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Bill Gates does not make $40 billion per year. He "only" has a net worth of around $50 billion. Around $29 billion of that will go to his charitable foundation, and the rest to other charities upon his death. Your $40 billion income / $2 million donation per year figures are way off scale.

I also challenge your view that you are some kind of superhero because you donate a bigger percentage of your income than Gates does (and YOU don't donate a bigger percentage FYI). It's not the thought that counts, it's the results. Bill Gates has donated more money than you will ever see in your lifetime. Your donation, while commendable, is nothing more than a pittance. The fact that you donate some large portion of your middle class income does not magically make more ill people well. It may make you feel better about yourself however.

Bill isn't even trying. For a mere $3.4 million dollars he could be a super hero http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/06/20/cx_de_ba tmanslide.html?thisSpeed=60000/ he just doesn't care enough to be one. Whereas we know Steve Jobs is a super hero, what with his amazing abilites to turn back time.

1. Apple doens't use the TPM hardware. Unlike Mac OS X, Linux actually does include drivers for this hardware, as far as I know (Quote Linus: "A lot of commercial companies want to do some really bad things with DRM. So people dislike DRM and want to make it harder to do. But the silly thing is that DRM really is just technology, and like most everything else, the badness comes not from the technology, but from what you use it for. There are actually valid uses of the exact-same technology, even if it ends up being called something different ("privacy rights," "security," what-not)."
2. Apple uses DRM in the iTunes store, but that DRM is relatively lenient, compared to what Microsoft allows for.

This simply doesn't compare to what Microsoft is doing.

So what are you going to do? Write your own OS?

Is it me or the chick who wrote the article looks real hot ? Refer http://www.forbes.com/fdc/bios/new/rachelrosmarin. html

I underwent robot-assisted surgery in 2003. A thoracic surgeon used Intuitive Surgical's daVinci robot to remove my thymus. The surgery was very successful. It was a minimally invasive procedure and the recovery was easy (compared to traditional open surgery).

http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/

Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology
http://cisstweb.cs.jhu.edu/

Forbes article: Robo-docs
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0904/100.ht ml

the opposite of that would be this: http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/12/ 19/ap3269685.html

If there's one thing people are good at, it's anthropomophizing. Look at how many people extend their pets' emotions, wants, and desires to the entire human range (But the doggie wants to be a mommy! She'll be sad if she can't be a mommy!). For that matter, look at those who start to talk to their cars, computers, and other electronics. This other article gives more details about how the elderly have interacted with the robotic seal, and mentions some studies conducted with Aibo. It seems that, provided that something gives the appearance of having thoughts and emotions, people will begin to treat it as though it does. I think that's how Bush remained popular for as long as he did.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/CRTT.html

I wish they would start with the chocolate. Considering the size of the average american waist, rationing chocolate would be an improvement, probably save billions in health-care costs.

Ah but dark chocolate is good for the heart. It also contains antioxidants which may help fight cancer. you've gotta love chocolate.

You mean these guys? I'm not sure we should take this report at face value.

Forbes occasionally whines about Craigslist. The real effect of Craigslist is not on the Internet. It's killing newspaper classified advertising, which used to be highly profitable.

What's wrong with the stem cell lines we already have?

A number of things. First of all, many of them are contaminated. Some sources seem to claim that it's mouse cells that have gotten into the lines, others just describe it as "non human." (cite, cite) All or at least many of the approved lines in the U.S. are contaminated.

Why the push to create endless stem cell lines when a stem cell will reproduce to more and more stem cells forever?

Cells in lines mutate with increased generations. It's not exactly like duplicating a digital file; it's a little more 'analog' than that. This is pretty basic biology; as you keep replicating an organism over and over, minor (random, environmentally-induced, etc.) variations are going to happen, and build up over time. In order to maintain high quality, new lines need to be periodically introduced. Anything that begins with a hard limit on the number of lines that can be used is inherently flawed -- what if there are problems in those lines? You're possibly compromising research by forcing scientists to use cell specimens that may not be optimal. That's like saying that scientists can only use one species of mouse or rat as specimens for research, even though it's known that some are better for some types of research than others.

