Is world's 8th largest economy really on recovery path?

If you guessed it.. California.. you are right about it!!! California economy happens to be approximately 2 trillion worth!! and if and IF it was a nation on its own, it would have be world's 8th Largest economy!!

I think California is biggest state of US in terms size of economy.. Northern California's Silicon Valley and Southern California's Entertainment Industry is more or less flagship which almost defines US in rest of the world. I agree.. New Yorkers.. don't get angry.. I was coming to you.. You also define US big time.. it doesn't mean rest of the states are Chillar Party (coin change - sorry folks, couldn't come up with better term in English).  for those who are interested in finding about California.. please visit Wikipedia page for California for more interesting facts an figures.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California

Any how.. coming back to basics.. Is California really recovering? One point of time unemployment was around 12%. Recently it has come back to less than 10%. Which is progress.. and once people's mentality changes about California, that it is back on track.. there could be easy rush towards further growth and development.

There are some dangers ahead.. Weather is one of them.. This year's almost negligible snow falls on Sierra mountains has forced irrigation water cut for central valley farmers. Which will definitely hit the progress.. Central Valley is responsible for almost half of the entire US' fresh farm produce.. I agree that US mostly imports.. but whatever is freshly produced locally, our California's central valley contributes half of it. So it could be big hit to those farming community. Fortunately or unfortunately there share in economy is still very small but job impact could be high.

Everyone is saying that housing has bottomed out.. but I thought I heard this more than year back and still prices are going down and down.. Hopefully this time economists are correct!! Even I want to see some equity in my house back. Once housing turns around, that would be big sentimental shift and that can drive many other things here. If you are educated or rather than that, if you are in High Tech there is already almost boom time for jobs. But beyond high tech things are still bad. Hopefully this growth in Hight Tech will spill over to other areas of economy and spur growth over there..

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20275337/california-economic-outlook-brightens-bit-new-study-says

Forecast: California to continue job growth

Researchers see state jobless rate dipping below 10% next year

By George Avalos

gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com 

The economic outlook for California has perked up and the state should escape double-digit jobless levels more quickly than previously thought, researchers said Wednesday.

“Things look slightly better,” said Jerry Nickelsburg, a senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast, which released its quarterly outlook.

California is expected to suffer a 10.8 percent average jobless rate this year, but that should improve to an average of 9.8 percent next year.

That outlook is brighter than the group’s previous view. In December, the Anderson Forecast predicted a 10.5 percent unemployment rate for 2013.

“We are seeing improvement in the labor markets,” Nickelsburg said.

What’s more, job growth should steadily improve in the coming years, the researchers predicted.

The number of payroll jobs in California increased 1.2 percent last year, according to the Employment Development Department.

The Anderson Forecast said that pattern of job growth should continue, with statewide payroll increases of 1.3 percent this year, 1.9 percent next year and 2.5 percent in 2014, the economists said. “Things do look like they are going to be a little better in California, given the recent sharp drop in the state’s unemployment rate,” said Jeffrey Michael, director of the Stockton based Business Forecasting Center at University of the Pacific. 

The nationwide job market is also on the upswing. But growth in the United States still doesn’t look that great, according to a report for the Anderson Forecast that was prepared by senior economist David Shulman. 

“We are growing, but curb your enthusiasm,” Shulman said. 

The economy added an average of 250,000 jobs in the first two months of this year. That would work out to a rate of 3 million jobs a year. But Shulman said he doesn’t think that kind of growth can be sustained. 

Instead, the nation is more likely to add 160,000 to 200,000 jobs a month on average, he said. That would equate to an annual pace of 1.2 million to 2.4 million jobs. 

The strong job growth in January and February was boosted by mild weather around the country, Shulman said. 

“There was more construction, more outdoor work, people went to restaurants and the mall,” he added. 

The rebound in California is being led by industries that are strong in the Bay Area. 

“Tech industries, professional, scientific and technical services, health care, computers and electronics — those are all doing very well,” Nickelsburg said. 

More recently, improvements have begun to surface in some industries that have lagged. Retail, along with leisure and hospitality, are rebounding, Nickelsburg said. 

The Bay Area is likely to remain in the vanguard of the recovery for California, analysts said. 

“The Bay Areahasdefinitely been leading the rebound for the last six months or so,” said Michael, the UOP economist. “We think the Bay Area will continue to outpace the rest of the state in job gains.” 

During the one-year period that ended in February, job totals in the Bay Area grew 1.9 percent, more than double the pace of statewide job growth of 0.9 percent. 

“The rebound started in Silicon Valley and now the improvement is spreading throughout the Bay Area,” Michael said. 

Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos. 

Does Video Chat has potential to be a killer App?

Lot of work is going on to make Video Chat/Calls ubiquitous as phone calls. Recently Google announced that they are opening Google+ Hangouts for developers to build apps on it. Lot many other companies are trying to build and incorporate video chat/talk much simpler.

Question is.. is there that much potential for these video chats/talks. Do customers really want video calls to be that much. Let me know your experience if any.

In my view, it will still take long time for us to start using video, if et all it really kicks off. I may be wrong as well. But currently my understanding is based on couple of facts/observations I have noticed.
 - Most of the folks are still not ready for video calls. many times they may not be in situation or place where they can really use it.
  - Secondly, we are yet to see really good video quality and really easy to use devices.

Best candidates are Portable/touch devices like iPhone/iPad/etc.. They have great potential to be part of our life. They are becoming good part of our life already and soon Laptop will have status of what currently desktops have. Even these devices needs some more improvements. Like better (HD) front camera. Apple's facetime is one good example of ease of use but it has limitations about apple device. But it is really good and works great when you have decent wi-fi signal. To solve this, another app which came was Tango which works across the board on iPhone and Android devices. It also has some cool features but I found it more problematic than Facetime. Still in time to come, it will get better. These apps (facetime/Tango) works more on devices' address book looking for phone numbers and emails where counterparts of these apps is already there. So it is great and easy to use.

There is no doubt that video chats are better in terms of  overall user experience. However, they are complex to use and mostly many times people can't do. I remember that once our office conferencing system started turning on video by default and people started taping the camera of laptop as it was sometimes embarrassing. Even now, I barely see anyone turning on webcam during our work meetings. Again, it is just my view or experience. But the fact is that you really need to be intimate with the person whom you are doing video chat. We are accustomed to voice and are happy with it mostly.

Don't know if the hype around video will really turn into reality ever.. I would really like it to.. I do enjoy doing video conferences with good friends and family members. In fact next generation type of video conference should include 3D chat where they can project other person's hologram and make it more closer to reality. That would be really nice!!

