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In case anybody starts thinking about how they might profit from an imminent decline in the SCOX short, The Motley Fool has an FAQ on shorting stocks.

In case anybody starts thinking about how they might profit from an imminent decline in the SCOX short, The Motley Fool has an FAQ on shorting stocks.

I'm reminded by your response of polititions who sidestep direct questions by answering something totally unrelated or spouting their rehearsed views until the original question/point is forgotten by joe-sixpack.

This was your response to point #1 in which I simply stated that jobs moving offshore will decrease the income taxes collected by states and federal govt:

Our economy is directly driven by the rich and big business. More money being made equals more money being injected into the economy. I seriously doubt that average joe sixpack who receives a big refund every year has contributed anywhere near as much as the rich and big business.

See? I make a point about loss of income taxes collected as more jobs move offshore and you spout that the rich drive the economy. If you want to know how economies work, read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" rather than reciting what you might hear repeated on Fox News.

This is how you responded to point #2 in which I stated that the tax cuts might not be spent in ways that help the economy or at all. I further give an example of how the tax cuts might be spent on building offshore facilities to move even more US jobs overseas:

Of course you neglect the fact that these tax cuts will be spent by the people receiving them. Again, more profit means more tax revenue.

See? Anyone can see clearly that I did mention the tax cuts MIGHT (not WILL) be spent and even gave an example. If we sold the tax breaks to Americans with "because the rich pay more now", then I wouldn't bother bringing it up. But it was sold to Americans with "because it will help improve the economy" so I'd like to see this tied together for people that receive millions in tax breaks. And as for the poor schmoes who only get $500 - $50,000 in annual tax breaks, let them spend it anyway they want.

Also, your "more profit means more tax revenue" sounds like common sense but is in fact misleading because there are clear examples of corporations making billions in profits (not revenues) while not paying ANY federal income taxes due to loopholes. For example, Microsoft paid no income taxes in 1999 despite making $12.3 billion in profits according to Citizens for Tax Justice. To find out why this doesn't jive with that year's SEC reports, look at this Motley Fool article for details and you'll find the numbers from ctj.org add up.

Your reponse to point #3 in which I state that we (USA) end up paying more for the war in Iraq because we pissed off our allies that would've paid for part that if we went in together was baffling:

The terrorists are extremist Muslims that are[...]

Whether the terrorists are Muslims or Martians and whether they believe in Allah or the tooth fairie is irrelevant to my statement about us having to pay for ALMOST ALL of the war instead of A REASONABLE PART of the war because our leader didn't think it was important enough to build consensus with UN before going in. IMHO, if we had Bush SR leading us instead of JR, then this would've been done right.

I didn't like Clinton either but at least we didn't lose thousands of American lives to terrorists within our country during his watch. And during his foreign policy leadership, I vaguely remember Israeli and Palestinian leaders shaking hands at the White House--vaguely because that is not as memorable as the current bloodbath. I also recall a balanced budget but that isn't as memorable as the millions of jobs lost under Bush Jr. or the now unbalanced budget & deficit which can't be explained away solely by the cost of war on terrorism.

Things can be done a lot better than this and I don't care if it is a Republican or Democrat or Independent that helps us out of this mess. --- We need someone smarter to lead

Anti-establishment psychology also comes into play: for example, you don't see anti-business graffiti on your local coffee shop, you see it at Starbucks. When people want to make a statement about animal cruelty and food, they often picket at McDonald's - not the local Mom & Pop restaurant. Why? Because it's perceived as cool to go after the big business.

People picket Starbucks and McDonald's because it attracts attention. Be sure not to confuse "getting attention" with "getting actual results," however. If you look at the recent Pesticide problems with Coke and Pepsi, you will see that the underlying problem is not the fault of Coca-Cola/PepsiCo. The local water is the actual problem. Groups went after those two companies in order to attract attention. Look at the search results for "coke pesticide" to see how much attention it has gotten.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo could drop that segment of the market with very little loss in direct profits. However, their image goes down. As a result of the attention, PepsiCo has announced they will use mineral water instead of tap water in all of their fountain drinks.

Problem solved, right? Wrong. The water in India is not getting any cleaner as a result of this attention. All that happened is that the two companies targeted cleaned up their act. Have you heard anything in the news about the dirty water in India that doesn't talk about Coke or Pepsi?

