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Wow! Really? Apple's Gross Profit Margin is 41% whereas Microsoft's is 84.8%. Looks like MS has the higher profit margin, at more than twice Apple's. And I didn't know Amazon and Bestbuy were boutique retailers. Or are you just showing your anti-Apple bias?

Falcon

Wow! Really? Apple's Gross Profit Margin is 41% whereas Microsoft's is 84.8%. Looks like MS has the higher profit margin, at more than twice Apple's. And I didn't know Amazon and Bestbuy were boutique retailers. Or are you just showing your anti-Apple bias?

Falcon

Precisely, it's a shame some people aren't smart enough to realise this.

The War Diary leaks had a lot of awful shit in them that deserved much more media attention than it got, but by releasing it as one massive batch all we got was a few days about a few select scandals in them then nothing.

I'm not convinced that those bitching about Assange's ego really have much to base that on and there's a large degree of double standards- people who bitch about government/corporate abuse but do nothing about it then bitch at someone who does. There's plenty of those here, but even in real life we've got Sarah Palin as perhaps the ultimate example - "CONSTITUTION, FREE SPEECH, SMALL GOVERNMENT!!!! Oh wait, Julian Assange is exercising free speech why aren't you killing him for us government?". This interview explains some of the questions his detractors often bring up, so it's a shame they have to come up with their own made up answers (i.e. he's doing it for his ego, he's doing it because he hates America etc.)-

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/

But other frequent whining about American focus is a bit short sighted, and I have to wonder if people have actually been following the news or reading the cables if they believe it's an anti-American thing too- Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan have all been painted in a negative light, Iran and North Korea have been painted as much weaker than many believed they actually were. How is this anti-American? Some of America's arch enemies have suffered a blow as much as America has with the release of these cables. Sure the leaks are America, but that doesn't mean it's exclusively an attack on the US- on the contrary, it's more a use of US intelligence to show a realistic picture of the world as a whole. I guess some people are just much more zealous about their country being exposed for wrongdoing than others, particularly when they've pretended to themselves their country is perfect. Those who whinge about government and corporate abuse but also whinge about Wikileaks/Assange, should just go sit in a cave, because not hearing anything about the outside world is the only way they will be happy.

What I don't understand though in all honesty is why the partner media sites like The New York Times, The Guardian etc. don't just host a mirror for them. I mean, what's the government of the UK and US etc. going to do, shut down the websites of a major newspaper? Good luck in dealing with the uproar that would result from that. You could argue they might lose some readership, but I'm sure the fact they've partnered with Wikileaks and are running the stories in the first place defines there readership who would and wouldn't support them already.

Could anyone confirm if they are near their processing limit, thus releasing it piece meal?

They claim to be:
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/

"As we've gotten more successful, there's a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly."

Now, I have some sympathy for the pragmatic argument that getting good tools into enough hands is the best way to raise the odds of cracking hard problems. Some people will point out (for example) that a modern 3d game like Crysis might have been emulated (at a fraction of real-time speed) 20 years ago, but nobody figured out how, or bothered to do so, (and no, Castle Wolfenstein doesn't count) because hardware limitations made it too cumbersome and only a few parties had the resources to even try.

Even so, claiming it "can't be done" is going too far. People are building conventional computers that simulate neurons on the order of a cat brain, but programming them is the problem.

It all depends on your definition of "real ai". AI is a broad term that applies to anything from a simple game of "Eliza" to giant cerebral cortext simulations.
I see real progress in the 35 years I've studied the field, though apparently not a fast enough pace for our society of instant gratification. Human-level intelligence (maybe not such a high bar when you think about it) is fast approaching.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/18/ibm-brain-science-technology-breakthroughs-supercomputer.html
In my view, it's advancing almost faster than society can handle it. Can you imagine what would happen in our society if someone built a truly intelligent machine that exceeded human capacity? It could scour the internet for information, acquiring knowledge what would take generations of humans to learn in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Would we need doctors and lawyers, or any sort of educated person anymore if we could just let our cyber-guru agent tell us what we should do? It's a pretty scary proposition if you think about it, especially when you see some of the decisions the uninformed masses have been making lately...

