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Thanks for bringing that up evilviper because that one has always puzzled me...WTF is it with Ronnie Reagan and the right wing? He was a SHITTY president! Doesn't anyone remember the homeless vets sleeping on the grates in front of the White House? Or how he said "deficits don't matter" and proceeded to TRIPLE the debt under his watch? Iran/Contra? CIA drug running? Hello?

This is what we remember.

1972-1980: 0% market growth; a malaise decade.
1980-1988: 300% under Reagan's 8 years, your investments tripled.
1988-1992: 33% under Bush I - or 400% going back to 1980 - as Bush Sr. was probably making most of the decisions anyways.

Republicans remember Reagan fondly for the same reason Democrats (just as justifiably) remember Clinton. And Reagan didn't even have the massive, out-of-trend growth bubble sparked by the Internet, to help him.

1992-2000: under Clinton, another 400% in 8 years.

2000-2010: Under Bush II, another lost decade.

Your memory of Bush II is exactly what a Reaganite thinks when he thinks of the pre-Reagan days. (Although I'll grant that Reaganites are great at doublethink; completely ignoring the money to be made under Clinton I.)

The key quote, "give bad reputations to whoever makes" DRMed products, made me wonder about the effects of the Sony rootkit fiasco on its stock. The story broke in the blogosphere in late October, 2005. So what was the effect on Sony stock? A brief, very small drop, followed by a 45-50% increase over the next six months. I can't imagine a worse black eye than what happened to Sony's reputation viz bloggers, so how effective a tool is reputation sullying? Has it ever worked?

The xbox team is lucky MS didn't go ahead with their desire to kill off the project after the first couple of years when it became clear that Sony was leaving them in the dust in sales.

Rushing such underpowered hardware out the door ahead of Sony and Nintendo is the life and death gamble the xbox team is having to make now that the amount of money they have to spend is significantly smaller than with the first xbox design.

MS's revenue growth has been on a straight line decline over the past five years, along with the stock price.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 360 never actually makes it to store shelves in November. And I would say it is even money on the thing getting canceled in the next year or two.

Oh, by the way, Darl says "Pay up your SCO $699 license fees, you crack-smoking, filthy pirates!

SCO stock down today WSJ

Cray vs. goatse.cx

Who here uses anything but Google? Hey you, you in the back, what the hell are you doing with Excite? Just put AltaVista down, and nobody will get hurt. Come on, Nader. Anybody who's not a newbie or a moron uses Google, and Google clearly marks their ads. I'm amazed the other search engines are still in business. Maybe they won't be much longer (CMGI is AltaVista's parent corp.).

This is the free market taking care of things without government intervention. There's a prefectly good alternative (Google), it's free, and it's honest. Why complain to the FTC when you could just use Google? Caveat emptor, and all.

.. irresponsibility.

VA Linux's losses grow fourfold May 22, 2001
VA Linux issues third earnings warning April 27, 2001
VA Linux: Caught by the IPO jinx? February 21, 2001
VA Linux cuts 25 percent of workers, delays profitability February 20, 2001
VA Linux tumbles on profit warning January 17, 2001
Suit accuses VA Linux of deceiving investors January 11, 2001
VA Linux seeks profits on programmer site December 5, 2000
and of course.. LNUX

Modding me down won't change a thing.

(Agenda Computing is based in Irvine, California, but is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kessel International Holdings Limited)

Kessel Company prosectus: "In view of the Euro currency fluctuation, shortage of certain electronic components and start up stage of new product lines, the Directors believes that there will not have any significant change in the overall performance of the Group in the 2nd half of the year. However, provided that the new businesses are operated as planned and all unfavorable factors graduated away from the Group, the Group look forward to the future with optimism."

Since when did Blizzard own all rights to the word "diablo"?

The investor-owned utilites made stupid investments in inefficient plants

The politicians in California haven't really deregulated - they created a very controlled, artificial market.

This "dergulation" - as the Reason article also points out - was passed unanimously by the state legilature in 1996. For reference here is the political makeup of the 1996 California State Legislature - Look for the heading "1996 State Legislature Results" about 4/5 of the way down the page.

For a less politically (Two Party) bent view on the general concerns facing California and other "dergulated" (or soon-to-be) states check out this, this, and this article.

One more energy-related article here.

To add my own $0.02.... Please don't take any of these articles as The Word on this or any issue. That would be dumb. Read! Read! Read!

Also, had either of these points not happened, it's at least possible that California would not be in the mess they are in. Given both points, this outcome should have been predicted.

Finally, unlike the goof-ball who penned the Reason article, please don't subscribe to the Two Party system of blaming a philosphy for the actions of our present Republicratic regime. Contrary to their notions, there is not only room for, but need for both Liberal as well as Conservative thinking in our govenmental bodies.

Lord knows every other internet appliance has failed miserably. Netpliance an nounced that they will be getting out of the business, Virgin has bailed out (and yes Virginia, the bios password was hacked within 24 hours of that announcement), WebPods had all of 300 subscribers, etc. Somehow, the lack of local hard storage to store stuff plus (frequently) a poor isp service, doomed these guys. I wonder if this guy will be any different?

Now go to http:// www.bigcharts.com/intchart/frames/frames.asp?symb= MSOF&time=8&freq=1 and check out what MSOF did around that time. On November 30, it opens at 1/16th. Closes at 1/8th. Dec 1, closes at 3/16. Dec 2, 3/8. Dec 3, 7/16. So in three days of trading, anyone with MSOF has septupled the value of their holdings.

It gets better. People take profits over the next few sessions and the stock troughs a bit. But in the second half of the week it starts really charging. It closes the next Monday, Dec 13, at well over a point. And if you bought in at 1/16ths and sold with perfect timing when MSOF peaked at 1 1/4, you would have turned a $1000 investment into $20k in under two weeks.

I don't think the profitability of any potential micro-MS would be Gate's deciding factor in which company he would want to be involved in.

Immediately after the break-up, chances are he's going to own a big chunk of all 3 divisions anyway, so his money is more or less safe. I also imagine, he will have some degree of influence over the individual companies, due to his holdings in the company (ofcourse, I imagine the DOJ could force him to put his eggs in one basket or put other similar constraints on his involvement).

(Also, I read somewhere that after the break up of Standard Oil and AT&T the respective market caps of the offshoot companies was greater than that of the whole, or somesuch. Basically, they were saying it's good to invest in a company just before a forced break up. Anyone got references to this? Or am I talking crap?).

I imagine that the market would react favourably to whichever (if any!) of the companies Gates aligned himself with. Gates being Gates and all.

But from the announcement, it sounds like he's going in to the applications division anyway.

It'll be interesting to see how the market reacts over the next few days. MSFT has been on a bit of a roller coaster for the past week. It's worth pointing out that they're up 2% or so as of writing this, which is good considering they've been falling for a week or so. Have a look at bigcharts.com or your favourite financial news site.

...j

Andover is public now (just this week i think) it wasn't a rocket like VA though. Check it out

Its at 67 1/2 right now, down from 83 5/8
Market Cap is about a billion. The question is... How many shares did Rob get? I would assume that everyone involved made enough tho.

There is nothing wrong with capitalism. So far its seemed to work for America. And so what if corporations are being founded to make money off of Linux. ITS STILL OPEN SOURCE!!! Which means no matter what they do, you benefit as the user.

How is making money not exacly what Linux is about. FREEDOM! the freedom to do what you want! Including making a profit... and other people profit too! The commercialization of Linux can only be beneficial to the community.