Fair point regarding the Google+ search results. I guess I never really thought about that. I guess it's good that they reversed the result huh?

Not sure if I follow the real name policy argument. Personally, I understand that people want privacy and there was a huge outcry when Blizzard also required real names as part of their RealID row out. But at the same time I think the issue that both Blizzard and Google wanted to address was cyber-bullying by hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. I think everyone else just got caught in the crossfire because of a few bad actors. In all seriousness, neither Google nor Blizzard really benefits by having your real name. It's not like the earn money by knowing your name, they earn money by knowing your interests. Your name just doesn't give them that. And for them to require real names, there must be something else there. But then again that's just my 2 cents, take what you will.

Even if you had a Google+ account, if you didn't use it, what did it matter?

That makes no sense. China just banned its government from using Apple products, not Apple products in general. It hasn't sealed itself from outside ideas and innovations at all. Chinese citizens can still buy iPads and iPhones so Chinese smartphone manufactures still has to compete.

Another reason why this may have happened that most people probably wouldn't think about is that this might be a move to fight corruption. iPads and iPhones have been vastly popular as "gifts" within the government. Banning the government from purchasing them as gifts would help to fight some of the corruption problem they're having.

1. PPACA sets up a tax liability for all and a tax credit for those who gets health insurance.
2. Congress has the power to levy taxes (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 and amongst other places in Article I, Section 8 as well as the 16th Amendment)
3. Constitution does not forbid congress to pass legislation that enables citizens to receive tax credits. And the congress did that by the creation of an agency to help people get health insurance. "Federal and State Exchanges"
4. Therefore, PPACA is well within the power of congress according to the constitution.

The Supreme Court found this to be the case so if you think it's unconstitutional, you'll have to take it up with the Supreme Court. Although, they are highly unlikely to want to hear the case again.

You may think Obamacare is bad, in reality, insurance premiums are high because hospitals have to make up for its huge amounts of bad debt from treating people without insurance and can't play for their treatment. And since hospitals can't refuse emergency room patients, they take a huge loss. Not to mention, it clogs up the Emergency Room so that someone who absolutely needs Emergency Care may not receive it in time. To make up for that, the hospitals charge insurers a huge amount and provides really bad service. The wait time at certain hospital ERs are 4 to 6 hours. To fix the problem. you need to keep people out of the ER, make hospitals charge less.

The PPACA attempts to do that by: 1. Encouraging people to get insurance. It's ok if you don't, you'll just have to pay some more taxes.
2. If you have insurance, you go get seen by a doctor before you have to go to the ER. This reduces the stress on ER and ensures that the hospital's bad debt is reduced.
3. Hospitals are put on a new plan to get paid. Instead of a set fee for providing a service, they are now paid to manage the health of an individual. Before the incentive was to do as many tests and treatments with the patient as possible since the government paid up for each one. Now the hospital is paid a set fee to provide care towards 1 patient per month at a certain standard of care. If they do too many tests, that will eat into their margins. If they do too few tests and the patient gets really sick, then they fail the quality of care test and they get penalized on the payment. Either way, the hospitals will be incentivized to provide good quality of care without going overboard. And this will reduce the cost of care overall, which will in turn reduce healthcare insurance premiums.

Full disclosure: I work for a major pharmaceutical company on the impact of PPACA on their ability to access physicians and sell their products.

Go to Business School. It's a huge investment, but it really lets you go anywhere that you want. Also it will allow you to build a pretty good network that you can leverage in getting that next awesome job.

So they decided that it was dangerous and made it illegal to point lasers at air planes yet they think it's some how safe to point it at cars? Seems like someone forgot to sanity check their idea.

And this is why we can't have nice network infrastructures.

Your child needs better "friends."

Security is when you don't store your password in any browser in the first place. Consider your child's "friend" again. When your child is in the restroom, that "friend" can easily compromise your child's account by simply visiting the site (they're already logged in thanks to saved passwords).

I'm just going to point out a few minor flaws in your argument. In Petco vs Walmart example, WalMart is still only in one industry, retail. This is considered relatively focused as far as the market is concerned. The issue with Amazon is that they've actually diversified outside of retailing such as Video Streaming, Cloud Vending, Logistics (third party sellers and Amazon then distributes), and other smaller segments. So Amazon is not focused. But on the other hand, Kobo is too focused. They only do one thing. But I totally agree with you that they need something amazing to beat Amazon since Amazon has such a head start on Kobo in the market.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a spectrum of focus. 1. Ultra-focused: Petco and Kobo, 2. Focused: Walmart, 3. Not Focused: Amazon, 4. Conglomerates: 3M, Time Warner.

Corporate Finance basically tells that Ultra-focused companies usually end up in niche positions. Companies like Walmart generally do very well. Amazon will still do OK, because their "diversified" businesses come from core capabilities required to succeed at their core business, ie logistics and excess server power. And then conglomerates generally trade at a discount in the stock market because generally the disadvantages of diversification outweighs the advantages, and individual investors can diversify themselves as opposed to having to invest in diversified companies.

That being said, I don't think Kobo will be able to beat Amazon anytime soon. After all there aren't that many David vs Goliath stories unless there is mismanagement or the "Goliath" is resting on its laurels.

I don't think they are doing this for MS's benefit. Microsoft already have such a large network effect, this will do almost nothing for MS. The network effect is how Microsoft and Intel became giants in the first place. Wintel machines of the late 80's and early 90's allowed them to quickly erase Apple market share. You can have a shitty product but the value proposition increased as the installed user base increased, so you'd still have to buy it. I think every agrees Win Vista was horrible. MS spent 1 billion dollars developing it and then broke even on Vista 2 month after release by moving 20 million units a month at $50-60 per unit net. Compare that to the original OSX, also about 1 billion to develop. $50/60 per unit (less for the newer kitties), but Apple only moved 19 million per year. It took Apple 2 years to break even. The advantage is already there, this will do very little for MS.

I think the issue that Intel is try to address for themselves is that supporting Linux/Android is painfully expensive because the Linux/Android space is very fragmented with many different versions of kernels, drivers, etc Supporting Win8 which is fairly uniform will reduce the cost of support.

Sure not limiting it to Win8 will potentially reduce revenue, but you also reduce costs. If the reduction in cost is greater than the reduce in revenue, you have positive increase in profitability.

Existence of Nessie doesn't disprove evolution. Unfortunately evolution doesn't say Nessie can't exist, just very unlikely. Anyway, if anything evolution tells us dinosaurs still roam the earth today. Or at least their descendants, the birds. So the "OMG Dinosaurs disprove evolution" is a bunch of non-sense..

If you really need something to block things on the cheap then use PeerBlock (it's free). Then you can use the lists at iBlockList or look for some lists on the internet. There should some appropriate lists for you. Also you can white list servers individually if needed.