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Approximately half of Alibaba's shares "were sold to 25 investment firms", and "most of the shares went to US investors."

I wanted to learn more about it and I came across this on Yahoo! Finance: Our parent company Yahoo (YHOO) has a 22.5% stake in Alibaba and will sell roughly $8 billion in shares today, leaving it with a 16.3% stake.

Which brought up a lot of things.

So, Yahoo! is speculating in the stock market now? Or venture capital? Well, they might as well since their Internet business is for shit.

I knew what Alibaba was but can a peon like me get in on the IPO and made the easy money? Nope. I don't know the right people.

A Chinese company on the NYSE? So, I guess they are going to meet all the reporting requirements and auditing? A Chinese company? My the World has changed in the last few years! (The simplicity of Chinese accounting scandals) Good luck with that!

"Investing" in Bitcoins doesn't look so crazy anymore.

http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-fighters-using-us-arms-study-085735376.html

"Moderate" my ass.

For over a decade, there's been a simplified search page similar to Google's at http://search.yahoo.com/. Of course, there's no reason to use Yahoo! Search anymore, but they did listen back then. (I was working there at the time, so I have a decent but probably imperfect memory of the timeline.)

Education? ... Yes! Why it's great for education! In fact, it's the future of the classroom! And don't forget, Oculus Rift is both a floor wax and a dessert topping!

But seriously:

And if we can make virtual reality every bit as good as real reality in terms of communications and the sense of shared presence with others, you can now educate people in virtual classrooms, you can now educate people with virtual objects, and we can all be in a classroom together [virtually], we can all be present, we can have relationships and communication that are just as good as the real classroom

Classroom teaching is a bug, not a feature. It is a side effect of the fact that our earholes and eyeballs are connected to our skulls, and until recently we had to put them in the same meatspace where the teacher was talking and showing pictures. Once you step into the no-physical-presence-required realm of using a VR headset, you can release the restrictions imposed by the simultaneous physical presence requirement.

One simple example: Lecture halls, with their tiered seating -- those are designed that way because we can't see through each other, not because it is better to be sixty feet away and at a thirty degree angle from the teacher.

And how about discussions? Hierarchical, collaboratively moderated, store-and-forward discussion threads are much better than "realtime whoever gets the teacher's attention before the bell rings." We've been using the latter because that's the best we had for thousands of years.

Screw Nimrod, see subject-line above, & this quote from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques...

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power."

So, what's the "MAGIC WORD" I use?

Hosts!

APK

P.S.=> I do those better than ANYONE ALIVE currently, with a LOT of excellent help from folks in the security community (gotta give credit where it's due, 12 such sites with custom hosts file data that give users of hosts more speed, security, reliability & even anonymity) via APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

So... how can I make that BOLD statement? Easily:

The BEST IN THE BUSINESS for antivirus/antispyware per this VERY CURRENT TEST from a reputable source here http://www.av-test.org/en/news... proves they're the best with valid tests first of all!

Secondly:

MalwareBytes feature my program & recommend it as "best of breed" on one of their sites (hpHosts - they recommend me as best @ the top center of the page & MalwareBytes "powers" them, see right-hand side top of page) http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

Let's see Khyber achieve the same (never WILL happen - he's a webchump "wannabe coder", nothing more, who talks a BIG GAME, but can't manage to perform the attacks he notes on ME, in MITM (or BGP I noted) - both of which I admitted hosts don't work on (neither do firewalls or antivirus/antispyware though)).

Cripes - I was achieving great things BEFORE that fool Khyber even got outta diapers I'd wager (since 1996 in publications like Windows IT Pro, then Windows NT Magazine, & many others as well as winning finalist placement 2000-2002 @ MS TechEd in its hardest category: SQLServer performance enhancement) !

That little "webchump wannabe programmer" Khyber actually *thinks* he can get the BETTER of me? Guess again!

FACT - I've got a list of 7 things he's already screwed up on vs. myself in this exchange already, lol... apk

You're right! There should be no CEO. The company doesn't need a chief executive. ,,,

Over the years, I have read many of your comments and assumed that you were an intelligent and relatively emotionally balanced person. Your reply is leaving me in doubt about that now.

