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Well, if the Republicans stay on their anti-education crusade they've been on lately, I'm pretty sure slate tablets will become standard items in classrooms, again, too.

60% is the all-time high for EUR/USD. Chart here. The euro is currently worth about as much relative to the dollar as it was in 2004, which is more than at any time prior to 2004.

...in theory.

Wish it was true.
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-buffett-secretary-talk-taxes-221442297--abc-news.html

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. [...] They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ... attributed to Socrates.

This quote gets trotted out on every story like this, but it's actually misattibuted. The quotation is from a play called "The Clouds" which lampoons the intellectual traditions of Athens. The CHARACTER called Socrates in this play says the quote, but it has nothing to do with the HISTORICAL Socrates/writings of Plato about Socrates/etc.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. [...] They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ... attributed to Socrates.

A gun owner stores his firearms properly (ammunition separate from the firearm)

That doesn't seem very helpful if somebody has broken into your house and you need to have your weapon ready for use as fast as possible. It just so happens that kind of story was in the news today: http://news.yahoo.com/14-old-phoenix-boy-shoots-armed-intruder-181216213.html

then I suppose there is a big fine coming Apple's way since they told her she could buy one. That's law. If Apple doesn't like it they can just ignore it. Apparently.

"Sabet says she later called Apple's corporate customer relations, where an employee reportedly apologized and told her she could buy an iPad online."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/iranian-american-woman-says-apple-refused-sell-her-002456511.html

The clerk in this case was probably over zealous/cautious. I don't think racist or mean or anything. He's trying to follow the policy the best he can. Apple HQ fixed the issue, but the fact still remains that your take on US export laws is false.

But Larry Ellison is buying a Hawaiian island. Where did that money come from? Thin air?

We bought Oracle licenses. Lots of licenses. We bought them for 20 years while Sybase and other competitors grew, flourished, and faded, because the sonofabitch really had built the best mousetrap on the block.

But somehow Larry gets rich when the economy grows and gets richer when it shrinks.

O RLY? ORCL is still trading below its dot-com boom peak. And if you're talking about the recent recession, here's a 5-year chart. The Crash of 2008 cut ORCL by 40%, falling from $24 to $14. The recovery took it back into the mid-$30s, but he's down 25% this year as the economy sputters along.

Also, WTF does one person need with an entire Hawaiian island? Or a fighter jet? Why do we allow one person to accumulate so much wealth that they have to find new, unnecessary extravagances to blow it on while the rest of us can barely afford to educate our kids?

Also, WTF does one person need with a computer capable of posting to Slashdot? Or TCP/IP connectivity? Why do we allow one person to accumulate so much wealth that they have to find new, unnecessary extravagances to blow it on while the rest of us can barely afford to pound grain into gruel to feel our kids?

- Output from a mechanical typewriter from some kid in the Sudan.

But Larry Ellison is buying a Hawaiian island. Where did that money come from? Thin air?

We bought Oracle licenses. Lots of licenses. We bought them for 20 years while Sybase and other competitors grew, flourished, and faded, because the sonofabitch really had built the best mousetrap on the block.

But somehow Larry gets rich when the economy grows and gets richer when it shrinks.

O RLY? ORCL is still trading below its dot-com boom peak. And if you're talking about the recent recession, here's a 5-year chart. The Crash of 2008 cut ORCL by 40%, falling from $24 to $14. The recovery took it back into the mid-$30s, but he's down 25% this year as the economy sputters along.

Also, WTF does one person need with an entire Hawaiian island? Or a fighter jet? Why do we allow one person to accumulate so much wealth that they have to find new, unnecessary extravagances to blow it on while the rest of us can barely afford to educate our kids?

Also, WTF does one person need with a computer capable of posting to Slashdot? Or TCP/IP connectivity? Why do we allow one person to accumulate so much wealth that they have to find new, unnecessary extravagances to blow it on while the rest of us can barely afford to pound grain into gruel to feel our kids?

- Output from a mechanical typewriter from some kid in the Sudan.

I believe they're sitting on a large body of cash and in no danger of going under any time soon.

It is a public company... no reason to "believe" or guess...

