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If you raised taxes to 100% for everyone making $68K/yr and up, it would fund the US Federal Government for approximately NINE DAYS!

The top 10% pays over 70% of total federal income taxes. The top 1% pays 40% of total federal income taxes.

Here's a good piece using the government's data and has a nice chart.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1044651-tax-share-by-bracket-an-update

Let's talk "fairness:" The top 10% of income earners in this country already pay over 70% of federal income taxes, and the top 1% (the rich) already pay almost 40%. Is that not enough? Almost half of those who work pay no federal income taxes. Is that fair? Is it healthy for so few to pay so much, and for so many to pay nothing? When almost half the population has no skin in the game, and another quarter pay only a very small share of total taxes, it is easy to demonize or exploit the richâ"it's called the "tyranny of the majority."

And, do you think the rich will just wait around to have their wealth confiscated? Ask the French actor Gerard Depardieu. When the rich move their wealth and themselves out of reach, who do you think the government will come after for their tax-money "fix"?

Strat

Unlike Romney supporters the facts are on my side:

1. Apple stock off 200 points.

https://www.google.com/search?q=AAPL&aq=f&oq=AAPL&aqs=chrome.0.57j60j64j0l3.3905&sugexp=chrome,mod=1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

2. Apple market share falling.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/11/15/ios-loses-market-android-recent-quarter/

3. Apple's margins down.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1070841-apple-gross-margin-conundrum-explained

So who is denying reality here?

If I front some capital, can I become the next Shapeways?

It may already be too late. Staples is getting into the game: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1042071-staples-fires-warning-flare-to-3d-printing-market

I would not be surprised to see a home improvement or other big hardware chain get into it too. Think NAPA 3D parts for autos

Isn't 2.7Bn larger than the combined market value of every yellow pages business in the world combined?

Doubtful. AT&T sold 53% stake in their yellow pages business for $950 million which would put the estimates for solely AT&T's yellow pages business around $1.8 billion.

Verizon doesn't want to upgrade their network and supply the bandwidth they actually sold. Overselling is lucrative -- hence the data caps

What? You mean the same Verizon that unveiled FiOS Quantum, a 300/65 connection, earlier this year?

In fact, they've invested anywhere from $23 to $30 billion dollars in FiOS. To say they didn't upgrade their network is the height of ignorance.

But hey, I guess this one didn't exactly fit into your "X does Y because of Z, always, no exceptions" template.

Yeah, I'd say the real story here is that Amazon decided to enter the alcohol sales business (starting with wine). This is big because of the byzantine laws around each state regarding alcohol, not to mention the three tier system in place (producer, distributors, retailers). Other big companies haven't touched this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-tier_(alcohol_distribution)

Amazon has tried three times now to do this, each time has met resistance from lobbyists, or have failed to get the shipping infrastructure in place (they aren't using their own system). Here is more information here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/904821-in-vino-veritas-third-time-not-the-charm-for-amazon
Wineries want this in place because they currently have to hire someone to figure out all the shipping compliance rules for them. Then they have to setup an ecommerce site, process the orders.....and do all the shipping. This sounds common to a tech audience but most small wineries aren't setup for this.

"Less well" by what metric?

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1002261-apple-why-the-recent-drop-is-unjustified Its a nice little article that covers why apples shares recently dropped, and unlike me argues for a brighter future so you may consider it balanced, and covers some of the measures of performance of a company like Apple in easy to read language, and some nice graphs.

The server market, usually Linux-based, appears to be AMD's most stable market.

Servers are a market that AMD has been losing for years now.

AMD stole over 20% market share from Intel while they were fucking around with the Pentium 4 disaster, and they've been losing it ever since the release of Conroe. Nehalem with high-scaling QPI interconnect was the last nail in the coffin - AMD's server share has been in free-fall since then.

2010: 7% server market share!

This year: 5.5% server market share

Like the first linked article stated, AMD bet the farm on Bulldozer, and it's killing them. There's no way in hell AMD can reverse this trend with their existing silicon - that's already been made clear. So they're cutting to stay afloat, while they slowly rot from lack of innovation.

It'll be HP all over again, and that makes me sad.

Care to provide a citation with that?

If Google doesn't work on your machine, sure.

"AMD is aware that these very chips Intel produces are found in around 95.5% of servers around the world, as per Mercury Research. AMDâ(TM)s share of the server processor market is around a dismal 5%."

Graph at bottom shows AMD at 4.5%

"AMD lost server processor unit market share (now down to just about 5%)"

"The Intel x86 architecture has clearly won the server segment, and within the x86, Intel has 95% market share and AMD has 5% market share and is declining."

The more "official" source is probably IDG, but they only provide yearly figures. For 2011 they listed AMD as having a 5.5% server market share, and Bulldozer isn't going to improve that for 2012 but still a few months until you get those numbers... Oh yeah and that is x86 servers, not all servers just the Intel-AMD turf war.

I don't see where the growth is coming from there.

The following two articles seem to capture the general analyst and investor opinions on the matter:

Skeptical Of Amazon At These Levels

Why is Amazon's price-to-earnings ratio so high?

