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Quoted from Sun's SEC filing on 2006-05-05 (pg. 40): Read [PDF] or HTML

"In particular, we are seeing increased competition and pricing pressures from competitors offering systems running Linux software and other open source software."

If you've seen/believe IDC market share reports of operating systems, you'd notice that the huge growth of Linux was not at the expense of Windows, but rather Unix (they seldom break Unix down into its flavors, but Solaris is the leader, so they'd be hurting from Linux). The IDC data showed that Linux was a competitive threat to Sun back in 2002, and it appears that Sun feels that way still.

See: An old IDC report
See: http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/15/0715linux.html Savio

http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/12/cx_ah_0912aapl.ht ml

also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer#Notabl e_litigation

Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.

And he's like, Steve, Steve, Steve, I need your help on something, I'm out in the Hamptons and I'm doing a crossword puzzle here and I'm trying to remember that word that you Eastern religion hippie freaks are always using ... what is it? Five letters, begins with K. Kurma? Korma? No, that's some kind of Indian food. Oh wait. Karma. That's it, isn't it? Karma? I think that's it. Great. Whew! But anyway, so what's new? I'm a little out of touch these days, haven't been reading the papers, just out here on vacation enjoying myself. Any news on the Disney front? Or at Apple? What's going on? Heard those iPods are selling like crazy. Good for you, Steve, really. Good for you. Couldn't be happier for you. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Really. I mean it. You get my drift? Peace out, as the kids say.

Mothers tasted baby food in front of airport security guards to prove it contained no liquid explosives.

At Dulles, one passenger fished a bottle of Tequila from a carry-on bag. It joined the rest of the newly classified contraband in a trash container.

• Forbes magazine says Michael Dell is worth $17.1 billion dollars.

  If I were to guess, he probably hasn't spent more than $100 million of that.
  
  

• Forbes Autos says he has a Porsche Boxter and a Hummer
  

  Yeah, I bet he only uses one of them at a time! And he probably doesn't even go over 70mph!

• This site says his house is 33,000 square feet.
  

  He totally doesn't use any more than 10,000 square feet, I bet!

• 
  
  Point: welcome to the gratuitous world of the absurdly wealthy.

...shove it where the sun don't shine

And I call bullshit on the fundamental premise of your post, there is a difference between "owning" (which is really just existing) your body and the very basic housing you need to survive and "property" which can be unlimited in it's extent while other people suffer in great misery. Native Americans for example "owned" their own bodies, tools, and houses with no idea whatsoever of the abstraction of a possible infinite accumulation of property.

Economists in my opinion are the rationalizers of the great evil of 10 percent of the U.S. population owning as much as the bottom 40% of the poorest people in the world. Paying people less than a dollar an hour while your have billions as Phil Knight who owns Nike does is evil.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/2KZ5.html

No Phil is not 10,000 times more "productive" than one of his workers in Vietnam who works in stifling hot conditions for 12 hour shifts with few bathroom breaks so she can go back to a tiny shack and a plate of beans and rice.

As far as I'm concerned by providing the intellectual version of spin in fancy charts and statistical analysis that are based on on fundamentally flawed premises economists serve much the same function in society as Nazi propagandists like Goebbels did, i.e. putting a happy face on misery and destruction. And what are some of these false premises?

1. Economics is predicated on the idea of infinite expansion and in fact it's necessary for the economy to function. Clearly this is a fallacy because infinite expansion is not possible on a finite planet. Why is infinite expansion part of economics, because banks when they give out loans by creating a loan account in essence create money out of nothing, and that newly created money must be paid back by expanded production or the whole pyramid scheme of bank financing collapses because banks loan out more money than they have in savings and checking accounts.

2. Currency speculation can expand the money supply without actually creating more productive activity. This in turn leads to bubbles like the Asian financial crisis, the great depression, the dot com bust, and the current perilous housing market are just 4 examples of. Thus fundamental instability in capital financing again leads to great suffering throughout the world.

3. Pure capitalism leads to monopolies which destroy the competition that Adam Smith's self organizing principles of economics are based on. Yet most supply side economic theory does nothing to reign in pernicious monopolies and their distorting effects on society. Do I really need to talk about Microsoft here on slashdot? Look up Bechtel, Haliburton, Shell in Nigeria, Coke in India, Union Carbide in Bhopal, Nike in Vietnam, and when you have read of the great suffering these companies have caused feel free to shove your charts and graphs up your ass.

