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And it's just circular logic to say that fewer guns is safer, except where lots of guns is also safe...

You missed the important part: It's not necessarily how many guns there are, but how they are dealt with.

I might believe that, if gun control attempts in the USA didn't consistently have the OPPOSITE effect in a large way. Crime rates go UP under gun bans, and go DOWN under relaxed concealed carry laws.

Again: What time-frame are you looking at?

I live in a country that has very strict gun laws, and has had them for 60+ years. It's almost impossible to get a gun here, and getting a permit even more so. There are also very, very few gun-related crimes. And no, it's like like there'd be a stabbing every day. I also live in a major city. If something happens with a gun involved, that's major headlines, simply because it's so rare.

Also, to counter your evidence:
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/07/local/la-me-guns-crime-20130508

It's disingenous to suggest a gun control measure that affects a tiny part of an open country is indicative of any likely result of any future legislation that affects the whole of the nation.

Now you're just blatantly moving the goal-posts... Neither you nor anyone else mentioned nation-wide regulations specifically.

However, there ARE plenty of examples of those as well:

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jun/28/opinion/oe-lott28

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323468604578245803845796068

http://www.examiner.com/article/gun-statistics-cast-doubt-on-weapons-ban

Where is the evidence of this sharp rise, where is proof of the correlation?

I linked to many, and you're just playing dumb and pretending it's not there. You can use any of those as a jumping off point to get even more facts and figures. But of course, you don't WANT to do that, and would rather feign ignorance.

I am shocked. Shocked! That a country--any country--would spy on a foreign head of state.
What a world we live in

As long as you are "shocked, shocked," in this manner, you are correct.

NSA, France and spy wars

Naturally, the French would be outraged. What government would be happy to learn that a close ally was secretly monitoring its people? Then again, it was revealed in 2010 that France conducts its own espionage activities here on U.S. soil. What's more, French officials have been aware of the NSA program in France for months. Oh, and also, France's intelligence agencies have established an electronic surveillance system of their own that monitors their citizens' phone conversations, emails, texts and even their Twitter posts.

That said: This hasn't been a problem. I know of no cases of RC to full sized aviation mid-airs.

Here's one for you.

I imagine they happen with some regularity at places where R/C and manned aircraft share the airspace -- for example, at Torrey Pines before R/C use was banned (not sure what the current status is.) Of course, nobody was arrested in those incidents and I don't even know that there were any injuries -- but there were some collisions.

Funny. Two weeks of no government and I didn't notice a single difference. Global economic disaster? Melodrama much?

I'm pretty sure he's referring to the Republican House claiming to be working on a bill so as to forestall the Senate's bipartisan efforts to avoid defaulting on the debt, and then said Republican House members falling flat on their faces in their attempts to find common ground on the debt ceiling. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed in the Senate and they managed to find an acceptable solution where the broken House failed.

Fitch indicated that a US default would have dropped their rating for the US Treasury from AAA to B+ and it's doubtful the other raters would have been any kinder. For reference, that's only somewhat better than Greece's current rating of B-. Do you really think that having that happen to the Treasury of the US, whose currency is the major foreign trading reserve currency for most countries, wouldn't have been devastating to the world economy?

China is agitating for countries to move to another reserve currency due to Tea Party propensity for playing national debt Russian roulette. Much as China might want otherwise, it's unlikely that countries would switch to the Chinese Yuan because China is notorious for manipulating its exchange and no rational government would hand that much power to a government with such a recent history of predatory market behaviour. However if countries started dumping their dollar reserves for anything else (or even switching to a mix of pounds, euros, rubles, yen, yuans and dollars), you can bet your bottom dollar that the value of the dollar would have quickly found a new unprecedented bottom. There's a pretty good chance it would trigger hyper-inflation in the USA. If you don't think that happening to the biggest national economy in the world (at least for now) would count as a global economic disaster then I don't think anybody should be taking economic advice from you.

Nah, that is the job of the "non-partisan" media. Guess which way they broke on it?

Networks blamed shutdown on GOP in 41 stories --- 0 for Dems

You would never guess this, would you?

Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)

Msnbc.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

Do journalists' political donations (mostly Democratic) = news bias?

