have no experience with product development and more polished projects from the top management and PMs.

Google Ireland accounts for most of Google's revenues.

It pays most of that out to Bermuda to dodge taxes:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/google-tax-cut/google-terminal.html

This mechanism was very well documented in a businessweek article: Pssst .... Wanna buy a Law?
In a nutshell, the companies lobby and pre-fabricate heavily customized (for their own needs) bills for local governments` use, keep them in the drawer and present them whenever opportunity rears its ugly head. The article describes exactly this bill in action in Lafayette and the havoc it wreaks on the municipality's idea to build its own infrastructure. Very grimmm...

EU fines Deutsche Post half a billion Euros. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-25/deutsche-post-to-appeal-eu-ruling-on-repaying-state-aid.html

If you don't want to get fined, don't break the rules. BTW, Korea and other jurisdictions fined Intel for breaking the rules to kill AMD.

You do know that the income gap in China is narrowing, right? And it's widening in the US? Conditions in China are bad, but getting better. Conditions for workers in America are much better, but getting worse. Who's getting hurt here?

This is an expression of the free market at work, with a good dose of unintentional consequences for the corporate masters who shipped all the jobs overseas in hopes of getting cheap labour, thereby increasing the value of that labour, and slowly improving the lot of the workers there (at the expense of the workers back home, of course). All this crying and gnashing of teeth ignores the fact that conditions in China are improving for workers, and American workers don't like that.

The real problem isn't the shipping of jobs to one part of the world or another. The real problem is executive compensation. The leeches at the top pay themselves hundreds or possibly thousands of times the wages of the people at the bottom of the supply chain, instead of limiting themselves to something reasonable (but still quite a lot of money) and making sure that everyone else in the chain makes a decent standard of living.

That's not true.

Conditions are improving for Chinese workers though, there's no denying that. Urban living standards have risen in absolute terms, but the gap is growing fast.

We're already seeing where things are heading this way just with water. People are pumping antifreeze up from their water wells, and the oil/gas companies pumping god knows what down there insist it isn't their fault. How do you figure out who to sue? When you can't even force the companies to tell you what they're pumping down, how can you prove that what you're pumping up came from them and not some long closed auto shop that for all anyone knows dumped barrels of whatever in the yard decades ago and it just now got down to the water table?

Why does the government have to provide water to the people of Dimock, PA? Oh wait, that's right, the government said that Cabot didn't have to fix the problem, they just had to give them some water for a few years. Imagine, if only the government hadn't been there to make Cabot do anything at all!

The air? How would you even begin to figure out who caused the pollution that gave you lung cancer? It's bad enough WITH government "regulation" where companies have to "self-report" their "accidental" benzene releases.

It's more profitable to treat the ailment than to cure it? I sure hope they don't pull a 'Geron'. Give them a few more months to solidify their findings ...

Wow, there is somebody on Slashdot who sees the Meego history in realistic light.

And Elop just may be doing a few things right: we finally get sales figure estimates for Lumia not entirely pulled out of some banker's orifice, and they show some respectable numbers, this before US sales have rolled in.

Where do you see something exciting in these projects ?
They are just eye-catching, and I predict they will be killed in the near future (Wave is already dead).
See hairyfeet's reply, his fad's concept is so true.

About innovation, read this interesting article about 3M:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_24/b4038406.htm
To sum it up: 3M had a culture of innovation during 100 years. A single CEO killed this culture in 4 years.

And 3M just got out of the top 50 most innovative companies:
http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.html

To make room for 2010's freshmen, a half-dozen American giants on 2009's list got dumped: AT&T, ExxonMobil, 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Southwest Airlines, and Target

Where do you see something exciting in these projects ?
They are just eye-catching, and I predict they will be killed in the near future (Wave is already dead).
See hairyfeet's reply, his fad's concept is so true.

About innovation, read this interesting article about 3M:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_24/b4038406.htm
To sum it up: 3M had a culture of innovation during 100 years. A single CEO killed this culture in 4 years.

And 3M just got out of the top 50 most innovative companies:
http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.html

To make room for 2010's freshmen, a half-dozen American giants on 2009's list got dumped: AT&T, ExxonMobil, 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Southwest Airlines, and Target

No, you are wrong, here is an example: http://google.com/codesearch
No more service, and no replacement (don't believe what they say, this service was indexing all source code on the Internet, not Google's only).

Google is killing every service that doesn't return quick money. This means that Google just stopped all innovation (except a few star projects, like Google car, but what does an advertisement's company do in the automobile's domain anyway ? It's so ... out of place).

Why would you want to take risks when you can make money with existing products ?
Why would you put money in Research when you can concentrate on Development ?
Oh, that's right: let's buy any startup that has an interesting idea, and kill the idea if it doesn't make money.

