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Analysts and industry experts point to a number of reasons. Primarily, they say, Apple’s deep pockets — a staggering $60 billion in cash reserves — have allowed it to form strategic partnerships with other companies to buy large supplies of components, for example, expensive flash memory. By doing this, the company probably secures a lower price from suppliers, ensuring a lower manufacturing cost.

At the same time, they say, Apple has sidestepped high licensing fees for other items it needs, like the A4 and A5 processors within the iPads. Those parts, designed in-house at Apple by a company that Apple bought, are among the costlier components needed to make a tablet computer.

NYTimes

Paul Krugman actually made the same joke when he posted a preview of his column topic in his blog:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/falling-demand-for-brains/

I'm not saying they should make the same amount of money as a laborer, what I am saying is that the difference shouldn't be as high as it is. That much money should not be concentrated in the hands of so few. We are not a banana republic.

Wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=2&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

We have a more unequal distribution of wealth than any other banana republic before us, including Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana. We are officially a Banana Republic. The only thing missing is the bananas.

Somebody has already created DNA from scratch and placed it into a cell. So they are pretty close to doing this already. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html?_r=1/URL

Apple crackdown on sexy apps last year.
and yet Playboy and Sports Illustrated Swimwear were allowed to carry on?

Don't tell me they aren't paying for it 30% of app's sales is paying for it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/technology/23apps.html

Sounds like whoring your authority to me...

While this is not my area of expertise I actually know of an example. Several years ago when jet fuel prices skyrocketed and all the airlines started charging fees on everything to stay afloat Southwest Airlines didn't even raise their fares because they had hedged long term fuel oil at ~$50 barrel. At the time they set up the hedge the median price was much lower so it meant they were paying more than any of the other airlines for their fuel but it also meant that when the price shot up to >$90 barrel they were still paying ~$50.

It's amazing that even after so much corruption in government has been exposed, the common man simply brushes it off and reverts to blindly trusting authority. If that doesn't illustrate the power of indoctrination, I don't know what does.

Right, because it's that much of a black and white issue. Either release everything, or release nothing. What was done, was irresponsible. Is there not a difference between releasing SOME information, and dumping so much stuff that people are put in harms way? The NY Times Magazine did a long , including talks about things they refused to do, including some interesting tidbits, such as:

• Prior to the current release, WikiLeaks was most famous for footage of US helicopters firing on a crowd in Baghdad in 2007. All for a release like that, until you hear this: "But in its zeal to make the video a work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version that didn’t call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric “Collateral Murder.”"
• The Times also "Guided by reporters with extensive experience in the field, we redacted the names of ordinary citizens, local officials, activists, academics and others who had spoken to American soldiers or diplomats. We edited out any details that might reveal ongoing intelligence-gathering operations, military tactics or locations of material that could be used to fashion terrorist weapons."
• That the Times ended up with a poor relationship with WikiLeaks, ultimately losing access to early release of data, after Assange was made that "we declined to link our online coverage of the War Logs to the WikiLeaks Web site, a decision we made because we feared — rightly, as it turned out — that its trove would contain the names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets."

• The article (fascinating, really) goes on to talk about the Times eventually being in touch with the government, and agreeing to withhold certain documents that were mentioning too many specific details of ongoing operations, and disagreeing and publishing others that they felt were not endangering any lives. But throughout it all, the Obama administration was apparently not trying to strong arm the Times, and the article specifically cites: "The Obama White House, while strongly condemning WikiLeaks for making the documents public, did not seek an injunction to halt publication. There was no Oval Office lecture. On the contrary, in our discussions before publication of our articles, White House officials, while challenging some of the conclusions we drew from the material, thanked us for handling the documents with care. The secretaries of state and defense and the attorney general resisted the opportunity for a crowd-pleasing orgy of press bashing. There has been no serious official talk — unless you count an ambiguous hint by Senator Joseph Lieberman — of pursuing news organizations in the courts. Though the release of these documents was certainly embarrassing, the relevant government agencies actually engaged with us in an attempt to prevent the release of material genuinely damaging to innocent individuals or to the national interest."
  
  So yeah, I think one soldier releasing hundreds of thousands of documents without any care to do so solely with a moral purpose, and taking care not to release things that are flat out dangerous, and giving them to a guy who just wanted to bulk publish EVERYTHING regardless of content is not only illegal, but also not morally defensible.

