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For-profit entities compete by doing two things: increasing revenue and/or lowering expenses. Increasing revenue is hard in a market where the customer base is finite; it's easier to cut corners. It's only a matter of time before those cut corners lower the quality of the education offered. For-profit schools are not in the business of providing quality education, they are in the business of making money. It's not if you can do it better than the other guy, it's if you can do it cheaper.

Also, this is interesting: Charter schools aren't the free market miracle cures you seem to think they are. tl;dr: Charter schools game the system to make it look like they perform better than public schools, by dropping or turning away poorly performing students. Separation of church and state is also just theory. No fiscal responsibility, either; they don't have to tell you what they're spending your tax money on.

Many yes, but far too many feel that "If that's the price we have to pay for safety, then so be it".

Not as many as people think.

It's all in how the survey question is stated. If you ask people "Do you support airport security?" you'll find overwhelming support. Obviously. Ask people if they support the TSA irradiating its citizens, "raping" them with invasive pat-downs -- whether they agree with those security procedures, and you'll get much lower response. It's like the IRS: Most people acknowledge they have to pay their taxes. Few agree with the collection tactics the IRS uses, or the lack of judicial oversight.

Ok, let's go there.

If you sell the stock less than 12 months after exercising the stock option, you pay regular income taxes.

If you sell the stock 12 months after exercising the option, you pay 15%.

http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/taxes-on-nonqualified-stock-options-9304/

http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/taxes-on-incentive-stock-options-12196/

Ok, let's go there.

If you sell the stock less than 12 months after exercising the stock option, you pay regular income taxes.

If you sell the stock 12 months after exercising the option, you pay 15%.

http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/taxes-on-nonqualified-stock-options-9304/

http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/taxes-on-incentive-stock-options-12196/

The reason GDP has plummeted is that high tax rates,labor rates, and costs of massive regulation have encouraged business and manufacturing to leave the country in droves for decades for friendlier business pastures.

Labor rates in the US relative to corporate profits are very low today:

Corporate earnings are the highest they've been relative to worker wages (including benefits) since just before the Great Depression...If earnings were to suddenly revert to their historic average relative to wages...stocks would have to fall about 40% to return to their average level relative to earnings.

Have some companies moved production abroad? Yeah. But there are still 150 million people at work in this country full time. That's a freaking lot of people at work.

USA Today reported on a trend way back in 2010 of companies moving manufacturing work back to the US, despite what you characterize as high labor costs and massive regulation:

Chinese wages and shipping costs have risen sharply in the past few years while U.S. salaries have stayed flat, or in some cases, fallen in the recession. Meanwhile, U.S. manufacturers have been frustrated by the sometimes poor quality of goods made by foreign contractors, theft of their intellectual property and long product-delivery cycles that make them less responsive to customer demand.

With the cost gap between the U.S. and other countries narrowing for other expenses, such as class-action lawsuits, making products in the USA is now about 22% higher than the average of nine of its largest trading partners, down from 32% in 2006.

The $1 club gets paid in stock options, which have their own tax structure, and the occasional comped service. While it is a good way to avoid taxes, they are usually still taking a big hit in the pocket book for doing so.

Yes, a huge hit -- or roughly half of my tax rate (NOT including payroll taxes). Those poor CEOs, working out of the goodness of their little hearts for $1 and a few stock options, and the government has the nerve to actually take a portion of their pittance?!?

Capital gain income from assets held longer than one year are generally taxed at a special long-term capital gains rate. The rate that applies depends on which ordinary income tax bracket you fall under.

• Zero percent rate if your total income (including capital gain income) places you in the ten or fifteen percent tax brackets.
• 15% rate if your total income (including capital gain income) places you in the twenty-five percent tax bracket or higher.

http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/taxes-on-incentive-stock-options-12196/
http://taxes.about.com/od/capitalgains/a/CapitalGainsTax_4.htm

And "not a dime" on those under. And yet, when the Bush tax cuts go away, tax rates will go up. For everyone. http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/how-the-expiring-bush-tax-cuts-affect-you/ It is a deliberate choice at INACTION, which means it is a choice on the part of Obama to let everyone's taxes go up. He lied. There is no other way to say it.