I originally misread the parent post. So this should pretty much support what was said now that I have realized my mistake. In closing, getting more attention than everyone else is perceived as cool by the script kiddies; that is why they target Windows.

No underpants?

http://www.fool.com/foolfaq/foolfaqcharts.htm

The official term used is called Dynamic pricing. Here is a link to the story about Amazon after they were caught out.

I'm not PMZ but the Motley Fool has a pretty good car buying guide.

>You can't just decide to do it, there are significant capitalization requirements, to say nothing of the money the bankers will want for doing the work for you.

Your ignorance is equally breathtaking.

Cost to incorporate (where I live): $403.30
Cost to put your corporation on a penny stock market: Minimal (free? I'm not sure).
Amount of bookeeping required: Almost none, short of dealing with taxes. ZERO SEC requires, that's for sure.

You think such a corporation has to be Nasdaq listed or something? At best you might need to hire 1 accountant to get going. Big deal.

By the way, I'm incorporated. Want to buy shares? Well, I'm not selling right now, but the effort required by me is none. The only thing I'd have to send you is a paper saying how much stock you've bought, and get the accountant to record your purchase in the books. I never have to speak with you again, if I didn't want to. Total cost to me? About $0.10 if you include the price of the toilet paper your stock would be printed on along with the accountant's fee (assuming he enters everything in all together when closing the books at the end of the year, like with my corporation).

Here's a few examples that might be helpful to you. How many of them do you think are going to give out shareholder's packages every year? 2... maybe 3?

My original statement still stands. I don't care about those people. But just to throw some interesting stuff your way:

Fool.com

Look at it this way, the high income earners are the ones who invest in the economy. These are the people that buy stocks and start companies. The ones that give jobs to others. Spurring the economy does not happen by giving someone $300 whereby they go buy a new television.

You also state that they take it from the workers who are creating wealth. You don't have a right to work. You are free to go elsewhere and find a job if you don't like the current one. You aren't being forced at gunpoint to work there. Oh wait, white-collar work isn't as admirable as blue-collar work? Despite the fact that the white-collar managers and CEO's are the ones who EMPLOY the workers.

Of course you can encode MPEG4 in real time. On lots of different kinds of architectures... do you even know what MPEG4 is?

MPEG4 is a framework where you can combine different elements of different things -- sounds, text, video, still images, whatever -- into a single scene. In the "video" arena, there are several codecs you can choose from, at different bit rates, at different qualities, and at different sizes. Many of these combinations can be encoded on-the-fly by a moderately fast microprocessor or DSP.

Anyway, if you look at real performance numbers for the CPUs, I believe that you'll find that the 2Ghz G5 is faster than (say) a comparably-configured 3Ghz P4 on some things. The P4 is probably faster at others. For just about everything, they probably have similar performance. With a similar transistor count and silicon process, you expect reasonable architectures to come out with similar performance.

But can you get a dual processor Pentium? Of course the answer is "yes". Not only that, you can get 4x and 8x (and possibly more) Pentium and Xeon systems. You can also get 1x, 2x, and 4x, etc Opteron systems with a Hypertransport bus.

But obviously you didn't even investigate that... you just think that since Steve hinted at it, it must be true. You probably also think that this is the first CPU family to have a 64-bit datapath. How unfortunate.

The only true thing in your post is that, to my knowledge, no desktop PC system has a 1Ghz/64 bit bus to their chip. You can get an 800Mhz 64bit bus on the P4. The Opteron has its northbridge memory controller on chip, running at full frequency... so that would be the equivelant of an 1.8Ghz system bus (in some ways).

Please, investigate matters before you post. Or you just look like a fool. And not a fool in the good way. And you end up frustrating people like me. I'm embarrased for both of us.

what I've read they haven't yet shown a profit

According to a recent article on The Motley Fool:

The company is now looking to earn between $0.13 and $0.17 a share in the June quarter on revenue of at least $62 million. While it has made a comforting habit of underpromising and overdelivering with every passing guidance marker, this will be its first profitable quarter.

So it isn't profitable yet, but coming close.

Travis

P.S. This is my 3rd post to this article, but I really don't work for Netflix, I just like the service.

Only us geeks care about being able to copy DVDs.

Um, slight correction here... us geeks are the ones pointing out that DeCSS is neither INTENDED nor REQUIRED for copying. It's solely meant for playback, but that of course negates the DVD industry's PLAYER monopoly.

