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That really isn't the problem of corporate personhood, it's a problem of personal apathy. How much did you donate during the last election? Probably none.

Look at what happened in Obama's election campaign......he made over half a billion from individual donors. That is not easy for corporations to match. In politics, the reason corporations have so much power is because people complain about money, but they don't care enough to actually donate to the person of their choice. Corporations win because of apathy.

That is the important point: it doesn't matter WHAT kind of campaign finance laws you have, as long as their is widespread apathy, the corporations will still win.

Also, you completely misunderstand corporate personhood. If a person in a corporation behaves negligently, they can still face criminal charges, for example, like in the BP oil spill.

I don't disagree with your point, but we -don't- pay "market price" for the oil. Since Goldman Sachs took advantage of the repeal of Glass-Steagal, we've been paying speculator prices. Look here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_09/b4217086779050.htm. Good read, even if not very tightly woven.

Because it is a pain in the ass and costly to implement

Don't forget you're also developing the F-35 JSF, which seems to be a more versatile F-22 at the cost of some air superiority (which is already far superior to every other nation's air force). The bill for that program seems to be around $380 billion.

Remember that TMobile is a PROFITABLE company. They are actively making money. If DT would just cut them lose and give them the freedom to succeed or fail, I am willing to bet that they would do pretty well.

Profitable is an elusive beast. Its doubtful T-Mobile alone would survive.

During the first quarter of 2011, T-Mobile saw its revenue hit $4.63 billion, putting it in line with the first quarter of 2010. However, the company's profit fell over $200 million year over year from $362 million last year to $135 million in the first quarter of 2011.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20060353-17.html

They can see the writing on the wall, as their small market area makes it hard for them to compete.

In addition DT has problems elsewhere, parts of their Euro market are also tanking. In fact the German market sees to be the only place they are making a good profit margin. They were counting on the now-defunct sale as a source of income.

Carrier IQ is a child's toy compared to Palantir.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-14/nokia-rises-as-danske-says-microsoft-may-buy-smartphone-unit.html

The market comes with very strong regulations:

The Libbies want to dismantle those regulations.

You can't defraud people,

You must be new here -- in the country, I mean. You've never been cheated by business? You're either really young or really lucky. Ever heard of OtherOS? You don't consider Sony removing a feature you've paid for to be fraud?

you can't pollute,

No? Why is no one in prison for that? You can bet your ass if you, a person, negligently did something like that you'ld be in prison for life.

you can't enslave people,

Tell that to anyone dependant on a paycheck when unemployment is 9%. Tell that to migrant farm workers.

you can't steal,

Ever heard of emminent domain?

What about negligent homicide? A mass murder and nobody went to prison for it.

Wanting to dismantle the federal EPA is brain-dead stupid. Pollution doesn't honor state lines. Wanting to dismantle the FDA si similarly moronic as most of your food and medicine comes from out of state.

just like the public sector is a completely inappropriate sector to place the production of food in!

Huh? You're batshit crazy, son. Nobody is asking for the government to go into the farming business! Take your meds and then a nap.

This isn't some utopian ideal It happens in the socialist countries of Europe.

Which ones? The bankrupt ones? Greece is a wonderful model of superb vacation time and job security/pensions, right? As usual, the belief that we can simply wish all these wonderful things into being without any cost or detrimental effect to our economy/standard-of-living is disingenuous at best and outright delusion at worst.

Maybe, just maybe, the healthcare equation isn't as simple as "implement universal healthcare, solve all problems". http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/09/where_are_healt.html

Similarly who is paying for the "more vacation time" you speak of? And who is creating the jobs? You really do act as if there's some magic genie that could snap his fingers and make all this stuff appear. Right now our country is looking to CUT costs, because we SPEND TOO MUCH. And you want more handouts? How bout we start by finding what is actually causing our healthcare bills to be so high and address that (rather than handing out healthcare to everyone, no matter what the cost!)

