Apple pays out 67%. That's on Gross.

If they were to perhaps, talk about the expense of promotion, servers, and the fact that all the toys for Whack-A-Mole ended up in lawsuits, they could use Hollywood accounting. It would still be 67%, but of the net -- which means cab fair instead of money to buy the Limo.

I don't except that Programming is "Bigger than Hollywood" until we have people saying they are programmers while the bulk of their income comes from waiting tables, and I have to sleep with my Employer to get a job interview.

I WISH the process were that simple.

Yeah but can we all just agree that connecting some of these systems to the internet or a wireless network is a bad idea?

I want a person who sees one screen with internet access, makes a decision, and presses a physical button on the controls for the nuclear power plant.

So auto driving cars are great -- can be secured, but let's not be cavalier about "other things are computer controlled" -- there's going to be iPhone software that tweaks the car and that means 100X more access by script kiddies to mayhem.

Nobody said "the science is done" -- they said; "the alarm has been sounded."

A fire alarm goes off in your house -- do you wait for the research to be conclusive or do you look for smoke, get a fire extinguisher, call 911, leave the building or do something useful to deal with it? The research into; "what do we do, the alarms are going off?" Is underway.

Know, you are talking about an exploit that could be affecting 60% of Android phones vs. "a potential" of affecting iOS but no proof and you point out "but if there was a problem you'd have no options".

Sounds like someone in a campaign defending a corrupt and incompetent politician with the potential that the other candidate could start Armageddon based on them not doing anything to prevent Armageddon.

There are orders of magnitude better security on Bitcoins then there are on our electronic voting systems. They were designed in the first place by two hackers Rove got out of prison. They had three "Access databases" one for query, one that was used to submit the vote, and a third with no particular reason given. Any reason other than fraud to have three databases in a simple voting system and any REASON why a touch screen device is so expensive and flakes out so often? If Banks had these problems they'd lose billions at ATMS; they don't, so the only reason is fraud or incompetence.

I'd say that government agencies or very advanced hackers working for the mob took out some bitcoin companies with my first suspect being governments as it challenges the bankers they work for.

I already know I vote on a totally hackable system and it's just honest enough to be plausible. Pay no attention to Max Cleland's vote flipping in the last few minutes of the election.

Yeah, I notice how many foreign agents and bankers the FBI gets.

I'd like for once the FBI not to arrest someone from Green Peace, a protestor with Occupy Wall Street, a group of homeless men who had an FBI handler who put them up to it.

Eric Holder could take the Fed Chairman and the heads of Goldman Sachs and prosecute them for all sorts of crimes -- anyone paying attention will know about the abuse that one company has made. Why is this not happening?

There is nothing "legit" going on -- merely agencies preserving the status quo and a government owned by the people who they have to borrow from to get into office.

It's worse than "papers please" -- there are a lot of laws making it illegal to cover your face or disguise your appearance. Facial recognition software is not good enough yet to really track everyone -- but they've laid the groundwork.

Total Information Awareness means that all things are known about all people. Being that there are so many laws, I'm very sure we are all guilty of something. Prosecution therefore, is selective and can be used to target anyone getting in the way of people with power and three letter agencies.

Nice rhetorical argument with yourself -- however, the issue from my point of view is Wikileaks is being targeted for being one of the last few "journalist' organizations. Corporate Media investigates it's holding companies and advertisers in the USA and they never find anything wrong. However, on sweeps week you will find out from Action News that there is a repairman who charges you for a new muffler but puts in an old one, and there are some government workers they caught napping.

The real issue from my point of view is that Wikileaks is not being investigated for wrong-doing -- they are being investigated to find out who their sources are. It's supposed to be a Democratic Representative government here and that's impossible without an informed electorate -- so any group; CIA, NSA or Al Qaeda that wants to keep you from the truth and put out false information is against what America is supposed to be about.

Wikileaks is not untouchable and above criticism, but they are one of the most important and precious things to America and the world right now, and the NSA and CIA look like the fascist dirt bags we were warned about. At every turn they prove why they should be mothballed. Keeping us safe from worse bad guys? Right. And next year the bad guys will get worse because they can't fight back against a drone. They attack what they can attack where it gets the most attention because we live in a world of asymmetrical warfare. Going head to head doesn't work. Protesting murders for marketshare doesn't work.

