Slashdot Mirror

Spencer Ante: Hype and Hope: Test Driving Google's New Glasses

The press release doesn't say, but they got approval to use 1800 MHz for LTE recently, so I assume it must be 1800.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120821-700757.html
http://www.zdnet.com/uk/4g-decision-annoys-everything-everywheres-rivals-but-it-will-benefit-consumers-7000002942/

The rate at which these decisions are being made indicates that it is not going through a human mind.

That's a good thing.

One of the worst crashes in history didn't involve computers (1929) - that was ALL humans panicking and getting caught up in the margin call downward spiral.

Human traders trade on gut instinicts and emotions - even when there are no computers. Gut instincts are mostly wrong.

The best traders are actually folks who've had brain damage so that they don't feel much emotion.

And since HFT, I've been seeing much less large market moves because of piddly bad news. And any day to day volatility has no effeect what so ever on my investments - my strategy is measured in years.

It's all about the numbers and frankly, I prefer it that way.

I've seen many studies of fatalities in the U.S., and in other countries, like Bohlin's studies in Sweden, that report higher fatalities with higher speed. If I saw good data to the contrary, my belief would be shaken.

Bohlin had a graph of fatalities vs. speed, and it wasn't linear. It went up very quickly and it looked like a power function to me. Fatalities are caused by many mechanisms, and you have to sum them all. If you have a curve with a better fit, I'd be happy to use it.

As for the autobahn, you have to compare equal roads, and equal cars. I'm not convinced that Germany vs. the U.S. is a good comparison, and I'm not convinced that the autobahn is just as safe with unlimited speed as it would be with limited speed. And it looks like German traffic engineers aren't convinced either.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443589304577637773840176082.html
September 7, 2012, 6:24 p.m. ET
Toll Road Offers Fast Cash to Texas
By NATHAN KOPPEL

A 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health found that higher speed limits adopted by states in the wake of the 1995 repeal of federal speed-limit controls had led to a 3.2% increase in road fatalities, or an estimated 12,500 more deaths from 1995 to 2005. "When you increase speed limits, you have an increase in the severity of injuries," said Lee Friedman, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and one of the authors of the report.

http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Green-light-may-light-up-to-cap-autobahn-s-speed-1475147.php

German authorities already have used speed caps to make the autobahn safer. Last year, after an 80-mph limit was imposed on the busy stretch between Hamburg and Berlin, traffic-related deaths fell from eight to zero, according to a government study.

Your implication that removing the minimum wage would eliminate unemployment is baseless.

No. Just because you don't choose to recognize the basis, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Ultimately, employment is a trade: my labor for your money. Minimum wage prevents a certain range of trading. That means some people are less well off than they would be with the opportunity to sell their labor.

The US has a lot of ways to hide unemployment, via prisons, schools, retirement, and just ignoring people who aren't employed for long enough. For example, labor force participation is now somewhere around 63.5%. While that's not far off its high of around 68%, it hasn't been this low since the early 80s.

And the figures mask a huge decline in labor participation rate among men who have steadily declined in labor participation over the past 60 years.

There's also huge unemployment among youth and certain minorities which can easily be predicted due to the relatively low value of these groups' labor.

I don't think that minimum wage is solely to blame for these trends, but it is a big factor.

Samsung is spinning off their LCD division to concentrate on OLED. It is a really bad time to invest in low margin LCD factories.

And let's not forget it was Google who suffered a major crash that lost people's emails, so you can't truth them on reliability either.

The accounts were restored. Don't take my word for it, read the Wall Street Journal.

http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2012/08/31/thai-group-says-steve-jobs-reincarnated-as-warrior-philosopher/

Appleâ(TM)s mantra of using technology to bring people closer together also dovetails neatly with the teachings of the orange-robed monks at the Dhammakaya Temple.
They preach a worldly, tech-savvy form of Buddhism which instructs worshipers that it isnâ(TM)t a sin to grow rich, as long as they contribute a chunk of their earnings to the Dhammakaya cause.

Material possessions are cool. Just give us money.

Among other things, he has said the reincarnated Mr. Jobs spends much of his time lounging in a glass palace resembling an Apple store. Phra Chaibul also has said the being formerly known as Steve Jobs is attended by 20 servants, who seem to resemble the Apple store âGeniusesâ(TM)

The spiritual rewards also appear to be worth the effort, at least according to Phra Chaibul. He says that Mr. Jobs now enjoys sleeping on a floating hover-bed, and when he thinks of a piece of music he would like to hear, it automatically plays. If he is hungry, an aide quickly brings him a tasty treat.

âoeEverything is high-tech, beautiful, and simple, exactly the way he likes it, and he is filled with great excitement and amazement,â Phra Chaibul says. In fact, the technology surrounding the reincarnated Mr. Jobs works so seamlessly that he has no reason to âoebare his canine teethâ or otherwise exercise the hot temper for which he was known on earth.

