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Microsoft still has a good business - servicing business desktops. That's not going away, because business needs to get work done. The problem Microsoft has is that Windows 7 is pretty good. It does what it's supposed to do, doesn't crash much, and doesn't take too much attention. There is no reason for businesses to "upgrade" to Windows 8.

Business desktops are now a business like heavy trucks. Companies buy and use lots of heavy trucks. They use them for their useful life, then buy new ones. Building heavy trucks is a profitable, successful, and important industry. But nobody trades in a heavy truck on a new model because the new model is slightly better.

The tablet industry is fighting to keep prices up. They're not going to succeed. You can get a basic Android tablet for under $70 on Amazon or WalMart, and for $30 in Shenzhen. Apple is still charging as much as $800, but market share has declined from 60% a year ago to 40% now and Apple is feeling pricing pressure. Microsoft isn't going to make much money in tablets.

Moving into "social" would be a big mistake for Microsoft. Nobody is making money in "social". Zynga just laid off a quarter of their workforce. Facebook traffic and revenue peaked a year ago. (Facebook is now increasing ad density to increase revenue per user. That worked for Myspace, right?) Everybody else is doing worse.

Microsoft just has to realize that its job is to service business, and do it better. Windows 8 is not helping. What business might go for is a much more secure OS.

Please humour me for a moment and take a look at this photo which shows the iPhone 3GS and Galaxy S side by side. Then try to tell me with a straight face that you can't see the similarity.

Of course they look similar, so did many phones from different manufacturers throughout the 90s, then the early non-touchscreen smartphones, PDAs, Laptops, Desktop computers, etc... often look very similar across manufacturers.

The US already spends money on healthcare. The current law isn't likely to do much to improve outcomes for the general population It may result in some improvements for a small minority, and make care for a much larger percentage much more expensive.

Democrats' New Argument: It's A Good Thing That Obamacare Doubles Individual Health Insurance Premiums

In fact, the average 25 and 40-year-old will pay double under Obamacare what they would need to pay today, based on rates posted at eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH). More specifically, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoker, the average Obamacare “bronze” exchange plan in California will cost between 64 and 117 percent more than the cheapest five plans on eHealth. For 40-year-old male non-smokers, it’s between 73 and 146 percent more.

You also might want to look into the epidemiology of truck bombs. They can have a significant negative impact on the health of a community, and there have been a fair number of attempts by extremists in the US since 9/11. One of them was by a member of the Taliban.

Yazidis Live Among Reminders of Deadly Attack

The death toll from 9/11 attack was ~ 3,000. It resulted in approximately $100 billion in damage to the US economy. That is more that the incremental cost of the war to the US defense budget in several years, and half of the cost of implementing the Affordable Care Act per year once it is in full force.

Please humour me for a moment and take a look at this photo which shows the iPhone 3GS and Galaxy S side by side. Then try to tell me with a straight face that you can't see the similarity.

A few interesting points/questions:

- The Galaxy S interface looks nothing like stock Android. If they felt it necessary to create their own interface, why create one with similar UI elements such as the shaded area for the four icons at the bottom?
- The Galaxy S hardware design has rounded corners with chrome edging. These are not typical features you find on every smartphone, nor are they essential to its operation. How did they coincidentally end up with such a similar design?

The Galaxy S3 and S4, as well as the Nokia Lumia range and HTC's range show that you can make attractive devices with nice UIs. Apart from most HTCs looking the same, and most Lumias looking the same, why is it that no other devices have managed to end up looking like carbon copies of the iPhone?

Complete fucking nonsense rated insightful. Apple has an effective tax rate around 24% which I'd venture is higher than most companies. If course, that doesn't fit the anti-Apple narrative.

Why?

Who cares if they can't sell their old, dull junk?

