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Although it has not had an IPO, it does still have shareholders - its VC's, and its employees. More than 500, according to recent news. USAtoday And its certainly answerable to these. An IPO only increases the number somewhat.

Because it'd be near impossible to meter, it's unreasonable to expect VOIP-to-VOIP traffic to be regulated and taxed. However, VOIP which peers with the PSTN (i.e. the phone company) is a much easier target. But aren't taxes already being collected here? For each phone number assigned to a VOIP device, the party providing you with service (i.e. voice ISP, such as Vonage) needs to get a PRI or similar hookup to the phone system. Doesn't that get taxed? And what about sales tax? An argument could be made that wherever the VOIP provider has POPs, they could charge sales tax. And don't I already pay taxes to my ISP for my internet connection?

I'm not against taxes - I'm against excessive, stupid taxes. Like paying an E911 tax, only to find out that the money collected is going towards office supplies, dry cleaning, cars, etc. Or paying over 20% tax on my cell phone service.

Now the government is going to allow suppression of freedom of speach, this is not good.

Oh c'mon, the U.S. government? That'll never happen.

We run out of turkey parts? But since the technology looks like it will work with many types of waste, even sewage, we might never run out at all.

This Global Warming is having a much bigger effect than I thought. The climate on Jupiter is changing too.

hmmmmm....maybe items such as these make them that way perhaps?

Come on now, insist on accuracy in both the census AND vote counting.

Agreed.

You said: Without the Electoral College a few things would happen....The Dakotas...would never see a candidate campaign in their state. They would be completely irrelevant.

Well;

The two candidates instead put their time, energy and money into major battleground states this year, and South Dakota was not among them. After all, the state has only three electoral votes.

Bush had no paid campaign workers in South Dakota, but Republican politicians such as Gov. Bill Janklow and U.S. Rep. John Thune carried the torch on his behalf.
The Gore campaign had one paid worker in South Dakota, Democratic officials said.

Whatever.

SB

We certainly are a nation divided.

More URLs about this here, and Here (USA Today's original article). Even Snopes says the USA Today map's population numbers bu counties are accurate

Well, according to Y2K financials compiled in:
Off the Charts: Pay, Profits and Spending by Drug Companies [Act Up]
net income for the industry ran an average of ~20%, which is a great profit margin for any manufactured product.

Marketing, advertising, administration costs ran between 15% to 39% of expenses.

Research and development ran an average of ~15%.

Chart which illustrates this. [Act Up]

The profit breakdown has been extensively reported elsewhere, as this is derived from SEC filings, and the margins continue to this day, this is just the first source I goggled. NOVA on PBS had a great documentary on this issue last month which had similar stats.

The pharma industry enjoys record profits, pays its corporate officers extravagantly well, and charges the American public more for the same products than any other market in the world.

At the same time, we allow the pharma companies to deduct the expenses of R&D costs, clinical trials, marketing, et al, and give them patent protection so that they enjoy a protected revenue stream for many many years.

This industry then takes its profits and buys congress, ensuring that the government does not use its buying power (MediCare) to negotiate better pricing, and pass legislation which keeps americans, states and health providers from purchasing the very same drugs from Canada (Bush's recent drug bill).

Drug bill a well-financed victory for industry [USA Today]

For many, they have no choice: buy drugs or die. I do not believe the patent system was intended as a means to extort money from vulnerable citizens. In my opinion it's high time that our government bullies the pharma industry to arrange its affairs, so that pharmaceuticals are again priced fairly.

They can start by restricting advertising for pharma products just like they have done for cigarettes and alcohol. That should shave 20% right there.

For all the apologists out there who will claim "it's capitalism; they have no responsibility except to their shareholders", let me remind you that the government grants corporate charters and allows businesses to exist to benefit the public good, not just to extort money from the sick and vulnerable.

After Sept. 11, to the amusement/horror of music critics and radio industry professionals, Clear Channel issued a list of 150 songs to its member stations that it deemed too sensitive to play in the wake of the terrorist attacks. The list included an odd mix of songs: the more understandable choices featured flight references ("Bennie and the Jets," "Ticket to Ride"); others were associated with New York ("On Broadway"); and, most surprisingly, many were related to peace ("Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Imagine"). The list also included all songs by the political rock group Rage Against the Machine.