THEY CAN'T EVEN MIMICK A GNAT'S BRAIN.

Methinks you are a little, shall we say, "out of the loop"?

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/18/ibm-brain-science-technology-breakthroughs-supercomputer.html
We've long passed a gnat's brain and will probably reach primate brain equivalence within a couple of years.

From what I've seen, the political will to bail out anyone has been tapped out for at least the next 5-10 years.

Who needs political will when the Fed can just issue you lines of credit behind closed doors?

The news reached me just after I finished reading an enlightening (for me) essay on the motivation behind WikiLeaks. In short, it explains, quoting from Assange's previous writings (pdf), that his goal is no less than creating a worldwide environment in which the costs of securing information exchange in a conspiracy, governmental, corporational or any other, are driven so high as to render it uncompetitive as an information processing entity. The increased transparency will have the effect of raising the government accountability and lowering the competitiveness of unethical companies (by raising the reputational costs, see also this Forbes interview). And, as the author of the essay writes: if the diplomats quoted by Le Monde are right that “we will never again be able to practice diplomacy like before,” he's already succeeding.

Wikileaks doesn't out anything anymore, unless its US intelligence.

Wrong. Big bank is next. It's a US bank, though, so you still get to call them un-American if you find it productive.

"Wikileaks isn't done for sure. There will be more leaks in the future."

Hopefully the stuff we have seen so far is just the prelude. According to this interview with Assange, they are already getting more new leaks than they can sort through.

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange

The awesome part of this interview is that he's talking about some leaks targeted for release next year that could "take down a bank or two" and he's apparently referring to some LARGE U.S. banks. I've been hoping for this ever since the release of the Afghan war documents. With any luck it will take down the entire global banking cartel.

I was going to mod you down, but I am giving you the benefit that you are misinformed, rather than a troll.
So here, this should make you happy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334432/WikiLeaks-boss-Julian-Assange-goes-US-bank-explosive-new-dossier.html

Agree or disagree with his process, but Assange makes some very reasonable points in the full interview. Judge for yourself here:
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/

Sure, if the US govt's actions were not important more private information would have come out, but right now the US, is by far the most dominant world power, and it is fairly assertive in using its power, so documents revealing its workings carry a corresponding importance. So it seems that Assange has his priorities right.
Also, one thing that I have noticed is that Wikileaks does seem to be listening to criticism, and every release seems to incorporate lessons learned from the previous ones. Wikileaks is certainly worth supporting.

According to an interview with Assange in Forbes JA: We have one related to a bank coming up, that’s a megaleak. It’s not as big a scale as the Iraq material, but it’s either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents depending on how you define it. Forbes: Is it a U.S. bank? JA: Yes, it’s a U.S. bank. Forbes: One that still exists? JA: Yes, a big U.S. bank. Forbes: The biggest U.S. bank? JA: No comment. Forbes: When will it happen? JA: Early next year. I won’t say more.

Actually, it was "invented" by a German in 1918 and proposed for the US in 1921.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/04/value-added-tax-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=GvWYhJI1UVoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (page 4)

While there is truth to the assertion that some private schools are much better than others, this doesn't take into account how bad many government schools are.

Nor does it take into account how good many government schools are; nor does it take into account that private schools get to select their students, while public schools systems don't.

We do not have a public school system in the U.S. -- we have thousands. Each county generally runs its own system, with a bit of oversight and funding at the state level. I live in a narrow strip of Baltimore County between Baltimore City (an independent city, Baltimore is essentially a county unto itself) and Howard County.

