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> The problem often has been that they've had a long history towards pushing proprietary formats and devices. Some of those have been successful, many have failed to catch on, and some were spectacular failures (Betamax).

I mentioned Sony's long line of failures back in 2014.

Failed Sony Formats...
* Betamax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
* MiniDisc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
* HiFD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
* SSDS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
* BroadBand eBook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
* Memory Stick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
* HDV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
* Super Audio CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
* Universal Media Disc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

Successful Sony Formats...
+ CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
+ Blu-ray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Sony's completelyfailed to understand the importance of buying digital music. Apple's iPod and iTunes wasthe digital walkman.

This is why Apple has a market cap of $800 Billion and why Sony only has a market cap $44.85 billion

--
The PS4 Pro should have been called the PS4K and played 4K Blu-Ray.

GM lost $11 billion for the US Government. Hardly a "win". And that was direct cash just given out, not a reduction in taxes paid to the State. And there were about 243,000 employees at GM at the time, not 1.5 million. You really do like lying a lot, don't you?

Wat?

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...

Amazon ran a deficit of far beyond 1.2 billion, for a relatively long time. The lessons of the 90's have already been forgotten, as predicted.

What, do you just make stuff up out of raw bias? They were north of 44% last quarter.

Gee, I hope you still have Flash installed, then you could look at the "Comparison with Competitors" chart. AAPL is doooomed with their tiny 44%,

What, do you just make stuff up out of raw bias? They were north of 44% last quarter.

Little did I realize that would have been like emailing Bill Gates for help because a driver didn't install correctly on Windows.

Well it was 1995, while he was still studying at the university of Helsinki working on Linux 1.x, long before the dotcom money and any serious corporate interest in Linux, while Microsoft at the time was a $50 billion dollar company. So almost the same ;)

In comparison, Sony's gross revenue was 77.46Bn USD last year.

...That's one thing that people often forget in these minimum wage/living wage debates: the employee still has to be productive enough to earn those wages. ...

No one is forgetting that, Coward, except maybe the corporations writing the paychecks.

Looking at the productivity vs compensation curves for Americans over the last 50 years there has been an enormous increase of average productivity (2.5 times increase) but virtually no corresponding in real average wages, and the real minimum wage has actually declined, and corporations like Walmart are making record profits ($127 billion for Walmart this year) so worker productivity is doing very, very well for the corporations. All of the evidence shows that corporations are squeezing workers compensation to pump money into the pockets of investors (mostly the already rich) and the executive suite, and have been doing so for two generations now. American workers at all levels, from the minimum-wage workers up are easily productive enough to have earned fat raises across the board.

That is bs. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...
Comcast total debt issuance has flucuated between -2 billion and 2.5 billion over the last 5 years. Compare that with the dividends it pays out in 2014: Quarterly Dividends and Quarterly Share Repurchases Increased 35.5% to $1.3 Billion

Like it or not, CEOs are measured by their share price. When Ballmer took over in first quarter of 2000, Microsoft's market cap was $534.42B.
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...

Their current market cap is $399B.

$135B in market cap was lost over 14 years while he was CEO. You may be right that he's a great marketing guy, etc., but "wildly successful" as a CEO may be a touch unrealistic.

In mathematics, Mr Bezos, this analysis is known as the pigeonhole principle, which in layman's terms says you can't ethically pay tax nofuckingwhere on $74b dollars in revenue.

Better check your research, Amazon does pay taxes: http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...

And FYI, companies pay taxes on profits, not revenue, so that $74b figure is not very useful unless you want to underscore how thin Amazon's margins are?

Actually they are not.

http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/...

"In front-running, a trader will take a position in an equity just before a brokerage takes a position that will cause the stock to move in a predictable way. The most common example of front-running is when an individual trader buys shares of a stock just before a large institutional order for the stock which will cause a rapid increase in the stock's price."

You can do that by being a human and knowing a large order is coming in or you can do that with a computer that's connected by a fast connection to the exchange. When the large order comes in- your computer places an order faster ahead of the other order. You wouldn't be placing the order unless you knew about the large order.