Nobody any more - only out of touch wanna-be desperates and old people still use iPhones

I'll try to ignore the juvenile condescension dripping off that post and try to stay factual. Millions of people who do not fit your description still buy the iPhone, the iPhone 4 is Apple's entry level phone and entry level devices are kind of important for enticing new customers. The problem (for Samsung) is that firstly, this will be appealed and secondly, the iPhone 4 is about to be succeeded as the entry level model by the unaffected 4S and possibly the rumoured low cost iPhone model. So for Samsung this is mostly a propaganda victory whose magnitude depends on how much the Samsung PR department and Samsung/Google's army of fanboys can inflate it's importance

I found the article linked to in the summary to be a bit confused, there is a somewhat better analysis available here

U.S. Patent No. 7,706,348 concerns an “apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system” (an allegedly UMTS-essential patent). Newer iPhones and iPads coming with Qualcomm QCOM +0.84% baseband chips (starting with the iPhone 4S) are definitely not affected, limiting the potential impact of this decision on Apple’s revenues — basically, Apple would have to make the iPhone 4S its entry-level iPhone model and discontinue U.S. sales of older iPhones (and the “new iPad 4G”, the third-generation iPad, its entry-level model for iPads with cellular connectivity; WiFi iPads are not affected at all). Formally the decision also relates only to the AT&T versions of those older products, but Samsung reserved the right to allege infringement by Apple products running on other networks (unless they come with Qualcomm baseband chips).”

And some companies enjoy the fact that you pay them to give then your data only to have them sell it and make even more money.

Outsourcing saved Dell, and it saved HP. Were it not possible, we would be importing our computers from China just as we do our TVs, radios, set top boxes, microwaves, etc.

Because you haven't really substantiated your contention; I am more inclined to believe Forbes' detailed analysis on this topic, then some Slashdot AC's unsupported claims.. please see How HP and Dell destroyed their PC advantage piece by piece.

The outsourcing "fad" has just begun. Even H-1Bs are extremely attractive. Think one can pay a USAian with a CCIE $30k/year? Won't happen, but you can easily get H-1Bs for that pay and qualifications with just a couple forms.

The CCIE is an expensive and difficult certificate to obtain regardless of nationality; people who hold this are valuable, regardless of nationality. I don't believe there are many Indians holding this level of qualification. There aren't very US people holding this qualification either. This is definitely not a helpdesk worker certificate.

I will agree that H-1Bs are attractive. Especially for menial programming jobs. Outsourcing is extremely attractive for programming jobs and manufacturing.

But outsourcing falls apart when there is work that is tied to a physical location; such as at an ISP or Telco, where you have a wire plant.

Until robots are invented that can be operated from overseaas, and the speed of light is broken, so that latency can be reduced to an acceptable level -- there is not much fear of offshoring technicians that do some mechanical work which involves physically touching misbehaving equipment in order to troubleshoot.

You really need to fact check yourself, and maybe cite a source for why you'd ever factor in the taxes owed by his C-corporation into his personal tax obligation. If Berkshire were an LLC maybe, but it's not and you're dead wrong.

In 2010 Warren Buffett earned about $62.8 million and he paid about $6.9 million in tax after deductions of about $23 million.

I know $23 mil is a lot more than I deducted last year. He paid in an effect rate of 11% on his gross earnings, which is much lower than my rate, and my wife and I are of those bottom 85%.

Yeah AC, thanks for the link to such a crap article by a biased writer who loves to hate.
Check out his latest headlines.
I love this nonsensical gem in the article you linked:
Tesla can’t increase demand by dropping the price very much. About the only way they can do this (barring some—currently remote—major battery technology improvements) is by cutting the vehicle’s range.
Seriously? This guy is suggesting that their only hope to increase demand is to reduce performance, rather than cost?

Telsa only finally made money this quarter because of energy credits paid to it by other auto makers. That cost is passed to consumers in higher prices from those companies. The tax incentives to buy an electric car is money out of everyone pocket to make up the difference. Telsa is already losing money on every one of its cars and the market for a $60-100K car is not going to suddenly increase so demand will not go up much.

