Slashdot Mirror

For those not interested in going through all of the links just to find the one that links to the relevant article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2012/08/02/knight-capital-trading-disaster-carries-440-million-price-tag/

Because they are not actually being "subsidized". Use of that term is mostly just political theatrics. The 3 largest "subsidies" are:
1: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
2: Tax expemptions for farm fuel (because that fuel is not used on roads).
3: HEAP - Low income Home Energy Assistance Program

These 3 programs account for about $2.5 billion of the about $4 billion that are considered "Oil Subsidies". source

These are getting to be fairly frequent events. See http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidleinweber/2012/08/01/another-tech-glitch-roils-markets-how-simulation-could-help/ for comments on the problems this morning, and how traders might be able to build their own early warning systems

You're conflating "Samsung is aware of these 2006 design mockups" and "Samsung was aware of these design mockups in 2006". One of those follows from available evidence, other one doesn't (and probably would entail an industrial espionage investigation).

No, I'm not. Jonathan Ive disclosed that himself in 2006, this is public knowledge, and before you accuse Apple of fabricating evidence, what's quoted there is Samsung's version of the story! Apple's lawyers are having it really easy in this trial, with Samsung shooting themselves in the feet every time they try to argue for their defense.

A small company isn't likely to have security experts on staff, and even if they do there's no guarantee those experts will catch every break-in.

Dropbox is not exactly a small company.. They had $240 million in revenue in 2011 entirely from storing customer data.. Seems like they could spend 1% or 2% of that on security. http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbox-the-inside-story-of-techs-hottest-startup/

It's been just over a year since the login-without-a-password dropbox security breach... Where they said "a few hundred" accounts were accessed, but had no way of verifying how many were actually accessed.

It's all just so incredibly sloppy.

Why are they still in business? They obviously don't know what they are doing. I have no idea how can anyone trust them with their data.

Tech journalists: Stop hyping unproven security tools
Monday, July 30, 2012 | Christopher Soghoian
http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2012/07/tech-journalists-stop-hyping-unproven.html

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2010/3/25/1269523445370/Austin-Heap-001.jpg

"Preface: Although this essay compares the media's similar hyping of Haystack and Cryptocat, the tools are, at a technical level, in no way similar. Haystack was at best, snake oil, peddled by a charlatan. Cryptocat is an interesting, open-source tool created by a guy who means well, and usually listens to feedback.

In 2009, media outlets around the world discovered, and soon began to shower praise upon Haystack, a software tool designed to allow Iranians to evade their government's Internet filtering. Haystack was the brainchild of Austin Heap, a San Francisco software developer, who the Guardian described as a "tech wunderkind" with the "know-how to topple governments."

The New York Times wrote that Haystack "makes it near impossible for censors to detect what Internet users are doing." The newspaper also quoted one of the members of the Haystack team saying that "It's encrypted at such a level it would take thousands of years to figure out what youâ(TM)re saying."

Newsweek stated that Heap had "found the perfect disguise for dissidents in their cyberwar against the worldâ(TM)s dictators." The magazine revealed that the tool, which Heap and a friend had in "less than a month and many all-nighters" of coding, was equipped with "a sophisticated mathematical formula that conceals someoneâ(TM)s real online destinations inside a stream of innocuous traffic."

Heap was not content to merely help millions of oppressed Iranians. Newsweek quoted the 20-something developer revealing his long term goal: "We will systematically take on each repressive country that censors its people. We have a list. Donâ(TM)t piss off hackers who will have their way with you.

The Guardian even selected Heap as its Innovator of the Year. The chair of the award panel praised Heap's "vision and unique approach to tackling a huge problem" as well as "his inventiveness and bravery."

This was a feel-good tech story that no news editor could ignore. A software developer from San Francisco taking on a despotic regime in Tehran.

There was just one problem: The tool hadn't been evaluated by actual security experts. Eventually, Jacob Appelbaum obtained a copy of and analyze the software. The results were not pretty -- he described it as "the worst piece of software I have ever had the displeasure of ripping apart."

Soon after, Daniel Colascione, the lead developer of Haystack resigned from the project, saying the program was an example of "hype trumping security." Heap ultimately shuttered Haystack.