Here is the story which stimulated all the ideas and thoughts..

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20273524/google-hangouts-video-chat-app

DEVELOPING VIDEO CHAT

Focused on making connections

Google+ Hangouts opens to developers’ apps in hopes of engaging users on social network

By Mike Swift

mswift@mercurynews.com 

Christine Egy Rose realized she was on to something powerful. Instead of the awkward monosyllabic two-minute exchange her 3-year-old son Jackson typically had over a video chat link with relatives, he spent a full 50 minutes happily working on a shared drawing with his grandmother in Florida, using the video chat’s embedded drawing feature that Egy Rose was developing.

Egy Rose’s mother-in-law, feeling so much closer to the little boy in California, was almost in tears by the end of the chat.

“We don’t have the Sunday night dining room table anymore — at least a lot of families don’t — and the three of us didn’t,” Egy Rose, CEO of the video chat and collaborative play startup Scoot & Doodle, said in an interview with fellow co-founders Patty Chang and Sarah Stone Waters. “We wanted to re-create that for our families.”

With Google on Wednesday launching the first half-dozen apps from independent developers for the “Hangouts” video chat feature of Google+, the Internet giant hopes to increase the time people spend on the social network and create a popular platform that will ultimately grow to hundreds of video apps, or more. Hangouts allows up to 10 people to connect on a video chat.

By adding software apps to Hangouts, independent developers like Scoot & Doodle hope to make video chats more like an inperson, shared social experience, allowing apps to transform video chats, just as they revolutionized cellphones. 

---

KAREN T. BORCHERS/STAFF PHOTOS

Christine Egy Rose, right, CEO and co-founder of Scoot & Doodle, shows her children Cate, 8, and Jackson, 3, her new Hangouts app.

“It’s really the starting gun,” Vic Gundotra, the executive who heads the development of Google+, said of Wednesday’s platform launch. “No one has ever done a multiuser video service for the whole world for free, let alone open it up to developers and see where they take it. It takes a company like Google, at Google’s scale, to do something like this, and let’s see what happens.” 

In opening Google+ Hangouts to independent developers such as Scoot & Doodle, Google is cribbing a page from Facebook. When CEO Mark Zuckerberg opened Facebook’s platform to independent developers in 2007, no one knew it would trigger a revolution in social games that spawned successful companies such as Zynga. More recently, Facebook also has offered shared-experience services, such as a feature launched in January that allows friends to listen to the same song at that same time. Facebook has also partnered with Skype to provide video chat. 

Engaging users 

At more than 100 million users, Google+ is still a fraction of the size of Facebook’s 845 million users. But an even bigger issue for Google+ is poor engagement, with recent data from comScore showing users average just three minutes a month on Google+, compared with seven hours a month on Facebook. The Hangouts feature is “one of the four or five pillars that we have that really drive engagement,”Gundotra said. “It fundamentally changes the interaction when you can see somebody’s eyes, which is why we said social is much more than just status updates. That’s why we invested so much in video technology.” 

Among the other Hangout apps launching on Google+ Wednesday will be “Aces Hangout,” a virtual deck of cards, allowing a person in the Bay Area, for example, to play a game of poker through a video chat with a cousin in Denmark and an aunt in Denver, as well as other apps to play games or share documents. 

“Google is really hoping to drive engagement with its network, and getting people to stay online and use its services more is absolutely something it wants to do,” said Irene Berlinsky, an analyst with IDC who follows video chat. Along with Skype, Google is emerging as “really the two big gorillas” of video chat, she said. 

Egy Rose, Chang and Waters don’t fit the stock profile of Silicon Valley startup entrepreneurs — they are not 20-something men, and they are not engineers. Egy Rose and Chang are former NBC television news producers — Egy Rose with “Meet the Press” and Chang with “Dateline” — while Waters was a designer for clothing companies such as Old Navy and Abercrombie & Fitch, but had never designed for the Web. 

All three, however, are the mothers of young children and what ultimately became Scoot & Doodle (The company got its name from the nicknames for Egy Rose’s two kids.) started out as an attempt to solve a social problem — the difficulty of staying close to children and adults separated by geography or divorce. 

“We knew the problem was enormous,” Egy Rose said. “Everyone we talked to was experiencing that.” 

The three founders worked early on with educators and scientists from the MIT Media Lab, San Francisco’s Exploratorium and the Stanford Institute of Design K-12 Lab to gain insights about how to connect children and adults, and they began to focus on shared activities such as drawing and 

art. One early idea was to create a kit, including arts and games, to help busy parents or distant grandparents connect with children. But around this time, Egy Rose and Chang, who were partners in a Silicon Valley video consulting business that did corporate videos for large Silicon Valley companies, got advice from a mentor who suggested they focus on the Internet as the way to bring families together. 

Selling the idea 

But as they made the rounds looking for investors in Silicon Valley to talk about using video chat to create “a collaborative playspace,” it was tough to get traction. 

“We knew we had a big problem: We’re all women, we’re all close to 40, we all have children, and we don’t have technical backgrounds,” Chang said. As they met with potential investors, “we had people say things like, ‘You girls are cute, but it’s not going to work.’” Ultimately, they signed on engineers Brian Ng and Kenji Morrow to create a five-person startup that is now based in San Francisco. And, by chance, a mutual acquaintance introduced them to the Google+ team. While a beta version of the product is also on the Scoot & Doodle website at scootdoodle.com, it’s not yet open to full public use. Which means that the Google+ launch Wednesday marked the coming out party for the three founders in front of a potential audience of millions. 

The startup is still exploring revenue models, but wants to build audience for its product first. “We are committed to learning from the people using the product,” Egy Rose said. “We will land on the right solution.” 

Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories or facebook.com/mike.swift3. 



KAREN T. BORCHERS/STAFF 

Christine Egy Rose, from left, Patty Chang and Sarah Stone Waters are co-founders of Scoot & Doodle. The startup has made an app for Google+ Hangouts. 

We only needed SGI ('s remnant) in Patent War!!

This is why Patent policies should be revamped completely. Some day they can even patent the process of breathing (who knows some version is already patented).

Once beloved company Silicon Graphics which failed to keep up with technology trends wants to get last juice out of their patents. Most likely their intent is to increase value of their patents that someone like Apple or Google will buy their patent to shore up their defense against each other.