Pretty much because the difference between the bad ones and the good ones is all in the display assembly - it makes up the bulk of the cost. A decent screen and touch interface etc is going to set you back - and then it becomes "an expensive tablet".

Hang on. My problem with your analysis is that you're combining two things that are entirely separate... The INPUT and the OUTPUT.

I realize that (eg. AMOLED) displays are expensive. No problem, though... I'm perfectly willing to settle for a lower-res LCD display based on older tech. The Samsung Transform Ultra I mentioned is a perfect example, with a nasty LCD screen-door effect (compared to my Droid) but which I quickly learned to tolerate...

But high-res screen or no, what drives me insane is flaky touch-screen INPUT (not output), and I find it hard to believe that going from a horrible, glitchy capacitive touch screen, to a RELIABLE capacitive touch screen, costs a significant fraction of a phone or tablet's sale price. In many cases, as I said, I'd be willing to bet it might only require a software change.

Furthermore, I'm not sure your statement is actually accurate. All sources I could find point to an iPhone 4's Retina display at about $30:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2010/tc20100627_763714.htm

http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/06/apple-maintains-big-margins-on-iphone-4s-according-to-ubm-analysis/

I do not suggest that European law is similar to chinese laws or islamic barbarism. But it's also very unlike American law, and has no direct right to free speech like Americans do.

Google does not actually have physical business presence anywhere outside of the US (in fact I believe they don't even have that outside of California). They have wholly owned subsidiaries, some of which are physically located inside the EU. Technically those subsidiaries are resellers.

So google's methods of making profit are governed by the laws of the state of California, while google's profits are distributed according to the laws of the British territory of the Bermudas. Read all about it

Except of course, that CRA loans were a small part of the sub-prime crisis, and had a lower default rate than non-CRA loans, which shows that the banks did indeed fail to give due diligence.

in shareholder equity to a direct competitor. What are you going to do next, Gil Amelio (Apple CEO 1996-97) and AT&T's board of directors?

"Let's give our boy another 27 million USD annual package for losing a third of our shareholder's market cap since he took over in 2007!"

...their government departments(including nominally private organizations like Huawei) and any company's assets within China all deserve to be compromised.

Of course, this won't sit well with the China apologists that will (inevitably) modbomb this - just that China gets too many passes than it really deserves.

Always when I hear or see something positive about WP7, I get a knee-jerk reaction that makes me think about the 1 billion US dollars MS payed Nokia to promote their new OS. If they have that much cash to spend, why not waste it on some forum trolls and reviewing sites as well?

The implied innovation (that keeps coming up in these "iPhone and other smartphone") is in dusting off old ideas that can be implemented with the "now ubiquitous" technology.

Old ideas that require a kilometers long particle accelerator, or three mules and 45 feet of leather strapping aren't nearly as exciting as seeing something cool done with this cheap computer with a radio transmitter that you keep in a pocket next to your gonads.

I once got kudos from Mr. Dean Kamen for employing a Handspring Visor to do medical datalogging. Yeah, medical datalogging had been done before, our company had been doing mostly that for the previous 25 years, and we didn't have anything to do with development of the Palm Pilot or the Visor, but we recognized the newly affordable, highly portable computers for their potential as a significant component of what was previously a much larger, more expensive, and less portable system. Sure, it could have been done 3 years earlier with "off the shelf" tech, but using the Visor dropped the development costs of the overall system by nearly an order of magnitude. I was a little embarrassed when he said it, but, looking back, we had the idea fairly far along in development as an accessory to interface to the serial port of a Palm Pilot before the Visor was announced, and when the Visor was announced, we backed up (maybe a month's work) to redo the device as an "on the bus" expansion board for the Visor instead. Our timing to take advantage of the Visor launch couldn't have been better - completely accidental, but that's how it worked out.