He also admitted that he knew that increasing the rates on the "rich" would mean lower revenues. He said he'd do it because it was "fair". He doesn't care if there is a budget shortfall, or that by cutting the taxes on those who pay the most you actually get more money out of them overall, he's willing to cut off OUR noses to spite OUR faces.

In our society hard work is only enough to get into the top 20%. The top 5% is mostly locked in and handed down the children of people already there.

Sheer nonsense. Forbes magazine tracks the richest people in the world, and currently has a list of some 800 billionaires globally. More than 60% of the people on that list are "self-made".

If you want to talk about "the top 5%", that would be anyone who has more than a million dollars. In that case, it's worth mentioning that the VAST majority of todays millionaires did NOT inherit their wealth. Most also say they don't consider themselves wealthy.

There have been plenty of studies done on the subject, and the conclusion has always been pretty clear: those who inherit their fortunes tend to lose them within a few generations at most, while being replaced at the top by those who started with nothing.

The fine is going to be cheaper. A quick google for "health insurance fine" shows predictions around <$1000 or 2.5% of your income (if you make $50K a year that's only $1250). And it looks like finding a policy cheaper than that will be hard (I'm not sure if I trust those numbers as the advertised (i.e. artificially-low-to-catch-your-attention) prices for insurance are closer to $60-$100 per year). In any case the Massachusetts law that it this bill modeled after is designed so the fine will always be less than the cheapest premium.

Google isn't the only site that displays news on stock charts this way, and I don't think they were the first.

Examples:
SmartMoney
MarketWatch

I agree the charts are poor. What about the fact that the axes don't necessarily start at 0? This can be misleading, in that a small difference can be made to look much more significant. Broadsheets in the UK do this all the time.

That's one of the first tricks I learned from How to Lie with Statistics. The other is that log scales should be used much more than they actually are. (Google finanace gets this right, although it's not always obvious.)

One point... red-green colour blindness is quite common, so if we're being pedantic you'd probably want to avoid using them for contrast. Problem with colour-coding is also deciding what is "good" and "bad", which is making a subjective judgement.

Have you ever seen the Map of the Market? It's a Java applet that gives you the choice of red-vs-green (the traditional subjective value judgment, at least in the West) or blue-vs-yellow (especially useful if you have red-green colorblindness, its high contrast is probably useful for lots of other forms as well).

But it has gone out of its way to clear its name.

That name that they paid so dearly to have for themselves alone...

As a shareholder, this is a great move. If this saves MS money, it puts more money in my pocket.

Maybe calling yourself a shareholder makes you feel all warm inside, but unless you own gazillions of shares you still have no say whatsoever in the way the company is run -- not to mention the fact that with a dividend of $0.13/share, it'd make for a piss poor investment.

Come to think of it, the only way for you to really make money with Microsoft is to sell your shares or, in other words, NOT to be shareholder.

RT.

Microsoft has a five star corporate credit rating. Exxon-Mobil grade corporate credit. Pfizer grade corporate credit.

Microsoft's total debt is 2 billion dollars.

Microsoft holds 24 billion in cash.

Revenues have shrunk to a bare $61.1 billion.

Its profit margin to a modest 26% - but, all in all, it's not a bad showing for a thirty year old industrial in a down market. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT

This is Microsoft's first trip to the bond market.

There is no private corporation on the planet which can borrow money more quickly or more cheaply.

The five year bonds return 2.95%. That is just 1% over good-as-gold US Treasury notes. What's Behind Microsoft's Bond Offering?

There are certainly some interesting possibilities: perhaps a big push to get Win 7 out in time for the Christmas shopping season.

The dual-core Win 7 ATOM netbook with NVIDIA graphics could be crushing for the geek who placed his hopes on Linux and the ARM.

For the quarter ended Dec. 27, 2008, traditionally the best of the year because it includes the holiday season, the maker of computers and electronic devices reported net income of $1.61 billion, or $1.78 a share, up from $1.58 billion, or $1.76 a share, a year earlier.