How hard would it be to find the number of suicides in the US, the number of people in the US, the number of people in China and then (the only hard one) number of suicides by Foxconn employees?

Turns out not hard at all. Foxconn = 400,000 employees, with 12 suicide attempts. US suicide rate is 11 per 100,000.

Google is hard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07suicide.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/21/science/sci-suicide21

Foxconn employees live on the premises in worker dorms. The suicides prompted the company to outsource the dorms.

Then corporations finagled life in perpetuity from governments, and the long slide into unchecked power began. In 1886, a landmark Supreme Court ruling deemed corporations "artificial persons" with nearly all the rights due a natural person. With that, they won the right to lobby the government and twist our system to their sociopathic ends.

Now here we are after more than 200 years of this experiment in democracy, watching corporations not only lie, cheat, steal, kill, and corrupt with impunity, but subvert our government so thoroughly that it no longer matters which political party holds power; and now they are preparing to sweep away the last vestigial check on their abuses by sidestepping public shareholders and stock markets in favor of private equity where they are beholden to no one but themselves and their buddies in other mega corporations.

The body politic must wake up soon and correct this, or we will definitely arrive at a very dark place as fast as unfettered avarice can take us. Stripping corporations of the right to lobby and live in perpetuity would be a very significant first step. Applying anti-trust legislation ("Trust" was the previous term for cartels and monopolies) to break up the "too big to fail" companies would be an excellent follow-up. But whatever is done, it must be across the board, with no loopholes, or we will find ourselves back in the same place in a fortnight.

I know Wikipedia is considered the final word around here, but I suggest reading something a little more in-depth -- a lot more quotes from the horse's mouth:

NY Times Magazine article -- It's very long but well worth reading. Many insights from one of 20th century's greatest minds.

I was amazed that NY Times would print something so heretical to the church of Algore, but maybe the Magazine division hasn't been completely taken over by fanatics yet.

We just know that when some truly great technology comes around, it is usually because of some inventor in his basement

And that basement will never be able to compete against entrenched established industry. If anything, they just buy out the inventor and put the 'invention' on a shelf. See the auto industry for legion examples like seat belts that were *forced* on them by the government. The market certainly wasn't clamoring for them.

as if they should be ashamed for trying to make a buck

the ones that *don't* sell out usually are trying to help the people. The ones that do it only for the money, you never hear much about because they are bought off.

The fist one to finds something that, to the end consumer costs 50% less to go a mile, will win

You mean like the first *private* industry that discovered nuclear energy production? oh yeah that was the federal government.

We know exactly what is in hydrofracking fluid. And, before any drilling company moved into our area, we were informed that it would be best if we had our water tested by a 3rd party (our choice). They do this not because they think something will happen, but because people's water supplies already have contaminants, and they don't want them coming with a pack of lawyers later on to blame them.

Do you see your straw man argument here? If we *knew* what was in the fluid we wouldn't be able to claim that something wasn't in the fluid is now contaminating my water. The legal argument is fair and probably a standard issue, but it also admits they know that fracking is capable of causing just such types of contamination. this seems to indicate fluid contents are *not* known. Haliburton fights disclosing it's fracking fluid contents

we've vilified nuclear energy as Chernobyl waiting to happen when it is in reality a very clean alternative to coal (save for waste disposal, which presents other issues but doesn't have to be a problem if stored properly - we will eventually find a way for conversion to something safer).

You are one of the rare few nuclear proponents that acknowledge the waste issue. Nuclear is as clean CO2 wise as coal is nuclear radiation wise. Each has outputs that have to be dealt with and that has a cost.

You claim that conservatives have only been *painted* in a bad light on environmental issues and renewable energy. Except you don't provide a single example showing what they are in favor of except 'letting the markets' and big business decide.

We can't put every business on the chopping block at the first cry of foul play. We should also be careful to differentiate between hype, hysteria, and the facts. And there is a difference between negligence and honest mistakes - these businesses stand to suffer a great deal for any of their mistakes. It just so happens that a lot rides on these types of businesses

That was exactly the PR spin BP used in the Gulf, while claiming that the flow rate was a measly few thousand barrels a day. Except they knew it was above 50 thousand barrels an hour. Or the faulty blowout preventor they *knew* had problems. Or replacing the drilling mud with water against the engineers advice. Or their 'cleanup' plan to protect the WALRUSES in the Gulf. How many 'honest' mistakes before we decide the industry isn't exactly working in our best interests? BP is a great example. HUNDREDS of violations compared with 10s of violations for the other major companies combined in just a few years.

