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Who's side are we supposed to be on?

Anything that hurts Zynga, hurts facebook, as they reminded us over and over in the IPO filing. So, depends what you think of the Zuckerborg.

If it's a strawman, what is the hint that you said you were sending them? What Kjella said boils down to that you want all the benefits of the sites you like to be provided to you for free. That seems to be the case - if not, what message are you trying to send by visiting sites that cost money to provide and then blocking the ads?

A much better strawman is your penultimate paragraph:

People will provide content. The internet existed before its "monetization".

I'm sure people will provide content and that the internet existed before it carried adverts. Frankly, though, that's pretty irrelevant. I don't want the 1990s internet, I want the 2012 internet, and I don't just want random peoples' blogs I want videos, music and professional journalism, and whether you like it or not those things cost money.
It's good of you to recognise that YouTube differs "somewhat" from your website, but I don't think you realise quite how different it is. You can run a website for $10 a year as long as it doesn't do much and few people visit it. A popular website costs a little more. Estimates for YouTube's operating costs run to $700 million a year, including over $1m per month for bandwidth.
You may be inclined to claim that that is a ludicrous overestimate - but it isn't. Since they recently floated, Facebook's financial statements are in the public domain. Their prospectus lists their total expenses for 2011 at almost $2 billion dollars, including $388 million spent on R&D. To put it mildly, using your $10 website as a baseline for the modern internet is ridiculous.

I'll be blunt: I don't want your website - I want YouTube, I want Slashdot, I want quality journalism, I want music. Providing those costs money which either means people have to pay or they have to show adverts. If your vision is to replace that with the sort of content that can be provided for $10/year - no thanks. Almost every website that's cheap to run is cheap because it's bad and because nobody cares.

JPM, like all other big banks, are engaged in outright fraud. Like rigging municipal bonds, where the penalty was a just fine (ie - cost of doing business). Maybe even rigging LIBOR, where I bet the end result will just be another fine. The problem is, no one goes to jail since it is now official policy not to prosecute bank fraud.

Federal prosecutors officially adopted new guidelines about charging corporations with crimes — a softer approach that, longtime white-collar lawyers and former federal prosecutors say, helps explain the dearth of criminal cases despite a raft of inquiries into the financial crisis.

Though little noticed outside legal circles, the guidelines were welcomed by firms representing banks. The Justice Department’s directive, involving a process known as deferred prosecutions, signaled “an important step away from the more aggressive prosecutorial practices seen in some cases under their predecessors,” Sullivan & Cromwell, a prominent Wall Street law firm, told clients in a memo that September.

The guidelines left open a possibility other than guilty or not guilty, giving leniency often if companies investigated and reported their own wrongdoing. In return, the government could enter into agreements to delay or cancel the prosecution if the companies promised to change their behavior.

Its called a market order.

And from that link:

However, the price at which a market order will be executed is not guaranteed.

Ouch. I suggest reading up on the SEC's trade execution advice.

In particular, there is a "duty" for a broker to provide "best execution" of market orders. But frankly that regulation looks too complicated to be enforceable except in egregious cases.

There is no such brokerage when you're trading directly on the market as high frequency traders do.

Point taken. Its actually an algorithm that matches buy and sell orders placed on 'the book'.

And it's worth remembering that brokers are not obligated to give you the best price possible (unless law on that particular practice has changed since I first heard of it), but the price you asked for, if you asked for a price at all.

Its called a market order.

As I see it, you're lumping a bunch of different exploits under the label of "high frequency trade".

Specifically, what I'm objecting to is the practice of extracting 'book information' from the market by making a bunch of entries to probe for this information (which is not generally available to the trading public) and then canceling the orders. This cancellation could be implemented by simply dropping the network connection or utilizing an error handling process intended for correcting errors in placed orders. When no such error actually occurred. Both of these are fraud. But one would have to prove intent. Perhaps by obtaining a copy of the code and reverse engineering it.

Example: I place a market order to buy 100 shares of XYZ when there is a standing offer to sell at $2.00/share. But a HF trader continually probes the market and steps in to buy 100 shares at $2.00 and sell at $2.01 just before my order. So I get my shares at $2.01. A 'fair' trade would have sold those shares to the HF trader whether I put my order in or not. And if the market turned around and I changed my mind, the HF trader could get stuck with shares that would soon be worth perhaps $1.80. That's how the market works. This form of HFT is called 'front running'. When its done by market makers (traders with a duty to facilitate trades based on book knowledge), it ends up with prison sentences. Because market makers are strictly controlled by SEC regulations due to their advantage in possessing 'book information'. The fact that a third party is (fraudulently) obtaining this data doesn't make it right.

In my opinion, the markets have a fiduciary duty to me to protect my order information. Just because someone has bigger computers with faster network connections should not excuse them from doing so. But I'm afraid that the HFT payment for order flow is just too attractive and so they are motivated to look the other way.

No, I want $1000 dollars of FB. If that's 40 shares at the time I place the order and 20 shares at the time the order is processed 4 hours later because Nasdaq screws up, I get 40 shares and a bill for $2000.

Allow me to introduce you to the limit order. You want to buy $1000 of FB and your screen/broker/google-finance says that it's $25/share? Send your limit order for 40 shares @ $25. If the price jumps up (regardless of the reason) you won't get filled and you'll have to try again later, but at least you're not stuck with a mystery bill for your purchase. If you sent a market order for 40 shares... well... I hope it was a good learning experience.

