Slashdot Mirror

My bad: the Forbes article I grabbed it from is a year old:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/01/20/dont-underestimate-microsoft-but-watch-out-for-margin-compression/

"Bing is another powerful tool Microsoft can juice. Despite “continuing to rack up operating losses,” Bing is “inching up the search ladder,” according to Caris, growing revenues 13% to $784 million. Microsoft is sitting on a massive $512.7 billion war chest with which it supports acquisitions and businesses like Bing, which are strategic in tapping into Google and Yahoo’s all-important search revenues. According to comScore, Bing’s market share is now up to 15.1% (as of December), compared to 14.5% for Yahoo and 66% for Google."

The Democrats couldn't even get a majority of their own party on board to support a public option

What you mean is actually "The Democrats couldn't even get a majority on board to support a public option". If the senate was all Democrats, they could have passed it easily, but the Republicans wouldn't even come to the table. The whole health care concept even came out of a Republican think tank.

What ideas did the Republicans want again?

Presenting as proof, any particular definition of 'currency' or 'money' when the question is what constitutes an apt definition of 'currency' (or 'money'), is begging the question. In fact both these terms prove so difficult that even someone like Allan Greenspan can famously admit that he does not know what money is. (Which is actually wisdom notwithstanding the lampooning he received). And observers such as Steve Forbes can declare that Whatever [Bitcoin] Is, It's Not Money! (Not sure I find his reasoning any more convincing than the current judge's)

And one could equally quote the classical money theorist Georg Friedrich Knapp's quip to the effect that "money is whatever is accepted at government pay offices" to argue the bitcoin is not money. Though perhaps it's safer to say that legal tender is what can be used to a) dispose of tax liability (or fines) and b) to coerce a creditor to settle a debt. Whether money is or is not something other than legal tender is an open question.

Given the highly difficult and contentious nature of 'money' and/or 'currency,' I have to agree with OP that this judge's determination, based largely on the idea bitcoin can be exchanged for conventional currencies, is somewhat lacking. I say this as a lawyer and someone with an interest in money theory. Here is how superficially the magistrate judge disposes of this thorny question:

First, the Court must determine whether the BTCST investments constitute an investment of money. It is clear that Bitcoin can be used as money. It can be used to purchase goods or services, and as Shavers stated, used to pay for individual living expenses. The only limitation of Bitcoin is that it is limited to those places that accept it as currency. However, it can also be exchanged for conventional currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen, and Yuan. Therefore, Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money.

One hopes a superior court would provide a more considered evaluation as to what constitutes 'money' for the purposes of these Acts.

Obamacare doesn't encourage massive cost increases in health care.

Right. It increases the scope and extent of what health insurance covers and forces insurance companies to insure pre-existing conditions. It also attempts to force everyone into buying health insurance.

And with the incentives to lower costs and improve outcomes

Incentives which don't actually exist, let us note.

We haven't yet seen the increases in efficiency that come from the preventative care mandates. Those can easily take 10 years or more to fully materialize, depending upon the condition.

Or never. There are a few examples of useful preventative care such as immunizations and prenatal care. But IMHO its primary outcome is to expend some money to find expensive medical problems. I think that's why insurance companies haven't bothered with it.

It was a conservative proposal from the start.

Let's start by looking at the differences:

Stuart says that Heritage's version of the individual mandate contained "three critical features" that distinguish it from Obamacareâ(TM)s mandate: (1) it required people to buy catastrophic coverage, rather than more expensive comprehensive coverage; (2) it was primarily financed "through the carrot of a generous health credit or voucherâ¦rather than by a stick"; (3) Heritageâ(TM)s mandate "was actually the loss of certain tax breaksâ¦not a legal requirement."

So the most notable difference is that the individual mandate wasn't actually a mandate in the conservative proposals. Among other things, that doesn't create the constitutional conflict of the individual mandate.

The bit about catastrophic versus comprehensive health insurance is also important because paying for the latter just means that you're paying at least one middleman, the insurance company, in order to obtain routine health care.

