Occupy Wall Street - Page 115

On October 26 2011 17:09 logikly wrote:
they are indeed anti capitalistic protesters. Hell they quote the communist manifesto almost to the verbatim.

On October 26 2011 17:13 Saji wrote:


Right and wrong, some are, some arent, what all the people in OWS have in common is that they are ANTI-CORRUPTION

is it that fact so hard to understand?

On October 26 2011 10:43 Ropid wrote:
Kiarip sounded like all regulations are bad and asked for an example where regulations helped the market. This was the first example I remembered where it is clear that some kind of intervention and oversight was needed, and I thought everyone here would know about AMD and Intel's past.

On October 26 2011 10:43 Ropid wrote:
If you do not know about what happened, AMD sued citing anti-trust laws, and Intel counter-sued about patents. The overall outcome was Intel paying $1.25 billion to AMD in a settlement. If you are interested, typing "AMD Intel settlement" into Google will lead you to news articles about the settlement, and those articles will generally have a paragraph roughly summarizing the circumstances in the past.

The question if Intel's tactics worked, I would guess it did, and it was worth it for Intel. AMD had the best product for a few short years, but never managed to use that fact to overtake Intel's market share. Intel did eventually catch up regarding the processor design. Without Intel's illegal machinations, AMD would have earned more money when they had the design lead. This would surely be better for competing with Intel nowadays, and the market would be better for everyone involved (including the PC end consumer), except Intel.

On October 26 2011 17:21 TanGeng wrote:

I was looking for an insightful analysis of the business tactic from someone with more than passing knowledge of the business of the PC market. I didn't feel like doing it myself.


AMD filed suit against Intel for using tactics that would have been acceptable for companies didn't dominate 80% of the market share like Intel did. Anti-trust cases have those double standards and leave that gray area for judicial discretion. I'll congratulate AMD and their lawyers on the settlement victory.

What I don't see is Intel winning with the tactic. I can't rule it out, but the evidence is sparse. The hint that AMD would otherwise had an opportunity to overtake Intel's market share is pure conjecture. The PC market emphasises brand recognition over performance, and Intel has always dominated AMD in brand recognition around the world. A few years of design advantage isn't nearly enough to turn that around. In fact, it'd be absurd to expect that.

Intel's deep discount model for exclusivity cuts both ways. When a PC house decides not to give Intel exclusivity, AMD's pricing would be superior. Intel was forcing PC houses to choose sides, and certain PC houses such as Dell computing were famously to Intel in part due to the exclusivity discount. They had faith in Intel, its pricing, and its history of excellent products, and Intel didn't disappoint by catching up to AMD within a few years.

Instead of predictions of a hypothetical higher AMD market share, tell me if Intel's combination of forcing vendor exclusivity while offering an inferior product was a winning formula. Was Intel's market share increasing or decreasing in the PC market segment when this was happening? Was AMD's market share increasing or decreasing when this was happening? I don't know what happened in the PC market and I would be very interested to know if Intel had a successful tactic. What I do know is that in the more tech-savvy and cost-conscious server market, AMD's Opteron was blowing Intel out for a few years.

On October 26 2011 12:23 HCastorp wrote:
Matt Taibbi's latest:

OWS isn't mad at Wall Street for winning, but for cheating

A strong reply to one of the most common criticisms of the protesters: That they are simply envious of the rich.

ETA: OH yeah, and this, from Oakland tonight:


There would be footage from above, but the two major-network choppers ended their livestream simultaneously, just minutes before the teargas was deployed. I'm not usually a big media-conspiracy guy, but that is just pathetic.

On October 26 2011 23:48 NoobieOne wrote:
Okay hear me out. One of the complaints against the protests even here is that it is anti-capitalist. Now I want you all to think, our system of capitalism no longer works. In order for capitalism to succeed for the common worker there must be more jobs than there are people to fill them. That way whatever company pays more will get the better quality workers. With there being more workers looking for jobs than jobs itself capitalism dictates that the companies shouldn't raise wages due to the ability to keep paying their employes the same since they can't get jobs elsewhere. This means more profit for the big business and less for the common worker because prices of items are still going up with inflation.