1.77 Billion and falling.

Only governments have the right to use guns

That used to be the case but no longer is.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0910-07.htm

"Privatization" is the primary agenda of the corporate sponsored Tea Party and related movements. The goals are to dismantle the government offices and subcontract those roles to private corporations (on the presumption that government-run organizations are inherently inefficient and waste taxpayer dollars). Multi-national conglomerates already "own" the US Congress through aggressive lobbying, kickbacks for campaign funding, and the promise of highly compensated future roles as consultants, senior executives, or board members for today's politicians, judges, and appointed officials. The mega-corporations are to US government what the cocaine and heroine cartels are to the Mexican government.

To give you an idea, here's a quick summary of the transitions sought or already begun:
WAS - NOW
Regulatory Agencies - Self-regulation

Public Utilities - Same utilities but customers now have to buy through specially qualified "distributors" of the same utility rather than direct

Public Courts - Private Arbitration (many judges today are issuing one-sided pro-business decisions in the hope of landing a better paid position as a private arbitrator at one of the major firms. Arbitration proceedings do not have to follow state or federal rules of procedure, appeals are limited, legal precedant does not apply, there is never any jury of peers, and rulings do not even need to abide by the US Constitution)

Collections Agencies - Sheriffs and Judges (ok, this is a reversal, but not a good one, and one that serves corporate interests and re-institutes debtor's prisons: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jailed-for--280--the-return-of-debtors--prisons.html )

Corrections Facilities - Private Prisons (and much incentive to fill them regardless of guilt or innocence: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal )

CIA - Private contractors (including foreign nationals. No oath of service or duty to uphold the Constitution. Can violate US and international law while not accountable to anyone outside of their employment contract)

US Armed Forces - See above
State Law Enforcement - See above

Public Schools - Vouchers for Private Schools (non-sectarian schools have limited capacity. In a "free market" your kids would likely end up in a fundamentalist religious school). In time the vouchers would go away as they are not a product of the "free market" and make the system unworkable.

Fire Departments - Private Fire Departments http://www.salon.com/2010/10/04/libertarian_fire_department/

The "benefits" of privatization have been debunked for most roles of government http://umaine.edu/ble/files/2011/01/Privatization-BP-08.pdf
But privatization is still pushed as a cure-all in election campaign ads. I could go on, but as I show above, "privatization" eventually eliminates all of your Constitutional rights and protections. Once the corporations OWN the government AND the guns, who is going to help you? I'd rather not give corporations any more rights than they already have, especially since they are now considered "people" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission.

"we were treated to not even 10 years ago."

I think you err. I agree with your point of view, but it's been more than ten years since the Doomsday - errr - Global Warming fanatics got going with their new religion. It might be hard to agree when the movement really started, but this article seems to suggest 1969 as the earliest.

http://news.yahoo.com/political-history-global-warming-debate-united-states-223500960.html

SPDY solves *a* problem, but not *the* problem. The root of the problem today is that loading a simple web page requires 20 or more separate connections: images, ad networks, tracking systems, social network links, 3rd party comment systems, javascript libraries, css, etc. Somehow all of that content needs to be coalesced into fewer connections.

You are wrong use netstat and a modern browser to test it out. With servers configured to do HTTP request keepalives, most browser open a maximum of 2 connections to one server and keep them up and everything is sent through those persistent connections.

The browser also needs to open at least one connection to any third party server without regards for the protocol used.

I see an average of 5 to 20 seconds timeout on most sites. The the server waits for other requests on the SAME connection. Use telnet and watch for the "close connection" delay after entering the query:

telnet www.yahoo.com 80
Trying 98.139.183.24...
Connected to www.yahoo.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1
host: yahoo.com

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 18:49:19 GMT
Location: http://www.yahoo.com/
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Cache-Control: private
Age: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Server: YTS/1.20.10

Connection closed by foreign host.

Yahoo's server took about fifteen seconds to close the connection.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/core.html#keepalivetimeout

Markets are feedback control systems

I'm an electronics engineer and have had postgraduate courses on this. Any delay introduced in the feedback loop will tend to destabilize the system. HFT works fine, it provides liquidity to the market, it benefits everyone.

BTW, I also derive most of my income today from trading stocks, not in a bank, but my own savings, trading from home. I'm perfectly satisfied with the way the system works.

People who hate the market suffer from the same problem as those who hate people from a different race. It's prejudice caused by ignorance.

To assume that traders are greedy people who only want to steal from you is the same as some Alabaman who believes blacks are lazy and stupid men who only want to rape white girls with their huge penises.

The free market is a very positive force that benefits everyone. Look at North Korea for what will happen when there's no free market. Look at other third world countries to see what happens when markets are small and primitive.

