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It's interesting how you failed to mention even one instance of "collateral damage", i.e. where occupation troops kill innocents directly, including women and children.

Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4

Not to point fingers, but I'm curious as to whether you're simply unaware, or something else held you back.

China is sending out all the signals, and the markets are reacting. So much for your "facts be damned". Must be hard to take, the capitalists beholden to "dirty pinko commies". Just one of todays' headlines ...

The once-mighty U.S. dollar risks losing its status as the world's default reserve currency now that China has signalled plans to diversify its $1.43 trillion (U.S.) of foreign exchange reserves, analysts say.

The U.S. greenback was clobbered on foreign currency markets again yesterday, tumbling against all 16 of the most-active currencies and setting new lows against the euro and the Canadian dollar during the session. At the close of trading, the U.S. dollar was worth 92.81 cents (Canadian). The loonie, meanwhile, suffered a late-day setback, losing 0.77 of a cent (U.S.) to close at $1.0775 as traders took profits.

Of course, you could have read this yesterday

China Threat Sends Dollar Ever Lower

LONDON -

Fresh concerns that China could diversify its currency assets away from the greenback sent the euro to a new record against the dollar, and the pound through the psychologically significant $2.10 barrier on Wednesday.

The pound rose to $2.1051 in morning trading in London before settling down to $2.1010, while the euro hit $1.4703, before settling at $1.4674, above its $1.4554 value in late trading in New York the day before.

The trigger was remarks by Cheng Siwei, the vice chairman of China's National People's Congress that the country's forex regulator would shift its foreign exchange holdings and that China should consider moving its reserves to "stronger" currencies.

"The comments certainly spooked the market to say the least," said Peter Scullion, Vice President of the FX Currency Department of Nomura in London. He added that too much should not be read into the comments, given that Cheng was not a particularly senior official and as the Chinese government tried to retract the comments soon after they were made. "It's also not a secret that many central banks, particularly in the Middle East, have been diversifying away from dollars," remarked Scullion.

Scullion said uncertainty about the dollar would continue to drag it down, potentially sending the euro across the $1.50 threshold. "Realistically over the medium term between now and the end of the year there is no reason why markets wouldnt continue to push the dollar lower," he remarked.

Concerns about the health of the U.S. economy has been the underlying driver of the greenback's fall over the past months. "While we may see some periods of dollar buying, most market participants expect the dollar to weaken further given the tremendous uncertainty about the US economy," Scullion said.

Last week both the euro and the pound gained against greenback, as the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates to 4.5%, ahead of this week's meeting of the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, in which both are expected to hold rates, thus broadening the rates differential even further. (See: " Rate Outlook Undercuts Dollar").

Worse than expected write downs at some of America's largest banks, including Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ) and Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ), could mean that the Federal Reserve will be forced to cut interest rates again, despite some recent positive data, including on jobs.

Scullion said that the gloomy outlook had sent the dollar lower even against the Japanese yen. The yen has remained weak thanks to the stunningly low interest rates, currently 0.75%, that have been maintained by the Japanese central bank. The dollar was trading at 113.16 yen in Tokyo late on Wednesday, from 114.66 yen the day before.

More info on Forbes.

Eh? Aren't they talking about VMware here? EqualLogic sells storage solutions. If he means that several machines can access those storage systems simultaneously, he's out on a limb! I've never heard of such systems!

From Forbes:

Last month Asus' Eee PCs hit store shelves in Taiwan, and Shih may have his breakthrough. The two-pound laptops starting at $340 sold out in 30 minutes, and buyers around the globe clamored to get their hands on them. This month they arrive in the U.S.--starting at $300--and Europe. The rollout will probably reach China early next year, with the schedule for the rest of Asia not yet set. The day they went on sale, Asustek's stock rose 4.9%. Kirk Yang, who heads Asia technology hardware research for Citigroup in Hong Kong, predicts that the company will sell at least 3 million Eee PCs next year but could easily tally 6 million. By comparison, Apple has sold 4.3 million laptops in the last four quarters. Analysts say the Eee PC will probably have the low-end market to itself for 18 months before the other big PC makers can jump in.

The Forbes article is slightly off in regards to the US price (it is actually $399.99 in the US), but there's some pretty obvious demand. At first glance the eee PC seems like a small underpowered laptop. However, the hardware is plenty to do the most common PC functions like reading emails, browsing the internet, and watching videos.