4. Pure capitalism has no easy way to quantify externalities and thus encourages pollution as long as the pollution doesn't directly damage the property owners own property.

5. Closely related pure capitalism cannot distinguish destructive activity from non destructive activity except through the wild guess of "opportunity cost." Thus for example war by the U.S. and Israel is very profitable for Boeing the Carlyle group and their friends and guess what again causes great suffering in the world. And rebuilding the destroyed societies as vassals of U.S. multinationals is also a "gain" for the GDP.

So if your claim that I made a "typo" is based on some economic terminology I'll pass and use my own terms thanks.

I also recommend you read "The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1887208038/002-02 04872-9747219?v=glance&n=283155

Where a Stanford business school PHD takes down the fundamentally flawed assumptions in contemporary economic theory that underpins the globalist juggernaut.

sure that they would be able to recover thoses costs by haveing the right to control how and by whom it is produced
This is a fallacy. Revenue is not magically generated by having control over production, nor is control over production a guarantee of profit.

Explain to me how even the current patent system hurts the inventor.

In many ways, but mainly because the patent system has become a game for the Big Guys who can afford the law suits or defend themselves by using their own patents. Small inventors with one or two patents don't stand a chance. This article is but one example of this scenario. The way the multi-nationals use cross-licensing as a legal way of creating cartels is also pretty sickening (I recommend the excellent book Information Feudalism by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite for more on that).

For a more general discussion around the patent system and some of it's problems, I direct you to a few references on the topic:

http://wiki.ffii.org/Martin041109En
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,73 69,665969,00.html
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020805/newman200207 25
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/21/business/wh o.php
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm
http://www.cepr.net/publications/intellectual_prop erty_2004_09.htm

http://www.forbes.com/facesinthenews/2006/03/13/mc afee-samenuk-microsoft-cx_cn_0313autofacescan11.ht ml

check out http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/1/2004/LIR.jht ml?passListId=1&passYear=2004&passListType=Misc&un iqueId=2799&datatype=Misc

They say #2.

The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them.

Who would have thought it given the current events of the world?

You want to make money? Find an acceptable product or well known name and shove it down America's throat

Worked great for Starbucks with
Akeelah and the Bee didn't it?

It's much easier to make something good and desired in the first place, unfortunatly doing that is very hard.

I have no idea why Amazon thinks they're uniquely positioned to do this, it sounds like panic and confusion to me. If it works and they make buckets of cash and/or beautiful art then they're geniuses and all is forgiven, but it right now it just looks like they've lost focus.

I have better, more accurate, proposition. Games that very popular, or good, tend to be pirated more. Consoles that have a lot of good games tend to be very popular. Piracy and popularity might be slightly corelated but one doesn't neccesarily causes the other. This is coming from someone who has purchased an XBox for the sole purpose of modchipping it for emulators and XBox Media Center and also owns a PS2 with an installed hard drive that game images run off of. The XBox is much easier to pirate games for in my experience than the PS2. Yet, the PS2 has about 3 times the number of consoles as the XBox.

Already happened ...

Yukon vs Accord head-on
Mustang side swipes an Explorer

And from the archives, the Gladwell article about SUVs: the psychology, history, and numbers:
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

Personally, I'm glad people drive SUVs. It's like the stupid-tax they call the lottery, but here it's like watching Darwinism in high-chairs action.

It turns out that Forbes.com was wrong...
In an article written by Daniel Lyons?

This is just the latest climb down in the SCO peanut gallery as their media allies find other things to write about. Before this article Rob Enderle already moved from his SCO Should Win article to predicting that SCO's litigation, against IBM or anyone else, is all but done.

The story here isn't that SCO has come up with another lame excuse in another vain attempt to flog the dead horse of their court case back to life, but that even their most ardent supporters are starting to see what's going on.

It turns out that Forbes.com was wrong...
In an article written by Daniel Lyons?

This is just the latest climb down in the SCO peanut gallery as their media allies find other things to write about. Before this article Rob Enderle already moved from his SCO Should Win article to predicting that SCO's litigation, against IBM or anyone else, is all but done.

The story here isn't that SCO has come up with another lame excuse in another vain attempt to flog the dead horse of their court case back to life, but that even their most ardent supporters are starting to see what's going on.

Yeah, too bad all of that "infrastructure" spending hasn't helped their 9.1% unemployment rate.

