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It's simply false that Amazon didn't pay taxes.

As a public company, their balance sheet is made public, and it shows they paid hundreds of millions in taxes every year. You can read for yourself at the link below.

So Amazon paid taxes to governments, and the governments decide how to allocate those tax revenues around programs that help the people. That's the right way for this to work as that allows policy makers to do their best to design programs to best help those who need it while not laying a cost on those who can't afford to pay it.

These sensationalized stories don't do society any good.

Amazon filing: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/ph...

did some quick googling (but haven't really investigated the links in depth yet)

amazon official press release (non-multimedia version): Introducing the Newest Prime Benefit – Audible Channels for Prime

amazon official press release: multimedia version

https://www.amazon.com/audiblechannels

http://www.audible.com/channels/

Yeah, good call. The BBC news channel added that, and Slashdot copied them.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/ph...

Is the original press release and seems to only say that it will be released for Amazon Prime viewers, not mentioning anything about being a "worldwide release".

US only and needs MS Silverlight ..

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/ph...
Amazon’s First Pilot Season of 2015, Featuring Slate of 13 Original Comedy, Drama, Docuseries and Kids Offerings, is Now Available on Amazon Instant Video in the US, UK and Germany

And yeah, Silverlight :S . Amazon must be getting some £££££ from Microsoft, either that, or their video/web department is run by 16 year olds that never heard of flash.

The companies themselves may be fine... they are making a lot of money in other things.

Umm, look at a quarterly earnings report for Discovery Communications sometime. Of their 9 month earnings in the latest report, for example, they had a total revenue of $4.589B, with $2.209B from US networks, and $2.291B from international networks. That is over 98% of their revenue. More than half of their revenue is from advertising. Although they are trying to invest in internet based media, the vast majority of their money still comes from TV shows and their cable networks.

AMC has proven that even a small investment can have huge returns.

And yet Discovery and A&E, each have three times the total viewership in 2014 as AMC networks (e.g. some numbers found here, with more in depth around but not as easy to find online). The top network companies by viewership are: Viacom, TW, NBC, Discovery, and A&E.

The problem faced by Discovery and A&E are the same faced by pretty much all cable networks at the moment, that all of the big ones are losing viewership, between more minor options being available and people going to the internet more. Discovery and A&E channels are some of the more successful ones, and will remain parts of lower level cable tiers for some time, especially considering some of their reality shows are the highest watched ones on cable TV. Some network groups are running into issues with their secondary spin-off channels, but still have a couple solid channels and can reshuffle stuff to keep them going.

To quote AMD (pdf) in their 2014 Q1 earnings, a couple days ago:

We are on track to generate approximately 50% of our revenue from high-growth markets, including embedded, semi-custom, dense server, professional graphics, and Ultra Low-Power client, where we can create differentiated winning solutions by the end of 2015. (...) We used to be a business centered over one stream of revenue, one opportunity, the PC market. Now we've introduced five new ones with our traditional space; that's six key markets where we can leverage our core IP. (...) Now let's turn to our traditional businesses. In graphics, we see strong demand in the enthusiast portion of the market. Our industry-leading R7 and R9 products drove GPU revenue growth year-over-year and sequentially.

In short, they're transforming away from their "traditional" business and of the PC market graphics revenue is going to be significant. AMDs x86 CPUs/APUs are going to be a small part of their business, there's a reason Intel is aiming all the big guns at ARM because AMD has already in their strategy decided to get out of the head-to-head competition with Intel. If you don't believe that, read the above lines again. They couldn't compete with Intel when they bet everything on one horse, now they're riding five others as well? That's a slow exit strategy, milking the CPU/APU revenue to execute their transformation. The FX line is probably already dead, Kaveri/Beema/Mullins will keep AMD present in the consumer market a while longer but the revenue is funneled into all those other key areas.

STEC Announces Innovative 2TB Solid-State Drives, New Version of Caching Software
So you could buy a Kia or two... but still...
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon

In what universe?

Here's Amazon's latest financial release:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1779049&highlight=

Here's the important bit:

Net income decreased 45% to $97 million in the fourth quarter

Amazon is barely breaking even. Whether or not this is an intentional strategy is another discussion, but it sure as hell ain't making 10.8 billion a quarter. It's not even making ONE HUNDREDTH of that.

Look at their income.