Basically Amazon has a lot of long speculative interest based upon the possible future value of their EC2 compute cloud, tablet business and other SAAS offerings which remain largely unrealized as of today. Essentially, there's a lot of betting on high future revenue growth in those areas of Amazon's business while the current earnings, which come mostly from retail operations, are still relatively modest by way of comparison. They're good, but not enough by themselves to justify the high price; hence the high P/E ratio. All of the current and likely future revenue, at least for the near term, seems to be priced in right now PLUS a hefty premium. In a word, owning Amazon stock is relatively expensive ; especially if their tech investments don't pay out big time in the medium to longer term. Incidentally, I don't own Apple for many of the same reasons; very high future growth projections and betting on future prospects with little or no compensation for downside risk. When everyone "has to own" a particular stock, like Apple or Amazon or Google, that's often a fairly reliable signal that the stock is over-hyped and overbought. Even if the underlying business is good, it's still very easy to pay too much for a share.

If you're a small investor reading this and you still want to trade expensive and risky stocks like Amazon or Apple, it would be best to do it using a collar with options. Your upside may be limited, but so is your downside and with a share price that high even a few percentage points move in the wrong direction can mean a big loss for the small investor; you can get squashed. Even with protection, it's still risky to trade these stocks because the likelihood that an individual knows something that the analysts and insiders don't or haven't already traded on is miniscule. You'd have to take larger risks on upside or downside surprises to make any money and IMHO, and that's just not worth it. The same limited profit can be had more easily and for less risk in other investments.

In 2011, more corn was used in ethanol production than for livestock feed for the first time ever. Ethanol accounted for 5.05 billion bushels which at 56 pounds per bushel (shelled) comes to 141.4 million tons. Worldwide corn production in 2011 was 867.5 million tons. That's over 16% of the global corn crop used for ethanol production.

Miguel is wrong. He's a developer not a user and there is a big difference.

Apple is basically a phone designer with a small laptop/desktop/tablet line and a tiny sideline in MP3 players. The Mac line as of 2012 Summer represents about 14% of revenues, the Iphone 55%. In addition, the Iphone is heavily subsidized by phone companies/carriers, meaning the consumer pays about $200 of the $400-600 retail price for the latest generation phones, making the margin even fatter. Net Profit for Apple is probably mostly Iphones.

This means it is a BAD BET to figure that Apple will do much for their desktop/laptop lines, in terms of development. Already stupid decisions like an all-in-one body that cannot be upgraded to more RAM or have a battery swapped out are ticking off users and showing the signs of starvation of not just funds but actual thinking.

In terms of hardware, PCs tend to beat Apple machines for price, performance, features, and even design. Apple's chicklet keyboards are difficult to type on, higher end PCs avoid this "cheap" all-in-one keyboard that tends to look like a wave (the keyboard being flexible tends to roll up in one corner of the laptop).

If you don't like Unity/Gnome 3 (and many don't, its awful), then XFCE or LXDE or any number of desktop or window managers await. That is the power of linux, and the plethora of distributions ensure that there is one out there for you.

Apple's extradorinary profits come mostly from phone companies subsidizing Iphones to get those juicy data charges. [Reason #1 I avoid smartphones.] As soon as that fails or comes to an end (all things do) then Apple will come down to earth. Meanwhile its hardware in most areas of desktop and laptop computing are subpar. And pricey. Too pricey for consumers who are in the US and Europe, increasing barbel shaped: lots of poor people shopping at Dollar General and Aldis, and a few at Nordstroms and Neiman Marcus. The Neiman Marcus model won't sustain Apple. Not even Paris Hilton getting a new bejeweled Macbook every month will keep Apple afloat.

Meanwhile you can get useful work out of a low-end laptop running Windows 7 if you slap Linux on it. Apps are free, generally good, and most installers get the basics down right. For a price of NOTHING for the distribution, people are willing to spend some time getting things right because they don't HAVE THE MONEY. That won't be a wave but will be significant. Particularly as Microsoft partners ticked off at the introduction of the Surface tablet and MS pricing are likely to offer their own bare-bones Linux driven machines, particularly if Metro's UI is the flop everyone thinks it is. If price points are $50, making a difference in consumer purchases for a laptop (sub or nearly $300 range) then yes, expect to see various flavors of Linux appear once again.

If the data center is built with the correct architectural planning and resilience, then no it shouldn't affect it at all. these are the same centers that withstood the Earthquake and the horrendous storms recently. Granted that Amazon was a casualty of the storms, but there were so many other organizations that ran without a single hiccup. this is the reason yo want to load balance your service across geographically separate areas. its highly unlikely that a hurricane is nailing your east coast center the same time the Mississippi is flooding your mid west center and an earthquake takes out your west coast center. SOME users will be temporarily inconvenienced, but the service as a whole will be online.

the main things that relate to a data center staying operational:
1) will the building physically survive the incident. no brainer.
2) can power be maintained, including generator support. no brainer
3) can the telco connections stay active. no point in humming servers if a tree takes out your connection to the world.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/289607-data-centers-prove-earthquake-proof

You mean like people who buy or hold RIM stock?

