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While Waterworld is often used as an example of a failed big budget movie, it had made $115 million profit as of 2005, which equates to a 4.1% annual return. While not enormous, it isn't to be sniffed at either.

Actually, you're wrong on the first part. The patents were largely invalidated due to prior art that RIM was able to find in Norway.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/06/30/blackb erry-rim-ntp-cx_ah_0630rim.html

"We're already making bucketloads of cash from an installed user base of 6 million just being a PC title. We don't need no stinkin' Xbox!"

So Japan controls cockroaches, then women/people, and now we have sharks and a number of groups around the world that have gained ethical approval to develop implants that can monitor and influence the behaviour of animals, from sharks and tuna to rats and monkeys.

It is easy to decry the abuse of the animals in question.
It is equally easy to see the potential benefits to the relatively small number of humans (globally) who have nerve damage.
But why no hue and cry on the potential abuse of this technology on humans?
Guns, germs, and chemicals may kill you. This can enslave you.

there is plenty of oversight. Red Cross visits

And they have documented "inumane treatment" of prisoners.

"Proven" torture at Gitmo? You mean allegations of torture by people who've been released from Gitmo.

Umm, the government has admitted to using torture at Gitmo.

And I like how torture has been watered down to being anything that might discomfort anyone at any point in time, compared to say, the torture that Americans at Hanoi Hilton received

And I love how the Bush administration has redefined torture so narrowly as to only cover injury serious enough to cause death or organ failure. You are sticking your head in the sand if you think that none of the techniques we use on prisoners qualify as torture.

Listen to bedwetters like you whine incessantly is torture in and of itself.

Why does questioning the use of force by the state make you a pussy? I never understood that. If anything, apologetics for those in power always seemed a lot more cowardly to me.

And I guarantee listening to people whine about our government abusing its power is not nearly as bad as being waterboarded.

"Did you know that with all the various products that Sony sells that the Playstation division is basically carrying the entire company?" ..and you can of course point to a source for this "fact".

This piece seems to suggest you're lying: http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2005/10/27/af x2302512.html

Operating profit for Sony march-september 2005: 50.98 billion yen
Operating profit for Sony gaming division: 2.3 billion yen

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you like. - Mark Twain

Will their browser be better than google's?!

http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/01/gates-google-pola nd-cz_km_0301autofacescan09.html

And, along the same lines, is this guy a sublime master as slinging disinformation, or is he a dowdy old codger who thinks he understands technology? Did something get lost in the translation here?

It's all about marketing , getting the name and message into the minds of the people.

But you also have to fight what I like to call the name gobbling effect. For example, when you tell people about X Windows, what is their response? "you mean Windows XP?" how about Linux Live CDs? "you mean Windows Live?" Or how about, I run X on my box? "you have an xbox?"

Getting people to remember the name is important, but often difficult, look what happened to Corel Linux before it even had much of a chance? Sure, it's now Xandros, but you see, people knew Corel, and a name like Corel Linux would've stuck easily. It was Debian based and even had a GUI installer. But you see, here again the name was too powerful, and sure enough "Corel Sells Out To Microsoft" * and following shortly after with "Corel to Spin Off Desktop Linux Unit" and "Xandros Buys Corel's Linux".

"The terms of the Microsoft investment included an option under which Microsoft could request that Corel translate Microsoft's next-generation .Net server software to Linux. Hanlon said that regardless of the restructuring options it selects, the company will fulfill its contractual requirements." - quote source Yeah, I bet.

* = "It isn't quite as strange as Microsoft 's investment in Apple Computer several years ago, but it ranks right up there."

In tin foil hat speculation mode, look what erupted in the press about Google via the censorship/China/web issue, even though Microsoft itself and Yahoo were also mentioned in news articles regarding the same issue, but the outcry was all against Google, and what did this follow? The wide news coverage of a possible "Goobuntu".