Gross income is the $127 billion figure I quoted. That's the income before taxes and expenses, which is comparable to the $50,000 income I quoted for a middle-class (American) family, which is also before taxes and expenses.

If it weren't for the almost $11 billion in unusual expenses they incurred this quarter, they would have earned about $5 billion in net profits. Instead, they lost over $5 billion for the year. That's more than two year's worth of profit gone up in smoke. It doesn't take many of those to make a bankrupt company.

Blowing $3,500 on a crappy car also wipes out a hefty chunk of a middle-class family's profits, and might even take multiple years to save up for.

In HP's case, since they also hold almost $129.5 billion in assets and have only $22.5 billion in debt, they have $109 billion in net assets (or $104 billion including this loss). They'd need to have about two straight decades like this to actually go bankrupt, assuming they don't close up and sell off first.

To continue tormenting this deceased analogous equine, that's like having a middle-class family with a $50,000 income losing $2,000 each year, but starting with $41,000 already in the bank. It's certainly not a desirable situation to be in, but it's not imminently disastrous.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 7, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Diamond Foods, Inc. (Nasdaq:DMND) ("Diamond") today announced the appointment of food and beverage industry veteran Brian J. Driscoll as President and Chief Executive Officer,
Link

He left Hostess in March, and got a new job in May. Unless this is some other Brian Driscoll CEO in the food industry...
Ok, so you're wrong on this one. Maybe one of the other 6 CEOs that helped pile-drive hostess in the last year is having trouble getting work. Could be.

But these people aren't betting anything. The system is rigged in their favor, and even if they do a REALLY shitty job, they come out with a million dollar bonus and a new job where they ride the gravy train and get a merit bonuses, or ride the fail train and get another severance bonus. And they'll say there was nothing they could do to help their old company. That it was doomed. And they'll blame a laundry list of factors. They may even be right. But then why the hell are we paying these people so much if they have so little power?

"What is we ran the exhaust alongside some materials like this"

you mean like this:
http://www.gentherm.com/page/automotive-0
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107768&p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=1326140&highlight=
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/08/bmwthermal-20110830.html

or this:
http://www.serdp.org/Program-Areas/Energy-and-Water/Energy/Conservation-and-Efficiency/EW-1651
http://www.navysbir.com/10_3/8.htm
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012SPIE.8377E..15S

The problem is usually in actually getting that level of total conversion efficiency. By the time you take all of the efficiency chain fractions into account, you're far below the theoretical 15% (which only occurs at peak, steady conditions).

Try going to amazon.com and clicking on the link marked "Press Releases": http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1720457&highlight=

Hopefully you (and the people that modded you up) are a little less ignorant now.

That would have to be a pretty cagey crook. The breach occurred January-February. Global reported the breach to Visa, MasterCard, and Federal authorities once they detected it last month (source: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=125339&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1678656&highlight=). The news only came out Friday to give the Feds enough time to investigate without tipping anyone off. Truth in posting: I work for one of Global's competitors.

Somewhat wrong. Research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies. Only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It sounds like you read the conservative cliff notes on the issue.

R&D expenditure varies pretty widely. Bayer appears to be one of the worst in R&D to marketing ratio; according to their 2011 Annual Report they spent about 3 billion Euros on R&D and 8.8 billion Euros on "selling" (excludes manufacturing costs). On the other hand, Roche was pretty evenly split between R&D and marketing, with about 8 billion Swiss francs on each. Bristol-Meyers Squibb put about $4.5 billion into marketing and $3.5 billion into R&D.

So yes, drug prices tend to be inflated and a lot of the expense goes to marketing. However, they are also spending a lot on R&D - generally 10% - 25% of income. I won't argue that drugs shouldn't be cheaper - they absolutely should be - but claiming that the pharmaceutical companies don't spend money on research and have no associated costs to recover above the cost of manufacturing the drugs is just plain ignorance. It is certainly worth discussing how drug research and development should be paid for, but India unilaterally deciding to ignore patents without providing any way of funding new research simply isn't sustainable if everyone does it.

Unlike you, I've actually read their financial statements....

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MTA0NDQ2fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1

(Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking + PSG) / Total Segments = 38%

So less than half of their "segment" income comes from computers.

If they sell of their computer business what do they think they can sell?

"Personal computer business" != "computer business". Their Q3 2011 financial review indicates that, in earnings from operations in the quarter ending July 31, 2011, the rest of the computer business - "Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking" - was third, after the services business and the printer/scanner business, and ahead of the PC business.

