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Chinas economy is growing without having to steal oil

lol yeah, they arrest people to push down the price of iron ore. Then they steal technology for high speed trains. Then they sell poisoned baby food. But those are minor issues, you missed the most important points.

The main difference between China and the US, economically speaking, is that Chinese officials are trying a managed economy. They reward companies they like, and punish companies they don't like. They try to steer economic growth. Whereas the US has a more traditional approach of not interfering and letting the economy do its thing. In fact, the less they interfere, the better off the economy is (probably in part because they don't know what they are doing).

So, what China did worked quite well for the last decade, but will it work for the next decade? Who knows? They need to keep making the right decisions over and over. It's not easy, Stalin started out well but then the Russian economy went into snail mode. And even in China there have been some huge problems (Mao) in the not-very-distant past. So it will be interesting to watch and see how the Chinese leadership manages, or what kind of changes they have to make.

Now the company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak.

They're saying there "may have" been a breach - not that there "was" a breach.
What's really strange, is a lot of reputable sources are reporting this wrong.

In fact, a note from the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) quotes Banri Kaieda, the nation's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister, as saying that it is "a fact" that there were holes created by the meltdown. That would likely mean at least some of the uranium fuel is now lying on the basemat below, or perhaps even outside the concrete containment.

But nowhere in their linked report does it say anything about a breach in the containment vessel.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda said it is a fact that the
water injected into the No.1 reactor leaked away because of a hole or holes
created by the meltdown.
[...]
The operator, TEPCO, said on Thursday that most of the fuel rods in the reactor are believed to have melted and sunk to the bottom of the reactor's pressure vessel.
TEPCO says the melted fuel has apparently cooled, even though much of the injected water is leaking through holes at the bottom of the vessel.
Under a plan decided last month, the utility was to fill up the containment vessel with water and set up a system to circulate the water through a heat exchanger.

Not that I can really blame them too much for mixing up some of the terms, considering how many different "vessels" there are.

Though, it does seem TIME got it right:

It's important to note, however, that the worst has not come to pass, nor do experts believe that it will. In that scenario, all of the rods would have fully melted, collapsed, and burned through the pressure and containment vessels, causing a large radioactive leak outside.

WSJ too:

Within 16 hours, the reactor core melted, dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and created a hole there. By then, an operation to pump water into the reactor was under way. This prevented the worst-case scenario, in which the overheating fuel would melt its way through the vessels and discharge large volumes of radiation outside.

The nuclear industry lacks a technical definition for a full meltdown, but the term is generally understood to mean that radioactive fuel has breached containment measures, resulting in a massive release of fuel.

I'd like to read more about your second link, but it says the NRC report is "confidential". Got a closer-to-the-source link? Or at least a newer one? (the report is from March)

Here's another WSJ article along similar lines, but I didn't bump into the subscription thing.

There is a detailed diary here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703509104576330531564264132.html

"Documents released by Tepco Monday showed the isolation condenser— an emergency cooling system installed on Reactor No. 1 before the quake as a final resort in case of a total loss of power—worked only sporadically, if at all. Tepco officials explained that somebody appears to have manually closed the valves on the condenser soon after the March 11 quake—but before the tsunami hit about an hour later—to control the fluctuating pressure inside the reactor. Reopening the valves required battery power, so those valves likely couldn't be opened because the tsunami damaged the backup batteries.

If the valves hadn't been shut, things might have turned out differently. Temperatures in the reactor climbed faster than initially expected, causing more and faster damage. Tepco admitted this week the problems at Reactor 1 were far worse than originally thought. Its new projection shows fuel may have started melting rapidly only five hours after the March 11 quake. By 6:50 a.m. March 12, the fuel was likely in a heap at the bottom of the vessel. "

Battery power was lost apparently.

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, [Eric Schmidt] elaborates. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Google has mentioned a number of times that customization is a major feature of their searches. While this summary isn't without cause to be nervous about such a thing, instead of algorithms to correct algorithms, it's no major feat to allow users to disable some of the non-spam related algorithms. In fact, it's no major feat to disable algorithms by subcategory: geographical location, operating system, language, search history, etc.

Do you mean "the law" as in "the child porn law" or "the law" as in "any laws"? Because I can guarantee you that practically everybody in America breaks SOME law. There are so many things illegal that it's practically impossible to live as an entirely law abiding citizen.

