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All this because Stallman is opposed to DRM restrictions being included in the GPL.

"Software radical Richard Stallman .. a lesser-known programmer--infamously more obstinate and far more eccentric .. anticorporate crusader .. band of anarchist acolytes .. anticapitalist bent .. a new crusade .. radical group .. socialist crusade .. so reviles .. .. putsch ..

"A cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler, Stallman won't comment on any of this because he was upset by a previous story written by this writer ..

"is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a bowl of soup he is eating. His own Web site says Stallman engages in what he calls "rhinophytophilia"--"nasal sex" .. Orwellian doublespeak .. Stallmanites ..

".. Stallman's enforcers, such as his sidekick and attorney, Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen ..

"ActiveGrid, an open-source software maker in San Francisco, originally planned to distribute its program under a gpl license but changed plans after a big European bank declared it wouldn't use products covered by the gpl, says Peter Yared, chief executive of ActiveGrid."

What is the name of the bank. Provide a citation to any statements of the bank regarding the GPL.

".. Stallman's suicide-bomber move .. hard-core followers .. a radical hacker who went on a kamikaze mission ..

Some previous quotes from Lyons on Open Source ..

"For months, in secret, the Free Software Foundation, a Boston-based group that controls the licensing process for Linux and other "free" programs, has been making threats to Cisco Systems"

"Could SCO Group's lawsuit against IBM actually have merit? .. Linux zealots have already decided that the case is worthless and that SCO's .. complaint should have been tossed out ages ago"

"Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community because last month he dared to make a deal with SCO Group"

All this because Stallman is opposed to DRM restrictions being included in the GPL.

"Software radical Richard Stallman .. a lesser-known programmer--infamously more obstinate and far more eccentric .. anticorporate crusader .. band of anarchist acolytes .. anticapitalist bent .. a new crusade .. radical group .. socialist crusade .. so reviles .. .. putsch ..

"A cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler, Stallman won't comment on any of this because he was upset by a previous story written by this writer ..

"is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a bowl of soup he is eating. His own Web site says Stallman engages in what he calls "rhinophytophilia"--"nasal sex" .. Orwellian doublespeak .. Stallmanites ..

".. Stallman's enforcers, such as his sidekick and attorney, Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen ..

"ActiveGrid, an open-source software maker in San Francisco, originally planned to distribute its program under a gpl license but changed plans after a big European bank declared it wouldn't use products covered by the gpl, says Peter Yared, chief executive of ActiveGrid."

What is the name of the bank. Provide a citation to any statements of the bank regarding the GPL.

".. Stallman's suicide-bomber move .. hard-core followers .. a radical hacker who went on a kamikaze mission ..

Some previous quotes from Lyons on Open Source ..

"For months, in secret, the Free Software Foundation, a Boston-based group that controls the licensing process for Linux and other "free" programs, has been making threats to Cisco Systems"

"Could SCO Group's lawsuit against IBM actually have merit? .. Linux zealots have already decided that the case is worthless and that SCO's .. complaint should have been tossed out ages ago"

"Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community because last month he dared to make a deal with SCO Group"

All this because Stallman is opposed to DRM restrictions being included in the GPL.

"Software radical Richard Stallman .. a lesser-known programmer--infamously more obstinate and far more eccentric .. anticorporate crusader .. band of anarchist acolytes .. anticapitalist bent .. a new crusade .. radical group .. socialist crusade .. so reviles .. .. putsch ..

"A cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler, Stallman won't comment on any of this because he was upset by a previous story written by this writer ..

"is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a bowl of soup he is eating. His own Web site says Stallman engages in what he calls "rhinophytophilia"--"nasal sex" .. Orwellian doublespeak .. Stallmanites ..

".. Stallman's enforcers, such as his sidekick and attorney, Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen ..

"ActiveGrid, an open-source software maker in San Francisco, originally planned to distribute its program under a gpl license but changed plans after a big European bank declared it wouldn't use products covered by the gpl, says Peter Yared, chief executive of ActiveGrid."

What is the name of the bank. Provide a citation to any statements of the bank regarding the GPL.

".. Stallman's suicide-bomber move .. hard-core followers .. a radical hacker who went on a kamikaze mission ..

Some previous quotes from Lyons on Open Source ..

