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They've been slowly going out of business for years as their clueless
management phases out of retail products and services and whiles away
its days with speculative
investments. Now, maybe they're going into the spyware
or pop-up advertising business to cash in on the dot com
boom. Sears is the poster boy for the pointy-hair boss in
Dilbert.

I walked past my local Apple store today and it was absolutely packed. I saw staff helping people leave the store with carts full of new purchases. The store is almost always one of the busiest stores in the mall and I routinely see people leaving with PowerBooks and iMacs. If you were correct the store would usually be near empty.

It's tough to make a large dent in such a huge market. But Apple's market share is growing relatively quickly. It looks like so far this year they had a 40% increase in computer sales.

Many thought the company was crazy-doomed when that little gadget first launched. (Even the die-hards.) And yeah, the price was criticized.

I agree with a number of posters who say when folks trash Kindle, they're really trashing ebooks in general. What I think Amazon pulled off with Kindle was a way of grabbing mainstream book-buyers--Romance, Scifi and Horror readers have been into ebooks for a while.

I'm not a total fanboy; like my Kindle, hate the case. I'll only add that, when taking the wife to malls, I've gone back to bringing the Sony with me, partly because I'm not finished a couple of Talbot Mundy books, partly because, with its slightly smaller size, the Sony fits into my jacket pocket, while the Kindle doesn't.

But, as to all Kindle lovers being cultists:

"all criticism is autobiography"

Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray

(also PHP, Perl and Python runs seamlessly on Linux rather than on Mac, I mean PHP or Perl or Java is well TESTED on Linux rather than on Mac).

What the hell are you talking about?

PHP PERL PYTHON and all your linux and most Unix server software has been running perfectly in OSX since the day it was released.
every single mac install comes with apache, php, perl and python installed by default.
Mysql is one click away as well.

Furthermore most software that needed to be recompiled to run on the power architecture doesn't need to be anymore as an apple server is just another x86 server.

Most developers who I work with on major web projects using PHP/Mysql/postgres/Oracle/Python/Ruby do all their work in OSX, with some compatibility testing on windows, not much on Linux. (iVillage, BlackPlanet, VH1, MTV, Coke, L'oreal, Nickolodeon, Scolastic, etc) This is to their advantage because they can use all vi or emacs on the command line, they can use all opensource tools, as well as subetha, bbedit, etc, but then they can have MSword, excel and all the garbage that production managers/account execs send them as well, without using some clanky converter software.

further down your post:
How many really bother whether Linux is an OFFICIAL UNIX or not

Why should it matter if its an official Unix?
Well for starters because it means that most applications and application frameworks from any other Unix system can run on osx, either with a recompile or directly if from another x86 based Unix; again obviating your ignorant argument about Linux being the ONLY server.

Second because any Unix admin can open an osx command line and will feel at home, as he would on Solaris, AIX, IRIX, Unixware, etc.

All I care is it should be scalable, secure and supports major application frameworks and databases. Exactly, which is what OsX does. its scalable, you can form a grid system in a few clicks or command line commands, it supports every major framework as all the other Unix systems do, and it runs mySQL, Postgres, Oracle, DB2, and any other unix compatible open source database .

Nothing can replace Linux in the server market, but there is a great chance that Linux can exceed market share of Mac OS X
OsX might not be the most popular server for sure, but Linux market share in that market is DECLINING, not increasing:
http://enterpriselinuxlog.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/08/28/the-server-market-share-battle-microsoft-gains-2/
http://www.geekpedia.com/news193_Linux-server-market-share-plummeting.html
http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/184429419
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/48999.html

on desktop (I think Linux already exceeds Mac OS X in market share)
Hugh, dood... come on alright:
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/newsanalysis/techhardware/10385313.html
and the money is showing the opposite as well here:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/10/22/apple-q407-financials-triumph-of-the-steve


how did this post get a 5 -- are you kidding me? what is informative about it?

Just to address a few specific claims.