This is all well explained in the Motley Fool article here (a few years old, but things don't seem to have changed much...)

As the .sig says, "I play DVDs on my Linux machine. I'm a CRIMINAL!"

Seems that the Beast can't meet payroll without printing new stock to cover it. link here.

HP would not even bother about Sun right now because it does not want to bite off more than it can chew. Investors would not at all take kindly to the acquistion of Sun by HP. HP right now is trying to fend off the dog that is Dell. HP does have about 13.2 billion $ in hand (Biz Journals) but it will probably not want to mess with it right now.

Sun has already brought in x86 systems in the lower end. Both Sun and IBM are adopting AMD's Opteron for lower and mid level systems.

People know that Sun is able to keep customers only by chanting the reliability and customer satisfaction song. Its Ultra Sparc's are falling behind in performance and it is probably only with the Sparc V's that it can gain any semblance of competitiveness. And when are the Sparc V's going to come out? 2005 at the earliest.( News)

What is Sun's market capitalisation? As of March 19, it was about 10.73 billion $.

If this story is indeed true then it would be the most talked about merger. Competition for customers paying money for big tin has only gotten worse after the tech meltdown.

Part II

Apple doesn't have $6B in cash. Apple doesn't have $6B market cap. Market cap as of today is $4.7B. Cash is $1.16B.

So what is wrong here? Someone above posted an article that said Apple had "$4.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments as of Dec. 28" But that sounds like Market cap to me. Check their cash flow statement. Also, you'd never get a loan larger than your market cap, unless you have some big favors to call in.

I don't think their plan was that well thought out. Like the Underpants Gnomes, here's their real plan:

1. Release a game with buffer overrun
2.
3. Profit!!!!

Ummm.. You're a little bit off on this. The IRS can only go back three years and audit you. That is unless they suspect you of comitting fraud, then they can go back as far as they damn well please. You're better off keeping copies of your returns indefinitely. The Motley Fool has a nice guide on how long to keep stuff.

Personally, I'd keep both the paper and electronic media.

--zawada

Amen.

I'm glad also not to hear you (quite) say, "Well, I'd stop stealing if they'd just lower prices." Stealing will always be free (esp. when P2P cuts out the street corner middle man in the trenchcoat), and they can never compete with free. Just say "no" to extortion. :)

CD prices have fallen surprisingly little in 20 years -- about a third in inflation-adjusted dollars. I don't remember prices like this with vinyl, and when CD's came along there was a hefty premium for them. Yes, they provided higher quality, but I bet their production costs are now far lower.

I think the RIAA members need to do some serious introspection about their business model. That doesn't mean ignoring infringement, but realizing that the boat is sinking because of a lot of larger holes in the hull. Direct sales are a great concept; other methods to lower costs must exist. Note however that we do live in a society that somehow manages to buy $130 Nikes that cost $30 wholesale. (Astonishingly, Nike only makes a few dollars profit on each pair.) The record industry is far from the only industry with big markups, so don't rush to any conclusions.

The RIAA members should not abuse market statistics or fix prices to promote their cause. Resentful consumers should not steal to promote theirs. Now, all join hands and sing....

The funny thing is I'm sure 99% of the public has no idea what all this talk is about. The one-quarter who do don't even talk to the three-eighths of the 10% of the last ninth who uh... Well, I'd like to see some statistics on that, I'm 110% certain.

Charges filed in alleged eBay scam
... Click Here. Charges filed in alleged eBay scam. LA man charged with
26 counts of grand theft. LOS ANGELES, Dec. 4 -- A Los Angeles ...
www.msnbc.com/news/843312.asp?0si=- - 48k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.msnbc.com ]

Fool.com: Fools Team to Fight eBay Scam [News] May 2, 2001
... This way, every time a scam artist tries to take advantage of a seller ... eBay's response
eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove says this particular scam pops up from ...
www.fool.com/news/2001/ebay010502.htm - 30k - Cached - Similar pages

TechTV | Source of EBay Scam Found
... Ebay wants to protect its trademark, but says it's tough to find
criminals like the email scam artist. It's very hard to track ...
www.techtv.com/news/security/story/ 0,24195,3408892,00.html - 38k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

