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KKD

cuz it dying on its own...

fuckin fools .

There is clearly a conflict with public interest, but people agree to follow the rules, as there were no other way to stimulate creation and distribution of work of art. Only if we would have alternative "exclusive Right" to be secured by "Authors and Inventors" and/or other ways "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", than there will be no need for old restrictive mechanisms...

But why, there are alternatives:

• "exclusive Right" to sell copies; this way author still can benefit by selling "author's" issue of his creation, but copying for non-commercial use will be unrestricted (and welcomed as it "promote the Progress...");
• author can benefit from supporting his product;
• artist can benefit from performing his work of art;
• people can tip author (feel free to laugh if it sounds funny to you)...

... i just did a note on this here

MSoft is a big company with very smart accountants. Like most big companies they heist our country's tax system for a big ride every single year, so it is we the people who pay the bulk of the taxes even though we have less rights these days than do companies.

Check this:
http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rule maker000217.htm

You need to put a fraud alert on all three of your credit reports. This has three effects: 1) You get a free copy of your credit report, 2) they remove your name and address from the pre-approved offers list, and 3) any new credit grantor will be instructed to telephone you to verify that you really want to open the account.

Hmm, this sounds like a pretty good deal. I wonder if you can "pre-report" fraud for these benefits... legally?

Here's a good post on fool.com about how one woman went about recovering from the theft of her identity.

Microsoft Breakup Decision Overturned by the Court of Appeals

Judge Jackson had compared Microsoft to "drug traffickers".

by Michael Jennings

(Thursday, June 28, 2001) Today the Court of Appeals handling the Microsoft anti-trust case overturned the lower court's decision to split Microsoft into two or more companies. The breakup would have placed the Microsoft Windows operating system in one company and created a second business for everything else.

This decision of the Court of Appeals has been widely recognized as fair because of the behaviour of the judge of the lower court, in which he had not given the required appearance of impartiality. Judge Jackson had, for example, compared Microsoft to "drug traffickers", and Bill Gates to Napoleon. (See page 111 of the Court's decision [PDF format]).

The Court of Appeals found that Judge Jackson's 206-page Findings of Fact, in which Microsoft was found to have engaged in illegal conduct, was entirely acceptable. It was his conduct outside the courtroom that was a violation of the code of conduct for United States judges. (For more about this, see pages 111 to 115 of the decision.)

Earlier, many people had praised Judge Jackson's skill in handling the case inside the courtroom. Technically oriented observers considered the Findings of Fact to be very well informed.

However, the penalty that Judge Jackson recommended for Microsoft was voided because of his public misconduct. The Court of Appeals directed that a new district judge examine the case, using the Findings of Fact as a starting point.

The story is very widely reported. For examples, see: ABC, AP, BBC, Washington Post, Seattle Times, CNet, The Industry Standard, Reuters, Guardian, Motley Fool, and MSNBC. The NY Times article requires that you register. Registration is free.

Silicon Valley.com said "[Microsoft] can continue its brutal practices for a while longer..."

There were two parts to the anti-trust case, 1) the Findings of Fact, in which Microsoft was found to have engaged in illegal activity, and 2) the remedy, which is what would happen as a result of the court finding illegal activity. Judge Jackson had ordered that Microsoft be broken into two companies. It is only this second part, the remedy, that has been voided (vacated) by the Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals wrote, "We vacate the judgment on remedies, because the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte [outside the court] contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials in public statements outside of the courtroom, giving rise to an appearance of partiality."

The Court of Appeals added, "Although we find no evidence of actual bias, we hold that the actions of the trial judge seriously tainted the proceedings before the District Court and called into question the integrity of the judicial process."

The ruling of the Court of Appeals was unanimous, by a 7-0 vote.

More links:

Open Secrets.org report on Microsoft soft money donations

Common Cause report on Microsoft political contributions

Antitrust Law and Economics Review

Older Articles:

Microsoft Unfazed by Threat of New Antitrust Suits (Thursday, June 21, 2001)

What, me worry? Microsoft's Ballmer stays cool, confident, composed. (PC World, June 17, 1998)

Michael Jennings
Futurepower®
P.O. Box 14491
Portland, OR 97293-0491
U.S.A.