Housing: Housing prices are not increasing? Did you see the losses all of the banks took this quarter? It's because of all of the people who defaulted on mortgages they could not afford to pay. Those people cannot afford to pay because they have no equity in their homes to refinance. They have no equity in their homes because property values have declined by as much as 15% in the last year in some parts of the country. Those houses they walked away from; they are now being repossessed and sold further depressing the housing market. This isn't inflationary at all. It's text book deflationary pressure, and based on the losses some these banks are taking I predict its going to result in a net decrease of at least $40-70 billion in the money supply of this country. This is only going to show in the form of these people decreasing their spending since they won't have that home equity line of credit to draw from.

Fuel: Sure oil is hitting $90 a barrel, but that's still below the inflation-adjusted all-time high of $100 that we saw in late 1970s. Source. And most of this recent spike is due to overblown concerns over Iran and speculators (i.e., people who are just buying oil because they think it is going up in price, not people who actually use it) who are going to start dumping oil in the next few months. I bet you oil is closer to $70 in January than it is to $100. (And as an aside, as someone who wants to encourage renewable energy, I want $100 oil because at this point solar, biodiesel, ethanol, geothermal, and a whole bunch of other alternative energy sources become economically profitable. That'll never happen until oil is legitimately scare though because OPEC will act to keep longterm prices below this point to avoid letting the genie out of the bottle. Source.

Health Care and Education: There are legitimate concerns with respect to inflation in these two areas as their cost increases are far and a way outstripping regular inflation.

#1 - Impress. Get the established software vendors to recognize the work done by those who are behind open source.

#2 - Infiltrate. Once the value of open source is seen, have people who are dedicated to it, and who have contributed to it be seen as valuable. Get them into influential positions.

#3 - Once in positions of influence, start flexing that muscle!

How can I make my next product a "disaster" like that?

First, you want to be obligated to buy twice as many as you actually need. This doubles your production cost. Apple was in negotiations to cut production in half just a month after the launch.

Next, you want to be forced to drop the price of your product to sell what you are contractually obligated to buy.... Let's say from $599 down to $399. With a raw materials cost of $250 per unit, you can totally blow the other $150 on packaging, shipping, advertising, support, and your fixed development expenses. If you do it right, you might even be able to loose money on each unit sold.

Finally, you really want to piss off the handful of people that do buy your product so they'll never buy anything from you again. Make sure you do things to really anger the most enthusiastic fans you have. Illegally void their warrantees, "brick" their product with an update, that sort of thing.

There, that should do it. And if your company depends on the success of the product, all the better. That way, when the numbers hit Wall Street, your stock will plummet and the investors will demand your head on a plate and start filing lawsuits.

-fan

According to several reports, a big chunk of Apple's profit is coming from the locked-in service providers:

http://www.thestreet.com/s/huge-iphone-fees-juice-apple/newsanalysis/techtelecom/10369581.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/17/mobilephones.apple

To make the same profit without a lock, Apple would have to raise the retail price significantly. Looks like a subsidy to me.

They haven't been paid everything yet. Apple gets money throughout the contract term. I don't think Apple plans on passing that up...

Does Apple truly have much to lose from iPhone hackery?

Yes.

To say nothing of other intangibles like wanting to guarantee a seamless user experience with iTunes, activation, the carrier partner, etc.

For the record, I will be surprised if Apple actively tries to re-lock already-unlocked phones, but I would not be surprised if they try to prevent unlocking in future firmware updates, considering the current unlock mechanism uses an overflow condition that will likely be, well, fixed in future updates (should Apple not fix a potentially exploitable buffer overflow on the iPhone?). Then, someone will find some other exploitable condition to unlock the iPhone, and the game continues.

Every GSM handset under the sun has been unlocked. The main difference with iPhone is that people are more likely to do regular full firmware updates with the iPhone due to the kind of product it is and the ease of doing so via iTunes, as opposed to other GSM handsets. But I can't see Apple relocking already-unlocked phones.

That said, while an explicit exemption exists that allows end customers to legally unlock GSM handsets in the US, no such requirement exists for a vendor to allow it, document it, or provide such a capability to the customer (see also "DMCA Exemption Attorney Weighs in on iPhone Unlocking".