Why would you assume my question meant that there should be no CEO at all? Such hyperbole should be beneath you. My original question to you asked you how many tickets needed to be sold to pay executive salary. The question was meant to engender thought about how much exactly a CEO is being paid. In this example:

http://news.yahoo.com/united-a...

So he was paid about 7 million in cash and stands to earn another 7 million if he meets targets. Assuming $500 a ticket, that is 14,000 tickets that must be sold in order to pay the cash he has already received.

Let's look at it in comparison to average employee salary. Let's assume the median wage is $50k a year for all non-executive employees. I know that is high, but it makes it easier to analyze take home pay. That comes out to 140 employees yearly pay before taxes that he has received.

That seems high but compared to say a star basketball or football player, it is not so bad; however, that comparison can not truly be useful.

I guess the real question should be: Why is an enterprise that is losing 440 million dollars every 3 months paying the top person 7 million dollars compensation? It appears to be unsustainable. There is SEVERE downward pressure on all salaries for the line employees so why is there so much upward pressure for the executives? I do not see the value that they are adding.

Surely, the job of CEO of United is hard and very few people can do it, but it still seems like he is being compensated more than he is worth.

Theres no one source for the information, but below are a few links to some of it. They have apparently made about $6 Billion in revenue since their inception and in 2010 at least they made $700 Million in licensing fees. I did include their "investments" along with what I could call "licensing fees" because they seem to be effectively the same thing. A good chunk of their revenue is via "Patent Funds" where they offer companies a chance to join in to buy a block of patents, apparently with a thinly veiled threat that if they don't buy in IV will sue them if any of the patents in the block apply to prospective investors.

http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.businessweek.com/ar...
http://www.cnet.com/news/insid...
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusi...

but whenever actual media on the ground go looking through "newly won rebel territory", they find nothing but locals.

Maybe they should go look in Novoazovsk, and around Mariupol in general. The lightning fast strike and encirclement there has two explanations: either rebels have mastered teleportation to suddenly reach out that far with no-one noticing, or else the strike came from across the Russian border (which is much, much closer in that area).

The Ukrainians haven't captured any regular Russian forces in actual combat, just that one small unit out of position near the border weeks ago.

They have only presented video evidence for this one capture, but they claim more than that.

In any case, the more interesting information source here is Russia itself. The coffins are flying back in, and parents are getting slips notifying them of their boys KIA with no specific designation of place... but in all cases they are from the units who were reported to be stationed in Rostov or even closer to Ukrainian border, and time-wise these match with Ukrainian claims of engaging enemy forces. Several NGOs are now trying to dig deeper into the story, contacting relatives etc to figure out the scale of this, and keep finding new cases, but needless to say they're having a hard time - and the government has already started cracking down on them as "foreign agents".

Well, in all honesty, Apple still has the best selling smartphone, undisputed. Granted, the 127 different models Samsung produces are selling more, but Apple makes three phones in the top 6, just like Samsung. The iPhone 5c is the #1.

http://news.yahoo.com/apple-sa...

I don't care if it's #42, I'm waiting for that blackberry passport. I love that thing.

Well, in all honesty, Apple still has the best selling smartphone, undisputed. Granted, the 127 different models Samsung produces are selling more, but Apple makes three phones in the top 6, just like Samsung. The iPhone 5c is the #1.

http://news.yahoo.com/apple-sa...

Yahoo provides IMAP as well. It's free.

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mobi...

Every marketer and customer gets some easy benefit from a single marketplace

Until the single marketplace uses its market power to exclude sellers entirely from a market. This has allegedly happened in the markets for iOS apps and console games. What editorial power does Amazon exercise over its Kindle store, other than to remove obvious copyright infringements and erotica? Is the "preference to publishers with larger ebook catalogs" a way of dealing with the likes of VDM and 30 Percent Fewer Shades of Grey?

Well
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/ukra...

There is no good side in this conflict and when it comes to censorship Ukraine isn't much different to Russia.