Here's the first relevant link I came across:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842.html

I hate to agree with the GGP, but just because of his tone. This type of stuff is seen all the time by specialists when someone writes something already deduced. For example an example outside chemistry, you could see the work by Harvard student Anna Katherine Barnett-Hart. She was widely praised following the publication of "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis for explaining the housing crisis' roots in structured finance products. What she really did was repackage work done by some Harvard faculty into an undergraduate thesis, and BAM, 15 minutes of fame. It was just an easier way to read the same analysis that had already been done, and it got the wow factor of age.

As one of the sources for this is the Wall Street Journal maybe net neutrality issues are finally getting proper coverage, instead of the Rush Limbaugh style of this is the "fairness doctrine" coverage it has gotten in the past.

Using that same example and extending it a bit, this also applies to Pres. George W. Bush's intellectual capacity. He and Karl Rove would have book reading contests (Pres. Bush read a lot already, it was just a competition that the two built up). Based on the books that Pres. Bush read (e.g., The nonfiction ran from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ and Genghis Khan to Andrew Roberts's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900," James L. Swanson's "Manhunt," and Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower." Besides eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton's "Next," Vince Flynn's "Executive Power," Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact," and Albert Camus's "The Stranger," among others.), we can extend your surmise of Gingrich to Pres. Bush: "He clearly is a sharp man."

More info: http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB123025595706634689.html#printMode

You really are a douche bag...NUCLEAR REACTORS PRODUCE NUCLEAR WASTE!

They actually produce very little waste (much less than the crap spewing from coal or from producing solar panels). Go education yourself here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690627522614525.html

Key quote:

What remains after all this material has been extracted from spent fuel rods are some isotopes for which no important uses have yet been found, but which can be stored for future retrieval. France, which completely reprocesses its recyclable material, stores all the unused remains -- from 30 years of generating 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy -- beneath the floor of a single room at La Hague.

The supposed problem of "nuclear waste" is entirely the result of a the decision in 1976 by President Gerald Ford to suspend reprocessing, which President Jimmy Carter made permanent in 1977. The fear was that agents of foreign powers or terrorists groups would steal plutonium from American plants to manufacture bombs.

I do not trust the government to tell the truth on matters this large. While I doubt bin Laden is alive, I doubt the official version of his death even more.

Let's see..... the US Government announces he is dead:

Obama Announces Death of Osama bin Laden

The terrorist organization he headed announces he is dead:

Text: Al Qaeda statement confirming bin Laden's death

The regional troublemaker with a strong intelligence agency and an avowed enemy of the US announces he was dead before the operation:

Iran's intelligence chief says bin Laden died long before the 'alleged raid'

Family members denounce his death:

My father's death was criminal and I may sue the U.S.: Bin Laden's son slams Al Qaeda leader's killing

The locals are protesting his death:

Pakistani tribesmen protest

At this point, I think anyone doubting Bin Laden's death is about ready to star in their own personal Truman Show, and doesn't really need more news or photographs.... maybe a shrink or philosopher. Cogito ergo Bin Laden moritur.

The looney bin is getting crowded. Sanity: step 1, step 2....

Personally I think H2 is too difficult to handle. I think after a few cars blowup, the consumers will flee. -or- If the manufacturers do manage to make safe, impervious hydrogen cars, the pricetag will be so high (~$100,000) that nobody will be able to afford it. The same flaw that plagues pure EVs.

Because conventional gas tanks never explode, gas engines never catch fire, and we're paying a fair price for perfectly safe gasoline storage and transport?

Never mind the studies showing that hydrogen is safer than gasoline in real-world situations. It's not the safety mechanisms that make the present technology cost $100,000 per car, it's the fuel cells themselves, and the cost will only come down over time because of mass-production and technology advances.

Boeing is heavily subsidized and helped via political power by US government, it's not standing firmly on the ground with both feet

You're right, they aren't standing on the ground at all. $2.6 billion from NASA for research that the WTO is complaining about, and Boeing is flying high with in order backlog of $329 billion. Seems like chump change compared to the 20 billion in below-market-interest loans you EU folks gave to Airbus ;)

Jibes aside, are you really going to go with a "but the government helps them!" argument against a US company when comparing our industry to China's? I'm trying to come up with an analogy that would be hypocritical enough but just can't do it.