Forbes explains the current and future Telsa situation pretty good.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2013/05/27/if-tesla-would-stop-selling-cars-wed-all-save-some-money/

Foxconn's long term plan is to replace many of the Chinese workers with robots:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/02/22/as-china-changes-infamous-foxconn-goes-robotic/

Optimists will say they'll find jobs elsewhere. But when the Chinese workers took the US workers jobs, very many US workers did not get jobs elsewhere.

Note that this guy managed to be "best developer" even when outsourcing his work to China for one fifth his salary:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/how-a-model-employee-got-away-with-outsourcing-his-software-job-to-china/article7409256/
Probably have to give him some credit for identifying and managing quality outsourcing talent.

But you should be worried if you're an expensive worker with a job that's easily outsourced and you are merely above average, or even mediocre.

Well if something like the E-Cat can make serious strides within the next few years, that might solve some power issues. If... http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/05/20/finally-independent-testing-of-rossis-e-cat-cold-fusion-device-maybe-the-world-will-change-after-all/

Who would be the constructor?

I can think of a couple of candidates.

some sort of evidence for your claim?

Cnet: you're left with no doubt that you're being recorded.

What's Apple famous for again? Yup, they are famous for being famous.
Well that and popularizing the graphic user interface everyone uses in the first place.

Introduced 29 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

And for having a pretty decent Unix-based operating system while Ballmer drives Microsoft off a cliff.

Introduced 13 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

And for designing the first mp3 player that the mass-market embraced.

Introduced 12 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

And for ushering in the change from feature-phones to smartphones.

Introduced 5 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

And for creating an earthquake in the tablet market such that in the future it is predicted more tablets will sell than PCs.

Introduced over 2 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

See where I'm going with this? We all know Apple's history. The point is: what insanely great innovations have they unveiled since the death of Steve Jobs?
Answer: NONE.

Forbes asks After Liberty Reserve Shut Down, Is Bitcoin Next?

Will prosecutors move on to shutting down Bitcoin (BTC)? After all the parallels between BTC and LR are strong — both are virtual currencies that use an exchange to convert legitimate currencies into electronic ones.

Patrick Murck, legal counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, wants to avoid that comparison. As he told the Journal, “I think [the Liberty Reserve indictment] is just another giant, flashing warning light to bitcoin exchanges: If you’re not compliant, there are some serious risks, both at the federal and state levels.”

At this point, there is no evidence of Bitcoin being used for nefarious purposes that’s as strong as what Bharara claims to have on Liberty Reserve. On May 28, he said that prosecutors had seized $25 million in 45 bank accounts around the world — with “more to come.”

Federal authorities did go after a part of the Bitcoin infrastructure earlier in May. They seized accounts of Mutum Sigillum, an intermediary of Mt. Gox — the Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange that controls 80% of the market. Mutum Sigillum accounts were seized because it had not “properly registered as a money transmitter with the Treasury Department,” according to Bits.

What's Apple famous for again? Yup, they are famous for being famous.

Well that and popularizing the graphic user interface everyone uses in the first place.

And for having a pretty decent Unix-based operating system while Ballmer drives Microsoft off a cliff.

And for designing the first mp3 player that the mass-market embraced.

And for ushering in the change from feature-phones to smartphones.

And for creating an earthquake in the tablet market such that in the future it is predicted more tablets will sell than PCs.

But yeah...they are just famous for being famous...

...Until they release a TV with a kinect-like interface running iOS. And then Sony's PS4 and the Wii U crashes and burns, (which is sort of already happening...sales on the Wii U are very poor and Sony's electronics wing isn't doing well either), while everyone is playing Angry Birds on their new Apple TV platform and we get umpteen-million articles about the "New Console Wars," which are now between Microsoft and Apple.

Of course then a couple years will go by and people will forget all of history and again claim that Apple is just famous for being famous. Such is the cycle of Slashdot.

You know, until that happened, you'd just be a tin-foil hat wearer, without a shred of credibility to you. Actually, you still are. But thanks to the colossal mistake of a couple of people in the IRS and Obama's total and complete inability to deal with a scandal, that singular act has managed to make the tinfoil hat crowd look more credible than the government.

