
slightly missed opportunity sir
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Joni Mitchell
181 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
the way do do protests is to apply for a permit, get 1000s if not 100,000s of people together for a weekend .. bands .. speakers .. make a definite statement
camping out for weeks in parks is just boring ..
all for public protest mind you .. was a anti-war and civil rights marcher in the 60s and early 70s
just saying it's a lot more effective to have an event .. get tear gassed .. get out .. make big news
oh .. and the banksters don't give a shit .. go after the politicians that enabled and are still enabling them .. follow the money .. [hint: .. Goldman-Sachs]
As I recall .. Microsoft gave China huge discounts to obtain better cooperation on piracy
Did then the US government get the same kind of discounts ? .. and if so ..
are private consumers / businesses getting royally screwed and are the only ones supporting MS's 40% gross margins ?
"The settlement covers (the gross revenue Google received from the illegal advertisements and) the gross revenue made by the Canadian pharmacies from sales to customers in the US."
wtf ? .. shouldn't they have gotten the the gross revenue made by the Canadian pharmacies from those phamacies ? .. or was it just easier to sue Google than to piss off the Canadians that knowingly sold the stuff ?
that being said, that US companies and Medicare can't buy drugs approved by Canada to save costs is absurd ..
smartphones are about 55% of the new mobile phone market and iPhone is currently 17% of the smartphone market
let's say by September, the smartphone share of all new phones goes to 60% and iPhone's market share of that goes .. let's be generous .. to 25% because of the new version
that's still only 15% of the mobile phone market ..
net income of facebook in 2010 .. about $500 million(?)
net income of google in 2010 .. about $8,510 million .. 30% over 2009
I really don't see fb increasing it's net income by 17 times to catch goog, and goog's increase in net income from 2009-2010 was $2,000 million .. 4 times fb's total net for 2010
how does that translate in anyone's mind that fb is worth anything close to goog ?
let's presume man's activity changes the long term climate for a minute
US and Europe clean up the nasty aerosols and free hydrocarbons that create nasty smog starting in the '70s .. the skies clear up significantly, letting more sunlight in, and warm the planet from the late '70s until end of the 90's
Then China and India start taking off in a big way, both burning a lot more coal, oil, gasoline and natural gas, most often in less-than-clean ways that increase the aerosol sulfur and free hydrocarbons .. and the warming levels out and perhaps even decreases a bit
who woulda thunk it ? ( actually .. I've thought this a possibility for years )
of course the soot on the arctic ice will still melt that, which has been the primary reason for arctic ice melt all along
whether it's "single label" or ".TLD" ?
IOW, using the example, whether it's "@nike" vs "@.nike" or "http://nike" vs "http://www.nike" or having to have some subdomain in the address like all other TLDs ?
really ? .. just don't allow single label to resolve .. all other TLDs require "." , I could care less that it might be required to be @sales.nike or www.nike or shoes.nike to resolve
also .. there are critical .com file extensions in Windows .. how come there isn't a big security problem with that ( other than fools that open an email attachment with .com thinking it's a websile link ;-0)
.. if they can use the IPO money to reduce the server-cluster cost and increase other efficiencies, the company could be worth a whole lot more than $1 billion quickly
.. somewhat mindless casual gaming is obviously huge, and Zynga may be reaching critical mass with 60 million users, meaning advertising costs to maintain growth might reduce ..
.. they may well pull in $1 billion gross this year based on the first quarter .. now suppose they can become more efficient and pull a 20% profit long term . that's $200 million not counting continued growth... using any reasonable multiplier shows the company may be worth several $billion ..
casual gaming where the average user spends $5 per month or less, but can play unlimited time seems a pretty solid business plan, sad, but better than the profits in *serious^ gaming development these days
it would take something more clever and competitive than FarmVille to pull me in, so the only problem I see is someone other than Zynga coming up with more compelling and addictive gameplay
what has you thinking Intel sees nVidia as a hostile competitor ?
they have settled differences, are particularly not stepping on each others toes at minimum ...