HFT is necessary because prices are not continuous amounts, they are broken at $0.01 intervals. To see how bad this is, imagine a share with a price in the single-digits cent range. This company really exists. If you could buy it at $0.01 you would have the perfect deal, it cannot go any lower and if it goes up you win at least 100%. According to my broker page, which I cannot link here, right now there are bids to buy 7882 million TecToy shares at $0.01.

One cent is an extreme case, but this problem appears at any price. Prices are not an analog value, they are subject to effects coming from the gaps between the cents. HFT is a way to filter some of these problems through dithering. This is the same principle that lets printers print gray scales with black ink, they print many very small black dots and varying the interval between the dots lets it show any value of gray.

Apparently enough to give them a 6.6bn GBP market cap, which is significantly better than AMD are doing.

Apparently enough to give them a 6.6bn GBP market cap, which is significantly better than AMD are doing.

"They are close to being expelled either willingly or against their will," he [Interior Minister Eli Yishai] said. "This is a number that threatens the Jewish identity."

1. The FBI does not have the cash, tech, people or access to telco hardware to seamlessly track content from one exchange to the end point in the USA.
If you sent abc to your exchange, some trip, back into the USA, back to another exchange - the message is still abc.
Could a mid budget US federal agency log all US net traffic for a few days, weeks vs a large city?
2. The FBI has the tech in the form of sneak and peek, key loggers to get down to your home and collect all data in real time.
At this time it does not want people doing strange things to nice consumer operating systems to spoil the quality of tracking.
So they talk of Tor been hard work as aspects of VoIP tech once was suggested to be.
3. The FBI recalls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore and the reaction of the UK gov.
4. The FBI recalls the number of .gov and .mil staff and contractors it might find
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/pentagon-declined-investigate-hundreds-purchases-child-pornography.html
Budgets, laws and hardware will gift the US "net" as a simple network in real time soon.

I submit that yahoo poster vicl2012v is the writer of the blog and submitter to Slashdot and likely the anon doing a lot of responses here.

Here is a post on yahoo asking for help in boosting the story through slashdot submission.
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_N/threadview?m=te&bn=51443&tid=52505&mid=52505

"Click on this slashdot submission if you want to vote it up so it appears on slashdot:"
This yahoo post is 21minutes (June 8/11:19pm) after the /. submission (June 8/10:58pm)
and Vicl is unfamiliar with /. so how in 21 minutes did he become aware of the post ?
"There is a rating slider on the middle-right as well. You can drag the sliders to the left - but it seems these are for rating the comments (?). "

As to the truthfulness of the post I make no comment.
But it looks like a Yahoo Stock board poster promoted his own blog entry to slashdot, a major score in small stock touting.

The blog referenced is by the Yahoo Finance NLST stock group poster vicl2012v. He writes the blog, then uses references to it on the NLST Yahoo stock board to back up his points. Totally self referential.

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_N/threadview?m=ts&bn=51443&tid=52454&mid=52454

The Yahoo stock board is the usual UN-moderated open mess of spammers, and self interested parties both overplaying and hiding their interests.

As the post here is submitted by anonymous draw your own conclusions.

A) You suck at statistics. Just because it had an effect on you doesn't mean it had an effect on anyone else.
B) You're engaging in worthless meme-parroting. Sometimes, correlation indicates causation. And often, people have checked for it.
C) Econ 101 says you're wrong. If a price goes up, demand goes down, except in the case of fully inelastic products, in which case it craters after much higher prices than usual.
D) Practice says you're wrong. Here's a random link I pulled from 30 seconds of googling: http://news.yahoo.com/cigarette-tax-hikes-curb-smoking-pregnancy-study-130406524.html

Gah. It's crap like this that makes me think humanity is doomed, and we should just get it over with now.

I didn't say that _every single_ person would start a murderous rampage. I say
that a very large minority would commit serious crimes.

See http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100828213651AAbXzLU

They are a New York paper complaining about a competing city getting all the high tech startups and therefore venture capital now that Wall Street has basically self-destructed the New York financial markets. Meanwhile the same paper is reporting that the jobs ax is going to fall again on the banking sector as upper level management throws middle management overboard in order to save their own bonuses: http://news.yahoo.com/wall-st-few-places-hide-jobs-ax-hovers-220146813--sector.html

About the only thing that needs changing about San Francisco (and California, in general) is to not have Prop 13 apply to non-residential commercial properties. There would be a quick rebalancing in what gets built.

