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Whether Apple is actually guilty of anything or not, Amazon's tactics weren't exactly nice either. In exchange for US paying less, someone else was EARNING less. That's the only way it could possibly work. I'm pretty sure Amazon isn't dumb enough to screw themselves out of money, so the publishers and authors were the ones that took the hit.

Actually, Amazon WAS selling below costs on certain books. See, they were willing to eat the loss in order to own the market - probably setting themselves up as a monopoly - who knows? But yeah, the publishers still got the amount they wanted - it wasn't hurting the authors (at that point). http://www.portfolio.com/companies-executives/2012/04/12/amazon-lowers-ebook-prices-in-wake-of-price-fixing-lawsuit-against-rivals

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

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

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

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2264505/goatse-security-claims-gaping?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+LatestUpdatesFromVnunetcom+%2528Latest+updates+from+VNUNET.COM%2529


And does this bring anything to mind ? http://assets.portfolio.com/images/reuters/2010-06-10/net-us-att-fbi.jpg

Might be better for little Timmy to plan on being a televangelist instead of a climatologist

There's definately more money in it.

Joel feels our pain and has made himself wealthy (reportedly earning $13 million for his last book advance alone) and his church prosperous ($75 million and counting in annual revenue) by urging us to let go of it, to turn it over to God, to accept God’s favor so that we may be as prosperous as Joe

Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/07/16/Megachurch-Preacher-Joel-Osteen#ixzz0qrDeHFqK

what is he going to do? Jack up the subscription price hoping that'll help?

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YES.
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2007
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YES.
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2008
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YES.
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Note: I really hate this sites commenting system. If I log in, I get booted to the main page and lose my current comment.
And If I don't I can cleanly format my comment.

UGH

Google is your friend. The figures quoted in that article don't completely bear out the original claim (the very rich give a higher percentage of their incomes than the averagely wealthy), but the poorest do indeed seem to give more than anyone else.

Welcome, Comrades! Welcome to the Glorious Union of Soviet Capitalist Republics!

Here's another article which chronicles the recent failure of the self-appointed "Masters of the Universe".

I am amazed this is even in dispute.

As much as blind faith in religous systems is mocked on slashdot, you would think blind faith in economic systems would be discouraged as well.

So why did Obama keep on so many of Bush's economic team? Geithner for example got a promotion from Goldman-Sachs to Bush's TARP administrator to Obama's Treasury Secretary. I'd suggest that there are not quite as many differences between the two parties as many on both sides like to pretend there are. Both are in favor of crony capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism Your (and since you're just repeating the party line here your party's) attempts to place blame on a fantasy deregulation straw man are... unconvincing to those who do more than accept your play on class warfare chords. Both sides are to blame for allowing so many unproductive ventures to survive for so long on the backs of the productive members of society. One of my favorite pieces on the framework for the current crisis (over last 30 years) is this one: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom

The author of TFA Felix Salmon is a good read. If you're into finance or economic happenings check out his blog Market Movers at portfolio.com

I've had him on my feed list for a few years through various sites he's been at.

--Q

Emphasis mine.

"At that point, Facebook offered Twitter around $100 million in cash, with the rest of the deal in stock. Facebook said it would come up with the $100 million by selling more of its stock to outside investors. Twitter agreed on one condition: that the Facebook stock it received be valued at the price company shares garnered on the open market. Facebook blinked and the deal talks ended. "They wanted to buy us but there was not much conviction," the person says."

"Analytics Web site Compete shows Twitter has 6 million unique users, up from around 800,000 last year. Yet Twitter doesn't generate any revenue, despite its surge in popularity."

And finally the best quote of all from Portfolio's interview with Twitter's CEO:

I can't imagine how many times you've been asked, "But how will you make money?"
We will make money, and I can't say exactly how, because we can't predict exactly what's going to work.

spite the abuses and errors in the system I think that the people at the top are being paid fairly because they're not just 'running the company', they're taking all of the risk as well. If something goes badly, typically your CEO gets fired.

Except CEOs don't normally get 'fired' in the sense that most other employees are fired. According to this article on Portfolio.com, unless the CEO actually violates a law or policy of the company most contracts mandate the same level of severance benefits as if they left voluntarily. Since poor business choices and incompetence aren't illegal, even if a CEO screws up big, but in a legitimate manner, they won't be penalized because their contract prevents it! Where is risk they have for being innovative or 'daring' leaders?

In contrast, most US professionals being fired for incompetence means out the door by the end of the day, with only one last paycheck. They normally don't get a severance package at all in that case. I'm not arguing that the rank and file of the corporate world should be protected in the same way. Instead I'm pointing out that if you believe the current CEO salaries are justified on the actual personal risk, you are basing it on a false premise.

