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The URL you are looking for is at thestreet.com.

[snip]
AT&T Wireless (AWE:NYSE - commentary - research) customers cannot activate new GSM cell-phone accounts or make changes to existing GSM service because of a glitch that a Wall Street analyst is blaming on an upgrade of software from Siebel Systems (SEBL:Nasdaq - commentary - research).
[/snip]

And related.

[snip]
An executive in charge of consulting services at Siebel Systems is leaving the software company at the end of the year, a representative for the San Mateo, Calif., company confirmed Friday.
[/snip]

And Siebel stock is now marked as a Buy. Go figure.

/me buys some SAP stock. ;)

1) So? Come on, get serious.

2) Why we went to war. You've heard the saying that no one is so blind as he who will not see?

3) I assume you're talking about the recession, which started when Clinton was in office, according to official government figures. Well gosh, where to begin.

Service Sector Hiring Hits 3.5-Year High

NASDAQ, Dow Soar on Productivity Gains

For Home Loans, a Steady Market

Two Reports Indicate Recovery Is Taking Hold

Productivity Makes Best Gains in 20 Years

Auto Sales Rise with Economy

Shares Reach 18-Month Highs on Manufacturing News

Holiday Spending Shows Strength

Reports Indicate the Economy is Continuing its Expansion

Economy's Growth Is Revised Upward to 8.2%

U.S. Economic Growth Hits New Records

Number of New Jobless Claims Fell Last Week

Housing Starts In October Near 18-Year High

Economists Expect An Increase of 135,000 Jobs

Consumer Prices Steady After Four-Month Climb

Durable Goods Jump, Jobless Claims Drop

4) Sure. We're going to the moon so Bush can distract us from a bad e-mail bill passed by Congress.

5) Sure. We're going to the moon so Bush can distract us from the RIAA and MPAA.

I could go on ...

I'm sure you could. But I'd rather you didn't. - Alaska Jack

This block of text inserted to overcome Slashdot's stupid average-characters per line rule: WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation. WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, i

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/markets/marketfe at ures/10117159.html

Markham, Ont.,-based ATI earned $22.3 million, or 9 cents a share, on revenue of $380.7 million in the quarter ended Aug. 31, compared with a loss of $34.6 million, or 15 cents a share, on revenue of $222.9 million last year. Excluding investment gains, goodwill amortization and other items, the company earned $29 million, or 12 cents a share, in the latest quarter.

Do I detect a bitter msft owner

The point of this--which seems to escape most commenters--is that this is being used as a tactic to "out" Atrios.

This is exactly right. The abusive thing about this case is that Atrios loses his anonymity regardless of the merits of the case and despite the fact that bloggers are immune to libel suits. Punishment comes without conviction.

Upton even says in his letter, "Determining your identity for the purpose of making service of process can be easily accomplished through a subpoena to Blogspot.com."

Furthermore, Upton first pointed out this tactic to Luskin in this article about cleaning up message boards, where he says, "Message board posters may be unaware of the risk that they take when they post a message about a company, and that the qualified anonymity they enjoy may lull them into a false sense of security."

...traditional PC languishes

What the heck? Pc business is growing, not too fast, but there are more and more PCs sold each year. Whatever product you come up with for post-PC era, PC kills it from the price standpoint. Network computer, dedicated e-mail devices, Internet-enabled frames, image viewers you hook up to a PC - all crushed by the PC.

i found
this article on SCOX latest runnup to be telling. In particular:
SCO management has indicated $1 billion would be an acceptable takeout price -- about one-third of the $3 billion plus potential punitive damages SCO is seeking from IBM
hmmm a billion dollars? I think IBM would rather take this thing to court. In the mean time I'm not going to target $45 a share as the analyst pushed.

Here's a pretty good review of the Deutsche Bank analysis, along with a summary of the stock's position overall. They note that the $45 target is highly speculative, and basically hinges on whether IBM will settle or not. Given the stakes, I don't think that's likely. What is likely is that this issue will linger around for at least another 18 months, so get used to SCOX swinging wildly.

