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the same people responsible for the global financial collapse.
Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Nancy Pelosi?

Realizing you're attempting humor, in an ill-informed trollish sort of way
But actually the 2000 - 2001 congress were the ones that authored and passed the legislation that resulted in the global financial collapse.
Oh, and Greenspan was involved as well, just FYI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)
http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/ts072000.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1837154020080918
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2000/20000210.htm

Open source commonly refers to software whose source code is subject to a license allowing it to be modified, combined with other software and redistributed, subject to restrictions set forth in the license.

A number of commercial firms compete with us using an open source business model by modifying and then distributing open source software to end users at nominal cost and earning revenue on complementary services and products.

These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software. Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives. To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline.

Open source software vendors are devoting considerable efforts to developing software that mimics the features and functionality of our products, in some cases on the basis of technical specifications for Microsoft technologies that we make available ..

The SEC filings in the original post are from 2004. Not the most current evidence damning MS. And since I am all in favor or said damning, here is a quick tutorial on how to search SEC filings using the EDGAR database.

In the "company name" field, type Microsoft. Only two choices there, since it is a pretty unique name. We are going to look at the entity known as "MICROSOFT CORP."

Here is where a lot of people get messed up. You have to look for a form called the "10-K" by entering "10-K" into the "Filing type" text field. That is where all the dirt is, any good corporate researcher will tell you.

From there you have to click on the link in the "Document" column that corresponds with "10-K." After that you just choose the most recent 10-K (annual report), and there should be lots of juicy evidence against the company, written by its very own lawyers.

For example, I just did a simple text search (long document) for the term "open source."

The SEC filings in the original post are from 2004. Not the most current evidence damning MS. And since I am all in favor or said damning, here is a quick tutorial on how to search SEC filings using the EDGAR database.

In the "company name" field, type Microsoft. Only two choices there, since it is a pretty unique name. We are going to look at the entity known as "MICROSOFT CORP."

Here is where a lot of people get messed up. You have to look for a form called the "10-K" by entering "10-K" into the "Filing type" text field. That is where all the dirt is, any good corporate researcher will tell you.

From there you have to click on the link in the "Document" column that corresponds with "10-K." After that you just choose the most recent 10-K (annual report), and there should be lots of juicy evidence against the company, written by its very own lawyers.

For example, I just did a simple text search (long document) for the term "open source."

I love doing this: From the MS Annual Report under "ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS", "To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline."

Mmmmm, original reporting...

The IBM Annual report shows some very interesting things.

Here is a fun one for all my standards wonks, "Without interoperability among all manner of computing platforms, the integration of any client's internal systems, applications and processes remains a monumental and expensive task."

If I were in your shoes, I would contact a lawyer, especially if you can get a free consult. I, personally, would probably also look for a securities lawyer who works on contingency, so you don't have to front any money. Bear in mind, registration is only required if the offering isn't exempt, and I am certainly not familiar with every exemption. For example, Rule 504 of Regulation D requires Form D to be filed. Even if they complied with Federal Law, there's also state "blue-sky" laws.

Yeap, that's what I searched. The search for "Company Filings" goes to http://www.sec.gov/idea.

Soooo, if the company isn't found on this list... it's safe to say they aren't registered with the SEC and I should call my lawyer etc etc?

EDGAR is the main SEC filing database: http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. Registering with the SEC, as required by section 5 of '33 Act, is pretty expensive. It's usually not even done by well-funded startups.

Because software is about as expensive as the hardware in these deals, the world could save up to $500 million each year by dumping Microsoft.

Why $500 million/year? Isn't it closer to $12.2 billion--the revenue generated by Microsoft's software licenses?

Interesting that as Google cried cash-poor to employees ("current economic crisis requires us to be more conservative about how we spend our money"), it was filing a (paper) Form 40-APP with the SEC asking for an exemption from the Investment Company Act of 1940. Google explained that a past 40-APP SEC filing was necessary so the company could realize 'sustainable competitive advantages' by investing its cash stash in something less conservative than US Government securities.

No. They put a ban on selling financial stocks short.

The repubs want to pay the same morons who got themselves into this mess $17k/hr of government money, because heaven forbid someone who is rich actually have to take responsibility for anything bad.

I don't know, who the "repubs" want to pay, but the Democrats' intentions are certainly "less than honorable". Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama are the two-highest beneficiaries of the Fannie and Freddie lobbying efforts — despite the vast accounting irregularities of both monsters.

