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Yahoo in particular got in pretty thick with the Chinese Government, helping them find and jail those reporters and bloggers. Jerry Wang was completely unapologetic about it.

Here's several pages of waffle by Yahoo's Media Relations department: http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/ReleaseDe tail.cfm?ReleaseID=187725
So far as I can tell, it says absolutely nothing.

The Hong Kong Journalists association is much more to the point: http://www.fcchk.org/media/FCCToYahoo2.htm

I find it a little hard to believe Yahoo is going to do an about face. Can you imagine Yahoo executives at their next liason with the Chinese Government telling them "Ok, Commies, the rules have just changed. From now on, we're going to insist things are done right around here!" It's a nice thought, but it just isn't going to happen. Walk away from money? Never! (Unless they think they've lost the market to locals anyway?)

If those companies came out together publicly and criticized the Chinese Government, we might see something. But short of that I'm guessing it's just to make us feel better. "Oh Google and Yahoo? That's old hat; They have an NGO Code of Conduct now."

Subscriber Acquisition Costs. Subscriber acquisition costs include hardware subsidies paid to radio manufacturers, distributors and
automakers, including subsidies paid to automakers who include a SIRIUS radio and a prepaid subscription to our service in the sale or lease
price of a new vehicle; subsidies paid to chip set manufacturers; and commissions paid to retailers and automakers as incentives to purchase,
install and activate SIRIUS radios. The majority of subscriber acquisition costs are incurred and expensed in advance of acquiring a subscriber.
Subscriber acquisition costs do not include advertising, loyalty payments to distributors and dealers of SIRIUS radios and revenue share
payments to automakers and retailers of SIRIUS radios which are included in sales and marketing expense. Subscriber acquisition costs also do
not include amounts capitalized in connection with our agreement with Hertz, as we retain ownership of certain SIRIUS radios used by Hertz.

they've fscked up every single aspect of the publicity, popularity and launch of the PS3 through trying to make this system do everything.

Blah blah blah. Back in 2000, nerds on the Internet were saying the exact same shit about the PS2. I have seen no surveys, much less reputable ones, that indicate that the average video game buyer is pissy about the PS3. There's a reason Sony dropped the price in Japan but not the US. I honestly cannot grok why people think that they are making decisions about the PS3 at random.

Oh, and this survey was funded by the folks who own the rumble patent (Immersion). You might think it's a coincidence. However, a survey done by the same research company showed favorable results for another Immersion product.

Go ahead and quote him: Cnet article. A $26M settlement = license and 10% stake in Immersion for MS. Sony declined to pay up and got pounded with a $90M judgment.

There's a news summary on their main web page:

Circuit City Customers

Chase is notifying a segment of Circuit City credit card account holders that computer tapes containing their personal information were mistakenly discarded.

Quoted from Sun's SEC filing on 2006-05-05 (pg. 40): Read [PDF] or HTML

"In particular, we are seeing increased competition and pricing pressures from competitors offering systems running Linux software and other open source software."

If you've seen/believe IDC market share reports of operating systems, you'd notice that the huge growth of Linux was not at the expense of Windows, but rather Unix (they seldom break Unix down into its flavors, but Solaris is the leader, so they'd be hurting from Linux). The IDC data showed that Linux was a competitive threat to Sun back in 2002, and it appears that Sun feels that way still.

See: An old IDC report
See: http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/15/0715linux.html Savio

Quoted from Sun's SEC filing on 2006-05-05 (pg. 40): Read [PDF] or HTML

"In particular, we are seeing increased competition and pricing pressures from competitors offering systems running Linux software and other open source software."

If you've seen/believe IDC market share reports of operating systems, you'd notice that the huge growth of Linux was not at the expense of Windows, but rather Unix (they seldom break Unix down into its flavors, but Solaris is the leader, so they'd be hurting from Linux). The IDC data showed that Linux was a competitive threat to Sun back in 2002, and it appears that Sun feels that way still.

See: An old IDC report
See: http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/15/0715linux.html Savio

Paypal has little or non-existant telephone support. Have you ever tried calling Paypal?