Some jackasses did worse than others:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/227432-now-apple-could-have-some-problems

US manufacturing has NOT been losing to China. Look at the chart labeled "Real Manufacturing Output vs Real GDP" on this page:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/602691-u-s-manufacturing-leads-current-economic-growth-as-it-has-for-15-years

US manufacturing jobs have been lost to China and technology. It's the job loss that causes people to say US manufacturing is declining.. and robots and 3d printing changes nothing on that front. Fact is, US factories are already full of robots

Well I don't have to ask whether you look things up before you accuse others of lying or just fly off the handle immediately:

US:
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/411333-donald-ingram/98306-nearly-8-in-10-americans-now-living-paycheck-to-paycheck

Canada:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/six-in-10-live-pay-to-pay/article1705096/Can't

Can't find any numbers for Europe but I'm sure they're much better off.

Safety deposit box is probably the only reasonable solution.

Actually, a bank safety deposit box, which I assume is what you meant when you said "safety deposit box", may be one of the worst places for some of your most urgently needed documents.

Why? When someone dies, a safe deposit box may be sealed for weeks, which could result in result in delays. You might even have to spend money securing a court order to open the box. Further, and here's the Catch-22: the will's executor will not be able to get to the box without the will that shows that he is indeed, the executor, resulting in headaches and delays.

China's total GDP is still less than half that of the USA.

At this rate, it should be clear that it won't take long for that to be reversed. If it holds, you're looking at parity by 2020 and reversed long before 2030. Now we are starting to see dissatisfaction from the Chinese populace due to working conditions and failures in the political system which the Internet is making more visible, so it's likely that rate is going to taper off somewhat. However, even if there is significant (uncontrolled) socio-political upheaval in China in the next couple of decades, the writing is on the wall.

It's management alright. It's been management for years. Microsoft consistently hires the best people in the field (well, those that Google doesn't snag—prior to that, though, they were nearly unchallenged, and consequentially MS has had a huge number of very respectable older researchers and engineers, including a large contingent of ex-DEC people) and then squashes them with bad managers, who spend so much time politicking and infighting that they can't recognize genius like the Courier.

Unfortunately this is an increasing trend in the whole software industry; the very recent example of Diablo 3's utter failure to live up to hype, even though it's now the fastest-selling game in history, can largely be attributed to management changes in Activision. The underlying problem seems to be hiring management and leadership from non-computing sectors instead of promoting from within, although in MS's case it's more like a long-term family feud.

When your a corporate CEO billionaire and need to lay off people in order to buy your own friggin hawaiian island and then come back and bitch and whine that you can't find "talented people" something is fishy.

When rich people give away excess money to charities, that does not absolve them of guilt for the actions that made them wealthy in the first place. Just because Bill Gates gives away a bunch of money, that doesn't excuse he got that money using illegal monopoly tactics. You can't get credit for giving away money that you stole from taxpayers in the first place.

In recent years in particular, Buffett's wealth has been acquired using insider information from his cronies in the White House, actions that would have resulted in jail time for a less connected investor. Here's the way the circle works:

• Buffett and Goldman Sachs contribute buckets of money to the democratic party and the Obama campaign.
• When Goldman was in risk of going under, Buffett invests $5B in them to keep them going. It was a no risk bet because Buffett's buddies let him know before the general public that GS was getting a bailout. Notes on that at Trade With The Ultimate Insider.
• Buffett publicly thanks the US government for bringing stability to the markets, by which he really means money in his company's pockets.
• All the borrowed money plus $1.6B divident profit flows back to Buffett within 3 years.

There's endless stories on this theme, including major trades around the US auto industry bailout too. I believe the most recent is the Keystone XL mess. Peter Schweizer's "Throw Them All Out" book has a whole section devoted to Warren Buffett's tricks where he abuses his political ties for profit. Here's a video segment from Schweizer summarizing that. Buffett's money is just as dirty as if he'd robbed you with a gun; don't like the kindly old man disguise fool you.

This is a very reasonable point you make. If you read the article I linked, there is a graph specifically detailing digital single sales revenue which doesn't really factor until 2003 when the decline was already in effect for about four years. In reality it's probably partly the availability of songs a-la-carte and partly piracy. The financial reversal, whatever the cause may be, is striking. [q.v. Michael DeGusta's adjusted graph]

It may well be overblown. I believe the industry will recover. Legal alternatives to piracy like iTunes look extremely promising. Still, I find the lets-do-away-with-copyright rhetoric pretty simplistic and those who espouse it seem to have no inkling of music industry economics (at least historically speaking). I find the self-styled copyright revolutionaries who feel entitled to free content to be especially grating. And, like everyone else, I find the suits and fat cats at RIAA and MPAA to be delusional, short-sighted, and in many cases downright evil (David Geffen is a good example).

Exchange it for real money. Fast.

Deutsche Marks would be a good choice.

Once upon a time, 'Did X for Y' for free may have looked good on your resume. Now, it's barely more than a comma. Now, it's a comma that you paid for in sweat equity, because you were good enough to ask a favour of, but not good enough to pay.

This!