Whatâ(TM)s more, Mr. Jobs was reborn in a younger, more handsome form. Phra Chaibul says he now appears to be around 35 to 40 years old, with a full head of hair. Artist renderings accompanying Phra Chaibulâ(TM)s lectures show a rejuvenated Mr. Jobs living in a photo-shopped, air-brushed utopia where he hangs out with other sprites and revels in the achievements of friends and colleagues he left behind on earth.

What does a celestial warrior-philosopher need with servants?
Or glass palaces? Or floating hover-beds? Or tasty treats? Or hair?
Or pathetically "younger" body of 35-40? Why not go for a viral 19-21 with a wisdom of several lifetimes?

Probably cause the above mentioned Phra Chaibul is 68 and 35 seems to his unimaginative mind (Really? Afterlife apex for a celestial warrior-philosopher is about auto-playing music and snacks on a floating bed?) like an impossibly distant age when he was "young".

And if you want to SEE what he actually meant, please step this way.
Dhamma Media Channel has renderings of all Steve's previous incarnations on display.
Including an explanation why he died of cancer.

SPOILER:

In a previous incarnation he had beaten to death an "unlicensed doctor" who "gave the counterfeit medicine to his older brother".
PI Steve (Previous Incarnation Steve) ended up selling his family business AND donating a part of his liver to save his brother.
"Unlicensed doctor's" death on the other hand "was caused mainly by liver hemorrhage."
See how it all ties together?
AMAZOING-OING-OING-OING!

Gaming is an important, healthy activity. It increases mental alertness and improves reaction times.

But, could you receive that same mental alertness and improved reaction time from doing something instead of gaming?

Couldn't a fast paced recreational activity like tennis, baseball, basketball improve your reaction time? And the exercise should improve your mental alertness.

This article should be required reading for kids today. This is an issue I find myself wrestling with from time to time. I spent two years wasting time in Star Trek Online with the purpose of wasting that time. It was a pretty game and I decided this was where I was going to grind away in thoughtless leveling-up--and it was brainless, repetative nonsense. I basically voluntarily put myself in a Skinner Box, holding down the "fire" button while runing around for hundreds of hours in order to get that little hit of dopamine each virtual reward of experience points brought me. Finally, I decided it was time to just uninstall the damn thing and walk away from it incomplete (not that it could ever be completed).

That one was voluntary, when Skyrim came along, I got sucked in again, playing heavily for several months before my family and job responsibilities forced me to shelve it for six months. I recently started it up again long enough to complete the main quest, and that felt like a chore. The months of not playing broke the spell, so that I didn't feel connected and invested in the rewards anymore. Why the @#$% would I spend hours saving to buy a virtual house or read a hundred vitual books about a virtual world when I've got the real thing to work on here? Skyrim was epically beautiful, but so is a weekend hike in the mountains.

Gaming is an important, healthy activity. It increases mental alertness and improves reaction times. I think all kids should play video games--or rather, play the right kinds of video games. My new rule for games is no more "forever" games like MMORPGs and Skyrim. I'm currently looking for a new game, and the most important characteristic is that it that it take <=20 hours to complete. I'll pay $20 to see a two hour movie with my wife, so $50 enjoying 20 hours of Portal II is a bargain.

The general consensus seems that the stress of starting diaspora* lead him to suicide; but I've never fully accepted it, even though it's reported he suffered Asperger's and that his mom thought he was depressed. I have never been able to find details on his suicide other than reports that he died of asphyxiation -- something that can be difficult to achieve without the right "tools". Almost immediately after his death, a "suicide note" was posted on the internet, then removed shortly after. From what I remember, the coroner's report was delayed for a few weeks or more, and the police-report didn't mention what item Ilya used to kill himself, yet "suicide" was prematurely announced by nearly every media outlet.

It was a project that caught a lot of attention; from the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, to Mark Zuckerberg himself.

At one point in their startup, Papal froze their donation account.

Whatever the truth of the situation be, I don't dispute any aspect of it. I do remain curious though. Here's an old interview with Ilya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3QwvlnhpDSo

You think Wikileaks is a big money-making venture?

It's funny how people believe anyone whose name is in the news must be rich. "Hey, did you see that guy who got a million hits on his YouTube video of his dog who skateboards? That guy must be like a millionaire or something!"

WikiLeaks Donations Topped $1.9 Million in 2010

Wikileaks has been criticized for their lack of transparency in handling of donations.

The controversial website WikiLeaks, which argues the cause of openness in leaking classified or confidential documents, has set up an elaborate global financial network to protect a big secret of its own—its funding. . . .