Back in 2003 SCO held a media event called the SCO forum where then CEO Darl McBride said this:

"They have found already a mountain of code," he said. "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix."

That and this next quote came from a CNET News article from August 2003 which also goes on to describe some of what Chris Sontag, head of the company's SCOsource effort had to say:

"I can understand one or two lines being in common," said Sontag, who is charged with maintaining the company's intellectual property rights surrounding Unix. "But when you're talking about this level of variables being the same...the comment sections all being the same, it's problematic."

Sontag then showed, in a series of slides, Linux code that he claimed has been literally copied from Unix. He said numerous comments, unusual spellings and typographical errors had also been copied directly into Linux.

So, if any of that was really ever true, then why doesn't SCO just show the judge the mountain of evidence which they angrily told the media about back in mid-2003? Instead, according to the Forbes article, they are now complaining that "code deletion is one reason why the Lindon, Utah, software maker has been unable to comply with a demand that it produce examples of allegedly stolen code."

"It's kind of hard for us to do that," says Brent Hatch, an attorney with Hatch, James & Dodge in Salt Lake City, "because we don't have it. It was destroyed before it could be given to us."

In your comment about the "cut list" I think you must be referring to the 'cleaned DVDs' topic of a few days ago, and I think you're misunderstanding that ruling.

What was prohibited in that case was the reproduction that Clean Flicks was doing in order to produce the edited versions. They were taking a movie, editing it, and then selling the edited version -- yes, they were selling each edited version packaged along with an unedited version, but they were reproducing the film just the same. That's where they ran into copyright problems.

Other companies who took a different tactic towards the problem, and avoided the reproduction step (by delivering to the customer an EDL that would cause the player to fast forward through various 'offensive' parts) were allowed under the ruling.

There's a pretty good analysis of the verdict on FindLaw, which isn't too long and is worth reading. In particular: "The defendants also argued that they were protected by the so-called "first sale" doctrine ... [they] failed to win on this affirmative defense, because they were not just dealing in the hard copy, but rather making copies of it." (Emphasis mine.)

If you're willing to spend some more time reading things actually written by folks who have law degrees, I recommend this substantial article from the Georgetown Law Journal, which was written in 2004 and examines the viability under copyright law of several video-censoring technologies, including old-school razorblade tape splicing, CleanFlicks-type digital editing, and EDL-based 'skip over' systems.

Although CleanFlicks no longer offers the edited copies of DVDs, another company, ClearPlay, still offers an EDL-based product (which IMO is a much more elegant solution to the problem anyway, since it lets you pick what types of smut you personally dislike), as can be seen on their website.

This type of on-the-fly editing is legal, and was clarifed as such by President Bush's passing of the "Family Movie Act of 2005," which specifically allows you to make changes to an authorized copy of a motion picture, as long as you don't create a fixed copy of the edited version. The best part of the law? It's not limited purely to obscenity edits; according to one Forbes article, it could be used just as easily to protect a fan's removal of the more obnoxious parts of Star Wars Episode 1 as it could the removal of Kate Winslet's nudity from Titanic. (Sadly, apparently the technology can't replace Jar Jar Binks with a naked Kate Winslet. Yet.)

So the next time you think that G.W. hasn't done anything for you, it seems that he may have let some good slip through after all.

The Swiss Brain/Mind Institute and IBM are already working on this. The article says it is the first ever, but that is incorrect. Also the price tag is WAY under budget. IBM is building what will be one of the largest supercomputers on the planet to do this. It's not exactly something you can pull of with a few old PIIIs in a Beowulf cluster. Unlike their British counterparts the Swiss team is actually starting with simple brain structures and building the brain up from there, not trying to reverse engineer the whole thing in one go. It makes sense to first replicate the parts and then piece them together.

Article from more than a year ago:

http://www.forbes.com/technology/sciences/2005/06/ 06/cx_mh_0606ibm.html

Wall Street Journal had an article about this two days ago. Sales of SUV's have dropped about 25% in the last six months, with specific makes (Jeep Cherokee, Ford Explorer) dropping more like 33%. What people are buying instead are large sedans, the Ford LTD kinds of things that can carry 6 people, and, as it turns out, as much or *more* weight than many SUV's. I got interested in the latter point a couple of years ago and found a Consumer Reports list of net/gross vehicle weight. A Ford Taurus was rated to carry more weight than a Ford Explorer. Remember all those dangerous exploding Firestone tires a few years back? It turns out those Explorers were only supposed to be carrying 1000 pounds total weight. With full tanks (240 pounds) and five adults (200 pounds apiece) they were over their design load. Since then they've greatly increased the Explorer's net/gross ratio.