Second, there's the insurance exchanges.

Feulner went on to argue that "the president knows full well â" or he ought to learn before he speaks â" that the exchanges we and most others support are very different from those in his package. True exchanges are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance. President Obamaâ(TM)s exchanges, by contrast, are a vehicle to introduce sweeping regulation and federal standardization on health insurance."

And of course, there's the other non-conservative features like expansion of basic coverage and elimination of pre-existing coverage which aren't conservative ideas.

And we ignore the glaring fact that Obamacare was passed by a 2000 page bill with a lot more junk in it than some conservative ideas. Is requiring restaurant chains of a certain size to publish nutritional information a conservative idea?

The difference is night and day in the summaries at least. Reading the summary of the first story, one would conclude that progress is as much dependent on a group of companies funding ASML, that the cost is a major factor forcing companies to pool their efforts, and that as a result the number of major players at the leading edge is likely to stay small but stable. It is also highly unlikely one company alone can leapfrog the others for a major length of time, although say Intel can spend a lot of money to get a couple of years advantage. The second summary mentions TSMC and Intel but carefully leaves out the other company that has made the news with a major investment in ASML, Samsung. But emphasizing that Samsung is going to stay at the cutting edge of fab technology, especially with its rumored deal with Apple to be the fab for Apple's next generation of chips starting in 2015, would call into question just how important is the patent battle between Apple and Samsung, when in reality Apple and Samsung are stuck in this marriage funding the next generation of fabs.

How so? I would take an agreement of only the richest 40 on the planet. http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/

Then again, they probably couldn't agree on the champagne brand alone

Do you really think the rich will pay for it themselves? Don't you realize that in this day and age we've socialized risk (and by default the debt of those businesses "too large to fail.").

Take a look at the tactics use to convince sports rubes that a new multi-billion sports stadium needs to be build for a private business (or they'll leave). Politicians don't have any problem taxing the local economy for something like this. The rich will figure out something to get the rest of us to pay for their sanctuary. The only reason it isn't happening now is that there are still enough nice places where they can fence everyone else out.

Then again, they probably couldn't agree on the champagne brand alone

Obama care is far from UHC man. As a student who pays about $900 a year for my student health coverage, which isn't fancy but does provide some benefits and access to the student clinic on campus I can tell you this piece of crap legislation will F me in the A. College is already about $14000 a year for me, living off-campus, care to wager how much it will be when I have to spend few thousands a year for a health plan?

some reading

I think the EFF is outgunned here when you have former Senator Chris Dodd heading up the MPAA. There's a reason why the MPAA and RIAA have friends in DC and why we have laws like the DMCA and an abhorrent fear that the profits of the members of these organizations is at risk. John Doe suits have been their bread and butter attack method and now with more and more Federal Judges growing backbones it would appear that their tactic involves harassing the ISPs all the while greasing the palms of Congress. Let's not forget where the push for SOPA comes from, it's guys like old Chris there, pushing his contacts in DC.

I joked with my wife about her criticism of me for buying something at a dollar store for $1 without a good plan of how I would use it.

Something about being a billionaire makes people crazy. I guess it's because they have no friends, or they think everyone wants to be with them because of their money.

In general, I agree with your wife. But maybe he has SO MUCH MONEY that he can "waste" $250 million just like you are "wasting" $1. According to Forbes, it's less than 1% of his net worth. http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/08/05/jeff-bezos-buys-washington-post-for-250-million-less-than-1-of-his-net-worth/ Presumably you're worth more than $100, but lots of people buy ridiculously expensive cars or huge houses. (I like the IDEA of a huge house, but the *upkeep*/paying for others to upkeep seems like more of a pain than the initial purchase itself, even if you have the money.)

Please do pump-up summaries by including pseudoscientific commentary. Lead does not cause crime any more than global warming causes piracy.

In my experience, led is quite good a STOPPING crime!!!

Please do pump-up summaries by including pseudoscientific commentary. Lead does not cause crime any more than global warming causes piracy.