We have Wikileaks because our news media dropped the ball, and we have terrorism because we don't listen to people who suffer.

After 30 years working in software development I've not seen a return to the bad old days as you suggest.

Well, I suppose if things are good for you then the problem is solved for all time.

Union negotiated rules are laws means you've got benefits on the backs of the efforts of others -- you're welcome. The fact that a lot of hourly employees at blue collar jobs work unpaid hours due to task quotas is also not your problem.

As soon as some Jim Crow Laws were repealed in red states because "we didn't need them any more" -- lawmakers went about abusing the election system before the ink was dry.

There is so much that is getting worse for workers and most people I know don't think their kids will have more opportunity than them. Have you heard some Republicans leaders talk about repealing certain labor laws because we don't need them any more? Probably not your problem.

It's irrelevant what the conditions on those other products are because the companies haven't shouted from the roof tops how much they are doing to prevent the situation

So the fact that Forbes and other news agencies only mentioned Apple as "having slave labor camps" and not mentioning the thousands of other US companies using the same facilities, which required Apple to YET AGAIN go out of their way to try and improve conditions --- now leads to more responsibility on Apple's part because they've tried to improve conditions, they state on a web page that it's their intent (that's not really wanky advertising -- nobody finds that page unless they search for it).

So fuck -- here we are with another story that ONLY mentions Apple and you have no problem with that, but it's still "all Apple" because they had to defend their reputation. WTF?

Apple has no damn control in these factories other than moving their business. They have pressured to improve conditions -- but the workers are all clamoring to work at these factories and they fall asleep on other assembly lines. Why does it matter if it's an iPhone or a Sony Tablet?

There's also a lot of smog in these worker districts. I think a lot more corporations need to step up and have standards. The only real way to improve worker conditions is to support tariffs on imports and labor unions -- but that's gone out of style in America.

Wow, "on the internet" means the FBI is always involved because -- hey, it crosses state lines!

So now some media side show and innuendo flame war has caught the attention of three letter agencies. Good, they need another excuse not to go after bankers and people with power doing lot's of crimes and bust some more hippies saving trees.

My guess is that some corporations or interest groups are sending money to politicos in these neighboring states because they want to stop the legalization of drugs.

Or the cops are complaining because they can't get what they used to on confiscated marijuana.

Honestly, if they could hand out pot at high schools to keep kids off Meth -- that would be an improvement.

Isn't thunder created by the vacuum of a collapsing ion trail from the lightning itself?

So the lightning creates a super charged plasma, and that heat and ionization forms a vacuum. Coupled with anti-matter and xray burst you get your perfect Gamma-Ray engine.

Now I did read that we could scan for life outside our solar system by looking for ionized light -- seems that the "left-handed chirality" of amino acids is do to the right-handedness of the more common organic compounds that a Yellow star creates. The right and left-handed carbon compounds cancel out over many reactions and the slight nod to right-handed means they are more plentiful. Since "more building blocks" equals less energy, life -- at least on earth, ended up being left-handed chemical bonds.

A plethora of left-handed carbon compounds on a planet full of life means that the light that bounces off of it will be polarized.

However -- if we can say that Lightning is created on planets with magnetospheres and oxygen, and likely is the catalyst for life (well, that's my guess -- regards to Mary Shelley). Then we might "more easily" find likely life-baring planets by detecting Gamma-Ray bursts. Should stick out more than polarized light.

Detecting both gamma-ray and polarization might give us a statistical probability for life. We will need some actual sample data more than one, however.

You can paint a sign on an elephant and call it a Petunia for all I care. Hitler has more in common with our Republican/Conservative Party in the USA than almost anything you could mention right now.

Both sides are allowing the wealthiest to buy the rules -- so in a few more years, it won't really matter who runs the stage show. I want a living wage, and I don't want to panic about health care and retirement. Even risk-taking super trapeze artists can use a safety net. Hitler was Progressive only in the sense that he made progress. He was socially regressive however. Remember, they persecuted people.

Whomever is not for war, not for companies over people, doesn't manipulate currencies, and above all else, values human life the most -- well, that's the person who is not like Hitler. Which group is suggesting we send a bunch of latin American refugees back across the border when the drug cartels are slaughtering school buses full of people? A lack of compassion and blind obedience to ideals is the direction of fascist pricks -- call it anything you want.