Where I live, the schools are decent-to-good; half of Baltimore County public high schools were ranked in the top six percent of high schools by Newsweek, and 85% of graduates go on immediately to higher education. But in a few minutes I can be in Baltimore City -- as seen on The Wire -- which a few years ago had one of the lowest on-time graduation rates in the country, less that 40%, and 11 schools were failing so badly that the State of Maryland tried to take them over directly; there has been marked improvement the past few years, but it's still an underperforming system. Or in a few minutes I can be in Howard County, one of the richest counties in the U.S., where the graduation rate is over 93%, and average SAT scores are over 1100 on the old 1600 point scale.

As one last aside, note that since 1970 real spending per pupil at government schools in the U.S. has more than doubled, with - so far - nothing to show for it.

Nonsense. Since 1970, public schools have had to provide increasing special education, more ESOL education, more free and reduced price meals. They've also introduced more gifted education and AP classes, which didn't exist (or at least, weren't widespread) in 1970. Schools have also become a delivery point for a wide array of social services, which accounts for a very large chunk of spending. Finally, public schools also provide transportation for students -- you may have noticed some increase in gasoline prices since 1970.

In spite of these extra costs, public school expenditures are lower than secular private schools; they spend a bit more than Catholic schools, but get slightly better outcomes. (Note that "expenditure" and "tuition" are very different things, thanks to grants; for example, one school in McLean, Virginia, had a tuition of $25,890 and spending of $35,665.) There are cheaper private schools, but they're usually poor performers. You get what you pay for, and overall, public school price/performance is in line with private schools. The problem is systems like Baltimore; and it's not just the schools that are the problem there, there are enormous issues of economic and social justice at work.

if you own the factory, you actually own the means of production, and therefore you actually are in power

This must be the reason that why FoxConn has a gross margin of 2.8% (previously 6.6% before the suicide workers scandal) http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-31/hon-hai-foxconn-international-tumble-after-earnings.html, while Apple has a margin of 41% http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=AAPL, because Foxconn has control of manufacturing and therefore has all the power.

Having this power, FoxConn can "lock" Apple out of its factories and Apple will do absolutely nothing instead of shifting production to any number of interchangable factories not just in China but anywhere in the world. And of course, since FoxConn has all the power, if they end their partnership with Apple they will be able to sell fake Apple products because they will magically have the Apple brand and distribution channels in the West (which is still where a great deal of the money is). And using their enormous leverage of selling products at a 2% margin FoxConn will be able to attract the engineering and design talent that will come up with the next product that will render current Apple products completely obsolete.

Get over yourself. Manufacturers in China have no power unless they are actually able to sell their products for a reasonable profit, and they have even less power because they are competing in a commodity market where one manufacturer is no better than the other and only have direct access to the Chinese marketplace (which has nowhere near the amount of money as the West). Companies in the developed world, on the other hand, have direct access to rich consumers and can draw on talent not just from the advanced nations but anywhere in the world. And this will remain so, as long as the companies in the West stay ahead do not become complacent (like the American auto industry in the 80's). If the Chinese do catch up, then all the better, competition is always good. Witness how the rise of Japan, Taiwan and Korea has made electronics much, much better during the 80's and 90's.

http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2010/10/28/khan-academy-a-name-you-need-to-know-in-2011/ A smart guy doing not for profit education videos on practically everything. Now on the verge of revolutionising education, noted this year by Bill Gates, given funding from Google.

People are unpredictable and do unpredictable things, both individually and in groups. If you can do better a Nobel prize awaits you.

In fact, a Nobel Prize in Economics may await you even if you can't do better, and your model is hopelessly unrealistic, not used, not needed, and not original.

Recently, french president Nicolas Sarkozy has been announcing new trade deals with China. The trade deals cover things such as nuclear energy, and Airbus airplane sales. If I am not mistaken, some of the deals involve China manufacturing parts of the airplanes in China. It is not hard to imagine Chinese workers using workers surreptitiously learning and then transferring important Airbus technology to the Chinese airplane manufacturing industry. I am beginning to become anxious about China and its motives.

