Slashdot Mirror

Cisco --- No Services

So much more funny as a picture...
... or this one... or this one or this one

Interestingly, these seem to be different locations as well (different exit number, different landscape, different design on sign), do we see a pattern here?

If you thought that LinkedIn's IPO was hyped and hyper, Zynga's going to put that all to shame.

Okay so let's take a look at the two IPOs. From Slashdot's own summary of LinkedIn's IPO we have this fact about what the shares were trading at on LinkedIn's opening day:

That price values the company at over 30 times its 2010 revenue ...

So now that we can see Zynga's financials, we see that its revenues for 2010 were $600 million meaning that if the shares hold at exactly the price Zynga opens at, they will be valuing Zynga at 1 2/3 times their 2010 revenues. Now, of course, last year's revenue doesn't mean everything as growth, market cap, etc come into play. But that 1 2/3 times is substantially less than the ridiculous 39x amount that LinkedIn's IPO skyrocketed to. If the total trading volume's valuation goes from $1 billion to $23.4 billion in the first day of trading then we'd be approaching LinkedIn-levels of bubble hype. How exactly is Zynga going to "put that all to shame"? Are you in possession of some proof that the trading will once again go ape shit past $23.4 billion? I think the recent MySpace sale has shown that a company that makes games (though shaky) is nowhere near as volatiles as a company that relies upon its social network to fill its coffers.

Remember, some folks estimate that Farmville alone is now worth more than EA.

I hate Zynga with a passion and am convinced that Words with Friends has completely destroyed my Android phone's battery life (all the while showing me ads to improve my battery life) but I think they're a far better bet than LinkedIn. I've commented on Zynga's 7 Eleven partnership long ago and I think that market penetration is massive and gives them an upper hand that I cannot fathom how the competition will beat -- especially if that's an exclusive contract.

These days, you don't go to college to get an education. You go to college to get a piece of paper that gets you a job.

When that's the mentality, everyone has the assumption that you have to go to college to get a job, everyone goes to college, and college standards have to be lowered to give everyone an equal opportunity. At the same time, colleges have realized what a cash cow "educations" are and have been jacking up rates like no man's business. Let me tell you another secret. I went to GT for my bachelor's degree. Everything that I learned came from my own studying. I could have sat in my basement with textbooks and a computer, table, and desk lamp and learned the same materials because I was always either in the classroom or library anyway. Nothing special about these places. The only "special" thing required is to have a curriculum designed which amounts to little more than having a syllabus. Trade secrets from the professor? Didn't learn any. The lecturer's PowerPoint slides? Please. The few lab resources that I actually used? Sorry, but I had a more capable lab built by the time I was a sophomore with funds from my summer/part-time jobs and purchasing old equipment on eBay.

I'm still $42k in debt, and the wife is going crazy about it. I think that Pete Thiel is trying to make the statement that this whole college process is completely haywire and that you don't need a college degree to be successful. Just some intelligence, creativity, some books, and a desire to learn on one's own and a drive to innovate. But what would I know having been through this twice already?

'In China, we will have a debt crisis — a high-speed rail debt crisis,' says Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and longtime critic of high-speed rail who worries that the cost of the project might have created a hidden debt bomb that threatens China's banking system. 'I think it is more serious than your subprime mortgage crisis. You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It's a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.'"

Unfortunately, that apparently isn't the only bubble in China:

How Big Is the Chinese Property Bubble?

In times of crisis alternative economic models become more appealing. Since the USA, the beacon of capitalism was the epicentre for the current crisis and the Chinese economy escaped relatively unharmed, there is a certain logic in asserting that the central planners in China have the right economic prescription.

But as James Chanos and others have pointed out, centrally planned economies lead to malinvestment and nowhere is that malinvestment more manifest than in China’s Property market. Consider John Mauldin’s November 24th, Outside the box interview with Vitaliy Katsenelson. Katsenelson compares Japan’s property bubble of the late 1980s to modern day China and the results aren’t pretty.....

China's credit bubble on borrowed time as inflation bites

The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to take out protection against the risk of a sovereign default by China as one of its top trade trades for 2011. This is a new twist.

It warns that the Communist Party will have to puncture the credit bubble before inflation reaches levels that threaten social stability. This in turn may open a can of worms.

"Many see China’s monetary tightening as a pre-emptive tap on the brakes, a warning shot across the proverbial economic bows. We see it as a potentially more malevolent reactive day of reckoning," said Tim Ash, the bank’s emerging markets chief.

Officially, inflation was 4.4pc in October, and may reach 5pc in November, but it is to hard find anybody in China who believes it is that low. Vegetables have risen 20pc in a month.

China: the coming costs of a superbubble

China may seem to have defied the recession and the laws of economics. It hasn't. When China's bubble bursts, the global impact will be severe, spiking US interest rates.

The world looks at China with envy. China’s economy grew 8.7 percent last year, while the world economy contracted by 2.2 percent. It seems that Chinese “Confucian capitalism” – a market economy powered by 1.3 billion people and guided by an authoritarian regime that can pull levers at will – is superior to our touchy-feely democracy and capitalism. But the grass on China’s side of the fence is not as green as it appears.