Defense official says Pentagon has evidence Russia firing missiles inside Ukraine
Russian troops 'directly' involved in Ukraine conflict: US, Kiev

Of course, if you don't believe US officials, let's instead turn to something we can all trust: money.
Markets take fright as Russian tanks roll into Ukraine

They are charging for the gross. tare + net

https://answers.yahoo.com/ques...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

No, it's actually "S" words, words beginning with the letter "S". On a side note, I've got to ask you about the Penis Mightier. Will it really mighty my penis, man?

The referenced domain lists usman_khalid143@yahoo.com in its contact information. I wonder how long that email account will stay live.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Dice-EI_IE8654.11,15.htm

Employees say it's “OK” 16 ratings
3.3

71% Approve of the CEO 10 ratings
Dice President, CEO, and Director
Scot W. Melland

https://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=DHX

Do you understand the benefits of a union?

Classically speaking, unions existed to drive up benefits through threat of strikes or walkouts. In the 20's and 30's, unions were responsible for the 40 hours workweek, Saturdays off, and a living wage -- by preventing things like random firings and unpaid work (see 80 hour work weeks in the game industry).

To be clear, if individuals were better at negotiating wages, we'd see a rise in salary in the field, but according to statistics this is quite simply not the case. "Ah, but salary went up from 80K to over 100K you say", to which I agree, but if you adjust for inflation, you'll see that that $80K in 2004 is equivalent to $100K in 2014 (26.1%). In the same period, the tech heavy Nasdaq grew 143%. While some of this can be attributed to there being more people employed in the field, I doubt there 2.5x more CS graduates than there were ten years ago.

So while pay is still decent, there's still no rise in salary despite what many consider an obvious shortage in the field. If more CS majors studied those useless fields like "history", we'd have a union and there wouldn't be a bunch of indentured servants known as H1Bs driving wages down (by artificially inflating the labor pool with people who can't quit).

Like Hatorade?

Buffett's secretary Bosanek pays a tax rate of 35.8 percent of income, while Buffett pays a rate at 17.4 percent.
http://news.yahoo.com/warren-b...

Yeah, the fact that men just happen to be in the teaching jobs that get paid better is total coincidence.

I'm not sure what that had to do with what I was discussing. Just because I don't think affirmative action is morally justifiable or effective doesn't mean I believe women should be paid less. But what the heck, let's go there...

Simple economics factor can explain the discrepancy between K-12 and college professors. There are far fewer available tenured positions at colleges, and the educational requirements are tougher to become a professor. Highly trained specialists always get paid more. So of course a college professor will earn more than a K-12 teacher.

However, that doesn't explain the gender gap within the tenured professorship level. Note that fields such as science and engineering tend to command higher salaries, and since these are male dominated, it likely skews the results. We'd really have to see male/female salaries per department and at roughly equivalent experience levels and professional credentials / awards, or else we're comparing apples to oranges. If we compare apples to apples and see a disparity, then of course, that indicates a problem.

As far as K-12, all grades typically use the same pay scale, and of course, aren't different for men and women.

Did you just assume that high school teachers earned more than kindergarten teachers? Or are you suggesting that college professors earn more than kindergarten teachers simply because of sexism?

I suppose you think if you hit four blacks in a row on roulette you should always go red because it's red's turn to come up?

Although statistically it's totally irrelevant what the prior spins are, betting like this is how I pay for my expenses whenever I visit Vegas. Sure, I don't make a fortune doing it (usually just 20 here, 40 there), but I've never walked away from a roulette table a loser.

Then you haven't played enough roulette, or actually kept accurate records.

I would remember losing. Now, we're only talking about around $3,200 over like 4 different trips but still, it payed for my meals, taxis and, well, some of the alcohol. I never stay at the table, I swoop in, red or black, collect, and leave. I've stood around and watched people lose startling amounts of money on those tables.

Let me see if I understand you. Is this the gist of what your practices are? You walk down to the roulette wheel and wait for the ball to hit four blacks in a row, then place $800 on red and walk away a winner with an extra $800 in your pocket. I could certainly believe that has happened to you four times.

