Slashdot Mirror

Ah, gotcha.

I really do wonder sometimes why the US market repeatedly gets inferior goods. Certainly US buyers can afford the better stuff; why not ship RDS-capable radios? Why not make OEM HID headlights an option? Yet they didn't do either of those things. Certainly they can -- RDS isn't exactly newfangled anymore, and with HID lights an option on things like the Mini Cooper, it's not like better lighting is going to price the cars out of the market. So why the foot-dragging?

Next time around I expect to get at least the headlights as factory instead of having to fix the shortcoming myself ("drop-in kits" don't count as a real fix; I was lucky and the parts were available as factory items elsewhere and I was able to get my hands on them) and my purchasing decision will be executed as appropriate.

Fortunately, the Audi (which is a VW division; good thing as I'm a VW buff) A3 offers everything I want (with a manual transmission; none of this "forcing an expensive and less reliable/efficient automatic on the customer who wants any option package" the Jetta/Passat pull) in a small 5-door hatchback package for a reasonable price. I'm leaning heavily that way... provided I can get my hands on a new or good-shape used one, configured the way I want, by the time the Golf falls apart.

And I do plan to drive it as long as possible -- I don't lease cars or buy new ones every three years, and I'm one of the 42% of people who pay their credit balances every month.

Go me.

Google already came out and denied any involvement with napster, according to this

analysts are guessing that Jobs will unveil at least one of the following: a new iPod Shuffle, a PC that runs on Intel Corp. chips or an iMac PC that acts much like a digital television tuner and recorder.

It's because John Dvorak is delusional, and wants to be Bill Gates' but-buddy. John Dvorak is cleary an idiot, with no insight into IT.

If that's the case, then why is RedHat dipping following analyst downgrades?

One rumor on the official message board (not linked because it's already about to collapse under increased usage) is that TTWO is postponing Oblivion so they'll have a game release during 1Q 2006 to make the books look better. They already warned on earnings for the rest of 2005 and 2006, and several of their other titles have been delayed as well, so any manipulation of release dates to even out revenues quarter-by-quarter is probably on the table. It's interesting that this news arrives from TTWO during a conference call and not from the developer, Bethesda Softworks.

Some are suggesting that Bethesda will try to drop TTWO as publisher (they did just fine by themselves with Morrowind) because the game is pretty much ready for release.

However, these are just rumors. The last word from Bethesda was apparently October 13, when Peter Hines, a Bethesda marketing VP, said that Oblivion would be ready for the holidays.

Does anyone have more insight into whether these rumors might be true?

You mean like this?

Microsoft today is where IBM was years ago. And Google is in a position to do to Bill Gates what he did to IBM.

I don't have any money to invest, but sitting on the sidelines I really love and am rooting for this company. Go google.

Red Hat surges on upbeat earnings

I made a lot of money today...

Do you stil (sic) think the US is 'the richest nation on earth'? Look at unemployment, illiteracy, innumeracy, infant mortality (43rd, after Cuba!) and poverty figures for the last decades. Compare to any other country and then do the same for the added figures for the whole EU.

The United States IS "The Richest Nation on Earth." The value of our assets dwarfs the values of the assets of most nations, with only a couple coming anywhere close (Japan, China, Germany).

Look at the value of our prime assets and liabilities: our owned equity, money, real property, inventories, capital goods, net our net debt. I don't have hard numbers, and I challenge someone to find them. I'd imagine the wealth US owned (by citizens, government, and share of corporations) to be about $100 trillion. I'd estimate that this is 30% of global wealth. Probably only Japan comes even close, with maybe $30 trillion, or 10% of global wealth.

Unemployment: United States labor markets are so efficient, that unlike the socialized economies of Western Europe, if you don't have a job, you can get one. Only in Japan is unemployment better managed (at the cost of growth). Some people might be into something called 'facts' - here you go.
August 2005 - US: 4.9%. Germany: 11.6%. France: 9.9% . China: 23%, +/-20% (pick a number, any number). India: 9%. Indonesia: 9%. Japan: 4.4%.

