Slashdot Mirror

Of Enron vs. accounting regulations fame? Looks like he's still SEC chairman. The SEC under the current admin seems determined to let big corps do whatever they want.

Baystar's initial $50M investment was later converted into "shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock" with several interesting restrictions. These Series A Convertibles represent 3,850,000 shares of common stock. Read this S-3/A report, about a 1/3 the way down under the section heading "The holders of shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock have preferential redemption rights and rights upon liquidation that could adversely affect the holders of our common stock."

Here is the full section:

If the selling stockholders choose not to convert shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock, then, as holders of shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock, among other rights, they will be entitled to require us to repurchase for cash all the shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock held by them at a premium price if any of several redemption trigger events occurs. Our redemption obligation may be triggered by events that are beyond our control. These redemption provisions, if triggered, would require us to redeem the then-issued and outstanding shares of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock for cash. If we were required to pay cash to the holders of shares of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock, it could have a material impact on our liquidity, which may require us to obtain additional sources of cash to sustain operations and may negatively impact the holders of our common stock.

Additionally, the holders of shares of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock will be entitled to receive a preferential distribution of our assets prior to any distribution to our holders of common stock upon a liquidation, dissolution, winding up or other change in control transaction in which we sell all or substantially all our assets or merge or consolidate or otherwise combine with another company or entity. Upon the occurrence of a liquidation event, the holders of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock will be entitled to receive the greater of:

the value of the shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock held by them determined by multiplying the closing sale price of our common stock on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market on the date of the liquidation event by the number of shares of common stock into which the preferred shares could be converted at the time of the liquidation event; or

up to $50 million, the aggregate purchase price paid by the selling stockholders for shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock in our private placement, plus eight percent of that amount less the amount of any dividends paid to the preferred stockholders in the calendar year in which the liquidation event occurs.

Depending on the amount of assets we have available for distribution to stockholders upon a liquidation event when shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock remain outstanding, we may be required to distribute all such assets or a portion of such assets that exceeds the preferred stockholders' pro rata ownership of our common stock assuming full conversion of their preferred shares into common stock, which could eliminate or limit the assets available for distribution to our common stockholders. Our potential obligation to pay to the law firms representing us in our efforts to establish our intellectual property rights a contingent fee of 20 percent of the proceeds we receive from a sale of our company, subject to certain limitations, could also contribute to eliminating or limiting the assets available for distribution to our common stockholders.


Looks like the $50M that Baystar invested in TSG is not very risky at all. If anything "bad" happens to TSG, Baystar gets paid first. Plus the lawyers get 20% of any sale price, probably the only entity that will get paid off before Baystar.

I read this when it first hit the sec.gov website and realized that a

If you take the trouble on filing a formal complain to the SEC you could actualy make a difference.

Second the MS antitrust judge Kollar Kotelly needs to be informed as well. What MS is doing is directly against her ruling.

If you think the SCO case is an important case for the SEC to investigate, you should contact the SEC, telling them to investigate SCO and why you think the SEC should be involved. You should reference specific points from Halloween X and/or Groklaw if you're going to make your point. Most government organizations prioritize in part by whatever wheel squeeks the loudest.

Although the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) never officially makes public when it investigates an organization, an SEC staff member told NewsForge that complaints and tips about suspected under-the-table funding, stock-kiting, illegal insider trading, and money-laundering involving Microsoft or Microsoft-connected individuals to the financially struggling SCO Group have been coming into the agency with regularity since last August. The SEC "does not take such complaints lightly," the source said.

Most of the complaints have been registered by telephone and by using the SEC's Web site. "We've gotten a lot of them," the SEC source said. An SEC investigation would look into alleged backtracking and charting fund transfers, suspicious timing of certain stock transactions, possible instances of stock-kiting and insider trading, and other potentially serious infractions.

Other individuals may be far ahead of the SEC in this investigation. Several open source advocates have been conducting their own, private investigations of SCO's financial dealings for many months.

MacNN is incorrect. If you read the actual report:

Apple Financial Statements

You'll see $4.8 billion as of Dec 2003 in cash and investments, and $7.0 billion in total assets.

The latest Filling was Feburary 10th, summmarized full My educated geuss since most filling as trimesterly about May 10th will be the next major SEC filling.

Judging by, among others, these articles in Slate (here and here); these articles regarding an Eisner biography (here and here); this little gossipy titbit; and this critical letter of resignation from Roy E. Disney, the dissatisfaction with Eisner seems to have been brewing for quite some time.

