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There used to be a troupe of Austin comedians who did live movie riffings, they were known as "Mr. Sinus Theatre." Jim Mallon and Best Brains sued them. At first, they attempted to license the MST3k name and logo, but Mallon decided they were "too adult." They ended up changing their name to "The Sinus Show" and eventually broke up. Do you approve of licensing MST3k?

Snork. Somehow I think that Hal Covert is busy enough at Silicon Image.

How about KCI?

We buy driflo from McKession and then turn around and sell it for $100 a box.

BTW, for all those on V.A.C. machines, after Dec 31, the US San Antonio plant is closing (along with 50 jobs) and now your canisters and dressings will come from Ireland.

Also, the HIPPA protected documents that your HHA and doctor's office send in will no longer go to San Antonio either. Your private health documents will now be transfered to India (along with another 150 jobs) to be veiwed and entered. (Think about what is on those forms ... SS, DOB, Address, wounds, infections, etc.. They now will be going to a different country that is not HIPPA protected - but I'm sure they'll shread the documents when done.)

And for an added bonus, that information, once entered, will be transfered back to the US.

Loss of jobs and a risk of privacy because a 21 % rise in profits was not enough.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2007/09/17/daily22.html?ana=from_rss --- Ireland
http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stories/MYSA102307.KCI3Q.EN.19b4fea57.html --- Profits

Like, say, in Birmingham, Alabama?

You realize franchises are awarded at the local level, right? That's why RCN could never get into Philadelphia, even though RCN offered them 250 million reasons to say "Yes."

In Georgia a non-compete has never held up except for executives and people who sold businesses to another business entity. The judge can find one flaw and strike the *whole* contract. The courts look upon these contracts as illegal in 99% of cases because they try to keep ordinary people from working.

http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2005/07/11/story4.html
http://intellectual-property.lawyers.com/ask-a-lawyer/Using-Non-Competes-To-Protect-A-Companys-Investment-6746.html
http://www.icemiller.com/enewsletter/NonCompetesOtherMyths.htm

The second issue is that, in some states (like Calfornia), you are not required to agree to binding arbitration in a dispute even if your contract stipulates binding arbitration. In California, an appeals court declared that binding arbitration in any contract allowing a full court trial by a company filing suit against an employee is null and void. In the case of David Abramson vs. Juniper, the appeals court said that allowing a court trial by the company against an employee but disallowing a trial (in favor of binding arbitration) by an employee against the company is unfair and invalid. If a court trial is allowed in one direction, the trial must be allowed in the other direction.

In other words, if your former employer attempts to intimidate you (with high-powered company lawyers) into signing away your invention (produced after termination from the company) to him, then you can sue your former employer for harrassment. You do not need to agree to binding arbitration. You can sue your former employer in a full court trial.

Most American companies, like Juniper, are ruthless. So, know your rights. Contact the labor departments of both the federal government and the state government. Talk to your lawyer.

By the way, does anyone know how the lawsuit by David Abramson against Juniper is progressing? The appeals court granted him the right to sue Juniper in a full court trial.

MST3k was officially dead/zombie-fied to me when they starting suing small live acts based on 'format similarity'. The folks in charge obviously have no sense of humor.

http://www.wral.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/1782165/

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9772407-7.html

unfortunately for Lulu:

http://www.wral.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/1979319/

http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2007/10/29/daily6.html

In this situation, just take it up with your credit card company if you bought using your credit card. Otherwise, you're in trouble, no?

Looks like an interesting company. The CEO and President are married.

However, there have been numerous Slashdot stories that have been about companies looking for investors. It would be more comfortable if such stories would have a statement that no one at Slashdot or Slashdot's parent company took money to run the story.

Here's a facility already under construction (comercial development) to do just what you say would be if it was feasible...
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2007/07/02/daily6.html

Rio Rancho, NM (where Intel made Pentiums) went this route beginning a few years ago. It's had mixed success, with the city threatening to rebid and other actions. One of the allegations made in a local paper (maybe not online, not sure, but you can try AbqTrib links from googling "rio rancho wireless broadband" and getting a trial access or something - I won't) was that the contractor was using home-grade rather than industrial-grade components in severe-environment areas. The following link discusses that they're fixing this and Wichita's POV on it.

http://wichita.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/200 7/06/04/story3.html

I really don't want to fuel discussions about the evil-ness of businesses but I do want to add to the debate about whether government control or free enterprise are the ways to get this done, and I just want to share - as an admittedly-ridiculous data-point-of-one - views as a resident where this occured, in response to many comments made already.

