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So about $558 million over that period (2003 to 2010)

Its still nothing compared to US Federal spending on climate change for that same period (over 106 billion dollars).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

So whats so bad about spending 0.5% of federal climate change spending to try and get the message out that not everyone is in agreement with it?

Seriously, 558$ million, what a big number. Lets scare the sheeple that read the news.

Honnestly, $106 billion spent over an 8 year period, is insane IMO.

$106,000,000,000
      $558,000,000

"The problem for the devil's argument is that Pharma spends double the amount on advertizing that they do on research. "
nope.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma...

http://www.lymphomainfo.net/lifestyle/leukemia/novartis-gears-up-to-showcase-us-health-care-shortcomings
vs
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlangreth/2010/08/09/gleevec-inventor-why-arent-there-more-cancer-cures/

Which more-represents 'objective' reality? Personally, I am more inclined to cynicism...

1. Estimates of just medicare/medicaid fraud in the US easily approach $100 billion. I'd bet those estimates are conservative.

According to that link, the GAO estimated $48 billion in "improper payments." I suppose that's "approaching" $100 billion, if you are free to take any number and double it.

The GAO didn't say "fraud," they said "improper payments." Big difference.

The author of that article said that Medicare fraud is 10%, but private insurance fraud is only 1.5%. Funny thing, he used to work for the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, which is a private insurance industry lobbyist.

I went to a doctor about a bad knee. He gave me an x-ray, and billed the insurance company
$1,000. When I got home, I read a medical journal article about my knee problem. They said that x-rays aren't necessary. I wonder how much the private insurance industry loses to fraud. I'd like a calculation made by somebody who isn't a lobbyist for the private insurance industry.

120 billion euro? Internets, you so funny.

To put things in perspective:

1. Estimates of just medicare/medicaid fraud in the US easily approach $100 billion. I'd bet those estimates are conservative.

2. Medicare/medicaid spending is only about a fifth of the US budget. (That doesn't necessarily mean that total US fraud is 5 times the above figure, but suggests it's much larger than $100B.).

3. The Eurozone's GDP is about equal to (slightly larger than) that of the US.

Put it all together, and tell me with a straight face that fraud in the Eurozone is 120 billion euro (about $160 billion). Keep in mind that for every Sweden there's an Italy.
Yeah, it's "probably" much higher, like the Broncos "probably" lost.

At a net worth of 4.4 billion dollars he should provide some scholarships himself.

Forbes pretty much agrees with that analysis, and they valued the Tax write off for Moto losses to have been worth one billion out of the gate, plus 700million yearly. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti...

Then there was the sale of 2 Moto fabs in the far east.

See also http://www.androidcentral.com/...

It will be interesting to see how much of the State Side assembly and shipping stays here. The advantages of having Chinese labor has been falling yearly, and Lenovo may just decide to build boards over seas and do the (mostly) automated assembly here in Texas.

That's gonna leave a mark. A -$10 billion mark!

captcha: failure

Maybe not. According to Forbes Google's net cost might have been as low as $1.5 billion, which means this might be a net gain.
TLDR: The sold off portions and the tax write-down may have made the out of pocket costs only 1.5B.

As I pointed out elsewhere, this isn't the only sale from that purchase. Look here

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti...

They already sold off parts of that 13 bn for 2 bn in cash and 15% stake in another company. This makes another 2 bn. They also got to keep the patents, and got massive tax writeoffs for years. They may have come out ahead on cash (depending on the tax writeoffs) and definitely ended up buying those patents for a few billion max.

Not really. They sold various other parts in the past for cash, and got tax writeoffs. Forbes estimates it only really cost them 1.5 billion in cash. With this deal they made money, and likely kept the patents.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti...

+ submissive lawyers = what's happening.
Would anyone want to work under this "Larry"?

If so, what is it like? Is he throwing chairs as well or is he not strong enough?