I do not think the PC market is going to diminish, but that it will change. There will be more ultra-portable devices like the eee or iphone to replace common functions of a PC. In the near future I see the desktop PC as a tool for demanding applications, but not for general home use. For example, my parents (we live in California) love it when their computer gets smaller because they only use it to write documents, check email, and browse the internet. There's no longer a need for a PC to take up as much space as it has in the past.

You can't base a 'supercomputer' on the OS it runs. 'Supercomputers' often run Linux, the same (with tweaks) that can be run a desktop. http://www.forbes.com/2005/03/15/cz_dl_0315linux.html

Back when it was possible -- just barely -- for an intelligent person to think SCO might still have a case that they were just coincidentally showing no proof of, Dan Lyons was among those trying to portray SCO as in all likelihood a bunch of swell guys who had produced something of value, only to see it ripped off, and were now simply seeking just compensation for having been ripped off.

That in itself is proof of nothing except excessive credulity.

What makes Lyons a two-faced mealymouth is that in the same time period he wrote the infamous "Linux's Hit Men" article, in which he excoriated the Free Software Foundation for seeking compensation/compliance in cases where swell programmers had produced something of value and put it under the GPL only to see the fruits of their labors ripped off. The Foundation, Lyons tells the reader, "doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners ... maybe, as some suggest, the foundation wants GPL-covered code to creep into commercial products so it can use GPL to force open those products." Lyons' final line? "Such a pity, comrade."

So, let's sum up. When it's a commercial company which claims it has been ripped off (even if it's actively refusing to show anyone its evidence of the alleged ripoff under reasonable conditions) Lyons thinks it's perfectly okay for them to demand huge financial recompense. When it's open source coders that get ripped off, however, Lyons thinks it's pretty jerky for anyone to actually make the rippers-off comply with the license for the code they chose to use -- if not some sort of sinister conspiracy.

Gee, I can't think why anyone would doubt the sincerity of Lyons' love for Linux and open source.

A commercial venture would never get off the ground. There is absolutely nothing that is economically viable for a commercial venture in space. The closest thing is perhaps mining, but the ROI on that is non-existent http://www.forbes.com/2006/01/17/space-investing-mining-cx_lh_0118space-mining.html

Quotes from the links:

Today, driven largely by the US, online poker is close to a $2 billion industry.
Online poker revenues have grown from $82.7 million in 2001 to $2.4 billion (all numbers US) in 2005; last year, more than $60 billion was gambled on poker sites; and every day, 1.8 million players toss their ante into the virtual pots of the Internet.

Until now, U.S. laws governing Internet gambling have been ambiguous, leaving the way open for the $12 billion online industry to flourish with American customers.

The buzz generated by the band's pay-what-you-want publicity stunt may also boost sales. Radiohead's previous album sold only 300,000 copies in the first week--about one-sixth the number of copies of In Rainbows now in circulation.

I like this quote from the Washington Post article: Her take on Comcast: "What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles."

Another quote: "Manassas police spokesman Sgt. Tim Neumann says there have been other police calls to that Comcast office..." I would love to know why.

Quote from the parent comment: "I called Comcast and started screaming. This got me somewhere as I finally got escalated to the CEO's office where they had a customer care executive assigned to me."

You never get to the CEO's office, I'm guessing. They just say that to try to make you think they believe your complaint is important. In 2005, the Comcast CEO made $14.3 million, just for that one year. I know, I know what you are thinking: "I'm sad. He had a bad year!" But, don't worry, in 2006 he made $27.8 million.

I think that it is safe to assume that someone who makes millions each year for doing a bad job has no concerns whatsoever about any troubles you have with his company. Any phony expression of concern is handled by people who barely make a living.

In case you want to express your horror that he only makes tens of millions instead of hundreds of millions each year, contact the Comcast CEO directly: Brian Roberts.

Why is being rich considered by rich people a license to be evil?

So, what will be the next thing to take eBay's place?

When the news came out last week about imeem signing a deal with Sony/BMG the same story also revealed that EMI was talking with imeem about the same kind of deal and so were Vivendi. So with a bit of luck we should soon see all major artists* available for free on imeem, assuming you can find them of course - the labels are supposedly getting a chunk of the ad revenue from the site. * Except of course for the Beatles, Radiohead and other artists who haven't signed up for the usual digital distibution deals.

Security made progress, that's granted, but nothing is absolutely sure.