No, I want $1000 dollars of FB. If that's 40 shares at the time I place the order and 20 shares at the time the order is processed 4 hours later because Nasdaq screws up, I get 40 shares and a bill for $2000.

Allow me to introduce you to the limit order. You want to buy $1000 of FB and your screen/broker/google-finance says that it's $25/share? Send your limit order for 40 shares @ $25. If the price jumps up (regardless of the reason) you won't get filled and you'll have to try again later, but at least you're not stuck with a mystery bill for your purchase. If you sent a market order for 40 shares... well... I hope it was a good learning experience.

They wrote down a turd whose asset value wasn't worth what they paid. Look at the cash flows. They continue to generate billions of cash.

SEC filing

Isn't this kind of fraud the realm of the SEC?

http://www.sec.gov/answers/sec31.htm

Facebook also filed an ammended S-1 with the SEC:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512222368/d287954ds1a.htm

That says right in it:

"Our business is subject to numerous risks described in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus. You should carefully consider these risks before making an investment. Some of these risks include: ... Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where our ability to monetize is unproven, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results; "

This was reported on by major financial news sources almost two weeks before the IPO:

http://blogs.ft.com/tech-blog/2012/05/facebook-admits-to-mobile-weakness/#axzz1viB00j8h
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-05-07/tech/31602869_1_zynga-facebook-linkedin

This information was freely available to anyone who was paying attention. They're trying to blame Facebook for their own failure to do even basic due dilligence.

Digging up dirt on a guy you want to see gone and then publicly posting it on the internet while posing as the good guy who's just fighting for the truth (as opposed to a shareholder with a personal stake in things) is worse in my book than lying about your college major after graduating decades ago and leading another tech company in the meantime.

I'd like to say I don't necessarily believe TFA's version of events, at least not without a second source corroborating it and Loeb getting a chance to have his say, but getting to the truth of this matter is so unimportant to me personally that I'm willing to just roll with it for the sake of discussion.

Man, in light of the above, I really need something to fill my time. I should get a boyfriend. Or a dog.

But they haven't been posing. They have always been crystal clear on what they want. If you read Third Point's press releases on this matter, you will see that they have never concealed the fact that they have a stake in the company and are trying to change the board. It is mentioned in every one. In fact, due to the size of their stake they had to make a formal public announcement to the SEC when they acquired it.

They published a public letter announcing their strategy to the board last September and copied in the SEC: SEC EDGAR

And I don't see what is inconsistent about being a good guy and wanting to turn around a failing company. Not everything that makes money is bad.

You don't have to be a shareholder. You can get their financials at the SEC's website.

Why borther with buying a share? Anything they send out to shareholders they also have to publish on SEC's Edger. It is a great little resource.

http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

Now, buy a share of Berkshire Hathaway. You can get the information off the SEC, but Buffett really knows how to put on a show.

"Don't worry, we'd expect a kook who advocates the use of hosts files to "block malware"" - by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23, @07:59AM (#39769305)

Hosts files work for that, because the majority of what malware makers use IS host-domain names (because they are recyclable, the RBN was notorious for it in fact).

Hosts files also get you speed back that you pay for, and far more (not just functioning for extra layered security).

QUESTION: How often do you see an IP address in the address bar in your webbrowsers, or in emails?? Perhaps 1/2 of 1% of the time, IF THAT???

When you do, doesn't that signal "warning" to you???? It ought to... & then, if they're bogus, add them to a firewall rules table. Pretty simple...

HOWEVER: Hosts files work vs. known bad hosts-domains, and they can do things firewalls & adblock can't, like:

---

1.) Speedup access to your fav. sites via hardcodes of your fav. sites & blocking adbanners

2.) Circumvent DNSBL's if unjust

3.) Get you past tracking like DNS request logs & other trackers online too!

---

Care to debate ANY of that?

---

"(and who's been known to write a little himself hmmm APK author of apkapp2backgrounddaemonprocessengine.exe?) " - by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23, @07:59AM (#39769305)

Which I had lowered to ZERO THREAT LEVELS @ Computer Associates by passing ALL 21 QUESTIONS FOR REMOVAL they had for that... they should have removed it period (it's not even scriptable for attack - no argv/argc commandline possibles in it either).

Computer Associates was found to be a pack of LITERAL CRIMINALS afterwards ('oddly', lol, not):

http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2004-134.htm

FOR ACCOUNTING FRAUD!

Addtionally?

Their security suite was sold off later as well, that's right...

E.G.-> A company I worked for full-time was using it & forced us to sell it in fact, but tore up emails left & right from customers, we removed it ourselves...

Any questions as to WHY IT WAS SOLD OFF by CA??

This has also happened on "false positives" to some other notables, like Nir Sofer of NIRSOFT, and even Dr. Mark Russinovich of Microsoft (psexec & other pstools being abused by malwares).

LATELY? I've proven 6 antivirus makers wrong yet again as well, & they have rescinded false positives for my new 'APK Hosts File Engine 5.0++:

(6 Major ones in Symantec/Norton, ClamAV, Arcabit/Arcavir, Comodo, McAfee, & yes, DrWeb).

So far?

---

1.) Arcabit/ArcaVir (found it was a "false positive")

2.) Symantec/Norton (found it was a "false positive")

3.) ClamAV (found it was a "false positive")

4.) COMODO (found it was a "false positive")

5.) McAfee (in process now w/ J. Walter/D. Meier @ McAfee)

6.) DrWeb (in process, bit of a language barrier to the Russians there)

Of 68 total antivirus scanners that found my program "ok"!

