Mandrake to Acquire Conectiva

An anonymous reader writes "With a press release Mandrakesoft has announced the acquisition of Conectiva. 'Mandrakesoft, the number one European Linux company, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Conectiva, the number one Linux company in Brazil and Latin America. This acquisition is expected to increase significantly Mandrakesoft's size and R&D capabilities.'"

Comments

Big day for Mandrakesoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard they acquired Conectiva earlier.

Come on editors, READ YOUR OWN DAMN SITE.

Re:Big day for Mandrakesoft

[agm]

I reckon. I sent an email saying it was a dupe while it was in "the mysterious future". Not much point if they don't even read those emails.

Re:Big day for Mandrakesoft

[DarkMantle]

Actually, there's a big difference between the two. the title of the previous article says "Mandrakesoft Acquires Conectiva" as in it already happened. That post was sent to us from the future because this article says that "Mandrakesoft To Aquire Conectiva" as in it hasn't happened.

With time travelling news reporters named Trillian from Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, all of our news will be out BEFORE it happens. CNN's "News As It Happens" is a thing of the past....

Or is that present.

Stupid paradox..... :s

Re:Big day for Mandrakesoft

[LiquidCoooled]

Subscribers should have a button in the mysterious future.

Pressing it should sound an alarm and turn a lava lamp different colors.

Taco and Cowboy can get into their superhero costumes and slide down a pole to go and fight the evil menace.

Re:Big day for Mandrakesoft

[scm]

I had to reload the page a couple of times. I thought something had gone wrong the first time because it was showing the same story on the top that it was when I looked at /. this morning...

What does it say about /. when the editors don't think their site is worth reading?

Re:Big day for Mandrakesoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, so they posted the dupe first? Slashdot is getting good!

Re:Big day for Mandrakesoft

[jspoon]

It's a stock swap. No money is involved. So apparently there's nothing stopping them from swapping back and forth acquiring each other several times a day.

Re:Big day for Mandrakesoft

[datadriven]

On the plus side, at least the topic icon is not a dupe.

Re:Big day for Mandrakesoft

[pcmanjon]

"What does it say about /. when the editors don't think their site is worth reading?"

What's it say about the readers when they visit a site that they know the owners don't even care about.

Says wonders on "we the people" :)

geez

[Quasar1999]

Come on... the story is right on the front page still... same title... Are you people completely blind?

Re:geez

[Fred_A]

Oh no... it's Groundhog day !

I'm having déjà vu all over again !

Paid for it twice?

[TERdON]

Conectiva's former owners must have done good business. As we can read at here MandrakeSoft paid for it once yesterday too...

Again?

[bsharitt]

How many times can they acquire the same company in one day.

This comment may be a dupe...

[datastalker]

...but that would fit with the site.

It's still on the front page!

http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/02/24/1546209 .s html?tid=163&tid=147

deja vu

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so good, they bought it twice!

Harrrrrrrrrr

[hamfactorial]

^---------^ Holy overreactions Batman!

In other news...

[mpupu]

In other news, Mandrake acquired Connectiva.

THIS ISN'T A DUPE!

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Come on guys, have some sympathy.

I mean, once Mandrake aquired Connectiva, they had to reboot to load the new kernel. It's only natural that you'd see the message twice.

Shessh ...

This is a dupe

[jaymzter]

Before we go off and slam the editors for a truly horrible week, maybe we should reflect on ourselves. I mean, who is really so blind that the same stories keep getting submitted?? People, check the damn site before rushing to submit a story! You're not planting a flag and won't go into the history books just for getting a story submission on /.

Re:This is a dupe

[LiquidCoooled]

If a press release is posted somewhere, its entirely possible for multiple people to read the same story at a similar time. Consider also the syndication via AP or other sites - look at how Google handles dupes, most single news items have 1000s of sites all saying the same thing.

Each of the readers of these thousands of sites can decide to submit their take on the story, and so for every single bit of syndicated news travelling the web, there could for certain stories be thousands of submissions (i hazard its usually much less though).

The editors themselves have to filter through all these and find out what interests THEM, what stands out from the rest. They have to read and judge all these, and quite quickly decide which to post. The single story you see could be from a flood of 100 similar "dupes" themselves, so the editor thinks its new and picks the best one at that moment.
</ponder>

I can quite easily see WHY they happen, perhaps we could help the editors by making a submission scanner and search function. An interface to google news (as somebody pointed out recently, they manage to index very quickly so would catch most) would be simplest I think. Even just using link domains as an initial "this might already have been posted very recently" test would help them out.

Any perl hacks out there got any ideas?

