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Personally, I view the stuff like G+ suggesting people involved in previous searches just part of the service that Google is providing. I don't use it, but I can easily see how others could. It's not much different from the ability that Facebook has to suggest people based on various criteria, and I've never seen anybody get up in arms about that.

I use both. Or at least I did till I deleted my Google account yesterday. Facebook has never spooked me out for spying the way Google+ did. With Facebook it's obvious and acceptable. It's using information from within Facebook. They recommend possible friends because you have a number of friends in common. I can't remember having been recommended a friend that hasn't been a friend of a friend. Maybe they up the probability if you went to the same school, or like the same things, I don't know. But that all seems fair.

Google+ are doing it by spying on your web habits when you are not on Google sites. That is completely unacceptable.

It may be that you just haven't experienced that uncanny moment yet. As I said I too used to be happy with Google a while ago. But when you have your own moment of realising that Google knows something about you that they shouldn't, you might change your mind, just as I did.

It all comes down to personal taste., and the price we are wiling to pay for Google's services. You have reached the point where you're no longer willing to pay their asking price, and that's fine. I guess I'm still OK with the price I'm paying. Another year from now... who knows.

I think that's exactly it. You haven't experienced that uncanny moment of realising that Google knows something about you that they shouldn't. When it happens, you might well change your mind, just as I did.

However, I still think you're deluding yourself about the changes in Google. There are no changes; they've just gotten better at what they do. And that is to consolidate all the various bits of information you choose to give them, compile it, and use it as part of their services that you are consuming.

No, you're wrong. I know from personal experience, I spotted it a few weeks ago. Then a few days ago this:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225380456599176.html

Soon after that, it was discovered that Google was using a slightly different trick to get around Firefox security settings. And IE was allowing to do the same thing without tricks.

They are spying on you when you're on sites other than Google's own, even if you set your browser up to be secure and not allow that. You might not have known that up to now, but it is the case.

And I'm not some security nut. Ordinarily I'm on your side thinking that people on Slashdot are ridiculously overreacting on privacy issues. This one surprised me.

On the ocean floor, are large deposits of the stuff Wall Street Journal
A company called Nautilus Minerals Inc. is planning to begin operations.

They're just trying to get our guard down, as any sinister anti-American organization would. Just watch: the minute the WSJ stops running editorials like this, the UN will take over! ;-)

Ah, yes, you so right: WSJ - Alert on Hacker Power Play. Among other things hackers will do:

* Hackers are the reason I have to get up for work.
* Hackers are the reason that the newest tweetdeck sucks.
* Hackers stole my bike!
* Hackers are the reason i lose my car keys all the time.
* Hackers are the cause of Global Warming.
* Hackers are the reason I need to pee while standing in line.
* Hackers Are The Reson No One Gets The Truffles.
* Hackers are the reason why NSA director General Keith Alexander is so ugly.
* Hackers is the reason Brady Quinn is a bad guy for speaking out against the patron saint of football.
* Hackers are the reason why my girlfriend is pregnant.
* Hackers are the reason why John McCain leaves his first alert medical bracelet on his nightstand
* Hackers are the reason I can't ever fold those stupid bedsheets with the elastic corners.

Only in this particular debate, the actual scientists agree with Unnamed Democrat. That doesn't quite have the symmetry you were going for, though, right?

That really depends on the debate, doesn't it? We keep hearing that there is "Consensus" about man-made global warming being a fact in shrill tones, with accusations of being anti-science, or a "denier" if you disagree or have reservations. But the simple fact is that there has never been a genuine consensus among all scientists, not even all climatologists, that global warming, to the extent that it exists, is man-made. (Indeed, how often do you see tens of thousands of people agree about anything with no dissenting or differing views at all? I don't think that there are even many dictatorships that claim the vote is 100% for the ruling party anymore.) The faux "consensus" is in fact a means of control and a way to provide an opening for punishing dissent by denying publication, tenure, grants, and damaging reputations. The stakes are enormous: billons of dollars in green energy funding, carbon exchanges, direct government and bureaucratic control of much of the economy and daily life with the proffered goal of controlling carbon emissions. Progressives and leftists have always wanted more government power to regulate the economy. No wonder the Communists march about global warming - ironic given the Soviet record on the environment.

The Climategate emails are quite revealing.

