Slashdot Mirror

(Please forget everything you learned from the Oatmeal about Tesla and Edison. Other than that, I'm modding you up because I completely agree with you.)

Please apply some critical thinking to everything that both Forbes and The Oatmeal have to say about Edison.

(Please forget everything you learned from the Oatmeal about Tesla and Edison. Other than that, I'm modding you up because I completely agree with you.)

We're fixing the problem with your chemistry books.

No, the book isn't changing. India will soon have Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which will make the reference a sensible one.

In fact, no.

  I accidentally posted this anonymously farther down, but in fact Bill Gates has done tremendous harm with his so-called "philanthropy"; his real contribution is "leveraged philanthropy", where you use philanthropic donations to control something so that you make more money. This is true with his vaccine so-called "charity" - which forces poor nations to spend money from other sources on expensive foreign vaccines, rather than on development of local vaccine manufacturing or of general public health infrastructure, and thus actually degrades the quality of 3rd world health care while making Bill Gates his "charitable" money back and then some. This is true of his education so-called "charity" - which forces poor school districts to spend money from other sources on high-tech gadgets and expensive consulting services, which are sold by Bill Gates' various partners, but which are actually worse than no services at all.

The Gates' foundation has announced a partnership with Pearson (for profit-education company) to develop and market materials aligned to the common core. These are the materials that your school district must agree to purchase (this particular test cost $32 million state wide) in order to qualify for Race to the Top.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-19/news/31369375_1_answer-silly-question-pineapple
    So, Bill Gates is using a small amount of his "charitable" money to force public money in much larger amounts, to be wasted on this crap.

Bill Gates wants to fit teachers with galvanic bracelets:
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/09/just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-get-crazier/

Bill Gates needs vaccines to be a "profit center" for his pharmaceutical buddies. I spelled this out above but read the comments.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/11/10/what-bill-gates-says-about-drug-companies-2/

Oh, hey, Bill Gates is using his agricultural charity to force the 3rd world to buy Monsanto's crops:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto

It's meant to be syllogistic.

As in:

Linux:Operating Systems::OpenStack:Cloud

At this point, though, OpenStack is still pre-1.0, perhaps equivalent to Linux circa 1993. Whether it can polish up and continue to deliver what is needed is yet to be seen.

The impetus behind cloud right now means that this will be a lot more high profile than Linux was in 1993. There's all sorts of politics (eg Why Citrix Left Openstack) at play, and no one has an OpenStack cloud of any significant size running. OpenStack has been tooting its horn for 18+ months and yet the most advanced player is really just going into production. Rackspace clearly sees OpenStack as an avenue to leverage outside development in an effort to go after Amazon, but whether that makes it viable for other people - and thus creates a rewarding ecosystem - has yet to be seen.

"I continue to believe in Best Buy and its future..." Schulze said in a statement.
followed immediately by "Schulze also said he was exploring options for his 20.1 percent stake in the company." and an accompanying article from here

Looks like he's getting out as much as possible now.

Hurray for Microcenter?

Yes, killing yourself early reduces the chance of disease later. But, lots of Cokes every day is not a straightforward answer to the implied context of "What is healthy?" Killing yourself through methods that expedite your getting a different disease like diabetes instead of waiting for Alzheimer's is not a serious answer.

Given a lifespan of roughly 90 years, living healthfully, with a good diet, good exercise, good sleep patterns, and good stress levels means you live that span, and in enjoyable health. Over-indulgence or other kinds of self-abuse means suffering for great lengths from illness and dying early.

A six pack of Coke daily isn't the right solution to having a finite life. So it really is a kind of sarcasm, the fact that it's offered as a good idea.

Your speculation about immortality being hell is just speculation. You don't know. This is one of those situations where the right idea changes one's outlook, and the right idea takes knowledge, insight, and imagination. For example, "What's the big deal about using Facebook or companies that keep tabs on you? What could possibly go wrong?"

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

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/03/not-an-april-fool-1.html

Your lack of knowing how to survive and thrive in immortality is not the same thing as there being a lack of ways. And your lack of knowledge is not a good argument for giving up trying to live a long, healthy life.