Why are we wasting money, time and energy creating more stem cell lines when those resources could be spent on the actual research?

Because it's not a waste? Because more cell lines are needed for research. Scientists aren't just coming up with new cell lines for fun, or because they get a huge rush out of destroying blastocysts. Plus, the knowledge gained during the development of the cell lines can be put directly towards other goals. It's not an either/or tradeoff. In order to do the research, a steady supply and wide variety of stem cells are needed; the research can't be done well otherwise. Since the research is in its early stages, a lot of the focus now is on producing a variety of lines that can be worked with. I think this answers your next question as well. It's not as if money for 'research' is being diverted so that evil scientists in their underground la

look at the top 100 and I'll betcha that they started with nothing.

Surely this is a joke, let's look at that list, in fact let's not look at all 100, just the top ten will suffice.

Source: Forbes http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
Bill Gates - comes from a wealthy family, intially given $200,000 by father to start Microsoft
Warren Buffett - comes from a wealthy family, started work at his father's stoke brokerage house
Carlos Slim Helu - comes from a wealthy family (his father WAS 'self-made'
Ingvar Kamprad -one of the few 'self-made' rich
Lakshmi Mittal - comes from a wealthy family
Paul Allen - appears to be one of the few 'self-made' rich
Bernard Arnault - source of wealth unknownp possibly 'self-made'
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud - one can only laugh at this one
Kenneth Thompson & family - inherited fortune from father
Li Ka-shing - appears to be one of the few 'self-made' rich

So, it appears that about 1/3 of the richest 10 are rich as a result of their own hard work (or with minimal assistance). My guess is that this is relatively consistant with the top 100.

Computers for kids? Bah, humbug! According to Reuters, while speaking at the Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Government Leaders Forum on Wednesday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates repeatedly criticized the prototype $100 laptop created by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, which aims to develop a crank powered, inexpensive computer for use by children in developing nations. It's underpowered, has a too-tiny screen and needs a hard disk, Gates says. It's not the first time he has come out against the device, and also not the first time people have suggested his curmudgeonly behavior might have to do with the fact that the OLPC is being backed by rival Google and won't run Microsoft software.

IIRC, Xandros is what became of Corel Linux.

As well, IIRC, Corel sold their distro to Xandros about a year after Microsoft pumped $135 million of much needed cash into Corel in a "joint development and marketing alliance" to get Corel to port their various Windows apps to the .Net architecture.

Prior to this, Corel had been poised to port WordPerfect to Linux (natively - I believe there was already a WINE-based port) and were working on all sorts of initiatives to help make desktop Linux competitive with Windows. Then they got this investment, they talked about staying the course with Linux, but it languished, announced projects languished, and then they sold it.

- Greg

I assume Citi is testing thumbprint ATMs on unbanked and lower income people because the fallout should be more managable if the technology failed. Sounds like a nice test market where you don't have to worry about losing loyal customers with $10k in the bank.

But why India? There are 56 million unbanked people in the US:
http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/02/23/0223find svpunbanked.html

It's great to see them want to spend ALL of their money on charity and that they will liquidate their assets to do so. A cynical person might say that any large pile of money will attract people more interested in themselves than the charity's mission. Making the organization spend them money will insure the money goes to the immediate purpose.

Given such intents, it's strange to see the foundation money spent buying independent newspapers. The Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News don't seem to have much to do with AIDS.

And in the words of Forbes, Investors Abandon SCO

"SCO Gets TKO'ed" - Forbes "The judges seem to be growing frustrated with SCO. For years, the company has gone around making outlandish claims--including many to Forbes--about IBM stealing huge amounts of code from Unix. Yet SCO has never shown any evidence to back up its claims."