If you are making "20 here, 40 there" on a red/black bets, then taking in $3200 would require around 800 to 1600 winning bets on red/black. To simplify the math, I'll say each bet was $40, so we need at least 800 more winning bets than losing bets. If you have actually only made those 800 winning bets, then wow - that's freaky! The odds of that happening are something like 1 in 6.7x10^240 (two to the power of eight hundred). I doubt very much you have NEVER lost a roulette bet, because the odds against that are so incredibly incredibly incredibly incredibly high (I should really add a whole lot more "incredibly" terms).

So what might you actually be doing? Based on your reported winnings and bet size, we need 800 more wins than losses (assuming the numbers reported are accurate). A quick google search turns up a nice discussion about coin flips (link below) that I can use to get some calculations from. If we ignore the house advantage due to the green "0"/"00" slots we can just use a 50/50 probability. The variance of a Bernoulli distribution is: Var(X) = np(1-p) where n is the number of trials/bets, p is the expected probability of outcome 1 and (1 - p) is the expected probability of outcome 2. With p=1/2=0.5 we have Var(X) = n(1/2)(1-1/2) = n/4. The square root of the variance is the standard deviation and about 2/3 of all trials of a given size should fall within one standard deviation of the expected result (Wikipedia link below). If someone got 800 more wins than losses, that would not be too surprising as long as the number of bets they made was large enough so that they were still within a few standard deviations of the expected result of equal numbers of wins and losses. Only 1 out of 400 billion trails fall outside of 7 standard deviations, so 8 standard deviations should be very very very conservative (and makes the division of 800 simple!) So with a standard deviation of 800/8 = 100, this gives a variance of 100^2 =10,000 and the number of bets (n) is around 40,000. A more reasonable estimate of 4 standard deviations (1 out of 16,000 trials fall outside of 4 standard deviations), gives a standard deviation of 200, variance 40,000 and a number of bets of 160,000.

flipping coins calcs: https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/q...
standard deviation odds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Basically, in order to have 800 more wins than losses, you need to make a whole lot of bets, unless the odds are significantly different from 50-50.

For me at least, it seems likely that your memory or record keeping is at fault and that in actuality you have not come out $3,200 ahead on bets of $40. Or eve

A yahoo news article claims the general public in England trusts Wikipedia more than traditional news outlets.

And "defamed" or called out on something questionable? Genuinely asking, I never heard of this British journalist until today...

Your "solution" is poorly thought out and is why nobody does it that way

Banks will lock you out on the 2nd or 3rd failed attempt. A quick Google finds plenty of sites like Paddy Power and Yahoo lock accounts after a few bad password entries.

Most sites at least switch to a captcha after several failed logins too.

The current theory is that Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol contracted Ebola in a scrub room from another staff member who had been infected but wasn't showing enough outward signs of infection. hopefully the persons involved in transport will be more carefully screened before the flight.

NOTHING is 100% safe. all people can do is reduce risk as much as possible. that being said, the risk of this patient now spreading ebola to the U.S. is incredibly low.

also, 3.5 stripes is right. there's seriously no need to call anyone "stupid". wth.

Did you really think the rocket attacks started this year? I only linked to the latest year's worth of data, but in that link the first line contains this link: Since 2001, Palestinian militants have launched thousands of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Hamas is so proud of their rockets that they unveiled a monument to them this year. https://ph.news.yahoo.com/vide...

Either you are being deliberately obtuse or you are simply sowing disinformation. Either way I'm certainly wasting my time engaging you in any further discussion regarding this topic.

Dr. Bose did a lot of groundbreaking research back in the day. And, yes, nobody wastes $100M in audio research the way Bose does.

The problem is that none of that is reflected (heh heh) very well by their product line. You can't prove anything from a one-off sample in their office. The real key to home audio isn't cost no object performance; it's bang for the buck in real-world production. And it's there that Bose's products are sketchy, and the way they sue anyone who measures that fact should set off a warning light. All the money going into R&D is part of the problem--that's overhead that doesn't fund itself unless it's turned into product innovation. And it didn't in this particular case; the most fundamental patent in this lawsuit set is one Bose purchased , not developed. Not exactly a high point in Bose R&D history.

