Slashdot Mirror

Sounds like a last ditch effort to save themselves from bankruptcy .

I think you want to take that back. GM is producing good products now.

the article is idiocy and so is your comment.

We have the fact that apple already tried to sue Motorola over the xoom. This is just the response, which was done well before google acquired motorola.

The "Google" Action will be if/what we see from google as a result of this reflecting on them going forward, which could be entirely nothing.

Quite.

This project is a poster-child of what disasters outsourcing can cause, and yet Western business still continues to pursue relentlessly the most radical outsourcing programmes imaginable with no regard to the reality of the situation and the consequences.

My last employer (a large American corporation) has embarked on such a voyage into oblivion and I've been transferred to the outsourcing company (an Indian Engineering "consultancy").

It's incredibly painful to watch. I'm glad I'm not a shareholder, and I'll be leaving as soon as I can find a new job.

Engineering is now "a commodity that can be bought as and when needed on the open market." Engineers don't maintain state in their brains, apparently.

The point of the programme was to ensure Fisker creates American jobs. which it did, despite the lies to the contrary in this story.

You don't care about the truth. You just hate America.

GM's profit has risen strongly and steadily ever since Obama bailed them out with the public's money.

You're a stupid liar.

"Wake me up when there is 25%+ unemployment and breadlines."

You are a head in the sand idiot, no wait. that is a insult to idiots, you are simply a dip-shit.

Unemployment figure is ONLY those currently receiving unemployment insurance. everyone else is not counted, so if you ran out your unemployment you are no longer counted.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/learn-how-to-invest/The-real-unemployment-rate.aspx
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/16/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate/
http://www.qualityinfo.org/olmisj/ArticleReader?itemid=00000486

I can post about 800 more links to the real numbers, but I assume you can use google instead of only getting your news from Fox News.

As for bread lines.... They exist you idiot, maybe if you were not running around in your Saab with blinders on you would see them. Millions use Food trucks and food aid every week to get food for their families. Most run out of food before they run out of people standing in line. They do this at low income areas not next to your Starbucks where you get your half Decaf latte every morning. It's also called "food stamps" but you seem to be far too uneducated to know what that is. No it's not used for mailing food. Food stamp use is at record high levels, also many families in states that do not have food stamps use Food aid trucks.

http://www.loveinctricities.org/gleanersfoodtruckinformation

Oh and fucking asshole republicans that hate the poor are trying like hell to cut it....

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/23/politics/main20065537.shtml

Come on back when you get some real education and experience as to what is happening in your country and your city. next time let's talk about how the cost of living has risen by 15-20% for everyone over the past 4 years but the feds will not talk about.... Bread went from $0.99 a loaf to $1.25 a loaf, Milk up almost 55%, Meat up 35%, etc... Or are you claiming that is not happening either?

I don't see why their workers wouldn't be on par with Detroit , since they are currently made in Georgia

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/07/09/kia-ville-georgia-a-small-town-catches-a-big-break/

An Indian company, HCL, was subcontracted to write the software for the Electrical System (safety critical) of the 787. The software was so bad that the FAA refused to certify it and the software had to be rewritten.

A very large number of Western companies are outsourcing their engineering to HCL these days. In fact many competitors in the same vertical markets buy in engineering from HCL .

HCL supply vast pools of cheap, "motivated" fresh graduates with no experience willing to work long hours for peanuts. These over-worked and under-paid workers change jobs frequently amongst all the competing outsourcing companies in an effort to get pay rises. It's not uncommon for them to change employers every 3-4 months.

This is the new way forward: engineering at rock-bottom prices. Say goodbye to continuity, experience and diligence. Cheap is what counts. Isn't outsourcing great?

An Indian company, HCL, was subcontracted to write the software for the Electrical System (safety critical) of the 787. The software was so bad that the FAA refused to certify it and the software had to be rewritten.

A very large number of Western companies are outsourcing their engineering to HCL these days. In fact many competitors in the same vertical markets buy in engineering from HCL .

HCL supply vast pools of cheap, "motivated" fresh graduates with no experience willing to work long hours for peanuts. These over-worked and under-paid workers change jobs frequently amongst all the competing outsourcing companies in an effort to get pay rises. It's not uncommon for them to change employers every 3-4 months.

This is the new way forward: engineering at rock-bottom prices. Say goodbye to continuity, experience and diligence. Cheap is what counts. Isn't outsourcing great?