In fact, China’s defiance of the global recession is not a miracle – it’s a superbubble. When it deflates, it will spell big trouble for all of us.

It seems likely that the world has a few more financial tremors coming.

Some streaming protocols, like HTTP live streaming, can work well with common techniques like content delivery networks and transparent caching to allow content distributors or ISPs to reduce network load by moving popular content closer to the endpoints.

Instead it CUT it's deployment spending over the past few years

[citation needed]

That would explain a lot but I looked it up and there appears to be no indication that's the culprit (not sure what is). Here's a link or two or three that says AT&T has increased its wireless capital spending. I found one article claiming what you say in the headline but if you read the article the jist is that the reduction in capital spending was due to a slowdown in their U-verse home fiber buildout.

Apple is fifth in market share (around 10%) behind 4 other companies in terms of units sold. Their market share has doubled in the last five years but it's relatively easy to grow from 5% compared with HP's nearly 30% or Dell's 20+%. They've grown but they've only taken a fraction of the market share and almost all at the high end of the consumer market. Apple does not seriously compete in corporate PC sales nor do they compete at the lowest end of the consumer market.

The premise was that Apple couldn't continue being highly profitability while competing with "commodity hardware", they are doing exactly that with PC's.

In fact, the average selling price (consumer price + subsidy) of the iPhone has increased over the years.

Demonstrably incorrect. There are tablets out there for equal or less money from (potentially) serious competitors like Research In Motion and Motorola. Somewhat misleading though since tablets are essentially a new market so there has been little time for competitors to bring competing products to market, regardless of price.

The Xoom is the same price with a lesser GPU and the Playbook is the same price with a smaller screen.

Flash memory is not generally purchased in large quantities on a spot market. You can't just run to Toshiba and say I'd like 3 million flash memory chips delivered tomorrow. They have to purchase in advance and only then do the manufacturers produce the products. Buying market moving percentages of anything does not always result in lower prices if other people want that commodity too. If you buy 75% of the world's supply of anything, by definition you paid more than others were willing meaning you moved the price up, not down. There are numerous suppliers of flash memory and they adjust supply as demand shifts. Apple is a big player in this market but hardly the only one.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/83670-apple-on-huge-order-breaks-nand-flash-supply

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080703/apple-takes-top-honors-in-competitive-nand-eating-contest/

The vast majority of the profit Apple makes is from selling hardware. Yes they make some money on the side from software and music sales and the rest it's a fraction of their overall revenue. Any profit Apple makes from software sales is simply gravy. Itunes exists to keep people buying iPods and iPads and iPhones. It is widely known that Apple does not make huge amounts of money from music sales. They do pretty well with App Store sales but those still are a fraction of their hardware sales. Don't take my word for it, look at Apple's financial statements.

I said profit from selling there own software for iPads.

Apple sells Numbers, Pages, GarageBand, and iMovie for the iPad. 30% of the profit would be recognized from iTunes and the other 70% would be recognized under software sells. If the average iPad buyer spends $50 extra between buying Apple software and accessories (headphones, smart covers, etc.) that's almost pure marginal profit.

Furthermore since Google is bankrolling the software development for them (Apple has to eat those software development costs themselves) the Android OEMs have a theoretically lower price floor than Apple. Conceivably they could sell the Android device for less than Apple's cost and still be profitable.

Unless you're HTC paying Microsoft a "license" for each Android phone sold. iOS development costs are spread over roughly 50 million iOS devices and the core OS is also used for roughly 12 million Macs. But either way, that has nothing to do with marginal profit.

Conceivably they could sell the Android device for less than Apple's cost and still be profitable.

That doesn't seem to be working out to well for Motorola....

True, I misread the numbers. Apple "only" made 6 billion after taxes in Q2. I wonder where that profit went? From their call:

"Turning to cash. Our cash for short-term and long-term marketable securities totaled $65.8 billion at the end of the March quarter compared to $59.7 billion at the end of the December quarter, a sequential increase of $6.1 billion."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/264616-apple-management-discusses-q2-2011-results-earnings-call-transcript

In other words, the profits went into the bank.

I just ran across a book the other day that cost more on amazon.ca than on amazon.com. Not sure how that works. There is no duty. The difference in shipping costs of the printed book should be moot especially where I am, within fifty miles of Niagara Falls. And to top it off, the Canadian dollar has been worth more than the U.S. dollar for the past few months. Amazon had no good reason to charge almost ten dollars more to Canadians for the same book. Not very reputable if you ask me. But since they bought bookpool.com a few years ago, they're the only real game in town.

I think your issue might be more with book prices in general than with Amazon specifically. It's long been a North American book publisher tradition to print USD and CAD prices on books with seemingly little regard to the current exchange rate. According to Exchange Rates Revisited: U.S. Dollar and the Cost of Books, in 2009 the CAD prices printed on newly published books were as much as 27% higher than the USD prices. This was at a time when the US and Canadian dollars were at parity. I would guess the price that Amazon pays to the publishers for the books is similarly skewed.