And with companies abusing their unpaid "internships" and yet corporate profits are at record levels. And if they do fall, you just know that they're going to can people, send more work overseas using the lie that they can't get enough qualified people in their home country or blame it on some lame excuse like "government regulations".

Internships is just abuse of people's desperation to get their foot in the door and to actually get a job. And then there are the rationalizations by hiring managers that just cons folks into giving their labor away.

And about the "not good enough to pay" part

And volunteer work? Doesn't do a damn thing because everyone is doing it to stay busy and we've all bought into the lie that it looks good on a resume because "we're doing something while we're not working". Nope. It just means you can't get a paying job because you're defective in some way. Of course, no hiring manager will ever give you feedback.

I swear to god, if I ever get a chance to become a take-over "private equity" guy like Romney was, I won't can all the peons; I'll take out the managers first with the reason that they're not qualified, their skills are out of date, and they show a serious lack of planning.

I will then instruct them to get "re-training" in some marketable field.

And guess what, if you compare oil prices with gasoline prices, they do look fairly correlated.

Several provisions of the 1933 Banking Act sought to restrict 'speculative' uses of bank credit. Section 3(a) required each Federal Reserve Bank to monitor local member bank lending and investment to ensure there was not âoeundue useâ of bank credit for âoespeculative trading or carryingâ of securities, commodities or real estate.

Most would agree that when the fox is put in charge of the hen house, foul play will ensue. Just a couple examples:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/665c90e8-ecf4-11e0-be97-00144feab49a.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/29/us-lme-warehousing-idUSTRE76R3YZ20110729
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10290085/1/goldman-citigroup-to-make-markets-on-cbot.html
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0413/096-sachs-semgroup-goldman-goose-oil.html
http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/cvi/description

Forget about the economies their bookcooking destroyed, more important are the stooges being PLACED(not elected) into Euro leadership positions:
http://www.infowars.com/banker-coup-goldman-sachs-takes-over-europe/

Re: BRICS as an organisation not a casual grouping.

I stand corrected. I didn't realise they had formalised their relationships to that degree.

Nonetheless, it's hard to see India, for example, siding with China in a dispute with the US. Or Brazil.

Lower the risk of exposure to a volatile borrower (US start playing nasty with China would be seen as volatile)?

Let see

* India buying IMF gold - among the reasons - diversifying India's reserves (under the milder term of "foreign exchange reserve management") and a larger voting share in the IMF;

* Brazil - even if at a record high reserve level, probably quite f**ked in this respect - the exposure to US securities seems quite high. Anyway, here's something interesting: Brazil prepared to lend reserves from the nation's central bank (CB) to help finance the rescue package for the European Union - looks like a (risky?) attempt to diversify to me.

TFA talks about loss of control over margins at Best Buy. Apple Stores are known to have some of the highest margins in retail. Their success demonstrate that people are willing to pay high margins for products if they feel they're getting good service for it--which is certainly not the Best Buy experience.

Well, yes and no (IMO). Most Apple devices are not purchased at their brick and mortar stores.

Best Buy has simply cornered the market on turning salespeople - who used to provide a valuable service, in helping consumers find the right product for them - into upsellers, BS-slingers, and unhelpful, annoying gnats you have to wade through to simply look at product.

Just try to buy a television - you have to fight through aggressive pitches for a mount, then for the snake-oil monster cables, the snake-oil monster power supply, the all-profit extended warranty, the hilariously priced home installation....

The last time I was in a Best Buy was when a certain tablet was released. I had to fend off two aggressive attempts by the zitfarm serving me to complement my $200 tablet with a $200 pair of headphones.

One of the primary benefits of buying things from Amazon, etc., is that you don't have to deal with retail staff.

TFA talks about loss of control over margins at Best Buy. Apple Stores are known to have some of the highest margins in retail. Their success demonstrate that people are willing to pay high margins for products if they feel they're getting good service for it--which is certainly not the Best Buy experience.

Also, it's rarely the case that there is a large advantage to purchasing an Apple product outside of their stores, due to their extensive price controls at all retailers. As you can also see from that chart, Apple makes an ever higher margin for the products they sell online. They could adjust their price to match the lower overhead and sell them cheaper direct. The fact that they don't is an interesting component to their overall strategy.

.

(Hedonic Inflation).

Yeaaaaaaah, lots of people disagree with you on that one, chief.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/344721-google-now-the-perfect-stock-for-buffett

Madoff. One word suffices. He was detected a decade before he finally took himself down, and the SEC went out of their way to not investigate. Why? Because he was an insider. The only reason he was caught was that the market went down, and his investors started needing their money. The SEC only got wise after it was far too late.

Enron. Again, only one word is needed. They were cooking the books for many years before they folded. Once again the SEC was asleep at the switch, and only found out when it was far too late.

Long Term Capital Management. Not as well known as the others, and somewhat earlier, it was the prototype of the modern trading failure and bailout. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_term_capital_management They got in way over their head with too much leverage and had to be bailed out by the US government. No lessons were learned.

