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The REAL issue with whether options should be expensed or not is whether the diluted EPS captures the full effects of dilution through options issuance, or if there are hidden costs. There's a non-zero "option value" to the options (the choice not to exercise if the stock price drops), that is distinct from the "intrinsic value" (roughly equal to the strike price minus the current price). The argument is that this is presently not captured in the accounting regulations.

For more info on share dilution, check about.com's primer. There's also a section in there on common tricks companies use to hide dilution effects.

• Fine. But don't whine when it's not economically feasible for people to produce these forms of entertainment because the piracy is so rampant.

Yeah, because we all know VHS movie distribution failed horribly due to lack of region coding. Region coding is not about piracy, it is about erecting artificial barriers in the supply/demand equation. A practice more commonly known as Price Fixing!

• If you're going to protest these companies, then protest their products completely.

That is EXACTLY the idea I'm trying to convey. I am pointing out the hypocrisy of those in the Slashdot crowd who become enraged by MPAA lawsuits against 'DVD Jon', and then turn around and fund those lawsuits by purchasing the latest release of $MPAA_SCI_FI_MOVIE. In short, 'put up or shut up' to all on the board.

• Nothing irks me more than someone who shows their protest by downloading and consuming as much as they can. Way to show the man! Not trying to say you are guilty of the above - you might be, you might now be.

I don't, I'm not, and by bring it up, you insinuate that most of us arguing for the preservation of fair use (backup copies, time shifting, etc) and the rest of our rights are trying to justify criminal intent.

I resent that. We are not the criminals. The criminals are the ones making unconstitutional laws and infringing on our constitutional rights with impunity. The criminals are telling college professors to take down their websites and censoring their lectures via threat of litigation. The criminals are the ones suing students for writing software.

They are the criminals, not those of us voicing our displeasure with them. They have nothing I am willing to trade for my constitutionally protected liberties, and I will not stand by quietly while they try to take them by force.

• And remember, these are forms of entertainment. They aren't denying ... the ability to live your life.

Through the perversion of our legal system, they are doing just that.

• You could argue they are affecting your rights, but come on, it's a movie (I won't go so far as to say it's a "cartoon," since most anime fans hate that :)

You value entertainment more than liberty? I find that appalling.

• If you don't like how they play, you simply don't have to play with them.

Oh, but you do. You have no choice. You buy a blank CD and BY LAW you must contribute to the RIAA's coffers. My CD blanks are used to back up data, drivers, preserve original copies of legally acquired audio CDs, and to ferry multi-megabyte software updates to my modem bound brother. Why should I have to pay the entertainment industry 25 cents per blank to do that? So they can file groundless lawsuits, of course! When they knock on your door with a subpoena and an IP address which they claim is yours, you have two options. 1) Spend years of your life in court and tens of thousands on legal bills fighting it, or 2) give them $3000 and beg them to leave you in peace. Guilt or lack thereof is irrelevant. You don't see a problem with this legalized extortion?

The Integrated Circuit was Invented in America by Americans, making both modern computers and spaceflight possible.

Maybe if you had 'bothered' to check the facts, you wouldn't look like a dork!

The videogame image is about 40'x60' and is remarkably crisp. I'm pretty sure we'll be running RvB off of a DVD.

BTW, the sound is amazing.

Jim

The Australian Computer Museum needs to be able to educate the non geeks on why exactly what they have is important and why average joe should care.

The least you could do is back up your accusation with some proof."

I presume you've heard of the honorable Orrin Hatch, senator from Utah? Are you unaware of his efforts to destroy people's computers? Do you know how much money he receives from the media industry? He is using his influence to take away your rights.

I like our government and I'm actually pretty conservative, but there is no doubt that there is a war going on to take away consumers' rights.

Body Bus = Skin Cancer?

It will certainly be a while before the long term effects of data or power over skin will be available. The lower levels of the epidermis constantly divide and push older dying cells outward to protect the body (info). Many things can cause improper division and lead to cancer. UV radiation everyone should already know about but so can excessive amounts from other radiant energy sources; such as electromagnetic or microwave. I don't believe short term exposure to low levels of energy have any chance of causeing problems in a healthy adult; but years of exposure over the same areas may be another story. There is no way in hell I want devices sending messages or power across my skin until there is significant data to say its safe.

Actually, its called the Millennium Digital Commerce Act of 2000.

See it HERE.


Story when it happened HERE.

Actually, its called the Millennium Digital Commerce Act of 2000.

See it HERE.


Story when it happened HERE.

It continues a trend that began two years ago when Stewart Filmscreen Corp., a leading U.S. maker of screens, began selling a light-gray screen that enhanced the images from projectors using digital chips.