If you are looking for "morons", they aren't on Wall Street. Some of those people may be arrogant assholes, but "morons" they aren't. The morons are people, who bought houses they had no way of affording without reading the fine print. It is impossible for any democrat (and I don't mean the political party here, but anybody associating with the Demos rather than Optimates) to blame the "ordinary people", so they blame the bankers and mortgage brokers to help unqualified people get mortgages. That the "victims" who got the mortgages are morons is not explicitly stated...

The vicious irony of it all is that Fannie and Freddi were both created for the same purpose — to give mortgages to people, who were otherwise unqualified to receive them. But that was a Democratic effort (New Deal — woo-hoo!), and we can't blame them in the newspapers, can we?

Do you honestly believe that mark to market is the main culprit in the crisis?

The main? Not sure. One of the main? Definitely. Notice, how the banks like BofA and JPM are sitting pretty — and were even in a position to buy the failing investment banks (Bear Stearns went to JPMorgan earlier this year, Merill Lynch — to BofA last week). They have the same "toxic" securities. But they don't have to account for them in the same way — they are allowed to use certain financial models to come up with a price for the paper the are holding, rather than being forced to price it at today's market prices... In a normal (liquid) market there is little difference. In one spooked (even temporarily) by mortgage-related panic — it is a difference between life and death. Because if nobody wants that paper today (even though its issuer is solvent, and continues to pay dividends, etc.), then, under the "mark to market" requirements, the paper is worth zero and you have no collateral. You lose your credit ratings (automatically). And then, immediately, your counterparties are seizing whatever other collateral you may have put up to guarantee deals, and, whooops, your (ex-)employees are carrying out their stuff out of your (ex-)offices...

Perhaps, the main culprit were Freddie and Fannie. Created to address a "market inefficiency" — no sane banker would risk giving their own money to anyone, who managed (in this blessed country!) to stay too poor to have any money for a downpayment — they grew up into two disasters. Here is one, somewhat partisan, opinion. You may disagree with person, but some of the facts there (the main beneficiaries of their lobbying efforts, and their accounting irregularities ) are indisputable.

In fact, the tearing down of the barrier between commercial banking and investment banking allowed multiple conflicts of interest in investment banks, now also involved in brokerage and insurance and other areas.

These are empty words — and a spin. Here they are restated, spun just as convincingly in the opposite direction: "In fact, the tearing down of the barriers between different financial activities allowed for greater efficiency and the benefits of the economy of scale, thus allowing better-tailored financial products to be offered to clients at lower fees."

And my spin above is closer to truth than yours. Because yours is similar to arguing against air-travel using air-crashes as an example. Yes, an air-plane can crash — in particular, if it touches the ground however slightly during flight. But it can bring passengers much further, much faster, and for much less, than any previously known method of transportation. This is little consolation, when you picking up bodies from the wreckage, but remains an objective truth.

I have no problem with prosecuing the naked short selling rules. What's at issue is that shorting shares ( naked or otherwise ) has been banned on all financials.

What's incredible is that companies like Sears, Netflix, Capstone have been crying foul for years and wall st laughed and kept shorting them blind while the SEC looked the other way. Here is an example. The rule was never enforced. Today wall st is in the crosshairs and everyone is running around trying to prevent short sales.

These markets are not orderly. An entrenched well-connected few are pulling every string in sight to protect their interests and we all are going to end up footing the bill when the piper comes calling.

I think many problems could actually be solved by eliminating the market features that make it possible to make money on a tanking stock.

So how do people who believe a stock is overvalued monetize their beliefs?

Without short selling the market would probably have a much stronger tendency to self correct.

Not true. Getting rid of short selling would lead to stocks not being valued properly. In fact they would generally be over-valued. The SEC evens has a paper:

Finance theory predicts that under certain conditions, constraints on short selling may
cause securities to be misvalued by the market, particularly when investors have highly divergent
opinions about the stock. A simple argument is that short sale constraints make it more costly
for those investors who have a negative opinion of a stock to trade on their beliefs, and thus, their
views may be reflected less in the stock price than those who have a positive view. Under more
general assumptions, theoretic models predict that short sale constraints can cause stocks to be
either overvalued or undervalued.

