Slashdot Mirror

Intel released their Q3 results late Tuesday. In their conference call they were evasive about a suprising drop in their tax rate and also about the amount of their inventory writeoff. Intel claimed their inventory was down $43 million to $3.2 billion with an unspecified writeoff amount. Investors were happy to see inventory did not go up again and the stock went up Wednesday. In several different articles people are working out the mystery of the writeoff amount. Normally Intel's "cost of sales" is a steady number. Any writeoff will add to this number. So you can estimate the writeoff just by seeing how much this increased. With this calculation, it seems Intel had a writeoff of $472 million.

Intel released their Q3 results late Tuesday. In their conference call they were evasive about a suprising drop in their tax rate and also about the amount of their inventory writeoff. Intel claimed their inventory was down $43 million to $3.2 billion with an unspecified writeoff amount. Investors were happy to see inventory did not go up again and the stock went up Wednesday. In several different articles people are working out the mystery of the writeoff amount. Normally Intel's "cost of sales" is a steady number. Any writeoff will add to this number. So you can estimate the writeoff just by seeing how much this increased. With this calculation, it seems Intel had a writeoff of $472 million.

AT&T is implementing several measures to cut costs dramatically, purportedly including job cuts.

A Linux migration, genuine or merely made as a threat in negotiations with Microsoft to obtain lower licensing fees, is also a bold cost-cutting measure.

Cost-cutting isn't limited to companies in trouble, though, and as Linux becomes more mature and companies begin to accumulate successful track records using Linux, such announcments will become common. Companies will move to Linux as a competitive manoeuvre and, for that reason, may choose not to disclose how they're cutting costs.

Linux will probably be ready sooner than most people expect - it has no comparibly heavily-funded marketing drive to trumpet its most recent successes and largely relies on word of mouth, snippets of news articles, and occassional bits of advertising from IBM and Novell. I'm a Linux user and I don't keep up with the latest best features of Linux.

Not only will Linux be ready sooner, its move to broader prominence in the market will take the general public by surprise (even though the party faithful that have been proclaiming Linux RSN since 199x will wonder what took so long).

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B 3FA7194E%2D79F9%2D4398%2DB541%2DFB46D3E92111%7D&si teid=mktw

"And, even if the founders spoke only about their outside interests beyond Google, the SEC may consider the interview a violation of the quiet period, he said."

1. Each share is priced well over US$100 and the MINIMUM bid is FIVE shares. That's over ~US$550 if you want to own a tiny piece of the company.
2. The two founders will own a minority stake but retain 60% of the voting rights. WHAT? Where's the accountability (especially after Enron, Worldcom...) Too much power concentrated on top of the foodchain. Investors have TINY input on decisions, i.e. no input how to make their investment better.
3. Slate article on Dutch Auction. Quote:

   First, auctions are not a new IPO mechanism. They have been tried in numerous countries over the last 25 years (including the United States) and, in almost all cases, have been discarded in favor of the traditional American IPO method. Second, what's good for the company (high price) is often bad for investors (less upside). Third, those willing to pay the most for shares may not be those best qualified to evaluate their worth. Fourth, and relatedly, auctions are generally not better for individual investors (i.e., us). When individuals "win" auctions (e.g., get stock), it is often because they outbid professional investors who have better information and/or a better sense of value. In such cases, the future stock performance is usually lousy, and the "winners" end up losing.

4. Google at $3B is overvalued at a P/E of over 100. Yahoo! is valued at the same but has a LONGER and MORE PERSISTENT performance record. Microsoft made MSN Search in mere 11 months. Search market is cooling down in the fall (temporarily or - worse - permanently), so to bank on Google making lots of profits and continue to do so for next few decades in order to justify $100/share is more of a gamble than a investment.

5. Just go to MarketWatch, last week's Economist (subscr.), and a whole load other places and they will all tell you how short sighted this MSN article is. Yes, it will avoid the pop. But that does NOT necessarily make it better. The way it's being conducted now, it remains to be seen.