For what it's worth, investment bankers took over the spinoff company that developed the idea, they got all queasy about depending on other companies and "non commodity technology" to support their investment so they went much more vertically integrated, building their own PDA, and recoding all the PC side software in Visual Studio and MFC (from Borland's OWL). In some senses, they were right, Borland and Palm/Handspring did die fairly soon thereafter, but in another view, their prescience about these problems is what hobbled their growth, taking almost a year to re-code the software, and longer to build their own PDA - if they had pushed harder on what they had in-hand, their time to market would have been dramatically reduced, and maybe they would have done better for the original investors. As it turned out, they just plodded along, slipping into chapter 11 about 10 years down the road.

Not too far off. I'm almost done with this book and I'm not quite sure what "value" these guys provide for the money they get:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_09/b4217086779050.htm

That 76 billion in cash Apple has isn't building iPhones and it isn't paying for new product research. It's sitting in the bank and when corporations make big profits they are supposed to share those profits with the people who own the company. That's the shareholders.

Are you sure about that? Apple is known for using their cash reserves strategically to lock down their supply chain and ensure lower prices. Also Apple uses that cash to buy companies for expansion or technology. Or are you going to fault Apple for not foolishly spending all their cash reserves?

Did Obama ever actually claim "the economy has recovered"?

Anyway, it's all about how you define "recovered" - some economists argued that the economy had "recovered" once it showed 3 months of consecutive growth. See this businessinsider article for an example of that usage. The man on the street may well argue that "recovered" means the jobless % returns to previous levels, but others are arguing that may not happen at all in the "jobless recovery". So, by what metric is "recovered" measured? Profitability? Employment? CEO salaries? Salaries for everyone else? Economic growth? Consumption? House sales? The deficit? And over what time period is this metric to be measured?

Unfortunately China is backing away from Nuclear:

"The government wants to address public concern over the safety of nuclear development," Li Yongjiang, vice president of the China Nuclear Energy Association, said in an interview in Hong Kong, where he is attending an industry conference. "Capacity will fall somewhere between 60 and 70 gigawatts, as some planned projects have to be scaled back or canceled."

Have you ever used a touchscreen to play games? Constantly having your arm at attention and moving your hands around blocks screen real estate is a really big minus most people don't consider.

Have you ever used a touch-enabled device to play CARD GAMES? Touch-based devices offer more intuitive and easier-to-hit targets than the abstracted controls of something like a Nintendo hand held. Incidentally (not really), there is much anecdotal evidence that elderly people do very well with iPads. In some cases, iPads can also be used as an assistive device.

Regarding cost, iPads are right around $500. That's really not much for a device that may dramatically improve an elderly woman's quality of life. An iPad potentially be a more useful device than a Nintendo hand held, which I'm guessing would be disregarded after a few uses.

I hear variations on this claim quite frequently.
Here are several links that dispute your recollection.
http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/news/coladvice/ask/sa990930.htm
http://blog.globalbx.com/2008/10/06/small-business-statistics-and-failure-rates/
A collection of results that span from your estimation to the inverse, http://www.moyak.com/papers/small-business-statistics.html
There also seems to be many discussions on the myth of high failure rates. for example, http://www.bnet.com/blog/business-myths/why-the-small-business-failure-rate-is-90-percent-smoke-and-mirrors/117

This certainly isn't rigorous, but my 3 minute Internet estimation is that you are broadly incorrect. Apparently, the notion of failure is complicated. Failures appear to be inversely proportional to seed capital. It varies substantially with race and industry. And the definition of failure may include businesses that close for reasons other than financial inviability.

Did you even read your own reference? Contributions have gone up, though not as much as "tuition".

That's not clear from the link, since the figures were not inflation-adjusted. But in any case, those numbers are 10 years old. How about some more recent information:

In the 2009 fiscal year, state support for higher education nationally fell from $80.7 billion to $77.9 billion, and this year it's expected to fall an additional $2.7 billion, to $75.2 billion, according to the annual Grapevine survey out of Illinois State University's Center for the Study of Education Policy. The impact of those reductions has not been fully felt yet, because nearly $40 billion was provided to states by the federal government through the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, part of last year's $787 billion stimulus package. With those federal funds soon running out and state and local tax revenues still in decline, many public university presidents are looking anxiously toward the 2011 fiscal year, worried that the they'll have to take even more draconian measures.