Apple sold 2.5 million Macintosh computers in the latest quarter, up 9% from a year earlier and in line with estimates. The company sold 22.7 million iPod media players, up 3% and far exceeding Wall Street's expectations. It also sold 4.4 million iPhones, 88% more than a year earlier but slightly less than Wall Street expected.

Apple is STILL expanding sales of it's main products: ipod, iphones and computers even in the worst financial quarter in the last decade or so. Astounding. Is it marketing? Is it his Jobs-ness? Is it mostly good, well researched products? Is it all of the above? Probably the latter.

Regardless, I wish those laid off at any company good luck in finding a new position. It's a sorry thing since this crisis was probably avoidable by people less blinded by ideology, but then again, most everyone was blinded by the magic of the market so maybe it wasn't.

actually, the majority of the rich in the US got there by working for it.

Of the Forbes 400 list of the really wealthy, 270 are entirely self-made, while only 74 inherited their whole fortune.

Or to look at it another way, of those who have 5 million dollars or more, only 10% inherited it. The rest worked for it.

Now, that may not be true in other countries, whose economic and cultural systems are different. But in the modern US, wealth is generally a by-product of people working hard and being willing to take risks that others don't. Take a look at the Smart Money article.

I'm normally not a fan of wikipedia, but since this is so very basic stuff, I'm going to make an exception :

Carbon_dioxide_levels_and_photorespiration

I noticed your link says "light-independent reactions" increase with increased CO2 levels however it says nothing about light dependent reactions. And I haven't seen a reduction in light. It also says nothing about plants who slow slower with an enriched CO2 environment yet I previously included links to scientific articles that said some plants do show a slower growth rate.

Yes there are exceptions (that's only because plants have dropped the co2 content of the athmosphere so very much). One or two. Doesn't change a thing for food crops though, or for trees, or ...

Once again you didn't read the articles I provided a link to, the "New Scientist" article specifically says "A two-decade study of rainforest plots in Panama and Malaysia recently concluded that local temperature rises of more than 1C have reduced tree growth by 50 per cent (see Don't count on the trees)." Now this doesn't say an increase in CO2 slows growth it does say a raise in temperatures does, and Greenhouse Gases are called that because they raise temperatures. And if you look at the Google link you will see the search was for "co2 plants OR trees growth". Another article, from Harvard, goes over a science study that shows "Warming may not spark tree growth". Here's another Google, this one for co2 trees slowed growth food. As for food, what affects food crops like corn more than anything else is using the crops to feed cows and other animals as well as biofuels. In the US 90% of the corn grown is to feed livestock and not humans. Yet the amount of corn needed to raise 1 pound of meat can feed a bunch of people. And cows aren't corn eaters, they're ruminants and eat grass. Yahoo! has a webpage explaining why cattle are fed corn instead of grass.

You are being dishonest, sir.

Whereas I've provided plenty of links to scientific research and articles you haven't provided anything and I'm the one being dishonest? You're the dishonest one not me. You're dishonest and, like president Bush, ignore science. Unless you can have a rational conversation and provide evidence to back up your claims I see no reason to continue.

No I didn't, I think shareholders are idiots.

http://www.smartmoney.com/commonsense/index.cfm?story=20080506-yahoo-microsoft-deal&pgnum=1

Google's been a more profitable possibility from day one. Like I said, Yahoo didn't need this as much as MS did.

What if I suck at talking in general? I get nervous when people ask me questions about myself. For instance if someone asks me what I did yesterday, I have to stop and think for 20 seconds and recall what it was, and then take another 20 to organize the random thoughts about yesterday into a coherent sentence. If someone is waiting on you (for instance, they asked you a question) then I get nervous because I think they're thinking (and probably are, especially in this case) "why is it taking this guy so long to respond? He seems suspicious" and so they ask more probing questions and the problem just worsens.

However, I have found this to be effective at making me seems less sketchy and at forcing people to accept me. Sure, it may take me some time and some stumbling/incoherent sentences to get what I want to say out, but if I'm looking straight into their eyes when I finally have what I want to say and am saying it, they seem to be more accepting. I'm going across several borders this summer so I will be trying it if I have any problems. Wish me luck.

