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>> 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.

Actually it is even worse than that.
In the absence of HFT's the alternative is to have specialist market-makers at exchanges. That would mean an oligopoly of people who can buy a seat of exchanges making money on bid ask spreads. They were kicked out of exchanges after a set of large investors sued them for front-running their trades http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2003/nf20031217_6559_db016.htm.
If you had neither specialists nor HFTs, a trade could only be done in case there was a buyer and a seller. It would be great in case of normal markets, but in case of market panics there would be far more sellers and buyers causing price swings to worsen. It is believed that this would be bad for liquidity and markets in general.
There are some other ways proposed to solve this problem - some have suggested an auction every second, with no trades done in between those seconds. IE there would be only 28,800 "trades" in an 8 hour day. Every order that comes in between is consolidated. It is not clear if that would still help because presumably some computer would figure out an algo. that could beat the auction.

Of course, in this case the software is licensed free of charge for everyone. I'd say that, and the fact that the base is all open source, does quite a bit to calm other manufacturers.

That's not strictly true though is it. It might be true for old versions, but Google might well withhold access to new versions. They've already done so with Honeycomb, releasing early to the parties of their choosing. And then there's this mysterious quote from Google : "According to Google, Microsoft did not ask permission before showing Stevenson the Android source code. [...] "The confidential source code improperly provided to Dr. Stevenson is highly proprietary source code that Google does not even share with its partners, such as Motorola," Google said."

One doesn't buy or sell bridges, prisons, etc.

You must be new to the US:
Private Prisions
Roads
Everything else

Now MeeGo is ready

That's hardly what this article says.

At its current pace, Nokia was on track to introduce only three MeeGo-driven models before 2014

And Nokia's problem so far has been having too few models? And they're biggest competitor launches how many phones a year?

It is evident from a number of sources that are or were inside Nokia that Meego/Harmattan was delayed due to continual direction changes by management. I believe Meego/Harmattan, if it had been shipped by February 2011, even with 1 device a year, would have been sufficient to make Nokia's Qt strategy successful.

But, too many devices leads to a lack of hardware accessories from 3rd parties, too many form factors for developers to consider (right, Qt/QML would make it easy for most apps), too much divergence in software between devices, leading to fewer updates, leading to shorter support lifetimes, leading to resentment from customers, leading to smaller market share.

I think Nokia still hasn't managed to figure out what it is that they are doing wrong. It certainly wasn't their Qt strategy, or Linux-based devices, or tablets ...

Now MeeGo is ready

That's hardly what this article says.

At its current pace, Nokia was on track to introduce only three MeeGo-driven models before 2014â"far too slow to keep the company in the game. Elop tried to call OistÃmÃ, but his phone battery was dead. "He must have been trying an Android phone that day," says Elop. When they finally spoke late on Jan. 4, "It was truly an oh-s--t momentâ"and really, really painful to realize where we were," says OistÃmÃ. Months later, OistÃmà still struggles to hold back tears. "MeeGo had been the collective hope of the company," he says, "and we'd come to the conclusion that the emperor had no clothes. It's not a nice thing."

Personally I don't understand how they could screw that up so royally, but it seems they did.

I've owned Nokia phones in the past, and have always considered them when it came time to buy a new one. But they just ensured that will never happen again. I can see maybe dabbling with Windows Phone and offering a few sets for variety... but when the news keeps showing that Windows Phone is DoA, I don't get why Nokia would bet everything on a sinking ship. Are they truly that suicidal?

The article you quoted is rubbish. Here's a comment from there:

One should invest in a little research before writing.

1) The 38% drop stems almost entirely from users moving from Windows Mobile to another platform. Windows Mobile is to Windows Phone 7 what the Newton is to the iPhone. Yes, Microsoft is losing to Android but so is Apple. And it is misleading to imply, as you did, that customers are leaving Windows Phone 7. This just isn't the case.