"For months, in secret, the Free Software Foundation, a Boston-based group that controls the licensing process for Linux and other "free" programs, has been making threats to Cisco Systems"

"Could SCO Group's lawsuit against IBM actually have merit? .. Linux zealots have already decided that the case is worthless and that SCO's .. complaint should have been tossed out ages ago"

"Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community because last month he dared to make a deal with SCO Group"

Early on in the lawsuit, Daniel Lyons writing for Forbes heavily backed SCO against IBM, however like SCO they cited no evidence to back up the claim that Linux developers stole code from Unix and put it into Linux. They simply assumed that since the people behind the SCO suit were successful with lawsuits in the past they would be successful again.

And of course like many of us called it back in 2003, SCO's stock first skyrocketed on the hype from articles like Forbes' and then plummeted as it has become public knowledge that their case is completely without merit. Naturally those people in on the action early cashed out early and big, leaving the pointy hairs' who listened to Forbes holding the bag. So they may well have had some level of credibility in 2003, but the zealots wearing the blinders at Forbes called it wrong, and they didn't miss by a hair, they missed by a mile.

The article is from a Daniel Lyons talking about "restricting business"
though the real point of GPL v# seems to be is to keep free software from
restricting users (at the expense of shady business lock-in practices).

Lots of FUD about how this will hurt the (business) economy, etc. A
lot of the gist sounds like a push to privitize the previous work of
the community.

Also a bunch of exploitave tabloid-style character attacks on Stallman.

Seems Daniel uses this simliar muck raking style with other platforms:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/22/vista-microsoft-b allmer_cz_dl_0322mi...

Some people have written about the author:
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/174 sounds like he
equally pisses off eveyone he reports about.

One thing you have to consider is that 9 times out of 10 price differences in a country are directly related to the cost of doing buisness in that country. Look at this chart ( http://images.forbes.com/media/2006/05/Overall_Tax _Burden_Governemt_Spending.pdf ) when you average the total tax burden of European countries you get a rate in the 40%-45% range, when you look at North America the united states is the primary consern at 25.5% (Canada actually has a pretty decent Corporate tax rate because we have bad personal income tax rates), and Japan rests at about 25%. Since Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo all have to pay an additional 15%-20% tax in the European region they need to charge 15%-20% more on their items to make the same profit from their products.

Always remember, no company pays corporate taxes their customers pay corporate taxes; if you want low cost affordable products lower your corporate tax rate.

That design choice doesn't do anything to remove the responsibility of the user to monitor the volume level. If someone wants to blow their eardrums out, that is their choice. But by adding the higher volume level capability, the iPod is now a viable product for those who are already hard of hearing.

Let's apply your argument to another piece of audio equipment. Take the common receiver. I just looked at one that had 770W total power, 110W per channel. Paired with the right set of speakers, it would be more than capable of damaging hearing. Yet, no one is trying to force them to make "safe" audio equipment.

cetroyer

I hardly call this an answer:

Mickos: We plan to give our investors an exit. When or what that looks like remains to be seen.

To avoid asking something that's already been answered, here's a synopsis of some of his more recent interviews.

In Guy Kawasaki's Blog, he's asked:
1. How do you make money with an Open Source product?
2. What changes in the Open Source community's attitude have you encountered since you decided "to build a company" around MySQL?
3. Do you compete head to head with Oracle or do you have different customers?
4. What's the biggest MySQL DB?
5. What's the weirdest use of MySQL?
6. What's the most "mission critical" use of MySQL?
7. How does a company controls what's happening to its product when the Open Source community is doing the programming and testing?
8. Is Open Source hindering innovation because it's one thing to debug an existing product but it's another to design a new one?
9. Who fixes the most bugs?
10. If MySQL ceased to exist as an organization, would MySQL the product continue?

In InfoWorld, he's asked:
1. Recently, a number of open-source developers have expressed their unhappiness with the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the second draft of GPLv3. Are you concerned about a potential forking of the license as some people stick with GPLv2 and others move to GPLv3?
2. How do you decide when MySQL needs to develop new features for the database and when to rely on the open-source community for those innovations?
3. So, is open source then a more forgiving environment than the proprietary software world?
4. What's ahead in 2007 for MySQL?
5. What's the latest news on Falcon, the transactional database engine being developed by database architect Jim Starkey who joined MySQL in February?
6. Is MySQL's current dominance of the open-source database market ever a cause for concern?

In Forbes, he's asked:
1. How is open source software influencing what the bigger tech giants like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft will do in the next year?
2. Do open source firms that sell to large, proprietary software companies risk being dubbed sellouts by the community that's helped them develop their software?
3. How do Oracle's recent open source acquisitions affect MySQL?
4. Is Oracle more of a threat now?
5. What is MySQL's workforce like?
6. MySQL recently took funding from Red Hat, Intel and SAP. What's the strategy here?
7. Is there an IPO for MySQL in the future?