In what percentage bracket is he - 2, 3.. important questions, right?

http://www.forbes.com/pictures...
http://www.forbes.com/profile/...
http://www.celebritynetworth.c...

http://elitedaily.com/money/en... ...
He is a serious Womanizer

Ellison, like all Elite men, is a womanizer. He has been linked to countless celebrities, heiresses, and other notable figures over the world. He is also divorced 4 times. Ellison can often be found dating three Oracle employees simultaneously literally.

Hrm...

+ submissive lawyers = what's happening.
Would anyone want to work under this "Larry"?

If so, what is it like? Is he throwing chairs as well or is he not strong enough?

In what percentage bracket is he - 2, 3.. important questions, right?

http://www.forbes.com/pictures...
http://www.forbes.com/profile/...
http://www.celebritynetworth.c...

http://elitedaily.com/money/en... ...
He is a serious Womanizer

Ellison, like all Elite men, is a womanizer. He has been linked to countless celebrities, heiresses, and other notable figures over the world. He is also divorced 4 times. Ellison can often be found dating three Oracle employees simultaneously literally.

Hrm...

I read the summary twice and thought... WHAT phosphorous shortage?? "Scientists predict..." Is this a joke? I found this article that agrees with me. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti...

Perhaps the original "source" thought that a finite mineral "reserve" meant the resource itself is finite. The current phosphorous mining operations find enough to last 300 years and then stop exploring for it (making a fininite "reserve" of what they've found). We are going to run out of lots of other things (like tin and copper, sea floor minining is going to be UGLY) before we have to send anyone into the pee-pee mines. I have a limited number of socks in my sock drawer, but it doesn't mean there's a socks shortage, or that we need to mine them from coffins.

No, Snowden is at best a leaker, he could be worse.

Which "malfeasance" are you referring to? I haven't heard of them doing anything illegal (even if some might tend to make you uncomfortable).

Really? http://www.forbes.com/sites/je...

Keep up, eh?

"What have we done to China so far?"

http://www.wired.com/wiredente...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke...

Given that China has the second largest output for research papers nowadays I'd imagine there's quite a lot for the US to learn from them even if they are stereotyped as a backwater state which the US could learn nothing of value from.

That's a relief.

Nobel Committee Rebukes Michael Mann for falsely claiming he was ‘awarded the Nobel Peace Prize’

At least the Climategate emails are simple skullduggery whitened by a whitewash.

he's into politically motivated demagoguery, court actions and making a public circus of it.

You may recall that it is Mann that is suing Steyn, not the other way around, and Mr. Mann isn't above politics himself.

Climategate 2.0

Consider an email written by Mr. Mann in August 2007. "I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy." Doug Keenan is a skeptic and gadfly of the climate-change establishment. Steve McIntyre is the tenacious Canadian ex-mining engineer whose dogged research helped expose flaws in Mr. Mann's "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures.

One can understand Mr. Mann's irritation. His hockey stick, which purported to demonstrate the link between man-made carbon emissions and catastrophic global warming, was the central pillar of the IPCC's 2001 Third Assessment Report, and it brought him near-legendary status in his community. Naturally he wanted to put Mr. McIntyre in his place.

The sensible way to do so is to prove Mr. McIntyre wrong using facts and evidence and improved data. Instead the email reveals Mr. Mann casting about for a way to smear him. If the case for man-made global warming is really as strong as the so-called consensus claims it is, why do the climategate emails show scientists attempting to stamp out dissenting points of view? Why must they manipulate data, such as Mr. Jones's infamous effort (revealed in the first batch of climategate emails) to "hide the decline," deliberately concealing an inconvenient divergence, post-1960, between real-world, observed temperature data and scientists' preferred proxies derived from analyzing tree rings?

This is the real significance of the climategate emails. They show that major scientists who inform the IPCC can't be trusted to stick to the science and avoid political activism. This, in turn, has very worrying implications for the major international policy decisions adopted on the basis of their research.