This is illegal.
The key is knowing the large order to buy or sell is coming in and executing "in front" of it.

---

Arbitrage is noticing that two different markets or orders have a different price for the same equity. You buy the lower and sell it to the higher until the two prices equalize. This is legal

Nokia's revenues were already falling dramatically; they peaked in 2007:

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...

Let me know what "boutique" you know of that pulls in $71 billion in gross profit and I'll happily invest...

What astonishes me is that they have all this cash and they don't seem to be inventing anything new or creating any new markets. That's the bigger sign of distress at the company.

No new markets? For crying out loud the iPad was released just 3 years ago. That for all practical purposes created the tablet market as we know it today. It's absurd that anyone should really expect Apple to create completely new multi-billion dollar businesses from scratch every year or they are somehow in danger of going out of business. I'm pretty sure you have no idea how difficult it is to productively invest a cash hoard the size of the one Apple has. It's virtually impossible.

When you get to the size of Apple or Google or Microsoft there simply aren't that many investments you can make that will move the needle. Apple made something like $156 billion in revenue in 2012. Apple's trailing twelve month growth rate is 9.2% which is effectively the same thing as creating a $14 billion company from scratch. FYI a company with $14 billion in revenue would be in the top 200 companies in the Fortune 500. That means Apple *grew* by the entire size of eBay last year. How easy do you think that is to do? What business do you think Apple should do that is going to generate $14 billion in the next year?

I don't know where you got your numbers from. but from http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Market_Capitalization/1999/Q4
when Ballmer took over in Jan 2000 at that point the market capitalization of microsoft was 407 billion it is currently 227.4 billion,

Ok so there could have been share by backs and other stuff I am not aware of so I will assume you a right and he did put 40 billion dollars of values on since Jan 2000

so the company must have been worth 187.4 billion so that is an average rate of increase per year of 1.5% I can get more than that in in the bank in an on call account. From these figures (maybe wrong of course) he has clearly done an outstanding job.

Clearly such a skill level he has a well deserved 15.2 billion personal wealth (wikipedia).

• Amazon Services LLC
• Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Amazon Web Services, Inc.
• Amazon EU SÃrl
• Amazon Europe Holding Technologies SCS
• Amazon Fulfillment Services, Inc.
• Amazon Services International, Inc.
• Amazon Corporate LLC
• Amazon Technologies, Inc.

which all use the term "Amazon" without the ".com".

In 2010, Visa processed 3.2 trillion dollars per year. The US Federal gross receipts for 2010 came out to a mere 2.2 trillion dollars (receipts, not GDP which came to 14.5 trillion for that year).

They handled 3.2 trillion dollars in transactions in the same way that NASDAQ has handled 1.2 billion shares so far today -- NASDAQ does not own those shares, NASDAQ processes trades of those shares between buyers and sellers. VISA processes payments between you and the merchant that you handed the credit card to. Since VISA falls well below your arbitrary line ($3 billion in n.o.p, not exactly a ruler of the universe there), there's no problem, right?

When MomCo bets the till on the ponies, MomCo goes under. When JP Morgan Chase effectively does the same, the whole goddamned stock market takes a dive and grandma's (not to mention, my) 401k edges lower and lower and lower...

Repeat after me... payment processors are not banks. Payment processors do not issue mortgages. Payment processors do not issue CDOs. Payment processors process electronic payments.

The way you've used "We The People" ("We The People don't care..."), besides demonstrating amazing hubris on your part, distills down to mob rule. Until you develop a logical rationale and dividing line to support what you claim ought to be done, you can quite rightly be ignored.

Sorry Mitt, but corporations ain't people.

For the purposes of entering into contracts, buying property, and the like, they are. Since well before you were born.

This is not really an accurate explanation. Once an order is filled, it can't be cancelled. What the HFT's do is post small orders, cancel them if no one fills them (buys or sells based on the HFT offer), and tries again, like you say. But once it hits Alice's limit price, the trade does actually have go through. This article is a much better explanation: http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/High-Frequency_Trading_(HFT)

Ummmm No.

