rajpaul

annoyed by a hoodie? they are going to make a mint from this deal.

bankers win again :-)

I assume the decrease in crime has a lot of factors. But, can't the decline of violent crime be partly explained by more people being kept in prison?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/US_incarc...

If criminals are kept in jail longer, they can commit fewer crimes against the public.

these 'pranks' are all marketing gimmicks.

"based on current global trends"

Interesting bit of science fiction, but current trends never continue like that.

The computer made a lot of things obsolete. For example, typewriters, carbon paper, and those calculators that printed to roles of paper.

Tablets won't make anything obsolete, let alone desktop computers.

I found Musk's slight display of emotion when he talked to Aldrin and Armstrong's criticism to be very humanizing and touching.

When he said his response to their criticism is to prove to them that it can be done and done well made me admire him.

That's true. Also, unlike other criminal organizations, 'ratting out' your hacktivist co-conspirators isn't harmful to your health.

Not 0-day, but you might find it interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DarkMarket

DarkMarket was an English-speaking internet cybercrime forum created by Renukanth Subramaniam in London that was shut down in 2008 after FBI agent J. Keith Mularski infiltrated it using the alias Master Splyntr, leading to more than 60 arrests worldwide. Subramaniam, who used the alias JiLsi, admitted conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to nearly five years in prison in February 2010.

The website allowed buyers and sellers of stolen identities and credit card data to meet and conduct criminal enterprise in an entrepreneurial, peer-reviewed environment. It had 2,500 users at its peak.

I also think that a lot of black hats are working for the feds. But I think it has more to do with their lack of integrity and morals rather than threats and intimidation.

Legal advice is a big part of black hat literature, so I don't think any of them can claim ignorance.

When I was a kid and video game arcades were still popular, there was a huge one in the mall.

They had a restaurant and you could order food from a touch screen, and play games on it while you wait.

I hated it. A waiter always came by to make sure your order was correct. I had to wonder, what's the point? It was gimmicky and useless.

This was probably 13 years ago.

I tried to use the twitter mobile site. I'll never do it again because it takes too long to load.

This is why people use the twitter app instead of the site.

did the ipo turn out to be a better payout than google offered them?

I've seen a lot of these drone stories and discussion threads. The most interesting thing about them is the assumption that America has the right to violate other countries territory.

The situation described should never happen.

Did they pump contacts for recommendations on a good outsourcing shop first, or at least ask for references and follow up on them?

I wouldn't even take my car to a mechanic blind.

Apple's statement confirms that it is still in some iOS 5 products.

Cellphones and TVs prove that it's "winner takes all", because they all use standards that have won and now have it all. For example, despite the fact that Blu-ray players are made by different manufactures, the Blu-ray technology is still the take all winner in the HD format wars.

Also, throwing the PC industry out as an anomaly is a mistake because iOS and the PC both particular kinds of technology - they are platforms. In this type of "winner takes all" scenario it isn't the standard that takes it all, but the platform providers. The only hope for iOS is the web as the platform.

Aside, I think that Windows Mobile has an even more compelling business model than Android, because Microsoft has more of a financial incentive to improve their proprietary platform than Google does.

Take what Linus says about locked down technologies losing in the long term and consider that technology is often a "winner takes all" game and we have an interesting scenario playing out for iOS in the future.

Unsurprisingly, Windows dominates with more downloads than all others combined.

The article says that swearing is the easy way out, and that intelligent, talented people can do better. I'd go further and say that swearing nothing more than cheap fucking theatrics, and gimmicks.

This is Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway corporate website: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

It's very simple and clean.

That is a great video. Before watching it I didn't understand QR codes at all.

As a consumer, I've never used a QR code in my life. If companies reward users for using QR codes with discounts, as the video suggests, I would use it.

Also, now I understand why a business would want to use QR codes. They help the businesses to track the effectiveness of advertising.

I'm seeing more of these intergenerational conflict articles coming to the surface now. I'm not surprised it took so log for it to happen. I'm surprised that baby boomers are allowing it to happen at all.

I can't imagine baby boomers wanting to watch network news or read mainstream websites that bring light to these inequalities. It's eyeballs and wallets that dictate content, and it's the boomers who have both.

I think he's saying that when you borrow money, it stimulates the economy and increases people's incomes. That allows people to borrow even more money. Which stimulates the economy and increases people's incomes even more. It's a feedback loop and we saw it break in 2008.

An example is people "using their homes as ATMs" during the housing boom. Easy credit drove up the prices of homes, people used the increase in net wroth to take home equity loans, other general debts, or buy investment properties, which in turn drove up the price of homes even more.

The root cause of speculation is cheap and easy money. The cheap and easy money comes directly from the Federal Reserve. They provide it in the misguided hope that it will be put to work in the real economy.

From what I've read, from the beginning Zuckerberg has been pretty clear in his desire to make everything everyone does public and on facebook. So this seems consistent with his vision.

This sounds a lot like SAP's in-memory database, HANA:

"SAP HANA is an integrated database and calculation layer that allows the processing of massive quantities of real-time data in main memory to provide immediate results from analyses and transactions."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2011/10/04/why-sap-hana-is-a...

I agree, it's not the governments job.

But I've always wondered, what came first, the corrupt government, or citizens who don't pay tax?

I see the same thing in Greece. The government is corrupt, but the people don't pay taxes.

Does the government become corrupt because there isn't enough money to pay civil servants, or does do people refuse to pay taxes because they will be misused by a corrupt government?

I have a co-worker who's from mainland China. He tells me that many Chinese feel that the stock market is immature, corrupt, and rigged to work against the "average joe".

The perception seems to be that unless you know someone and can get inside information, you can't make money.

Instead, average people put their money into real-estate (1) or put it to work in private lending (2). And then there are the pig farmers who speculate in base metals (3). My coworker didn't mention them though.

1: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/02/03/chinese-property...

2: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/29/china-economy-runa...

3:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

Sino-Forest was a $5 billion dollar company that was listed on the Toronto stock exchange until recently trading was halted on the stock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Forest_Corporation

Difficult economic times always expose fraud. If the economic situation continues to deteriorates I think we'll see more Sino-Forests.

"It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked." Warren Buffett

A gold based currency can still be devalued. Simply change the amount of gold it is backed by. For example:

"Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act on 30 January 1934;...The act also authorized the president to devalue the gold dollar so that it would have no more than 60 percent of its existing weight. Under this authority the president, on 31 January 1934, fixed the value of the gold dollar at 59.06 cents."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard

debasement even happened when actual phisical coins made from precious metals were being used:

"Throughout history, governments have been known to create more coinage than their supply of precious metals would allow. By replacing some fraction of a coin's precious metal content with a base metal (often copper or nickel), the intrinsic value of each individual coin was reduced (thereby "debasing" their money), allowing the coining authority to produce more coins than would otherwise be possible. Debasement sometimes occurs in order to make the coin harder and therefore less likely to be worn down as quickly. Debasement of money almost always leads to price inflation unless price controls are also instituted by the governing authority, in which case a black market will often arise."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin#Coin_debasement