How can this be? My own adidas related spending is up 350% since Dec 12th of 2008. Clearly its not enough. Also, it really annoys me when companies complain that profits are down. Maybe Adidas should take a page out of Valve's pricing playbook.

BBC NEWS | Business | Adidas sees profits plunge by 95%

Sportswear giant Adidas has reported a fall in profits for the April to June period of 93% as consumer spending fell during the economic downturn

I had suspected as much, but tivoblog crunches the numbers to compare the cost of TiVo versus a Cable company DVR. The monthly costs come out slightly in TiVo's favor, but does it justify the initial hardware investment? This is where TiVo could really make the case that it offers more services, like Amazon and Netflix streaming.

The Cost Of Operating A TiVo DVR -- Are Cable Company DVRs Really A Good Deal? | TiVo Blog

Being the geek that I am, I decided to call my local Time Warner Cable in order to figure out whether or not a cable company DVR is in fact a better deal. Here's what I found out...

I'm hoping that immigration reform happens sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, some positive news about the effects of immigration on the "underclass" was released today by the Cato Institute.\ \ Free Trade Bulletin no. 38: As Immigrants Move In, Americans Move Up | Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies\

As plausible as the argument sounds, it is not supported by the social and economic trends of the past 15 years. Even though the number of legal and illegal immigrants in the United States has risen strongly since the early 1990s, the size of the economic underclass has not. In fact, by several measures the number of Americans living on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder has been in a long-term decline, even as the number of immigrants continues to climb. Other indicators associated with the underclass, such as the crime rate, have also shown improvement. The inflow of low-skilled immigrants may even be playing a positive role in pushing nativeborn Americans up the skills and income ladder.