How many corporations are going to tolerate pressure from an outside source to stop selling Linux if they start? Especially when the millions of dollars are wiggled in their direction. We need someone with actual balls to stand up and market Linux to the masses that won't back down under pressure. On their way to success, you can bet every skeleton in their closet will be brought out for parade when they turn down offers for buyouts.

As others have suggested elsewhere, the fight needs to be taken via EFF or some other means to break up the grip that exists at the OEM level and bring choice to the people when they purchase their computer to begin with.

I want the government to sift through all publicly available information to find people planning or engaged in activities which would cause me or another 2,966 of my countrymen to be deprived of life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness.

Look to the oval office for the conspirators, then.

From this report: "At least 2,289 service members have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count."

See also this page, which shows that the estimated Iraqi body count is 10 times higher than the deaths we experienced that were caused by other agents acting through another sovereign nation to do their killing (in other words, Iraq had nothing to do with the WTC towers falling, which was the inital reason given for the US invading).

eBay is of the main advertisers on Google, they bought over 600,000 keywords last year alone. eBay doesnt have enough static pages for Google to index it properly so this is a nesscessary evil. Without eBay's support of Google, you're taking a loss of about 10M+. That's a pretty big hand to bite.

There are two problems with your logic:

1) There's a reason eBay can spend 10M+ on Google Adwords. It makes far, far more. In 2004, eBay had 3.3 billion in sales, and 780M in profits! Google needs less than 2% of the market to make up for the loss of advertising. Google has the brand awareness to easily grab 2% of that market.

2) It would assume eBay can afford to stop advertising with Google to get revenge upon Google. They can't. They would be shooting themselves in the foot, and giving Google Base more marketshare and more profits (see 1).

I think its more likely you'll see Google Base pages with Adword advertisements for eBay in the margin.

His problem is not the lack of qulifications he just dont have enough cash. Lying about qualifications didnt seem to hurt Richard Li http://www.forbes.com/2001/03/30/0330facesli.html

Which just confirms it's not what you know, but who you know - or who you're related to.

PS: Appologies for the Anonymous Coward posting: Ricky is three or four pointy haired heads away from being my boss...

PPS: Qualifications arent everything, we had a CCIE apply for a position in our team that didn't know shit about BGP. We checked him out he truely was a CCIE.

What SETI actually looks for (as opposed to "complex information" is artificiality: signals that appear outside of the normal background noises, frequency ranges and so on.

As the pulsar experience has taught us, that is not good enough. It can be difficult to conceive up-front of possible ways nature can make artificial-looking signals.

Again, the problem is that the idea of looking for aliens sending a radio signal is a particular assumption, at the very least, of particular capabilities and motivations of the senders. With ID, we have none of that: the ID could do or be like ANYTHING AT ALL.

http://www.forbes.com/2005/10/21/genetics-dna-comp uting-comm05-cx_mh_1024herper.html

And to suspect we can know all the motivations or purposes of aliens broadcasting is a bit premature.

About a dozen American citizens are jailed or detained il-legally in China. And congressmen don't think this is an important issue to take up with the Chinese ?

I work for a mobile games company. I will tell you that the market is not a mirage.

It's completely unsubstantiated to say that people in this industry are people who could not cut it in the console/PC world. Tell that to:
* Trip Hawkins (a founder of EA)
* John Carmack (from Quake fame)
* All the major publishers who release mobile games along with console counterparts (THQ, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, etc).
* All the major publishers who are re-releasing their famous console games (Konami, Capcom, Namco, etc).

Successful people in the console/PC games market are looking for the best ways to get into the mobile games market evidenced, of course, by EA's huge buyout of Jamdat.

Even giving thought that mobile games are limited to being bad versions of the console counterparts is plain wrong. Look at Yahoo Mobile Games. Yahoo Games has an unbelievably large gaming market that has no interest in playing console games. Many of them (who have computers) also have cell phones, and play those games as time fillers at home would play the same games as time fillers on a bus ride.