I'm just guessing, but since they said "digital chips" rather than LCDs, maybe it has to do more with DLP Projectors rather than LCD Projectors. Although LCD projectors can be brighter than DLP projectors, the pixels aren't as obvious on DLPs. Perhaps since brightness is a problem, this screen may be better suited to enhance a DLP projection. DLPs are supposed to be popular for home theaters.

It continues a trend that began two years ago when Stewart Filmscreen Corp., a leading U.S. maker of screens, began selling a light-gray screen that enhanced the images from projectors using digital chips.

I'm just guessing, but since they said "digital chips" rather than LCDs, maybe it has to do more with DLP Projectors rather than LCD Projectors. Although LCD projectors can be brighter than DLP projectors, the pixels aren't as obvious on DLPs. Perhaps since brightness is a problem, this screen may be better suited to enhance a DLP projection. DLPs are supposed to be popular for home theaters.

I actually called up the Intellectual Property Office once and they told me that there is no 20 percent rule. It's a myth. The IP people consider a multitude of factors -- although it *is* possible to change an image enough to have it qualify as a new image. Part of the test involves determining whether the image appears to be based on the original.

I didn't know the U2 singer was a Senator.

Oh, you must mean this Senator Bono.

You really need to get with it.

It's a point seconded by Sheri Graner Ray, a senior game designer for Sony Online Entertainment. The game industry, by virtue of its overwhelmingly male employee-base, is missing a big market, she said.

Surprisingly, slightly more women than men reported playing computer and online games (approximately 60% women compared to 40% men) while about the same number of men and women reported playing video games.

What about Marvin ?? He should be on it. He always reminds me of so many people I actually know

Poor sales and weak titles may be one reason for the change.

On a side note, I couldn't believe my eyes the other day when I saw a brand new X-Box on sale for $99.

For those who are struggling with the phrase "Arigato gozaimashita!" this link explains:

Frequently Asked Question in Japanese language - What is the difference between Arigatou gozaimasu and Arigatou gozaimashita?

"BASIC (standing for Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was written (invented) in 1963, at Dartmouth College, by mathematicians John George Kemeny and Tom Kurtzas[sic] as a teaching tool for undergraduates. BASIC has been one of the most commonly used computer programming languages, a simple computer language considered an easy step for students to learn before more powerful languages such as FORTRAN" (Kurtz is the correct spelling)

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbas ic.htm

So the first version of BASIC that was ever written was Dartmouth BASIC and it ran on a GE-265 mainframe (created by General Electric). A bit of trivia: The first BASIC program ran on May 1, 1964 at 4:00 am.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jrh29/kemeny.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_programming_lan guage#History (has a big list of dialects)

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Monte Davidoff wrote a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair in 1975, which, incidentally, was Microsoft's first product--he went on to produce BASIC interpreters for many different processors.

Apple and Microsoft: The first BASIC for Apple, called Integer BASIC was written by Steve Wozniak. Microsoft offered to sell them their BASIC but Steve Jobs told them they already had one, and if needed, they "could write a better one in a weekend". Apple later needed a floating-point version of BASIC, and since Wozniak was too busy with other projects, they bought Microsoft's floating-point BASIC--it was called Applesoft. As is the standard with Microsoft products, there were initially some bugs, instability, and memory hogging that had to be worked out. Some speculate that if Apple hadn't bought Microsoft's version, Microsoft would have gone under--Apple was able to buy it for a flat fee of $10,500 (and no royalties).

http://apple2history.org/history/ah16.html#Appleso ftI

Comment on your sig. I think it's clever, but you might want to correct the information.
"The way to a man's heart is through the left ventricle."

Actually the left ventricle would be the way out of a man's heart. The left ventricle is the chamber that pushes the blood out through the aorta to circulate through the rest of the body. The right atrium/auricle is where blood is first received back into the heart. More info can be found here or here.

This amount you're proposing isn't exactly small either, it's 56x56 kilometers, which is 3136 square kilometers, and 60 meters deep. The area along is over 1% of the area of the UK, or upwards of 3% the area of New Zealand.

I can see at the time I posted this that you've been smacked down as flamebait, but please, tell me how these numbers are reasonable.

"SECTION 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

Hense, it bans polygyny and polyandry as well as homosexual unions.

Do you mean the station that is in such a poor financial position because of their annoying talk show hosts and crappy content that they had to fire some of the top execs and then could not even afford to pay their hosts so now they have extremists like Al Franken doing the show for free? No thanks.

