Slashdot Mirror

In the article there is no mention of the number of computers at stake, but according to this article it's about 70,000 computers, and not 7,000 as the Slashdot header suggests. There are more interesting quotes in the Bloomberg article, for example that the main reason for the switch is security issues, so that they won't switch if Microsoft fixes these security problems.

``I still have concerns about security'' in Windows, Eslambolchi said. ``We have had more viruses attacking PCs in the last six months than in the previous 10 years.''

Bloomberg says it's 70,000 not 7,000. Here's the article.

AT&T

See AT&T Tests Linux to Replace Microsoft's Windows on 70,000 PCs

For those interested here is the Bloomberg link.

Well, they do punish white collar crime in China!

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080& sid=aMZ0siUWgs8k&refer=asia

I saw this somewhere else that had a really good quote as well... I'll try and find it.

Would you prefer liar?

Um, you forgot the rest of the story. Dudley lost, as did we all. The SCOTUS concluded 5-4 that your identity alone is not incriminating enough to be protected under the 5th amendment.

``This a jump of at least two decades in the race to unlock the coffee genome,'' Brazilian Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues said in a statement on his ministry's Web site.

A two-year government project studied 200,000 sequences of coffee DNA and identified 35,000 genes, which in combination give the drink its flavor and aroma, the statement said.

The DNA database will be open to Brazilian companies in about five or six years, and foreign competitors will be able to access patented information on payment of royalties, Clayton Campanhola, the head of Brazilian agricultural research agency Embrapa, was cited by Reuters as telling journalists in Brasilia.

Rodrigues told reporters that Brazil would produce a ``super coffee'' through cross-pollination of coffee plants and not through genetic modification, according to the British Broadcasting Corp.

Brazil has banned the planting and sale of genetically modified crops.

This makes minimal sense to me, although it does explain why the other stories don't mention a publication. They spend two years, it's a jump of two decades, they're done but Brazilian companies can't see the data for five or six years and foreign companies will have to offer royalties? Pardon my cynicism, but what exactly do they have right now? Some shotgun coverage? ESTs?

Meanwhile, this is a few months work for any of the major genome centers. If there's really any commercial value to this, I can't imagine the coffee industry wouldn't just sponsor a publically-available ccommercial genome, like every other major agricultural crop has or will have. No one is going to wait five years and then give Brazil royalties.

Ford's first hybrid, goes on sale in the U.S. this fall. After loosing billions in the last few years Ford is attempting to brand themselves as the "environmentally conscious" company by launching their new Escape.

However, there is much debate over who developed the vehicle technology. Ford claims all original patents but did pay off Toyota for "patent similarities". Hmmmm.
Bloomberg News"

Dang, you beat me to it. I read DetNews Auto section every day and went nuts when I saw the slashdot headline. I also found this over at Bloomberg by Doron Levin (an editor over at detnews as well).

BTW, although hybrids are the new chic-ness in cool rides (and 15 years ago those same people were all diving for SUVs, but whatever) no one's done a careful analysis of the cost to manufacture the batteries as well dispose of them properly, especially on the scales of 17 million new vehicles sold per year (in the US). To me, we're simply trading a "cleaner" car today for an expensive cleanup tomorrow. Everything seems to be a trade off. Diesel has its problems, especially with the U.S.'s sulfur rich diesel. A lot of our advances in cleaning up car emissions come at a price such as expensive and toxic metals in catalytic converters.

Sources, please. The iPod is hot and sales of iTunes have already hit 100 million downloads. This growth in a relatively small timespan, along with partnerships with Motorola for cell phones, HP for their own portables along with other manufactures for car stereos, etc. suggest Apple is the major player, even if you can buy lots of cheap MP3 players. The success of this venture certainly has competitors scrambling, including Sony.

Funny you bring them up: Apple Records did sue Apple Computers, first in 1989 and then again last year.

-Sosumi

Bloomberg has a pretty detailed article about this, for those looking for more detail than the commonly-used Reuter's article contains...

Simply put, Japan's game market is much, much bigger than the US's. Even if it's shrinking now, it'll have to shrink to less than half of it's current size for the US market to "catch up".

That's why people saying that "The real money is in the US console market" crack me up. Crazy me, I figure going after the market with 2-3 times the number of customers is where I'd make more money. Silly, eh?

What's kinda silly is just making up statistics out of thin air:

" Xbox sales in Japan -- the world's second-biggest market for video-game consoles and software after the U.S."