There are numerous major accidents. Rarely a huge toll (here is an example: ship new to service, not a 2nd/34rd world country, 20 people KIA out of 89), because there are no more huge cruise ships nor massive advertising before their their maiden trip, therefore most go barely noticed. If, on the other hand, nuclear plants go more and more numerous and bigger (powerful) the global risk (and local cost) of an accident will rise.

>> Building a clean coal plant costs now approx the same as a nuclear one

> Are you just agreeing with what I said?

Yes, but please don't neglect that "'clean coal' approach is pretty new and disruptive, therefore there are margins for savings."

> 'Clean Coal'
> still has the increased fuel costs of coal

There is plenty of coal in the US (no strategic problem), its cost is much more stable (uranium price is now at least 5x times 2001's) and it produces no very dangerous waste.

> and that's before you consider CO2 sequestriation

As already written: nope, in the proposed case study (see IGCC)

> Oh, and your link states $1,500-$2,000/watt, not a 'very minimum 2000+ per kW.'

Nope. The Platts document states that:
-=-=-=-=
Generation II" nuclear power unit -- of the type China has built ((...)) $1,500 to $2,000 per installed kilowatt. The figures are even higher for Generation III plants
=-=-=-=-

Will somebody try to build a brand new generation 2 plant (less secure) in the US? Therefore it will be a G3, which costs are "Even higher" than $2000/kW, which is what I wrote (isn't "very minimum 2k" equivalent to "even higher than 2k"?)

> when it comes to retrofitting it frequently isn't, because it costs so much more

True on the short term, but when we have to switch a country retrofitting as soon and much as possible often makes sense because it also switches most of the existing chains (supply, skills...). Be keeping old stuff around one just makes it harder for all to switch. You are right in that most will not replace nearly new stuff, but incentives have to somewhat speed up the reform of at least middle-aged obsolete energy guzzlers.

> Homes can last centuries.

That's less and less true, helping insulating.

> IGCC still loses a couple efficiency points when you tack on sequestriation

True but marginal and could be coped in the coming years.

> As for the waste - like I keep saying, it's ~95% fuel still. The remaining 5% will reach ambient in a couple hundred years

All I know is that the DOE tries hard to ensure that the repository (Yucca) will be sure for 1 million years, by an EPA requirement.

> Decommisioning is paid for in the USA by a fund

In the UK the first major decommission campaign caused a shock: estimated costs were way, way underestimated. Let's bet that, at this point of time, taxpayer money will (as usual) cover deficient private companies.

> in seeking higher efficiencies they ended up sacrificing durability. Is saving a kw/h a week worth cutting 10-25% of a system's useful lifespan? Heck, for a while they were making homes so well sealed that many became chemical disasters from buildup of home cleaners/chemicals*.

I f

"Before, Linux was this cloud we didn't get. I was high-fiving everyone I could find when Novell bought SuSe. We already won once against Novell." Martin Taylor, Microsoft General Manager of platform strategy link

The USA (and maybe other countries) isn't ready to be responsible enough with the technology to keep it safe. Chernobyl is a good example, and here is another*. Like everything else, after while, people start getting complacent, lazy and apathetic and then things get begin going to hell. Everyone starts pointing fingers at everyone else and the "it's not my job" syndrome sets in. Critical issues do not get dealt with because everyone else thinks someone else should be taking care of it. It's just like your job, only there is a larger potential for claiming a lot of lives.

[*] - http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/22/scada-hackers-infrastructure-tech-security-cx_ag_0822hack.html

Ahh, parent poster is a Troll, eh? Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard would probably agree with AC. Is he a troll too? I saw far too many kids there for the party myself... the 'life experience' they called it. We even have online encyclopedias citing which schools paaar-tay the hardest. I'm sure that image doesn't hurt enrollment numbers and the government money flowing into universities. I wouldn't be surprised if universities quietly encourage that 'rep' via PR firms. College is big business. So big in fact that university finances have begun drawing the scrutiny of congress. We've even begun exporting American-style higher education. It may not be the best in the world, but it sure makes a shitload of money.

In the meantime, there's a lot of kids leaving college with a worthless degree and lots of debt. The university was enriched by the process, but you can't say that for all their graduates. I'll bet if the OP had mentioned something about outsourcing the post would be +5 Insightful.

Remember, this guy also wrote the Forbes cover story claiming blogs were "an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective", then turned around and started the Fake Steve Jobs blog.

Another triumph for consistency.