An Indian company, HCL, was subcontracted to write the software for the Electrical System (safety critical) of the 787. The software was so bad that the FAA refused to certify it and the software had to be rewritten.

A very large number of Western companies are outsourcing their engineering to HCL these days. In fact many competitors in the same vertical markets buy in engineering from HCL .

HCL supply vast pools of cheap, "motivated" fresh graduates with no experience willing to work long hours for peanuts. These over-worked and under-paid workers change jobs frequently amongst all the competing outsourcing companies in an effort to get pay rises. It's not uncommon for them to change employers every 3-4 months.

This is the new way forward: engineering at rock-bottom prices. Say goodbye to continuity, experience and diligence. Cheap is what counts. Isn't outsourcing great?

Cause Microsoft is one of the biggest funders on Capitol Hill !!!

"Microsoft's chief Washington lobbyist has been convening regular meetings attended by the company's outside consultants that have become known by some beltway insiders as "screw Google" meetings ..

Microsoft is trying to harm Google in the regulatory, legal, and litigation arenas because they're having problems with Google in the competitive marketplace." link

...the rich seem to think that because they make millions, they don't have to contribute.

[Citation Needed]

In fact, I'll see your claim that the rich don't pay their share and raise you a citation of my own. If these stats are accurate, and yes, I know what they say about statistics, then the top 25% of wealth in America pays 85% of the taxes. Does that seem "fair" to YOU?

What you don't realize is that there is no such thing as "fair". "Fair" is an arbitrary concept that is only defined within the context of the one who is using the term. To those below the poverty level, it isn't "fair" that they have to pay any taxes at all, because they don't have enough money to provide for their own needs, much less to contribute to the common good. To the rich, it isn't fair that the top 25% of income in the U.S. is paying 85% of the taxes -- they (presumably) worked hard for their money, so why should they have to shoulder the burden of paying to provide goods and services for the welfare class? My own personal opinion is that there should be a flat tax -- say 25% -- across the board for everyone above the poverty level. No credits, no loopholes, just a flat tax rate that applies to everyone. But that's not "fair" either, because those just above the poverty level ($11,161 in 2009) will feel that 25% hit (or $2790.25) far more than a rich person will. However, it isn't "fair" to the rich person (someone making over $250,000 per year, per Wikipedia and dailyfinance.com) either, because a 25% tax rate lightens their pocket by $62,500 -- over 5 1/2 times the ENTIRE SALARY of a borderline poor person. Is that "fair"?

So, I'm not terribly interested in what people call "fair" because there's no such thing. If you think you can find some objective measure of what "fair" means, you are fooling yourself.

He has a significant financial interest in climate science reaching a particular conclusion.

Do you really believe that Al Gore is motivated by money? Think about that for a moment. What evidence is there for it? I don't even know if he has stocks in renewable energy research companies, or the like, but isn't it plausible that he has invested in said (theoretical?) companies because he has lots of money, and believes that this is a good thing to do?

Can you support your point a little better? It sounds like you are just casting unfounded negative aspirtions.

Clearly you have not followed Gore Jr's life much. His family continues to make millions off of oil stocks given to them as a bribe by Armand Hammer.

Here's Gore sort of being disclosed in 2000:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=468

Here's Gore being called out for more faux caring:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

...and now Gore Jr. is playing both sides.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/11/03/al-gore-the-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html

Clearly your blinders are locked if you do not understand the clear conflict of interest here. I'm sure the slightest bit of investigative journalism could produce much more incentive.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/20/more-rich-americans-renounce-u-s-citizenship-for-lower-taxes/

The simple fact of the matter is that you'll never hear about them, and the ones that do it for the sole purpose of avoiding taxes broke the law, so the IRS will still sieze everything you own in the US and make sure that if you ever change planes in the US you'll be arrested. So many don't do it because you'll never be able to go to the US again to visit family or transit through to another country.

I don't think 'the rich' will leave.That argument is just as much as demagoguery as the 'tax-cuts for the rich' sleight mentioned in your post above.

Are you seriously saying that nobody would move from a high-tax area to a lower-tax area? Because there are plenty of examples.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/study_the_rich_are_leaving_new_jersey_a5E4Ti0z6CxWelbf6nGwOL

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23735878-darlings-50-percent-tax-sends-tycoons-to-switzerland.do

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8466160/Rich-Chinese-consider-leaving-China.html

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/20/more-rich-americans-renounce-u-s-citizenship-for-lower-taxes/

It won't be 100% of course; some rich folks will stay, even if taxes get really high. (There's a cynical old rule of thumb: if you want to hang onto your money, do the same things that retired Senators and Congressmen do. There will always be a way for the rich to keep their money, as long as retired politicians have money.) And some people will just pay the taxes. But there are limits, and the more severe the tax rate, the more it will encourage people to leave.