Look at the bright side

[bstadil]

At least it is not the same guy that submitted the story. I am holding out for Cowboyneal submitting same story twice on same day.

I understand Ladbrook is giving 9:1 currently

Dupe

[CastrTroy]

Can't the editors at least look at the front page to see if the story is a dupe? Sometimes I think they do it just to rattle our bones.

mirror...

[same_old_story]

right here

DUPE DAY

[zoloto]

Well, I say everytime we find a dupe - especially one within the same day and on the front page - we just dupe the comments and karma whore till our faces are numb and eyes are pained.

Just an example:

How? (Score:5, Interesting)
by sfraggle (212671) on Thursday February 24, @11:27AM (#11767199)
(http://fraggle.alkali.org/)

How do they have the money to do this? Werent they almost bankrupt about a year ago?

[ Reply to This ]

Re:How? (Score:5, Informative)
by crow (16139) on Thursday February 24, @11:32AM (#11767258)
(http://www.votecrow.com/ | Last Journal: Monday July 01, @01:30PM)

It's a stock swap. No money is involved. This is typical of how mergers often work. The companies agree to merge, and they agree what the company being acquired is worth, do some math, and convert the shares of the acquired company into shares of the new company. The math is much like doing a stock split, though the ratio usually involves a number of decimal points. (The accounting for the investors is also much like a stock split.)

The real question in this case is why is Mandrakesoft's stock worth enough for Conectiva investors to consider this to be a worthwhile deal (as opposed to grabbing on to a sinking ship). I haven't looked at the business side of either company, so I can't comment there.

.
.
Simple isn't it? I think we should all do this and maybe the guys running /. will start to notice... wait.. they dont' even read the front page, how are they going to notice the comments? D'OH!

*tears up plans and flushes them down the toilet*

NEXT!

Dupped comments

[HokieGeek]

you think a dupped story is bad? some idiots have dupped this article's first post like 50 times!! what is this world coming to?!

Cool!

[by hemos]

Being a Mandrake user for several years, I am happy to see that they overcame their financial difficulties and are in a position to expand.

Apart from the botched 9.2 upgrade debacle, they have a distro that I can use for a Linux home network without spending too much time on it. I have four machines running Linux at home, and don't want to spend a lot of time on each configuring it.

They are also familiar and friendly enough for my kids to use it as their only desktop. They get to play their MP3, use FireFox or Konqueror, use Open Office for homework, ...etc.

Moreover, it is also perfectly good as a server for LAMP, Samba, ...etc.

Go Mandrake!

Re:yep

[hdparm]

Acquisition went so well that they are now thinking about acquiring Conectiva, as well.

Re:#1 European Linux company?

[Lxy]

SuSE still owned the linux desktop in Europe last I checked. That being said, they're no longer a European distro as they're now owned by Novell, headquartered in Provo, Utah. Therefore SuSE is no longer a European company, despite the fact that they may still have the market share.

Re:yep

[qewl]

Your marklars are wise and true.

After marklar chose to obtain marklar, marklar paid a lot more marklar for the marklar than marklar wish marklar had. Other marklar dislike French marklar and want powerful and profitable marklar away from those marklar. But no matter marklar, the best marklar will always be free marklar. Open marklar forever!

Plagerism!!!

[crow]

That was My post 11767258 in the original story.

CowboyNeal... why even have the email link?

[powerlinekid]

For the first time ever I emailed that this was a dupe to the editors before it was put on the front page.

I even linked to the story and mentioned it was on the frontpage.

So now we know they not only don't read their site, but they don't read email about their site. Which leads to the question of... what do you actually do? You don't edit. You submit anything Roland whatever posts. You post shit that has already been posted. You let Michael post amaingly misleading items.

Bah I'm done. Well heres one less subscriber...

From a leaked OSTG corporate chatlog...

[KrackHouse]

Zonk> Damn slashdot junkies are calling us on our sloppiness. What'da we do?
CmdrTaco> To hell with 'em. We're getting paid peanuts, isn't redundancy the mother of invention?
Zonk> I read somewhere that redundancy is the mother of invention.
CmdrTaco> What?
Zonk> I know you are... But what am I?
CmdrTaco> To hell with 'em. We're getting paid peanuts, isn't redundancy the mother of invention?
Zonk> Who's on first?
CmdrTaco>Yes
Zonk>What?

Correct me if I'm wrong....

[simetra]

but... didn't Slashdot run this story already?

It's really hard to be sure, but I could almost swear...

So many dupes lately...

[Max Threshold]

Is somebody resubmitting every story that comes up on the front page? A simple article URL search would eliminate 99% of these dupes.