Ah, my mistake, the standard way is in the ocean. I am wrong on that. To avoid bones they say mainly plankton and bacteria.
Wouldn't they still get washed away? otherwise we would see this happening all over the sea beds.

Anyway, I did a bit more searching and found an article about an oil field under granite which means the oil field was not made only by dead sea creatures. Granite link
Cheers
Chris

... Every national science body in the world has concluded that AGW is real.

Officially. Non-officially, there is a TON of debate on the topic. Like at this event. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/05/23/7-protest-hints-for-the-global-warming-alarmists-of-the-world/

Mandatory option? Third hand I have to wonder if he had a set of options that were mandatory. Suspicion that the lecturer didn't believe what he was saying? That sounds a little paranoid to me. There are many people that disagree with me but until I have some strong evidence I tend to think that they believe what they say. I will say there are conditions where for some reason a teacher is required to teach something they don't agree with but they should teach a subject objectively. A teacher shouldn't lie to say something they don't agree with or to support something they do agree with.

The course could be taught without being feminist or misogynist. Women do get paid less than men in a lot of jobs (I picked this source because it cites the wage gap, mentions it is narrowing and points out 15 jobs where women get paid more). This in and of itself does not mean women are necessarily discriminated against. For instance do men ask for raises more? Do men negotiate pay more when they are getting hired? If so does that mean I am more likely to hire a woman because she won't negotiate pay or ask for a raise? Does that mean I'm discriminating again men? women? both? If I'm a man will I get hired more if I don't negotiate? If I'm a woman will I get paid more if I do negotiate?

Completely and 100% wrong. The US is the #1 manufacturing economy in the world, and it is focused in exactly the right areas, high value technologically intensive products.

http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-top-manufacturing-countries.htm

Furthermore it is actually improving while China and Europe are in decline.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2012/05/24/seattle-is-leading-an-american-manufacturing-revival/

She became a Physician Assistant. Read about her and her decision her http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/19/masters-degrees-jobs-education-leadership-howard.html

So the moral of the story here folks is simple, if you want it done right you do it yourself and you sure as hell don't trust a country known for snatching every idea that ain't nailed down and who is famous for copying other's stuff to do it for you!

How'd you get that moral from this story? There's no evidence yet that the Chinese put the backdoor in.

What next you're going to blame the Chinese for Apple's backdoor? http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/10/25/careful-iphone-owners-simple-backdoor-lets-anyone-bypass-password-protection/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57408370-281/how-apple-and-google-help-police-bypass-iphone-android-lock-screens/

> Not mentioning the drop in live music revenues in North America

Looks like Lowery isn't quite up to date, there: from January 2012:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2012/01/06/live-music-in-2011-revenues-up-attendance-down/

Of course, as Masnick emphasizes, "live music" is an enormously wide range of activities not all of which are covered by Neilsen SoundScan. You must forgive me for refusing to believe Lowery has reached his conclusion by gathering more data or different data than them; however, if Lowery would actually cough up the data in a way which could be reviewed, I could possibly be convinced.

Only slightly different from Curt Shillings first industry, professional sports, where they take taxpayer money, stay in business, then demand more. Had the state just given him the money, he could have stuck around for a while, then went back for more a few years later by threatening to take jobs elsewhere.

Other estimates are as low as 400,000, with mixed reviews to boot.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/09/radiation-detected-in-drinking-water-in-13-more-us-cities-cesium-137-in-vermont-milk/

4/11 - Radiation from Japan has been detected in drinking water in 13 more American cities, and cesium-137 has been found in American milk—in Montpelier, Vermont—for the first time since the Japan nuclear disaster began, according to data released by the Environmental Protection Agency

Mr. President, pick one:

1. Continued cooperation from wealthy drug companies on your healthcare agenda
2. Sudden shift in big pharma campaign contributions (> oil+gas+wallstreet) to Romney's 527s.

And that profit fee is on top of the U.S. corporate tax rate being the 1st or 2nd highest in the developed world. Does anyone think they eat those rates or don't try to offshore jobs and manufacturing?

But the effective tax rate is no where near as high. From the same article you linked to!