I don't think it's fair to accuse me of demagoguery.

steveha

Apple surpassed Walmart in 2008 for the largest US seller see here and now sells more than Walmart and Best Buy combined.

I recall reading a similar boast for world-wide sales more recently.

And since Android has now surpassed Apple on smartphones

The really big news is that Android has now surpassed RIM.

This is in line with last weeks Nielsen report.

It's quite a surprise, but Android managed what Apple couldn't: best RIM in the US smartphone market. Interestingly, Android's gains seem to be at RIM's expense. (This is likely due to RIM's "disappointing" 2010 lineup.)

Anyhow, to keep this on topic: If Samsung is rethinking their tablets in light of the prosaic upgrade to the iPad, wait until they see the Playbook (it's absolutely astonishing). With competition like this, Android tablets are going to be pushing new boundaries by years end. If Apple keeps with it's "giant iPod Touch" approach to tablets, they're going to get left in the dust.

"The fact that 10% of the U.S. Population makes almost 90% of the wealth and the other 90% makes only 10% "

No one cares. As long as that 90% can live the American dream: white picket fence, 2 car garage, 2.3 kids, etc. They don't care if the garage houses a Camry or a Lambo, long as they can live their lives, they're happy with 10%.

Problem is with 10+% unemployment and another 20+% underemployment you now have 30% of the population that can't live the american dream. If this trend continues to increase we'll see Egypt in front of the White House.

lazy, link:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/company/microsoft-corporation/msft/nas/institutional-ownership

Many people seem incapable of investigating connections and learning that Elop is the 8th LARGEST MS stockholder, although he claims his shares aren't worth that much and he's selling them as fast as the law allows.

It is obvious he is not conflicted in his interests since, as a major stockholder, it is in his own interest to keep MICROSOFT as profitable as he can. A former Microsoft executive, he's done to Nokia what he did to Macromedia as its CEO. Macromedia WAS a competitor to SilverLight but it is now dead. Symbian, running on 200 million Nokia phones (4 times Apple's iPhone market), is now DEAD in 1st world countries! Symbian will only be onn phones in non-1st world countries and for another 150 million sales or so, then it is DEAD world-wide. Qt's mobile phone foot print was only on the Nokia phone, now it is DEAD on that platform, and WP7 lives. The pattern is too consistent to be accidental. It's worse. Elop has it in his power to kill all future proprietary Qt apps on the Windows platform.

Elop cannot hurt the GPL version of Qt, but his true motives for Qt will be revealed when we learn what his plans are for the commercial Qt license. IF he does NOT allow Nokia to continue to sell commercial Qt licenses (dragging his feet, making promises which put off Qt plans, etc...) we'll know what his true motives for accepting the Nokia CEO position were -- to kill Qt's cross platform capability for proprietary applications (sans source) on the Windows platform. Qt, "write once, run anywhere", IS exploding on the Windows platform. It makes a LOT of economic sense to use Qt to write a proprietary app whose source code can be compiled on THREE platforms with little or no change. One very sophisticated tool chain, three target platforms. Ballmer knows that. Elop knows that. The WORLD has now learned that. That is what scares Ballmer, Microsoft, and .... Elop?

They also know that the QtFree Foundation Agreement, signed by Nokia in 2009, allows ALL of Qt to go BSD or fully GPL if Nokia (Elop) allows a gap of more than one year between the free and proprietary version, or if Qt development is not *significant* for a year. Elop isn't supposed to nickle and dime Qt development. But, I predict that he will. He will allow the commercial version to stagnate, and by succession the GPL version, using what ever excuse he needs to use. Because they have stagnated they are not "up to Nokia's high standards" and commercial Qt license sales will be suspended until WP7 activities moderate and allow "resumption" of Qt development. Elop can waste another few months "negotiating" with the QtFree foundation and, more importantly for Microsoft, no NEW commercial Qt licenses will be available during that time. Existing proprietary Qt projects will be impeded. Letting Qt go BSD would be a problem, though, because it opens Qt to the Windows ecosystem again, this time WITHOUT a license! Elop & Microsoft can't allow that to happen. So, they'll add just enough development to Qt to make it *significant*, even if it really isn't (is changing a few files and the version number significant? Whose lawyer will fight that?) which gives them another year. Qt is now, really, two years behind. That's 2/3rds of a computer generation! If they can stretch this ploy out another year Qt becomes a computer generation behind other tools. App developers look to other tools. Elop has freed the Windows ecosystem of proprietary Qt apps, creating more opportunities for Microsoft to step back in and fill the vacuum left by Qt's departure.