They have given $42,200 to Bush, vs. $1,750 to likely Democratic nominee John Kerry in the 2004 race. What's more, the executives and Clear Channel's political action committee gave 77% of their $334,501 in federal contributions to Republicans. That's a bigger share than any other entertainment company, says the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. In contrast, Viacom (VIA) executives and its political action committee gave just 30% of their $545,650 to Republican candidates. Viacom syndicates Stern's show.

No, I don't see anything political there. Just good business sense. (Yeah, right.)

W

Damn, forgot Link

Well, you're absolutely right about the first part.

Just like I want my automobile to just work. And it does. I take it to the mechanic and have it worked on regularly. And I pay some for that service.

But if the car manufacturer started to hide the engine diagnostic codes in an effort to make me visit the dealership for very expensive service, you can bet I'd be concerned about welded shut hoods if there were any occasion whatsoever for service. Or service packs.

People don't use IE because it just works. (There's Macs if that's the objective).

People use IE "because it came with My PC", because it's good enough, and because it's a (deliberately) hard hassle to remove and replace with something else.

I expect constant shakeouts in the FOSS world.

Successful applications will incorporate the best features, will be used by the most people, and will receive the most developer attention.

Sometimes unwarranted momentum for an application can be caused by a large distro placing the application front and center. This might not be fair to a better application, but people wanting more than the default will either find out about the better option or contribute development effort to making the B player stronger. It might not be efficient, but evolution is full of Einsteins that couldn't outrun sabre-toothed tigers, either.

The nice thing is that the carcasses of failed applications serve as idea food for people looking to build something new and better, where many many failed commercial codes with great ideas and great, potentially reusable, implementations in them end up buried forever.

Artists like Courtney Love and Janis Ian?

Odd, they are telling us the record industry is the group that's been ripping them off. Why should we believe you instead? What is your association with the music industry, should you happen to have one?

I decided not to bother with a point-by-point refutation when you repeated the *AA companies favorite lie. Given the repeated exposure of this lie, anyone who repeats it now is either too clueless to be worth discussing anything with or too interested in grabbing regular checks from *AA organization or label PR firms to care about it.

You should look to your. . . associates in the industry for an explanation as to why they are ripping artists off.

Note: if you are not on their payroll, you are an idiot. You're doing their work for them free of charge. Your getting modded as "Insightful" suggests that people should be required to take IQ tests before being allowed mod points.

If you don't like reading facts and informed speculation about M$hit and the *AA organizations and member companies, click here.

Of the 143.6 million people who watched the superbowl, lets say that only 1% of them were children. Of the fathers I've talked to, not one was happy about what his children had seen. I'd even go so far as to call them "freaked out." Outraged would be better. So, even if it's "relatively few," we're still talking over a million outraged parents.

You may say, "who cares? the population is over 291 million here." Yeah, but a million people can do a lot in Washington.

<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techreviews/200 1-04-23-cell-phone-jam.htm">Other countries</a>

That article doesn't make much sense to me.

Gasoline sells for $1.75 a gallon. 1 gallon of gas weighs about 6 lbs, or 2.7 kg. ...the manufacturing of one desktop computer and 17-inch CRT (cathode ray tube) monitor requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuels...

That means the fossil fuels alone cost $155.55 US. ...and 1,500 kilograms of water.

Water sells for (random city choice by google) $0.84 US per cu.ft., or 62.5 pounds, or 28.3 kg. That means the water alone cost is $44.52 US.

I have no idea of the costs of the unnamed chemicals, so I won't include them.

I find it hard to believe anyone builds a computers where the raw materials themselves are about 50% of the final MSRP (hint: I run a computer store and know items get marked up by 50% between leaving Asia and being placed in the customer's hands). Am I missing something? Are water and gas free in China?

This brings up a good point about what to buy. I've got ~10 free songs coming to me from the Pepsi/iTunes giveaway, and I don't know what to buy with them.

I start looking around for a song I want, and I usually end up buying the entire album instead (latest purchases, Gershwin's Greatest Hits and Buffy: Once More with Feeling). My tastes in music are pretty varied, going from classical to hip-hop, but I'm having a tough time finding music I want to get.