1. Unfair/hidden taxation. Rio Rancho has a lot of retirees, but it also thinks like it's the 2000s, not the 1990s. IOW, no one really questioned if it were fair if taxes were required for this if they didn't want the service, any more than they question if school taxes are fair if they don't have kids. It adds to the quality of life and with taxation, there has to be give and take. If you live somewhere where quality of life isn't a concern, I suggest moving.

2. Should it be a utility-like thing like water, under city control, etc? Yes. No one trusted that any vendor or vendors could serve students in hard-to-wifi areas, schools, Intel, the city, unless contractually required to do so.

3. Should it be a utility-like thing.... (same question). No. No one trusts city hall to understand the internet correctly.

4. Should it be franchised, like cable? Absolutely not. Horror stories abound with last-mile-of-cable problems, access rates being fixed to near-impossible-to-change copper/fiber/switch infrastructures, not to mention all of the other evils associated with cable franchises. The goal of city-wide wireless access is to fix all of that.

5. That Rio Rancho had trouble and had to re-groove the supplier means the supplier, like any other, will be greedy. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they just got in over their heads by inexperience. But having contractual control by the city meant they could be compelled to fix things or face a contract lawsuit - way different than the steering-committee nightmares associated with listening to a cable franchise explain (lie) about why something cannot be done. IOW, swift action is occuring.

And I guess that's my overall perspective. It's a new area, but not without precedent. Vendor/providers are still discovering the right way to execute the business, or discovering new business models for this. Cities need to find the right balance between control and bureaucracy. Citizens need to hold their cities and vendors accountable.

Not trying to suggest a utopian model or claim that Rio Rancho's way is right - the jury is still way out on that, but maybe it will be ok.

Just want to emphasize - there are good and bad precendents to study on this.

Netflix didn't drop their prices to do "the right and obvious thing", they did it in response to increasing competition from Blockbuster.

Here's some more, oh grand poobah:
http://news.com.com/8301-13574_3-9751315-40.html

And even NASA is advising, LOL:
http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/200 7/07/02/daily25.html

I'll take off the tinfoil hat, when you take out the earplugs.

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/02/ 06/daily49.html

``The organization announced Thursday that it will drop the prices on some of its tickets next season, even offering $2 tickets for seats at the American Airlines Center's terrace level at 10 games.''

By the logic presented here on slashdot, since $2 tickets to an NBA contender are too good to be true, the people who buy them are thieves.

What struck me were the numbers, which do not impress: Vonage at $2.95 a share. Penny stock territory. SunRocket No. 2 in VoIP with 200,000 subscribers.

From The-Handwriting-Is-On-The-Wall Department:

Internet phone service provider SunRocket Inc. fired a significant number of employees and several top executives on June 29.
The layoffs included Chief Technology Officer Mark Fedor and Chief Information Officer Robert Kramer. CFO David Samuels also is leaving the company. He resigned July 2 to take an executive position with another firm.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that SunRocket laid off 30 employees, a figure the paper said was a quarter of the company's staff.
CEO Lisa Hook denied...at the beginning of May that her team was preparing to cut a significant number of staff -- which at the time numbered 160 full-time and contract employees.
SunRocket has raised approximately $20 million in additional venture capital from existing investors since early spring bringing the company's total capital raised to date to about $100 million.
The company is likely to [reach] August with a total of $30 million to $40 million in new venture capital, said one of SunRocket's investors. "There's a lot of interest in the company. Obviously it's been tough with the industry being under pressure, but the category is still strong."
SunRocket has been pulled into the legal fracas over Internet phone technology.. as well as increased competition by cable providers packaging Internet telephone service... Vonage's disappointing {IPO] in May 2006 and poor stock performance has also hurt. Vonage shares debuted at a price of $17 on May 24, 2006 and were trading at $3.13 early on July 3. SunRocket fires 2 top execs, staff [July 3, 2007]

go ahead and add freescale to the list as well

although the article doesn't mention it, the percentage seems to be about 10%, too (of a ~24,000 employee company)

Despite the issuance of a dozen patents, it is far from clear what actual contribution, if any, Mr. Lemelson's work made to the field of machine vision. The particular machine vision system described in Lemelson's patents was never built as a practical machine in the real world.

The theory regarding the Lemelson machine vision patents is that no one using 1954 knowledge and technology could have built a machine vision system capable of functioning as described in Lemelson's patents.