(ALL found it "ok" in the 64-bit model, but only those above 'flagged it' false postive, & ONLY in the 32-bit model - which I KNEW was wrong, because the code is literally 99.9% the same in both memory bounds compilations, differing only in resource strings that say "32-bit" vs. "64-bit" - this has happened to Nir Sofer of NIRSOFT as well & we discussed that much via email recently (and in the past))

---

Anyhow/anyways:

4/6 of those above so far have "retracted/recanted" their false positives on a program I wrote that another security community organization's hosting (malwarebytes/hpHosts) for me (very cool of them). The others (McAfee & DrWeb) are slow about it (McAfee, & I have a DIRECT CONTACT there name J. Walter &/or D. Meier)...

IF ANYONE DOUBTS THIS? CONTACT: malwarebytes/hpHosts site admin Mr. Steven Burn, a co

I provided links to people who admit to running multiple accounts

Ancedotal, and unverified. A handful of comments saying "oh yeah me and my friends totally have a bunch of accounts" is not evidence.

and I used to work at a place that ran multiple accounts as well, for "marketing purposes."

Also anecdotal, and speculation that such accounts make up even a significant fraction of Facebook's numbers. No attempt whatsoever is made to show just how many of Facebook's accounts are fake.

So no, I'm not wrong. You have provided no hard evidence for your claim at all.

Your claim was that "facebooks' user numbers are already grossly inflated". That means that you claimed that of Facebook's 845 million monthly active users, a significant fraction (which realistically would have to be at least 100 million at the bare minimum) are fake. Your links do not support this notion, because even with the anecdotes taken at face value you have only shown that that there are some fake accounts, not that there are anything on the order of the hundreds of millions of accounts that would be needed for the numbers to be "grossly" inflated. It is nobody's fault but your own that you chose to make an accusation on a scale you were not prepared to back up.

You chose to admit that you are talking out of your ass a second time, just as I said you would, and you will now repeat that choice again.

Well to put this in perspective, while Tropicana AC's (a.k.a "East") Net revenues was $279m, their operating income was only $2.3m after operating expenses are deducted.

So no, Tropicana AC's management definitely does feel a $6m hit. It's not a lot of money compared to consolidated net revenues of $623m. However, on a consolidated level, Tropicana entertainment had a net loss of $2.8m.

Bear in mind that Tropicana AC had also gone through a bankruptcy reorganization in March 2010.

A $6m hit still stings them considerably when margins run tight. Atlantic City in general has not been doing well over the past few years due to the recession. While house odds are in their favor, they're not wildly in their favor, so to make money they need lots of people playing a lot of lot of rounds. When attendance drops, their operating costs can't be cut as quickly, they do have unionized employees.

All of this information can be found on their latest 10-K: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1476246/000144530512000602/a20111231-10k.htm#s18F7C3BC4B5443E4BDFBC1717B852C6C

From their SEC filings on EDGAR.

http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

Pick a drug company and a year. Depending on which companies and which years you look at, both statements are true.

The relevent quote: "We generated 96% of our revenues in 2011 from our advertisers."

Also you can find this statistic in any of their SEC quarterly filings. This number is of course down from 99% a few years ago, but with the addition of thousands of projects in the same time period I don't think any are earning large returns.

I simply pointed out that someone who defines Google as an "ad network" is biased and no more rational than the guy he complained about.

Excerpts from Google's fiscal report for 2011 (emphasis mine):

We generate revenue primarily by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising. Businesses use our AdWords program to promote their products and services with targeted advertising. In addition, the third parties that comprise the Google Network use our AdSense program to deliver relevant ads that generate revenue and enhance the user experience.

We generate our revenues almost entirely from advertising, and the reduction in spending by or loss of advertisers could seriously harm our business.

How We Generate Revenue
Advertising revenues made up 97% of our revenues in 2009 and 96% of our revenues in 2010 and 2011. We derive most of our additional revenues from our enterprise products, as well as our display advertising management services to advertisers, ad agencies, and publishers.

Please explain how a corporation that consistently derives over 95% of their revenues from ad-related services is not an "ad network".

The funniest part of their filing is the motto at the very top of their connected globe:

"To make the world more open and connected"

Let's pretend we stand for the exact opposite of what we do and people will bite.

They filed the actuals http://sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001326801&owner=include&count=40 Revenues of 3 and something billion and profits of a billion in 2011.

It will be interesting to see audited numbers from Facebook. Look for deferred expenses, future revenue accrued in the present, and expenses being capitalized.

The classic is that AOL capitalized their free AOL disks, rather than treating them as a marketing expense in the current year. When the SEC caught them on that, they had to restate several years of financials, and it turned out they became profitable six years after they said they did.

Groupon had similar problems with accounting for marketing expenses. This is a classic issue (or scam) with dot-coms which threw money at getting market share.

And the SEC wonders why people keep doing this sort of thing. I bet those two guys (and many other not charged) walked away with millions.

According to the court filing:

Nagaicevs generated more than $850,000 in illegal profits from this scheme. His unauthorized trading in the hijacked accounts also caused losses in excess of $2 million which were reimbursed by the broker-dealer firms that carried the victimized customer accounts.