Further, requirements in various jurisdictions that the carrier provide a means to unlock the handset after the contract term, i.e., after the subsidy is paid, MAY NOT at all apply to the iPhone, since the iPhone is technically unsubsidized. Apple appears to be negotiating backchannel subsidies and unprecedented monthly kickbacks from carriers...but the iPhone itself still isn't subsidized under the traditional subsidy model: you can buy an iPhone, walk out, and NEVER activate it, and the phone is yours to keep. However, this may also mean that no carrier is ever obligated to unlock it for you.

Also, Apple is depending on the expected profits from AT&T kickbacks for AT&T activations...that's how the iPhone price is structured. Now, if you can figure out how to unlock your phone and use it on another carrier, great. But also don't cry if Apple throws roadblocks in the way. You can argue that "it's only good for Apple" if people get to use unlocked iPhones, but that's not your decision to make, unfortunately - it's Apple's. Don't get me wrong: YOU can decide it's good for YOU. But you don't get to decide that it's good for Apple, or anyone else. And with things like seamless activation via iTunes, Visual Voicemail, and all the tight integration that requires enormous amounts of backend cooperation with the carrier partner (think about how iPhone activation works and how it must have been to pull something like that off), is it any surprise Apple wants to keep the iPhone experience with the carrier partner?

And think of all the other ways iPhone is unique: you get to walk out of the store with it sealed in a box, it can be easily bought as a gift, the customer does activation themselves in the comfort of their own homes with a pleasant interface, and so on.

So if people can figure out how to unlock the phone, great. But don't expect Apple to not fix actual bugs like buffer overflows in the phone that are coincidentally used to enable unlocking, and don't assume that ANYONE will ever be "required" to unlock iPhones, unless it is simply flat out illegal to have a SIMlocked phone in a particular jurisdiction, in which case Apple would probably elect to skip that market entirely.

This is a lot like the Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware arguments. People always say it's "better for Apple" or "free advertising for Apple". No. Pirating the OS is not good for Apple. And even if you say "but I'd buy it for $129!" that also doesn't solve it...the $129 price is predicated on the fact that there is Apple hardware that goes along with it. So then you say, "Well, I'd even pay $250 or more! Would that fix it?" No, because part of the Apple experience is the seamless integration and things "just workin

Jokes on you cause they just sold their 1 millionth iPhone: Suck it.

http://www.thestreet.com/s/iphone-shift-bruises-ap ple/newsanalysis/techtelecom/10378004.html?cm_ven= CBSM&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

"The iPhone buzz is wearing off.

"AT&T (T - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) shares dropped 2% Wednesday after Apple (AAPL - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) made two moves that took a little more sparkle off this summer's heavily hyped smartphone debut. "

But it just may be slowing it down:

• Windows server revenue grows FASTER than Linux
• Linux servers lose market share year over year

The Amazon numbers may be tiresome but at least they are current. The problem with your NDP numbers is that the most recent numbers you show are for June - before the PS3 price cut, before E3, and before the public acknowledgment of the $1 Billion RRoD debacle. Speaking of which, NDP states that as of two weeks after the price cut, PS3 sales were up 135% at Sony's top 5 retailers.

Whatever

For AT&T's latest quarterly results, "Wireless service average revenue per user, or Arpu, rose 3.6% to $50.63"

"Japanese operator KDDI saw its operating profit rise more than 15 percent in the first quarter... ...at the au service and ARPU stood at JPY 6,150, up 5.6 percent year-on-year."

AT&T results
KDDI results

You care to try and explain this? $50.63 is almost exactly 6150¥. I was using KDDI in Japan. I was a Cingular customer back in the states. What give?

Viacom spun off Blockbuster back in 2004.

Jack Gold, founder of industry analysis firm J.Gold Associates, said "I don't know where it will fit in the market."

At $499 after a $100 rebate, the device is an expensive sidekick. For another $200, users can get themselves a laptop, says Gold.