Compare that article to this one from when the whole SCO fiasco was getting started. Same author, you'll note - very different attitude. I love the hilarity of juxtaposing the titles of the two articles. Back then Lyons was calling Linux advocates and users "crunchies" - now he just calls them "fans" and says things like "companies... have built booming businesses around Linux."

Not that he'll get called on the hypocrisy or anything.

"SCO Gets TKO'ed" - Forbes "The judges seem to be growing frustrated with SCO. For years, the company has gone around making outlandish claims--including many to Forbes--about IBM stealing huge amounts of code from Unix. Yet SCO has never shown any evidence to back up its claims."

Compare that article to this one from when the whole SCO fiasco was getting started. Same author, you'll note - very different attitude. I love the hilarity of juxtaposing the titles of the two articles. Back then Lyons was calling Linux advocates and users "crunchies" - now he just calls them "fans" and says things like "companies... have built booming businesses around Linux."

Not that he'll get called on the hypocrisy or anything.

I guess the only thing left to say is,

Na na naa na...na na naa na...hey hey hey...goodbye...

SCO's stock went into a screaming dive today. It's down 40% today on heavy trading, about 20x the normal volume. The mainstream business press has picked up the story, and, this time, there's no ambiguity.

• "SCO Losing Case Over Linux Code" - Associated Press "Kimball gave Wells' reasoning his full support Thursday, finding that SCO had deliberately failed to show any proof of its claims."
• "SCO Gets TKO'ed" - Forbes "The judges seem to be growing frustrated with SCO. For years, the company has gone around making outlandish claims--including many to Forbes--about IBM stealing huge amounts of code from Unix. Yet SCO has never shown any evidence to back up its claims."
• "Investors Abandon SCO" "Investors fled SCO Group's stock on Friday, voting with their feet after a federal judge gutted its lawsuit against IBM. "

Forbes seems to have really had it with SCO. Much of SCO's early FUD appeared in Forbes articles, which now makes Forbes look bad.

SCO's stock went into a screaming dive today. It's down 40% today on heavy trading, about 20x the normal volume. The mainstream business press has picked up the story, and, this time, there's no ambiguity.

• "SCO Losing Case Over Linux Code" - Associated Press "Kimball gave Wells' reasoning his full support Thursday, finding that SCO had deliberately failed to show any proof of its claims."
• "SCO Gets TKO'ed" - Forbes "The judges seem to be growing frustrated with SCO. For years, the company has gone around making outlandish claims--including many to Forbes--about IBM stealing huge amounts of code from Unix. Yet SCO has never shown any evidence to back up its claims."
• "Investors Abandon SCO" "Investors fled SCO Group's stock on Friday, voting with their feet after a federal judge gutted its lawsuit against IBM. "

Forbes seems to have really had it with SCO. Much of SCO's early FUD appeared in Forbes articles, which now makes Forbes look bad.

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2006/11/10/voting-f raud-security-tech-security-cz_bs_1113security.htm l

This article came out in forbes a while back and the author has the best solution I've seen for verifying votes on electronic voting machines. He proposes having a touchscreen computer to make all of your ballot selections and when you are done and hit vote it prints out a piece of paper with your sslections. You then can verify your votes were recorded correctly before putting your ballot in a box so that it can be run through an optical scanner at the end of the day to count the votes.

Here's the direct link to the slide show for the impatient among us.

Incidentally, the LEGO company is the second most reputable company in the world, according to Forbes.

Well, #55 anyway according to the forbes list:
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/18/06f2000_The-Fo rbes-2000_Rank.html

What about it? It lost 4 billion dollars and finished a tiny bit ahead of the Gamecube in market share.

Torvalds: TiVo has the DRM issue (media companies have strong-armed them into not being as useful as they could be), but the thing that clashes with some in the FOSS community is that they make it hard to upgrade their box with another version of Linux. Which I personally think is OK--they made the box, they choose how to upgrade it. I only care that they give the source code back, not that they make it easy, or necessarily even possible, to play with their hardware. Again, it's the "reciprocity of source code" versus the "freedom of software" thing.