I can't stand it when people think of something as a potential "bubble" so they think it's something from which to stay away. There was a dot-com bubble, but the Internet is still here and a growing market. The mobile application industry may be a bubble in the sense that there are some uneducated investors throwing money at half-baked developers, but that does not mean that there are no developers with solid business models and evidence of growing revenue. It is impossible to ignore the numbers. 193 million mobile handsets sold in the US alone in 2004 with a $345 million gaming market. This is doubled from the previous year.

I will say that the industry will change many times in the next few years. Executives at major console publishers will have to learn to change their expectations in capabilities ("Why can't we make Need for Speed Underground on a device with 243 kB of RAM?"). Designers will have to come up with ideas to take advantage of networking/GPS capabilities unique to mobile. Independent developers will all die out without huge venture capital, big-name licenses, or big-name publishers to get carriers to put their games in their catalogs. The industry will think of better ways to sell games instead of "Pay me $5.99 for this game that you may only play once because it sucks," you'll see more of, "Thanks for buying the *INSERT NEXT BIG TOM CRUISE MOVIE* DVD/Theatre ticket, here is your link to download the mobile game! I hope you play it and other people see you playing it and give us more publicity for the movie!" Or in better networking environments, you'll see exactly what Flash game portals do and offer games for free if you look at an advertisement for 3 seconds.

Anyone who thinks the industry is limited has not enough exposure to the industry or is not imaginative enough.

Ebay is A++++++++++++++++plusplusplusplusplusplusplusplusp lusdoublegood!!!!!!!!

Or not. Actually, they suck at customer service. What they are good at is doing absolutely nothing, having good uptime, and marketing their "service." Honestly, this article is pretty spot on. It's over five years old, and things haven't changed much.

In the United States, we have the Constitution as the bedrock of our legal system. The most important provisions of the Constitution were emphasized in the Bill of Rights.

Article (or Amendment) 4 of the Bill of Rights says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That seems frighteningly clear to me, and is at least as relevant today as it was when it was written. Throughout our Constitution, the point is made over and over that individual rights are paramount, followed by States' rights, and lowest on the hierarchy of "Rights" are those reserved for the Federal government.

In fact, in the United States, individual rights are so revered that when they come into conflict with criminal prosecutions, except for a restricted set of situtations, INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS TRUMP CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS. This is, so far as I am able to determine, unique among nations of the world and has served to keep us free these past 200+ years.

In China, the situation is reversed. The national government has all the rights, and the individual none. Whatever the government says, goes.

A good summary of the censorship situation in China is presented in the 2/27/2006 issue of Forbes (reg. reqd.) -- be sure to check out the editor's remarks.

In the United States, we have the Constitution as the bedrock of our legal system. The most important provisions of the Constitution were emphasized in the Bill of Rights.

Article (or Amendment) 4 of the Bill of Rights says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That seems frighteningly clear to me, and is at least as relevant today as it was when it was written. Throughout our Constitution, the point is made over and over that individual rights are paramount, followed by States' rights, and lowest on the hierarchy of "Rights" are those reserved for the Federal government.

In fact, in the United States, individual rights are so revered that when they come into conflict with criminal prosecutions, except for a restricted set of situtations, INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS TRUMP CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS. This is, so far as I am able to determine, unique among nations of the world and has served to keep us free these past 200+ years.

In China, the situation is reversed. The national government has all the rights, and the individual none. Whatever the government says, goes.

A good summary of the censorship situation in China is presented in the 2/27/2006 issue of Forbes (reg. reqd.) -- be sure to check out the editor's remarks.

State Environment Protection Agency.

China Pushing Environmental Cleanup

The US Library of Congress
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.loc. gov

Google
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.gogg le.com

Forbes
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.forb es.com

Wall Street Journal
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.wsj. com

New York Stock Exchange
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.nyse .com

Ford Motor Company
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.ford .com

Better yet, go through the Forbes 500 list and see just how many of those companies use Linux, Solaris, or any other *nix that is open-source or has had open-source underpinnings. Check the web servers, the MXs, etc. I see a couple that use Windows web servers but I'd be willing to bet that they have an open-source item somewhere that's publicly accessible.

