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There is probably no reason to block this merger as it would create what is clearly a massive market monopoly. AT&T and Time Warner own pretty much all the cables suitable for communication into people's houses in many areas.

Time Warner, which is what AT&T want to buy, own no cables. Time Warner Cable, which is now a separate company from Time Warner, own cables; they have already been bought by Charter Communications, who also own cables.

Eh, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.

If you look at various SEC mandated, or voluntary, disclosures from publicly traded companies, you'll almost always see something like this example from Time Warner.

Legally, distinguishing between statements of fact and 'forward looking statements' makes a difference. It's like the securities equivalent of the “These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.” tag you always see on 'dietary supplements'.

So, if some optimist was given information that constituted a forward looking statement, with the usual boilerplate, about what Nokia hoped their strategy would do, they can go shove it. If Nokia outright claimed that this move would have a specific, definite effect, on their market position or stock price, Nokia may well have shoved their foot in their mouth, good and hard...

2 out of 5?
Umm Time Warner....
That would make it 3 of 5.
Time Warner Inc., a global leader in media and entertainment with businesses in television networks, filmed entertainment and publishing, uses its industry-leading operating scale and brands to create, package and deliver high-quality content worldwide through multiple distribution outlets.
http://www.timewarner.com/our-company/about-us/

Time Warner Inc. != Time Warner Cable Inc. They separated years ago. Time Warner Cable (and maybe Insight Communications Company and Bright House Networks) provides the Road Runner High Speed Online ISP service, Time Warner does not.

Time Warner and Time Warner Cable Agree to Separation

Here's why it will be back, or something like it:

From their recently filed 10-K report:

"Technological advancements, such as video on demand, new video formats and Internet streaming and downloading, have increased the number of media and entertainment choices available to consumers and intensified the challenges posed by audience fragmentation.
The increasing number of choices available to audiences could negatively impact not only consumer demand for the Companyâ(TM)s products and services, but also advertisersâ(TM) willingness to purchase advertising from the Companyâ(TM)s businesses.
If the Company does not respond appropriately to further increases in the leisure and entertainment choices available to consumers, the Companyâ(TM)s competitive position could deteriorate, and its financial results could suffer."
Full Document Here:

http://ir.timewarner.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=950144-09-1481

I think you seriously underestimate how powerful the pro-Zionism lobby in the US is. AIPAC has frequently been ranked as the most powerful lobbying group in the US.

Considering that the US Jewish population is only about 2%, AIPAC's amount of influence on US politics is very impressive.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, if it's taxed as personal property, it strengthens consumer rights substantially: If it's yours, you can resell it; if you have to crack the DRM in order to transfer it, well, you're just protecting your rights as a consumer, yes?

More significantly is how this fits in with the whole "intellectual property" meme: if it's property, it can be taxed. If Time Warner claims to "own" a series of ones and zeroes presented in a particular order, well gee, that's something that's taxable. And the IRS, golly gee, should have them list all of their taxable assets and its taxable value. And ones and zeros don't rot, so there's no depreciation, right?

Computing the taxable value should be easy enough -- simply take what they've earned off of it so far and multiply that by the time left in the copyright term. Good thing they've made sure those are insanely long, eh?

If Time Warner doesn't want to pay taxes on a movie that's been rotting on their shelves since 1943, then they can relinquish the property into the public domain and get it off their books forever. I mean, hell, their 2007 financial statement says they own $47.2 billion in intangible assets and $41.7 billion in "goodwill", so if that represents $88.9 billion in intellectual property, why the hell aren't they paying property taxes on $88.9 billion?

More to the point, why the fuck are we paying taxes on something they claim belongs to them?

If they have to declare every item in their portfolio as taxable property, there may well be great balance restored in the creative commons, the entity copyright law was designed to stimulate and protect.

Not really. AOL is an asset owned by Time Warner Inc. (http://www.timewarner.com/corp/businesses/index.html). This is taking that subsidiary asset and splitting it into two separate assets. At least, that's what I make of this.

Time Warner, whose subsidiaries include numerous entertainment firms and content delivery companies, may at the very least look at a restraint of trade suit in the making.

I hear the saliva splatting on the floor from the lawyers dripping jaws already.

"Now" as in "May"?

"After a short window following their standard DVD and Blu-ray releases, all new titles will continue to be released in HD DVD until the end of May 2008."