Although, I suppose Amazon could just order a whole bunch of books in USD, and then sell those to Canadians. But, then I'd also suppose there's some draconian clause the the agreement between the publishers and Amazon not to do that. Maybe Canadians are just used to seeing a higher numerical price for their books so the publishers figure they can still get away with it. Or maybe Amazon does pay the same price to the publisher whether a book ends up going to a Canadian or an American, it's just Amazon and not the publisher figuring they can keep screwing Canadians.

It happens: http://seekingalpha.com/article/19019-sony-s-damaged-reputation-has-its-costs I agree with you, most consumers are quite apathetic. But that doesn't inure Sony to the fruits of their labors. And the more bad press they get, the more agitators become aware of the situation - the kind of people with the means and motivation to have a positive impact on the roles of corporations in society.

One button mouse, almost destroying Apple, delaying the move to Intel because he wanted to use chips that were not used by "real" computer makers, Apple 3 firestarter meant business still cannot take them seriously.

Let's take these in order:

One button mouse: First off, remember, this was 1981-83, when these decisions were made. Nearly no one in the regular population (and even most computer "experts") even knows what a computer "mouse" is at that time. Jef Raskin wanted a multi-button (up to FIVE) mouse. SJ did not. And at the time, Xerox PARC (I think), or maybe it was M.I.T., had conducted "usability" studies that showed, hands down (or mouse-buttons-down) that a one-button mouse was far easier for MOST people to learn. So, the one-button mouse was decided upon on the LISA, and then adopted on the Mac. See this article for some mouse history. However, that was then. So, that's why, ever since MacOS 8.6 (1999) Macs have directly supported two button (and now more-button) mice, and MacOS has actually supported "contextual menus" with a Ctrl-Click since MacOS 8.0 (1997). This very informed article might clear up any misconceptions about the advisability (still!) of a one-button mouse, and the Mac's support of same. That's why Apple's OWN multi-button mice (I think up to 5 buttons are definable) still default to acting like a one-button mouse. Because, for MOST people, it IS the better choice. Even now. But, this is one tired meme. Stop it. You're embarrassing yourself. Oh, and BTW, according to the Wikipedia article cited above, Microsoft really didn't start supporting a second mouse button until the release of WIndows '95. So, considering that Apple added contextual menus only two years later, and full two-button support two years after that, Apple wasn't nearly as late to the "right-click" party as the haters make them out to be.

Now, shall we start naming the Apple "industry FIRSTS"??? Of course not; the list is far too long...

Almost Destroying Apple: Um, I think you have Jobs confused with Sculley, who nearly killed Apple by LICENSING MacOS to third parties (at the urging of BILL GATES!), and signing a technology agreement with Microsoft to allow them to basically steal Apple's superior GUI code (and even THEN, WIndows 95 SUUUCKED compared to MacOS). See here, and here. However, thanks for trying. And I don't think anyone who is not purely delusional would characterize Apple's performance since Jobs' return as anything other than "phenomenal".

Delaying the move to Intel: Hmmm, I wonder who's decision it was to keep an INTEL version of OS X (and all the core "iLife" apps, etc.) up-to-date from 1999 (going back to Rhapsody/NeXTStep/Mac OS X Server 1.0) to 2005 (when the move to Intel was announced). Jobs had been REPEATEDLY promised two things from IBM: The first one was a G5 CPU running at 3.0GHz "real soon now"; and the second was a low-power G5 to put in a laptop. But IBM let him down. Repeatedly. And so, after it was patently obvious that IBM wasn't coming through (because they were too busy chasing the Cell CPU), Jobs (along with the Board of Directors!) made a pretty painful decision to make a HUGE platform change. And, BTW, they pulled it off REALLY seamlessly, too. Oh, and if your definition of "real computer makers" is limited to only those who use X86 architecture, then you are, by definition calling Sun, IBM, SGi (when there was an SGi), DEC (when there was a DEC) and others NOT "real" computer makers. Now do you see how stupid your statement sounds? BTW, you do realize, of course, that the PowerPC architecture is the little brother of IBM's "Power" architecture, which of cour

China has only just been growing for a few years now. For the people to really feel the effects it takes more years after the growth happens. In fact Their people are in better shape, a lot better, in 20 years. Poverty was at around 84% in the mid 80's. In 2005 it was 16%. Chinas middle class has also been rising. While they might not be at the levels of the western world yet, they are getting big and better with much investment by their own countries infrastructure is only going to help them more.

They were able to use further loans from the gov to pay back the TARP funds. I know GM did this, not sure how widespread it is among TARP recipients. So they went around and got another loan, paid back the original loan, and everyone's happy.

As to G-S, give me access to 0% loans direct from the fed and I'm sure I can make money too. Like oh, use these no interest loans to buy government bonds that return 5%.. That's right, we give these bastards money at no charge so they can turn around, buy government debt, that we as taxpayers pay back at a 5% charge. Sweet! No wonder so many NY Stock exchange board members jumped onto G-S when they became a bank specifically to allow them to get bailout money.