Even the thought of that makes me want to cry. That multi-industry monopoly should be out of business*, not profiting (PDF) and steamrolling history.

*or at least offering à la carte, and apologizing both for astroturfing and getting away with it

Apple is a public company. RTFM

For Q2 2011, Apple paid $1.9 billion in taxes on $7.9 billion on profit

Apple is a public company. It is in their financial statements.

iPhone and related products and services (d) 12,298. Total net sales $24,667. Numbers are in millions

You still have to factor in R&D, Tech support, building / real-estate costs, transportation, warehousing / distribution, executive salaries, administration, Marketing, IT, and the list goes ON and ON.

Apple made $14 billion net income on $65 billion in revenue last year. According to your logic, it should have only cost them at most $13 billion in actual manufacturing costs. Again according to your logic, Apple spent $38 billion on everything else. That's 58% of their revenue is spent on operation and R&D costs. To put that in perspective, with 50,000 employees, Apple spent $760,000 per employee on operational and R&D costs. That's an incredibly inefficient company.

Apple is however a public company and they have to disclose certain things. According to their annual report, Apple spent $1.7B on R&D and $5.5B on "Selling, general and administrative" costs. Again according to your logic, Apple spent $30 billion last year on what exactly? Because it seems those two categories and specifically listed costs account for most of those costs that you listed.

I used to work for a Tyco company in the security sector. We had multiple products R&D'd in Canada/USA and manufactured around the world. One example was a controller board which we sold at about $600, went for $900-1000 MSRP and cost us about $95 to manufacture. Still, the company had a high EBIT but wasnt rolling in billions of dollars either due to OTHER costs.

So you're basing your whole assumption that every $499 electronics product only costs at most $100 to make on your company and their products? Did it every occur to you that other products may not have the same cost/profit structure. The variation of component costs alone makes each product different. The iSuppli has estimated an iPad costs $250; however, they are only looking at estimated wholesale costs and some allowance for manufacturing. If a part was more expensive or harder to work with, they don't know. It's a reasonable estimate of the lowest manufacturing cost a product.

I disagree with the general sentiment that the average consumer is blissfully ignorant of Sony's malfeasance when it comes to content protection. While the average consumer may not understand it from a big picture perspective, Sony's current position in the market has already been crippled by consumer reaction to how they protect their content.

Here's Sony's FY2009 sales by segment (slide 4). Their music division had 522.6 billion yen in sales for FY2009, or about $5.25 billion. Here's Apple's sales for roughly the same period (PDF warning). In FY2009, Apple sold $8.09 billion worth of iPods, and had ~$4 billion worth of music sales in the iTunes store.

What does everyone remember Sony being famous for? The Walkman. When the MP3 market took off, everyone just assumed that Sony would be a big player in it. Sony was synonymous with expensive but high quality portable music players, so it was natural to expect a fantastic MP3 player from them. But Sony's music division somehow managed to force their electronics division to encumber their MP3 players with heavy DRM. At first they wouldn't even play MP3s - you had to buy/convert to some proprietary format which, in preventing you from trading songs or converting to MP3, made it extraordinarily difficult just to put your music on the player. People warned each other in droves to stay away from it.

As a result, Sony has a negligible presence in the MP3 player market today. In order to protect their music division which has approx $5 billion/yr in sales, they missed the opportunity to grab the lead in a new electronics product market where the current leader makes over $12 billion/yr. They let the tail wag the dog, and paid dearly for it.

For the last decade Microsoft stock has been dead money. No growth.

Hardly dead money, Microsoft have paid out a dividend on their shares every quarter since the end of 2004 (which is as far as the linked dividend history goes back)

Apple on the other hand haven't paid a dividend to their stock holders since 1995.

So if you own Microsoft stock you are paid actual cash money every quarter. If you own Apple stock you then it has gained in value so it has made you money in theory, but you don't actually have any more money in practice unless you sell the stock.

Both situations are beneficial to the stock holders but there is a big difference between cash in your pocket and an increase in share price.

Actually, the full press release with all the clutter and no information on the API, etc. is here: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1504334&highlight=

Well, I'm not sure about a VC in 1976, but if you'd invested $666.66 in 12/12/1980 the date of the IPO, you would have received your shares at $2.75 per share (after adjusting for stock splits that have occurred since then). Given that the same shares are trading around $315, you'd be sitting on right around $76,350.