"I am not sure why anyone would want to buy this device if they already have a laptop," he says. "I would not personally carry it because it does not provide me with enough benefit."

In essence, the first amendment is:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

You know, I do not see anything in the above phrase that says it is OK to break both state, and federal laws. I can not help but think what Jim Cramer thinks of this?

Ya think this is one of those times like when the guy who didn't sign the Beatles for a record deal? At anyrate, I find it funny that there are statements like free 18 months switching from Verizon to Cinguar with the iPhone. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it would be quite a slap in the face. Maby this will be a wakeup call to the cell phone companies that they are completly clueless about the market they control.

Wikipedia claims that Mr. Lowenstein is now "heading up" the newly-formed Private Equity Council.

He seems like a nice guy, but I think he was just along for the ride, especially if what the article says about his non-interventionism is true.

To paraphrase Cramer who recently picked MO and HAL as two of his "Value Stocks of the Year", someone is going to make money off these companies so it might as well be you.

OSDL is shrinking (again) by 33%. VA Software (The owner of Slashdot) is still bleeding. Linspire has largely flopped. Novell is only making money because MS just gave them a big cash infusion. Red Hat is the only OSS company out there making any money, from what I can tell, and even Red Hat is in trouble from the big boys (lots of other people agree... lots of short selling of their stock.

There simply are not many OSS companies out there that are really financially healthy.

My guess is that their response to the memo will pretty much be to either fire or severely demote the guy:

http://www.thestreet.com/newsanalysis/techstockupd ate/10323250.html

If the comments in this forum about nothing worthwhile being on the radio dial, with the possible exception of political talk, since the mid 1980s and my own experience with newspapers thus far (I have never been a subscriber) are any thing to go by then these private equity firms are going to loose their collective shirts in this business. When was the last time you saw any of your friends younger than thirty (30) regularly listening to music radio stations or reading a paper newspaper? Clearly there is value in online news, but with Google news bringing even the most obscure sources to the top of the stack where is the equity in an ink and dead wood newspaper brand? Readership and subscriber numbers for newspapers and radio listeners are either stagnated or declining in most of the major markets and have been going in that direction for many years. This article by Jim Cramer really hits the nail on the head. These guys are ultimately going to lose and lose big with this investment.

hmm... I though it was all about swirls and swooshes

Define "get away with": EA has been posting reduced profits and slumping earnings reports since 2004.

http://www.thestreet.com/tech/gamesandgadgets/1026 6185.html

SCO Group Likes Its Stock at These Levels

How about now?

Whoa - Easy there, trigger.. let's get our facts straight, shall we?

PlaysForSure is not DRM. WM-DRM is DRM. Both PlaysForSure and Zune use WM-DRM. PlaysForSure is nothing more than a logo slapped on a player (portable or network connected) saying that it will play any music or video purchased from a store that also has the logo. Zune is a player and a store that are tightly integrated together to enable some of the little niceties that are harder to do when one has to worry about being compatible with a variety of devices or a variety of online media stores.

While we are getting our facts straight, why don't you do a little research - yeah, Plays For Sure is a marketing initiative, but it is also a system...a system than the Zune doesn't support in favor of it's own Zune Marketplace. Don't believe me, check out these articles.

As for the claim you make about Windows Media Player being miss represented by Apple, why don't you offer a link to the site? I searched Apple's website and couldn't find any mention of WMP 10 or 11 on the site at all. Perhaps I am just an idiot...or perhaps you are just "remembering" something that didn't happen.

Looks like Vissage and Indentix are getting ready for a merger:

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/funds/madmoneymail bag/10304937.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite= NA

"The identity/security company is merging with one of its fellow competitors, Indentix (IDNX - commentary - Cramer's Take), at the end of the month. Both stocks will be de-listed from the Nasdaq on Aug. 29, when the deal closes. The new company will trade under the symbol "ID" the following day, on the New York Stock Exchange."