You'll never guess what he says he found -- 235 journalists donating to Democrats while only 20 gave to Republicans for a total of $225,563 to Democrats and $16,298 to the the GOP-inclined. - See more at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/07/media-politics.html#sthash.hhVKqE2Z.dpuf

The media needs to get back to being consistently "equal opportunity bastards."

Nah, that is the job of the "non-partisan" media. Guess which way they broke on it?

Networks blamed shutdown on GOP in 41 stories --- 0 for Dems

You would never guess this, would you?

Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)

Msnbc.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

Do journalists' political donations (mostly Democratic) = news bias?

You'll never guess what he says he found -- 235 journalists donating to Democrats while only 20 gave to Republicans for a total of $225,563 to Democrats and $16,298 to the the GOP-inclined. - See more at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/07/media-politics.html#sthash.hhVKqE2Z.dpuf

The media needs to get back to being consistently "equal opportunity bastards."

Reports just in of a Torino 1 level asteroid to possibly hit in 2032. Just your garden variety 400m wide space pebble.

I'm sure the bonus will be put to good use...

Billionaire sought secret lair for sex, drugs, complaint says

Flush with wealth from Broadcom Corp.'s 1998 public stock offering, computer chip magnate Henry T. Nicholas III made a few additions to his equestrian estate in Laguna Hills: hidden doors and secret levers, an underground grotto, tunnels and a 2,000-square-foot sports bar he called "Nick's Cafe."

But there was more, according to a claim made in court documents: plans for a "secret and convenient lair" with hidden entries for Nicholas to indulge his "manic obsession with prostitutes" and "addiction to cocaine and Ecstasy."

Practically only Slahdotters ever think of technologically-targeted ads as a good thing. In polls, nearly 70% of the public oppose such practices:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/12/privacy-do-not-track-ads-internet-gallup-poll.html

...or were the Russians simply nimble enough on their feet to exploit an incredible opportunity when it fell into their lap? ...

I think you answered your own question there. It literally fell into their lap. The US has done the same.

No, but there are TV repeaters like the VCR Rabbit from the 1980s that are entirely legal, and do exactly what Areo do - rebroadcast taped or OTA (via the VCR's tuner) to another device.

Why was it called the Rabbit? Because it multiplies the video signal.

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-06-22/business/fi-20799_1_rabbit-system

This is merely a VCR plus VCR Rabbit in a cabinet in a data-center paid for via subscription for the service. You could roll out your own rebroadcasting DVR and stick it in a closet or under your TV as part of your media system and pipe the signal back out to the Internet available to only your devices like this does.

--
BMO

I have a dream, that one day all the little factual posts on Slashdot will not be marked troll because of the color of the moderators politics.

Charge of racism offensive to Obamacare critics

Louisiana state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson last week took to the chamber’s floor to declare opponents of President Barack Obama’s “signature legislative achievement” are motivated by race.

“I have talked to so many members both in the House and the Senate, and you know what? You ready? You ready? What it comes down to? It’s not about how many federal dollars we can receive, it’s not about that. You ready? It’s about race,” Peterson said. “I know nobody wants to talk about that. It’s about the race of this African-American president.”

After Calling Obamacare Critics Racist, LA Legislator Says 'I Didn't Call Anyone a Racist'

Mainstream Scream: Martin Bashir accuses Obama scandal critics of racism

Are Obama's critics racist? Jimmy Carter thinks so

A Modern Timeline of Liberals Claiming That Opposition to Obama = Racism

There is plenty more that could be posted on this topic.

The system wasn't overloaded from people trying to sign up. That's government propaganda for you.

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-california-health-exchange-glitches-20131001,0,7108713.story

"State officials said the Covered California website got 645,000 hits during the first day of enrollment, far fewer than the 5 million it reported Tuesday."

And that's just hits. The government refuses to say how many people have actually registered accounts and how many have actually bought insurance.

The web-site not only can't handle a moderate amount of traffic, people aren't interested in signing up or buying the product even if they can get through.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/03/a-trickle-not-a-wave-what-insurers-are-seeing-in-obamacare-enrollment/

"After two days without any word on sign-ups, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana received some reassuring news Wednesday night: Seven people had signed up for its plan on the marketplace that day."

Right, and this is a well known fact: as soon as a new CEO takes over, the previous problems at the company instantly cease and the stock price shoots up without any intervention.