Well they should let these fuckers know. That was the last time I bought a game there (no loss, since their selection sucks). I don't remember the exact time, but it was when F3 was new, so about 2 years ago?

My take on it was that they had no right to fucking ask in the first place, as there is no law that says that they're allowed to demand ID for those in the first place.

And also, according to their investor relations page, they absolutely still card, as of this year.

With that premise, Best Buy recognizes the concerns regarding the content of certain video and PC games. It's why the company currently has a "mature" product sales policy in place that prohibits the sale of video and computer games rated M (as defined by the Entertainment Software Rating Board) to customers under the age of 17 years old. The policy requires employees to check the age of any customer purchasing M-rated video or computer games who appears to be under the age of 21. All store employees are required to read the policy and sign an acknowledgement of the policy on their first day of employment. Failure to follow the policy results in discipline, which may include termination.

From this press release back in April from IMAX: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=118725&p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=1419230&highlight=

it looks like IMAX failed to deliver with their proprietary 2D to 3D conversion technology...

This Bloomberg video on the Chinese neodymium monopoly starts off as bleak as your post, but the last 45 seconds show that US industry shouldn't be counted out just yet. There is hope. Want to help? I suppose you could buy Molycorp stock.

As you can see, every single company is making less money than Apple, except for HP. And I'll bet you that when you look up HP's annual financial reports, it will show they're not making that money in the PC-market.

Forgot the topic of conversation, did we? Here, let me remind you:

Jobs is going to loose the smart phone wars just like he lost the PC wars.

Last time I checked, Apple has both larger revenues and larger profits than any other manufacterer of consumer desktop and laptop computers on the market. I'd be happy to "lose" like that too.

The numbers you quoted are for all sales across all departments. And you apparently realize that with your comment on HP.

Sorry, but you still haven't shown Apple's numbers for their "computer desktop and laptop computers" business. You'd be hard pressed to, seeing as how Apple doesn't release those numbers, only how many units they sold and their total revenue / profits.

I'll still go through some of the numbers you listed, though.

According to HP, during fiscal Q2 2010, it made $10 billion (of their company-wide $30.8 billion) in revenues in its Personal Systems Group (i.e. Desktop/Laptop PCs) with a $465 million operating profit.

According to Apple, during fiscal Q2 2010, they made $13.5 billion in revenues (across the entire company) with a $3.07 billion profit. Did I mention this is across the entire company yet?

Having said that, Apple does have more details in their (PDF) 2009 10-K (Amended) form. According to it, across all of 2009, their total revenue on Macs was $13.9 billion. Which would be an average of $3.5 billion per quarter. However, I don't see where in this document they say how much the Mac division made in profit. Instead, they have the average price of Macs sold (which incidentally is $1,333; down 10% from 2008's $1,478). Side Note: These numbers includes their XServe server line.

According to Dell, during fiscal Q1 2010, their Consumer and Small Business groups made a combined total of $6.7 billion in revenues, with an "operating income" of 330 million (Dell doesn't list profit per department). This is not counting their Large Enterprise or Public (health care?) divisions.
       

This happens a lot. The sticking point is often that the patent owner offers the research lab a license to use their technology, but the lab has to sign an agreement to turn over the rights to all the commercially useful results of the lab's research to the patent holder. Often the agreement is so onerous, the researchers refuse to sign.

With the BRCA gene patent that was recently overturned, the lab could do research with the BRCA test for free, but if they found out one of their subjects was positive for the BRCA gene, they weren't allowed to tell the subject, because Myriad Genetics was charging $3,000 per test.

As to the prior art -- I thought the same thing. Academic scientists always publish anything useful, and if it was published, it would be prior art.

You can find the actual patent numbers in their 10-K form if anybody wants to look it up. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9Mzc2ODQxfENoaWxkSUQ9Mzc1NTU2fFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1

I wonder how much of this research was done with U.S. government funding, which would have made it unpatentable until the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.

Bing and Google actually both give pretty much the same results.

Yes, if you are searching for "Britney Spears". If you are remotely interested in searching for something not mundane, guess what? Google owns Bing. Sorry.

Bing itself was innovative from Microsoft, even so far that Google copied Bing's sidebar from them,

Oh my God. Stop the presses. Now. So, this is innovation just like putting a nice background over the search bar right? Are you for real? No really, do you think two seconds before you post some garbage? I guess no Apple/Google threads to troll today. Do you want to remove your lips from Ballmer's cock for one second?