In 2005 http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Debt_to_Equity/2005?ref=chart

Amazon had a debt to equity ratio of 15:1. If you view the nation of the United States as the potential equity of the country (that could hypothetically be nationalized) then the US Debt to Equity Ratio is more like 1:10.

Revenue:
Walmart: 460b
Target: 71b
Amazon: 54b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Revenue

Net profit:
Walmart: 16.4b
Target: 2.9b
Amazon: 0.38b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Income/2012
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Income
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Income

So Walmart is 10x larger by revenue.. and 43x more profitable.
Target is 1.5x larger by revenue.. and 7x more profitable.

Amazon has a long way to go.

Revenue:
Walmart: 460b
Target: 71b
Amazon: 54b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Revenue

Net profit:
Walmart: 16.4b
Target: 2.9b
Amazon: 0.38b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Income/2012
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Income
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Income

So Walmart is 10x larger by revenue.. and 43x more profitable.
Target is 1.5x larger by revenue.. and 7x more profitable.

Amazon has a long way to go.

Revenue:
Walmart: 460b
Target: 71b
Amazon: 54b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Revenue

Net profit:
Walmart: 16.4b
Target: 2.9b
Amazon: 0.38b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Income/2012
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Income
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Income

So Walmart is 10x larger by revenue.. and 43x more profitable.
Target is 1.5x larger by revenue.. and 7x more profitable.

Amazon has a long way to go.

Revenue:
Walmart: 460b
Target: 71b
Amazon: 54b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Revenue

Net profit:
Walmart: 16.4b
Target: 2.9b
Amazon: 0.38b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Income/2012
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Income
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Income

So Walmart is 10x larger by revenue.. and 43x more profitable.
Target is 1.5x larger by revenue.. and 7x more profitable.

Amazon has a long way to go.

Revenue:
Walmart: 460b
Target: 71b
Amazon: 54b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Revenue

Net profit:
Walmart: 16.4b
Target: 2.9b
Amazon: 0.38b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Income/2012
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Income
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Income

So Walmart is 10x larger by revenue.. and 43x more profitable.
Target is 1.5x larger by revenue.. and 7x more profitable.

Amazon has a long way to go.

Revenue:
Walmart: 460b
Target: 71b
Amazon: 54b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Revenue
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Revenue

Net profit:
Walmart: 16.4b
Target: 2.9b
Amazon: 0.38b

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Income/2012
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Income
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Income

So Walmart is 10x larger by revenue.. and 43x more profitable.
Target is 1.5x larger by revenue.. and 7x more profitable.

Amazon has a long way to go.

Maybe this has something to do with it:
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Net_Income/2010
Investors don't care about innovative or cool, except as they affect the bottom line.

Ok, fine.. let's attack his argument.

He says the past 10 years have been 'lost'. Yet, profits and revenue have more than tripled.
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Derived_Net_Income/2000
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Revenue/2000

He complains that Windows RT won't launch until "later this year". Is he really complaining that an entire operating system won't be available for a few more months?! This is just stupid. An operating system is not simply a new version of notepad. It takes time and a lot of resources to develop.

He says Windows Mobile has deteriorated. So has Nokia, RIM, Palm, etc, etc, etc, etc. Apple really knocked the ball out of the park, and Android isn't helping. This is tough competition for everyone in the industry, and Microsoft -- just like RIM and Nokia -- knows it needs some major improvements to compete.. which they are working on.

So what's his real complaint?

That he got fired from Microsoft.

Ok, fine.. let's attack his argument.

He says the past 10 years have been 'lost'. Yet, profits and revenue have more than tripled.
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Derived_Net_Income/2000
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Revenue/2000

He complains that Windows RT won't launch until "later this year". Is he really complaining that an entire operating system won't be available for a few more months?! This is just stupid. An operating system is not simply a new version of notepad. It takes time and a lot of resources to develop.