Of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones industrial average, 19 told shareholders their effective rate for their 2011 fiscal years, mostly ending Dec. 31, was below Obama's proposed new tax rate, according to a Reuters analysis of securities filings.

It is not mentioned in the article but the proposed new tax rate is 28%. Other industrialized nations have an effective tax rate between 22.6% and 27.7%. This is hardly a crippling difference. Not to mention may of the largest companies in the U.S. pay nothing! For example in 2010:

The most egregious example is General Electric ( GE - news - people ). Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.

It seems pretty disingenuous to claim high corporate taxes as a major problem without looking at what companies actually pay.

What's more significant is that Zynga crashed - down 17% and trading halted for almost an hour. If FB were so great, why did their BFF take a nasty shot to the head?

Thank you for trying to educate me. You are still totally wrong, but I do appreciate being tipped to the subtlety of the story. Having dug into it, the best I can determine is that the GE tax is "small" -- that's the last word from GE, having realized how bad an idea it was for them to announce that they paid billions less than zero. Since GE refuses to be more specific, I think it is fair to assume that "small" is within rounding distance of zero. Since I paid more than zero, I stand by my assertion that I paid more than GE, but if you want me to be 100% literal about it, then I didn't pay more than GE by billions of dollars.

Forbes says billions in tax benefits in 2009
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes.html

Business Insider say GE is "full of crap"
http://www.businessinsider.com/ge-taxes-2010

CNN Money reports $0 in taxes
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/16/news/companies/ge_7000_tax_returns/

Washington Post, deep down on the second page, reports a "small" tax liability, but GE won't specify; note that "zero" is the smallest number of all
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-truth-about-ges-tax-bill/2011/04/05/AFZm0L9C_story_1.html

Stratification and class structures aren't very good terms to describe the wealth concentration problem. It would be more true to say that in an undirected market there is a positive feedback effect in which success gets you enough money to have a higher chance of succeeding the next time. It is a process with no upper limit to how much power you can gain with an early advantage, and partially locks out new players from the game.

But does this dynamic exist in the real world? The King or Queen of the United Kingdom has long been the wealthiest person of that realm, yet they aren't particularly wealthy given how long their families had that wealth. Forbes, for example, currently pegs the Queen of England at $420 million. That's a princely sum, but far short of what past monarchs of England used to own.

What it means is that there are mechanisms for dissipating large concentrations of wealth, mostly through inheritance in the above case. But there are other effects worth mentioning here.

A big one is simply that it's harder to earn money on big money than it is on small money. For example, having a billion dollars doesn't make you any more valuable as an employee (unless you somehow can invest it in a particularly impressive education, cyborg body/brain, or whatnot).

Your labor doesn't become more valuable just because you have a lot of money. If you're worth only $10/hour to an employer, then you're not going to be worth $20/hour to them just because you have a million dollars in the bank.

Having lots of money doesn't automatically increase your ability to earn money. And at extreme levels of wealth where are the people or companies going to get that return on investment from? At a million dollars, it might be rather easy to find investments that return 10%. But if you own $100 billion where are you going to find that 10% return?

Similarly, a single person can keep up with a million dollars easily. Not so for $100 billion. That means either you invest suboptimally as you have time and attention to pay. Or you diffuse the responsibility by hiring people to manage parts of your wealth.

As a final example, we have virtual game markets that exhibit many of these behaviors. For example, Eve Online (an internet spaceships and economic game) uses the "ISK" ("InterStellar Kredit") as its unit of currency. It's fairly easy for experienced players to earn 50-100 million ISK per hour of concentrated effort (commonly called "grind"). Some such players have well in excess of a trillion ISK, which is roughly equivalent to at least 10,000 hours of grind or five years of treating Eve as a full time job.

Obviously, they didn't play Eve that way for five years straight. It's a combination of persistence, market dominance (there are a variety of ways to dominate various parts of Eve's economy such as heading an alliance that controls parts of highly profitable space, skillful trading for enough years, humongous acts of fraud, and owning assets that provide a critical manufacture or market advantage at an extremely good time and place to have the advantage).

But a thing that is readily seen is that it's a lot easier to increase the value of small wealth than it is to increase the value of large wealth. It takes just takes less work and there's less concern about fraud (the player can cut out everyone else even and still make a good profit).

