text:
"Eligibility Requirements"
a. have received an email from the Promoter informing them of the Promotion and including a link to the Applicable Product (the "Promotion Email"). Note: only users selected by the Promoter and who have opted in to receive promotional/marketing communications from the Promoter will be eligible); and/or
b. be pre-selected by the Promoter and have the Applicable Product available to purchase on the Applicable Store without using the email link.
"Applicable Product(s)"
12 month and 3 month PlayStation®Plus membership at 25% off the regular price. The membership will continue indefinitely until cancelled and you will be billed in 12 month (for the 12 month membership) or 3 month (for the 3 month membership) periods at the then current full PlayStation® Store price.
"Applicable Store"
PlayStation®4 system store and the online store on the web known as the PlayStation® Store, excluding all other methods of purchase, other PlayStation®stores and in-game commerce.
"Closing Date"
8 June 2018 at 10:00 (BST).
"Entrant Countries"
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, , Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom
"Opening Date"
25 May 2018 at 10:00 (BST)
Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Limited, 10 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7LP, United Kingdom.
Eligible Persons must during the Promotional Period:
a. for those Eligible Persons receiving the Promotion Email: follow the link in the Promotion Email to an Applicable Store;
b. sign into their SEN account;
c. add the Applicable Product to their shopping cart in the Applicable Store; and
d. complete the purchase of the Applicable Product.
1. This offer ("Offer") is open to Sony Entertainment Network ("SEN") (previously known as PlayStation®Network ("PSN")) account holders who meet the Eligibility Requirements ("Eligible Persons").
2. This Offer opens on the Opening Date and closes on the Closing Date. The period from the Opening Date to and including the Closing Date shall be referred to as the "Promotional Period".
3. Eligible Persons may purchase Applicable Products on Applicable Stores during the Promotional Period. In order to qualify for the Offer, Eligible Persons should place the Applicable Products in their basket and complete checkout before the Closing Date. PlayStation®Plus memberships which auto-renew during the Promotional Period are excluded from the Offer.
4. To take advantage of this Offer, Eligible Persons must complete the Steps. Please note that to take advantage of this Offer, Eligible Persons must (i) purchase the Applicable Product by following the links in the Promotion Email to the Applicable Product; or (ii) be pre-selected by the Promoter and have the Applicable Product available to purchase on the Applicable Store without using the email link. Eligible Persons who purchase a PlayStation®Plus: 12 or 3 Month Membership (and not an Applicable Product) will not qualify for the Offer. Eligible Persons who purchase a PlayStation®Plus: 12 or 3 Month Membership via an upsell on the PS4 console will not qualify for this Offer. Eligible Persons must not send the Promotion Email to any other person. This Offer is not transferable. Should a person other than an Eligible Person purchase the Applicable Product by following the link in the Promotion Email, they will not be entitled to receive the Offer.
5. Offer only available via Applicable Stores.
6. Registration for PSN is subject to acceptance of the PSN Terms of Service and Privacy Policy .
7. Returns of any Applicable Product will be in accordance with the PlayStation Store Cancellation Policy.
8. PlayStation®Plus subscription only available to Sony Entertainment Network (SEN) account holders with access to PlayStation®Store and high-speed internet. PlayStation™Network (PSN), PS Store and PS Plus subject to terms of use and country and language restrictions; PS Plus content and services vary by subscriber age. Users must be 7 years or older and users under 18 require parental consent, except that users in Germany must be 18 years or older. Service availability is not guaranteed. Online features of specific games may be withdrawn on reasonable notice – www.playstation.com/gameservers. Approved payment method details required to purchase PlayStation®Plus. Full terms apply: PSN Terms of Service at www.playstation.com/legal/PSNTerms.
For the 3 months membership:
PlayStation®Plus memberships will continue indefinitely until cancelled and the recurring membership fee of the then current price for a PlayStation®Plus: 3 Month Membership will be deducted every 3 months from the user's wallet automatically if the user has sufficient funds in their wallet or a valid payment method registered to their account.
· Recurring PlayStation®Plus membership fee: [1,869.00 INR] until otherwise notified by email to the email address registered to your account.
· PlayStation®Plus billing frequency: every 3 months.
· PlayStation®Plus membership duration: ongoing until cancellation.
For the 12 months membership:
PlayStation®Plus memberships will continue indefinitely until cancelled and the recurring membership fee of the then current price for a PlayStation®Plus: 12 Month Membership will be deducted every 12 months from the user's wallet automatically if the user has sufficient funds in their wallet or a valid payment method registered to their account.
· Recurring PlayStation®Plus membership fee: [4439.00 INR] until otherwise notified by email to the email address registered to your account.
· PlayStation®Plus billing frequency: every twelve months.
· PlayStation®Plus membership duration: ongoing until cancellation.
A user can cancel their PlayStation®Plus membership at any time so that their membership will expire on their next payment due date. This will stop future payments of the membership fees but they will not receive a refund for payments already made.
Instructions on cancelling your membership are at https://www.playstation.com/get-help/help-library/store---transactions/payments---refunds/how-to-cancel-a-service-subscription/.
When a user purchases a membership, we will turn ON automatic funding in their account settings. This means that if a user does not have enough funds in their wallet to pay the membership fees, the required balance will be charged to the payment method registered to their account (if any) unless they turn off automatic funding. To turn off automatic funding, go to [Account Settings] > [Wallet] > [Wallet Settings].
9. For Eligible Persons who are already one or three month PlayStation®Plus members and wish to take advantage of the Offer, their new 12 Month PlayStation Plus Membership will begin when their next monthly or quarterly payment would otherwise have been due and, from then on, they will be charged on a recurring basis every year until they cancel (instead of every month or three months as they have previously paid).
10. Internet required. Eligible Persons are responsible for any internet access fees.
11. If there is any reason to believe that there has been a breach of these terms and conditions or incorrect, illegible, fraudulent or other invalid or improper information has been provided, the Promoter may in its sole discretion refuse to deliver the Offer.