The current world wide recession/depression. The greed and stupidity of Wall Street is at least as great as it was before the depression of the 1930's. All of the structures put in place as a result were negated, and the SEC led the way. Harvey Pitt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Pitt#Criticism Donaldson http://mobile.businessweek.com/magazine/destruction-at-the-sec-09012011.html and Cox http://seekingalpha.com/article/96487-5-failures-of-sec-chairman-cox all sat around with their thumbs in their butts while the biggest fraud in the history of the world was in progress. They all had their marching orders, which was to do absolutely nothing to rock the boat, and they did exactly what they were told.

(Not that the SEC is doing a better job at the current time. The current focus on insider trading is like writing parking tickets while a riot is in progress. It is a deliberate attempt to avoid the big picture and look busy while the economy sinks.)

It would be better if no one at the SEC went in to work. They should all just stay home and collect their pay and do nothing. Then there would be no pretense that there was anyone protecting investors, which is the true situation. Wall Street has one purpose these days, which is to funnel as much money as is humanly possible into the hands of insiders. The upper management steals from their clients, their investors and their workers. A deaf, mute, blind and toothless SEC is just one medium sized cog in the mechanism that enables the massive ongoing looting of the US and world economy.

You don't have any "God-given rights". There is no God.

Can I mod this pedantic? Oh, sorry, AC, can't do it. Seriously, relax. It's a figure of speech. Even people who don't believe in God know what this means. Act of God is probably somewhere in your insurance policy, and no one EVER claims that insurance companies are moral and virtuous penitents.

The only reason AT&T can make up any price and get away with it, is because THERE IS NO COMPETITION. Back in the 80's, the DOJ forced AT&T to split into smaller companies over antitrust concerns. Now 30 years later, they've reabsorbed half of those pieces and continue to gobble up every telco they can find. Soon it will be time for another antitrust battle.

Do I disagree with AT&T's pricing? Oh yeah. That's why I have a different provider. Oh wait, I must not have one, because "there is no competition". Really?

Your point might make some sense if there were cell towers up all over the place in the 80's. There weren't. The real reason your point doesn't make any sense is because AT&T isn't even number one in the market. They have less than one third of the market. Seriously. Five seconds on google before you open the mouth part of your face.

Timed to calm the equity markets jittery over the news of two key Model S engineers leaving

When you put executive salary as a percentage of an industry, it doesn't sound like so much, but the Medical industry is truly staggering in it's size - according to Wikipedia, we spent $2.26 trillion dollars on health care, which, by your figure would suggest that executive salary for that industry consumes 113 billion dollars.

According to this article (the first one I found on the subject via Google) a typical figure for corporate America is for executive pay to be 2.4 percent of the net income. So, it seems like we can do better there.

To address some other points:

1. Agreed that administrative costs can go down. The figure I've heard is that the insurance industry carries a 20% overhead above what's paid out to policy holders. It's worth noting that if medical care was socialized and nothing else changed, that's 200 billion dollars we could put into paying down national debt.

2. Lawsuits are as much an issue of public perception as anything. I think most people believe frivilous suits are wrong, but most would jump at an opportunity to be compensated when someone is injured or killed. IMO, the people complaining about the situation and wrongly citing McDonalds cases are as much to blame as anyone. The law as written is actually pretty good in this area, and changing public perception (building the perception that there isn't a lot of free money to be made here) would do a lot to cut down on frivolous suits.

3. Socialized medicine, drug law reform, and welfare would do a *lot* to cut down on that kind of fraud. When a homless guy can get a meal and a warm bed in a shelter, he's a lot less likely to abuse a hospital. When a druggie can get their fix through legal means, they are a lot less likely to waste $1000 in diagnostics to get some pills. When medicine is free, treating a poor guy who has no means to pay is no longer fraud. I think the ends justify the means here.

A friend of mine had a good suggestion for fixing privatized medicine: make it illegal to cherry pick. A healthy young guy gets the same rates as an old cancer survivor. Relative rates go up for us when we're young and able to earn, and down when we're older and need the coverage. And it becomes within the means of an individual to buy a policy (whereas now it's very expensive unless you're part of a group policy.)

This is the problem. Vapid, ignorant, uninterested people who don't even bother to illuminate the vast empty place between their ears. You mention Nazis. So let's do this by the numbers. WHY WERE NAZIS BAD? Because they were Fascists and slaughtered a bunch of innocent folks. What is a Fascist? Well, Mussolini, a Fascist, said its the corporate state. Why is this bad? Well when a nation's corporations determine the fate of that nation and its people all kind of predictable things, bad things, begin to happen. You see profit is a great thing to motivate people, but as a guiding target for a society, it can lead to dark things. At first everything is great and the society enjoys explosive growth. But soon, the system begins to cannibalize itself. Ultimately the wheels come off, it crashes and explodes, and often a lot of people die. That why we don't like fascism. If you want to know how to tell a Fascist State here are some signs to look at. If you've not been in a coma for the last decade, you may notice that modern day America now has something in common with Germany and sadly its not the love of beer. So your Nazi comment as clever as you might have thought it was echoes a sad and frightening irony.