Peer-Review Thuggery

Climategate 2.0

Consider an email written by Mr. Mann in August 2007. "I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy." Doug Keenan is a skeptic and gadfly of the climate-change establishment. Steve McIntyre is the tenacious Canadian ex-mining engineer whose dogged research helped expose flaws in Mr. Mann's "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures.

One can understand Mr. Mann's irritation. His hockey stick, which purported to demonstrate the link between man-made carbon emissions and catastrophic global warming, was the central pillar of the IPCC's 2001 Third Assessment Report, and it brought him near-legendary status in his community. Naturally he wanted to put Mr. McIntyre in his place.

The sensible way to do so is to prove Mr. McIntyre wrong using facts and evidence and improved data. Instead the email reveals Mr. Mann casting about for a way to smear him. If the case for man-made global warming is really as strong as the so-called consensus claims it is, why do the climategate emails show scientists attempting to stamp out dissenting points of view? Why must they manipulate data, such as Mr. Jones's infamous effort (revealed in the first batch of climategate emails) to "hide the decline," deliberately concealing an inconvenient divergence, post-1960, between real-world, observed temperature data and scientists' preferred proxies derived from analyzing tree rings?

This is the real significance of the climategate emails. They show that major scientists who inform the IPCC can't be trusted to stick to the science and avoid political activism. This, in turn, has very worrying implications for the major international policy decisions adopted on the basis of their research.

"I wouldn't make such a big deal about self-selection. Scientists trying to disprove something to do with climate change would probably put "global climate change" in their article, since they want it to be read by people who study global climate change."

It is important for 2 reasons.

First, that essay in Science was the seminal article that got the whole "consensus" ball rolling in the first place. Since the day that article appeared, no amount of contrary information ever again convinced many people that there wasn't in fact a solid, incontrovertible consensus on the subject. When in fact there was not.

Second, yes the self-selection is important because it means that Oreskes did not show precisely what she had set out to show: that there was a consensus. Had she used more realistic (i.e., representative) search terms, she would have been examining well over 10 times as many papers. I daresay a whole order of magnitude is important. And those papers would have been much less likely to support any "consensus" on climate change. That one little difference in the criteria (including "global" in the search terms) very definitely made a huge difference in the results, and there is nothing to show that it was justified. In fact, it is quite reasonable to think she knew full well it would skew the results. Even after many very solid criticisms of her methodology, she hasn't backed down from asserting her known-to-be-unwarranted conclusion.

"And there is consensus. There was in 1979. The NAS investigated the matter then, and declared that there was a consensus view. Here is the current NAS document."

Your "current NAS document" makes reference to only one actual source on the subject, which is an IPCC report that is over 10 years old that has not only been superseded 3 times since, but largely discredited, and the projections it made are very clearly out of line... the projections would have it nearly 1.0 degrees C hotter than 2001 by now, when in fact last year was about 0.1 degree cooler than 2001. (Source: the graph in the article linked to below. ITS source is data from CRU itself.)

And, apparently, it really has to be said yet again: consensus -- even where it really exists -- is not science.

Anyway, I see your NAS document and raise you this one from yesterday's WSJ.

Uhm ... most of them?

Mmm, yes, perhaps so.

I'd hope that as long as you're not endangering anyone or anyone else's property by doing so, you'd be fine?

I think you are correct.

It's MY flag. I bought it, I paid for it, and I can bloody well do what I want with it.

Yes.

But the thing is, many people have a strong emotional attachment to the American flag. That's why burning one is rather strong protest "speech". It is Constitutionally protected by the First Amendment, which is as it should be, but you should know that many people will be severely annoyed with you if you do it.

My point, which I attempted to make with understated dry humor, is that if it's legal to destroy the American flag on purpose, it had darn better well be legal to accidentally crease a passport and break the chip. (In fact, given that nothing made by humans is perfect, who is to say that the chip didn't just fail on its own?) In any event, this strangely passively quoted comment about needing to revere and worship our passports and protect them from all harm is harmless quackery if it is from some random guy, but something I would worry about if it is from a member of the US government.

steveha

These guys have something to say about that

Schools already got all the money they need but they just used it to hire more administrators and other staff. I don't think throwing even more money at them will help without some fundamental changes in the way they operate.

In 1955, teachers constituted about 65% of local education workers; today, despite years of rapid gains in teacher ranks, they amount to only about 40% of the eight million local education workers.