Google is ranked as the 2nd most innovative company in 2010:
http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.html
Let's see how it will do in the next rankings.

The problem with Google is now greed.

Bump. Someone sprinkle modpoints above.

The current philosophy that China will over take the US in technology improvements or economically is based on non-sense from the media and fear mongers. *gasp* The fact of the matter is that there is such disparity in the Chinese economy they will soon be feeling the sobering effects of the rash growth and self-valuing yuan.

There was a story doing the rounds a couple of years ago about a (small, local) study which found that 9-month old infants displayed gender-specific preferences when playing with toys, i.e. girls tended to play with "girl" toys, boys with "boy" toys, with the suggestion that this could be due to innate rather than cultural factors.

This is possibly the case, but I wonder how well the researchers actually controlled for other factors which could influence the outcome. Unfortunately, I can only find journalistic write-ups of this study, and not any actual paper, even when searching the proceedings of the conference where this was supposedly presented.

Let's not forget that ethanol fuels destroy engines, lower gas mileage, and drive farmers into bankrupcy.

Rational, mentally-balanced individuals don't engage in that kind of behavior.

Just FYI

I mean, Lego is reportedly the world's #1 tire manufacturer, just based on the number of tires it produces, but it's not exactly an automotive powerhouse.

Maybe, all I know is that they're the only ones making Ferraris I can afford! (or were)

Is this a legitimate comparison?

I mean, Lego is reportedly the world's #1 tire manufacturer, just based on the number of tires it produces, but it's not exactly an automotive powerhouse.

BW 2001: Bloomberg still insists that the Net is too "unreliable" a way to deliver his product. Servers go down, security is dicey, and he has faith in a closed system. There's a Bloomberg Web site with data and news for free. But the CEO was an early skeptic of the Internet gold rush, and these days he figures that he has been proved more right than wrong.

BusinessWeek: "The deal's advocates faced a barrage of questions. In addition to Mary Ma, Lenovo's chief financial officer, the lineup included people from consultant McKinsey and investment bank Goldman Sachs (GS ). The directors' chief concern: Were Lenovo's execs really capable of running a complex global business? The breakthrough came after three days. The directors concluded that if Lenovo could recruit IBM's top execs to help manage the company, this merger could succeed. "The board felt there were positive solutions," says Liu."
LA Times: "Also at stake in the deal are about $18 million in investment banking fees for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co., based on Bloomberg estimates. Merrill has advised IBM, and Goldman worked for Lenovo."

I'm surprised that nobody noticed it: Google is stopping all its future innovations, and concentrate on short-term revenues, which is a decision from their CEO, not by the cost of maintaining the current tools (it's a very small cost).

Something similar happened in 2000 with the 3M company, when James McNerney from GE became the new CEO.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_24/b4038406.htm
In 5 years, 3M, which was ranked as the most innovative company in the world, fell at the 7th place.
This year, 3M disappeared from the 50 most innovative companies, check here:
http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.html

McNerney focused on using Six Sigma, and improving productivity.
3M, based on a culture of innovation since 100 years, had its internal culture almost destroyed in only 5 years.

The inventor of post-it said that it would have been impossible that the "post-it" concept would have been successful using the new method.

In my opinion, it's a very short-sighted decision, as you can see with Microsoft and IBM, which invest a lot of money in innovation.
It's impossible to predict what will work in a few years, and I doubt that the current monopoly of Google on Internet ads will long very last.

Now, let me give a prediction:
currently, Apple and Google are ranked 1st and 2nd as the most innovative companies.
I bet that in 2 years, they won't be in the top 10 anymore.

I'm surprised that nobody noticed it: Google is stopping all its future innovations, and concentrate on short-term revenues, which is a decision from their CEO, not by the cost of maintaining the current tools (it's a very small cost).

Something similar happened in 2000 with the 3M company, when James McNerney from GE became the new CEO.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_24/b4038406.htm
In 5 years, 3M, which was ranked as the most innovative company in the world, fell at the 7th place.
This year, 3M disappeared from the 50 most innovative companies, check here:
http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.html

McNerney focused on using Six Sigma, and improving productivity.
3M, based on a culture of innovation since 100 years, had its internal culture almost destroyed in only 5 years.

The inventor of post-it said that it would have been impossible that the "post-it" concept would have been successful using the new method.

In my opinion, it's a very short-sighted decision, as you can see with Microsoft and IBM, which invest a lot of money in innovation.
It's impossible to predict what will work in a few years, and I doubt that the current monopoly of Google on Internet ads will long very last.

Now, let me give a prediction:
currently, Apple and Google are ranked 1st and 2nd as the most innovative companies.
I bet that in 2 years, they won't be in the top 10 anymore.