Well, you know what, okay. Out of the thousands of times Obama and the "rabid liberals" have gotten it right, after six years of constant, sustained, unending attempts by the Republicans to find something, anything, to sink Obama even if it means repeatedly punching themselves in the face (Comeon guys, with all the major issues out there, your party platform for the previous four years has been trying to ensure Obama didn't get re-elected. Petty much?)... I suppose yes, with that much scrutiny eventually something had to pan out.

So take this one, singular victory. Have it, it's yours. You can feel righteous for a bit now -- you have a right to be upset

Well, that's mighty white of you. You are indeed a generous spirit.

True Scandal - A tea-party group ... gets attention from the IRS—and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF.
The IRS Fiasco Is Only The Tip Of The Iceberg
A Frequent Visitor to the White House

...Douglas Shulman, Commissioner from 2008 to 2012, during the Obama administration, visited the White House 118 times just in 2010 and 2011. His successor, Steven Miller, also visited “numerous” times.

Lawmakers say IRS targeted dozens more conservative groups than initially believed

The IRS targeting of conservative groups is far broader than first reported, with nearly 500 organizations singled out for additional scrutiny, according to two lawmakers briefed by the agency

IRS Admits Targeting “Tea Party” Groups
The New Nixon This time, the press cheered as the IRS investigated the president's opponents.
Tea party groups call IRS process 'nightmare'
IRS approved liberal groups while Tea Party in limbo
Curious IRS Timing - Did the tax agency also target groups that support Israel?
Obamacare + IRS = gangster government
7 Questions That The IRS Inappropriately Asked Of Tea Party Groups
The IRS’s Tea-Party Targeting - An apology, but no explanation
Did The IRS Try To Swing Election To Obama?

Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert

During the last bird flu I stocked up on Tamiflu, you can get a script for it from your doctor provided you're on good terms. Of course Roche has done an excellent job of hiding a great deal of information about the efficacy of Tamiflu, and there is more than fair cause to doubt its effectiveness in a serious outbreak of influenza. That and its best taken within the first 48 hours of infection.

Also anti-buffered, eg. when the Siberian permafrost melts.

There might be a little reprieve.

To the Horror of Global Warming Alarmists, Global Cooling Is Here

Well of course a few weirdos like you are going to abandon them at various points

Considering that (as Forbes says, "in capitalist America, TV watches YOU!". The thing watches everything you do and listens to everything you say. It pays attention to whether or not you're watching ads. "This time around, the Kinect will be more versatile and accurate than the original, measuring everything from your facial expressions to your heart rate."

Sorry, dude, but if you're ok with that creepy shit, YOU are the weirdo. Then there's region locking, not owning the games you pay for, always online... I see that either this console will bomb horribly, or you kids are even dumber than I gave you credit for.

Yeah unions are great. That steel industry sure is kicking ass and the cost/quality of American cars can't be beat!

The Germans and Japanese don't seem to have any trouble building competitive cars with union labor. So either American unions are considerably worse than their counterparts in other countries, or the problem lies somewhere else. The Big Three haven't exactly had brilliant management. In fact, their management has traditionally been crappy and shortsighted.

German workers get paid much more than American workers and even have representation on corporate boards. Yet manufacturing in Germany is thriving and the quality of their goods is among the best in the world.

Not sure where you're getting your numbers from but they're WAY off:

Wow, I really did mistake the numbers I was gathering for my post. Those were not sales, they were total cars sold. And the numbers were in the millions, not billions.

14.5 million new cars were sold in the US in 2012 (source), and 40.5 million used cars sold (source). Considering the average price of a new car is now about $30k (source) and the price of a used car sale is about $10k (source), that puts the actual size of the market at the values listed below.

$435 billion new car market vs $405 billion used car market.
14.5 million new car sales vs 40.5 million used car sales.