Per-pupil spending in public schools has grown to $10,500 today from $2,831 (in 2010 dollars) in 1961.

From: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204531404577052194234235910.html?mod=ITP_opinion_0 (paywalled)

That is one of the reason most parochial schools (not just Catholic ones) can educate students at a significantly lower cost than public schools.

Schools already got all the money they need but they just used it to hire more administrators and other staff. I don't think throwing even more money at them will help without some fundamental changes in the way they operate.

In 1955, teachers constituted about 65% of local education workers; today, despite years of rapid gains in teacher ranks, they amount to only about 40% of the eight million local education workers. Per-pupil spending in public schools has grown to $10,500 today from $2,831 (in 2010 dollars) in 1961.

From: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204531404577052194234235910.html?mod=ITP_opinion_0 (paywalled)

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OUR WORLD??

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser
Most UK Muslims will vote Labour
British Muslims recruited to fight for 'al-Qaeda' in Somalia
Hate preacher: One day we will stone adulterers
Sharia: a law unto itself?
'Record rise' in UK anti-Semitism
Assimilation’s Failure, Terrorism’s Rise
U.K. Cuts to Military Will Curb Influence
Iran cuts oil exports to UK and France

Much of Europe is in deep trouble.

The US might avoid the worst of it.... if it can prevent Iran from tossing a nuke at it and the EMP sends life back to 1901. The major European powers were supposed to put a lid on the problem - it didn't work out that way.

Don't forget the privacy-setting circumvention mode.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225380456599176.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

A few points to consider.

1) Apple now has a kill switch. Part of the point of pushing application-signing is so that they can disable signed apps which turn out to be malicious. Only one has to wonder if that's all it will be used for. It's not that I'm particularly distrustful of Apple--I'm distrustful of companies with a lot of power. Amazon's used their kill switch to remotely delete content, promised not to do it again, then did it again. If a company is big enough to survive the publicity of using their kill-switch, then it is in their interest to use it when locking out that software benefits them.

Heck, merely having the ability to do such a thing invites having some patent lawyer ask for a court order requiring that they use it against allegedly infringing third-party works, even if Apple itself were inherently trustworthy. Kill-switches from software vendors are a horrible idea. Apple almost certainly wants the ability to disable any software running on their hardware, which partially leads into...

I have the same concern, although it'd be nice to have some way to block stuff that turns out to be bad; yeah, it closes the barn door after some horses have already escaped and shit all over some machines, but at least it might stop them from doing more damage.

2) There's no doubt that Apple would love for all software to be sold through the App store. They make money that way,

Do they make enough money for them to bother getting rid of the "identified developers" option?

and they get people accustomed to relying on them for software. I don't think it's inherently bad to run an app store, however requiring people to use it would be bad. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think that's the future for Apple.

My prediction is that 10.10 will remove the ability to run unsigned content (after all, it's free to get a signing key.) And 10.11 will probably require all precompiled applications to be acquired through the App store (except on the Server version of the OS, for which the option to run unsigned binaries will almost certainly remain.) 10.9 will keep the defaults, as it will take some time to get a critical mass of non-App store developers signing their work.

OK, you're on the record; I'll go on the record as predicting that the most they'll do is default to "App Store only", and they may well not even do that. (I wish I could also predict that the OS X model will go "back to the iPhone/iPad", as that'd squelch a lot of the complaints about the "walled garden", and make the frog in the pot complain that the hot tub is getting a bit cool, but we'll see what happens in iOS 6.)

3) Virtualization. I expect it to be built into the OS at some point, based upon point 2 above. Maybe they'll acquire Parallels or Virtualbox from Oracle. Maybe they'll write their own. It will be a concession to the fact that they still live in a heavily-Windows world, and interoperability is still sometimes required.

There might be some hooks in the kernel in the future for doing some of the virtualization stuff, to replace any kexts that Parallels/VMware Fusion require, but I don't expect them to build it into the OS, based on my expectation that they won't do the stuff you predict in point 2, so no need to do it themselves, and on virtualization not being as core to desktop/notebook machines as it is to servers. Only if it looks as if all the virtualization projects will go away, or if there's some way they can do virtualization a lot better than anybody else can, do I think they'd bother.

Full article is behind a login wall, here's a workaround:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204792404577225922293962202.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

A few points to consider.

