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here. Looks like I was wrong with the 40%, that looks more like 60%. There's a quarterly loss of 300 million USD, that would be a billion over a year if it stayed constant. Not sure how much they really lost, the billions figure was just something I read in comments on a forum.

Late Thursday, the company reported that its net losses grew in the second fiscal quarter thanks to a sharp rise in expenses. Revenue also climbed, thanks to strong sales of video-game titles such as "Madden NFL," "Spore" and "Rock Band 2."

So revenue is up, sales are up but the company is bleeding money like mad. Seems this whole talk about next generation games costing too much to be profitable has something to it.

By the way, there is $350 billion in securitized student loans, and now they're having trouble.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/yahoo-plays-catch-up-offshore-tax/story.aspx?guid=%7BB54D432E-20D4-47B3-B7E9-204593E9E00D%7D&dist=msr_2

Long Story Short: MS & Google both have offshore tax dodges setup, so they end up paying around 24% tax rates, while Yahoo pays around 40%. Yahoo wants to join the offshore tax dodgers, but the IRS recently decided to crack down on the practice.

This isn't in the article, but IIRC, Obama has already made it clear that he's going to close such loopholes in the tax code, which will translate to higher taxes on corporations and more revenue for the Treasury Dept. (let's not have the discussion on whether this is a good or bad thing for business and the country)

Acorn is accused of:

* registering false names
* registering people (like the starting lineup of the dallas cowboys) in multiple places
* voter fraud in florida

CNN has covered this multiple times, in allegaionst about fraud in pennsylvania and nevada, and admissions about fraud in ohio

And since you don't seem to understand how voter fraud works: People are supposed to get exactly one vote. Only living, real people, who (to simplify) are citizens of the location in which they live are supposed to vote, and only in the place where they live. Dead people are not allowed to vote. Imaginary people are not allowed to vote. People are not allowed to vote multiple times. You can only vote (in many places) if you register to vote, some time in advance of the election.

Now, imagine that some organization, we'll call them WALNUT, comes along, and registers lots of dead people, and lots of imaginary people, and lots of living real people in multiple places (such as registering Bob Barker in Las Vegas, Boston, and Las Angeles). Come election day, this same organization (or a conspiratorial organization) uses these false registrations to enter votes. This allows the organization's members to vote once for themselves, and once for each additional registration. If enough false votes are submitted, this can tip an election. When an election is close (As some polls indicate that this one will be) a smaller number of fraudulent votes can tip the election. This can cause the person who was not the choice of the electorate (as determined per the election process, according to the rules) to become the elected.

Of course, you could be just a little shite who doesn't care about free, valid elections, and would rather minimize a very real issue, than to fix whatever problems that occur. If that's the case, then you can go suck it.

Am I reading the data from the Congressional Budget Office wrong? Look at 2007, for example: the chart lists an "On-Budget" deficit of $342.2 billion, a Social Security surplus of $186.5 billion, a Postal Service deficit of $5.1 billion, and a "Total" deficit of 160.7. No year (up to 2007) had a "On-Budget" deficit of greater than $600 billion.

You're completely right, I was adding in my head and getting 700bn when in fact it's "only" in the 500-600bn range. Which is, of course, completely insane. (Maybe the discrepancy between total debt and deficit is due to interest payments?)

In any case, my original point is that the total numbers are high and not well reported. It's frustratingly common to see news reports cite "on-budget" deficits as the real measure. Here's just one example I found in 30 seconds of Googling:

Excluding off-budget items such as the Social Security Trust Fund, the on-budget deficit rose to $437.7 billion so far this year, compared with $264.7 billion a year ago.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/budget-deficit-soars-rebate-payments/story.aspx?guid=%7B7DC4F7B8-CEB2-4D30-AF91-43EE5BC5E3B2%7D

Senior citizens tend to have high voter turnout. There is a strong obligation to pay back Social Security. The last attempt to privatize Social Security failed. Obama is likely to win the election. He appears to be against cutting benefits and instead favors imposing new Social Security taxes on those making over $250 thousand per year.