Yes it is. JVC announced hybrid Blu ray / DVD discs nearly 3 years ago. Why they're not used commercially I have no idea but the technology is not new. And flippers featuring HD DVD or DVD on one side and Blu Ray on another are also feasible. Warner have been talking of a Total HD which has HD DVD on one side and Blu Ray on the other.

All of which is largely irrelevant when considering if Blu Ray or HD DVD is more "compatible" with DVD. All Blu Ray players and all HD DVD players to my knowledge support DVD.

God forbid someone make a profit. I suppose Google should just survive off of funds from the People's Republic of America while promoting peace and love along with open source software.
If you'd crane your head out of the bong smoke once in a while, you might actually consider a world in which people have a right to invest and produce capitol. Furthermore, people with ideas like yours kill open source- "Oh hey Google supports open source that means they have to adhere to these strict anarcho-communist guidelines or I call them evil", why don't you call out someone who deserves it for once?

Hell, why limit yourself to 3rd party sites? A few tens of thousands of DMCA takedowns sent to the service providers of 20th Century Fox, Time Warner and Paramount ought to be good for a laugh.

Worried about the legality? Do it from a foreign country...

All purely hypothetical of course.

Some people argue that AOL means Time Warner. Time Warmer staff has to eat snakes on a plane and fried worms. Those who think it was funny may stay. Lord of the Rings was a recent Time Warner success. So our Lords of the ringtones think it makes sense to provide AOL's special features for FREEEEEEE. It will end up like this. Citizens will get paid by AOL for testing spyware, watching advertisement and the resurrection of Harry Potter.

What a long, embarrassing fall for the online company whose stock was once so valuable that it could buy a major cable company!

You do know that they're more than a cable company, right?

"This is really funny. Disney is basically saying that the academy is the biggest problem in the whole movie copying/pirating thing."

Stick around and read more Slashdot coverage of movie piracy, and with each article you'll see at least one nitwit post something to the effect of "If the movie industry wants to stop piracy, they should stop the leaks, rather than busting the poor teenagers who use BitTorrent bork bork bork!". In other words, you'll find plenty of Slashdotters who really do think that, yes, it's Academy screener leaks that are the biggest problem.

While the notion of taking measures to track screeners has obviously boggled more than a few Slashdotters, you can rest assured that the industry -- including the folks in the academy who get the screeners -- have known about this paranoia for years. The "do not copy under penalty of castration with a dull spork" type warnings have been plastered on screeners for quite a while now, and recipients have to literally sign agreements before they get their screeners, or it's sporking time. In fact, it's watermarking that caught Carmine Caridi. If this level of security makes you uncomfortable, or if you'd be offended to be asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, then you're probably not suited for the movie industry, or any industry that requires NDAs, for that matter.

"I think I'll go out on a limb and say that Disney isn't going to earn any more awards for future movies."

Yes, a huge limb -- your conjecture is unfounded and incorrect. But that's understandable, since you're obviously not up to speed on this little part of the industry. So, naturally, your post is +5, Insightful. Ain't Slashdot great?

Offcial announcements:

http://www.sonyonline.com/corp/press_releases/0617 05_warnerbros.html
http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812 ,1073757,00.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050617/sony_time_warner.ht ml?.v=1

Interestingly, the DC Comics MMO is scheduled for Q4 2007.

Bruce

Newspapers generate most of their revenue from adverting. It's probably a higher percentage than CNN/Fox News which take in a considerable sum from subscribers (where most of your cable bill goes every month). From their latest release TimeWarner gets a little over half it's cable network revenue from subscriptions and about a third from ads. The rest is licensing of original content. It's on page two in the networks division.
From their latestrelease, the NYT generates about two thirds of revenue from advertising and a quarter from readers, (the rest comes from smaller ancillary businesses). If pure generation of revenues was an indicator of bias, cable news networks would be the least biased sources of news. The big reason for the difference in depth of coverage is the audience. Most TV viewers do not want to sit through half hour sagas about a news story (while newspaper readers prefer reading 4,000 word stories about imporant subjects). I'd bet that a higher portion of newspaper readers prefer PBS of BBC news if they watch any of the news sources becuase they have deeper coverage of important issues and less fluff (which is far more popular).

Funny. But that's been around for a while already....

http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812 ,669780,00.html

Straight from AOL/TW, not just a summary from a newspaper: AOL introduces internet phone service

If you read the actual press release you'll see that one of the features listed is "* Full Enhanced 911 (E-911) calling coverage in all of the markets targeted for the initial rollout of the AOL Internet Phone Service. E-911 helps deliver a user's address-specific information in the event of an emergency."