It's called a "Threat Narrative". It's why there were no WMDs. There never was even suspicion of WMDs. There was only the need for a Threat Narrative to convince the people to let the armed forces off it's chain.

Vietnam? Threat Narrative. McCarthyism? Threat Narrative.... The Holocaust? Threat Narrative. Require Evidence before belief -- That's rational. Always disbelieve the Threat Narrative. Don't Fall For It, not even once.

A single, simple hand grenade is considered a WMD. I am sure that Iraq has some hand grenades, so the threat of WMD's is real.

Designed in California, built in China, with taxes paid in Ireland: http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/05/21/apple-called-a-tax-dodger-by-senate-committee-apple-says-system-needs-to-be-dramatically-simplified/

And taxes paid in Ireland. http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/05/21/apple-called-a-tax-dodger-by-senate-committee-apple-says-system-needs-to-be-dramatically-simplified/

- Great Firewall of the UK, China, Iran and Russia
- Undersea cables cut in the Mediterranean knocking entire continents off the network
- Copyright collection agencies deciding what is allowed on the internet and what isn't with no public input or control whatsoever (HADOPI, GEMA, the list goes on for quite a while)
- Several nations' network speeds are so slow as to make the internet unusable for doing anything more than reading text
- Several nations don't have internet connectivity whatsoever (largely island nations, Southeast Asia and Africa)
- ICANN's support of non-English URIs and country-specific TLDs
- US laws like COPPA, CFAA, and the planned CISPA/SOPA, and a USTR hostile to internet freedom
- And this one has been important since the dawn of the internet: ICANN and IANA have always been based in the US and controlled by its government
- The top three biggest TLDs in the entire world (.com, .net, .org) are all administered in the US, and this has been used to establish jurisdiction over servers physically located in foreign countries. (See Megaupload, Rojadirecta, TVShack, and the Pirate Bay) -- frequently at the behest of private industry without due process of law

Wrong.

If they paid no taxes at all (completely false) then the IRS would have climbed so far up their ass that they'd need to cut in switchback trails to find their way back out. Just by having a single retail store that sells a single retail product, the would owe taxes on that revenue. To say otherwise is just being a fuckwad or a troll - you choose.

Stop being willfully ignorant, and read.

Apple pays US tax on all revenue gained in the US, Canada, Central America, and South America.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/
"some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war" - too expensive for training and useless around the world.
What most sites do is pick any "purchase order" number and then quote it was ever just that total low amount.
If you add up the US gov contracts to buy over the months, you get ongoing larger numbers until new order details where less public on gov sites.

Hurricanes aren't getting stronger or more frequent. But they are making landfall less often.

(14) A person having a right to use a computer program should not be prevented from performing acts necessary to observe, study or test the functioning of the program, provided that those acts do not infringe the copyright in the program.

(15) [...]Nevertheless, circumstances may exist when such a reproduction of the code and translation of its form are indispensable to obtain the necessary information to achieve the interoperability of an independently created program with other programs.
It has therefore to be considered that, in these limited circumstances only, performance of the acts of reproduction and translation by or on behalf of a person having a right to use a copy of the program is legitimate and compatible with fair practice and must therefore be deemed not to require the authorisation of the rightholder. An objective of this exception is to make it possible to connect all components of a computer system, including those of different manufacturers, so that they can work together. [...].

GP is correct, this isn't a "net neutrality" issue. It's a class of service issue.

Bull Fucking Shit. When Google was heavily lobbying the FCC to impose "net neutrality" rules on wireless ISPs as part of the Class C spectrum for LTE they were insistent that it meant the auction winner could not impose contracts on their users requiring them to purchase a higher class of service before being allowed to run a bandwidth consuming local tethering server. It is 100% because Google lobbied for that definition of "net neutrality" that Verizon Wireless can no longer require you to pay an additional monthly service fee if they notice you running a tethering server on your LTE phone.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2011/09/26/the-true-cost-of-net-neutrality/2/

But now that Google is the ISP, they want to claim that "net neutrality" doesn't mean exactly what they filed petitions with the FCC claiming it meant? Yeah they're a corporation and can be evil but don't be an apologist for their self-serving flip flop.