$22 billion new video game market vs $2.5 billion used game market
500 million new game sales vs 125 million used game sales
source

While the difference is not as drastic as my original incorrect values suggested, the difference is still enormous. The used car market is about the same as the new car market, but for video games it is 1/10th the size.

Here's an excerpt from a letter published over a year ago:
Up until recently, I thought there was a small chance that Mr Rossi could have actually found the “Holy Grail” and invented a unit that was going to change the world as we know it today. That is why I sent him my genuine offer for US$1 Million for a repeat of the demonstration that has given his device the most credibility, i.e. the demonstration on 29 March 2011 with the Swedish scientists, Kullander and Essen.

I said to my friends at the time, “if Mr Rossi is genuine, he will jump at this chance of proving that his equipment works, however I think it’s most likely that he will answer by saying, ‘this is just a joke, I don’t want to be involved in circus activities’”. I predicted this because this is what has happened with other scamsters who have tried to get money from me when I have come up with a very fair offer to check that their claim actually works.

I predict that Mr Rossi will delay and delay in producing machines or in getting a proper scientific test done, while behind the scenes more and more people will be investing.

In many years to come we will hear from Mr Rossi that he is still trying to have the unit finalised, but “big business” has somehow managed to hijack his efforts. This, or other similar excuses, will be used by him to ‘explain’ why his device doesn’t appear on the market.

In the meantime, it’s likely that people around the world – not just wealthy businesspeople who should know better, but many innocent mums-and-dads – will have lost millions of dollars. This is what I am going to try and prevent.

Maybe this is because the oil industry evolved from the same people who ran the cattle industry, where a man's word was his bond and multi-million dollar deals were made on a handshake. Integrity was everything, and if you lost that, you simply weren't in the business anymore.

Oh GAWD please stop with the cheesy platitudes and the pining away for older, ostensibly better times. That is such a tired trope. Surely you recognize that this is a ludicrous and unprovable statement based on no evidence whatsoever?

Uh, no, it's based on actual truth, which in turn is based on the personal experience of my family and many others. You can whine about those older ways if you want, but the fact is they were the foundation of transforming Texas into one of the world's most dynamic and beneficial economies. There is good and bad with that, but overwhelmingly good.

Government (and "free governemtn money") corrupts pretty much everything absolutely...

And surely you recognize that this is a contradiction of your previous statement? The oil industry enjoys enormous tax breaks and subsidies. Are those billions in subidies not government money? Is the oil industry somehow immune to corruption because of its mythical birth among cattle barons?

First of all, your accounting includes lots of things as "subsidies" that all businesses get. It's ridiculous to count those as subsidies to the"oil industry".

Secondly, your premise is only remotely true if you blatantly lie with the statistics. In the US, the subsidy for renewables *dwarfs* that for other energy sources, when normalized to energy units. (This is really the only correct way to compare them - after all, why wouldn't one use an energy basis to compare energy sources, unless you're just trying to score cheap political argument points?)

Solar's subsidy is a whopping 1600X the subsidy for coal, oil, or gas, and over 300X that of nuclear. (Not that I'm complaining - I work in solar - but let's at least be honest about the fact that solar is really only viable if it receives enormous subsidies...)

Source Subsidy per kwh
Coal $0.0006
Oil/Gas $0.0006
Nuclear $0.0031
Renewables $0.0154
            Biomass Power $0.0020
            Geothermal $0.0125
            Hydroelectric $0.0008
            Solar $0.9680
            Wind $0.0525

How do they reconcile their claims with "Snapchats Don't Disappear: Forensics Firm Has Pulled Dozens of Supposedly-Deleted Photos From Android Phones" - http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/05/09/snapchats-dont-disappear/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

"A 24-year-old forensics examiner from Utah has made a discovery that may make some Snapchat users think twice before sending a photo that they think is going to quickly disappear. Richard Hickman of Decipher Forensics found that it’s possible to pull Snapchat photos from Android phones simply by downloading data from the phone using forensics software and removing a “.NoMedia” file extension that was keeping the photos from being viewed on the device. He published his findings online and local TV station KSL has a video showing how it’s done ..."