He says Windows Mobile has deteriorated. So has Nokia, RIM, Palm, etc, etc, etc, etc. Apple really knocked the ball out of the park, and Android isn't helping. This is tough competition for everyone in the industry, and Microsoft -- just like RIM and Nokia -- knows it needs some major improvements to compete.. which they are working on.

So what's his real complaint?

That he got fired from Microsoft.

Wow.. Elop tripled profits and revenue in a matter of months?!

Either that, or you're full of shit

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Derived_Net_Income/2000
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Revenue/2000

Wow.. Elop tripled profits and revenue in a matter of months?!

Either that, or you're full of shit

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Derived_Net_Income/2000
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Revenue/2000

The margin numbers I give are on the whole company. Amazon does not break out the ebooks separately,.

So the report you state doesn't apply at all. It doesn't support your argument and it doesn't support mine either. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
Chart shows that net margin for amazon went up in 2007 from 1% to 3% and then sat at 3% till 2010. Then its net margin went back down to 1%. Here is Walmart and Target for reference.
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
So Amazon's net profit is pretty normal compared to other retailers. The fact that it made a profit at all is commendable during a recession. Take a look at Sony http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Sony_(SNE)/Data/Net_Margin/2008

The margin numbers I give are on the whole company. Amazon does not break out the ebooks separately,.

So the report you state doesn't apply at all. It doesn't support your argument and it doesn't support mine either. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
Chart shows that net margin for amazon went up in 2007 from 1% to 3% and then sat at 3% till 2010. Then its net margin went back down to 1%. Here is Walmart and Target for reference.
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
So Amazon's net profit is pretty normal compared to other retailers. The fact that it made a profit at all is commendable during a recession. Take a look at Sony http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Sony_(SNE)/Data/Net_Margin/2008

The margin numbers I give are on the whole company. Amazon does not break out the ebooks separately,.

So the report you state doesn't apply at all. It doesn't support your argument and it doesn't support mine either. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
Chart shows that net margin for amazon went up in 2007 from 1% to 3% and then sat at 3% till 2010. Then its net margin went back down to 1%. Here is Walmart and Target for reference.
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
So Amazon's net profit is pretty normal compared to other retailers. The fact that it made a profit at all is commendable during a recession. Take a look at Sony http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Sony_(SNE)/Data/Net_Margin/2008

The margin numbers I give are on the whole company. Amazon does not break out the ebooks separately,.

So the report you state doesn't apply at all. It doesn't support your argument and it doesn't support mine either. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Amazon.com_(AMZN)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
Chart shows that net margin for amazon went up in 2007 from 1% to 3% and then sat at 3% till 2010. Then its net margin went back down to 1%. Here is Walmart and Target for reference.
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Target_(TGT)/Data/Net_Margin/2008
So Amazon's net profit is pretty normal compared to other retailers. The fact that it made a profit at all is commendable during a recession. Take a look at Sony http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Sony_(SNE)/Data/Net_Margin/2008

...but than I took an iPhone to the knee.

Foxconn annual profit (2010) is $2.2 billion.
Foxconn employees (2010) is 920+ thousand.

That means annual profit per employee is $2391.

Lets suppose they give the entire profit away to the employees. Thats $199 per month, or $6.55 per day, per employee.

Are you still all smug, or do you now have a lump in your throat because of how ignorant that you now realize that you are? I wonder. The right thing to do would be to have that lump... thats if you have a conscience.. do you have a conscience, or is this fake caring that you do enough for you?

Apple alone made $26.71 billion that year.

Using the same math you did, that comes out to $29032 per worker.
Plus those $2391 they are already payed it comes out to $31423 per worker.
Which is 6 times the Chinese GDP, and twice the minimum wage in the USA.

Imagine... one company with ability to lift almost a million workers not just out of poverty, but straight into 1st world middle class.
Imagine that "trickling down".

Instead of... you know... building their house made of gold.
Sorry... made of glass. Without any corners.

