Microsoft is making money. Lots of it. Facebook has a really good idea on how to make money.

Make your predictions about MS failing...there's evidence to suggest they are going the way of the dinosaur. Facebook's Golden Goose on the other hand has yet to lay eggs.

If he can make 4, so can the bozo that wants to create a fake account to for your pets, browsing ex girlfriends, gaming Farmville perks, and avoiding your boss' prying eyes.

In short, there aren't a billion people on facebook--nowhere near it. An important fact for businesses that are looking to tap into a network of "real" people.

How about, "Render unto Caesar."

???

To create artificial scarcity on toner modules, and in turn keeping prices on consumables high.

Please tell me this is a joke...

The term "war chest" also relates to funds that can be used on company acquisitions.

This should not be modded insightful, and the person should be glad that they posted as AC.

$130 per share would barely cover the amount of PURE CASH the company holds, let alone there assets in real estate, patents, office furniture/equipment etc.... Factor in other details such as...oh I dunno... actual profits... projected earnings and other profit making assets, one could argue that this is one of the few companies IN THE WORLD that deserve such a high valuation. How many multibillion dollar companies can you name that have the same profit margins as Apple? That's a tough list to compile. How many companies beat analyst estimates nearly every single quarter and post record profits on a regular basis?

Your opinion on share buyback is sound, however. It's popular right now to believe share buybacks are a waste of money. Investors don't seem to be moved very much by this gesture now days. You can rightfully argue the buyback plan is a waste, but on paper less stock available should equal more value per share.

Lived there for a couple years. Booze is already free flowing, and is not a cultural taboo at all, at least in the west. Prostitution is huge too. Trannny's everywhere at night. Russian imported women too.

Not trying to take away from your message... just stating those two, from my experience, is alive and flourishing already.

That's because we like you Canadians. Spend some time around the southern border checkpoints... I know a few white people that spend as much time going through checkpoints as I do, and they seem to have good luck not ever being screened. Get yourself some skin within a couple shades of brown like me and I tell you what...your odds shoot through the roof.

I roll thru two checkpoints between Phx and San Diego on a near weekly basis. Sometimes theres an extra 1 or 2 random checkpoints included between that route.

About 80% of my pass thru's have invloved a drug dog walking by the car.
They always ask citizenship, maybe some other questions like "Is this your car?" or "Could you state your birthdate?"
For me, I get selected for "Secondary screen" 1/3rd of the time. During the second screening they will ask you several questions to stress you or try to get you to trip up. They will then ask to see what is in your trunk. Other times they'll plain ask to search your entire vehicle. I've gotten this check so many times that I now say NO when they ask to search my car. You can say NO, just be prepared for them to haze you A LOT.

I'm of [mostly] Asian decent but 50% of people who first meet me say I look Mexican. This seems to factor into my high screening ratio. I feel this to be true because a family member of my girlfriend works BP. On the subject of profiling he has told me "Of course we don't profile! (WINK, WINK, Big Smile, Thumbs up)

The checkpoints, I assure you, are as deplorable as everyone here makes them out to be. The BP is a glorified social program to keep underachievers and ex military folks employed.

Which is PERFECT if you don't want things to work correctly in the first place! Good products delivered efficiently become cheap.

Its about profit maximization. More fuckups = more billable hours and expenses to pass on to the customer :)~

If you let them in your datacenter, it's your fault if anything goes wrong in there.
If your vendor botched a deployment or delivers a functionally useless product, it's your fault for buying into their marketing campaign and not understanding what you just got yourself into.

But mostly, I think the blame system was by design here...Hire someone else to do the job for everything possible. Fire them/drop contracts when they don't work for you, then file insurance claims to compensate (plus extra if you do it right) for the damages. The trick is to keep the damages rolling as expected--enough to keep insurance revenues up, but not enough so that your premiums adjust to make it unprofitable.

I can see how this is a problem for many. Driving, much like any activity, is dependent on preference and personal techniques, so tuning the specs can be very subjective...Anything that can gets the job done safely is good. That floating frame of reference is indeed difficult to get used to, but not impossible if you take a different perspective and put absolute trust in your intstruments.

If you point the mirrors out towards your blind spot until the body of your vehicle is JUST out of sight of the mirror, your frame of reference is a very real, very defined space--anything beyond the edge of that mirror is your car.
Now that you can't see your own vehicle, you naturally feel like you are flying blind. Thats ok. Pilots are trained to trust their instruments. Firefighters are trained to trust their suits and respirators will hold up in the heat. Without that trust, they'd be too scared or uninformed to do the right thing that saves lives in crisis. The same mindset could be applied to your trust in the mirrors, as those objects will always bend and reflect light the exact same way.

If your driving style is very "seat of the pants" or driven by feel, this technique is virtually worthless. Likewise if you share a vehicle with someone, or find yourself slouching or shifting your body position often while driving. tl;dr--Try it out if you are inclined to be a regimented driver or tend to treat yourself as an extension of the driving tool.

UGH, you don't know how much I want to hug you for pointing this out.
Just this week I had narrowly avoided a collision while backing out of a tight parking spot. Halfway out another car begins backing up. I can't reverse anymore because of a car waiting behind me, cant go forward or return to the parking spot because the other car had already backed out far enough to prevent me. I honked the horn continuously for several seconds until they correct themselves just inches before collision and return to their start position.

As I drive off I get a better look of the passenger, cursing to myself because the idiot wouldn't spend 2 seconds looking over her back. From a profile view I noticed the driver was an extremely obese woman crammed in a 2 door honda civic with chest fat so prominent you couldn't tell if her own chin was digging into her shoulders or her breasts. I doubt she had much more than 90 degrees of free head rotation.

THIS IS THE FUTURE, AMERICA.

Don't think parent should have been modded offtopic. The article cites people buying this sort of thing have a higher return percentage than others as a possible reason for the policy.

+1 Funny? or -1 Gross maybe...