As for myself, I couldn't help doing a little day trading yesterday. Got in at $19.40, jumped out at $20.90. I'll take that anyday!

SCO Stock soars

Another one

Fastest Growing Company !!!

If this is the advice given to investors then it is no wonder that the markets are in such a mess. In fact these experts think that $45 dollars will be a fair target.

"Skiba calculated his $45 price target by forecasting earnings and revenue based on licensing agreements for Unix and other licensing opportunities."

Do we know whether or not the licenses granted to Microsoft etc were perpetual or annual, because otherwise I cant see where they think the additional funds will come from ?

From the article it also looks as though they are still angling for IBM to buy them for $1 BILLION. I think IBM will not buckle and will just crush them.

Some interesting quotes:

As a "call option," an SCO investment would not be likely to expire before spring 2005, when the IBM case is scheduled to go to trial

Spring 2005?! We have to put up with this for that long? Argh!

Accordingly, Skiba advised investors not to discount a potential takeout of SCO, particularly if the firm is able to slow down the adoption of Linux. SCO management has indicated $1 billion would be an acceptable takeout price -- about one-third of the $3 billion plus potential punitive damages SCO is seeking from IBM.

$1b? Hahaha!

In addition, he argues that the idea of Linux being created by thousands of volunteer programmers is largely myth, given that companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ:NYSE - commentary - research) and others have paid thousands of employees to improve the operating system and build a business around it.

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech/ronnaabramson /10119639.html

Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Skiba accompanied his buy rating with a $45 price target, but cautioned that investors should consider an investment in SCO "extremely high risk and volatile." Shares of SCO propelled $5.13, or 33%, to $20.66 in recent trading.

Buying SCO is akin to buying a call option on the company's controversial lawsuit against IBM (IBM:NYSE - commentary - research), Skiba wrote in his research note. In its suit filed in March, SCO charged IBM with misappropriating SCO's UNIX source code in its Linux business. But the case is complicated because of how SCO ended up with rights to Unix and the code's relationship to Linux.


The analyst doesn't try to hide the fact that this is an incredibly risky investment. You're basically betting that the lawsuit will be successful. Therefore, shorting this stock would seem like a way to get some easy money. Then again, I would have said the same thing about betting on the Cubs a few days ago.

This analyst doesn't like it.

His prediction? "There's a $100 million write-off headed Disney's way."

> screaming spikey-haired Asian guy.

a.k.a. Waldo Chen who even appears on my ReplayTV channel guide. He is the poster child for the .com age.

--H

http://www.thestreet.com/comment/keyhole/774791.ht ml
Scroll down for Paul Allen reference

http://www.savephillyschools.org/edisonwatch/

Computer Associates (CA:NYSE - commentary - research) on Tuesday announced it would pay a $40 million settlement to a company that claimed breach of contract over a $15 million partnering agreement it made with the large software firm.

In a press release issued after the bell, Islandia, N.Y.-based Computer Associates said it has reached a settlement with the Canopy Group and Center 7 over a suit filed by the companies in April 2001 in federal court in Utah. Center 7 claimed that Computer Associates reneged on a deal to help sell $15 million in software the small company had bought.

Center 7 was formed by the Canopy Group, which has ties with companies experienced at suing the monsters of software. Canopy has a major stake in SCO Group (SCOX:Nasdaq - commentary - research), which in a suit filed in March charged IBM (IBM:NYSE - commentary - research) with infringing on its Unix copyright in its Linux business.

I agree with you. The SCO Group is not a real company. They are an operating tentacle of The Canopy Group.

More news of interest:

Computer Associates Agrees to a $40 million settlement

Level 7, another Canopy Group tentacle, sued CA and settled for $40 million. Check this line out: Level 7 didn't write its own software, it bought software, entered a contract with Computer Associates, and then turned around and sued them.

Wake the hell up, everyone, and take a close look at exactly who and what we are dealing with.