TechTV | EBay Spam Scam
... that's it.. Ebay wants to protect its trademark, but says it's tough
to find criminals like the email scam artist. It's very hard ...
www.techtv.com/news/security/story/ 0,24195,3408463,00.html - 39k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Possible Ebay Scam - www.ezboard.com
... It looks like the scam artist is targeting bigger sellers-not small fry-so if
any of you get an email asking for information-contact ebay about it first. ...
pub131.ezboard.com/ fbliss51092frm48.showMessage?topicID=27.topic - 14k - Cached - Similar pages

Ebay scam artists
... to conferm the info. Scam Artist email, Name, Ebay ID, Offence. mtracker@iland.net,
Mark Campbell, tracker44, sells broken items as new.
www.ctlinx.org/ebay/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages

A New eBay Bidding Scam?
... Then at the last minute, he writes, the scam-artist could withdraw his high bid ... But
with the eBay system and other Internet bidding systems, that might not be ...
www.auctionbytes.com/pages/abu/y200/m03/abu0009/ s05 - 19k - Cached - Similar pages

Scam artist meets fraud hunter
www.brockmoore.com/Scams/SkylineMovies.html - 7k - Cached - Similar pages

PayPal - Internet Info for Real People
... a correction had to be added as MSNBC incorrectly reported the scam artist could
access credit card and bank account information. The eBay community quickly ...
www.thebee.com/bweb/iinfo217.htm - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

The first major component of the balance sheet is Current Assets, which are assets that a company has at its disposal that can be easily converted into cash within one operating cycle.

BTW, did you notice that IBM's bid for Rational was a cash offer and not in shares? When was the last time Microsoft bought a company for billions in cash?

IBM and Rational have already reached an agreement.

This article is either late in getting out or pure rumor.

An interesting documentary topic, who's timing couldn't be better in light of Apple's recent earnings news ... here's a snippet from the ElectronicNewsNet
Despite driving upgrades to its new Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" operating system, Apple reported a US$45 million loss and flat year-on-year revenue for its fiscal 2002 fourth quarter.

Hopefully, this is just an issue of absorbing the R&D costs of their new O/S. I'm not a Mac user, but some of my best friends are ...

Is this the same Greg Ballard who used to be the CEO of 3dfx?
If so, isn't it the consensus that bad management drove 3dfx to the ground?

http://www.fool.com/Specials/2002/02090600sp.htm

Apple is actually right in the cases where they are trying to defend their intelectual property, even though you - or the copycats - might think otherwise. Poor clones hurt Apple's image much like cheap bootlegs or fake clothes hurt the original brands.

Turns out that page doesn't have the dialog in question.

Try here.

Greenspan is not just an acolyte of Ayn Rand metaphorically, he actually hung out with her. It's not an accusation, it's the simple truth.

The Fed, Alan Greenspan, and Ayn Rand

Alan Greenspan, Cultist?

The Motley Fool: Who is Alan Greenspan?

quote:
In the 1950s, Greenspan, who had been steeped in the free-market skepticism of John Maynard Keynes along with most economists of his generation, became an acolyte of Ayn Rand. Rand's philosophy of what she termed "enlightened selfishness" bears considerable similarity to today's libertarianism. Greenspan met Rand through his first wife, painter Joan Mitchell. Although Greenspan's friends and colleagues suggest that his relationship with Rand's Objectivism was more of a flirtation than a real commitment, Greenspan remained part of the philosopher's circle until at least the late 1960s. In addition to writing for The Objectivist, a rather surprising essay he wrote in defense of the gold standard -- surprising in light of his later work, that is -- appeared in the Rand-edited 1967 collection of essays Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Still, something about Greenspan's obvious pragmatism and political instincts fits poorly with the uncompromising sense of purity that characterizes Rand's heroes. If Greenspan ever was an Objectivist, his years in Washington have probably made him reconsider.

Businessweek: The Chairman as Political Animal

quote:
RAND FAN. By his mid-20s, Greenspan turned from music to economics--and the virulently antigovernment views of philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand. Greenspan became a regular in her salon in the 1950s and remained in touch until her death in 1982.

Randies may think of Greenspan as an apostate today, but the Chairman still thinks of himself as a Randite, if his reading preferences are any indication. And it's not hard to get become an apostate of Objectivism -- dissent ain't tolerated much in that salon.

Mayhap Greenspan deviated from Rand because he's actually working in the real world.

The Fed may be anti-democratic in nature, but thank god for that, or we would have collapsed into something resembling the Weimar Republic in the 80's.