1) Apple now has a kill switch. Part of the point of pushing application-signing is so that they can disable signed apps which turn out to be malicious. Only one has to wonder if that's all it will be used for. It's not that I'm particularly distrustful of Apple--I'm distrustful of companies with a lot of power. Amazon's used their kill switch to remotely delete content, promised not to do it again, then did it again. If a company is big enough to survive the publicity of using their kill-switch, then it is in their interest to use it when locking out that software benefits them.

Heck, merely having the ability to do such a thing invites having some patent lawyer ask for a court order requiring that they use it against allegedly infringing third-party works, even if Apple itself were inherently trustworthy. Kill-switches from software vendors are a horrible idea. Apple almost certainly wants the ability to disable any software running on their hardware, which partially leads into...

2) There's no doubt that Apple would love for all software to be sold through the App store. They make money that way, and they get people accustomed to relying on them for software. I don't think it's inherently bad to run an app store, however requiring people to use it would be bad. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think that's the future for Apple.

My prediction is that 10.10 will remove the ability to run unsigned content (after all, it's free to get a signing key.) And 10.11 will probably require all precompiled applications to be acquired through the App store (except on the Server version of the OS, for which the option to run unsigned binaries will almost certainly remain.) 10.9 will keep the defaults, as it will take some time to get a critical mass of non-App store developers signing their work.

3) Virtualization. I expect it to be built into the OS at some point, based upon point 2 above. Maybe they'll acquire Parallels or Virtualbox from Oracle. Maybe they'll write their own. It will be a concession to the fact that they still live in a heavily-Windows world, and interoperability is still sometimes required.

Indeed. The NSA refuses to answer as to whether it is tracking cell phone locations. NSA Lawyer Questioned Over Cellphone Location Tracking of Americans Senators Ask Spy Chief: Are You Tracking Us Through Our iPhones?

That was my first reaction, as well, until (as some others have pointed out) Kodak sued Apple first last month in a fit of patent-trolling desperation before declaring bankruptcy. This is really just Apple's counter-suit. No sympathy for Kodak there...

Link to full article.

Consumption taxes are not inherently simpler than income taxes. The core reason behind conservatives arguing constantly for a flat consumption tax is that they are tired of progressive taxes and really would prefer taxes to be regressive. It has very little to do with the IRS or your plight.

I had a back and forth, about taxes, in another thread with a /.er whose rebuttal was
"The founding fathers didn't institute a progressive income tax"

The fact is, consumption taxes (and/or tariffs) were enough to support the Federal Government's expenditures for the first ~85 years of its existence.
Now, a universal flat tax is just a massive giveaway to the richest Americans and a massive taking from those least able to afford it.
Not even Hermain Cain's 9-9-9 survived as a universal flat tax.

Do a little research next time before parroting bullshit

Sounds like you are emotionally invested in the topic.

Note that I didn't say Israel was solely responsible, everything else you wrote is true but does not contradict what I said, no matter who vociferiously you expressed it.

For anyone else reading along interrested in an actual citation, here'e one of many that acknowledges both Israel's and the Muslim Brotherhood's involvement in the beginnings of Hamas.

Shouldn't the vast global environmentalist "AGW" conspiracy have prevented these scientists from publishing their results? Isn't climate science controlled by a crowd that ensures their future prosperity by preventing dissenting opinions? How could this be?!

They are probably still stunned by the release of the Climategate 2.0 emails.

Climategate 2.0 - A new batch of leaked emails again shows some leading scientists trying to smear opponents. - NOVEMBER 28, 2011

Last week, 5,000 files of private email correspondence among several of the world's top climate scientists were anonymously leaked onto the Internet. Like the first "climategate" leak of 2009, the latest release shows top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public.

The scientists include men like Michael Mann of Penn State University and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, both of whose reports inform what President Obama has called "the gold standard" of international climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). . . .

Consider an email written by Mr. Mann in August 2007. "I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy." Doug Keenan is a skeptic and gadfly of the climate-change establishment. Steve McIntyre is the tenacious Canadian ex-mining engineer whose dogged research helped expose flaws in Mr. Mann's "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures.

One can understand Mr. Mann's irritation. His hockey stick, which purported to demonstrate the link between man-made carbon emissions and catastrophic global warming, was the central pillar of the IPCC's 2001 Third Assessment Report, and it brought him near-legendary status in his community. Naturally he wanted to put Mr. McIntyre in his place.