China's recent moves to restrict export of rare earth elements demonstrates its desire and ability to throw its weight around to achieve its ends. I don't think this bodes well for future relations with the West. If China is willing to cut off exports of an important commodity to Japan over a territorial dispute, what else is it capable of doing? Has it really been an intelligent policy decision to cede North America's manufacturing base to China? We have replaced manufacturing jobs with "service industry" jobs. The wealth gained by service industry jobs in areas such as engineering and design are largely dependent on other countries respecting "intellectual property" provisions. If China holds the power in manufacturing, what is to stop them from simply lifting our expertise and ideas and profiting from them without compensating us?

Above all, I believe China's rapid growth, largely at our expense, shows the intellectual vacuousness modern free trade theory. The standard line of those who expound the virtues of modern neoliberal economics is that nations that trade with each other do not go to war. Though there is some truth to this, I believe those who believe that trade prevents war ignore many important lessons from history. They ignore human nature. They miss the fact that China is not a democracy, that it does not play by the same rules we play by. They ignore the fact that China is displaying signs of increasing nationalism. They ignore the fact that military dictatorships are often unpredictable, that powerful rulers often fall victim the darker side of human nature and that power corrupts.

Oh I think he is very clever. He has as much wealth as Bill Gates and others. That's not by accident.

Actually, he has about half as much as Bill Gates, but your point still stands. He knows what he's doing.

http://www.forbes.com/wealth/forbes-400/list

Alpha, Beta and Ice Cream

The original article suggests otherwise: http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-body-scan-technology-deployed-in-street-roving-vans/

Though only time will tell.

And everyone can see Carlos Slim and Bill Gate's "high scores" too: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank.html

They are all just digits in a bunch of computers somewhere. If enough people decide it's real, it's real enough :). If for some reason everyone decides the US dollar is worth nothing, Bill Gates becomes worth a lot less.

Fact is most of what we do is a waste of time. Most of it does not really endure much longer than that Pacman high-score, nor means much more.

A hundred thousand years from now, someone might rate the entire human race's "achievements" by 2010 as "so fucking what".

And 100000 years isn't very long. The "classic" dinosaurs were around for about 160 _million_ years.

How many geothermal plants would the US need to produce 100 exojoules?

I can ask the same about LFTR plants. It takes the same amount whether they're nuclear plants or wind farms if they are of the same size. If it takes 1000 wind farms then it takes 1000 LFTR plants. Exo? Do you mean exa, (peta X 1000)? I see Google returns both.

If we extracted geothermal energy at that rate how long would it take to deplete the extraction sites and how many new wells would we need to drill every year?

Well let's see... The Geysers Geothermal Resource Area in Napa and Sonoma Counties has been producing geothermal energy since the 1960s, between 40 and 50 years. The Department of Energy, DOE, says the oldest nuclear power plants in the US still operating was licensed in 1969. They are licensed for 40 years, and license renewals are for another 20 years. Now how long do geothermal energy plants last? The geothermal plant at Larderello, Italy has been operating since 1904. Or 1913 according to wiki. The Wairakei Power Station in New Zealand has been operating since 1958. That rounds up the top 3 oldest geothermal power plants. Each one is older than the oldest nuclear power plant still in operation.

Also let's look at Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone, it was named in 1870, so it must of been erupting regularly by then.

If there are any more objecting questions I don't know what to think, except maybe you object to geothermal. Maybe because you own shares in nuclear power but not geothermal. Me, I don't own any shares but if I were to buy energy shares I'd buy geothermal, solar, or wind but not coal, natural gas, or nuclear power. At that, I'd try to buy shares in Chinese manufacturers, maybe Brazilian, Indian, and or Russian. BRIC.

Falcon

According to Forbes he's worth 14.5 billion--number 37 on their list of the world's billionaires and the 15th richest person in the United States. (Think about that for a second: there are only FOURTEEEN PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES RIGHT NOW WITH MORE MONEY THAN MICHAEL DELL.)