SCO said they would win. They fooled me. I should have known better. I apologize. Many Linux fans said SCO would lose. They were right. I was wrong. The end.

So where in these articles did HE change his mind? Also, if this is thought to be the mind-changer, why write this latest article?

Dumb and Dumber

Bumbling Bully

SCO Gets TKO'ed

So where in these articles did HE change his mind? Also, if this is thought to be the mind-changer, why write this latest article?

Dumb and Dumber

Bumbling Bully

SCO Gets TKO'ed

So where in these articles did HE change his mind? Also, if this is thought to be the mind-changer, why write this latest article?

Dumb and Dumber

Bumbling Bully

SCO Gets TKO'ed

Last week Forbes declared Apple TV to be the 'iFlop'.
Sorry, but NBC and the like really don't give a damn about catering to the Jobs worshippers that buy whatever he tells them to and bought into Apple TV hype and bought that piece of turd.

From this article

http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/19/software-linux-lawsuits-tech-oped-cx_dl_0919lyons.html

Daniel Lyons has some choice quotes

"I reported what they said. Turns out I was getting played. They never produced a smoking gun."

and

"It is simply this: I got it wrong. The nerds got it right."

Not often you find a journalist reporting on their failure of foresight. Daniel gained a few points in my book.

[ ... ]

In other words, like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree.

They should wake up. SCO may not be very good at making a profit by selling software. But it is very good at getting what it wants from other companies. And it has a tight circle of friends.

[ ... ]

they have a larger money vault than Uncle Scrooge
Heh, I had my doubts, so I looked it up.

Bill Gates' net worth is $56 billion. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/10/07billionaires_William-Gates-III_BH69.html

Scrooge McDuck is worth "five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillion dollars and sixteen cents", which apparently translates to $10.9 billion, according to Forbes.


That makes my day that you looked that up, it (my day) was going right down the toilet (actually a great day when you think about it but you know those days when ya just feel meh?) and I was only guessing which makes me even happier :) And perhaps I am just tired and lazy but where did you find the reference for Scrooge McDuck's wealth?

http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/31/china-internet-usage-cx_nwp_0403china.html

You are quite right, however this is really only an extension of this idea of a 'phantom contract'. You get content and youa re forced to watch ads. The tv/cable guys have been whining about this for a good long while now. For instance, notice how while VCRs could read the break signal and pause your recording to skip the commercials, but they arent made that way anymore?

Notice that John Dvorak says "Now take that fast processor and add a big hard disk and you have the slowly emerging personal video recorder. In many ways the device is similar to MP3 technology: It's a way to steal programming. This has gone unnoticed because PVRs haven't caught on, yet. " So skipping commercials is theft. Again the phantom contract delusion. (link is here http://www.forbes.com/2001/04/16/0416dvorak.html) I am not hot linking because the content is only available by clicking on a pass thru flash advert page.. to the article page that is also filled with advertising. So Forbes and John.. bite me.

Its has often been asked of the 'mandatory advertisement viewing" crowd "Am I still a thief if i have to pee?" Im sorry your broadcasting/cable tv/publically accessible web page in no way puts me on the hook to be screamed at with autoplay flash popup ads for soap.

Entergy, the company that has been buying up old reactors to try to run them harder as they reach then end of their design lifetimes gets quite a few safety related criticisms. They use solo guards at security posts so it is not too surprising that one was found asleep at Indian Point last month: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/27/ap405783 6.html. They were recently reprimanded for for a worker taking a nap at the Pilgrim Reactor as well. The Simpsons is reality based television.

They also try to cut costs by refueling quickly. They boast of 90% up-times because of their quick refueling, but with reduced staff, how can they manage to both refuel and to scheduled maintenance, or avoid deferring maintenance that cannot fit within the shortened down time window? In the present case they seem to even be willing to run at reduced power rather than to promptly address the broken cooling tower. Was the ungreased bearing that caused their SCRAM on a list that just got skipped to get more up time? They give the impression that controlling costs it their primary function. Installing required warning sirens at both Indian Point http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl e?AID=/20070830/NEWS01/708300442/1025/NEWS09 and Vermont Yankee http://www.reformer.com/headlines/ci_6835609 has been lagging. In Vermont they want Boy Scouts to distribute warning radios rather than doing it themselves.