Starting salaries are staggering: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2007/04 /30/daily96.html?from_rss=1

Don't believe me? Google for it yourself: "energy company subsidize conservation"

Example: http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/200 5/08/22/smallb4.html

Apparently, getting a warning that you may be delisted from NASDAQ is not that earth-shattering a thing, necessarily. Dell is on its second warning now.

This is not to say it's nothing, but it doesn't by itself mean that the company is going down in flames.

They just announced they'll spend $2.5 billion on a plant in China (their first Asian fab plant) as well as new US and Israeli plants. They've got lots of fab facilities all over the US, as well as some in Israel and Ireland.

A few years ago, there was a recent big-deal about HillaryClinton.com - read more here.

P.S. My guess is the respective party would pay a lot for Ugly Democrats and Ugly Republicans .COM ... amd then retire 'em! ;-)

Goose and Gander time:

Despite WTO and NAFTA decisions supporting Canada (which the US ignored in typically arrogant fashion) It took 10 years to create a new softwoods trade pact to stop excessive tarrifs on Canadian softwood imports to the US:

http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/trade/eicb/softwood/b ackground-en.asp ..."A NAFTA Extraordinary Challenge Committee (ECC) agreed with Canada and unanimously affirmed the original NAFTA Panel's finding that the U.S. International Trade Commission had no basis on which to find that the U.S. industry was threatened by injury."...

You can probably thanks Georgia-Pacific and their ilk for that.....

The US also chose to ignore NAFTA (which they themselves pushed upon Mexico and Canada as benefitting all of NA) is order to keep Mexican cement out of the US (until they didn't have enough local product due to post-Katrina reconstruction)

http://www.thebta.org/news/newsreleases/12162005.c fm

http://birmingham.bizjournals.com/birmingham/stori es/2005/07/25/story7.html

Canada has had some interesting ideas regarding copyright and fair use which should not be trampled by the copyright holders who seek to enslave the elements of popular culture. USians make the mistake of seeing Canada as a miniUS, but from what I have seen is that their society has a lot of Liberal European ideas about individual rights which the US would be wise to consider if they were'nt ponied up to the trough of the copyright cartels..

-I'm just sayin'

http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2 005/05/09/story1.html

Why would Dell try to convince people that there is no demand for Linux?

The pillow making industry still needs people to run their networks,

Umm. Yay?

I'm not saying the intent is bad. But it's an enormous waste of money in my opinion.

Loved the discussion of how the bot can easily decapitate.

They'll pass a new law requiring people to recycle them, and to pay a fee to do so. And then of course you'd need a law fining people for putting them in with their normal trash. And all of this will induce people to chuck them in ditches like old tires and batteries, so you'll have to fine people for that too. And all this enforcement doesn't come for free either, so if they're not collecting enough revenues from the fees and fines, the rest will come out of your taxes.

When in doubt, throw a new law at it.

It's called Hyper Cow and was introduced to market in 2003. There was controversy surrounding the plan to sell it in schools and the product has since disappeared from the market.
The chocolate flavor was a bit on the sweet side for a chocolate milk but was otherwise a decent product.

"It would be like the Beatles who simply refuse to permit distribution in any format except physical albums in either LP or Compact Cassette."
I have seen and heard Beatles Compact Discs. (And I have heard of Beatles quasi-CDs.)
I have seen and heard Beatles music on DVD. I believe that's another format.
There are now hot rumors that Apple Records will finally release Beatles music in digital form.
http://news.com.com/2061-10793_3-6150862.html?part =rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subject=news
http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/01/applebeatles_d e.html
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/200 7/01/15/daily57.html
The digital Beatles tracks will be sold at the iTunes Store. That will hurt Microsoft further.

AT&T completes buy-out of BellSouth

..if companies such as Surewest are signing franchise agreements. They also offer the exact same service in Sacramento, as well as other areas in the region (Elk Grove, Natomas, etc). If they are in direct competition with companies such as AT&T, why the hell should AT&T be exempt from franchise agreements? I understand that AT&T probably does not plan on running fiber in Northern California central valley region, but some of these same rules should apply from one market to the next. I believe that the CPUC considers a specific class of provider as "Broadband Overbuilders", and they are under the same restrictions as Cable Providers. The FCC needs to strike down on companies like AT&T and make them pay like everyone else.

Stock options are an expense and should be accounted for.

