Slashdot Mirror
Halloween X Author Mike Anderer Speaks Out
cdlu writes "Mike Anderer, author of the now-famous Halloween X document, has spoken out at NewsForge. Among the highlights is a prediction by Mr. Anderer that Microsoft has many more disruptive lawsuits planned up their sleeves."
The Slashdot story seems to claim that Microsoft has many more lawsuits planned. Here is the paragraph that I think the author was referring to:
In a world where there are $500 million dollar patent infringement lawsuits imposed on OS companies (although this is not completely settled yet), how would somebody like Red Hat compete when 6 months ago they only had $80-$90 million in cash? At that point they could not even afford to settle a fraction of a single judgment without devastating their shareholders. I suspect Microsoft may have 50 or more of these lawsuits in the queue. All of them are not asking for hundreds of millions, but most would be large enough to ruin anything but the largest companies. Red Hat did recently raise several hundred million which certainly gives them more staying power. Ultimately, I do not think any company except a few of the largest companies can offer any reasonable insulation to their customers from these types of judgments. You would need a market cap of more than a couple billion to just survive in the OS space.
I read this to mean that Microsoft has a queue of 50 frivoulous lawsuits against itself not that Microsoft is planning 50 lawsuits against other people.
At any rate, Anderer's comments are devoid of any substance. Someone at Microsoft/SCO probably wrote the memo for him or he just copy and pasted talking points into his response.
He doesn't say "that Microsoft has many more disruptive lawsuits planned up their sleeves", he says that Microsoft have a great many lawsuits queued up AGAINST them. His perspective is evidently that you can only survive in the operating systems market if you can stand up against the sort of litigation that Microsoft has to. I don't think his point is a very good one but let's not pretend that it was something else entirely.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
Did you even read the article? He didn't say that Microsoft had 50 "disruptive lawsuits" up their sleeves... he said that Microsoft is going to face 50 lawsuits from people sueing them. His point was that someone smaller, like RedHat couldn't withstand that kind of judgement against them because of their limited resources.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Red Hat, Inc. Prices $500 Million of 0.50% Convertible Senior Debentures Due 2024
RALEIGH, N.C., Jan 6, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq: RHAT) today announced the pricing of $500 million aggregate principal amount of 0.50% Convertible Senior Debentures due 2024, which are being issued in a private offering.
The debentures are being sold at 100% of their principal amount. The sale of the debentures is expected to close on January 12, 2004, subject to customary closing conditions. The initial purchaser has an option to purchase up to an additional $100 million aggregate principal amount of the debentures. The debentures will be Red Hat_s senior unsecured obligations and will be subordinated in right of payment to all of its existing and future secured debt. Red Hat expects to use the net proceeds for general corporate purposes, including possible acquisitions of complementary businesses and technologies and the expansion of its international operations.
The debentures will bear interest at a rate of 0.50% per annum, payable on each January 15 and July 15, beginning on July 15, 2004. The debentures will mature on January 15, 2024, unless earlier converted, redeemed by Red Hat at its option or repurchased by Red Hat at the option of the holders. Each $1,000 principal amount of the debentures will be initially convertible under certain circumstances into 39.0753 shares of Red Hat common stock. Therefore, the debentures are convertible in the aggregate into approximately 19,537,650 shares of Red Hat common stock, or approximately 23,445,180 shares of Red Hat common stock if the initial purchaser exercises its option to purchase additional debentures in full. The conversion rate is equivalent to a conversion price of approximately $25.59 per share, subject to adjustment. This represents approximately a 37% conversion premium based on the last reported bid price of $18.68 of Red Hat common stock on January 6, 2004. The debentures will be redeemable by Red Hat beginning in January 2009 and investors will have the right to require Red Hat to repurchase the debentures in January 2009, 2014 and 2019 and upon certain repurchase events.
The debentures have been offered only to qualified institutional buyers in reliance on Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. The debentures and the shares of Red Hat common stock issuable upon the conversion of the debentures have not been registered under the Securities Act and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to a U.S. person absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements.
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offering would be unlawful.
About Red Hat
Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise. Red Hat is headquartered in Raleigh, N.C. and has offices worldwide.
Forward-looking Statements
Statements in this press release that are not historical facts and that relate to future plans or events are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include Red Hat_s intention to raise proceeds through the offering and sale of convertible senior debentures, the intended use of proceeds and the anticipated terms of such debentures. There can be no assurance that Red Hat will complete the offering on the anticipated terms or at all. Red Hat_s ability to complete the offering will depend, among other things, on market conditions. Red Hat_s actual results could differ materially from those projected or forecasted in the forward-looking statements. These include uncertainties relating to market conditions for corporate debt securities in general and our debentures in particular, as well as other factors identified in Red Hat_s most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
SOURCE: Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat, Inc.