I don't think you realize just how many small businesses fail. The death rate for startups is that 90% fail within three years. Unless you think 450 of the Fortune 500 are going to fail within three years, I think it's safe to say that larger businesses are a bit more stable than that.

I'd suggest collecting magazine clippings and/or URL's about other major companies that have successfully switched to Linux and Open Source. Here's a few links to get you started.

Etrade:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1916119,00.as p

Amazon, Ebay, Wal-Mart, Dell, American Greetings:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/10/08/1008linux.html

Cendant:
http://www.cio.com/archive/070105/cendant.html

Merril Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/27/0327linux.html

Boscov's
http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/17/0717casestudy.htm l

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange:
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,1828002 ,00.asp

I'd suggest collecting magazine clippings and/or URL's about other major companies that have successfully switched to Linux and Open Source. Here's a few links to get you started.

Etrade:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1916119,00.as p

Amazon, Ebay, Wal-Mart, Dell, American Greetings:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/10/08/1008linux.html

Cendant:
http://www.cio.com/archive/070105/cendant.html

Merril Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/27/0327linux.html

Boscov's
http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/17/0717casestudy.htm l

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange:
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,1828002 ,00.asp

I'd suggest collecting magazine clippings and/or URL's about other major companies that have successfully switched to Linux and Open Source. Here's a few links to get you started.

Etrade:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1916119,00.as p

Amazon, Ebay, Wal-Mart, Dell, American Greetings:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/10/08/1008linux.html

Cendant:
http://www.cio.com/archive/070105/cendant.html

Merril Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/27/0327linux.html

Boscov's
http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/17/0717casestudy.htm l

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange:
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,1828002 ,00.asp

I read +6 Troll, Flamebait, etc... A lot of mods don't know what the hell they're talking about and if it goes against groupthink, it goes down in Flamebaits. When it does, there are people there like me to pick it up and give it an informative, insightful, or interesting boost. Not everyone runs on default mod settings here at /. Genuine flamebaits and trolls are getting much rarer. I see a lot less GNAA and WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEE crap here these days. (With the exception of Apple Trolls. They never go away. They even get Cover Storys in Forbes. "Likely to top 4 Million units" for iPods. Dipshits... they sold 14 Million) Most of the down mods go to people who simply think differently lately.

Now, so that I'm not totally off topic... the article describes a system where one group could only listen, see track title, artist name, and download. The second group could see all that and could see download counts as well. Wow, the ones that were downloaded most got the most attention and additional downloads... Duh. That's not scientific. There's no F'ing experimental group! Why didn't they have a third group that could see everything group #1 saw, and *randomly generated* download counts? If I see a song has been downloaded numerous times, listen to it, and it's crap, I'm sure as hell not downloading a copy to save if it sucks. I don't care how many people listen to something, but I would consider download counts an indicator of what I should try first... At least until I realized the download counts were meaningless. If they repeat the experiment with the third group and that group downloads random crap like lemmings then maybe they have something worth reporting... Otherwise, they've proven nothing.

From an interview on Forbes.com with John Connors, CFO of Microsoft after the announcement that they were issuing a one-time dividend of 30 billion (yes with a B) dollars:

John Connors: The first thing was to keep enough cash on hand to give us flexibility to manage things like a severe short-term economic dislocation or investment opportunities. We haven't publicly said how much cash that will be, but it's probably fair to assume that, after the upcoming distribution, we will still have around $25 billion to $40 billion on hand.

and here's another quote from the same article:

We have a relatively unique model, in that our business is not capital-intensive. What drove our approach is that Bill [Gates] and Steve [Ballmer] and the board are pretty conservative. We don't want to be in the position where we have to make decisions because of the balance sheet. And while we don't anticipate that we would ever have a year with expenses but no revenue, we'll probably keep at least one year of operating expenses and cost of goods sold in cash on hand--that's around $20 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Now if you like you can also look at their SEC filings if you want to argue with people. AFTER the $30,000,000,000 dividend, they'll have AT LEAST $25-40 billion dollars. That means they have on hand $55-70 billion dollars cash or liquid assets. Your last statement that shareholders would have "no control" over this money is just dumb. Shareholders have final control over everything. That's why they have yearly votes.