So how did the firms that the associates work for 'walk away with millions' when Nagaicevs got $850,000 and the total losses to the accounts was over $2 million? I'm guessing that since the firms that those associates worked for reimbursed those accounts that those two associates are facing some pretty upset employers. Is that really worth a couple hundred thousand?

It was really clear to me how he was precisely doing this for his own gain but here's a PDF of the 15 page court proceedings that goes into detail (section B is the informative part). Essentially within one single trading day he would establish a long or short position through one of the unregistered trading firms. Then in that day he would gain illegal access and, if he had to, sell securities to beef up the cash in the account and then make trades that would cause his long or short to payoff. Then he'd pull it all out from the original account. He would often complete this cycle in 15 to 20 minutes and, as a result, he'd often be responsible for more than 50% of that stock's trading volume for that day. It's interesting, they go in to the details of a GBX stock and how the price changes are 10 to 50 cents (on ~$10 per stock).

Google's effective corporate tax rate is ~19% [1]. You'll note this value is higher than the 2.4% quoted in the media. That's because the US corporate tax rate *is* paid on US revenue -- the very low rate is paid on foreign profits which are simply left overseas. This was described in the original Bloomberg article but lost on many of the reposts.

So unless your firemen or police are in Europe, you're crying over revenue that wasn't really "yours". If you are from the EU, if you want those taxes just fix your tax structure to close the loopholes.

[1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312511282235/d228523d10q.htm

Google's effective tax rate is 20%, as you can read in the 10-Q filing with the SEC:
    http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312511282235/d228523d10q.htm

The EU tax rate is 2.4% because the EU has policies that allow tax avoidance, and many companies take advantage of that. After all, when was the last time you paid more taxes than they were legally obligated to? If the EU wants more revenue of income earned there, they can change their policies. If you live in the EU complain to your government, not to the companies operating there.

Anyone living the US that expects a multinational to repatriate profits just so it can pay extra taxes is just engaging in wishful thinking. EU money is far better spent expanding European options (building datacenters nearer to load, local engineering centers, investing in EU companies, etc). How often would it be worth it to take a 35% hit and bring the money into the US?

Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act

Seconded.

impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets

You mean something like the SEC Section 31 fees? Right now the fee is $19.20 per $1M in stocks sold. If my math is correct, that amounts to 0.096 basis points per stock traded, or slightly less than 1/10 of your example. I don't know how the dynamics of the market would change with such a fee hike, but I can imagine that it wouldn't be ponies and butterflies like most people seem to suggest. Imposing fees with the express purpose of penalizing behavior sounds like a good way to deepen the entrenchment of the few super-profitable companies, who don't care because now they have less competition.

re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I'm guessing that you mean to reduce the impact that "shareholder interests" have on corporate decision-making. For that, sadly I think we all have to wait for a "changing of the guard" in the SCOTUS.

Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act

Seconded.

impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets

You mean something like the SEC Section 31 fees? Right now the fee is $19.20 per $1M in stocks sold. If my math is correct, that amounts to 0.096 basis points per stock traded, or slightly less than 1/10 of your example. I don't know how the dynamics of the market would change with such a fee hike, but I can imagine that it wouldn't be ponies and butterflies like most people seem to suggest. Imposing fees with the express purpose of penalizing behavior sounds like a good way to deepen the entrenchment of the few super-profitable companies, who don't care because now they have less competition.

re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I'm guessing that you mean to reduce the impact that "shareholder interests" have on corporate decision-making. For that, sadly I think we all have to wait for a "changing of the guard" in the SCOTUS.

.
For the six months ended June 30, 2010 and 2011, our revenue increased from $231.0 million to $522.0 million, our bookings increased from $373.0 million to $561.3 million, our net income decreased from $20.4 million to $18.1 million and our adjusted EBITDA decreased from $187.3 million to $177.3 million.

It looks like net income dropped 10% (to 90% of what it was), and EBITDA dropped by about 5%.

How that translates to a 90% loss in profits I'm not quite sure... Seems like it's a drop TO 90% of what it's profits were - a 10% reduction, not a 90% reduction.

Their "profit" in the first half of 2011 was a loss of $253 million...

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1490281/000104746911008207/a2205238zs-1a.htm#toc_ce79801_1

The "stockholders" consist of fund managers and traders who are simply engaged in gambling. They don't care about who runs the company, because they will likely be out of the stock by the end of the week.

You should review Yahoo's DEF-14A. Yes, the top three stockholders appeared to be funds. No, they're probably not trading it actively, because trying to buy or sell 90 million shares is guaranteed to move the price against you. Yes, they're interested in the company's chief officers, but probably only for quarterly profit, and not the long-term (decades and beyond) success of Yahoo!.

In the case of HFT operations, shares are held for milliseconds, with no human even knowing which companies were invested in.

You can bet your ass that every HFT operation knows YHOO; there is always a person behind the algorithm. And yes, there's probably a large share volume being traded by HFT algorithms and market makers. However, the total number shares owned by these organizations at "voting time" is probably next to nothing. You don't get voting rights just for having the stock passed through your hands: you actually have to hold onto it (at least for one day), which is antithetical to any form of day-trading.

The whole stock market and share system has become a den of rank iniquity. But people still believe in it, and still trust their life savings to it.

Someone who is entrusting their entire savings to the stock market is either (1) young, (2) stupid, or (3) isn't paying attention. For retirement investments, the stock market is advertised as high-risk/high-reward and is not suitable for lump-sum liquidation. I agree with you that too many Americans don't treat it this way, and this is a travesty. But please don't be bitter at the stock market for being the speculative arena that it always has been.