Let's do some math, shall we? He has $14,500,000,000 and he has to pay a $4,000,000 fine. Let's knock six zeroes off each of those. He has to pay $4 for for every $14,500 he has. That's 4/14500 or 1/3625 of his net wealth. Let's just pretend I'm worth a million dollars (because I don't know how to calculate net worth when your house is upside down and you are carrying lots of other debt.) That would be the equivalent of me paying a $275 fine.

THE GOVERNMENT JUST GAVE MICHAEL DELL THE EQUIVALENT OF A SPEEDING TICKET. Now, that might sound low, but take heart, we're not talking about just any speeding ticket here--we're talking about a bad one, like those "fines doubled when workers present" kinds. Or maybe a school zone. ($310, I think.) Running a red light in my neigborhood costs $202.50, according to the signs they just put up next to the cameras. And that's if I was a millionaire. Compared to my actual net worth, this is probably in the "Taco Bell Combo Meal" zone.

According to Forbes he's worth 14.5 billion--number 37 on their list of the world's billionaires and the 15th richest person in the United States. (Think about that for a second: there are only FOURTEEEN PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES RIGHT NOW WITH MORE MONEY THAN MICHAEL DELL.)

Let's do some math, shall we? He has $14,500,000,000 and he has to pay a $4,000,000 fine. Let's knock six zeroes off each of those. He has to pay $4 for for every $14,500 he has. That's 4/14500 or 1/3625 of his net wealth. Let's just pretend I'm worth a million dollars (because I don't know how to calculate net worth when your house is upside down and you are carrying lots of other debt.) That would be the equivalent of me paying a $275 fine.

THE GOVERNMENT JUST GAVE MICHAEL DELL THE EQUIVALENT OF A SPEEDING TICKET. Now, that might sound low, but take heart, we're not talking about just any speeding ticket here--we're talking about a bad one, like those "fines doubled when workers present" kinds. Or maybe a school zone. ($310, I think.) Running a red light in my neigborhood costs $202.50, according to the signs they just put up next to the cameras. And that's if I was a millionaire. Compared to my actual net worth, this is probably in the "Taco Bell Combo Meal" zone.

You're joking, right?

Gene sequencing speed/cost is moving faster than Moore's law

This system does 400-600 million base pairs per 10 hour run.

149,000,000,000bp/400,000,000bp/run ~ 373 runs

3,730 hours ~ 155 days

I don't how long setup times between runs might be or what other factors are involved, though. On the other hand, a big lab would have more than one sequencer.

See the point 3, SLAM on: http://blogs.forbes.com/briancaulfield/2010/10/09/four-reasons-google-cars-drive-better-than-you-do/

It wasn't the phone company record that the call took place, it was her company record about what was discussed during the calls.

Her phone records that she presented investigators showed she had a pre-existing stop-loss order to sell the stock if it traded below $60, but others testified that was a lie fabricated after the illegal info was given to her. So, there's your obstruction. Yep, they couldn't prove the crime but could prove the cover-up.

Fire up the Wayback Machine, we're headed to March 4, 2004. Fox News, Forbes, USA Today

The Forbes article that first (AFAIK) broke the story at a national level. Not a happy-day sort of read.

President Obama's Father's Socialism

An article on Cloward-Piven Strategy

Another Cloward-Piven article

Those ought to explain why he could easily send money from the government to anywhere without caring about the plight of the people he's sending money to: He wants to weaken America. The fastest way to do that is to weaken our economy further by spending massive amounts of what we don't have to spend and by getting massive amounts of people to believe they are Entitled to "free money".

Remember - as intelligent and nice as President Obama is, he drew his dreams and values from his father. While that's commendable, his father regarded America as a country whose wealth was drawn from the rest of the world' poor. President Obama's father also felt it was appropriate to drain America's wealth so it could be redistributed entirely to the poor - not just a "little equalization".

And those dreams and thoughts are what drive our President.

Full Disclosure - I didn't vote for him, and I'm an Independent.