You think the government should pay Apple more money? How about they stop trying to dodge taxes and pay up first? http://www.forbes.com/sites/leesheppard/2013/05/28/how-does-apple-avoid-taxes/

> and I suspect pilot salaries probably aren't exactly
> the same as retail employee salaries

Not exactly, but closer than you might think. A look at the numbers: http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to-know-how-much-your-captain-earns/

The upshot is that variability is high, but for junior pilots pay is between about $20k (for regional airlines) and $50k (highest starting pay at a major ariline). Average major airline starting pay is $36k. Of course pilots fresh out of school don't get those major airline jobs.

Retail salaries also vary widely. Minimum wage is 7.25/hr, which comes out to $14,500/yr if we assume 40-hour weeks and 2 weeks unpaid vacation. On the other hand, Costco pays $11.50 an hour for a starting salary: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/06/of-course-costco-supports-a-higher-minimum-wage-it-already-pays-above-it/ and average pay for Costco employees is around $45k (see ), which is admittedly rather high for retail.

But personally, I think Apple buying Intel would be a travesty. Intel laid the foundation for personal computing (including smartphones) more than any other company. I realize Apple uses Samsung chips, not Intel, and that microprocessors would have developed a lot since the 1970s without Intel or any other single company. But still... for Apple to swoop in and make such an unheard of windfall by putting a pretty face on the technology that an entire industry has been building for decades just exemplifies the annoying "winner takes all" aspect of market forces when it comes to intellectual property.

Yes, there are times Godwin's law should be applied. And when your government is reading your mail (email, phone calls, social media). and monitoring your travel (street camers, license plate scanners on police cruisers), and your police are being militarized.

Exhibit 1: Listening to your communication
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354590/greenwald-nsa-has-trillions-e-mails-and-phone-calls-betsy-woodruff

Exhibit 2: Monitoring your travel
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/07/28/18740565.php

Exhibit 3: Militarization of police
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bradlockwood/2011/11/30/the-militarizing-of-local-police/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/4203345

***

Essentially, the only reason most American's do not realize they are living in a police state is because most American's are decent folk and indoctrinated to submit to authority. As such, very few American's ever conflict with the state on a level to feel the police state.

The deranged genocide of millions is NOT a requirement for a police state. While Hitler and Stalin killed millions, much of the Soviet Republics police state history was not under the auspices of genocide. A police state, by necessity does not need to be a deranged murderous state, in order to be a police state.

So yes, with all of that happening. I think we've reached high time to be justified in enacting Godwin's Law.

Annual disk drive production is around 600 million HDDs per year ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2012/10/03/have-hard-disk-drives-peaked/ ).

I've never encountered a bank doing this, and if they did then I'd strongly object and report them to the regulator.

First result from "banks reordering transactions":
http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2013/06/11/yes-banks-are-reordering-your-transactions-and-charging-overdraft-fees/

The use of Adblock and similar to help reduce (not remove) blanket tracking combined with this means that it becomes opt in and as a "product", the user is still valuable and thus still "fed" free stuff.

I think one of the more interesting considerations is that if this takes off and more militant anti-blanket-tracking occurs, perhaps we can have more control over what the advertisers try to decide about us. For example, a ferret owner researching baby food for a sick ferret is highly unlikely to want to get flooded with a massive number of "your new baby!" ads and coupons for diapers and cribs and wipes. (True story, mind you. Owned ferrets. Researched three baby food items from Google. Within a month, I could have saved thousands from all the discounts and coupons I was offered for baby stuff. Gah.)

Quite sure it won't stop advertisers from knowing when somebody is pregnant based on them buying blue rugs and lotion though.