In LXer, he's asked:
1. What are your short and long term goals do you have for the MySQL database system?
2. Realistically where do you think you will pick up quick conversions to enhance your immediate market share from your competitors? Later, how much market share must MySQL commercial versions have to pick up to have long-term viability?
3. If you see your main opportunity is in the replacement of Oracle installations does MySQL match or exceed the forte of Oracle in the transaction per second processing? Are you now aimed at the lower end of the Oracle market installations? What will it take to be really competitive with Oracle at the upper end of the scale?
4. If you see your natural market as the range SQL Server is now aimed at, small medium business and departmental installations, can you match their ease of administration? If not what is the salient argument for such companies to install MySQL over the competition? Since you are primarily aimed at the market willing to pay for your enhancements and support, do you see any advantage in offering a MySQL product that will undercut MySQL server from below?
5. What trade offs have had to be made to make MySQL 5.0 commercial version more feature rich and robust?
6. Where do you see competition arising from for pursuing the paths to th

Love him or hate him, it is impossible to claim he is not relevant in 2006. In his domain (entertainment), he was one of the top grossing performers last year, nudged out by only the likes of Steven Spielberg for total income. He's also considered one of the most powerful men in showbusiness, as evindenced by this article in Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/53/5S85.html ...which places him in position "7" out of 100 of the most powerful Celebrities in the entertainment business. The news story about having a couple of free days on Sirius may be ho-hum, and there may be many of you that have an extreme dislike for his programming...but irrelevant he is not.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Netscape and Java reduced Windows to a collection of buggy device drivers about nine years ago. Oh, wait, that didn't happen? Hmm...

maybe before you put in the few bucks in this Sudan thingy, you should know that this Sudan thingy did not show on the political map until Chevron got the boot out of many oil contracts with Sudan. Guess who won the contracts; You guessed it right; the enemies of the current Bush administration, that is Turkey, Iran, India, and China. The report of the human rights groups regarding the "Genocide in Darfur" is very wierd (p.s.Darfur means home of the Fur.). For the first time in the history of human rights groups, they point at the villages that need the intervention of the UN troops, (Led by the US forces of course) that the emptied villages matches the map of oil concessions in south Darfur.

Call me Paranoid,but I think there is a little more to it then just stopping a human rights abuse.

BTW, how come we did not see any dead bodies from this "genocide"? We are seeing all kinds of gore from Iraq on daily basis.

Darfur remained relatively quiet during the dreadful war (two million dead in the past 20 years) between the African ethnic groups of Southern Sudan, where most people are Christians or animists, and the Arabs of the North who dominated Sudans government, army and economy. It was the peace settlement between North and South in 2003 that triggered the revolt in Darfur. That peace deal gave the southern rebels a share in the central government, a half-share of the oil revenues now pouring in from wells that are mostly located in southern territory, and the right to a referendum on independence from Sudan in six years time. So some leaders of the Zaghawa and the Fur decided to emulate the southerners: launch a revolt in Darfur, and try to cut a similar deal with Khartoum in return for ending it.

Question to George Chultz of the 1st Bush Administration, who is behind most of this propaganda: Is this another "Slam dunk"?????

No, more likely it's due to the 287,000 Sony laptop batteries Fujitsu just recalled today. Fujitsu Adds To Sony Recall Woes

I realize that the original poster did say "enter already established markets" I don't think that is what he meant. I say that because entering a market is easy for the most part. Succeeding in a market is a very different thing. You might say MS barely beating out Nintendo in worldwide consoles sales is success, but most business people will tell you that success is making a profit. MS has made a profit on their entire xbox division in only one quarter. That quarter happened to contain Halo 2 and Christmas. Other than that, they have lost money on the xbox division. In fact, forbes says they've lost $7 billion from their newer products, including the xbox ($4 billion alone) and MSN. So while they might be entering already established markets with ease, I'd say they are hardly successful at it. Sega left the console market when they couldn't afford to be in the console market anymore. If the past is an indication of the future, Microsofts investors will want them to leave the console market as well.

1. The guy is a volunteer and has undergone months of microgravity training with the doctors.
2. The procedure has been discussed and planned for a long time.
3. The procedure itself is very minor surgery.
4. The knowledge gained from this has the potential to save a life of an astronaut in space.

And to compare it to Nazi's is stupid.