WHY do people continually seem surprised by these sorts of things? It's Facebook. This is their M.O. "Accidentally" leak millions of users' worth of data once every 6 months or so, a handful of people (and all of Slashdot) wring their hands, and the millions of morons who don't care keep on using it without even noticing.

Fourth richest?
Is that why they are in debt?
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110210-704337.html
I know the religion debate is in another thread, but seriously... how can you equate wealth to puppy dogs and fairy tails?
Sure people work, and produce... but why project this to increase/decrease based on "feelings" and "faith"?
Fuck our world financial system is retarded. Yes... "Futures", legal gambling on the middle and lower class.

Alki's startup FilmOn streamed over-the-air broadcasts online without any licenses...and was sued successfully by CBS and the other networks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704369304575632643263718292.html

cz

Doubtless the passengers on Continental Connection Flight 3407 thought the same thing.

To be fair, I suspect it will be some time before spaceships are being flown by a pilot who doesn't know how to recover from a stall.

If the spacecraft's pilot thinks it's safe enough to fly, then I'll fly with him.

Doubtless the passengers on Continental Connection Flight 3407 thought the same thing.

now with link! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703849204576302970153688918.html

most people on facebook aren't thinking of themselves as criminals with things to hide

Now there might even be criminals using facebook to their own demise... Who knows...

There have been plenty of stories of petty criminals (usually teenagers or young men), being caught by police because they bragged on Facebook.
http://www.google.com/search?q=criminals+caught+using+facebook

I agree all of the disclosures are voluntary and they got what they deserved, but you can't argue that some people on Facebook wouldn't be better served by keeping their mouths shut.

Of course nobody minds much when Facebook is used to catch someone who's accused of armed robbery or assault. How about using Facebook to catch tax evaders?

The real issue is not whether people "think of themselves as criminals", but that they don't think things they post online will ever be used against them. This is kind of an old story, but it bears repeating:
Teacher fired for having Facebook photo with two glasses of alcohol

So I think your implication of "nothing to hide, nothing to fear", rings a little false. Activities which used to be innocuous (having a few drinks), can now put your job in jeopardy, because we are driven to share everything online (like you say).

Child exploitation may have a long disconnection between the event and a viewer, but the photos weren't made to put in a family album.

Yes, sir, in some cases, they were.

http://www.cfcamerica.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=358:woman-charged-with-possession-of-child-pornography-for-taking-photos-of-herself-breastfeeding&catid=3:news&Itemid=96

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top%20stories/story/Innocent-family-pictures-or-child-porn-Parents/ARX1K8NqXk6yMGyVfAmueQ.cspx

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/09/22/family-vacay-pics-deemed-child-porn-by-wal-mart-at-center-of-lawsuit/

The fact that my password and credit card number have been pwned sort of screws the PSN in my eyes.

And of course you feel completely safe in Microsoft's hands, the company with a long and glorious history of high profile fiascos like the all-day trading outage on the London Stock Exchange or turning a modern Navy frigate into a floating barge

Maybe Paul Allen realized that the Fermi Paradox was worth pondering. The late Michael Crichton gave a speech titled "Aliens cause global warming" at Cal Tech in 2003 (Read it here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122603134258207975.html) I found it educational. Not that doing the research was a bad idea, but after forty years we should have detected something more conclusive than the "wow" event. It means that there are no signals to detect (either they don't exist or are so attenuated that they cannot be detected) or that there is some flaw in our approach to detecting the signal.

ZTE the 4th largest phone maker in the world.

Apple IOS devices are being outsold better than two to one by android.

Umm...no. The reality is almost the exact opposite of your claim.

This has been answered above. The study you quote (same study the other guy mentioned) is very deceptive, because it has NOTHING TO DO WITH SALES.

The research found that Apple’s iOS platform — on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches – reached 37.9 million people, while Android reached 23.8 million, on phones and tablets.

"Reached"? What the heck does that mean?

Well when you follow the story to its source it is measuring all the iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads ever sold against the number of android devices ever sold. With a four or five year running start its no wonder there are more IOS devices floating around out there (used or no longer being used).

My statement had to do with current sales, or sales over the last quarter, or sales over the last year. Further, this thread is about Apple's lawsuits against Samsung over Smart phone sales. Not about tablets.