Illiteracy: Literacy rates of countries with population of more than 150 million - US: 97% China: 91% India: 59% Indonesia: 88% Brazil: 86% Pakistan: 46%. While I'd assume EU Literacy rate is 99% (quite commendable), 3% of our population being miseducated is not a condemnation of our wealth - just our education system. Imagine what our unemployment would look like if everyone could read... (Source: CIA World Book)

The main wealth Americans have, however, is institutional. We have the ability to choose from a variety of goods and services, more enforceable rights than almost anywhere else, and impressively low corruption. When the Chinese can buy any American goods, have the right to due process and continuous ownership, responsive government, and don't have to pay off the police on a daily basis, maybe then they could build wealth.

why would EBay want to buy a peanut butter manufacturer? And if they did want to, I would think Jif would be a more appropriate takeover target.

Market analysts say (and market analysts are never wrong) that skype "could help eBay quickly improve customer service"

Anyone who's used Paypal know how important "customer service" is to ebay :-)

In all seriousness - as WSJ intimates, automated buyer to seller / buyer to previous buyer / etc VOIP calls, could improve ebay's model of doing business.

Hmm, from http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B 223E5F7F-8B7C-49C3-9C74-052DAEEADC86%7D&dist=rss&s iteid=mktw google only issued 19.6 million shares, so 14 million more would be quite significant, dont know where you got that number from.

Oh it's true...you just can't make this stuff up... http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B 223E5F7F-8B7C-49C3-9C74-052DAEEADC86%7D&dist=rss&s iteid=mktw

Actually, it appears that they are referencing pi. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?column=N et+Stocks&siteid=mktw&dist=

uhhh...
http://www.senate.gov/~kohl/press/statements/20053 09430.html
that ain't an idiot like me talking, that's one of your father's former colleagues who said...

"Such blatantly anti-competitive conduct by the oil cartel violates the most basic principles of fair competition and free markets and should not be tolerated."

another opinion on price fixing...
http://slate.msn.com/id/77957/

i am not a conspiracy theorist. i just think that corporations have too much power nowadays and that they have no conscience that tells them what is right and what is wrong. and that the government is not doing its job of protecting the rights of the citizens, and instead has found a higher paying job of doing what corporations want and lying to the public.
an example...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7804770/

it is only logical for corporations to try to fix prices! they are going to do whatever they can to do what they are designed to do...generate more and more profit. getting rid of competition or collaborating with competition will do that for them. that is my reason for thinking there is price/supply fixing. you can say "well, i've seen the inside of government and corporations, and, believe me, there isn't". and, even if you really believe that, i simply will still believe what i believe.

"And then all end up jail. Yeah, right."

okay, i think you're missing one of my points all along. my point, that i'm sure you know, is that things don't work like they do in theory. in theory, those fines from the crimes exxon committed would stop them from doing crimes in the future, but those fines won't. those fines are only another part of the cost/benefit analysis that a company does when it decides to do something. and even fines like $500 million are not enough of a disincentive to deter a company as big as exxon. i think the fines that these companies face should absolutely cripple them. that is the only way that corporate power can be checked, because that is the ONLY thing that it understands, money.

and, if amazon cooked the books, i don't think they would most likely end up in jail...

they might be found not guilty...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8293846/

they might not ever go to trial (5 years and waiting...)
kenneth "kenny boy" lay

or they might get a "harsh" penalty...
bernie ebbers

just look at this page...
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/features/scandal_s heet.asp?cbsReferrer=www.google.com

the majority of those on that page are NOT in jail, years after their crimes were committed. i understand that justice is slow and these cases are complicated, but still.
now, compare the page of corporate scandals' status with this one about mandatory drug dealing sentences...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snit ch/primer/
(scroll down to the mandatory sentences table)

now, who did more damage? the guy coming out of the ghetto, with no father, no education, a lifetime of dissapointment and discrimination, who has drugs in his pocket because that is what everyone else does and that's the only way he sees to make money or the corporate criminal destroyed the financial savings and jobs of thousands of people because he was greedy?

now do you see why i think there some type of fishy business going on? i mean look at the penalties. they fined samuel waskal $4 million dollars and sent him to jail for 7 years. but he got $73 million in compensation in ONE year! plus he'll most likely get out early. so, when he gets out he'll have millions of dollars in the bank

It would certainly be a rather uncharacteristic or bold move by Cisco as far as their track record of corporate acquisitions go. I touched on this very briefly in my own rejected submission (which imho was slightly more informative than the one posted, however it was probably submitted later, so I'm not complaining).