The linchpin of WikiLeaks's financial network is Germany's Wau Holland Foundation. WikiLeaks encourages donors to contribute to its account at the foundation, which under German law can't publicly disclose the names of donors. Because the foundation "is not an operational concern, it can't be sued for doing anything. So the donors' money is protected, in other words, from lawsuits," Mr. Assange said.

The German foundation is only one piece of the WikiLeaks network.

"We're registered as a library in Australia, we're registered as a foundation in France, we're registered as a newspaper in Sweden," Mr. Assange said. WikiLeaks has two tax-exempt charitable organizations in the U.S., known as 501C3s, that "act as a front" for the website, he said. He declined to give their names, saying they could "lose some of their grant money because of political sensitivities."

Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks gets about half its money from modest donations processed by its website, and the other half from "personal contacts," including "people with some millions who approach us and say 'I'll give you 60,000 or 10,000,' " he said, without specifying a currency. -- How WikiLeaks Keeps Its Funding Secret

It will take time, but if the trend continues, the children of the the vaccine refusers will be in the majority when the disease reappears. They will eventually be left with a choice of risking the disease or "risking" the vaccine. As long as we keep our own children vaccinated, the vaccine refusers are the ones who will suffer in the end. A sad but highly likely result.

If my kids were allergic to vaccinations I would be forming groups with parents of other similar kids to investigate lawsuits against the vaccine refusers. A few of these, reported widely, might help turn the tide.

I am also heartened by the act that some doctors are refusing to treat patients who do not vaccinate their children. There was a good WSJ article in Feb 2012: "More Doctors 'Fire' Vaccine Refusers" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203315804577209230884246636.html

Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are "firing" such families from their practices, raising questions about a doctor's responsibility to these patients. Medical associations don't recommend such patient bans, but the practice appears to be growing, according to vaccine researchers.....

Why'd you have to link to the AP article via that (dead) troll Breitbart?

Here are some other sources, thanks Google:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19377261
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358404577609810658082898.html

I'm sure the AP article can be found via a more... reputable site.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to don a biohazard suit and hide from all the Apple fanboys masturbating wildly to the news.

You are correct. Here's an example to prove it. (However, you will notice that even with Medicaid you can't always get treatment.)

Wall Street Journal
September 13, 2007

MEDICAL MAZE
Legal Loophole Ensnares Breast-Cancer Patients
Shirley Loewe Chooses The Wrong Clinic And Starts Long Ordeal

By JOHN CARREYROU

LONGVIEW, Texas -- In June 2003, Shirley Loewe went to Good Shepherd Medical Center here with a softball-size lump in her breast and was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer. She didn't know it, but she had just made a big mistake.

Ms. Loewe was uninsured. Under federal law, she could have gotten Medicaid coverage -- and saved herself a lot of hardship -- if she'd gone to a different clinic less than a half-mile away. But by walking through Good Shepherd's doors, Ms. Loewe unwittingly let that opportunity slip and embarked on a four-year journey through the Byzantine U.S. health-care system.

It was an odyssey that would take her to five hospitals, two clinics, two charitable organizations and two nursing homes in two states. She was denied assistance or care at least six times along the way, for reasons that ranged from not being poor enough to not being sick enough.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118781024289705455.html

This look at credit-card related MBA doesn't look good. It also isn't a good sign that even the Wall Street Journal, not exactly known for its The Daily Worker editorial slant, has observed the problem.

So, yeah, the available statistics don't look good, and the structure under which company/consumer arbitration is operated(Company requires many arbitrations/year, gets to select arbiters, results of past arbitrations are obviously available to the company; but typically not available to the consumer, arbiters know that future business can depend on past 'results') it'd be a fucking miracle if any impartiality existed...

After a cargo accident, millions of tiny white plastic pellets have been washing up on the Hong Kong's shores. No authority, no government cares. Civilians voluntarily organize cleaning up activities every weekend and the situation is still catastrophic. Uncountable fishes have their stomachs stuffed with plastic pellets, but Hong Kong Government still insists that those fishes are harmless and safe to eat. Those fishes are dying of staving because they couldn't take any more real food, and the Government only cares about whether it is safe to eat them.

Sadly, environmental disasters effect everyone in the same planet but they would hardly raise mass concern.

In the latter case, the only way for law enforcement to find out about these comments is if they're actively monitoring ALL messages on Facebook, ALL the time.

You do know many more things are monitored right? I haven't been on Facebook in awhile but most sites have a 'report this post' feature client facing. It's similar to a like but it's a dislike... pretty crazy concept right? I also don't find it shocking that there is active and most likely automated enforcement of their acceptable use policy. Perhaps you're familiar with how SPAM is dealt with? That doesn't seem to bother you. In some situations monitoring is a good thing. Like when they close peoples accounts who are known pedos, or idiots who post pictures of crimes. Please don't misconstrue this as support and/or endorsement of Fascist communications monitoring.

