Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Silicon Valley Firms in Alleged Salary Fixing Scheme
April 22nd, 2012Via: MacWorld: Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe are accused of agreeing not to poach each others staff, therefore holding back career development and suppressing compensation. A federal court in California has ordered seven technology companies in the state including Apple, Intel, Adobe and Google to face a private antitrust suit from five former employees, who […]
Many Portuguese Returning to the Land
April 22nd, 2012Via: RTE: Disillusioned by the unfulfilled promise of the cities and feeling stifled by tough austerity measures aimed at coping with an economic downturn, some Portuguese are opting out and returning to the land. Jose Diogo, who spent two years in Lisbon working as a technical advisor at a meat company, was one who fled […]
Another Weird Incident Involving Possibly Bogus Securities in Italy
April 22nd, 2012Via: Bloomberg: Italy’s financial police seized U.S. government securities with a nominal value of $1.5 billion from an unidentified man in his 70s, they said in an e-mailed statement. The police said they also took certificates of deposit for about 1,000 tons of gold, which together with the U.S. bonds are worth more than 3 […]
Scientific Fraud: ‘Nobody Had Noticed the Whole Thing Was Rotten’
April 21st, 2012Nobody noticed, eh? Well, my archives go back to 2002, for example, but I don’t count, and thousands of others like me don’t count. The professionally educated ignoramus class heaps scorn on “conspiracy theorists” for outing their crackpot grant swindling and corporate profit cult for what it is, but then, when the rot has gotten […]
Google Billionaires Eric Schmidt and Larry Page Have Teamed Up with James Cameron for Space Mining Venture
April 21st, 2012Via: Reuters: Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and billionaire co-founder Larry Page have teamed up with “Avatar” director James Cameron and other investors to back an ambitious space exploration and natural resources venture, details of which will be unveiled next week. The fledgling company, called Planetary Resources, will be unveiled at a Tuesday news conference […]
IBM Creates Lithium-Air Battery with 15 Times the Power Density of Lithium-Ion
April 20th, 2012Via: ExtremeTech: As part of its Battery 500 project — an initiative started by IBM in 2009 to produce a battery capable of powering a car for 500 miles — Big Blue has successfully demonstrated a light-weight, ultra-high-density, lithium-air battery. In IBM’s lithium-air battery, oxygen is reacted with lithium to create lithium peroxide and electrical […]
Liquid Metal Battery
April 20th, 2012Via: MIT: MIT Professor Don Sadoway, an expert in materials chemistry, brought his astonishing battery idea to the recent talks at TED 2012: Full Spectrum. While most new battery inventions target spaces inside smartphones or electric cars, Sadoway’s idea is big. Gigantic, in fact. He and his team have invented a Liquid Metal Battery that […]
Food Stamp Rolls Increase 70% from 2007, Projected to Keep Increasing Until 2014
April 20th, 2012Green shoots pushed out to 2014? Via: Wall Street Journal: The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a 70% increase from 2007. It said the number of people receiving the benefits, commonly known as food stamps, would continue growing until 2014. Spending for the […]
IBM’s Internal Plan to Grow Earnings-Per-Share to $20 by 2015: Fire Most U.S. Employees
April 19th, 2012Via: Cringely: The direct impetus for this column is IBM’s internal plan to grow earnings-per-share (EPS) to $20 by 2015. The primary method for accomplishing this feat, according to the plan, will be by reducing US employee head count by 78 percent in that time frame. Reducing employees by more than three quarters in three […]
Blamed for Bee Collapse, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm
April 19th, 2012Via: Natural Society: Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident […]