I'd like to discuss the lack of innovation in Bose audio products in objective terms, but their very deep flaws prevent that from even being possible. They don't use the standard measurements for speakers everyone else in the industry does. Their theater products ignore the THX specifications everyone else adopted. That pattern is everywhere at Bose. You can either believe in the ancient Bose mythology of not measuring speakers, or you can agree that the concrete numbers every other audio researcher in the world uses are important. Read some papers by Dr. Floyd Toole if you want to find out about reflected sound from someone in the speaker manufacturing R&D business who moved past the 60's.

Dr. Bose was a smart dude, but smarter than every other researcher put together? That's a very special breed of arrogance. I'll take the side of scientific consensus, thank you.

Bose didn't even file that patent--they bought it, presumably because they realized it was so general they could sue people all kinds of people when they felt like it. Bose: better sound through patent extortion!

SLOTHS!

Don't call us slow!

Have you noticed what Israel is doing to non-Jewish citizens of Israel? I guess not.

Make them members of parliament (Knesset)?

Are there Muslims in the Israeli Knesset?

That does seem cruel.

That doesn't have anything to do with the lawsuit. Bose's early patents on noise reduction had a fairly wide scope to them, trying to own the entire territory of reducing aircraft noise independently of the signal. They might even have been able to claim some sort of domain over anyone who plays headphones without music; I wasn't following patent silliness back then. But those products have been shipping since 1989, so any really fundamental patent in that area expired years ago.

What Bose did then was either file or acquire a series of patents on the obvious ways to build digital circuits for such noise reduction. You can't build any digital noise reduction system without tripping over at least one of them. In the tech industry, there are all these "on a computer!" patents people like to complain about. In audio, their version of that tactic is to patent some math in the form of a "Digital Signal Processing System". The first one is really blatant in that regard. Basically anyone who builds a digital circuit with things like a FIR filter and applies it to audio noise reduction can expect a patent infringement. And Bose didn't even develop that one; they bought the patent specifically for the sort of extortion they're doing here, in the usual way Bose sues companies frivolously.

Yes, and stock price is not cemented to profits.... Stock climbs as the influence of the company climbs. FB is a famous company that never made any profits, or even showed any ability to ever produce profits, that still had a tremendously good stock evolution. Or you could just look at Amazon's Stock Price, to see that it has been climbing and climbing and climbing, making their investors money (over the last 4 years alone it has gone up to 5 times its starting value).

The only people claiming the carbon tax wasn't working were Coalition politicians (and their apologists), and the companies who didn't want to have to cover the external costs of their businesses. Fact is, it was starting to work quite well, despite the damping effect of Abbott attacking it with all the FUD he could muster.

And now we have economists scratching their heads as to why a conservative government would attack a market-based climate solution while favouring a big direct-action spending program instead:

Roger Jones, a Research Fellow at the Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, called the repeal "the perfect storm of stupidity".

"It's hard to imagine a more effective combination of poor reasoning and bad policy making," he said.

"A complete disregard of the science of climate change and its impacts. Bad economics and mistrust of market forces."

Citation needed, huh? Why not start with the first hit on google.

This is the 3rd time I've caught you, you're definitely a NSA/GCHQ shill, copying and pasting from a script, just to earn a pay check, thinking you're part of the 'system', while in fact nobody in the higher ups gives a fuck about you.

Everyone outside the US knows the US created the Ukraine crisis, I'll just leave 3 proofs here:
  VP Biden's son joins Ukraine gas company's board
  American Diplomat Caught On Tape Saying "Fuck the EU"
  Was The Price Of Ukraine's "Liberation" The Handover Of Its Gold To The Fed?

If you 'search the net' for events relating to drones ... take away the EquuSearch related results, you'll find that pretty much EVERY ONE OF THEM is some fucking moron doing something that either DID hurt someone, was dangers as shit, came very close to hurting someone, or certainly had the potential to hurt someone.

I've been paying attention to the almost daily news stories about "drones," and I have not observed what you claim. The vast majority are people spooked by multirotors hovering around.