He did resign, but only after it was clear that he was not going to be nominated for the Board again, as this letter states.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /Archives
Disallow: /Archives/bin
Disallow: /Archives/dev
Disallow: /Archives/etc
Disallow: /Archives/ftp
Disallow: /Archives/gopher
Disallow: /Archives/tmp
Disallow: /Archives/usr
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /bin
Disallow: /oursite/previews

The gains that Linux, BSD, OS X and others have made despite this warchest is quite a testimonial as to how far behind that company's technology is.

Please copy and distribute Let's Put SCO Behind Bars. It has a Creative Commons license. From the page:

The stock of companies offerring Linux products and services may have been unfairly devalued as well. Stockholders in any of the affected companies - either SCO or its competitors - may wish to avail themselves of the Security and Exchange Commission's Investor Complaint Form to ask that something be done about this. You may not even be aware that you have standing to complain: if you invest in any mutual funds that hold shares in SCO, IBM, Red Hat or any other company that offers Linux products or services, then you have a right to ask the SEC to investigate. Check with your mutual fund to find out which securities are in its portfolio.

My searching turned up news stories saying ~$3MM. The company's form 8-K from Feb. 2003 shows they took a one-time restructuring charge of $150MM. Is that where you got the number?

No they didn't. AT&T and CBS have both condensed their names, but according to their latest quarterly report, IBM are still officially "INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION".

The Asset Purchase Agreement has been available on Groklaw for a while now. It was used by SCO as Exhibit in their original complaint.

Links to APA related documents (from Groklaw.net)
APA, APA Amendment 1, APA Amendment 2. TLA

The Asset Purchase Agreement has been available on Groklaw for a while now. It was used by SCO as Exhibit in their original complaint.

Links to APA related documents (from Groklaw.net)
APA, APA Amendment 1, APA Amendment 2. TLA

And, at the rate they're going, it never will be cost effective. In MS' first fiscal quarter (July 1, 2003- September 30, 2003) the Home and Entertainment Division, where the Xbox is, lost $273 million. Most of that was from the Xbox. In MS' last fiscal year (ended June 31 2003), the Home and Entertainment Division lost $990 million dollars; again, most of that from the Xbox. And in the previous fiscal year (ended June 31 2002) the Home and Entertainment Division lost $866 million; again, mostly from the Xbox. These figures easily found in Microsoft's SEC filings.

It will never become cost efficient at this rate.

Ironically, the division that normally loses the most money, besides the Xbox part of the Home and Entertainment Division, used to be MSN. But, in this last fiscal quarter it actually came out in the black, with $58 million in profit; compared to losing $147 million in the same quarter last year.

Maybe all those dumb butterfly ads actually worked.

Further, copyrights are contained in the list of excluded assets, and that list is not modified in any way by Amendment 2.

Wrong. That is exactly what is amended in section A of Amendment 2.

Thus Novells copyrights are NOT explicitly excluded (the patents are though). But it is open to interpetation (see other comments on this).

As much as I'd like Novell to be right, it really isn't clear-cut at all who owns the Unix copyrights.

The original Asset purchase agreement does not give SCO any copyrights, but amendment 2 to the deal raises questions. SCO says this gives them copyrights, Novell disagrees.

What does the amendment say?
The section on assets excluded from the deal is:
All copyrights and trademarks, except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies.

So, skipping the double-negation and some of the blaha, the deal includes:
[Novell] copyrights and trademarks [..] required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX

So it really hinges on what is meant by "required with respect to the acquisition".

SCO says this means everything.

Novells interpretation is that SCO must demonstrate a requirement of these copyrights for them to be transferred. Patent rights, which SCO have made claims to (in court documents!) were definetly not transferred. That is explicit in the deal (and the amendments don't change that)

Given, reading the documents, the intent of the deal does not to appear to be to give SCO all rights to UNIX. But it's difficult to say.

Since this is a matter of interpretation, and SCOs whole case against IBM is built on this ownership, it's unlikely that they'll ever accept Novells ownership of copyright. It's also unlikely that they'll sue Novell, they're busy enough litigating as it is. (even if they seem to want more)

I think we all know Novell will have to bring suit to resolve this. The question is if they will, seing that it's not a clear-cut win, and they really don't have much to win on it either. (If Unix had had value as a product, we wouldn't have had this mess to begin with)

Edgar form 4 reports insider trades. Why are people still investing? The insiders are cashing in stock options like crazy.

Google management will have 6 months after the IPO to find ways of keeping anybody important to their operation that is about to become rich. There are SEC rules that employees are not allowed to sell their shares for 6 months after the IPO. Here is a very good explanation. It is possible that people who "know too much" may not be allowed to sell their shares for years.