Like I said, I agree with you. These aren't the death spasms of a dying company. It's actually the ordinary life cycle of a Canopy tentacle. The very name "The SCO Group" masks this, because it's associated with 20 years of Unix history.

This is an unrelated case (remember, Canopy Group makes a living suing people). However, given the timing, I am now lead to believe that part of the settlement was that CA agreed to buy some of SCO's phony "Linux Licenses".

"The recession officially begins in March 2001 and ends in November 2001."

Nope. MSNBC is hardly a reliable source. Try here

From the article - The official start date of any U.S. recession is based on the consensus of the dates when production, employment, income and sales peaked. Of these, the two key indicators are nonfarm jobs, which peaked in March 2001, and industrial production, which peaked in September 2000. The broadest measure of sales -- real manufacturing and trade sales -- peaked in August 2000.

You'll find that SCO Group still owes Novell a noticable sum ($1.7 million) for Unix rights. You'll find they've burned more than $200.000.000 of venture capital, with little hope of recovering any of that except by a miracle ('Sue IBM? Brilliant idea!').

Their forward-looking statements also makes for interesting reading:

The Company anticipates that participants in the Linux industry will seek to influence participants in the markets in which we sell our products to reduce or eliminate the amount of our products and services that they purchase.

IOW, they've already filed with the SEC that they might stop selling any actual products. There's a truckload of warnings of potential hazards, most of which are very familiar to what has been discussed here and in other press.

The latest quarterly filing can be found at SEC or on: TheStreet.com

'Supernova' probably best describes what they're doing.

They managed to unload quite a bit the previous two months:

SEC filings on SCO Group

In general, their latest quarterly SEC filing contains lots of interesting bits and pieces. Like you can find that the MS licensing deal they had was probably worth some 8,25 million dollars? Guaranteed no more, unlikely to be less, seeing that previous quarter licensing revenue was $0.

You'll find that SCO Group still owes Nowell a noticable sum ($1.7 million) for Unix rights. You'll find they've burned more than $200.000.000 of venture capital, with little hope of recovering any of that except by a miracle ('Sue IBM? Brilliant idea!').

Their forward-looking statements also makes for interesting reading:

The Company anticipates that participants in the Linux industry will seek to influence participants in the markets in which we sell our products to reduce or eliminate the amount of our products and services that they purchase.

IOW, they've already filed with the SEC that they might stop selling any actual products. There's a truckload of warnings of potential hazards, most of which are very familiar to what has been discussed here and in other press.

The latest quarterly filing can be found at SEC or on: TheStreet.com

'Supernova' probably best describes what they're doing.

Point #2 is significant in this case; any IP infringement I have seen in the past has been prefixed with a cease and desist letter. No evidence has been presented, this is a clear-cut case of FUD on the part of SCO.

More info here:

Linux Dispute Keeps Escalating

Don't forget, SCO is also under SEC investigation for financial misdoings. "The consolidated complaint alleges certain improprieties regarding the circumstances surrounding the underwriters' conduct during the Company's [SCO's] initial public offering and the failure to disclose such conduct in the registration statement in violation of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended." This is not a company on the up & up, it's not impossible to imagine a shady dealing with MS to ensure uncertainty in the Linux camp.

With the current SCO pricing strategy the TCO argument for Linux goes out the window. Technically speaking it's more expensive to run a Linux shop than an NT/W2K shop. MS now wins the cost argument handsdown; interesting how that happened. Also note that the MS deal gives $5M to SCO for the next 3 quarters. With the cost of payroll at around $5M this is enough to keep the company afloat. The additional $8M initial amount can be used to mitigate deferred revenues and other long term expenses. This deal is fishy, I expect someone is going to get hurt real bad and it might just be Microsoft.

Wade Cook made money by selling overpriced seminars to people trying to get rich quick. They also tried to do trading for their own account. They were not very successful. Wade Cook Financial, and its wholly-owned subsidiary the Stock Market Institute of Learning, are now bankrupt.

You ain't seen nothing yet!

Nortel: $175 in January of 2000, $0.85 in August 2002.