Given China's recent record, I expect them to be painted with lead paint, filled with propylene glycol, have a case that falls apart, and kill people horribly when it crashes.

But let's all keep buying these unregulated, untested imported products because, wow, look at the savings!

No it's not, because, frankly it doesn't affect anyone I know. People don't care. I don't care.

If an illegal alien can go and open a bank account, it's fine by me. Bank of America is not in the law enforcement business, it's in the banking business. This alien is supporting an American business by opening that bank account.

No, let's talk about predatory lending, sneaky credit card terms, deceitful charges, etc.

Let's talk about MBNA (now part of Bank of America) and BofA being some of the heaviest hitters to push through new bankruptcy law that makes everyone a peon to credit card companies, regardless of circumstances! Let's talk about the fact that an amendment to limit credit card interest rates to 30% (yes, that's thirty f'ing percent) was rejected last yaer. Yes, credit card companies did not want their interest rate limited to a cut-throat ceiling of 30%!

Let's talk about my platinum Bank of America card moving from 2 late payments (by even a day!) in 6 months to 2 late payments in 12 months to 1 late payment in 12 months before they bump your rate from a good APR to an insane 20%+ default APR. Let's talk about two-cycle billing (my roommate, who normally pays off his entire balance got bitten by this because he miscalculated and payed off a $1 less than the balance)

Let's talk about CapitalOne (and some other predatory lenders) not reporting your credit limit to the credit reporting agencies, which is ILLEGAL to do, but there is not enough activism or pressure to change that.

So yeah, let's talk about that, and then you can tell me why I should care that Bank of America issues a bank account to an illegal alien, when there are all these other topics out there that affect every damn American.

You're getting a shareholder lawsuit!

Your data on SUV sales is utterly incorrect. The data (with links):

Ford SUV sales lead to loss: "7/21/2006 - Ford Motor Co. reported an unexpected quarterly loss Thursday as sales of sport-utility vehicles plunged amid rising gasoline prices. The loss threatened Chief Executive Officer William Clay Ford Jr.'s plan to revive the No. 2 U.S. automaker."

Chrysler has slower truck and SUV sales: "9/18/2006 - DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group said at the weekend it could lose about $US1.27 billion this year, a much deeper loss than it forecast in July because of mounting inventory and slower truck and SUV sales."

German premium car makers hit by slump in SUV sales: "9/13/2006 - Germany's premium car makers are feeling the pinch as consumers in the United States, the world's biggest car market, are turning their backs on fuel-guzzling SUVs."

Chrysler slashes production of trucks, SUVs: "9/19/2006 - In the meantime, the company plans to significantly scale back on truck and SUV output due to a decline in sales of such vehicles. Trucks and SUVs, which historically represent about three-quarters of Chrysler's volume and return generous profits, have been under pressure in the U.S. due to high gasoline prices, [DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter] Zetsche said."

The problem is that contract lock-in is de rigeur in the cellular industry these days.

I lost my job to outsourcing. I was out of work for nearly a year.

It was hell, it was torment, and it was impossible to find work...until I outsourced my job search.

I was at wit's end until I was inspired by My Outsourced Life and I did something about it and landed a great job thanks to my friend "Steven" in India.

Sure, Bush's attitude is cocky because I strongly suspect he thinks that we are "better than" India; but the important thing to take out of this is : outsourcing is not going away, and you can either exploit it or let it ruin you.

The cocky part is the American spirit, for overcoming adversity in the worst of times, with hard work, ingenuity and creativity. Dedication to excellence in the work you do will keep you going, and if you want something badly enough you will find a way to get it.

My first exposure to cable was in Manhattan, where people welcomed it because it was damn near impossible to pull a signal. After that, it was a great idea to pay money to not see commercials, but then the commercials came anyway =( Thank god for TiVo, but I digress. My point is you are the first individual that I have ever heard saying "people thought cable was suicide".