I'd like to agree with you on this. In fact, I'm 70% confident you're right. However, I'm not complacent about it. First, imagine the consequences of another 10-20 years of mismanagement. Then imagine a popular politician pushing the idea that in the face of such financial problems Social Security should be "means-tested"--- essentially becoming a program that benefits the non-rich. Then imagine the threshold of "non-rich" gradually slipping downwards due to poor yearly increases, until it becomes a program for the poor. At that point it will have lost a lot of public support and becomes vulnerable to cuts, particularly if we're faced with a choice between reducing SS and cutting, say, education spending. I think that's the long-term recipe for eliminating Social Security, and you can be someone somewhere is planning the whole thing.

Rolls Royce, IIRC, has emerged from bankruptcy at least once. Pulling up the market cap on Hyundai Motor corp. was a bit tricky, since they're a Korean company and don't trade on the US exchange. They appear to have a market cap of roughly $10 Billion. Rolls Royce Motor cars now exists only as a subsidiary of BMW. They were sold for £430m, although that isn't the whole story, since the company was actually split up after a long and troubled past that even included being nationalized by the British government. BMW licensed the artwork necessary to make their car look like a Rolls-Royce--for £40m.

So. I pulled these 5 vs 50% figure out of my posterior. It's actually quite close after you adjust for inflation, exchange rates, and the fact that the markets are down lately.

I don't disagree with you about the mentality of luxury buyers. It's just that it's always a smaller market; just not as small as I thought. The 5 vs. 50 figure was unjust "piling on" because I thought the disparity was HUGE. I should have simply said, "which company would you rather own", since that's the real decision that an entrepreneur is faced with--a similar proportion of ownership in one type of company or another. In that case, it's no contest. It's $10 billion vs. 500 million + inflation and exchange from pounds to dollars. The CEO of Hyundai can probably park a years worth of Rolls Royce production in his driveway, if he is so inclined. Oh... please don't make me check the facts on that one; it might be wrong. I'm just being colorful at this point.

Both trade names have associations outside of automobiles. Hyundai, IIRC, manufactures all kinds of things and is probably one of the largest employers in South Korea, IIRC. At any rate, comparisons between the automotive division associated with one trade name, and the diversified holding company (or other companies in different lines of business carrying the same trade name), are not going to be fair.

Since nobody (including TFA) has thusfar linked to the official information page on Microsoft's site...

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/antipiracy/default.mspx

Microsoft has a 6-minute video you can watch in "Zune-quality" WMV or "Broadcast-quality" MPEG.

Thanks to MarketWatch for actually linking to the original source.

Even better, this article. More tech specs.

The repubs want to pay the same morons who got themselves into this mess $17k/hr of government money, because heaven forbid someone who is rich actually have to take responsibility for anything bad.

I don't know, who the "repubs" want to pay, but the Democrats' intentions are certainly "less than honorable". Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama are the two-highest beneficiaries of the Fannie and Freddie lobbying efforts — despite the vast accounting irregularities of both monsters.

If you are looking for "morons", they aren't on Wall Street. Some of those people may be arrogant assholes, but "morons" they aren't. The morons are people, who bought houses they had no way of affording without reading the fine print. It is impossible for any democrat (and I don't mean the political party here, but anybody associating with the Demos rather than Optimates) to blame the "ordinary people", so they blame the bankers and mortgage brokers to help unqualified people get mortgages. That the "victims" who got the mortgages are morons is not explicitly stated...

The vicious irony of it all is that Fannie and Freddi were both created for the same purpose — to give mortgages to people, who were otherwise unqualified to receive them. But that was a Democratic effort (New Deal — woo-hoo!), and we can't blame them in the newspapers, can we?

Do you honestly believe that mark to market is the main culprit in the crisis?

The main? Not sure. One of the main? Definitely. Notice, how the banks like BofA and JPM are sitting pretty — and were even in a position to buy the failing investment banks (Bear Stearns went to JPMorgan earlier this year, Merill Lynch — to BofA last week). They have the same "toxic" securities. But they don't have to account for them in the same way — they are allowed to use certain financial models to come up with a price for the paper the are holding, rather than being forced to price it at today's market prices... In a normal (liquid) market there is little difference. In one spooked (even temporarily) by mortgage-related panic — it is a difference between life and death. Because if nobody wants that paper today (even though its issuer is solvent, and continues to pay dividends, etc.), then, under the "mark to market" requirements, the paper is worth zero and you have no collateral. You lose your credit ratings (automatically). And then, immediately, your counterparties are seizing whatever other collateral you may have put up to guarantee deals, and, whooops, your (ex-)employees are carrying out their stuff out of your (ex-)offices...