I don't even look at CDs anymore. Too expensive and takes too long to find something you like.

I'm sure every record exec started shaking in their boots with the USA Today article that shows that a lot more youth are turning to their parents CD collection of Queen and ZZ Top. No new sales.

. . .

She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.

Rest at the URL.

So if you're a 15 year old with a Webcam. . . Ashcroft says that it is not only illegal to send out nude photos of yourself, but it is even illegal to take and keep nude photos of yourself on your own hard drive.

If the DOJ is so well funded that they can fight terror and send little girls to jail at the same time, maybe it's time to start looking into cutting their budget. They obviously don't need it to protect Americans.

If Bush manages to get himself reelected after this kind of crap, time to look for a free country.

It is funny that the Republicans are using the fact that the Kerry family had a house in France as a campaign issue :). What's next, maybe to claim Kerry is a nazi since he has a German grandfather (who was Jewish)? I guess if you don't have anything to run on, smear the opponent with anything you can find.

Some people get so impressed with stupid simple tricks. I think the people on that judging committee had ought to all be fired, then stoned, (puns intended). Evaporative cooling has long been known and used for centuries, even millenia. The only new thing here is using wet sand as a media to hold the evaporative fluid. Most people in the southwest US must be laughing their a$$ess off with this article. "look at those idiots swoon of stuff we have used our whole life!". Evaporative coolers are have been and are still used in the US in warm less humid climates to cool everything up to and including entire homes. See the URL for a heads up on good old 'swamp cooling' in the USA. USA Today Q&A on Swamp Coolers

Yes.

"What I would love to see is a present day alternative to The Simpsons - new town, new characters, new voice actors (that would be willing to work for a 'paltry' salary per episode)"

It was called Family Guy.

Incorrect.

The minimum salary for Major League baseball players this upcoming season will be $300,000. The overwhelming majority of players make this minimum (or more, but short of $1mil in most cases). The players who do make the big bucks, a la Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, in almost all cases put up brilliant numbers that do, in fact, earn the ballclub money equal to or greater than their salaries (um, hence why they are paid that much).

In any case, A-Rod will earn in the neighborhood of $21mil this season to play 162 games of baseball (not including postseason play, of which the Yankees are almost always participants). $22,000,000.00 / 162 is $135,802.47. The average baseball game length these days is around 3 hours. So A-Rod makes $754.46 every minute, assuming he practices for free. It probably takes him 10 seconds to put the average pair of shoes on, and in 10 seconds he makes $125.74 (not $8mil).

What is striking to me, however, is that when the baseball players threaten to strike (or in 1994, do strike), everyone seems to call foul on them. To understand the situation, you must not look at relative amounts of money of average American salary and average MLB player salary; You must look at how the owners hide profits (by reporting them as expenditures for their others ventures, e.g. George Steinbrenner's new YES network) so that they can justify not paying the players more, etc. The majority of the players, in actuality, are earning the ballclubs much more than $300,000. They do deserve their piece of the pie.

Later,
Patrick

That reminds me of this article I read the other day. This can't be a good idea.

There may still be hope for the family guy.

Haha, no kidding. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) thinks this is a great idea

is USA today has already posted this joke as fact. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-03-31-googl e_x.htm

Kids are listening to their parent's music because today's music sucks. That's why cd sales are down. Dumb fuckers. I listen to Pink Floyd and Eric Clapton and Bob Seger and Led Zeppelin and Queen because they are good. I don't listen to much music made in the last fifteen years because I just don't like most of it.

Would it kill you to list the article you copy/pasted from?

Except the AWOL aligations were false, and the White House proved otherwise. This was a blatent attempt of the Democrats to portray John Kerry as the "war hero" while Bush as a deserter.

In fact, the White House didn't have a leg to stand on. They talked out their asses for a while until they convinced everyone who doesn't pay attention that they had a case. If you paid attention, like I did, you'd have a different view. To give you some documentation, I googled it. Here's a good article on the subject:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-11 -bush-guard-usat_x.htm

It's from USA Today. A relevant excerpt (boldfaces mine):

In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Bush said he fulfilled his Guard commitment and offered to make his records public. Host Tim Russert asked, "Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?" Bush replied, "Yes, absolutely."