They go on to test this theory and find:

We find that pilot stocks and control stocks have
similar returns over this horizon, but some tests show weak evidence consistent with the
hypothesis that price restrictions facilitate over-pricing. In the absence of price restrictions,
prices do not rise as much as with price restrictions, leading to a lower equilibrium price.

Fucking DOH !

http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=JAVA

What's the concern over this? If you want to know how a company performed, read the damn 10Q/K. Those are archived here: http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml . Stop relying on press releases as real news.

ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS

Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those described below, that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, and the trading price of our common stock.

Challenges to our business model may reduce our revenues and operating margins. Our business model has been based upon customers paying a fee to license software that we develop and distribute. Under this license-based software model, software developers bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenue received from the distribution of their products. Certain âoeopen sourceâ software business models challenge our license-based software model. Open source commonly refers to software whose source code is subject to a license allowing it to be modified, combined with other software and redistributed, subject to restrictions set forth in the license. A number of commercial firms compete with us using an open source business model by modifying and then distributing open source software to end users at nominal cost and earning revenue on complementary services and products. These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software. Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives. To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312508162768/d10k.htm

Pre-sales?

Read what they do fear:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312508162768/d10k.htm

Right. But read their nightmare scenario to chose your favourite way to break their neck:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312508162768/d10k.htm

It is a domino effect, adapt or die. that sounds unrealistic given the market value and success but in fact the turning point is close. I am not sure Microsoft can learn quickly enough and catch up.

Yes, you can, it is called the domino effect.

Have a look what elements of the Vista desktop and standard applications are not yet available for other platforms as well.

Office is e.g. a lock-in as OpenOffice is not the best competing product yet. The adobe suite is at least available for Macs. iTunes. Games. Hardware support. The remaining advantages are melting fast. All essential open source tools are also available for other platforms, web applications anyway.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312508162768/d10k.htm

10-K available here:
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000119312508041781/d10k.htm

Statement of income here:
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000119312508041781/d10k.htm#fin91974_19

Revenue: 404,552
Income: 70,474
Profit margin = operating profit/operating revenue = 17%

By comparison:

Microsoft: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312508162768/d10k.htm#tx31450_12
Profit margin = 29%

10-K available here:
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000119312508041781/d10k.htm

Statement of income here:
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000119312508041781/d10k.htm#fin91974_19

Revenue: 404,552
Income: 70,474
Profit margin = operating profit/operating revenue = 17%

By comparison:

Microsoft: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312508162768/d10k.htm#tx31450_12
Profit margin = 29%

10-K available here:
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000119312508041781/d10k.htm

Statement of income here:
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000119312508041781/d10k.htm#fin91974_19

Revenue: 404,552
Income: 70,474
Profit margin = operating profit/operating revenue = 17%

By comparison:

Microsoft: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312508162768/d10k.htm#tx31450_12
Profit margin = 29%

Everyone blames oil companies for their record profits, when they should be watching profit MARGINS, which have remained static for the past decade for the majors like Exxon and others.

Can you back up your assertion about profit margins? I took a look myself, and In 1997, the gross and net income of Exxon-Mobil was $137B and $8.4B respectively, or a profit margin of ~6%. The same respective values in 2007 are $404B and $40.6B, or a profit margin of ~10%. Those numbers also represent a 4.83x increase in profit. I'm not an accountant however, so perhaps I'm misreading something.

Data: SEC 10-K filing for Exxon-Mobil for FY '97 and FY '07. Save the FY '07 document and remove the header garbage, then save it as .html. It's much prettier that way.

Everyone blames oil companies for their record profits, when they should be watching profit MARGINS, which have remained static for the past decade for the majors like Exxon and others.

Can you back up your assertion about profit margins? I took a look myself, and In 1997, the gross and net income of Exxon-Mobil was $137B and $8.4B respectively, or a profit margin of ~6%. The same respective values in 2007 are $404B and $40.6B, or a profit margin of ~10%. Those numbers also represent a 4.83x increase in profit. I'm not an accountant however, so perhaps I'm misreading something.

Data: SEC 10-K filing for Exxon-Mobil for FY '97 and FY '07. Save the FY '07 document and remove the header garbage, then save it as .html. It's much prettier that way.

a lot (if not most) of the judges in this country are ancient old farts . . .
Really? I've only met about fifteen or twenty judges so maybe I'm missing something. But in my experience and from what I hear from various lawyers, most judges know quite a lot about computers and really aren't all that old. Do you have numbers to back this up?