IMO killing commercial Qt is what his move to Nokia was all about. Nokia's Symbian smartphone market share was twice Android's and four times iPhone's, and the cure to stopping the 22% market share decline over the last year is to shed 19% market share, fire most of your developers, abandon your "disruptive" technologies, and re

He loves it when a plan comes together

Perhaps Microsofts 8th largest individual shareholder had a hand in things?

Here's an article about the issue. This is a bit dated now but it's not likely you'll find much more; this has been kept pretty quiet overall.

Essentially the dispute centers on Amazon having the distribution center held by a subsidiary which "just services orders from another company, nudge nudge, wink wink". This, however, isn't the entire issue as Texas billed for taxes as far back as 2005 but the distribution center opened in 2006, as I understand it. I'm not a lawyer so perhaps there's a fine shading of case law that affects this.

Amazon's filed suit demanding an audit of the tax bill but this sort of crap is something they play hardball over pretty regularly. Remember that the law works quite differently when you have enough money to fight it. Friggin' corrupt system, I say. I'm all for collecting sales tax on all orders but, as others have said, this is expensive for smaller online retailers to manage so it's a non-starter.

Folks need to remember that businesses are not compensated for collecting, accounting for, banking and then remitting these taxes. This is something that's not without cost yet we're obligated to do it for no benefit to ourselves. Before saying there's benefit from paying taxes, keep in mind these are taxes owed by customers, not the businesses themselves. We business owners typically pay taxes on top of this for ourselves; handling those shouldn't be compensated.

Because of this, nothing he does will get MS out of its slump.

If this is a "slump," I'll take more of the same.

In the second quarter:

Revenues: $19.95 billion.

Business software profits up 35%
Server and tools profits up 22%
Entertainment group profits up 86%.

Kinect is a winner.

Windows revenues down 30%. But with Win 7 approaching a 25% share of the global market for a client OS, that is not the end of the world. No, the iPad Is Not Killing Microsoft's Business

Where's Ballmer with a chair (and not sitting on it)?

The Borg icon and the stained glass window were never more than flameboat.

Trash them both. It clears your head:

In Microsoft's second quarter:

Revenues $19.5 billion.

Business software, profits up 35%
Server and tools, profits up 21%
Entertainment group, profits up 86%

While PC shipments are down and tablet sales are hot, the PC isn't going away any time soon:

No, the iPad Is Not Killing Microsoft's Business
Mobile vs Desktop

Most companies are run by the guy who invented the damn thing. Microsoft was driven by Bill Gates; when Gates went away, so did Microsoft.

Not true.

Microsoft was launched in 1975. 36 years ago.

Gates knew when it was time to let go, other entrepreneurs have failed this test badly.

Henry Ford had become so set in his ways by the 1940s that the government considered him a threat to the war effort - and nationalization of the Ford Motor Company was averted only because his own family voted their stock against him.

Factoring out the effect of the Windows launch, Microsoft estimated growth around 3%, "in line with PC market growth." Again, 3% growth isn't terrific, but it's nowhere near as bad as the headline figure suggests.

Even if Microsoft's Windows revenue does start to slide in coming years, the company can weather the blow. Sure, Windows revenue makes up a quarter of Microsoft's total sales. But its business-software division -- including Office, as well as SharePoint and Exchange -- contributes 30% of its revenue, and that division expanded its profit by 35% last quarter.

Other divisions are seeing similarly strong profit growth. Microsoft's server and tools division, which makes up another 22% of revenue, saw its profit rise by 21%. And the entertainment group, which makes Xbox and Kinect and accounts for 19% of revenue, posted profit growth of a whopping 86%.

No, the iPad Is Not Killing Microsoft's Business

No, the iPad Is Not Killing Microsoft's Business

On the corporate side, probably not... yet.

On the consumer side? It's already eaten heavily into netbooks, where Microsoft had finally managed to gain some sort of majority.