Perhaps, the main culprit were Freddie and Fannie. Created to address a "market inefficiency" — no sane banker would risk giving their own money to anyone, who managed (in this blessed country!) to stay too poor to have any money for a downpayment — they grew up into two disasters. Here is one, somewhat partisan, opinion. You may disagree with person, but some of the facts there (the main beneficiaries of their lobbying efforts, and their accounting irregularities ) are indisputable.

In fact, the tearing down of the barrier between commercial banking and investment banking allowed multiple conflicts of interest in investment banks, now also involved in brokerage and insurance and other areas.

These are empty words — and a spin. Here they are restated, spun just as convincingly in the opposite direction: "In fact, the tearing down of the barriers between different financial activities allowed for greater efficiency and the benefits of the economy of scale, thus allowing better-tailored financial products to be offered to clients at lower fees."

And my spin above is closer to truth than yours. Because yours is similar to arguing against air-travel using air-crashes as an example. Yes, an air-plane can crash — in particular, if it touches the ground however slightly during flight. But it can bring passengers much further, much faster, and for much less, than any previously known method of transportation. This is little consolation, when you picking up bodies from the wreckage, but remains an objective truth.

called.

VMWare's corporate owner decided to turn it into a conforming, completely not distinct, part of their bureacracy, and the founder/CEO of VMWare quit ( or Was Gotten Rid Of ), for insisting that VMWare required focus, management devoted to *its* function and survival in *its* market...

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/emc-sacks-vmware-ceo-takes

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/vmware-shares-hit-competition-executive/story.aspx?guid={07369773-A431-4E60-9BE7-BFEE779EFD32}&dist=TQP_Mod_mktwN

Notice that competition is heating up ( Microsoft is committed to eradicating 'em ), and their overlord is committed to preventing them from having the autonomy to survive...

One thing that is consistent: if a company has focus on what it's doing, it can endure.

If it hasn't, because it does too many things, in too many directions, its profitability dies, then it starts doing the slash and burn style of management, then customer support goes to hell, then the spend time and resources taking their chunk of the market down with them.

( anyone here remember the cost of going with Caldera? )

Ah, not VBox, but VirtualBOX, I think.

Last I checked, Two Scoops was still in production after ten years, and the margins terrible. In contrast, computer equipment moves rapidly. This is most apparent in chip fabrication, but also in final computer assembly. The fact is, you can't spend the time wringing out production efficiencies in a product with a 3 year life span. Especially when assembly is such a small part of the cost anyways, it just doesn't make sense to focus on that rather than reducing part costs.

Coase's theorem is the relevant economic concept, about when firms choose to hire employees (do it themselves) versus go to the market. And there are ton of contract manufacturers driving prices down. By letting these guys focus on the cost of operating their plants (which plenty run several of), Dell can focus on financing and marketing and pricing features you and I want, rather than pursue slim improvements in margins that are the staple of commodity manufacturing.

The truth is, Dell pursued production too much, at the expense of margins. By selling off the factories, they can move the balance between share of sales and prices much faster. Just order less and let the contract manufacturer deal with what to do with the downtime.

Chrysler August U.S. sales drop 34% to 110,235 vehicles
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/chrysler-august-us-sales-drop/story.aspx?guid=%7BBE03025C-D889-46E5-BB78-07C727F4519E%7D&dist=msr_1