I do my research all right. I am a shareholder in AAPL. You are the guy with the bad attitude and wrong assumptions. Do you even know the difference between revenue and profit. More revenue does not necessarily mean more profits. Do you mean that these guys are wrong and you are right. If you have any solid numbers with a source for profits please feel free to post them

Steve Jobs
http://www.forbes.com/facesinthenews/2004/07/15/07 15autofacescan02.html?partner=yahoo&referrer=

Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/infoimaging /2004/07/16/infoimagingbhsuper_2004_07_16_INHT_000 0-8217-KEYWORD.Missing.html?partner=yahoo&referrer =

CBS
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yhoo/story.asp?sou rce=blq/yhoo&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo&guid=%7BDE3A09A 5-CDE6-481A-8AD3-5A7DE38EE971%7D/

I do agree with you on the margins on iTunes being low. But the RIAA would have to cut its bloated share of the pie soon enough.

Someone may have already mentioned this, and if so - I apologize. But I noticed this in another article on the topic of the new iPods - it seems that incoming Duke University freshmen will be receiving iPods pre-loaded with "Duke University content." How frickin' cool is this?

Since Bush has been in power the Geneva convention is more or less void

Well, considering that the Geneva conventions are limits of wartime behaviour, they have been more or less void since December 1941, which is the last time congress declared war.

a country has been overrun

Overrun by what?

the country is spending billions (more) on weapons

Wrong. Defense Spending is significantly lower than previous times of conflict, which is impressive considering that we are not fighting any single nation, but rather a philosophy that is present in many parts of the world.

Israel gets a "do whatever you like" card

US policy regarding Israel hasn't changed over the past 30 years. Why would you blame Bush for this?

rights have been taken away from citizens

And what "rights" would those be? The right to know if a Cell Phone network went down? (Hint: If your phone loses service, there is a good chance the network went down)

corporate america has been placed above the law

Besides the crooks who broke the law.

the VN was almost invalidated

The UN was invalidated because they failed to enforce their own resolutions for 13 years.

money for good causes is being withdrawn

Let me guess, a "good cause" is something that you agree with, right?

America, get yourself another president, _please_.

owlstead, get yourself an educated argument, _please_.

Redhat's P/E is an amzing 125.

More details about the scheme are available at CBS Marketwatch.

The bulk of TiVo's new subscribers last quarter came through its partnership with DirecTV, which offers TiVo service built into some of its television set-top boxes so that users can pause live TV, easily set up recordings and skip past commercials...

AP Online

Apple has denied that there will be any price increase, and furthermore, they are in multi-year contracts with the different record labels such that the price is locked at $0.99 for at least a couple more years.

Good News you don't have to die.

You can't prove that you aren't a child molestor, so should we suggest that you may be?

If you're going to accuse me of being a child molester, you had better have proof that I am. However, if you are going to refrain from leaving your child alone with me on the off-chance that I (or anyone else you don't know for that matter) may be a child molester, that's just good sense. I never accused him of writing a trojan. But I am going to refrain from installing the patch until I'm convinced that he didn't. You haven't convinced me.

You can make up any kind of unsubstantiated suspicion and then argue that it's valid becaue no one can prove that it's wrong.

First, the suspicion is not completely unsubstantiated. People do write trojans, many of them claiming to be patches, like this one. And to assume, without good evidence, that this one isn't a trojan is naive at best, reckless and negligent at worst.

Second, again, I'm not asking for proof, just evidence. You made the claim that it couldn't possibly be a trojan, berated those who thought it could possibly be, and haven't provided much in the way of evidence to back it up except a) he says it isn't, b) no one else has said it is, and c) your opinion of why he wouldn't bother. Not very convincing I'm afraid.

Third, not being able to prove the assertion does not mean you are relieved of providing evidence to support it.

Besides, you will not convince me that thousands of people tried it and none of them were looking for malware.

Who's asking whom to prove a negative now? I'm not trying to convince you no one looked. The point is you haven't even shown one case where they have. It's not up to me to show they didn't. You're claiming they did, you show they did.

If they publish a link to it and it turns out to have malware, then they get sued for negligence. Therefore, logic dictates that they would have checked that before publishing the story.

Do you have any support for this claim? Any at all?

Then just what do you do? Run an unpatched Windows 98SE system? If so, doesn't that mean that you trust Microsoft, since they supplied the OS?

This has nothing to do with whether or not I trust Microsoft. Nothing at all. It is entirely about you claiming there is no reason to suspect the existence of malware in the patch, providing no evidence to support the assertion, and trying to make others feel stupid for believing otherwise.