> And that stopped Merck from selling Vioxx without a warning against people with heart conditions
> taking it? Someone in the company drafted a letter indicating that, if I recall correctly, Vioxx
> would make roughly $250million more in 6 months without that warning, and someone else went forward
> with it.

You're proving my general point, which is that companies do whatever makes the greatest profit, and aren't remotely socially minded. Short term profit is more desireable than long term profit, so you'll get the odd Vioxx, but it's probably more likely these days (since all the tobacco lawsuits) that they'll get caught doing that sort of thing. When a company gets caught, though, they pay the price. This happened with Ford, who kept quiet about a problem because it would have been cheaper to pay off bereaved families than to fix the problem. That's why the US has punitive damages - something we in the UK could do with!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto

Look at the problems the Vioxx incident has caused Merck:

http://www.thestreet.com/_more/stocks/biotech/1019 5104.html

> Knowingly killing your customers being frowned upon or not, I bet regardless of whether Merck
> crashes and burns from the lawsuits, the people that knew about this will get their golden
> parachute and not a single scratch. They'll probably be welcomed to the executive ranks for
> another company, just another guy who makes the ballsy decisions that gets the stock price up for
> the quarter.

Probably, yes.

According to this article, the music service and player will be incompatible with Microsoft's own PlayForSure format. So, Microsoft is planning to open a music store that sells music that is not only incompatible with the market-leading iPod, but also with every other mp3 player on the market today.

Does this strike anyone else as completely insane? With Napster, Yahoo, Creative, SanDisk, etc. already losing money competing with iTunes/iPod, does Microsoft really believe it can come into the market at this late with yet a third proprietary format and gain any traction at all? Is this move another sign of their arrogant belief they can do in every other market what the did in the PC space? Or, is it just desperation?

Does anyone here on Slashdot believe they can succeed with this strategy?

And you're confusing income with profit.

Actually, no, they got it right. You are confusing income with net income (which is profit).

"The income statement adds up all of the company's revenue, subtracts its expenses and gives you the bottom line -- a.k.a. net income."

I don't know how much profit they make per day, but it is way less than 26 million euros.

For the last three years, MSFT has shown a net income of
$12,254,000,000 (2005), $8,168,000,000 (2004), $9,993,000,000 (2003),
which when divided by 365 gives
$33,572,602.74/day (2005), $22378082.19/day (2004), $27,378,082.19/day (2003)
and at 1 U.S. dollar = 0.783024039 Euro, this converts to
26,288,155.00/day (2005), 17,522,576.30/day (2004), 21,437,696.50/day (2003)
which is *not* "way less than 26 million euros" per day.

Re: vonage: there's nothing weird about sueing someone who breaches a contract (even a verbal contract) with you. Why would it matter that the contract is about share deals, or anything else?

Can you imagine how the prospective buyers would react if the shares had shot up, and Vonage management had said that they'd decided to sell them at the higher price?

If you want to become a stock market speculators, you have to learn to cope with the fact your going to be wrong sometimes, and suck up the loss you take.

Note that IPO shares are typically priced slightly below what the company thinks the fair value is, in order to give the initial purchasers a good deal. The more paranoid (cynical?) have suggested that Vonage deliberately overpriced its shares and used its own customers to prop up its IPO price. Given that customer relations for the company weren't stellar to begin with (too many horror stories dealing with their staff), this is going to generate a lot more negative PR with both their current customer base and potential future customers.

I submitted a story on this yesterday morning. Vonage went on CNBC Wednesday morning and announced that it "is going to let some of its customers off the hook by buying their unwanted shares." The statement said that "While all avenues are available to us we cannot imagine alienating our customers in that way. If certain . . . customers don't pay we expect to repurchase shares from the underwriters if necessary."

People immediately started pointing out that it is illegal for a compnay to treat different shareholders in the same class differently -- Vonage was only offering to "make whole" (Wall Street speak for "absorb the losses of") investors that hadn't yet paid for their shares; people that had paid were SOL.