They're a private firm, and they don't release thier figures. We can definatly say they're profitable. Forbes has done most of the legwork, so i'll refer you this article: http://www.forbes.com/home/intelligentinfrastructu re/2006/04/27/video-youtube-myspace_cx_df_0428vide o.html A tl;dr summary: 12.9 million unique visitors in the month of March alone: - raised $11.5 million in venture capital in the last year - bandwidth costs approaching $1 million a month - estimates generated $230 million in revenue in 2005 Adsense revenue for this much traffic has to be serious $$$.

Superpower wars aren't about military force anymore(if they ever were). It's about economic force.

No serious, it's a blue H2 that runs on hydrogen a prototype for now (and a publicity stunt), but any blue from factory hummer is a H2H a hydrogen powered H2 Hummer. My boss was actually offer an oppertunity to be on the list to beta test a hydrogen power hummer but there are no fueling stations localy. The Hummer he had was taken back under the lemon law beacuse they couldn't get the lightbar electrical to quit leaking so he got a bran d new Escalade instead, the engine bay has a huge open area that the hybrid batteries are going to be put in, when available. The auto companies are moving a lot faster than people realise.

I know a couple people who work for Chrysler in Auburn Hills, and a coworker's husband is with Ford's proving grounds in Romeo, these are people who are working on stuff from next year to ten years out. Everybody I talk to is in love, yes LOVE with Hydrogen, the Automakers see it as a way to put the money they spend on emissions testing into the dividend checks or at least stop the hemmorraging loses. Also having a whole batch of Eco-Freindly cars available could very well peer-pressure people into new vehicles that might have been sitting on the fence. From the perspective I have it's the Energy companies that are dragging their feet not the automakers. Remember the Ford's Model T was designed to run on ethanol and the diesel engine on vegetable oil.

It wasn't the bush administration who leaked her name. It was some disgruntled employee who didn't agree with bushes policy (talk about undermining)

The second point is the buysh lied, They use this report as proof and it all seemed as if it gave the bush basher the credit they deeply needed.

Except that Exxon has been posting record profits and not record revenues.

MS achieved second place in a established market their first try. That is far from a 'failure'.

Second point, that 5 billion lost, does that include revenue from games and Live? Care to give a cite somewhere?

I am sure they would like to sell more but a lot of people are waiting to see what the other players bring to the market.

...it would be nice to know exactly where he got the information that Zune would also wrap non-WMA, non-DRMed files in a DRM layer. Does it really do that? Anyone have a source?

The original source quoted is Forbes Magazine's article with direct quotes from Microsoft spokespersons, however, in reading that article it seems to me to imply that only a subset of songs bought from MS's version of the ITunes store will be available for sharing and it implies that any other music simply won't be able to be shared at all, including Creative Commons works, although the wording lends itself to ambiguity.

Q4 03: 336,000
Q1 04: 733,000 (holiday quarter)
Q2 04: 807,000
Q3 04: 860,000
Q4 04: 2,016,000
Q1 05: 4,580,000 (holiday quarter)
Q2 05: 5,311,000
Q3 05: 6,155,000
Q4 05: 6,451,000
Q1 06: 14,043,000 (holiday quarter)
Q2 06: 8,526,000
Q3 06: 8,111,000

this one is a year old but shows how 'shitty' exchange is...

http://www.forbes.com/intelligentinfrastructure/20 05/08/23/lotus-microsoft-email-cz_dl_0823lotus.htm l

its not some mom and pop review... will fire up some gartner and idc ones as well tomorrow...

fly boy signing off...

None of this liberal 'think about her feelings, criminals have rights too' bullshit here. The article was totally on target.

We shall see who is convicted, right now it's just an embarrassingly well documented accusation that the AG and most sensible people believe. It's only on conviction, when guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt, that your rights end and only in a manner prescribed by law. That said, shame on Forbes.

You can go to the MBA porn glossy, Forbes, where Tom Van Ripper writes an unabashed defense of witch hunt. Without really naming the content of the "leaks" or debating the morals of bringing information to the public, he cries and calls for more "oversight" and "information security." They even go so far as to blame the victim for "an atmosphere of distrust". It's a sickening endorsement of all the wrong kind of behavior.

The whole affair stinks like punishment of a whistle blower. That's unambiguously immoral and illegal.

I refuse to read anything from forbes ever since they posted this blatantly sexist piece, then removed it, then re-posted it along side a weak-ass "counterpoint" from some woman who is just as childishly ineffective at interpreting statistics neutrally: http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers- Divorce_cx_mn_land.html Forbes can suck on it.