Its never gets mentioned but Google get about $700m a year in tax deductions from future profits each year through 2019. It got a further set-top box business to Arris Group for $2.35bn and offloaded Motorola Home getting a 15.7 per cent or so stake in broadband technology firm Arris plus $2.05bn in cash. Some estimates put eh cost to Cost Google as low as $1.5 Billion http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/12/22/did-motorola-mobility-only-cost-google-1-5-billion/ and it got Motorola's 12.5k issued patents and 7500 patent applications.

I looked over the article and abstract, and note that they compared criminal psychopaths with non-criminal non-psychopaths.

The study seems to equate psychopathy with criminality; ie - they didn't compare non-criminal psychopaths with non-criminal normals, nor did they compare criminal-psychopaths with criminal-normal.

I strongly believe that psychopathy by itself is not a problem; only the immorality, and then only when the immorality leads to actions that hurt others. Psychopaths could learn and practice ethics through upbringing and/or training and would have few issues with society. Studies show that many corporate leaders score high on "psychopathic" behaviour.

There's a little-known aspect of people called mob mentality which causes people en-masse to act completely differently from their typically rational, self-interested way. People in mobs have been known to charge cannons and guns with no concern for their own well-being. This could be the empathy/mirror neurons acting to bring crowds of people together as a single organism.

A psychopath would be immune from this effect - they would be able to step back, assess the situation, and question the actions of the crowd. Possibly even stop the crowd or redirect it. A psychopath would be the one, lone voice in the lynch mob who shouts "why are we doing this? This is not who we are!" and possibly redirect the actions of the crowd.

Psychopaths may be important in society simply to keep our mirror neurons in check and make sure that society acts rationally (note: rational != ethical).

For reference, consider this guy. Admittedly brave as hell, but I wonder where he would score on the "psychopathic tendencies" spectrum.

This is why the Mac ain't going anywhere. Apple pulls in more profit on their pitiful 5 million PCs than HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer and Asus make on their combined 53 million PCs. 5% marketshare, 45% of the profits... that's why I'm a stockholder :)

Well, nuclear causes less death's than any other energy-source..

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
http://www.geekosystem.com/coal-oil-nuclear-deaths-chart/

Or you could do a google yourself on "number of deaths coal oil nuclear"

The thing with nuclear-power is that everything happens at the same place and affects more people in one go..... And i prefer something that kills ~90 people per year over for example Oil that kills ~36000 per year... Or natural gas that kills ~4000 per year.. Even wind-power kills ~150 per year....

The problem is that it's public opinion that drives the direction of how we generate power, but the problem is that the general population don't have the knowledge to actually make an informed decision, and neither can i fully.
The thing is that nuclear-power, and there are many types of technologies, is probably the only thing that will be able to sustain the human population for the next 50 years until we can perfect fusion-power or something else that do not have the same impact.

If nuclear-power would still be seen positive by the general population we would also build new reactors that are safer instead of staying with the old reactors that have known safety issues.

Yeah, but he's dead now so it doesn't matter what he thinks.

DOJ Wins Ebook Antitrust Case: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2013/07/10/doj-wins-ebook-antitrust-case-whats-next-will-apple-appeal/ "Judge Denise Cote has ruled against Apple in the closely watched ebook price-fixing antitrust case that played out in lower Manhattan in June. The company has been found guilty by the court of colluding with trade book publishers to raise the prices of ebooks at the detriment to consumers."

Umm no, it comes down to expectations...."Apple said today that sales rose to $35.3 billion from $35 billion in the fiscal third quarter ended in June. Profit was $7.47 a share, down from $9.32 a year ago. That topped the expectations of analysts, who were expecting expecting sales of $35.01 billion and profit of $7.32 a share." http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/07/23/apple-to-report-third-quarter-earnings-live/

So Apple did well. Sales are obviously down but then most analysts expected this. Apple can't keep up the record sales with competition from Samsung and other Android manufacturers. The market is getting saturated.

Two points:
1) iPad sales didn't tank. They were down, but that's to be expected considering they had a major product release (the 3rd gen iPad which introduced the retina display) that helped to drive sales in the year-ago quarter, but no corresponding release this quarter to drive sales similarly. If anything, I found it astounding that sales were only down about 10%, given that they're working with a nearly 9 month old product (the 4th gen iPad was released late last year), rather than a brand new one with a marquee feature.