So in summary, I claim that the positive feedback exists only to a point then there are diminishing returns. People who figure out how to make money without directly grinding it (via a job) are going to get richer no matter what. But there's a size where they run into trouble managing that wealth. One either needs to deliberately limit wealth below that point or step up the game.

Please get your facts straight - google walked away after examining the books. There was no way that groupon was worth 6 billion - it's a huge ponzi scheme.

Sure, people put their money into it knowing it was bogus - they figured there would be even greedier, bigger fools around to hold the bag.

in France most breads don't contain sugar AFAIK [...] yet there is also a big proportion of people with weight issues, not as big as in the USA, but still quite big.

Data from Forbes from 198 countries:

United states: 9th fattest country in the world, 74.1% overweight or obese

France: 128th fattest country in the world, 40.1 overweight or obese

In Europe, only Romania (134th, 39.1%) has fewer fat people.

The only first-world countries that ranked lower than France in this table were Singapore and Japan.

Saying that France has a "big" problem with obesity is rather an overstatement, don't you think?

Having missed out on Enron Forbes wants to show it still has the magic.

Heh, don't get me started on hollow sentiment. I'm supposed to tighten my belt in this "global economic crisis" while these ten folk have a personal worth in excess of the GDP of all but twenty-eight countries of the world?

Makes me sick.

You'd be surprised how much hardware and software have back doors built into them, much of it legally.

GOOGLE: Cisco routers back doors

and you'll find hours of reading material alone just for one company.

WIKILEAKS: published information on dozens of companies making spyware for hardware and software and selling it to governments.

When is the last time you checked the firmware on your PCI devices and network card?

Your router?

Dumped and checksummed/debugged your BIOS lately?

Why aren't the anti-malware companies like Symantec and others climbing over each other in an effort to invent the technology and utilize it via the cloud to create GIANT databases of checksums for legit firmware for hardware in the fight against the most serious of root kits? Are they in bed with big bro?

How many so called remote exploits were patched this week in Windows? This month? This year? Since its release? Start from the beginning of the Windows version release and count all of the remote exploits up to present day and compare that to OpenBSD for example.

##

U.S. govâ(TM)t wiretapping laws and your network
â" https://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-us-govt-wiretapping-laws-and.html

âoeActivists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal âoebackdoorsâ that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipmentâ"functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They donâ(TM)t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.â
â" http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

It seems to me that it is not only Saverin who is not mindful of and not caring about the health of the nation and the people around him. Judging from the articles linked below, it seems that the entire of Facebook is not healthy:

Facebook's reputation in the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Fac

You'd be surprised how much hardware and software have back doors built into them, much of it legally.

GOOGLE: Cisco routers back doors

and you'll find hours of reading material alone just for one company.

WIKILEAKS: published information on dozens of companies making spyware for hardware and software and selling it to governments.

When is the last time you checked the firmware on your PCI devices and network card?

Your router?

Dumped and checksummed/debugged your BIOS lately?

Why aren't the anti-malware companies like Symantec and others climbing over each other in an effort to invent the technology and utilize it via the cloud to create GIANT databases of legit firmware for hardware in the fight against the most serious of root kits? Are they in bed with big bro?

How many so called remote exploits were patched this week in Windows? This month? This year? Since its release? Start from the beginning of the Windows version release and count all of the remote exploits up to present day and compare that to OpenBSD for example.

##

U.S. govâ(TM)t wiretapping laws and your network
â" https://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-us-govt-wiretapping-laws-and.html

âoeActivists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal âoebackdoorsâ that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipmentâ"functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They donâ(TM)t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.â
â" http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

You'd be surprised how much hardware and software have back doors built into them, much of it legally.

GOOGLE: Cisco routers back doors

and you'll find hours of reading material alone just for one company.

WIKILEAKS: published information on dozens of companies making spyware for hardware and software and selling it to governments.

When is the last time you checked the firmware on your PCI devices and network card?

Your router?

Dumped and checksummed/debugged your BIOS lately?