If that thought doesn't disturb you, then I can't help you, because there's obviously something wrong with you.

Indeed it does, which is why I'm very careful about what I choose to share online especially when my name and picture are associated with it. Did you even read what I wrote? I'm more alarmed at your lack of understanding of what privacy is and why you think people have it on Facebook. There is no privacy on Facebook. By sharing information you're doing the exact opposite of keeping it secret.

privacy/prvs/
Noun:
The state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people.
The state of being free from public attention.

You have no expectation of privacy Facebook here too here. By posting information you are sharing information.

TLDR; "I can keep a secret but the people I tell cannot."

Got a link to that? I would love to read it.

My sources are in Danish, but just google negative interest, and you will find several sources. Note there is a small handful of countries that has this situation now, Switzerland, Denmark and Germany I know of, and some links mentions Finland and Netherlands.

It is already mentioned on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate#Negative_interest_rates,

Wall-Street Journal: http://blogs.wsj.com/eurocrisis/2012/07/06/the-dangers-of-negative-interest-rates/

The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/9456634/Negative-interest-rates-spell-final-defeat-for-beleaguered-savers.html

Go read this, and let me know what you think. Incidentally, I first heard this story on the BBC, so not exactly some US conspiracy here.

FWIW, I also have friends who have been there, and it really is as nightmarish of a police state as you could imagine.

It starts with Sweden clearing him for travel. And he does so.

You don't need any clearance to travel and Sweden didn't issue any such thing. Unless an arrest warrant is placed on your head you can leave as you please. And Assange did leave.

After his lawyer was notified that an arrest warrant is coming his way

Then, he is called back.

He is not just 'called back'. An arrest warrant was placed on his head. Because he was abroad a European Arrest Warrant was issued and served. Then Assange used every possibility to fight extradition.

He's a suspicious sort, and offers to come back if he gets a guarantee he won't be extradited to the US. Sweden said no. He offers to meet in person, in the UK. But Sweden said no.

Here's where your story really stops adding up. He didn't offer a thing. He fought the arrest the best he could and when he lost he skipped bail and hid in Ecuadorean embassy. Only after that he and Ecuadorian officials started giving interviews and statements where they demanded he'll be given assurances.

Feel free to correct me and show what official way he used to ask to be interviewed on the English soil.

Sweden has not charged him with any crime.

This is the favorite spiel of Assange's lawyer. Yes, he has not been charged. An arrest warrant was issued and under Swedish law he cannot be charged before he is actually arrested.

Why has Sweden said "no" to ever offer?

What offers did he make to 'Sweden'? Through what channels? And when? Citation needed!

I'm not sure on the timeline, but I didn't think that Julian was a criminal at the time Ecuador initially extended the offer for asylum.

Yes, you are clearly not sure on the timeline. But regardless of timelines, I doubt his bail conditions included stepping on Ecuadorian soil.

I didn't think it that unusual, other than the lengths that Sweden has gone to to get Julian back after they told him they would not charge him and he was released and told he could go.

Sweden issued an arrest warrant. Assange escaped Sweden. Then the Swedish prosecutor issued an European Arrest Warrant, sent it to Interpol and requested extradition.

That's it. That's all the length that the prosecutor has gone through. All the rest is Assange's and his lawyers theatrics

We don't need thousands of Media Studies graduates with huge debt, we need Scientists, Entrepreneurs and many other roles that are currently being filled by imported labour.

The problem is that 17 year olds generally have no idea what skills are in demand in the workplace. Perhaps every university should be required to write a letter to each prospective student, informing them of the ratio of graduates from that university with that particular degree in the last 5 years who are employed/unemployed, and the median salary. The letter could also point out similar degrees with better prospects. That way student choice would be retained, but it would be more informed. Alternatively, we could go the China route, and only fund the top % of students to study in-demand degrees, and consign everyone else to a lifetime of manual labour (gaokao: for poor households, the 30 percent of China’s population living on less than $2 a day, the gaokao is like a lottery ticket — but one whose rewards come not by chance, but through blood, sweat, tears and toil. For them, gaokao doesn’t translate as “high exam,” it translates as “test you must ace so your life won’t suck.").

Your post is largely nonsense, and you get some very important things wrong.

In the Pentagon Papers case, the courts didn't say it was ok, but simply that the government couldn't stop the papers from publishing them. The option to prosecute them was left open, and has been so. It is just the case that the government generally hasn't pursued that option.