Ummmm ... no ... EXERCISED stock options may be an expense but even then, it's purely balance sheet shuffling, and in the end it has a positive effect on cash flow. If an option is never exercised, it is NOT an expense. At worst, it's a potential liability. Regardless, this SEC bullshit along with Sarbox is the reason why virtually all new companies are choosing to list their IPOs in the EU. Assenine regulations like this will only serve to hurry the economic decline of this country. Here's a link echoing the story I hear over and over again.

Politics? ClearChannel banned the Dixie Chicks records after they spoke out against Bush.

Between 1998 and now, SGI has had to rent space out to Google to stay afloat, has been delisted, gone through at least three separate downsizings (including several executive changes), and has filed for bankruptcy. The point is, SGI has tried the "sue to keep afloat" pattern before, and it didn't work then. I doubt very much it'll work now. SGI produces fast Linux boxes, for sure, but it competes in a very hard market.

BWI has free wifi service; the article is wrong. I was just there midsummer using it, and you can even read the press release here for the rollout.

Um, Maureen Govern is not a "guy." See (e.g.) here.

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2006/08 /07/daily13.html

May not mean much to anyone, but I used to work for that company and still have a good friend that works there now. Apparantly they're all super excited about this deal. Times like this I glad I got out of there. ;)

Thanks for this opinion, it helps understand why there is so little understanding between the US and the rest of the world.

For the record, I'm Australian, and so perhaps somewhat neutral. If I may respond :

> Europeans hold America to a higher standard than you do yourselves

This may be the perception, however Europeans by and large don't pretend to save the world from itself, while simultaneously bombing everyone and pretending to be restoring democracy everywhere in the process. The US government pretends to do this all the time. The US Gov went to the UN in NYC, and basically said "We are going to restore democracy in Iraq" "The Iraqi are going to welcome us with open arms". Don't you remember this ?

Look at the score card, and tell me whose standards weren't upheld again?

> You treat immigrants with such disdain, and then preach about human rights?

Europe has exactly the same problems regarding immigration than the US does. I seem to hear that the federal goverment wants to build a huge wall along the Rio Grande to keep wetbacks out. I heard that Arizona wanted to specifically tax recent immigrants to help build that wall. That's more than disdain, that's downright humiliation.

> You have domestic terrorism problems that you can't solve, and then you presume to tell us how to solve our terrorism problems?

Actually I think Europeans are slowly solving them. The Lockerby Lybians were found and charged thanks to international cooperation. We know who masterminded the Paris Metro attacks, he was recently arrested and extradited to France via the UK. This particular procedure was very long, but European countries have signed an international agreement for faster processing recently.

Notice that the UK didn't bomb Lybia as a result of Lockerby (the US did for other reasons, though!) and that France didn't bomb Algeria for the metro attacks.

Notice as well that internal terrorism is also hopefully being resolved. IRA vowed to disarm a year ago, and went ahead a few month later despite considerable doubt in the Protestant camp that this would ever happen.

The bottom line is that Europe has been coping with terrorism longer than the US have. I hear that the US got some tips from the Israeli. This is good, because if there is a country knows about terrorism, that is Israel. Note that they, too, despite considerable military and financial help from the US, still haven't resolved that issue.

> You are more than willing to ask for our help when things like Bosnia get out of control, but then your population would prefer to snub the US when it needs help?

Bosnia was the best US deed from recent memory. Thanks. However on the Iraq issue the US was not *asking* for help, it was *demanding* it. As in strongarming, refusing debate and even calls to the most basic rule of reason. Note that in the case of Afghanistan, where terrorists and 9/11 masterminds were harboured, *many* nations responded to the call. Even the French, who count 7 casualties so far in Afghanistan.

Regarding Iraq, it was well-known that Iraq was not involved. GWB wanted to go there to settle some kind of score and grab the 2nd largest known reserves of oil in the process. Some European refused, insisting that Iraq was not going to be the easy walk in that GWB was hoping for. Can we blame them?

> Well, from my perspective, you all look like a bunch of racist spoiled children

A very slippery slope here. When I studied in the US, I saw very few African-Americans doing advanced degrees like master's and PhD's. Why is that do you think ? when did the African-Americans acquire

Merriam-Webster is adding the verb "to google" to their dictionary in the next release.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/20 06/07/03/daily36.html

It would seem to me that if Red Hat's support was as bad as oracle is alleging then they wouldn't be kicking ass and taking names in this survey: http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2006/0 1/09/daily6.html

That would be stealing the *CD*, not the music. Now, stealing music would be more like doing what this sheriff is trying to do, but illegally.