2) Mango was released to manufactures last month. This was reported by this same outlet that allowed you to publish such drivel. On second thought, you were right to ignore it. I wouldn't trust eWeek as a source either.

As to why Nokia switched: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm

Key takeaway is that hiring open source evangelists to design a mobile OS(i.e Meego) failed and they wouldn't have had enough devices running it. After the board realized that, they jettisoned the CEO and brought in Elop to get alternatives. Blackberry, HP and Google told him to take a hike so the only credible option left was WP7. Interesting angles that you don't see when you read Slashdot comments.

Reagan Policies Gave Green Light to Red Ink [Washington Post]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26402-2004Jun8

What Killed Off The GOP Deficit Hawks? [Business Week]
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_52/b3914021_mz007.htm

Do Deficits Matter? [The Weekly Standard]
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/245esggv.asp

But, but, Dick Cheney told us that Ronald Reagan proved that "deficits don't matter"!

"The raising of taxes on only the 'rich' will never do the trick. "

Alone, yes. But it still makes sense to do so because you *can*, whereas raising taxes on everyone to increase revenues would be foolish and counterproductive at this point. Everybody I've ever heard advocating that the Bush-era tax cuts should be rolled back for people with high incomes has also said that cuts in spending must also occur. Purely cutting government spending has risks too, because cutting government spending will affect jobs and economic activity negatively.

A "candle to grave welfare state" isn't an "impossible promise", although it may be for quite a while now because the debt has been run up too high. However, it doesn't have to be this way. Other countries managed just fine providing more services than the USA did (e.g., universal healthcare), albeit with higher tax levels, and were running budget surpluses until the economic crisis of 2008 (e.g., Canada). The US government could have continued running budget surpluses itself and started paying down its long-term debt (thus decreasing interest payments) if it and its legislators hadn't changed course in about 2002 and decided that keeping more money in the hands of its citizens was more important than paying the accumulating bills for the services it did provide. It's that decision that has slowly but surely backed the country into a corner from which neither pure cuts nor tax increases alone are the way out, because you've basically been living on a credit card for the last decade or so. The seemingly prosperous economic activity of that period was a sham built on cheap credit and bogus investments, a problem that came to roost in 2008 and which won't be sorted out for years. And to make things worse, you've got people in power now that think blackmailing the country over its debt ceiling and resolving the matter with only one strategy (cuts) is the only acceptable way forward. It's going to take more than that. Making cuts *and* eventually rolling back the clearly unsustainable Bush-era tax cuts is the only sensible way forward.

The right thing to do would have been to decrease taxes AND implement corresponding deep spending cuts and service decreases back then when the tax cuts were made. That would have been honoring the principle of achieving a smaller government. But no, they did dick all and just kept on spending into a hole. Starving a government of funds and then doing nothing to cut services gives you crappy services and a huge debt. But at least we can say the experiment has been done. Now the problem is several times worse than if it had been dealt with back then, and yet you still have people in power who think radical cuts alone will somehow lead to better government and a better future. No, it will probably put the economy into a tailspin. Meanwhile you have half the multi-millionaires out there saying "No, please, we can't survive on a few percent less net income", and sending big donations to their representatives to obstruct any thought of tax increase on them to help the country get out of this financial mess.

The problem isn't the "cradle to grave welfare state", it's that nobody was willing to pay what it actually cost to get the services they did have, and when the costs and revenue seriously started to diverge, you had a bunch of idiots in power who thought "starving the government" would somehow magically work out better. Except, you didn't starve the government, you just put it on a tab. Heck, you even had the vice president at the time saying that "deficits don't matter", and at least half his party thinking the same thing as they presided over a spectacular deficit increase.

Congrats. You've conclusively proven deficits do matter, you fricking idiots, and now the tab is due.

I may be way off-beam here but I think Android is open source and IE isn't.

You think very wrong.

However I have never lived in the US so I don't pretend to know what your experiences are.

And there's the basic problem.