12. The Promoter reserves the right in its reasonable discretion to disqualify any person whose conduct is contrary to the spirit of these terms and conditions or the intention of the Offer.
13. The Promoter accepts no responsibility for failure of any Eligible Person to create or sign-in to their SEN account or to complete the Steps as result of any Eligible Person's or third party's network, hardware or software failure of any kind.
The Promoter reserves the right to alter or cancel this Offer or update and/or amend these terms and conditions at any stage, if deemed necessary in its opinion or in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
14. In the event of a dispute, the Promoter's decision is final and no correspondence or discussion will be entered into.
15. To the extent permitted by applicable law, these terms and conditions shall be construed and interpreted in accordance with the laws of England and the contract between each Eligible Person and the Promoter shall be deemed to have been formed and performed in England.


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Excerpted from the book Food Fight. To learn more about the Farm Bill and purchase a copy of Food Fight please visit www.foodfight2012.org
Billions of Farm Bill dollars flow into America's rural communities each year to boost income for farmers, who continue to face an onslaught of financial, environmental, and agricultural challenges. But which farmers are receiving payments? Following the Farm Bill money trail involves understanding the complex circumstances surrounding what it means to be a "farm." It also requires focusing in on why the government singles out so few crops for subsidies. Finally, it means drilling down into deep divides: family farms versus corporate mega-farms, producers versus buyers, commodity versus diversified agriculture.
The USDA identifies approximately 2.2 million farms in the country. The agency's definition of a farm is quite broad: "any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced or sold, or normally would have been sold, during the census year." When the USDA averages farm income, it includes a sizable category called "rural residence farms"—households that may own a cow or a few sheep, but do not list their occupation as "farmer." Only 23.5 percent of farms actually grow enough crops or animals to earn over $50,000 a year, and 31 percent are producing so little that they don't even clear $1,000 a year. Such mini-farms generally do not receive subsidies and their households rely primarily on off-farm income.
Just a fraction—around 15 percent—of all farms generate most of the agricultural output, primarily because they have specialized in commodity crops. Family farms are a dying breed. Although the average American farm measures about 441 acres, farms of that size are becoming increasingly difficult to find. While mega-farms and so called "hobby farms" (not my favorite term) are on the rise, it is the medium-scale operations, with acreage between 50 and 2,000 acres, that are declining.
Farm Bill funding is undoubtedly skewed toward a very narrow group of crops. Of the $246 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars spent on commodity subsidies between 1995 and 2010, almost 70 percent went to the production of just five crops: corn, cotton, wheat, rice, and soybeans.
Focus on the slice of small and mid-sized farms that comprise less than 10 percent of all operations—those that gross between $100,000 and $250,000 from farming and whose operators claim farming as their primary occupation—and a far different picture develops. According to an analysis of USDA farm data by Tufts University researcher Timothy A. Wise, 82 percent of farms in this bracket received some sort of government payment and relied on them to keep their operations afloat. Even as commodity prices reached record highs in 2007, family farmers continued to struggle. While corn prices increased 87 percent between 2003 and 2007, fertilizer costs jumped 67 percent. Fuel costs doubled. At the same time, counter-cyclical payments to small and mid-sized farms, which kick in when the market price of a crop falls below a set target price, dropped by half. As a result, small and mid-sized farms' net income from agriculture actually declined between 2003 and 2007, from $30,000 to $26,000. Farm households supplemented their income with an average of $31,000 from off-farm jobs during the period of Wise's study. Combined, household income was just barely above the U.S. average. Without the farm subsidies, many of the small and medium-sized farms would border on poverty.
The elite group of mega-farms felt no such squeeze. These are the large commercial farms earning over $250,000 per year that control vast acreages, benefiting from farm payments tied to land ownership and historical production. According to Wise's analysis of USDA data, very large commercial farms were responsible for 44 percent of commodity crop production and received 32 percent of commodity payments in 2003. "The concentration of farm payments," Wise says, "is caused primarily by the concentration of land and production in the hands of a relatively small number of large farmers. It may be necessary to address the root causes of this concentration in order to meaningfully address inequities in U.S. farm programs."
Even among those "wealthy farmers" at the top of the scale, however, the statistics can be somewhat misleading. Of the top 20 recipients of government farm and conservation payments between 1995 and 2010, none was an individual family farm. Instead, their ranks included corporations, Indian tribes or cooperatives that distributed payments among their members, and, to a lesser extent, conservation organizations.
Graphic courtesy Watershed Media
It is important to keep in mind the type of agriculture—for both plants and animals—that our federal subsidy system has intentionally perpetuated. The farm sector has been converted to a manufacturing model, designed to provide buyers with a lowest-cost product. Labor is replaced with energy-intensive machinery and chemicals whenever possible. These are extremely expensive costs that are most economically beneficial when spread over a maximum number of acres or animals. Once invested in such a capital-intensive system, it is extremely difficult for an operator to make any significant change in the scale or approach to farming. In fact, as harvests and production become more and more efficient, the main response, as in manufacturing, is simply to try to grow the scale of the operation.
The goals, strategies, and rules for today's Farm Bill subsidies represent a complete departure from the price-stabilization policies that dominated the first four decades of Farm Bills. In general, the government purchased grain from farmers during harvest time when it was plentiful and sold it off when grain was more scarce. Other programs, such as land set-asides, also helped manage supply, boost prices, and impose some fundamental soil conservation practices.
These programs were slowly dismantled beginning in the 1970s, when globalization began to shape the political and economic agenda. The U.S. encouraged its farmers to plant fencerow to fencerow to generate exports. By 1996, the grain reserve program was eliminated by a Republican dominated Congress. With the government out of the supply management game, farmers once again planted as much as they could, hoping to get ahead. The result was deflationary oversupply. In the ensuing years, the market price of corn fell to an average of 23 percent below the farmers' cost of production. As rural communities foundered, a flustered Congress instituted so-called "emergency payments" in 1998 to help keep farmers afloat. Those payments were made permanent in the 2002 Farm Bill.