2) Regarding the PC market and making money, Apple's low-volume/high-margin approach has allowed them to capture about 45% of the profit in the PC market (a plurality), despite their slim market share. To say the least, their share of the pie rather conclusively disproves your notion that the only way to survive in the space is with high-volume/low-margins.

I do agree that the analysts have been predicting that their margins would be compressed quite a bit, but Apple has been acknowledging that for quite awhile as well, ever since they introduced the iPhone 5, which has a rather high manufacturing cost, as well as the iPad mini, which has significantly lower margins so that it can compete more easily with other tablets in that space. Even so, their margins have remained relatively stable since the introduction of those products last year, and their sales have remained in line with or above what one would expect when you look at what products were actually released (i.e. few to none). Considering they've already acknowledged that they'll be having a rather full fall quarter in terms of product releases since they haven't been spreading them throughout the year as they typically do, it's not particularly surprising that they were down this quarter.

It makes perfect sense that Chinese groups are attacking the military of the Philippines since China is paving the way for aggression. China is trying to claim sovereignty over islands claimed by many of its neighbors. The age old quest by China to establish its hegemony continues.

Philippines Protests Renewed Chinese Pressure in South China Sea
China And The Biggest Territory Grab Since World War II
The Philippines and Japan want U.S. help in dealing with China’s aggression
Philippines upgrades military to end China "bullying" in S. China Sea
Japan Will Sell Ships To Philippines To Fight China’s “Bullying”

I wish I could "fail badly" to the tune of 23 to 32 million activations in 3 months.

They don't have to outsell Android in order to be successful, and to say otherwise completely ignores the dynamics of every marketplace that has ever existed.

Steve Jobs was responsible for Apple's 2013 bond issue? They've got better tech than I thought.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2012/12/10/steve-jobs-warns-apple-dont-be-greedy/ Steve Jobs 1995 "What ruined Apple was not growth They got very greedy Instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision, which was to make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible they went for profits. They made outlandish profits for about four years. What this cost them was their future. What they should have been doing is making rational profits and going for market share.”

Apple is now in a market where its competitors have better products; in larger selections; at better prices, and its response...

Designed by Apple in California http://www.apple.com/designed-by-apple/

So yeah when I say its revenues; profits; market share; technical edge; brand value; market cap are all down I tend to lay that responsibility square on Steve Jobs. Who should have embraced american manufacturing, made large sensible Acquisitions, planned for the maturing markets of its products...on the off chance it wasn't able to break into another new market, at an opportune time.

IBonds were a quick fix to its plummeting share price...the corporate rot is still there. Later I may be blaming the new Steve "I got rid of manufacturing" Cook for not stopping the rot, and squandering Billions too late.

At least you have the iPad Mini.

If you get to it through Google News, it's not paywalled.

I found out about that from this alternative article in Forbes.

According to Justice Minister Lord McNally, “It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd, particularly given his outstanding contribution to the war effort,” he said. “However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.”

Source. I guess it makes sense when you put it like that. Pardoning at best does nothing to change the people whose lives were ruined, justice is not done, it never can be. An acknowledgement that the country is capable of doing very bad things is probably better than patting ourselves on the back for fixing our grandparent's mistakes.

All of the false claims take advantage of one fundamental truth about the average temperature of our planet: it varies a little, naturally, from year to year. Some years are a bit warmer than average and some are a bit colder than average because of El Niños, La Niñas, cloud variability, volcanic activity, ocean conditions, and just the natural pulsing of our planetary systems. When you filter these out, the human-caused warming signal is clear. But natural variability makes it possible for scurrilous deceivers to do a classic “no-no” in science: to cherry-pick data to support their claims. They pick particular years or groups of years; they pick particular subsets of data. But when you look at all the data, or when you look at long-term trends, the only possible conclusion is that the Earth is warming – precisely the conclusion the scientific community has reached based on observations and fundamental physics.