Rather than looking at the technology or costs, why not look into the business health of each company. I think if you are going to be making an investment, youwant to be picking the one that is going to have staying power.

The Motly Fool recently shorted sirius believing their company to be overvalued. (That is not to say that their company will fail, stock price doesn't necessarily equate business health) The fool has quite a bit of discussion on each company.

It's a an important perspective.

-pos

I really hope they (and some others) can make the breakthrough, the processor market really needs some fresh new competition. Even though AMD and Intel are "battling", the fight is still, despite of the press - done in Intel's universe. See this article from turn of 2001.

But, when we see real pressure from multiple directions, we might see these companies develop something truly revolutionary, currently they don't have to - they just don't. A market situation in which Intel would have only around 40% slice, would nurture much more speedy development.

>> -They should have a general idea of how Bill Gates purchased MS-DOS from DEC and how Seymour Cray was out flying his airplane when the IBM sales people came to visit him, virtually guarenteeing that they would choose Microsoft

Of course, it was Gary Kildall that legend has it was flying when IBM came to call. However, there are multiple accounts of what happened at that time. Here's a short selection:

"Gary Kildall was not flying his plane" ... http://www.fool.com/Fribble/1996/Fribble961121.htm

"... the point person for IBM, has sworn that he never met Kildall that day. Kildall swore that not only did he meet with [IBM], but ..." ... http://lists.essential.org/am-info/msg04566.html

and the rather more sombre "What a tragedy. He was brilliant." (see "Subject: Kildall and DRI and IBM") ... http://people.smu.edu/rmonagha/4004.html

But if they were to fail that could affect how the stock market sees them... Most of Microsoft's assets are simply numbers in stock exchange computer systems.


That's not true. The previous article about their billions was specifically referring to cash reserves, which are not stock. Why do you think they have never paid a single dividend?

Movies are getting more and more expensive (2 people = $8 tickets x 2, popcorn = $4, 2 drinks = $7, candy = $4 = 16 + 4 + 7 + 4 = $31 just for the movie experience).

Yes, I'll agree going to the movies is getting more expensive. But it pales miserably in comparison to attending pro sports events. According to this article on Motley Fool, it costs about $150 for a family of four to attend a baseball game (and baseball is the cheapest of the four major sports to attend). If I wanted to take my dad and 2 brothers to a Redskins game (admittly the priciest of all NFL teams), it would cost me $442.54. For my money, I'd get four average tickets, 4 small drinks, 2 small beers, 4 hotdogs, 2 programs, parking, and 2 hats. Compared to the price of a sports event, watching a flick is a bargin. No weather to worry about, you don't have to go to a major city to see one, and you can pick anytime you want to go pretty much. And, if you want to save a couple bucks, there are always the matinees. Is going to the movies getting more expensive? Definitely. But for 3 hours of entertainment, much easier on my wallet than to catch a game.

More parody on the Fool

Now why is this important? Becuase Walter is on the board, and the boards mission is to increase share-holder value (As opposed to the CEO and managers whos mission is to keep their jobs!), and if Walter was acting in the best interest of the share holder this fight should have gone down long ago for much less money!

Im thinking 'cash is king' If I have 50 bucks to plonk down is the guy behind the counter going to refuse my 50 bucks? Or 500 copies got 'missplaced' in some storage yard and sold for cash. OH how about we dial in and 'activate' them. Oh that didnt work with DIVX. If a copmany treats its customers as thieves they may just decide they dont like the garbage being shoveled out...

Any sort of 'protection' that is come up with will be ripped right off. For example DVD. Which btw has pretty good protection? Dont belive me? TRY to break it with out using decss or any of the 'known keys' Try to actually figure out what the keys are on your own. Guess what you wont. The only reason DeCss came up was because one of the software dvd players left the keys in such a place that the guy could figure out what thier key was and then derive whatever key he wanted from that. You can bet the next version of DVD will have a vault door for security. But someone will screw up and the keys will be out. Or there will be a flaw in it that makes it a snap to crack. try Foolish DVDs

Also anything that is encoded must be decoded so you can copy it there. Or you can just make a bit for bit copy and the decoder will not know the difference. Most copy protection is just silly and bypassable.