I don't know how I would do that, however...

This morning's Houston Business Journal article about Ken Lay can be refreshed a couple of times until the accompanying ad shows a little building, with little people running around, and the caption Monster

The headline for the Wall Street Journal talked about a dead Ken Lay and offered a "Free Preview" in big red letters at the top of the first few paragraphs before cutting off.

I think you mean suppressed :) although I still disagree and I think you've picked a bad example.

- Although $10K was a lot of money in 1970 dollars, based on what I've read $10K was a wild under-guesstimate
- Only one prototype was ever built, so most claims seem to be based on regurgitated marketing specs rather than hands-on experience
- In the late 90's Mr. Ramirez was eventually convicted of 12 counts of fraud and money laundering and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison after he swindled his electric car investors out of millions

http://www.crest.org/discussion/ev/199811/msg01517 .html
http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1 :62578997
http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/1999 /01/04/daily12.html

He doesn't exactly sounds like the kind of chap who deserves to be lauded by electric car fanboys.

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2000/jan0 0/donationpr.mspx
http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories /2003/08/18/daily27.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060505/sff021.html
http://news.zdnet.com/5208-1040-0.html?forumID=1&t hreadID=13766&messageID=275522&start=-1
http://www.indonesia-relief.org/mod.php?mod=publis her&op=viewarticle&cid=25&artid=1558
http://www.itjungle.com/two/two030106-story08.html

Wow, you're really stupid aren't you.

I can't wait to see how you spin that. But you will. A world of black and white is the only way your intellect can operate. Real world scenarios are just too much for people like you to process and understand, so you resort to dumbing everything down in a futile effort to pretend you're not overwhelmed.

I love pointing out when you idiots are wrong.

In this day and age, the goal is to make a quick buck, meet your quarterly goals, collect the bonus and score another job based your great quarter. Downtime usually isn't an issue so you wind up with Microsoft spreading into desktops and datacenters. It's cheap and you can hire a reboot monkey to admin these systems. Of course we can replace the big box and the guys who've kept it running 7x24 for the last 23 years without any outages. They cost too much to keep around anyway and don't have any colors but green or amber.

Bill Gates understood that you don't need to be better, you need to meet the minimum standard and be the low bidder. With the introduction of Windows, the minimum standard creeps lower, allowing his next product even more market share. We're beginning to see a backlash with security and reliablity becoming issues again.

If a VAX booted in 1983 can run an application without a reboot for 17 years (Year 2000 shutdown) why doesn't can't a modern system stay up for week?

Perhaps you should do some research before spouting off caustic remarks like that. There are quite a few studies that show THC and other marijuana components could have anti-cancer & tumor properties. I've linked a few, you can do the rest of the legwork.

http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract /jpet.103.061002v1
http://www.jci.org/cgi/content/full/111/1/43
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/17/3/529
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/20 05/08/29/newscolumn6.html

If they had just taxed 740,000 San Franciscans, they could have raised the $15 million Earthlink says is needed to build the network at a TOTAL cost of $20.27 per person.

That's $20. Not per month, not per year, but for 10 years of free wireless service. Considering the city's tax base works out to $7,100 per citizen per year (paid partly by businesses of course), that's quite a bargain.

The annual budget for San Francisco is about $5 billion. According to the article, the initial cost to deploy this wireless network is estimated at $6 million to $8 million, or roughly 1/1000th of the city budget.

Earthlink has been granted a monopoly on city property and exemptions from certain regulations to build a citywide WiFi network. (Google is just leasing from them.) In exchange, they generously agree to rent the network for $20 per month to an average chump, or at some unspecified rate to Google, who will offer it for "free" to users.

Basic math: at $20 per sub per month, Earthlink only needs about 35,000 subscribers to recoup their worst-case build out cost within ONE YEAR.

If Google is paying them just a quarter of that, they would only need about 18 percent of the SF population, which is right around what they plan to get. Of course, after the first year they are minting money, since by their own estimate the maintence cost is about $1 million per year, plus customer support (only for paid customers surely) and billing.

In other words, the people of San Francisco will pay every single year the total cost to build the network. All this to avoid the evil of taxes and to experience the EFFICIENCY OF THE MARKET.

I am beginning to lose the fervent blind capitalist leanings of my youth because I live in San Francisco. Not surprising that this happened, but I am surprised at how.