Why aren't the anti-malware companies like Symantec and others climbing over each other in an effort to invent the technology and utilize it via the cloud to create GIANT databases of legit firmware for hardware in the fight against the most serious of root kits? Are they in bed with big bro?

How many so called remote exploits were patched this week in Windows? This month? This year? Since its release? Start from the beginning of the Windows version release and count all of the remote exploits up to present day and compare that to OpenBSD for example.

##

U.S. govâ(TM)t wiretapping laws and your network
â" https://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-us-govt-wiretapping-laws-and.html

âoeActivists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal âoebackdoorsâ that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipmentâ"functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They donâ(TM)t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.â
â" http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

You'd be surprised how much hardware and software have back doors built into them, much of it legally.

GOOGLE: Cisco routers back doors

and you'll find hours of reading material alone just for one company.

WIKILEAKS: published information on dozens of companies making spyware for hardware and software and selling it to governments.

When is the last time you checked the firmware on your PCI devices and network card?

Your router?

Dumped and checksummed/debugged your BIOS lately?

Why aren't the anti-malware companies like Symantec and others climbing over each other in an effort to invent the technology and utilize it via the cloud to create GIANT databases of legit firmware for hardware in the fight against the most serious of root kits? Are they in bed with big bro?

How many so called remote exploits were patched this week in Windows? This month? This year? Since its release? Start from the beginning of the Windows version release and count all of the remote exploits up to present day and compare that to OpenBSD for example.

##

U.S. govâ(TM)t wiretapping laws and your network
â" https://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-us-govt-wiretapping-laws-and.html

âoeActivists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal âoebackdoorsâ that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipmentâ"functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They donâ(TM)t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.â
â" http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

It also helps to be well educated: "According to the study, 96% of the immigrant founders held graduate or postgraduate degrees, with 47% holding master's degrees and 27% having Ph.D.s. About three-quarters had their highest degrees in the STEM fields." - Forbes

The story dwells on one person's story

That is true. However, research with a much larger sample size also reports immigrants form a disproportionate number of successful entrepreneurs. The Implications Of Immigrant Entrepreneurship:

A survey of 28,000 companies found that immigrants were key founders in more than a quarter of all the engineering and technology companies set up in the U.S. between 1995 and 2005.

The new research--led by Vivek Wadhwa, an executive-in-residence at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering--is a follow-up of a study published earlier this year by Wadhwa and his team that had counted $52 billion in annual sales by these immigrant-founded companies. Total employment at those companies: roughly 450,000.

...

According to the study, 96% of the immigrant founders held graduate or postgraduate degrees, with 47% holding master's degrees and 27% having Ph.D.s. About three-quarters had their highest degrees in the STEM fields. The largest concentrations outside of that were in business, accounting and finance.

Wadhwa says the Duke project underscores the point that a significant portion of immigrants in the U.S. are highly educated, fueling a tech boom, leading innovation and creating jobs. The report cites U.S. Census data to say that immigrants from India, the U.K., China, Taiwan, Japan and Germany are better educated than native U.S. citizens.

The results of the study are especially significant for Indian immigrants, according to Wadhwa. "Indians are among the best educated of all immigrant groups," he says, adding that Indians founded more engineering and technology companies in the U.S. in the decade up to 2005 than the next four groups combined--those from the U.K., China, Taiwan and Japan. They accounted for 26% of all start-ups, about 117,000 jobs and $14 billion in revenue in 2005.

Not a tax accountant here, but didn't Forbes come up with the same 24.2% you just came up with for Apple's 2011 effective tax rate?

I'll be honest, I can't make heads or tails of what you're saying or what the article says, but is it just a case of a bad summary of the Forbes article, rather than Forbes itself being incorrect, or are their other numbers correct, even though they matched you on that one?

The US is one of the few places where US companies have to pay income earned overseas when it brought back onshore. Which means the same income is taxed twice

No it isn't. When a U.S. company repatriates foreign profits they get a U.S. tax credit equal to the amount of mandatory foreign tax they have paid:

U.S. companies pay federal tax on their worldwide profits. This would result in double taxation of foreign earnings that are also taxed by a foreign country, but foreign taxes generally can be claimed as a credit against U.S. taxes on foreign earnings. For example, a U.S. company with an Italian branch deriving $100 million of income and paying $25 million of Italian taxes would pay federal taxes of $10 million ($35 million less $25 million). Forbes

You didn't read the article. If you had, you'd have seen the link to Forbes' previous article on the alleged tax rate, where it explains how Greenlining Institute's 9.8% figure takes into account the tax dodges you're talking about.