Turning around the damage that Leo Apothiker and Mark Hurd inflicted is not something anyone could manage in 6 months. Meg Whitman has been extremely up front about that. Analysts like Bloomberg are retards who care about quarterly profits at the expense of long term sustainability.

Here's a slightly more balanced story: she's managed to put a floor under it, and now HP can start to rebuild. That takes time.

The truth is that only California is serious about environmental protection, and the rest of you just want to rape the land and shit in your neighbor's mouths through the air.

Yeah, but y'all have gone too far. Now we can't even put in the tech that would prevent horrible emissions in the first place because it might displace some animal. Or did you forget about the tortoise that delayed the Mohave solar plant? And while I don't know if it is true, this isn't the 1st time the EPA shut something like this down, because I remember hearing about a gas station being shut down when they couldn't upgrade their storage tanks(to keep them from leaking fuel into the ground water) due to there being a lizard in the area that might be impacted.

We'll check you in anyway

Could be... but the smallest of the top 20 (easiest list I could find) of the largest US companies (by market cap) is 2.5x larger than Monsanto (Citicorp).

AAPL is 9 times bigger, but I am sure you are right MON is much more influential. But just wait, given time maybe AAPL can do for education what Monsanto has done for Agriculture...

like the woman labeled a terrorist for spanking her kids on a plane...
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-airline-felonies20-2009jan20,0,5183005.story

The Federal government for decades has told industry the Federal government is pulling out of the helium business. The private sector has sat on its hands and done nothing.

How often does the Federal government actually shut off a program that it runs (regardless of what is says)???

How about the USDA raisin board that has regulated that strategic resource, the raisin, since the New Deal...

If this is true, then how come our schools are so awful?

We the people have been throwing more and more money at schoolteachers, and requiring ever-increasing levels of training and education to maintain their license to teach, yet the educational achievments of our students have been flatlined for 40 years, and have even fallen dramatically in some districts.

Have we really been throwing money at teachers? Teacher salaries have remained fairly constant in inflation-adjusted terms over the past few decades. W have definitely been throwing money at schools. With NCLB testing and gee-whiz-bang "let's give everyone a tablet" initiatives, and insanely overpaid administrators, we're spending way more, but we aren't seeing any results... hm...

Meanwhile home schooled children, taught by parents with no formal training as teachers, outperform government-schooled students so often that the high achieving home schooler has become a cultural meme, if not a cliche.

Charter schools have also been able to deliver superior results at lower cost.

Um, citation needed? Yes, some charter schools are great, but even more are worse.

No, I don't think we need professionally trained well paid teachers. What we need are voucher programs, more home schooling, teachers and schools that have to compete, the utter end to tenure of any kind, and pay/bonuses based on classroom performance instead of seniority.

Because tying pay raises to test performance doesn't give anyone an incentive to cheat. It would never happen.

Opening up the teaching profession to anyone with a bachelor's degree and a demonstrated knowledge of a subject (english, math, science) would be even better. There is no evidence that having a master's degree in early childhood education helps someone teach 3rd graders how to multiply. Let those who want to teach and who are good at it take the field, and get rid of parasitic space takers for whom a teaching job is a state-paid sinecure.

Most of all, outlaw public sector unions so that groups like the NEA aren't able to block real education reform.

I'm all for at-will employment, but let's be honest, if school systems could get away with paying teachers minimum wage, they would. After all, if all you need is demonstrated knowledge of a subject, why don't the 1st graders teach kindergarten? Too far? OK, well, certainly a high school dropout should be OK. After all, they know their colors and how to read "See Spot Run." I'm sure you wouldn't mind handing over your kids to a burnout stoner, right?

And in Brunei, Muslims objected to Yokohama tires with a tread pattern that looked like a Koran verse

Also despite the fans and critics loving Empire, George himself considered it the worst of the originals and was not as involved with making it, and resulted in shooting taking much longer than expected. Basically all the good shit about Empire, you can thank Gary Kurtz.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/12/entertainment/la-et-gary-kurtz-20100812

That would be nice, as opposed to the drivel you linked to.

Gee, maybe the LA times would be more up your alley.

Damn that factual information...I guess DM did get it right huh?

who knows why or who it benefits, but it certainly isn't the people of the UK.

Is that your evaluation based on many years of experience with the intelligence agencies? Or is it the snark of a passing minute on the internet?