I don't know if there are any additional updates, but as of yesterday, Best Western is disputing the extent of the breach, saying it only affected some guests at one hotel, not millions. FWIW, link only for reference, got no dog in this fight, beyond this: stop giving out your important info, then it can't be stored or "lost" for whatever reason. Just say no to store clerks or utility clerks "demanding" your SSN. If you freely give away your data without putting up a squawk, don't be surprised if it isn't "your" data any more, because you just gave it away. As to computer security, there isn't any, people should just recognize that. At *best* there are some attempts at computer security. In the US, the only legal entities that can demand your SSN are state and federal authorities for various reasons, tax, getting a drivers license or professional license, etc., and they must state a reason, banks and brokerages, and employers AFTER you have been hired. Anyone else can ask for it, but you aren't required to give it out. They can possibly refuse you the service then, but that's a crapshoot. Usually when I get asked outside of the legal requirements I retort and demand to see their customer indemnification policy in writing if they suffer a data breach and my data gets compromised. That shuts them up, because they don't have one, at least I have never run into one with any utility or service or store. Just keep going upstream over the clerks or first manager's head, keep asking to see the same written guarantee that you will get paid something if they suffer a loss. They've always caved for me at that point, I get the service.

Best Western claims that it was a single hotel, and that they purge older data when it's not needed.

Of course, as it's been so widely reported, the chances of people believing anything other than the worst case scenario is unlikely, as how many blogs are going to post a 'oh, nevermind, I was wrong' article? (and the newspapers would hide it somewhere on page 24)

Details here mention Cox rolling it out in Arizona,
but it is here as well with Cox.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/cox-arizona-has-increased-speeds/story.aspx?guid={252044FA-B424-46B0-83A1-9848D796CF12}

Hmmm, I haven't seen anyone else post this yet so here is a response from BW:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/best-western-responds-sunday-herald/story.aspx?guid=%7BA87F9682-AC67-4803-A135-B6ACF42C0956%7D&dist=hppr

The Sunday Herald reporter brought to our attention the possible compromise of a select portion of data at a single hotel; we investigated immediately and provided commentary.

It just could be a damage control response, but I'd say they have bigger problems on their hands if they denied it and it ended up that the original article was accurate.

Vista hasn't failed in the home and SOHO markets: Top Operating System Share Trend In these - global - webstats Vista is the only OS showing any significant growth at all.

See, a kid using Windows XP in high school will encounter Windows XP applications in ten or fifteen years.

He will most likely be using apps that will be recognizable descendants of those first published for the Mac OS in 1984 and Win 3.1 in 1992 and Win 95 in 1995.

Microsoft Office Ultimate for full-time students in the U.S. is $60:

Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office Access 2007, Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, Office OneNote 2007, Office Groove 2007 and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007

The apps might in the cloud.

But I'll take the odds that the office of 2019 or 2025 isn't going to look all that different from the office of 2008.

______

Net Applications isn't tracking licenses - it is tracking users:

160 million hits to its clients's websites each moth

Additional estimates about the website population:

76% participate in pay per click programs to drive traffic to their sites
# 43% are commerce sites
# 18% are corporate sites
# 10% are content sites
# 29% classify themselves as other (includes gov, org, search engine marketers etc..) About Our Market Share Statistics

Wait until the guards get a look at at this event.
Imagine the terror of 5,500 instilled by photographers - oh the humanity.....

The link in TFS didn't work for me (they may have fixed it by now), but here's the marketwatch article and BigBlue's press release.
Oh, and uh, WOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Chemical Society President Praises House Passage of Higher Education Act

The president of the American Chemical Society today praised Congress as well as a coalition of science, business and education organizations for their work leading to House passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act which supports STEM education.
ACS President Bruce Bursten, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville said the final bill showed Congress understands the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education programs to America's future.
"As both president of the world's largest scientific society and a university faculty member and dean, I am grateful for the bill's emphasis on improving the rigor of teacher-education programs in science and math, and the priority it places on providing incentives to encourage students to obtain STEM degrees and pursue STEM-related careers. I am especially pleased the bill takes actions to expand efforts to encourage diversity in the science and technology workforce by increasing the participation of underrepresented groups. On behalf of the more than 160,000 members of the American Chemical Society, I thank Congress for giving education policy the attention it deserves via this important bill."
In a letter to leaders of the Senate and House committees which guided the bill's passage, the American Chemical Society joined 13 other science, education, and business organization in praising the "outstanding bipartisan leadership" of Congress on this issue.

This is the story that will be reprinted by his campaign.

Senators serve six-year terms that are staggered so elections are held for a third of the seats (a class) every second year. United States Senate

The Senate is quite deliberately structured to filter out the background noise - so that it can focus on what is central and not peripheral.

