Monthly Archives: February 2012


Fascinating to watch!

Fascinating to watch!

Reshared post from +Google Earth

This Google Earth animation of the Costa Concordia wreck (by Peter Olsen) is a pretty impressive example of Google Earth's advanced touring capabilities (and 3D modeling)!

Learn more about how the tour was made on this great recap post from the +Google Earth Blog (http://goo.gl/NsCvx) and then download the tour for yourself (http://goo.gl/ivdYv) to dig deeper in Google Earth.

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Two of the top engineers in the US auto industry will both be retiring on April 1….

Two of the top engineers in the US auto industry will both be retiring on April 1. Ford announced this morning that group vice president for global product development Derrick Kuzak will be leaving after 34 years with the company. While CEO Alan Mulally has received much of the public credit for turning around Ford in the last five years, in the auto industry a plan is only as good as the products that roll off the assembly line.

Kuzak is a soft spoken engineer that doesn't have the flash of Bob Lutz but he certainly has the product development chops and understands where the investment needs to go create best in class vehicles. Having spent a number of years at Ford of Europe he was familiar with the products there and what the market was looking for and when Mulally brought him back to Dearborn to lead the ONE Ford effort, he knew exactly what to do. He assembled a great team and like Steve Jobs at Apple he saw what needed to be cut and what should go forward. Hopefully the team he assembled will continue to execute the plan in the coming years.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, General Motors announced that chief technical officer Tom Stephens is also leaving. Like Kuzak, Stephens wasn't typically the public facing voice of GM, but he spent his entire 43 year career in the engineering ranks at GM. After Lutz retired in 2009, Stephens succeeded him as vice chairman responsible for global product development before moving into the new role of CTO a year ago.

Both men helped lead their teams through tumultuous times in the industry and they will be missed. Let's hope their successors have the same kind of vision about where to go in the next decade.

Check out Kuzak talking about global product development and the new 2013 Ford Fusion in the video.

#derrickkuzak #tomstephens #ford #2013fordfusion #fordfusionstory #gm #generalmotors #engineering

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If this is accurate and I'm inclined to believe it is, it makes arguments about…

If this is accurate and I'm inclined to believe it is, it makes arguments about lowering both income and capital gains tax rates even more pointless. Clearly the system is slanted heavily in favor of the wealthy no matter which way you look at it.

Reshared post from +Tim O’Reilly

This slashdot post puts a couple of important points together about how rich folks can avoid paying tax simply by borrowing against the value of their stock rather than selling it. For example, the post notes that since Jobs never sold his stock, simply borrowing against it, his widow now has to pay no tax at all, even if she sells the stock, since she inherits it at its current value free and clear of tax. (I'm not a tax lawyer, and can't attest that every detail here is correct, but I have heard this same story from tax accountants as well as from very rich friends.)

It would be really good to have a simple tax system with lower rates and fewer dodges, IMO. Of course, that's not possible with human nature, since whatever simplification occurs will soon be gamed, which is why we need a complete overhaul of the tax system every once in a while….

Nice to see that Zuck at least appears to be planning to pay some tax (but the story might have that wrong too. Unless he's doing this with the intention to pay tax, I can't imagine why he'd sell the shares he exercised (which would be subject to ordinary income unless they were held long enough to get capital gains) rather than simply selling some of his founders shares, which he's held since the beginning, and replace them with newly exercised shares, to get the clock ticking for capital gains rate on those shares too.

I guess what I'm saying is that from a tax accountant's point of view, this story probably is as full of holes as swiss cheese, but the notion that the rich do have some very easy ways to avoid paying any tax at all is quite sound, and the technique fairly common among those with large company shareholdings.

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The Zuckerberg Tax – Slashdot
Hugh Pickens writes "David S. Miller writes that when Facebook goes public later this year, Mark Zuckerberg plans to exercise stock options worth $5 billion of the $28 billion that his ownership stake…

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How is bringing a lithium ion battery into the cabin any safer than having it in… 5

How is bringing a lithium ion battery into the cabin any safer than having it in a checked bag?

Reshared post from +Ben Canales

TSA Surprise- NO Lithium batteries in checked luggage!

Heads up Photographers and HDSLR video folks- on a recent job to Fiji, my coworker and I packed our DSLR batteries in our checked luggage. When we got to the job site (a remote island) we discovered our 13 DSLR batteries had been removed from our checked Pelican cases! Job was almost torpedo'd by this, but fortunately we had one battery in each camera that we had on carry on, so we weren't completely sunk.

But, beware- the rule is you have to carry-on those batteries on flights. Evidently they are a fire hazard. Take note and skip the surprise on your next travel shoot!

http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/assistant/batteries.shtm

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TSA: Safe Travel with Batteries and Devices
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) protects the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce. TSA's regulations, restrictions, and job openings are l…

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How the Chrysler "Halftime in America" ad might have turned out if we had…

How the Chrysler "Halftime in America" ad might have turned out if we had taken Mitt Romney's advice in 2008. I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of Americans that work for Chrysler and its supplier network today would much rather have seen this result.

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Daimler shows the world how not to build a luxury automotive brand!

Maybach was perhaps the epitome of everything that Jürgen E. Schrempp did wrong as the CEO of Daimler from 1995 until he was ousted in 2005. The whole thing is an example of hubris on wheels and based on the estimated €1 billion that Daimler spent to develop the cars and establish the retail network, CAR estimates that the automaker lost an average of €330,000 on each of the 3,000 units sold over the past seven years.

Next year Maybach will again recede into the annals of history and it seems like it probably won't be missed.

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Why Maybach closed: Daimler lost €330,000 on each one | Car Blogs | Car Magazine Online
Maybach: soon for the scrapyard in the sky · The Maybach 62 is very l-o-n-g · There's no faulting the quality on a Maybach… but the taste? The double M badge for Maybach · Maybach will be axed f…

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More evidence that any sort of extra-judicial copyright enforcement is likely to…

More evidence that any sort of extra-judicial copyright enforcement is likely to cause more problems than it solves. Making it easier for so-called rights-holders to take down content without truly proving that it infringes on copyrights, will undoubtedly lead to chilling effects and censorship.

#sopa #pipa

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EXCLUSIVE: How The NFL Fumbled Chrysler's Commercial
Chrysler's Clint Eastwood ad was the most controversial commercial (for various reasons) of this year's Super Bowl. But it wasn't controversial enough that someone acting on behalf of the NFL should h…

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Outstanding news for everyone in California! 9

Outstanding news for everyone in California!

Reshared post from +Samir Osman

It's about damn time! One more step towards ALL people being treated like humans again. It absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age this issue is even in question, but considering that only 50 years ago interracial marriage was still illegal in a lot of states I guess I shouldn't be too shocked that this country is still full of small minded bigoted hate mongering zealots.

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Appeals Court Rejects Gay Marriage Ban
A federal appeals court panel in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that California's voter-mandated ban on gay marriages, Proposition 8, was unconstitutional, in a closely watched case that could eventually…

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Sales of hybrid vehicles reached an all-time high market share of 2.79% in 2009 before… 9

Sales of hybrid vehicles reached an all-time high market share of 2.79% in 2009 before falling to just 2.11% of all light duty vehicles sales last year. Based on that less than stellar market penetration would you consider this statement reasonable?

"Given America's insatiable, if not illogical, thirst for hybrids,"

Considering that aside from the Prius, no other hybrid vehicle has ever sold out its production capacity, insatiable is not the word I would use there.

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