NSA helped foil terror plot in Belgium, documents, officials say
Police arrest 10 over Belgian 'Islamist terror plot'
Belgian police raid homes in connection with Syrian terror groups recruits
Two Belgian "terrorism" suspects detained in Yemen
Fearing terror attack, Belgium arrests 14

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-dianne-feinstein-congress-press-shield-law-20130913,0,5900019.story

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/07/03/Durbin-Wants-Government-to-Decide-Who-is-a-Journalist

1986 article: "Marriage Rate for Women Dips Below 10% for First Time" - http://articles.latimes.com/1986-05-07/news/mn-3886_1_marriage-rate

Other studies have shown a link between gum disease and heart disease. So whether you don't want cancer or don't want a heart attack, brush your teeth!

(The American Heart Association disagrees)

if you're pumping an oxidizer and control pumping of that then it's not really solid rocket... instead the oxidizer is mixed in.

now this of course has it's drawbacks as you can't just turn the rocket off if you want to or control the speed by controlling flow . and then there's accidents like this http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/27/local/me-explode27 since the stuff is .. well, explosive to say the least.

and let me add....he's 15. a minor. charges? wtf is this country coming to that even kids are now criminals?! WTF AMERICA??

Children of "tender years" might have escaped prosecution. But that is and always has been close kin to the little loved insanity defense. Too young to control his actions. Too young to understand the consequences of his actions.

The adolescent is a work-in-progress. He is not an infant.

The first execution of a juvenile offender was in 1642 with Thomas Graunger in Plymouth Colony, Massachesetts. In the 360 years since that time, a total of approximately 365 persons have been executed for juvenile crimes, constituting 1.8% of roughly 20,000 confirmed American executions since 1608. Twenty-two of these executions for juvenile crimes have been imposed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. These 22 recent executions of juvenile offenders make up about 2% of the total executions since 1976.

The death penalty is forbidden in all states for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crime following the Supreme Court's ruling in Roper v. Simmons (2005)

Execution of Juveniles in the U.S. and other Countries

Supreme Court rules mandatory juvenile life without parole cruel and unusual (2012)

The grocery story already DOES charge companies to stock its products, and has been doing it for over a decade.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jan/29/news/mn-58869
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0415/130.html

It's always worth remembering that North Korea's leadership has a special kind of evil ruthless madness to it that has resulted in them painting themselves into a corner, and China has been willing to give them security guarantees. It is sort of like an excerpt from the plans for World War 1.

I'm afraid your lovely theory is ruined by the history of hijacking.

El Al Flight 426 hijacking
Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr. - Aircraft Hijacking
Hijacked Iraq Jet Crashes, Killing 62 : Two Hurl Grenades, Force Airliner Down in Saudi Arabia

There are more.

...and how many flights are there that AREN'T hijacked every day? What do you suppose the percent is? I don't know the answer, but I'm certain there are a lot of zeros after the decimal point.

I'm afraid your lovely theory is ruined by the history of hijacking.

El Al Flight 426 hijacking
Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr. - Aircraft Hijacking
Hijacked Iraq Jet Crashes, Killing 62 : Two Hurl Grenades, Force Airliner Down in Saudi Arabia

There are more.

They've documented 2.
3 is right fucking here - http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/
4 is documented in their court battle http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/google-fights-nsl/
5 was documented
6 was documented http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-wins-floating-data-center-patent/17266
7 was documented http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-nsa-google-encryption-20130907,0,3652913.story

All are verifiable and you're full of shit.

As an engineer who lives practically next door to one of the hubs of so-called 'Silicon Beach', let me tell you that there is more publicity than business behind this concept. Don't get me wrong--there are legitimate reasons for considering the Los Angeles area a decent tech hub. A number of my favorite companies (Dreamhost!, and others) are located here, typically somewhere between the downtown area and Santa Monica. One of the biggest benefits is the thriving venture capital communities in the downtown and Pasadena areas, which is an understated-but-critical component to any truly substantial claim to 'Silicon [noun]'. (Strong venture capital communities also come with excellent startup support, commonly in some form of incubator.) You also get some great synergies between the educational institutions in the area (USC, UCLA, CalTech, Claremont colleges...), ongoing technology business efforts, and the parallel (not-as-mighty-as-it-once-was-but-still-substantial) aerospace community. We're fortunate to have a new (at least moderately) technically literate mayor, who's been pushing this 'Silicon Beach' idea quite a bit.