If I had any money at that point, I'd have bought some stock in Nortel. If they went out of business Canada would go down the toilet economically.

For the last six years the averaged revenue growth is 7.2 - 9.8% (except for the year 2000 probably due to the recession). That's pretty good figures. For the years 1980-1995, before high speed Internet, the average revenue growth was 5.2% a year.

2. The data you are showing is relative to ticket sales in theaters, where DeCSS is a non-issue. DeCSS affects the sale of VHS and DVD products by diluting the market for those goods with "pirate" copies that are either free or cheap.

You are right here. The increase in DVD sales is much more impressive than the revenue growth of the ticket sales.

DVDs conquer the movie world

WARNER-HOME-VIDEO-DVD Sales Soar

BusinessWeek

Blockbuster Sees Revenue, Profit Growth in Q1

4. Just using the numbers you linked to, the movie makers are actually losing more money than ever. So I suggest not using these numbers in any rational debate about the subject at hand.

The Domestic Grosses are just part of moviemakers revenue. There are also Overseas Grosses, which excide the domestic grosses. There are also rental revenue, merchandise sells, and VHS and DVD sells.

Warner's 4Q revenue rose to $11.4 billion from $10.6 billion, as strong box office and DVD sales and improvingCNN Money

Fox Post Profit Gains

The Ever-Expanding, Profit-Maximizing, Cultural-Imperialist, Wonderful World of Disney

• 
  At UBS Warburg, Jack Francis, co-head of equity trading, said the sudden surge in price followed a 5-million-share block trade, considered to be a very large buy by Wall Street standards. "That was spurring stories of a potential takeover, which doesn't make any sense at all but did add fuel to the upside," said Francis. "The rumor doesn't hold a lot of weight, but in a market like this it gets people off the fence who are looking for any story that could generate alpha."
  

The shock effect is so substantial I'm reminded of it everytime I visit this otherwise very classy site, and it probably reduced the number of times I visited it.

Text-based ads are it. Their seeming helpfulness makes them very workable. Readers don't need big Flash'y ads in order to come in - even the little link on our web named 'Support' works very well indeed. There are too many good points to text-only links to mention :)

Dell will not be selling their own printers, they will be selling Lexmark's printers with the Dell name stamped on them. It is in Dell's best interests for Lexmark to do well in this case.

Overture buying altavista too

Here is a chart of what vendors think is important when choosing an embedded OS.
Linux already satisfies the four most popular criteria: Real Time capabilities, royalty free licensing, it runs on a variety of CPUs and it provides access to source code.

No wonder Motorola choose for the linux solution.

From Macrovision's Annual Report, as filed with the SEC:

In the U.S., the digital PPV system operators have installed copy protection capability in their digital set top boxes. However, they have indicated that they will not activate copy protection until the studios release their movies to the PPV system operators at or closer to the same time as they release them to home video. This standoff between the system operators and the studios has had a negative impact on our potential revenues and net income opportunities, although it is less of an issue in international markets, where studios have been able to insist that PPV movies be copy protected.

OTOH, the thought of that fat pipe moving *more* spam is scary.

No kidding! Here's Riptech's press release and Recourse's news. This follows the purchase of MountainWave earlier this month.

Helevius

almost as funny as the story run by FOXNEWS.com saying "al Qaeda operatives have infiltrated WorldCom" (last two paragraphs on the page)... seems they didnt read the whole story at foxnews.com... it was a joke commentary by Arnaud de Borchgrave

the story outlining foxnews erronious reporting is here (Item #4).

New AD&D thief subclass for purposes of WOTC game submission:

Fraudster! Gain one experience point per dollar successfully l33ch3d from shareholders in the form of embezzled funds, falsified expense reports, improper derivatives trades, or just plain lousy accounting."

experience : Rank
0-100 : Office Supply Cabinet Raider
100 - 999 : Expense Account Padder
1000 - 9999 : Spammer
[ ... ]
? - ? : WOTC executive (1)
[ ... ] 100,000,000 - 999,999,999 : Rogue trader
zzzzzzzzzzzzz - zzzzzzzzzzzz : Rogue trader of the Order of Leeson (2)
over zzzzzzzzzzzzz : Arthur Andersen!