As for soup kitchens and bread lines, are you brain damaged? Here, try these sites: People in line at foodbank, The State of Poverty in America, What replaced the Soup Kitchens, The real state of Unemployment in America Today, Tent Cities Sprouting up all over the country. One in five children in America today goes to bed hungry. One in six people in this country suffers chronic malnutrition. One in eight is out of work and can't find employment. Entire regions of America have been depressed for so long, they now have names like "The Rust Belt." One in seven people in this country is saved from hunger by food stamps or federal food programs. There are scenes all over the country of people lined up for blocks waiting for food from food banks. There are shanty towns and tent cities across the nation of homeless people who were formerly middle class, and tens of millions of middle class Americans who live a single pay check away from becoming homeless. Food banks are pleading for support, they've never before been required to support so many people and many are on the verge of collapse. Are you so blind and poorly informed that you don't even see the profound state of social collapse around you? Are you sleep walking? Medicated? Either you have no mind or you have no heart, please which is it?

As for the ruling class, the top 400 people in this country now have the same wealth as the bottom HALF of the country, over 160,000,000 people. The imbalance of wealth in America today is greater THAN ANY TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY. That is the ruling class. They have hijacked our government. They have hijacked the media and our sources of free information. They have robbed us of our Bill of Rights and damaged our form of government to the very edge of its ability to be repaired. They are working hard to rob us of our last best hope for human freedom and development, the internet.

I don't advocate violence, and never have, but I tell you now, I am plenty angry. I pray that we find our way back without the spilling of blood, but I have a hard time imagining a bright future with so many like you walking the street today. You scare me more than the despots.

I have a wife and five kids - and we're starting on grandkids now. I live in my own house that I almost own free and clear, and am not posting from my mom's basement subsisting on Hot Pockets so your insult falls flat. This is my hobby. Maybe I'm too much into it but everybody's got their thing and this is mine. What you enjoy doing with your idle time isn't my business, and what I do with mine isn't yours. To me this is more fun than World of Warcraft or Star Trek Online, or whatever it is that trips your trigger.

The market is a volatile place, full of uncertainties. You can find a broker who might assure you he can find you regular growth after dividends, maybe 3-4%. Some will go five, but they won't put in writing. More than that and you're probably dealing with Bernie Madoff or somebody like him. Many 401K funds actually lose money as the brokers in charge of them churn investments to garner transaction revenues. If you work your own money and keep an eye out you can do better usually - in fact, a monkey with a dartboard can because the monkey doesn't have a motive at odds with your goals.

Other companies accrue cash, it's true. To accrue cash that's 80% of your market capitalization though, that's an exceptional achievement and worthy of notice. Apple, a company much criticized for hoarding cash, had $81B in cash and marketable securities at 9/11, or something like 24% of their market capitalization at that time. 24% is not a threat because you can't do a leveraged buyout with 24% down. 80% though? That's a whole other story. Can you think of anything your bank wouldn't give you a loan for with 80% down?

Could this be any more biased? Why is Slashdot posting this crap?

The article claims that "Apple fan sites celebrate Apple patents," but all he does is link to one site, Patently Apple. That site exists to track Apple patent applications "in search of future features and secrets," as the site puts it. It's not celebrating patents; it's just reporting on them in hopes of predicting upcoming product plans.

It also repeats the old troll meme about PARC, claiming that "Apple disregards the notion of fair competition, which takes a lot of nerve for a company that built itself on knockoffs (e.g. Xerox PARC)." Overlapping windows and pulldown menus did come from PARC, but Apple is the one who invented the File-Edit-View-Window-Help standard menu layout, the phrase "cut-and-paste," and several other common GUI paradigms that are taken for granted today. Not to mention that many of those Xerox PARC employees went on to work on the Macintosh project at Apple!

If we're throwing around knock-off accusations, Android used to look like this until the iPhone came out, and then Android suddenly started looking and behaving a lot more like iOS, right down to the pinch-zoom gestures that originated with the iPhone. For crying out loud, Samsung outright stole Apple's icon artwork and used it in their stores. TechRights, of course, ignores all this. It's no surprise at all that Apple is going to try to hinder competitors' efforts to ride the coattails of its design work. It went through this before with Windows in the 1980s and only lost its court case against Microsoft because of a previous licensing agreement.

Obnoxious Android fanboyism has reached a fever pitch. Android fanboys are now officially more annoying than Apple fanboys. They've adopted this idea that they are freedom fighters and that their tribe is under threat from evil. It's embarrassing and is a resurrection of the worst elements of the desktop Linux movement from 10 years ago.

Exploring the rest of the site, it calls itself "a progressive site which supports software freedom and advocates digital diversity through standardisation." Most of its stories are anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux, and present a one-sided view of tech news that's intended to rile up its readers (not unlike Slashdot, to be honest). It also claims to be against monopolies but says nothing about Google's monopoly in web advertising nor the fact it's using its monopoly revenues to pump a new market with a free product (Android), just like Microsoft did with Windows and Internet Explorer in the 1990s. For some reason, Android advocates

For crying out loud, Techrights' Twitter account is called @boycottnovell. Boycott Novell is associated with Roy Schestowitz, an infamous Usenet troll who spams the advocacy newsgroups with pro-Linux news links and used to astroturf Slashdot with multiple accounts.