The sensible way to do so is to prove Mr. McIntyre wrong using facts and evidence and improved data. Instead the email reveals Mr. Mann casting about for a way to smear him. If the case for man-made global warming is really as strong as the so-called consensus claims it is, why do the climategate emails show scientists attempting to stamp out dissenting points of view? Why must they manipulate data, such as Mr. Jones's infamous effort (revealed in the first batch of climategate emails) to "hide the decline," deliberately concealing an inconvenient divergence, post-1960, between real-world, observed temperature data and scientists' preferred proxies derived from analyzing tree rings?

This is the real significance of the climategate emails. They show that major scientists who inform the IPCC can't be trusted to stick to the science and avoid political activism. This, in turn, has very worrying implications for the major international policy decisions adopted on the basis of their research.

Bribing an activist with an iPhone 4, or beating up a worker to control the news, is hardly what I'd call "do[ing] better".

Did you bother to click through to the actual "article"?

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/21/reports-of-suicide-in-china-linked-to-missing-iphone/

It's a blog that's very light on any verifiable facts and instead uses unattributed reports:

Some publications reported that, in the days prior to his suicide, Sun had been detained and beaten by a senior official

So you linked to a blog about a blog that uses treats terms like this as facts with nearly no direct reporting or attribution:

• "News media in China"
• "Some publications reported"
• "some reports quoted"
• "Some English-language blogs"

I suppose that I have too high of standards for this day-and-age of blog rumormongering...

Maybe this incident occurred, maybe it didn't. Maybe Foxconn is evil, maybe it isn't. Maybe Apple is responsible, maybe it isn't. We'll get any meaningful answers if all we have are rumors and unsubstantiated aspersions!

B.S.
 
According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.
  link.

You are mixing up refined petroleum products and crude oil. As you can see by our net exports of refined products, we currently have excess refinery capacity.

We consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil a day in the USA. About half of that is imported (~9M barrels/day in Sept 2011). The top 5 countries we import oil from are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria in that order which account for about 70% of our oil imports.

ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

The ~60 million barrels of petroleum products we exported the first 9 months of 2011 represent about a weeks worth of oil imports. Not even close to being a net exporter of oil.

There isn't anywhere close to enough oil in the USA that can be pulled out of the ground fast enough to satisfy our oil demands...The only way to achieve energy dependence is to cut oil demand in half

B.S.
According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.
link.

This time around, it's Democrats who have a strong pro-Hollywood lobby, labor unions and the Chamber of Commerce.

The battle has scrambled the usual Washington lines. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and labor unions, usually rivals, back the bills, while many activist groups on both the left and the right oppose them....It's a tougher call for some Democrats, thanks in part to the bill's strong union backing and the fact that Hollywood has opened its collective wallet wider for Democrats historically. The bill is a top priority of the Motion Picture Association of America, which hired veteran Democratic senator Chris Dodd as its chairman last year.

All the more reason to exclude all lobbyists from Washington, DC.

I don't see this as WD doing very good: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16691839
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120123-712851.html

Seagate did great, but that's what happens when your major competitor has big problems, and people buy from you instead.

Not that $1.6 billion would hurt them much, but all they'd have to do is threaten to stop making the iPad in China. At that point, the government will just make Proview go away.

FTFY.

The loss of jobs would be immense. If Apple stopped selling the iPad legitimately, it's not as if Chinese people wouldn't be able to get a bootleg version of it. Hell, China has made a knockoff Apple Store!

Why don't more companies use an IPO auction format so anyone that wants shares can get them? Google did it and it seemed to work out ok for them:

        http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125045821555835141.html

It seems more fair for the individual investor - if they want in on an IPO, they can do it, they don't have to be an "insider".

It seems better for the company - their stock gets issued at the maximum price the market is willing to pay, so they get the best valuation they can get.

Of course, it's bad for the banks since they don't get insider shares to give to their preferred investors who all get to share in the "pop" after the IPO. This pop does no one any good except the insiders that got to buy the shares at the IPO price. It's money that the company left on the table, they should have priced higher.

Oh wait, I guess I answered my own question - banks would never go for it for most companies. But, like Google, Facebook had the clout to force it on them.