I'll just post it here too, since it includes a few more links for those interested:

According to today's Sunday Business newspaper, Cisco Systems Inc. is thinking of buying the finnish mobile handset giant Nokia in the aftermath of CEO Jorma Ollila's retirement announcement. In the past Cisco has concentrated more on buying smaller, niche tech companies. But this time its chief is believed to be interested in merging with a wireless infrastructure company, and Nokia would fit this bill. The paper says the merger would help Cisco create "intelligent wireless applications". Convergence is the buzz word of the day and this move would certainly combine the fixed-line and wireless networking capabilities of the companies. Cisco is currently valued at about $123 billion (25.5 times earnings) and Nokia at $71 billion (18.8 times earnings). Neither company has yet commented on the rumour.

The reason iPod stockpile is up is because of a trial deal with Walmart has now gone full scale and they needed to bone up on the players.

see MarketWatch story here

The worldwide portable player market is expected to grow even more over the next few years. You can Google for it.

To top it off, wedding photographers are ranked #10 on the list of most overpaid professions

Many people invest funds in indexes like the S&P 500 entirely "blindly", in which case it amounts to betting/gambling, doesn't it? I mean you can lose money on these funds.

In theory you can, but on average it does better than 90% of the human-managed funds.

So you have a 10% chance of doing worse than some other fund and there's effectively no risk of major loss, front or back-end loads or commissions. That group of characteristics is attractive to many, myself included.

Ever seen the SNL clip of Dana Carvey doing Ross Perot as he leaves running mate James Stockdale (VP) out in the middle of nowhere after the 1992 vice presidential debate?

I swear, Dvorak looks like Phil Hartman doing Stockdale on this website:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B D0E8469A-28FC-415D-9281-C97B5FA2CA3D%7D&siteid=mkt w&dist=

Perhaps Dvorak just talks out of his ass like Stockdale did:

"Who am I? Why am I here? I'm not a politician."

IronChefMorimoto

I have been doing a lot of close work with IBM and a couple of other electronics companies in the past few weeks. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Jobs is just being foresightful (imagine how much we could make if we all were?) and anticipating that IBM has been moving out of the direct manufacter business.

There are a couple of key things that have happened that have made this seem impending. The first of course, was the divestiture of the IBM Laptop division to a Lenovo in China. (I'm so glad I have one of the last US made ones). Then, in April, IBM's Q1 numbers missed their target, resulting in a 8% drop in IBM stock. This was due to product delays, drop offs in sales around the world, and rising pension costs. Then at the end of April, Avnet Inc. announced that it was going to buy Memec, LLC, which is the world leader in semiconductor distribution and on-demand design.
The word on the street though, is that the mainframe and midrange areas are not going anywhere, and the AIX world is booming with business, so they are smart to keep their focus on their stable lines.
All of this, plus the interesting fact that IBM is focusing all of its efforts and attention not only on 'short-term' support contracts, but the repeating big customer - Professional Services. This is a cash-cow industry, if done right... We'll see how things progress. It really looks like IBM is starting to try to emerge from the Electronics Industry that brought them into the 21st Century.
Just my $2.00. Hey, it's 2005, inflation, ya know?
Jho

I have been doing a lot of close work with IBM and a couple of other electronics companies in the past few weeks. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Jobs is just being foresightful (imagine how much we could make if we all were?) and anticipating that IBM has been moving out of the direct manufacter business.