After the proverbial shit hit the fan, the Berkman Center's Jillian York wrote:

I certainly blame Heap and his partnersâ"for making outlandish claims about their product without it ever being subjected to an independent security review, and for all of the media whoring theyâ(TM)ve done over the past year.

But I also firmly place blame on the media, which elevated the status of a person who, at best was just trying to help, and a tool which very well could have been a great thing, to the level of a kid genius and his silver bullet, without so much as a call to circumvention experts.

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jonmatonis/files/2012/07/web_chat.png

Cryptocat: The press is still hypin'

In 2011, Nadim Kobeissi, then a 20 year old college student in Canada started to develop Cryptocat, a web-based secure chat servi

I just read this article on Forbes. It looks like they've come to the same conclusion I have.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/06/21/microsoft-first-branded-tablets-next-their-own-cell-phone/

We're talking about Forbes, here you know?

The East Coast financial world lives in terror that some punk in a hoodie is going to yank the rug out from under them. They love the "techies needs suits" narrative, and go for it whenever they can.

The irrelevant snipe about Greece and Spain is just Forbes waving their flag as "Austerions". Actually the troubles in Greece and Spain result from them not having they're own currency, not with their debt level, but it's very, very important to worry about government debt or some crazies might suggest doing something about 8% unemployment... like taxing the rich to hire teachers.

By the way, if you took Forbes seriously when looking for investment advice, you would almost certainly lose a lot of money: http://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2011/02/22/higher-inflation-is-on-the-way/

So calm down, yes this is ridiculous, but it's just Forbes. Tribal loyalty is more important than being right.

Here are some videos. He represents the phones as unmodified, though running an old version.

The distance isn't so much of an issue because he was able to use an NFC tag, not a transmitter, not an active device of any kind, but a mere tag to cause the phone to switch on its bluetooth radio and give him a sudoer's command line over the BT radio. An attacker could hide an NFC tag in a table or at waist level in a public place, or in a tag that's disguised to be legitimate, where people are liable to stand for more than 10 seconds: the tag cracks the phone open, and then someone with a laptop within BT distance conducts a brief session to grab what they can, or install a rootkit.

They pulled that comment just a few months ago. Earlier this spring you would have found a claim that it doesn't get PC viruses (Don't be pedantic and claim that it doesn't get PC viruses because PC refers to windows viruses, that's a specious argument and it's a deliberate ploy to claim Macs don't get viruses). So yes, almost every currently deployed Mac was sold with the claim that Macs don't get viruses, directly from Apple.

http://www.redmondpie.com/apple-removes-its-virus-immunity-claim-for-mac-from-official-website-not-so-safe-from-viruses-after-all-huh/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/06/26/yes-apples-machines-really-can-get-viruses/

Apple never explicitly claimed that OS X is immune from viruses or that they don't get viruses, they just made a big hullabaloo about the fact that there is more malware for PCs (read: Windows) than there is for OS X. If Apple had made the claim that OS X in immune to malware they'd have had a class action lawsuit claiming false advertising on their hands the instant that the first OS X trojan arrived. So if you would be so kind as to provide a link to an archived page from Apple's own website where they expicitly claim that Macs cant get viruses we'd be interested in seeing it.

don't forget runescape, they got around 200 million accounts. yes you saw that, 200 MILLION while wow has around 11m subscribers..but how many accounts I don't know but I bet runescape which is free plays a big role why wow is getting killed. Theres some others out there of course but when I heard that news...seems clear they must play a big role in that.

From all the stories I've read they didn't even note Apple's estimates. They are all harping that analysts predicted 29 M iPhones and Apple sold 26M; however, none of the analysts bothered to mention that 26M is a Q2 record. Forbes calls out the ridiculousness of the situation.

I'm sure there are people who like the hardware or have other reasons to get an Android phone instead of something else. But the number of Android users who are willing to pay for their software is simply too low. The examples are numerous. Forbes had an article on this subject a few months ago and just last week there was something here on Slashdot about a developer who got so fed up with all the piracy going on, he decided to not even try asking money for his game anymore.

I'm not saying this because I don't like Android. I like Android just fine. But I do agree with the guy in the original article that something has to be done to get cash flowing towards the developers of Android applications.