The US is still largely a nation of laws, even if there are issues that need to be addressed, and more trouble is on the horizon. Unfortunately some people are either ignorant about the law, or pretend the law is something other than what it is. A perfect example of this is the question of how the conflict with Al Qaeda is being pursued. Much of it is being acted upon under the Law of War, not under criminal law. This is intolerable to many people, so they pretend that the US is lawless rather than following the rules of a different body of law. Case in point - indefinite detention of enemy combatants without trial. That is not only permissible under the law of war, but in fact customary. That is how the US held 300-400,00,000 German prisoners in the US in WW2. They didn't get trials, and no habeas corpus. Don't like it? Don't take up arms against another state, especially if you are a non-state actor with a proclivity towards war crimes, as Al Qaeda is. Things are a bit more complicated now that the US Supreme Court has muddied the waters on the subject.

Crime rates in the US have been falling for quite some time, which baffles some people. And no, there is no dictate for people to engage in mass murder. The US isn't a large prison. It isn't related to police brutality. The police are not prison guards, nor are they thugs in general (specific exceptions made for behavior).

The way that things get better is by voting and the courts, not armed rebellion - the US isn't every anywhere close to that point once you move out of the realm of fantasy.

Your claims are wrong and your reasoning specious (not to mention that the US only waterboarded three people, the last in 2003*).

In short, you're completely wrong.

At the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, a.k.a. Tokyo Trials, . . . only seven Japanese war criminals were executed. Every one of them was convicted of either being complicit in or directly comitting atrocities and murder on a grand scale.

. . . it seems pretty clear we executed these men for charges that far surpass concerns about waterboarding.

Now it does appear that various forms of torture were a consideration in some of these cases that resulted in death sentences at the Tokyo Trials. Media Matters marshals some evidence to that effect, but again waterboarding was presented as just one of several types of torture, many of which appear to be more severe. (Media Matters also appears to cavalierly lump all forms of Japanese water torture together and, say, forced ingestion of water — an execution method centuries ago — is obviously very different from waterboarding.) . . . . There are examples of war criminals convicted of waterboarding, even alongside convictions for a number of harsh forms of torture, who were not put to death.

In no way, shape or form could waterboarding be said to have been the predominate reason any one of these people were hanged. Begala suggesting people at the Tokyo Trials were hanged for waterboarding is akin to noting that Charles Manson is guilty of trespassing on Roman Polanski’s home and then insisting that’s the reason he got a death sentence. (Not that I’m suggesting trespassing and waterboarding are equivalent crimes; I’m just making a logical point.) --- Sorry, Paul Begala — You’re Still Wrong

More:

Holder on Waterboarding — Proving It’s Not Torture While Insisting It Is
The Waterboarding Trail to bin Laden
Waterboarding and Torture
Regarding Those Claims About WWII Waterboarding

* Exclusive: Only Three Have Been Waterboarded by CIA

You obviously weren't living the same life as the majority of Americans during Reagan's administration. Even left leaning CNN and MSN give Reagan some credit here.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/06/news/economy/obama_reagan_recovery/index.htm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/05/05/reaganomics-vs-obamanomics-facts-and-figures/
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/276826/obama-vs-reagan-deroy-murdock
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904875404576530412322260784.html
http://money.msn.com/investing/election-12-obama-vs-reagan-bloomberg.aspx

Did you ever notice how when a commoner plane crashes into a building, we get lots of security at the airport, but when a private plane gets crashed into a government building in hopes of furthering a political agenda by way of fear and tragedy, somehow that doesn't fit the definition of terrorism? Lest private plane owners (who happen to overlap with media owners) be inconvenienced. There's no secret network like the parent seems to think, a lot of rich people hate each other, but there's a huge pile of this, alignments of interest of the bourgeoisie, which leads to basically the same result.

"After a yearlong investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday that it won't bring charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or any of its employees for financial fraud related to the mortgage crisis."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443537404577579840698144490.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

"But Goldman, as the Levin report makes clear, remains an ascendant company precisely because it used its canny perception of an upcoming disaster (one which it helped create, incidentally) as an opportunity to enrich itself, not only at the expense of clients but ultimately, through the bailouts and the collateral damage of the wrecked economy, at the expense of society. The bank seemed to count on the unwillingness or inability of federal regulators to stop them - and when called to Washington last year to explain their behavior, Goldman executives brazenly misled Congress, apparently confident that their perjury would carry no serious consequences. Thus, while much of the Levin report describes past history, the Goldman section describes an ongoing? crime - a powerful, well-connected firm, with the ear of the president and the Treasury, that appears to have conquered the entire regulatory structure and stands now on the precipice of officially getting away with one of the biggest financial crimes in history."

"To recap: Goldman, to get $1.2 billion in crap off its books, dumps a huge lot of deadly mortgages on its clients, lies about where that crap came from and claims it believes in the product even as it's betting $2 billion against it. When its victims try to run out of the burning house, Goldman stands in the doorway, blasts them all with gasoline before they can escape, and then has the balls to send a bill overcharging its victims for the pleasure of getting fried."