Is it the position of the GNU folks that nobody should be able to use GPL software to provide services for a profit, or that if they do, they shouldn't be able to secure it against hacking that would permit theft of that service?

Here, have another review: http://blogs.forbes.com/digitaldownload/2006/11/zu ne_stinks.html

I submitted it for a story back on 11/13 and it languished as "pending" until very recently "rejected".

Did Microsoft hold secret talks with Novell prior to any public announcement to any agreement?

If so, I would hope openSUSE developers would be more concerned about this, rather than a clearly *open* offer from Shuttleworth. I used SUSE for several years prior to Novell coming into the SUSE picture, before I switched to Ubuntu Linux.

I said it before and I'll say it again, I think Mr. Shuttleworth is brilliant.

Look, if Microsoft wanted to bring Windows and Linux together, why didn't they do it when they partnered with Corel around six years ago? (if, indeed, it was a partnership, correct me if I'm wrong please) Does anyone remember Corel Linux? It, like Ubuntu, was a Debian based Linux distribution, with an easy to use graphical installer! And this was around six years ago! (There was even a Corel Linux for Dummies book, check Amazon dot com and see for yourself) Anyone who wants to gain an enlightened perspective can google about Corel Linux and Microsoft and inform themselves. Here are a few important articles:

"Corel Sells Out To Microsoft"

"Interview: Corel's Linux VP on the Microsoft deal" @ CNN 10/16/2000

"Microsoft Faces New Antitrust Probe Over Corel Deal"

"Government lawyers want to know more about a deal in which Microsoft gave Corel, perhaps best known for its WordPerfect program, $135 million in exchange for 24 million shares of Corel stock last October." "After the investment, Corel announced it would retreat from developing software designed to run on the Linux operating system, which competes with Microsoft's Windows operating system." - quotes source

"Microsoft Litigation" List - Educate yourself

I ask you: Who do YOU trust?

Do you want open meetings and discussions? Isn't that what an open source community thrives on? Or do you want secret meetings?

For those of you who would rather crack chair throwing or developer jokes and ignore the issue, read for yourself in an interview with Bill Gates dated 11/17/2006 where he mentions Novell, indemnification, and the word pioneering all in the same reponse to a question:

"Gates on Vista, Linux and more"

History repeats itself, and I believe, in my opinion, we're seeing it happen right now. IMO the Corel/Microsoft events in history should not be ignored. In fact, I suggest they be looked at again closely and compared to the present Novell/Microsoft events for educational purposes. :) Google for yourself and see, there are a lot of juicy articles out there on this. And yes, I know about Xandros, my point is about where Corel Linux was headed.

The reason you get cancer is (VERY generally speaking) not because your body is stressed but because DNA replication and repair is not perfect. It leads to mutations which, in a VERY VERY unlikely event, create immortal and invasive cell lines we clinically call cancer.

Well, you being a biochemist and doctor, I highly doubt that anything I say is going to sway your opinion...but, no offense, instead of seeing cancer as having a single cause (e.g. DNA replication and repair leads to mutations), I see it as a multi-faceted problem, with the biggest factors being stem cells, enzymes, diet/nutrition, and lifestyle and exercise. The biggest problem with mainstream medicine, in my opinion, is that everything is treated in isolation.

• In 1902, John Beard, a professor of embryology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, authored a paper published in the British medical journal Lancet in which he stated there were no differences between cancer cells and certain pre-embryonic cells that were normal to the early stages of pregnancy

In 2000+, we are just starting to see that cancer cells contain pre-embryonic stem cells that form the very material that John Beard saw in 1902. See:

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2004/1227/070.ht ml

• The same John Beard also noted that the body had a way of regulating this material, to keep it from getting out of hand. In the same 1902 Lancet article, he pointed out that one of the ways the body keeps these cells in check is by the use of enzymes.