IPod shipments rose threefold amid ``staggering'' demand for the mini version of the music player, which Apple will start selling in Europe this month, said Timothy Cook, Apple's worldwide vice president for sales. The popularity of iPods helped reignite demand for Macintosh computers, fueling the best quarter for shipments in almost four years

"It gives me more confidence that the iPod will drive customers to other products" said Jim Grossman, a technology fund manager at Minneapolis-based Thrivent Financial, which manages $64 billion and owns Apple shares.

Excuse me, but I seem to have misplaced my Attorney General. Have you seen him lying around anywhere?

And they want more profit. See the conspiracy to keep the puppet in office.

i'm not saying this, that, or the other thing about arm, but if you look at the debacle of california and their power problems when electricity was deregulated there, then it is clear that for some matters, a monopoly is actually a good thing

it's simplistic to think monopoly=bad automatically

but it's also bad to not recognize where monopolies are a necessary evil due to the high cost and other barriers to competition (do you really want to wire all of california a number of times redundantly for electricity?)

where you recognize a monopoly as inescapable, you must regulate them, bind them with legislation, and watch them like a hawk... and then they are "good"

btw, here's another monopoly that just made the news, and no, they are neither good nor necessary:

us govt and de beers in an agreement to allow them to reenter the us market after a 50 year hiatus for monopolistic practices

The big story in the media last week, was that DVDs actually supply over 50% of the movie industry income.

The average american home purchase ~15 DVDs per year.

That's huge- and it is ON TOP of record-setting box office receipts. They make a lot of money from them.

But somehow, they still manage to claim that they are bleeding money out the ass.

I'd like to say that I will be boycotting them, and not supporting their industry. But looking at the top 100 films in the past 2 years, I've seen all but two. So whether or not we like their business, we do like their product.

The Bloomberg article offers some insight into the business strategy. The plan here is to make units that require a "fuel cartridge". "Fuel cartridges" contain just methanol and water, but will have markups previously seen only for printer ink. Toshiba expects to make ten times as much on the "fuel cartridges" as they do on the fuel cells.

Look for strategies to prevent "refilling".

sorry

For those following the far-reaching effects of the US Mad Cow scare in Japan, the next version of this title is going to have to be referred to as Yoshinoya 2: Pork Bowl Simulator... As it stands now, the only beef bowl you're going to get from Yoshinoya here in Japan is a virtual one. Damn those prions for robbing me of the delicious taste of shredded beef-flavored fat delicately slopped over greasy rice with a garnish of radioactive ginger!

If you'd been reading lwn.net you would have already noticed their link to a Bloomberg article, written in english, which covers this.

when the Beatles get their injunction, blatent disregard to contracts and trademarks will have its consequences, just hope investors get out first

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085& sid=a6ni5OCPVzkQ&refer=europe">http://quote.bloomb erg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=a6ni5OCPVzkQ&re fer=europe

Competition Commissioner Mario Monti on March 24 said forcing the Redmond, Washington-based company to disclose the inner workings of the software that powers more than 90 percent of personal computers was necessary to ensure it doesn't exploit its monopoly. Microsoft argued the ruling will cause ``irreparable harm.'' The following week, it agreed to license technology when it settled its decade-long dispute with Sun.

``One could be forgiven for wondering whether this agreement and the huge payment to Sun were really needed, given that Microsoft has consistently stated there is no interoperability shortcoming beyond natural technological barriers,'' Lafitte said.

Kumar's resignation may help the company reach a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which began a formal probe into the company's accounting in May 2002. Chief Financial Officer Ira Zar said "high-level'' executives were involved in hiding revenue drops when he pleaded guilty to securities fraud earlier this month.

However, the expenses of the stock plan were never booked. When all this came out, the stock price dropped 31% the next day.

See: Graef Crystal's 4/21/04 column on Bloomberg

They don't make money.

Are you generating revenue? How much?

Yes. A small but growing revenue stream. Specific dollar amounts are confidential.

Oil futures prices are down 2.7% today. The rumor on the Drudge Report is that Iraq is already pumping oil above expected output...

Meanwhile, the USA is filling its strategic oil reserves to the highest levels ever. The thought is that with the proper reserves, they could soak any future terrorist attack that may cut off supply... recall that Bill Clinton tapped the oil reserves in 2000 for price control, a move widely seen as covering up effects of the dot-com recession that had begun earlier in the year. In 2000, it was noted that the reserves could support 100% production levels in the USA for two months, and that was at 571m barrels. Prices at the time were only about $26/barrel as shown on this graph.