Here in the USA, since the Retardicans took over in the early 2000's, every worker protection has basically been gutted. We're at 20% real unemployment, employees are uniformly scared for their jobs, and almost no company has anything but PHB's around.

It's the MBA's who are responsible for the complete lack of cross-training and the complete lack of understanding that (a) the workforce needs redundancy and (b) working people to death is bad in the long run.

Then again, your average MBA can't see more than a month ahead of time. Which again is part of the problem. The "long run" never enters into it. And these subhuman assholes are the ones who decide "Oh, Bob is taking 2 weeks off for vacation, to use up the accrued leave time so we don't steal it from him on "expiring"... Nothing broke while he was gone... guess we don't need Bob any more!"

Company problems are like people problems, sometimes there's a systematic reason, other times it's completely down to the individual and the circumstance.

While you've focused more on the personal skills that many geeks lack, you're also missing that many geeks don't seem to understand how difficult running a business, really is. Even small businesses. There's so many things going on, so many things out of your control, so many people you rely on, and so many unintuitive "systems", which are really hard to get a grasp on.

The worst companies I personally know of, that I have worked for, or with, are run by engineers/scientists.

While there is something to be said for the executives having been in that industry, there's also a lot to be said for people with outside perspective, and a fuck load to be said for people who understand how businesses run. The article has said MBA's, but I take that more to mean accounting/management/finance/economics professionals, so MBA's/CA/CPA/CFA/* all in one bag. It's condescending to suggest that this is due to "MBA's", and the real discussion seems to be one of "short-term balance sheet driven management" versus "long-term" and or "non-balance sheet driven management".

Well, short-term versus long-term versus some mix of both, has and continues to be, one of the most debated topics amogst "MBA's". To suggest that somehow they don't understand this, is absurd. Hell, the very fact that Bob Lutz is writing about it, shows this is absurd, since he is in fact one of those "MBA" people.

Oh well, for those who haven't read the the Business Week article, I recommend it. It really gets to the heart of his story. The TIME one, not so much.

True, you make a lot of good points so I decided to look into it further. I decided to look into a high end brand of clothing (i.e. non-commodity) and the first company that popped into my head was Gucci.

2010 fiscal year reported revenues:

• Gucci: € 4,010.7 million / $ 5,800.42 million (source)
• Apple: $ 65.22 billion (source)
• RIAA (US market): $ 6,850.1 million (source)
• MPAA: US $ 10.6 / Worldwide $ 31.8 billion (source)

Even then, a single high end clothing brand can almost match RIAA's earnings.

Paul Ceglia: The Man Who Owns 84% of Facebook? link

"Ceglia sifting through old files in his western New York home to find assets to pay back his clientele. He says he came across a document signed in 2003 by Mark Zuckerberg, then a freshman at Harvard and now chief executive of Facebook. He says the document is a valid contract that entitles him to an 84 percent stake in Facebook"

"Mr. Ceglia's high-profile representation .. recently withdrew from the case at a critical juncture .. Mr. Ceglia is carrying on with a small, boutique-y firm of four San Diego-based attorneys who, according to CNET, represent 200 medical marijuana collectives. link

Better watch out then as if you win then these two will come suing your ass off Winklevoss Twins Resume Facebook Attack..

There was an article in Bloomberg Businessweek last week about MySpace and how it all went wrong. It's really interesting how quickly MySpace went from the planned jewel in the crown of News Corp. to Murdoch's abandoned stepchild.

Even at the time of the News Corp acquisition, cracks were showing in MySpace's dominance of the social network scene, but the infusion of cash and media expertise from News Corp could potentially have helped it. Unfortunately, once Murdoch shifted his focus to acquiring the Wall Street Journal, he no longer cared about what happened to MySpace and any hope (however small) of saving it was lost.