The whole IPO has basically been a mess, with snafus both in selling shares to their customers and delivering them. Some Vonage customers that they were led to believe that they "weren't allocated shares in the IPO when in fact they had received the shares. Others investors who purchased shares have complained that technical glitches on a Web site set up for Vonage customers prevented them from executing sales in a timely fashion."

I've had good experiences with the Vonage product as a customer, but there are many, many stories of how poorly Vonage customer service treats their customers. They're very slow in sorting out problems -- it took them 3 months to transfer my land-line phone number, and initially the temporary number they gave me was in a different area code than my city, putting me in a long-distance calling zone relative to my friends. It took hours before they fixed it (they kept claiming it wasn't "technically possible" to give me a new number). Analysts are worried that future propects for the company might not look so good, and that screwing over their own customers in the IPO might be the last straw.

EA seems to be placing more and more emphasis on developing its own content, as opposed to licensing it from other content owners. Do you have any targets on what percentage of your business you want owned IP [intellectual property] to be?

Our goal is to get over 50%.

Also, the grandparent post is technically inaccurate -- AOL bought Time Warner, not the other way around.

Interesting that this announcement from Apple came the quarter after PortalPlayer announced a new technology (called Preface) that's designed to work with Windows Vista only.

So - were they dumped for practical reasons or for punitive reasons? What do people think?

Onto a different aspect of this story - the company being touted as the most likely supplier of replacement chips is Samsung (allready a supplier of a good deal of ipod flash memory). Is it really wise for Apple to trust a competitor with components crucial to Apple's core business? (ipods are Apple's core business now).

Well, I guess Apple are happy doing business like this

No, I understand the dynamics quite well. Legg Mason owns 4.3 million Class A shares, or about 2% of the company. Google insiders hold 271 million shares, of which 238 million are Class B "preferred". Class B shares get 10 votes to every 1 Class A share, making Legg's voting power 4.3 million votes to Google Insider's 2.4 billion votes.

Thus Google is in a perfect position to tell each and every shareholder in the market to, "buzz off." Even Fidelity and Legg Mason.

Ouch!:

http://www.thestreet.com/_tscs/funds/investing/102 67646.html

PC gaming for Microsoft is like that fat chick you know is always available but you really wish you didn't need her. They tried to get away from her with the Xbox and 360, but now that those plans are in shambles, the skanky fat chick that is pc gaming isn't looking too bad with no other options these days.

Back when the Xbox stuff started Microsoft people were desperate to try to convince people that their machine wasn't just another pc with pc games. But with console publishers for the most part giving the Xbox PS2 hand-me-downs, pc titles have become more attractive over the past few years - less less-attractive would be more accurate.

Something dramatic has to happen in the Home Entertainment division up theree in Redmond. Firings is the obvious first choice. Second, reality needs to be admitted. The Microsoft of 2006 is not the Microsoft of the late 1990s. They simply no longer have the power to walk right into a market and sweep everyone else aside. The across the board failures in the Game/Media markets can't be ignored no matter how much the people working up in Redmond want to hold on to past glories.

The only area where Microsoft probably still has any hope of being a major player in the Digital Media markets is through the deals they are making with cable companies and their settop boxes. Outside of that, Microsoft really needs to have a long hard and honest look at their realistic outcomes. Someone up there in Redmond most likely needs to stand up and admit these are areas Microsoft can't win.

This does nothing to address the crisis Microsoft faces with the 360.

http://www.thestreet.com/_tscs/funds/investing/102 67646.html

It is obvious things are going badly for Microsoft and the 360, but I didn't realize just how bad until I read this article. Microsoft needs to stop putzing around and buy someone big. And soon.

Another perspective here:

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech/semis/1026311 3.html

And what I said (roughly: "you don't have any clue what you're talking about") is still far more accurate.

Simply the weight this man pushes with no data to back his claims is what is really influential.