Do this scam enough and the facebook money is nothing.

It's simple to see the benefits: compare unemployment in the US during the global slump, to a unionized country like Germany.

Hire and fire has its downsides: you get the axe when rich people decide that they want to save their money, instead of fuelling the economy and creating jobs. With looming deflation it's the no-brainer choice for them: deflation makes their existing capital even more valuable in the future. Inflation would force that capital into the 'real economy' - but inflation is decreasing right now - the US is facing japanese-style deflation.

Those of you who rely on honest work instead of on investment income on inherited or hoarded capital: sorry, the next decade or two is not going to be to your liking. Those who are trying to survive these bad times in their country clubs are sending their condolences. (but not any cheques)

In 1979 the top 1% earners had 10% of the US's wealth. In 2010 the top 1% has more than 50% of the wealth - and the bottom 40% has exactly zero percent. (they are in net debt)

If you thought that such income asymmetries have no downsides you were wrong.

one should equate it to the masses in front of the guillotine back in 18th century. it is not wise, to keep ignoring their will, despite they having started to openly express it and become aggressive over it. last batch to do that, had their heads in a bucket.

21% of peak Internet traffic in North America is a Netflix stream.

YouTube Video 10% Flash Video 6%. Everything BitTorrent, 10%. Video's Expanding Bandwidth, and What It Means for Internet Traffic [Nov 19]

Netflix reached those numbers with only a bare 2% of it's 15 million paying subscribers streaming video.

300,000.

That would put the number of prime time video pirates at less than 30,000.

Jamie Thomas took her case before three civil juries. Each one of which handed her head back to her on a plate.

It seems that nothing pisses off the masses quite like the geek's sense of entitlement.

The economy was fucked when the banksters initiated the largest embezzlement scam in human history in the form of the housing bubble. They just managed to cover up the theft until about 2006.

That's only part of the story. The full story involves unregulated derivatives.

It is about the fact that Goldman Sachs had, and continues to have, network taps that are closer to the exchange computers than anybody else. They have latency advantages of up to .2ms on trades, which is a gigantic window if they can cache other orders and jam theirs into the front.

Others have pointed out that Goldman Sachs record is statistically IMPOSSIBLE. See Seeking Alpha here:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/154083-goldman-is-its-trading-performance-statistically-reasonable?source=commenter

Also, the exchanges have seen rashes of NOP orders placed. Fake trades designed to jam the queues to create artificial windows of opportunity to front-run big market movements. Goldman Sachs is probably (fuck probably, they are certainly) gaming NBBO and pocketing the difference millions of times a day.

For the less market knowledgeable out there (basically, most of Slashdot), they are running the scam Richard Pryor did in Superman, or in Office Space. They are skimming pennies off the market by seeing a trade ahead of it hitting the exchange, then jamming NOP orders in while they calculate and move a trade ahead of that to piggyback on the effect of the larger trade on share price.

Denninger has been all over this story:
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2139302


Sergey's code probably contains stuff in it that jams NOP orders into the system, or shows how it using something simple like the dragon tools or plain ol' tcpdump to inspect orders as they fly-by on the tap. In fact, Sergey's code may PROVE beyond a reasonable doubt that Goldman Sachs is tapping the NYSE Exchange computers ethernet feeds. That would be a bombshell of the first order.

Like I said, look beyond the technical press and look at the financial press. Goldman Sachs is coming to the poker table with a marked deck and it can be statistically proven.

HFT is a smoke screen. The frequency of trading is moot. if I can look at the world's trades before they hit the exchange and process and effect NBBO, I now have a license to print money. Doing it high frequency just makes the printing press run faster.

This was covered in the Economist last week.

The US has some of the largest deposits of rare earths in the world. One big location is Mountain Pass, California. The mine there was closed in 2002, because it wasn't competitive with the China price. (Or with China's mining with a complete lack of environmental controls.)

The Mountain Pass mine is being reopened under new management. In a few years, this problem will be over.

The problem with rare-earth mining is that, since the materials are rare, the waste problem is huge. The early stages of extractoin are messy. Big acid lakes, things like that.

Call me a foil hat wearing lunatic but I say at this point we've seen more than enough evidence of close cooperation between the American government and America's large industries to call it a budding facism.

Consider: Pluralism has been steadily weakening as congress and the presidents sign law after law giving and allowing the president to take unprecedented power. The courts already lack any real ability to stop this trend.

New laws have made everyone a criminal. Those against whom the government chooses to enforce these laws are being imprisoned and harassed. It's no longer possible to be a law abiding citizen in America -- only on the ruling powers' good side or not. Police all over the US have an "us against them" mindset that has led to countless abuses to the extent that a police uniform is no longer a comforting site even for those who obey the law. It's now illegal in several states to even record these abuses and Americans everywhere are shutting up and keeping their heads down.

If these dangerous trends are not stopped the US will be a fascist police state very soon.

Oil production of Iraq: ~2.5 million barrels per day .