Exactly. I'm still cheesed off by this one crazy article by Steve Salzberg claiming that the University of Florida was shutting down its CS department. It was only asking them to teach more as this correction makes clear. Yet why is the first one still available online?

These guys are the kings of trolling.

Exactly. I'm still cheesed off by this one crazy article by Steve Salzberg claiming that the University of Florida was shutting down its CS department. It was only asking them to teach more as this correction makes clear. Yet why is the first one still available online?

These guys are the kings of trolling.

OK, so if you follow a link in TFA and manage not to balk at an even more inflammatory headline, you get to Mr. Worstall's claim that http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/04/18/apples-9-8-tax-rate-entirely-mind-gargling-nonsense/">Apple paid approximately 24.2%, 24.4% and 31.8% for 2011, 2010 and 2009, respectively -- which doesn't really answer the question of what they paid in 2012 but does explain why a figure of 9.8% sounds unreasonable.

The "planar" process was based on the original patent for the integrated circuit itself. That fundamental innovation was patented by Robert Noyce of Grinnell, Iowa. Hoerni was one of Noyce's "Congregation". My mistake was in conflating the refinement with the fundamental innovation.

You'd be surprised how much hardware and software have back doors built into them, much of it legally.

GOOGLE: Cisco routers back doors

and you'll find hours of reading material alone just for one company.

WIKILEAKS: published information on dozens of companies making spyware for hardware and software and selling it to governments.

When is the last time you checked the firmware on your PCI devices and network card?

Your router?

Dumped and checksummed/debugged your BIOS lately?

Why aren't the anti-malware companies like Symantec and others climbing over each other in an effort to invent the technology and utilize it via the cloud to create GIANT databases of legit firmware for hardware in the fight against the most serious of root kits? Are they in bed with big bro?

How many so called remote exploits were patched this week in Windows? This month? This year? Since its release? Start from the beginning of the Windows version release and count all of the remote exploits up to present day and compare that to OpenBSD for example.

##

U.S. govâ(TM)t wiretapping laws and your network
â" https://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-us-govt-wiretapping-laws-and.html

âoeActivists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal âoebackdoorsâ that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipmentâ"functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They donâ(TM)t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.â
â" http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

BACKDOORS in YOUR hardware & software!

You'd be surprised how much hardware and software have back doors built into them, much of it legally.

GOOGLE: Cisco routers back doors

and you'll find hours of reading material alone just for one company.

WIKILEAKS: published information on dozens of companies making spyware for hardware and software and selling it to governments.

When is the last time you checked the firmware on your PCI devices and network card?

Your router?

Dumped and checksummed/debugged your BIOS lately?

Why aren't the anti-malware companies like Symantec and others climbing over each other in an effort to invent the technology and utilize it via the cloud to create GIANT databases of legit firmware for hardware in the fight against the most serious of root kits? Are they in bed with big bro?

How many so called remote exploits were patched this week in Windows? This month? This year? Since its release? Start from the beginning of the Windows version release and count all of the remote exploits up to present day and compare that to OpenBSD for example.

###

U.S. govâ(TM)t wiretapping laws and your network
â" https://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-us-govt-wiretapping-laws-and.html

âoeActivists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal âoebackdoorsâ that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipmentâ"functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They donâ(TM)t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.â
â" http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

BACKDOORS in YOUR hardware & software!

You'd be surprised how much hardware and software have back doors built into them, much of it legally.

GOOGLE: Cisco routers back doors

and you'll find hours of reading material alone just for one company.

WIKILEAKS: published information on dozens of companies making spyware for hardware and software and selling it to governments.

When is the last time you checked the firmware on your PCI devices and network card?

Your router?

Dumped and checksummed/debugged your BIOS lately?