Bullshit. http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2009/2009-221.htm

There are two issues.

1) they may be cheating and many have reason think so.

There have been accusations that they find out about orders in advance. In this case when you sell your shares, they sell theirs first (pushing down the price) and then buy yours later (immediately taking your profit). There are even admitted cases (see this document from an HFT company) where this could happen without the HFT company even doing it deliberately, just because they have the advantage of ultra fast trading and your trade happens in an unlucky way which basically gives away information about the trade before it has been completely executed.

2) many think so

Your shares are worth what people think they are worth. If people believe the HFT companies are cheating then this causes the other people not to joint the market. The key currency of the stock market is trust and right now people don't trust it. This means your shares are worth less than they would be otherwise. Importantly, this means that companies can get less investment by putting out shares, so it means there is less money to be made from the stock market generally.

In other words; perception is reality; HFT damages perception, so HFT damages reality.

I'd think that the return on time savings is nonlinear. Once you get beat by your (closer in) competition, its not really worthwhile saving a few milliseconds to not get beat quite as badly.

Their money would be better spent on a co-location site. If this nonsense gets out of hand (everyone trying to get closer to the exchange servers), I think the SEC should extend the Fair Disclosure regulations to this issue. Dictate a minimum length of fiber optic cable between exchange and client data centers.

Does Zynga really use CloudStack? In its pre-IPO filing, Zynga says this:

Our technology infrastructure is critical to the performance of our games and to player satisfaction. Our games run on a complex distributed system, or what is commonly known as cloud computing. We own, operate and maintain elements of this system, but significant elements of this system are operated by third parties that we do not control and which would require significant time to replace. We expect this dependence on third parties to continue. In particular, a significant majority of our game traffic is hosted by Amazon Web Services, or AWS, which service uses multiple locations.

(emphasis mine)

As an individual investor you are welcome to find the companies you are willing to invest into and do so, or you are welcome to start your own company and invest into that.

As to saying that employees are treated like cattle... excuse me? Verizon has 194,400 employees with 45000 striking union employees, so are you saying that about 150,000 employees are treated like cattle in Verizon? From what I see is that the 45000 union members are getting a deal, that is much above what the normal market is providing for that the non-union 150K employees are getting.

If having to pay part of your own health insurance and pension plan is being treated like cattle, then what about all the people who are doing their own savings and are paying for their own health insurance, are they the worst cattle of all? I prefer to invest my own money and I prefer to buy my own health insurance, does this mean I am cattle? I believe that allowing yourself to be treated as a herd comes from one's unwillingness to be an individual, who takes care of his own investment and other needs.

Good salaries and benefits means happy employees who are proud of their job and do their duties well.

- well sure, but what does being part of a union have to do with that? Good salaries do not come from unions, they come from healthy market and sound economy, which is the opposite of what unions and government spending achieve.

It also means long-term loyalty and commitment from the workforce. It may not look as good on the quarterly statement, but it shows that company is considering longer perspective - the ones that chase numbers from quarter to quarter are the ones with stock that can fall just as rapidly as it rises.

- it's not about stock prices, it's about dividends actually (if you are an investor that is). If you are a speculator on the other hand, then you prefer volatility to stability, you make more money that way, but that's like gambling in a casino.

Unions absolutely do not help long term company prospects, this is clear from all the companies that had unions and went under or where unions had to go away.

Neither unions nor government spending help your investments. In fact both of those factors are absolutely detrimental to your investments, just look at GM and Chrysler and notice that it's not the companies were bailed out from their financial problems, but it was the union that was bailed out and the investors were left holding empty promises, as the value of their portfolio was obliterated in a microsecond by the government resolution.

The real solution to GM and Chrysler problems would have been bankruptcy and restructuring of the debt, the bond holders and other investors would not have been made whole, they would have taken a haircut of-course, but the companies would have survived, would have been bought out at fair market value and would have been restructured and would have been doing sound business at this point.

Instead the government didn't just give a haircut to bond holders, but it cut their heads off, handed the bill for this atrocity to the tax payers all that the unions would be made whole instead. Of-course the market now is in worse conditions thanks to all of that, as failures are bailed out, the legitimate businesses (like Ford and others) suffer this and also now are faced with the moral hazard. Ford may be forced into bankruptcy by the union demands, simply because the unions believe that gov't will bail them out and screw investors.

As an investor the best possible decision for your investments would be to stay out of any union shops and in general to stay out of USA market, which is completely discredited by the government monopoly agenda of printing and inflating money, borrowing and spending beyond any means and abilities to ever repay the debts, all of the wars and business regulations and taxes and monopoly

Not like the general search engine. No they don't. The reason is mostly due to how people use those apps. With the search engine you are looking for something and entering a term. This is a perfect time to evaluate your search term and then target specific ads to you. Google Docs, Gmail, Picasa, Android products are unable to be monetized as effectively as Google Search. It is pretty clear if you care to read the 10-Q or 10-K. But based on the tone of your previous comment I would say this is very unlikely so I included it for you.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312511032930/d10k.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312511199078/d10q.htm
http://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q2_google_earnings.html

Google's own statement in their last 10-K. "How We Generate Revenue

Advertising revenues made up 97% of our revenues in 2008 and 2009, and 96% of our revenues in 2010. We derive most of our additional revenues from offering display advertising management services to advertisers, ad agencies, and publishers, as well as licensing our enterprise products, search solutions, and web search technology.

