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The answer is that they're not doing well financially at all. They continue to get infusions of cash from private investors to cover ongoing legal costs: http://www.forbes.com/2005/12/22/jetblue-applied-s ignal-cx_dn_1222eyeonstocks.html

I suspect they can keep it up for another year or so before they start running out of investors to screw.

Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/

Among the many people I know who are arguably upper-middle-class (I'm not one of them), none of them were "born wealthy."

You call this a point? Aside from being a false analogy and the apotheosis of baseless logic, it ALSO only serves to SUPPORT the very point you are trying so desperately to undermine. LOL. You see, your conclusion is wrong, but the fact is, MOST birds are not in fact victims of hungry cats. Most birds die of "old age". The odd cat that catches a bird is in fact the odd cat. Still want to use your analogy? Ok, well, most upper-middle class people were not born wealthy. In fact, most billionaires are entirely self-made. Here are some actaul FACTS supporting the FACT that most wealthy people are self-made (maybe you can use them to improve your infalliable "logic" skills): http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/2005/03/10/cz_l k_lg_0310commentary_bill05.html

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Amazon pays $40m in patent settlement. HP pays $141m in patent settlement. Digene Corp. pays Georgetown University $7.5m plus royalties in patent settlement. Medtronic pays $1.35 billion in patent settlement. I mean, I don't want to call you a liar, but it seems to me, just kinda, jumps out at me, maybe I'm just mistaken, but it seems like patents are worth more than the paper they're printed on.

I've said it before (check my post history) and I'll say it again. Slashdot is the Fox News of Patents. It's just a bunch of people standing around a burning barrel bitching about something they don't (or refuse) to understand.

And no shit nobody pays any attention to that.

But if you ask anybody around Slashdot, it's because Slashdot has the geniuses while they system is filled with idiots. I'm no psychologist, but I'm pretty sure that begins to meet the symptoms of schizophrenia.

But don't let me slow anybody down. By the way, I'm in no way associated with but recommend Patently-O. Try understanding the system that you hate so that you don't end up making statement like:

For example, it's not unusual to word a patent in such a way that a genuinely innovative company that would not even compete with the patent 'taker' will have to go and license (overbroad patenting by design).

I mean seriously, WTF. Please show one legitimate example of this . Don't be like this guy. Know what you're talking about.

You can't record with an iPod?

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/06/22/i pod_recorder.html
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2004/04/23/cx_ah_ 0423tentech.html
http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/118245 &mode=thread
http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com _content&task=view&id=130

http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2004/0524/1 20.html

Maybe you should do some research first.

My favorite gaffe of 2005 had to be the non-story about Google and Sun "teaming up on OpenOffice." Remember how Slashdot reported that Sun and Google were "planning Web Office" and how hundreds of posts celebrated the "fact" that a buggy office suite would be rewritten in JavaScript? In the end all that came of that deal is that Google would bundle its toolbar with the wholly-unrelated JRE download -- an asinine bundling that if it involved any other two companies (cough) would have led to mass denouncement among the alpha geeks.

Actually, all the well-known corporate scandals took place in the late 1990's, on the watch of a certain good-time Charlie whose mind was on other pursuits, and were exposed very early in Bush's first term.

Not only was Clinton too busy having his dick sucked to take any notice of the largest frauds in American history, but his own DNC Chairman was involved in Global Crossing up to his eyeballs. Terry McAuliffe schemed with his good pal, CEO Gary Winnick, to pump and dump a $100,000 investment to the tune of $18 million, stealing a fortune from pension funds and mom-&-pop investors.

Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and those responsible for the biggest frauds are being aggressively pursued by the Bush Justice Department. Many of the major offenders have already been convicted and handed stiff sentences, and more are certain to follow.

I am sorry to have to bring this news to all you dewy-eyed college dimwits who think that these are Republican scandals. It must be hard on your tender unformed psyches when reality socks you with a clue-by-four.

Thanks for cleaning up Clinton's mess, W!

-ccm

The Results of "Predatory pricing": Commodity Prices from 1880-1890

During the 1880s output of monopolistic industries grew seven times faster than the overall economy, while prices in these industries were generally falling--even faster than the 7% rate of decline that occurred in the economy as a whole.

Free market economist Milton Friedman states that he initially agreed with the underlying principles of antitrust laws (breaking up monopolies and oligopolies and promoting more competition), but came to the conclusion that they do more harm than good and that therefore they should not exist.