Serve your country with honor and wind up on the FBI's terrorism watch list: Veterans a Focus of FBI Extremist Probe

from the leaked financials last year facebook is making money. I think it was $250 million or so NET profit on revenues of $1.5 BILLION.

for a lot of people facebook is the new contact list and has replaced email for most communication. my gmail is my spam/marketing honeypot these days and social networks are used for communication.

but then again geeks and techies are usually the last ones to GET trends like this.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, MOD PARENT DOWN!!!!! Facebook made a billion dollars in profit in 2011, *not* $250 million. Check the Wall Street Journal http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-everything-you-need-to-know/ . Just on principle, it pisses me off to no end that this moron is talking out of his ass about stuff he clearly knows nothing about, and has somehow gotten modded to a +5. There's not even an excuse, you could have found the real statistic in 15 seconds on Google instead of just making stuff up.

All I can say is, if completely inaccurate statements like this can somehow get modded to "+5 Insightful", then the basic premise of Slashdot is fundamentally unsound.

You list the benefits of the internet as a whole and comment as if those benefits are for users of facebook only...sounds like you drink the cool-aide ;)

To develop more, you cite examples of entities (political parties, retailers, travel industry) and say that because those entities want information and facebook HAS information then facebook.com will be a profitable company

You're skipping about 1000 steps...its what Adam Smith called the 'black box'

See people buy things for all kinds of reasons, and marketing types have their own institutional problems for why they can't get a good sample (look at say, Neilsen ratings for more on this kind of ineptitude). Marketing people barely understand the internet, and you're saying facebook is smart for betting those companies will put alot of their money into just ONE internet ad channel...wouldn't ever happen on a scale to sustain...

And that ad sales volume has to be sustained over decades.

To use your refrigerator analogy, what's really happening is that facebook is saying that Sears and others like them will have enough data saying that people chose Sears based on facebook.com posts to justify a substantial, long-term ad buy that would sustain a quasi-profitable company with huge overhead.

That's not a smart bet in a good economy....let alone an economy where the Sear's of the world are closing hundreds of stores

So you're wrong on all counts...facebook is a bad business model, bad investment, and a wast of computer cycles for the most part
The last one was IMHO

If you work for the Homeland Security, do you get access to the All-22 Shot?

It will be interesting to see audited numbers from Facebook. Look for deferred expenses, future revenue accrued in the present, and expenses being capitalized.

The classic is that AOL capitalized their free AOL disks, rather than treating them as a marketing expense in the current year. When the SEC caught them on that, they had to restate several years of financials, and it turned out they became profitable six years after they said they did.

Groupon had similar problems with accounting for marketing expenses. This is a classic issue (or scam) with dot-coms which threw money at getting market share.

MegaUpload - piracy = a service used by the music industry:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181201072864644.html

Required reading:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203716204577014262225551278.html

WSJ has now published a letter from climate scientists challenging this op-ed (Quoting first 3 pars): "Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations. You published "No Need to Panic About Global Warming" (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science. Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter."

What did Barnes & Noble close?

Not yet, but give them some time. They're working on it, what with putting all their money towards the Nook, an e-reader which is only noteworthy in discussion of why Barnes and Noble is going to be going out of business in a few years.

Give them a year or two, then the answer to that question will be a definitive "yes." B&N are doomed.

maybe its not the weather that is out of whack, but our expectation of it. maybe the seasons have decided they don't want to conform any more to the three monthly slots we've allocated for them.

Careful with that opinion, it could get you fired. ""Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job."". Quote sourced from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

One thing I've been trying to do is figure out how much money is spent on each side of the global warming debate. Of course, Exxon has billions in revenue, but they only spend a small portion of that on global warming. But how much is spent on each side?

The best sources I can come up with (things like this and this) suggest that hundreds of millions are spent on one side, and billions on the other.

I'd really like to find better numbers, though. If anyone has any, please let me know.

Too late for this discussion really, but the Wall Street Journal just published an editorial on this subject. The title of the editorial: "No Need to Panic About Global Warming"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The editorial was signed by 16 people:

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

AGW proponents claim that the science is "settled" and that "nobody" who isn't a crank or a shill for evil big business disagrees. These 16 people disagree.

P.S. Freeman Dyson isn't completely sold on the need for urgent measures to control carbon release into the atmosphere, either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Global_warming

steveha

1) In response to new government rules that airlines must advertise the bottom-line ticket prices, Spirit airlines whined: "Thanks to the U.S. Department of Transportation's latest fare rules, Spirit must now HIDE the government's taxes and fees in your fares." (Which is a lie - they can still show a price breakdown, but must now show the bottom-line total).