OMFG I didn't realize the oil and coal companies are being _persecuted_ on such a massive scale by the big bad gubernment and those lazy scientists, how would they ever defend themselves... maybe with profits from oil and gas? http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-27/exxon-mobil-profit-tops-10-billion-on-crude-oil-price-surge.html Exxonmobil made (net) 10 billion in the last quarter alone - don't worry I think the big boys can take care of themselves, they can petition the government (lobby) against regulation, run ads and fund any scientists who take their money. Maybe the government spends more money on global warming research because it is an observable phenomena. Your argument about AGW funding could be the same as that of a believer in phlogiston theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory complaining the government isn't spending on phlogiston research...

And there will never be a melt down in China, because they do such a good job of building infrastructure that is failure proof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#2011_Wenzhou_train_accident

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-07-28/china-high-speed-rail-crash-likely-caused-by-signal-flaw.html Beijing National Railway Research & Design Institute of Signal & Communication Co. apologized to the families of people killed or injured in the crash and said it would cooperate with the investigation, according to a letter posted today on its website. The company, a unit of state-owned China Railway Signal & Communication Corp, didn’t say what equipment it had supplied or designed.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201107250340.html Concerning the burying of a train car after the accident, a source in Japan who investigates train accidents said, "Investigative agencies in China are not very independent, and I have heard that in many cases they are influenced by what the government wants done."

After all the Japanese, one of the most technically advanced countries in the world, had four reactors explode due to regulatory failure. All it took to keep this worse case scenario from occurring was a bigger sea wall. But that would have cost some money, and be a public admission that there was an earthquake problem.

So China, which has no effectively independent regulators, will have no problems with the largest expansion of fission power in the history of the world. Care to bet your life on that? There are literally millions of Chinese citizens who are having that bet made for them, and they have no choice in the matter. Since you are so sure there is no danger, maybe your best move would be to relocate as close as you can to one of their reactors. They will be the leaders of the 21st century, as you said, and you should be where the actions is.

I'm more confused about what is said over why it is said.

A good thesis has three parts: Who, What, and Why

Now, I see plenty of who and what, but no why.

"This is also the reason why Google is struggling in non-western world like China and Russia. They didn't get there by the time internet got wider usage, so they cannot get market share now." -- really? A company that doesn't like censoring and tried to find ways to not censor legally does not get common usage in a country that loves to censor? I'm talking about china and their homegrown Baidu as an example.

Saying that Microsoft started from an underdog position is fallacy. There were other search companies before Google existed and Microsoft didn't see any need to compete then. They made Google their enemy after they realized that there is a market for information. Just because they were late doesn't mean it is Google's fault. Maybe it was the lack of foresight with the internet? If memory serves me right, Windows 95 did not have WinSock at release and had to be installed with modem software.

----------------------
Related to the article though, I find the whole thing all-in-all pointless. They are giving food to the enemy here, and that is under the assumption that people choose the browser by choice of the default search engine. I can only assume they really want to get a foothold to edge out some of Google's territory down the road.

This has been covered widely in the business media, best article probably being from Bloomberg
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm

Why not Android:
[Elop] tried to negotiate a deal with Google to run Android, but Google refused to give the world's biggest phonemaker any advantages over its smaller partners, meaning Nokia's corps of 11,600 engineers would have next to no ability to add their own innovations to Google's software. "It just didn't feel right," Elop says to the crowd. "We'd be just another company distributing Android. That's not Nokia! We need to fight!"