I'm finding this whole trend on this thread and in general that "judges and lawyers and legislators know nothing about computers" increasingly annoying. What is your basis for this? Do you people know anything about how the courts work? Do you know what WESTLAW is? Or EDGAR? Or LEXIS-NEXIS? Or SOX? Or how key PDFs are to many kinds of jurisprudence? How modern filings are done? Document disclosure? Due diligence? Let alone how much computers have permeated law schools for quite a while now?

Are there a few idiots who give good quotes? Duh. We all know about the "collection of pipes". But I think that y'all are way too ready to dismiss the people in all aspects of the law as clueless and not worth the effort to understand.

Technically you could say that Microsoft doesn't do anything profitably except OS and Office software.

You could indeed say that, but you'd be wrong by billions of dollars. The SQL Server group is highly profitable as well, making almost a billion in profit in the first quarter of 2008, and over 3 billion over the 9 months ending March 31. See the numbers here, in note 9 (SQL Server is under Server and Tools). Note that even the Entertainment division (makers of the XBox) made a profit that quarter, and also in the 9 month ending March 31. The only division in the red is the Online division (no surprise there).

Yes. Now that (effectively) no closed source player are left. Darwinian natural selection has left us the strongest, open source projects. Many precede MS attack on the Internet. Open source is now killing Microsoft. It's a one-two, knock-out. Even most of the yahoo bid was based on stock not cash, and even some of that which is actual cash looks like it would have to borrowed.

Further, there's no market for MS, not even public-sector corporate welfare. See the mandates:

• develop open source encryption tools
• use encryption
• provide training in encryption
• closed source
• develop and use open source
• provide training in open source

Source: A5-0264/2001

For all new European projects:

• open source is the preferred development platform
• open source is the preferred deployment platform
• support open, well-documented standards is required

Source: European Commission technology strategy.

So rather than listen to nerdy Bill, slobby Ballmer, or their media proxies whine, listen to others: go open source, open standards. You save work, you save time, you increase security and you recession-proof your company.

• Improper disclosure (for example, IRC 7216 - Penalty for disclosure or use of tax return information.)
• Retention (i.e., SEC rule 204-2, assuming it applies to email. Questions still exist.),
• Discovery (to comply with Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure)

• Improper disclosure (for example, IRC 7216 - Penalty for disclosure or use of tax return information.)
• Retention (i.e., SEC rule 204-2, assuming it applies to email. Questions still exist.),
• Discovery (to comply with Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure)

From what I understand by reading the SEC website, it is only required by law to disclose a company's proxy voting policies. The policies themselves are not regulated. i.e. they can count unvoted shares however they want.

In Yahoo's case, it has particular problems because Yahoo has substantial unconsolidated holdings in other companies such as Yahoo Japan and Alibaba. The value of these companies shows up in the P part of the ratio, but the earnings aren't counted in the E part. The value of these holdings alone would put the value of the company close to the $10 billion number you propose.

Yahoo's earnings statement includes their 44% share of Alibaba. See Yahoo's 10-K filing for 2006, "Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements", Note 4, "Investments in Equity Interests": "The Company records its share of the results of Alibaba and any related amortization expense, one quarter in arrears, within earnings in equity interests on the consolidated statements of income." Yahoo's 34% stake in Yahoo Japan is accounted for similarly. Total earnings from equity interests for 2006 were $112 million. That's about 15% of Yahoo's net income, and it is included on the consolidated balance sheet.

If we believe Yahoo's forecasts, their stock price has a fair value closer to $40/share, but even coming up short of this doesn't make them very overpriced. They are in a rapidly growing industry and have had double digit revenue growth for many years, so I think they still qualify as a growth company.

Ignore the wishful "forecasts" and look at the actuals. Yahoo's revenue peaked in 2005, and it's been downhill since then. They're not a growth company any more, they're a declining company.

Read the SEC filings, not the press releases.

Ah, the great tragedy of Slashdot-the slaying of a beautiful political screed by an ugly fact. (With apologies to Thomas Huxley.)

The first SEC commissioner appointed by Bush to the SEC was Harvey Pitt on August 3, 2001 - more than 2 months AFTER this ruling issued. Every SEC commissioner at the time this decision issued was appointed by Clinton. Even if lower-level Bush appointees were involved in drafting the answer, the commissioners could have stopped this from issuing.