It's understandable that we want to ease the plight of the family farmer. But in practice, the Farm Bill often subsidizes the expansion of a mega-farm operation that puts family farmers out of business. Legal loopholes, lax enforcement, and loose definitions of what it means to be actively engaged in farming have resulted in tax dollars supporting people who either don't need or don't deserve subsidies. Included in this group were subdivision developers who bought farmland and advertised that prospective homeowners could collect subsidies on their new backyards. Congress members past and present have also been beneficiaries, sometimes raking in sizable yearly payments. According to the Environmental Working Group, 24 members of Congress or their immediate family members received farm subsidies between 1995 and 2010, some totaling millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, farmers who grow the perishable produce so necessary for a balanced diet have been kept out of the subsidy game for decades. With 20,000 miles of waterways, nearly 80,000 farms, and over $30 billion in annual on-farm revenues, California tops all states in terms of agricultural sales, yet 90 percent of its growers receive no subsidies. Florida is another prolific food producer, with extensive citrus, row crop, dairy, and calf-breeding operations. Yet only 10 percent of Florida's farms and ranches receive direct subsidies. According to the Environmental Working Group, if farm payments were based on overall contributions to the nation's food and fiber supplies rather than the narrowly targeted commodity groups, five other states with large, but mostly unsupported, farm sectors would immediately benefit: North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado.
In understanding the subsidy game, it's important to consider who ultimately benefits from policies, in addition to who directly gets the money. The real winners in the subsidy explosion of the last decade and a half have been the animal feedlot operators and the largest corporate mega-farms, along with input suppliers like Monsanto, a host of service industry providers, and the big grain traders: ADM, Bunge Cargill, and Dreyfus. Small and mid-sized growers depend on subsidies to stay afloat, sometimes even in big years; meanwhile big industrial growers thrive. Isn't there a better system to qualify who actually needs support and under what conditions? The answers may require a fundamental shift from 20th-century policies that encourage overproduction and low prices. Rather, policies should be reoriented toward a complete economic system, one that helps qualifying family farmers earn a fair price for their products, caps payments, rewards environmental stewardship, incentivizes more diversified and resilient food and farming systems, and recognizes the value of family farms as key drivers of community health and economic development.
We are standing at a pivotal moment in history, one in which education and advocacy around the climate emergency, public health, racial injustice, and economic inequity is imperative. At Earth Island Journal, we have doubled down on our commitment to uplifting stories that often go unheard, to centering the voices of frontline communities, and to always speak truth to power. We are nonprofit publication. We don't have a paywall because our mission is to inform, educate and inspire action. Which is why we rely on readers like you for support. If you believe in the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible year-end donation to our Green Journalism Fund.Donate

subset: commoncrawl


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Digital Identifiers
MagnePrint is a dynamic card authentication technology based on the unique physical properties of the magnetic stripe, also referred to as the stripe's digital identifier or (DI). It provides validation that the card itself is genuine and that its encoded data has not been altered. The term itself is derived from "Magne" as in magnetics, and "Print" as in fingerprint.
Natural Characteristics
Just as fingerprints can uniquely identify human beings, Magnetic Fingerprints (MagnePrint) can uniquely identify magstripe cards. This is possible because of the stripe composition.
A magnetic stripe is created from billions of ferrous oxide particles. The particles are various shapes and sizes and are mixed in a random pattern when the magnetic slurry is prepared. They are sealed in place when the slurry dries, during the tape manufacturing process.
Once this occurs, the stationary particles emit a permanent, repeatable and distinctive magnetic signal, which is the MagnePrint. The MagnePrint, like a fingerprint, remains basically unchanged for the life of the card.
Data and MagnePrint are Linked
The MagnePrint is in the background of the stripe. It is sometimes referred to as "noise". It does not interfere with the cardholder personal data encoded in the foreground. Nor can the encoded data remove or erase the MagnePrint. Furthermore, the MagnePrint and the cardholder personal encoded data can be linked.


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Those bullish on oil should pause before betting US output will soon retreat Read full story ›
Source:: FT.com Oil and Gas
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Professional Community for Car Dealers, Marketing, Advertising and Sales Leaders
107 members33 Comments 15 Likes
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Posted on November 2, 2012 at 4:08pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
Jim and all,
The day of transparency in our automotive realm will sustain. Yes, the transparency of information should be accurate for all consumers. Does anyone know if CARFAX has a Dealer Advisory Board that is place and pursue adherence to recommendations/concerns...?
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text:
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been the belle of the ball since he set an NFL quarterback record with 181 rushing yards against the Green Bay Packers in the divisional playoff round.
There are no more questions about whether 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh should have stuck with Alex Smith. Kaepernick is being hailed as the quarterback of the present and future in San Francisco.
The Atlanta Falcons have paid attention as people wonder if their 24th-ranked total defense can hang with the versatile signal-caller.
"Love hearing we can't stop Kaepernick," linebacker Sean Weatherspoon told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Vic Tafur. "We want the challenge and look forward to it. It will be fun."
Be careful what you ask for. The Packers were up for a challenge too, then they served up 444 combined yards and four touchdowns to Kaepernick alone.


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Jazz Pharmaceuticals To Report 2012 Fourth Quarter And Full Year Financial Results On February 26, 2013
11 Feb, 2013, 21:05 GMT
DUBLIN, Feb. 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc (Nasdaq: JAZZ) today announced that it will host a conference call and live webcast on Tuesday, February 26, 2013 at 4:30 p.m. EST/9:30 p.m. GMT. During the call, company management will provide a business and financial update and review its 2012 fourth quarter and full year financial results.