In addition, in the past year we have also invested aggressively in our newer businesses—namely display, mobile, and enterprise—to lay the groundwork for future growth. We have also made strategic investments in critical product areas, like Android, Chrome, and Chrome OS—following our core philosophy of building open platforms with optionality, and creating infrastructure that allows everyone on the web to succeed. We also believe that an active acquisition program is an important element of our business strategy. During 2010, we invested $1.8 billion to acquire companies, products, services, and technologies.

Our business is primarily focused around the following key areas: search, advertising, operating systems and platforms, and enterprise. "

Not like the general search engine. No they don't. The reason is mostly due to how people use those apps. With the search engine you are looking for something and entering a term. This is a perfect time to evaluate your search term and then target specific ads to you. Google Docs, Gmail, Picasa, Android products are unable to be monetized as effectively as Google Search. It is pretty clear if you care to read the 10-Q or 10-K. But based on the tone of your previous comment I would say this is very unlikely so I included it for you.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312511032930/d10k.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312511199078/d10q.htm
http://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q2_google_earnings.html

Google's own statement in their last 10-K. "How We Generate Revenue

Advertising revenues made up 97% of our revenues in 2008 and 2009, and 96% of our revenues in 2010. We derive most of our additional revenues from offering display advertising management services to advertisers, ad agencies, and publishers, as well as licensing our enterprise products, search solutions, and web search technology.

In addition, in the past year we have also invested aggressively in our newer businesses—namely display, mobile, and enterprise—to lay the groundwork for future growth. We have also made strategic investments in critical product areas, like Android, Chrome, and Chrome OS—following our core philosophy of building open platforms with optionality, and creating infrastructure that allows everyone on the web to succeed. We also believe that an active acquisition program is an important element of our business strategy. During 2010, we invested $1.8 billion to acquire companies, products, services, and technologies.

Our business is primarily focused around the following key areas: search, advertising, operating systems and platforms, and enterprise. "

HFT is somewhat illegal, since it could be considered insider trading, since you have time to process information before it becomes available to other people thanks to a faster network infrastructure.

That is an incorrect definition of insider trading. Don't take my word for it, read the SEC definition of insider trading.

(money laundering and dope dealing going on with it)

You mean exactly like with the real, traditional, cold hard cash?

There are laws and procedures to prevent using traditional cash for such things. Go to your bank and deposit $50,000 in small bills. If you are not a retailer, expect trouble. That's exactly why Bitcoin is taking off like a rocket among criminals - payments are anonymous.

Yet another example is taxation. Imagine that I designed a gizmo for you, and you paid me 100 bitcoins for that. As a contractor, I should include this revenue into my estimated taxes. But what is the value of those bitcoins, and at what time do we calculate them? That would be similar to getting paid in Canadian dollars, Yens, etc.

Alternatively, we can treat them as a security transaction, as if you paid me for my work with 100 shares of a certain company. Perhaps that's how it should be treated. But the catch is that this security is not registered! Even then you have to pay the tax on it, at its current value - which can't be determined because there is no established market for it. Your own pet exchange in the basement, where you dial whatever prices you want, doesn't count - that's why securities laws exist.

But on top of that, why would I want to pay taxes if I can get away with it? The bitcoins are tied to a number of my "account" that nobody can associate with me.

Government-issued currency has fewer problems of this sort. In essence, by using it you submit to a certain level of monitoring, but in return you are given certainty. For most people it's a trade they don't even think twice about. I'm not concerned that the government knows that my paycheck cleared. I will report it in my tax papers anyway. But the guy who sells drugs to homicidal maniacs ought to be concerned. An ideal libertarian currency - like Bitcoin - produces the same effects that humans discovered over the course of thousands of years that we know currencies. Bitcoin will also repeat all the mistakes of earlier currencies that it can technically do, just because there are always people who benefit from doing so and people who are just sheep ready for fleecing.

A summary of the agreement is in the 10-Q here under '8. Microsoft Agreement': http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000101287000004766/0001012870-00-004766-0001.txt

If I understand correctly, it seems nvidia was concerned it wouldn't be able to deliver the chips that microsoft wanted in a timely manner. So microsoft paid $200 million up front, for anticipated chip purchases, with only the possibility of getting $100 million back if they decided to cancel (the rest would be converted into preferred stock). This would give nvidia $200 million to use to develop the chip, and they would only have to pay back $100 million if they couldn't. In exchange for the $200 million up front microsoft got the right of first and last refusal with respect to any offer for 30% or more of nvidia.

300-500 shareholders is the limit, depending. You're not automatically classified as a public company though. You simply have to meet different reporting requirements. From sec.gov:

Reporting obligations because of Securities Act registration

Once the staff declares your company's Securities Act registration statement effective, the Exchange Act requires you to file reports with the SEC. The obligation to file reports continues at least through the end of the fiscal year in which your registration statement becomes effective. After that, you are required to continue reporting unless you satisfy the following "thresholds," in which case your filing obligations are suspended:

your company has fewer than 300 shareholders of the class of securities offered; or
your company has fewer than 500 shareholders of the class of securities offered and less than $10 million in total assets for each of its last three fiscal years.
If your company is subject to the reporting requirements, it must file information with the SEC about:

its operations;
its officers, directors, and certain shareholders, including salary, various fringe benefits, and transactions between the company and management;
the financial condition of the business, including financial statements audited by an independent certified public accountant; and
its competitive position and material terms of contracts or lease agreements.
All of this information becomes publicly available when you file your reports with the SEC. As is true with Securities Act filings, small business issuers may choose to use small business alternative forms and Regulation S-B for registration and reporting under the Exchange Act.