Nuclear power does have a safety culture, using systems like lessons-learned to attempt to improve safety. But, pushing aging reactors past their design capacity or refueling faster with fewer people seem like lessons learned just waiting to happen. Shoestring methods lack the kind of redundancy that provides for safety margins.
--
Rent solar power for you home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/09/05/ap408608 5.html is a net-VIRUS. This site hangs me my firefox after sucking my hard disk because of this. I killed it and it stopped sucking my hard disk.

This is fucking to everyones except 192.168.0.164's President, Chairman, Owner/Partner, CEO, CFO, CIO/CTO, CMO, COO, General Manager, Vice President, Technical Staff.

The video, flash, etc. are a complex complement to help to fucking ever, forever, forever.

There are mucho evil JavaScripts in Forbes.com

Forbes is spying you to steal something like from Wall-Street.

huh hello. Am I the only one who thinks that it is normal that NBC/Universal is pulling its stuff from itunes considering that they announced yesterday their own online video site: www.hulu.com ? source: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/29/ap406570 5.html and a gazillion others...

Apple had better get innovating the next major killer features

Looks like Apple's got some innovative plans in the works . . .

Should this come to pass, would we have to re-work the "If Microsoft built a car" jokes?

Apropos our discussion on "public reaction" I see that the Associated Press has just picked up the story about Tanya Andersen's class action against the RIAA, a story that was reported here on Slashdot two weeks ago after it had been first reported on Jon Newton's web site p2pnet.net and on my lowly blog. And if you go the "commentary & discussion" section near the end of the blog post, you'll see a list of just some of the online media that have been discussing it, including Wired.com, Ars Technica, TechDirt, The Register, Yahoo! Tech, and many others, including European news media as well.

True it is that these stories are of greater interest to people interested in music, computers, the internet, p2p file sharing of music, videos, and games, or law.... but that includes MOST people under 50, a lot of people over 50, and almost everybody under 40.

Ironically, of all the people I know, the only one I can think of who would not be interested in any of this is.... believe it or not... Marie Lindor. She's never even turned on, let alone used, a computer, and she's worked such long hours as a home health aide, leaving early in the morning, getting home late, working weekends, and being a homemaker throughout... she doesn't have time to listen to music.

And she never even heard of file sharing.

This think tank is definitely in the business of bias. Here's one that concluded tax cuts would not primarily benefit the rich, but Congress didn't buy it. Here's one cited in Forbes saying that insurance deficiencies are due to government regulation--which Michael Moore's "Sicko" exposes as a horrible untruth. It's easy to find studies like this from IPI. They use Free Market rhetoric to influence lawmakers, but it's that variety of the Free Market that is anticompetitive.

The music industry, as everyone here likes to say, relies on an outdated business model, but one part of their business model that is quite current and up to date is how it seeks protection through government influence. Sometimes Congress likes to hear distorted studies, because it helps them to have excuses. That's the real issue here.

Many posters seem to think this is a US-only problem. This issue is much bigger. For example, the EU has a large trade deficit with China. Since the EU and US economies are about the same order of magnitude, and their trade deficits with China are similarly sized. I would argue that their economies have similar issues. All this discussion about exporting jobs, exporting factories, etc. needs to consider this.

Two problems with this. One: that isn't quite true. THough they indeed have similiar sized economies the EU's deficit with Chine, while quite large at almost 170bn, is much smaller than the US one of more than $ 700 bn.

Second: while the EU has a significant deficit with Chine, overall it has a quite small one of some $10 billion. Thanks to surplussed with other trading partners such as: the US.

"BluRay, please meet betamax."

I wouldn't call blu-ray the new betamax just yet, with Blockbuster already announcing they're carrying only blu-ray titles primarily due to PS3 sales.

But you have a point. Sony doesn't have a great history of making formats that eventually become the standard. Minidisc? DAT? UMD movies? If I was Sony I'd practically give away Blu-ray players just to get them out there, then in a year or two once it becomes a standard re-coop their costs in license fees. Microsoft has been doing this for years with the Xbox and Xbox360 but it was necessary to make them a major player in the console wars and at times Xbox has had the most sales.

Even the mainstream media is saying it. This is Forbes' take on Vista.

In the meantime, the only advice I can offer you is to not upgrade to Vista.

I've seen similar sentiments in a lot of trade mags too, as well as many of the other complaints being aired here.

Notice you didn't see a thread here encouraging people to ask Democrats [about taxes and Al Qaeda]

Well, this being a site whose demographic is more united in a concern with science than on an agreement about tax policy or foreign policy, no, you didn't.