Note: See the 1993 study, almost 100 years later, by Nicholas Gonzalez, where he used pancreatic enzymes to get these results on patients with pancreatic cancer (And btw, Gonzalez based his treatment on research done at the turn of the last century!):

Five of 11 patients in the initial series, which was sponsored by the Nestle Corporation, survived for 2 years or more and the results were published this past spring in the journal, Nutrition and Cancer [33(2):117-124 (Note:The 5-year survival rate for all patients with pancreatic cancer is only 4 percent.)

• If folic acid is in short supply, Ames found, thymine levels drop and a large amount of uracil instead of thymine is incorporated into human DNA. This leads to chromosome breaks when DNA is being repaired and subsequent mutations. The findings in the Fertility and Sterility report support this model, the authors claim. (reference: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2001/0 2/26_diet.html)

Go to google and type in "poor diet causes dna mutations" and then read my post from the Lancet again. The above reference is just one of many, many examples of poor diet causing DNA mutations, and there are several other vitamins, not just folic acid that play a role in cancer prevention. The bottom line is, they don't have cancer rates in third-world countries like we do in the United States. It isn't environmental, just read the Lancet article already cited and it isn't genes...but it is dietary/vitamin related.

I could cite research article after research article, but I'm not going to sit here all day ( Although, I could post more if it will actually be read).

The bottom line, for me, is this: I can count on a couple of fingers the number of people I have known that had cancer and went the traditional chemo/radiation/surgery treatments and lived more than a year afterwards. But I have personally known, and known through friends and co-workers, more people who put some of the above research into action and skipped the chemo/radiation/surgery and went on to live normal, healthy lives.

Again, cancer is a multi-faceted problem. Most Americans don't want to change their diets and/or lifestyle, they want to take a pill and be cured. I don'

[Again, keep in mind that to isolate stem cells, scientists "peel away" the trophoblast.]

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2004/1227/070.ht ml [forbes.com]

Cancer Killer

Radical researchers are onto a controversial idea for stopping cancer: go after stem cells

Peter Dirks uses a talented pair of hands to cut cancer out of the brains of sick children. But no matter how brilliantly he performs, he rarely is able to stop cancer's return; sometimes the tumors come roaring back just months after he excises all visible signs of disease.

This inevitability--of children dying in the face of his best attempts to heal them--got to him. "It broke my heart that we couldn't do more for them," says Dirks, a surgeon-scientist at the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. So in desperation he set out six years ago to pursue a radical new theory of what truly fuels cancer's growth, one that might unlock new therapies and explain why today's treatments often provide only fleeting help.

His concept was so fringy that government agencies repeatedly rejected his grant proposals. Parents of several of his patients kept the research going by donating $100,000 to his efforts; one of the couples even took up a collection at their child's funeral. But this fall Dirks reported a breakthrough that could dramatically alter our understanding of how cancer grows. His revelation, which could take a decade or more to take hold, is the latest in a string of findings that may one day uncloak the key triggers of many different kinds of cancer.

Scientists have long assumed that all of the dozens of kinds of cells inside a tumor are created equal--and are equally deadly, capable of spreading elsewhere in the body to create a totally new tumor. So they focus on chemotherapy that kills as many cancer cells as possible.

Dirks and a handful of other mavericks argue that this indiscriminate approach is wrongheaded. They believe a single type of cell may be cancer's main growth engine:mutant stem cells that, though barely present, spawn other cells that then spark growth. "This has profound implications," says researcher Thomas Look of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "The major cells you see under a microscope may not be the ones you need to kill in order to cure the disease." He adds that the theory "is definitely still very controversial" in some quarters.

Figure out a way to isolate these mutant cells and target only them, Dirks says, and maybe cancer can be stopped outright--and the kids he treats might stop dying so soon after he operates.