You simply can not come up with any statistic that shows IOS outselling Android in smartphones, and if you focus on current sales of all IOS devices and all Android devices Android still wins, and only a handful of Android tablets have actually hit the market.

Lets be honest here and not try to refute sales figures with fleet figures. Talk about blithe disregard for the facts!!!

Oh, and just for your info, I hold Apple stock, and have no plans to sell any time soon. So don't start with that childish "haters" stuff.
And stop insulting people who bring you news you don't like. Shooting the messenger doesn't change the facts.

Apple IOS devices are being outsold better than two to one by android.

Umm...no. The reality is almost the exact opposite of your claim. Devices powered by iOS --iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad-- are in fact outselling Android devices by 59% (37.9 million to 23.8 million). The summary also makes the same claim, that "Android is surging past iOS in marketshare", but it's as wrong as you are. Android-powered smartphones are outselling iOS-powered smartphones, but that's collectively; no single manufacturer even comes close to Apple. The iPhone is far and away the best-selling smartphone on the market.

Android proponents (I won't be disrespectful and call them "fanboys") and lazy journalists love to point out the fact that Android is outselling iPhone, but that's disingenuous; they're comparing a platform to a single device. In both platform-to-platform and device-to-device comparisons, Apple is still wa-aay ahead of the competition. At the end of 2010, Android had the largest smartphone market share at 33.3%, Nokia was second with 31%, and Apple third with 16.2% of the global market. Apple's smartphone market share translates to 4.2% of the total market for all mobile phones, and yet Apple is reaping 51% of the total profits of the entire mobile industry. And they're doing it with variations of a single device. That fact certainly gives the lie to the claims that the iPhone is "dead in the water". If these jaw-dropping numbers demonstrate that Apple is "getting desperate", as you claim, then I'm sure their competitors would love a big helping of the desperation they're imbibing.

Apple haters may have their reasons for disliking Apple, but they need to make a reasoned case if they hope to be taken seriously. Blithe disregard for the facts, and trumpeting bizarre assertions as fact, despite all evidence to the contrary, certainly doesn't help their cause. It only lumps them into the same category of fruit loop as the "birthers".

There Is No Such Thing as Nuclear Waste

How is this going to beat more open platforms like Amazon or (I assume) Google

You do realize that there are 59% more iOS devices than there are Android devices, don't you? And that this would likely also work with iTunes on the desktop which has a gigantic install base...

If it is real, how could it "lose"?

Wake up...
Google tracks you as well.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703983704576277101723453610.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
And future phones will be doing the same stuff.
It's all benign, yet in the right hands of a government and/or criminal entity trampling over your so called "rights".

Hey, I just got my first smartphone: a BlackBerry Curve 9300 3G. It's great. Unlike every iThing and Android I've ever tried to use, I don't want to smash it to pieces with a toffee hammer. (It also does Ogg and FLAC out the box, which surprised me - I thought Thomson charged 10x as much for the MP3 licence if you did that.) Unfortunately, RIM is run by insane incompetents and BB is a dead platform walking. Gah.

Actually, it's not even close. iOS has almost 40 million users, while Android is just under 25 million.

For phones, it is 33% Android, 25% iOS, which isn't exactly "trouncing". If you use profitshare rather than marketshare as your metric (and surely this is the metric that matters to corporate giants like Apple, Samsung, and HTC), Android is in the basement and probably always will be, because it's a commodity OS. It's whole purpose is to remove the OS as a profit center.

If you go by OS, then iOS is trouncing Android. Because by going by OS, you HAVE to include, iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-users-apple-still-trouncing-android/?mod=e2tw

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704004004576270424155464958.html

So all the victims can just suffer I guess owing to insufficient insurance.

Ya know, I really think we outta give credit where credit is due, and I don't see how these young 'uns will ever be able to top the level of worthless in Cuecat. I mean get VCs to pay for scanners to be passed out so folks can go to the trouble of hooking it up, installing a buggy driver that spied on you AND all for the "privilege" of scanning AN AD so you could be hit with ads on your PC? that is sheer genius levels of worthless right there pal, I don't see FB or any of these kids being able to top THAT nuclear powered failure!

I think the bigger question than "what happens when this bubble bursts" is the much more fundamental question of "What do you do when you don't have a use for people anymore?" Because as it is we are ALL playing IQ musical chairs with less seats for a bigger population every. single. day. and the next to go WILL be the entire service industry. what then?