http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/qasbsec.htm

Despite the suit, recent SEC filing suggest eveything pointing up:

        * Revenue skyrocketed from $55,189,000 in FY2010 to $137,764,000 in FY2011.
        * Advertising revenue rose from $50,147,000 in FY2010 to $119,333,000 in FY2011.
        * Subscription and "other" revenue increased from $5,042,000 in FY2010 to $18,431,000 in FY2011.
        * Despite rising content acquisition costs (up from $32,946,000 to $69,357,000 between FY2010 and 2011), Pandora's loss narrowed from $15,549,000 in FY2010 to $321,000 in FY2011.

Despite strong competition such as Sirius XM radio and even Apple to that regard, I wouldn't worry much.

Wow. [citation needed] much? Let's go down the list, shall we?

1) Not only can I find no evidence of a $500M figure ever having existed before your comment, but if they had made a settlement for a half billion dollars, Sony wouldn't exist today. Their operating income last year was just $342M (source). Fat chance that Sony could survive a $500M settlement hit. By all indications (i.e. because it's not mentioned in their annual filings from that year and there are no followup stories to be found), this did not impact their bottom line in any sort of meaningful way.

2) As for what the settlement actually was, they paid up to $150-175 per customer that damaged their PC in an attempt to remove the rootkit (see here), plus $5.75M in settlements to various states (source). That's it. It probably cost them less than $10M to settle the whole thing.

3) For a quick example of a company that can take a hit like the one you talked about, we all remember the Microsoft EU antitrust case from a few years back, right? The one regarding media players, where they were fined roughly $600M, and had followup fines of roughly $250M and $1.44B, all of which were extensively covered in the news since they were, at the time, the largest fines ever handed down by the EU (more info). But Microsoft was able to absorb the hit. Of course, they could do that since their operating income last year was about $24B (source), which is roughly 70x that of Sony's.

4) As for your DOJ claims, I can't find anything about government computers being infected (though I wouldn't doubt it) or the DOJ being involved at all. In fact, they never got involved, despite the public outcry and requests that a criminal investigation be launched.

Aside from government computers getting infected, is anything you said true, or are you just routinely off by a few orders of magnitude when quoting figures, as well as prone to making up stories that have little basis in fact?

If you read the fine print you will discover why GE got such a large tax credit:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312510246292/d10q.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312510173396/d10q.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000004054509000071/frm10q.htm

Corporations pay taxes in the countries they operate in. They report financials for each of those countries, and they file taxes in each of those countries. GEFS also known as GE Capital is based in the US and its primary business here (which was giving out crap loans, but thats another story) was what generated the losses in 2008-9. So, the bulk of GE's losses in the 2008-9 meltdown came from its financial services, the bulk of those loses were conducted in the US and thus the bulk of their tax right offs did as well. The other business units in GE US operations are high revenue low margin businesses, and thus have little profit to offset against the losses.

It is patently unfair to include the entire results of the GE holding company's corporate profits, for which they pay taxes on to multiple countries, and then claim that they must be double taxed by the United States for business not conducted in the US. Granted, they locate a lot of their leasing business in low tax countries like Singapore and Ireland, but those profits are not "American Profits" if they leave them offshore.

As for that New York Times article, their smoking gun is that GE has been paying a smaller percentage of their overall profits to the IRS over the last 5 years. That is because their China, India, and Brazil business have grown like crazy in the last decade. They also bring this up after GE gets a monster tax credit from having GE Capital nearly implode in 2008, which skews the results of the last 2 years.

The key to the situation is this (and I quote from the NYtimes article):
"If G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore." So if they take those profits from a subsidiary in Ireland and reinvest it all in their Irish business, they don't have to pay any taxes to the IRS on it. Is that wrong? I dunno, its been the law for over a decade. I think it was passed under Clinton. Since lately, the lions share of GE's profits have come from their financial services, the lions share of their taxes are subject to that law.

If you read the fine print you will discover why GE got such a large tax credit:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312510246292/d10q.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312510173396/d10q.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000004054509000071/frm10q.htm

Corporations pay taxes in the countries they operate in. They report financials for each of those countries, and they file taxes in each of those countries. GEFS also known as GE Capital is based in the US and its primary business here (which was giving out crap loans, but thats another story) was what generated the losses in 2008-9. So, the bulk of GE's losses in the 2008-9 meltdown came from its financial services, the bulk of those loses were conducted in the US and thus the bulk of their tax right offs did as well. The other business units in GE US operations are high revenue low margin businesses, and thus have little profit to offset against the losses.

It is patently unfair to include the entire results of the GE holding company's corporate profits, for which they pay taxes on to multiple countries, and then claim that they must be double taxed by the United States for business not conducted in the US. Granted, they locate a lot of their leasing business in low tax countries like Singapore and Ireland, but those profits are not "American Profits" if they leave them offshore.

As for that New York Times article, their smoking gun is that GE has been paying a smaller percentage of their overall profits to the IRS over the last 5 years. That is because their China, India, and Brazil business have grown like crazy in the last decade. They also bring this up after GE gets a monster tax credit from having GE Capital nearly implode in 2008, which skews the results of the last 2 years.

