Kraft Goes Hostile for Cadbury
By Dan Mitchell
Posted Monday, November 9, 2009 - 10:21am
Kraft Foods (KFT) has gone hostile in its bid for the British confectioner Cadbury (CBY), sticking to the original bid of $16 billion it made in September.
By Larry Downes
Posted Monday, November 9, 2009 - 7:53am
Bernard Bilski, the head of the natural gas division at a Pittsburgh-area utility, had an idea. Recognizing the risks of weather conditions in the demand for energy, Bilski came up with a mathematical model for hedging meteorological uncertainty to smooth prices for consumers. Convinced his method broke new ground, Bilski applied for a patent in 1997. The Patent Office rejected his application, however, a decision upheld last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Image courtesy of United States Patent Office.
Word of the Week
Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 5:09pm
The Securities and Exchange Commission has been busy recently looking into all sorts of sneaky-sounding market practices that may be giving some traders unfair advantages over others. This week, SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter told Reuters that she’s increasingly concerned about "sponsored naked access."
By Mark Gimein
Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 2:32pm
For several years now, two very smart people—Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker and polymath jurist Richard Posner—have written a blog together in which they debate the economic and legal issues of the day.
The Doughnut That Dare Not Speak Its Name
By Dan Mitchell
Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 1:23pm
It's a bad sign when the product you're selling is so awful that you can't bring yourself to name it.
Fort Hood on YouTube
Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 11:25am
As Americans come to terms with yesterday's massacre at Fort Hood, they aren't just doing it privately. They're broadcasting their thoughts to the world via YouTube, and those thoughts range from the grief-stricken to the tasteless. First comes the shock, such as this gentleman's reaction:
Google Gives in to Privacy Concerns
Posted Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 3:09pm
Google's (GOOG) leaders have always had something of a tin ear when it comes to apprehending how afraid people are of its power and ubiquity. Ken Auletta's new book, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, has a case in point.
Why Eating Tainted Beef Is OK
By Dan Mitchell
Posted Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - 2:01pm
Did you know that ground beef that has tested positive for E. coli is allowed to be sold after it has been cooked and processed?
I didn’t, until just now, and though the idea squicks me out a little, it turns out that it really isn't a big deal. After all, processing removes a lot of stuff that can't and shouldn't be sold to the public—that, in part, is what processing is.
Photograph by Eising/Getty Images
Posted Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 4:00pm
It is no surprise that the bursting of the credit bubble led to a global crash in consumer spending on luxury goods. The traditional markets for luxury goods in the West and Japan—where 80 percent of the world’s $228 billion luxury sales take place—have hit a wall. In the United States, where aspirational brands became everyday items, the luxury business has gone into hibernation.
Photo of Louis Vuitton bag by Scott Barbour/Getty Images
Revealed: Google Job Interview Questions!
Posted Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 3:21pm
The San Francisco Chronicle's tech blog has been stirring up life in the Valley lately, with a series of posts about Google's (GOOG) increasingly dull and conventional workplace culture. The vaunted sandbox and 20 percent time climate, Googlers complain, is giving into the inexorable pull of big organizations toward boring management arrogance and bureaucracy.