That's what a query in the system? They freeze the money and then let their fraud department take a look. Nothing special required.

Driver's license? 25,000+ people die on the roads every year due to car accidents in the US. Passing a driver's test doesn't make you safe or immune from accidents or from doing stupid things.

Their Charters.

http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html

http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/governance/guid elines.cfm

Paypal's Micropayments and Skype? Probably convenient for quick overseas calls to POTS lines...

The choice of languages used to demo the new translation tool seem to point to something interesting.

In the only four slides where translations are shown, these are the original languages which are translated into English:
Slide 137 - Chinese
Slide 138 - Arabic
Slide 139 - Arabic
Slide 140 - Arabic

As accidental as these choices may be, is Google trying to sell the new translation tool to some arm of the U.S. Federal Government?

Consider that the previous two U.S. wars were fought against enemies whose holy text is considered definitive only in Arabic.

Consider that the only nation challenging the U.S. as a global superpower is China.

Dear Yahoo! Investor Relations:

There's a moroon on a public website spouting off that Yahoo! is distributing viruses. People have commented that he is most likely wrong. But he has left his contact information, and claims to be a Best Buy representative.

As an investor in Yahoo!, I find it disturbing that someone would spread possibly false rumors about the company that I have invested in, potentially damaging the reputation of the company and my investment value.

Please investigate. The posting can be found at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143968&thresho ld=0&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&cid=12064858 . The users email address is (supposedly) kaldur.dauthur@gmail.com

Thank you.

Yeah, but remeber, Microsoft got hit also( From Immersion's web site) so its not just the dualshock controllers. As this article mentions, Microsft ended up licensing the technology (and became a shareholder, although this isn't mentioned).

Yes, unfortunately the source is correct.

Take a look at this SEC filling (found it doing a quick google search for "History of Immersion Corp")

http://immr.client.shareholder.com/EdgarDetail.cfm ?CompanyID=IMMR&CIK=1058811&FID=950134-05-4791&SID =05-00

Heres the most relevent section I could find (IANAL)

OUR CURRENT LITIGATION AGAINST SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT AND OTHERS IS EXPENSIVE, DISRUPTIVE, AND TIME CONSUMING, AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE, UNTIL RESOLVED, AND REGARDLESS OF WHETHER WE ARE ULTIMATELY SUCCESSFUL, COULD ADVERSELY AFFECT OUR BUSINESS.

On February 11, 2002, we filed a complaint against Microsoft Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., and Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District Court of California alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,889,672 and 6,275,213. The case was assigned to United States District Judge Claudia Wilken. On April 4, 2002, Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft answered the complaint by denying the material allegations and alleging counterclaims seeking a judicial declaration that the asserted patents were invalid, unenforceable, or not infringed. Under the counterclaims, the defendants are also seeking damages for attorneys' fees. On October 8, 2002, we filed an amended complaint, withdrawing the claim under the U.S. Patent No. 5,899,672 and adding claims under a new patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,424,333.

On July 28, 2003, we announced that we had settled our legal differences with Microsoft, and we and Microsoft agreed to dismiss all claims and counterclaims relating to this matter as well as assume financial responsibility for our respective legal costs with respect to the lawsuit between Immersion and Microsoft.

On August 16, 2004, the trial against Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Inc. ("Sony Computer Entertainment") commenced. On September 21, 2004, the jury returned its verdict in favor of Immersion. The jury found all the asserted claims of the patents valid and infringed. The jury awarded Immersion damages in the amount of $82.0 million. On December 10, 2004, the Court held a hearing on post-trial motions relating to the jury's decision, and Immersion's request for a permanent injunction and other relief that may be appropriate. On January 5 and 6, 2005, the Court also held a bench trial on Defendants' remaining allegations that the '333 patent was not enforceable due to alleged inequitable conduct. The Court has taken the matter under submission. On January 10, 2005, the Court issued a written order ruling on the motions heard December 10, 2004. The Court denied the parties' requests for judgment as a matter of law on various issues. The Court awarded Immersion prejudgment interest on the damages the jury awarded at the applicable prime rate. The Court further ordered Sony Computer Entertainment to pay Immersion a compulsory license fee at the rate of 1.37%, the ratio of the verdict amount to the amount of sales of infringing products, effective as of July 1,