This myth has been confirmed.

Microsoft Annual Report 2005

Hey, no argument here! Like other posters have said, it's shocking to see that Muslims offended at the depiction of Mohammed linked to bombing and terrorism are responding to those charges by enlisting suicide bombers and offering a bounty for the murder of the cartoonists.

You really underestimate the vast amounts of resources (eg. money) Microsoft has. Last year they pulled in $10 billion in profits.. and that's after taking into account any losses from the first gen xbox along with the R&D and all that for the 360. They have $64 billion in assets and is worth $273 billion. (http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/compin fo/CompanyTearsheet.jhtml?cusip=594918104)

They broke into a market they had no presence in and which is highly competitive and gained second place in their first generation. Money is what does that. They bought second place for a relatively high price, but still not much compaired to what resources they have. It would be asinine to think they would drop an entire market that they're second place on in the beginning of the next generation that they are currently the only company involved in. It would also be silly to assume they wouldn't follow through with trying to reap the benifits of their investment in the first xbox (userbase and infrastructure) along with the R&D of the 360 before this generation ends. I would actually be pretty surprised if MS isn't in the generation that follows the 360, as they will see this current generation as either a profit, or moving themselves further towards greater marketshare and eventual payoff. They're a stubborn company.

I'm sure Exxon and friends, with their 'oh snap look what's going on in the Middle East right now' speculative price hikes will manage to edge it closer to $200 this year. I mean, just take a look at the record profits these megacorps are raking in. All it will take this year is the threat of action against Iran, a few hurricanes here and there, and bam, another huge hike.

  Keep in mind that Cheney is still sitting on the board at Halliburton, which has recorded record quarters since the beginning of the Iraq war, by winning closed-bidding contracts for reconstruction. Strangely enough the US military is tasked with keeping Halliburton contractors safe while they work..which isn't always successful. If you look carefully at the list, you'll see the majority of KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root, a Haliburton company) employees were involved in logistics, i.e. truck drivers. Convoys are popular targets for IEDs. KBR has been a thorn in the side for Halliburton, and they've considered selling it off for awhile, due to the PR nightmare and litigation that ended in a 4 billion dollar settlement over asbestos claims.

The Wappingers Falls woman says she never downloaded any songs and if it was done on her computer by her children or their friends it's the fault of a file-sharing program for allowing them to do it.

Bush proposes to spend $5.9 billion in fiscal 2007 on a plan the White House has dubbed the "American Competitiveness Initiative." Two-thirds of the money - $4.6 billion - would be used to pay for tax credits U.S. companies get for investing in research and development projects. All of Bush's past budget submissions have included a proposal to make this tax credit permanent.

Another key component of Bush's competitiveness initiative proposes spending $380 million in fiscal 2007 to provide more rigorous math and science instruction in high schools [...]

  For all you financial wizards, Forbes also has an article on the suggested alliance/buyout.

I'm glad she tore into him as well. I actually ended up seeing it by accident and really got into it when she started asking all the big questions.

Still, why wasn't that her first reaction?
I think Oprah is just a naturally positive person. I also think that she thought the show's research team had done enough research on the book before she aired the original book club episode. I think she should be somewhat angry at her own research crew also; they should have been able to find out that the book wasn't completely fact from the very first show.

I have to say though, that this James Frey must have thought he was a real bigshot to want to lie to Oprah. Who in their right mind would even try and lie to Oprah about anything. This is what he gets...

I certainly do not believe that our elected leaders are idiots. If they have the IQ to engage in mud politics to win an election, they have the IQ to understand the seriousness of global warning.