Critics also argue that the empirical evidence shows that "predatory pricing" does not work in practice, and is better defeated by a truly free market than by anti-trust laws.

Thomas Sowell argues that even if a superior business drives out a competitor, it doesn't follow that competition has ended:

Alan Greenspan argues that the very existence of antitrust laws discourages businessmen from being productive for society, out of fear that their business actions will be determined illegal and dismantled by government. In his essay entitled Antitrust, he says: "No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would otherwise have been possible." [4]

Torvalds may be a millionaire, but Bill Gates is many times a billionaire. Big diffrerence

Some potatoes are quite different from other potatoes.

Nobody but the fucking Chimp-in-Charge himself...

"Bush said, 'Yes, I do' when asked if he believes DeLay is innocent. And he said he hopes that DeLay will return to his leadership post."

http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/ap/2005/12/14/ap2 392932.html

Prejudicial remarks from the White House? Nixon got reamed for prejudicial remarks. But then that was back when the US had a functional news media.

If Microsoft really wants to kill themselves on this, not only will the /. crowd love it, but so will Sony, and Nintendo. Of course, all those commercial companies that have figured out how to run an actual business on top of MS's OS may not appreciate having a bunch of gaming/entertainment execs that can tug on the ship helm at will.

I'm sure shareholders won't look too lightly on the profit losing division which represents the XBox. Shareholders are likely to examine the idea quality vs. profitability ratio from this division and smell bad news. Microsoft will probably just claim that they are being given access to more areas of the company hoping to foster horizontal integration, but they'll forget that only PHBs like buzz-phrases like that and shareholders will see the fluff for what it is.

> You seriously need to read news from another source besides slashdot, which is right now the
> only site reporting frequently on the supposed "disaster" of the 360 release.

You need to learn how to use a search engine:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4525318.stm
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3146387
http://www.forbes.com/2005/12/14/gates-jackson-xbo x-cx_cn_1214autofacescan02.html
http://news.com.com/2061-10797_3-5995807.html
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/675/675720p1.html

Don't forget, they've got that funky glow in the dark effect, too!
Picture: http://www.forbes.com/2001/07/26/0726gfp.html

I know this thread is going to turn into a huge gripe on massive corporations and how corrupt and evil and bad they are... but... considering the company is being publicly humilated, it's stock is trading at half the price it was a 2 years ago, and it's hemorrhaging jobs. I think it's fair to say the free market is correctly punishing this big business that is supposedly "running the world". But that's just me.

http://www.forbes.com/2002/08/12/0812deadintro.htm l

Its impressive to make that much money, not only in retirement, but when you've been dead for years.

Release the hounds on anyone who doesn't RTFA

C. Montgomery Burns - http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/fictional/05.html

In fact, release the hounds anyway.

Before you spew vitriol at Bush and America perhaps you would like to know that American greenhouse gas emissions had gone down by 0.8 percent under Bush"

Although some European countries have managed to reduce their emmissions, most have *not* met their targets and only the UK has exceeded its targeted cuts. In fact, "Eleven have reported increases since 1990, with huge rises seen in Spain (41.7 pct), Portugal (36.7 pct), Greece (25.8 pct), Ireland (25.6 pct), Finland (21.5 pct) and Austria (16.5 pct)" as reported at Forbes

So perhaps you should try talking to your European brothers living in glass houses in Spain and Ireland before you start casting rocks at the US. Making promises in a treaty is nice, but not keeping them yourself and then critizing those who never made the promise in the first place is hypocrisy of the worst sort.

The United Nation is not a for-profit organization? Really?

were arrested over bribery involving millions of dollars

in which one U.N. staffer, Alexander Yakovlev, was convicted in a Manhattan federal court this past August

step down from his post Monday amid allegations that he and the governing

Bailey's Compass Sacks Three Execs In UN Scandal

Germany Shocked by Damning Report On UN Scandal

More?

This idea is from Ralph Yarro

I wonder if it will be as successful as the SCO group under his leadership?