Nobel Committee Rebukes Michael Mann for falsely claiming he was ‘awarded the Nobel Peace Prize’

Michael Mann And The ClimateGate Whitewash: Part One

Mann has a record of being evasive about the data and methods used. Are you willing to certify that what you found are the complete and accurate set of data, models, and code used to produce the results that Mann published on? Is any data he excluded noted? Is the methodology in there?

THE HOCKEY STICK REVISITED - A Tale of Obstruction (2003-2004) I suggest reading the entire section "A Tale of Obstruction (2003-2004)" at the web page, it is a sordid tale.

Michael Mann And The ClimateGate Whitewash: Part One

Sometimes being simple isn't good enough. Mann has a record of being evasive about the data and methods used. Are you willing to certify that what you found are the complete and accurate set of data, models, and code used to produce the results that Mann published on? Is any data he excluded noted? Is the methodology in there?

THE HOCKEY STICK REVISITED - A Tale of Obstruction (2003-2004) I suggest reading the entire section "A Tale of Obstruction (2003-2004)" at the web page, it is a sordid tale.

Michael Mann And The ClimateGate Whitewash: Part One

And when buying Android you get to support Microsoft to the tune of 2 billion dollars per year.

LINK | LINK 2 | LINK 3

When you train and educate for current technology and current needs of business, they will be unqualified when things change.

Companies' needs are for the short term. Technology, business and the markets change very quickly and if we train people to be one trick ponies they will have to be retrained again anyway.

And we're not talking about ancient Babylonian or Greek here - we're talking about reading, writing, math, basic science and critical thinking here - as well as civics; which I think has been completely forgotten by everyone. Those are basic things and more important than the programming language du jour; which after going out of style, those people will be unemployable - even if they do retrain inanother language du jour - because they have no on the job experience and the companies will just go and hire some CHEAP new grads who were trained in the language/tech du jour.. The system is gamed to screw the people and enrich the rich even more.

If a company needs a worker they SHOULD train that person to do the job that THEY need. TO demand that my taxes go to pay for vocational training for some high tech company that off shores their profit so that they don't have to pay taxes is a complete ripp-off.

These companies want it all their way: the public pays for their worker training while they keep all the profits and pay little or no taxes.

Google and the rest of Silicon Valley is actually harming our country. They are importing poor people to work for less, not paying taxes, ripping off the system, and all the while keeping the money for themselves.

Yup, http://www.forbes.com/sites/er...

There was no bounty for the golden gate bridge, the interstate highway system, or the exploration of the moon. the empire state building had no bounty for successful construction and neither did the hoover dam. These works were constructed by private companies that paid a living wage and considered the welfare of their employees sacrosanct.

Let me just link this for your consideration:

But, Hoover Dam’s construction had its ugly aspects. “Racial and ethnic discrimination, profiteering at the company store, and the flouting of health and safety regulations” all existed. Blacks workers were segregated while Asian labor was banned. Poor safety standards led to appalling deaths from heat stroke, badly executed detonations, and carbon monoxide poisoning among others.

The response from Crowe and his underbosses was merciless. Strikes were crushed, the exhausting pace of work continued, and injury compensation was denied. Indeed, fraud was not uncommon. The medical staff, at management’s behest, sometimes intentionally misdiagnosed men suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning (contracted from truck exhaust while blasting out tunnels) with illnesses. As Hiltzik notes, diseases such as tuberculosis or pneumonia were “all conditions for which the men were ineligible to claim injury compensation.”

Actually I'd like you to cite please; in fact I'm going to pull the "I call BS" card as well. There's actually an official list of people who have renounced their citizenship each quarter for tax purposes, published by the IRS, and it isn't all that large (2,963 in 2013 to be precise, and 2013 was a big year for this.) Just how many people on that list do you actually know? Almost all of them are filthy rich. What, are you the captain of their yacht club or something?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke...

Some go so far as to say that the U.S. tax and disclosure laws are downright oppressive.

No group is more severely impacted than U.S. persons living abroad. For those living and working in foreign countries, it is almost a given that they must report and pay tax where they live. But they must also continue to file taxes in the U.S. What’s more, U.S. reporting is based on their worldwide income, even though they are paying taxes in the country where they live.