Intel not interested in ARM or discete cards .. nVidia not interested in mobo chipsets
wouldn,t surprise me a bit nVidia is sharing GPU tech with Intel or that Intel is sharing it's fab and circuit expertise with nVidia ... and I think Intel paid nVidia $1.3 billion or so for cooperation and IP sharing
They both see AMD as competition though .. and likely have other common enemies
GoDaddy may have market share, however the market has shrunk considerably, almost all holders of what seemed like good names have reduced their portfolios, so the domain name business is a shrinking business, not an expanding one
Bottom line is, that in almost all cases, you need to build a website with traffic, real value and a real money making business or the name is worthless
Yes, there may be a blip in increased business with all the new TLDs, but that's all hype and those TLDs will all fail ( watch what happens to .xxx in 2 years and look into the value of having a .biz domain now )
It's likely the hype behind these new TLDs that is pushing the price up beyond the $1 billion that's been floated months ago, and I'm sure there is still profit in GoDaddy, but it is at best a level business in these poor economic times with little hope for growth.
Bob's a smart guy, getting out and moving on, while the getting is ok .. if he had been a genius though, he would have gotten out by 2004 and probably gotten $10 billion for the business
all costs of doing business are reflected in the price of a product or service, therefore all tax on business is paid indirectly by the consumer of said products and services
while I'm not saying reducing tax on business would result in lower prices ( though it might to some degree because of competition ) , the true cost of government is always borne by it's people
it would be more honest, frankly, if all taxation were on individuals, be that income tax, various social insurance, sales-VAT, or asset-property taxes .. then the people would see directly the cost of the governments and have greater scrutiny .. instead the government seeks to pit "the people" in opposition to "corporations" fooling them into thinking, ultimately, that the people are not actually paying for all taxation
fact is the US still manufactures more product and provides more high end services than any other country in the world .. most manufacturing here is highly automated and done in an energy efficient way .. we still have a fairly well educated and hard working labor pool, who are not making any more, in real terms, than they were 20 years ago
so labor costs are not the biggest factor ..
let's look at China or India, much of the labor is still hand work, so while cheaper, it might take 10 or 20 or 50 people to do the same job a computer controlled machine does in the US, Japan or some European counties
to make an item in China, on average, takes 3 times the energy it does in the US, because we have a fairly efficient infrastructure in terms of transportation, electrical, natural gas, etc. compared to China
The bigger difference is overall taxation and government regulation, including environmental regulation, product safety, work place safety standards and the cost of compliance for all this (sometimes reasonable) law
what needs to be addressed is the ability of these multinational corps, mostly based in US, Europe and Japan to operate in countries where the people of a country are basically slave labor working under unsafe conditions .. it is NOT fair trade to produce a product for the world market where the worker is subject to 70+ hours per week, oppressive and/or dangerous working conditions on wages that pay little more than the cost of food and clothing
A cost for being in the WTO, should be a tax based on a world minimum wage and complying with certain work place standards, those receipts should go to the very poorest of countries, directly to the people there locally, for food, sanitation, health and infrastucture
my guess though, would be that the countries like China would, to the minimum necessary, improve conditions and wages at home, before paying a tax destined for a poor African or South American country, however the net effect would be a move towards a more equitable fair trade of goods and the movement of capital a bit more towards the workers
you'd not see a big increase in cost of goods, because really, the cost of labor is no longer the largest factor in the manufacture of most goods
the reason these corps have piles of money and invest in production overseas, say in Ireland, is because the corp tax rates in Ireland are 12.5 % .. China 25% .. Taiwan 17% .. Singapore 17% ..Macau 12% .. Hong Kong 16.5% ..
USA up to 35% + up to 12% state .. where would you do business and create jobs if you ran a big bucks multinational ?
fuck lowering the repatriation tax .. lower the US fed corp tax rate to 15% and watch production and services return to the USA, and the jobs with them ..