The jury is definitely still out on Satellite radio. You did read about how XM's loss widening this week, didn't you?

I'll bet a few idiots will pay for their podcast, however, I don't think it's going to work very well. First, people are going to have to go seek out the audiobook version of their content on a weekly basis, instead of having it auto-sync'ed to their iPod. Second, this is going to greatly decrease their audience, which is never good for performers. Third, they've priced themselves out of the market, a podcast is not worth $3.50/hr when TV is going for 1.99/hr.

I could see paying a subscription of about $7/month to a podcast aggregator site to gain access to all of the content new and archived for maybe a season. Like I said, some people will buy their show but most people won't. In the process, they have alienated their audience, thus the reference to shooting oneself in the foot.

Anyone who reads my post's knows I'm pro MS, but I don't belive for a minute that MS sites have almost double Yahoo. The MS sites get about 114 million, not over 180 million like this report says. If that report were accurate, combined with the AOL deal, MS would have the most lucrative Advertising network the internet has ever seen.

This report also contradicts some stats (that I think are more inline with the truth) published by the NY Times and Associated press for the month of september.

Here are the numbers:
Yahoo = 123 million
AOL = 119 million
Microsoft = 114 million
Google = 87.6 million

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/06/business/ao l.php [iht.com]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/technology/07aol .html?hp&ex=1131426000&en=ca8853d306a6b3e5&ei=5094 &partner=homepage [nytimes.com]

http://washingtontimes.com/business/20051113-11344 1-2245r.htm [washingtontimes.com]

http://www.smartmoney.com/stockwatch/index.cfm?sto ry=20051115 [smartmoney.com]

Well my ankle grabbing fan-boy friend you are a fool. I will concede his numbers weren't 100%, but his point was. And realistically his numbers were close enough. Google is still dwarfed by the big boys, as you will see when I post the numbers below.

For the record he didn't say "search" he said "visitors". Advertisers don't just care about search cowboy. We are talking about revenue streams and market sizes. AOL may be 3% of the search market (according to your numbers) but they are 12% of Google's revenue (according to the links below). Looks like search isn't the end all and be all is it cowboy?

I'm just so sick of you cocky little troll like fan boys thinking you know something, but all you really know is how to download porn in your mom's basement.

Here are the numbers:
Yahoo = 123 million
AOL = 119 million
Microsoft = 114 million
Google = 87.6 million

Here is the math for ya:
AOL + MSN = 237 million
Yahoo = 123 million
Google 87.6 million

My sources are abundant from New York Times, Associated Press, to international papers. Here are 4 for you to check out, but there are PLENTY more.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/06/business/ao l.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/technology/07aol .html?hp&ex=1131426000&en=ca8853d306a6b3e5&ei=5094 &partner=homepage

http://washingtontimes.com/business/20051113-11344 1-2245r.htm

http://www.smartmoney.com/stockwatch/index.cfm?sto ry=20051115

It is one of those commodity items that becomes cheaper to run on a per-customer basis the more customers you have.

Not exactly, because of the revenue-sharing contracts:

Vertical revenue-sharing contracts allow manufacturers and retailers, or rental companies, the ability to better manage their "coordination of inventory decisions where both firms separately maximize profits. Historically, the use of simple, linear pricing rules between manufacturers and retailers may lead to suboptimal supply of the good in that market. "Vertical" contracts, signed between an upstream manufacturer and a downstream retailer, offer more flexibility for coordinating supply decisions. Specifically, revenue-sharing contracts, in which the retailer pays the manufacturer a fee per unit of inventory as well as a percentage of the revenue generated from the inventory, allow firms greater flexibility than simple linear pricing (that is, a wholesale price per unit of inventory only)." It has been found that "firm profits decrease with the elimination of inventory restrictions, but consumers are generally better off. Eliminating both the inventory restrictions and the linear-pricing contracts generally improves consumer surplus and increases the upstream firm's profits for this set of retailers; however, it lowers downstream firms' profits.". Online video rental companies like Netflix determine profit on a per-subscriber basis. To be responsive to their customer's needs while competing on price and implementing a growth strategy they have to offer a compelling selection of products that are not readily available offline. Therefore, per Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, "So we might make slightly less per subscriber because people watch more movies, but they're happier with the service, and they tell their friends about it. Marketing is our biggest cost, so we look at it as a straight-ahead win, because doing that helps us to grow faster".