In the tablet market, which Microsoft had pretty much all to itself for the past *10* years? Microsoft will be lucky to even become relevant in tablets again, what with Android coming into the picture there (nearly the rest of the tablet market belongs to Android-powered tablets). This is in spite of the fact that you can buy an HP Slate 500 right now with Windows 7 on it.

Six months is too early to proclaim the death of anybody, but if the iPod and iPhone are any indication, Microsoft is going to remain toast in the tablet realm for a very long time. It may even have one hell of a fight on its hands just to keep hold of consumer PCs and laptops as time passes and tablets make even deeper inroads.

Incidentally, the big hopes that the pro-Microsoft crowd have pinned on WP7 are beginning to fade. The Kinect is even shaping up to become a passing fad (so far, the only data on Kinect we have is during the past Christmas shopping season - a perfect time to sell toys, you know... and the Wii is *still* out-selling the thing by almost a factor of two).

Is Microsoft going to die or go broke? Probably not in this decade. However, I can very easily see Microsoft being slowly forced to cede the entire consumer market, (save for maybe the XBox) to the competition. Microsoft will likely end up being a corporate/enterprise software house, and probably spin off or sell the whole XBox side of things (after all, they have yet to realize ROI on it, and the next gen is likely due in 2-3 years). They're probably going to lose the mobile realm to Apple and Google. They've already (IMHO) lost the tablet market to Apple and Google. After that, the rest starts moving inward, as people realize that they really don't need Windows for much at home anymore.

URL Fix: Microsoft Reports Record $0.77 Earnings Per Share in Second Quarter

Here is another look at Microsoft's second quarter.

Microsoft may be a big, sprawling company, but it's hardly acting like a deer in the headlights facing a speeding Steve Jobs at the wheel. Given the decades-old and often bitter rivalry between Apple and Microsoft, that narrative is tempting. But a deeper look into Microsoft's report reveals a company that's surprisingly nimble for its size.

First of all, the idea that Microsoft can't create a phenomenon like the iPad anymore simply isn't true. The iPad sold 2 million units in its first 60 days. The Kinect sold four times as many, tapping mainstream interest much sooner.

What's especially interesting is that the Kinect sold so well despite the lack of buzz in the tech media. Comparing Google search and news trends for the word "Kinect" with that of "iPad," and you'll find that the iPad attracted much more of the public conversation. And yet the Kinect's 8 million sales in November and December surpassed the 7.3 million iPads that Apple sold in the entire fourth quarter.

Factoring out the effect of the Windows launch, Microsoft estimated growth around 3%, "in line with PC market growth." Again, 3% growth isn't terrific, but it's nowhere near as bad as the headline figure suggests.

Even if Microsoft's Windows revenue does start to slide in coming years, the company can weather the blow. Sure, Windows revenue makes up a quarter of Microsoft's total sales. But its business-software division -- including Office, as well as SharePoint and Exchange -- contributes 30% of its revenue, and that division expanded its profit by 35% last quarter.

Other divisions are seeing similarly strong profit growth. Microsoft's server and tools division, which makes up another 22% of revenue, saw its profit rise by 21%. And the entertainment group, which makes Xbox and Kinect and accounts for 19% of revenue, posted profit growth of a whopping 86%.

The threat of tablets to Microsoft is real and shouldn't be trivialized. But neither should Microsoft's ability to keep sales and profits growing in other areas of its broad-based businesses.

No, the iPad Is Not Killing Microsoft's Business

It seems they might not have gotten the full 900 mil. See

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/myspace-in-trouble-on-900-million-google-deal/19224196/

Also one has to wonder how much it cost to run myspace all these years. I don't think we will ever know for sure whether Murdoch made or lost money with Myspace. The myspace finances were not separated out in the statements. In the 2010 statement the group in which myspace belonged (named appropriately as "other") suffered around a $500 million loss. However that group included other businesses.

The bigger joke is, pretty soon this DRM-crap will be in just about every new processor. So it'll only be people with older CPU's (read: anything not 1-2 years new) that lack.

Sort of the way that people with Windows Vista or Win7 get fucked for video quality hooking a laptop or HTPC up to a TV or projector that happens to have a VGA input rather than DVI or HDMI.

Welcome to "the future", where DRM is fucking everywhere and your rights as a consumer mean precisely Jack and Shit. And if you wonder how we got there, look no further than the two-party system where both sides are bought out by the same businesses.