I'd say Ford's offerings are on par with what other car makers have to offer. The only place where they would be sorely trounced is in the diesel engine department where VW excels at making fuel efficient cars

You are correct about the US offerings, not in the rest of the world though.
Some examples...
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm
http://media.ford.com/news/forddoubleat2011dieselcarawards.htm

Ford has the capability and has for decades, the US market does not want diesel cars or there is a massive conspiracy to keep them out. Either way, Ford is very capable of providing them.

I've been studying phishing attacks and spear-phishing attacks for the past few years. And to be blunt, if you don't think that you are vulnerable, then you are truly the clueless one. You really don't understand the level of sophistication that these attackers have, in using the right kinds of email formatting, the right kind of language, the right kinds of events, and the right kinds of names of people in your organization.

Are you good enough to avoid PDF exploits? What if you got an email in your inbox about a conference in your field, would you be smart enough to avoid that? How about one that talks about a retirement party for a real person in your organization? Or one that used a stolen account from someone in your org? Read this article in Business Week to see some sophisticated phish.

Being arrogant about it and blaming users may make you feel good about yourself, but it won't solve the problem. So get off your high horse, be an engineer, and devise real solutions that can really work with people, instead of being an ass about it.

Free Wifi really isn't much considering the millions in taxes that can be paid by these companies... I think Jobs's tax comment was a swipe at Google which doesn't pay much of any tax to Mountain View.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2060919/Tax-Assessor-Wants-Google-To-Pay-Property-Taxes-Even-Though-New-Facility-Will-Be-on-Federal-Land

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/google-tax-cut/google-terminal.html

And Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes from.

Citation most definitely needed for this. The majority of their revenue may be coming from iOS devices, but it is the *device sales,* not the *app store,* that is accounting for the vast majority of their revenue.

10 billion plus apps downloaded. 200 million iOS devices sold to date. That's roughly 50 apps per device. Some year-old numbers suggest that 75% of the apps in the app store are paid apps - so let's assume that 38 of the 50 apps per device are also paid apps. Again from last year, average price of a paid app was $3.63.

So the "average" iOS device, with 38 paid apps, has generated 137.94 in app store revenue. Apple keeps 30% of that, for a cool $41.40 per iOS device, or 8.3 billion in revenues from every app sold since the app store was opened.

Last year, Apple had 65.2 billion in revenue.

Please show your math that leads you to conclude that the app store is the "major source" of Apple's revenues?

That simply isn't true. The pumps stopped because of flooding, and there is no suggestion that maintenance was an issue.

A 1990 report by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission foretold of this exact scenario, this was brought up again to Tepco in 2004 by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

To me, that means they failed to meet their obligations (and that is putting it politely, if you do some searching you'll find their own employees had brought this up several times).
To argue there was not absolute requirement is what is the root cause of the mistrust, the JAEA brings up that this is a problem and they choose to ignore it then claim "who would have thought this could happen" as an excuse - and get away with it!
Oh, thanks for bringing that up, I should have linked to what I meant by that statement.

Lessee.. my Bluetooth headset has to transmit as far as my pocket, whereas my phone potentially has to transmit up to a couple miles. Which one do you suppose would cause the greatest amount of harm?

Your 100mW is way off base. That's a maximum transmit power for a Class 1 BT device with a range of 100m. A typical Bluetooth headset is a Class 2 2.5mW, 10m range device. 2.5mW is 1/40th of Class 1's max power output. According to this article, a Bluetooth headset SAR can be as low as 0.001W/kg, which is a few orders of magnitude smaller than for a cell phone.

How else do you suppose they can get away with such a minuscule battery and still offer decent talk time?

Nothing... just the old HCF. Not like it will never happen.

South Carolina's Oconee Nuclear Station will replace its analog monitoring and operating controls with digital systems
Chinese Military Admits Existence of Cyberwarfare Unit
Wait..

No need to wait, they are already there since a long time ago. Save what you can... in this case, some costs. After all, a blender is $30 at Walmart and this is great for the nation (hint: second phrase of TFA).