But this is true for every large corporation. Actually even more so for Apple, who haven't actually done much else than polished BSD and open source projects.

Oh shit, I knew it was coming. Another Apple troll by Ballmer's Cock Jock. Nice try, you failed. So iPhone OS and iDevices are "not much"? Sure, that's why everyone and their dogs are scrambling to copy it and improve upon. AppStore - iTunes eco system. Oops, no innovation right? Fucking christ sopssa, ever read your own posts before hitting submit?

Microsoft still spends millions into R&D while Apple does nothing like that.

Are you fucking dense? Hint hint, read this. Note the 2008 date? Note the 11000 hires for R&D. Note the 1.1 billion $ cost of it? Sure, Apple just sucks on Ballmer's cock and Ballmer gives them all the cool stuff right?

Google isn't really that innovative either.

Did you bother watching Google I/O presentation the last two days? Ever tried Gmail or other Google apps?

I think Courier was quite innovative.

A copied device using a touch screen with a copied operating system. Very innovative.

Visual Studio per se probably isn't innovative, but it's a really stable product and better than anything else on the market.

Using that logic, hey, Google Search isn't really innovative, but dude, it's the best thing on the market.

Microsoft also used to publish great and also innovative games

Dungeon Siege? Aka Diablo II ripoff? Or Halo? Aka random FPS like millions of others? Sure. Innovation! Oh wait, no, they bought those companies or got in an exclusive contract. Innovation? Lay down the crack pipe, and Ballmer's cock.

Jeebus fucking Christ, what a troll, and of course sockpuppets and idiot moderators are giving this douche +5 insightful. Good job moderators! Good job!

Apple's 2009 Annual Report shows that it sold $13B in Macs, $8B in iPods, $~7B in software, music and accessories, and $13B in iPhones and related services.

But what are the profit margins for those revenue numbers?

Apple's 2009 Annual Report shows that it sold $13B in Macs, $8B in iPods, $~7B in software, music and accessories, and $13B in iPhones and related services. I think they get a nice commission from AT&T for the 2 year contract. So, yes, they do indeed sell more peripherals and phones and "other stuff" than they do "computers". Not surprising since the iPhone is significantly lower priced than a Macbook, and the iPod as well. Both have mass market appeal. But computers are their core business--this is a nice bump but if you average it over many years you'll see that the computers are what's kept the company alive. They have $6B in annual expense around their retail stores. I think they need to be real careful about those because that could eat up their $33B in cash pretty quickly in the event of a downturn. "Looking" better than ever and that's why I'm short on Apple. Their share price is based on continued growth like they have had, possibly on a global basis, and I just don't see that's possible with what products they have. It's a classic bubble, get off the titanic, it won't get over $275...

Are you really trying to paint google, a company that did nearly $24 billion [google.com] in revenue last year as the underdog getting smeared by the big, bad apple?

well, if you're going by that metric, i guess apple would be the bully in that case.

Well.. you went and made me search wikipedia.. thanks for that.. 2008 total assets for Apple 39.57 billion .. 2008 total assets for Nokia 39.58 billion .. ok so you say, well thats only .01 billion more.. but the thing is, Nokia's billions are Euros.

You should have searched something more up to date than wikipedia. That 39.47B figure is for 2008. According to their 10K they now have 53.85B, or which 34B is liquid assets. Nokia's market cap is less than double that.

He's probably thinking of corporate annual reports. The vast majority of the Fortune 1000 have really glitzed up their regulatory reporting over the past couple of decades. Random examples:

Ford Motor Company

Bank of America

Pepsi Corporation

There's more information on Medical News today if anyone wants a more medical take on this and a less ... Israeli interpretation (I don't know about you but I'm not too hung up on what nationality the researchers are and am more so interested in the technical details). Their 2008 annual report sheds a lot of insight on this as well. Although this information has been public knowledge since the beginning of the year, it should be interesting to watch their stock fluctuate throughout today.