"So let's move on to something much simpler. In the spring of 2010, about a year into his investigation, Sen. Levin hauled all of the principals from these rotten Goldman deals to Washington, made them put their hands on the Bible and take oaths just like normal people, and demanded that they explain themselves. The legal definition of financial fraud may be murky and complex, but everybody knows you can't lie to Congress.

""Article 18 of the United States Code, Section 1001," says Loyola University law professor Michael Kaufman. "There are statutes that prohibit perjury and obstruction of justice, but this is the federal statute that explicitly prohibits lying to Congress."

The law is simple: You're guilty if you "knowingly and willfully" make a "materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation." The punishment is up to five years in federal prison."

"Lloyd Blankfein went to Washington and testified under oath that Goldman Sachs didn't make a massive short bet and didn't bet against its clients. The Levin report proves that Goldman spent the whole summer of 2007 riding a "big short" and took a multibillion-dollar bet against its clients, a bet that incidentally made them enormous profits. Are we all missing something? Is there some different and higher standard of triple- and quadruple-lying that applies to bank CEOs but not to baseball players?"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511?print=true

Feds walk away from prosecuting Goldman, SEC misses Madoff, but this guy needs to be prosecuted - twice!

That's the way it works in our plutocracy. The big fish get away scot free with the little guys get it up the ass.

Run up billions of dollars in debt and can't pay it back? The government steps in, covers it, pay yourself a big bonus, and everyone pats you on the back for being a financial whiz and a "job creator".

In the meantime, a peon who does the right thing and gets educated and pays with student loans is stuck with them for life unless he pays them back - no free ride like the plutocrats get. And to add insult to injury, you have some very ignorant people who think that only folks who majored in liberal or fine arts have that problem and that they deserved what they got - not true, BTW, folks with nursing, accounting, CS and engineering degrees are also having horrible times. Or they accuse those folks of going to expensive private schools - which isn't always true either considering state schools are quite pricey themselves.

And to anyone who posts that they worked 2 jobs, held a 3.0+ GPA and graduated in 4 years with a CS or engineering degree without any debt, I call bullshit. I will never beleive that.

Anyone who defends this system is either in on it or has this illusion that they can with enough "hard work", some "risk taking" and some "brains" that they to can join the 1%; you'll have a better luck winning the lottery.

Feds walk away from prosecuting Goldman, SEC misses Madoff, but this guy needs to be prosecuted - twice!

I don't remember if Congress got involved, but the FCC certainly did: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124908121794098073.html

From a WSJ review of Paul Allen's biography:

Past histories of Microsoft have said Mr. Allen's departure from the company was sparked by his first brush with cancer in 1982, when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease.

In that year, Mr. Allen says he eavesdropped on a discussion in the Microsoft offices in Bellevue, Wash., between Mr. Gates and Steve Ballmer, now the company's CEO, in which he heard the two men talking about Mr. Allen's recent lack of productivity and how they might dilute his equity in the company by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. Mr. Allen said he burst into the room and confronted Messrs. Gates and Ballmer, both of whom later apologized to him and backed down from their plan.

"I had helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off," he says in the book. "It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple."
.
A spokesman for Microsoft said Mr. Ballmer had no comment.

Earlier efforts by Mr. Gates to whittle down his partner's stake in Microsoft were successful though, according to Mr. Allen.

Schulze is putting up a one billion dollar equity stake:

To complete a deal, Mr. Schulze will likely need investors to contribute $2 billion toward a buyout, according to people familiar with the matter, which combined with his current $1 billion equity stake, would leave him with a funding hole of around $7 billion in debt.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444246904577572842651243850.html

Schulze is worth an estimated two and a half billion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M._Schulze

Meanwhile, their production is 1/20th of the U.S. domestic production. None of their oil goes to the U.S.

Fact one: Syria has substantial oil production.

Fact two: the "king" in question is the head of state for an unstable, authoritarian government.

Fact three: a country in full blown civil war, which is what could happen with the death of Assad, won't be producing much oil for sale. A lot of infrastructure would be broken as well, depressing Syria's future oil production.

Fact four: In the event of a civil war, the fun and games could extend to other countries with greater oil production, leading possibly to other drops in oil production. After all, the current Arab Spring tensions originated in Tunisia a country with half the population of Syria.

Given all of that, it would be hard to justify prices moving by more than $1/bbl in a rational market.

What is the elasticity of supply and demand? My take is that there's some problems somewhere, if prices can jump up so easily.

Also, how much did oil prices spike due to the rumor?

Between 10:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m., futures for light, sweet crude rose from $90.82 to $91.99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

So the price of irrationality is $0.17 per barrel for half an hour at most by your thinking.