You think MickeyD's bitches about having to pay minimum wage now, which frankly in America one can't live on and actually keep from going under, what do you think they will do when they can replace the ENTIRE workforce with machines? hell there really isn't anything that can't be done in your average fast food joint that assembly line automation couldn't do better, more accurately, and 24/7 without breaks, the only thing keeping them with humans is cost, but what happens when the robot is cheaper? you can't expect to hire everyone part time at $6 an hour when gas is $6 a gallon and a bag of groceries costs them $60, so what then?

I'd say you have a good 60% of the population that are working C and D level jobs that WILL be either shipped overseas where there is no working regs and you can run sweatshops and pollute the entire area, what are we gonna do with them? Execute them? lock them up? make up bullshit jobs (BTW currently government employs MORE than manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined source here) so now what?

So I'd say that is the bigger question we are facing. If the top 25% have everything while the bottom 75% starve society will collapse, crime will be rampant as they try to survive, yet at the same time we simply don't need the labor of more and more people on this planet. What do we do with these jobless masses? Blowing more bubbles doesn't change it, neither does pushing the "education!" meme that politicians keep harping about while ignoring that more and more that graduate from all these colleges and trade schools have nothing to show but debt they can't pay, because in the end machines will do it better.

And before anyone pops in with the capitalist meme of "wages will go down and they'll balance!" I'd like to point to what the race to the bottom gets us, aka the the Halliburton clause where more and more of our precious water is being contaminated and being rendered unfit for use by those that want to make money NOW and screw later. Meanwhile the super rich just got a giant tax break thanks to outright bribery, so trying to beat the third world at who can be the most polluted and corrupt probably ain't the right way to go, that is unless you like the idea of paying $10 for a bottle of drinkable water and having your kids wear masks just to go outside.

I read a good piece on this a while back. Link. It might be paywalled, so Google the title to get the whole article.

Probably would not harm them as much as wind power does, depending upon who you ask.

Firms offer to harvest online conversations and collect personal details from social-networking sites, résumé sites and online forums where people might discuss their lives.

You mean like Google already does for its advertisers? In fact, one of the related links in the article is a story about Google titled Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead, discussing their plans for utilizing their vast archive of valuable user data. The battle for online privacy was lost long ago.

Yes, I think this is the saddest thing ever. I don't even dare RTFA. TFS is already more than I can stand.

Well, then don't read this one. Not goatse or anything similar but creepy in that unique Japanese way of introducing tentacles into everything.

What's 10 billion when you already have 50 billion? Still more money than he could spend in his lifetime.

Lol, omfg... ur serious?

I could piss away 50 billion in 3 months. I just sat here and wrote
down the first week and I'm already thru 10 billion... and that's not
even into the investing portion of the spending spree.

First day... I'm a car nut, so I'd buy every car on my 'list'. First 10
cars burn up over $20 mil. Probably close to $30 mil if I'm doing a
"i want it now". Actually, this is an *edit*, while I was thinking
about it... just the Ferrari's alone would burn thru $20 million.

The remaining list would soak a half bil easily. And that's just cars.

Vehicles... like this one,
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/01/22/gm-futurliner-rewrites-barrett-jackson-record-books-hammers-to/
I would try to buy, he lives about 10mi away...
http://maps.google.com/?&ll=33.609301,-112.199248&spn=0.001087,0.00182&t=h&z=20
$4 mil, gone...

First day of vehicles could hit $1 billion, pretty easily.

Second day... boats. cmon. another half billion easy.

Third day... planes. Really? 1 Good one, quarter million.
Gotta get the Marine One quality copter, another $241 million.
I guess I could just buy the old one?
http://www.taxpayertreasurehunt.com/index.php/Cancellation_of_Marine_One_Procurement
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/vh-71.htm
http://www.top5pedia.com/Top5%20Military/MostExpensiveAircrafts.html

Then you have to do what most rappers forget to do,
http://www.tmz.com/2011/04/11/nate-dogg-foreclosure-pomona-house-died-dead/
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/06/04/rapper-chamillionaire-ridin-into-foreclosure-on-houston-mansion/
http://www.allmandandlee.com/bankruptcy_blog/bankruptcy-law/even-rapper-jay-z-battles-foreclosure/
set some of that money aside in an interest bearing
or investment grade account to pay for storage of all
that stuff you just bought.