The problem is that American agribusiness is a huge and powerful lobby.

Think about this scenario. Washington concedes that global warming is real. Then, immediately, Washington must switch to a carbon-neutral fuel system like ethanol. To get enough ethanol, Washington would need to drop the 54-cent tariff per gallon of ethanol imported from Brazil. Dropping the tariff would cause Midwest corn farmers and their lobby to cry, "Uncle Sam!"

To understand the power and influence of American agribusiness, consider the Japanese ban on American beef. Tokyo demanded that we Americans test 100% of our cattle meat destined for the Japanese market. The management of Creekstone Farms actually proposed a plan to test all its cattle meat so that it could be exported to Japan. Tokyo was happy. Creekstone Farms was happy, and its management would happily shoulder 100% of the cost of the tests in order to re-enter the highly profitable Japanese market. Yet, the U.S. Department of Agriculture refused to sell the necessary chemicals (for the tests) to Creekstone so that its chemists could conduct the tests. The reason is that American Agribusiness was very unhappy. Who would have thought that Washington would be so opposed to free enterprise and capitalism? The management of Creekstone had every right to satisfy its primary customer: Japan. After all, in a free market, businesses make their own decisions about how to win business. Yet, Uncle Sam blocked this decision (to test all cattle for madcow disease) by a private business.

If you aren't angry yet, consider this fact. If Washington dropped the 54-cent tariff per gallon of imported ethanol, everyone would pay $1.50 per gallon of fuel for their vehicles. What's the cost of fuel now? $2.70 per gallon and climbing.

That's a joke, right? If not, I'm afraid it's you who are misinformed. I don't suppose you'd care to provide any references or even search terms to back up your claims? (FWIW, I couldn't care less about Google and China; they still have the best damn search engine out there).

Yes, there are tax and liability benefits to incorporation, but you can't be forced to do it. Most companies above a certain size do incorporate for the liability reason alone. However, individuals and partnerships can still get the limited liability and most of the tax benefits by organizing as an LLC or L(L)P (many law firms do this).

Even if you do incorporate, you can't be forced to become publicly traded. Many large companies are privately held -- in fact, a majority of all corporations. Privately held corporations are exempt from SEC jurisdiction, most of the disclosure requirements, Sarbanes Oxley, etc. Additionally, your shareholders can't sue you for not maximizing profit if you're the only shareholder!

I'd even go so far as to say that most companies that go public do so for one of two reasons. Either the owners want to sell part of the company and make a lot of money for themselves, or they see it as a quick way to get additional capital. The former is mostly just greed, and the latter isn't necessary if you properly plan your finances and have the company invest back in itself.

I'll go ahead and back up my statements with evidence. Here is a list of the top privately owned companies in the US. You may recognize such names as:

Mars
PricewaterhouseCoopers (who ironically does quite a bit of business auditing public companies and helping them comply with SOX)
Bechtel (Hoover dam, Chunnel, etc)
Cox Communications
Toys "R" Us ...and that's just in the >$10 billion/yr range. There's quite a few in the top 20 publicly traded list that have less revenue than the top privately owned. Quite a few of these are also entirely owned by a single family (Bechtel, HEB). If all the owners were to decide to take a unified stand on a moral issue, they have the power to see it through.

Here's a nice little report on the world's top 100 billionaires put together by Forbes. Can you find Steve Jobs on it? It's a lot easier to find Bill Gates. He's #1, with over 44 billion. Although Steve recently improved his lot by a good $3billion in Disney stock, we're talking about last year here, so... he's #194 on the list with a paltry ( by comparison ) 3 billion. Even after the Disney/Pixar deal, Steve has far less than a quarter of Bill's net worth.

Yes, in case you're having a hard time getting my point, I'm saying the comparison is off-base ( unless you're doing it on some percentage basis ), because Gates could donate Jobs' entire net worth without exactly needing to cut back on his expenses.