So no, I do not want to hear this is anticapitalist as an excuse. Capitalism isn't working the way that its supposed to right now so the system MUST be changed some way. I am not saying to go to a communist or socialist system but pure capitalism is not viable inside our current economic system.

PLEASE tell me why moving away from the capitalism ideas is a bad thing because right now I feel that capitalism is the core of the problem and don't just quote something you heard on the news, think for yourself.

On October 25 2011 12:27 Kiarip wrote:


and they do this with the help of government regulation, so obviously this isn't an example of a free market being counter-productive.


I don't. I'm not saying that markets are only sometimes useful, I'm saying that yes:

1) People are not ONLY creative in pursuit of capital
and
2) Innovation isn't ALWAYS rewarded in a capitalist society.

But those two things don't take away anything from capitalism.

People aren't going to all of a sudden be more innovative for the sake of things other capital, if capitalism is removed, but there will be less people that are trying to be innovative for the sake of capital,

and yes not all innovation gets rewarded in a capitalist society, only the useful ones do. In addition, sometimes people can be cheated out of their reward (even without anything illegal happening,) but this is also just as likely in a non-capitalism society.

On October 26 2011 17:09 logikly wrote:
they are indeed anti capitalistic protesters. Hell they quote the communist manifesto almost to the verbatim.

1. Capital Incentive never retards creativity.
2. Markets never punish "useful" innovation.

Would you agree with those statements?

On October 27 2011 01:01 Traeon wrote:


I strongly disagree with these statements. The pharma industry shows how profit gets in the way of consumer interest. It's more profitable to regularly create a new and patentable drug because that allows the company to ask 10x the price of a generic drug. This new drug doesn't have to better than alternatives (and often isn't. New drugs also are always more risky than older ones because it takes decades for the full spectrum of side effects and interactions to become known).

Why this works? Lots of money sunk into marketing and "education".

On October 26 2011 17:09 logikly wrote:
they are indeed anti capitalistic protesters. Hell they quote the communist manifesto almost to the verbatim.

Veterans for Peace member Scott Olsen was wounded by a less-lethal round fired by either San Francisco Sheriffs deputies or Palo Alto Police on October 25, 2011 at 14th Street and Broadway in Downtown Oakland

On October 27 2011 01:01 Traeon wrote:


I strongly disagree with these statements. The pharma industry shows how profit gets in the way of consumer interest, and how innovation of questionable value is actually the most profitable. It's more profitable to regularly create a new and patentable drug because that allows the company to ask 10x the price of a generic drug. This new drug doesn't have to better than alternatives (and often isn't. New drugs also are always more risky than older ones because it takes decades for the full spectrum of side effects and interactions to become known).

Why this works? Lots of money sunk into marketing and "education".

Don't get me started on research being heavily focused on treatment rather than finding real cures (hint: lifetime treatment of patients is profitable, a quick cure isn't)

So yea, privatization is failing horribly in medical research imo.

On October 27 2011 01:57 PrideNeverDie wrote:


actually, it isn't always more profitable to regularly create a new and patentable drug. even if the new drug has shown improvement in treatments over an old generic drug, the company has to convince doctors and insurance companies that it is worth the extra cost to the patient. this is why so much money is spent on pharm reps. those ads in tv/magazines are trying to get the patients on the side of pharma to convince their doctors to prescribe the new drugs.

an example of this: a doctor treating a patient who has a very limited insurance plan or no insurance at all will not prescribe the latest psychiatric medication. the doctor's responsibility is to factor in the patient's economic situation to formulate the best treatment plan for that particular individual. the doctor would prescribe the generic. even if the doctor wanted to prescribe the latest psychiatric medication, the patient's insurance would deny the medication until it is proven that the generic medications do not work. the insurance company wants their patient to use the least expensive medication so that their costs are as little as possible. there is no elaborate conspiracy between the pharmaceutical company, health insurance, and the doctor to screw the patient out of as much money as possible. the truth is that all 3 of the parties mentioned have conflicting interests: the doctor wants the best possible treatment for his patient, the pharmaceutical company wants the patient to buy the most expensive medication to increase their profit, and the health insurance wants the patient to buy the least expensive generic to lower the amount the health insurance needs to spend.