Well, firstly: there are a lot of stupid inventions (e.g.: hat that spreads into an umbrella).
Secondly: there are a lot of inventions that are developed based on previous ideas and are fully exploited (e.g.: paperclips - there are many designs, quite a few still being used).
Thirdly: many inventions are innovative, but just not quite good enough to use (e.g.: the development of the zipper took several tries).
Fourthly: The technology is often not good/economical enough in practice (e.g. Lilienfeld's invention of the field effect transistor in 1925 (patented in 1930).
Finally: some inventions are so far advanced for the time that no one (other than the inventor) sees any realistic use for it (e.g. Babbage's analytical engine)

On top of that, I looked at their website and it appears that the new blimps they're selling aren't even Zeppelins: they aren't rigid airships and they aren't filled with hydrogen.

I was hoping that somebody had gotten over the bad rap that hydrogen got after the Hindenburg accident, considering it really was the highly flammable skin of the Hindenburg that ignited.
If they used hydrogen, the blimp would be able to carry more than just 12 people.

If I wanted a soft, helium-filled airship that could only hold ten passengers, I could have just gotten one of these.

Europe tends to de-genericise geographical indicators such as CHEDDAR(tm) cheese for cheese made in Cheddar, England.

I don't know about the Cheddar cheese example, but I don't really care because the topic is "Pilsner" and not cheese.Similar problems can carry different circumstaincail backgrounds, you know... But if you truly want to go via the way of examples from different industries, let me give you one term: Velcro - everyone says "velcro" as if that was a general term and yet the noun is a _brand name_ - it is an american simplification to take brand names for generic terms.

And by the way, I would bet my own cash that 80% of Americans would swear to whatever is dear to them that velcro is an American invention even though it's Swiss, but that's a different topic altogether, let's not get into that...

Otherwise, how could SABMiller, which makes MILLER LITE(tm) beer, get away with claiming [xpressmart.com] that MILLER LITE beer is a "true pilsner"?

Based on the only piece of evidence you included, it is not SABMiller directly who claims Miller Lite is a "true pilsner" - it is "Biros Merchandising" who manages the online store xpressmart.com and confidently sells those kind of patches.

When a language such as English does not have a formal codification, it doesn't matter that both "Velcro" and "Pilsner" have a capitalized and non-capitalized version of the two in the "American Heritage" dictionary, because in the end, this kind of ignorance of proper usage of such words is practiced only by less than 5% of the world population.

As for your jeering, grow up. Looking over your webpage it seems you are the dime-a-dozen slashdot variety geek, who thinks knowing 2 bits about ip-tables or the latest IE exploit qualifies you for praise. It clearly does not, your website is useless in the context of more timely and pertinent information supplied elsewhere. Perhaps it would be in your best interests to try Zoloft or one of the more promising new SSRI's, Pacman on Prozac. Next time before insulting someone, why don't you do your Homework?

i'm surprised you'd mention sprites but not elves, blue jets, blue starters, gnomes, pixies, sprite haloes, and trolls. The ephemeral nature of these events provokes some rather whimsical names.

Shipping software is all about where the rubber meets the road. It's important, especially when it comes to debugging and handling bizarre crash conditions, to know what happens at the most elemental level.

Rubber tires do not protect you from lightning. It's the metal frame of the car which protects you.

For even more fun, don't forget about the Jesus actor in the Passion of Christ being struck by lightning during the filming. The assistant director was hit twice. Probably a pissed off God -- mad that it's supposed to be realistic, what with the Aramaic and all, but Mel Gibson used a white Jesus.

And then there's Roy Sullivan. A quick google turned this up:

Roy Cleveland Sullivan was a Forest Ranger in Virginia who had an incredible attraction to lightning... or rather it had an attraction to him. Over his 36-year career as a ranger, Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times - and survived each jolt, but not unscathed. When struck for the first time in 1942, he suffered the loss of a nail on his big toe. Twenty-seven years passed before he was struck again, this time by a bolt that singed his eyebrows off. The next year, in 1970, another strike burned Sullivan's left shoulder. Now it looked as though lightning had it out for poor Roy, and people were starting to call him The Human Lightning Rod. He didn't disappoint them. Lightning zapped him again in 1972, setting his hair on fire and convincing him to keep a container of water in his car, just in case. The water came in handy in 1973 when, seemly just to taunt Sullivan, a low-hanging cloud shot a bolt of lightning at his head, blasting him out of his car, setting his hair on fire and knocking off a shoe. The sixth strike in 1976 injured his ankle, and the seventh strike in 1977, got him when he was fishing, and put him in the hospital for treatment of chest and stomach burns. Lightning may not have been able to kill Roy Sullivan, but perhaps the threat of it did. He took his own life in 1983. Two of his lightning-singed ranger hats are on display at Guinness World Exhibit Halls.