Here is more info on this topic from forbes. I think they did a better job covering the story. Plus they have a picture.

In the market for online products and services, Google provides shelf space by returning links to the sellers (of such products and services) in the Google web page of search results. The analogy between shelf space at Google and shelf space at Safeway is quite strong, and anti-trust laws apply in both cases.

How does Kinderstart fit into this picture? Well, first, consider the case of shelf space at Safeway. Kroger is a direct competitor of Safeway. Both Safeway and Kroger produce their own in-house-branded versions of many foods. For example, Kroger sells Kroger-branded frozen vegetables, and Safeway also sells Safeway-branded frozen vegetables. Should Safeway be expected to give shelf space to Kroger-branded frozen vegetables? Can Kroger's president claim anti-trust violations if Safeway refuses shelf space to Kroger. The answer is "no". Kroger and Safeway are direct competitors, and Safeway cannot be expected to help a direct competitor.

As for Kinderstart, it is a direct competitor of Google. Google is a general search engine that handles all searches in the known universe. Kinderstart deals with only a subset (of that universe): search results dealing with only parenting. Since Google and Kinderstart are direct competitors, we cannot expect Google to help a direct competitor. Google's management is well within its right to even remove Kinderstart from all of Google's search results (i.e. Google's shelf space).

By the way, Google now owns more than 60% of the market for search queries, and Google's marketshare is growing. Google has now entered monopoly territory, and we must keep a watchful eye over Google. Google is fully capable of evil (like catering to Beijing in censoring search results). However, in this particular case involving Kinderstart, Google has not done any evil -- yet.

Next on staqe was Gene Simmons claiming he was going to sue Apple and the state for infringing on his copyright by using a money bag with a '$' on it. http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/gene-simmons-jobs _cx_tr_06work_0523simmons.html

is the idea that someone would take the time to attempt to draw distinctions between these pejoratives at all. As far as "normals" are concerned it's relatively the equivalent of a Yugo owner and a Chevette owner comparing horsepower and 0-60 times, while they are driving Dodge Vipers

http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/16/gates-laptop-micr osoft-cx_po_0316autofacescan06.html

So with this immense amount of money concentrated at his funds, I don't think any of it will go to the OLPC project. The monopoly story all over again, this time in charity?

I am not an expert in 3drd-world charity, but I think that the critiques given to this project really are short-sighted. Of course a laptop with some form of internet connection can help the 3rd world. Just don't see it as "3rd world consists only of poor people sitting and waiting for water", I just guess they'll do anything they can to get a little bit forward, and if this consists of communicating in a smart way to find, sell or buy stuff, why not? I know several people from "2nd" world countries, and they really can get somewhere with their internet access, you have a presence/access to the world!

"Isn't good enough for you? The prize for abolishing disease, starvation, education and humanity isn't worthy? come on" If rich people were truly serious about abolishing that, they wouldn't live on anything more then $100,000 until these goals were accomplished.

Quoted from wikipeida

Despite his immense wealth, Buffett is famous for his unpretentious and frugal lifestyle. He continues to live in the same house in Omaha he bought in 1958 for $31,500.[3] His chairman's salary from Berkshire Hathaway of $100,000 per annum is extremely modest by corporate American standards.
Emphasis mine

Sticking to his long-term intentions, Buffett says the residual 5%, worth about $6.8 billion today, will in time go for philanthropy also, perhaps in his lifetime and, if not, at his death.

Koch Industries
rank

That is not the mainstream opinion of Bill Gates. Far from it. Most people view Gates as a glorious role model. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, Gates ties for second in the "Most Admired List In U.S." An Esquire poll of men that was published a few days ago rates Gates tying for second in "Most Popular Celebrity Dinner Companions." Gates ranks #1 in World's Most Admired CEOs of 2005.

I don't see the other multibillionares (Google guys, Redhat guys, Ellison, Jobs, etc) stepping up to the plate and making any commitment EVEN CLOSE to the level he has.

Several other posters have already pointed out Google.org.