But that's the end of the good news. Here's why the TFA totally misses the mark, and (most likely unintentionally) buys into one of the latest political fads here in southern California.

First, the MySpace influence is strongly overrated. Businesses fail and shrink all the time, and--surprise--when they do, talented engineers will go off and do other things. The article paints a picture that implies that MySpace was this huge supergiant of a tech star, which went nova and whose subsequent remnants collected to spawn a whole new constellation of stars. In reality, MySpace was never really that big of a tech phenomenon or local influence. It's nowhere near as substantial as the unprecedented collapse of the southern California aerospace community (a PDF--page 11 is most interesting) after the Cold War. If you don't want to click the link, here's a summary: southern California employed 271,700 aerospace jobs in 1990; that number dropped by 57% by 2000, and continues to plummet (88,4000 in 2011). It really makes MySpace look like a drop of piss in a thunderstorm.

Second, it's easy to underestimate the fact that southern California--even just 'Los Angeles'--is a really, really big place. The Silicon Valley is ~46km long (I'm measuring from San Mateo to downtown San Jose--the width, of course, is mere miles), and Wikipedia puts the population between 3.5 and 4 million. By comparison, Los Angeles county alone is 76km (Santa Clarita to Long Beach) by 74km (Santa Monica to Claremont), with a population of 10 million souls. Why is that relevant? It shouldn't be a surprise that, in a really big area, there are going to be a few winning tech companies. Few people can even agree what 'Silicon Beach' constitutes. Is it supposed to be Playa Vista, with the new Fox technical studios (a la MySpace), Electronic Arts offices, and a few new offices in newly-remodeled air hangers? It is sort of the west side in general, where Google has recently consolidated a new office (in Venice Beach), and Activision-Blizzard is headquartered (Santa Monica)? Is it the general downtown vicinity, including North Hollywood and other light industrial areas, where established tech businesses have high-rise offices and new startups are renting out old movie studios for a steal of a rate? Is it the city of Los Angeles in general, with a new tech-friendly mayor, or the county, including tech-friendly Pasadena (CalTech and JPL, plus a lot of venture capital organizations)? Or does it also include Orange County, host of a whole slew of tech-sector ecosystems centered around U.C. Irvine (including the

This is precisely what the citizens of Germany thought in the early 1930s. That worked out well for them. It's also how citizens of North Korea used to think. Now, if you're kid or grand child does something, you go to jail, after watching them get executed for something as mild as having sex. I certainly hope you don't buy garden gnomes that appear to look like a caricature of the president of 2025....

Now that is innovation and market leadership.

No, you missed it -- Yahoo! now has a new logo. Just think of all of the corporate processing power that had to be invoked for such a dramatically change from this to this.

That's why they get the big bucks.

Virtually every terrorist group in the world shifting tactics in wake of NSA leaks: U.S. officials
Terrorists harder to track after Snowden's leaks, officials say

It's amazing to me that you would think terrorists changing tactics in light of Snowden's leaks would even be a question.

Who would he sell Microsoft to, if he got to be Microsoft's CE? Anyone have ideas?

NSA or some of its affiliate companies. They aren't fully assimilated yet, so could make sense that an arm of the money printing machine buys it.

The Japanese are great at hiding things. Like police abuse.

http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/police-brutality-japan

I presume you're being sarcastic, but Vietnam's leading export is crude oil.

Which is the "WHY" of the Vietnam war from its inception.

That's pretty unlikely since oil wasn't discovered in Vietnamese waters until 1975, and Vietnam had been at war pretty much since the Japanese invasion in the 1940s.

Do you have a theory about Korea? Where are the big oil fields there? Or is that just another case of the US preventing a communist takeover of mountain covered land instead of jungle covered land?

d) Lives under a bridge

"In the Bay Area, they're placing their truss in the bridge troll"

Seriously? Movies and TV shows get produced on budget on time??? You could have fooled me...
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-29/entertainment/ca-29112_1_films-waterworld-schedule

Seriously, did you read the post your were replying to, since it referenced Waterworld as a delayed overbudget movie? In any case, movies and TV shows are better than games by necessity, because you cannot hire a cast and then pay them to sit on their thumbs while you screw around with the scope of your creation.