If nerds on Tech Rights and Slashdot want to boycott Apple, go ahead. None of them were using Apple products anyway--they are Linux advocacy sites. Apple wouldn't even notice.

Can we get some actual tech news? Or is Slashdot forever lost to its current role of flamboyant baiting for ad views? Ugh.

As a platform - the important thing - Apple's star is waning.

Android fanboys have officially become more obnoxious than Apple fanboys. Apple's star is waning? The company that's set to report the biggest earnings blowout in history?

You represent all that has become wrong with the Slashdot community since Android's release. This site, which used to be respectful of Apple and praised them, has now become so vehemently anti-Apple (simply because they now compete with Google) that it's driven away many of the rational posters to other communities like Hacker News and Digg, which only skews the demographic even further. Reading Slashdot comments has become like reading a Worst Of Engadget feed.

You are the angry neck beard. You fetishize marketshare as if it's the only thing that matters, because you're still seeking a victory for Linux after its failure to capture any non-trivial desktop share. You hate Apple fans because Apple is popular, so you stand cross-armed in the corner, grumbling at everyone else having a good time. You don't represent the mainstream user, who doesn't want to jailbreak or configure or plug things into other things, etc. They like the iPad because it just works--as an appliance should.

There's a huge clash going on between the new paradigm of appliance computing and the old guard who wants the 1990s tweak able nerd playground to linger forever, and a black cloud of bitterness that has been seething from Slashdot in the last couple of years because of it. The industry is changing. Configurability is disappearing because it turns out consumers don't want it and never wanted it, and the technology is now here to deliver that experience. This site is read by a niche of techies who still run Linux on the desktop and think configuring a computer is a worthy way to spend an evening.

Business is run on profits. It doesn't matter if iOS is outnumbered by Android phones--it was inevitable because the iPhone is just one phone--Apple is making obscene amounts of money off its devices. Android only benefits carriers and handset makers. What's worse, they have complete control over the operating system, leading to shit like Carrier IQ and TouchWiz. The era of fragmented platforms is over in the PC world. Android is now experiencing it because this market is new, but seamless, controlled experiences always win out in the end. Just look at how the game industry moved away from PCs to consoles over the course of a few years. Android developer support has actually declined by one-third over the course of the year, according to a study by Flurry Analytics.

The conclusion here is that claiming Apple's star is waning is not just ridiculous, it's outright retarded. The company is making crazy amounts of money. They're set to release the iPad 3 in a few months with a Retina Display, which will push the iPad even further ahead. The bitterness over Apple's popularity here on Slashdot has led to an arrogant, condescending attitude toward their users that just looks really petty to outsiders, and the inability to "get" what normal people want is the reason there are high-rated posts here actually praising the fragmentation of Android and its endless configurability options. You may use computers in that way, but to the rest of the world, computers are just a tool and not a hobby. Tablets are the promise of computing without the mess--it's finally here, and computer tweakers are spiteful because of it.

Still, for as open as you seem to think Mac OS X is, why can't I download Darwin and run Mac software on it?

Because the top layer is not open.

But what layer at all of Windows can you download openly and run at all?

Where are all of the applications for OS X?

Well that was a stupid question.

Why doesn't OS X work on just any commodity PC hardware?

It does. Apple just doesn't sell it that way.

Why does Apple go sue crazy when someone puts together a Hackintosh or when someone even posts a video showing one?

Wait, you are already contradicting yourself? What an ass. I'll stop resounding here since it's clear you are just another Apple Hater Troll.

P.S. as for selling now - well, you've made (by your own admission!) some pretty stupid statements, but that probably is the stupidest.

The Fire arrives configured for Amazon One Click purchases, and the option to disable this does not work. Anyone who picks up your Fire will be able to order anything they like without any password, PIN, or other attempt to verify the purchase being made.

See here: Serious Security Flaw In The Kindle Fire

Come back in 6 months. The $0 iPhone has been available for a week.

The CEO of AT&T mobile says they're getting more $0 iPhones than any other device:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/300868-at-t-s-ceo-discusses-q3-2011-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=qanda
"And actually, we're getting more new subscribers coming on the 3GS on the average than other devices."

> Apple retails stores do seem profitable.

You don't know how right you are. They are, in fact, more profitable per square foot than any other retail store, period. "... more than six times the revenue per square foot at Neiman Marcus, four times that of Best Buy, and about one and a half times that at Tiffany's"

Very vocal minority are making noise that they want hackable widgets. How about some statistics showing just how many widgets are actually hacked? Is it even 5%?

OK. 5% of 65million phones is 3.25 million phones. (Probably more as I only found old data with a quick google) In 2009, Palm, Symbian and "Others" was only 3.7 million phones. So I guess that 5% is enough. http://seekingalpha.com/article/194442-predicting-2010-north-american-smartphone-market-share


And that is assuming your 5% is correct, which I disagree with. Cynaogen is almost mainstream. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/22/android_on_touchpad_project/ Almost everyone I know with an Android, has it. Admittedly, my sample has less blithering idiots than the public at large...

Larger market in what sense? You can keep deluding yourself into believing that the EU is a larger market, but in most cases it is not.