Not to take away from the goals and achievements of the Gates Foundation, but unless you have access to the personal financial data of Ellison, Jobs et al, you're only speculating that they aren't "stepping up to the plate." Also keep in mind that they can't make a commitment "EVEN CLOSE" to Gates' commitment in absolute terms simply because they don't have as much money.

I would like to hope that these guys are giving back to society, but just because they don't shout it from the rooftops doesn't mean that they aren't doing anything. Heck, are you gonna assume that I'm not making any charitable donations because I haven't announced it in a press release?

Without any supporting evidence, it's quite a jump from "they have the power do it" to "they have done it." Your unfounded assumption is that anyone who has the power of an entire country at his disposal will use it mainly to enrich himself. Accumulation of personal wealth is not everyone's primary motivator.

You would deny that the sky is blue. When people have absolute power, they will use that power to enrich themselves, as Lord Acton observed, as Kim Jong Il has.

http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/04/royalsphotoshow_5 .html:

"North Korea's 'Dear Leader' reportedly buys Mercedes Benz cars by the dozen and is said to be one of the world's biggest importers of Hennessy's cognac."

http://www.opendemocracy.net/xml/xhtml/articles/26 86.html :

"The stories told about the extravagance of Kim Jong-Il's lifestyle are so lurid that at first they seem hard to believe. A number of former cooks, including an Italian and a Japanese sushi chef, have described in detail his gourmet obsessions. One chef published a book in Japan under the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto; at the very time people were starving in their millions, he travelled to Iran and Uzbekistan to buy caviar, to China for melons and grapes, to Thailand and Malaysia for durians and papayas, to the Czech Republic for Pilsner beer, to Denmark for bacon, and (regularly) to Japan for tuna and other fresh fish."

"When I tracked down a member of one of Kim's "happiness teams" of dancers and masseuses in Seoul, I asked her if these tales could be true. O Yong-hui, a petite slender woman with a pale porcelain complexion and almond eyes started out as a professional gymnast until she was recruited to join one of the four all-girl dance troupes. She is now 33."

"She described how, on joining Kim's court , she was given handmade Italian shoes, Japanese designer clothes (Yamoto, Kenzo, Mori) and an Omega watch inscribed with Kim Jong-Il's name. A check of Swiss trade statistics shows that in 1998, North Korea did indeed import $2.7 million's worth of luxury watches."

"At breakfast she enjoyed French croissants, fresh yoghurt and imported fruits because Kim said they must have clear and healthy skins. At lunch there was fresh raw fish, Japanese-style, and at dinner Korean or western dishes."

"We ate off porcelain dishes inlaid with roses and used silver tableware. Everything was imported. Nothing I have ever seen in South Korea is as good", she said. When her five years was up - no girls stay longer - she decided to flee with her husband, a former bodyguard."

"I double-checked their stories with an ex-bodyguard, Lee Young-guk who observed Kim at close quarters during eleven years of service."

"In a real sense, he is the richest man in the world. There are no limits on what he can do", Lee said. "He has at least ten palaces set in sprawling grounds and insists each is always occupied by thousands of staff so his enemies are never sure where he is. They contain golf courses, stables for his horses, garages full of motor-bikes and luxury cars, shooting-ranges, swimming pools, cinemas, funfair parks, water-jet bikes and hunting grounds stocked with wild deer and duck."

In about a year .. when DS Lite and Wii have had a chance to penetrate the market Nintendo may buy Apple ... at least CNET will tell us so.

That would honestly make more sense. Have we all (or at least C-Net) forgotten this?

Nintendo is for all intents and purposes a privately owned company. If Yamauchi says they're not for sale, they're not for sale. (Yamauchi stepped down only as CEO - he is still majority shareholder.) And we all know him - he's not about to sell out the company for a merger that doesn't help Nintendo in the least.

A hostile takeover of Apple by Nintendo, though, is unlikely but theoretically possible.

If you take the number of employees into account then Valve Corp with a little more than 70 employees made $70mil in 2005. That is $10mil per employee. Compare that to the number of human resources involved in the "Titanic" or "Star Wars" and you get a better picture of who's making a more efficient use of human resources.

I mean, on what area should one compete with them?

I'd like to see you try to run up a bandwidth bill of 1 million bucks a month... : p

How can things like IPTV come into being if companies like Verizon are barred from building up and reserving the capacity to provide them?

And how did we ever end up with DSL and Broadband? If I was still using 300 Baud dialup, then you might have a case. But I don't, and your argument holds no water.