The odds are quite good that you will out of school and have other things to think about before your Senator comes up for relection. Your threat is just so much hot air.

Free music in the dorms is never going to rank high on his list of priorites.

Since I am not responsible for the price of gasoline, absolutely nothing.

But you are. You use it, therefore you have taken your rightful place on the demand curve. Want to demand less? Drive a smaller car or drive less, just like a lot of other Americans are doing.

OK, let's not be a dumbass.

First, it's not just Americans that drive cars. Still, at best, I am 1/1,000,000,000th responsible. If I stop driving a car, the price of gas would not change at all. No one would even notice. Therefor, I am not responsible for gas prices. However, if Congress removes the moratorium on offshore drilling, then that would drop prices by what Democrats say is 3% (although, many say more, but we'll go with their number.)

Now, given that math above, you want to tell me how I am somehow more responsible for high gas prices than Congress.

But, either way, I've done my part. I drive a 4-cylinder car and my wife works from home now. It was a hell of a pay cut, but she did it. We also eliminated unnecessary trips, like taking my kids to see their grandma. It breaks that poor woman's heart, but we must protect the caribou in Alaska, right? They are so much more important than us mere humans. My family and I have done all we can, so get off our asses!

It's now Congress' turn to do their part. Instead, they went home. And here, asshats like you defend them and try to blame $4.00 gasoline in little ol' me. As if I am solely responsible for gas prices doubling in the past two years (Hey, wait a minute... Isn't that when the Democrats took control of Congress with the promise to do something about high energy prices? Yeah, it's all my fault.)

Since I am not responsible for the price of gasoline, absolutely nothing.

But you are. You use it, therefore you have taken your rightful place on the demand curve. Want to demand less? Drive a smaller car or drive less, just like a lot of other Americans are doing.

For myself, after hearing about some industrial metals showing signs of running out (i.e. zinc), I'm more interested in asteroid mining. And then there's solar power production. If there's some way of capturing raw solar and getting it down to earth in a usable form, I'm all for it.

Still, if it's possible to mine the moon for moon coal...

Though the iPod and iPhone are popular, there is no way Apple could survive on those products alone. Mac is their core business. If they lose their supremacy to cloners, they're sunk.

On what do you base this assumption? This article is old, but it shows an opposing point of view:

Leading the charge for Apple was its line of iPods, with the company shipping 21 million of the market-leading devices during the quarter, a 50% jump from a year ago. Sales of the device accounted for $3.43 billion of the company's revenue, or nearly half the total.

Apple's total number of iPod sales now stands at about 90 million units since the device first went on sale in October 2001.

"After five years, the iPod is still going strong," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research. "It's still a very popular product." Wu holds a buy rating on Apple's stock. The results show that demand for Apple's products remains strong despite stepped-up competition from rivals such as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT: Microsoft Corporation News, chart, profile, more Last: 27.26+1.10+4.20% 4:12pm 07/16/2008 Delayed quote data Add to portfolio Analyst Create alert Insider Discuss Financials Sponsored by: MSFT 27.26, +1.10, +4.2%) , which is pushing hard to boost its share of the digital entertainment market with a new handheld media player and other consumer products.

"The iPod sales were shocking," said Gene Munster, of Piper Jaffray. "And the earnings power of this company is reaching record levels."

Macintosh computer sales also surged, rising 40% to $2.4 billion, while Mac shipments rose 28% to 1.61 million units, more than double the growth of the overall PC market. The Mac results were a slightly below many analysts forecasts, as several had expected Apple to sell between 1.75 million and 1.8 million Macs during the quarter.

However, Munster, of Piper Jaffray, said the holiday-quarter Mac sales needed to be taken into context, and were actually solid because they remained almost in line with Apple's September quarter results, which is when Apple sees strong back-to-school PC sales.

"People give iPods for Christmas, not computers," Munster said.

It's quite obvious they want everyone to feel that regardless of the findings of a court, the defendant will have lost, and it's best to do as they say in the first place, regardless of guilt or innocence. RIAA doesn't care much about appearing to be in the right or anything anymore, they just want to induce fear, safe in the knowledge people will still fund the music industry as they way RIAA leads it.

Precisely. Which is why Dow Jones Market Watch compared them to the Mafia.