Since then, White House officials have released only documents concerning whether Bush fulfilled his service obligations. White House statements have not addressed the release of any papers that could show disciplinary actions, medical exams, legal scrapes and the like.

On Tuesday, the White House released pay records from a military archive in Denver that it said showed Bush was paid for at least the minimum training time he was obligated for in 1972 and 1973.

But the records showed only what days he was paid for, not where he was or what duty he performed. Neither did they address outstanding questions about why Bush missed a required physical in 1972, forcing him to stop flying, or what happened during a five-month gap in 1972 when Bush didn't show up for training.


Here's another article for your perusal (boldfacing mine, again):

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the records "show that he was paid for his service, and you get paid for the days on which you serve."

That's the proof the white house had, BTW. Pay records. I've heard members of the national guard at the time say that they had managed to get paid without even showing up for duty. We'll assume for the sake of argument that GWB was 'getting paid for the days on which he served,' though:

The records indicate that between May 1972 and May 1973, Bush served 14 days -- two days in October, four days in November, six days in January and two days in April. The White House offered no indication of why there was a gap in Bush's service from April to October, 1972.

That's a five month gap. Nobody knows where he was during those five months.

AWOL----absent for 30 days or less.
Desertion-----absent for more than 30 days with evidence of no intent to return to duty.
Five months-----150 days

Poor babies. Sometimes when you have terrible customer service, you sell music without the artists' permission and the press demonstration of your service fails, you have a bad product. But then again, maybe not...

link That's probably how she got pregnant in the first place....listening to that devil music. ;)

CVew

If the presidential election is within 10% either way (and from the current polls, that would seem to be likely), we are going to see a firestorm of lawsuits. With all the experts claiming electronic voting systems are insecure, both sides are already gearing up for legal battle.

Don Campbell at USA Today has an interesting op/ed piece on the subject.

Berzerkely has collected a large amount of information on this site. Lots of interesting data.

The movie Gigli cost $54 million!. If price == quality then Half Life is going to blow! Kidding of course.

Most of the technology we have today is the direct result of, or significantly improved by the space race. From things as simple as velcro and dehydrated food, to sophisticated electronics, there are huge benefits to everyone that are never mentioned when people bitch about the costs.

BTW, the costs aren't really that much. Defense spending in 2002 was $360 billion, while Nasa's new budget is $15.5 billion. Even spending a trillion dollars over the next decade wouldn't bring it close. Furthermore, we're spending nearly $4 billion in Iraq and nearly $1 billion in Afghanistan EVERY MONTH. For some reason, no one seems too interested in doing a cost/benefit analysis on that.

People don't realize how much our lives have been changed by the 'side effects' of trying to achieve huge goals. Bigger challenges lead to bigger innovations.

Space travel brings a whole different set of challenges than we face on Earth, inspiring different innovations. This is even more true with manned space flight.

Manned space travel will continue to be necessary if we wish to explore further out or in more detail. Robots can only do things you planned on, and going into the unexpected is the whole point of exploration. The communications lag will also increase. The 8 minute lag to mars limits the speed and manuvuerability of the rovers. While this is fine for now, eventually we will reach a point where further research requires closer to realtime action. The further out you go, the less feasible remote-control exploration becomes.

...But unfotunately the RIAA record companies are not working in a free market, but are a cartel successfully sued for conspiring to fix prices. All the music stores are pricing around $1/song, and it's common knowledge that the stores, such as iTunes, aren't making any money at that price. So I wouldn't hold out for further discounts.

Hey, he could save some money and just look in the mirror. Ladies and gentlement, here's your alien:

Paul Alien!

For a wishy washy economy at the moment, we sure have a lot of money to throw around.

No, we actually don't. That's the whole point. Hence our huge deficits. We actually had a surplus just 4 years ago. This administration is fiscally reckless, no matter what your politics are.

The deficit, in pure dollar amount is now higher than it has ever been. The previous record was set in 1992 (see same story). In terms of GDP percentage, it was actually a bit higher under Reagan and Bush Sr. The Beeb has a nice article about all of this.