Most of this info is from here and here, respectively.

Probably not:

"We're studying our options about what to do about the patent, but our primary strategy doesn't rely on patents. Our primary strategy is to have a service that works better than any other service -- that consumers not only like but rave about to their friends -- and that's what's propelling our growth"

From this link to an interview with Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings.

Here a link to radio interview with him as well.

Article

For instance, in its fiscal year ending on June 30, 2002, the American National Red Cross spent $1.16 billion on employee salaries. Spending on actual disaster relief assistance for individuals was only $608 million. Of that, $479 million was for Sept. 11 assistance. This spending occurred only after the media put loads of heat on the organization. During the preceding fiscal year (the one ending on June 30, 2001), the Red Cross spent $1.04 billion on employee salaries and only $149 million on actual assistance for individuals.

Despite all this seemingly damning evidence, Charity Navigators gives the Red Cross a four-star rating, largely because of the organization's financial strength (which after a point, becomes more of a negative than a positive in my view). This is why I think doing your own research is highly advisable, especially if you're contemplating major gifts.

Personally, if you wanted to help through the Red Cross, I'd suggest giving blood instead.

They can't interpret it all because there are no technologies currently available to do so. (BTW - A database/datamart is not "a technology", for this discussion, it's just a place to hold information.)

Data-mining and data-visualization technologies that can handle a petabyte of data do not yet exist in the business world. I guarantee you that advanced research projects are tackling just such problems, and advancing the state of the arts. It won't be long before useful nuggets of information can be gleaned from these vast seas of numbers.

An advanced relationship-visualization tool can be found on the web at - TheyRule.net
Another one can be found at - Map of the Market

It's only a matter of time before all that data will yield useful clues to Total World Domination(tm). And who better than WalMart to exploit these clues to subdue the dominant world power, and move its base of wealth to a communist, human-rights-ignorant county, leaving a vast wasteland of low-wage, no-benefits, tax-roll-supported service-oriented jobs in its wake?

God Bless (what's left of) the USA - Made in China

I actually think that a major drop in the price of oil & subsequent uptick in the stock market is a possible "October Surprise". Why would they do this?

o Oil is at the 20-year high, ~$50/barrel.
o Prince Bandar bin Sultan has already said (though long enough ago that people have forgotten) he'll step up production to cut prices for the election.
o Even a small drop in oil prices will cause the stock markets to rise.

It's a question of timing, I guess, when to drop prices so that everyone gets a nice gas-pump price reduction, but I'm waiting for it to happen.

Imagine if prices went back down to ~$40/barrel: stock market up, gas prices down & still ~$10/barrel up from a year ago. <sarcasm>Everyone wins!</sarcasm>

Unfortunately, for Transmeta, this "technology" is neither new nor hard to duplicate. The Opteron (AMD) and the new Pentium IV (Intel) are both VLIW processors microprogrammed to execute the IA32-64 instruction set.

Both AMD and Intel have an R&D budget that dwarfs the annual revenue stream of Transmeta. It has had several years of losses and will likely head into bankruptcy by the end of next year.

AMD and Intel are in a fierce battle that will destroy lesser players like Transmeta. Unfortunately for Transmeta, the IA32 processors are rapidly becoming commodities with shrinking margins.

Is there a white knight for Transmeta?

We are not running out of oil. In 1982, proven world oil reserves were 696 billion barrels. Since then the world has consumed 452 billion barrels, but proven world reserves are now over 1 trillion barrels. And we still have tremendous coal, natural gas, gas hydrates, and other energy alternatives available.