My point is the American public doesn't even need to be lied to. Democrats may support some interests of the wealthy in secret, but Republicans publicly denounce the poor and support continued tax cuts for people who are already fabulously wealthy. The only people who are going to pay more with the new tax laws that are about to pass are the poorest of the poor, while the rich see their benefits increase.

Repeating commonly held views of a political party is not a strawman. It's a fact. And the fact remains that wealthy Americans are fucking traitors for refusing to pay their fair share for the government and the infrastructure that made their wealth possible.

These are the same sad fucks who dumped out of the stock market after 9/11. They don't give a damn about this nation if they can't exploit it for money.

H1-B is just one of the Visas being used to bring labor into the country.

Visa abuse is rife and largely ignored.

There are 73 different types of Visas now, and ppl overstay them
and get jobs here in various fields from Tech to Quickie Mart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_visas#Select_List_of_the_Various_Types_of_Visas

That is why the TRUE U6 unemployment rate is closer to 28%.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate/19556146/

Some of the imported workers are smart, some are not, but all are willing
to work past 5 pm and most are willing to work for wages that are well
below the national average for the skillset required.

The L1 visa is not mentioned here, and it is also not mentioned that
the SEVENTY THREE different types of Visa are abused and used
to bring ppl into this country for things they were not intended.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_visas#Select_List_of_the_Various_Types_of_Visas

Once you consider that some of the 911 hijackers got their visas AFTER
they hit the towers, then you see how worthless the system for approval was.

Once you see that ppl are still getting Visas even though the
TRUE U6 unemployment rate is closer to 28% then you
realize that the ppl we elected to represent us clearly are not.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate/19556146/

But in the end this will simply bite the employer in the ass as
the top consumer in the world here int he US will start to
consume less and that will effect their bottom line.

But what we are seeing is simply a race to the bottom, and
with 28% TRUE U6 unemployment that bottom is not too
far away.

What is coming will make the great depression look like
a recession.

The natural evolution of fiat currency is predetermined.

34 instances of hyperinflation are fact, no debate required.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Examples_of_hyperinflation

That fact that most of these were intentional caused is
up for debate with John Perkins defining the intentional pretty clearly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgqfs8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29GhXsx7-Rs

So with intentional financial collapse on the table, follow
the money and then you start to see what is in your future.

Good Luck to all the good ppl !!!

WE the people don't need to lose freedom. Those "nearly human entities with nearly full human rights" need to lose freedom, however. They are merely legal constructs who are on the edge of having "free speech rights?!" It is getting beyond ridiculous. We need to protect ourselves from big business. We know what happens when we let them do what they want. We presently have laws in place and entire governing agencies in place and in operation to prevent the bad things that business will do if allowed. To name a few, the FDA, the FCC, the FAA, the EPA, the Department of Labor and more all exist because of what business would do if they were not regulated.

"We know what happens"? Apparently not. What happens when you take away the rights of business owners is that they, the jobs, and the standard of living move elsewhere. While there are legitimate reasons for regulation, it remains that you can't force me to start a business (especially one without access to capital). You can't force me to hire people. All these TLAs have simply made the conditions ripe for the problems you happen to notice. Big, powerful companies can navigate the absurd forest of regulation far better than small companies can and they don't have to hire US workers in the process. That leads to the real problems such as an estimated real unemployment rate over 20% in the US. That won't get fixed by obsessing over the power of large businesses.

Go ahead and whine about the bad businesses in the US (and elsewhere in the developed world) while the bad businesses in China eat our future.

You mean "The other other other white meat"

A fact is something that can be corroborated with some form of evidence. Since you provided none, I expressed my opinion of your statement.

I was merely hoping for a citation noting a significant difference. My original post did not claim all schools are identical; it merely compared the difference in quality to the difference in cost and made a conclusion. I apologizing for not providing evidence originally but here it is. If you wish to rebut this claim, please provide references to the contrary.

On top of that, this past week Google bid 2 billion to acquire 111 Eighth Ave, New York's ISP hub in Manhattan http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/google-near-purchase-of-nyc-landmark-building-at-111-eighth-ave/19692398/

How quickly we forget the screw Google efforts and the fact that because the Republicans no longer control the house or the White House they are trying desperate tactics. The cost in bribes and "taking fat cats to dinner" alone to get into bed with the Democrats must have put Microsoft off the lobbyist angle. So why not try the courts?