The other side is that while most full-timers at Google have either shares or options, they probably did not amount to much compared to their salary. If those shares become worth ten times their value, and the employee decides to cash out, they will probably gain a few years salary. That might be wrong in this case. With a market cap of $36 billion, even a few shares may be enough to retire. Most companies plan at least 10% of their stock to cover employee options. $3.6 billion / 650 employees gives an average of $5.5 million. On the good side (for us), maybe most of those options are not vested yet.

The big winners are the ones who started the company or invested cash for shares. The investors should not matter to operations, and the founders have already made enough to retire if that was their preference.

---
Here is a link to the story that Google might be forced to IPO that I should have included in my last post. 500 share or option holders and $10 million in assets forces an IPO.

Here is a link to the actual rules. See "Corporate Reporting".

DMCA Notification Letter
SCO has commenced providing notification to selected Fortune 1000 Linux end users outlining additional violations of SCO's copyrights contained in Linux. Certain copyrighted application binary interfaces have been copied verbatim from the UNIX System V code base and contributed to Linux without proper authorization and without copyright attribution. Any part of any Linux file that includes the copyrighted binary interface code must be removed. This ABI code was part of a 1994 settlement agreement involving the University of California at Berkeley and Berkeley Systems Development, Inc., (BSDI).

Their stupidity never ceases to amaze me. Well, if it "must be removed", then tell us what is it that "must be removed", dammit!

Also note that they claim that the ABI code was part of the settlement between UCB and BSDI (and SCO/ATT/Caldera/Novell are neither of those two...) :-)

AOL is losing money to companies that are offering a cheaper service so now when a customer calls and wants to cancel they can offer them a cheaper service and still keep their customer

This is less than true; granted, AOL's suffered some encroachment on the bottom, but it's not nearly as significant as the destruction from above from broadband availability. Over 80% of the rural broadband customers the company I work for signs up comes from AOL - not from low-cost dialup. Those $5 to $10/mo. Internet users stay with their low-use plans. It's the $22 for AOL + second phone line to use all the included hours (at another $20 with taxes) = $42/month for crummy old AOL that gives consumers a very easy decision going broadband.

Consider AOL's focus the past 10+ years: "unlimited hours." They were never the low price; consumers that wanted a $10 or less service found plenty of local ISP options and in the past 5 years, Netzero, ad-supported dialup and various sub-$10 approaches flooded the market.

Reading AOL's 10Ks, they've been pretty clear that they don't see themselves in this market. Instead, they proclaim more of a value pricing model - lots of hours at a good price. The only problem is that their unlimited buffet quickly became a fare that was unpaletable to an increasing amount of consumers, especially those who spend more time online and were AOL's primary market. Somebody opened up a buffet next door, and for another $10-$20/month (about 50% to 100% the price of that second phone line, so in many cases, the consumer ends up saving money by switching), it's several dozen times the quality.

So I wouldn't expect they perceive this move as a defensive one. Perhaps, in fact, its a low risk (no AOL brand name at stake) move to test the waters on the sub-$10 market where they never have been strong. I'll contradict a previous post - this actually might make sense. After all, AOL's a cash cow and they're going to have to do something with all the dialup foundation to keep it competitive as the dialup market loses most of its upper 80% of consumer. They're going to be left with 100% price-based market.

Move the AOL operations over to the Netscape brand (and rebrand as AOL) and you've got another lease on life. This sounds to me as if non-AOL execs made this call. This is a move 1 year out from cutting over AOL to a low-cost, low-price operation and Netscape (in a rather perverse way) might actually end up being the beginning of the end of AOL.

Interesting move, Time Warner...

*scoove*

Drug companies spend twice as much on marketing as on R & D.

This is silly, and it's bad because it's oft-repeated.

First of all, the data that you refer to looks at expenses that include marketing/advertising AND administrative expenses, so it's disingenous to say what you're saying. Let's take Pfizer, for example. Look at the financial statements in their annual report.

On revenue of $32 billion in 2002, they spent $5 billion on R&D (about 16% of revenue) as opposed to $10.8 billion on SI&A (selling, informational & administrative) expenses, which is about 34% of revenue, or, yes, twice R&D.

But how much do you think the "administrative" portion accounts for? Let's look JUST at employee costs: in the 10-K they have to say how many employees they have; they have about 98,000. Let's say the employees each cost, on average, $75,000 per year, using the rule of thumb that employees cost about twice their salary (which average is ballparked to about 37k per year -- a pretty low average, I would say). JUST the employee cost would be almost $7 billion dollars.