Of course, it's worth noting that those who believe in climate change can do much the same to come up with the opposite results. Regardless, you'll notice that the Daily Mail article gives you a chart that "proves" they're right, but neither offers you the Met Office's data nor gives you a link to the same. The good news is that it isn't hard to go to the Met Office's website and look at the data yourself. I think you'll find it tells a different story than the DM.

"Pretty good?" Their mice are *awesome*. The Arc Touch Mouse is one of the coolest PC gadgets Ive ever bought. Whoever runs that division should be replacing Balmer. Instead in the last reorg Balmer is replacing them with Windows OS Architecture VP Julie Larson-Green (and the phone VP is now running Windows Engineering). So the biggest failures are taking over groups that havent failed quite so bad; Windows 8 VP takes over XBOX and hardware, Phone VP takes over Windows OS. No wonder Forbes named Ballmer the worst CEO in America.

They can do pretty much what ever they want in the name of your safety. http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-coming-to-a-highway-near-you/

Ballmer is the Surface Tablet of CEOs.

Ballmer is the Zune of CEOs.

Those statements are nicer than what the press is saying, which us "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."

and average annual salaries are $130K

That number is optimistic.....Even in Santa Clara median pay is $93k.

I agree that the US is behind Europe on fuel efficiency of our car fleet - though we have made recent strides. Also, the measure that the Europeans use for fuel economy is much looser than the US standard - in reality, many of the cars available are virtually the same yet have drastically different ratings in the US and Europe.

You can't compare the entire US to France - the US on the whole has a much rougher climate than most of France. There are few areas of the US with the kind of mild climate that part of Europe enjoys. Our east coast has extremes of temperature - if you live in a place that is warm in the winter, it is almost uninhabitable without AC in the summer. If you live in a place with nice summers, the winters are cold and require a lot of heating. There are places in the Northwest with similar temperatures, but they tend to have a 6-month drought season and a 6-month rainy season, so they aren't ideal for traditional agriculture and thus aren't as densely settled.

We have some recent trends in the US that you might not be aware of. One, kids are less interested in cars. Young people are going completely carless in cities - though the cities tend to be those with decent public transportation. That's not even a requirement, though, as car sharing has become the vogue. Young people are flooding into once-crumbling downtowns.

In addition to these recent demographic shifts, we found a new way to get at huge reservoirs of natural gas that Europe is skittish to do themselves, and now Europe is burning our excess coal. The result is that the US has decreased its own emissions by 20%, and much of that is now added to Europe's total (though the economic downturn is still keeping emissions low). It's true that France is crazy for nuclear, and I admire and covet their willingness to reprocess fuel. But they are very much an anomaly in Europe - everyone else is abandoning nuclear (or at least pretending to), because a tidal wave might suddenly hit Germany and cause a nuclear emergency.

You're moving from NetSol to GoDaddy?

That might have made sense, say, in 2003, when NetSol started going to the birds.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2012/09/10/5-reasons-you-should-leave-godaddy-and-how/

GoDaddy has been on my blacklist along with NetSol since SOPA.

Best two services I've seen that are ethical, long-lasting and reasonably priced are NameCheap and Gandi. Gandi also has the benefit that it's not in the US, and so unless you're using it for something that's illegal in France, you're unlikely to get your domain yanked out from under you (and you'll get warning if it's going to happen).

And here is a link to prove it :
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcwebertobias/2012/07/27/unsafe-gun-safes-can-be-opened-by-a-three-year-old

Because HBO is content with how things work, or it otherwise is a big pussy and doesn't want to take the risk of pissing off it's MSO partners.

Forbes article from a few years ago on this very subject.

it is not going anywhere.

it already is.

The "it's just replaced less often" meme has been analyzed and found not to be true. There are increasingly more people who aren't replacing their PCs with another PC when they die, but rather with a tablet.

Sorry, but the data disagrees with you. Don't confuse what you (and me too) want to be true, with what is actually true. Wishful thinking gets you nowhere.