Gabriel Szulik, 919-754-3700 ext. 44439
gszulik@redhat.com
Your word's spellcheck thinks your computer is a potpie. How much time do you spend Downloading service packs and DELETING SPYWARE LIKE CLARIA. How about dividing the $179 saved on extra goodies such as scanners, multimedia and high end sound cards that are all autmogaically that I as a proud Linux user gets. You havent used linux you ignorant bastard, you deserve whats coming to you.
Anyhow, great, he's worked for SCO under NDA, he's got a lot of Darl-like bombast about economic justification for his actions.
He *thinks* he's a rocket scientist (mostly people who say 'it's not rocket science' do think this :-).
He's writing junk patents, apparently for people who haven't figured out that the .com bubble has burst.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
I think it's time to start calling your local attorneys general and suggest that they work on anti-trust proceedings against microsoft again. am i correct in assuming that these sorts of actions start at the attorneys general? my impression is that some of these guys are actually out to defend us, so if we give them a barrage of phone calls maybe they will look into it. Here's where you can get some contact info.
OK, I'll be the Language Police this time, because the word cruft in this case is not just an ordinary misused word, it's a misused hackers' word.
Let's use the right word to express ourselves. The word that should have been used is " crux ."
According to the New Hackers Dictionary, the definition of cruft is:
The appropriate word was crux, which, as defined in Merriam-Webster Online, means:
So let's at least use words correctly that we as hackers made up ourselves. It's really not enough that we just find the closest-sounding hackers' word to substitute for a perfectly good, already existing word. The malapropism that results isn't even funny to anyone but other hackers.
And just think of the ridicule you would receive if, instead of posting a English language comment with a malapropism in it, you had instead posted a C++ program with a malapropism in it.
Hardware support is the _worst_ thing to argue for Windows being better than Linux. Linux support far more hardware than Windows, just consider all those architectures that Linux runs on and Windows doesn't.
Also, many drivers in Linux are actually written by people who actually maintain them, meaning that if your peripheral is supported in 2.2, it's likely to also be supported in 2.4, 2.6, and future versions. Contrast this with Windows where devices can and do become useless when new and incompatible Windows versions come out, and some drivers won't be ported to the newer version, whereas other things won't be released for earlier versions -- you must upgrade to use the new functionality, but that means you can't use your old device anymore.
I have a dream that one day, hardware manufacturers will actually care to support a plurality of operating systems, either by shipping drivers for various systems (this is already happening to some extent), or, preferably by releasing specifications (which used to happen in the past) or standardizing interfaces at hardware level (I think many USB devices do this). Or they might embed platform-independent drivers in firmware, a la OpenFirmware. I think this dream might just come true when the operating system monoculture is broken.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Rather than just stating that it doesn't, think about why it doesn't. Is
it because of the technical superiority of Windows? Or the superior innovation
coming out of Microsoft? Do you think they wrote all those drivers themselves?
They did for a huge chunk of the earlier drivers, yes. IIRC, Windows 95's drivers were initially all written by Microsoft - or at least a huge chunk of them were.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
This is rarely enforced, however, as such cases often end up being very difficult and time-consuming to prosecute (e.g. see US vs. Alcoa, 1945). The law has, however, been upheld by courts in the past, notably in US vs. Standard Oil (1911) and US vs. DuPont (1956).
"In a world where there are $500 million dollar patent infringement lawsuits imposed on OS companies (although this is not completely settled yet), how would somebody like Red Hat compete when 6 months ago they only had $80-$90 million in cash? At that point they could not even afford to settle a fraction of a single judgment without devastating their shareholders. I suspect Microsoft may have 50 or more of these lawsuits in the queue. All of them are not asking for hundreds of millions, but most would be large enough to ruin anything but the largest companies. Red Hat did recently raise several hundred million which certainly gives them more staying power. Ultimately, I do not think any company except a few of the largest companies can offer any reasonable insulation to their customers from these types of judgments. You would need a market cap of more than a couple billion to just survive in the OS space."
Then the headline says:
"Among the highlights is a prediction by Mr. Anderer that Microsoft has many more disruptive lawsuits planned up their sleeves."
My interpretation of this paragraph is that Microsoft always has tons of people suing them, and that redhat or whomever else wishes to make a living as an OS vendor needs to have lots of cash to pay out on some of them. Of course I disagree with that, but he does not come out and say that Microsoft has 50 more SCO-type suits in the works.
Liberty.