2) Bank of America was eager to rationalize their $5/mo ATM card fee as "unintended consequence" of new regulations on on card swipe fees. (Yet somehow they found a way around this unintended consequence when passing the buck backfired and customers got mad at them instead of the government.)

3) Health insurance companies all rushed to blame Obamacare for steep price increases in 2010, even though none of the provisions of the law were to kick in for several years, and healthcare prices have been rising sharply for decades.

Of course, I'm not saying there's no truth in the claims. Regulations can be costly to certain parties. But the truth is almost independent of the rhetoric. Blaming the government for price hikes (whether as retribution against regulations, or simply as a fig leaf for hiking prices) is something companies will rarely miss an opportunity to do.

"The government's case also contained potentially embarrassing allegations that top Google executives, including co-founder Larry Page, were told about legal problems with the drug ads.

Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island .. Mr. Neronha declined to detail the evidence, which was presented in secret to a federal grand jury"

Except that RIM is using locked bootloaders*. That means, no, you don't get to do whatever you want because only RIM controls what software is allowed to run on the device.

RIM phones only run the RIM OS. (I'm not talking about the playbook, which is a different animal).

The RIM OS always shows you what programs are installed (and you can remove them if you like).

But on the RIM OS you can run any application you like. RIM doesn't stop you. RIM isn't able to remove applications that YOU put on YOUR phone.

For example, not long ago the phone company in the United Arab Emirates tried to trick users into installing a new "firmware" which was actually spyware:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124827172417172239.html

Removing it was dead simple.

I don't know about his ethical code, but a corporation's ethical code is that fines, settlements, and lost lawsuits are just another cost of doing business, even if the broken law really amounts to negligent mass homicide.

The wall Street Journal (who wrote the original article) is a pretty reputable source as these things go. So when they write all the same facts and then follow up with :

"Mr. Whitaker, who pleaded guilty and faced a maximum 65-year prison term, was sentenced in December to six years, following what federal prosecutors called "rather extraordinary" cooperation. He is due for release in two years."

I tend to believe it.

Read the actual article, in the Wall St Journal, not the crappy pcmag article that was based on it.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204624204577176964003660658-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwNTEyNDUyWj.html

They cite numerous credible sources, including the US Attorney who led the investigation. Oh, and there's also the fact that Google admitted to wrongdoing as part of their settlement. Feel free to keep your head in the sand though.

That rarely happens, at least in the United States.

And even if it does, in many cases you will be in a better facility than a maximum-security prison, depending on the state and the crime you are accused of. You will likely eventually be released, and you will have not been convicted of the crime, therefore retaining your civil rights (if you were accused of a felony).

That, or eventually they crack the crypto.

Happens more often than you would think. And in the case of contempt of court, since the judge is actually a witness to the offense of contempt of court, your detention does not require a trial.

Ah, but incriminating evidence of what? She might be completely innocent of what she's charged with but guilty of something else. In fact, she probably is, and so are you.

Fortunately, warrants must state clearly what they intend to fine, and if they find incriminating evidence of another crime, they have to obtain a separate warrant to return for that evidence.

This is a little different though, when they're in your house and making a sweep, rather than holding onto your files, where they can take their time.

Ah, but incriminating evidence of what? She might be completely innocent of what she's charged with but guilty of something else. In fact, she probably is, and so are you.

So its in everyones financial best interests to have the charger as close to the building as possible. Even if you drive a gas guzzler.

No, it's in everyone's financial best interest for plug-in electric car owners to charge their car at home, and not soak the local shop owner for the electricity their cars consume.

Here's an interesting article on the growing number of charging stations from the WSJ last October:

Charging equipment is popping up largely because of subsidies. As part of a $5 billion federal program to subsidize development of electric vehicles and battery technology, the U.S. Energy Department over the past two years provided about $130 million for two pilot projects that help pay for chargers at homes, offices and public locations.

With less than 20,000 EVs on the road today, that works out to over $6,500 per EV, and since the subsidies only pay for a part of the expense, which can run $2,000 - 7,000 per charger, it's safe to say we have at least two chargers for every EV in the country.

Although it isn't certain that Elop will manage to save Nokia, he at least understood that painful changes needed to be made. I'm not sure that Heins understands the dangers that RIM finds itself in though..