I'm a little saddened to see all the negative comments aimed at the *victim*. What did he do wrong? He trusted someone. Apparently, that's so idiotic and inconceivable that it makes him the one who's at fault. What's next? Blaming rape victims for not bringing pepper spray on a blind date? What happened to blaming the perpetrator? The lesson here appears to be, if you're capable of scamming people online, then you deserve the money and your victims are morons. I guess the study that was written about in NY Times last year wasn't far off the mark.

China, India, and another 1billion people in other counties will not control themselves in the short term

And why then, is China the leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels? linky

You're an idiot of the finest order though :)

New York Times good enough?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/world/africa/26iht-iran.html

CNN International work?

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/26/ahmadinejad/

Washington Post?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/27/AR2005102702221.html

How about the BBC?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4384264.stm

Now what the fuck were you saying again?

As a company, I didn't have to get a notarized paper, I only had to provide a scanned company registration, just like with Apple. Approval time was 2 days I think.

As a company, I think you stand in a very different platform than the writer of the article. As an individual, it does seem a bit hostile to go through such a process. It did cross my mind that his point may be mute as a company, but also, as a company, a lot of programmers would still develop for the platform because they were told to do so (for the exception of one man companies that the IRS considers illegal, you will have to hire a janitor or something to work around the 1 employee rule and not face any retaliation.) The single hobbyist programmer, though, is very important for these markets, and RIM is indeed making it hard for them.

As for "scammers", I'd say their app approval process should be the one handling that, just the way Apple does.

Yes, there was torture by the CIA in Guatemala... 20 years ago. If you've got stories of newer stuff, link those. GGP is clearly talking about Guantanamo, for a variety of reasons. I'm pretty sure there weren't a whole lot of Muslims involved in the Guatemalan civil war, Dubya hadn't even gotten into politics at that point, and the story he is referring to in the original comment is Guantánamo Detainee Release Blocked by Appeals Court

Nope, that never happens...

Sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere reflects sunlight. This is a known fact.
Volcanoes spew sulfur dioxide. Large eruptions cause it to reach the stratosphere. This is also a known fact.
The effect of global cooling caused by sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere has been measured and reported in numerous science journals.
http://terra.nasa.gov/FactSheets/Aerosols/ http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/VolcWeather/description_volcanoes_and_weather.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/opinion/24caldiera.html?_r=1

This is another example of whackos in government run amok. Why not let consumers decide what to buy and for what purpose?

Actually, its another example of politicians (and their monied backers) distorting the truth for political gain. Incandescent bulbs are not being banned.

The law requires all general-purpose light bulbs that produce 310-2600 lumens of light be 30% more energy efficient than circa 2007 incandescent bulbs by 2014. Incandescents are fine if they are more efficient and even back in 2009 plenty of improved incandescents were available. I'm sure even cheaper bulbs are now on store shelves.

During the winter I leave a small 40 watt bulb on in my well house to prevent the pipes from freezing...it gives out enough heat and it's perfect for that application. Now I will have to get a space heater causing me to burn even more electricity even when turned on the lowest setting.

Well, you are using a bulb as a heater - bulbs are intended to produce light. But instead of being stupid about it and wasting all that money on a heater, how about just buying a socket that takes two 20 watt bulbs and use those instead? Everything under 40 watts is exempt from the new efficiency requirements. Or you could just buy a new 60 watt bulb and use that - 20 more watts will cost you what? like $10 more a year for the same heat output.

From TFA:

Specially trained customs officers would be authorized to screen the alleged smugglers.

We can't count on actual medical personnel to be trained properly with regard to x-ray exposure levels...

As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

This is a very, very cogent point - one I was hoping someone would make. University educated professionals operating FDA approved devices have dosed patients with multiple Grays of radiation during a single instance of a well studied medical diagnostic procedure. Somehow we're trusting Billy Bob and Rayquan with similar equipment that hasn't undergone any FDA oversight at all? And now we've got even more powerful imaging equipment scanning our soft tissue? Which way to the freedom patdown line?

From TFA:

Specially trained customs officers would be authorized to screen the alleged smugglers.

We can't count on actual medical personnel to be trained properly with regard to x-ray exposure levels...