Thanks, that was a fascinating read. It's almost written as a story. Still, I'm strongly inclined to believe it, though I'm a bit dishearted that their primary sources are unnamed. It'll be interesting to see what comes of it now that it has been denied by the Pentagon (though I suspect that is necessary for covert operations, so it tells us little). Hopefully, some solid evidence will come forth if it is true.

As the article relays, it seems that a reasonable sap which provided for limited autonomy for a well-trained group expanded wildly out of control. From the article, it looks like the sap became ripe for abuse because untrained persons were performing the interrogation and they expanded to prisoners for minor crimes who were not really suspect to have useful information.

OT: Another interesting turn of events is the (apparently unwitting) use of serin gas as an explosive device by some insurgents. I'm sure /. and the news will be rife with posts exclaiming the presence of one single WMD, initially found not by the Coalition, but by the insurgents who apparently didn't even realize what they had found.

Anyways in this case it might be more relavant to define a "software GDP," and for now I think the US would be #1 in that dept.

There are some surprisingly large shops in Germany. SAP AG (the world's largest maker of business- management software) is one that immediately comes to mind. You may be right, but I'd like to see how the numbers actually stack up.

Opera alows you to enable or disable pug-ins from its quick preferences menu.

Further more with out flash hwo the heel do I navigate around sites like this?

That said I do hate flash and during the dot com boom repeated irritated clueless "web designers" with tirades about why I hated it.

Hi "Mike." (If you're wondering why the name is in quotes, just read the pablum that this coward posts.)

Air America, supported by as much as $60 million from investors including RealNetworks Inc. Chairman Rob Glaser.

Any other questions, "Mike"?

Nice cherry-pick of economic numbers there, John Kerry. I don't think your hours worked GDP numbers tell the whole story. For example, we have much higher overall per-capita numbers. If you think an economy should be judged on how much leisure time a nation's peoples have, well we will never speak the same language. France has been around a lot longer than the US, but we produce almost nine times its overall GNP. What about growth? Innovation? Employment? (France and Germany's unemployment numbers are almost twice as high!)

The bottom line is there is trouble in both of your socialist paradises: France has been racing toward a free-market economy to the point where it is becoming merely a very heavily-taxed capitalist economy, and your vaunted 35-hour work week has been killing the economy:

• France is in the midst of transition, from a well-to-do modern economy that has featured extensive government ownership and intervention to one that relies more on market mechanisms...The current government has lowered income taxes and introduced measures to boost employment (9% unemployment). At the end of 2002 the government was focusing on the problems of the high cost of labor and labor market inflexibility resulting from the 35-hour workweek and restrictions on lay-offs...The tax burden remains one of the highest in Europe. The current economic slowdown and inflexible budget items have pushed the deficit above the EU's 3% debt limit. Business investment remains listless because of low rates of capital utilization, high debt, and the steep cost of capital.
• Source

Germany's economy has been in the crapper for years, and its latest numbers look weak. And it seems your socialist welfare state has some outsourcing problems of its own:

• Germany shed the most jobs in a decade last year as companies including Siemens AG, the nation's biggest electronics company, SAP AG, Germany's biggest software provider, and Volkswagen AG, the largest car producer in Europe, shift production to China, India and Eastern Europe, where labor costs are a fraction of the level in their home market.
• Source.

Further,

• Germany's economy has expanded by an average of 1.2 percent every year since 1992, the same as Japan and less than half the rates in the U.S. and the U.K. in the period.
• Source.

And

• Germany's ageing population, combined with high unemployment, has pushed social security outlays to a level exceeding contributions from workers. Structural rigidities in the labor market - including strict regulations on laying off workers and the setting of wages on a national basis - have made unemployment (now above 10%) a chronic problem.
• Source

Oops! Looks like this socialist utopia is collapsing under its own weight. Your socialist economies just can't compete in a free world market, something that even China and the Russians are coming around to. Pretty sad your two shining examples of socialism are invalidated by the fact that their economies suck!

• The Cologne-based IW economic institute said in a survey last month that German industry's labor costs are the highest in the world, with 72 percent of 523 companies questioned saying they would hire more staff if the government made headway on lowering the burden.