US corps lose or make little on their US operations, therefore pay little tax .. or there is corporate cronyism with companies like GE given special tax breaks .. they make big profits overseas and keep the money and investments there .. where the tax rates are lower ..
a proper warrant would have required DigitalOne to clone the *particular* customer's data and take only that *particular* customer's site(s) offline .. not necessarily in that order
if they do not have the knowledge and skill to do that, what is the fucking point of taking a bunch of racks they probably can't fire up without DigitalOne's help ? .. DigitalOne should be the first in line to sue
do hope they get sued for any damages, however it is very hard to sue the Feds, and harder to sue the FBI ( only if the scope of the warrant was violated ), and impossible to sue a Fed judge for damages
sure .. if it keeps warming the oceans could conceivably rise a few feet over 100 years .. or 500 years .. or 1000 years
the oceans have already risen 100s of feet in the last 15,000 years, though they have been pretty stable in the last 3000 years despite periods what it has been warmer ( Medieval Warming period )
There are ancient cities under 100s of feet of water in the Mediterranean .. Coral Islands build up with the sea level and mankind will adjust IF the sea levels rise a few centimeters a decade.
C02 is ( per the warming alarmists ) 9% to 23% percent of the greenhouse effect ( and that seems quite imprecise to call good science ) yet water vapor ( again per warming alarmists ) it 35% to 70% of the greenhouse effect .. average humidity has gone up with C02 ..
yet why are we not trying to reduce water vapor ? .. why are we not trading water vapor credits ?
also .. it's the natural warming cycle that causes the C02 and water vapor to rise .. not the other way around .. that's a fact of historical evidence.. not computer modeled hypothesis
"The fact is the world is far, far gone to save if global warming is happening"
the whole world .. plants, animals and humans all do better in a warmer climate .. if we had not come out of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago to the warmth we've had for about the last 8000 years, I doubt very much we'd have any civilization at all
More C02 = more plant growth = more food for animals .. 1990 - 2000 study by UN showed 7% more biomass on the planet, mostly due to the rise in C02 and slightly increasing temperatures
We've had more rain and snow falling the last 3-4 years as well .. this is what may lead to a new Ice Age .. it's not about temperature, it's about precipitation increasing because of more evaporation and humidity, which in the long term cools the planet, in the longer term cools the oceans, which can then absorb more C02
there is NO historical proof that increasing C02 leads to an ever increasing temperature, yet plenty of evidence in the historical record that for the last 2 million years or so, we go from Ice Age to a warm period like now every 120,000 years or so .. with some of those warm peaks have been warmer than now .. even been warmer in the last 8000 years with no evidence that the C02 levels were higher ( though indeed they may have been .. ice cores have at best a 300 year resolution and a weighted resolution over the 4000-6000 years they take to form )
again .. warm = good for life .. cold = bad for life
even know AMD got started in x86 under license with Intel to produce 8086 & 8088 chips for IBM, that required 2 sources
my point is that, rather than out of the general necessity to license some core IP that all chip designers and makers need .. Intel and nVidia are staying out of each other's way and will be complimenting each other's business
nVidia won it's right to produce iCore chipsets but is not doing so
Intel has an ARM license, but is not jumping into that business
both produce GPUs, though Intel's TechRep™ is well behind nVidia's in that game, Intel is not in the discrete GPU business and I doubt has resistance now to nVidia tech on it's future CPU dies ( if it's not already there in Sandy Bridge )
that Intel and nVidia have apparently decided to cooperate rather than compete against each other in areas they could and settled there legal differences, IMO .. is quite significant and puts AMD further behind in the CPU and GPU business
not meaning to repeat what I've said a few times here .. however ..
Intel didn't pay nVidia $1.3 billion just to settle cross-patent and licensing, they paid for a mutually beneficial alliance where Intel is the x86 CPU and circuit process monster in the room, and nVidia is the GPU and ARM monster in the room
they are in a complimentary relationship that cannot be beat in the long term .. amiably paying each other for a bit of IP whether it's Intel for nVidia tech in GPU on Intel CPU dies or nVidia for Intel IP in basic circuit and process design for nVidia GPU and ARM fabrication ( simplifying the situation )
Supercomputer boards using off-the-shelf chips trickles down to servers and integrates to SoCs for PCs, tablets, phones and other devices .. nVintel™ will dominate within 2 years on more platforms than the consensus thinks now ..