Why Windows Phone:
Elop says his software deal with Microsoft was misconstrued as a Hail Mary to the receiver with the worst hands in the business. Microsoft had just 4 percent of the overall market prior to the Nokia deal. What Nokia didn't gain in market share, however, it hopes to gain in flexibility. The contract grants Nokia the right to stuff almost any innovation it can muster into its Windows Phones

In 1998 a U.S.-German satellite known as ROSAT, used for peering into deep space, was rendered useless after it turned suddenly toward the sun. NASA investigators later determined that the accident was linked to a cyber-intrusion at the Goddard Space Flight Center in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. The interloper sent information to computers in Moscow, NASA documents show. U.S. investigators fear the data ended up in the hands of a Russian spy agency.

And i used to laugh at that satellite "hacking" scene in "Antitrust".

Samsung is not backing down because of that Australian ruling: here's an article that they have now also filed suite against the iPhone 4s in Australia and Japan (following existing cases in France and Italy)

have shown that sitting is bad for you. Learn to work while standing and enjoy the extra years.

It's not so much the fact that you're sitting, as the fact that you're not moving. Standing in place has not been shown to be any better for you than sitting on your ass.

Ideally, you'd walk around the office every few minutes.

have shown that sitting is bad for you. Learn to work while standing and enjoy the extra years.

What the...? How is it losing ground? Apple is the #1 smartphone vendor and had its highest sales ever with the iPhone 4, even in spite of the phony antenna controversy. In fact, with the iPad and iPod touch counted, iOS is the #1 mobile OS by a large margin.

I believe Android has it beat. Apple may be gaining traction but it's not number one. A quote from BusinessWeek July 29:

Apple increased its market share to 5.6 percent in the second quarter, from 2.6 percent a year earlier, IDC said in an e-mailed statement today. Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc., the three biggest vendors, all lost market share, making Apple the only one of the top-four to post a gain,

I'd never actually looked at the raw data before, so I decided to based on your post. And...yeah, that's pretty interesting.

Anyone interested... http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp?ticker=RIM:CN

The iPad CAN be produced for less than $500, and it is. Don't forget that Apple has made long-term commitments with the memory manufacturers, so they've even got better deals than that...

iPad
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2010/tc2010046_788280.htm

iPad 2
http://www.itproportal.com/2011/03/14/apple-ipad-2-faces-severe-component-price-inflation/

Yeah, my current employer "bought" me from a call center, over eleven years ago, for $36k. Now, I'm making nearly 3x that salary. I come and go when I please, essentially work on what I feel like working on, and I get to be an asshole and a curmudgeon, and noone can call me on it. There are benefits other than salary.

They enticed you away with a raise, and you stayed because you kept getting fair market value for your service. That was kinda my whole point.

What he ought to do is decide whether working for the new company benefits him more than working for the old company. Whether it's worth giving up the friendships, relationships, intangible benefits, and other goodies he's built up in exchange for the larger salary and the possibility of new intangible benefits down the road. Early this year, I took a new job with a giant financial firm, and while the pay was indeed nice, the working environment was NOT what it was cracked up to be. It was a nightmare, and so I returned here about about 10 weeks. Not everyone would have this opportunity, but in my case, I'm sure glad I did.

So, let me get this straight. Talking with your boss about another opportunity could be considered disloyal, but you actually left your current job for a better offer and then came back and you're advising others on what you consider to be company loyalty?

This is not just my advice, this is the generally accepted wisdom:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/28/counter-offer-employer-lead-careers-cx_hr_0630counteroffer.html

http://frugaldad.com/2008/02/05/accepting-company-counter-offer-can-be-risky-move/

http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/nov2004/ca2004114_2710_ca009.htm

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/it-recruiter/why-you-should-not-accept-a-counter-offer-2359

I would hardly consider these 4 links "accepted wisdom". The first link (Forbes) talks about some guy whose counteroffer was to be the CEO of a major multinational retailer. So what if he only had the job for 3 years? When your salary is $1m per year and you have a golden parachute bailout, 3 years as CEO is plenty of time to rack up some serious cash. It even mentioned that he took an early retirement. Oh, the horror. That sounds like just about the best possible outcome. CEO anecdotes are not really applicable for people working at the "peon" level.