A few days ago there was a story about how iTunes is expected to change its 99 cent flat pricing in the next year; in that article the following claim is made, "EMI said today that digital sales, made up 4.9% of the company's sales in the last six months, up from 2.1% a year ago." (http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/16/apple-emi-itunes -cx_pak_1116autofacescan08.html). How can iTunes be so high in one chart, yet only account for less than 5% of EMI's total sales in the same period. From what I understand, EMI should be getting the majority of the sale on iTunes, so I'd expect it to be a bit higher.

- Cisco buys SA (Scientific Atlanta)
- Cisco recently bought danish company Kiss Technology - now part of the linksys division (Some of you might remember them as the first company coming out with a Mpeg4/Divx set top DVD player)
(http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2005/corp_072205.h tml)
- Kiss has a long standing relationship with chip maker Sigma Designs, Inc.
(http://www.google.com/search?q=Kiss+Sigma+Designs )
- Sigma and Microsoft are working together to enable Windows Media CE product, including Kiss products
(http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/nov 04/11-30sigmadesignspr.mspx)
- Sigma is working with Microsoft on their MSTV IPTV platform.
(http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/sep 05/09-08SigmaIBCPR.mspx)
- SBC plans to release IPTV service using the MSTV platform.
(http://www.microsoft.com/tv/content/PressReleases /SBC04_IPTV.mspx)
SBC will use Motorola and SA set top boxes for this (service.http://www.sbc.com/gen/press-room?pid=480 0&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=21772)

Obviously Cisco wants to be a player in the IPTV space.

This article is interresting also, cisco was not named, so they must have realized that their were getting out of the loop. Not anymore with the SA acquisition: http://www.forbes.com/facesinthenews/2005/09/09/tv -broadcasting-microsoft-cx_dl_0909autofacescan06.h tml?partner=yahootix

Some of the richest people in the world doesn't dress up real nice. Why should their employees?

Steve Job's signature attire of black turttleneck and jeans.
Jeffrey Bezos's dark jackets, simple blue shirts, and khakis. Jeffrey is ceo of Amazon.com.
Larry Ellison's similar look to Steve Jobs. He likes to wear black mock turtlenecks too but with a nice jacket over it.

(Referrence: Forbe's 2002 Article, Uniform Billionaires)

I guess key thing is aim to make yourself presentable. No Jeans with starbucks coffee stained tshirts. New pair of jeans, tucked in collared poloshirt, and semi-dress shoes is good start.

No shit, it really does! And one-eyed lambs cure cancer, too!

Let's face it, Red Hat's amaturish "desktop" offerings and lame marketing can't and won't overthrow Micrsoft.

Troll.

Red hat do not compete in the desktop space. Nice try.

As the future of Unix, Apple is also making strong claims on the server and super computer markets. Apples success with the Virginia Tech supercomputer is proof that Apple is opening up a lead in the top-end of the market.

Troll

You mean the way Linux "rules" Supercomputers with an estimated 60% of the top 500?

There seems to be an emerging consensus in Slashdot land that Apple and OS X is the future of Unix and the sole legitmate claimaint to the king of the desktop.

*sighs* Troll... modded up to +3 by apple fanboys - how predictable.

You, sir, might be interested in one of these... or perhaps even one of these. Hope you're rich..... ;^)

I hope everyone realizes that "lower software costs" means "lower programmer salarys" or "fewer employed programmers" or some combination thereof.

Do you mean to suggest that the money paid for software almost exclusively pays for programmer's salaries? If that is the case then why is William H Gates III the richest man on Earth?

RTFA. Microsoft spends 30% more on advertising alone than on software development according to its own numbers. The rest of the money goes to lawyers, lobbyists, and shareholders. The point of TFA is that most of the difference is deadweight due to copyright.

I just don't happen to know any billionaires off the top of my head who are active politically and primarily support Republican, conservative or libertarian causes in the U.S. with hundreds of millions (or billions, since you suggest a 100 to 1 ratio) of dollars every year. They may exist, as I only personally know the politics of a few billionaires.

However, I'm sure with your opinions, you'll be able to come up with a few. Here's a list of billionaries as a starting point for you.

I'd like to hear about this breed of billionaires you speak of. Maybe I can hit one up for some money for a good cause.

Back in reality, the Democratic party in the U.S. gets much more of it's contributions from large individual contributions than the Republican party does, both in terms of percentage of contributions and in terms of total contributions.

I got the information from the following Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/2002/10/18/1018lucent_print. html, which states in part:

To get to $20, Lucent would have to enact a 1-for-29 split, based on recent prices and its number of shares outstanding. According to the NYSE, a company must pay $5,300 for a reverse stock split.