The real problem here is NOT that Apple's slide-to-unlock idea has become so popular that they should be forced to allow other companies to license the patent. The real problem here is that Apple's slide-to-unlock idea should not have been patentable in the first place. Apple was the first to implement the idea, so they got a head start in the market, and that should have been enough.

Agreed that it shouldn't have been patentable. But Apple was second with the idea. Their slide to unlock patent was overturned in the UK based on prior art - Neonode patented slide to unlock 3 years before Apple.

Once again, An innaccurate headline fools most of the slashdot readers. Seriously folks, click on the article and just scroll down to the full McDonald's letter. It is seven sentences long and says essentially that the employees deny Dr. Mann's account but that McDonald's is still investigating. Dr. Mann has not yet responded to their queries. Nowhere is it even implied that they are denying Dr. Mann's claims.

Forbes article confirms Mann was asked to leave
"Update: A McDonald’s spokesperson confirms that Mann was in fact asked to leave the restaurant,"

So McDonalds is confirming that they did tell Mann to leave, just like I said, now they're arguing over the manner in which he left. Mann provided this photo which confirms it was physical.

Okay, possibly I'm stupid or out of touch, but I've been around the interwebs for a while and seen my share of stuff. It just doesn't seem likely that there are a million porn sites. I wouldn't have guessed 1 million in the world, and certainly not 1 million that the Indonesian government can block.

Here's an article in Forbes article that says

In 2010, out of the million most popular (most trafficked) websites in the world, 42,337 were sex-related sites.

That's a far cry from 1 million. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/julieruvolo/2011/09/07/how-much-of-the-internet-is-actually-for-porn/)

Maybe they mean 1 million pages. Or maybe there are a million sites that only host a single drawing of Mickey banging Minnie doggie-style. Or maybe they mean something different by the word "pornographic." But 1 million pornhubs? 1 million redtubes? I'm having a hard time believing this.

I was hoping the story linked under "Big Data analytics" would be interesting but it wasn't. It only has vague statements and a couple small examples. A much better story is "Target knows you're pregnant" from earlier this year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

Clearly, someone at Forbes disagrees with you:

Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama?

I read a number of newspapers and Internet news sites, and this is the first I've heard of it,

MSNBC: http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/cyborg-steve-mann-details-alleged-mcdonalds-assault-889595

Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/07/17/cyborg-discrimination-scientist-says-mcdonalds-staff-tried-to-pull-off-his-google-glass-like-eyepiece-then-threw-him-out/

The Huff: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/steve-mann-attacked-paris-mcdonalds-digital-eye-glass-photos_n_1680263.html

NYT Daily: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/cyborg-professor-claims-assault-paris-mcdonald-digital-glasses-article-1.1116246

Canadian news: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/07/17/tech-mann-digital-eye-glass-assault.html and a few others.

Plus El Reg, CNET, Network World, and the usual tech news sites. And the story is the second top google-news results for "McDonald's".

It's also the second article on Slashdot itself about the incident. http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/07/17/0335227/man-physically-assaulted-at-mcdonalds-for-wearing-digital-eye-glasses

1) Health insurance =/= costs =/= access to care. I don't know why, but people outside healthcare policy ALWAYS make this mistake.

However, it's the reason why those of us who actually work in the field tend to be against Obama's plan, even when we're as progressive as Jon Stewart. (I'm in health policy, but I'm not the author of the piece. JSIA.)

So can we have fewer talking points and more attention to detail please?

2) Costs have increased dramatically (i.e., 19-30%) where Obama's exchanges have been implemented.

3) Insurers are still free to kick individuals with pre-existing conditions off their plans. They can just do so by increasing premiums to a point where they know the individuals can no longer afford it and have to take the tax increase. It's why it's still best to create a shell corporation and purchase insurance through a group.

4) Massachusettes has had no demonstrable impact on the number of bankruptcies due to medical bills (i.e., most bankruptcies). Because MA's law is structurally identical to the ACA, that tends to suggest that the ACA won't really help patients' budgets.

5) Premiums can still increase dramatically each year. Although dramatic increases (IIRC, more than 5%) have to undergo a regulatory review, all the review has to show is that the costs are driven my medical costs instead of profits.