These mutant stem cells already have been found in breast cancer, two types of leukemia and multiple myeloma. This fall Dirks and six scientists at the University of Toronto proved the existence of the cells in human brain tumors, pinpointing a small group of cells believed to be the driver of the tumors' growth. "In every brain tumor we have looked at, in both adults and kids, we are able to find these cells," Dirks says.

When the researchers implanted just a couple hundred of these cells into mice, they developed huge tumors and often died within weeks. Other brain cancer cells, by contrast, were incapable of forming new tumors, no matter how many were injected into the mice, Dirks wrote last month in the journal Nature. The more stem cells present, the more virulently the tumor grows:They account for 1 in 4 cells in a glioblastoma tumor, the deadliest type of brain cancer, but only 1 in 500 cells in slower-growing forms of brain cancer, Dirks found.

Some researchers predict that stem cells eventually will be found in most major types of cancer. "It will completely change the search for new treatments and the way we think about the disease," says Irving Weissman, a renowned stem cell expert at Stanford University, who says several big drug firms have taken an interest in the latest findings.

Stem cells are the primitive

Does a person's integrity have a price?

As much as I admire your enthusiasm, doesn't your sentiment remind you of a choice quote from here?

Another Music Phone - yawn - by Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora

What Would An iPhone Look Like? - by Forbes

I've read some other ones of similar style, laying out hurdle after hurdle (often imaginary) which Apple will have to overcome.. but I'm too lazy to find others. I'm sure you can, even just by searching Slashdot.

Here's Forbes Magazine's David "Incontinentia" Lyons' latest hatchet-job on him.

Some quotes:

Stallman is "a cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler", and "He is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a bowl of soup he is eating."

Of course this is that bastion of corporatism, Forbes Magazine. And of course this is David "Incontinentia" Lyons.

Boy, the marketing geniuses at Microsoft are really working overtime. Points can only be bought in $5.00 increments? What the hell? This isn't Costco for music - people are already used to two ideals - all you can eat subscriptions (which Zune offers) or a la carte purchases. If i hear one song I want to buy, I sure as hell am not going to go through a lengthy process and spend $5.00 to do so.

What a dumb move. Each Zune review I've read so far has been down on the player, but more importantly on Microsoft's "treat users like idiots" approach.

David Pogue - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/technology/09pog ue.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin
David Ewalt - http://blogs.forbes.com/digitaldownload/
Walt Mossberg - http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11630284839 3917854-wNNFl42I1SSNBP6dH5xF08kTRlQ_20071108.html

By over-litigation, stupid, religion-fueled vetoes, etc. the U.S. falls further and further behind as other countries move ahead in nearly every major technological field. It's depressing to contemplate.

However, on the bright side, even without federal funding, stem cell research abounds. Private companies are funding the research. Which, in the end, is probably better than government funding anyway since everything the government touches turns to crap.

"Good on ya" to the Australian legislature. With proper limitations in place, there simply is no reason not to proceed with this type of research. There are many advances that have occurred over time that were fought for what appear now to be "silly" reasons (mostly ignorant fear).

Proceed!

The deal is what Novell is licensing from Microsoft. Basically patents relating to Mono and probably wine and samba. Think about it. Samba is probably the single most important product in the linux world. Now that Novell has made an exclusive licensing deal with Microsoft, the effect on the rest of the industry is going to be chilling. Microsoft will use it's deal with Novell to apply indirect market pressure on everyone else, causing consumers to think twice about using linux in any capacity that relates to Samba (or mono or wine), knowing that Microsoft successfully pursued Novell. Of course if you use Novell you are safe, but this is only because Novell has already agreed to pay microsoft. This is a brilliant move on MS's part, one we denied was coming for years. They have now successfully co-opted what they could not buy: linux and GPL'd software. In essence they own GPL software now and can extract license fees from us at their will and pleasure. This is very very bad news for all of linux indeed. Novell has signed their death warrant and also brought risk and death to us all. Here's an interesting quote:

"On Thursday night, I asked Jeff Jaffe, Novell's chief technology
officer, if he could think of a company that had partnered with
Microsoft and done really well as a result. Which Microsoft alliance,
I asked him, would he cite as the model that he'd like to emulate?His
response: "I think this partnership is breaking new ground."
http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/03/linux-microsoft-n ovell-tech-cz_dl_1103linux.html?partner=yahootix

I wonder how Novell's stock price will respond. I guess it will probably go up since stock traders are pretty clueless and probably eat up everything Jaffe says.