Why aren't the anti-malware companies like Symantec and others climbing over each other in an effort to invent the technology and utilize it via the cloud to create GIANT databases of legit firmware for hardware in the fight against the most serious of root kits? Are they in bed with big bro?

How many so called remote exploits were patched this week in Windows? This month? This year? Since its release? Start from the beginning of the Windows version release and count all of the remote exploits up to present day and compare that to OpenBSD for example.

###

U.S. govâ(TM)t wiretapping laws and your network
â" https://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-us-govt-wiretapping-laws-and.html

âoeActivists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal âoebackdoorsâ that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipmentâ"functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They donâ(TM)t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.â
â" http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

You'd be surprised how much hardware and software have back doors built into them, much of it legally.

GOOGLE: Cisco routers back doors

and you'll find hours of reading material alone just for one company.

WIKILEAKS: published information on dozens of companies making spyware for hardware and software and selling it to governments.

When is the last time you checked the firmware on your PCI devices and network card?

Your router?

Dumped and checksummed/debugged your BIOS lately?

Why aren't the anti-malware companies like Symantec and others climbing over each other in an effort to invent the technology and utilize it via the cloud to create GIANT databases of legit firmware for hardware in the fight against the most serious of root kits? Are they in bed with big bro?

How many so called remote exploits were patched this week in Windows? This month? This year? Since its release? Start from the beginning of the Windows version release and count all of the remote exploits up to present day and compare that to OpenBSD for example.

##

U.S. govâ(TM)t wiretapping laws and your network
â" https://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-us-govt-wiretapping-laws-and.html

âoeActivists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal âoebackdoorsâ that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipmentâ"functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They donâ(TM)t have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.â
â" http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

How exactly does that work?

I'd tell you, but it's classified.

Rest assured, however, it all works great. Did you see any more planes flying into buildings in US since 9/11? No? See, it works!

Can we have another budget increase now? 'cause, you know, it's a mighty fine country you have there, would be a shame if anything happened to it...

Facebook's reputation with the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Facebook photo and a generic description offered to police by the victim's boyfriend."

Defending herself required a "... court appearance and several thousand dollars in legal bills."


Open source will prevail. E

"Don't check your customers for IDs. Just sell them and we'll track the criminals across the Mexican border." - This policy resulted in many, many deaths that could have been prevented by not encouraging stores to break gun laws and sell to criminals.

Now it sounds like DHS is trying the same stupid strategy. Read more here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2011/09/28/fast-and-furious-just-might-be-president-obamas-watergate/

Hell, Google is the holder of largest fine ever sanctioned to any US company - $500 million for knowingly accepting and showing dangerous rogue pharma ads on their sites and search engine.

Because in the little world you have created for yourself to live in, $500 million is bigger than 2.3 billion, right?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/02/pfizer-drugs-us-criminal-fine

Where did they break the law with the competitiveness thing with keywords? hint: they didn't.
Where did they break the law with the Oracle case? Hint: it's not even over, and already indications show that they didn't. Also total liabilities in the $0 range are significant.
Where did they break the law with the youtube case? Hint: they didn't.

All of these cases are extremely evil by nature. In several of these cases they have without shame weaseled their way out of trouble by by settling for fines (read: bribes). Hell, Google is the holder of largest fine ever sanctioned to any US company - $500 million for knowingly accepting and showing dangerous rogue pharma ads on their sites and search engine.

Might be a "public company" related problem, most public companies emulate, or over time, have to do it. Basically a typical CEO case (think Allison, Hurd, Ballmer..), they are playing golf, sailing, jetsetting, giving speeches, buying some new boat, super car, house etc. They do not have time or motivation for innovation, but they have to deliver some message to the eagle eyed shareholders that constantly demand ROI and bitching about the stock price all the time. So if the constrained CEO has to execute something, he should rather not to deliver it himself, no no, that would be suicidal, imagine his poorly thought out plan fails, now, how would that look? So the smart CEO rather buys success or at least he emulates it, there are lots of advantages... and it always sounds like a good move, proven, familiar.. and will do justice to those hawkish bankers, analysts and other Wall Street related drones demanding positive quarterly message with some predictable results.