They didn't, most likely because they couldn't. The Supreme Court decision at the root of the reasoning has been in place since 1975. This must be corrected legislatively, either by removing the predefined plan affirmative defense entirely or, more likely, by making the revocation of such a plan an event to which liability can attach.

The SEC is aware of the problem and has given indications that it may reconsider its position heretofore that canceling a planned trade made under the "safe harbor" (under (10b5-1(c)(1)(i)(B)(3)) does not constitute insider trading, even if the person was aware of the inside information when canceling the trade.

This safe-harbor provides, in pertinent part, that "[t]he contract, instruction, or plan ... [must] not permit the person to exercise any subsequent influence over how, when, or whether to effect purchases or sales; provided, in addition, that any other person who, pursuant to the contract, instruction, or plan, did exercise such influence must not have been aware of the material nonpublic information when doing so."

There are THREE important things to keep in mind about this:

(1) the "loophole" is created by the SEC's interpretation of the rule, not the rule itself;

(2) either the rule or the SEC's interpretation may be changed at nearly any time with relative ease; and

(3) given the right facts, a court may yet find persons using these directed-selling plans guilty of insider trading, in spite of the SEC's interpretation of the rule, if that person violated the substance and spirit of the separate Rule 10b-5 (which is the rule prohibiting insider trading). This article provides readers with a good introduction to the subject.

Putting that aside, the fact is that regulations rarely have their full, intended effect, especially on the first go. If you read the aforementioned speech, it's pretty obvious that the SEC is trying to do the right thing: Allow executives (particularly founders and other holders of large percentages of stock) the ability to sell those shares on a pre-determined schedule, unencumbered by any insider information they have at a given time during the execution of that plan and unconcerned about the way the market would view the sale, since it had been planned and announced far in advance. For someone with a large percentage of stock, the ability to trade out of that position smoothly over time is critical, since any large sale would be disruptive to the market, and frequent small sales would likely be difficult due to the fact that they might coincide with the common circumstance of having insider information.

The problem, of course, is while the executive is not supposed to initiate the sales plan based on insider information, that same executive may cancel a sale or withdraw from the plan entirely based on non-public, material information. In doing so, they create a bias in that their sales that were initiated would be expected to perform "better than average", since any sales that would have performed "worse than average" are more likely to have been canceled. Such a bias is precisely what academics found and is referenced in Thomsen's speech. The SEC can then amend/interpret the rule so as to close any loophole. Such a process may go through multiple iterations before all the holes are patched.

In terms of the Wikileaks article itself, there are a few problems: First, it is not just "small investors" who are hurt by this. Any investor, small or large, who is not an "insider" would be disadvantaged by such activity. There's no need to be a populist to see the potential for abuse here. The second problem is that it is JP Morgan's fiduciary duty to offer the best product available to its clients, including taking advantage of the specifics of SEC regulations, if necessary. Of course, this particular opportunity is available only certain, very wealthy insiders, but that's the circumstance that the SEC created, not JP Morgan. This situation is no more unethical than Mercedes or Volvo building a "safer" automobile that is only available to those wealthy enough to afford it--and it carries the same hazard for others, actually, since a "protected" driver may be more reckless and endanger other drivers.

In short, there's no need to get bent out of shape when a necessarily imperfect law or regulation is exploited to someone's advantage. This is just what people will do in any system. The only solution is to keep in mind unintended consequences and improve the framework that one has for the future.

(a) Does the act of terminating a plan while aware of material nonpublic information result in liability under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5?

No. Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 apply "in connection with the purchase or sale of any security." Thus, a purchase or sale of a security must be present for liability to attach. See Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723 (1975).

"Cringley" missed a key element of the story. Bank Julius Baer was preparing to take their US operation public via an IPO for about a billion dollars. They filed the prospectus with the SEC a few weeks ago. "We are an asset management company that provides investment management services to institutional and mutual fund clients. We are best known for our International Equity strategies, which represented 92% of our assets under management as of September 30, 2007." They were going to call the business "Artio" (ticker symbol ART, to be listed on the NYSE). Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were to underwrite the IPO.

So the last thing they needed was to be the subject of a New York Times story and all over the world press, associated with money laundering. Now the deal goes under a microscope. Their underwriters have to take a second look and the SEC may have questions. Julius Baer will probably have to file a "material event" 8-K report with the SEC. Newspaper and magazine reporters will be looking at Baer. The question will be raised that the rather high returns Baer reports may be achieved via money laundering.

