"It's like, thanks for everything you did in the 20th century, but you're being bought by a search engine," said Roger Entner, a telecommunications industry analyst and founder of Recon Analytics, a market research firm. He added, "Nobody ever buys a company and leaves it alone."

oh really? Warren Buffett would be very interested to hear that.

but then again, those who can, do; those who can't.....criticize those who can

As others pointed out,

"This is absolutely brilliant because it tracks what the stock market is actually driven by, personal opinion"

"The market itself is just the result of the combined emotional responses of investors"

having gained and lost $250k in the stock market myself in the go-go dot.com days, I can look back with 20/20 hindsight and can categorically state that the market is just the herd instinct. Remember the Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykrody 1983 movie "Trading Places"? remember how the Duke brothers tried to corner the orange juice market? and then the other traders in the pit said "hey, let's get in on that action!"

from wikipedia:
"The story about the Dukes' cornering of the orange juice market was probably inspired by the "Silver Thursday" market crash of 27 March 1980, during which the Hunt brothers of Texas tried to corner the silver market and subsequently failed to meet a $100 million margin call."

since they are tracking the herd mentality via social media, they will probably have more winning averages than not. time to take a closer look at their business model.

without reading any further, almost sounds like what they used in that movie 'Disclosure' with Michael Douglas; wearing the 3-D glasses and whatnot. or somewhat similar to 'Minority Report'

I've had some medical issues and work as an IT troubleshooter by profession, so I think I know when to suspect that someone is throwing me a line of bullshit, whether it be computer or user. In the case of a medical practitioner, I have found a few doctors (over 20 yrs experience) who try to bullshit me with a potential line about what they think the cause of my medical problem is or what the solution may be.

What it boils down to is that doctors are NOT omniscient. Just like us IT troubleshooters who do a lot of diagnosing of IT problems based on past experience, suspicions, and gut feelings, doctors do the same. They use their clinical training, their past experience to arrive at a PROBABLE DIAGNOSIS that is then usually borne out by any tests that may need to be performed.

MY STORY
------------------
With a pinched nerve and ruptured vertebra disc in my neck causing me major pain, one surgeon swore up and down that I _HAD_ to have a spinal fusion. Took his word for it. Spoke with my father about it who told me to get a second opinion....glad I did. The 2nd surgeon was a bit upset that #1 surgeon didn't try anything else prior to recommending surgery, so we did therapy first and then steroid shots (which resolved the issue). Prior to the therapy/steroid shot, I was sitting next to the anesthesiologist while my wife gave birth via C-section who noticed my twisted neck and painful expression (I was supposed to get the steroid shot that morning but my wife decided to go into labor instead ). He asked my story, I told him and named the doctor. His comment? "Yeah, I've heard that he [the surgeon] is surgery happy"......greeeeeeat......

Before the whole thing even started, my Primary Care Provider said "it's probably just a pulled muscle" (painful and sore all the time). Asked for x-rays, refused. Demanded them, got them. First comment from PCP was "Wow! You have HUGE bone spurs". Sent me to Physical Therapy. After 6 sessions of weekly therapy with little relief, therapist says "I don't think you have a pulled muscle, I think you have a pinched nerve or disc problem". Back to the PCP, who said "Well, they're just a PT, they're probably wrong." After 1st experience with PCP with x-rays, demanded a referral to a spinal specialist. You've already seen my story about him in the preceding paragraph.

Long story short - doctors are not god, hold them accountable. they are only as good as GIGO, and if they don't keep up with all the changes in their chosen field or open to using the most conservative treatment possible, then they are worse than useless, even dangerous.

And, mind you, there were "experienced clinicians"

you better hope his mother doesn't start reading /.

she might come looking for you if she hears you use ipCHAINS

I got two G1's about 16 months ago for free. When the wife's touch screen died, I called several cell phone repair stores and got a 100% response ratio of "Android phones (all of them, not just the G1's) are too hard to work on". The prices quoted made it cheaper for me to buy a used working cell phone than get it repaired, and the store owners agreed. They couldn't even guarantee that the touchscreen would work if replaced and advised me that it could be a 50-50 chance the repair wouldn't work and I'd still have to pay them.

Since then, I've been having second thoughts about getting another Android phone when my current contract runs out.

so now you have radioactive lava that could possibly be spewed out in an eruption.

lava doesn't "eat up" the radioactivity, it's a nice thought though.

Since the mafia and their ilk don't give a crap about how they dispose of it, I say make the punishment fit the crime. Make them live in it.

That's right, make them build their own houses of nuclear waste mixed with concrete, make them shower with radiation-tainted water, make them grow their own food in radiation-fouled soil. We'll see how fast they get out of the nuclear waste market.

How many engineers born here in this country do you know that can't get a job? There's too much competition from the H1B's they bring over from India/Pakistan.

I had a revelation the other day. I was in my carpool, driving our daily 100mile commute with the two other guys (who are both from India. I'm white and born here) and we were talking shop about different companies we used to work for. I mentioned how surprised I had been that a certain consulting company from India had so many Indians at one of my prior companies I worked for.

Much to my surprise, both of my carpool buddies had nothing nice to say about This Crappy Solution company (TCS, aka Tata) and both told me that TCS holds down wages even for them (they're direct hires, not H1B's) here in this country. They estimated that if TCS was forced out and H1B allotments were cut, they could make at least 30-50% more. They're both from India, over 40yrs old, been in this country for about 10-12 years.

Hell, when you've got the people from over there telling me how TCS pays it's consultant about half of what they would make here, it's time to really start checking to see where the politician is getting his kickbacks from and dig those skeletons out of their closets.

Problem NOT solved. What if you end up getting an account with the same company that sent you the wrong email? You just screwed yourself by blocking and auto-deleting.

The IDEAL SOLUTION would be for gmail/hotmail/yahoo/whatever to have a button just like the spam button that would then return the email to the sender as BOUNCED address email. You could make that decision. Spammers like to have current valid email address lists to sell to others, and if it bounces back as BAD, then not only will they remove it from the list, you've cut off that spammer. They don't really know if your email address is valid or not.

But wait, you say, then the spammers will never cut addresses off the list. Really? When all those returned emails start hitting THEIR email server and THEY have to process it, how happy do you think they will be? And even if they auto-delete, it will still be flodding their pipe to the Internet which slows down their whole operation, which will make them spend more of their own money to get another OC3 to flood spam which will get bounced back...... are you starting to see the point here? and even if they have buckets of money to spend on that, how happy do you think their pipe provider is gonna be that they are maxing out the pipe and causing a burden on THEIR network?

anyone care to point out the flaw in my logic?