So why do Republicans seem to love huge deficits? My speculation is that by running up the deficit, they starve Congress of money that could otherwise be used for social programs that they are morally opposed to. $1600 from every American is now used to pay off the deficit. Think what we could do with that money, if we now had a $5.6 trillion surplus instead of a $1.5 trillion deficit (as was the projection for 2004 at the end of the Clinton administration).

Do you have *any* basis for a claim like this, other than "your gut feeling"?

Yes. OK, granted the "100 times" thing is a bit speculative, but look at the Spitzer telescope. While the images might not be as visually appealing as those hubble has gotten, it has been the concensus (from what I have read) that it is a superior telescope form a scientific viewpoint.

USA Today has a recent story

I was unable to find any definate statistics as for percentages of movies made. average box office sales etc unfortunately. I can say that no R rated movie is in the top 20 highest grossing films of all time nor was there one for 2003. yet appearently the majority of movies released are rated R. You can also find teh listing of top movies as adjusted by inflation here

That was a funny comment, but do remember that in all the recounts that occurred in Florida AFTER the whole bru-haha, Dubya still came out ahead.

To say Bush won every media recount (those are the recounts that happened after the election) is a distortion. The truth is Bush won every recount using only undervotes (i.e. where the problem with the ballot was a hanging chad or there was only a dimple) (See USA Today). That is the most widely used standard, and the one that Gore was asking for, so ultimately Bush won. Fine.

But I think it might worth at least mentioning that if you include the overvotes (such as where people checked Gore and wrote in Gore) Gore won. That is to say, if the standard is voter intent, in every recount more people went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush. So when you say Bush won every recount, be sure and include that little footnote, because otherwise people may think you are being dishonest. See Guardian. See USA Today. See Salon. See Washington Post.

And you know, maybe if minority votes counted for as much as a non-minority vote, that would make a difference. See New York Times.

Personally before Florida, I thought the voter's intent was the standard. How silly.

Then there was the minorities being intimidated at the polls thing. Then there was Republican officials writing on a bunch of ballots to "fill in missing information." I'm not saying they didn't just fill in missing social security numbers, but it is obviously a violation of election standards to have partisan non-election officials writing on ballots. There are media references for all this stuff too. Go find them yourself. I'm tired.

That was a funny comment, but do remember that in all the recounts that occurred in Florida AFTER the whole bru-haha, Dubya still came out ahead.

To say Bush won every media recount (those are the recounts that happened after the election) is a distortion. The truth is Bush won every recount using only undervotes (i.e. where the problem with the ballot was a hanging chad or there was only a dimple) (See USA Today). That is the most widely used standard, and the one that Gore was asking for, so ultimately Bush won. Fine.

But I think it might worth at least mentioning that if you include the overvotes (such as where people checked Gore and wrote in Gore) Gore won. That is to say, if the standard is voter intent, in every recount more people went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush. So when you say Bush won every recount, be sure and include that little footnote, because otherwise people may think you are being dishonest. See Guardian. See USA Today. See Salon. See Washington Post.

And you know, maybe if minority votes counted for as much as a non-minority vote, that would make a difference. See New York Times.

Personally before Florida, I thought the voter's intent was the standard. How silly.

Then there was the minorities being intimidated at the polls thing. Then there was Republican officials writing on a bunch of ballots to "fill in missing information." I'm not saying they didn't just fill in missing social security numbers, but it is obviously a violation of election standards to have partisan non-election officials writing on ballots. There are media references for all this stuff too. Go find them yourself. I'm tired.

Speaking of thinking birds, this article is fascinating . . .

With a pair of Chinese and Japanese software companies developing a version of Linux for the Asian market I'm sure that M$ can already see their potential market shrinking. I'm also pretty sure that many at M$ are worried about the desktop deal that Sun has struck with China. So M$ tries to counter these moves with a language pack? I'm sure that M$ is going to have to try a lot harder than that!

That may have been true once, but it is not true anymore. Here also: Japan's military dilemma.

Holy cow, nobody has yet even mentioned 2004-DW as a candidate for Sedna nor posted any links. Here ya go:

story 1
story 2
story 3
website of researcher at CalTech

The diameter (up to 1880 km) of 2004-DW matches pretty nicely with the upper estimate of 2000km of Sedna. These reports find 2004-DW to comparible in size to Quaoar. (Note these stories came out when the data was fresh, better numbers should be handed out Monday.)

So try to disprove the logic.

What logic? That people that take the insensible and short term solution to earn money by doing crime, will try to invest in their long term future and have carefully and rationally considered that voting democrates will make it less likely that they end up in jail? The shear stupidity of that statement is something Bush would have been proud of.

How can you sit there and say the burden is somehow on the poor with a flat tax? The more you make, the more you pay.

The system is that the more you earn the more percentage you pay. If you change this system the poor and the middle class have to pay more. You do the math. It is similar to cutting welfare and communicty programs to fund cut taxes for the rich, it is essentially an increase in the taxes on the poor.

How would they "deny the american dream" to people, anyway? As far as I know, the American Dream is not to live off the government, which is what is happening now with many of the lazy among us.

Rich are not inherently evil, but most rich are rich because of their daddy like Bush, and not because of their ability (again, junior is a good reference). To be able to live the american dream, you must have a system that not has as a purpose to make the rich richer by lowering their taxes and giving crony companies like Haliburton (and share-holders like Cheney) a free access to hard earned tax-money and even over-charging in the deal. For the entrepeneuric middle class to be able to live the american dream, contracts have to be given on merit and not by counting rich buddies. And the middle class must have money left after paying the tax bill and their health insurance to invest in their (and the countrys) future. A tax- and spend- government like the Bush administration makes sure that only the ones that can afford the lawyers and lobbiers have a chance from the start. What kind of dream is that?

You are probably one of the more misinformed people I have had the pleasure to discuss with and you even brag about your education! Maybe try to connect to the real world instead on relying on myths like the benifit of poll tax and that Bush is rich because he works hard?

Everyone here acts like DISH is some white knight. They're as guilty of bundling as the next guy. Do you think for a second that because they can buy alacarte they're gonna SELL to you in the same fashion? Nope. They're gonna bundle and force whatever bundles they want down your throat.
DISH is hiding behind percentages in listing the rate increases, while Viacom has said they're asking for a raise of something like 6 cents/subscriber. Another article pointed out that ALL the Viacom channels together cost less than DISH is paying for JUST ESPN. Considering DISH just raised rates by multiple DOLLARS, it doesn't sound like an out of line request.

Besides, anyone knows that if Viacom holds out for a bit over a week, March Madness on CBS will force Echostar to cave if the Viacom losses don't.

I am uncertain why you suggest the parent read a newspaper or turn on the television news, considering your implication that it would prove you correct. Instead, it proves that your theory is a conspiracy denied countless times. The NY Times, Washington Post and other newspapers you're referring to have all consistently reported that this theory has been denied. Most cable news channels have had limited coverage altogether, reporting on the status of the Marines stationed in Haiti and noting only briefly Aristide's quaint claim that he was kidnapped, followed by a quotation of the Pentagon's denial and subsequent dismissal. I watch daily CNN, FNC and MSNBC, meaning those are the channels I refer to. Located here is an editorial which covers the majority of the material. For the record, both the Seattle Times and San Francisco Chronicle are respected in the industry, but the NY Times is included here as well.

Here (eatme123/eatme123)
Here
Here
Here

There are occasions in which skepticism is warranted, in which the government is lying to you in order to further its agenda. There may even be times in which the White House spokesman can casually lie to you without showing an iota of remorse, although that would be remarkable. This is not one of those times, as is obvious to those of us who are paying attention. Pull your head out of your ass.

This is a good start

Haryana(State in India) signs pact with Sun Microsystems
The Haryana government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sun Microsystems to adopt open source office productivity tool, the StarOffice 7, for departments and educational institutions.

Linux may carve out bigger niche in desktop PC market
On Feb. 4, it announced the sale of 10,000 copies of its StarOffice desktop suite to United India Insurance, one of India's largest insurers. StarOffice can run on Windows or Linux desktop PCs. Sun aims next to persuade United India to replace 10,000 Windows PCs with Linux-based Java Desktop PCs.