Still, let's be serious. Both of these guys kick serious ass. That, you pretty much have to admit- it doesn't matter if you love 'em or hate 'em, their place in the world today isn't due to their daddy's handouts or pure, dumb luck : they're ambitious people who worked ( and inspired others to work ) to get them where they are today.

Who am I personally more impressed by ? Let's just say I wouldn't make the judgement based solely on charitable contributions... I'd look at political contributions, check for motivations behind charitable contributions, look at their business practices, how they treat employees ( especially low-level ones ), how they treat their friends and family, check what they do to make their local area better, etc. But that's just me.

That's actually not correct in two senses, read again the article

Firstly, Microsoft has given the code to many governments in their Government Security Program, some in Europe. So that is not what is happening now.

Secondly, they're not selling code to governments. They are selling code to competitors.

That's never stopped Microsoft before. Look at the graveyard of all the companies who made some niche product that was smashed when MS included it as a feature in Windows. (It didn't always work as well, but it was there and killed the niche.) The real money in TTS isn't for individual computers, but for large services and such. (Which is a shame because there's a lot of emergent SOHO apps that could use cheap but good TTS and VR.)

MS has actually gone backwards on TTS, because the L&H TruVoice American English engine that comes SAPI4 and MS Agent sounds much better than Mike, Mary and Sam. Of course, Lernout & Hauspie managed to graveyard themselves. MS has been stagnant on TTS since 1998, but hopefully they're doing more than just shipping a newly tweaked voice for Vista.

I don't think it is a matter of Diebold using this excuse because they really think it is theirs to own, I'd bet it has more to do with the head of Diebold promising to deliver Ohio to Bush before the last presedential election. If someone could go into the files and see that they don't match the reported outcome, that whole company would have more problems than people asking to see the files. I bet the GOP supports their decision to withhold the files for this very reason as well. If it turns out that Bush really didn't win Ohio, imagine the fallout...

Slashdot:

I work at Coverity (a static source code analysis company), I personally have been trying to get in contact with someone at Blizzard to demo our static source code tool. Maybe this forum would be an appropriate place to at tell them about our technology.

Coverity's breakthrough product, Coverity Prevent, automatically detects critical software defects that hamper the development process and frustrate your important customers. In addition, Coverity Prevent pinpoints security vulnerabilities in source code to reduce the risk of malicious attack. In a matter of hours, our customers such as Juniper Networks, Veritas Software, palmOne, Synopsys, and nVidia found hundreds of critical, crash-causing bugs and security vulnerabilities at compile time with no manual testing or changes to the code, build, or existing processes. Our technology was recently featured in Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2005/0314/0 60.html

Coverity's technology came out of years of research at the Stanford Computer Science Department, where it was used to automatically detect thousands of bugs in open source projects such as Linux and Apache. What resulted was a product that customers find easy to use and that scales to large, complex software projects.

Coverity Prevent is the only solution that can achieve 100% code and path coverage, detecting costly defects and security vulnerabilities in parts of the code that are difficult to test. Furthermore, using Coverity Extend, our customers can develop custom checks to uncover defects that are unique to their product or defects that have been triggered in the field.

We would like to be used by every game developer in the industry but are having some difficulty in contacting the appropriate people. We have almost every other industry except gaming using our tool.

http://www.coverity.com/customers/

For more information see
http://www.coverity.com/
http://linuxbugs.coverity.com/

Bugs found in the linux kernel:

http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux%2Fkernel%2Fgit% 2Ftorvalds%2Flinux-2.6.git&a=search&h=HEAD&s=cover ity

A few months ago Cisco bought Scientific Atlanta and now Motorola buys Kreatel (it makes sense, although Forbes said Motorola still had an advantage over Cisco).

There's few independent players left in the STB arena. I wonder how long until somebody buys Amino, I3Micro or FedTec.

Now then, where the F was the ACLU when the Clinton Admin was conducting physical searches without warrants?

If you are referring to searches before 1995 (e.g. Aldrich Ames), then, as reported by the Associated Press, you can eat your words.