Think about it this way -- to be a successful business owner, you can't just be smart or a hard worker. You have to have some sort of entrepreneurial spark that most people don't have. Every business owner that I've dealt with who is reasonably successful is also a type-A nutjob (mostly meant in a good way...) who works 130 hour weeks and never lets up.

I'm an accountant in private practice, dealing with these guys is my day job. Generally this is my observation, though there's a chicken and egg thing going on.

Being both willing and able to get started is the hardest part, once you've jumped in the deep end there's more motivation than you could possibly want. The type of stress is different though, your home is on the line but you're calling the shots and choosing how to deal with problems. How much of your stress is really due to management? When it's your business, you only deal with assholes to the point that dealing with them is worth the marginal amount money they bring to YOUR bottom line. As an employee, one asshole could cost you your entire job and having dealt with that asshole makes no difference at all to your paycheck.

Insane hours put into your own business just is not the same as the same hours worked as an employee.

- I can't sell. Period.

Only matters in certain industries. My firm for example doesn't advertise and does very little tendering, 99% comes in from a recommendation from existing customers or local bank managers. "Selling" is frowned upon, clients are looking for someone they can trust.

- I'm not your typical "slimy used car salesman" personality that most small business owners tend to be

While it'd be easy for me to think of the 95th percentile slimy successful guys, pretty much all the others rely on good relations with staff, customers and suppliers.

In small business, relationships are everything. Well, everything once cashflow is OK, though your relationship with key suppliers is the difference between a cashflow problem and a crisis.

- I'm not willing to risk my livelihood or work insane hours for something that will probably fail. (Isn't it 90% of small businesses failing within a year still?) What would I fall back on?

The stats are skewed pretty badly. The ones that try to use empirical data count all sorts of aberrations, like new subsidiaries of existing businesses who specifically created a new company to have a stab at a risky venture while containing the losses. I have several clients who set up a company to handle a single deal which either goes through or doesn't happen and either way they fold the company within the year. Much of the time a company is "sold" by company A selling their non-cash assets and trade to another company, then the company is folded which creates the appearance of a failure out of an actual success.

To get around some of the above issues some studies only count companies with employees. Well, all companies require at least one human director so they can't be counting one-man-bands either, a very large share of small companies. I'd wager that they are proportionately more successful too - self-employed contractors are very often little different to employees with varying numbers of part-time jobs. Plus payroll is a very substantial and very inflexible cash outflow.

Generally a "1/3 1/3 1/3" is accepted, being equal chances of success, break-even or losses over the lifetime of the business, with failures heavily skewed towards the early years. Again though the general statistic hides more than it reveals, this article, while old, is quite interesting.

I'm not trying to argue that self-employment isn't risky, but it is more of a possibility than yourself and the many people who share your views think. That said, you do need the means to go a few years with negligible income, though

You can get enterprise support from Apple; it's just not very well known. Apple is still a bit new in this area. Business Week covered this quiet trend in 2008

Andy Rubin
May 21st, 2010

"If Google didn't act, it faced a draconian future where one man, one phone, one carrier were our choice,"

March, 2011

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_15/b4223041200216.htm

"From now on, companies hoping to receive early access to Google's most up-to-date software will need approval of their plans. And they will seek that approval from Andy Rubin, the head of Google's Android group."

So is it less "draconian" when that one man is Andy Rubin?

I would agree, yet the marketing mantra seems to be that women make the majority of purchasing decisions in households.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/feb2005/nf20050214_9413_db_082.htm

and from elsewhere:

Women account for 85% of all consumer purchases including everything from autos to health care:

91% of New Homes
66% PCs
92% Vacations
80% Healthcare
65% New Cars
89% Bank Accounts
93% Food
93 % OTC PharmaceuticalsAmerican women spend about $5 trillion annually
Over half the U.S. GDP

Apparently this is part of the reason why you don't see 70s/80's action programming now, and why outside of sports, most broadcast network programming is female oriented. It probably accounts for why more men are spending their time playing games than watching TV as the broadcast networks have little scripted programming to offer. The female oriented purchasing premise however seems outdated since fewer people are getting married, and that more and more households are single parent households. This leaves a fairly large body of men who are shopping on their own independent of women. Syfy would seem to be a place to show plenty of ads for games, action/comic book movies, DVD box sets, cars etc, yet the ads shown don't always seem to match that demographic.