Opps...sounds closer to fraudsters

Maybe this is because the oil industry evolved from the same people who ran the cattle industry, where a man's word was his bond and multi-million dollar deals were made on a handshake. Integrity was everything, and if you lost that, you simply weren't in the business anymore.

Oh GAWD please stop with the cheesy platitudes and the pining away for older, ostensibly better times. That is such a tired trope. Surely you recognize that this is a ludicrous and unprovable statement based on no evidence whatsoever?

Government (and "free governemtn money") corrupts pretty much everything absolutely...

And surely you recognize that this is a contradiction of your previous statement? The oil industry enjoys enormous tax breaks and subsidies. Are those billions in subidies not government money? Is the oil industry somehow immune to corruption because of its mythical birth among cattle barons?

Plenty of studies show that healthcare costs more in the states even when broken down by procedure or otherwise controlling for such theories.

Cite? The studies I've seen show no rhyme or reason in determining the manner in which procedures are priced: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/08/one-hospital-charges-8000-another-38000/

You listed off a set of heavily regulated oligopolies as examples of the free market ideal?

Heavily regulated? Fedex? Comcast? I assure you the healthcare & health insurance industry is regulated far more heavily than any of those companies. Do you know how many pages long the HIPAA regulation is? Or Obamacare? Healthcare is a red tape nightmare. Hell, just look at the original application paperwork: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2013/04/03/to-sign-up-for-obamacare-start-filling-out-the-forms-now-and-hire-a-good-accountant/

She is not in a position to negotiate. That is the antithesis of the free market. She needs what they are selling in a way that makes rational cost analysis impossible. How much is your life worth to you?

And that's the straw man. Because you act like every health care provider out there is going to illegally collude to get you to pay any price. Except that price fixing is against the law in all industries, including medicine. If one hospital tells you "give me all your money or I let you die", you go to the next doctor who is is willing to be reasonable. By the same straw man, why don't plumbers let your entire house flood when a pipe bursts? They certainly have you by the balls there. Or what if your AC dies in mid July in sweltering 110 degree weather? Are the HVAC people going to say "give me every penny you have or I let you suffer heat stroke?". Services are trying to make money -- they're not all teaming up to dick you over.

What is the value of your life? Not an easy number

I disagree. For one, you're phrasing the question wrong. It's "what is your healthcare worth"? And those are numbers that are finite and can be determined using statistics, labor rates, and drug costs. Even for the unforeseen emergency case, probability and cost-analysis will give us a weighted average cost of a given event that might occur in your lifetime. The entire field of insurance is devoted to running those kinds of analyses. To pretend those numbers are mystical and out of reach is silly -- we have databases and databases of historical medical records, pricing histories decades long. Those numbers are accessible.

EPA welcomes lawsuits and if you are the right person they will guarntee you a win before you even start the lawsuit.

This is how the EPA is currently funding enviornmental groups with tax payer money. The EPA welcomes lawsuits that they plan on losing, they just don't wany YOU suing them because you are not part of their "team".

Is to make rules more stringent, and ban Bananas

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/03/10/fukushimas-refugees-are-victims-of-irrational-fear-not-radiation/

I just told you we don't need to be reminded that you're paranoid. Christ

Take a step back from your opinion and re-read the GP post.

Tyranny is already here. It is just masked in Bureaucracy. All you need to know is that the Powers that be, have already targeted "enemies of the state", simply because they oppose the Bureaucracy's over reaching power.

The files for the original 3D printed gun by Defense Distributed were order to be taken down by the State Department. Note that is not known by the State Department if the files violate ITAR export laws, but since they were unsure they wanted Defense Distributed to assume their action was illegal. In other words any action not explitcly granted by State should be assumed to be illegal. That is not a how a free society operates. Tyranny is not 'all or nothing', it can be a slow corrosive process.