Why should Google, Microsoft, etc. be allowed access to that bandwidth since it's not impeding their ability to provide their services? Not allowing the telecoms and other large ISPs to do this would akin to not allowing Google to invest in dark fibre for its own purposes. Hmmm is that the smell of hypocrisy among the slashdot crowd once again?

No, the smell is the B.S. coming out of your fingers. Microsoft, Google, etc. already pay for their bandwidth usage, and the more they use, the more they pay, just like everyone else.

- the home user already pays for bandwith - last I checked if I want increased bandwidth I have to pay for it.
- the ISP already pays for increased bandwidth to the Telcos
- the ASP already pays for increased bandwidth. (example: Youtube pays $1 million a month for it's bandwidth usage).

The content companies have no right to the entire network

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The *end* user has the right to access whatever content provider they want, without a Telco surcharge. As a consumer, I neither want to nor should I have to choose between using Google or A9 or MSN search based on a surcharge. Period.

Telcos have no right to Balkanize the internet. This is a naked money grab by the Telcos. If they win, the average consumer loses, pure and simple.

Ouch, my paragraphs about Solar and Alcohol fuels were mulched by Slashcode. Here they are:

Solar: Since solar energy can't be directly used (photovoltaics have <10% efficiency) you could try using a solar array that decomposes water into hydrogen and oxygen. Problem: you'll need hundreds of square miles of area filled with solar cells just to satisfy ONE state's demand. *And* you'll have to fill those hundreds square miles with complicated mechanical contraptions that keep the cells focused on the sun, which will add dramatically to the set up cost. And let's not forget the environmental impact of cooling hundreds of square miles of land and potentially altering weather patterns.

Alcohol fuels: again, a problem of scale. Brazil produces about 4 billion gallons of ethanol fuel a year because of its unique crop characteristics. In the US, however, California alone consumes 14 billion gallons of gas a year. And any cost savings with ethanol are offset by the cost of disrupting farming/land-use patterns to produce trees/plants that can be used to produce ethanol _plus_ the cost of fitting/retrofitting engines to run on ethanol. While more promising than wind/solar (probably a reason why Gates is investing his own money in ethanol), it will probably not even reduce 20% of our total transport energy consumption of 0.634 terawatts (after a 30% reduction).

It looks like you are trying to implement a relational database in Excel!

Would you like to...

• Add another 100,000 rows to the worksheet? (You're my kind of jackass!)
• Use a fucking relational database? (but not MySQL or Oracle!)
• Suck it, Ellison!, and don't show me this tip again or I'll throw a chair at you. (I'm still bitter about the year you beat me.)

This Patent review is a result of Forbes news article about eBay's "Buy it Now" patent and the Supreme Court judgement.

Software and Business Method patents need to go and be banned.

I already made my position clear about these types of bogus patents. If you don't, read my comment over here.

Forbes has an article on how the EFF has won the first round by getting the judge to agree that the documents should be released. Of course, AT&T will get a chance to scrub them clean of "trade secrets", a loophole they will no doubt abuse. However, at least the judge is showing a willingness to get down into the nitty-gritty.

The government will be lobbied to the point where the bill actually does more damage than having a law in the first place.

If you need proof of this just look at the anti-spam laws around the world that safe-guard "e-marketing".

What kind of argument is this?

"The government will be lobbied to the point where the bill actually does more damage than having a law in the first place. If you need proof of this, just look at the laws that prohibit dumping of toxic chemicals into waterways, or the laws that prevent false advertising, or the laws that forbid discrimination in getting loans/housing/jobs."

Yes, lobbying can ultimately have a negative impact on laws. But it's ridiculous to say, "Hey, the government screws things up sometimes, so we're best off having the government do nothing, just in case they screw this up, too."

As for "pennies on the gigabyte", just how many gigabytes do you think AT&T, Sprint, Level3, and other top tier ISPs transmit and receive per day? For example, this article estimates that YouTube alone transmits 200TB of data each day, paying possibly as much as a penny per minute for this bandwidth, or in the ballpark of $1000 a day. They're currently being charged by their ISP based solely on bandwidth. But what if, say, Time Warner could take their pound of flesh, saying that since YouTube hosts video, they should pay a premium to deliver content to TW's end users (the ones, mind you, who are already paying $40 a month for Internet service)? Claiming this kind of money from the top content providers on the 'net adds up fast, and when combined with the additional incentive that the cable and phone companies have to prevent competing VoD and VoIP services from using their networks, you better believe that they'll implement whatever procedures are necessary to make it work.