I thought that the core of Skype which was joltid was settled....

It is, from: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=35489567

"eBay Inc. and Silver Lake Investor Group Settle Skype Litigation with Joltid Limited
11/26/2009

eBay Inc. announced that the investor group led by Silver Lake, which had previously entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in Skype from the company, has reached a settlement agreement with Joltid, Ltd. and Joost N.V. that gives Skype ownership over all software previously licensed from Joltid and ends all litigation currently pending against the investor group and eBay at the closing of the acquisition. As part of the settlement agreement, Joltid and Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis will join the investor group, contributing Joltid software and making a significant capital investment in exchange for a 14% stake in Skype. As a result, Silver Lake and other investors including Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), will together hold 56% of Skype and eBay will retain 30%. As previously announced, eBay will receive approximately $1.9 billion in cash upon the completion of the sale and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. The deal, which values Skype at $2.75 billion and is not subject to a financing condition, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009."

Oh for the love of god, this is way out of hand.

They weren't "hacked", they saw a tiny anomaly in their network traffic (which honestly, most companies wouldn't even have noticed), and decided to notify you about it and handle it in the most paranoid way possible. It's such a small thing that I wouldn't have expected most companies to even tell anyone it happened.

But somehow them behaving in a very commendable way for a security company has blown up into an absolute PR nightmare for them, with sites like BusinessWeek posting articles with the title "LastPass Loses Passwords for 1.25 Million Customers", which aren't even remotely correct. This is why companies don't disclose security breaches, because people are too dumb to understand the details, it gets sensationalized for no reason, and comes back to bite them hard.

Their implementation of this was pretty poor (trying to force almost everyone to change their password, when their server can't handle password changes at that rate), but their overall intentions were extremely good, and only make me even more confident in their service.

all that is a diversion, most people in debt are not in debt due to medical bills.

Perhaps true. But in the USA, most (62%) personal bankruptcies are due to excessive medical bills (and three-quarters of those people did have insurance). Not that there's anything wrong with the US medical care system, or anything.

I thought everyone knew about Tulip Mania. I'm sure it's in Wikipedia, look it up. It's probably the first known "bubble" in recorded history. Tulip bulbs were being bought, sold, and speculated on at insane prices. Sometimes a bulb was worth many many times what a skilled craftsman would make in a year.

You know, somehow I missed that one. I've literally never heard of it ... thanks for the info.

And, in case anybody thinks they're kidding, this and this are what I tracked down.

That's just funny.

Binding arbitration does not always go in favor of big business.

Not always, but close enough.

It's a stacked game -- the corporations know which arbitrators have ruled for and against them, but an individual has no such knowledge. Those arbitrators who tend to find in favor of consumers tend not to be rehired.

It wouldn't take much to document that and then sue the arbitrator's firm if it could be shown that they always or almost always side with the corporation. A good attorney general would take on a corrupt arbitration system under the guise of fighting for the little guy (but actually for re-election).

I think you will find, however, that even court proceedings often go in favor of the corporation. Even class action ones.

Binding arbitration does not always go in favor of big business.

Not always, but close enough.

It's a stacked game -- the corporations know which arbitrators have ruled for and against them, but an individual has no such knowledge. Those arbitrators who tend to find in favor of consumers tend not to be rehired.

According to this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/11/top-jobs-for-grads-nace-2_n_847505.html engineering jobs are doing quite well. This http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc20081113_488542.htm seems to suggest it might even be sexy!