I disagree on the issue of physical media versus a file, and the costs associated with them. I believe many people underestimate the cost of bandwidth, servers, etc. in distributing electronic files. Particularly, in a situation where people are downloading large movie files. Look at the estimates for YouTube bandwidth costs.. Add to that servers, admins, etc. For a large movie store, the costs rapidly exceed 10s of millions per year. While there are benefits to working in virtual space, distribution costs are not ZERO, or even close to it.

This could be a good starting point (an article listing some pioneers in inventions, and some of their fates).

Also, this article is a synopsis of Robert Kearns' battle with Ford over his IP/patent rights for the invention of the intermittent windshield wiper.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/10/ 25/ap3119965.html/

UK and New Zealand have lower taxes than US???

No, they have lower top marginal tax rates. Which is meaningless.

If you want to understand the tax burden, you need to look at the percent of GDP that ends up as taxes. Forbes calls this the "misery index"; I think the fact that Mexico ranks as "less miserable" than Japan tells you the degree of BS in that label, but the data is informative nonetheless. The U.S. is near the bottom of the list, with a low tax burden.

Washington is routinely criticized for not contributing enough to support the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, if private donations are included in this analysis, the United States is among the most generous donor countries in the world.

The traditional basis for measuring aid transfers may understate U.S. contributions, because it omits donations that come from individuals, foundations, religious organizations and other private sources...

-- The U.S. government is frequently maligned for contributing only about 0.16% of its gross national income to development assistance--usually the most parsimonious figure among DAC members. However, U.S. private agency grants tallied by the DAC represent 2.1 cents per capita, ranking the generosity of U.S. citizens below only the people of Norway, Ireland and Switzerland....

U.S. private donations abroad are strikingly high relative to other wealthy nations. Several cultural factors may account for this discrepancy:

-- The Japan Foundation for Global Partnership concluded that Americans provide about eight times as much per capita in charitable donations, noting that Japanese avoid seeking personal credit for charitable giving.

-- Europeans largely view social problems as the responsibility of government, a factor that may limit direct private contributions but also explains the greater degree of support for official assistance. Many U.S. citizens view "big government" sceptically and prefer to provide aid with their own funds.

Shiner wrote in 1999, "Americans look even better compared to other leading nations. According to recent surveys, 73 percent of Americans made a charitable contribution in the previous 12 months, as compared to 44 percent of Germans, and 43 percent of French citizens. The average sum of donations over 12 months was $851 for Americans, $120 for Germans, and $96 for the French. In addition, 49 percent of Americans volunteered over the previous 12 months, as compared to 13 percent of Germans and 19 percent of the French." America the stingy

Just a week ago, a stunned world watched televised footage of U.S. helicopter pilots plucking grateful survivors from the devastated Indonesian island of Sumatra and dropping off food and medicine to desperate victims unreachable by road.

In recent days, however, a political blow-back has ensued, with the government of Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim country - getting antsy about perceptions of a mounting U.S. military presence.

Yeah, the tax rates for many European countries is sort of ridiculous. Japan looks good but it is very difficult to get citizenship. Anything down from Canada in the table in table I linked would probably reasonable for someone used to low taxes in the US. I can't tell you how the immigration standards work though (though Japan and the US still win on the opportunities to earn a boatload of money).

I'm sort of a patriotic American and I don't think I would ever leave give up my citizenship, but in the hypothetical case that I had to and was able to pick any country to move, I would select Canada followed by Japan.

[Again, keep in mind that to isolate stem cells, scientists "peel away" the trophoblast.]