The very suggestion that a stock analyst is just going out and making a guess about this with "no data" is laughable. Again, you haven't the slightest idea how these people work, and you're just piling up bullshit assumptions. This guy does have data, and if you went and read his whole analysis, I'm sure you would find that he has justifiable reasons for thinking this. In fact, if you had only read the article (which, by the way, almost certainly barely scratches the surface of his report) you would have noticed several pieces of his evidence that were mentioned there:

1)There have been reports from designers who were supposedly working on AMD-based designs for Dell.
2)Dell began selling AMD chips (retail-style) on their website a few months ago.
3)This analyst personally conversed with Michael Dell and was told that the sales force was demanding Opteron servers.
4)Dell's inventory doesn't check out; if they are going to continue only working with Intel chips, they aren't keeping as many of them on hand as could normally be expected.
5)This analyst claims to have other, anonymous, sources in the industry who say this is going to happen.
6)It has been within the last 12 months that Opterons have become the obvious choice for servers.
7)Last week Michael Dell publicly said using AMD was a distinct possibility.

I would like to know whether anyone can recall an analyst having predicted this before, and what evidence they cited at that time. Because I've been following AMD and Dell both for quite some time (from an investor's point of view; I have owned shares of both from time to time, and yes, I currently own some AMD) and I can't say I saw that.

But whether this will all come to pass is not exactly the point. The point is, stock analysts base their predictions on actual data...that's their job. They give their employers amazingly exhaustive reports about this sort of thing. So when you just go shooting off your mouth about how this guy has "no data" and is just trying to pump a stock for personal gain (something he can go to jail for) you sound like an idiot. Particularly when you yourself have absolutely no evidence for your own position.

Oh, and as it happens, I came across this other story this morning, here which contains this paragraph:

According to Santiago, AMD chips are likely to be incorporated into 10% of Dell's servers, 5% of its desktops and 3% of its notebooks by the end of 2006. AMD will have processors in 20% of Dell's servers in 2007. (Santiago doesn't own AMD shares.)

So I guess that pretty much eviscerates your whole completely unfounded argument. Not that I hadn't already done that anyway...

Who cares about Web 2.0? Web 2.1 will offer a best of breed approach to "expedite e-business platforms and mesh sticky supply-chains with integrated transparent interfaces that transform visionary markets. Through iterating one-to-one paradigms, it revolutionize cross-media mindshare". Come on Cramer! You know you want to buy it now!

In under 5 years it went from a two person operation to one of the 500 most valuable corporations in the world.

Give google time and they will either be bought out by another media firm, or they will become one of them.

In america on the other hand, people are largely used to the capitalistic way of doing things: i.e. you earn money and you find someone who can sell what you need. Anything new (like GPL) that breaks this line of thinking immediately puts people on the defensive.

Neither GPL nor Linux prevents profits, examples are Redhat and to a lesser extent MySQL. Though it's not in Microsoft's league Redhat is making a profit. Businesses like IBM are moving from selling products to providing a service, they can "give away" software then sale service and support. Though it's a different economy it still offers the possibility of making money.

"The IEA figures put the total spare capacity of all 11 countries in OPEC at just 330,000 bpd (down from 6 million bpd in 2002). Conventional Saudi spare capacity is zero." http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0234CBB3-16 9D-42DF-8B33-6BEFF80FA478.htm Saudi Arabian fields probably past peak production: http://www.thestreet.com/_tsccom/funds/supermodels /10174679.html

I never heard of Carl Icahn till I read today's posting. He's the 49th richest person in the world according to Forbes.His political contributions are to both Republicans and Democrats. (But mostly to Dems.)

Some people would say he's a Wall Street predator the way he bullies companies like TWA. He's got such a big pile of money he can influence companies like Blockbuster. The same guy thinks he's the closest thing a shareholder has to a friend. Even serious analysts admire him.

He's even part of XO Communications and tried to takeover the ailing Marvel Comics. There's a book about it called Comic Wars.

"You learn in this business: It you want a friend, get a dog" - Carl Icahn

After a decade of rapid growth, eBay has stagnated. Now, with a $2 billion pile of cash and short-term investments, the San Jose Net auctioneer seems to be looking for some new direction.

It looks like eBay is trying to cash in on the Next Big Thing (TM).