makhanko

I own two Volvos and I can tell you that with the new insanely complicated engines no mechanic will touch the car. You will be stuck servicing it at Volvo dealership at lawyers hourly rates. And this will be aggravated by the fact that with more moving parts the car will break more often. Plus the cost of the new engine is much higher. The base price of the 2016 XC90 with the new engine is well above what the previous model cost. The fuel efficiency savings are unlikely to come close to offsetting the increased cost of ownership.

It seems that Volvo adopted the "differentiation" strategy of some hardware manufacturers - needlessly boosting the specs which looks good on paper but doesn't do squat for the end user.

In my opinion it's move in the wrong direction for Volvo that used be known for it's simplicity.

Indeed it was a very ... unbalanced piece from someone who has only visited Russia once in two decades (by his own admission).

Basically a self-proclaimed "serial entrepreneur" who has little understanding or insight on the subject is exploiting a politically/ emotionally charged topic for his own questionable gain. Why read this crap?

In personal income tax situation it would be an equivalent of paying a fee (bribe) to some 80 year old guy to sign him on as a dependent to claim a deduction your our income tax.

Here is a good explanation why corporations are taxable:

Corporations are participants of the economy and their profits depend on tax-financed public goods: healthy and educated workforces; good infrastructure; publicly enforced respect for contracts and property rights, and so on. When corporations avoid or evade tax, legally or illegally, they free ride on the backs of the rest of us. Stop taxing them, and you savagely undermine political community.

I wonder if using outlet would be considered a fair use of the facilities. The car owner's son was playing tennis at the school which means he was given a permission to use the facility. If this is the case then using the parking lot, drinking fountain, water in the bathroom, light or electric outlet at the school should be considered a fair use unless there is something that indicates otherwise (like a no-parking sign)

Absolutely agree that if there were no prior encounters with man who charged his car, then the cop acted in bad faith wasting tens of thousands of dollars of public money in judicial costs for a "crime" than could have been prevented with a simple community policing effort, basically telling the guy to unplug the car.

But of course considering that crappy newspapers like USAToday often omit information to make the stories sound bigger (technically not a lie), there may have been some background that caused the cop to arrest the car owner.

Also I wonder if using outlet would be considered a fair use of the facilities. The car owner son was playing tennis at the school which means he was given a permission to use the facility. If this is the case then using the parking lot, drinking fountain, light or electric outlet at the school should be considered a fair use.

On the other hand. Apple users can already determine the location of their phone and remotely lock or wipe out the iPhone using Apple's iCloud website. Thus apple has technical ability to do just the same - just a matter of sending few command by the server administrator.

Great summary!

Kudos to this comment for pointing out the addiction angle. There are definitely much more dangerous products being sold than even traditional cigarette, but hardly there is a legally marketed product more addictive than nicotine. The sale of such products should be strictly regulated, not only it because of the human costs but because it undermines the the principle of free market exchange when a customer is not at will to buy or not buy the product or alternatives. On the other hand the benefit of converting traditional smoker to e-cigs is undisputed.

Why hasn't anybody figured out to put a reasonable time limit on each device Mac address? 1 hour since you first log in should be enough to satisfy 90% of customers and discourage the 10% hogging seats. Its like saying - you are limited to 5 refills and being able to enforce it discretely. Who would object to that other than those taking advantage?

This is why Google and technology in general should stay away from foreign policy where the end always justifies the means, no matter what the rhetoric is.

Unfortunately building trust using this method is becoming increasingly difficult. The more sellers use it (up to the point that books are written about it) the more it's being washed out and abused, the more aware consumers become of the manipulation and the more they reject it. I see more and more sellers having to resort to statements like "Free something - NO questions asked, NO registration, NO strings attached...", which defeats the whole purpose.

Can't agree more. Pleading guilty for 6 month for Aaron would have meant publicly admitting that he was nothing but a common thief without a day in court. Despite what Dolan says in his twitter, the threat of 35 years must have been pretty real in order for DOJ to use it as leverage against Aaron.

Article on Boston.com with the screenshot of Dolan tweeter posts

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/277353-l...

Being Russian myself I always thought that nobody took anything that RT publishes seriously. I guess I was wrong.

As Uber's similar difficulties in New York show, the governments both North and South of the 49th parallel consider city transportation to be their exclusive domain and are not shy to regulate it instead of looking out for consumers.

In Vancouver, Canada the quasi-government regional transportation authority is heavily subsidized by taxpayers and is still running in deficit. They are not exactly happy about competition from the companies like Uber.

At least Russians did not plant the microbes for Vladimir Putin to find using a giant microscope in front of television cameras. :)

This article is an excellent example of the knee-jerk reaction from the stock market and the attitude that if it's not profitable this quarter it's not worth doing.

That's why the big G will always be the king of search. :)

Dead on point about scheduled one-on-one turning into a useless formality.

Other than the idea of framing the one-on-one meeting to be 90% controlled by the employee the post is thin on suggestions. "How do you get help when you love your job, but your personal life is melting down?" - Really?

Regardless of the fact that this was written by a former US president, what’s truly amazing is that somebody could take a subject old as the world – love and marriage and write such a simple, genuine, straight to the point message, without a hint of bullshit that happens to reads like a novel.

There has been so much said already about patents and lawyers killing innovation, but if this is not a perfect case in point then I don't know what is.

China Daily has lighyears of learning to do to produce better PR (propaganda) pieces, at least in English. They will never catch up with US. But they should consider doing what Russians did - hiring bunch of Englishmen to do the spin, like on Russian Television (rt.com) for example. Everyone knows that English accent make anything sound more convincing.

May be we are barking at the wrong tree, carriers and device manufacturers that is. Case in point - Google's own Nexus S phone which has not yet received official ICS update! Either google intentionally holding it back hoping to sell more Galaxy Nexus phone with ICS installed or most likely the ICS leapfrogged at the expense of its backwards compatibility with the existing hardware. Google should wake up and smell the roses before it's going to be too late to repair the damage. Next time they announce a major OS update consumers will not even care because by the time they see the update on their phone, the next iOS version will be announced and pushed to iPhones on the same day.

And this is exactly the reason why paid Android upgrades is a terrible idea - Apple has set a gold standard for updating OS and paying for Android updates will make the situation even worse for Android users.

Great article. Being an Economics major in my previous life I always suspected that Supply-side economics was kind of bullshit. This just nails it - "When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around."

If this were an active military facility there would have been a portrait of Vladimir Putin hanging in every room. But obviously this factory has long been abandoned.

Google Nexus phones have horribly inefficient release cycle. It happened with Nexus One, Nexus S and is happening with Galaxy Nexus: - Announce a flagship device superior to iPhone late in the late fall, make it big, get everyone excited - Loose all the steam by dragging wide availability into Jan/Feb, until most people don't care anymore. - by the time people start buying it in the spring, get trumped by the rumors of the upcoming iPhone update.

How many schools are in this city? Or anyone over 10 years old automatically gets a job at the factory? Nice!