Wall Street Journal agree with you. To wit: "Sun's stock has underperformed for several years. It did bounce when Jonathan Schwartz was named CEO about two years ago, but his tenure has been a great disappointment, both for investors and employees. Sun has made several expensive acquisitions including buy-outs of MySQL and StorageTek. Sun's revenue remains flat and its operations swing between tiny profits and small losses. Sun's chief scientist and head of sales recently left the company. News from JAVA comes in the form of almost daily and not useful PR. The company has changed its ticker symbol and has done a reverse merger to move its share price into higher territory. Whatever chance Sun had to claim a major portion of the global server market is lost. IBM (IBM) and Dell (DELL) are in the final stages of beating Sun into the ground. Its bets on Solaris, Java, and open source software have failed. Sun's shares are off over 40% during the last year." http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid=%7B848284A8-5B7F-4A29-8AEF-A3F70E273CB4%7D&link=www.247wallst.com/2008/06/the-247-wall-st.html&dist=msr_2/

I really hope this isn't Sun's swan song.

In a statement, the White House strongly objected to provisions of the bill that would send $4 billion in aid to communities hard-hit by foreclosures, faulted other spending plans and changes in how regulators oversee housing programs.

"The federal government must not prolong necessary corrections in the housing market, bail out lenders, or subsidize irresponsible borrowing and lending," the White House said in a statement.

Whew...For a second, there, I was in danger of having my preconceived notions being shattered. What a relief!

It was clear that this was another one of those declarations that politicians love to slip in at the last minute hoping no one will notice becase the bill is hundreds of pages long. And what would be great about allowing the federal government to (again!) bail out greedy banks! In fact there's over 400 people in the lending industry being charged with mortgage related fraud!

[sarcasm]Wait a minute...bailing out big business...that can't be democrats supporting that. It must be the greedy, big business republicans. [/sarcasm]

What we need to get over is the myth that all democrats are for the "little guy" and all republicans are for big business interests. There are some trying to do the people's business, but unfortunately, most politicians of either party are in for themselves and how much lobbyists can pony up. Then they throw us a bone once and awhile to shut us up. Short of throwing them all out and instituting term limits, I think it's only going to get worse.

Yahoo shares slip on reports of search deal with Google

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/yahoo-reaches-search-deal-google/story.aspx?guid=%7B4FA6F062-5DB7-4705-8AD7-E179C777FA84%7D&dist=morenews

Wall Street may scramble to unwind bad bet on Yahoo

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/wall-street-may-scramble-unwind/story.aspx?guid=%7BA9AD455E-239C-4809-8E60-E1B004A91A10%7D&dist=hplatest

Yahoo shares slip on reports of search deal with Google

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/yahoo-reaches-search-deal-google/story.aspx?guid=%7B4FA6F062-5DB7-4705-8AD7-E179C777FA84%7D&dist=morenews

Wall Street may scramble to unwind bad bet on Yahoo

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/wall-street-may-scramble-unwind/story.aspx?guid=%7BA9AD455E-239C-4809-8E60-E1B004A91A10%7D&dist=hplatest

You're numbers are off. Inflation has been mis-reported for a couple decades now, no longer taking into account many cost-of-living expenses because they are "too unpredictable and fluctuating." Things like gas and food, to name a few.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-inflation-understated-due-trio/story.aspx?guid={DED8CC4C-8199-40E1-93F9-43A3C5E0F0D4}

This is one of the reasons why our inflation numbers seem so low compared to other countries, yet the value of our dollar is dropping. There are other reasons, of course.

You also have to look at the numbers in a per-person perspective. (per capita?) I'm curious if the numbers look similar, when you factor in population growth.

Actually, TWC left because they were swapping territory with Comcast while they divvied up Adelphia.

Yes, it's about oil. Check out 1998: PNAC Letter to Clinton: Remove Saddam ... vital interests in the Gulf. The people that wrote that letter ended up in the Bush administration and helped "architect" the war. Oil is important to the US economy and rather than invest in alternative energy and conservation, Bush and his cronies choose to invade a country that was no threat to the US.

It was about securing access to oil. It was a stupid idea that did not work and we will be paying for it the rest of our lives.