HERE is the link

OK, to be more precise, there is no front from Apple. They've had little things that were going to break big for every year for at least the past 6 or 7. Every year, there's OOOOOH XSERVE and OOOOOOOOH ACG and developer support! It's as predictable as "Linux is going to take over this year, really, this is the year, every prediction for the past 7 or 8 turned out wrong but THIS year is really it!"

G5 sales are still disappointing, and look to be so again this quarter. You tried to avoid the main point of any threat specifically from Apple, other than the empty promise that these things that aren't selling, have been out in the market place for a while now, are suddenly going to turn around and start selling like hotcakes.

Apple is going nowhere. They have a few more "gee whiz" products that everyone will stare at through the window and ooh and aaaah and then walk off without a purchase.

Where are the tons of orders for XServes?

Where is any evidence that their sliding sales and tiny market share is going anywhere but down? How are they compensating for the disappointing G5 sales?

E-Loan is the company you are thinking of. Coverage of the policy here, and here.

The story is a little onesided. Kerry thinks everybody should have broadband, too. Check the CBS article Bush, Kerry see broadband as election issue. If it asks for a member ID and a password, use "memberid" and "password" respectively. Bush says he wants broadband for everybody by 2007, Kerry says he wants to spur technologies that will bring broadband to everybody. Same thing. However, on slashdot, we're only allowed to point out when Republicans say stupid things, not when Democrats do. Didn't you read the F.A.Q.?

Made out?

Hmm.

While Apple's iPod sales remain strong -- the company sold 730,000 iPods in its last quarter and had pre-release orders for 100,000 iPod mini music players -- Bachman said the company's G5 sales could turn out to be disappointing for the second quarter in a row.

For its fiscal first quarter, which ended Dec. 27, Apple shipped 206,000 G5 computers, short of many analysts' estimates. Bachman has estimated that Apple would ship 195,000 G5s in its current quarter.

Sounds like it didn't work to me. They hardly 'made out' on that one.

Nope.

Over 10 years they are down over all. As with many companies you would have only made significant money if you sold right before the crash.

10 year chart

Probably because CNet pays them more than they could make running their own web site. Running a web-site would involve getting out and selling ad space and buying lots of bandwidth. Both of these roles are probably more cost-effecively done from the fancy CNet building in San Francisco, because it's a better place to shmooze with advertisers and suppliers.

CNet still has a nice cushion of IPO cash that they can use to pay Indian developers well as well as buying more expensive things like Esther Dyson's EDVentures

I'm sure Esther didn't come cheap, so I think CNet's right when they say it's not just for the money savings. If a writer in India can produce better content for the same price they'll hire one there. If Esther can provide even-better content for a much higher price, they'll hire her too.

My guess is that the cost of the Indian writers to build out the sales side of the proposed website wouldn't be possible in the post-.com-ipo era.

Consumer confidence declined 9 points in February

Feb Retail sales disappoint, come only from car sales

Yeah, I'll bet the archair CEO's are anxious to go after Steve for doing such a thing. I mean, it might be different if Pixar's last quarterly financial results were record-setting, or if they made over 50% profit.

Oh wait, Pixar did all those things.

Never mind. Maybe he's not such a bad leader after all.

My father pays more in medical malpractice insurance than I made last year.

Do I believe you that you make less than $31,500? Sure. Do I care that your dad pays that much for insurance? Not when you figure his take-home pay (pretax) is $500,000. Should you care? No. After all, he makes over 16x your salary.

So what am I saying? I dunno. I guess that your dad is easily in the top 1% of US wage earners and ought to quit bitching about insurance costs.

Imagine you are some non-tech-savvy investor, and all you know about Infiniujm Labs is what you see here. Not so bad, right? So I think the reason Infinium is so intent on protecting its image is because of this fragile bubble they have built around the stock.

...

WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- When individual Americans are accused of helping terrorists, they're thrown in jail and their names are dragged through the mud.

But when major U.S. corporations are caught trading with the enemy, they get just a slap on the wrist from the government.

In the past two weeks, the government has revealed that 57 companies and organizations have been fined for doing business with terrorists, despots and tyrants.

...