They're a successful consumer electronics company trailing a part of the business they hang on to for nostalgia.

Maybe the $5.1B in revenue (17.8% of total revenue) they got from their desktop/laptop lines in the most recent quarter has something to do with it too. Or the 14% YoY growth in units sold. Especially when the industry as a whole grew at just 2.6%.

Note that the $5.1B in revenue is just for Q3 desktop/laptop sales, which almost equal to the entire company's annual revenue 10 years ago.

App Store purchases started a few years ago, but Apple launched the iPod and iTunes about 10 years ago.

And really, it was just the past few years they exploded. Look at this:

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Apple_(AAPL)/Data/Market_Capitalization/2001/Q2

Note that their massive growth really started in 2005. The iMac had nothing to do with it. In fact, there are rumors that they will completely drop Mac OS X and move all devices to iOS to shift more focus to App Store purchases.

"People still shop for electronics at brick and mortar stores?" Since Best Buy had $1.39 billion in net income last year, I'd be inclined to say: yes, they most certainly do shop at brick and mortar stores. Source: http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Best_Buy_(BBY)/Data/Net_Income/2010

blatant factual errors:

"The insurance industry, the industry that calculates risk, has calculated the risks of nuclear power and they want nothing to do with it. It is, according to the experts, too risky to insure. "-spun

blatant factual error which you were too lazy to check.

"Where did you get the idea that the nuclear power industry pays into a fund? Do you have some kind of citation for that? I'm pretty sure they do not."-spun

blatant factual error which you were too lazy to check.

or are you contending that you didn't make blatant factual errors.

"only carry the minimum insurance mandated by law"-spun

Some plants have more than the legally required minimum amount of coverage, example:

STPNOC purchases insurance coverage on behalf of NRG and the
other owners of STP. STP maintains property, decontamination
liability and nuclear hazard liability insurance coverage as
required by law and periodically reviews available limits and
coverage for additional protection. Currently, STP has a
$2.75 billion limit in property and decontamination
liability insurance coverage, which is above the legally
required minimum of $1.06 billion. The $2.75 billion
includes $1 billion excess blanket coverage that is shared
with two other nuclear power plants, namely Diablo Canyon and
D.C. Cook.

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/NRG_Energy_(NRG)/Nuclear_Insurance

but of course I'm just being a nuclear cheerleader and emotional by point out that you're too full of yourself to admit when you're wrong and too lazy to do good research.

Business isn't about being fair, and this comparison is completely valid, Google is still catching up to Apple and Microsoft.

Really Apple's business history is that of two companies, Apple Computers from 1976 to 2006 which focused on personal computers, laptops and software and Apple Inc from 2007 which focuses on personal computers, portable computing operating systems and consumer electronics

Look back 13 years ago for Apple before the transition started.

For 1998-99 Apple made a $601 million profit on $6.1 billion in revenue for the 1999 fiscal year.

http://www.tidbits.com/article/5608
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Apple_(AAPL)/Data/Revenue/2000

First, that doesn't fit the definition of counterfeiting. They aren't trying to pass them as anything else.

- let's look at that claim, shall we?

here you can see prices for cotton, you can zoom out to 10 years time-line Note how it used to be around $50 in 2003.

So in 2003, it was possible to get a pound of cotton for 50 USD. OK. So if I am expecting AT MINIMUM to have dollars in my possession today, that are still printed by the Fed, shouldn't I expect those dollars to buy roughly the same amount of cotton as they bought in 2003?

But today the prices for cotton are over 200 USD / pound.

So from 2003 50 to 2011 200. Feels like counterfeit 'money' to me.

However let's now see what that means translated to what I call money.

In 2003 gold was roughly 350/ounce

For an ounce of gold you could buy 7 pounds of cotton in 2003.

Let's see, today gold is around 1430-1440. For an ounce of gold it is possible to buy... wait for it ..... 7 pounds of cotton.

--
I can do the same thing with coffee, sugar, copper, grains, etc.etc.etc.