A commercial drone at a wedding
A creepy guy flying a multirotor around a medical faciltiy
NYPD getting excited about another multirotor
FAA warns a multirotor pilot to stay at low altitude
"Drone" crashes in someones yard
"Drone" videos Pirates baseball game
Drug smuggling with a multirotor
"Drone" reported outside someone's apartment
"Drone" used to spy on French football team
Woman Attacking Teen with "drone"

Some of those were dangerous to aircraft, but most didn't involve manned aircraft, and no one was hurt or killed. There have been plenty of close calls with model planes, but there haven't been many actual collisions and I'm not finding any deaths due to collisions with manned aircraft.

In all likelihood there won't be either. Most of these "drones" are small and light. When they collide with manned aircraft they disintegrate and perhaps scratch some paint. Here is what happens when a aerobatic aircraft slams into a typical model plane. Balsa and foam don't rate against aircraft aluminum. Is a death possible? Of course. Obviously. However, I think the interval between such events will be many years and the fault will not be attributed to the drones in every case, either.

I'm with you in that the stupid among us are creating the need for regulation. Adding to the hysteria of it all with claims of imminent "danger" is not useful.

After some Google searches, it looks like a dump truck would be about 27 cubic yards. A penny is about 0.44 cubic cm. This gives us about 46,900,000 pennies in a dump truck (rounding down to the nearest hundred thousand) or $469,000 worth.

After some Google searches, it looks like a dump truck would be about 27 cubic yards. A penny is about 0.44 cubic cm. This gives us about 46,900,000 pennies in a dump truck (rounding down to the nearest hundred thousand) or $469,000 worth.

perhaps a European can tell us when it's considered appropriate to forget about a convicted sex offenders offenses?

Your conviction is stored by the police and will show up in a criminal record check forever,

But as that page points out "It is highly sensitive personal information and cannot be shared with anyone in the business that does not need to know as part of their role."

In particular there is no reason that it should be available to the public through a web search.

Someone (myself or a friend or even just someone I know) posted a file for me that I later linked to for YOUR viewing (I remember the context of the circumstances and you were being your usual [my opinion] asshole self). Who that was is ambiguous. Possibly I am a friend of this person, which is WHY I asked him to post the file.

Lonny Eachus isn't ambiguous.

The next obvious google search showed that in 2009 Jane Q. Public asked about the "money siphon system" scam a few hours before Lonny Eachus bought into it. Those are the only posts Jane Q. Public and Lonny Eachus left on that forum. They both disappeared after those posts, presumably by ambiguous coincidence.

I'll be [sure] some passengers would like that prime real estate.

In a commercial B747 (if you can find one still flying), where the cockpit would be on a single-decker plane, there is generally a passenger cabin with windows all the way to the nose (although no windows that face forward)... Although that used to be prime real-estate, it is generally relegated to economy-plus (business class and first class upstairs) as the market for premium seating has reduced...

FWIW, there's probably more to be gained by eliminating passenger windows like this Spike aerospace design, although I'd be interested to see how they get around the simulated parallax problem with their proposal...

"U.N. figures show of India's 1.2 billion people, 665 million of them — mostly those in the countryside — don't have access to a private toilet or latrine"

https://news.yahoo.com/88-perc...

I'm confused by these reports. What are the real facts?

Is that water, the ultimate solvent -- or perhaps bacteria -- are breaking down the plastics back into it's components, and the ocean (much like the oil from the BP spill) is taking care of itself.

Naw, couldn't be. Go ahead and panic, hippies!

Yeah, and everyone know that broken down oil was completely harmless.

Whatever components that plastic is breaking down into it likely contains a lot of molecules that aren't found in nature. When those molecules enter an organism there's no telling what the hell they're going to do.

I don't understand this fantasy that some people cling to that we can dump endless streams of random crap into the environment and mother nature will just magically take care of it with no consequence. People would sure as hell notice if you started dumping garbage into a lake and screwing up a beach where people swim once a week, why do you think the things that actually live in the polluted water won't be affected?

attempting to make quality products (too hard, expensive) that can be driven to making financial assets that can be sold (easy, cheap).

You think so? GM's finance division had net income of $566 million on revenue of $3.34 billion in 2013. GM had net income of $6.9 billion on revenue of $155 billion. And you think they are a finance company? Their finance division accounts for 2% of their revenue and 8% of their profit. So no, GM is not a company focused on selling financial products.