Off-the-late, all this patent war has become only good for patent lawyers. I guess, all the companies should sit together and decide to dump all the patents stop worrying about patents. Just focus on innovation and keep building great things such as iPhone, iPad etc.. :-)The amount they are spending on patent wars could be better spend on extra R&D and would yield better results to them. I know that this is only wishful thinking and legal advisors will never let this happen as it will be suicide for them.

In this case, SGI may really have some very basic Computer Graphics Patents which might be used by every company producing any image rendering on LCD etc. But that was history and they should be let go.. Moreover, why SGI is waking up now. They should also put some limitations of how long you haven't tried to enforce. In this case, SGI remnant must be knowing about their patent violation long time back. If they were sleeping till now, they should allowed to sleep forever..


PATENT DISPUTE

SGI remnant sues Apple, other phone makers

Apple, Sony and four other companies were sued by Graphics Properties Holdings, formerly known as Silicon Graphics, for allegedly infringing a patent through their sale of mobile phones and other electronic devices. The lawsuits against Apple, Japan-based Sony, Taiwan-based HTC, South Korea-based LG Electronics and Samsung, as well as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, were filed in the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del. The patent at issue relates to a computer graphics process that turns text and images into pixels to be displayed on screens.

According to the lawsuits, the defendants’ infringing devices include Apple’s iPhone and the HTC Evo4G, LG Thrill, Research In Motion Torch, Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, and Sony Xperia Play smartphones. Graphics Properties said that unless the alleged infringements are halted, it will suffer irreparable harm. The lawsuits seek to stop the sale of infringing products and also seek reasonable royalties and other damages. 

Now Windows / Nokia Phone..

Has any one tried it out. I was big fan of Nokia Cell phones. Just Phone part.. I used to love it. There were the best.. In past, they were best phones when it comes to voice quality or working even in poor signal area. I rarely had any call drops on it. As compared to iPhone or even previously, those flashy Sony Ericson or even my Samsung Blackjack (anyone even remembers it :-) ).

I rarely see Nokia phones here in US. They are still very much popular in India and may be rest of the world. In US, due to dominance of Cell Providers, Nokia had almost zero market share. For some reasons, they failed to come up with any agreement with them. May be they were happy with non-US market.

Now with Microsoft alliance, I am guessing they are coming back. Nokia is known to be best in terms of hardware. However, we will have to see how there machines works or marry with crappy Microsoft OS. It will be interesting to watch and track how do they perform. I guess, future and reputation of two once upon a time best companies is at stake. I hope that they will come up with better cell phone and more importantly better overall experience for users and customers. Now a days, more important thing is overall experience and ecosystem around it. All thanks to Apple iPhone, customers are more demanding and levels are set much higher.

I guess, MS and Nokia should also come up with some thing like iPod touch type. With Skype in their bag, they can easily come up with good competitor for non cell phone type of devices to extend product range similar to iPhone, iPod-touch and even iPad. They can freely and aggressively sell and try it out. There is still ample of diet for good tablets. Especially for MS, if they can some how link their tablet to Desktop/Laptop.. May be MS tablet can introspect your desktop and bring applications and media on tablet automatically either on memory or may be thru their cloud. There could be great synergy for them. MS is still defacto leader in desktop area. If they help users migrate and ease pain by keeping data/application/media in sync they still might have some good story and can still successfully get good pie of the market.

AT&T to sell $100 Nokia phone

Rival to iPhone and Android devices will have LTE speed

By Scott Moritz

Bloomberg News

AT&T plans to start selling a Nokia smartphone with Microsoft software for half of what it charges for the iPhone, as the device’s makers seek to break Apple and Google’s dominance of the U.S. market. The Lumia 900, which runs on AT&T’s network using faster, so-called longterm- evolution technology, will start selling for $99.99 on April 8, the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier said Monday in a statement. The latest iPhone and newest handsets running Google’s Android software typically start at $199.

Nokia is counting on Microsoft’s Windows Phone software to reignite sales in the U.S., where the iPhone, Android makers such as Samsung Electronics and Research In Motion’s Black-Berry control 92 percent of the market. Microsoft is trying to increase its share of the mobile software market to expand beyond the slowergrowing personal-computer market.

“The pricing is aggressive,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst at research firm Current Analysis in Teaneck, N.J. “They are hoping to use price to get people to buy a product with an operating system they aren’t familiar with.”

To get the $99.99 price, customers need to sign a twoyear contract with AT&T. The Dallas-based carrier will also sell the phone without a contract for $449.99, said Steven Schwadron, an AT&T spokesman.

Those price points suggest that AT&T is subsidizing each Lumia by about $350. That compares with a $450 subsidy for the cheapest version iPhone 4S, which sells for $199 with a contract and $649 without one.Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft executive, started rebuilding the Espoo, Finland-based company’s smartphone strategy around the Windows Phone operating system last year. Nokia had previously focused on its own MeeGo and Symbian operating systems.

Nokia and Microsoft have said they are willing to spend money to fuel sales. Microsoft said last year it would pay Nokia $1 billion to develop and promote Windows phones. Elop said in October that marketing spending on the Lumia series would be triple the money spent on previous product sales promotions.

Will you upgrade to Windows 8

Good review of upcoming Windows 8 in our local news paper by Troy Wolverton. I am yet to try it out and this article does incites me to check out MSDN and see if I can get handle on the copy of Windows 8 and upgrade one of the machine. I will try to do that and let update you all soon.

Let us talk about Troy's feedback objectively. First mistake or flaw in his testing was that he upgraded several years old Dell machine. In my view all the newer OS should only be used on latest machines. Whenever new OS comes out, it assumes that baseline for average machines has gotten better and they are designed to leverage advancements in Computing and Memory Power. I never had great experience with any of the latest OS on older machines. That includes not only Windows but also MAC and iPhone as well.

One more thing, I am personally really happy with Windows7. It was great OS after long time after XP from Windows. It was literally flawless and worked liked charm. I don't have any intentions of upgrading current Windows machines from Windows 7 to Windows 8.

Now coming back to Windows 8. Seems like MS is pushing hard for Tablets. Which is obvious as they totally missed that boat and want to come back to it. MS wants to unify user experience of Desktop and Touch Sensitive device experience of the users. Which will be great thing for common users. Metro seems to be nice concept and looks great. There has to be some kind of learning curve to get used to it but at the same time most of the current users don't have to upgrade from Windows 7.

Whatever being said about Microsoft, we still need to credit them with proliferation of computing in 90s and early 2000s. They simplified PC and made it cheap enough for every common man to have and take advantage of PCs.

Let me know your views about this review. I will also update you soon about it :-)

For PC users, Microsoft’s new version of operating system is a major misstep

The venerable PC is at a crossroads.