(1) - To Be Determined

(2) - a Rogue Trader of the Order of Leeson must both inflict a loss of over $1B and the collapse of a major financial institution. The Order is named after Nick Leeson, who broke his employer, Barings Bank, with $1.3B derivatives loss.

(3) - Title chosen by the reigning champion. Former winners have included Bre-X ($4B scam re: nonexistent gold mine supported by faked ore samples) and current leader Enron at over $60B (740M shares outstanding at $83 at the peak) in vaporized market cap.

The title is currently in contention, with executives from Tyco (TYC) making yet another strong showing this morning by racking up almost 9 billion experience points as TYC trades down to $10.12 (-$4.48) on further allegations that alleged personal improper accounting may have also affected the company. While TYC had appeared to be coming back from its lows in recent weeks, these revelations have taken Koslowski's score from ~60B experience points to 80B experience points, and he currently stands at 90B.

(And before you go off in a huff and claim that capitalism has somehow failed - despite these egregious examples, the market's full of thousands of good companies out there run by good people out to make an honest buck by providing a service or good for money.

And more importantly, all of these scandals combined still barely make a dent against the multi-trillion dollar pyramid scam called "social security". The people who purchased ENE or TYC did so of their own free will. The same cannot be said for the unlucky "participants" in the Social Security game.)

seems someone at WoTC is in some deep doodoo...

Hasbro Fires Exec, Claiming Embezzlement

thank you soooo much for bringing that up

this could be the end of Wizards' full content control
and bring an era of Hasbro-delegated misery to d20/mtg ...

moderators please mod the parent up; I didn't find the link, he did.

seems someone at WoTC is in some deep doodoo...

Hasbro Fires Exec, Claiming Embezzlement

Yeah, it's apparent that the Bells are doing wonderful!

Verizon cuts

SBC cuts

BellSouth cuts

Inflated financials

Interesting how you're ignoring the fact that they adjusted their net income upwards to the benefit of $1.3 million over three years. link and another

Enjoy your game of turok, and I hope you get over your bitterness at TDFX death soon.

and still wonders... Amazon's CFO

I also saw the PBS special (Frontline, IIRC). One of the central themes was that banks/underwriters (e.g., Credit Suisse First Boston) of the some IPO's manipulated the market to their benefit. CSFB recently settled with the SEC over this; for instance, you can read this article. To quote:

Specifically, the commission said, CSFB allocated shares of IPOs to more than 100 customers who, in return, funneled between 33% and 65% of their IPO profits to CSFB. The customers typically sold the stock on the day of the offering, often collecting big profits. The customers then transferred a share of their gains to CSFB by way of excessively high brokerage commissions.

Of course, one of those IPO's was LNUX.

I suspect Zilog and their bond holders were expecting their IPO to bail them out, but they withdrew it September 2000 when the IPO market went down the tubes.

This an interesting quote from TheStreet.com

"Under the 1974 Tunney Act, designed to make sure settlements with the government are in the public interest, a proposed settlement must be published in the Federal Register and undergo a 60-day public comment period before gaining approval. At the end of that period, the government has 30 days to respond to those comments. The court then determines whether the settlement is indeed in the public interest."

So the community needs to get organized and be prepared to speak to the settlement and why it is or isn't in the public interest.

MarkX

I work for Ford Motor.

Please see here: http://www.thestreet.com/tech/siliconvalley/102490 9.html

This isnt the 'best' description of the situation, but BASICALLY the Ford PeoplePC deal has been a scam from day one.