The key to the situation is this (and I quote from the NYtimes article):
"If G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore." So if they take those profits from a subsidiary in Ireland and reinvest it all in their Irish business, they don't have to pay any taxes to the IRS on it. Is that wrong? I dunno, its been the law for over a decade. I think it was passed under Clinton. Since lately, the lions share of GE's profits have come from their financial services, the lions share of their taxes are subject to that law.

If you read the fine print you will discover why GE got such a large tax credit:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312510246292/d10q.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312510173396/d10q.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000004054509000071/frm10q.htm

Corporations pay taxes in the countries they operate in. They report financials for each of those countries, and they file taxes in each of those countries. GEFS also known as GE Capital is based in the US and its primary business here (which was giving out crap loans, but thats another story) was what generated the losses in 2008-9. So, the bulk of GE's losses in the 2008-9 meltdown came from its financial services, the bulk of those loses were conducted in the US and thus the bulk of their tax right offs did as well. The other business units in GE US operations are high revenue low margin businesses, and thus have little profit to offset against the losses.

It is patently unfair to include the entire results of the GE holding company's corporate profits, for which they pay taxes on to multiple countries, and then claim that they must be double taxed by the United States for business not conducted in the US. Granted, they locate a lot of their leasing business in low tax countries like Singapore and Ireland, but those profits are not "American Profits" if they leave them offshore.

As for that New York Times article, their smoking gun is that GE has been paying a smaller percentage of their overall profits to the IRS over the last 5 years. That is because their China, India, and Brazil business have grown like crazy in the last decade. They also bring this up after GE gets a monster tax credit from having GE Capital nearly implode in 2008, which skews the results of the last 2 years.

The key to the situation is this (and I quote from the NYtimes article):
"If G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore." So if they take those profits from a subsidiary in Ireland and reinvest it all in their Irish business, they don't have to pay any taxes to the IRS on it. Is that wrong? I dunno, its been the law for over a decade. I think it was passed under Clinton. Since lately, the lions share of GE's profits have come from their financial services, the lions share of their taxes are subject to that law.

Santa Clara has professor Sharath Sury as Dean's Executive Professor of Finance:

http://www.scu.edu/business/finance/faculty/sury-profile.cfm

What's his specialty? Risk management behavioral finance. *irony alert*

This is the SEC barring him from trading for 2 years, due to not properly disclosing risky investments (he was using 95% of the fund to trade Google stock on the earnings bounces and telling his investors that it was a conservative fund...of course no one would have cared but he lost all their money):

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2010/33-9111.pdf

He then shut down the company called S4 Capital (the one the SEC did an action against), and looks like he started it back up as Chicago Analytic Trading Company. Any idiot can see they are the same company (both in Chicago and Santa Clara, even the Santa Clara office address is the same):

http://www.catcbd.com/contact.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=S4+Capital

The kicker is his "Santa Clara Initiative for Financial Innovation and Risk Management (SCIFIRM)" was supposed to be the "Sury Initiative for Financial Innovation and Risk Management" but Santa Clara found out about the SEC action...rather than kick him out they just changed the name! The webpage still has the old name: http://sifirm.org/Home_Page.php

How can they keep this guy on the faculty, let alone PAY him to teach? It boggles the mind. If I was an alumni I would be contacting the dean.

You won't be too surprised to learn this hypocrite worked at Goldman Sachs...

I would imagine stupid stuff like this happens all the time in academia, as the schools would rather save face then address improprieties...oops, will I get sued now?

According to Auletta, 80% of AOL's profits come from subscribers, and 75% of those subscribers are paying for something they don't actually need. [...] seventy-five percent of the people who subscribe to AOL's dial-up service don't need it.'"

WTF is this gibberish? My best guess is 80% of profits come from all subscribers (an irrelevant "fact") and 75% of dial-up subscribers do not need the dial-up, which is interesting only if there's too many of them to account for the folks who have it as back-up. Mish-mash the two together into the gibberish summary however and you have what looks like 80% of AOL profits come from dial-up subscribers of whom 75% don't need it.

I did consider that it is possible (however implausible) that indeed summary intended to say the latter, in which I call BS. The 10K shows subscriber sales of $244.8m and total net profit of $171.6m (80% of which is $137m). So we'd be saying that, at an absolute minimum, requiring dial-up to have zero cost, over 56% of ALL of AOL's subscriber sales is for dial-up?

If that wasn't implausible enough, summary implies 75% of dial-up customers don't need it because they have cable/dsl, so we're getting an absolute minimum of 56% of $sales from an absolute maximum of 75% of the number of subscriber customers, hence (though I really don't trust my maths here) dial-up must cost >70% more than cable/dsl subscription does? I can't be arsed trying to get around AOL's country redirect to find out what the dial-up subscription costs since it isn't even advertised in the UK and AOL have one of those country redirects.

I'm going to call BS even on the idea that 80% of profit comes from all subscribers, since that'd require an epic 56% net profit ratio, oh and anyway 42% actually came from "discontinued operations" and, since I'm guessing dial-up operations are continuing, that does not leave the necessary 80% for subscriptions.

Am I missing some other, actually plausable interpretation of the summary? Am I totally not getting something, perhaps due to standard practice in US that isn't ver here?

Incidentally there is no useful reportable segment info in the 10K so I've no idea how these figures were calculated, though they do look suspiciously round.