It seems the first article in the main post talks about STEM but doesn't provide any real evidence but may be talking about an article noting the brain drain of the finance world and that the percentage of MIT grads going into finance increased. It was not the majority. This isn't a bad thing. I am a software engineer with a BS in computer science and an MS in computer engineering. I worked on financial software, device drivers, internet advertising software, remote control car embedded software, and wireless meshing software. STEM can take you into all sorts of industries. I don't know why this is a bad thing and I don't think that was what the President was saying.

The author says, "First, American culture has always realized this 'stuff' is important." I find that hard to believe. When I was in school, there were almost no computer science majors. My graduation had 3 CS majors walk with me with over 10,000 students enrolled at the university. Other STEM majors did a bit better but the reality is that our society looks down on STEM folks. It is considered weird and odd. Hollywood uses this stereotype often because the public believes it. We are geeks, nerds, dorks, etc. STEM really does need better PR since keeping the world running doesn't seem to matter much anymore.

The second article attacks pure science jobs. Most folks that major in STEM probably do not go on to pure research jobs. Why is this a bad thing? Many folks become engineers and use the research to create other things. They compare school teachers to scientists even though many are both. Many "pure" researches are college professors. "The women I know who are university professors, by and large, are unmarried and childless. By the time they get tenure, they are on the verge of infertility. " My wife is a university professor and we have two kids thank you. I know several other professional female mathematicians who married and had kids. It seems they these folks get married at the same rate as most other folks and have kids at about the same rate too. Also, the author ignores that the PhD can go into public school teaching and will be paid extra for having the degree. They can leave college and go into the private sector. Some do both. My wife programmed for a while and then came back to teaching because she liked teaching a lot more.

"men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question 'is this peer group worth impressing?' " That is an incredibly sexist statement. Does the author have any proof that women do not do the same? As far as I can tell the sentence should be changed to "people sometimes lack perspective..."

"When Albert goes to graduate school to get his PhD, his choice will have the same logical foundation as John Hinckley's attempt to impress Jodie Foster by shooting Ronald Reagan. " The author compares getting a PhD to being a stalker. This is why STEM needs better PR! Americans see most PhDs as potential stalkers who are just trying to impress the other potential stalkers. Maybe someone gets a PhD because they are actually really interested in the field and really want to study it for its own sake. Maybe someone cares about something other than money. Maybe there is more to life satisfaction than just making more money. Do you want a job that pays 20% more that you will hate or a job that you will love? Perhaps the PhD candidate is actually smarter enough to do what he/she loves.

"What about women? Don't they want to impress their peers? Yes, but they are more discriminating about choosin

Frankly, the idea of companies being "friends" is a bit weird

It's very weird indeed

No they're not. BRL bonds have to offer about 12% interest to sell in today's market. Those 2-year BRL bonds compete with 2-year US Treasuries that have to offer only under 1% interest, yet still sell more than BRL bonds do.

Yes, replacing the USD in infra-BRICS transactions does leave more USD in circulation with less demand, thereby lowering the price of USD. But USD is still far more valued as an investment than BRL. Especially in the role for which the Fed controls USD value: global inflation control. The USD is far more stable than the BRL, even if that 3-6-12% BRL swing within the last decade is an opportunity for some (informed/skilled/lucky) investors to make profits against the low end if that's when they buy.

Because the ultimatum from Saudi Arabia was "put in backdoors or GTFO," and they didn't GTFO. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-07/rim-saudi-arabia-reach-deal-on-blackberry-ap-says.html

Does anyone really think Facebook wants to subject its operations to the scrutiny of the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and any state regulators in any location where Facebook has facilities? California, where Facebook maintains its corporate headquarters, has extensive banking regulations as well.

American Express used to issue only credit-cards that carried no interest charges and required full and immediate payment of all outstanding balances. That's because AMEX didn't want to be regulated as a bank.