• ``The reason that we go more to India and those countries is we get highly skilled young people in a flexible labor market for cheap prices,'' said Henning Kagermann, 56, chief executive officer of SAP, in an interview at the Cebit fair in Hanov

Nice cherry-pick of economic numbers there, John Kerry. I don't think your hours worked GDP numbers tell the whole story. For example, we have much higher overall per-capita numbers. If you think an economy should be judged on how much leisure time a nation's peoples have, well we will never speak the same language. France has been around a lot longer than the US, but we produce almost nine times its overall GNP. What about growth? Innovation? Employment? (France and Germany's unemployment numbers are almost twice as high!)

The bottom line is there is trouble in both of your socialist paradises: France has been racing toward a free-market economy to the point where it is becoming merely a very heavily-taxed capitalist economy, and your vaunted 35-hour work week has been killing the economy:

• France is in the midst of transition, from a well-to-do modern economy that has featured extensive government ownership and intervention to one that relies more on market mechanisms...The current government has lowered income taxes and introduced measures to boost employment (9% unemployment). At the end of 2002 the government was focusing on the problems of the high cost of labor and labor market inflexibility resulting from the 35-hour workweek and restrictions on lay-offs...The tax burden remains one of the highest in Europe. The current economic slowdown and inflexible budget items have pushed the deficit above the EU's 3% debt limit. Business investment remains listless because of low rates of capital utilization, high debt, and the steep cost of capital.
• Source

Germany's economy has been in the crapper for years, and its latest numbers look weak. And it seems your socialist welfare state has some outsourcing problems of its own:

• Germany shed the most jobs in a decade last year as companies including Siemens AG, the nation's biggest electronics company, SAP AG, Germany's biggest software provider, and Volkswagen AG, the largest car producer in Europe, shift production to China, India and Eastern Europe, where labor costs are a fraction of the level in their home market.
• Source.

Further,

• Germany's economy has expanded by an average of 1.2 percent every year since 1992, the same as Japan and less than half the rates in the U.S. and the U.K. in the period.
• Source.

And

• Germany's ageing population, combined with high unemployment, has pushed social security outlays to a level exceeding contributions from workers. Structural rigidities in the labor market - including strict regulations on laying off workers and the setting of wages on a national basis - have made unemployment (now above 10%) a chronic problem.
• Source

Oops! Looks like this socialist utopia is collapsing under its own weight. Your socialist economies just can't compete in a free world market, something that even China and the Russians are coming around to. Pretty sad your two shining examples of socialism are invalidated by the fact that their economies suck!

• The Cologne-based IW economic institute said in a survey last month that German industry's labor costs are the highest in the world, with 72 percent of 523 companies questioned saying they would hire more staff if the government made headway on lowering the burden.

• ``The reason that we go more to India and those countries is we get highly skilled young people in a flexible labor market for cheap prices,'' said Henning Kagermann, 56, chief executive officer of SAP, in an interview at the Cebit fair in Hanov

Here is a Bloomberg news link

"In October, Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Steven Milunovich suggested Sun put Schwartz in a position to talk to the public more and called him ``brilliant.''

McNealy has resisted slashing more jobs. Merrill's Milunovich had called the company a ``bloated, underachieving, unfocused'' business and said it needs to eliminate 7,000 workers.

Sun has had their market share eroded on both sides - Microsoft and Open source *nixes. Even a $1.6 Billion US is not going to be enough to prop them up. And who knows if SCO has their eyes on that money!

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086& sid=a54gb5_g9EIQ&refer=latin_america

Apparently they've put the voltage back to 220 after reaching an agreement to buy power from Brazil.

Bloomberg reports: Apple Computer's sales of its iPod were up 140% in the fourth quarter of 2003, giving it a 50% share of the digital music player market. How did the company do it? With a typical Apple design that couples cool style with high technology, and with terrific marketing, featuring an ad campaign that Marian Salzman of ad agency Euro RSCG said "is about an Apple state of mind." Read the rest of the article here

In addition, a quick check of the stock analysis shows a generous 1-Year Return of 71.706%.

I don't know about you, but I would say they are doing just fine.

Of a failing company suing other people in the face of change. :(

How odd, check today's news, manufacturing levels are at almost a two-decade high.

Insightful my ass.

And the 9.7% out of work in France would probably like a 5.6% unemployment rate a lot better.

Yes, the deficit is worrisome, but if the economy is weak the worst thing we could do would be to raise taxes - that would just weaken the economy and hasten any job flight that is occurring. And it's actually nowhere near the highest deficits of all time as a percentage of US GDP.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087& sid=ajC3_3Y70kus&refer=top_world_news

I admit I did not rtfa, but I already believe games are not to blame for violence in this country. Why? Well we hear it all the time in the mainstream news -heavy metal music is making kids kill each other, Grand Theft Auto is making kids kill each other, freely available handguns and high-power firearms is why kids kill each other, violence on TV and in movies is what makes kids kill each other, the broken marriages, high divorce rates and single-family homes are robbing kids of the stability at home and thus they grow up insecure and want to kill each other, ......