Tel: (503) 233-7820
Fax: (419) 781-4606
E-Mail: jennings_michael @ hotmail.com (remove spaces)

Futurepower is a registered trademark.
Copyright 2001

...Is that why Northop's stock is down?

1) Companies are not required to show an options grant in their income statement, but can show it in a footnote in their annual report. This makes the company appear to be more profitable than it really is. Motley Fool article, and part two
2) Deferred taxation. No one has to pay taxes when the option is issued, but they would if an equivalent amount of salary was paid. Business Week article, look a couple of paragraphs in.
3) Risk dilution. If a startup succeeds, the founders are going to be extremely wealthy. They'd much rather give up some of their potential gains in that situation, in exchange for a greater chance of the company succeeding. (Since their paying less salary up front.)
4) Tying the employee to the company. It's expensive to train someone to take over a position when someone leaves. It takes them a while to get familiar with what the previous person was doing.

For these reasons, issuing options can be a win-win, for both the employer and the employee. So even if employees are valuing the options appropriately, companies may still want to pay a greater value of options than they would of salary.

1) Companies are not required to show an options grant in their income statement, but can show it in a footnote in their annual report. This makes the company appear to be more profitable than it really is. Motley Fool article, and part two
2) Deferred taxation. No one has to pay taxes when the option is issued, but they would if an equivalent amount of salary was paid. Business Week article, look a couple of paragraphs in.
3) Risk dilution. If a startup succeeds, the founders are going to be extremely wealthy. They'd much rather give up some of their potential gains in that situation, in exchange for a greater chance of the company succeeding. (Since their paying less salary up front.)
4) Tying the employee to the company. It's expensive to train someone to take over a position when someone leaves. It takes them a while to get familiar with what the previous person was doing.

For these reasons, issuing options can be a win-win, for both the employer and the employee. So even if employees are valuing the options appropriately, companies may still want to pay a greater value of options than they would of salary.

Caldera always has been in to this IP thing. Here is a quote from an old Fool.com article (August 14, 2000 )

The reason Red Hat has been so much more successful than, say, Caldera Systems, is that Red Hat sees what it does as a service, and Caldera sees its intellectual property as a product it can control

Caldera always has been in to this IP thing. Here is a quote from an old Fool.com article (August 14, 2000 )

The reason Red Hat has been so much more successful than, say, Caldera Systems, is that Red Hat sees what it does as a service, and Caldera sees its intellectual property as a product it can control

LNUX isn't totally worthless.

Yet.

Nor will you see Larry being led away in handcuffs any time soon. They need the cell space for someone else.

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Network TV and Radio have free models that are paid for by advertising so some internet sites will be able to do this as well. The biggest problem is that so much crap is on the Net, I mean who would pay a fee to visit The Onion...honestly. Sites with only niche appeal or low quality content, or products and services oriented sites without a strong value proposition and no loyalty driver will always fail...just like poorly written magazines, TV shows, or a resturant in a strip mall that only make a so-so sub sandwich.

A fee based model isn't such a bad idea for sites like on-line magazines, but for sites like Outpost.com and others trying to sell products on the web, they have to provide a product or service that's cheaper, or easier to buy, or not found elsewhere or they won't retain customers and their business model fails. In any type of retailing, clicks or bricks, you typically make 80% of your revenue off 20% of your customers and these are customers you have to retain year after year. A retail model can't be sustained through acquisition.

But I've digressed a bit. The point is that the Net's not going to become one big fee based world where every site you visit will only be accessible via login or cookie that was bought for a $20 annual fee. Some sites like The Motley Fool and others will survive with a free or a blended approach offering basic services & content free and premiums for a fee. That's not such and bad thing. It's all about supply and demand and we all know what the Net has the biggest supply of and what's in the greatest demand...PORN! Maybe Kozmo.com or Freeworks should have spent more time browsing porn sites and doing some best practices benchmarking prior to launching their ventures. Who knows, they might have been as successful and Jenna Jameson's Official Site, one of the most successful porn sites on the web.

If you build it...they will come...but only if it's worth a shit.

2)How do you profit from someone's stock tanking unless you're a competitor? If the price goes down, and you hold stock, don't you lose money regardless of how much anyone else loses?

