Almost every single industry in america is oligopoly and defending oligopolies with the free market capitalism argument is completely illogical and unfair.
If companies (private or state owned) are making huge profits at the cost of tax-payers money, then capitalism or socialism doesn't make any differences...
i guess gold and silver are the best bet.. though i dont know its a right time to buy right now as prices has shot in last couple of years... dollar crash may also result in to stock-crash and someone who can predict this can also buy 'short' ETFs. Dollar crash will also create demand in Oil which in-turn will increase the oil price. all these factors can help anyone to shield from now. Also one can start investing in forex, many smart immigrants have started investing in their home countries so that there is some risk mitigation.
Interested readers can also read "10 Bubbles in the making" @
i wont be surprised if 80 is "few" for China as they might be planning to have 800 trains in next 10 or 20 years (its a huge country - geographically ) ... who knows?
Loved it when you said "Ambitious people are rare, ... When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age."
IMO, Ambitious people are like power engine or say running water - its a old saying that running water never stops at any hurdles, no mater what - they pass thru huge mountains and forests - if a ambitious person loves what he/she is doing then nothing can stop him/her - you can see the fire in their eyes to succeed, the ambition and love for their work itself becomes determination ...
I just can't wait for my browser to becomes my OS - it would be a game changing scenario - it won't matter what is pre-installed, you'll be able to switch your OS in a second ... it won't even matter what h/w you are using (PC on intel, MAC on intel, Linux on whatever) ....
i wonder how much a h/w platform or pre-installed s/w would matter in one's life when a browser is your new OS and almost all your apps are on the cloud !!!
i second with you - upgrading existing infrastructure or implementing small creative fixes will solve most of the problems and will also create huge amount of direct and indirect jobs ... huge benefit of infrastructure spending is you require people right at the site so no outsourcing (not that i'm aginst but still it helps local economy)
1. It's safer than car, very few or no accidents compare to highway accidents - so you can't put value to human life.
2. Compare to air and car drive, weather conditions doesn't impact HSR.
3. Peace of mind: Compare to driving car, its a peace of mind as you may relax rather than stressing out due to driving itself or weather or traffic jams etc.
4. Compare to air travel, there is no hijack like situation possible. i.e. peace of mind to government.
5. No matter how fast you drive a car or bus, you just can't beat HSR's speed and time saved due to speed. Plus no speeding ticket :)
i know i'll be downgraded for saying this and i'm ok with that because most of the hackers are apple lovers and this is hackers community and not marketing forum :) but anyway if you think that apple charges reasonably for their products then you've no clue how apple is doing in other parts of the world - marketing research says that companies like apple had made money from westerners ONLY !!!
yes, apple offers quality products
yes, apple charges for premium
yes, apple has all the innovation working for them ....
But
Apple is a hit in western world only where people spend blindly .... look at the success rate of apple in 3rd world countries (where population is huge) - you will know that they are nowhere in top 10 --- surprised? let me give you an example:
ipod: a music player that is a huge hit in north-america is a super-flop product amongst south-asians!!! WHY? Why people who are known as a smartest consumers in the world don't buy ipods? the reason is not only the price of an ipod but also the lack of features in ipods ... the other mp3 player offer way more features than ipods ... and sound quality is as good as ipods .... So why one would pay more price for less features and get a same quality of output???????????? this is not me who is saying it, its a huge market research for all the premium products that has a good following in western countries but no takers in other parts of the world.
So the same product that we call "premium" in america (or western world) is labeled as a "rip-off" in other parts of the world where a person is called as a foolish for paying more price and getting same quality output but way less features...
i agree with you that "Apple needs to innovate on the low end, or die" because cloud computing and browser OS are going to be a game changer - if every task is done on the net and if the browser is the OS then how would one differentiate a PC from MAC??? all you need is a hardware with a browser OS that is slick and speedy, while all the apps that resides on the net will have same look and feel on all the browsers doesn't matter what hardware you're using!
open university/courses will become a norm... if you're interested in the subject then there should not be any reason why you cant study and clear exams without any hassle ....
one such univ. is "University of the People", world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement of higher education.
i agree with you - Yahoo finance, Yahoo sports and Yahoo movies are very popular ... also one might be surprised that yahoo has huge loyal fans in asian countries like china, hongkong, singapore, india, indonesia etc.... people from these countries started their internet life with yahoo search and email services and they still use it, so yes, there are many yahoo properties that are undoubtedly leading the competition...
this is smart move by twitter - inviting celebrities so that media will help to get more traffic ... more traction means more valuation means more money from investors ...
This is just like YC clone except asking for 20% of share in return... i think this is a lot for a startup to give away... i'm not saying its wrong or bad but can't justify it either ...
just 2 days a go i predicted that google will come out with its own OS - though android - but never expected that in just couple of days my gut feeling will come true ...
If companies (private or state owned) are making huge profits at the cost of tax-payers money, then capitalism or socialism doesn't make any differences...