Many can claim a foreign tax credit on their U.S. returns, but it generally does not eliminate all double taxes.

The law that will have you extradited is called FATCA.

Accenture, from the multinational corporation formerly known as Arthur Andersen, changed their name after the Enron scandal, formerly residents of tax haven Bermuda, now residents of tax haven Ireland http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2013/11/06/if-ireland-is-not-a-tax-haven-what-is-it/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen#Enron_scandal

Actually, my favorite was the Challenger License Plate with the message "KABOOM"

However, I don't buy it. If this researcher has found a way to bypass the hardware encryption on a locked iOS device, that sounds like a bigger and more interesting security hole than one in a shitty Starbucks app.

Ummm ... except law enforcement has been able to do this for some time now.

I think it's even been covered here -- I didn't think it was news.

If you think your appearance is holding you back professionally why don't you do something to help solve that problem? While it's true you can't do anything about your height or skin color, you could certainly cut your hair, shave and possibly dress more conservatively (even better, dress/look like those who have the position you want). It's up to you make sure you fit the image of who you want to be professionally.

If you really don't know where to start, here's a good article with some basic advice of how to dress yourself appropriately for your office environment.

1. Salaries in technology are rising at a rate of 7.5% or so per year. That's not really fast enough to stimulate the supply of people they need, but it's indicating that they can't get what they want for the price they were originally offering.
2. According to the BLS, they're projecting a 22% increase in demand for developers. The supply has gone up, but not by that much.
3. Unemployment among techies is about 4.4%, half the national average, and as low as 0.5% for DBAs. So very few who bill themselves as techies are out in the cold.

There are levels of communications that can be secured even with an hostile/insecure carrier. It can know where are you, but maybe not what you are sending and to who, (at least as pure data stream, if not as plain phone calls). Anyway, regarding hostile carriers or not, it should be safe against hostile/insecure sim cards too.

They do this China vs US breakdown every time a new iPhone teardown happens.

It costs Google about $4 more a unit to make Motorola phones here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/09/25/if-apple-brought-iphone-manufacturing-to-the-us-it-would-cost-them-4-2-billion/

...with Apple, apparently, it's not the $4 a unit that's the biggest deal, it's tax "loopholes" of having those monies all happen in other countries. The $4 extra a unit is only .6B, a paltry $600M.

Interesting sentence, let's break it down:

Grocery stores are a bit rare in the ghetto, and those few which exist usually charge exorbitant prices while providing very little in the way of variety (and don't ask about the produce.)

First, let's tackle this one:

Grocery stores are a bit rare in the ghetto

First off, where are the bulk of food stamp benefits going, to "the ghetto" or to millions and millions of struggling Americans in the suburbs?

Second - "Grocery stores are a bit rare"? Are you sure?

Third - "and those few which exist usually charge exorbitant prices while providing very little in the way of variety":

Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, “you can get basically any type of food,” said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, lead author of one of the studies. “Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert,” he said.

Source: Food Deserts and Obesity Role Challenged in Studies

Poor neighborhoods, Dr. Lee found, had nearly twice as many fast food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier ones, and they had more than three times as many corner stores per square mile. But they also had nearly twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocers per square mile.

Source: Food Deserts and Obesity Role Challenged in Studies

Finally, "(and don't ask about the produce.)" - why not? is it because, as I suspect, it isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be?

In one neighborhood in Camden, N.J., where 80 percent of children are eligible for a free school lunch, children bought empanadas, sodas and candy at a grocer, while adults said they had no trouble finding produce. Wedged in among fast food restaurants, convenience stores, sit-down restaurants, take-out Chinese and pizza parlors were three places with abundant produce: Pathmark and Save-A-Lot supermarkets and a produce stand.