The parent comment is just more FUD, move along...

No, nobody makes a distinction between broadcast television (which is redundant anyway) and cable television (which is one medium on which television programs are broadcast).
"One hundred percent." "Nobody." Huh.

A quick Google search shows lots of references making a distinction between cable networks/TV and broadcast TV. Here's one from a cable company.

NTSC is both an analog and a digital format.
So switching from NTSC to ATSC for digital TV wasn't necessary at all! (joking)

NTSC, a standard for the broadcast of analog TV.
Broadcast television systems.

And I think you need to go back and look again at your television. Those "RGB" (actually, YUV, or luminance/chroma) inputs are, in fact, analog.
When weren't they? Are you trying to say that because they're analog that they're somehow NTSC or carrying NTSC or ATSC signals? These are the same inputs my computer plugs into.

Also why would you presume that RGB inputs are the same as component inputs? Both are analog and can carry video derived from NTSC, ATSC, or any other signal source (like a computer).

This news is just a rehash of an AOL press release, which is its top-10 list of spam topics of the year. It has a footnote: This list is unscientific, and is not in any specific order. The cited email subject headers are not ranked by volume within the Top 10 list. So that's really just about making "AOL" appear in the media one more time; so far so good since CNN and then Slashdot picks it up. As to "Vioxx," I would think that probably the AOL PR intern who put together this list on the basis of his/her own spambox mixed it up with Viagra.

So, this means AOL customers might have to switch to RoadRunner?

So, this means AOL customers might have to switch to RoadRunner?

You are correct! , they did chnge their name.

BTW that link is the announcement

1. AOL/TW will drop the AOL part and revert to Time-Warner.

Didn't they already do this? I could be mistaken, of course, but when you go to www.aoltimewarner.com, it redirects you to www.timewarner.com, where I can't find a single thing that has the AOL and Time-Warner names together.

Just a sec....

Isn't NewLine part of AOL^H^H^H Time Warner?
According to This, they are.

And Warner Pictures is too?

Considering there were a number of reports that TW's profits for the last few years was largely influenced by LOTR:FOTR & TTT - it shouldn't take much for NewLine to receive the rights....

Should it?

By and large, the heads of our news organizations are very definitely liberal.

I guess you're not including Rupert Murdoch, eh?

Can you give an example of a CEO who is definitely liberal? Like Richard Parsons or Steve Case?

Compuserve. Probably the only reason they didn't try to litigate .png off the face of the planet is because they can't afford to.

Compuserve's parent company. Come again?

Quoth:

If such a message came from a company with not a bad reputation (winamp comes to mind), i would install the program

I guess you didn't realize that Winamp is Nullsoft is America Online whom is also the proud owner of Time Warner, among other things.

Is there really a reason to go about trusting, implicitly, this "winamp" organization of which you speak?

Indeed, the similarities between H2G2 and Time Warner are uncanny. Likewise the BBC to AOL. Just a few years ago it would have been H2G2 buying the BBC; my, how the tables have turned.

Personally, this is the last straw for me. I'd all but given up on the BBC in any case. I switched my viewing habits to the high-quality "Sky One" channel, and haven't looked back. Say what you will, but you can't question the integrity of Rupert Murdoch, can you?

I myself have been stuck in the Verizon loop of insanity. Long story, but to get to the point:

Cable modems are inherently insecure. You are sharing common bandwidth with others. That gives them level 2 access. Talk to RCN and see how well they handle Firewall Support. The reps at Time Warner pass you off from person to person and I have yet to get and answer.

Time Warner is the company I am going through until I can the proper DSL modem. They are very unclear on their policies. Having gone through both the Road runner site and the AOL-TimeWarner site, they do not specify very clearly what their terms of service are. I'm not too worried as I only plan to have them for a couple weeks. You, should check into it more though. A few companies out there... Sprint.... Have some very, evil policies. Like the right to go into your house because you are using thier service, right to dictate what sites you go to, regardless of legality, etc. So I would find all of that out before you consider either.

(In case you ever go through verizon, RA-14 crap out past 11,000 ft. from CO. Only the RA-12 Modems will work past that. Fujitsu has not ETA on when they will fix this issue.)

The big labels also keep most of the profits derived from the artists work, and only very sucsessful artists can make much money at all.