Setting standards is fine, but the question is who sets those standards, and wether those standards will be set in the best interests of the community of developers and hardware vendors, in the interests of Google, or in the interest of users. Using access to Android source as a club to force OEMs to use Google search, to hamstring Facebook and other service providers, or to only provide the kind of phone Google sees fit isn't standardization in the interests of consumers.

With even the "do no evil" Google doing major tax evasion, is anyone surprised an old boy's club like GM is doing even fancier tricks? I'm at the point now where I don't even consider companies that are net tax neutral to be that bad. You have to actively be siphoning money away from the taxpayers via bailouts and unprosecuted financial fraud to register on my radar nowadays.

Weight is already taken into account when you register and get a license plate from your state, as is the age of the vehicle, size of the engine, and other factors.

My 5 year old motorcycle costs as much to tag as my ten year old sports car, but the bike gets 50mpg highway and can still go 200+ (take that Prius!), and the impact is negligible compared to any four wheel vehicle, even a "smart" car. Only federal highway systems are eligible to get federal funding for road work, the state and local governments front the cost of the majority of infrastructure. Now, if you really wanted a high MPG car that beats the pants off of pretty much all hybrid and electric vehicles out there, the Ford Fiesta with its 65.5+ mpg engine would be the way to go, but alas it won't be sold here in the US

Anyways, this is nothing more than another attempt by Uncle Sam to grab at more money rather than trimming the fat in our government and cutting the costs of redundant and unnecessary departments.

"A tax is a fine for doing right, and a fine is a tax for doing wrong."

Linking to page 1 of the article would probably be nice. Better yet, the print version.

Linking to page 1 of the article would probably be nice. Better yet, the print version.

I only switched when I could get a native version of MS Office

1989, back before it was out for Windows even? Or did you mean MS Office X from 2001?

And the two are compatible. They're just not the same. I can share files back and forth between them just fine, but I wouldn't claim that they are running the same OS, even though they share their OS roots.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-23/hp-calls-oracle-move-shameless-gambit-to-hurt-competition.html

I'm much more inclined to believe Intel and HP on it. While the Itanium did not become the be-all, end-all for computers Intel hoped (they wanted to go to it because their cross licensing is for x86, not IA-64) it has not been a failure. People like to joke about it and rag on it but all it means is they've done little to no research. It is a competitive chip in the super high end market. When you need massive DB servers or the like, it is a real option and one that people use.

Now as to what kind of future it'll have I can't say. The high end segment keeps shrinking as normal desktop hardware gets better and better. You can knock 4 8-core Xeons in a system right now and get some great performance at a good (relatively speaking) price.

At any rate I wouldn't listen to anything Oracle says, particularly about competitors. They are not known for their truthfulness, or for their sense of fair play.

The most compact nuclear power plants around (naval units used in submarines) weigh about 1000 tons.

Wrong, these are much smaller.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_22/b4180020375312.htm

I think he was talking about real reactors, not imaginary ones....from the article you linked to:

So far, no manufacturer has sought certification for any small reactor, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Formal approvals would likely take three to five years, the same as for bigger reactors, says Scott Burnell, a commission spokesman.

The most compact nuclear power plants around (naval units used in submarines) weigh about 1000 tons.

Wrong, these are much smaller.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_22/b4180020375312.htm

As has been stated almost but apparently not quite to death already, these reactors are not the "safe" kind that we know how to build. The unsuitability was known ahead of time and covered up for the purpose of profit.

Capitalism has lost a lot of credibility with me over the last few days. Now, I'm not sure if I should ever have given it any.

The Fukushima meltdown didn't have to happen: Japan Nuclear Disaster Caps Decades of Faked Reports, Accidents. I've read other reports of non-functioning standby diesels in US-based boiling water reactors. Do you really think it's any better here or whereever you live?

While I agree with the point of your post, I must point out that in the Fukushima case the standby diesels *did* work. It was just that they weren't really compatible with a 10 metre tsunami. However, up to the point of getting swallowed by it, they worked fine on all reactors.