Do you know what it means to qualify for a "free lunch"? It means that 1/3rd of the child's daily meals are provided by a school cafeteria, prepared by chefs, and designed by nutritionists. It also means they qualify for a free hot breakfast at school in the morning in many cities. That's 2/3rds of the child's meals provided for FREE, in addition to SNAP/Food Stamp programs.

Every month the federal government air lifts in millions of dollars into "ghettos" as part of a program designed to only pay for food - don't you think that would attract a few food retailers?

These are wholesale prices. Once you add in VAT and the EU's subsidy taxes the actual retail prices are quite a bit higher.

The prices also vary quite a bit from country to country, and within countries.

http://energy.globaldata.com/media-center/press-releases/power-and-resources/europe-paying-more-for-electricity-than-us-states-globaldata-consultant-with-dramatic-differences-seen-between-countries

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/10/27/berlins-ballooning-electricity-rates-become-highest-in-europe/

It's not just about prices ... from that Forbes article:

An overwhelming majority – some 84% – of the more than 1,000 Germans interviewed for a recent survey expressed support for Germany’s plan to shift the lion’s share of the nation’s electricity supply to renewable energy over the next decade.

What gives? How has such a radical energy policy remained so popular in the face of rising costs?

Take John Farrell’s recent treatment of the subject in Renewable Energy World:

Support for Germany’s renewable energy quest isn’t about cost of energy, but about the opportunity to own a slice of the energy system . . . Nearly half of the country’s 63,000 megawatts of wind and solar power is owned locally, and these energy owners care as much about the persistence of renewable energy they own as they do about the energy bill they pay. Not only do these German energy owners reduce their own net cost of energy, every dollar diverted from a distant multinational utility company multiplies throughout their local economy . . . Three-quarters of Germans want to maintain a focus on ‘citizen-managed, decentralized renewable energy.’

These are wholesale prices. Once you add in VAT and the EU's subsidy taxes the actual retail prices are quite a bit higher.

The prices also vary quite a bit from country to country, and within countries.

http://energy.globaldata.com/media-center/press-releases/power-and-resources/europe-paying-more-for-electricity-than-us-states-globaldata-consultant-with-dramatic-differences-seen-between-countries

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/10/27/berlins-ballooning-electricity-rates-become-highest-in-europe/

There has been evidence of this association floating around for ages. On the balance of evidence there may be reason for concern, but in particular as with anything in medicine, the right decision for any individual may come from presence of the right (or wrong) risk factors.

See e.g. : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121114083928.htm http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/01/11/the-neuroscience-of-pot-researchers-explain-why-marijuana-may-bring-serenity-or-psychosis/

One factor that would seem to be relevant is the proportion of THC and cannabidiol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol) present in plant strains, and change in ratios from decades past as plant breeding has changed the landscape of what effects may be expected from a particular plant.

The extreme reaction of "Reefer Madness" is almost certainly misguided, but there is reason to suggest that more science is needed towards ascertaining that the full benefits may be had, and risk factors removed (e.g. via genetic tests and controlled breeding/testing of plant strains) whether for medicinal purposes or otherwise.

What a load of hyperbole. This has nothing to do with the right to remain anonymous online and everything to do with proving that the reviews are fake. This may even relate to some of Yelp's alleged unscrupulous business practices: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhandy/2012/08/16/think-yelp-is-unbiased-think-again/

My list was by R&D spending as % of GDP. The topic of this article.

US: 2.7
China: 1.98
EU: 1.96

We can also talk about unemployment:
China: 4.1
US: 7
EU: 12

Or maybe growth rate of economy:
China 6.8
US 3.5
EU 1.1

Or people who have walked on the moon
US 12
China 0
EU 0

The EU Nobel Prize total is mostly before 1950. Since then the US has been winning the vast majority of Nobel Prizes. Recently US domination has been overwhelming.

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jonbruner/files/2011/10/nobel_graphic_small.png

Nobel Prizes 1950-2012 (approx)
US 60% (67 after 2000)
EU 30%
China 0

Um, do you mean like iOS in the Car that's been known about since at least June of 2013 and that has 12 car manufacturers signed on already?