Reveals some intersting tidbits (The following link contains Microsoft and Immersion in the google search results)

http://immr.client.shareholder.com/EdgarDetail.cfm ?CompanyID=IMMR&CIK=1058811&FID=950134-05-4791&SID =05-00

Taken from the above link:

WE HAD AN ACCUMULATED DEFICIT OF $114 MILLION AS OF DECEMBER 31, 2004, HAVE A HISTORY OF LOSSES, WILL EXPERIENCE LOSSES IN THE FUTURE, AND MAY NOT ACHIEVE OR MAINTAIN PROFITABILITY.

Since 1997, we have incurred losses in every fiscal quarter. We will need to generate significant ongoing revenue to achieve and maintain profitability. We anticipate that our expenses will increase in the foreseeable future as we:

protect and enforce our intellectual property, including the costs of our litigation against Sony Computer Entertainment;

continue to develop our technologies;

attempt to expand the market for touch-enabled technologies and products;

increase our sales and marketing efforts; and

pursue strategic relationships.

If our revenues grow more slowly than we anticipate or if our operating expenses exceed our expectations, we may not achieve or maintain profitability.

OUR CURRENT LITIGATION AGAINST SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT AND OTHERS IS EXPENSIVE, DISRUPTIVE, AND TIME CONSUMING, AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE, UNTIL RESOLVED, AND REGARDLESS OF WHETHER WE ARE ULTIMATELY SUCCESSFUL, COULD ADVERSELY AFFECT OUR BUSINESS.

On February 11, 2002, we filed a complaint against Microsoft Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., and Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District Court of California alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,889,672 and 6,275,213. The case was assigned to United States District Judge Claudia Wilken. On April 4, 2002, Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft answered the complaint by denying the material allegations and alleging counterclaims seeking a judicial declaration that the asserted patents were invalid, unenforceable, or not infringed. Under the counterclaims, the defendants are also seeking damages for attorneys' fees. On October 8, 2002, we filed an amended complaint, withdrawing the claim under the U.S. Patent No. 5,899,672 and adding claims under a new patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,424,333.

On July 28, 2003, we announced that we had settled our legal differences with Microsoft, and we and Microsoft agreed to dismiss all claims and counterclaims relating to this matter as well as assume financial responsibility for our respective legal costs with respect to the lawsuit between Immersion and Microsoft.

It goes on and on...

Could this have anything to do with HP's board of directors change two days ago? See SEC filing: http://www.shareholder.com/Common/Edgar/47217/4721 7-05-35/05-00.pdf

Guys, Nintendo can't claim prior art anyway. If you read this Immersion Technologies Press Release about Gamecube then you'll see that Nintendo has liscensed the patents already. You're right, Nintendo is no slouch about patents, but with how they go after them, they know better than to try and get around them.

I believe immersion holds the patents for all the original force-feedback stuff coming out for computers back in the later 90's too.

http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/ReleaseDetail.c fm?&ReleaseID=148239

(yes, 'yhoo', not 'yahoo'. Clever, huh? Keeps us from flooding her).

Let's let her know our feelings. I've read most of the thread (whew!) and I can understand those supporting Yahoo! (but not those who don't want their pr0n, etc. discovered--hey, you're dead; why do you care they'll all find out what a perv you were?). Let's make it a vote. Write Ms. Mahon and let her know what you think, what you want them to do with your stuff.

Seriously, this is just the marketroids doing their thing. When the accountants start warning about threats from Linux, we know there's a real threat. Linux is getting mention in the latest annual filing, too.

So what? You're not looking at the big picture.

Looking at Bristol-Meyers pays about twice that amount of taxes every year.