I could go on and on all day. Bascially, the plan is good for hospitals, doctors, and insurers because they get paid a lot more consistently thanks to the government, which has basically forced everyone to become a customer. But that doesn't make it a good deal for people. When insurance premiums and OOP expenditures can go up by double-digits while individuals' wages remain the same, it just drives what little remains of the middle class into the poor house.

Which is why this former Obama voter and health policy researcher is sitting out this election.

The masses are irrelevant. They always were. Originally, they were excluded because they were irrelevant.

Unfortunately, their irrelevance is being overriden by their marketability now... the bleating sheep have no individual value, but their fleece and their flesh are quite valuable on the commodity market. And there are so damn many of them. So the range is fenced, and roads laid, and pens built, and soon the whole damn Internet is a boring endless feedlot.

Why despise Manning[?]

Word. From my point of view, best to hop on the Free Bradley Manning bandwagon in order to meet women.

Do you actually get better management by paying $100M per year than if you pay $1M per year?

Apparently, most shareholders believe that the answer to that question is "yes", especially at the biggest blue chip banks like JP Morgan and Goldman. Although you will notice that the Citi board, which has not done as well in recent quarters, received some fairly stern questioning of Vikram Pandit's bonus. In fact, I think that they eventually forced him to accept a substantial cut as a result of the worse than expected performance. Sounds like the system is working to me.

Valve was valued at between 1.5 - 2 billion last Feburary by Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions/

They are also more profitable per employee than either Apple or Google. I think they'll be able to put up a fight. Sure their gaming market isn't as large, but they produce games that are played to have fun, versus casual games you can play for a minute or two while the barista is making your whatever crap your drinking.

Without the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (creatures of government) the mortgage crisis would not have happened.

I disagree. It still would have happened, but it wouldn't have been as bad as it was without the Fed raising interests rates a few months after Greenspan encouraged everyone to buy Option-ARM mortgages (to name one of their bad decisions). The mortgage crisis was really a perfect storm of deregulation, fraud, hubris and greed. Had AIG not been selling un-funded CDS's with it's left hand, while loaning out it's AAA securities to investment banks and investing the cash collateral in junk (but AAA rated) mortgage back securities with it's right hand, Goldman Sachs wouldn't have been able to hold a metaphoric gun to the head of the country and force the Fed to pump billions into that sinking ship (just so they could pay back GS, Societe Generale, DeutcheBank and the rest).

Further reading:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/25/aig-treasury-fed-business-wall-street-bailout.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mailbag-aig-parking-meters-and-being-a-crappy-husband-20110214

Without TARP, HAMP, HAMA, AIG bailout, and trillions in secret Federal Reserve life support, the banks would have been forced to accept the consequences of their own actions, and the damage could have been repaired.

I wouldn't say the damage could have been repaired. In fact, an argument could be made that the short term (i.e. 0-10 years) effects would have been much worse. However, by not removing the moral hazard from the equation, Congress and the Fed insured that something like this will happen again. As long as there are no criminal or financial penalties for people making bad bets or engaging in fraudulent behavior, you are guaranteed to see that behavior repeat.

Might also want to take a look at this too - http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/07/11/amazon-snaps-at-netflixs-heels-with-paramount-pictures-deal/

Oh and this too...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

Forbes has an article claiming same thing

Really. You say the business owners you talk to are worried about estate taxes. Well, since the Obama's current proposal has a bult in $3.5 million dollar exemption and would be taxed at 45%, I find it very hard to sympathize with your business owners.
I am assuming you are relaying this story in an attempt to paint Obama in a bad light? If he's really after estate taxes, all Obama has to do is nothing. Because in 2013 the tax rate will automatically change to a 1 million dollar exemption with a tax rate of 55%.
Yes, I know. Its shocking. Apparently Obama wants a lower estate tax rate than Congress already has in place. I think your business owners might want to call their congressmen and ask them why they aren't pushing Obama's estate tax proposal through Congress.

Those are a couple of the typical talking points, but they are highly dubious.

Health care is highly regulated in all developed countries, including the US, and so the price of care doesn't reflect anything like its actual cost in economic terms. It's therefore almost meaningless to directly compare per capita health care spending between countries.