To legislate it to make it so you can not do it is even MORE dumb. Just because its digital does not mean its 'new'. Its just a different way of saying something. We HAVE copyright laws. Like them or hate them we HAVE them. They just need to enforce what they got. Dont belive me. go watch a vhs or dvd. Got a FBI warning right on the front that tell exactly what will happen to you. Same exact thing on the back of cd's. /p

I'm 26 and my wife and I have quite a bit of student debt. It's nice to WANT to say "save up six months of living expenses just in case", but when debt payments come due every month and the retirement contributions (I've done the math; compound interest is severely time-dependent) are made, it's really easy to SAY you want to have a fund, but in practice it's unrealistic.

Six months of rent and living expenses would be at least $10,000. That's a hell of a lot of money to save up "just in case" when you have a ton of other obligations that are always present.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't plan for the future, but it's one of my biggest complaints about The Fool and other personal finance advice -- a lot depends on age.

yo, word from the FOOL: Yet more analysis of the AOHellSlimeWarmer dogpile...

Yet more analysis of the AOHellSlimeWarmer dogpile...

No, Microsoft's main product isn't abuse or software. It's stock.

Microsoft is a pyramid scheme. It only looks like a mountain because it's grown so darned large.

-- Markus

I had something ineteresting to fill this space, but then Google found this article that does a much better job of proving my point than I could in this tiny text area.

And this is how they did it.

I didn't pay the money, even though I frequented the Motley Fool for almost three years, (and speculated endlessly about who the brilliant and mysterious HowardRoark might be on the AMZN board.)

The problem I have with the Fool's approach, and Slashdot's apparent decision is that it violates an implied ethic between the business and the community. TMF touted its "free" boards for years. Slashdot reminds you that all comments belong the the poster. Both sites encouraged people to give freely of their time and mental energy, and both appear ready to hold access to "the community" hostage in exchange for money.

It's only a matter of time until Slashdot blocks all access to non-subscribers. Is the issue really "survival", in the sense of paying for bandwidth and salaries? If that were the case, Slashdot could put up an itemized target number, and the community could match it. But that isn't the case. The "survival" argument is a facade. Slashdot is a business, Andover/VA is a business, and all of these entities seek to monetize the community.

The users who pay BMA yearly are the ones who send e-cards frequently. The last-minute Valentine's Day lusers will go elsewhere and help another free greeting card site lose their money faster.

How many people using Slashdot would pay for it if they had to? I would. Along with Google and MyYahoo, SlashDot is one of the few sites I enjoy regularly. Would I pay for cnn.com or pogo.com? No, becasue I don't use them frequently. Others might.

Just like there's basic cable and extended cable, Internet content sites can be lumped together to colectively provide service to paying customers. Zillions pay $9/month or more to AOL. They may not appreciate all of the services, but their money helps fund them, even the greeting cards. ;^)

- ez

That's because they got kicked off the NYSE. Only NYSE stocks have ticker symbols of 3 or fewer characters. As an OTC stock, they had to pick a new symbol.

They (ENRNQ) only got to pick the first 4 letters of their symbol - the "Q" suffix indicates the company is involved in bankruptcy proceedings. There's a table of codes here if anyone's interested.

Just got my weekly FoolWatch letter and saw the opportunity to comment on Auditing and Accounting firms (article) and wonder where one goes to whine about bad patents or trademarks (a very popular /. theme.)

There's no way to 'block' flash ads in Mozilla yet, and Yahoo keeps throwing up this damn huge Oracle/IBM ad on the my.yahoo.com page I have.

squid-redir lets you block anything from anywhere, based on the URL. This rule, for instance, blocks all Flash at the Motley Fool:

//.*.fool.com/.*.swf BLANK

It substitutes a 1x1 transparent GIF for the Flash. Something similar would work elsewhere...if you want to cut off all Flash from all sites, you can do that:

//.*.swf BLANK

It works on any system that can run Squid and Perl, and it'll work with any browser (I usually use IE, though I also have Lynx, Konqueror, and iCab available). More info and the block list I'm currently using are available here. Here are the Yahoo-related rules I'm currently using:

//.*yimg.com/.*/main.*.gif $1
//.*yimg.com/.*/yahoo.gif $1
//.*yimg.com/i/.* $1
//.*yahoo.com/serv.* BLANK
//.*yimg.com/.*.js NULLJS
//.*yimg.com/.*/adv/.*.gif BLANK
//.*yahoo.com/adv/.* BLANK
//images.yahoo.com/promotions/.* BLANK
//.*yimg.com/.*\.(gif|jpg) BLANK
//java.yahoo.com/.* BLANK
//promotions.yahoo.com/promotions/.*gif BLANK
//.*.geo.yahoo.com/toto NULLJS