Two women failed! It's obvious that women make bad executives, especially all these women. Never trust anything that bleeds for 7 days and doesn't die.

If Patricia Dunn spies on her employees like this, how can I trust her enough to be a customer of HP?

To be honest if HP produced equipment that was halfway decent and sold at a reasonable price, it wouldn't bother me one way or the other. They don't, on both counts, so the point is moot. Regardless, I'd tap that sociopathic ass.

Naughty Patricia.

Naughty.

Perhaps these two efforts coloborate.

Heated oceans are not the only component of a hurricane.

Warm water (a by-product of global warming) is only one of the components. This summer, I spoke with a local in Myrtle Beach, SC. He surfs in the winter (not sure how good the waves are) after the tourists go home. He said in the 40 years or so since he has lived there that this is the warmest the water has stayed during the winter (2005-2006). He gave a specific water temperature (I don't remember what) so this isn't a wild guess, it's hard numbers.

Record number of hurricanes or no, temperatures are staying warmer longer in many areas. This includes areas that this is a bad thing. It even includes areas that this isn't a bad thing in terms of a threat to humanity, but a great loss of an icon. We even have signs of a species going extinct from the heat. Not to be left out of the party, even humans are at risk.

I just wonder how much more climate-related disasters are needed before people stop and admit that there is a very strongly correlated statistical smoking gun that humans just _might_ be the central cause.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/09/ 05/ap2993239.html

9 terror suspects arrested today.

The info in DNS is most likley fake.

Info on Forbes of the real guy. I doubt a stock broker would have much to do with a scheme like this.

Looks like this is coming from a known source of spyware in Ukraine, "Inhoster.com".

"zcodec.com" is actually "85.255.117.106-xbox.dedi.inhoster.com", a dedicated server at a "nlayer.net" colocation site in San Francisco. The dedicated server appears to be associated with "atrivo".

Both "inhoster.com" and "atrivo" appear to be "psuedo-ISPs"; they have web sites that look like those of an ISP, but they don't really offer services for sale. Both have bad reputations: see "Spywarequake Scam on the Run. The previous attacks were based on phony anti-spyware programs. Now that people are wise to that one, the new frontier is apparently phony codecs.

The WHOIS information for "zcodec.net" appears to be bogus. It's given as "Abrahamen Biderman" at "5624 17th Ave, Brooklyn, New York" There is an "Abraham Biderman" with an office at 5624 17th Ave, Brooklyn, New York, and he's a political figure and investment banker, with a career running major financial institutions. Probably not behind some two-bit spyware scam.

"We have seen an explosion of telecommunication technology and consumer options since AT&T was broken up and the telephone industry was transformed from a monopoly into a set of carrriers that could each compete on level ground. "

You seem to be telling only half the story. Have you noticed how since the very day AT&T was broken up the telecom industry has spent every waking moment trying to merge back into one single company? What are we down to these days? Two companies? AT&T & Verizon? Why the hell has the Gov let this happen?

AT&T with its recent acquisitions is now back to being the #1 phone comany.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2006/08/15/att-0815m arkets13.html

Where did you get "Largest company on the planet" from http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/18/06f2k_The-Forb es-2000_Rank.html/ frobes has them at 55 and IBM at 23.

Link to your prediction, instead of just the story: Only the First Shoe to Drop.

That Slashdot story linked to a Forbes story about Intel laying off 1000 managerial positions. That was an admission that Intel has been badly managed in the past. Otherwise, how could they have 1,000 managers they don't need?

They don't need to fire thousands. They need to fire Intel CEO Paul Otellini. He has made Intel more adversarial toward its employees, and therefore less efficient. Intel employees spend a good part of their time and energy defending themselves rather than working.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini is AMD's most productive single employee, by far.

Performers frequently moan about never seeing a royalty check from their record label, no matter how many discs they sell. But a top concert draw can take home 35% of the night's gate and up to 50% of the dollar flow from merchandise sold at the show. The labels get none of it.

"The top 10% of artists make money selling records. The rest go on tour," says Scott Welch, who manages singers Alanis Morissette and LeAnn Rimes.

To misconceive so comprehensively is an achievement that could only be accomplished by one who sets out to misconceive.

I'm surprised you didn't go for the full monty and also deny the 'deliberate leak' being a misconception. You had plenty of evidence, vis:

Free Vs. Open
Daniel Lyons, 03.21.06

Lyons: In your view it is unethical for companies to ship code that is not free. By this logic, is it ethical for someone to "liberate" that code?