Sales growth has slowed to a crawl. And consumers and developers are increasingly turning their time and attention to smartphones and tablets.

Pressured by that trend, Microsoft is updating Windows to make PCs work more like smartphones and to bring Windows to a whole new class of devices: iPad-like touch-screen tablets. Last month, the company launched what it calls a “consumer preview” of Windows 8, the next version of its flagship operating system. The preview is not a final version — that isn’t expected until at least this fall — but it’s close.

I’ve been playing around with the Windows 8 preview for several weeks. I loaded it onto a several-year old Dell laptop, in part because that’s what I had available and in part to see what users of traditional PCs can expect from the new software. I hope to eventually test out the software on a tablet.

My conclusion: For PC users, Windows 8 is a major misstep.

Perhaps its biggest problem is that it has two separate and largely incompatible parts. It feels like Microsoft took a nice dress and attached it to an equally fine pantsuit and tried to pass it off as one garment. It just doesn’t work.

The two pieces are a new interface called “Metro” and the old, traditional desktop inherited from past versions of the software.

The desktop interface looks and works much as it did in Windows 7, except that you won’t find a Start button or Start menu, both of which have been core features of the software since Windows 95 debuted about 17 years ago. And you no longer see the desktop when you start-up Windows. 

Instead, you see the new Metro interface, which Microsoft developed originally for its Windows Phone 7 smartphone operating system. The interface is comprised of a series of application squares or “tiles” arrayed on a flat background. 

The app tiles are more than just static program icons; they can display snippets of updated information, such as your next appointment or the current temperature. 

When you launch an application designed for the Metro interface, it runs fullscreen by default, not inside a window. You can split the screen between two applications, but that’s it. Unlike with the desktop, you can’t see more than two applications at a time on a single screen. I actually like the Metro interface on Windows Phone 7 devices. But on a traditional PC, it’s a poor fit. 

Metro was originally designed to be used with a finger on a touch screen, not with a mouse or trackpad. 

In order to see a particular app tile on the Metro start screen, for example, you may have to scroll left or right. 

That’s not a problem if you can simply swipe left or right on a touch screen, but it’s not such an easy or quick thing to do if you’ve got to use a trackpad or mouse to click on a scroll bar. I’d much rather use the old-fashioned Start menu. Another problem with Metro is that, at least for now, most of the Windows applications people use are desktop-style programs. 

That makes the Metro interface an unnecessary barrier to those applications. I’d like to have my computer just boot up directly into the desktop interface. But Windows 8 forces everyone to begin on the Metro start screen. 

So I found myself frequently flipping back and forth between Metro and the desktop, a process that can be disorienting. Because programs for the two interfaces look and work differently, switching between them is like running two different operating systems on the same computer. 

The Metro interface is so radically different that much of what users have come to know about Windows for the past 17 years doesn’t apply. And the new interface doesn’t help them much in figuring out the new steps they need to take to accomplish old tasks. 

Take a simple example: closing programs. Since Windows 95, users have typically just clicked on the “x” in the upper right hand corner of the program’s window to close it. For those who prefer to use the menu bar, you can usually click on “File” and then “Exit.” 

But with Metro-style apps, you won’t find a closeprogram “x.” You won’t even find a menu bar. Instead, to close a program you have to move your pointer to the top edge of the screen, click and hold until the app screen becomes a thumbnail and then drag that thumbnail image to the bottom of the screen. And you have to do all this without any clues: there’s nothing to “grab” at the top edge of the screen and the interface gives you no indication of what you should do with the thumbnail once you’ve grabbed it. 

That’s merely one of many commands that are not only different but also hidden by the Metro interface. 

Windows 8 is not all bad. 

It has some great features and incorporates some good ideas. 

One of its qualities is speed. It generally starts up, resumes from sleep and shuts down faster than Windows 7. Also, it automatically will synchronize settings — Web bookmarks, desktop images, cursor blink rate and the like — and even apps across multiple computers. 

Another cool thing about Windows 8 is the way it works with Web-based services and social networks. With the Metro-style Photos application, you can view pictures you’ve stored on your local machine on Microsoft’s cloud-based SkyDrive service and on websites such as Flickr and Facebook. 

Similarly, you can save a document to your hard drive or to SkyDrive. 

Microsoft officials say users will be able to add on to these services as new Metro apps become available, and that they eventually may be able to pull up photos from Picasa or save documents to DropBox, all from the same dialog box. 

But neat features such as these are more than outweighed by the fundamental problems with Windows 8. 

Microsoft obviously wants to drag the PC into a new era, but the result is an operating system that’s much harder to use than the old fashioned one. 

Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285 or twolverton@mercurynews.com. Follow him at www.mercurynews.com/ troy-wolverton or Twitter. 

com/troywolv. 




MICROSOFT 

Michael Angiulo, left, and Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft tout the new features of Windows 8 at the company’s Build conference in September in Anaheim. The new version of its operating system is expected to be released this fall. 

Is Silicon Valley Housing is back to bubble or just booming?

Great news items on front page of our local news paper. Seems that housing boom is back and it is more or less fueled by dot.com type of boom of Facebook, Google and many more successful tech companies.

In part it is fueled by higher employment gains in technology area which is again attracting inflow of technology workers back in valley. Palo Alto especially is favorite of all is considered safe heaven as it has great schools, great neighborhood of rich and famous. Even in worst of times, I haven't heard Palo Alto real estate going down. At the most it stagnates... However, boom does percolate to rest of the region and spreads to entire valley.

It is quite contrary to rest of the US that real estate is going up in Valley. But I guess, it is all about supply and demand. Lot of investment is from China, Russia and rest of the world. Which is quite obvious as weather is perfect and on top of it, if you want to do anything in technology area, this is THE PLACE to be.

Silicon valley is best example of the fact that Cost of Doing Business doesn't matter as long as you can do business and make money out of it. Silicon Valley has one of the highest possible cost of business with highest property rates, highest Utility rates, highest cost of employees, highest rate of taxes and one of the highest gas prices (except Hawaii). Despite that people come here and start business. Why? One reason could be luck or chance that Chip/Software some how got bootstrapped here. Another more persistent one is consistent climate of technology with abundant best Universities and abundant Capital availability from bunker hill road. All that surpasses any deterrent in form of cost.