All the foreign "loopholes" actually only help Apple avoid paying foreign taxes, those aren't about US taxes at all. These seem more about adding to the political theater of the government going after tax dodgers.

The entirety of Apples foreign cash horde earned on foreign sales, is subject to US taxation. Not one of those foreign shell games protects those earnings from US taxation. In fact they make the cash horde larger, making it potentially sweeter for US taxation.

But here is the one "loophole" that really counts. US Taxation doesn't come into effect until Apple repatriates the cash, which there is no requirement that Apple (or any other US corporation) ever actually do.

This is why US corporations have 1.45 Trillion dollars parked outside the USA.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/03/19/u-s-companies-stashing-more-cash-abroad-as-stock-piles-hit-record-1-45t/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2013/05/19/will-obamacare-reduce-the-crazy-variation-in-hospital-prices/

I think they mean 97% of scientists agree that some amount of global warming is caused by mankind.The amount that is caused by humans may be some or even most, but I don't think anyone could argue that it is ALL caused by mankind.

Perhaps you've been mislead? We're coming out of an ice age an that's an undeniable fact. Look at the history of Venice. You'll see they were trying to keep the rising Adriatic out of the city back at least to the 14th century. We're also finding long lost settlements in Greenland that were frozen out. We seem to be returning to where we were.

MMGW is being exposed in a big way - please RTFA.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/01/22/the-u-n-s-global-warming-war-on-capitalism-an-important-history-lesson-2/

Oh, it's more than that. The IRS is the key enforcer for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Your Next IRS Political Audit - The tax agency is getting vast new power in health care
The IRS Is Accessing Your Health Records. You Trust Them?

The US Government needs to get the problems at that agency fixed, now. Between this and the suppression of political groups going on, this is intollerable and undemocratic. What did Franklin say? A Republic, if you can keep it?

The IRS’s Curious Immunity - It’s worse than the PATRIOT Act.

bullshit, recession lasted at least into 2012

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/10/08/the-2008-recession-never-ended/

even now the real unemployment rate is over 22% by the traditional measure abandoned during clinton years http://shadowstats.gov/

It is agreeable to see such logical analysis of the current commercialization by J.J. Abrams of the ethos, characters, lore, beliefs and world community that is Star Trek. You may find this review on Forbes to be very much in agreement with your analysis: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelvenables/2013/05/17/star-trek-into-darkness-alternate-vision-of-mediocrity/ Live long and prosper.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/

I don't begrudge them anything, but they are seriously in outer space.

That can happen when you rise to the heights of power in politics, or stand on really large mountains of cash in industry, or take up residence in much of academia.

You mean like Al Gore?

Do you know how much these drugs cost to create and get approved for sale?

HERE

Also, the IP clauses shouldn't be an issue... they last for 20 years, and most of the time the drug patent is submitted prior to clinical trials. I am way over simplifying this though, as there are other items that can be done to extend.

It would also be nice if people could start trying to actually back up their points with some solid proof/articles.

This would be ok on TMZ... someone beat the editor!

What? The fact that the guy should better die on ISS or else face the RIAA/BPI suit for unlicensed public performance (no matter David Bowie's prediction) isn't interesting enough for /.?

(grin)

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

Those aren't "studies", they are a screwball's collected and biased web links. Matloff hasn't done "studies".

Have a look at his earlier web pages, where he was talking about the supposed evils of immigration in general:

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/Imm.html

He switched over to flaming just against H-1B because that's presumably more politically correct.

True, but bringing 100's of thousands of unqualified tech workers into this country to replace those who are already here is a bit much, don't you think?

First of all, they are qualified to do the low-level tech jobs they get hired for, otherwise employers wouldn't hire them. And I don't think it's "a bit much". You can see a good economic analysis here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/04/24/an-alternative-theory-of-the-skills-shortage/

In effect, US companies are willing to pay up to a certain amount for tech workers, but no more. If the price of labor rose more, companies would just move the jobs themselves overseas.