Or maybe Siri Eyes Free (an admittedly really dumb name) that was announced in June 2012?

Might not have been "the first ever" but Apple certainly beat Android on this one.

Snowden had NO IDEA of what was in the NSA when he went there

According to Keith Alexander, Snowden worked for the NSA for 12 months before taking the contract job with Booz Allen.

I don't understand why that is such a big deal anyway. They are going to spam me with ads one way or the other; at least if I find value in the product or service being advertised, it's less of a waste of my time and perhaps it's even a valuable proposition.

That's because targeted ads are failures. You research and then buy a pair of shoes online and they spam you with shoe ads for the next month when you are no longer interested.

What we need to be worried about are not ads that try (and miserably fail) at showing you stuff you might want to buy. We need to be worried about them using all of that personal information to manipulate you into wasting money.

One recent example is how Orbitz puts higher priced hotels at the top of the list for people using macintoshes. The real risk to each and every one of us is their ability to figure out your mental weaknesses and use them against you so that you spend more money than you should. It is the Big Data version of bikini models in beer commercials. Lots of people like to think they are immune to advertising - but nobody is 100% immune to millions of dollars worth of research on manipulation of the human mind.

Whoa... mental weakness?

You shouldn't look at it in absolutes buddy. A person who makes X is going to spend Y. All an advertiser wants is a bigger slice of Y.

When you look at Y in absolute terms, buying a Mac or spending more on a hotel might be like buying imported beer vs domestic to someone with less Y. Getting us to spend more on beer or computers vs other things is very much their goal. Maybe Orbitz found a correlation between more expensive computers and willing to spend more on hotels, big surprise there, but don't talk about how much money we SHOULD spend absolutely, these aren't the same hotels for more money, nor the same computers.

Someone spends too much on beer/computers when they can't afford necessities, not when they buy imports/Macs.
Beer companies are rewarding people for watching a game vs. non-drinking activity like going to movies, that's really what that is.

I don't understand why that is such a big deal anyway. They are going to spam me with ads one way or the other; at least if I find value in the product or service being advertised, it's less of a waste of my time and perhaps it's even a valuable proposition.

That's because targeted ads are failures. You research and then buy a pair of shoes online and they spam you with shoe ads for the next month when you are no longer interested.

What we need to be worried about are not ads that try (and miserably fail) at showing you stuff you might want to buy. We need to be worried about them using all of that personal information to manipulate you into wasting money.

One recent example is how Orbitz puts higher priced hotels at the top of the list for people using macintoshes. The real risk to each and every one of us is their ability to figure out your mental weaknesses and use them against you so that you spend more money than you should. It is the Big Data version of bikini models in beer commercials. Lots of people like to think they are immune to advertising - but nobody is 100% immune to millions of dollars worth of research on manipulation of the human mind.

It is likely you might be able to buy a retail copy of Photoshop to convent them, and that probably would work, but then you are spending thousands of dollars.

I don't know if this is helpful, but you don't need to spend thousands of dollars for an old copy of Photoshop. Adobe has effectively released CS2 as freeware. Officially, I believe you are only supposed to download and use this if you already have a CS2 license, but lots of people appear to have interpreted Adobe's actions as effectively releasing free software.

So, you might try this as a solution... CS2 was released in 2005, so if your photos are 10 years old, I imagine this could work.

Yeah, perfectly safe: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2013/12/31/with-bitcoin-in-your-pocket-is-your-identity-finally-safe/

“Due to the anonymized/cryptographic nature of the currency, it is almost impossible to track whether an individual has experienced a theft or loss due to other reasons–malware, a corrupt “wallet” which is stored on your hard drive, etc–and it’s especially difficult to determine with any accuracy where the stolen currency might have gone once ‘stolen’”

Der Spiegel reported on the NSA’s access to smartphones and, in particular, the iPhone back in September. Today, these reports expand to the NSA’s apparent ability to access just about all your iPhone data through a program called DROPOUTJEEP, according to security researcher Jacob Appelbaum.