Huh? ;)

Fair enough, but if you're going to speak for the average gamer, keep in mind that Nintendo sold about a billion dollars worth of software in 2000. Their closest competitor? EA, with under 500 million. Keep in mind that EA publishes games on all platforms and that Nintendo is restricted to their own. And in case you're wondering, those numbers don't include hardware, it's just the games. Doesn't sound like the average gamer is agreeing with you so far.

First of all, where did you get your EA numbers? Check out the financials. Sales in Q2-2001: $122.40M, Q1-2001: $92.92M, Q4-2000: $157.84M, Q3-2000: $334.17M. Total: $707.33M.

And as for hardware sales...you do know that the console makers lose money on hardware sales, right?

The basic issue is intellectual property rights, and how this applies to the artists who perform the music, and the record companies who market it. I'm not seeing much discussion about here, so I thought I'd do some research and post some more background.

The interesting thing to me is that recording artists and the record companies have vastly different opinions about the availability of music on the internet.

In general, artists would like to be able to sell their own music on the web -- however, they do want that music to be sold, not given away or stolen.

Artists who don't have labels are free to put their own stuff out there for download. They also have the ability to sell it on personally-made CDs or other media, although at this time they have no way to safeguard this media once it gets into someone else's hands.

Artists who are signed to a record company want to be able to market their music on the internet without going through their record companies (therefore getting the proceeds themselves, and not giving the record companies their 'cut'), presumably because the record companies are predatory. Predatory aspects of the record companies, for example, are a large part of Courtney Love's and LeAnn Rimes' opinions (below).

The record companies not only want to prevent 'their' CDs from showing up on morpheus, etc, they also want to prevent recording artists from putting other tracks onto the web for sale or for free. If artists could do this outside of their contracts, the record companies would of course lose money and customers.

Therefore, record companies want to prevent their CDs from being ripped or copied (hence this article), AND they want to prevent their artists from getting around their contracts by selling directly to consumers.

All in all, I think the record companies are RIGHT to try to keep their product from being pirated. However, not only is this basically impossible, but the MEANS they are going about it is going to cause a huge backlash and only hurt the record companies and the artists further.

Here's some more info:

From Intellectual Property Is an Oxymoron:

"There's an important difference between authors and publishers that the current intellectual property system ignores. Authors still perform a valuable service by creating intellectual property. Publishers perform an increasingly useless service, copying information that individuals who own computers connected by the Internet can copy on their own...

"...Publishers have become useless middlemen rendered obsolete by digital technology. The laws of supply and demand are driving their profit margins to zero... Notably, nearly 30 states are now suing the top record labels alleging CD price fixing."

Some artists' opinions:

Courtney Love: "Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software. I'm talking about major label recording contracts. " (from her speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, given in New York on May 16, as quoted on Salon.com.)

Business Week, writing about the Recording Artists Coalition (RAC) testimony at a Senate hearing in April:

"Musical artists represented by RAC want to be able to sell their music on the Internet without going through the bureaucracy of record labels. While many artists supported the copyright-infringement lawsuit the RIAA brought against Napster, they now want labels to aggressively award licensing deals to legitimate independent music Web sites in addition to the labels' own online services. That's something that isn't happening as fast as artists hoped."

a variety of artists at a Senate hearing in September, including Courtney Love, Don Henley, and LeAnn Rimes.

Alanis Morrissette (from Billboard.com): "'Artists today are not being given a chance to experience the normal ebbs and flows that result in an artist's evolution.'

"In Morissette's opinion, the Internet at one time offered great promise. Such companies as MP3.com and Napster, she said, 'offered a link between artists and audiences and was a way for less-established artists to have a forum to reach those who will be touched by their art.' Now, she said, those same companies have been 'litigated, vilified, and ultimately consolidated to the point where these opportunities [don't exist].' "Pointing to Napster's relationship with Bertelsmann, and the acquisition of MP3.com and Emusic by Vivendi Universal, Morissette said that the Internet has become 'a bottleneck for creativity,' because the media conglomerates are attempting to apply traditional, profit-oriented business models to the new medium."