That leaves about $3.8 billion for marketing, which is a lot less than R&D. And of course we're not considering 1) costs other than employee costs, like property/plant/equipment -- geez, the annual report lists this for Pfizer on a stand-alone basis (that means, not counting the subsidiaries, which I'll get to in a sec) as $1.8 billion dollars! And 2) before this year, at least, Pfizer had several consumer products divisions that naturally required much less R&D and much, much more marketing. This skew -- which I think exists in all the big drug companies -- certainly isn't clear just from looking at the bare numbers.

At any rate, it's clear that Pfizer, at least, certainly doesn't spend "twice as much on marketing as on R & D".

BTW, another way of looking at it is this: the data that's often repeated says that the 9 biggest drug companies spent about $45.4 billion dollars on "marketing, advertising and administration" last year. If we took this total to mean "marketing", it would be crazy. According to AdAge, the total amount spent domestically on advertising was only $83 billion last year. For EVERY SINGLE advertiser in this country. There's no F---ing way that more than half of this expenditure was marketing by the 9 major drug companies.

Wanna do away with government interference in drug prices? Fine - start by ceasing the issuance of patents.

This is also silly. The empirical evidence that best supports the idea that IP protection encourages more innovation comes from the pharmaceutical industry; in fact, there's a lot of contrary evidence for a lot of other industries, but not for pharma. (See, for example, studies by Levin, Cohen, Allison & Lemley, Kortum & Lerner; there are lots of them.)

The parent is right -- getting rid of patents would be a tremendous net negative to society, at least with respect to medicine.

And no, I don't work for Pfizer or represent them. I'm just huge on sanity checks.

I do not live in America, but shouldnt there be a lot of people reporting SCO to the appropriate governmental Body that oversees frauds in the stockmarket? (SEC)

For p&d (pump and dump) to actually occur, SCO must be shown to be making false claims for the purpose of increasing their stock. At this point that cannot be determined (legally) since nothing has been proven in a court of law. That doesn't mean the SEC isn't watching.

The FTC might also be watching, since interstate commerce is involved.

Are they waiting until the hammer falls (most likely) in heavy disfavor to Sco?

I think they have to wait. I do hope they are watching.

(Holy Shit, Batman, did I actually say I hoped the government was watching?)

Stock Exchange Commission???

Try "Securites and Exchange Commission".

I suspect that Boies and Co. think so too. Did you notice - they aren't working on contingency. They want money up front, now. If they truly believed in their cause I would think that they would prefer to wait for the big payoff.

After spending 10 seconds on the web to confirm/deny the assertion.. here is what was found.

Read one such article on the web

Here is another

And another
Form 10Q filing for Microsoft

And another
How about an old slashdot story

Not bad for 10 seconds work. Now let's see how well you fair. Find four more links and post them here :-)

If you trust its reporting, you can see that its main two cash cows are sliding and more and more is spent on marketing. I'd speculate that even some of the non-marketing line items include activities that other companies would consider marketing.

Keep in mind that other hype engines, Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, to name a few, also showed nice profits -- until their books got a proper going over. Given that it's a company found guilty of illegal anti-comptetitive activities and during the trial video testimony was forged and several contradictions in executive testimonies leave a suspicion of perjury and there is a history of cooking the books to hide an $18 billion loss, I'd be suspicious of any self-reported figures. But, hey, it's your money.

Even if the oft-cited-but-still-unseen money in the bank is real, it could disappear in security penalties, false advertising fines or anti-trust action. $1 trillion is a lot larger than $50 billion. Or, even if it is real and does not disappear in fines, then it could be used up trying to get vapourware such as .not and leghorn to market by 2006. Three years is too long for businesses to suffer with tools that are not ready for the Internet when most have enterprise level drop-in GNU/Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X replacements which are Internet ready now.

Once national investments and the larger funds have divested, there won't be any pretense to pretend that the company is viable.

If you trust its reporting, you can see that its main two cash cows are sliding and more and more is spent on marketing. I'd speculate that even some of the non-marketing line items include activities that other companies would consider marketing.

Keep in mind that other hype engines, Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, to name a few, also showed nice profits -- until their books got a proper going over. Given that it's a company found guilty of illegal anti-comptetitive activities and during the trial video testimony was forged and several contradictions in executive testimonies leave a suspicion of perjury and there is a history of cooking the books to hide an $18 billion loss, I'd be suspicious of any self-reported figures. But, hey, it's your money.

Even if the oft-cited-but-still-unseen money in the bank is real, it could disappear in security penalties, false advertising fines or anti-trust action. $1 trillion is a lot larger than $50 billion. Or, even if it is real and does not disappear in fines, then it could be used up trying to get vapourware such as .not and leghorn to market by 2006. Three years is too long for businesses to suffer with tools that are not ready for the Internet when most have enterprise level drop-in GNU/Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X replacements which are Internet ready now.