Quoting Wikipedia Monopoly:
In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a market situation where there is only one provider of a product or service. Monopoly should be distinguished from monopsony, in which there is only one buyer of the product or service. It should also, strictly, be distinguished from the (closely related) phenomenon of a cartel (which is a type of oligopoly), in which a centralized institution is set up to (partially) coordinate the actions of several independent providers ? as opposed to monopoly, in which there is one sole provider ? although, in some cases, that sole provider may have been created by consolidating several formerly independent firms
[...]
The term is sometimes (loosely) used to describe companies such as Microsoft or Standard Oil, which do face market competition, but which command a large market share and use their size to compete in ways which are considered unfair -- such as dumping products below cost to harm competitors, creating tying arrangements between their products, and other practices regulated under Antitrust law.
[...]
That's a NPOV for you!
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
Bush is the least qualified President we have ever had
After checking the Wikipedia...
Kennedy - Bachelor's degree
Carter - Bachelor's degree
Reagan - Bachelor's degree
Bush I - Bachelor's degree
Clinton - Bachelors and JD
Bush II - Bachelors and MBA
Least qualified? Not by comparison to some other recent presidents.
His ties to Enron alone are enough to want him out.
Much of the Enron shenanigans were ongoing before he even took office. Clinton had some ties also. Would that have made you impeach Clinton too, or only Bush?
Bush squandered the greatest chance for peace in our time by calling all of the world "Evil"
It was 3 countries, and those countries are either state sponsors of terrorism, genocidal regimes, or rogue nations pursuing WMD. If that's not evil, I'd love to see how you define "good."
say a big fuck you to the world
Kerry supported it... No, Bush got tired of UN corruption and inaction, and going around the UN was arguably the right thing to do. Check out the latest dirt on the UN's "Oil for Pala^H^H^H^H Food" program.
think of America as a "play by its own rules" bully
If those "rules" include reining in WMD proliferators and demolishing terrorist states, screw the opposition; The Right Thing (TM) isn't always the easy or popular thing. If finding and killing terrorists before they can strike is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Not to mention the fact that he wants to hold Americans without trial or due process indefinitely
If they're terrorists, they have almost no rights. To be considered lawful combatants and thus entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, you must meet four conditions: have a responsible chain of command (autonomous terrorist "cells" don't qualify), carry weapons openly, have a distinctive uniform or insignia, and follow the laws of war... Al-Queda meets NONE of these (the commentary I cited above is interesting... I recommend reading it).
It's OK that you hate Bush... really.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
"Least qualified? Not by comparison to some other recent president"
Yea because a college degree proves everything. Bush's inability speak English on an 8th grade level proves more than anything you said. Do we need to talk about how many schools Bush was rejected from? And yes people who flee from the military are not qualified to send others to die.
"Much of the Enron shenanigans were ongoing before he even took office. Clinton had some ties also. Would that have made you impeach Clinton too, or only Bush?"
Umm let's see. Who was Bush's #1 supporter and closest ally during his run from the govenor's office to the Presidency? Who held special meetings with the Vice President to decide our nation's energy policy while other companies were locked out? Who let Enron dictate Energy Commision nominess? Who refuses to discuss those meetings? You cannot in any way compare the access that Enron had to Bush to any other President.
"Check out the latest dirt on the UN's "Oil for Pala^H^H^H^H Food" program."
No actually I'd rather check out Bush and Cheney's ties to the Oil industry. I'd rather talk about Halliburton. Go ahead ignore that and bring up some other subject. It's your able to do.
"If those "rules" include reining in WMD proliferators and demolishing terrorist states, screw the opposition; "
Your so fully of shit its not even funny. Where exactly are those WMD's in Iraq?
"If finding and killing terrorists before they can strike is wrong"
Rah Rah. Kill the terrorists! Yep just keep scaring the Americans and saying terrorism so that the people are afraid to elect someone other than a Right-Wing hardliner war hawk. Great arguement. "If finding the bad guys is wrong I don't want to be right!" Bravo. That will play well with uneducated people everwhere. The End justifies the means always. Right?
"If they're terrorists, they have almost no rights."
If they are American citizens they have rights. I specifically said American citizens, who Bush FULLY supports holding without rights. Way to set up a straw man arguement though and say I'm arguing for rights for foreign terrorists.
"It's OK that you hate Bush... really."
I know it is. Thanks for avoiding debating the real facts though. It makes it so much easier.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"I would state that this licensing project represented only a small fraction of my time over the last year and has completely gone away in recent months. "
and
"I am still hoping people dig up some of the more positive projects I have been involved with."
Before getting involved in this whole SCO mess, Mike should have remembered this vital lesson .