Second link (frugaldad) is written by Jason (Frugal Dad) on his blog. His anecdote is that he was ready to receive a counteroffer, but he got laid off instead. He then goes on to contradict the belief that counteroffers are indicators of disloyalty in his second paragraph.

Third link (businessweek) is behind a paywall, or broken.

Fourth article (it.toolbox) was written by a recruiter who is obviously irritated by people who run through the whole recruitment process (thus wasting his time) and then stay with their current company due to a counter-offer. He ends the article with this:

"I hope that some of this dialoge hits home because these are some of the most frustrating issues to handle as a recruiter. I think they are all avoidable and can positively impact your career when handled in the right manner. These are principles to live by, like being honest and sticking to your word, and knowing thy self!"

And I think that speaks volumes. It's not accepted wisdom, it's one recruiter guy giving his opinion.

Whatever though. Of course, there are intangibles like the people you work with, that atmosphere, perks, and your gene

Seriously? Is anyone at your current company under the illusion that you would not leave for a high enough offer? People can pretend all they want, but the reality is that your current employer bought you from your previous employer. Every new person they hire, they are hiring away from another company, likely at a higher rate. What's the big surprise here? Of course your skills are for sale - that's why you're working. If they are not willing to pay market value for your skills then move on.

Yeah, my current employer "bought" me from a call center, over eleven years ago, for $36k. Now, I'm making nearly 3x that salary. I come and go when I please, essentially work on what I feel like working on, and I get to be an asshole and a curmudgeon, and noone can call me on it. There are benefits other than salary.

I suppose I'm rather baffled by the whole logic here; what, then, should he do? Refuse the current job offer and stay where he's at, but keep it a secret? How does that prove loyalty at all? Nobody knows about it. Or he could refuse the current job offer and then tell his current employer he was offered a job somewhere else but refused. That just sounds needy and pathetic - does that prove loyalty? Or does that prove you're too chickenshit to stand up and ask for a reasonable raise?

What he ought to do is decide whether working for the new company benefits him more than working for the old company. Whether it's worth giving up the friendships, relationships, intangible benefits, and other goodies he's built up in exchange for the larger salary and the possibility of new intangible benefits down the road. Early this year, I took a new job with a giant financial firm, and while the pay was indeed nice, the working environment was NOT what it was cracked up to be. It was a nightmare, and so I returned here about about 10 weeks. Not everyone would have this opportunity, but in my case, I'm sure glad I did.

    Or he could man up and explain the situation to his boss. If his boss has a clue and his workplace isn't a hellhole, they might offer him a small raise. If they are hostile to the whole idea, then he's better off quitting and moving on anyway. I've never had a problem discussing stuff like this with my boss, she is intelligent and reasonable and understands that I have bills to pay and a family to feed. I don't work for the love of working, I work because I need a paycheck. If I can get a bigger paycheck by negotiating a little bit, what's the harm in that? If you work at a company that considers something like this untrustworthy, then maybe you should reevaluate the situation.

The problem is that it marks you as someone who's looking for a new job. Even if you get your counter-offer, your employer knows it's merely a matter of time. Those "intangibles" tend to disappear rather quickly at that point. If you're working strictly for a salary, then by all means, go for the counteroffer, but for the rest of us, it's not worth turning our workplace hostile for a little more money.

This is not just my advice, this is the generally accepted wisdom:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/28/counter-offer-employer-lead-careers-cx_hr_0630counteroffer.html
http://frugaldad.com/2008/02/05/accepting-company-counter-offer-can-be-risky-move/
http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/nov2004/ca2004114_2710_ca009.htm
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/it-recruiter/why-you-should-not-accept-a-counter-offer-2359

In the past jobs seemed to be a bit of a design nut.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_39/b4002414.htm
Apple everyone knows their employment depends on living up to Jobs's high standards. According to one story, possibly apocryphal, Jobs once demanded that a designer of a new Mac not allow a single visible screw. When the designer built a prototype that had one screw, tucked out of sight under a handle, Jobs fired him.

