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In Back Alleys and Basements, Video Arcades Quietly Survive
(Source: Wired)
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Fascinating Holiday Retreat: Anantara Dhigu Resort in Maldives
Lavinia, freshome.comWith soothing views of the Indian Ocean and the possibility to take a refreshing plunge in its waters every day, Anantara Dhigu Resort & Spa Maldives opens up its gates to a tropical paradise. Located just a 35 minute speedboa…
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In many ways, today’s smartphone litigation is a sequel to that far-off “look and feel” fight. But there’s an important difference: a series of court decisions in the 1990s effectively legalized software patents. As a result, incumbents like Apple have more powerful legal weapons to use against would-be competitors.
Google has spent billions on patents to help it fight back against legal actions by Apple, Microsoft, and others. The search giant may have deep enough pockets to buy the patents it needs to defend itself, vindicating its right to compete in the mobile computing market.
But firms without billions may not be so lucky. The failure of Apple’s original look and feel lawsuit cleared the way for smaller firms (like Jobs’s own NeXT) to compete in the desktop computing market. In contrast, if a firm today has a great idea for a mobile OS but lacks thousands of patents or the billions of dollars it takes to acquire them, it will likely be defenseless against angry patent lawyers. Apple’s demand that companies “stop using our ideas” will have real teeth.
That’s bad for firms that want to get into the mobile OS market. It’s also bad for users, who may be deprived of innovations these firms can bring to the market. But it’s great for patent lawyers.
” — If Android is a “stolen product,” then so was the iPhoneCorporations Don’t Need a Tax Cut, So Why Is Obama Proposing One? -
“The Obama administration is proposing to lower corporate taxes from the current 35 percent to 28 percent for most companies and to 25 percent for manufacturers.
The move is supposed to be “revenue neutral” – meaning the Administration is also proposing to close assorted corporate tax loopholes to offset the lost revenues. One such loophole allows corporations to park their earnings overseas where taxes are lower. Why isn’t the White House just proposing to close the loopholes without reducing overall corporate tax rates? That would generate more tax revenue that could be used for, say, public schools.
It’s not as if corporations are hurting. Quite the contrary. American companies are booking higher profits than ever. They’re sitting on $2 trillion of cash they don’t know what to do with. And it’s not as if corporate taxes are high. In fact, corporate tax receipts as a share of profits is now at its lowest level in at least 40 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, corporate federal taxes paid last year dropped to 12.1 percent of profits earned from activities within the United States. That’s a gigantic drop from the 25.6 percent, on average, that corporations paid from 1987 to 2008.
And it’s not that corporations are paying an inordinate share of federal tax revenues. Here again, the reality is just the opposite. Corporate taxes have plummeted as a share of total federal revenues. In 1953, under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, corporate taxes accounted for 32 percent of total federal tax revenues. Now they’re only 10 percent. […]
The Administration’s initiative doesn’t even make sense as a bargaining maneuver.”
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The actual Most Interesting Man in the World died last week. If you haven’t taken a minute to read his obituary, please do so now.
Gallery: Lego model of the Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS detector | UniversityPost