There are a couple of key things that have happened that have made this seem impending. The first of course, was the divestiture of the IBM Laptop division to a Lenovo in China. (I'm so glad I have one of the last US made ones). Then, in April, IBM's Q1 numbers missed their target, resulting in a 8% drop in IBM stock. This was due to product delays, drop offs in sales around the world, and rising pension costs. Then at the end of April, Avnet Inc. announced that it was going to buy Memec, LLC, which is the world leader in semiconductor distribution and on-demand design.
The word on the street though, is that the mainframe and midrange areas are not going anywhere, and the AIX world is booming with business, so they are smart to keep their focus on their stable lines.
All of this, plus the interesting fact that IBM is focusing all of its efforts and attention not only on 'short-term' support contracts, but the repeating big customer - Professional Services. This is a cash-cow industry, if done right... We'll see how things progress. It really looks like IBM is starting to try to emerge from the Electronics Industry that brought them into the 21st Century.
Just my $2.00. Hey, it's 2005, inflation, ya know?
Jho

The Game Is Virtual. The Profit Is Real.

By MARK WALLACE Published: May 29, 2005

JASON AINSWORTH plays the online game Second Life at least four hours a day. In the game, he runs a virtual real estate development business. But his after-tax profit - about $1,800 a month - is real, and it's enough to pay the mortgage on his home in Las Vegas.

For many people, what are known as massively multiplayer online games have become significant sources of income.

Web sites have sprung up that allow players to use real currency to buy items - like weapons or real estate - that they may want or need for the games

Games like Second Life, World of Warcraft, Ultima Online and dozens of others offer the opportunity to interact with thousands of players worldwide in virtual environments that continue to exist whether or not any particular person is playing at the moment. The virtual broadsword you found in the dragon's cave (or that dream house you built) before logging off on Tuesday will be right there on Wednesday.

Acquiring those items, however, requires work. In Ultima Online, it can take weeks to amass enough virtual gold to buy a superior weapon. It can take just as long to earn enough "simoleans," the virtual currency of The Sims Online - the online version of Electronic Arts' best-selling role-playing games - to buy and furnish a house.

But not everyone cares to spend time toiling in pursuit of game money. This provides an opportunity for people like Mr. Ainsworth. A thriving market has sprung up in which players spend real-world cash to buy game currency or desirable items from other players. Transactions take place on eBay or on sites like gamingopenmarket.com or www.ige.com. Payments are made through PayPal and other online services. Players then log into the game and transfer the virtual goods or currency.

Mr. Ainsworth, 36, was not a fan of online games until his 10-year-old daughter became interested in The Sims Online. He then noticed that a large number of simoleans were for sale on eBay. "I started hearing about players leaving the game who were selling their assets," he said, "so I figured, buy low, sell high."

But Mr. Ainsworth found his moneymaking options in The Sims "very limited"; he switched to Second Life, a virtual world that is less a game than a three-dimensional environment in which players can do whatever they choose. There, he has leveraged his real-life experience - he is a developer and contractor - into an online business. In 14 locations in Second Life's virtual world, he owns enough "land" to rent space to nearly 50 retailers, who in turn earn virtual money selling everything from jewelry to clothing to art (all nonexistent, of course). Mr. Ainsworth converts his game profits into real money on sites like eBay, Ige and gamingopenmarket, which charge a small fee, and he includes that income on his tax returns.

"A lot of your success or failure depends on your ability to keep the fire lit," he said. "I have good months and bad months, but the work is fun."

Earnings can be considerable. Ailin Graef, who goes by the screen name Anshe Chung in Second Life, said she was on track to earn about $100,000 in real money in her first year in the game's real estate business.

Hundreds of people who play Second Life make a profit on it, said Philip Rosedale, chief executive and founder of Linden Lab, the game's developer. The value of the average player's transactions, if converted to real money, is more than $1,000 a year and has been growing nearly 25 percent a month, Mr. Rosedale said.

Who buys this stuff? One Second Life resident, who asked to be identified only by her screen name, Diamond Hope, said she spent $10 to $15 a month on clothing and other accessories in Secon

http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/insiders.a sp?symb=IBM&vc=0&siteid=mktw&dist=dropmenu

$13 million in the proceeds of a stock grant sale and options exercize to J. Bruce Harreld alone.