Hmmm. This comment seems to be getting a lot of flack. I still stand by my arguments though.

Less barriers in biotech development would lead to faster production and more competition. Just think what the computer has done for the industry.

I did find this article as I was browsin' around. it describes the argument for and against Alexander fleming's decision not to patent penicillin. Enjoy.

I'm not sharing a music file... I'm sharing a commercial !

Okay, Googled it, can't find the law, but I did find several interesting sites with commercials !

Anyone know the relevant laws ??? (Yeah, IANAFL).

The US is probably the worst trade partner in the world to deal with.

I thought .net *IS* delphi

I believe the grandparent intended to say, "Those would be the beautiful beaches of Al-Andalus, infidel swine!" as the Islamic state in Spain was known. This term in the origin of the English Andalusia and the Spanish Andalucía, so it's not far off.

The wheel is in the "garden shed" category to be sure, but it went through its own prduct cycle: initially as a Potters' Wheel then attached to two wheeled-carts before being used for sturdier four-wheeled vehicles.

The paperclip was patented. Several times.

However, the purpose of the patent system is not to ensure that money goes to those who "deserve" it. Patents are state-granted, limited term, monopolies on inventions. They serve a very specific purpose - to encourage inventors to disclose how there inventions work so that they can be reproduced by others when the patent expires; they exist to act as a balance to the economic advantages that can be enjoyed by inventors who keep their inventions secret.

They also serve to motivate research in some areas (pharmaceuticals, for instance) because the very high returns that can be gained through having a monopoly more than offset the high development costs.

They do not, however, have anything to do with fairness or rewarding deserving people.

Actually, there is.

A while back people started coming out with the notion that the ideal diet (and, for that matter, entire lifestyle including exercise regimen) depended on blood type, which roughly characterizes some racial features.

Twisted relationships

So the US doesn't have a problem then? :-)

Since most cars don't need and can't use anything higher than the regular grade of gasoline, switching to diesel to save money doesn't make much since if diesel is the price of mid-grade.

Skirts the line? This movie is fantasy from the opening credits. Global warming is still just a theory and to think that us humans are capable of causing it is bad science from the start.

Case in point, the 1990 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo ejected more "greenhouse" gasses into the atmosphere than the human race has created since the start of the industrial revolution. This one volcano cooled the planet by half a degree for two years. How can we be causing "global warming" if a volcano capable of more than all of us together only slightly affect the earth's temperatures?

Global warming is a scare tactic to make us all guilty for having cars.

wrecked its economy by going too far with some socialistic ideals!?!?!?

The California *I* live in was wrecked due to horrifically ill-advised energy deregulation.

Damn those "socialists" and their free market!

Terrorists blow things up and kill about 1/10th the number of Americans who die in highway deaths each year, but in doing do they stiffen our resolve and so never get anywhere near to changing our fundamental America values.

But dissidents and domestic trouble-makers can cause real problems for a regime that calls questioning its mistakes tantamount to aiding America's enemies.

Today is Memorial Day. I hope that all Americans will take time today to reflect on the costs of freedom and the American men and women in our armed forces who have paid for our freedoms with their service, their wounds, and their lives.

On this Memorial Day, let's really support our troops by following the advice of so many retired officers and men by insisting that "Robert S." Rumsfeld and his band of incompetent chicken-hawks resign -- or be fired.

I thought so too, for a while. But it turns out that popular authors like Ann Coulter have rehabilitated McCarthy's image. They have now "proved" he was a good guy.

One of the longest-surviving relics of that period is the "Pledge of Allegiance", which McCarthyites in Congress modified to violate the 1st Amendment.

The Germans can't call their sparkling whites Champagne due to the Treaty of Versailles. Article.

Offer a total system that identifies, tracks, manages and assists post-sale product life cycle events.

Provide technology that can turn any physical location, with an Internet-connected PC, into a fully automated product ownership information and return center.

Become the "gateway" for eCommerce fulfillment services, especially package returns for misplaced items and those requiring service or support under product warranty programs.

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll have the accuracy of the US military.

Yeah.. and since Hejlsberg, the former Chief Engineer at Borland, is Microsoft's Chief C# Language Architect , About.com even speculates about a Conspiracy Theory: MS's .Net IS Borland's Product

Because hydrogen goes boom in a big way.

Actually, if you read the article that you just linked, it does a very good job of explaining why the Hindenburg fire was not a hydrogen explosion (especially on page 3).