A live webcast of the presentation may be accessed from the Investors & Media section of the Jazz Pharmaceuticals website at www.jazzpharmaceuticals.com. Please connect to the website prior to the start of the conference call to ensure adequate time for any software downloads that may be necessary to listen to the webcast.
Investors may participate in the conference call by dialing +1-800-920-8624 in the U.S., or +1-617-597-5430 outside the U.S., and entering passcode 75109778.
A replay of the conference call will be available through March 5, 2013 by dialing +1-888-286-8010 in the U.S., or +1-617-801-6888 outside the U.S., and entering passcode 53780559.
An archived version of the webcast will be available for at least one week on the Investors section of the company's website at www.jazzpharmaceuticals.com.
About Jazz Pharmaceuticals
Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc is a specialty biopharmaceutical company focused on improving patients' lives by identifying, developing and commercializing innovative products that address unmet medical needs. The company has a diverse portfolio of products in the areas of narcolepsy, oncology, pain and psychiatry. The company's U.S. marketed products in these areas include: Xyrem® (sodium oxybate) oral solution, Erwinaze® (asparaginase Erwinia chrysanthemi), Prialt® (ziconotide) intrathecal infusion, Luvox CR® (fluvoxamine maleate), FazaClo® (clozapine, USP) HD and FazaClo LD. Outside of the U.S., Jazz Pharmaceuticals also has a number of products marketed by its international division, EUSA Pharma. For further information, see www.jazzpharmaceuticals.com.
SOURCE Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc


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Results tagged ' Jose Contreras '
Plan C: The Phillies Turn To Jose Contreras to Close Games
By Tommy Rancel //
Several major league teams have switched closers this season due to incumbents' ineffectiveness. The Philadelphia Philies, on the other hand, have made multiple changes at the closer spot because they can't find one player to remain healthy at the position. With Brad Lidge on the disabled list, again, the Phillies went looking for a new 9th-inning man.
Lidge started the season on the disabled list with an injured elbow. He was activated on April 30th and appeared in four games, recording one save. He felt some soreness earlier this week, and now finds himself back on the DL with inflammation of that same pitching elbow.
When Lidge started the season on the shelf, the Phils turned the ball over to his set-up man Ryan Madson. To the naked eye, it appeared Madson struggled in the role with a 7.00 ERA. But much of that gaudy ERA stemmed from bad luck, as Madson allowed two home runs in just nine innings of work. Looking at his expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP), a metric that looks at walks and strikeouts along with a neutralized home run rate, Madson's xFIP was a sparkling 2.79.
In his time as closer, Madson notched four saves. However, he had two blown saves in six chances. The latter of the two came against the San Francisco Giants. Madson was so frustrated after the game that he kicked a metal chair, injuring his toe. Madson needed surgery on the toe and currently sits on the 60-day DL.
With Lidge on the DL again, and Madson already there, the Phillies have turned to former starting pitcher Jose Contreras to close games – at least for now. Contreras has spent the bulk of his career in major league rotations. Of his 206 career appearances, 175 of them have come in the form of starts. The 15 appearances out of the Phillies pen this year represent nearly half of his 31 career relief outings.
Contreras spent most of 2009 as a starter, splitting time between the Chicago White Sox and the Colorado Rockies. He made 21 starts for Chicago before being traded to Colorado later on in the season. He made two starts for the Rockies before moving to the team's bullpen. In recent seasons, Contreras was barely average as a starting pitcher. He battled injuries and ineffectiveness for the better part of the last few years.
However, at his listed age of 38, Contreras has re-invented himself as a very good relief pitcher. Since moving to the bullpen, Contreras has seen his strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) jump. Career wise, his K/9 of 6.70 is unspectacular, However, out of the bullpen, he has struck out more than a batter per inning.
This season, Contreras has 18 Ks in 13.1 innings; a K/9 of 12.15. While the strikeouts have increased, the walks have declined. Contreras has shown decent control in his career with a walks per nine (BB/9) of 3.25. With just two walks in 2010, his BB/9 sits at 1.35 in the early stage of this season.
In fact, Contreras is the only relief pitcher to have an ERA below 1.00 and a K/9 above 12.0 so far this season. (min 10 IP)
One potential reason for the increase in strikes is an increase in velocity. As a starting pitcher, a player must condition himself to conserve enough velocity and energy to throw upwards of 100 pitches on his day. As a relief pitcher, he can fire away as his workload goes down to around 15-20 pitches per night. In his career, Contreras has averaged 91.7 mph on the fastball. In 2010, he is throwing almost three miles per hour more at 94.6. He is also getting more swings and misses than ever, with a swing strike percentage of 14.8% compared to 9.3% in his career.
On Saturday, his 206th career appearance, Contreras did something he had never done in the major leagues; he saved a game. With Madson and Lidge unavailable, it appears that Charlie Manuel will give Ol' Jose a chance to pad that career save total of one.
Given Contreras' improved skills and the Phillies winning wins, the Cuban righty is worth grabbing in all formats. If you have a free agent bidding budget, invest the extra buck to get him.
For more on Jose Contreras and fill-in closers, check out Bloomberg Sports' fantasy kits.


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"3D is a way of organizing things, particularly as we're getting much more media information on the computer, a lot more choices, a lot more navigation than we've ever had before."
"A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it's less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society."
"A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code."
"A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren't dependent on Washington doing something different."
"According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life."
"Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles."
"Although I don't have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way."
"Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy."
"Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information."
"Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough."
"Apple has always leveraged technologies that the PC industry has driven to critical mass – the bus structures, the graphics cards, the peripherals, the connection networks, things like that – so they're kind of in the PC ecosystem and kind of not."
"At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I'm afraid that's not quite right."
"Being flooded with information doesn't mean we have the right information or that we're in touch with the right people."
"Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don't think over time that's a good way to go. I'm a huge believe in digital currency… but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I'm not involved in Bitcoin."