How about Ford? Ford Financial had a net LOSS of $1.2 billion on revenues of $7.8 billion in 2012 versus the parent company making a profit of $6.25 billion on revenues of $133 billion over the same period. That means financial products are 5% of their revenue and actually were a drag on profits. So no, Ford isn't a financial company either.

I don't know where you got the idea that these companies are primarily finance companies but you could not be more wrong. Financing is a nice piece of the picture but it's manufacturing and car sales that makes or breaks them. Financing at best just pads the bottom line a bit.

What Google proposes adds cost to the cars without enhancing the ability to sell loans.

What Google is working on is nowhere close to being ready to put in production automobiles. It is a research project and will remain so for some time to come. Just because Google has developed some impressive prototypes doesn't mean it is even close to being something that Ford or GM could put in a car that gets sold to you or me. If Google wants to get into the automobile business they are welcome to try but I think if they do the phrase "shareholder lawsuit" will not be far behind. Just because Google has a bunch of smart people working for them doesn't mean they understand the business of selling cars.

Seriously. Try getting by on $30-35K a year. Now try doing it WITH STUDENT LOANS.

Adjusted to my situations. Thanks to believing the lies/myth that if I go to college and get a degree I'll get out with, at worst, a moderately paying job and those loans will be no biggy.

So, being a white male that did almost no extracurricular activities in high school, I had almost no scholarships and just put in for massive loans each year to also help cover room & board. It didn't help that I chose to go to an expensive, out of state, private university. (In fact, Yahoo! Finance did a piece recently on university costs, using my alma matter as a central example. Apparently it's now about $37K/yr there; when I was a freshman a decade ago it was about $30K.) And so I graduated, right after the Great Recession started, with approx. $150,000 in student loan debt. Unable to get a job, I did a stint in the military and took part in their Loan Repayment Program; between that and regular, minimum payments of $900/mo I'm down to $111,000.

I'm able to pay it with my current job (roughly $38K take home), but I live paycheck to paycheck and with such a massive debt over my head as I near 30 I don't even consider things like relationships, hobbies, or getting a place of my own.

Tornados cause a lot of damage - both directly to property and indirectly to the economy. It's preventing the cost of that damage that's the real aim, reducing deaths is only a happy sideaffect.

So it's the cost of that damage that you weigh the cost of building against to see if it's cost-effective.

One estimate puts the amount insurers have paid on tornado-related property claims in the past two decades at roughly $130 billion

Source

So let's run with that figure... in 20 years it'd save $130 billion. At $160 million per mile that's enough to build 812 miles of wall. Close to the 1000 miles. After 25 years you have broken even.

So if we build the wall to last at least 30 years, which doesn't seem unreasonable at all, then despite the enormous cost you've actually saved a massive amount of money.

Since it's just a static structure too the running costs will be pretty low - you'll just need to maintain it so it doesn't crumble away. Which'll cost a fraction of what it cost to build in the first place.

False, see: http://news.yahoo.com/does-con...

There is a difference between the extended border zone, where a reasonable cause to search must exist, and the functional border where no cause is needed. Anyone within that 100 mile extended border zone still requires a reasonable cause to search, even according to the Department of Homeland Security's own rules.

There's no such thing as a 100 mile constitution free zone, though it was reported it was greatly misunderstood (or greatly exaggerated). Searches within the extended border zone must fit a set of criteria. None of it applies to searches by police at traffic stops.

See http://news.yahoo.com/does-con...

Now while this certainly is not a great thing for freedoms, it is not at all the hysterical claim of a zone where the constitution no longer applies that ACLU tries to claim it to be. They took several different ideas and combined them together to invent a new entity. Basically the "functional border", which is the actual border crossings plus international airports, does allow searches without reasonable suspicion which is a bad thing, but that functional border is NOT 100 miles wide.

The problem here comes from repeating something that is untrue over and over in order to make a point so that the listeners just stop paying attention even if there may be a truth buried within those lies. If you want people to pay attention to the diminishing civil liberties then tell the truth that can be verified instead of repeating myths.