The interesting thing is this:

- the United States is not the only country with alienated youth, check out Japanese kids (in Japan) or countires throughout Europe. In fact, isn't it part of growing up to be alienated and not fit in? Most of us didn't fit in when we were growing up, but who cares?

- the divorce rate in the U.S. is not the highest in the world, Brittain is higher. But we don't see the Brits killing each other left and right, or blaming everyone and their dog for why the other is so violent.

- mainstream music and movies can't be blamed, because they are ALL available in other countries, and in some cases might even be "taken more seriously" by foreigners who idolize the American way of life, so how can we blame movies, TV and music?

- the availability of guns in this country isn't totally to blame either - look at Canadians, they've got millions of guns throughout the country, but we don't see the Kanucks blowing each other's heads off.

I never really had a cohesive perspective on this stuff until I watched Bowling for Columbine. This is exactly what the movie is about - investigating why this country is so obsessed with violence. The answer, according to Michael Moore (and I totally agree with him), is that we live in a society that thrives on fear.

We're afraid of being robbed, insulted, embarassed... We're afraid we'll get too fat, or get too thin, or be unhealthy about our diet.... We're afraid we won't fit in, or won't get laid this weekend, or can't get a promotion at work, or might get fired, and what the hell am I gonna do when I retire? and how are my kids going to possibly afford college on their own?! and jesus what is up with social security?....

It just goes on and on, and we finally get to fear over our kids, and that's where all the blame lands on TV, movies, music, and video games. If the average parent would spend real quality time with their kids instead of plopping them in front of the fucking television night after night, things in this country might start turning for the better.

I wrote about this on my blog when I saw the movie a few months ago. For any interested parties, here's a link to The Charlie Rose Show where Michael Moore was interviewed.

``They're going to have a lot more trouble in a few days,'' said Craig Schmugar, a virus research manager with Network Associates Inc.'s McAfee division, referring to Lindon, Utah- based SCO. Personal computers whose clocks are set wrong are probably responsible for the attacks on SCO, Magallanez said. Such PCs with incorrect clock settings are probably less than a half of 1 percent of all infected machines, Schmugar said.

I find this very interesting:

Bloomberg's SCOX Page - take a look at the number of shares listed in the "Short Interest" box... confidence in SCOX? I think not...

FYI:
Short interest
Total number of shares of a security that investors have sold short and that have not been repurchased to close out the short position. Usually, investors sell short to profit from price declines. As a result, the short interest is often an indicator of the amount of pessimism in the market about a particular security, although there are other reasons to short that are not related to pessimism. For example, hedging strategies for mergers and acquisition as well as derivative positions may involve short sales. -- Taken From the Bloomberg Glossary Pages

They're doing it.

$4 billion IPO.

Bloomberg hasn't picked this up yet. Bloomberg is slipping. Yahoo Finance doesn't have it yet either.

This is an unusual investment for a bank. It's a pure speculative play. Their management is probably kicking themselves for buying in at the top.

When you buy stock, and you get confirmation that your trade has successfully executed, it's a done deal.

When you use the result of an order execution before its settlement, you are borrowing from your broker. The SEC allows this because the vast majority of settlements are completed as expected, so it doesn't destabilize the market, and it keeps money from being tied up. But even this generosity has limits: if you buy a stock, sell it the same day, then buy it again the same day**, the SEC considers you to be engaged in "pattern day trading" and makes you capitalize your account just like you were an option trader.

**Subject to some exceptions that don't apply to the average individual investor.

The company that created the bogus sell orders should be accountable for actually making those sales, even if it means they now have to buy up stock at a higher price.

You WILL base your future behavior on the premise that you now hold that stock.

To put it more bluntly, when you buy a bill of goods up the river, you owe yourself to verify the situation before you sell to somebody who likes breaking kneecaps.

This kind of behavior will undermine the stock market (and at a time when there's already plenty of reason for potential traders to be wary.)

Yeah I think eventually even the markets are realising SCO are on a one way trip to no-where SCO share value I'm beginning to think with all this paranoia that McBride must the the bastard love child of John Ashcroft, now there's a real scary thought?