"By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education."
"By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer."
"By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited… The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while."
"Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn't necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that."
"Certainly I'll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I've gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them."
"Certainly there's a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there."
"China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it's not an 'us versus them,' it's an 'us and them' type scenario."
"China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them."
"China is certainly an important player in the global economy, and a widespread AIDS epidemic would threaten that growth."
"Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority."
"Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year."
"Contrary to popular belief, I don't spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I've learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that's what kids are playing. That's what people are talking about."
"Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it's aid-neutral."
"Digital reading will completely take over. It's lightweight and it's fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over."
"Digital technology has several features that can make it much easier for teachers to pay special attention to all their students."
"Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society."
"Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires."
"Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that's associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to."
"Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you're glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things."
"Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things."
"Eventually we'll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in a carbon-based system."
"Eventually you won't think of 'the Internet business.' You'll think of it more like news, weather, sports, but even that taxonomy isn't clear."
"Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player."
"For a highly motivated learner, it's not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you're a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good."
"Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs."
"Given how few young people actually read the newspaper, it's a good thing they'll be reading a newspaper on a screen."
"Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources."
"Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone."
"Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work."
"Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book 'The Most Powerful Idea in the World.'"
"Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not."
"Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable."
"Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules – not just for governments but for private companies."
"I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you're trying to do?"
"I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill."
"I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts."
"I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act."
"I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!"
"I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there's a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that."
"I don't think there's a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version."
"I have a company that is not Microsoft, called Corbis. Corbis is the operation that merged with Bettman Archives. It has nothing to do with Microsoft. It was intentionally done outside of Microsoft because Microsoft isn't interested."
"I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I'm not denying myself some great things. I just don't happen to have expensive hobbies."
"I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he's got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups."
"I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition."
"I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty."
"I meet people overseas that know five languages – that the only language I'm comfortable in is English."
"I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I'm still fanatical, but now I'm a little less fanatical."
"I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot."
"I remember thinking quite logically that I didn't want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on."
"I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know."
"I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user."
"I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young."
"I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has."
"I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV."
"I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it's just such a dramatic success."
"I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things."
"I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software."
"I would counsel people to go to college, because it's one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills."
"I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in."
"I'm an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring."
"I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs."
"I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software."
"I've always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that."
"I've always been interested in science – one of my favourite books is James Watson's 'Molecular Biology of the Gene.'"
"I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief."
"If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life."
"If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG."
"If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was 'satisfactory,' I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?"
"If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that's a good discussion. Maybe that's the way to help close the deficit."
"If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone."
"If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn't be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers."
"If you're a person struggling to eat and stay healthy, you might have heard about Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali, but you'll never have heard of Bill Gates."
"If you're low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn't seem entirely fair."
"If you're using first-class land for biofuels, then you're competing with the growing of food. And so you're actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture."
"If you've found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work."
"In 80% of the world, energy will be bought where it is economic. You have to help the rest of the world get energy at a reasonable price."
"In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years."
"In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in."
"In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically."
"In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn't been the case for teaching."
"In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively."
"In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that."
"In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that's safer, doesn't require us to go around the world to get all our oil."
"In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there's such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success."
"In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn't been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A's without taking a book home. I didn't go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam."
"In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it."
"In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That's quite clear."
"In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?"
"In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can't you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that's different from a California textbook that's different from a Massachusetts textbook. That's very expensive."
"In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you're going to be 20 years from now is how well you're doing in your education system."
"In the old generation, if one kid bought a PlayStation 2 and the other kid bought an Xbox, at his house you played PlayStation, at your house you played Xbox. Now that it's online, all those early buyers who… you want to play with, they've got their reputation online of who they are and how good they are at these games."
"In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone."
"Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other."
"Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation."
"Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future."
"Internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels."
"It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants."
"It's OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don't want them to catch up because we're slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse."
"It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'"
"It's easier to add things on to a PC than it's ever been before. It's one click, and boom, it comes down."
"It's possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it's sure going well for me, I must admit."
"It's the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear."
"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."
"Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so exciting."
"Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole."
"Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it 'tap-dancing to work.'"
"Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That's not possible on $1 a day."
"Maintaining a consistent platform also helps improve product support – a significant problem in the software industry."
"Measles will always show you if someone isn't doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles."
"Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it's taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, 'Let's get out the camera and get that shot.' You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want."
"Money has always been in politics. And I'm not sure you'd want money to be completely out of politics."
"Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download."
"My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don't want to get malaria."
"My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go."
"My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we've had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff."
"Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down."
"No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO."
"Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it."
"Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it's about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it's less than one ton. It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero."
"OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me 'Trey' because I'm William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I'm also known."
"Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn't that complicated. I wouldn't want to put it on my business card."
"Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they're not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them."
"On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity."
"One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn't elect those people. Isn't it supposed to be different? Aren't we supposed to like the people that we elected?"
"One thing I've always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they'll tell you, 'We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.'"
"Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder."
"Over time, yes, countries will need to look at specific GMO products like they look at drugs today, where they don't approve them all. They look hard at the safety and the testing. And they make sure that the benefits far outweigh any of the downsides."
"Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It's fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form."
"People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn't they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters."
"People are always coming up to me and saying, 'I heard your dad's speech, and it's really great.' And they'll mention some place I didn't even know my dad was going to."
"People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change."
"People don't want lots and lots of single purpose devices. They do not want to have to learn how to set up something for photos, another thing for music, another thing for video."
"People want to watch whatever video they want to watch whenever they want to watch. If you provision your Internet infrastructure adequately, you can do that."
"Personally, I'd like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems."
"Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them."
"Polio's pretty special because once you get an eradication, you no longer have to spend money on it; it's just there as a gift for the rest of time."
"Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school."
"SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it's very inexpensive to send mail."
"Security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit; your machine can be taken over totally."
"Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don't solve these security problems, then people will hold back."
"Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren't easy questions."
"Should there be cameras everywhere in outdoor streets? My personal view is having cameras in inner cities is a very good thing. In the case of London, petty crime has gone down. They catch terrorists because of it. And if something really bad happens, most of the time you can figure out who did it."
"Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs."
"Software substitution, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses – it's progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set."
"Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you're good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well."
"Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs."
"Steve Jobs' ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right, and market things as revolutionary are amazing things."
"Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way."
"Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important."
"The Center for Disease Control started out as the malaria war control board based in Atlanta. Partly because the head of Coke had some people out to his plantation, and they got infected with malaria, and partly 'cause all the military recruits were coming down and having a higher fatality rate from malaria while training than in the field."
"The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: 'Does your teacher use class time well?' and, 'When you're confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?'"
"The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand."
"The Green Revolution focused on the big three – maize, rice and wheat – and the Green Revolution did not adapt the big three to African conditions, other than South Africa, as much as they should have."
"The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard."
"The U.S. couldn't even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They'll be killing each other again in less than a year. I'm sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits."
"The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I'd say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government's name."
"The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really even notice it, so it's part of everyday life."
"The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful."
"The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol."
"The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that's legitimate."
"The fight against AIDS in China is already well underway. The Chinese government and other funders are providing major support, and they'll continue to bear primary responsibility for delivering prevention and treatment."
"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."
"The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that's something that appropriately ought to be done."
"The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine. And to have broad usage of that vaccine. That would literally break the epidemic."
"The main thing that's missing in energy is an incentive to create things that are zero-CO2-emitting and that have the right scale and reliability characteristics."
"The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world."
"The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era."
"The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that's expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren't used in the food chain today, or by intercropping."
"The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying."
"The nuclear approach I'm involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There's a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions."
"The nuclear industry has this amazing record, even equipment from generations one and two. But nuclear mishaps tend to come in these big events – Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now Fukushima – so it's more visible."
"The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I'll never be hands-on on anything except software."
"The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive."
"The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing."
"The part of uranium that's fissile – when you hit it with a neutron, it splits in two – is about 0.7%. The reactors we have today are burning that 0.7%."
"The potential financial reward for building the 'next Windows' is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it."
"The spread of online information isn't just good for charities. It's also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work."
"The thing about HD-DVD that is attractive to Microsoft is that it's very pro-consumer in letting you copy all movies up onto the hard disk."
"The tool that's most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite."
"The trouble with energy farming is that the energy isn't always where you want to use it, and it isn't always when you want to use it."
"The truth of Moore's law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant."
"The typical project design time for a large company like IBM – and they keep track of this – is a little over four years."
"The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it's Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same."
"The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low."
"The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough."
"The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster."
"The year I was born, 1955, the first big disease-eradication program in the world was declared for malaria. After about a decade of work, they realized that, at least in the tropical areas, they did not have the tools to get it done."
"There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no-one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft."
"There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it's extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You'll never get perfect blocking."
"There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable."
"There is no doubt that as an economy grows in a great way like India has, that you have to step back and change your tax systems, because you start to get more disparities of wealth."
"There's 20 companies that I have investments in – some batteries, some solar-thermal, one big nuclear thing. We need hundreds and hundreds of companies like that, so that in a 20-year time frame we really are starting to change the energy infrastructure."
"There's always been a lot of information about your activities. Every phone number you dial, every credit-card charge you make. It's long since passed that a typical person doesn't leave footprints."
"There's no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw."
"There's no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, 'The government's corrupt,' and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done."
"This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50."
"To create a new standard, it takes something that's not just a little bit different; it takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard."
"Today, we're very dependent on cheap energy. We just take it for granted – all the things you have in the house, the way industry works."
"Two out of every five people on Earth today owe their lives to the higher crop outputs that fertilizer has made possible."
"Typically, your corporate e-mail account is not, today, that spam-targeted. It's more the free e-mail accounts that are spam-targeted."
"U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market."
"Unemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary education."
"Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do."
"We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they'll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year."
"We all sort of do want incentives for creative people to still exist at a certain level. You know, maybe rock stars shouldn't make as much; who knows? But you want as much creativity to take place in the future as took place in the past."
"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction."
"We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy."
"We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well."
"Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they're rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things."
"Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It's basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it's wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore."
"What destroys more self-confidence than any other educational thing in America is being assigned to some remedial math when you get into some college, and then it's not taught very well and you end up with this sense of, 'Hey, I can't really figure those things out.'"
"What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life."
"When Ford sells a car, a dealer isn't allowed to take out the engine and put a different one in. When a newsstand sells the Washington Post, no one can go to the newsstand and pay them to rip out the classified section and put their own classified section in – if they could, they would do so."
"When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that."
"When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have."
"When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it."
"When you revolutionize education, you're taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you're priming the pump for so many incredible things."
"When you want to do your homework, fill out your tax return, or see all the choices for a trip you want to take, you need a full-size screen."
"Whenever you have multiple devices including multiple PCs that you want to share information with, it's always been a bit complicated."
"Whether I'm at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I'm looking forward to reading."
"Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes."
"Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact."
"With Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to gain market share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device. But a lot of those users are frustrated. They can't type. They can't create documents."
"With tech companies, whoever's the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, 'Is this the end of them?' And – there's more – more times people think that's the case than it really is the case."
"You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well."
"You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well."
"You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it's really let us down."
"You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There's another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity."
"You're never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour."


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« Teacher Tells Students to Take Nazi Viewpoint | Main | Robot Competition Founder Named Nat. Teacher of the Year »
Researcher: Math and Science Teachers Should Get Higher Pay
New research from the Brookings Institution provides empirical backing for the widely held notion that math and science teachers can generally find higher paying jobs outside of education.