Oil production of Iran: over 4 million barrels per day.

Therefore: totaloil leaked into Gulf, over a period of two months, was less than two day's production for a mid-ranking oil-producing country. To put it another way: you'd have to take out 15 rigs of that size to have the same effect on world supply as a major war in the Middle East.

I think the real irony is that the government is paying these companies (vicariously) to make us fat with one hand and then dishing out all these bucks to fight obesity on the other hand.

And then shutting down the new drugs that could potentially help. The ones that work well get shut down because they're perceived as too dangerous. The ones that are safe will get shut down because they're perceived as not working well enough.

The only winner is the bureaucracy.

I think the real irony is that the government is paying these companies (vicariously) to make us fat with one hand and then dishing out all these bucks to fight obesity on the other hand.

And then shutting down the new drugs that could potentially help. The ones that work well get shut down because they're perceived as too dangerous. The ones that are safe will get shut down because they're perceived as not working well enough.

The only winner is the bureaucracy.

While Microsoft isn't making headlines in the consumer market, over the last decade they have pretty much caught up with or surpassed the competition in the business space (ex: Java, Oracle, PHP, Amazon EC2...). They have however recently started focusing on consumers again with Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7.

And while Apple's per quarter revenue is catching up with Microsoft, in terms of gross profit Microsoft still has about twice the margins that Apple does, which makes sense because software is cheap to produce and distribute. The research and development numbers show that Microsoft spends twice as much of their profits (8 times the total amount) that Apple does, which also makes sense because all Apple really does is find new suppliers with smaller/cheaper/better parts.

By the way, counting all taxes (not just US corporate income tax) Exxon alone averages about $30 Billion per year, although it's been less in the recession years.

Mr AC, it's not impossible to do- it IS called front running and they are getting away with it. If they weren't doing it with computers or they weren't so big, they would have been prosecuted for this.

Google "front running" and "Goldman Sachs". You'll find numerous articles on the subject starting a few months back as people realized what they were doing.

Here...
http://seekingalpha.com/article/150397-flash-trading-goldman-sachs-front-running-everyone-else

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/is-goldman-stealing-100-million-per-trading-day/

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Holdings Outperforming S&P 500 Handily
It is also overweight Healthcare, Consumer Staples and Industrials. The Foundation is underweight Telecom, Consumer Discretionary and Energy, and it has a 0% weight in Technology, Utilities and Materials.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Owns Over 7 Million Shares of BP

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Buys CSX Corp., M&T Bank Corp., XTO Energy Inc. Mcdonald's, Devon Energy Corp., Sells Johnson & Johnson
These are the top 5 holdings of Bill Gates

      1. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-B) - 1,251,250 shares, 48.36% of the total portfolio
      2. McDonald's Corp. (MCD) - 6,867,500 shares, 5.27% of the total portfolio
      3. Canadian National Railway Company Fully (CNI) - 8,399,653 shares, 4.82% of the total portfolio
      4. Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) - 4,285,000 shares, 4% of the total portfolio
      5. Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) - 6,128,000 shares, 3.74% of the total portfolio

Is this a philanthropic venture or a tax evasion investment scheme?

I do commend Gates for what he is doing but I would not go so far as to slobber all over him for his philanthropic works considering his past illicit activity that played a significant role in providing him with the funds to become a philanthropist.

This is easily seen as an even greater impediment to companies going public than the economic downturn. Just like the government intervention that allows companies to patent software, government interference in the market in the well-intentioned ideas behind SOX becomes simply another way that existing corporations can bludgeon upstart competition with their incumbent dominance and lobbying savvy.

Considering the massive financial impact investors endured from the likes of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and others it is a tough sell to kill regulation like SOX. While it does introduce a cost burden there is a lot of that burden which should be in effect in the first place for any viable and reputable business. There is a lot of SOX costs that are blown out of proportion exactly because accounting costs that should have been in place are included with new requirements like audits.

Anyhow, costs aside the data does not agree with your assessment of the impact of SOX on IPOs.

Market pull backs and recessions that result in regulations like SOX are the cause of reduced IPOs not the regulation as can be seen in the charts in this article that clearly shows little or no impact to IPO trends from the passing of SOX in 2002. Once the market started to recover from the dot com bust the IPOs returned even though SOX was in place.

I would not say that "very often peoples problems are self imposed". Our society does not give ample opportunities to people to increase their education and wealth. You either have good credit and can get an education which indentures you to banks for a decade or more, or you go off and get a job making just enough to get by with minimal benefits. Unfortunately, good education is available only to those with access to money beyond living expenses so money tends to stay in a specific class. That is why better education is needed for the poor to grant them similar opportunities to others. Im not saying give away free money, Im just saying that its sickening to see the disparity of wealth, health care and education in this country. So far conservatives only manipulate things so that the rich get richer at the expense of the general population and even the environment. Conversely, the liberals want to give people money for free, which is just as bad since it transforms a significant number of people to being useless to society over time. We need some new blood in government to fix these problems. http://seekingalpha.com/article/189649-wealth-disparities-in-u-s-approaching-1920s-levels

> This is NOT a reason to stop offshore drilling. Offshore drilling is an essential part of our current energy use. What this is, however, is a good reason to reinforce laws surrounding safety and preparedness standards...and make sure they are fucking followed.