How do they get wireless routers to operate in an environment filled with so much fear? I'd be dropping packets left and right. "Is that guy going to kill me?! checksum error." "That guy has a knife! No route to destination." Packet, packet, packet, pac--ARGH, THEY GOT ME!

Heh, yeah. Here in Vanuatu at least one tower was dragged down by locals because of a land dispute.

By and large, though, people tend to protect the things they value. This Forbes profile of Denis O'Brien reports that, during a period of rioting and looting in Haiti, people actually guarded the towers, because they saw Digicel as being on their side.

Original submitter here.

The point I find most interesting in all this is that Digicel succeeds by defying conventional wisdom about supply and demand. They simply create supply and trust local demand to rise. Here's the second paragraph of the original submission:

"If you just focus on risk, you can't do a thing," said Digicel's billionaire president Denis O'Brien in a 2008 Forbes profile. But O'Brien's small-market revolution should teach us another lesson, too: Traditional economic analysis doesn't work when it comes to communications. Telecommunications is a supply-driven economy. If you build it — no matter where you build it — they will come.

Ballmer earned a total compensation of $1,276,627 / 2000 hrs/yr = $638.31/hr!
Oracle chief Larry Ellison leads this group with $1 billion in total compensation 1,000,000,000 / 2000 hrs/yr / = $500,000.00 / hr, try telling him to fly commercial and arrive at the airport 2 hours early so to not offend Congress by "wasting" money on a private jet!

Exploits indeed. NoScript protects me from them...which is kind of the entire point. It not the intended use of JS, is the intended misuse that gets people (like you, I assume) to unknowingly open the door. On some of your particular points:

JavaScript local files access 'interfaces'

Of course there's not. You have to make it happen. It takes about 2 minutes.

HTML

Just because you "...wouldn't be surprised if there has been some exploit.." doesn't mean it's ever happened, or even if it's possible. Find some facts and then make a point.

Images

Really? A 5 y/o issue is the best you can do? The JS exploits I listed earlier were only a month out. What's more, any non-administrator (or non-Windows computer) was not harmed by WMF files (unlike like JS that can be a universal killer).

And I think any fantasy that it was harmless to allow JS (or any script) to auto-run was dispelled yesterday. No clicks required, no particular OS required, no admin rights required. Of course, NoScript users were immune from this.

I still would want to see an actual hard example before I would believe that someone would actually be getting less by earning more.

Losing medicaid eligibility comes to mind. Of course, that is an issue of clashing absurdities and the screwed up way health care has been and will continue to be funded. Few realize that the US free market in medicine was abolished in the early 1900s.

"You'd think Intel would just accept they suck at GPUs and buy Nvidia already."

Should Intel buy nVidia? Jen-Hsun Huang, who averages about $23.02 million per year, is not the sort of person who would easily integrate into Intel, and he is important to the leadership of nVidia. Intel's CEO, Paul Otellini, makes about $14 million.

Soon Intel's integrated graphics will have mid-range speed, leaving only the high range for nVidia. The high range of video adapters is mostly bought by teenagers who want to practice being violent with video games, instead of practicing being involved with other people. That means nVidia will be dependent on buyers who are being self-defeating; eventually there may be a backlash against that.

The high range of video performance will always be needed for architectural drawing and machine design, for example, but the total demand will drop, as the nVidia stock price seems to indicate. So, maybe nVidia is not a good purchase for any company.

Should Intel CEO Paul Otellini be replaced? Another reason Intel should not buy nVidia is that Intel is generally a failure at anything besides making new CPUs and support chips. For the success of Intel and AMD in making CPUs, the world can be extremely thankful; that's enough success for any company.

But Intel in other areas seems amazingly badly managed. Intel marketing seems completely out of control. Is the product confusion at Intel a deliberate, sneaky way to sell slow processors to technically challenged customers, or just stupid?

Quote from the article linked just above: "Sandy Bridge PC processors will keep the CORE-i3, i5, and i7 designations and will be rebranded the "new CORE-i3..." That approach is likely to create confusion among customers about exactly what they're buying, given that the average user likely wouldn't be able to pick a Nehalem i7 from a Westmere i7 or Sandy Bridge i7."