The study, according to a blog post by co-author Martin R. West, a Brookings nonresident senior fellow, looked at the employment records of some 32,000 teachers in Florida over a seven-year period. It found that math and science teachers who left the profession for a new job "earned 15 percent and 12 percent more, respectively, than did former English teachers after leaving." In addition, science teachers were "heavily over-represented" among teachers who left for new jobs.
The results, West says, bolster the argument that schools need to modify "teacher compensation systems to offer larger salaries for math and science teachers as a means to improve teacher qualityand student achievementin these subjects." He argues that, though well-intended and understandable, efforts to value teachers equally across subject areas may ultimately be hurting schools:
[T]he outside labor market is a reality that school districts cannot simply ignore. By not allowing teacher compensation to vary with outside earnings opportunities, we implicitly ask individuals with strong math and science skills to make a larger financial sacrifice to enter and remain in the profession. It is students who lose out when too few of them prove willing to do so.
West acknowledges, however, that recent surveys show that both educators and the American public are generally not in favor of differentiating teacher pay based solely on subject area.


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Wilding Downtown
Channel 2 actually covered this somehow. We're amazed Rahm didn't stomp on them yet:
- Chicago police made several arrests Saturday evening following another "wilding" scene instigated by young people along the Magnificent Mile. Photographers shot chaotic video of police officers and vehicles swarming Michigan Avenue near Huron and detaining several young people around 7:30 p.m. Some of the disturbance leaked onto Chicago Avenue near State Street on a relatively warm night with temperatures in the 50s.
Chicago Police News Affairs confirmed officers arrested "a number of offenders" and said charges were pending. Details weren't available.
But community activist Andrew Holmes, who happened to be shopping with a relative in the upscale retail district, described a scene in which hundreds of young people misbehaved, with some of them harassing and attacking people on the street.
"They assaulted a Chicago police officer who was on a mounted horse. And all of a sudden, they assaulted the citizens walking the streets – just normal citizens shopping, enjoying the weather," Holmes told CBS 2's Chris Martinez. "I caution those parents if their child has been arrested … You need to think about your child. Just don't say the Chicago police picked on your child, when we watched all the assault going on, especially by teen women."
Hey McCompStat and Tiny Dancer? This has been predicted here for how long? Years? Your "more-with-less" strategy sucks and is a direct result of these failed policies. Preckwinkle and Alvarez - No punishment, no deterrence, no reason not to act like animals. This is on your doorstep, too. Holder - you ready to have that "discussion" on race yet? We can start in Georgia and work our way north if you like.
This is the first warm weekend of the year - summer is going to be a fucking disaster.
Labels: crime, un-fucking-believable


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But let's face it: We're here because it's there. If it were to burn out tomorrow, AND we had the capacity to use all wood, oil, nuclear fuel, etc. (including what's still underground) we could keep the planet warm enough to support life for maybe 72 hours. Maybe.
But it's always been free. Until now.
Ms. Angeles Duran, of Spain, has registered herself as the owner of the sun. Really.
She claims that while international treaties forbid nations from owning stellar objects, individuals may do so. So she went to a local notary and registered herself as the sole (sol?) owner of a very large furnace, currently located 93,000,000 miles from her.
She says she's going to start charging the rest of us for using her property.
Here's the story.
Thank you, Kayden.


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SCHENECTADY -- An early morning fire swept through a two-story wood frame house in eastern New York on Thursday, killing four people, including three children, authorities said. A fourth child was injured and taken to a burn unit at Westchester Medical Center. The fire in Schenectady, just west of the capital of Albany, broke out shortly after 4 a.m. It was the third fire of the night in the city of about 66,000 people and struck shortly after firefighters fought another blaze about a half-mile away. The investigation will look for any connections between the two nearby fires, but Fire Chief Michael Della Rocco said they are believed to be unrelated. Two adults and four children lived in the upstairs unit, Della Rocco said. The father, 33-year-old David Terry, was killed along with three children: 3-year-old Layah Terry, 2-year-old Michael Terry and 11-month-old Donavan Duell. Five-year-old Safyre Terry was hospitalized. Della Rocco said the children's mother was not in the house at the time of the fire. The building burned quickly and completely largely because it was made in a late 19th- and early 20th-century building style known as "balloon construction" in which studs run from the ground to the roof without the fire-breaks required by modern codes, Della Rocco said. The house, gray with maroon trim, was tucked closely between two other two-story homes on a residential street where many of the houses are two-family. The second-floor was gutted and the roof gone. The fire curled siding on the house next door, separated by a narrow alley barely the width of a car and filled with charred debris. City fire investigators were working with state and federal agencies to try to determine the cause. Della Rocco said the building will be condemned and demolished. Krystal Ashline knew the family. "The kids were great kids," she said. "My kids played with them. He was a really good father. He was the one who mainly took care of the kids. "It's a tragedy," she said. "It just broke my heart." Shane Conway, who lives on the first floor of the house, told The Daily Gazette that he awoke around 4:30 a.m. to the shouts of his stepfather's girlfriend. "I got up, got everyone out, made sure my son got out," Conway told the newspaper. Three children and four adults escaped the first-floor dwelling. James Moloney, who also lives downstairs, said he could hear what he thought were smoke detector alarms. "I wanted to go back in to see if I could get any of them, but you can't," Moloney told the newspaper. "It was fully engulfed." Annette Singh said the neighborhood is a mix of people from Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad. She said people generally help each other out there. But Ashline said the street is plagued by drugs and crime, including shootings and assaults. "There's a lot of wrong," she said.