Bruce Harreld came from Boston Market several years ago where he also helped drive that company straight into the shitter.

Most IBM employees got no annual increase last year and variable pay e.g. bonuses which is what most people count on, were cut to the bone - average awards were half what they were the year before and about one fifth of the people got them. This year IBM suspended annual increases to executives but stock and other equity awards were not frozen. In the meantime the employees are bracing for another year of no increases and no variable pay. Simultaneously, benefits cost were increased about 15-20% to employees. Moreover any employees sitting on options that were awarded after 1998 have worthless paper - priced around $132 which is where the stock was headed in 1999 before it had its relentless crash since then ($76 as of today). And there is a strong push to force employees to work from home so IBM can sell their real estate. Employees are expected to give up one room of their house to for a home office and the reimbursement of their office supplies to the employee is now imputed income.

http://www.thestreet.com/_tscs/funds/ericgillin/10 062472.html and this one

true. And here's an article on AOL's plight in today's broadband market.

And on the other side of the spectrum...the xbox catches ON FIRE!!!!
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B EFC6463C-2966-4B35-A60A-9B7DC5F019B7%7D&siteid=goo gle&dist=google&cbsReferrer=www.zeropaid.com

You might have been just guessing or you might know something...I had to mod you insightful after I checked the weekly chart for SUNW...it happened just like you said.

They have 1.5 million customers.

They have 3 million subscribers, not 1.5 million (I hate to link to such a dire-sounding headline, but the article does have a lot of hard info). And their subscriber base is growing rapidly.

Every day at my office you can see a bunch of those red envelopes in the office inbox. And a lot of us that subscribe get them at home, so clearly there are more where I work than I even know about.

This is a popular service and one that people really like. One of the first things I learned when picking stocks is that the bottom line is the product has to be something people want. The quick test of any stock is to look around at what people are saying about the company, not from a business perspective but as customers. I have honestly heard the words "I love Netflix" more times in one week than I've probably heard the words "I love Blockbuster" in my entire life.

That doesn't mean the company's on the road to success, but it does mean they have the basic building blocks right. Blockbuster's really got nowhere to go but down at this point.

Look here among other places

100% private eh?

TiVo Sale Rumors -- link
by: phillipswann 02/23/05 12:21 pm
Msg: 239226 of 239994

http://www.swannisez.com/tivorumor022305.html

(If you look at that link now, it's a rehash of Reuters news concerning the rumor, with no hint that Swann -- who has probably scared himself half to death by singlehandedly moving the market -- started this rumor himself)

At 3:11 pm, Marketwatch issued a sloppy story that credited an entity called "Inside Digital Media" for cracking the apple buyout story. However, if you visit the site, you will find a blog entry that presents a well-reasoned rationale as to why Apple should buy Tivo, but no hard news at all.

Subsequently, analyst Steven Kroll, Jr. (whose dad is a senior partner at the same firm) provided the "what we hear on the street" quote that Reuters served up.

No one seems to have bothered at all to trace this garbage to its specious sources.

I own some Tivo, and was watching all of this today because I was considering cutting my losses (this dog had lost one-third of its value in a month). Instead, I'm holding on and hoping for a short squeeze, or even the possibility that the rumors will alert video-on-demand competitors to what a bargain TIVO's 3 million subscribers would be for anyone seeking a toehold on the living room.

So, while it looks to me that the rumor is only that, I wouldn't be too surprised if it became reality.

Big Charts Graph of SCO for last 2 years

here ya go

• "This may shock you at first so steel yourself for the idea. Ready? We are going to start paying bloggers. Soon you will be blogging for dollars. That's right people, chocolate is to peanut butter like AdSense is to blogs."
  
  and...
  
  "So, if you blog about baseball, there might be ads for Major League Baseball memorabilia next to your post. If you blog about painting, there might be ads for art supplies. In fact, when you blog about something specific, there's a good chance you'll earn more..."

I don't think so. In fact, I know it's not so.

XM's Hugh Panero has already spoken to Steve Jobs and nothing has come from that either.