I can't find any information that says reverse splits are illegal on the NYSE. Do you have a link?

Why don't they give the ETs for this car? I would love to know how its top speed and 1/4 mile times. I guess that with a 100kW power-plant, or about 140 HP, the practical rating is closer to 50kW, or 70 HP. On second thought, I don't want to know the numbers.

Secondly, why do they give the car such a crappy look. What is wrong with the sexy convertible two-seater look, like a Miata or Triumph Spitfire? Something like this:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2003/10/21/cx_dl_ 1021vow.html

Not ready to sell the '70 GTO yet.

I agree with you on every point. Thing is, that doesn't really excuse the grandparent poster from either trolling or just spouting nonsense as though it were fact without any amount of knowledge about the subject.

I'm not in the financial industry as you are (readers: see his other reply to my original post). However, I do take an avid interest in the the automotive sector. I follow the automotive news from the "car guy" standpoint, yet I'm quite interested in the trends of the industry as a whole. So, needless to say, I've read my fair share about the ins and outs of being GM or Toyota.

Most people will find that the Japanese are taking hydrogen seriously, but they don't want to sink their money into more than delivering the vehicles that can run off of it. GM, on the other hand, has pretty much accepted that it's not competing well in the combustion engine market and Toyota and Honda hold too many patents for it to compete well in the hybrid market. That's why GM, to a much greater extent than the others, is investing in anything to do with hydrogen. They're betting the companies future on it and they know that without infrastructure it'll take too long to adopt and they won't be able to survive.

Some light reading:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/05012 2143455.htm
http://www.hydrogenforecast.com/April2005/hf_oeman nouncements040205.html
http://www.forbes.com/execpicks/global/2005/0509/0 32.html

Well, Ma Bell is charging consumers more than once. They also get to hide it as a tax (read: FCC fee in the taxes section of your phone bill).

One of the strategies they use for inflating the 'tax' is misrepresent the cost of equipment. You thought the military was bad with $40,000 toilet seats? Bell will charge $35,000 for a zero-quantity of batteries.

There was a big write-up on this (and the cover-up) in Forbes a while back.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0512/082_print.h tml

They not only charge fees but the FCC lets SBC charge its own taxes and cancel its own audits.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0512/082_print.h tml/

If you write a good story and it gets published somewhere worthwhile, the only thing you get out of it is the admiration of women (and homosexuals), and the disdain of pretentious snobs everywhere. And a crappy paycheck.

Tell that to Dan Brown! He took home a decent paycheck last year.

I know, I know... He's not indicative of the majority of fiction authors...

Use this instead http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2005/1114/1 28.html

http://www.forbes.com/business/free_forbes/2005/11 14/128.html

whenever you want to read a Forbes article (not often I grant) and you run into a registration screen....add the free_ in front of the forbes as above and you can read virtually the entire site for free.

Last year bloggers posted videos showing how to break open a Kryptonite lock using a ballpoint pen. That much was true. But they also spread bogus information--that all Kryptonite models could be cracked with a pen; that it is the only brand with this vulnerability; and that Kryptonite knew about the problem and covered it up. None of these claims is true, but a year later Kryptonite still struggles to set the record straight, while spending millions to replace locks. http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2005/1114/12 8_2.html

'Long'?

The boingboing post is 450 words long - I'd hardly call that long.

If you take out the words that are just quoting the Forbes article, then it's only 150 words long.

I mean, yeah, compared to the 'can't be arsed' posting style of Dave Winer, which would probably be:

Forbes says something about blogs

...then I guess it's long.

I blame MTV. Or something.

It has nothing to do with facts -- Dan Lyons is just pissed that he gets flamed repeatedly on Groklaw. Lyons also tried to get back at OSTG by flaming SourceForge because one of OSTG's reporters tried to interview him.

• Talks about the GPL Hit Squad
• Took forever to repudiate SCO, if he ever did.
• Predicted SCO's victory and cheered them the rest of the time, trumpeting every extortion.
• Never did get free software. No money from free software? Ask IBM how they made one billion dollars on all that "crazy" talk. SCO declared winners!
• Recently stirred shit about mySQL
• Stirred the shit between OpenBSD and Linux

How's that for a short list of inflammatory shit? This guy has a long history of flamebait. Forbes, you suck.