-- Terry

We are 5 voting percentage points from shoving religion into science classes nation-wide. The know-nothings and American Taliban (dominionists, christian reconstructionists, etc) are so bent upon bringing Gawd's Word and the law of Leviticus to the land that they have been trying, and succeeding, in getting into positions of power. It truly is frightening, and the next thing you know, Pi is going to equal 3 because that's what it says in the Bible.

The amount of people who believe in strict creationism is stunning. It is fully half of the US population, and another big chunk believe that God directly guides evolution if it exists at all. Anti-science is all the rage, because it makes people who don't actually know anything believe that their opinion is just as good as someone who holds a doctorate in physics.

http://news.yahoo.com/nearly-half-americans-believe-creationism-212000630.html

And these people are your neighbors, so they determine who is on the school boards and what textbooks get bought. Have we forgotten recent history? Have we forgotten the Dover PA school district?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

Have we forgotten this too?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/law-allows-creationism-to-be-taught-in-tenn-public-schools/2012/04/11/gIQAAjqxAT_story.html

A bill that allows Tennessee public school teachers to teach alternatives to mainstream scientific theories such as evolution will become law this month after the governor refused to sign or veto the measure, The Washington Postâ(TM)s Valerie Strauss reports.

Without good books, good curricula, and school boards that are not going to pander to the religious nutbags (or not be religious nutbags themselves as in Dover), the science education gets short shrift, which happens too often.

Yes, it is fucking abysmal, and don't let anyone tell you differently.

--
BMO

It was no accident, the Shanghai index fell 64.89 points and people starting blogging that since 6/4/89 was the date of Tiananmen massacre, the stock index coincided with the date, which is a particularly infamous one. The censors then blocked those people for discussing the massacre, which is verboten. The NYT has a more in depth article. Now, the fact that the stock market fell by that exact amount by closing (see here) might be an accident, but the censors were doing exactly their job, censoring people discussing the massacre. As the NYT points out, other stock markets have been hacked and this may have be the case here as well, or some other intentional act. The Chinese government is investigating and you may rest assured that we will likely never know what they find since that would draw attention to why they were investigating in the first place.

No, according to PETA you must not eat the animals, or use their fur, or skin, only kill them and trash the bodies making sure it is a complete waste of an animal's life and corpse.

PETA is the same group that tries to make it seem like my well-fed, mostly-indoor, spoiled-to-hell pets are enslaved. Obviously whoever came up with that concept has never belonged to a cat.

Every time I come across that particular group of terrorists (yes, they are terrorists), I make it a point to outline my wife's plan to turn our 2 cats into a pair of mittens and socks, respectively, once they pass away.

Seriously, I do that. Fuckers hate me, and the feeling is mutual.

No one can answer that but what we do know is that as of the end of 2010 only 30% of the world's population apparently has internet access. So if only 10% of the world's population likes FB that means 20% who have net access still opt not to have it and not due to technical limitations.

http://news.yahoo.com/disconnected-70-percent-world-doesnt-internet-despite-rising-201836035.html

I suspect increasingly a lot of FB accounts are doing to be dud accounts of no real value because companies like spotify force people to login via Facebook so they create an account just so they can have spotify.

Spotify and everyone else has to quit assuming everyone on the net has a Facebook account. They don't and in fact most people don't.

It's kind of difficult to take Mark Whittington seriously after reading this.

Well, unless you can find another planet for the huge earthquake it will not be larger than 9.5

source

Except that's exactly what's not happening. Take this case. Suppose that they now start forcing N% of contracts to IT businesses run by women. Now there aren't many such businesses (regardless of the reason), which means that competition for that N% is going to be lackluster - heck, it's spelled out in TFA, pretty much.

You don't know that -- all you've done is take a snapshot of a single instance in time, saw what you perceive to be a minima, and decided that is the nature of things now and forever.

Conceptually, affirmative action is like a social algorithms that endures local minima, but with the design that an eventual equilibrium (or global maxima) will be generated. We have a lot of algorithms like this in computer science[0]; many optimization strategies are known to generate poor intermediary results, with the end-product being either the correct solution, or the best solution derived from the algorithm execution (ideally within some known, expected bounds)[1]. Genetic algorithms work this way: a single generation, viewed on its own, may be at a local minima, and thus an extremely poor solution. However, viewed at the end of the run after multiple generations, a better solution can be obtained (either a high local maxima, or a global maxima -- if one even exists).