Once national investments and the larger funds have divested, there won't be any pretense to pretend that the company is viable.

If you trust its reporting, you can see that its main two cash cows are sliding and more and more is spent on marketing. I'd speculate that even some of the non-marketing line items include activities that other companies would consider marketing.

Keep in mind that other hype engines, Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, to name a few, also showed nice profits -- until their books got a proper going over. Given that it's a company found guilty of illegal anti-comptetitive activities and during the trial video testimony was forged and several contradictions in executive testimonies leave a suspicion of perjury and there is a history of cooking the books to hide an $18 billion loss, I'd be suspicious of any self-reported figures. But, hey, it's your money.

Even if the oft-cited-but-still-unseen money in the bank is real, it could disappear in security penalties, false advertising fines or anti-trust action. $1 trillion is a lot larger than $50 billion. Or, even if it is real and does not disappear in fines, then it could be used up trying to get vapourware such as .not and leghorn to market by 2006. Three years is too long for businesses to suffer with tools that are not ready for the Internet when most have enterprise level drop-in GNU/Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X replacements which are Internet ready now.

Once national investments and the larger funds have divested, there won't be any pretense to pretend that the company is viable.

Fair enough; good point. Of course, I wasn't talking about those kinds of companies.

And to respond to the AC: most regular corporations never have "make as much money as possible", or anything remotely like that, in their charter. The closest you'll get is the statement of the corporation's purpose, and nowadays, at least in Delaware, it's something like "the purpose of this Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity for which corporations may be organized". (That is the stated purpose of VA Software (parent to slashdot); you can see it in one of their amended S-1s back in 1999).

I suppose you wouldn't call $8,000,000 funding, then?

$8 million? Chuckle. That is just ONE of the Microsoft payments to SCO. Look in the SEC filing you linked to:

" During the quarter ended April 30, 2003, SCO entered into a licensing agreement with Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft"). The initial licensing agreement allowed Microsoft, at its election, to exercise two options to allow Microsoft to acquire expanded licensing rights with respect to SCO?s UNIX source code. During the quarter ended July 31, 2003, Microsoft exercised and paid for the first of these options. During SCO's current quarter, ending October 31, 2003, Microsoft exercised and paid $8,000,000 for the second option. "

The SECOND deal was for 8 million dollars. There was a filing last quarter about the first deal. That one was for 6 to 8 million dollars up front, plus an additional 5 million over the next three quarters. So the first deal totaled 11 to 13 million. Add the two deals and Microsoft is handing SCO about 20 million dollars. (And for all we know the second deal may include an additional 5 million over the next three quarters as well.)

Just prior to the Microsoft deal, SCO's market capitalization was about 10 million dollars. Now, would someone like to explain to me why the hell anyone would pay 20 million to buy a licence from SCO when all of SCO itself only carried a 10 million dollar price tag?

Not only that, but SCO had NEVER had a profitable quarter prior to the Microsoft deal. They were bleeding cash horribly and soon would have gone bankrupt.

In addition to those cash payments, SCO has also received a 50 million infusion from an investment group with ties to Microsoft. There isn't any evidence that Microsoft influenced this 50 million inventment, but it sure does look suspicious.

-

Troll?

I suppose you wouldn't call $8,000,000 funding, then?

How about $8,000,000 worth of evidence this quarter alone?

Plus the money Microsoft gave them last quarter...

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Actually they have been. See here, here, and here. Look for the "Option Exercise at" lines. They were exercising their stock options. Which would you do for your company, exercise an option at 5-20% of the current market value, or pay market rate?

You can see more from Edgar:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

On August 6, 1998 the United States Securities and Exchange Commission filed an administrative proceeding alleging securities fraud against a San Diego, California company named Spacedev Inc. According to the SEC, Spacedev is a microcap company that promotes itself extensively on the Internet. The company claims that it intends to launch an unmanned spacecraft to a near earth asteroid in approximately 2000. The SEC alleges that the company made false and misleading statements over the Internet and via other media in violation of U.S. securities laws. The SEC is seeking cease and desist orders against Spacedev and its chairman, James W. Benson.

Well that just sounds like a right fine company they got there.

More Links

Oh please. Mr Moller has been working on this skycar of his since the 1960s, and during that period he has always been just a few years from completion. In the meantime, he has used about any trick of deceptive advertising in the book in order to lure money from easily fooled investors and geeks.

Given the number of years Moller has been at this, and the lack of success so far (he hasn't even done one untethered flight, I have high doubts if Mr. Moller will ever reach the age where a skycar (his or someone else's) will ever fly.