I looked into the merits of the case and it seems to me that Ceglia has a valid case and the defendants are using SCO-like defense tactics already at this early point.

You obviously didn't look too hard. From dailyfinance.com:

Ceglia's attorney, Paul Argentieri, says bring it on. He says he offered to show Facebook's attorneys the original contract if they were willing to visit his offices in Hornell, N.Y. "They didn't take me up on my offer," Argentieri told DailyFinance. "They had three weeks to get ready to answer this very basic question. I was surprised by their hesitation."

Ceglia's attorney Argentieri says he will gladly explain why his client waited six- and-a-half years to file his lawsuit when the parties go to trial. He added that his client has plenty of other documents and canceled checks with Zuckerberg's signature.

That certainly makes Ceglia sound more like SCO than facebook here -- Ceglia's attorney is basically saying "we have lots of evidence but we won't show it to you."

The timing just doesn't make sense...Zuckerberg was alleged to have stolen the idea from the ConnectU guys in the fall of 2003, was't he? If this contract is actually legitimate, that would have shown that Zuckerberg had the idea long before he had contact with ConnectU -- or am I misremembering the time frame of the ConnectU stuff?

"Consumers everywhere want to have confidence that the internet companies they rely on will provide comprehensive search results and act as responsible stewards of their information."

"Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company anywhere," Clinton declared. "American companies should take a principled stand."

-- US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, referring to Chinese internet censorship.

I'm surprised I haven't seen the phrase "latency arbitrage" yet. You all are talking about buying and selling stocks "quickly" in terms of several seconds. But in this latest model, stocks are bought and sold faster than you can type a single word. It's automated, and the people who have a 100 millisecond advantage: the richest, who get their servers hooked up as near as possible to the source of the buy/sell info feeds. Imagine the difference between playing Quake or another first-person shooter 1000 miles away from a server where some other players are directly connected to the LAN, and one player is actually playing on the same machine that's serving. Who gets the fastest updates and the best real-time view? The host! Read more here: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/investing/rigged-market-latency-arbitrage-3-billion/19503388/

Unless you live in Pennsylvania, USA

York Canada
Lancashire, UK

We're more alike than you think.

As one of the last eleven people in the country with a job I look forward to buying one!

They'll be built in the bay area, employing thousands of people. This announcement is what jobs recovery is all about.

.. but why is the trading so frenetic in the first place? Why this absolute pressure to trade nownowNOW?

The stock market is a theoretical long term investment. It was before glass-seagul was appealed.

Here is how flash trading works. Basically a super computer sits below the trading floor watching incoming and outgoing transactions. Lets say you have $300,000 in savings and want to put $100,000 in company A as its stock price looks reasonable. It lists for $16 a share and you put down your $100,000 in shares. The super computer sees this HUGE grab and your transaction. It quickly buys all your shares before your transaction is complete and raises the price to $18 a share before your transaction is complete. Goldman Sachs or the other firm takes $2 from you in the process as you end up with less shares due to it becoming $18 a share within a few hundred milliseconds. Here is an illustration. The same firms do the same when selling so if you decide to dump a stock at $18 you end getting only $16 a share and Megabank makes another $2 a share.

Its used like this and here are some more details on how it works. SHorting is quite popular and caused Greece some turmoil. The same is true with investors shorting bank stocks and mortgage backed securities in 2007. Flash trading was likely the culprit as it could do this in ways you and I could not imagine.

The original crooks of the 1929 stock market crash complained after Glass-Seagull that they could not run the stock market with games like they used too and it was no fun anymore. It looks like its returned to just that today.

Who buys 3-1/2" floppies? The same people who buy Polaroid film. OK, not exactly the same people, but in real life, people and companies don't throw out stuff that is working perfectly well, and they keep buying the consumables for a long time after the product is supposedly "obsolete."

There's a consistent, strong tendency to overemphasis the new stuff, because it's how companies make their money, it's what makes for interesting articles in the trade press, and personal career advancement is better served by expertise in Windows 7 than in MS-DOS. But don't think for a minute that MS-DOS is not being used anywhere in your company.

People will say "that's five years old, do we really need to support it?" You point down the hall to the room where some PC-AT is still in use, and the reaction is, "Oh, sure, isn't it awful, I can't believe we have those museum pieces lying around, but that's just because our company is no good. NOBODY ELSE has them." Wrong, everybody does. If there's some manager who thinks they don't, it just means they don't know where it is.