Besides, your analogy to the 19th century post office doesn't stand up, either. We have this nifty invention today called the computer, which "can run things 900 to 1200 times better than any human" (and that was back in 1982). But seriously, the contract itself can be negotiated quickly - the ISPs are the ones calling the shots in most cases, so there's really not a lot of negotiation that has to happen - and the metering can all be achieved through the routing equipment.

Routing equipment which will be manufactured by companies like - guess who - "3M, Cisco, Corning and Qualcomm".

Apparently, the justification for this is coming from Sega VP, Scott Steinberg. He believes that the Wii will launch at under $200 due to its far simpler hardware in comparison to the competition.

Nintendo has always had a profit on all the consoles they've sold.

I don't see why Nintendo couldn't sell at $200 and still make profit. My understanding is that the core hardware isn't that much different from the Gamecube. Sure, they might lose short term profits that they could have had, but it would be worth it if they could pull a Sony on Sony themselves!

Re: All through this article, Ms Holzer uses the term "intellectual property owner" where she means "patent owner".

I checked TFA and the author uses the term "owners of intellectual property" twice, balancing this by referring to "patent trolls" three times.

Or course, I wish she'd called IP by its correct name, "Invention Piracy".

The Forbes article from a few weeks ago states that thier bandwidth usage is approximately 200TB per day, the cost of which "may be approaching $1 million a month".

Here's some more FUD for your pipe. True story...

Oh great - so now let's cherry-pick some isolated incidents to bolster our claims. We can do this all night and I bet you run out before I do.
In the meantime, "The heads of America's 500 biggest companies received an aggregate 54% pay raise last year". How much was your pay raise? While at the same time, real average wages have been declining since the early 70s - roughly in unison with the decline of union influence.
So the question becomes: who will help you look out for your own self-interest? The CEO whose priority is to pump the stock price for the Board of Directors? Or a democratically-elected union representative?
Why is it that smart people can be so dense?

Scott Steinburg, the VP of marketing for Sega said: "Bet on the Wii selling for less than $200". Source: Forbes

...the Yankees account for 27% of all league merchandise sales, the profits of which get shared equally throughout the league to the tune of more than $3 million per franchise. In effect, much of the league operates as subsidiaries of the Bronx Bombers.

Anyway, I can see this being similar to the way people purchase/load things on to personalize their cell phones. I'm sure if this thing becomes as mainstream as the ringtone/wallpaper industry for cell phones, you'll be able to find a $5 dongle on ebay and some open source software like bitpim that will allow you to upload your own patterns, download your purchased patterns to your computer, and then share them with your friends.

*cough* hemp *cough*

That will get you oil (seed), biodeisel (at much greater ratios than corn) and it can be grown at lower cost with greater yield...

but, someone might try to smoke it... so we can't have tha

It's illegal to grow hemp

For now. There are plenty of initiatives to enable farming of hemp. Recently North Dakota started pushing ahead with plans to allow hemp farming.

From other outbreaks of the H5N1 virus the mortality rate being quoted is about 50%. In the Vietnam case the mortality rate was about the same even with Tamiflu in use (and it was administered under optimal conditions).

From the article linked:

"Toronto infectious disease consultant Dr. Neil Rau says the study has serious implications...

"Here you have the optimal situations, the right dose, the right duration, the right timing and administration and yet you have a bad outcome. That's not a good thing to see," Rau told CTV News.

A lot of experts were surprised what happened in Vietnam. None that I have seen were satisfied with the Tamiflu.

On May 5, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministers met and H5N1 was a topic. WHO's Vietnam chief Hans Troedsson said: "The virus attacks multiple organs, including the kidneys and respiratory system, said WHO's Vietnam chief Hans Troedsson. 'It is very, very nasty,' he said. 'It has a high mortality rate, up to 50 percent, which is very rare.'

(Forbes) http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/afx/2006/05/05/af x2723635.html

I don't think its wise to relay on Tamiflu. This makes people falsely optimistic and lazy. We are in for a nasty time.

I only mention the BBC article because Governments usually try to play these things down. For H5N1 they are all being unusually dire and forthright. I think they know it will be even worse than the 2% mortality rate they often mention.