As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

This is a very, very cogent point - one I was hoping someone would make. University educated professionals operating FDA approved devices have dosed patients with multiple Grays of radiation during a single instance of a well studied medical diagnostic procedure. Somehow we're trusting Billy Bob and Rayquan with similar equipment that hasn't undergone any FDA oversight at all? And now we've got even more powerful imaging equipment scanning our soft tissue? Which way to the freedom patdown line?

From TFA:

Specially trained customs officers would be authorized to screen the alleged smugglers.

We can't count on actual medical personnel to be trained properly with regard to x-ray exposure levels...

As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

This is a very, very cogent point - one I was hoping someone would make. University educated professionals operating FDA approved devices have dosed patients with multiple Grays of radiation during a single instance of a well studied medical diagnostic procedure. Somehow we're trusting Billy Bob and Rayquan with similar equipment that hasn't undergone any FDA oversight at all? And now we've got even more powerful imaging equipment scanning our soft tissue? Which way to the freedom patdown line?

From TFA:

Specially trained customs officers would be authorized to screen the alleged smugglers.

We can't count on actual medical personnel to be trained properly with regard to x-ray exposure levels...

As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

This is a very, very cogent point - one I was hoping someone would make. University educated professionals operating FDA approved devices have dosed patients with multiple Grays of radiation during a single instance of a well studied medical diagnostic procedure. Somehow we're trusting Billy Bob and Rayquan with similar equipment that hasn't undergone any FDA oversight at all? And now we've got even more powerful imaging equipment scanning our soft tissue? Which way to the freedom patdown line?

Specially trained customs officers would be authorized to screen the alleged smugglers.

We can't count on actual medical personnel to be trained properly with regard to x-ray exposure levels...

As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag
After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks
A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing
Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

Specially trained customs officers would be authorized to screen the alleged smugglers.

We can't count on actual medical personnel to be trained properly with regard to x-ray exposure levels...

As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag
After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks
A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing
Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

Specially trained customs officers would be authorized to screen the alleged smugglers.

We can't count on actual medical personnel to be trained properly with regard to x-ray exposure levels...

As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag
After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks
A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing
Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

Specially trained customs officers would be authorized to screen the alleged smugglers.

We can't count on actual medical personnel to be trained properly with regard to x-ray exposure levels...

As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag
After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks
A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing
Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

Like they claimed launching four missiles in this faked photo back in 2008?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html

That's how the budget is spent. NASA, if it were a square on here, would be relatively small. With a budget of $17 Billion, it would be a little smaller than "Border and Transportation Security Directorate Activities".

Also check "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci" by Jonathan D. Spence and "The Art of Memory" by Frances A. Yates.

How is that raising the question? The governor has visibly demonstrated a desire to destroy unions and punish those unions that sided against him. You may have missed it but a prankster recently called the governor pretending to be a billionaire Koch brother. They made large donations to Mr. Walker, in return, Republicans just changed the law making it legal to sell off public utilities without any bids, so they can basically give away all infrastructure to the Koch brothers. Wisconsin has single party consent recording, so the prankster recorded his conversation with the governor. It was very educational. The governor is not only intent on crushing unions, he believes himself to be part of a group of people who were elected specifically to do that very thing.

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/politics&id=7975464

Let me tell you about my friend Dean, who works in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, and has for decades. He complained to management about this fellow "Phil" who had been doing some pretty disgusting stuff, but Phil was the manager's nephew. Well, Dean reported him to the union and the union got that bastard fired. Unions do not act as your fantasy anecdote suggests, sorry to burst your bubble, but we have far more problems with cronyism than with unions protecting undeserving workers. I've yet to see a single documented case of a union protecting someone who was undeserving of protection. I am guessing you will not present such evidence, just as I'm guessing your friend "Phil" isn't real.

Looking up "rubber rooms" as you suggest shows they are not so nefarious, but serve a vital purpose. Teachers accused of wrongdoing should be removed from classrooms, but not fired until such wrongdoing can be proved. That is what these "rubber rooms" are for. However, the policy was always a matter decided on by each state board of education, and is being phased out in most places: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html , yeah that is from last year.

In closing, may I suggest that if you are not being paid to spread propaganda for the ultra-wealthy, you should look into it. I hear they have hired tens of thousands of bloggers and writers to parrot the opinions of the ultra-wealthy to the public, making it seem as though there is grass roots support for said opinions. I hear it is quite lucrative, and if you already hold those same opinions, you wouldn't even be compromising any beliefs.