Outcomes are also not as easy to compare as some people think. For example, it's common to see life expectancy and infant mortality compared. By some ways of reckoning, the US ranks pretty poorly among developed countries on those two metrics. But it turns out that once deaths by fatal accidents and violent crimes are removed, and we account for differences in what countries consider a "live birth", the US looks pretty good. The first link also shows that the US has the highest survival rate for a wide variety of cancers.

(Note that I am not defending the claim that " the simplest procedures runs into the tens or hundreds of thousands". I'm just saying that things are not as simple as some people who want to change the US's system to be more like some other country's would like you to believe.)

As a software programmer, if I write an amazing piece of software that nobody has seen before and some big company comes and makes a totally ripped off clone, I'd be pissed and that'd be unfair.

Patents have nothing to do with fairness. Never had, never will. They started out as gifts by the King of England to his friends. Nowadays, whether or not you can enforce a patent mainly depends on whether you have a sufficient number of lawyers and amount of money.

Also keep in mind that patents in no way guarantee that you will be able to distribute and sell your "amazing piece of software". A patent only covers a single "invention" part of that software. There may be hundreds of patents owned by other companies/people that also apply to your program, and in principle you'd have to get a license/permission for every single one of those before you can use whatever they claim.

In short: as a programmer you are probably constantly "ripping off" hundreds of patent holders with every program you write. Unless you plan on going into the patent trolling business, it's unlikely that your one hypothetical patent will ever give you more benefit than the liabilities you have due to other people's patents.

Do we? Where do you take your data from? The research financed by the big labels? Maybe the same research that generated this:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/05/24/the-riaa-do-not-believe-a-word-they-say-ever-for-theyre-claiming-72-trillion-in-damages/

The CEO is generally an employee of the company. Do you really expect a board (most of whom also have degrees and are often CEOs of other companies) to hire someone without a degree to lead their company? Of course not.

So yes, CEOs will generally have degrees. The only time there is an exception is when the person founded the company, and built it themselves. And apparently in tech, there are only 3 of those left at the moment (gates, zuckerberg, ellison).

College drop outs account for 20% of the 657 self-made billionaires in the world:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/02/billionaire-clusters-harvard-skull-and-bones-goldman-business-billionaires-wealth.html

Of course, college dropouts (or those who never started) account for a much larger portion than 20% of the population.. so if anything, college dropouts are LESS likely to make it that far.

> ... Unless they are willing to take huge losses (as with the Xbox) ...

In case anyone is curious ... that Xbox is one expensive little box!

Article is from 2 years ago ... (I believe the Games Division is showing a profit now...)

Microsoft's MidLife Crisis
http://www.forbes.com/global/2005/1003/036A_4.html ... The Xbox game console is hot, but its division has lost $4 billion in four years and isn't yet in the black. ...

Gold:
[_] Cashless
[x] High-Value
[x] Anonymous

You're really referring to fiat currency and not cash-carrying in a broad sense. Although given that the penny's metal now has intrinsically more value than its decree, anything can change. Imagine how valuable paper bills would become if some catastrophe destroyed the world's forests? (Let's assume it also destroys book scanners. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krugerrand#History
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/07/13/bernanke-fights-ron-paul-in-congress-golds-not-money/
http://archive.mises.org/19274/central-banks-gold-is-money/

But it can work.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/04/27/can-gold-be-used-as-a-currency/

> to purchase the product and violate US law (and apple policy)

According to Forbes, items that can be purchased at retail do not require an export license.

While the guy at Forbes does seem to say that, he links to the US Treasury's site which states:

EXPORTS TO IRAN - In general, unless licensed by OFAC, goods, technology, or services may not be exported, reexported, sold or supplied, directly or indirectly, from the United States or by a U.S. person, wherever located, to Iran or the Government of Iran...
In general, a person may not export from the U.S. any goods, technology or services, if that person knows or has reason to know such items are intended specifically for supply, transshipment or reexportation to Iran.

There doesn't seem to be "any goods, technology or services except those that can be purchased at retail" language there.