Ford announced this program internally as an effort to jumpstart the rank-and-file computer knowledge in order to enable the company in the new 'ecommerce' universe (robost-corporate-speak-bullshit). They invested MANY MANY millions into PeoplePC PRIOR to their IPO. PeoplePC, as some of you may rememeber, was basing its business on "we give you PC now for a 36mos. ISP contract" ala Iopener and some others... when the big Dot Bust occured, all these companies started to fail. Ford, having its NUTS in the vice for about $25 Million dollars, Ford volunteered to ENROLL every Ford employee in the PeoplePC program... the cost to Ford directly? Im not sure, maybe something, maybe nothing - frankly I have no reason to believe that it cost Ford ANYTHING to do this, I believe it was an effort to further finance PeoplePC, give them customers (keeping them working/solvent) and give the impression that PeoplePC is a viable business.. remember Ford was in bed w/ PeoplePC pre-IPO... and they had a contract deal to be able to buy another $25M at IPO stock price.

So, basically, when PeoplePC the market ran away from all the DotComs and other fantasy-technology companies, PeoplePC became a worthless company.. they trade at like $0.18 per share.

Ford knows the company is doomed. They are not going to 'throw good money after bad'... they are going to let PeoplePC die.

THIS IS WHY THEY CANCELLED THE PROGRAM

Let me tell you very frankly - there are alot of people at Ford Motor Canada that are VERY VERY ANGRY about this. It could be a very heavy point in the next CAW contract (sept'02)... and the Salary Staff (which I am one of) are VERY aware of what is really taking place... the worst thing in the world is to be this close, this aware to something like this announcment and realize that the company you are working for is a decietfull(sp?) pack of liars.

More detailed info here. There is an article here that more or less says the same thing you do but doesn't reach the same conclusion.

How big a fine should it be? I don't think they'll go that high.

Here is a little article about it.

Until tomorrow, when you got another 10-20 spams.

And the day after that, when you got another 10-20.

By learning how to read headers and report spammers to their upstream providers, I cut my spamload from 10-15 per day in 1997 to 1-2 per day in 1999. It's remained relatively constant since then.

Incidentally, from the names of the "companies" mentioned in the spam, a little searching on Google will reveal that there's much more behind IMG Marketing, Berrytrim, and IGP than meets the eye in this article.

The meatspace identities of the perpetrators behind these three particular frauds are leaking out, and the perps are going down. (Hi, IMG, whazzup Brendan, and a big hello to Ralsky, now reduced to operating his web servers on dialup lines. Too bad for IGP, who, as mentioned in the article, finally got themselves torn a new asshole by the IRS. Guess it was a bad idea to have one of your spammers joe-job all those Lumber Cartel operatives. Whatever happened to Ron anyways? Wonder what's up with the IGP joe-jobber in Sacramento now?) *splorf*

My only regret is with the EIN fraud with the dropbox in Beverly Hills. Last time I checked, Beverly Hills was in CA, and I'd love to ask the deputy attorney-general why, if they know about it, American Financial Services is still operating? (Or perhaps the AG's office is just giving 'em enough rope to hang themselves... muahahahah!)

As regards Pre-Paid Legal Services, thestreet.com did some good reporting on them a few months ago.

As Tom Lehrer put it - "Who's Next?"

Paid Subscription has hardly been "skipped over". It's been tried and it seems to works in some places and not others.

Slate tried subscription when they launched. In fact there was a great deal of coverage specifically because they were trying a subscription model. Slate is no longer charging a subscription fee.
thestreet.com also had a paid subscrption model that failed.
The Wall Street Journal charges a yearly fee for online access to what is basically the content of the print paper. They've been doing this for years, and it seems to be successful for them (though I wouldn't really know).
There are probably too many other examples to list, but it's a model that's been tried and largely been failure.

Frightening quote of the day:
An ad exec quoted in an article on thestreet.com: Flagging Sales Have Net Advertisers Lowering the Banner

"It's [the banner ad's] not big enough [ ... ] It's not targetable enough. It's not intrusive enough."

Except Junkbuster doesn't really care how big the ad is, as long as the URL is expressible as a regexp. Fsck 'em.

ObMemePropagation:
All the ad agencies' base are belong to us!

Here. The explanations are full of PR twisted nonsense and fake optimism. Doesn't look good.