3 children, 1 adult dead in Schenectady fire
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Includes Substantial Investment by South Africa's Anglo American Platinum; Supports First Product Shipments for Energy-Storage Technology Pioneer
HAYWARD, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 4, 2014) - Primus Power, a leader in grid-scale electrical energy storage, announced today that it has secured $20 million in the first close of its Series C financing. South Africa-based resource developer, Anglo American Platinum Limited (Anglo American Platinum), the world's leading primary producer of platinum group metals (PGMs), led the round with a major contribution from its PGM Development Fund. Primus has pioneered a new class of safe, low-cost, grid-scale electrical energy-storage solutions. The Company's zinc-based flow battery systems decouple instantaneous electricity demand from supply, bolstering the stability and security of the electric grid, and helping accelerate the penetration of wind and solar energy with superior economics compared to conventional solutions.
Primus has now raised $35 million in equity funding since its founding in mid-2009. The Company has also received strategic government grants totaling $20 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), and the California Energy Commission (CEC).
Richard Willis of the PGM Development Fund joins Primus' Board of Directors. Existing investors also participated alongside PGM Development Fund. The new money supports 2014 customer shipments, transitioning the Company's manufacturing to a contract manufacturer, and expanding its sales and customer support organizations.
The timing is excellent. Commercialization of Primus' EnergyPod® containerized storage arrays is already underway. In the next year Primus will ship systems to investor-owned utilities, municipal utilities and microgrids at military bases. These shipments are an indicator of the increasing global demand for grid-scale energy storage, which is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of greater than 30% before 2020*. At that point, the worldwide market size is estimated at $21.9 billion*. Momentum is especially strong in California, thanks in part to a recent mandate by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that requires investor-owned utilities to procure 1,325 MW of energy storage by 2020.
Andrew Hinkly, Anglo American Platinum's Executive Head of Marketing, called Primus Power's solutions a game changer. "The EnergyPod® is a safe, low cost, power dense and ultra-reliable energy storage solution that installs rapidly. It is a differentiated product for mass deployment that integrates thoughtful design and utility-grade construction into a product that adds value at numerous locations along the electrical grid. This is a strategic investment for Anglo American Platinum. It is both good for business and for the environment."
"Anglo American Platinum's support is a welcome endorsement of our strategy, products and team," said Primus Power's CEO, Tom Stepien. "Beyond the investment, Anglo American Platinum is a valued partner and, as Primus expands internationally, they will provide a beachhead on the African continent. The new funds from Anglo American Platinum and other investors will help us accelerate our customer deliveries, grow our internal team and expand our product offerings."
*Source: Navigant Research
Primus Power, Primus Power's logo and EnergyPod are trademarks of Primus Power
About Anglo American Platinum
Anglo American Platinum Limited is a member of the Anglo American plc Group and is the world's leading primary producer of platinum group metals. The company is listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE). Its mining, smelting and refining operations are based in South Africa. Elsewhere in the world, the Group owns Unki Platinum Mine in Zimbabwe and is actively exploring in Brazil. Anglo American Platinum has a number of joint ventures with several historically disadvantaged South African consortia as part of its commitment to the transformation of the mining industry. Anglo American Platinum is committed to the highest standards of safety and continues to make meaningful and sustainable difference in the development of the communities around its operations. www.angloplatinum.com
About PGM Development Fund
The PGM Development Fund is a private equity fund established to provide capital for further PGM market development and beneficiation particularly in Southern Africa. It is an Anglo American Platinum initiative managed by Douglas Investments and advised by Bryanston Resources. www.pgmdevelopmentfund.co.za
About Primus Power
Primus Power is a leader in low-cost, grid-scale energy storage solutions with a scalable, distributed, multi-hour system that economically serves multiple storage applications. With 14 patented innovations in chemistry, cell design and system engineering, the Company's EnergyPod® products offer exceptional power density, reliability and portability at industry-low prices. www.primuspower.com Follow Primus on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Contact Information:
Media Contact
Jane Evans-Ryan
Genuity PR for Primus Power


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The human soul, like the human body, is not immortal by nature, but only by grace. Why is this important? Because the alternative is that the human soul is immortal in itself, by nature. If this were so, it would mean, by definition, that nothing and nobody could kill us. The only exception would be almighty God, if He were to retaliate against us on account of our having offended Him. This is exactly what many heterodoxies tell us happened, and it is a huge and hideous slur upon our all-good Creator, Who alone has life in Himself and is Life and the Life-giver.
What happened is simply that our first parents thoroughly trashed their relationship with God, rejected and walked away from the Life-giver. They pulled their straws out of the Fountain of Immortality and tore them up. They died, as it were, from thirst. They did it to themselves, without any help whatsoever, unless from the devil, but certainly not from God.
For those of you with an academic turn of mind, here is part of what Fr. John Romanides has to say about it in his book, The Ancestral Sin:
According to the Apostle Paul, God is 'the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Who alone hath immortality." Theophilus writes that God is "changeless because he is immortal." The basic presupposition in patristic teaching on the Holy Trinity, on Christology, and on grace is the fact that God alone is self-existence and, therefore, is immortal. The souls of men and angels are immortal not by nature but by grace. According to St. John of Damascus, the angels "are not immortal by nature but by grace because everything that has a beginning has by nature and end also." Similarly, Justin writes, "Those things that exist after God or will ever come to exist, have a corruptible nature and may disappear and cease to exist. For God alone is uncreated and incorruptible, and therefore He is God. But all other things other than God are created and corruptible." Against those who believe that the soul is ingenerate and by nature immortal, Tatian emphasizes, "O Greeks the soul is not immortal in itself." St. Irenaeus argues that the teaching about the soul being immortal by nature is from the devil.
Some of Christianity's first theologians insisted that the soul is by nature mortal and others that the soul is immortal. At first glance, it would seem that they contradict each other. Careful study, however, shows this to be only the appearance of contradiction. Against the philosophers and Gnostics who taught that the soul is ingenerate and by nature immortal, Justin, Tatian, and Irenaeus insisted that the soul is by nature mortal. But it seems that Athenagoras had other opponents before him, and he repeatedly emphasized, together with the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, the immortality of the soul. Irenaeus, however, presents both aspects of the same truth: the soul is mortal by nature but immortal by grace.