Whatever you think the definition of 'counterfeit' is or should be, it clearly does not protect the value of the fiat against the hands on the printing presses.

This is the reflection of actual inflation. Not the BS that the gov't is feeding you with, this is real inflation, real money expansion. They also have redefined inflation to mean something else, not money expansion but end consumer prices rising.

However they are not being honest their either. They are measuring 'core inflation rate', which excludes things that really matter: food, energy, clothing, housing.

So aside from food, energy, clothing and housing, it's all peachy, their inflation levels are under 2% they say.

OK. What they do not tell you though is this: a country that does not produce much of anything, but lives off credit of producer nations does not need to buy much of raw materials.

Instead it prints dollars (which I call counterfeiting), which are backed by nothing, and then it pays with this fiat for the goods that are coming into the country from productive nations.

Productive nations OTOH have to take in those dollars, exchange them for their own currency, buy raw materials (commodities), add value (production) and then send the made goods to USA.

The real question of course is this: when are they going to come to their senses and stop this madness? When are they going to start enjoying fruits of their labor themselves and realize they do not need to destroy their own purchasing power so that US consumer does not see the levels of inflation his gov't causes around the world.

I think the time is very near now when the world wakes up from this nightmare.

Also Liberty Dollars are very different from US coins:
Gold with Ron Paul on it

Silver face

Silver back

First, that doesn't fit the definition of counterfeiting. They aren't trying to pass them as anything else.

- let's look at that claim, shall we?

here you can see prices for cotton, you can zoom out to 10 years time-line Note how it used to be around $50 in 2003.

So in 2003, it was possible to get a pound of cotton for 50 USD. OK. So if I am expecting AT MINIMUM to have dollars in my possession today, that are still printed by the Fed, shouldn't I expect those dollars to buy roughly the same amount of cotton as they bought in 2003?

But today the prices for cotton are over 200 USD / pound.

So from 2003 50 to 2011 200. Feels like counterfeit 'money' to me.

However let's now see what that means translated to what I call money.

In 2003 gold was roughly 350/ounce

For an ounce of gold you could buy 7 pounds of cotton in 2003.

Let's see, today gold is around 1430-1440. For an ounce of gold it is possible to buy... wait for it ..... 7 pounds of cotton.

--
I can do the same thing with coffee, sugar, copper, grains, etc.etc.etc.

Whatever you think the definition of 'counterfeit' is or should be, it clearly does not protect the value of the fiat against the hands on the printing presses.

This is the reflection of actual inflation. Not the BS that the gov't is feeding you with, this is real inflation, real money expansion. They also have redefined inflation to mean something else, not money expansion but end consumer prices rising.

However they are not being honest their either. They are measuring 'core inflation rate', which excludes things that really matter: food, energy, clothing, housing.

So aside from food, energy, clothing and housing, it's all peachy, their inflation levels are under 2% they say.

OK. What they do not tell you though is this: a country that does not produce much of anything, but lives off credit of producer nations does not need to buy much of raw materials.

Instead it prints dollars (which I call counterfeiting), which are backed by nothing, and then it pays with this fiat for the goods that are coming into the country from productive nations.

Productive nations OTOH have to take in those dollars, exchange them for their own currency, buy raw materials (commodities), add value (production) and then send the made goods to USA.

The real question of course is this: when are they going to come to their senses and stop this madness? When are they going to start enjoying fruits of their labor themselves and realize they do not need to destroy their own purchasing power so that US consumer does not see the levels of inflation his gov't causes around the world.

I think the time is very near now when the world wakes up from this nightmare.

Also Liberty Dollars are very different from US coins:
Gold with Ron Paul on it

Silver face

Silver back

These fools have somehow stumbled their way into ~$11 billion in annual revenue by letting people hang out and use computers. But, any day now, one of those Indies that knows more about running coffeehouses is going to blow them away. Caribou Coffee, with 451 stores, offers much better coffee than that unpopular junk sold in Starbucks' 11,000 locations.