Either Intel's purchase of the inferior security software maker McAfee for a "lofty 60% premium" is a HUGE mistake, or the reasons why it is not a mistake should be explained by Intel marketing. No explanation was given, apparently. McAfee has a 21.9% market share selling software often pre-loaded on a computer to technically challenged buyers.

Quote from the article: " 'We believe security will be most effective when enabled in hardware,' Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said in a conference call." That seems a particularly wacky statement. "Security software" is needed only because, in my opinion, Microsoft deliberately allows its software to be insecure. Insecure software makes Microsoft more money because people with infected computers often buy another computer. For example, see the New York Times article, Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster. The Apple Mac OS, Linux, and BSD operating systems do not require "security software" because they are made to be secure.

Intel CEO Otellini does not seem to have the social sophistication necessary to running a big company. When he made an announcement in 2006 about the Intel Eduwise laptop, he seemed to be intending to have Intel compete with MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) charity program. However, Intel's intention seems to be just to make a market fo

Guys, Paypal has history in a large class action over frozen assets.

Forbes in 2002:

http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/08/0308paypal.html

It's funny, in that article circa 2002, Forbes thought Citibank's C2it would crush Paypal. Didn't happen.

Now, the British who know something about World Banking, might take it with MoneyBookers.
https://www.moneybookers.com/app/?rid=3809503
Either way, Meg Whitman knew the Ebay ship had sailed, she got out why the getting was good.

for all the issues i care about he's as bad or worse than Bush. Guantanamo. Civil liberties. Rule of law. Economic policy. Government spending. He even did the opposite of what he claimed on both healthcare and financial regulation. For the former, he blamed the insurance companies, then signed legislation that gives them a giant gift of perpetually increased funding from all of us. How do you fix something you claim is the problem by incentivizing it? For the latter, Goldman Sachs, one of the key culprits in the mess, is unworried about any impact from the financial regulation bill that's supposed to prevent the next crisis. It has no teeth. It certainly doesn't bring back Glass Stegal, which would have actually helped.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/outfront-goldman-sachs-volcker-obama-catch-me-if-can.html
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=34842
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/188551
yes the same taibbi who wrote
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64796

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom/

Most likely one or more of these people. Carlos Slim Helu & family are fifty times richer than her, although I wouldn't know which one (or ones) on the list it was.

When someone like Bill Gates goes to prison you'll have convinced me.

Helmsley was stupid, bragging publically about how "only little people pay taxes". That pissed almost everybody off.

"if those android game devs were deveoping on apple's platform they'd be SOL."

Um, Gameloft does make iPHone games, a lot of iPhone games, making $25 million from iPhone apps in 2009.

"I've certainly heard enough horror stories about the review process to turn me off from ever trying to sell anything on the iphone."

Sure there's a review process, but judging from how many apps make it obviously it's not bad, and with 200,000+ apps I'd be shocked if there wasn't somebody complaining about the process.

I'm sure you won't be missed, plenty of developers are becoming millionaires off iPhone apps, you don't have to be one of them. How many Android millionaires are there? After 2 years not one Android developer has made a million dollars from apps. In fact Android developers celebrate making "up to" 100k a year

Besides Android has it's own major problems, like a 24 hour return on apps: according to one Android developer, you can return any Android app for a full refund within 24 hours. Talk about fail, no wonder Android developers are broke when users can instantly download apps, use them, and then return it for a full refund and repeat the process anytime they want.

Sorry but Android is a joke, Google does not make money from Android while the iPhone is Apple's cash cow. If the iPhone vanished tomorrow Apple would be in serious pain, but if Android vanished tomorrow Google wouldn't even notice, so Apple will fight tooth-and-nail to make sure the iPhone maintains it's Jesusphone status while Google will continue to ignore Android.

Most of the costs are "per year" mind you.