Actually most the money goes to the companies that extract the oil, they are suppose to get a sweat heart deal. See Western companies may get 75% of Iraqi oil profits:

As I said, the idea was to secure future access to oil because it's important to the US (and world) economy. The intent was not such much for cheap gas, but a continuing supply of oil and gasoline. Bush and friends have strong connections to the oil industry and they were more than happy to let them (not you, or Iraq) profit heavily.

Sure, buying from Novatech means you don't pay a Microsoft Tax, but for people in the US that means paying the dollar tax.

Icahn "misunderstands" Microsoft proposal

He said that despite a tough economic climate, Comcast has been able to raise average revenue per-customer to $107 from $96 over the past 12 months.

In this case, he is Chairman Brian Roberts. In other words, because there is almost none to zero competitors in most of the markets Comcast serves, they can get away with continually raising prices. That is why the U.S. continues to lag the world in broadband.

Yes, there is the whole issue of running fiber and cable long distances in the U.S. compared to other countries like South Korea and Japan, but when you look at places such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc, you see the same pattern. Only one, or if you're lucky maybe two, providers from which to choose your broadband service.

In my area, we have two choices; Comcast or Verizon. I can pay $100/month for Comcast's triple-play or I can pay $100/month for Verizon's triple-play. But I can't pay $33/month for just the broadband access or $33/month for just the cable subscription (I currently pay $53.31/month for the combined Basic and Standard cable service).

This is the overwhelming reason broadband penetration in the U.S. continues, and will continue, to lag behind the rest of the world. The only solution is, unfortunately, government interference. Force the providers to offer their lines to others based on the logic that it was taxpayers who helped to subsidize the laying of all the cable and fiber through tax breaks and such. Either the companies open their lines and allow competition or they have to pay back all the subsidies they got when they originally promised to bring broadband to the U.S. Ten years ago.

"-millions of people are getting their homes foreclosed"
As pointed out elsewhere in these threads, 1% of America's over 113,000,000 households are already in the foreclosure process. Mean household size is about 3 people. This crisis will last many more months, and get worse before it starts getting better. We're already at 3*113M, and those millions will grow.

"-millions more are always 6 weeks paychecks from losing their homes"

I'd say that the millions of Americans spending over half their income on housing would be homeless if they lost over 10% of their incomes.

"-income has shrunk over the past 25 years"

It's surprisingly hard to find year by year stats on "real income". But what I could find in documentation showed that during the 2000s, real income has shrunk. And that includes the incomes of people at the top, which has grown.

"-But that [bs stock price] high was built on a bubble inflated by money lent from the Fed (taxpayers)"

I'm not going to bother working up the stats for that one. The Bear Stearns stock price was based on its expected profits, like any stock. Those profits were derived from the real estate bubble, which was derived from the artifically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, both in the inflation of prices from the increased credit and from the more complex "instruments" (bets on increases) derived from them. That's why Bear Stearns was in danger of collapsing, when the credit dried up. If you need citations to explain that to you, you're not going to understand them.

"-Bear Stearns (and its shareholders, brokers and execs) raked in so many $BILLIONS over the past 10-20 years running the way that eventually ran out, that it was totally worth the price of doing business when its shares collapsed"

Bear Stearns hit the wall with a 61% profit drop at the end of last year, which cost it a few $billion at the end, its first loss in 83 years. Well, in just 2003Q4 the BS profits were over $288M, or over $1.15B in just one annualized year, fairly early in the bubble. As BS started to decline with the bubble that had sustained it, it's profit could still drop to over $361M, even though dropping by a third, still an annualized profit of about $1.5B - while declining. If you look at 7 years where its profits were well over $1.5B average a year, that's over $10B in profits. Even a possible $3B loss is worth it to make over $7B in net profit on it.

"-(much of which ultimately came from the Fed - taxpayers)"

The banks loan money retail that they get wholesale from the Federal Reserve, which is backed by the Federal government. Which is paid by taxpayers. The Federal Reserve loaned JP Morgan extra money to buy out Bear Stearns and prop it up.

"-since your [GP]lies (FYI, he posted 52wk high and low stock price.)"