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2004/1227/070.ht ml

Cancer Killer

Radical researchers are onto a controversial idea for stopping cancer: go after stem cells

Peter Dirks uses a talented pair of hands to cut cancer out of the brains of sick children. But no matter how brilliantly he performs, he rarely is able to stop cancer's return; sometimes the tumors come roaring back just months after he excises all visible signs of disease.

This inevitability--of children dying in the face of his best attempts to heal them--got to him. "It broke my heart that we couldn't do more for them," says Dirks, a surgeon-scientist at the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. So in desperation he set out six years ago to pursue a radical new theory of what truly fuels cancer's growth, one that might unlock new therapies and explain why today's treatments often provide only fleeting help.

His concept was so fringy that government agencies repeatedly rejected his grant proposals. Parents of several of his patients kept the research going by donating $100,000 to his efforts; one of the couples even took up a collection at their child's funeral. But this fall Dirks reported a breakthrough that could dramatically alter our understanding of how cancer grows. His revelation, which could take a decade or more to take hold, is the latest in a string of findings that may one day uncloak the key triggers of many different kinds of cancer.

Scientists have long assumed that all of the dozens of kinds of cells inside a tumor are created equal--and are equally deadly, capable of spreading elsewhere in the body to create a totally new tumor. So they focus on chemotherapy that kills as many cancer cells as possible.

Dirks and a handful of other mavericks argue that this indiscriminate approach is wrongheaded. They believe a single type of cell may be cancer's main growth engine:mutant stem cells that, though barely present, spawn other cells that then spark growth. "This has profound implications," says researcher Thomas Look of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "The major cells you see under a microscope may not be the ones you need to kill in order to cure the disease." He adds that the theory "is definitely still very controversial" in some quarters.

Figure out a way to isolate these mutant cells and target only them, Dirks says, and maybe cancer can be stopped outright--and the kids he treats might stop dying so soon after he operates.

These mutant stem cells already have been found in breast cancer, two types of leukemia and multiple myeloma. This fall Dirks and six scientists at the University of Toronto proved the existence of the cells in human brain tumors, pinpointing a small group of cells believed to be the driver of the tumors' growth. "In every brain tumor we have looked at, in both adults and kids, we are able to find these cells," Dirks says.

When the researchers implanted just a couple hundred of these cells into mice, they developed huge tumors and often died within weeks. Other brain cancer cells, by contrast, were incapable of forming new tumors, no matter how many were injected into the mice, Dirks wrote last month in the journal Nature. The more stem cells present, the more virulently the tumor grows:They account for 1 in 4 cells in a glioblastoma tumor, the deadliest type of brain cancer, but only 1 in 500 cells in slower-growing forms of brain cancer, Dirks found.

Some researchers predict that stem cells eventually will be found in most major types of cancer. "It will completely change the search for new treatments and the way we think about the disease," says Irving Weissman, a renowned stem cell expert at Stanford University, who says several big drug firms have taken an interest in the latest findings.

Stem cells are the primitive master cells

I wouldn't be surprised if the ONLY reason they used this against Amazon, is because Amazon does the same thing to others.

Then be very surprised. IBM has a long history of strong-arming other companies with its patent portfolio and extracting license money from them. In fact, Marshall Phelps (who now works for Microsoft fwiw), turned IBM's sleeping patent portfolio into a $1+ billion profit.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ONLY reason they used this against Amazon, is because Amazon does the same thing to others.

Then be very surprised. IBM has a long history of strong-arming other companies with its patent portfolio and extracting license money from them. In fact, Marshall Phelps (who now works for Microsoft fwiw), turned IBM's sleeping patent portfolio into a $1+ billion profit.

This Forbes article is more in line with my recollection of the story. IBM approached Sun with a handful of bogus patents, which Sun's engineers handily debunked. However, rather than risk IBM digging through its portfolio for actually infringed patents, Sun coughed up the protection fee.