Summary links to page two of the article.

page one

The summary on /. links to page 2 of the article. Page 1 is here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/06/22/ceo-of-internet-provider-sonic-net-we-delete-user-logs-after-two-weeks-your-internet-provider-should-too/

> to purchase the product and violate US law (and apple policy)

According to Forbes, items that can be purchased at retail do not require an export license.

> Apple should be lauded for following it.

But the Apple Store employees did not follow the actual export law; and then they eventually told her she could buy the iPad online.

Not when it comes to college and post-grad it isn't.

5 inch display?
And I quote Forbes:

Although common wisdom holds that you wouldn’t want to hold something the size of a ham sandwich up to the side of your head, a wireless headset does somewhat mitigate the potential issue of dealing with an unwieldy phone.

Sounds like a great form factor to me!

Elon Musk doesn't need credibility with you, he has a net worth of $2 billion. And frankly, between you and him, I know who has more credibility with me.

A couple of things... First, you need to update your notion of what is "required" for a Mars mission. Second, SpaceX is developing a line of reusable launchers which will drastically cut the cost of launching mass to LEO.

Lots of very smart people have been working on this for quite a while, and they seem to think it can be done. After listening to their arguments, I tend to agree. We are on the cusp of a new "golden age" in space exploration. You may disagree, but I reckon you're in for a pleasant surprise, sooner than you think.

Without realistic battery life estimates and a price this might have well be Vaporware.

Why? Fan-boys seem well prepared to forgive Apple for any battery problems. Why is it suddenly an issue for Microsoft?

The quoted text from Carreon is too long and you get the feeling someone fell asleep writing it. I re-read it a second time, imagining better formatting and it read better, IMO.

So help me out here, can you show me what you mean? I basically grabbed those quotes from the two news articles where he gave interviews. I'm not one to change the language, punctuation or grammar of what someone is quoted as saying from a reputable news source. Please, if you want to help me, tell me what I was supposed to do with the quote in this article:

“So someone takes one of my letters and takes it apart. That doesn’t mean you can just declare netwar, that doesn’t mean you can encourage people to hack my website, to brute force my WordPress installation so I have to change my password. You can’t encourage people to violate my trademark and violate my twitter name and associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery,” he says. “And if that’s where the world is going I will fight with every ounce of force in this 5’11 180 pound frame against it. I’ve got the energy, and I’ve got the time.”

That's how it appears in Forbes and it's the entire basis for his lawsuit so I thought it was important. I took his words and left Forbes' interjections because that's their work and also when you're writing a summary it should be concise so I remove the "he said" and "she wrote" pieces.

I'm willing to learn and get better at this. It's really hard when people just say "You're a 13 year old girl, you're illiterate and other people's quotes are too long." Any helpful suggestions are greatly appreciated -- especially when they're more constructive than name calling.

He is probably referring to the deaths per GW numbers that have been floating around, I can't find the right one, but here is another one showing the numbers:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

The other charts I have seen in the past include the death tolls of the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan even, and still make nuclear look very good.

you mean besides the monthly "make no sense, freak everyone out" day? no, i don't think there's any difference.

If you think men's behavior isn't influenced by hormones, you are wrong:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/06/13/why-male-hormones-may-drive-the-stock-market-and-override-investors-ability-to-think-rationally/

I thoroughly hope, Stephen Elop is one of those 10000

They might drop a little box on your property :)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/01/27/darpa-funded-hackers-tiny-50-spy-computer-hides-in-offices-drops-from-drones/
Saves the sneaking of trying to get into your carbon monoxide detector, wall socket or office kitchen.

epic failure of an IPO? The company's goal is to sell a share of itself for the highest price it can. How did Facebook fail?

By doing just about everything that would have raised its price wrong. Source: Pretty much every major news outlet that's reported on it. http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/tygrrrr-express/2012/may/25/why-facebook-ipo-failed/ http://www.theage.com.au/business/world-business/facebook-ipo-fail-may-cost-nasdaq-us100m-20120606-1zuys.html http://rt.com/usa/news/facebook-ipo-globe-internet-644/ http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/business/962290-192/signs-of-facebook-ipo-failure-dots-connecting.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2012/05/23/facebooks-ipo-dealing-with-a-failed-project/