Try this link to the printable version (should work without being logged in and is nicer anyway, all three pages in one): http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0130/076_print.h tml

Go to Forbes.com
Well, go here : http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2006/0130/0 43.html

Same site, diff article on worries about Apples profitability.

What Engage In-Game is doing is no more illegal than someone hosting a custom mod on their server. This particular mod just happens to show pictures of brand-name sandwiches with a price tag. Bandwidth and server resources aren't free, and if this is how Engage In-Game is going to support keeping their servers online for free public use, they can stick advertisements on the virtual game walls. Would you rather they use bots that spam in-game chat every 5 minutes with text ads? The ads are far from intrusive, and if you don't like them, don't play on their servers.

Now, if Engage In-Game was paying players to go to other people's servers to spray and spam advertisements everywhere, that's going over the line because then they'd be intruding on OTHER people's servers.

Looked at from the "Works For Sure" side, this is a total defeat and surrender. If a Mac user wants to buy music online their choice no longer includes the decidedly second rate M$ players and music services. I don't see anyone mentioning this because no one takes the new Napster and it's kin seriously. WMP does not even work well on Windoze. The service itself was supposed to be a money maker and obviously it is a loser. It does not work for sure, it never worked everywhere and now they have dropped the only other major commercial OS.

You are right about them needing to focus on what's important. The whole M$ drive into your living room is an astounding flop. The Xbox is still a money loser and it's about to have it's ass handed to it. WMF playability is so poor that people just don't bother with videos and content provider must be desperate for a replacement. As mentioned above, their forray into the marvelous world of DRM'd music is not taking off despite massive "free trials" at universities because it sucks. While they poured all of that work and effort into rooting your living room, their core product is one big stagnant target. Even Michael Dell is selling Red Hat because people are fed up with Windoze.

Given the way they abused their position of trust when they owned the world of commodity computing, I hope they never recover. Bill Gates can take his money and enjoy his retirement while Microsoft sinks without a trace. I'll be happy when free software is shared rationally and the nightmare of public schools being sued for sharing binary coppies of weird format text editors is long forgoten. See you later M$.

Having sex does help according to this forbes.com article: http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/08/cz_af_1008health. html Here's a scrape from the article: "Wilkes University in Pennsylvania says individuals who have sex once or twice a week show 30% higher levels of an antibody called immunoglobulin A, which is known to boost the immune system." ...just be careful on doing it with. You might get the anti-immune system desease. :-)

Wow.. they must be fortune tellers.. or something.

When did corporations get more freedoms than individuals?
In the USA they don't. Worldcom and Bernie Ebbers are an example.
The USA does not have exclusive rights to toast big business, and their creators.
In Russia, we have the YUKOS oil company item, somewhat similar to the Worldcom situation.
I know, this is a boring comment, so for you older slashdotters wanting to see a story on a good-looking older woman who found herself in trouble with the law, and the resulting jail term tested the mettle of her Company, here you go.
(not that one, this one)

After going through four hard disks, motherboards, power supply daughterboards, and VGA cards in eight repairs during the three-year extended warranty of this piece of junk I'm more than happy to send it back to Toshiba in exchange for a down payment on a new Mac."

Good luck with that Mac. And your upcoming class-action lawsuit trying to get it serviced.

IBM is getting into the whole software as a service thing http://news.com.com/IBM+doubles+down+on+software+s ervices/2100-1014_3-5553386.html or http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/05/26/HNibmsof twareasservice_1.html which walks on Microsofts turf. IBM isnt all about open source and big mainframes anymore ... stuff like this squares them off as a direct competitor to where Microsoft wants to be in the near future.

This article http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/09/26/ibm-so ftware-investments-cz_qh_0926ibm.html states "In effect, giant IBM hopes this loosely allied swarm will overwhelm application offerings from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. "This is about building out an ecosystem of partners to compete" ... IBM also figures watching the little guys is a good way to spot future trends early, he said..."

-everphilski-