Except Microsoft makes about $0.75 of income on every $1 of OS sales that they do. See the client segment here:

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar08/10k_fr_dis.html

Apple doesn't break out their revenues and income by product segment, so a direct comparison is difficult; also, they don't publish a fancy Annual report, just a 10-Q for the SEC, which is available here (and probably lots of other places), so no linking to the pertinent section:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107357&p=irol-sec

It is probably reasonably fair to compare Microsoft's above operating income for client sales to Apple's overall operating margin of about 20%:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL

The big difference is that Microsoft is selling OEM's licenses to Windows, with essentially no production costs (just development costs) and Apple has to buy all the parts for those computers from somebody, with costs that comprise a substantial portion of the eventual revenue that they bring in.

It's possible that computer hardware sales are more lucrative than other Apple products, but I doubt that it is a factor of 2 or whatever. So Microsoft could halve the revenue they are bringing in for OS sales and still probably be making more income on those revenues than Apple makes.

I think the biggest reason Apple doesn't want to license OS X for sale is that they would lose control over the experience ("It just works" is a big marketing point for them). Next in line is that they have significant hardware operations that would face lower margin competitors, likely eroding their revenues.

Take a look at the 10-K and you'll find at least one risk factor which applies to Jobs (CEO):

The Company's success depends largely on its ability to attract and retain key personnel.
Much of the Company's future success depends on the continued service and availability of skilled personnel, including its CEO, its executive team and key employees in technical, marketing and staff positions. (p. 21, FY 2008 10-K)

IANASL (securities lawyer) but I find it relevant that the CEO is separated from the term "executive team." To compare, the similar risk factor in Microsoft's 10-K does not even specify specific employees.

While there are advantages and disadvantages to each, it's not black-and-white. In my opinion, it is too simplistic to look to one metric as a "main" metric, but at least Amazon is upfront about it. They make an argument in their 2004 annual report, right at the front.

I have to admit, it's not a bad argument, and they did manage to survive the dot-bomb... mainly it seems that they would like to take the emphasis off of growth and look more at the long-term health and sustainability of the company.

Does this account for stock splits?

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107357&p=irol-faq#split1 shows that the stock has split 3 times. If your prices do not account for splits, then you are comparing apples and oranges.

There's your problem - no Chinese guys are touching your Snap-On tools unless they're working in an American factory. Snap-On's one of the few companies who still make their tools in US and A.

Not true any more... just another company selling Chinese junk at American prices.

http://www.snapon.com.cn/snapon/en/index.htm

Seems to be down at this moment, but from the google cache of that page:

With an 86-year experience, Snap-on now focus on China. We set up a factory with well-trained engineers and workers in Kunshan, China. The world-class products produced are not only for China market, but for all the Asia Pacific Area. We also established a trading company, Snap-on Trading ( Shanghai) Co., Ltd. Our professional team can serve the customers throughout the country through a distribution network consisted of 6 Branch Offices and over 120 resellers.

Here's the factory address should you care to visit

SNAP-ON ASIA MANUFACTURING (KUNSHAN) CO., LTD
ADD: 500 Tong Feng East Road, Kunshan, Jiangsu 215300, PRC
TEL: 86-512-57708282
FAX: 86-512-57708383

Or how about this press release linked from the snap-on website?

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=90531&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1133066&highlight=china

Snap-on Announces First Quarter 2008 Results
Reports EPS from continuing operations of $0.97 compared to $0.64 last year; Completes acquisition of 60% interest in Chinese hand tool manufacturer

"We are also very pleased to announce that Snap-on recently completed the acquisition of a 60% interest in Zhejiang Wanda Tools Co., Ltd., a hot-forged hand tool manufacturer in China," said Pinchuk. "This strategic joint venture builds on Snap-on's current presence in the region and complements the company's existing production capabilities in Kunshan, China. Our majority ownership of Wanda Tools, our first hand tool manufacturing facility in China, is expected to be a key contributor to our future state and is another important step in extending Snap-on's manufacturing capability and market coverage in emerging markets around the world."

November 1999

-- Amazon.com launches its Wishlist service. Countless customers get presents they actually want for the holidays.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=502658&highlight=wishlist

You can contact them and voice your problem.

The names of their Officers and Directors are here:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-govManage

Amazon's Investor Relations Team email address appears near the bottom of this page:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-faq

Their address is:

Amazon.com, Inc.
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

You can contact them and voice your problem.

The names of their Officers and Directors are here:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-govManage

Amazon's Investor Relations Team email address appears near the bottom of this page:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-faq

Their address is:

Amazon.com, Inc.
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

Their annual report, available here:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107357&p=irol-reports

doesn't break out their income by product group, but it does list $2.5 billion in sales for "Other music related products and services", and I don't see any complaints about costs in operating it, so they are probably at least breaking even.