RMS: If you can indeed make that code free software, it would be ethical to do so. But that is hard. It would mean bringing about a state of affairs where people can enjoy all the four freedoms without fear. That is usually flat-out impossible under the current legal system.

Lyons: Would it be ethical to steal lines of unfree code from companies like Microsoft and Oracle and use them to create a "free" version of that program?

RMS: It would not be unethical, but it would not really work, since if Oracle ever found out, it would be able to suppress the use of that free software. The reason for my conclusion is that making a program proprietary is wrong. To liberate the code, if it is possible, would not be theft, any more than freeing a slave is theft (which is what the slave owner would surely call it).

"His deliberate neglect has more or less wiped one whole American city right off the map."

I do not come to defend Bush, because I can't stand the guy, but The Corps of Engineers admit the failure was theirs. The levee system in and around New Orleans was in a sad state of disrepair prior to Katrina, and it could be argued that Katrina saved lives by busting up the levees when many were already evacuated.

Could you imagine the nightmare that would've ensued from a garden variety severe thunderstorm at high tide in the middle of the night causing a levee rupture? No warning, no news coverage, many people asleep... the death toll could've been 10x higher.

According to Forbes World's Richest Person, the richest Asian is Thomas Raymond & Walter Kwok (Hong Kong) at $10.9 billion. If you think that's unfair with 2 people, Lee Shau Kee (Hong Kong) is next at $9.3 billion. Terry Guo only has $3.2 billion:

http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/LIRX28Q.html ?passListId=10&passYear=2005&passListType=Person&u niqueId=X28Q&datatype=Person

According to Forbes World's Richest Person, the richest Asian is Thomas Raymond & Walter Kwok (Hong Kong) at $10.9 billion. If you think that's unfair with 2 people, Lee Shau Kee (Hong Kong) is next at $9.3 billion. Terry Guo only has $3.2 billion:

http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/LIRX28Q.html ?passListId=10&passYear=2005&passListType=Person&u niqueId=X28Q&datatype=Person

When you are on your deathbed, are you going to be happy that you had a great career that forced you to stay away from your wife and kids? How about you, ladies. Are y'all going to look back fondly on the years you had kids, but even though your husbands could support your family, you worked anyway because "feelin fullfilled" meant more to you than being close to your kids as you rasied them?

The record will be raised to $33 billion this year in the buyout of HCA. Here's a good article on the history and current trends. Note that a $300 billion buyout of MSFT would be around 10% of the entire annual M&A market.

Sony. http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/08/24/ap2 972235.html

A great read, how people can object?

http://www.forbes.com/asap/1999/1004/235.html

Correct...from http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/08/24/ap2 972235.html:

Sony said the recalls will cost it between $172 million and $278 million. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said its recall was not expected to materially affect the company's results. Dell has said the recall would not affect earnings.

what they DO KNOW and DO CARE about are CampainContributions .. and big internet companies like google&co were probably kind of "lazy" with the contributions ... and washington decided to show them who's the real boss and how fragile their position is .. it's THAT SIMPLE!

and i doubt that legislation about net-neutrality will pass anytime soon ... this is a huge cash-cow for politicians ... u want net-neutrality, u contribute, u oppose it, u contribute .. why would anyone wanna pass a law and kill the cash-cow?!?!

P.S. looks like this guy got it right

From what I know, majors typically pass on between eight and sixteen cents per track to the artists, and that number hasn't changed much since the ITMS launch.

Most artists are lucky to get 15% of gross take, so given 65c going to the labels, that's less than 10c. Then, the labels deduct the standard 26% for free goods, packaging, restocking and breakages (all obviously still quite relevant for digital downloads), and my personal favourite, the 50% "new technology" deduction (which previously applied to CDs, even though labels made far more per CD than they did for vinyl). After all that, the artist is usually entitled to around 4c for the song.

Of course, this is not to say he/she actually receives that. First there's all the recording and promoting expenses to pay off as well, even though the artist does not get to keep the copyrights to their own songs. Then there's no easy way to be sure the label actually pays you what you're entitled to under your contract anyway, and the barriers to successfully auditing this are set as high as possible. Finally, even if you do manage to scrape up enough money to mount a successful audit, the label will offer to settle (typically for around a third of what you're owed), or to drive your legal expenses up a lot higher still.

Here is another link describing the lojack for laptops and how it works.