I'm not a Democrat or running for President. (Yet...I've hit the age requirement, and looking at the current field of candidates, might just write myself in 2008.) But I'd love to hear such questions put to candidates.

Here's how I'd answer: well, sir, if you want to lower taxes, you have to lower spending. Now, given that Americans pay lower taxes than most nations of comparable economic development, I don't find the issue tops on my priority list; especially when we're talking about increasing taxes on the unearned income of the wealthy, whose share of the tax burden has fallen.

But as it happens, a tremendous amount of money is being wasted on American "defense" spending, especially in the Iraq occupation. (Not to mention American and Iraqi lives.) U.S. military spending makes up close to half of the world total, with the next tier of nations (the UK, France, Japan and China) with around 5% each. We could almost halve our military budget and still be outspending any other nation five to one! But talk about such spending cuts - which would enable significant tax cuts - and neoconservatives go apeshit. It's as if they view the military as America's penis and fear it shrinking. (I fear they've confused their rifles and their "guns".)

Meanwhile, they love to make a big fuss about cutting spending on welfare and social programs, which make up a very small amount of federal spending and wouldn't save the average American more than a few dollars a year.

Politicians love to lump "entitlements" all together, ignoring that the bulk of that is Social Security (third rail!) and that a large chunk is military retirement spending and VA benefits, which rightly should be counted under military spending. Actual welfare and social development spending is fairly small.

As for Al Qaeda, "retreating" is not a concept that applies to fighting criminals. The whole notion that a "war" can be fought against a criminal gang like Al Qaeda (which was not in Iraq before we fucked it up, and would fall apart there if we weren't recruiting for them with screwups like Abu Ghraib) is the root of the problem here.

What will happen if we pull out immediately? The same thing that will happen if we pull out next year, or in five years, or in twenty years - chaos. The question is whether we are smart enough to cut our losses.

In the game of go, there is a common strategic error (at least for beginners like me) where a player will try to save a group of stones with a "ladder", laying down more sones and trying to escape. But a knowledgable player will see the pattern develop, knows his pieces are doomed, and lets them fall rather than wasting even more resources to have them and even more fall.

Iraq is a quagmire; Cheney knew it thirteen years ago. The invasion was a stupid and criminal thing to do. Bush and company should be impeached for their crimes, and the U.S. (and U.K., which really bears the root responsbibility for screwing up the Middle East back to the British Mandate) should compensate the Iraqi people as best it can and get the hell out.

Don't play with fire.

The class action does not go forward unless a court allows it to go forward.

If a judge decides that the affected class is ill-defined as a matter of law, unwieldy, unworkable and open to fraudulent claims this is not going to happen.

The legal environment for the class action lawsuit is increasingly hostile. High Court Reins in Class-Action Suits, Class Action Fairness Act of 2005

Sun says it has finally figured out what's wrong. It is an odd problem involving stray cosmic rays and memory chips in the flagship Enterprise server line, whose models are priced at $50,000 to more than $1 million. Yet Sun won't fix all of the servers it has sold; instead it will make repairs when it deems them necessary.

I remember hearing physicists (at the Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research) saying that if that was the case, they could use those chips as part of the most inexpensive cosmic ray detector ever made. So since then, I may trust Forbes to understand finance, but not technology or science or pretty much anything else.

on the heels of an article about defcon that was almost fair. is it just me or does this seem like one of the horsemen of the apocalypse?

There have been so many, but here a few of my favorites:

Enderle: "SCO Should Win"
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C1545173%2 C00.a...
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1563242,00.as p

Lyons: "What SCO Wants, SCO Gets"
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.h tml

BTW: Dan Lyons is also the guy who screamed and cried about anonymous boggers, and message board posters, then he turned out to be the fake Steve Jobs.

Didio: "SCO Group Gains Psychological Edge, Registers UNIX System V Copyrights"

"The fact that SCO registered its UNIX System V copyright lays to rest an earlier, erroneous contention by Novell president, Jack Messman, claiming that SCO did not own the copyrights."

http://www.techupdate.com/techupdate/stories/main/ 0,14179,2914388,00.html

Groklaw: "Maureen O'Gara reportage on a court hearing she didn't attend, yet magically was able to report on both the contents of a sealed SCO filing *and* what was shown by SCO's lawyers on a projection screen only Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells and the lawyers were supposed to see."