The satellite providers would love to get involved with the iPod, but why would Apple want to break its strangle-hold on locking out any competitors to the iTunes Music Store?

This article suggests that the board was considering breaking up HP. Interesting. It doens't rule out the possibility of a future breakup either.

"While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision," Fiorina said in a statement.

Well, apparently it will someday rock Google's little universe because according to John Dvorak [1] they are likely going to customize Firefox with Google branding, Google shortcuts, and possibly even ultimately develop some sort of Net-based operating system that runs in the browser, thus putting a serious hurt on Micro$oft.

Now, we've heard such talk before, but Google seems like they might just be able to pull off at least some of this, if true. That would certainly rock somebody's world!

[1] This story was rejected yesterday by the esteemed 'editors' of slashdot.

I should also have included some relevant links to Internet based news sources bookmarked in Safari:

Slashdot of course.
CNN of course.
NYTimes for the writing and quality of reporting.
BBC for the big mainstream non American news perspective.
Kevin Sites for on the ground reporting in Iraq.
Dan Gillmor for news grassroots news.
CBS for financial info.
CNET for tech news.
Global Security for political defense news.
Google for a good news accumulator.
Cryptome because John manages to pull some pretty damned interesting articles out.
NPR of course. Don't forget to donate.
Reuters because they have the news.
Washington Post for beltway news.
Wall St. Journal for more financial news.
NPR Marketplace for more financial news.
CBS for mainstream US news.
Technocrat for real science oriented geek news, like Slashdot only with less noise.
Oh, yeah and
Macsurfer for a Macintosh community oriented news accumulator.

IBM to give free access to 500 patents
CNet
And others

More, importantly, does this mean we can get a live feed from the MacWorld Keynote tomorrow?

=)

- Tony

No, I do not belive they have. But on the same topic, why is that important? I guess it could be important to you, judging by your username ;). Here is a quote from a about Amazon.com's "undeserved kudos" for innovation:

The author or co-author of 11 books about branding and marketing thinks the man behind Amazon.com does not deserve the kudos of Business Week magazine. Al Ries said Jeff Bezos should not be touted as one of the greatest innovators of the past 75 years because ... Amazon.com doesn't make money. Writing on AdAge.com, Ries says at the rate Amazon.com is going it will take the online retailer 85 years to break even from its accumulated $3 billion in losses. "Amazon.com pioneered a number of Internet innovations like one-click shopping," Ries concedes. But "Bezos went off the track" by adding dozens of other product categories to the business." Bezos should emulate Nintendo, Ries said. "If you want to make money, keep your brand focused. If you want to make the pages of Business Week, be our guest and get into everything."

How does making money and being profitable have anything to do with being innovative? His argument is blatantly weak, and highlights some ideologies that I personally find troublesome. Namely, the idea that innovation goes hand-in-hand with money. Granted, a fundamental principle of capitalism and the free market is that competition will spur innovation, and lead to new, cutting-edge ideas that will improve the quality of life and generate massive revenue. But to me, it seems counter-intuitive for a company to stop expansion into unconquered frontiers simply because the actions may not necessarily result in profits. In the article, Ries claims that Amazon.com should emulate Nintendo and maintain a focused approach. But how has Nintendo been doing? I'm not a big console gaming fan, but it seems like their grip on the market has been slipping to Sony and Microsoft. It wasn't until the recent release of the revolutionary, innovative (gasp) Nintendo DS system that they have seemingly regained some momentum. So why play it safe and stray from exploring new ideas and concepts just to make money? Then again, it is also possible to have the best of both worlds, and make money while coming up with new ideas. This is something Microsoft is quite good at, and I admire its business model and its ability to utilize such a business approach. Being a gigantic corporation with deep, deep pockets, Microsoft is able to take challenges on multiple fronts and try to come up with the next big thing in various sectors of technology. In contrast, companies like Electronic Arts take advantage of their big share of their respective markets and seem to be just slowly milking their successful products (ie. the endless lines of sports titles that are released every year with little improvement), hoping to make big money with quick, uninspired, non-creative tweaks to existing "brand name" products. But Microsoft is different. Just because they have money (and lots of it) and are consistently profitable and extremely stable, the company is still willing to innovate. I think such a mentality is extremely important for both the corporation and the individual. Atleast, this is the stance I personally take. Whenever I hear someone making a comment about a company's inability to "break even" or "make a profit," I cringe and chuckle at the same time. Why should that be the criteria for judgement? Personally, I would much rather work on something that has the potential to drastically change the way we live our lives than work on something that is guaranteed to make money, but is tried-and-done and mundane. It's just way more fun being creative, coming up with wild, crazy ideas, and having the opportunity to manifest these thoughts and transform them into real, practical goods and services. After all that, money is just an added bonus.

