So if they are valued as a multibillion dollar company, they could have a line of credit as if they were a multi-billion dollar company. Agree 100% with the rest of your post.

No, Uber has been 'valued' as a multi-billion dollar company by the venture capitalists who are backing them. It has nothing to do with Uber's actual economic activity or the net-worth of their assets and cash. When venture capitalists put a value anything, it really means that is their asking price for that "investment". It has nothing to do with true economic value. I personally am willing to go out on a limb and would value Uber somewhere between my kid brother's lemonade stand (proven profitability) and a decomissioned Russian aircraft carrier (proven scrap value). Exactly where in that range Uber falls, I cannot say. But then again, I'm not a venture capitalist.

In fact it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don't understand
It's just my job 5 days a week
Rocket man! Rocket man!

Please mod AC up! The problem as I see it with TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which is a free trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union is that it attempts to grant corporations an innate right to profitability and the ability to sue any government that passes laws that might restrict that profitability.

Italy is a country and can make whatever laws they want to regulating taxis or any other industries. If a company can take away Italy's right to regulate their own markets via TTIP, then wait until some other entity or business comes to your backyard and decides they don't like the regulations that maybe you want or need to preserve your business.

Mario Draghi said, "Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough."

Financing a member state via printing money does not exist within the ECB's mandate. So the ECB cannot legally do what you say they are doing. Greece is financing itself via ELA Emergency Liquidity Assistance, where Greek banks loan the Greek government money that cannot be repaid, then the ELA rescues the Greek banks from the bad loans. This type of back-door financing is not sustainable and will eventuall collapse under its own weight. OTOH, the ECB also lacks the mandate to kick a member state out of the common currency when they are unwilling and unable to meet the conditions for membership. Only the political leadership of the member states have the authority to either change the ECB's mandate, or to kick a member state out. How this will turn out is anybody's guess.

I think both IBM and Microsoft were working hard to undermine each other from the start of the project. IBM wanted to regain 100% control of the PC market and eventually ditch Microsoft. Microsoft on the other hand was trying to break free of IBM and wanted to license the OS to other computer makers on other platforms. Hence the disagreement over assembler and 286 support.

Former OS/2 fan here. In hind sight, one of OS/2's biggest flaws was lack of file permissioning, which NT had. I don't think IBM ever intended for OS/2 to be used as a server OS at all.

IBM was a mainframe and mini-computer company that also sold micros. IBM understood multitasking better than anyone else, but they also understood that as soon as micros could multitask, had networking and became multi-user (file permissions) the market for minis and mainframes would shrink. IBM's PC strategy from the mid '80s to mid '90s could be summed up as using their influence to prevent networking, multi-tasking and file permissions from happening on the same platform at the same time.

...sounds like the plot of a slumdog astronaut movie.

We don't know what the satellite photos showed. They were never made public. The irony is we got our best intelligence on Iraq's WMD program from Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspections. But we ended those when we started making ultimatums to Saddam Hussein... and in doing so, lost the best intelligence source we ever had on Iraq.

My personal theory is Saddam probably thought he had WMD, even if he didn't. Saddam Hussein wasn't exactly the kind of ruler you could say no to more than once. Mussolini's thought he had an air force on par with the German Luftwaffe or the RAF. The reality was the generals moved the few planes they actually had to whichever airbase Mussolini was visiting. The other theory is the Saudis were right; Saddam knew he had no WMD, but admitting it would have been a sign of weakness, especailly with Iran next door. Either way, our "career intelligence officers" and our political elite seemed to lack the street smarts to critically question the evidence. Maybe they didn't even want to. Donald Rumsfeld promised a 90-day holiday in the desert.

When communists murder people, it's treated more like an industrial accident than a crime. At least by some people.

"It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract."

(apologies to the "you just might be a red neck" guy)

If you remember owning a black and white television... you just might not be a digital native.
If you first learned to drive a stick shift.... you just might not be a digital native.
If you remember when there were only two kinds of coffee... you just might not be a digital native.
If you know what a pencil has to do with a cassette tape.... you just might not be a digital native.
...... < i could go on >....
If you have an AOL email address..... you are definately not a digital native.

Socialist governments do not have a monopoly on jailing or murdering their population.