Well, that sounds reasonable. But, then, as you pointed out:

> You want the government to take over...ok, what do you expect them to do? BP has the equipment, the government does not.

So.... ummm.... hmmm. I'm stumped. How exactly is regulator Joe going to make sure that there is a proper gasket on a blowout preventer, 1 mile beneath the ocean's surface? What's he gonna do, swim down there and take a look?

As for offshore drilling being "an essential part of our current energy use," do you have a cite for that? Let's say for the sake of argument that this article is correct. The total amount of oil below the gulf is perhaps 18 billion barrels. We use 8 billion barrels a year. Furthermore, BP is under no obligation to even sell us the oil that they collect! How does this translate to something that's extremely necessary for our energy needs?

BP didn't drill the well as a charity to the US, they did it for their own profit.

This article may not be completely solid financial data, but makes more sense than the populist reactionary stance you take:

So there you have it, Apple fans; your stock looks fairly priced. No debt on the balance and strong cash flows look good as well. By the numbers, Apple looks attractive as a growth story. Recent weakness may be enhancing the opportunity. Based on the thesis that earnings determine market price, Apple is currently trading at a PEG ratio of approximately one based on future earnings expectations.

I'm pretty libertarian, but I agree these should be stopped. As the other poster said, it gives real estate closer to the market servers an advantage, I'm not quite clear how it works, but it is evident that it does because people are doing it. I assume they can recognize short term patterns and jump in ahead of anyone else who might try to take advantage of them.

No, it's much worse than this. High frequency trading allows its practicioners to cheat, quite literally, as I pointed out in another comment that linked to this blog post.

When a buyer or seller places a limit order, their limit price is supposed to be a secret, and the market is supposed to deliver the best possible price for them relative to that limit. Flash trades and "immediate-or-cancel" orders allows high frequency traders to issue a flurry of really quick orders to discover a slower trader's limit price, and then trade at that limit instead of the price that the slower guy would have otherwise gotten.

So if ACME is trading at $26.10, slow buyer A enters a limit buy order for $26.40, and slow seller B enters a market sell order, the high speed trader is able to use really fast trades to discover A's $26.40 limit, buy B's shares at $26.10, and then sell them right away to A for $26.40, all before A can learn about B's more favorable sell offer and accept it.

It's allowed because the current theory is that anybody who wants to do it, can. I think the best argument against that is it takes real estate close to the market computers in order to have a fast enough ping time to trade by the millisecond.

No, the best argument against it is that it allows automated front-running by allowing the high-frequency traders to issue and cancel small orders in quick succession to discover an ordinary buyers or seller's limit price, and then profiting by offering a sale that would have otherwise happened at a price more favorable to the initiator. To quote the link (which is highly recommended):

Let's say that there is a buyer willing to buy 100,000 shares of BRCM with a limit price of $26.40. That is, the buyer will accept any price up to $26.40. But the market at this particular moment in time is at $26.10, or thirty cents lower.

So the computers, having detected via their "flash orders" (which ought to be illegal) that there is a desire for Broadcom shares, start to issue tiny (typically 100 share lots) "immediate or cancel" orders - IOCs - to sell at $26.20. If that order is "eaten" the computer then issues an order at $26.25, then $26.30, then $26.35, then $26.40. When it tries $26.45 it gets no bite and the order is immediately canceled.

Now the flush of supply comes at, big coincidence, $26.39, and the claim is made that the market has become "more efficient." Nonsense; there was no "real seller" at any of these prices! This pattern of offering was intended to do one and only one thing - manipulate the market by discovering what is supposed to be a hidden piece of information - the other side's limit price!

Wow, we are sinking to new levels of idiocy now.
The MSM would have you believe that the tremendous sell-off in the markets was just a trading error. If it was a trading error, then these markets SUCK! Are you telling me we put TRILLIONS of dollars, including our retirement savings, into a system that can be completely thrown into chaos because a single guy hits the wrong button on a single transaction? It’s a good thing Faisal Shahzad isn’t still working on Wall Street anymore, or he could have just pushed a button and caused a lot more damage that way than he did with a faulty car bomb
This is financial terrorism, folks, retail traders were stopped out and margined out while the pros made Billions picking up the pieces. Don’t worry though, if you are rich enough and connected enough, the Nasdaq will reverse your losses but if they really wanted to make amends, they would cancel the day’s trading for ALL traders.
This market didn’t just sell off because of a trading mistake. Whatever really happened, it happened because there were no real buyers when the selling came - something I have been warning would happen during the last 3 months of low-volume run-ups. I keep using the house of cards/Jenga metaphor and that’s exactly what we have so be very careful when the same idiots who have been telling you BUYBUYBUY are now telling you to "come back in - the water’s fine."

and here:

Having seen the capitulation unfold second by second and then listen to CNBC come up with every excuse under the sun just got under my skin. I've decided to chart some of our one second analytics charts of the capitulation unfolding on our screens. The chart below (more to follow) captures the moment of the final capitulation, before the reversal today. The idea that it was a 'fat finger' error is ludicrous; unless the fat finger hit every market in the world virtually simultaneously. Liquidity simply left the world financial markets for about four minutes this afternoon. The bids just vanished. And what else vanished? Remember the vaunted supplemental liquidity providers, led by Goldman Sachs. Remember that they are paid to "provide liquidity" through their predatory high-frequency algos, they are not required to do so. So when the S@#$T hit the fan they just disappeared. In one second more or less someone (and yes, under these circumstances, human beings take control of the machines) made the decision to pull the bids on every equity in the S&P, every financial futures contract, every FX contract in every market in the world. This kind of thing just doesn't happen in a pure auction environment; there just isn't a tight enough communication link between the parties to allow the decisions to propagate within the same second -- even with HFT algorithms. No. Some human made the decision to pull the bids; all of them, all at once. If that is not a condemnation of the concentration of financial power and the systematic risk it engenders I don't know what is.

Now if we can just eliminate the other 2/3 of the price solar energy will be free :)

During that same period, oil prices (also in inflation-adjusted dollars) went up by 500%. (Doubtless they have retreated during the recession; it's hilarious how quickly we all stop worrying about it as soon as prices fall at the pump. In a year gas will be sky-high again).

If our deficit were such a problem, the government wouldn't be able to borrow at under 1%.

Also, they are able to borrow under 1% because they are buying it from themselves.

Like the homeowners who borrowed excessively at teaser rates, our deficit strategy will work great... until it ends swiftly and with terrible consequences.

In essence, Google questioned the status quo too directly, and so it has been silenced by being driven into exile. To do anything other than exile Google would have caused the Central Government to lose face, which is a humiliation which must not be allowed.

I made up a number to illustrate a situation in which an economy could be untidy while still having the majority of people doing fine.

I'm not surprised that it would not align with reality. But it sort of does. Here is a site that says real unemployment in California is about 18%:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/114210-real-unemployment-closer-to-18-watch-those-long-positions

That source probably leans a bit corporate, but I would be sort of surprised if you could find a super-left blog claiming much higher than 20%.

Yeah, but you're presupposing that Apple is a fair platform
to begin with. I used to an Apple user for over 5 years but
I refused to stay with them after they enacted the "powermac tax"
where I had to spend an extra $1000 just to have a PCI slot. I've
been an exclusive Linux user for the better part of a decade now.

You're right about the App store lock in, but it's not against
the law to make profits. Overall, I don't "get" the iPad and the
value proposition it's selling, it ought to cost half as much with
the restrictions that come along with it. It reminds me more of
a kindle than anything else. Vote with your dollars and try
to promote the JooJoo instead which seems to fully support Flash
and Java.

https://thejoojoo.com/sites/specification

Also, the App store as it currently stands doesn't make up a
huge portion of Apple's current revenue but with the
introduction of this, the continued success of the iphone, and
the likely Kindle like integration for "songs on demand" for
the next gen iPod and support for the app store; the app store's
share of revenue will continue to grow with no limit in sight.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/137873-a-closer-look-at-those-iphone-app-store-revenue-numbers

The following link is ESSENTIAL reading

http://seekingalpha.com/article/178225-on-the-rare-earth-crisis-of-2009

China will not fall.

I have a story in the submission queue about Neodymium, 97% of which comes from China.

The following link is ESSENTIAL reading to have base data on any future predictions.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/178225-on-the-rare-earth-crisis-of-2009

Mod down parent. Nokia's R & D dept is shrinking while Apple's is small, but generates a much larger profit relative to the R & D investment.

Seth

Well, the stock never returned to its 2000/2001 peaks, and the company's reputation never recovered from the bashing it took during the big anti-trust case

The geek lives within his own little world.

But there are others:

Companies in the financial sector tumbled to the bottom of the Boston College-Reputation Institute 2009 CSR Index while top consumer brands perceived to be strong in the area of ethics, citizenship and workplace practices dominate the top 50, with Disney and Microsoft at the top.

Released today by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Reputation Institute, the index, based on a survey of consumers in the United States, shows the following companies in the top 10 positions:

1. Walt Disney Company
2. Microsoft
3. Google
4. Honda
5. Johnson & Johnson
6. PepsiCo.
7. General Mills
8. Kraft Foods
9. Campbell Soup Company
10. FedEx

Disney and Microsoft top CSR Index

Microsoft tends to do very well in surveys like these - and the margin between first and tenth can be paper thin. The Reputation of the Most Visible Companies
 

Not sure why this is getting marked as a troll as I found a couple of articles that talk about Apple's royality troubles.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/nokia-vs-apple-the-in-depth-analysis/
http://seekingalpha.com/article/36317-apple-s-iphone-and-the-future-of-qualcomm-part-ii