U.S. oil production is only declining because we have stopped looking and stopped drilling domestically over environmental concerns. Of course it may be our best interest not to drill now and save it for later, the oil deposits are not going anywhere. However, we need to explore how much oil we have now so that we know when best to start extracting. All of the recoverable oil on the planet will eventually be extracted. And if we don't buy Mid-east oil now, someone else will, and terrorism will still be fully funded. And it's probably best that we buy Mid-east oil. We have a real army and are the only country strong enough to get out of bed with the devil when the appropriate time comes.

Scientific advancement will most likely eventually end our oil dependence. There is no shortage of scientists working on the problem, the economic benefit to finding better energy than fossil fuel is enormous. But I don't think that any scientist who wants be a big hero and benefit from solving the world's oil problem is going to want to hear "You're not paying your fair share", "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" if they succeed.

Back in 1998 SmartMoney came out with its Map of the Market which was a Java-based visualization of activity in the stock market. SmartMoney now has a whole set of maps that track technology, health care, Internet and telecommunications stocks, as well as several others.

While it wasn't the first attempt to graphically represent vast amounts of dynamic data with multiple dimensions, it was probably one of the first -- if not the first -- free online visualization tool that was popularized through the Internet.

Some people have commented that the Google News Map project isn't very useful. The SmartMoney map was a basic tool when it started but now the company has a (subscription-based) detailed data visualization tool (MapStation) based on the free version, as well as risk analysis maps and others.

Give it time and the people behind the Google News Map, or someone else, will come up with a more advanced map that will provide the type of utility you're looking for.

Back in 1998 SmartMoney came out with its Map of the Market which was a Java-based visualization of activity in the stock market. SmartMoney now has a whole set of maps that track technology, health care, Internet and telecommunications stocks, as well as several others.

While it wasn't the first attempt to graphically represent vast amounts of dynamic data with multiple dimensions, it was probably one of the first -- if not the first -- free online visualization tool that was popularized through the Internet.

Some people have commented that the Google News Map project isn't very useful. The SmartMoney map was a basic tool when it started but now the company has a (subscription-based) detailed data visualization tool (MapStation) based on the free version, as well as risk analysis maps and others.

Give it time and the people behind the Google News Map, or someone else, will come up with a more advanced map that will provide the type of utility you're looking for.

Back in 1998 SmartMoney came out with its Map of the Market which was a Java-based visualization of activity in the stock market. SmartMoney now has a whole set of maps that track technology, health care, Internet and telecommunications stocks, as well as several others.

While it wasn't the first attempt to graphically represent vast amounts of dynamic data with multiple dimensions, it was probably one of the first -- if not the first -- free online visualization tool that was popularized through the Internet.

Some people have commented that the Google News Map project isn't very useful. The SmartMoney map was a basic tool when it started but now the company has a (subscription-based) detailed data visualization tool (MapStation) based on the free version, as well as risk analysis maps and others.

Give it time and the people behind the Google News Map, or someone else, will come up with a more advanced map that will provide the type of utility you're looking for.

Back in 1998 SmartMoney came out with its Map of the Market which was a Java-based visualization of activity in the stock market. SmartMoney now has a whole set of maps that track technology, health care, Internet and telecommunications stocks, as well as several others.

While it wasn't the first attempt to graphically represent vast amounts of dynamic data with multiple dimensions, it was probably one of the first -- if not the first -- free online visualization tool that was popularized through the Internet.

Some people have commented that the Google News Map project isn't very useful. The SmartMoney map was a basic tool when it started but now the company has a (subscription-based) detailed data visualization tool (MapStation) based on the free version, as well as risk analysis maps and others.

Give it time and the people behind the Google News Map, or someone else, will come up with a more advanced map that will provide the type of utility you're looking for.

Back in 1998 SmartMoney came out with its Map of the Market which was a Java-based visualization of activity in the stock market. SmartMoney now has a whole set of maps that track technology, health care, Internet and telecommunications stocks, as well as several others.

While it wasn't the first attempt to graphically represent vast amounts of dynamic data with multiple dimensions, it was probably one of the first -- if not the first -- free online visualization tool that was popularized through the Internet.

Some people have commented that the Google News Map project isn't very useful. The SmartMoney map was a basic tool when it started but now the company has a (subscription-based) detailed data visualization tool (MapStation) based on the free version, as well as risk analysis maps and others.