Or, put in different terms, look at one stock market index. There are many local minima over the course of the index, but the overall picture is one of growth.

Capitalistic theory argues against you, using your very points. N% may be lackluster for a specific, given contract[2]. If the contracts are sufficiently lucrative, and there are financial benefits to be obatined from that market, then more organizations will desire to enter that market. In this case, the "market" is the artificial construct of "IT businesses owned by women"[3]. If there is money to be made, then more entrants will fill the market. If you knew there was a field where you had a significant bidding advantage because you (for sake of example) had green eyes, would you not consider entering that field and reaping the benefits?

As more female-owned IT businesses bid for such contracts, competitive pressures will start to take effect, to the point where the local minima of "N% lackluster" is nullified. Thus, the concept is:

1. 0. Endure potential local minima, while aiming for a global maxima,
2. 1. As more entrants try to take advantage of the market, allow competitive pressure to improve them towards a quality maxima, and
3. 2. Achieve your original end of social engineering the market to increase the social structure(s) needing improvement (in this case female owned businesses).

You can't observe a local minima and then decry the entire algorithm. When it comes to social engineering, the algorithms often require multiple generations to achieve their ends; there is a good probability that it won't happen within a single lifetime. To use a local minima to judge an algorithm is illogical and narrow-minded. In this specific case, I see it as laudable to attempt to further engage women in business ownership -- there is a glass ceiling, and simply allowing things to progress as they have for the past 70 years won't change anything.

So let the algorithm run. The competition right now may be lackluster, but as more potential female business owners learn of the opportunity, they'll enter the market to get a slice of the pie. As soon as there are multiple female owners in the market, competitive pressure will be to out-bid each other, improving the process to the point where they are indistinguishable from their male-owned competitors. They still have to meet all of the requirements of the tender, and are still expected to produce results -- and over the long term, as competitive pressure and increased female ownership takes place, an equilibrium will be achieved whereby such actions

We're spending our weekend news cycles praising this, actually.

It is astonishing just how completely people like you have been filled with hate. Even worse is why your response to a story with no controversial aspects at all, couched in your malcontent world view, is given kudos.

"Maybe with direct communication, sci-fi fans can rest easy and not have to worry about their favorite shows being cancelled like FireFly."

"(C)ommunication" isn't the issue, it's having demonstrable ratings that appeal to advertisers - TV is not an entertainment medium, it is a mediumm for conveying advertising. They attract you by offering you some entertainment, but until you realize the networks don't really care what they show, they just want an audience to watch the commercials in it.

The best thing a Sci-Fi fan can do is get themselves a nielson box and then set their TV to watch all their favorite shows.

using a military website whos advisory board includes two former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to downplay the fact that
iran so far, just as russia had in the cold war, has outstriped our laughably conservative estimates of its military capability. After all, we've been banging this war drum for far too long to see its support base dwindle in the sight of things like the ability to capture, disable, and reverse engineer americas newest drone.
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-building-copy-captured-us-drone-083944692.html
investors like lockheed and boeing need politicians, and the american public to maintain the hardline opinion that iran could and should be easily crushed by the US military. The boogeyman must remain frightening enough to win the hearts and minds of constituents, but not so frightening as to make them reconsider the cause and effect of another real war without drones that sends kids home with missing limbs or a full scale IQ of 85.

Never is a mighty long time, and religious tenets frequently get left behind (or reinterpreted, or taqiyya'd) in a desire to achieve a goal.

          “The Iranian nation is standing for its cause and that is the full annihilation of Israel,” Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi said in a speech to a defense
            gathering Sunday in Tehran.

          His remarks came on the day International Atomic Energy Agency director Yukiya Amano flew to Tehran to negotiate for inspections
          of Iran’s nuclear program. They were reported by the Fars News Agency, the media outlet of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

While he could expect everyone else to do the dirty work and hope for a better outcome then the 6 day war, the only meaningful way the Iranian military could achieve his stated cause is with nukes (or chemical/biological weapons).

I've seen "deliberately caused an accident" a few times, as absurd as it sounds.

In North Korea, you can apparently be sentenced to death by traffic accident.

They should shut down Schwarzeneggers latest movie instead. So criminally bad it should be suspended, with force.