Apple Net Revenue:

2003 : $6,207 million
2002 : $5,742 million
2001 : $5,363 million ...
1999 : $6,134 million
1998 : $5,941 million

Microsoft Net Revenue:

2003 : $32,187 million
2002: $28,365 million ...
1999 : $19,747 million
1998 : $15,262 million

Looks to me like Apple is barely where it was at the peak 4 years ago (+1.2%)... and Microsoft is +62% ... Oh yea, Apple's doing really well...

Today maxtor announced that they have perfected perpendicular recording to allow for 175GB per platter.

Whos up for 700GB drives?

If you stop and check the listing of the Executives and the board of directors for Drugstore.com, you'll also see that the Chairman of the Board, Peter Neupert and at least one other board member worked for Microsoft before being hired on at Drugstore.com.
Going on that, you'd think that a man with an MBA from Dartmouth would have at least some kind of clue of what makes a good director. Hell, Stanger, the other director with MS ties got his MBA from Berkeley.

Aside from the fact that she happens to be married to the man most people on slashdot liken to the anti-christ, Ms. Gates has got cred of her own.

BA from Duke and an MBA from Duke, plus she sits on the board of Trustees at Duke.

Just because she married Bill doesn't immediately make this a freakin' conspiracy.

If you stop and check the listing of the Executives and the board of directors for Drugstore.com, you'll also see that the Chairman of the Board, Peter Neupert and at least one other board member worked for Microsoft before being hired on at Drugstore.com.
Going on that, you'd think that a man with an MBA from Dartmouth would have at least some kind of clue of what makes a good director. Hell, Stanger, the other director with MS ties got his MBA from Berkeley.

Aside from the fact that she happens to be married to the man most people on slashdot liken to the anti-christ, Ms. Gates has got cred of her own.

BA from Duke and an MBA from Duke, plus she sits on the board of Trustees at Duke.

Just because she married Bill doesn't immediately make this a freakin' conspiracy.

If you stop and check the listing of the Executives and the board of directors for Drugstore.com, you'll also see that the Chairman of the Board, Peter Neupert and at least one other board member worked for Microsoft before being hired on at Drugstore.com.
Going on that, you'd think that a man with an MBA from Dartmouth would have at least some kind of clue of what makes a good director. Hell, Stanger, the other director with MS ties got his MBA from Berkeley.

Aside from the fact that she happens to be married to the man most people on slashdot liken to the anti-christ, Ms. Gates has got cred of her own.

BA from Duke and an MBA from Duke, plus she sits on the board of Trustees at Duke.

Just because she married Bill doesn't immediately make this a freakin' conspiracy.

If you stop and check the listing of the Executives and the board of directors for Drugstore.com, you'll also see that the Chairman of the Board, Peter Neupert and at least one other board member worked for Microsoft before being hired on at Drugstore.com.
Going on that, you'd think that a man with an MBA from Dartmouth would have at least some kind of clue of what makes a good director. Hell, Stanger, the other director with MS ties got his MBA from Berkeley.

Aside from the fact that she happens to be married to the man most people on slashdot liken to the anti-christ, Ms. Gates has got cred of her own.

BA from Duke and an MBA from Duke, plus she sits on the board of Trustees at Duke.

Just because she married Bill doesn't immediately make this a freakin' conspiracy.

I googled him a little and according to this Statement of Changes in Beneficial Ownership SEC filing he is Vice President of International Sales.

If I'm reading it right he aquired 50,000 common shares 2003-03-18.

Pump'n'dump, here we come?

umm... no, they're not. hollywood video has nothing to do with blockbuster, other than they both have profitsharing deals with the studios. read up on your 'facts'. however, your point is still valid. i miss the abundance of mom and pop video stores that used to exist. they are/were great places to find lots of quirky movies you'd never see at a huge video company like BB or HV. sad indeed.

Many if not all of SCO's SEC documents are online as PDFs.

I wonder what the cost is to SCO each time someone downloads (for instance) the Statement of Changes of Beneficial Ownership. Maybe you're interested in "changes of ownership" high muckymucks in SCO itself think are worth making. There's also the most recent quarterly report as well as many others.

Many if not all of SCO's SEC documents are online as PDFs.