So, Matloff is right to the degree that H-1B visas are about keeping wages down. He's wrong in believing that that's a bad thing, since the alternative to hiring the H-1Bs is not higher-paid IT jobs for Americans, it is losing IT jobs from the US altogether.

You offer one piece of *evidence* an uncited statistic: *double digiits*. Being a good slashdot denizen, of course I tried to confirm or refute this this claim. There is zero evidence that *double digit percentages of employees* engaged in any misconduct or were even interviewed. I wonder where you got that statistic. The full transcripts, number of tapes , minutes of each tape, location of each tape is publicly available because the tapes were turned over to the police as a condition for O'Keefe's immunity from criminal prosecution. What they revealed was that O'Keefe systematically doctored and edited the tapes to produce guilt where there was clearly none. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN_2009_undercover_videos_controversy Points arising- They did not interview *double digit percentages* of ACORN's lower level employees or employees of any type. O'Keefe was NOT in "pimp garb " as it appears in the video when he was addressing ACORN employees, he was actually in a suit and tie. O'Keefe was sued in court by one of his victims and lost to the tune of $100,000. From the totality of the scam that O'Keefe and Giles ran , I conclude the following. O'Keefe and Giles are classic, textbook sociopaths. http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html Not only did they run the ACRON scam and vicitimize the individual ACORN workers, but they also victimized civil society itself by destroying a wel-respected, law-abiding participant in that society. O'Keefe has admitted the reason he went after ACRON was because they were engaged in voter registration. O'Keefe was arrested at the Capitol for breaking into the telephone exchange there in an apparent attempt to tap the phone lines. Everyone form Forbes to MediaMatters has concluded the same thing about James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles- they're lowlife scammers - http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/03/08/james-okeefe-pays-100000-to-acorn-employee-he-smeared-conservative-media-yawns/ http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/02/17/james-okeefe-and-the-myth-of-the-acorn-pimp/160485 http://wonkette.com/505026/wonket-sexclusive-totally-blameless-crime-stopper-james-okeefe-to-pay-100000-to-acorn-criminal

It's not Nixonian until you come up with the tape of Obama telling his aides to sic the IRS on the people on his enemies list.

The question of Nixon's tapes didn't come up until investigators came looking for them. The real investigations haven't started on this. . . yet. And it needn't take a tape to be Nixonian. The key is the intent and activity, not the recording medium.

The Obama Campaign's Nixonian "White House Enemies List"

The Obama campaign is now marshaling the power of the office of the presidency against private citizens — using the Obama campaign’s “Truth Team” to target individual Romney donors and supporters in a way that is alarmingly reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List” — as documented in a May 10th piece by the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel.

Obama's Enemies List
Strassel: Obama's Enemies List—Part II

Until we reach something closer to an AI with self awareness, they should be treated as cars. If a robot injures someone, is fault of the one that made or programmed or ordered it. We will put guns in jail because they are the ones that ultimatelly killed? Or demonize drones taking out all the responsability to all the chain that ordered what they did?

And what about the difference between physical, humanoid or not, robots, vs computers? Like blaming excel for all the economic troubles of today instead of the people that used it in situations and ways that they shouldn't?

Precisely:

March 6, 2013: As Carbon Dioxide Levels Continue To Rise, Global Temperatures Are Not Following Suit

"Fortunately for science the Mauna Loa readings are in good agreement with those taken at hundreds of other sites around the globe."

This is called Confirmation Bias. And it's not Science. Science is when you recognize that data NOT in agreement with other data is significant, and not just a discardable outlier.

As Carbon Dioxide Levels Continue To Rise, Global Temperatures Are Not Following Suit

Cisco IronPort. We use it and rely on it heavily for secure emails regarding pii for our pension fund

Yeah, we did the same at my company.

Our IT Staff just threw their hands in the air, and now we just use a public bulletin board for our all our internal electronic communications (with private messaging disabled). And once in a while just to be thorough, we let a spammer come in to post viagra ads on it, just to remind all of our employees that our bulletin board is completely opened to the outside world and nothing posted on it will ever be private.