Also he seemed a bit of a thin nut as well with the mini, imacs and laptops.

Will there be any change in being more open for enterprise use?

Not saying that you need to go all the way with os x on any hardware.

But have

Boxed software or some kind of easy way to work the app store.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=133132&highlight=education+end

I'm fine downloading software, but the issue isn't the download it's the fact that a purchase has to be tied to an iTunes account. If the APP has DRM then you need to also be logged in with that account. This causes serious issues in an Enterprise, much like the iPad does. The institution wants to always retain it's own purchases forever and so we end up managing hundreds of email aliases we use to generate iTunes accounts. It wouldn't be so bad, but there is also no model like the Volume Purchasing Program for the App Store for the Mac App Store and so tax exempt schools get taxed on purchases and then have to go through a process to get their tax back.

It's a boat load of overhead in a managed environment to say the least. Cart before the horse in regards to the Mac App Store. But I get it...Enterprise is the second class citizen to the bread and butter personal consumers.
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Laptops with battery you can change like just about ALL OTHER laptops.

some kind of hardware / software road map.

Mate displays

imacs with easy to get to HDD's other AIO don't make you use suction cups to take the screen off just to change a HDD.

specs bumbs or lower pricing on systems like the mac pro that stays the same for 6mo-1year + at times.

a bigger mac mini that has more for better cooling, desktop cpus (lower cost and more power then the laptop cpus in the mini), room for desktop HDD's, quad core + low to mid rage video chips.

A mac mini tower or lower price mac pro will also be good for enterprise use the mini is ok but same specs with more room for cooling may be needed.

Lot's of tech fantasy, zero fact. No company could ever legally negotiate the deal you described above. Please, take off your tinfoil hat and get real.

Meanwhile, outside the reality distortion field: Bloomberg Businessweek: Microsoft Is Said to Pay Nokia More Than $1 Billion in Deal (emphasis on which way the money is flowing)

According to Google, HP Touchpad costs $306 to make while the iPad costs $260. Of course it's all approximate, but at $499 it's clear they're being sold with about a $150 - $200 margin, which is pretty hefty in the consumer electronics market.

Now it's speculated that Amazon is taking a $50 loss on each Kindle Fire. And you know what, they're going to sell a ton. A quote from my friend just now: "dunno why i want the kindle fire so much." I'll tell you why, because it's in impulse buy range. And if Amazon can make that $50 back in content sales then they're going to do well with these.

What's zynga, never heard of that

Not sure if you are trolling or what, by Zynga is a huge gaming company mostly propped up by facebook. Some sources say that they are bigger than EA.

Well i guess not anymore :P

So the fact that Groupon counted the total amount of its daily-deal sales as revenue, including fees paid to merchants and didn't think anyone would notice had anything to do with it?

Or how about Zynga's founder Mark Pincus' own admission that he scammed the players to make money.

IBM contributes heavily to open source, and in fact might be the biggest contributor to open source, and they are quite profitable.

Due to their proprietary hardware and software that they sell. Not due to open source.

Actually, that's not true. In 2010, IBM earned $58.7 billion from its business services, technology services, and finance divisions, compared to $40.5 billion for its software and systems and technology divisions. So most of IBM's money comes from consulting and services, in which might involve proprietary products as well as open source software. IBM's policy is to offer its customers solutions that are the best fit for their needs and budgets -- that is, they'll bleed you as much as they can, but if it makes the most sense to use open source software, they'll use that.