There is still a market for new typewriter ribbons, compact cassette tapes, and vacuum tubes. When a billion dollar market becomes a $10 million dollar market, it doesn't necessarily become unprofitable. Heck, my dad once bought an old cylinder photograph that wasn't working. There was still an outfit that was still making replacement needles and diaphragms and other parts for them.

"I have not moved out of the comedian's box into the news box. The news box is moving towards me.

Perhaps Senator Franken thinks the same thing?

Apple cannot make money by first deploying the A4 processor then switching away after another chip beats it, they'd lose that massive investment in chip development.

Read up on sunk costs. Once the investment is already done it is not factored into future investment decisions. Apparently the A4 currently makes sense as an investment and Apple's balance sheet indicates that it does. The fact that they have already sunk development costs will (or rather should) not be a factor in future chipset decisions. That money is already spent and gone. Only future cash flows matter, not past ones.

It's a common irrational mistake people make saying "but I've already spent so much on this technology - it would be wasteful to dump it" when in fact that is irrelevant to whether a new investment is worthwhile. Consumers don't care how much Apple has invested in a technology and won't pay for it if something better is available. If some supplier were to come out with a much better chip tomorrow, Apple would have to decide whether there is a better forward looking return on investment with their in-house tech or outsourcing it. If the outsourced tech has the better expected ROI, they should outsource it regardless of how much money they have already sunk into the A4.

Irrelevant. Those goods may be produced in Asia but they are sold by people with jobs here - advertisers, retail staff and so forth. I'm not up for getting into a massive discussion about it but take a look at http://cafehayek.com/myths-and-fallacies and some of the articles there. You should have more respect for his opinion than mine. To answer the second question, I'm not an economist but he is.

I've read a lot of Hayek. I disagree with him on a few topics (but if I were on the same level as him, I'd have my own following :)). As for it being irrelevant, that's not quite so. It just means that while we're not losing 100% of the cash being spent on foreign goods, we are still losing some of the positive impact that cash could have in our economy.

Emphasis mine:

"When the economy is doing fine, he estimates, $1 of government spending yields 40 cents in extra production and related jobs." - http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/does-the-return-on-government-spending-triple-in-a-depression/19200069/

Did you read that article? DeLong states that in a "normal" economy, return on government spending is about 1.4 (40% over and above the amount invested). But during a depression, return is 2.5 (150% over and above what is spent). Important to note that DeLong is a Keynesian... if you're looking for a non-Keynesian point of view, he's a bad source :)

I think the safer course of action with those odds is to leave the money with the people who know how to spend it best in their situation, the people who earned it.

History tells us that's a poor option. Devastating cycles of recessions and depressions in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries would tend to agree...

Sorry for not posting sooner. Sick child in the house.

That's a bold assertion. What happens when they spend all the money on consumer goods produced in Asia?

Irrelevant. Those goods may be produced in Asia but they are sold by people with jobs here - advertisers, retail staff and so forth. I'm not up for getting into a massive discussion about it but take a look at http://cafehayek.com/myths-and-fallacies and some of the articles there. You should have more respect for his opinion than mine. To answer the second question, I'm not an economist but he is.

I find it interesting that you mention "Even the Austrians..." because I was just reading about that today. I really need to use some sort of web clipping addon.

Anyway, I would have to say I align myself pretty strongly with Hayek but my personal philosophy is whatever provides the greatest amount of individual economic freedom.

And I'm still looking for a good "unbiased" source of information on government spending. I hesitate to link to a third-party news source (especially News Busters) quoting Milton Friedman from a book, however this link has a subsection that is of interest:

http://newsbusters.org/node/27813/print

My google-fu isn't strong enough at this late hour but I also found an interesting statement:

"When the economy is doing fine, he estimates, $1 of government spending yields 40 cents in extra production and related jobs." - http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/does-the-return-on-government-spending-triple-in-a-depression/19200069/

In a such a short article, there's not much meat but I'm interested in seeing any corroboration and/or rebutal to the theories at the end.

Taken in light of the Friedman statements and the basic reality of where government gets its money would seem to suggest that there IS a very small window where government COULD stimulate the economy.

However that window is smaller, IMHO, than trying to hit a two-meter thermal exhaust port. On one side (spending too early) it's wasteful and takes money from the private sector. On the other side, you end up with massive inflation.

I think the safer course of action with those odds is to leave the money with the people who know how to spend it best in their situation, the people who earned it.