It's really hard to know why anyone would think of emulating a business model as clearly as unsuccessful as Starbucks:

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Starbucks_(SBUX)

So take your Kindle and shove it where the sun don't shine, partner. We don't need your kind around here.

If you want an idea of how little R&D spending is, you only need to look at medicine

Why would you look there and infer numbers for the tech industry - which is the context of this discussion - instead of just looking at the tech industry itself? In the tech sector the average spend is around 12-15% of total revenue, so as a percentage of their costs it is generally significantly higher.

How does a flash order using HFT work? As an example, let's assume that a buyer wants to buy 100,000 shares of INTC. The market price of an INTC share is $26.10, but the buyer's limit price is $26.40. In other words, the buyer is willing to pay up to $26.40 for each share of INTC or $0.30 more than its current price.[3] "Some marketplaces, like NASDAQ, offer high-frequency traders a peek at orders for 30 milliseconds - 0.03 seconds - before they are shown to everyone else. This allows traders to profit by very quickly trading shares they know will soon be in high demand. Each trade earns pennies, sometimes millions of times a day." - The Thirty-Millisecond Advantage, The New York Times.

"Some marketplaces, like NASDAQ, offer high-frequency traders a peek at orders for 30 milliseconds - 0.03 seconds - before they are shown to everyone else. This allows traders to profit by very quickly trading shares they know will soon be in high demand. Each trade earns pennies, sometimes millions of times a day." - The Thirty-Millisecond Advantage, The New York Times.

Via flash orders from NASDAQ, high-frequency trading firms get a peek at these orders for 30 milliseconds before they are shown to everyone else. Having detected a demand for INTC shares, the computers at these firms then start issuing small immediate or cancel (IOC) orders at specific levels above the current price of INTC shares. If the first sell order at $26.15 is accepted by the buyer, another sell order at $26.20 is issued, and so on.

This continues until a sell order at $26.45 is issued. Because the buyer's limit price is $26.40, the sell order at $26.45 is rejected. At this stage, the firms' computers flood the buyer with sell orders at $26.39, causing most of the company's order of 100,000 INTC shares to be filled at $0.29 cents above market price.

Under normal circumstances, a buyer would see the sell order at $26.15 and might subsequently drop the limit price on his/her order. However, high-frequency trading computers are so fast that unless the buyer owned comparable machines, he/she would have no chance to do this.

"You'd think Intel would just accept they suck at GPUs and buy Nvidia already."

Should Intel buy nVidia? Jen-Hsun Huang, who averages about $23.02 million per year, is not the sort of person who would easily integrate into Intel, and he is important to the leadership of nVidia. Intel's CEO, Paul Otellini, makes about $14 million.

Soon Intel's integrated graphics will have mid-range speed, leaving only the high range for nVidia. The high range of video adapters is mostly bought by teenagers who want to practice being violent with video games, instead of practicing being involved with other people. That means nVidia will be dependent on buyers who are being self-defeating; eventually there may be a backlash against that.

The high range of video performance will always be needed for architectural drawing and machine design, for example, but the total demand will drop, as the nVidia stock price seems to indicate. So, maybe nVidia is not a good purchase for any company.

Should Intel CEO Paul Otellini be replaced? Another reason Intel should not buy nVidia is that Intel is generally a failure at anything besides making new CPUs and support chips. For the success of Intel and AMD in making CPUs, the world can be extremely thankful; that's enough success for any company.

But Intel in other areas seems amazingly badly managed. Intel marketing seems completely out of control. Is the product confusion at Intel a deliberate, sneaky way to sell slow processors to technically challenged customers, or just stupid?

Quote from the article linked just above: "Sandy Bridge PC processors will keep the CORE-i3, i5, and i7 designations and will be rebranded the "new CORE-i3..." That approach is likely to create confusion among customers about exactly what they're buying, given that the average user likely wouldn't be able to pick a Nehalem i7 from a Westmere i7 or Sandy Bridge i7."