I don't know what that challenge is supposed to mean. But Before I do any more work to cite the facts I offered, I want to see you accept them. Because I expect you wont. You want to find fault with my "presentation". What's really a problem for you is that you are all too happy to accept the good news about the economy, but the bad news shocks you too much. You want to dislike the messenger, and reject their message. Which makes you a completely typical American.

Which is why we're in such deep trouble.

I looked at Yahoo, Inc.; The time to position one's self was at the end of January. From an Investors position looking at the data, what is going on between Microsoft and Yahoo now is moot.

After looking at M$'s stock price from November to January, one has to ask, "What Mad Hatter's Tea Party is going at M$?" Also, the price difference between Microsoft, and Yahoo looks to be like a one-to-one exchange. I wonder what the SEC thinks of multi-billion dollar coincidences?

I looked at Yahoo, Inc.; The time to position one's self was at the end of January. From an Investors position looking at the data, what is going on between Microsoft and Yahoo now is moot.

After looking at M$'s stock price from November to January, one has to ask, "What Mad Hatter's Tea Party is going at M$?" Also, the price difference between Microsoft, and Yahoo looks to be like a one-to-one exchange. I wonder what the SEC thinks of multi-billion dollar coincidences?

Well, say what you want, but this happened during the Vista release - http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?D5=0&D3=0&D4=1&ViewType=0&Symbol=MSFT&ShowChtBt=Refresh+Chart&DateRangeForm=1&CE=0&C9=1&DisplayForm=1&ComparisonsForm=1&CP=0&PT=8 ...and profits have been boosted by Vista and Office - http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/microsoft-profit-boosted-vista-office/story.aspx?guid=%7B46D585CE-B7D5-4F18-A19F-7EA2202FC200%7D

"FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has cited the auction of 700-megahertz airwaves as a success, in part because of the added openness rules. Martin said recently that the commission has no specific mechanism in place to enforce the "open access" rules for the C block, which would compel Verizon to permit a range of unfamiliar devices and applications onto its valuable network. Martin said at a conference at Stanford University earlier this month that he is seeking input on possible enforcement mechanisms. "

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/fccs-martin-seeking-input-open/story.aspx?guid=%7B7CDF0743-55A5-4E9A-A0DC-47258720C154%7D

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/paulsons-lament-deregulation-has-been/story.aspx?guid=%7B4AEF15AC-3966-4656-8108-C96712A88D68%7D

When ISPs say that net neutrality will bring the network down, what they really mean is that they will be forced to actually admit that they've oversold their uplink, the poor performance really IS their network, not some anonymous "out on the net" problem and they won't be able to double dip by charging two parties full price for carrying the very same packet.

So true, and look at what these monopolistic pigs are doing with their earnings instead of improving infrastructure:

"Comcast Corp. saw its shares jump Thursday, rallying after the cable giant reported a 54% rise in fourth-quarter earnings on increased revenue from its broadband and digital telephone services, and declared its first dividend in nearly a decade."

source

Yeah, cuz they are really hurting right now and clearly have no cash available for network upgrades.

So, first there were two cables cut (Alexandria, Egypt and Marseille, France):
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31cable.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin
Then a third (link between UAE and Oman):
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2008/02/third-undersea-internet-cable-cut-in.html
Then a FOURTH cable (link between Suez and Sri Lanka)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid=%7B1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9%7D

Coincidence my a**!
Middle East is basically cut from Internet, and we can enjoy only the officially sanctioned news from the mainstream. If something BIG is about to happen (remember, Iran is in Middle East too), then we cannot know what actually happens there (unless you believe what you are told by officials... which I don't).

Look, their owning company's stock price hit almost 9 1/2 cents a share yesterday!

While I do not disagree with the article, it makes it sound as though MS is on its last foot. Quite the opposite is true as they just reported record earnings for the quarter.

How can an open source software company with $70 million or so in revenue and no profits to speak of be worth $1 billion?

This is where you have to think outside of the box. There are some who believe that Sun may simply be the pawn of Oracle. Oracle could not buy MySQL directly because of anti-trust issues etc.. Not to mention, Sun and Oracle have been "strategic partners" for a very long time. However, another company could purchase MySQL to kill it off.

I am not saying this is exactly what happend, but I do think the above author and Dvorak make some good points. Disclaimer: IANADF - I am not a Dvorak fan :)