And they want me to subscribe to this shit? Hah!

Re:Dupe!

[tomhudson]

That's right folks - tomorrow, they'll post:

Mandrakesoft rumoured to be thinking of taking over Connectiva

Connectiva stock up on rumours of takeover by Mandrakesoft

Then, Saturday ...

Mandrake to issue Mandrake linux 9.0

Then, Sunday

Mandrake to issue Mandrake linux 8.0

By April Fools Day, it'll be time to post

Linus releases version 0.9.0 of his kernel.

Microsoft releases Windows for Workgroups, DOS 6.2.4

By Thanksgiving, we'll be seeing

Ford Motor Co releases the Model T for $640.00

Christmas:

Fire good. Me hunt. Cave dry.

Finally, on New Years Eve:

Apeman-think - "What ... is ... that ... black ... monolith ... thing ..."

And start the new year with

In the beginning, ...

... and I used to love the movie Groundhog Day ...

Re:IF YOU'RE REALLY PISSED ABOUT THE DUPES...

[Nik13]

I don't think anyone's really getting pissed ofg about them. Most people have been posting (dupe) midly humorous comments about it being a dupe.

Of course there's always a few who will get verbal about issues, but sometimes it's also good to bring them up, you can't necessarily blame them for that either.

I mean, if you say the same article on page 2 and then again on page 8 in your newspaper - once every week, wouldn't you start to think it's time we do something about it?

Even funnier

[David Rolfe]

It's even funnier when you go straight to the linux.slashdot.org address... then the front page looks like this:

Mandrake to Acquire Conectiva
Linux Mandrake
Posted by CowboyNeal on 2005-02-24 21:09
from the changing-of-hands dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With a press release Mandrakesoft has announced the acquisition of Conectiva. 'Mandrakesoft, the number one European Linux company, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Conectiva, the number one Linux company in Brazil and Latin America. This acquisition is expected to increase significantly Mandrakesoft's size and R&D capabilities.'"

( Read More... | 21 of 148 comments )

Ask Slashdot: Building a Linux Computer Lab for Schools?
Software
Posted by Cliff on 2005-02-24 14:12
from the penguins-in-education dept.
joseamuniz asks: "After giving Linux classes to Secondary School Teachers, I got in touch with a non-profit organization called UNETE. This association has donated 1,523 computer labs to public schools in Mexico. I told them about Linux, and they are interested in equipping a beta computer lab with this Operating System, with Intel PIII, 256 MB RAM PCs. The more they like this lab, the higher chances to include Linux in the new labs donated by this institution." What hardware configurations and software packages would you install on such a machine to show off the real power of Linux in an educational environment?

( Read More... | 44 of 428 comments )

Mandrakesoft Acquires Conectiva
Linux Business
Posted by Zonk on 2005-02-24 11:25
from the one-plus-one-equals-linux dept.
rednaxel writes "This morning, both companies issued press releases about the merge. French Mandrakesoft is acquiring all shares of brazilian Conectiva for a total amount of 1.79 million EUR (2.3 million USD) in stock." CNet has coverage of the merger as well. From the article: "This won't elevate us to the status of Red Hat or Novell/SuSE yet, of course, but this is a significant growth for us..."

( Read More... | 31 of 209 comments )

That's right, THE DUPES ARE SO CLOSE THEY APPEAR IN THE SAME FREAKIN WINDOW. They are seperated by one -- ONE -- other story. It's a new level of laziness.

Re:Even funnier

[CyanDisaster]

... It's even funnier when you go straight to the linux.slashdot.org address... then the front page looks like this...

Oh yeah? Try this one: http://slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=147

Mandrake to Acquire Conectiva
On February 24th, 2005 with 167 comments
An anonymous reader writes "With a press release Mandrakesoft has announced the acquisition of Conectiva. 'Mandrakesoft, the number one European Linux company,...
Linux > Linux Mandrake, Linux Business, Linux

Mandrakesoft Acquires Conectiva
On February 24th, 2005 with 212 comments
rednaxel writes "This morning, both companies issued press releases about the merge. French Mandrakesoft is acquiring all shares of brazilian Conectiva for a...
Linux > Linux Business, Linux Mandrake

Hope be with ye,
Cyan

What did Merlin say about Mandrake?

[infonography]

it was to Morgana;

Merlin - What is that root?

Morgana - Mandrake, the essence of it can prolong the act of love

Merlin - And if too much is taken?

Morgana - Pain and Death.

Relevanice? None. Just liked that bit in Borman's Excalibur.

And if your wondering what my distro is, it's SuSE, because she wears short skirts and big black leather boots...