"which convinced most of the group that they were expert economists, bankers, politicians"

Based on what I've seen of our "expert" economists, bankers and politicians I am convinced that almost anyone with a functioning brain and some minimal ethics could surpass them in every way so this tendency on the part of this group is understandable. In particular there seems to be a litany of Harvard and Yale grads, who went on to get Harvard MBA's who appear to be running the U.S. economy and political system who seem to be completely incompetent. One wonders if either those Ivy league institutions are completely bankrupt as educators, or more likely they have turned in to diploma mills for the spawn of the "establishment" or if anyone whose parents have big enough check book. Or maybe Ivy league universities just can't teach ethics or Business 101. They seem to be giving MBA's that open the doors to power and wealth to complete idiots. George W. Bush being the supreme example of someone who has a Harvard MBA and nearly single handedly destroyed the U.S. through sheer incompetence and ignorance.

Reference the parting shot from Andrew Lehde a state university educated hedge fund manager who clean up betting against the Ivy leaguers on mortgage backed securities.

Here you go:

The average GM assembly-line worker makes about $28 per hour in wages, and I can assure you that GM is not paying $42 an hour in health insurance and pension plan contributions. Rather, the $70 per hour figure (or $73 an hour, or whatever) is a ridiculous number obtained by adding up GM's total labor, health, and pension costs, and then dividing by the total number of hours worked. In other words, it includes all the healthcare and retirement costs of retired workers.

If you thank that says a lot about him, what does defending Chiquita, which paid some $1.7 million to death squads in Columbia (death squads which just happened to play nice, be pro-business, and just target Leftists and unionists), say about him?

The illusion of competence evaporates rather quickly while reading things like this.

Actually, it was over-regulation that broke the US banking industry

Utter utter BS. As Michael Lewis notes :

'There weren't enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors' appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman's bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn't create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league's stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all."They weren't satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn't afford," Eisman says. "They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That's why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that's when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?"'

I think this chart does a better job of illustrating the top marginal tax rate. It covers from 1913 to the present. It was over 79% from 1936-1963 and jumped to over 90% from 1944-1963.

"Perhaps when our lazy government gets off of its backside and does something about the exploitation of our citizens by outrageous fuel and power prices and mortgages designed by Satan"

You're absolutely right - European governments (not sure which you're in.. Turkey or The Netherlands?), really should do something about those fuel prices!
http://www.portfolio.com/interactive-features/2008/08/Gas-Prices-Around-the-World

meh.

on-topic: copyright terms are too long, copyright claims are largely abusive (but then bittorrent usage is largely 'abusive'), but copyright still has a right to exist. If nothing else, because otherwise everybody will take the GPL and run with it (breach of the license makes it default back to copyright law, no?) - and if that's what 'we' wanted, we'd use the BSD-style licenses, eh. Or, perhaps, because otherwise vendors can just take artists' imagery, use them for no compensation, and claim that they should be glad for the extra exposure or something.

They are 2 different companies. This is actually a pretty good read Worth the time.

1st point: Wanted: Writers for D.C. tech lobby group, secrecy mandatory
2nd point: Comcast acknowledges that it hired people to take up room at an F.C.C. hearing into its practices.

If you consider leaving, now is a good time. Yes, the rest of the world is expensive because the Dollar is on its way to becoming toy money. That makes your leave an especially strong statement: "I'll start with much less money in my new country but I don't care as long as I get out of here."

Actually two months ago was the good time to leave. As of last month, it's officially too late.

The expatriation tax, courtesy of Charles Rangel (D) and signed into law by Bush (R), under the Orwellian-named "HEROES" Act and on the even more Orwellian-appropriate Fourth of July, imposes a very heavy tax on anyone leaving.

Rangel tried four times to get this tax passed into law in 2007, and he finally got his way. The financial door's already been closed off. The only way out now requires that you pay tax as if you'd cashed in your entire IRA/401(k) and sold your house the day before you left.

Cash-strapped failed states imposing capital controls to keep their citizens from taking their money and running. Surprise, surprise.

In your first few sentences you're arguing that Google does not sell their information. I would really love to know how you know that. Let me guess, Google said they are not selling the information, correct? Did you know that Google, nor any other company for that matter, is somehow contractually obligated to tell you the truth. Google is held responsible to nobody but their stockholders and only the controlling stock holders at that. And even if Google does not sell the information, what makes you think that one day they won't turn around and start selling it. All it would take is a little down turn in the economy and maybe a 10% loss in the google stock to make google rethink their oh-so-kind ways. There is certainly no law stopping them from doing it, and it would make a lot of money for their shareholders!

As far as the technicalities are concerned, I said that I realize why the do it the way that do it, and I much prefer it to the 301's that yahoo uses in their methods. I am not technically naive my any measure, and that's also why I won't disable cookies in an attempt to 'block' google. Google has so much information about your computer that blocking a cookie would do nothing, disabling JS may help a bit, but your IP address, user agent string, referrer and time are always available no matter what you do, and with JS enabled there are enough variables in about your computer (screen resolution, time zone, IP, user agent) that are readily available to any site you go to, it might as well be a sessionID on a cookie.

