That’s a pretty crass threat and bizarre that a US company can do this! Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you’ll be fired | The Digital Home – CNET News.

Apps and websites that use the Google Maps API will soon have to pay $4 per 1,000 visitors Google announced today. There is an allowance for small sites – the first 25,000 map-loads a day are free. Google Maps API now costs $4 per 1,000 requests • The Register.

Basically it’s because econonmists allways calibrate the data – ie. change certain parameters to try to represent reality. Carter proved that even small changes to parameters make huge differences in the predictive power of a model. Economists calibrate and recalibrate their models all the time, leading to worse and worse predictions. Why Economic Models Are [...]

Analysis: HP – Dial M for mayhem | Reuters. Oops

As for what kinds of tricks the labels use, well, Frascogna notes “breakage fees” of 20%, which are based on breakage rates for vinyl from half a century ago. That CDs don’t break so much and that digital files don’t break at all, doesn’t matter. The labels still try to get a super high breakage [...]

It has decided to roll back a days’ trading as a result of the stolen bitcoins, which were dumped on the market, crashing the value of a single bitcoin. Apparently there wasn’t that much cash involved (only $1000,-) which means that the bitcoin currency isn’t very strong at all. Concurrently, a trojan has been found [...]

Well, this is getting interesting. Last week, we noted that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, alone among the other G8 leaders, questioned today’s copyright laws, suggesting that they did not fit with the times, and pointed out that these century-old laws don’t seem to fit with today’s internet. What the ‘free’ west can learn from ‘oppressive’ [...]

This page shows each ministry’s ICT projects, descriptions and budgets and how far they’re over or under budget. ICT-dashboard | ICT-dashboard.

KPN: Where unlimited means limited! I guess this is their strategy for people using whatsapp and skype services more often. It’s not a very good one, it’s like going back to the days where we paid a few cents per email… that business model didn’t last that long either. KPN wil klanten extra laten betalen [...]

Background: In 2009, the EU discussed the issue of a term extension for the ”neighbouring rights” that record companies have to recorded music. These neighbouring rights are now 50 years from the recording of a song. The proposal was to extend them to 95 years. After a lively debate in the European Parliament, it was [...]

A new study by Forrester Research found that maintaining a Facebook presence is less effective at drumming up business than plain old email newsletters or search ads. Companies interviewed for the study “received little benefits from Facebook,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Another recent study found that even print ads were better at fostering [...]

A study conducted by the Dutch calculators came up with the conclusion that open source didn’t save any money. Not so, says the MOD – they didn’t take into account things like the same costs incurred for 2500 users are now spent to service 6000 users, a savings of 66%! Rekenkamer blundert bij berekening open [...]

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The European Commission (EC) suspended trading in carbon credits on Wednseday after unknown hackers compromised the accounts of Czech traders and siphoned off around $38 million, according to published reports. EU countries including Estonia, Austria, The Czech Republic, Poland and France began closing their carbon trading registries yesterday after learning that carbon allowances had been [...]

Allthough you lose quite a few subscribers, you keep the subscribers who are interested in your messages and you increase conversions. You won’t be put on a spamlist (if you mail a subscribed list with an option to unsubscribe). It also outperforms using social media. Extreme Email Experiment: How Much Is Too Much?.

For the past 20 weeks I have been engaged in a very strange dialogue with the two noble Lords, in the course of which I have been trying to bring to their attention the willing availability of a strange organisation which wishes to make a great deal of money available to assist the recovery of [...]

Yup, the little kids have to fork over the money if they want to sing modern songs covered by copyright. Kindergartens ordered to pay copyright for songs | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 28.12.2010.

American Express Identifies ‘A New Era of Pause and Purchase’ With Five Key Trends Driving Consumer Spending in 2011 and Beyond Report Finds Locally-Sourced Goods, Digital Shopping and “Give-a-nomics” Are Among Top Trends Re-Shaping the American Consumer More Than Half (54%) of Americans Said They Try to Support Their Local Economy Over a Third (38%) [...]

Underground comic creator found out that someone had scanned his entire comic and posted it online in 4chan. Instead of getting pissed, he chatted with the people and his sales went higher than after being reviewed at Boing Boing! UNDERGROUND » Pictures help us learn..

The directive will fully harmonise the period within which payment is due at 30 days. Companies dealing with other companies will be able to set that period at 60 days in their contracts, but must pay bills within 30 days if no contractual period is set. Contracts will not be able to extend that period [...]

Behavioral economics tells us that emotions can profoundly affect individual behavior and decision-making. Does this also apply to societies at large, i.e., can societies experience mood states that affect their collective decision making? By extension is the public mood correlated or even predictive of economic indicators? Here we investigate whether measurements of collective mood states [...]

The Norwegian traders, Svend Egil Larsen and Peder Veiby, were handed suspended prison sentences and fines for market manipulation after outsmarting the trading system of Timber Hill, which is a unit of US-based Interactive Brokers. The two men managed to work out how the computerised system would react to certain trading patterns. This allowed them [...]

Dear website owner, congratulations on your excellent site, which includes features covered by our registered patent, #5,251,294. As the description indicates, many of the components on your pages, particularly your menus, rollover images, and shortcuts, are detailed in our claim. We would be delighted to lease these to you at a reasonable royalty rate of [...]

New Zealand has had a look at how the US software patents work and the mess they’ve made of things, so they’ve written up a bill stating that software is unpatentable. NZCS News – – NZ Computer Society.

This shows how from every $1000,- of revenue, the average music artist makes around $23,- out of which the record company then recoups ‘expenses’. ” In a traditional loan, you invest the money and pay back out of your proceeds. But a record label deal is nothing like that at all. They make you a [...]