I think I'd run out of money before 45 days... but
90 days is just a comfortable, I'm sure it'd be all gone
by then amount of time.

So, whomever thinks, $50 billion is more than someone
could spend (laughably) in a lifetime... doesn't have a lot
of imagination or desire.

-AI

I can assure you that nobody saw a 9.0 coming.

Well, I suppose a few people might have vaguely heard that Japan was located in something called the Pacific Ring of Fire, and even fewer might have heard that the Earth averages an 8+ quake every year and a 9+ every twenty, but who pays attention to geologists when you need fifty nuclear plants for a densely populated island on a major tectonic intersection, and building meltdown-capable reactors to 7.9 instead of 9.9 will save your economy a fortune if nothing goes wrong?

Oh, and speaking of Titanic "the boat is unsinkable" moments, in an article pointing out that at least one Japanese legislator saw it coming, the "tempting fate" award goes to Yoshinobu Terasaka, the director general of the Japanese government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency:

"We put in place engineering designs so we won't allow such a situation, the worst kind of situation, to occur," Mr. Terasaka said, according to the transcript. "We push our safety designs to the point where such a situation is practically impossible."

Well if they'd quit bloating the government out of control they wouldn't be having any money worries, now would they? For those that don't know there are officially MORE working in government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities COMBINED. Source here.

Their whole "IP economy" "Outsource everything" Ponzi scheme is falling down, and if it wasn't for government "make work" we wouldn't have much of an economy at all. It is time to go hardline isolationist (what the 1% call "nationalist and look the other way when other countries do it, such as China and the Yuan and India building a new Aerospace industry rather than buy from us) and take care of our own. bring back a 70% tax rate on the top 1% so they will be forced to invest rather than hoard, kill the H1-B and allowing companies to get breaks for outsourcing, it is time to put America FIRST.

They can keep adding taxes all they want but when the majority of Americans are in the "service industry" aka McJobs there simply isn't any money to pay that daddy fed doesn't hand them from the smoking hot printing presses first. This BS needs to end NOW or we can see what happens when a first world power comes completely unglued like Egypt. You simply can't employ the entire country in the government, and that is what we are heading towards.

Even so, the outcome of the patent litigation between Apple and Nokia is far from certain. As noted by Alexander Poltorak at GPC: "One cannot help wondering if the latest round [of suits between Apple and Nokia] is not a proxy for a fight between Microsoft and Apple, which are rivals as well." It's questionable whether these mobile wars should take place in the courts, in the form of patent litigation, or should be properly restricted to the marketplace, where they rightfully belong. Whatever one's position on the issue, however, it's true that as long as IP rights exist, then patentees have every legal right to enforce them.

One figure says it all: Combined operating profits at Japan's nine major consumer and industrial electronics makers for the most recent quarter were $1.7 billion.

Alone, South Korea's Samsung Electronics earned over twice that.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125732757764927689.html

Pretty much in black and white .. Japan is still a strong player in the electronics fields by all means, but theír role is being restricted to specialised component manufacture. They still has their niche areas, eg. cameras, game consoles, etc but the overall picture is pretty clear, which is why companies like Sony are desperately trying to create new markets that are free from competition.

Several points:

-- Glenn Beck is not a "mainstream politician on the right". He's a guy who's payed to say provocative shit in the media to generate viewer numbers. Those ratings are turned into profits by the Fox News Channel through the magic of advertising. Much like Howard Stern's detractors listen to him for long stretches of time "just to hear what he's going to say next," Glenn Beck is in the same business.

-- He uses violent rhetoric because it's provocative: it's attention grabbing, it's sensationalist, and it gets people watching. This does not excuse it, in my opinion, but he is no more making "violent threats" than any of the examples below are *actually* threatening violence. Read on.

would you care to cite some examples of left-wing politicians or their supporters inciting their audience to violence on a mainstream news outlet

I would!

-- Rep. Mike Capuano, Democrat, my home state of Massachusetts. Remarking on the collective bargaining legislation in Wisconsin: "It's more than just sending an email that gets you going. Every once in a while, you gotta get out in the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

-- Pres. Barack Obama, Democrat. Speaking to folks at a fundraiser: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun, because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

-- Pres. Barack Obama, Democrat. Talking about Republican prospects in the 2010 midterm elections"They are fired up. They are mobilized. They see an opportunity to take back the House, maybe take back the Senate. If they're successful in doing that, they've already said they're going to go back to the same policies that were in place during the Bush administration. That means that we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill."