It's called shorting. Basically you borrow stock from someone else and sell it. When they want it back you buy some. Read up on it at The Motley Fool (about two thirds of the way down that page). They don't like it because there's unlimited potential losses.
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Tom Vu!?

Hah! Loser...

Anyway, as you said "The very internet that you love so much is now going after you wallet. "

No, the very Internet I love is coming back...
Less commercial clap-trap, more useful discussion, is what I'd like to see.

My pick for best free site on the Internet? The Motley Fool, hands down.

Word.

Here is a link to an analysis by the Motley fool group http://www.fool.com/news/2001/rhat010323.htm?ref=e m_fwcm2

75% of all stocks trading at under $5 will be out of busness in 10 years.

To barrow from the motly fool would you rather have one share of berkshire hathaway inc BRK.A

Or would you like 12,000 shares of redhat RHAT

75% of all stocks trading at under $5 will be out of busness in 10 years.

To barrow from the motly fool would you rather have one share of berkshire hathaway inc BRK.A

Or would you like 12,000 shares of redhat RHAT

Just for some perspective:

Foolish perspective

Red hat got those numbers by cutting costs and through an aquisition. The business still has some growing to do, and remember... they are still a reletively small company. Lets all hope they can pull it off.

-pos

The truth is more important than the facts.

This Fool.com article goes into a bit more detail on the results (free reg. required).

Specifically it notes that while their revenue doubled to $27 million, $5.5 of that was from it's acquisition of Planning Technologies.

Also, there's this little blurb on ZDNET.

Aren't most web users interested in finding web resources?

I'd have to say no. Yes, you and I are interested in finding things on the web. We use search engines to find these things. The average web user (I'll use my mom as an example) can't tell the difference between Internet Explorer, Earthlink, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and the Internet. For her, these things are all equivalent. She is interested in "going" to places on the web, but she is pretty much restricted to those places that she can link to from Yahoo! or hear from her friends.

I believe that the majority of users are just like her. As a result, web communities are able form at places like The Motley Fool and the message board at Yahoo!. Users find a little place they like to frequent, put it in their favorites (because they don't know how to make it their startup page) and never venture very far. For these people (the majority of users) a semantic web would be completely useless.

Probably the best you could do is simulate one using a search engine that constantly sought and categorized pages intelligently.

This is more what people are suggesting; by defining and publishing terms (and making them machine parseable), equivalences between ontologies can be identified and applied automatically, along with other machine reasoning.

How long will this classification take and how long would any information be good? Joe Blow over at Geocities just put up his Britney Spears page. One day he may find Bjork his muse. He sure isn't going to inform some search engine of his updates. How long before the search engine comes back around to check his page out? Anything can be outdated by the time you find it in a search engine, which is not so different a situation than exists now, but no one is trying to put any handcuffs on web publishers now.

Dancin Santa

: Cancer

True - though the greater scientific collaboration available due to the utility of the Internet has certainly allowed research to proceed faster.

: World Hunger

I'd be interested to know if efforts like the Motley Fool's annual charity drive on behalf of organizations like Share our Strength is having an impact.

: Suicide

I've known a lot of depressed individuals who have found support from online communities that could never have existed without the Internet. MUDs and MOOs and MUCKs, web-based discussion forums, you name it. A friend of mine recently started a website that focuses on sexual freedom and expression for the physically disabled. By virtue of its place online, that effort is able to reach a far greater audience than the individual would ever have had the chance to reach on her own.

: War

I'm not sure there's an example of the Internet stopping a war yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if it happened in the near future.

: Britney Spears

That truly *would* be a service to mankind. I suppose if we look at communities like Napster as providing greater access to alternative or otherwise unknown artists, then maybe it has the ability to broaden people's palettes to where pap like Britney Spears will no longer satisfy the masses. We can hope, anyway.

You are probably thinking of LinuxOne...

Do a search for "linuxone" and "fraud"...

Topic on fool.com

Investorville discussion

Now Fool keeps the boards civil, at least as far as language goes, but not Raging Bull.

If you're the type who likes to throw gasoline onto a fire, here's a bonfire just waiting for you to back up the fuel tanker.