As for anyone who shuts off JS and cookies, you still give out your IP, user agent, OS, CPU, compression types etc, almost enough to construct a unique ID, and if you have a DB that has good track of everyone else, google can easily piece together the puzzle using the process of elimination. I don't want to disable JS, there is a reason JS is included in all browsers: so you can execute JS! With JS off, well, you can't use JS which is a really bad thing if you're into the web, especially web2.0 which is almost 100% JS. And I won't turn off cookies for the same reason, it's a tool web sites use to perform innocent tasks, such as tracking what items you added to your cart, or if you're logged on to a secure area, without cookies you're going to have a more difficult time using the net than with cookies. Just because someone abuses cookies by tracking you across sites is no reason to quite using them.

I think googles information gathering could be best analogized by having some huge agency that stuck a guy with a video camera on every corner in an attempt to see where everyone is going. Of course it's legal to do that, but once you start analyzing the information, and you start tracking when people leave a building and when people go to work and go to the store, you're skirting the law in regards to an individual's right to privacy. And that's not so far from what google has already done.

I don't see things getting better. Craigslist auction anyone?

You do know that eBay owns a stake in Craigslist of over 20% of outstanding shares? Craigslist will not get you away from eBay.

According to countrywide he got .5 off his rate because he was a US Senator. He knowingly accepted the VIP designation then tried to claim he thought it meant nothing? He serves and has served on various boards which have some power over this industry? Perhaps his party affiliation is saving him. I bet it is.

Read up on it, http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/06/12/Countrywide-Loan-Scandal

By lowering his rate they effectively handed him $60,000. In other words, Congressmen don't play by our rules. Their ability to regulate the industry means they intimidate without having to lift a finger. Considering his role in this bill and the fact he takes money from Countrywide for his reelection makes the whole thing stink.

and people wonder why crap like this little transaction law slips in. These guys are always slipping stuff in and out trying to avoid our knowledge of what they really do.

Dodd is a crook. He is a liar. He was simply caught and now is trying hide from it.

According to company documents and emails, the V.I.P.'s received better deals than those available to ordinary borrowers. Home-loan customers can reduce their interest rates by paying âoepointsââ"one point equals 1 percent of the loanâ(TM)s value. For V.I.P.'s, Countrywide often waived at least half a point and eliminated fees amounting to hundreds of dollars for underwriting, processing and document preparation. If interest rates fell while a V.I.P. loan was pending, Countrywide provided a free âoefloat-downâ to the lower rate, eschewing its usual charge of half a point. Some V.I.P.'s who bought or refinanced investment properties were often given the lower interest rate associated with primary residences.

Unfortunately, we are afflicted with the most corrupt military-industrial-political oligarchy the world has ever known. Need evidence? Read this before you post your standard ignorant redneck knee-jerk responses, or instinctively mod this to "Troll":

The Pentagon's $1 Trillion Problem

A choice excerpt (for those of you unaccustomed to RTFA):

In 2000, the inspector general told Congress that his auditors stopped counting after finding $2.3 trillion in unsupported entries made to force financial data to agree.

I challenge anyone and everyone to post credible data showing that there has been at any time in human history a state which has "lost track of" a greater amount of its citizens wealth. And yet, the morons continue to vote for the thieves.

The Pentagon runs some old COBOL code to track accounts and money. Logically. Article here.

The US DoD has a system, called MOCAS ("MECHANIZATION OF CONTRACT ADMINISTRATION SERVICES") that was originally brought on-line in 1958.

I'm not too familiar with it, so I don't know if the code has ever been changed -- I suspect the hardware has been updated periodically, probably various IBM mainframes -- but based on my experience with government systems there is probably a fair bit of original code in there that nobody understands anymore, and thus doesn't touch.

There is very little information about the system online; here is an Internet Archive page about it, that's as close to an 'official site' as I can find.

Judging from the photo, it's not a very demanding job.

I'm in the neighborhood, and wouldn't have minded getting paid to stop by for a nap, although preferably not on Camo Dude's shoulder. And I'd have happily complained about RCN for free!

They have seen how MediaDefender has made huge profits out of the rabid desire of the music industry & hollywood to stop the perceived 'theft' of music and movies to illeagal downloads particulary torrents through technological techniques.

AT&T see themselves in excellent position to tap into this market through traffic monitoring and MediaDefender's recent stock crash after leaked emails reveal they were pwned by a bunch of high school kids http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-stock-plunges-due-to-leaked-emails-071222/ and http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/01/14/Media-Defenders-Profile?print=true couldn't have come at a better time

This a big and growing market and one of its major players just took a nosedive, the market share is up for grabs.

I can't see big music & hollywood coming to their senses about the whole thing anytime soon so the 'fight' will go on and the likes of AT&T will be there to profit and drive the market.

So if you've got no morals and an idea for a good algorithm or counter-pirate technique give AT&T a ring...