I wonder what the cost is to SCO each time someone downloads (for instance) the Statement of Changes of Beneficial Ownership. Maybe you're interested in "changes of ownership" high muckymucks in SCO itself think are worth making. There's also the most recent quarterly report as well as many others.

Does anyone know if this is still Darl McBride's address?

355 S 520 W Suite 100
Lindon, UT 84042

http://www.shareholder.com/Common/Edgar/1102542/11 02542-02-2/02-00.pdf

Here is another link to the same content" in case it "disappears". Copy protection at its best, multiple links to copies... ;)

Western Digital announced a 200 GB drive on June 17th.

The application, developed specifically for a law enforcement agency, uses Visionics' FaceIt® ARGUS as the delivery platform for facial recognition capabilities and Wirehound's Birddog software on Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2METM) technology-enabled mobile phone with a color display. The FaceIt ARGUS system automatically finds faces in a field of view and searches them against a mug shot database. Upon finding a match, the Birddog component generates a wireless alert to the phones used by mobile law enforcement officials, who are then able to verify the identity of the subject. The phones can store multiple images and are alerted when a new image arrives. Non-matched images are automatically discarded from system.

I'm pretty skeptical, though, having used a 'FaceIt' trial version. I was able to train it to my face, but only by presenting it with a lot of variations (lighting, angle, etc.). This training data isn't available with mug shots.

However, I could envision a case where a cop remembers a 'wanted' picture, pulls someone over because they look like the picture, then uses the phone to pull up the right picture for on-the-spot comparison. Might work. But I doubt we're there--yet.

Sirius is 25% owned by Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer gave $85,000 in soft money to the Republican Party in the 2000 Election Cycle and has not yet made any contributions for the 2002 Cycle.

I just read through some of Visionics' press releases. They had gross revenues of $7 million last quarter, though that includes their more established business of fingerprint and other identification products.

In addition to Tampa's installation and the oft-cited London setup, Mexico is using the FaceIt software to prevent duplicate voter registrations (wonder how they handle identical twins), and Iceland's Keflavik Airport is installing it to nab crooks and false asylum seekers. A number of law enforcement agencies are also using the software to analyze/compare still images rather than live video.

Analyzing still images of known and suspected criminals sounds less controversial. But once agencies start comparing victim-description sketches to government photo databases of non-criminals (drivers licenses, passport photos, university IDs, etc.), many of the same issues will arise.

My guess is that the American public will ultimately value the benefits of real-time public face analysis more than the costs and risks. It will always have detractors, and there will be false arrests and discrimination cases. (E.g., higher rates of false IDs of certain minority groups seem likely if the groups have higher-than-average proportions of convicts. Or some poor criminal-look-alike will be questioned by police every time he tries to fill his gas tank, buy a Big Mac, or get money from the ATM.). But after a couple fugitive child molestors are picked up scouting the local mall or subway, I bet supporters will outnumber opponents.

i'd be more interested to know how you managed so far. But anyway. First you have to recognize that worst case scenario: dropping the whole thing is an option; it doesn't have to bankrupt you.

Before you get to that point, though you have to answer some questions. "What are my priorities?"
Is your first priority keeping your customer base?
Is it making something viable out of your hobby?
Is it that you keep control of the site somehow?

If you want to learn how some auction sites got to be profitable, any of them who've IPO'd are required to make financial statments available to current and prospective shareholders. So check out eBay's statments, see where their income comes from. Not quite looking at the source code for it... but it may be as useful as a header file. You'll probably see that the business needs to attain some sort of critical mass before it can make money the way eBay does. But look through the publicly available data to see how it works.

You seem to be particularly worried about customers rejecting banner ads. Unless you're billing yourself as "the lynx friendly auction site" or something, you shouldn't really have to worry. It will be something of a pain, and it won't save your site, but it should allow you to recoup some of your money... And i immagine that most banner services already have information on the finer points of joining and billing and stuff.

I don't know. Even if i did, i couldn't tell you, since i'm not an insured professional. But the first step in finding the answer is having a better idea of what you want.

__

alt.geek