Each year, the government investigates thousands of cases of U.S. individuals or companies for alleged violations of the Trading with the Enemy Act and other statutes and executive orders that restrict free trade. Each year, the government imposes millions of dollars in civil penalties and prosecutes 10 or so criminal cases.

We know why the companies are silent about what they've done. No one wants to be associated in the public mind with torturers, thugs and murderers, even if it's profitable to be associated with them in private. The companies' explanations, when available, show that even the most enthusiastic supporter of sanctions can run afoul of the law through no malice on their part.

Source

And here's the evidence.

Be sure to follow a few of the "Next Transactions" links to get a feel for the kind of money these guys are making. Note that in 2002 most of them were getting "award of stock" of as many as 165,000 shares (i.e., they didn't pay for them) as well as stock options, to be exercised later.

which somehow has ended up with 2.5 million less jobs then when it started, Forbes, which supports W despite it's knowledge that the economy grows faster, generates more incomes and profits, a lower unemployment rate and a higher stock market with any Democrat as President, wants to make sure that all those poor, unfortunate spammers/junk faxers still have jobs so that they can pay for further tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and contracts for Halliburton. Is that so wrong? Oh, wait, yes it is.

Translation: we're not making enough cash from North America because they're not taking us seriously. So, we'll hit you guys up for a few bucks.

I really wonder if anybody in Europe will really take these guys seriously? Since SCO was sooooooooo successful in launching their lawsuits in the U.S., I'm sure they'll do just fine in Europe.

Ok, but then check SGI's 125% raise in ten days! What could be the cause?!

Check the post near the middle of the comments by jbardhan:

...but why would somebody have moved >100k shares yesterday afternoon around 4pm? Check here. That's way out of line with their typical volume...

Beautiful.

If you don't trust that website, how about CBS Marketwatch or San Francisco Gate? They are both speculating, but they are larger press than MacRumors and ThinkSecret.

AMD grabs key security advantage. The article says it all.

So the implication is that Intel is only supporting this security feature on enterprise servers (Itanium), while AMD is supporting security on desktops and servers. Combine this with "cool and quiet" in desktop chips, like the mobile chip power saving technology, and 64 bit processing and AMD has quite a value proposition.

Actually, it was the Clinton adminstration that first suggested investing part of the Social Security Trust Fund into the stock market; he just wanted the investments to be controlled by the SSA. What Bush is suggesting is giving investment control to the workers themselves, but limiting them to three broad, index-based funds. This plan is nearly identical to the Federal Savings Program that government workers participate in. Furthermore, if people could have invested in a broad stock market index for 30 years, they *still* would have been better off with the "post-bubble-burst" investments than with Social Security. Check out this chart tracking the price of a S&P 500 tracking stock. It only shows 10 years, which hides a lot of S&P growth, but between 1994 and 2003 (the most recent bottom of the S&P), the price went from 45 to 75 (about a 5.25% compound annual growth rate). If you havn't paniced and stayed in the market you see that it's now at 105 (over 8.8% CAGR). **That** is why personal investment accounts is better than Social Security.

Also check out the other briefing papers which show that personal investment accounts are also better for poor people, minorities, and women than Social Security.

Barron's quotes a Deutsche Bank analyst who said there's a chance for more "dramatic gains" in SCO's stock price, based on the company's intellectual property lawsuits that seek compensation for what SCO claims is its stolen code that's included in the widely used Linux operating system.

To what degree is the mainstream media reviewing reports like this recent one from OSDL? If they are, they're certainly not reporting it. It's looking pretty biased to me!

...There's a chance for more "dramatic gains in the SCO stock price"

...The ability to yank one million lines of code out of five million is substantial; Investors seem to believe that SCO's suit has merit

So, to the average investor, SCO's claim that they matched 1 out of 5 million lines of code in Linux is pretty damning evidence.. whereas domain experts like us can easily see through these lies. Hopefully this comes to light in the courts, 'cause people like us are certainly screaming in a vacuum right now!

I'm thinking that the the financial/business media is leaning towards SCO side since SCO represents a more conventional corporate america, and Linux / GPL threatens that model?

We DO NOT want SCO to turn out like Rambus. For chrissakes, just take a look
at the chart. The company is doing very very very well after WINNING the lawsuits.

10) WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS

WTF? Using the writer's own figures, 2 weddings *4.33 weeks*6months=52 weddings, each requiring at least five hours of on-site work and an equal or greater amount off-site. That comes to a very normal professional service rate of about $115/hour INCLUDING all the expendables. Piss off, buddy, that's par for the course.

I wonder what someone with the following pedigree pulls in, since he failed to print his own salary. Last I worked in news (as an unpaid peon intern, they LOVE that in broadcast media) damn near everyone in the newsroom broke $100k and the big guns made millions:

"CBS Assistant Managing Editor, was a news editor for Bloomberg News, Executive Editor for the Daily Record in Baltimore and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times."

Now, I know he paid his dues at the LA Times, but I'm going to bet he now easily breaks $100k, putting him right smack in the top 7% of earners nationwide. For writing bullshit fluff like this, I think that's pretty damned over-paid. Hell, I've seen better writing on /., maybe he could adjust his salary to the same level of compensation.

I think I'll ask him. Why don't you?

Really, Ask Him

This article seems slashdotted, but there's a similar (same?) article on the CBS site: Ten most overpaid jobs in the U.S. .

Also, check a search on Google News

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Thursday that the firms will standardize designs for Unix servers as early as 2004 and production of high-end servers would be consolidated at a Fujitsu subsidiary.

If they agree to integrate their server operations, the two companies would have more than 40 percent of the Unix server market, topping market leader Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: news, chart, profile).

Fujitsu spokesman Scott Ikeda said that while the two companies enjoy a close partnership and have had discussions in the past, there have not been fresh talks to broaden this relationship.

"At the present time, however, nothing has been decided with respect to expanding the scope of our current relationship with Sun," Fujitsu said in a statement.

This is the reason for the drop: Margin concerns hit Apple shares.

Please back this up with some evidence. I do not believe Boies would be foolish enough to take this case solely on a contengency basis. SCO (or someone) is undoubtedly paying Boies regardless of the outcome of this case.

You do not go after someone with shallow pockets on a flimsy claim on a contingency basis.

SGI does not have shallow pockets. In fact, SCO itself does not have shallow pockets. As far as lawyers are concerned, anyone with enough money to cover their legal fees has deep pockets. SGI is currently worth $200 million.

A nice quote from that article:

In a statement, the DMA said that while it welcomed the ruling, it "acknowledges the wishes of millions of U.S. consumers who have expressed their preferences not to receive" telemarketing solicitations.

I was reading the article and this really struck me

A record industry official pointed to a past print advertisement from SBC's Pacific Bell unit that read, in part: "Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like. Go MP3 crazy. Try new music. Build a song library. Whatever."

"Sure beats going to the record store," the advertisement concluded.

-- snip --

Matthew J. Oppenheim, the trade group's senior vice president for business and legal affairs, said the ad was important because it suggested a strong motive for SBC's position. "SBC believes that free music drives its business,"

Hmmm... I guess they would make quite a bit of money from the excess bandwidth charges from people who download heaps of music. Certainly that would be a strong motive to take this stance, money is a strong motive for a lot of things.

Also.. it may be unrelated but their share price is up $0.35 :)

Software Cures MSBlaster Pain for MS Exchange; Web-based Approach to Exchange Pays Dividends
9/10/2003 10:29:00 AM

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sep 10, 2003 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Seaside Software's products, HiPerExchange and Xkey, have proved their worth for users during the recent MSBlaster crisis. While other companies have scrambled to re-connect their remote Outlook users suddenly cut off by multiple ISPs, Seaside customers have continued to access Exchange without interruption to critical business endeavors.

Companies with remote Outlook users can consider a number of alternatives for accessing their Exchange server, says David Ferris, President and Analyst of messaging consultancy at Ferris Research. The downside is they either add significant cost and complexity (VPNs, wholesale client/server upgrades) or drop majority functionality (eg, offline use in the case of Outlook Web Access). With Seaside's approach, users get rich client features (e.g., offline use, synched online performance, archiving) with their web client, HiPerExchange. By keeping all communications with the server web-based, they sidestep issues caused by worms such as MSBlaster while delivering Exchange to remote users.

OK, I'm a bastard and all, but with the most recent SCO (SCOX) stock jumps can you wait to leave them in the dirt for a few more days. I'll be able to buy my 8 160gb drives in a just another day or two if you'll let the stock continue to climb.