This "lynch mob" baloney and the smear response has been floating around the M$ moronosphere for a while now, and it's being taken up by other big dumb companies. Everytime someone makes a reasonable complaint, M$ has paid these nutcases to scream "extremism, liars, lynch mob!" Yes, I mean you Laura DidioIt's amazing how big dumb companies can dish out the insults like that but have a hard time when someone's little blog complains, rightly, about a billing dispute or some other notorious practice. Cry me a river Dan, your corporate task masters are having another "best year ever" screwing their customers. They are not going to take it quietly and trying to smear your customers is not going to win you new ones.

Oh yeah, I know how the "expert" knows that 50% of blogs are written by competitors. He or someone he knows is being paid to robot post bullshit. That's the one thing missing from the sidebar learned from the RIAA: pollute the space. It's not going to work.

>Forbes, which caters to the very rich, is shocked and appalled that suddenly people who aren't rich are getting heard.

Exactly. This article is best read in a Thurston Howell III voice and perhaps should end with, "then let them eat cake!"

This was written by Daniel Lyons, known anti-Linux nutjob, and it appears to be attacking Jem Matzan, a blogger who tried to interview Lyons a while back. Lyons also proceeded to attack OSTG (because Jem worked for OSTG at the time) with a piece trashing VA Software for selling a proprietary form of SourceForge.

"Poor guy. Did he not get the memo? This is what open source software is all about: creating knockoffs and giving them away, destroying the value of whatever the other guy is selling."

"What's new is that now open-source companies are turning on each other."

"Poor guy. Did he not get the memo? This is what open source software is all about: creating knockoffs and giving them away, destroying the value of whatever the other guy is selling."

"What's new is that now open-source companies are turning on each other."

Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns.

Which really annoys Forbes because that's their turf.

I saw this some time ago (august 5) on Engadget. That story also linked to a movie of a remote controlled girl.

Enjoy.

This is old news from a few months back: http://www.forbes.com/business/innovators/2005/08/ 04/technology-remote-control-humans_cx_lh_0804remo tehuman.html

This isn't about the residents. Madison has a growing hi-tech economy and Mayer Dave wants to keep it growing. Madison has many reasons why a business would want to choose it as a place to start up.

Picture yourself as a hi-tech businessperson considering which city to locate. What is the first thing you look for when you open your laptop when you sit down on a park bench or in a restaurant?

Madison has an advantage because it has a smaller area to cover than the larger metropolitans.

No, journalists don't make it up out of thin air. Well, unless we're talking about fringe publications like The New York Times or The New Republic ...or, er, the BBC itself, come to think of it. But I digress.

Anyway, if the reporter could have gotten one of the mission PIs or any prominent climatologist to voice this idea on the record, he would have. An anonymous "expert" can be anyone at all. It can be any random fool with a PhD, or the local high-school teacher, for all we know. The fact that he had to go with a limp and vague "people say..." tells you a lot, if you read between the lines a bit.

Furthermore, he didn't quote his "experts," and this tells you a lot, too. Maybe he asked an expert whether this mission might return some data that gives some insight into Terrestrial global warming, however small, and the expert laughed and said "Sure! Anything's possible!" And there's your "expert opinion." Only, the reporter can't quote him precisely because it would clearly not be the same thing as Herr Professor Doktor furrowing his brow and saying "We MUST have zis mission or ze race is doomed, I tell you, DOOMED to boil in the fetid heat of its own emissions!" (Cue dramatic music...) Again, if the reporter could have gotten someone to make a definite strong statement ("The Venus Express will tell us what we can expect from global warming here on Earth, and that's important."), he would have done so and used it. Remember the Sherlock Holmes reflection on the dog that failed to bark in the night.

As for the second part of your comment, sure, extra data is always helpful, if only marginally so. No doubt data from Venus isn't utterly worthless in terms of insight into Earth's atmosphere. No one's going to refuse to look at it, if they get it for free. But pay 220 million euros to get it??! That much bread will buy a lot of stratospheric balloon missions, or open-ocean buoys, or supercomputer simulation time, or experiments in the upper-atmosphere simulation chamber, or -- but you get the idea.

It seems that Forbes has been drumming this conflict up a bit.

Interesting Groklaw article about some fishy reporting on the issue by Forbes.