A valid point?

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A valid point?

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Ok, so we have Microsoft selling at a loss.

The 60 Mil or so they are losing is of no big deal.

They don't need it for taxes, they already have cooperate welfare:

Basically, Microsoft receives cash by issuing employee stock options, after which the company then receives billions of dollars in tax deductions from the IRS for doing so.

So the motivation is not profit or taxes...

I'm trying to work out a logical process here...

So what do we have left?

1. The anti-trust thing.

2. What else would make them bail? Is it linux related? It's hard to tell... I think this is a jump of gun, in that the event has happen, but no party has given a good reason. I know why I sell stock, but I'm sure those same influences don't apply to microsoft, considering the amount of moneys they have.

I'm just really curious to wait and see what Microsoft has to say, if anything, about this sell.

Aren't corporations supposed to be more focused on doing business than suing?

For what it's worth, I hope RAMBUS loses this particular battle, even if it isn't likely. The Motley Fool posted an article a while back predicting the success of RAMBUS based on these patents. Hardware patents can be as harmful to the industry as software--it's a hot issue right now, and some people are trying to do something about it already.

So what should be done with patents? I haven't really heard a good solution yet. Most solutions either favor the corporations (and lawyers) or they throw out the entire system, innovation to be done at your own risk. Is there a middle ground?

Tim

Aren't corporations supposed to be more focused on doing business than suing?

For what it's worth, I hope RAMBUS loses this particular battle, even if it isn't likely. The Motley Fool posted an article a while back predicting the success of RAMBUS based on these patents. Hardware patents can be as harmful to the industry as software--it's a hot issue right now, and some people are trying to do something about it already.

So what should be done with patents? I haven't really heard a good solution yet. Most solutions either favor the corporations (and lawyers) or they throw out the entire system, innovation to be done at your own risk. Is there a middle ground?

Tim

I blew the URL's listed in my other post, so here it goes:

The question and answer session from the conference call, text and analysis from Motley Fool:

Motley Fool Conference call 1997

From an anti-Mac perspective

PC Mag perspective

A more neutral perspective

ZD Net Anchordesk story at the time

If a court rules that Alan Emtage was the first to develop the methods described in CMGI's patents and CMGI's patents are canceled (or whatever the legal term for canceling a patent is), can Alan Emtage then get patents on the same methods and sue CMGI?

Two wrongs don't make a right. You can't beat these slimeballs by sinking to their level, it would be better instead to work towards patent reform (or abolishment, whichever comes first). Check these out:

• Against Intellectual Property
• Intellectual Property is an Oxymoron

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Motley Fool also has this article that give a more historical and investing perpective.

The motley fool had a decent article a few days ago on how the situation is a combination of poorly executed deregulation, NIMBYism (or BANANAism as they call it...Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything), and limits on what fuels can be used. It can be found here.

This is interesting in light of an article published on The Motley Fool on Monday. They predicted that Wind River would be the winner over Linux in the embedded systems market. Their reasons? Apparently, the nature of open source is one problem; another one they cited is the "lack of real-time capabilities"in Linux (and I thought these guys did their research!!!) MS is a loser from the get-go, apparently because it takes 18 months to fix anything.

Rack another one up for Linux!

For example, Thompson (RCA) was going to sell a TiVo box at RadioShack this Xmas season. They cancelled production when Gemstar threatened to cut off ties with Thompson because Gemstar is suing TiVo over a patent for putting a TV schedule in a grid. (I am not making this up. http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=13657926 )

Lawsuits and Patents are corporate weapons, not about justice.

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You could have linked to the Bull argument just as well article. My iMac and PowerBook have worked great. OS X PB on my powerbook has been awesome.

Check out this article about some peoples recent experience with Macs.

Through the reviews I'm reading, including the one at Motle y Fool, I'd say any immediate buyer is throwing money away , best held in their savings account until the memory, optimization and speed give a better accounting.

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Funny... I've been a Foolish investor since
I started paying attention to the stock market
a few years back and frankly, the Nasdaq's
rollercoaster ride had no real effect on me.
I'm still on track to retire with more than
I'm likely to ever need. Just quietly investing
5k a year(to start) in an index fund.