It could still be a loss leader of sorts, in the sense that it could have much lower margins than their other operations, which would dilute any measure that relies on total operations. This can have a negative impact on stock valuation(setting aside whether it should, the point is it can). So if they have to do $1 of 10% profitable iTunes business for every $1 of 20% profitable iPod business, from the outside, you see $2 of 15% profitable business. As problems go, not a bad one to have, but some investors think it is better to split those sorts of operations off.

If it were that simple, Warren Buffett wouldn't be worth $55B.

A company's value is the discounted sum of its future cash flows, which are determined by revenues, costs, and anticipated changes in both over time.

The last part is the kicker. Today's costs and revenues tell you something, but they don't always provide great indicators of costs and revenues 1, 2, 5, 10 years down the line.

That's one reason why Buffett has historically avoided new technologies- it's too hard to predict what's going to happen.

Take Apple for example (it's a link to Yahoo! Finance, I promise). Go look at their 1998 10-k. Revenue had dropped from ~$10B in 1996 to ~$7B in 1997. Apple had losses in both 1996 and 1997. And yet AAPL's market cap (which is the market's aggregate opinion of Apple's value) increased 40x over the past decade.

Did you predict that? I sure as hell didn't. Good job, Steve.

The anti-smoking vaccine, NicVax, is in phase 2B clinical testing, and appears to work. Sort of: "High antibody responders (top 30%) continued to show statistically significant abstinence at nine months: 9-Month continuous abstinence rate: NicVAX=20% (12/61, p=0.0076) vs. Placebo=6% (6/100)" That's not impressive, yet it's better than most anti-smoking programs.

Nicotine addiction is the toughest one to break. Programs for getting people off cocaine are about 40% successful. Programs for getting people off smoking are about 10-20% successful. Also, addicts tend to "age out" of cocaine and heroin addiction; after age 40, most of them eventually give it up. Not nicotine; people smoke their way to the grave.

One problem with a vaccine approach is that encourage overdoses, to overcome the antibodies. For nicotine, this is less of a problem, because smoking has a limited intake rate. But for cocaine, it's a real issue.

It's encouraging, though, that no side effects of this vaccine have been detected so far vs. the placebo.

The real promise for this vaccine is as a preventative measure. The average age for a new smoker is 13. Only 10% start after age 18. So if this works, a school inoculation program might be the way to prevent smoking.

Apple is worth more than IBM...

No. No it isn't. Apple does have a larger Market capitalisation than IBM, which is the share price times the number of outstanding shares:

IBM: ~$159B
Apple: ~$162B

However in terms of revenue, profit, earnings per share and assets, IBM is way ahead of Apple:

IBM: $91.4B / $9.42B / $6.06 / $103B
Apple: $19.1B / $1.99B / $2.27 / $17.2B

The Market cap is so high due basically to investor speculation, which can be seen from the Price/Earnings ratio (P/E) (Google and MS added for comparison):

IBM: 17.1
MS: 21.8
Apple: 47.6
Google: 52.9

Figures taken from here and here(PDF)

These are no ordinary Joe at amazon. These are some of the bigwigs, that makes it even more shameful.

First author: Andrew Jassy, senior VP of Amazon Web service, MBA degree from Harvard B school.

Second Author: Udi Manber , Professor at University of Arizona, and chief "algorithm" officer at Amazon. Doctorate from University of Washington.

third author: Jonathan Leblang , Former VP of A9 and Alexa, current director of A2Z Development center for Amazon. Graduate of George Mason University and Virginia Tech.

Wait a minute... OK, follow the trail.
co2science.org is owned by craig idso, who has in the past been linked to exxon mobile, and exxon has funded co2science.org in the past (Here). Also, co2science was paid $250,000 to make a video about how good global warming would be for society, funded by Western fuels. Do a search on the dude, All you'll find is his links to big business, and little in the way of credentials. For Instance:
http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Corrupt_Idsos.html
On his work with the Coal Industry
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=129849 &p=irol-newsArticle&ID=577889&highlight=
and for the other side of the aguement, a guy only using 2 sources makes the same case you are, and surprise, one is idso, and the other is a Balling character who is usually listed alongside the Idso's and their funding sources
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA334.html