I hope this boom will continue and will be a reasonable boom rather than bubble type of like it was in 2005s. All friends and family members.. if you want to move in, this is right time. jump in!!!


http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20235268/buyers-compete-short-supply-homes-bay-area

SHIFT IN BAY AREA HOUSING

BIDDINGWAR

IN SOUTH BAY, TECH WORKERS DRIVE UP MARKET; IN EAST BAY, PENT-UP DEMAND FUELS BUYING BOOM


By Pete Carey

pcarey@mercurynews.com 

Peter Giovannotto is smack in the middle of a major shift in the Bay Area housing market.

The Peninsula real estate agent recently had a modest Palo Alto ranch-style home draw 38 offers and sell in eight days for nearly a half-million dollars more than the asking price, all par for the course in Palo Alto’s overheated real estate market.

“We started at $1.2 million and ended up selling for $1.65 million,” he said.

A flock of eager buyers competing for fewer-thanusual homes for sale is sending prices soaring along the Peninsula, where Googlers and Facebook employees duke it out with foreign investors for a place to live.

In other parts of the Bay Area, pent-up demand has helped create a hot market for lower-cost homes, with buyers having to move fast to grab foreclosures and be prepared for stiff competition on other homes for sale. In Contra Costa County, pending sales of single-family homes are up about 62 percent from last year and inventory is down 32 percent — a seller’s market.

“We are getting lots of multiple offers on lowerend properties,” said Barbara Safran, president of the Contra Costa Association of Realtors. “One person told me they had 12 offers on a property in Concord.”

CHUCK TODD/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 

The winning bidder on the Palo Alto home was a Google employee from China, highlighting two trends: the rise of the wealthy tech buyer and the buyer from Asia. “We’re seeing lot more buyers from that region,” Giovannotto said. “It’s difficult to buy property over there, and the power of their money is greater over here.” 

Another Palo Alto home drew 10 offers recently, selling for $325,000 over the asking price. 

In the East Bay, a relatively small supply of lowerpriced homes and an increase in demand has homebuyers jumping. 

Two couples working with Danville real estate agent Kevin Kieffer of Keller Williams used the “strike first” method Kieffer advocates to grab their homes this month. He tells clients that in this market, they have to make a bid almost immediately, not wait until the weekend when the bulk of buyers are looking. If it’s a foreclosure, the bank is likely to welcome a decent offer, he said. 

Cameron and Rissa Kossen bought a bank-owned Martinez house that’s near Pleasant Hill schools for $313,000 by making an offer quickly. Had he waited until the weekend, Cameron Kossen said, other buyers would have made offers and “it would have gone up to $330,000 or $340,000.” 

Another East Bay couple, Ken and Ashley Wilson, were outbid on three homes before landing the fourth, a threebedroom, two-bath house in Pleasant Hill. 

“The housing market is moving so quick that houses would come on the market and my wife and I were having to make decisions almost at that minute, because there were others willing to purchase the home right then,” said Ken Wilson, who works at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. 

On both sides of San Francisco Bay, real estate agents say fewer homes than usual are for sale. 

“Menlo Park and Palo Alto are both desperate for inventory,” said Wendy McPherson of Coldwell Banker in Menlo Park. She said that Palo Alto recently had only about 30 homes for sale. 

Ray Chavez of Alain Pinel in Los Gatos sold a home in Santa Clara that received five offers in six days and sold for $17,000 over the asking price of $609,000, a big bump in that market for a small home. 

“It’s amazing what’s not out there right now,” he said. “There are only 32 homes in the whole city of Santa Clara. We’re down 74 percent from February 2011.” 

The threat of historically low interest rates rising further — the rates rose above 4 percent this week — combined with increased confidence in the economy is bringing out buyers who have been holding back. 

“I think it’s a little bit like Christmas,” said Safran of the Contra Costa Association of Realtors. “People finally started buying again this Christmas when they hadn’t bought for three years. I think they’re just ready. It’s time.” 

Sales were up across the Bay Area in February, the strongest showing for that month in five years, according to DataQuick, a real estate information service. 

Silicon Valley is having its fourth-highest year in sales since 2000, said Richard Calhoun of Creekside Realty in San Jose. Calhoun, who has tracked the inventory of homes for sale in Santa Clara County for more than a decade, said that in some parts of Silicon Valley, including the Palo Alto area, the entire stock of homes for sale would be exhausted in less than a month. 

“The housing market has definitely bottomed and is on a recovery path,” said Ken Rosen, chairman at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley. “I think it is a real recovery happening, around the whole country.” 

Contra Costa County, saturated with foreclosures, is still 18 months away from a full recovery and a normal housing market, Rosen said. “There’s going to be a spillover from San Francisco and the Bay Area, but it hasn’t happened yet.” 

Some would-be sellers on the Peninsula seem to be holding out until next year, when Facebook’s newly minted millionaires will begin spending their money, potentially driving up prices even more. 

Sellers are “getting greedy” and pulling homes off the market, said Alex H. Wang of Rainmaker Properties in Los Altos. “They get multiple offers on their house and say, ‘I don’t want to sell anymore. I’ll wait until next year.’ That upsets everybody.” 

Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419. 




LIPO CHING/STAFF PHOTOS 

Real estate agents Peter Giovannotto, left, and Chris Iverson stand in front of a Palo Alto ranch-style house that received 38 offers and sold in eight days for $1.65 million, $450,000 more than the asking price. The agents used the lights as part of a renovation theme during the selling period. 







The three-bedroom, two-bathroom Palo Alto house features a modest living room and a double oven, but the top oven didn’t work at the time of the $1.65 million sale. 

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http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20242869/bay-area-adds-more-than-15-000-jobs

LEADS STATE IN JOB GROWTH

Bay Area notches three-year high in employment

By George Avalos

gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com 

The Bay Area economy created 15,400 jobs in February, raising total employment in the region to the highest level in three years, the state’s Employment Development Department reported Friday.

But despite positive job growth in the Bay Area, the net gain statewide was a mere 4,000 jobs.

“California’s economy is being led by the Bay Area,” said Scott Anderson, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities. “The Bay Area is certainly the bright spot in the state.”

The Bay Area has added jobs for seven consecutive months, and all three major urban centers in the nine-county region are now making significant employment gains. The South Bay added 4,100 jobs last month, while the East Bay gained 3,200 and the San Francisco-San Mateo-Marin region added 7,100, seasonally adjusted figures showed. 

“The Bay Area is producing what the world wants,” said Jon Haveman, chief economist with the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. “High-end computer manufacturing, information services, professional and business services are all doing well and creating jobs.” 

To be sure, the Bay Area has a long way to go to recapture the jobs lost during the recession. Still, the current job trends show the region also has come a long way since the depths of the downturn. 