For example, only 15% of Oracles revenue comes from the EU (http://seekingalpha.com/article/173186-why-oracle-should-leave-europe-a-look-at-the-numbers), and Sun has more sales in the US than the EU (http://seekingalpha.com/article/173186-why-oracle-should-leave-europe-a-look-at-the-numbers).

Larger market in what sense? You can keep deluding yourself into believing that the EU is a larger market, but in most cases it is not.

For example, only 15% of Oracles revenue comes from the EU (http://seekingalpha.com/article/173186-why-oracle-should-leave-europe-a-look-at-the-numbers), and Sun has more sales in the US than the EU (http://seekingalpha.com/article/173186-why-oracle-should-leave-europe-a-look-at-the-numbers).

Bring Mexicans in just to tax them? I've got a better idea.
Tax the rich.

OK. So you tax the rich, what... 75%? 95%? Even if you taxed the "rich" 100%, it still wouldn't make a dent in our deficit. Now you have a worse job problem than you had before, since these "rich" guys can no longer invest money into the stock market, which allows companies to expand and create jobs, or buy bonds that allow local and state governments to hire people to build and maintain roads, public transportation and build libraries.

Three things have to happen before our debt issues are resolved.
1) Cut spending. If services suffer, let the states take over those services.
2) Tax everyone. Once everyone is paying taxes, say, via a federal sales tax, suddenly everyone will realize that it's their money that the government is spending. If you pay no taxes, you don't care how the government spends tax money. The top 1% pay a vast majority of the tax burden. Imagine how much more money the government would receive if you started taxing the other 99%!
3) Cut Spending. I can't say this enough.

As for "Tax the rich":

Given that we had a deficit of $1.3 trillion even after taking in $899 billion in total income tax revenues, does anyone in his or her right mind think raising income taxes on everyone or 'raising taxes on the rich’ would solve the problem? We would have to see income tax revenues from everyone go up by more than a double. That is, with a $1.3 trillion deficit for 2010, we would need an extra $1.3 trillion in income tax revenues on top of the $899 billion we got in 2010. That is not going to happen. And, instead of getting a reduction in spending, we are actually ramping it up for fiscal year 2011. Now that’s crazy.

In other words, the deficit alone is more than our entire income taxes bring in. If you double the income taxes on EVERYONE, not just the rich, you would still fall about $430 billion short of just covering the deficit. The deficit is $1.3 trillion. Income taxes area bout $900 billion. Bringing in another $900 billion won't cover the $1.3 trillion annual deficit. Sorry, but math trumps your class envy.

Also, as a side note, state and local income taxes are calculated AFTER federal dollars are taken out. If you raise the rate from, say, 35% to 70% on the "rich", that takes a huge bite out of state and local budgets. Instead of being able to tax the wealthy on 65% of their total income for the year, states and local governments would only be able to tax on 30% of the year. This would literally cut state and local tax receipts in half AND STILL NOT PAY OFF THE FEDERAL DEFICIT.

Paul Krugman wrote:

On the other hand, it’s hard to think of anyone less qualified to pass judgment on America than the rating agencies. The people who rated subprime-backed securities are now declaring that they are the judges of fiscal policy? Really?

He certainly had no problem with their ratings when they were rated AAA, why should he now? But then again he's the guy who insists on an 8 - 10 Trillion USD stimulus plan to "save" the economy. God forbid he understands the concept of fiscal responsibility - I wouldn't trust that man's opinions with a nickel.

Same misconception that people had in the 70's and 80's about Japan buying up America. Do some research before your spout off stats feed to you by the media.

US and Individuals own: 42.2%
Social Security Trust Fund: 17.9%
All other foreign nations: 11.6%
China: 7.5%
US Civil Service Retirement Fund: 6.4%
UK: 3.4%
US Military Retirement Fund: 2.1%
Oil Exporters:1.6%
Brazil(?): 1.3%

So, that means 68.6% if our debt is held by ourselves.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/246958-guess-who-owns-the-most-u-s-debt-not-china

The Bush tax cuts were to stimulate the economy after 9/11 (they failed to do so)

And yet, Federal tax revenues increased by 30% from 2000 to 2007 (and then began dropping in 2008 as the Housing Bubble burst).

And this in spite of the recession immediately post-9/11, which saw tax revenues drop 10% over a two year period.

Insightful? Really? When the poster literally makes up a non-existent recession to explain the drop in tax revenues when the rates were cut?

Look at the data folks: www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls (or if you prefer a graphic representation - http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2010/2/26/saupload_gdp2000_2010.jpg ). There was no post "9-11 recession"; in fact there is not a single quarter after the Bush tax cuts went into effect when the GDP did not increase, until the crash of 2008.

In real terms (inflation adjusted) there was no "30% increase". U.S. tax revenues fell sharply (18%) with the Bush tax cuts going in to effect, and recovered their former level only in 2006 (see second column, 2005 constant dollars: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist01z3.xls). But the country had grown in population by 6% over the interim so this was still down from previous levels. It never recovered to the previous level on a per capita or GDP fraction basis 9http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-fraction-of-gdp/).