All this is happening in a down market, in which it's hard to do an IPO and in which investors are very sensitive to unexpected risk. The whole deal may evaporate, or be repriced downward.

This was a very, very expensive mistake for Baer.

This is not going well for Bank Julius Baer.

Press reaction is very favorable to Wikileaks. The New York Times even published the IP address of Wikileaks. There's favorable coverage in The Associated Press, the British press, the Australian press, etc. Since it's on the AP feed, it's going to be in papers across the US tomorrow. Not much TV coverage yet.

Bank Julius Baer is trying to take their US business public. Their proposed billion dollar IPO could be derailed by these disclosures.

Yes, the prosecutors messed up. They charged him with insider trading, which has a very specific definition under the law. In this case the guy doesn't meet any of the requirements to be an insider under the rules. What got him off is probably that he had no help from anyone who was an insider. That's actually a deliberate "loophole" in the law so that, for example, if the CFO is dumb and leaves a copy of his company's next quarterly report on the table at a restaurant a week before it's due to be published, the regular joe who picks it up, notices that the company's earnings have tanked and sells his stock before the rest of the market finds out can't be prosecuted as an insider (unless the regulators can prove some collusion between him and the CFO).

Of course, that aside, the guy's breaking into the computers is a crime, and he can and should be prosecuted for that. But if the prosecutors charged him with something he didn't do, then the charges should properly be thrown out.

And yes, the legal system should be picky about definitions like that. It serves nobody's interests for the courts to begin going "Well, you didn't actually do what you were charged with. But that's OK, since you did something else illegal we'll convict you of what you didn't do anyway.".

Except that the Xbox and Xbox 360 has been major economic sinkholes. From 2002 to 2004 the then Home and Entertainment Division made an accumulated loss for 3.5 billion dollars. From 2005 to 2007 the new Entertainment and Devices division made an accumalted loss of 3.7 billion dollars. So over those 6 years they lost 7.2 billion dollars. Imagine how hard it will to make that money back (plus the lost interest on it) from a division that has a 6 billion revenue per year and never has shown a profit.

Microsoft has tried several directions when it comes to break into new markets but let's face it, they haven't done a very good job of it. Their money comes from the Server and Tools Division and the Business Division (Office etc.). And I don't think it's going to change... perhaps because they aren't used to competing on merits alone.

2004 10-K (has the 2002 to 2004 numbers) http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312504150689/d10k.htm 2007 10-K (has the 2005 to 2007 numbers) http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/drawFiling.asp?docKey=136-000119312507170817-22AR89VDNH3I307BANT6DSD928&docFormat=HTM&formType=10-K

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/890801/000095013407026067/d52464e10vk.htm

The idea was to gain some cash to sustain operations until a faultless (i.e. no major faults) CPU can be released. Those that bought faulty CPUs will get their CPUs replaced as soon as faultless CPUs are completed. In some sense you can look at AMD's action as taking out a long term loan.

A counter argument to my theory can be that AMD would not risk its reputation to take out a "cash loan" in such a manner. However, the risk of losing reputation is justified if we consider another major factor at play: the holidays. It is less likely that AMD would gain the same (or even close to the same) cash flows if they would have released the CPUs after the holidays.

AMD now has some cash and is able to breath a little bit. When it releases fixed CPUs it will be able to continue where it left off.

Well, as at the end of last year, they had $11,243,914,000 in cash or equivalent per their 10K filing.

Bethesda does not (currently) have the MMOG rights to the Fallout property--when they acquired the Fallout IP they licensed back MMOG rights to Interplay: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1057232/000117091807000324/0001170918-07-000324.txt.

Take it up with the individual who posted the blog entry that the summary was excerpting: http://www.gamespot.com/users/thorsen-ink/. The '?:' construct originated there. If you must have a reason to attack the summary, attack it for poorly structuring the excerpt of the blog entry such that the "Bogus or not bogus?" item seems to be part of the preceding quote from Pete Hines.

TFA is misleading. JGD Management is not an umbrella for York Capital Management. The reverse is the case. You do not have to go far to find who is behind JGD Management, from a recent filing for the purchase of a company in Israel:

The sole shareholder of JGD is James G. Dinan.

Apparently the Masters of the Universe use php and like diminutive nicknames.