Here is the O'Gara article:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041025040145/http://w ww.linuxworld.com/story/46800.htm

I think O'Gara was also the very first to report on the death of Val Noorda Kreidel. Maybe even before the coroner's report was out.

Hmm... in 2003 the President of the American Red Cross made $651,957. While I'm sure that the Preident/CEO of Johnson & Johnson makes more than that, a high six-figure salary is nice money if you can get it.

That sounds closer to compensation levels at a "big heartless corporation" than for "a little non-profit".

Shilling for MICROS~1

'In other words: The cat-lady personal-injury lawyer in Iowa who's been running the shakedown on Microsoft finally decided to take the money and scoot'

Shilling for SCO ..

"the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners"

Providing a unique interpretation of GPL licensed code ..

"For the past two years Fleury's company, Atlanta, Ga.-based JBoss, has been stealing business from IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) by giving away a set of open source programs"

Spining an acqusition for IBM into a death spiral of Open Source ..

"Sounds like the dot-com bubble, except that this time it's not just investors who will get burned. Customers are taking a risk too. Because when these open source software providers burn through their venture funding and go out of business"

Managing to get the words fanatics, stalinist, paranoia, zeolots and conspiracy into a mention of Open Source.

"Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community"

"For die-hard open-source zealots, this difference is not just a matter of personal preference or technical advantage; it's a holy war. And SCO is the Great Satan"

'Nasty as the open source crunchies might be, they may be nothing compared to the hardball tactics for which Oracle is known'

Shilling for MICROS~1

'In other words: The cat-lady personal-injury lawyer in Iowa who's been running the shakedown on Microsoft finally decided to take the money and scoot'

Shilling for SCO ..

"the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners"

Providing a unique interpretation of GPL licensed code ..

"For the past two years Fleury's company, Atlanta, Ga.-based JBoss, has been stealing business from IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) by giving away a set of open source programs"

Spining an acqusition for IBM into a death spiral of Open Source ..

"Sounds like the dot-com bubble, except that this time it's not just investors who will get burned. Customers are taking a risk too. Because when these open source software providers burn through their venture funding and go out of business"

Managing to get the words fanatics, stalinist, paranoia, zeolots and conspiracy into a mention of Open Source.

"Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community"

"For die-hard open-source zealots, this difference is not just a matter of personal preference or technical advantage; it's a holy war. And SCO is the Great Satan"

'Nasty as the open source crunchies might be, they may be nothing compared to the hardball tactics for which Oracle is known'

Shilling for MICROS~1

'In other words: The cat-lady personal-injury lawyer in Iowa who's been running the shakedown on Microsoft finally decided to take the money and scoot'

Shilling for SCO ..

"the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners"

Providing a unique interpretation of GPL licensed code ..

"For the past two years Fleury's company, Atlanta, Ga.-based JBoss, has been stealing business from IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) by giving away a set of open source programs"

Spining an acqusition for IBM into a death spiral of Open Source ..

"Sounds like the dot-com bubble, except that this time it's not just investors who will get burned. Customers are taking a risk too. Because when these open source software providers burn through their venture funding and go out of business"

Managing to get the words fanatics, stalinist, paranoia, zeolots and conspiracy into a mention of Open Source.

"Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community"

"For die-hard open-source zealots, this difference is not just a matter of personal preference or technical advantage; it's a holy war. And SCO is the Great Satan"

'Nasty as the open source crunchies might be, they may be nothing compared to the hardball tactics for which Oracle is known'

Shilling for MICROS~1

'In other words: The cat-lady personal-injury lawyer in Iowa who's been running the shakedown on Microsoft finally decided to take the money and scoot'

Shilling for SCO ..

"the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners"

Providing a unique interpretation of GPL licensed code ..

"For the past two years Fleury's company, Atlanta, Ga.-based JBoss, has been stealing business from IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) by giving away a set of open source programs"

Spining an acqusition for IBM into a death spiral of Open Source ..

"Sounds like the dot-com bubble, except that this time it's not just investors who will get burned. Customers are taking a risk too. Because when these open source software providers burn through their venture funding and go out of business"

Managing to get the words fanatics, stalinist, paranoia, zeolots and conspiracy into a mention of Open Source.

"Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community"

"For die-hard open-source zealots, this difference is not just a matter of personal preference or technical advantage; it's a holy war. And SCO is the Great Satan"

'Nasty as the open source crunchies might be, they may be nothing compared to the hardball tactics for which Oracle is known'