""Money" is a liability on a bank's balance sheet, so for that reason it is not in their interest to create it."
sorry, but a basic tenant, though sometimes not easily understood .. is:
Assets + Liabilities = Capital
In the case of loans, typically today, the bank borrows from a larger bank and this is a liability that is capital, and it is then loaned as a security note that is indeed an asset .. whether it gets paid or not, or whether that security's value raises or lowers determines profit-capital gain or loss, but it is still an asset
any not "money" the bank holds is a (capital ) asset, not a liability
it's losing money, has 100s of new competitors, some of which are well established *local* search portals, the deals suck, are luxuries that can be gotten for the *discount* price, usually at a closer location
as the article says, it's business customers aren't generally seeing the ROI they've been hyped to expect, and I suspect many, like me, subscribed to Groupon emails just to see what the hype was about, then unsubscribed a couple of weeks later after not seeing one *deal* of remote interest
beware when a business and it's venture capital is being spent mostly on sales staff and advertising-marketing .. it is not a business model .. just clever hype that will wear off
it's not like offering coupons for local business on the internet is a new concept, or that it is quite effective to do so on your own local business website .. on your Google Places page .. or offer discounts for services on Craigslist ( to name 3 common methods )
if you need Groupon for promotion, you are doing your internet marketing poorly otherwise
is a bit different because of casual gaming, which millions are playing and most paying real money for virtual currency and objects .. it's also become an advertising platform with currently larger fees (pay per click) than Google (by far)
none-the-less, facebook is greatly overvalued for the money it's pulling in, and unique in it's popularity and use .. it will likely survive the coming bubble burst, as Amazon and Ebay survived the .com bubble
is that all these companies will pass these costs of *patent protection* to the consumer
I was wondering how a current smartphone can cost $500+ *retail* or as little as $50 [upgrade] + $50 [taxes in California] with a new 2 year contract provided you shell out about $100 per month ( $40 + $10 [text] + $30 [data] + $10 [insurance] + $10 [taxes] typical in USA ]
gotta wonder how much of that is *protection* money built in for the PatentMobsters™ paying each other off
what is Intel's record regarding their chip and mobo plants ? .. how about Lenovo ?
are working and safety conditions significantly better in Taiwan ( though I know they contract a lot of stuff out to China as well ) ?
I think, due to worker conditions and general disregard of human life and basic human rights, China should have no place in the WTO .. what they do is NOT fair trade because it's very close to being a slave state for the vast majority there, yet much of the blame has to be placed on the multi-national corporations of the USA and Europe that have contracted and have actively participated in moving the manufacturing base for commodity products to China and other nearly-slave-state countries
USA should have *out-sourced" to Central and South America, and Europe to it's poorer counties, India, Russia and Africa .. we all should stabilize what is closer to home and to those that have a greater bond with our own cultures and values
let's see .. as of January 2011 .. 71% of web servers ran Linux
of all servers .. 2010 .. 7% AMD .. 93% Intel .. in 2006 that was almost 25% AMD - 75% Intel
what's the prize ? .. a purple hair dye job ?
granted AMD is up to 7.5% so far this year .. however E7 10 core Xeons are fairly new, and Bull'd is *expected* 3rd Q 2011 .. about the same time Intel goes 22nm tri-gate in the server market
we'll see who actually performs and gains cpu web server market share
I sold a few domains like WindowsPCgames.com, WindowsPCsoftware.com on eBay and eBay got take down notices from Microsoft's lawyers .. then I got an email from Microsoft lawyers to turn over the WindowsPC****** names I had not sold
I had completed the transactions before the eBay notice, so I just told them to screw themselves, I no longer owned them, and the ones that didn't sell ( and were basicly worthless anyway ) were very close to expiring, so I just deleted them myself and told them to talk to the registrar .. lol ...
now, they likely could not have forced me to turn anything over, and it probably wasn't worth the $2000 ICANN fee for MS to go to ICANN .. but they do make the threat ..
Interestingly .. "Windows PC" is not trademarked .. "Apple PC" is trademarked
I still own a couple of valuable WindowsComputer*****.com + .net names, yet have not heard from MS about those
OT
"Despite all the lobbying against free healthcare in the US I wonder how many people over there would welcome the chance to buy medicines on prescription from known and trusted sources for about $10 as we do in the UK under the NHS"
oh ? .. the doctors and nurses work for free ? .. the drug companies give away their product there ?
oh ?.. "the government pays for it" .. ahhhh .. no .. it's your wages that pay for it with taxes ..
there is no such thing as free healthcare .. someone is paying for it , or if it's paid with debt, the workers are just paying more for it than they would have "out of pocket"
it blows my mind that anyone thinks they aren't paying for services *provided* for some national system, when in fact they are paying more on average, through being taxed and paying a government bureaucracy to manage things, than if they paid upfront for the service.
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Larrabee .. couldn't compete as a discrete graphics card .. Intel smartly dropped that and is now using nVidia tech for GPU development .. well worth the $1.5 billion .. Intel continues focus on it's core business . nVidia on it's core business .. and AMD loses against both companies in CPU and GPU
McAfee .. jury still out .. however it's a good brand name, and McAfee tech *might* play out to be worth the $7.68 billion .. think it's a stretch for a company with a GAAP net income of $184 million, but certainly smarter than MS paying more for Skype, which loses money
Buy backs tells you a company is sound and expects to continue doing well .. the time to worry and be suspicious is when they are issuing / diluting stock to raise money
Intel .. in my estimation, is likely the smartest mature tech company in the world . both to consumers and it's shareholders .. a rare thing these days ..
1. Intel didn't pay $1.3 billion IIRC, just for cross-patent settlement .. it's for mutual co-operation
2. nVidia's GraphicsPU and GeneralPU designs are better than Intel's, and you'll soon see, if it's not already happening, nVidia graphics chips replacing Intel even on Intel's motherboards and will be the future reference, IMO
3. nVidia gets Intel's fab expertise and great relationship with the foundries
4. This ties in the better name of nVidia, IMO, to Intel in a better way than AMD absorbing ATI and deluting the ATI brand .. certainly both gain a bit more advantage, market-wise in this.
(personally, as a gamer, I've preferred nVidia over ATI since 2001)
5. True, Apple has an ARM license, so does nVidia .. Apple won't let Intel use it's ARM license for other Smartphone chip development I'd wager .. nVidia will
just seems to me to be the bigger picture
to be accurate, there is no "right to privacy" as that is vague and hard to define .. though it should be a basic human right (were reasonably definable), and there is US case law under certain cases that invoke the concept
what is a limit on government power related to right of privacy in the US is:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
.. effectively on a mobile, your location needs to be pinpointed .. not aware of a US law requiring any carrier or smartphone manufacturer to make your location available to any government agency without a court order ..
.. so it's a feature of the 911 emergency system once you've dialed 911, not that enforcement can track you without showing probable cause to a judge
.. several apps, such as navigation and local search also make use of your accurate location, and to expect that voluntary data is not being collected and personally identified .. is naive ..
.. IMHO, however, information that is not volunteered should be deleted within minutes of it's useful end .. at least in the US .. Eurosheep and companies operating there have to contend with data retention laws from what I understand .. and have no right to sue over data collected and saved against your personal will
"Concern was heightened by the fact that the patents being sold have never been made public"
surely you mean 'that WHICH particular patents being sold' because as far as I know, when a patent is granted it is published, including the name of the entity that makes the patent claims
how can the public, or at least those interested, not be able do a search of Novell owned patents and figure out, for the most part, which patents are involved ?
.. but do you really imagine Google and their lawyers did not think of *prior art* and have a proper presentation to convince a jury ?
.. perhaps the lawyers were sloppy and Google didn't think this could be a $5,000,000 hit .. maybe they thought they could get off paying a less than competent lawyer $100,000 or less to defend and didn't take this seriously enough .. but Red Hat apparently was involved as well ..
.. I suspect there will be an appeal on this, or when they go sue Red Hat, or IBM, or Microsoft, or Amazon, this will get reversed ..
.. just saying .. there was either valid infringement of a valid patent, or Google defended poorly
.. suspect the later