Employment totals in the Bay Area are now at their highest levels since February 2009. The East Bay and South Bay are at similar multiyear highs. 

The statewide jobless rate was 10.9 percent last month, unchanged from January. The United States had an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent in February, which also was the same as in January. 

In February, the South Bay posted a jobless rate of 8.7 percent, down from 8.9percent the previous month; the East Bay’s was unchanged at 9.3 percent, while the San Francisco area’s was at 7.4 percent, worse than the previous month’s 7.3 percent rate, a Beacon Economics estimate culled from the EDD figures shows. 

The overall Bay Area jobless rate was 8.6 percent in February, an improvement from the 8.7 percent rate in January, according to this newspaper’s analysis of the Beacon figures. 

Through much of the recovery from the recession, the South Bay and San Francisco regions led in job growth, bolstered by the fastexpanding tech sector. The East Bay, ground zero for the meltdown of the housing market, has lagged. 

Now, however, the East Bay has joined the upswing, which bodes well for overall economic prospects in the Bay Area. The 3,200 jobs East Bay employers added in February follow a gain of 9,400 jobs in January. 

Despite the improvements, the hunt for employment remains a struggle for some job seekers. 

Even the information technology sector isn’t uniformly hot for job seekers. Gabriel Garcia, a San Jose resident, is finding that IT employers prefer to hire people for temporary contract jobs rather than full-time positions. 

“It seems that things are picking up,” Garcia said. “But it’s been harder than I expected.” 

Despite the tough times, Newark resident Sarah Babbitt, a mother of two, is not discouraged as she seeks a job in retail or restaurant management. 

“I’ve been looking for work for about two months,” Babbitt said. “But I’m confident in my skills. I’ll be able to find something.” 

The region is poised to produce more employment opportunities for job seekers, analysts predicted. 

“The Bay Area has longterm fundamentals that are better than pretty much anywhere else in the world,” Haveman said. “That is the result of the frontier economy that we have in this region.” 

Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos. 

Will you go to Dr. Watson for diagnosis?

Great news from technology's perspective. At the same time scary if this will lead machines taking care of healthcare or if it will lead "Human Doctors" to use their brain less and less and rely more and more on Supercomputer.

In general it is okay to take more and more help of technology in these critical care type of issues. At the same time it is humans who need to be driver seat. Machines can only rely on past issues and past diagnosis. Nobody can replace human intuition, which on top of all the hard work and studies, make a doctor great. Our computing capability is still not there yet, at least in my view..

Also, it is possible that this project is over emphasized for marketing reasons. In reality, it could be at the most helper to doctors in diagnosis. However, there is great chance that doctors may start relying more and more on this instead of using their own mind.


IBM’s supercomputer may someday be ‘Dr. Watson’

Medical training to include residency at famed cancer center

By Jim Fitzgerald

Associated Press

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — The medical training of IBM’s speedy Watson computer will continue with a residency at a renowned Manhattan cancer hospital.

International Business Machines and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center said Thursday that they will add the latest in oncology research — and the hospital’s accumulated experience — to Watson’s vast knowledge base, and keep updating it.

The result should help the hospital diagnose and treat cancer more quickly, accurately and personally, they said.

“The capabilities are enormous,” said Dr. Larry Norton, deputy chief for breast cancer programs at Sloan-Kettering. “And unlike my medical students, Watson doesn’t forget anything.”
Watson won fame by beating the world’s best “Jeopardy” players. Applying its speed and language skills to medicine was a longtime goal at IBM, and Watson went to work last year for health insurer Well-Point.

The training at Sloan-Kettering will take time, and it may be the end of next year before patients at the hospital are benefiting from Watson’s speed and depth, said Dr. Martin Kohn, chief medical scientist at IBM. If successful, the finished product could be used anywhere in the world to aid cancer treatment.

Kohn said there’s a rule of thumb that it takes 15 years for breakthroughs in medicine to be disseminated around the world.

“So any process that can help get valuable information about choices and treatment out into general use more rapidly obviously is an improvement,” he said.

IBM said it was still focused on the project’s development and was undecided about how to market it. It said both IBM and the hospital had invested in the plan but would not disclose specifics.

Watson will be fed textbooks, medical journals and — with permission — individual medical records. Then it will be tested with more and more complicated cancer scenarios and assessed with the help of an advisory panel, Kohn said. It’s expected to speedily suggest diagnoses and recommend treatments, ranking several alternatives.

The computer’s grasp of the scientific literature — and its ability to find the right passage in seconds — will help doctors keep up with the ever-expanding amount of available information, the doctors said.

But Norton said it’s the patient records at Sloan-Kettering — with plain-language notations that Watson can understand — that will add “wisdom” to what the computer learns.

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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES

IBM’s Watson will be fed textbooks, medical journals and even individual medical records, and be tested with increasingly complicated cancer scenarios.

Where is Growth Engine of Apple

Apple's stock is all time high crossing $600 range for first time in the history of the Company. Most of the analyst says that this will continue for long time with everyone's target for stock even higher for $800 or more..

Now, question is how much and how long this train will continue. It will definitely continue for short term. Apple is benefitting from sound policies and fundamentals of past decade or so. However, I am cautious, especially when every one is of same opinion, usually that means it is mad rush without applying any brain or introspection..

Another thing, this recent dividend and stock buy back decisions are mainly targeted towards boosting stock value. Steve Jobs was principally against these changes. I don't think that he was God and knew everything correctly. So we can't assume that his way was the best way. However, now it is very clear that this recent dividend and stock buy-back announcement was mainly for increase shareholder value which essentially means that increase in stock price. Essentially working other ways to increase stock value. Which is good. Off-course, CEO and Board is primarily responsible to shareholders.

However, I am with Steve Jobs on this side.. CEO should primarily worry about increasing value of company by increasing value of company by creating more value for customers. All these artificial means like buying back stock or dividend are really short term and also really not very effective in increasing total value of company. If CEO just focus on creating value for customers that will automatically increase value of company overall. Stock dilution or cash in hand or not won't matter. Customers will love your company and reward it any how. In my view these type of things are merely a distraction for CEO. These should be attempted when other strategies are not working or you artificially want to increase stock value by speculations or mathematical jugglery.. This is not a good sign.. along with all the analyst being upbeat.. both of them are sign of brewing trouble or some kind of vacuum in strategy or road map..

There is no easy way, but CEO's salary/bonus should be totally de-linked from  short term stock performance. I hope I am wrong here but this seems to be simple effort by board and top executives to increase value of their bonus pool instead of overall real value of company. Times are good so nobody will notice these type of gimmicks and most likely these type of notes will be brushed aside.. Even my heart wants my brain to be wrong.. I love Apple and its product..