The NSA claims a 100% success rate in installing the malware on iPhones. Functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted.

It is unknown whether the backdoor was developed in cooperation with Apple, but Appelbaum doubts it. Video of Appelbaum's full speech is included in the article.

I haven't figured out why they won't just sell you an HBO Go subscription as a separate entity. They have a digital content distribution system in place. It has support on many different devices. Yet they still require that you buy their channel through a cable/satellite provider and THEN get access to it.

Why not just have an HBO Go subscription for $10/month? They can cut out the middle man (cable companies) and get a lot more customers that only do internet based TV.

HBO doesn't want to cut out the middlemen, because doing so would actually lose
them money (or at least not make them as much as one would expect, while at the
same time seriously pissing off their current revenue sources):

Why Doesn't HBO Allow Non-Cable Subscribers To Subscribe To HBO Go à la Hulu?

Given all the US lobbying against Huawei gear being used in critical infrastructure, it seems odd that the NSA is claiming they have managed to penetrate these routers.

Perhaps while NSA was powning Huawei routers they discovered they were already compromised.

Seems far more likely that in doing so, the NSA penetration was in turn detected and prevented by Huawei, or they haven't been able to penetrate to the extent they have with Cisco routers, and therefore they need to keep these out of critical infrastructure.

E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

The plausible explanation is that they are simply using ez-pass as a means to assess traffic congestion, ie how long is it taking a car to traverse a section of highway. Of course I don't doubt that law enforcement wants access to track people, but generally cell phone tracking is more reliable and readily accessible. Wanna bet these are at the border as well?

After spotting a police car with two huge boxes on its trunk — that turned out to be license-plate-reading cameras — a man in New Jersey became obsessed with the loss of privacy for vehicles on American roads. (He’s not the only one.) The man, who goes by the Internet handle “Puking Monkey,” did an analysis of the many ways his car could be tracked and stumbled upon something rather interesting: his E-ZPass, which he obtained for the purpose of paying tolls, was being used to track his car in unexpected places, far away from any toll booths.

The Surprising Reason That Oil Subsidies Persist: Even Liberals Love Them - Forbes

Oh, look. An NSA shill posting AC on Slashdot. Didn't see that coming!

Name a single innocent person who has been affected by the NSA.

Besides everyone that has the constitutional right to not be searched without probably cause and warrant? How about the companies that were being spied on for economic purposes? Were they big winners from that? No? How strange.

How about the big tech companies (such as anyone in cloud computing or cryptography) that took a major hit as a result of the leaks? You think they are happy that they are losing money now that people know how insecure these systems really are? How about Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc. that are suffering the same backlash on top of needing to invest a lot more resources to fix holes that the NSA was exploiting? What about RSA?

How about Lavabit and Silent Circle? These are just two examples of businesses that were dismantled because of legal pressure. They are completely legal businesses.

How about anyone that isn't actually doing anything wrong, but our government decides to harass/blackmail/defame anyways? We know that the NSA will find your porn and be more than happy to tell everyone about it. Blackmail is NOT OK!

We also know that the NSA has been writing and distributing malware. How about TorMail or any other (legitimate) service provided by Freedom Hosting? We know that the FBI confiscated the servers, but the NSA helped with installing malware on any connection and siphoning data regardless of whether or not the user was attempting to access a legal service or not. Hell, we even know that the NSA took part in hacking consumer Tor nodes to initiate a MITM attack in the hope that they might be able to track someone unrelated.

I think I've made my point. I could keep going, if I had to. There is a hell of a lot of people being wronged by this program, but lets turn your own game on you.

Name a single innocent person who has been affected by the NSA.

It's your turn. Name a single person or incident that has been stopped, hindered, or investigated in relation to terrorism from the NSA's programs. Trick question, we already know that there isn't any These programs have nothing to do with terrorism, so get your head out of your ass and stop pretending that it's OK for the government to infringe on our rights for their own personal gain.