Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category
Posted on January 26, 2011 - by Venik
Kodak Learns the Art of Patent Trolling
Just read in Bloomberg that Kodak is looking at a possible loss in its ITC patent infringement case against Apple and RIM. Kodak says that the low-resolution preview feature found in most digital cameras is infringing on a Kodak patent. The ITC judge said that patent should be invalidated, because the low-res preview technology is [...]
Posted on December 7, 2010 - by Venik
PayPal dumps Wikileaks
As you already know, PayPal stopped accepting charitable donations for Wikileaks. The Guardian reported that PayPal froze about eighty thousand dollars donated to Wikileaks via PayPal Donations service. So far PayPal has refused to release the funds, nor has it issued refunds to its customers who donated the money. I know this because I donated [...]
Posted on December 1, 2010 - by Venik
NATO, Russia, and Romania
In the recent interview for Romania Libera, Basescu announced that Romania will absorb its poor neighbor Moldova within twenty five years. According to Basescu, this “reunification” is a done deal and would have happened earlier if it wasn’t for the interference from the evil Russians. Acquiring Moldova’s territories is a key aspect of the Greater Romania concept.
Posted on May 30, 2010 - by Venik
Deepwater Sombrero
According to the latest news reports every attempt to plug the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico has failed. At some point last week it became obvious that BP has been copying the failed attempts to stop the 1979 Ixtoc spill. It is interesting to note, that the two drilling rigs – the Ixtoc [...]
Posted on January 21, 2010 - by Venik
Oracle vs. MySQL
Sun Microsystems – the creator of Solaris operating system and manufacturer of my favorite computers – is being acquired by Oracle – the maker of the world’s leading commercial database software that works best on Sun servers. This seems like a good deal for both Oracle and Sun. Unfortunately, this merger will be very bad [...]
Posted on October 7, 2009 - by Venik
Your Savings and the Decline of the Dollar
About a year ago I wrote about the plans Russia and other oil-producing nations have for breaking the tie between the price of oil and the value of the dollar. For years Russia and OPEC countries have been tiptoeing around this issue until the recent massive collapse of the US banking industry forced their plans [...]
Posted on May 23, 2009 - by Venik
Swiss Humor
The IMD – a Swiss business college situated on the shore of Lake Geneva popular among Russian nouveau riche – recently published a glossy report ranking “competitiveness” of national economies. Reading the preamble to the report one may be very impressed by the advanced methodology used by IMD’s researchers. Everything looks very proper and scientific. [...]
Posted on May 17, 2009 - by Venik
Pipeline Business
The EU continues waging a losing battle for its energy independence from Russia. Gazprom, hit hard by the global economic recession and dropping energy demands, may be skating on thin ice, but it is still well ahead of the EU. Following the August war with Georgia, Russia moved to consolidate its gains in the region [...]
Posted on April 21, 2009 - by Venik
Open-Sourcing JSF
The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese hackers broke into the Department of Defense computer systems and stole several terabytes of information related to the $300-billion Joint Strike Fighter project. Let’s imagine that three terabytes (this would be the minimum to qualify as “several”) of data were transferred over a 10-mbps connection. This is a [...]
Posted on April 20, 2009 - by Venik
Loudicrous
It seems Lou Dobbs decided to join the choir of starry-eyed optimists who believe that the recession is over that the American economy will begin to recover any month now. Lou, what is the point of parading Nobel Prize-winning economists on your show if all you do is interrupt them with your idiotic ideas? I [...]
Posted on April 16, 2009 - by Venik
Glimmers of hope
Recently there has a lot of talk of Obama’s “glimmers of hope” in the US economy. This tentative optimism hinges precariously on the small stock market gains in the past few days. Companies across the country are cutting production and inventories and the expectation is that eventually this will spur some consumer demand. This is [...]
Posted on March 26, 2009 - by Venik
Round Two
CNBC’s Jim Cramer believes that the economic recession might have reached the bottom and that we already are beginning to see signs of improvement. Indeed, the slightly-lower-than-expected quarterly decline reported by Best Buy infused financial analysts with much optimism. But even superficial analysis of Best Buy’s performance during the past quarter reveals the true reason [...]
Posted on March 21, 2009 - by Venik
The Jerks
The AIG bonus scandal is gaining momentum. According to the latest information, the total payout was $218 million and not $165 million, as was previously believed. Bonuses of at least $1 million each were paid to some 73 AIG executives, while four of them received bonuses in excess of $4 million. Of course, this is [...]
Posted on March 12, 2009 - by Venik
Madoff’s Confession
Since 1960s, Bernard Madoff’s investment scheme attracted thousands of wealthy clients primarily of Jewish descent. Madoff admitted defrauding his 4800 clients of $64.8 billion, which translates into a $13-million average investment for each account. Madoff’s victims were millionaires who often spent a great deal of time and money to get close to Bernard Madoff just [...]