OVERFLOWING IN CASH

No end in sight

to Apple growth?

Even after paying for dividend and stock buyback, tech giant’s shares are likely to keep rising


By Patrick May

pmay@mercurynews.com 

With Apple’s announcement Monday that it would use some of its ever-swelling cash reserves — now tallying some $98 billion — to pay a dividend, the Cupertino tech giant was getting attention for something other than its hit products.

Apple’s stock has soared, up 77 percent in the past year and hitting a record Monday, widening its lead as the most valuable company on the planet. But despite that ascent, most stock analysts who follow the company think its shares are still worth buying and expect them to keep rising.

Traditionally, companies have begun to offer dividends after their earnings and stock price growth slow. But not so with Apple, said Brian Marshall with the ISI Group, adding that the dividend announcement completes “a trifecta — investors are getting growth, value and yield.”

“Historically, people would say a growth-stock company giving a dividend was a sign to investors to sell,” he said. “But that’s not the case here.” 

Others also welcomed Apple’s decision — announced by CEO Tim Cook during an unusual conference call early Monday before the U.S. markets had opened — to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program this year. 

Darren Chervitz, co-manager of the Jacob Internet Fund, which owns Apple shares, said it was an anticipated and apt attempt by Apple to deal with what had become an unwieldy amount of cash. Yet because of Apple’s booming profit, its cash hoard may continue to swell despite the dividend and stock buyback. 

“We’re big Apple shareholders, but I’m not in the guessing game of when the growth will slow,” Chervitz said. “We’ve never seen anything like this company before, and revenue growth accelerating as it has is unprecedented.” 

By one traditional measure of stock market value, the price-earnings ratio, Apple’s shares are trading below those of Procter & Gamble, and just above General Electric. Both are solid companies but neither is seen as a fast-growing powerhouse like Apple. 

Cook said Apple would offer a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share sometime in its fiscal fourth quarter, which begins July 1, and that the dividend and share repurchase program would cost $45 billion over the next three years. The share repurchase is intended to help offset the effects of employees exercising stock options and selling off shares, and could bolster Apple’s share price. 

Apple generated about $30 billion in cash in its latest fiscal year, even after accounting for investments in equipment and other companies. As Apple’s cash pile has grown, the company has felt increasing pressure from investors to do something other than sit on it. 

During the call, Cook made it clear that Apple sees a lot more growth to come. 

“We have used some of our cash to make great investments in our business through increased research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments and capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out our infrastructure. You’ll see more of all of these in the future,” Cook said in a statement issued shortly before the 20-minute conference call. “Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business.” 

Declaring a dividend, a move long resisted by former CEO Steve Jobs, has benefits that could push Apple’s stock higher: It will reward shareholders and open ownership of Apple shares to a wider range of funds. Many “valueoriented” funds are not allowed to buy stocks that don’t pay dividends. 

On Monday, Goldman Sachs raised its target price of Apple stock to $700 a share and other brokerage houses set it even higher. 

While the markets cheered Apple’s announcement that it would pay dividends for the first time in 17 years — its stock Monday shot up to a record of more than $601 — not all analysts were elated by the news. 

“I’m feeling sad because this means the days of hypergrowth for Apple are over,” said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry. “The uniqueness associated with Apple is probably going to change starting today, because it’ll become like Cisco or Microsoft — another mature company with a strong past of dramatic growth.” 

However, there is no evidence yet that Apple’s days of dramatic growth are waning. Last quarter, its revenue soared to $46.3 billion, up from $26.7 billion for the same quarter a year ago, putting Apple on course to become the world’s largest technology company in terms of revenue. And Apple announced Monday that in the three days since its new iPad went on sale, the company had sold 3 million of the tablets. 

The spectacular sales figures for iPads and other Apple products will guarantee that Apple will have more than enough cash on hand to keep up its growth, Cook said. 

“Our main goal,” he told analysts, “is to make the most innovative products in the world, and we decided how much (cash) we needed to do that. We also looked at other things we might invest money in that would come out of domestic cash. After we’d done that and allowed for a war chest for things we can’t predict, we had extra cash left over. We have plenty to run the business, and we felt it would be the right action to declare a dividend.” 

Analyst Charles Wolf with Needham and Co. said, “The decision today will have no impact on Apple’s performance. Reducing their cash is financially irrelevant to the business going forward, which is really dependent on Apple continuing to innovate. And I think they have a clear glide path for at least a couple of years.” 

Is "Occupy Wall Street" movement a fraud?

Amazing news item in today's local San Jose Mercury News about definition of poverty in US and comparing it to rest of the world. Here are some striking facts about it:

 - As per US definition of "Poverty" family of four which makes less than $22K per year is poor
 - Fifteen percent of US population falls under this so called poverty line
 - This is all time high
 - Average income in Thailand is half of the poverty line definition of US
 - Poland's average income is almost same as US poverty line
 - India's average income is almost two third of US poverty line

Bottom line, Eighty (80) percent of world population lives below US poverty line standards. In US, anyone who can be qualified as "poor" as per US definition is eligible for safety net (Social Security, Medi-Care, food stamps etc..).

Doesn't this makes joke of this so called "Occupy Wall Street" movement.. These people better should spend their energy and resources to help rest of the world's eighty percent population. But why should they? that is not their problem.. and exactly that attitude makes them US a common target of hatred and animosity. Though this is general perception, I still feel it is more of jealousy. I know I am writing something which lot of people won't like.. but in my view that is the fact. US standard of living are higher than rest of the world and they have worked hard in past to build infrastructure and system for which they are reaping rewards. US has full right to define own standards of poverty.

Ultimately it is all relative.. Isn't it? I take India's example of poverty. Every time I visit standards of living are going up and so is definition of poverty. Which is exactly relative to progress made by the nation.. Though, I must admit that there must be many part or section of people who are still in same condition and progress hasn't reached them for a while. But it will percolate to all parts of society and population.

Having seen poverty standards of India .. Coming back to US. I feel all the charity work here is a joke. Personally I feel that there shouldn't be any need of charitable organizations in US. The level of progress and development makes it a joke out of charity here. In US focus should be to create jobs for these unemployed people. That will have much bigger impact than distributing wealth as charity. Jobs growth will enable government and other organizations to take care of so called poor and some really disadvantaged people.