Either Intel's purchase of the inferior security software maker McAfee for a "lofty 60% premium" is a HUGE mistake, or the reasons why it is not a mistake should be explained by Intel marketing. No explanation was given, apparently. McAfee has a 21.9% market share selling software often pre-loaded on a computer to technically challenged buyers.

Quote from the article: " 'We believe security will be most effective when enabled in hardware,' Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said in a conference call." That seems a particularly wacky statement. "Security software" is needed only because, in my opinion, Microsoft deliberately allows its software to be insecure. Insecure software makes Microsoft more money because people with infected computers often buy another computer. For example, see the New York Times article, Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster. The Apple Mac OS, Linux, and BSD operating systems do not require "security software" because they are made to be secure.

Intel CEO Otellini does not seem to have the social sophistication necessary to running a big company. When he made an announcement in 2006 about the Intel Eduwise laptop, he seemed to be intending to have Intel compete with MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) charity program. However, Intel's intention seems to be just to make a market fo

These days, there are few people (in the West anyway) who know how to create a 'punching' as it is called, and fewer who are interested in learning.

TFA mentions this, "What do young people want to come into this trade for, especially at the manufacturing end - because it's so dirty, you know". Yet there are young people getting into it and Etsy provides them a sells outlet.

Strangely, the remnant of my father's business is just starting to get orders from Asia, so maybe 'Free Trade' is finally coming around to the point where manufacturing costs in the US are competitive with Asia in this regard

Free trade does that, as there's more trade people demand more pay from their employers. China is seeing more suicides, which is going too far, because employers won't give them raises they demand, though employers are giving some raises. China's middle class is rising afterall and there are now 64 Chinese billionaires on Forbes list. The same is seen in India. Free Trade raises everybody's boat.

Of course China doesn't have free trade, the Chinese currency isn't allowed to float, but trade is more open there now than it has been.

Falcon

Hah, I did some research and had a long summary, and just asI was getting ready to post it, oops, somehow lost it.

So here is one key:

a metastudy on pv eroi. n=60 std=6.5 dev=4.5, approx.

Numbers: if you have some numbers, you can hope there had been some science earlier. From the number above, I suspect there is not a lot of science on pv eroi. And the studies there are seem to be pricey to get. But lets look in my buffer.

http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Nuclear_Energy

Oh, that was some numbers on eroi on the other tech.

You claim that nuclear is complex and expensive. The small ones are very simple. The expense is cost of capital and time overruns caused by greenie driven policy. Plus accounting insanity.

On capital costs, plug in 1% capital costs, On time line, try 1-2 years to construct, as is historical true in say France. On accounting, we are still getting returns on 190 year old infrastructure investments. But for an accountant, returns a ways in the future do not really exist.

Based on a list price of $27.95
$3.55 - Pre-production - This amount covers editors, graphic designers, and the like
$2.83 - Printing - Ink, glue, paper, etc
$2.00 - Marketing - Book tour, NYT Book Review ad, printing and shipping galleys to journalists
$2.80 - Wholesaler - The take of the middlemen who handle distribution for publishers
$4.19 - Author Royalties - A bestseller like Grisham will net about 15% in royalties, lesser known authors get less. Also the author will be paying a slice of this pie piece to his agent, publicist, etc.
This leaves $12.58, Money magazine calls this the profit margin for the retailer, however when was the last time you saw a bestselling novel sold at its cover price.

Assuming the previous is correct, your local Barnes and Noble has to stretch that money to cover all those incidental costs of running a physical, specialist store – rent, local taxes, utilities, sales taxes, staffing costs, benefits, insurance, stocking cost, inventory and so on. Their prices are a real kick in the pocketbook but I don’t think they’re exactly swimming in profits either. Indeed, a quick look at their wikinvest page reveals that

company-wide operating margin fell from 2.8% to 1.3% in FY2010

. My econ’ tends to be on the weak side, and correct me if I’m wrong, but that means they’re making a profit of approximately 1c on every dollar sold (couldn't find the figure for Amazon but it looks like Apple has an operating margin of 29.1% and Microsoft has 39%).