Or during Winter.. You know this was a yahoo question. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120430182228AAIk7uw

Well, mine was inspired by a quip in an old indy comic back in the late 80s or early 90s called Space Ark. The bit there was:

"How can we get close enough to the sun without burning up?"

"Simple. We go at night."

As for the Yahoo Answers post, I found it hilarious... hilarious that so many people actually thought the OP was being serious instead of seeing it for the silliness that it is.

Or during Winter.. You know this was a yahoo question. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120430182228AAIk7uw

Republicans attack their own when they do something as unbelievable as suggesting that, hey, maybe gay marriage won't destroy the nation, or that maybe taxing the people who have all the money isn't socialism.

Drink that Kool Aid chief, then educate yourself about Cory Booker, the man who denounced Obama's perpetuation of the drug war.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/23/cory-booker-drug-war_n_1541082.html
http://news.yahoo.com/cory-booker-walks-back-criticism-obama-campaign-bain-105420351--abc-news-politics.html

Seriously though, the fact that you ran off about this subject literally days after such a high profile refutation of your claim speaks to how grossly uninformed you are.

AP IMPACT: New light on drone war's death toll

AP IMPACT: New light on drone war's death toll

Ford was profitable in 09, 10, and 11.

So by "recent" I assume you mean 2008, when it lost 14.6 billion.

From TFA, each address is worth about $12.

So unless math has changed and 12 x 16million equals 14.6 billion... No, they could not have "averted their recent financial woes by auctioning off their addresses".

You clearly do not know the 101 of demand and supply ...

Scarcity drives the price up yadayda ...

They do NOT own 14.5B of $ value of ip adresses . Sorry.

Ford was profitable in 09, 10, and 11.

So by "recent" I assume you mean 2008, when it lost 14.6 billion.

From TFA, each address is worth about $12.

So unless math has changed and 12 x 16million equals 14.6 billion... No, they could not have "averted their recent financial woes by auctioning off their addresses".

When I clicked on the yellow "Get it now! DESKTOP" icon at the upper right hand site, yahoo sent me to a null pointer

http://axis.yahoo.com/null

And it actually appears to have some innovation behind it, display results and the provoking queries on the same screen in a way that makes it easier to navigate between them:

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/23/killer-mobile-browser/#s:2012-05-23-at-15-34-51

http://axis.yahoo.com/

you recall incorrectly. It had a pre-IPO sale price of 84, which then went to 100 the day of IPO, and was a very clean and steady climb from there.

He didn't use "sic erat scriptum", you did. He only used "sic", which according to online dictionaries is Latin for "so, thus". The first two dictionaries I referenced came up with slightly different definitions. The first one only applies to quotes, the second one is more general. I'd say his usage is acceptable:

[1] "Thus; so. Used to indicate that a quoted passage, especially one containing an error or unconventional spelling, has been retained in its original form or written intentionally."
[2] "intentionally so written -- used after a printed word or passage to indicate that it is intended exactly as printed or to indicate that it exactly reproduces an original"

According to the IEEE 754 standard, a double allows for at least 15 significant decimal digits of precision. This means that a number like 9,999,999,999,999.99 can be represented exactly with no rounding. I believe this is more than sufficient to fit Apple's budget in a C double float, using their current market cap of 496 billion.

In contrast, because Apple's budget exceeds 2^32 dollars, using a 32-bit fixed point number would not be sufficient, whereas the double float is.

Nope ... it was overpriced.

The only thing that prevented the stock from going below the IPO price was MASSIVE underwriter support (i.e. the banks that got paid to do the IPO buying the stock in large volume whenever it hit the IPO price of $38).

Look at the price chart here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=FB+Interactive#symbol=fb;range=1d

See the flatline at $38 from 3:30-4:00pm? That's due to the underwriters buying the stock in massive volume providing support at $38. If you monitored the detailed stock quote during this time (as I did), you'd have seen that the bid volume, normally single or double digit lots spiked to a continuous 99999+ lots (i.e. 10,000,000+ shares) during this time - i.e. the underwriters were essentially buying unlimited volume of the stock at $38 (to artificially support it). From the trade volume during that final half hour, I reckon the underwriters bought well over 50M shares (10%+ of the 420M shares floated).

So... stumbled out of the gate is being kind. It really slithered out like a giant wet turd.

As mentionned in another answer to this post, such a car already exists, and it's drawing lots of attention since newly elected President of France, François Hollande, paraded in that "green" car down the Champs Elysees after being sworn in.