Price of childhood trauma from witnessing your parents gunned down in front of you and "other eventualities" was not included for obvious reasons.

mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down

Dell's bread and butter was that each computer was special built per customer specifications. That got dropped a little after Micheal retired and that is when the company started going down. They started to copy Compaq, which was the worst thing they could do.

When I worked at Dell in shipping the head of logistics forwarded on the following editorial.

http://www.forbes.com/1999/04/21/feat2.html

While Consumer Watchdog hyperventilates about The Great Satan Google, they conveniently neglect to mention that their website tracks user behavior with...Google Analytics.

Several years ago, the federal prison system started offering customer-service calling centers.

and also points to "new recycling centers, printing facilities and industrial laundry rooms." The Nation seems to think BP is paying prisoners to clean up oil damage, and theres always number-plate production. You should note that

in the 1930s, Congress began allowing the bureau of prisons to put prisoners to work making products — part of an effort to rehabilitate them. But there was a catch. Because its labor costs are so cheap — prisoners make less than a dollar an hour — Federal Prison Industries was not allowed to sell products to anyone but government agencies and non-profits.

If you're interested in the topic both Forbes and USAToday ran some pretty good stories on the rise of prison call centers a couple of months back.

According to this it looks like I overstated the amount to retailers by a factor of 2; the margin taken by retailers is about 20%. So while I overestimated, it's certainly not by an order of magnitude (which would given GameStop and/or Amazon only about 3-5% margin. No way are they running that slim).

I found some analysis that GameStop's margin on used stuff is 41% (came up while I was looking for that forbes link, can't find it now). That seems plausible with a markup of 1-2x.

Without digging into the 10k's of various companies, that's the best I can come up with.

TL;DR: If you spend $50 at Gamestop, they make $10 if it is on a new game and $20 if it is on used games.

Which, going up a level of posts, makes the numbers different, but not an order of magnitude different. In any event, it supports my suggestion even more strongly in that more copies would have to be sold. If I can remember my train of logic from a week ago.

Apparently this guy has never heard of Exxon!

Once any business gets large enough, they do creative accounting or move all their "official" offices offshore (do you kow how many businesses are incorporated in Bermuda as a tax haven?) to avoid taxes.

http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/04/07/exxon-says-it-does-pay-u-s-income-taxes/

If the USA could actually collect what it is owed by big business, we wouldn't *have* a national debt!

e.g. http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/05/lawsuits-litigation-sba-ent-cx_ll_1005lawsuit.html

Really, a whole 15 seconds (and about as many words) for the $75 collector's edition?

I know we grew-up with it, but there's never going to be anything new until we STOP paying for the same old stuff.

-Matt

There's a reason why George Lucas is a billionaire.

He's very strong with the Schwartz!

Only if the company formally declares bankruptcy can they get out of their "lifetime warranty". See the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act for general information about warranties. "Lifetime Warranty" has specific legal meaning in the US.

Second, where is "BFG Technologies, Inc."? That information isn't on the web site. (This is why anonymous web sites are bad, and why our SiteTruth system gives them a low rating.) But it can be found. Dun and Bradstreet gives us the information that they are in Illinois, and Illinois corporate records gives us this:

BFG TECHNOLOGIES, INC. File Number 62377402
Status ACTIVE
Entity Type CORPORATION
Type of Corp DOMESTIC BCA
Incorporation Date (Domestic) 08/27/2002 State ILLINOIS

• Agent Name: PHILLIP A HEWES, 550 WEST VAN BUREN ST STE 1450, CHICAGO IL 60607 (That's Fitzgerald & Hewes LLP, their lawyers.)
• President Name & Address: JOHN VOSICKY, 2530 S CHESAPEAKE, WESTCHESTER IL 60154
• Secretary Name & Address: PHILIP HEWES, 441 S ASHLAND AVENUE, LAGRANGE 60525

Forbes has background info on John J. Vosicky. He was the chief financial officer before he was CEO. He was also previously CFO of Comdisco, which went into bankruptcy in 2001.