Can't believe I'm defending the Host, but they're now owned by AOL, not the other way around. She's now basically doing PR for AOL, so if AOL is evil she's at worst the spokeswoman of evil. At least she's got the accent for it.

Hardly news... Sotherby's first sold a bunch of Russan space hardware (including several space suits) in New York back in 1993,

[reference] http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F0061EF93A5A0C718DDDAB0994DB494D81

I guess Iceland's made its peace with geological instability (one would think you'd have to, by definition), but other geothermal efforts around the world are being halted or seriously delayed because of earthquakes they are believed to have caused:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/science/earth/11basel.html

"Traditional" geothermal wells are those drilled into a geological formation that has water in "porous" formation(s) which allow extraction and re-injection to occur. The field is able to produce and sustain a natural flow of water through the formation under geologic pressure eg. Iceland, New Zealand, The Geysers CA. etc
There is a development in recent years in countries that are not endowed with an abundance of geothermal producing zones to drill a well down to a non-porous hot zone, propagate fractures in the non-porous formations with high pressure, use seismic sensoring to track the direction of the fracturing and drill a second well to complete a loop for cold water to go down, heat up and return to surface. It is this experimental technique with the high pressure fracturing that has been blamed for seismic activity post drilling.
Just don't want the traditional sustainable geothermal to get hit with FUD regarding the Hot Rock Swap

I guess Iceland's made its peace with geological instability (one would think you'd have to, by definition), but other geothermal efforts around the world are being halted or seriously delayed because of earthquakes they are believed to have caused:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/science/earth/11basel.html

You are not safer even when they are not necessarily ignorant.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/05/us/judge-drops-charges-of-delivering-drugs-to-an-unborn-baby.html
Replace the word 'cocaine' with 'alcohol', and this looks ridiculous. Same guy. Goes for BS cases he can't win.

Maybe they could use an approach such as this: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/using-lasers-to-zap-mosquitoes/

50-100 mosquitoes shot down per second.

They're here to serve us, not the other way around. History shows that when you give the FBI increased investigative powers, those powers are used not to prevent the next 9/11 or OKC bombing, but to spy on dangerous subversives as Martin Luther King and John Lennon.

With power should come responsibility, or at least accountability. The FBI has shown neither.

The birth rate thing is changing now, but that's an accurate assessment of how things were, hence the disproportionate skew towards youth in the current Middle East. Making education available for women may be the thing most responsible for the general political stability in the West.

With an initial capitalization via Kickstarter (instead of VC or stock exchange).

With an initial capitalization via Kickstarter (instead of VC or stock exchange).

Overall, wind is often more expensive (and has to be subsidised as a result), at least per unit of electricity generated, than oil/gas at current prices.

Oil/gas is only "cheaper" because current pricing of oil/gas/coal does not account for it's externalities.

For example, a recent study puts the unaccounted for price of coal in the US somewhere between $140-$242 billion dollars a year.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/tallying-coals-hidden-cost/?partner=rss&emc=rss
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05890.x/full

If these costs (in effect subsidies) were paid for, wind (and other renewables) would be very cost competitive with coal without any additional subsidies.

As it is, subsides for renewable energy just help level the playing field.

The NYTimes link in the summary is to an older story about this. Here is the correct link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?sq=egypt%20internet&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=all

NYT put up a thing where you can play against Watson. Thankfully, you don't need to buzz in.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/16/magazine/watson-trivia-game.html?ref=science

I ended up with a -25.

Wires. That requires an external provider, either a private monopoly or the government. And of course that lets them tap the wire.

You might be able to get around that by using encryption (if that's legal in your country and if the encryption is easy enough to use). But encryption isn't going to help you communicate if your government pulls the kill switch on the internet, as Egypt's dictatorship did on Jan. 28. Moglen's talk was on Feb. 5, so you'd think he'd mention that, but he never mentions Egypt once in the whole talk. It could easily happen in the U.S.

His DNA sequence will also be fairly close to any ethnic group to which he belongs.

Thanks to DNA sequencing, it is known that Jewish women of Central and Eastern European origin have a higher than normal risk of getting breast cancer.

Should every one's right to information be limited by whatever group feels their "privacy" rights are more important?

take it from a less merit worthy program. You've already got nearly $700B tax payer dollars. If you'd like some suggestions how about starting here:

• Git'mo $118M
• nukes $29.12B
• Foreign military financing $4.5B+

On a related topic, the NYT has an article about how the Mubarak regime exploited Internet's weaknesses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html