This decision can (and will) be attacked in court by Microsoft. The BIG part of this decision is not the WMP. Quote: "Microsoft must make more of its software code available to competitors to help them create competing products to run on servers. [...]The software maker would comply with Wednesday's ruling in the meantime and would immediately launch a website at which competitors could start the process of applying to license Microsoft's communications protocols for server compatibility."

I'd say that's bigger than WMP being unbundled. Especially since "Microsoft may still offer PC manufacturers a version of Windows with the media player but that it must not offer any commercial, technological or contractual terms that render the stripped-down version less attractive."

Source here

Worth noting revenue for "Movie Companies" was 64 billion in 2003.

Moderate this comment
Negative: Offtopic Flamebait Troll Redundant
Positive: Insightful Interesting Informative Funny

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B 3EAAB40F-9BB2-4049-83BB-BE498FE9810A%7D&siteid=mkt w&dist=

And I quote...

"Adding to Nextel's urgency is its planned transfer to another part of the wireless spectrum to avoid interference issues with public safety providers. That could cost $4 billion or higher.

In addition, Nextel might have to spend several billions more to upgrade the speed and capacity of its network, a decision that could prompt the company to junk its inferior Iden wireless technology in favor of the CDMA standard now used by Sprint. Nextel is the only wireless carrier that uses Iden."

Wallstreet seems to think there is.

Thanks for the suggestion.. I just spent an hour reading interviews. The arguments for and against are spectacular. Just some of the things I read..

The startling fact is that Wal-Mart gets 60-70% profit margin off of Asian imports, and ONLY 15-20% on domestic produced goods.

Wal-Mart buyers have intimiate knowledge of every producers products and cost of production. Manufacturers are forced to outsource to China or be replaced by import goods.

Wal-Mart demands price decreases every year, and offers to buy larger quantities in lue.

Wal-Mart imports approximately 10% of the total American imports (by cost) from China. That's 15 billion dollars. Sales Revenue (last 12 months) is at 280 billion.

What America is doing every year is sending 150 billion dollars to China. We're not selling much to China either.. so eventually we will go bankrupt because we can grow our own income as fast as we're mailing it across the ocean.

A healthy fair trade would be to grow both of our economies.

My own worry.. I think we're starting to feel the pressure as our Dollar plunges even lower. There's a good article on Market Watch

Of course it is possible to keep a Windows machine naked on the net without it getting cracked.

1. You can't connect an unpatched MS-Windows machine to the 'Net. Even Redmond admits that in their blame-the-admin campaign. See also articles like, "Unpatched {Windows} PC "Survival Time" Just 16 Minutes".

2. Even if you download the patch and install it before exposing the MS-Windows machine to the 'Net, the patch may not work. MS Patches are infamous for being incomplete, breaking 3rd party applications, failing to patch what they claim to patch, or even resurrecting old security problems. e.g. Attack pierces fully patched Windows XP

3. Even if the patch does work, there are many widely known problems left unaddressed by the patch, such as this problem that MS still hasn't acknowledged.

4. Even if the points above are magically resolved, you still have reality bite you: You can't patch fast enough.

A lot of folks are heavily in denial about just how bad shape MS really is in. It's been a great ride, but it's time to get off. If you weren't early in and at the top of the pyramid scheme, then don't even think about it. Either way it's time to look away from Redmond and back to software that works and is actually designed to work.