Give it time and the people behind the Google News Map, or someone else, will come up with a more advanced map that will provide the type of utility you're looking for.

Back in 1998 SmartMoney came out with its Map of the Market which was a Java-based visualization of activity in the stock market. SmartMoney now has a whole set of maps that track technology, health care, Internet and telecommunications stocks, as well as several others.

While it wasn't the first attempt to graphically represent vast amounts of dynamic data with multiple dimensions, it was probably one of the first -- if not the first -- free online visualization tool that was popularized through the Internet.

Some people have commented that the Google News Map project isn't very useful. The SmartMoney map was a basic tool when it started but now the company has a (subscription-based) detailed data visualization tool (MapStation) based on the free version, as well as risk analysis maps and others.

Give it time and the people behind the Google News Map, or someone else, will come up with a more advanced map that will provide the type of utility you're looking for.

Back in 1998 SmartMoney came out with its Map of the Market which was a Java-based visualization of activity in the stock market. SmartMoney now has a whole set of maps that track technology, health care, Internet and telecommunications stocks, as well as several others.

While it wasn't the first attempt to graphically represent vast amounts of dynamic data with multiple dimensions, it was probably one of the first -- if not the first -- free online visualization tool that was popularized through the Internet.

Some people have commented that the Google News Map project isn't very useful. The SmartMoney map was a basic tool when it started but now the company has a (subscription-based) detailed data visualization tool (MapStation) based on the free version, as well as risk analysis maps and others.

Give it time and the people behind the Google News Map, or someone else, will come up with a more advanced map that will provide the type of utility you're looking for.

I hate to have to do this, but the percentage numbers are for different things. The revenue grew at 9.3% (to $11.8 billion), and the units grew at 24.1% (to 1.57 million boxen). These numbers are from InfoWorld. The article even said that it is "a clear move by users towards low-end servers and the Linux operating system"; that is a reasonable explanation how lots more boxes can ship with a smaller increase in cost.

FWIW, an article from SmartMoney.com from today uses an IDC report, and got similar (but not identical) numbers and it stated that the comparasons were Year-over-Year (total sales: $11.5, unit growth: 22.4%, Linux sales: $900 million, Linux $ growth: 56.9%, Linux unit growth: 46.4%).

SmartMoney MarketMap

LoB

I think the exciting thing here is the excellent (not just neat, but surprisingly useful/usable) implementation of a treemap pulling from publicly available data.

Also, while treemaps aren't new (see Smart Money's Market Map, MSR Netscan), they are qualitatively different visualizations than the heatmaps you mention.

(Also, the Flash loads much more transparently and the overall design is much slicker and well designed than most of the Java versions out there)

MSFT has 10,805,000,000 outstanding shares. An increase of $0.009 will generate the $100M in shareholder value. If the stock price

And announced the intention to sell 30,000 more. In addition to the tens of thousands he's sold over the last months.

Citibank customers who suspect they've become victims of identity theft can now turn to the company for help in restoring their credit.

"Citibank is providing personalized assistance for victims who really do not know where to turn," says Ronni Burns, director of business practices at Citi Cards. The bank assigns to each victim an identity-theft specialist, who guides the card member through the process of recovering and restoring their credit.

To avoid becoming a victim of identity theft in the first place, follow these guidelines:

--Protect items like social-security cards and bank-account numbers.

--Use caution when giving out personal information over the phone or Internet.

The "Rendezvous" software of Tibco is messaging software. Apple's is networking configuration. There doesn't seem to be any real attempt of Apple to capitalize on Tibco's reputation (because, naturally, Apple is some upstart company trying to leech off of the mighty Tibco...).

After all, wasn't this case sort of settled with the battle of Apple Records versus Apple Computer - there's not likely to be confusion in the products, and the Apple Records name had a hell of a lot more influence than Tibco does now.

A couple more news stories on this, more reputable but not much more information:
http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON -20030828-000863-0816
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/?http://www.pcpro.co.uk/new s/news_story.php?id=46737