-- Liberal talk show hosts like Beck are fewer & harder to find, but looking over various comments made by Randi Rhodes, Charles Bouley, Mike Malloy, and others... there are examples of violent rhetoric being used.

-- Famous recent example would be where a supporter of Pres. Obama's health care plan bit off part of a conservative protester's finger in an apparent fit of rage over their disagreement.

-- You could also check out the video embedded in this next link: in which a MoveOn supporter allegedly "chokes" a conservative protester. I'm inclined to believe there's not a lot of "choking" going on, but certainly there's still no need for him to be putting his hands around the other man's neck at a political protest, is there?

Look, it's easy to characterize violent rhetoric from liberals as "far, far left" activity, that's way out of the mainstream - nobody wants to believe that "their team" could be capable of the sorts of things that "those people" do, and so it's a natural reaction that you'd want to distance yourself from it. Much like conservatives will distance themselves from anybody who is *actually* preaching violence against liberals, and agree with you that it's the "whacko right nutjobs" who are talking like that.

The fact of the matter is that it's not just the whacko fringes using the rhetoric, on EITHER side. It's absolutely appropriate to be as disgusted with it from Republicans as it is to be disgusted with it from Democrats. Both of them should know how to behave better. But if you're really going to say that you don't mind if "your team" uses that kind of rhetoric, but you're going to object whenever the "other team" does, then you're just a hypocrite.

An excellent point! His bafflingly naive viewpoint and almost child-like understanding of the tools he hamfistedely rails against are validated because he's associated with an Internet startup that was bought out. And what a sturdy metric for argument cogency it is - only the best and brightest are chosen to be benefactors of the almighty corporate capital, and said corporate overlords will never overpay or make a bad investment!

Truthfully, I don't know who the fuck this guy is, and I'd never heard of "Milo.com" prior to your mentioning. His website looks dull and unremarkable, and appears - on the surface - to be a mediocre portal knockoff of Google's "Find Local" services. He may be a goddamn genius for all I know, but if he is, he should definitely work on sounding like less of a complete fucking retard when he chooses to drag out tired, cliche flamebait - or at the least, avoid making points indicating how completely oblivious he is to the capabilities of the platform he's rambling about.

According to WSJ, who had the an article the other day,

In Pandora's case, both the Android and iPhone versions of its app transmitted information about a user's age, gender, and location, as well as unique identifiers for the phone, to various advertising networks. Pandora gathers the age and gender information when a user registers for the service.

So I can't really see how Apple's system is all that much better. (And no, you don't need to use GPS to send location data, and neither is it used by advertisers.)

I was about to reply that I found it "very suspicious that the article omits ios... " then I reliezed your article doesn't either. It just includes a quote from another article; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242923804770968.html which explains why there were looking, not what they looked at. The iOS version simply was not examined for this test. Most likly because an iOS app is not privileged to the pivata data in question. That whole walled garden thing.

And who quit for a very dumb reason, probably getting a hearty "good riddance" on the way out the door.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703377504575651321402763304.html

Wikileaks broke Amazon's rules. The fact that it also broke the law is beside the point. At least here.

Amazon enforced its rules. I guess enforcing the rules on Wikileaks is some sort of blasphemy or something, because I can't see why else to retaliate against Amazon. But I'm not religious, so I don't recognize blasphemy as having any inciteful value.

No worries. Nobody needs Amazon for anything, and they're borderline evil..

Pro tip: If your job can be done from your house, it can be done from India.

I don't know about that. An article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday indicates this may no longer be the case.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703515504576142092863219826.html

If you value privacy, YOUR privacy, avoid dictionary.com app at all costs. First, their website was riddled with over 200 pieces of cookies and tracking info (read a piece either here http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know-digital-privacy.html or somewhere else, can't recall).

Second, their app for the blackberry wants access to ALL of your information, including calendar, contacts, files, email, SMS, etc... If you deny any of those permissions, the app won't work.

Moreover, I sent 2 emails to them asking what kind of information their app collects, and received no response.

Beware!