Here's some more info on NVidia vs ATI from a financial viewpoint. http://www.fool.com/news/breakfast/2000/breakfast0 01110.htm

The "produce" a service which allows people (bigtime and smalltime investors alike) to invest their money in all sorts of companies and other vehicles. The demand for their services is such that they can be paid a very high fee for performing this service. Like I said in my original post, they may not be the ones actually hammering the nail, but they do have a part to play in building the house.

As far as the little peons that can invest. I'd say thats a very bad idea.

The only way that you're not in the game at some level is if you keep your money stashed under the bed, spend it all, or invest in some sort of collectible that does not have value in terms of production (like stamps or artwork).

Money you keep in a bank account is being used in a similar manner as money you put into stocks, except that the bank handles all the transactions, assumes most of the risks, and takes most of the profit. If you're ok with missing out on most of the gains, fine -- investing in stocks isn't for everyone, and you'd be much better off not playing the game at all than playing the game without knowing the rules.

However, those that wish to learn the rules (regardless of how much they want to invest) and are willing to trade some security for higher returns have the opportunity to do so. With a little bit of research (spend an evening reading The Motley Fool or any other good financial site instead of watching TV) you can learn how to earn several times the rate of a savings account without taking too much additional risk.

Also note that taking on "a mutual fund" can be just as bad as any day trading. A mutual fund just means that you pay someone else to invest your money for you; they don't necessarily know where to put it to get the best results. On average, any given mutual fund will perform worse than the market as a whole.

As for the dotcoms... the "geeks" your refer to are probably the ones who are still making money off the dotcoms, if they were the ones who got in early in the game, before the rest of the general populace started driving up the share prices.

A copy of the article can also be found here. (Maybe.)

Adapted from The Motley Fool:
1. What are you doing about the terrible kidney removal problem in our nation's bars? 2. Will the DOJ take action against Nieman Marcus' cookie selling regime? 3. Have you considered using funds from forwarding Bill Gates' emails to fund the Social Security trust fund? 4. Should the FDA regulate Pop Rocks after the terrible accident with Little Mikey? 5. Do Walt Disney's copyrights count from the time he was frozen, or from when he is thawed out and actually dies? And, of course: 6. Will you veto bill 602P if it passes Congress?

I believe that there are a certain fixed number of stock shares for a company.

I used to think this was true as well. It's not. Microsoft can print up as many new shares as they want. All it takes is a rubber stamp approval from the board of directors. In fact, Microsoft "manufactured" $10 billion dollars worth of shares in 1999 and only bought back $3 billion dollars worth.

And that is why Microsoft's actions are so dangerous. They are literally betting the farm on the fact that their stock is going to continue to rise. If it doesn't they lose their largest single source of income. If you really are interested I would take a look at the Fool's Report listed in the /. article. It explains the situation better than I could.

I'll have to hope that this gets moderated up, because there are simply sometimes when I have to forego the starting score. These two companies aren't the only ones who are doing this. There was one alarmist tracking it and blowing the whistle a couple of years ago. He was widely regarded as a nutcase with an axe to grind because he was using Microsoft as his example. Then The Economist picked up the trail. They emphasized the point that this is a bad accounting loophole, and that the only reason to criticize Microsoft is that they are the biggest beneficiary of it. Here is the Motley Fool's article about it.

The writer of the piece, Rob Landley, is a long time clued in about technology writer. He was the first Fool to write critical pieces stating that Microsoft is a monopoly. In November 1998 he devoted a week of columns to Microsoft criticism. You can find out more about him here. Or check out his August 20, 1998 Introduction to Linux

The writer of the piece, Rob Landley, is a long time clued in about technology writer. He was the first Fool to write critical pieces stating that Microsoft is a monopoly. In November 1998 he devoted a week of columns to Microsoft criticism. You can find out more about him here. Or check out his August 20, 1998 Introduction to Linux

The writer of the piece, Rob Landley, is a long time clued in about technology writer. He was the first Fool to write critical pieces stating that Microsoft is a monopoly. In November 1998 he devoted a week of columns to Microsoft criticism. You can find out more about him here. Or check out his August 20, 1998 Introduction to Linux