OK. Well there is where our beliefs diverge substantially. Psychology isn't science, ergo none of their definitions involve science. You seem to have bought into the idea that there are "soft sciences." The term soft science is merely a term that people throw around when they want to add some legitimacy to their field of study, and figure that tagging along with the respected science community will give them a leg up in their arguments.

Note that I am not saying that psychology isn't useful; mereley that it does not meet the basic qualifications necessary to be categorized as a science.

Seriously? Movies and TV shows get produced on budget on time??? You could have fooled me...

http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-29/entertainment/ca-29112_1_films-waterworld-schedule

Parent specifically references Waterworld as a production that went over budget and schedule.

http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-29/entertainment/ca-29112_1_films-waterworld-schedule

Any artistic endeavor is going to have trouble with schedule and budget, because you are never quite sure where you are going to end up. You can make artistic compromises to bring in dates and lower budget, but the outcome is usually not worth the trouble.

From the following newspaper article: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-atomic-clock-stability-nist-20130822,0,6785801.story

The ytterbium optical lattice clocks at the [ NIST ], achieved a so-called stability of one part in 10^18. In plain English, that means that "if a clock had been running since the Big Bang, by now it would only be off by one second,” said Vladan Vuletic, a physicist at MIT who was not involved in the work.

[these clocks] could help industry build GPS systems that can rapidly pinpoint locations with sub-centimeter-scale precision.

In addition, I heard a report on NPR that said researchers studying Einstein's theory of general relativity could make use of this clock to more precisely measure how time is different depending on the surrounding gravitational force - over a change in altitude of 1 inch.

Story about the arrest.

Note they claim his video ignited muslim protests, when in fact it was a coordinated attack on embassies including Benghazi...

His video had nothing to do with it, but he made a great scapegoat for the embarrassed state department. Now that we know it was terrorists and not a protest, he's out of prison. How odd.

There are laws and rules that require publicly traded companies to maximize stockholder profit.

No no no no!

It's not really true. It's not completely false to talk about the need of public companies to take into consideration , but there are significant problems with the argument most of the time you see someone trot out that line. Shareholder wealth maximization is a consideration, but is by far need not be be-all, end-all goal from a legal perspective. This is particularly true in this scenario of 20% time, because if the board thought that 20% time was a good thing to have from the company's perspective, they would be completely allowed to implement it.

"While the duty to maximize shareholder value may be a useful shorthand for a corporate manager to think about how to act on a day to day basis, this is not legally required or enforceable. The only constraint on board decision making is a pair of duties â" the âoeduty of careâ and the âoeduty of loyalty.â The duty of care requires boards to be well informed and to make deliberate decisions after careful consideration of the issues. Importantly, board members are entitled to rely on experts and corporate officers for their information, can easily comply with duty of care obligations by spending shareholder money on lawyers and process, and, in any event, are routinely indemnified against damages for any breaches of this duty. The duty of loyalty self evidently requires board members to put the interests of the corporation ahead of their own personal interest."

"But if shareholder value thinking is counterproductive, how did it become so prevalent? Non-experts often assume the approach is rooted in law, and that public companies are legally required to maximize profits and shareholder returns. This is pure myth. Thanks to a legal doctrine called the business judgment rule, corporate directors who refrain from using corporate funds to line their own pockets remain legally free to pursue almost any other objective, including providing secure jobs to employees, quality products for consumers and research and tax revenues to benefit society."

"[Dodge vs. Ford Motor Company] is frequently cited as support for the idea that "corporate law requires boards of directors to maximize shareholder wealth." The following articles attempt to refute that interpretation. ... In that context, the Dodge decision is viewed as a mixed result for both sides of the dispute. Ford was denied the ability to arbitrarily undermine the profitability of the firm, and thereby eliminate future dividends. Under the upheld business judgment rule, however, Ford was given considerable leeway via control of his board about what investments he could make. That left him with considerable influence over dividends, but not as complete control as he wished."

"Many of us have heard that corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder value. Guess what, they are not. The law in the United States does not require management to maximize shareholder value (except under rare circumstances such as when the company gets put up for sale). This may surprise you because you've also probably also heard that shareholders own the corporation. That's not true either."

And finally, to make things ever more interesting:

"In case law speak, judicial commentary articulating an opinion and not decisive to the case is known as "dicta" and is not binding in the court of law. The comments that have made Dodge v. Ford the si