But seriously. This is a good thing. SCO needs to be slapped down like a bad habbit. Darl has pushed this long enough, and with a tool like this, we can finally push back.

Great work Eric!

harryk

In a new article, SCO's Blake Stowell is quoted as saying, "As of Tuesday [Sept. 2], we actually began making the license available. Selling it and mailing it to someone is not something we've actually done as yet, but as of today we are able to do that".

Excuse me for being shocked, but didn't SCO announce on August 11th in a press release, that they'd sold the first license? And didn't SCO then go on to tell us that SCO had signed up at least one additional customer since it sold its first IP License for Linux on Aug. 11?

Wait there's more...

There is an interesting coincidence about the timing of 1st license announcement.

According to marketwatch.com on 11 August:
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/historical/defaul t.asp?detect=1&symbol=SCOX&close_date=8%2F11%2F03& x=48&y=18

Stock opened at $10.45
Heavy trading (965,500 shares)
Fell to a low of $8.27. From Yahoo message board (see below) this low appears to be part of a sharp decline around late lunch time.
Stock closed at $9.289

Go look around here for what was being said on the yahoo board around 1.30 to 2pm this time: http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&actio n=l&mid=&board=1600684464&sid=1600684464&tid=cald& start=26210

The press release when SCO announced their first license was at 2.03pm ET according to the time stamp on it:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030811/lam083_1.html

No doubt the timing is all coincidence.

Another coincidence is that Michael Olson, had a 10b5-1 sell on that day:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/000 110254203000049/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml

No doubt, another coincidence.

So here's the quick summary:

1. SCO issued a press release, August 11, saying they sold their first Linux IP license: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030811/lam083_1.html
2. The press release, luckily for SCO, appeared immediately after the stock crashed to a low of $8.27
3. A SCO insider had a pre-arranged plan to sell stock (and did so) on that day , 11 August: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/000 110254203000049/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml
4. In September, SCO later said they had sold at least one other Linux IP license: http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/03/HNscocus tomer_1.html
5. In September, SCO later said they hadn't sold any Linux IP licenses: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1 817&e=2&u=/zd/20030905/tc_zd/59210&sid=9612075 1
6. I am not sure of the order of articles 4 and 5 in date, but article 4 appears to have been published before 5.

On the bottom of the CBS market watch page a few
interesting links?? (see below)

Coincidence??? Or prophecy?????

Sponsored Matches
(What are Sponsor Matches?)

Avoid Bankruptcy - Learn to Manage Your Money! Free Credit Counseling Services & More

Bankruptcy Alternative - Savings to 70% on Credit Card Debt on $20,000 up: Call 866-7xx-xxxx

"I Filed Bankruptcy" - Read my story and see what it is really like before you file

In other news SCO's stock plummetted 11.4%.

They do have cannonballs for balls and it seems that SCO is starting to make linux look pretty bad in the corporate analyst world. The fact that no one owns linux is starting the crop up as a huge disadvantage. People want IBM or Redhat or one of the other big linux players to step up and say we know this is BS and will indemnify our customers.

I know and you know SCO is on crack, but I believe there is a bigger issue here. Who is going to defend the IP in linux when its origin comes into question? Who is going to stand next to a customer running linux and give them a written document clearing them of any further license fees? I fear that if SCO is allowed to continue its FUD that linux will again appear too risky to use in the corporate world.

An article posted on CBS Marketwatch has this to say:

Laura DiDio, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said that a bigger issue than whether SCO prevails in its IBM suit is why IBM and other companies supporting Linux will not indemnify customers against potential claims from SCO.

DiDio argues that IBM's failure to protect its customers sends several signals to the market, including that Linux is not ready to become a mainstream computer operating system, and that there is a chance that SCO's claims against IBM just might have some validity.

"Every other software and hardware vendor provides indemnification for its products," DiDio said. "IBM is saying it doesn't want to take that chance because SCO might win."

Why won't IBM indemnify their customers? And for that matter how about Red Hat offering indemnity as well for users of their products? If SCO wins, Linux is dead, so it's do or die for Red Hat. Why not diffuse this whole mess and let companies battle it out in the courts?