the research being heavily focused on treatment is due to the fact that it is much easier to quantify. when doing scientific studies, it is much more cost-effective to look at the symptoms than take tissue samples of the diseased organs in patients.

we do not have enough knowledge and control over the human body to be able to pinpoint exact causes of pathological conditions and cure them outright. a lot of medicine is looking at a variety of general clues and putting them together like a puzzle to figure out the disease. in fact, the reason why American healthcare is so expensive is because of the demand of the patient to find out exactly what is wrong with them or they will sue. American patients get more MRIs and CTs done than any other country in the world and this is because if they didn't the doctor could possibly lose his license in a medical malpractice suit. until we can easily remove tissue samples from any part of the human body, doctors rely on looking at blurry pictures of general regions of the body to decide the disease present.

also, a lot of times there isn't a short-term cure available. most patients do not approach a doctor until their condition is so severe it impedes their life. imagine the uproar caused if a patient with kidney stones came to a doctor and the doctor told him to go home and let it pass without prescribing him anything. people are always complaining about doctors overprescribing medication in order to create patient addiction, but the second they are the ones in pain the doctor can't prescribe them enough painkillers. it is a lose-lose situation for the doctor and no matter what the doctor does he or she will be badmouthed on the internet.

actually privatization has improved medical research tremendously. if you search my post history, you can read my post outlining why corporate research is a lot better than government research. private corporations actually conduct much better studies than governments because it is in their best interest to have evidence that their medication works without question. i also outline the ways corporations tinker with the studies, so don't write off my post as corporation favored.

i don't blame you for not knowing a lot of this information because you need to be in medical school until you truly understand why a doctor does the things he does. also, until you actually conduct a medical study, you wouldn't know the specific details behind corporate research. however, please don't state conclusions you make as fact. just because it makes logical sense to you doesn't mean that it is the truth. you just aren't able to see the whole picture.

Google has been asked by a US law enforcement agency to remove several videos exposing police brutality from the video sharing service YouTube, the company has revealed in its latest update to an online transparency report.

Another request filed by a different agency required Google to remove videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. The two requests were among 92 submissions for content removal by various authorities in the US filed between January and June 2011. Both were rejected by Google along with 27 per cent of the submissions.

The IT giant says the overall number of requests for content removal it receives from governmental agencies has risen, and so has the number of requests to disclose the private data of Google users.

Brazil heads the first list with 224 separate demands to remove a total of 689 items from its search results, as well as from YouTube and various other services. Google says its social networking service Orkut is very popular in the Latin American country, which partially explains the number of requests.

Heading the list of countries requesting the disclosure of personal data is the United States, where a total of 5,950 submissions targeting 11,057 user accounts have been filed. Google fully or partially complied with 93 per cent of those requests. Second on the list is India, with 1,732 requests over a six-month period.

Russian officials filed fewer than 10 requests to remove content and 42 requests to disclose user information (which was the first time the number reached Google’s threshold for reporting). The company complied with 75 per cent of the Russian requests concerning content and none of those concerning user data.

Google says it hopes that its report will contribute to the ongoing public discussion on the ways the internet needs to be regulated.

We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.
The number of content removal requests we received increased by 70% compared to the previous reporting period.

The number of user data requests we received increased by 29% compared to the previous reporting period.

Police used tear gas on at least three separate occasions to disperse more than 1,000 demonstrators who took to the streets of Oakland, California Tuesday evening as running street battles engulfed the city for more than six hours.

Thick billows of smoke and exploding projectiles filled the streets of downtown Oakland as television footage showed a man who was bleeding after reportedly being hit in the head by a tear gas canister, the Oakland Tribune reports.

"We had to deploy gas to stop people from throwing rocks and bottles at police," said Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, as cited by the daily.

However, other unconfirmed reports indicate that flash-bang grenades and wooden dowels – solid, cylindrical rods – were used against protesters.

A still of Ali Winston's video

The authorities denied those reports, however, claiming that the commotion had been caused by protesters who were lobbing fireworks at police.

The conflicting reports came as live helicopter camera feeds for both ABC and CBS news networks were apparently cut right before police hurled tear gas canisters, only to cut back in later, as reported by the popular website, Gawker.