But then, same is true for rest of the world.. Isn't it.. I am listening to slogan like "Gareebi hatao" (remove poverty) since my childhood in India.. Did it removed or made any progress. Instead it just created more corrupt society and enabled richer get even more richer by this social net. What if spending billions of dollars for this, we would have spent it on infrastructure to enable ease of business and creation of production facility.. that would have definitely made difference. Which is still true..

Well this discussion is endless.. but give it a thought and let me know your views..

====================

THE GLOBALIST QUIZ

Where do poor Americans rank globally?

The weekly quiz is provided by the Globalist, a daily online feature service that covers issues and trends in globalization. The nonpartisan organization provides commercial services and nonprofit educational features.

QUESTION


The Occupy Wall Street movement brought a fresh focus to poverty and income distribution in the United States. According to recent Census Bureau numbers, about 15 percent of Americans live below the poverty line, the highest percentage in 18 years. But how does U.S. poverty compare in a global context? We wonder: The Americans whose income is just low enough to be classified as poor, according to U.S. standards, are still better-off than …

ANSWER

A. About 22 percent of the world population

B. About half of the world population

C. About 65 percent of the world population

D. About 80 percent of the world population

A. About 22 percent of the world population is not correct.

Those among the poorest 22 percent of the world’s population are incredibly poor by U.S. standards.

They are the 1.3 billion people who, according to new World Bank data, have incomes below what the World Bank designates as the absolute poverty line: $1.25 per day — or roughly $450 per year. There are just no such poor people in the United States. Although U.S.

poverty thresholds are differentiated by gender, age, place of residence, and other criteria, the average poverty line for a “typical” household of four is $22,400 annually. This works out as a little over $15 per day per person — or 12 times higher than the World Bank absolute poverty line.

B. About half of the world population is

not correct.

People exactly in the middle of the global income distribution have incomes of less than $1,500 a year per person (adjusted for purchasing power), or just a bit over $4 per day. This is close to the average level of income in countries such as Cambodia and the Philippines.

Again, there are no such poor people in the United States or in the rest of the rich world.

C. About 65 percent of the world population is not correct.

People who are near the 65th percentile by income in the world make about $2,800 a year per person (also adjusted for purchasing power). This is the average income level of people in Thailand. There are indeed some among the very poor in the United States whose incomes are about that level.

They are considered “extra poor” by U.S.

standards.

D. About 80 percent of the world population is correct.

The income of those who are just sufficiently “bad off” to be considered poor in the United States is about $5,600 a year per person (or $22,400 for a fourperson household).

This is slightly less than the average income in Poland, and it makes these Americans better- off than about 80 percent of the world population, according to economist Branko Milanovic, author of a recent book on global income distribution, “The Haves and the Have-Nots.” The poorest Americans benefit from a social safety net that the vast majority of the world’s poor must do without.

Karzai, don't forget Najibulah

After recent killing of civillians by American soldier in Afganistan, there is lot of fuss about US pull out from Afganistan. Which in my view is good news. It really doesn't matter whether US pulls out now or one year later. Things are going to be same in both cases within few months in Afganistan. It will be back in control to Taliban which clearly has support from neighboring countries.

By the way, my note about those killing is still under construction. I will cover it later with more detailed and fundamental thoughts.

Most surprising thing yesterday was Karzai's demand of faster NATO pull-out from Afganistan. He should be last person to ask for it unless, he is tired of living in Afganistan as well. May be he wants to go back to west/US and starts living his life normally. I think he knows very clearly, that once NATO/US is out of Afganistan and if he decides to stay there he will get same treatment as Najibullah (I hope my memory is serving me right as far as his name is concerned) got after Russians pulled out. What I remember is that he was hanged in public after stone pelting or something like that.

Nothing will change in few years of occupation. I doubt even fifty years of occupation can make any difference in there.. may be, fifty years may make difference if they spend huge amount on education and infrastructure and can put some stable democratic government in there. But fifty years will be really expensive especially there is no oil in Afganistan. Instead of spending fifty years in Afganistan, US can send these type of small missions two to three times and also test their latest gears.. that was too much.. but bottom line is that US needs to think long term if they want to fix anything et all.

US missed opportunity to bring Afganistan after Russian withdrawal which costed them dearly. At that time US had goodwill and support of Afganistan population and even slight spend of money could have made big difference. Right now, I don't know if they have any goodwill there.. I think it is more of opposite.

http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_20184939/taliban-talks-off-karzai-tells-nato-pull-back

Karzai demands faster NATO pullout

Taliban halts talks with the U.S. after village massacre

Deb Riechmann and Amir Shah

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan — The American campaign in Afghanistan suffered a double blow Thursday: The Taliban broke off talks with the U.S., and President Hamid Karzai said NATO should pull out of rural areas and speed up the transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan forces nationwide in the wake of the killing of 16 civilians. The moves represent new setbacks to America’s strategy for ending the 10year-old war at a time when support for the conflict is plummeting. Part of the U.S. exit strategy is to transfer authority gradually to Afghan forces. Another tack is to pull the Taliban into political discussions with the Afghan government, though it’s unclear that there has been any progress since January. Although Karzai has previously said that he wanted international troops to transition out of rural areas, the apparent call for an immediate exit is new. Karzai also said he now wants Afghan forces take the lead for countrywide security in 2013, in what appeared to be a move to push the U.S. toward an earlier drawdown.

A statement released by Karzai’s office said that during his meeting with visiting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the president “requested that the international forces come out of Afghan villages and stay in their bases.”

Karzai also said that the “Afghan security forces have the ability to provide security in the villages of our country,” the statement said.

But a senior U.S. official said Karzai did not make any demands to have U.S. troops leave villages immediately. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose details of a private meeting, said it’s unclear that the U.S. would be able to pull all of its troops out of the villages even by 2013. He noted that the U.S. plans to continue counterterrorism operations and advising the Afghan forces.

A rapid pullout from rural areas would have a devastating effect on U.S. ability to challenge the Taliban on the battlefield.

Unlike the Iraq War, where most combat was in towns and cities, the Afghan conflict is a struggle to secure rural hamlets and remote mountain valleys used by the militants to move in and out of sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan.

It would essentially mean the end of the strategy of trying to win hearts and minds by working with and protecting the local populations.

Karzai is known for making dramatic demands and then backing off under U.S. pressure. The call for a pullback will likely become another issue of contention between the Afghans and their international allies at a time of growing war weariness in the United States and other coalition countries.

Karzai spoke as Afghan lawmakers were expressing outrage that the U.S. flew the soldier suspected of gunning down 16 civilians early Sunday in two Afghan villages to Kuwait on Wednesday night. They were demanding that the suspect be tried in the country.

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SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday.