M$ can raise its prices for years to come to keep the money rolling in from the suckers but they cannot lock in more users it seems. Consider this. In October, Wikimedia records 91% of visits were “non-mobile”, mostly that other OS. 9% were “mobile”, mostly not that other OS. In October a year ago, the numbers were 95.2% and 4.8%. M$ is losing 5% share per annum on the move to mobile alone. In 2010, M$ had 84.29% share but now have 78.38% share, down about 6% per annum.
See also this article.
Asked early in 2011 what consumers thought of that other OS on a tablet, 45% were interested. Now, the number is 25%. At that rate of decline, interest will be ~10% by the time M$ moves its bowels to deliver “8ââ¬Â³.
Multiple sources of data are always better and more accurate when aggregated.
Remember when ASUS shook the world with the announcement of GNU/Linux on a netbook? Well, that will look like a teardrop compared to the flood of innovation 2012 will bring. Expect Android/Linux and GNU/Linux on ARM to intrude into the desktop/notebook space previously dominated by Wintel
Health and environmental damage from industry costs up to €18bn a year, according to the European environment agency
Naegleria fowleri is primarily a tropical disease but as the climate warms up, tropical diseases are moving north. Naegleria fowleri needs 80F water to cause infection
Many big Wall Street firms have settled fraud cases brought by the government with a promise to never violate the same law. But an analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission documents by The New York Times found that since 1996, there have been at least 51 repeat violations by those firms.
Massachusetts has sued the big US banks for foreclosure fraud.
As with the manufactured debt ceiling crisis in the United States, the E.C.B. is withholding relief in order to extort austerity measures from member governments—and the threat seems to be working.
Claims everyone knew what was going on but no one else can count. The only mystery, supposedly, was who was getting the money but it's now revealed that the money went to McDonalds. Gee, thanks.
We are economists who oppose ideological cleansing in the economics profession. Equally we oppose political cleansing in the vital debate over the cause and consequences of our current economic crisis.
We support the efforts of the Occupy Wall Street movement across the country and across the globe to liberate the economy from the short-term greed of the rich and powerful one percent.
We oppose cynical and perverse attempts to misuse our police officers and public servants to expel advocates of the public good from our public spaces.
We extend our support to the vision of building an economy that works for the people, for the planet, and the future, and we declare our solidarity with the Occupiers who are exercising our democratic right to demand economic and social justice.
Special undercover investigation: Executives from Bell Pottinger reveal 'dark arts' they use to burnish reputations of countries accused of human rights violations [and] to bury bad coverage and influence public opinion.
They claim to be able to manipulate Google results and Wikipedia, manipulate weak minded politicians, create doubt with unimportant details, to run fake blogs and all that other Arron Barr trash. Because they also claim to be true belivers in their clients, they are themselves the most manipulated party.
Please sign it too. Almost a million people have.
The first is that Bookshare, an online library for people who can’t read standard print books ... Bookshare is legal in the US, but that doesn't stop authors, agents or publishers who don’t know much about people with disabilities or copyright law sending cease and desist letters. ... Benetech develops free software to help human rights activists around the world safely record stories of human rights abuse. ... when asked if we know whether or not there are “pirated” copyrighted materials, we can’t say. ... [under SOPA] If any single publisher or author of any one of the more than 130,000 accessible books in our library gets antsy, they can send a notice to VISA and MasterCard and say, stop money from going to Benetech and Bookshare.
This article uses the propaganda term "piracy" for sharing. The point of SOPA is to give publishers the power to shut down whoever they want and that is unacceptable.
A few days after the verdict was announced The Pirate Bay registered depiraatbaai.be, a new domain not covered by the court order. Today, just a few weeks later, this domain is already the 124th most-visited in Belgium, on its way to enter the top 100.
[a bill] permitting ISPs to funnel private communications and related information back to the government without adequate privacy protections and controls. The bill does not specify which agencies ISPs could disclose customer data to, but the structure and incentives in the bill raise a very real possibility that the National Security Agency or the DOD’s Cybercommand would be the primary recipient.
"Cybersecurity" is impossible as long as people run Windows, but government wants weak security for spying on citizens.
She claims that her age was requested as part of the routine sign-up sequence along with credit card, address, and other related data, and that it was not made clear that IMDb claimed the right to then use this information in their public database. When she asked them to remove this data from public view, IMDb reportedly declined. ... Amazon seems to be largely "blowing off" concerns about their behavior in this matter, and worse, is attempting to preemptively shift blame to the plaintiff.
If the Coalition's plan is implemented, it would mean that national healthcare patients would be required to proactively take themselves off the list, to prevent their personal medical data being shared with researchers. ... Apparently, outsourcing medical research is the way forward for the NHS, but to do that, data needs to be shared.
The passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) through the Senate last Thursday saw the culmination of a ten-year crusade by Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to make the law of war apply on US soil. ... In summary, once the NDAA becomes law a US citizen on US soil can lawfully be killed by the US military if the military believes that citizen to be a terrorist affiliated with Al Qaeda or its allies.
As Senator Lindsay Graham recently remarked as an explanation for his support of legislation allowing for the indefinite detention of Americans, "Is the homeland the battlefield? You better believe it is the battlefield." ... If signed into law by President Obama, this bill will not only ensure that we remain in a perpetual state of war -- with this being a war against the American people -- but it will also institute de facto martial law in the United States.
The Senate clearly wished for the military’s “law and order” powers to extend beyond the territory of military bases on the theory that there may be “terrorsymps” (short for “terrorist sympathizers”) lurking everywhere. ... By noting that little-known fact [about Awlaki], am I showing “support” for “al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces”? Will the U.S. military be obliged to target me, too?
It is worth reading the whole article.
An interesting accusation and summary of previous US crowd control/population lock up plans in light of NDAA.
Tuesday’s “Occupy Our Homes” action in at least 20 cities makes it clear that they are standing up to banks to reverse foreclosures. ... We’re here because [there are] a lot of empty buildings owned by Wall Street banks and we’re going to liberate them
This is from the 1990s, when he advanced the Contract on America.
If you did not believe the Republicans said what they meant and meant what they said back then, you should look around today and read this again.
Ray Lutz should not be confused with this clown, Frank Luntz
The idea of bringing in a unitary EU patent system has been rolling around Brussels so long most people have assumed it will never happen. But there is a clear push on at the moment to realise these plans once and for all. ... taking place largely in secret: this is a hugely important area, with implications for all businesses, and yet we are not permitted to see how the final negotiations are being conducted.