GFoS, this is sorta painful to watch. What you are missing is that this is a a willful misunderstanding and you can't get it to go away by explaining it. If the republicans wanted to know what he said, they'd watch the clip and they'd know. But instead, what you're seeing here are circular justifications that do not address Obama's point at all -- but take heart.

Dems are going to vote for the Dem, as per usual.

Reps are going to vote for the Rep, as per usual.

And as always, always, always, it's the swing voters who will make the actual decision, and they *do* try to determine what is best, who is telling the closest to the truth, and so on. You never have to explain this stuff to them because they already know.

Consequently, Romney is absolutely unelectable. You can bet on it. Between abusing his dog, inability to speak publicly, hiding his tax returns, stumbling idiocy during his trip abroad, intent to "Bush II" us (which is exactly what bought us the current economic situation), predatory behavior at Bain, even his wife's "you people" gaffe -- and a huge list of further evidence of non-suitability -- no thinking voter could possibly place a vote for Romney.

In the meantime, under Obama, the jobs trends have reversed (check the graph... you can see the chaos the Bush administration wreaked on the jobs market), the credit card predators have been somewhat reined in, we're finally mostly out of Iraq, and we have at least the possibility of 30 million or so people getting access to healthcare.

Romney was the choice after the pizza guy, the crazy TX governor, etc... don't even worry about it. The only reason anyone even has the impression he could win is the news outlets spin it like it's really a competition so they can sell ads to an audience that is larger rather than smaller.

You watch. Romney has no chance. He's a bumbling incompetent on the one hand, and an ass on the other. Would he make an acceptable president? Hardly. You know it. I know it. And deep down, even the republicans know it.

I believe there is little to no fraud detection at the IRS, as a tiny amount of research on their part would have stopped this entire mess.

Have to agree with you there considering this most recent story,

IRS Accepts 2,137 Returns From ONE Address in forum

The central bank is also loaning money to these companies directly in order to keep them in business while they drive the competition out of business.

The NYT link for the claim that NYSE "canceled some of the trades" makes no mention of any cancellations. Sounds like these were matter-of-course cancellations -- stocks whose prices swung more than 30% were subject to the canceled trades. Sadly, details about how the cancellations were done are not widely available in the press, so it is unclear whether these cancellations constitute corporate favoritism.

On the other hand, this link [wikipedia.org] demonstrates that defense spending is on the order of 30 to 40% of the total government budget, and welfare programs including medicare/medicaid are below 50% (once the 'discretionary spending' component has been taken into consideration).

I don't think you've got that quite right. Try this chart. Social Security is bigger than defense spending by itslef. Entitlement programs are bigger than defense spending by themselves. Medicare, medicaid and related programs are bigger than defense spending by themselves. All other spending about equals defense spending. Now, guess which of these is a Constitutional responsibility of the Federal government? - Entitlement programs? No. Social Security? No. Medicare? No. National Defense? Yes.

Entitlements Crowd Out Defense Spending, and It’s Only Getting Worse

Since 1970, the historical ratio between defense spending and entitlement spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security has flipped. In 1970, total defense spending was 8.1 percent of our economy or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — more than twice the 3.8 percent of GDP spent on the big three entitlement programs.

Today, the core defense program has fallen to 3.9 percent of GDP, while entitlement spending has more than doubled to 9.6 percent of GDP. By 2030, the big three entitlements will absorb roughly 81 percent of all federal revenue if taxes are rightly held at historical levels. This crowds out defense and homeland security spending and threatens the historically low-tax, high-growth U.S. economy.

The long term trends are not positive.

The Welfare State and Military Power

I suppose you could try to get rid of welfare programs, but then you have to spend more on prisons and other ways to "handle" the rabble and sudden rise in crime as people do whatever they can to feed themselves.

The way to handle that used to be called "jobs". It has always been a challenge to create jobs, but the Obama administration has been increasing the difficulty and risk with job creation since it took office.

He does not care about America workers

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57472444-503544/new-obama-ad-mocks-romney-singing-america-the-beautiful/

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/07/25/super-pac-rolls-out-olympics-themed-attack-on-romney/

The half that pays for it? Or the half that just climbs a pole and hooks up illegally?

These types of investors should be fully liable when buying something so obviously bad as Farcebook on its IPO.

I'm not sure the term "liable" is appropriate here, but yes, investors should and do bear the risk for their investments.

Remember, however, that with a mutual fund, you're trusting a fund manager to enact the strategy specified in that fund's prospectus. If they don't, you might feel a little pissy that they started gambling with your money. (You could try to sue, but winning is very unlikely.)

(Here's the article I was thinking of by the way... scroll down one page and read the blue infographic box.)