Also, even some of IBM's proprietary software is open source. Let me repeat that: Even some of the software that you describe as "proprietary" also comprises open source elements. Not every open source license forbids commercial use. For example, IBM's WebSphere Application Server bundles a modified version of the Apache HTTP server (unless you want to use something else). In reverse, IBM has donated a number of products to the Apache Foundation, and these are usually mature packages that IBM was already deploying for real-world projects (e.g. CloudScape, aka Derby) and continues to use today -- now IBM just gains the benefits of community development. To the extent that Java is also open source, IBM is obviously heavily involved in the Java Specification Process (even if it has its own, proprietary Java products).

So you really can't claim IBM isn't a good open source citizen, and you can't claim IBM isn't profiting from its decision to embrace open source,either (where appropriate). Consider this: In 2010, IBM earned $22.5 billion from its software business. You know what it's gross profit margin from that business was? 86.9 percent. That's right, 86.9 percent. Think open source had nothing to do with that?

The open source part is just leveraged to sell more proprietary hardware and software.

Correction: The open source part is just leveraged -- or, if we can drop the bullshit MBA jargon, it's used to make money. What's wrong with that? I thought that was the whole topic of the thread.

Actually, yes, in some cases they do:
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/02/can_this_be_true_of_wal-mart.html

This is not the best article on the subject, but it is common for Walmart to contract for a cheaper version of an item with sometimes an identical model. Another mention would be here, in an article about the Snapper mower guy not wanting to sell to Walmart:

"The Wal-Mart vice president responded with strategy and argument. Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like. He suggested that Snapper find a lower-cost contract manufacturer. He suggested producing a separate, lesser-quality line with the Snapper nameplate just for Wal-Mart. Just like Levi did."

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapper.html?page=0%2C3

Google “shouldn’t be permitted to pursue practices that restrict others from innovating and offering competitive alternatives .. That’s what it’s doing now”, Jack Evans - Microsoft link

HAHA! Sucks when it's happening to you, eh MSFT?? Hope you like the taste of crow!!

`On top of all that, Microsoft is alleging that Google overcharges them as much as fifty-fold for advertising prices as compared to other buyers', samzenpus

Take notice of the exact phrasiology eminating out of RedMond.

Google “shouldn’t be permitted to pursue practices that restrict others from innovating and offering competitive alternatives .. That’s what it’s doing now”, Jack Evans - Microsoft link

"The power grid received 4,500 megawatt-hours of power from midnight to 7 a.m. in the months audited, El Mundo said."

The original article is no longer online. It was here: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-12/spanish-solar-panel-trade-group-calls-for-fraud-investigation.html. Google `spanish solar panel fraud' for more information.

An analyst said:

"In all, we believe that it is more likely that the board reaches an agreement to sell the company or parts of the company before a new CEO is found"

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9PJM6TO0.htm

Samsung filed this suit against Apple, not the other way around. How weak must their case be that after suing Apple, the judge rules that Samsung's own products be pulled from the shelves?

Samsung Electronics Counter Sues Apple as Patent Row Deepens

Frankly, health care costs are bleeding the United States dry. The U.S. is paying a 50% premium for health care that is below average (WHO. The giant deficit that is part of the reason for the downgrade of the U.S. debt rating? There are three main parts: Social Security, Military Spending and Medicare.

There are charitable medical organizations that only operate in undeveloped nations and the United States. The free market approach is working so poorly that poor Americans are getting health care that's the equivalent to what you'd get in Ethiopia or Somalia.

According to this article 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007 were caused by medical problems (link to study).

>> All the source is open but some is more open than others.

Please go on. Don't be shy. And if you can't provide the evidence, please just shut the fuck up with your Apple whoring.

"Over the past few months, according to several people familiar with the matter, Google has been demanding that Android licensees abide by "non-fragmentation clauses" that give Google the final say on how they can tweak the Android code—to make new interfaces and add services—and in some cases whom they can partner with."

Or I could have just said: Honeycomb. "Open" indeed.

BTW, they have pills for Tourette's now.

It's a little bit irony that the article at the link you provided has the following conclusion, which of course, you conveniently forgot to mention: -

The bottom line: Despite grumblings, Google's Android mobile operating system is still open—it's just getting more heavily policed.