Having recently read an article in the "New Scientist" as to how Carbon could be the new Silicon, thanks to Nanotechnology, this got me wondering whether Carbon could do the same thing for batteries, so I decided to see what the research status is. From what I can see Zinc-Carbon is the current cheap solution in non-rechargeable batteries (according to Wikipedia), though a few hits turn up Lead-Carbon batteries, with this following article suggesting it could be a "game changer":

http://seekingalpha.com/article/115257-lead-carbon-a-game-changer-for-alternative-energy-storage

As to whether that pans out we will have to see. The advantage of Carbon over Silicon and Lithium is its availability.

ownership (eminent domain) and operation of the physical layer

And who's going to pay for the maintenance ? Start hiring another set of workers to maintain the lines and guess what - I'll bet you that they unionize. Already the government workers have such a sweet retirement package that they game the system to get the most payout. http://seekingalpha.com/article/135117-want-a-pension-over-100-000-be-a-government-worker-in-california

the last mile is a natural monopoly but my tax dollars should not be making someone rich.

I have my own problems funding my retirement

"Exxon also set an annual profit record by earning $40.61 billion last year - or nearly $1,300 per second in 2007." -- Exxon shatters profit records

"Exxon earned $45.2 billion in 2008, beating the record it set in 2007 for most profitable corporation, at $40.6 billion." -- Exxon Posts Record 2008 Profit Despite Slip in 4th Quarter

In short, in two years (admittedly record years), Exxon has made more in after taxes profit than what basically all world governments and private companies have ever spent on global warming research, pro or con, and anti-global warming technology in 20 years. Further:

"I'm pretty sure that Exxon's tax payment in 2007 of $30 billion (that's $30,000,000,000) is a record, exceeding the $28 billion it paid last year. ... By the way, Exxon pays taxes at a rate of 41% on its taxable income!" -- Exxon's 2007 Tax Bill: $30 Billion

Ie, the government gets tons of money from Exxon through taxes. What exactly is their incentive to cut Exxon off again? Personal enrichment? It'd seem Exxon could trivially bribe politicians if that was what it was about. For politicians and private citizens to create a huge global warming conspiracy sounds more like a religion than one based upon money. Of course, that's a harder point to prove, especially with all the evidence by multiple, independent scientists.

PS - Just to be clear, again, Exxon made ~$40 Billion in 2007 after taxes. Their before taxes income in 2007 was ~$70 Billion. If the US wasn't spending money like a drunken sailor, there'd be plenty of money from the taxes on Exxon alone to do substantial technological and research development to combat global warming. The idea that in 20 years we've spent a meager $70 Billion is depressing.

No, after all, isn't MS paying those developers to build the games for Xbox too? This is nothing new, console manufacturers have always done this, and charged developers licence fees to get their cash back :)

I meant the amount of money MS has given out in developing and 'aggressively' marketing the xbox line. Current estimate is $7bn losses - quick link I can find says $5.4bn loss up to 2007, which doesn't count the red-ring-of-death losses (of $1.2Bn).

The government's reaction, in 1999 was to change the federal regulations — instead of making it easier for the banks to fight off the undue pressures.

Imagine you're a lender. The government tells you that you have to make a certain number of loans that you know will be unprofitable. Do you:

a) Make the bare minimum number of those loans.
b) Lever up and make as many of those loans as you possibly can, looking under every rock and behind every tree to find somebody who will borrow?

When it became possible to off-load the bad securities to Fannie Mae, the banks did make tons of money.

You do realize that during the exact time frame you're talking about, the GSEs lost market share to "non-bank lenders," right? The hallmark of the better part of the last decade was traditional institutions losing market share with the rise of nontraditional issuers (who, of course, were also not subject to the CRA).

Apple has some of the deepest pockets around. currently $34,000,000,000 in cash (yes that's 34 billion).
Apple latest financial results
Turning to cash, our cash plus short-term and long-term marketable securities totaled $34 billion at the end of the September quarter compared to $31.1 billion at the end of the June quarter, an increase of $2.9 billion.

SEC Proposes Ban on Allowing Stock Flash Orders (dated September 19th 2009)

Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and Ted Kaufman urged the commission to halt the practice, arguing frequent traders use technology to profit from access to information not available to retail investors.

Flash traders have direct connections to the NYSE exchange and pay large sums just for bandwidth to make sure the trades are almost real time. Goldman Sachs is a key participator in this.

That said, their trades often have no human interaction and generally are computers following trading algorithms only a block away from the exchange with a direct fiber line to the office. It would be impossible otherwise.

Some traders have been raising a stink over this, but generally the miliseconds do count.

From http://seekingalpha.com/article/150397-flash-trading-goldman-sachs-front-running-everyone-else

The maximum allowable time for a flash is 500 milliseconds, or half a second, although most of the markets flash routable orders for under 30 milliseconds.

Of course I don't know how the LSE handles flash trading or even wants it but I'm going to assume they need everything to be as real time as possible. You just don't hear the finacial firms complaining about the disparities simply because they have the money to set up the transactions their servers pretty much next to the exchange itself (if not in the same building).