Sales of Toyota cars exceeds Ford by 50%. Total sales of cars by non-US headquarted makes well exceeds US makes.

You won't see CAFE exemptions dropped anytime soon because that would crush US car makers who mostly get their money from light trucks.

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html#autosalesE

The Wall Street Journal responded to claims of there being talks by pointing out that there are none and that the information is a year old. Not only that, the information was broken a year ago by the New York Times, which is apparently conflating old information for something new.

Zuckerberg beat Wall Street at their own game, and they can't stand it.

That's correct. Zuckerberg doesn't have a problem. Morgan Staley has a problem. UBS has a problem. Knight Capital Group has a problem. Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital, the Carlyle Group, and the NASDAQ have a problem.

Everybody with a clue knew the Facebook IPO was way overpriced. But the underwriters thought that retail investors and pension funds, not themselves,would end up holding the bag.

Zuckerberg beat Wall Street at their own game, and they can't stand it.

That's correct. Zuckerberg doesn't have a problem. Morgan Staley has a problem. UBS has a problem. Knight Capital Group has a problem. Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital, the Carlyle Group, and the NASDAQ have a problem.

Everybody with a clue knew the Facebook IPO was way overpriced. But the underwriters thought that retail investors and pension funds, not themselves,would end up holding the bag.

> Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme,
Bullshit.

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

Being *forced* to pay for other people's mismanagement of their health and wealth is NOT sustainable.

By 2036, the program's actuaries predict, Social Security will have exhausted its reserves and will only be able to pay 77% of promised benefits.

by 2033, 21 years from now, the so-called "Social Security trust fund" will be empty. ... Is a Ponzi scheme - which is basically theft by deception - lawful just because the government runs it? The Supreme Court has said yes.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/09/08/is-social-security-a-ponzi-scheme/
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/04/26/social-security-iisi-ponzi-scheme/

> it's an intergenerational contract that works for everyone provided that it survives.
So how did people survive for the few hundred years *before* Social Insecurity was created in 1935?

How has India managed to survive without Security Insecurity for the ~4,000 years prior to 1952?
www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v16n5/v16n5p11.pdf

Well, this article says the the amount of "justified" homicides nationwide has doubled in the past 10 years, and that now 0.02% of homicides qualify as that. I think since 99.8% of homicides are murder, it is easy to overlook the self-defense clause. Yet pro-gun advocates sure like to mention the 0.02%... But by the same token, the gun control advocates don't like to admit that most gun related fatalities are self inflicted

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577311873214574462.html

Rapidly declining advertising revenues continue to be the industry’s core problem. The losses in 2011 were slightly worse than those of 2010 – 7.3% compared to 6.3%. Ad revenues are now less than half what they were in 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/business/media/quarterly-profit-falls-12-2-at-times-co.html

The New York Times Company reported on Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit declined 12.2 percent as rising subscription and digital advertising revenue at its largest newspapers could not offset the continued drop-off in print advertising.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120703-702076.html

Mediaset SpA (MS.MI), Italy's largest private broadcaster, expects advertising revenue in its home market to decline in the first half of 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/08/itv-advertising-sales-drop

ITV expected to report first decline in ad revenues for 18 months

http://www.exa.com.au/articles/autumn_09/

Meanwhile, free to air broadcasters have experienced multi-million dollar dives in profits and are writing their assets down as worthless. Channel 7, 9 and 10 are crippled by debt and funding problems in the face of declining advertising revenues and changing trends. Likewise, print media is experiencing huge decreases in both readership and advertising revenue.

http://www.filmneweurope.com/news/romania/declining-ad-revenues-at-romanian-tv

The deficit of the Romanian's public TV, SRTV (www.tvr.ro), decreased by 0.71% in 2011, to €36.7 million Euro, while revenue from advertising was 7.4 million euro in 2011, down 24.06% from 2010.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-15/sbs-admits-financial-trouble/3830502

SBS battling falling ad revenue

http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/digital-transform/print-editions-decline/

A steady decline in print circulation and a precipitous drop in advertising revenue in 2008 and 2009, especially classified advertising, have taken their toll on newspapers and newspaper chains.

In US officials' language "civil liberties" means "something that we claim, our enemies disrespect when we want to attack them".

Tell it to Stalin and Kim.

Stalin's death camps
Gulag
Inside North Korea's Gulag

Anonymous Coward in name and in deed.

Mayhaps. . .and mayhaps not. Take the example of James Vandersloot. First, identified as a donor to Republican causes in general, and Mitt Romney in particular. Then, he finds a political operative digging for dirt about his divorce. Now he's being audited by both the IRS and Department of Labor. This COULD all be a coincidence.

But it's not the first time someone has been "targeted" for harassment after offering an opinion or making a contribution. Which make the ability to express an opinion without providing full personal information. . . prudent.