dutch auction effect
on
Google IPO Swami
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Given the large amount of publicity Google's IPO is getting, and assuming the dutch auction will be pretty open to the public (I trust Google for that), the whole point of the dutch auction is to dampen the first day effect and make sure the company, and not day traders, gets most of the upside the market is willing to give it. Notice the assumptions up top, though... Theory doesn't always translate into real life.
And another thing: read the prospectus: the wall st guys are still getting a pretty good cut!
The master-slave now is not just for drivers but also for power. Under the USB gogo you'd still have to specify a device that will supply the power to the other USB device (one of nice features of USB is that the devices don't need to be plugged into a power supply) so connecting 2 "power slaves" to transfer files would not work.
Many in my family were "blessed" with acidy sweat/skin. This means that any watch we buy aside from all plastic or all titanium will have it's mechanism eroded in a matter of weeks or months (depending on person). One clockmaker even asked if we dipped a 6 month old designer watch into the ocean for a day or 2... Anyway, with Titanium watches my brother has had the same (very expensive) watch for 3 years now. Since Plastic only goes so far, I bought Ti this year too (although w/ leather strap, but even the strap clasp is Ti). It's light and reliable - what more could we ask for?
There is a lot of dark fiber out there (definitely in US, but also elsewhere), the problem is that it is not where there is likely to be demand for this type of crypto. The large urban metros (read: where gov'ts sit) are congestion points in general.
This is a natural economic process. When it was complicated and expensive to use web, only people that were heavy consumers used it (read: long sessions). As time goes on and it becomes easier and cheaper less intense consumers will get it. Therefore, we should expect the average user surf time to go down. What would be interesting to see is a statistic that breaks down average surfing time by how many years consumer has had internet access (e.g., avg for newbie users, avg for 1 year users, 2 years, etc).
(refering to Sun) "I think it's going to be really hard for an open standards company like that to get deep into the software business". So Linux yes, open source not so much...
I took my daughter to see the loenids and she was really impressed. It seems to me that the Geminids will not be as spectacular so I may skip it. I was really happy that it got her thinking (she's 6, in 1st grade) about earth moving thru space and got her more interested in the planets and meteors. We live relatively close to NYC and we went to the Natural History Museum a few months ago. They have a piece of a meteor on display, which I loved, but she was unimpressed. I think we'll go again and see if her reaction is different this time.
it's amazing to me how may times developers think their users are luddites and will not figure out how to circumvent shortcuts (as in the case of this CD). It's not just the domain of software either, Pentium 90s could be speeded up to 100 with 2 minutes of work by anyone that isn't afraid of a screwdriver.
The question is: is there a limit/border and if so, where is it? If it's wrong to sell to Saudi Arabia, is it right to sell to city librarys? To parochial schools that block contents? To parents that block content from their children? It seems pretty obvious to me that the parents one is OK (before you flame, wait! let me put my flame retardant on. OK, proceed). Selling to the Saudis is morally dubious at best, so where is the line?
By the way, morality in many other aspects has never stopped old time American companies in the past. Need examples? How about Phillip Morris: is it moral to sell something to people that will harm them for sure and shorten their life span almost surely? Still, people have no problem investing in this company.
Yahoo just announced that 3 more states have surrendered (see here). The list of suspected early surrenderers was on Yahoo earlier as: New York (confirmed), Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina and Kentucky. Since then 3 added ones have joined...:-(...
Since the 2 big states are leading the effort, it is key that they NOT sign off on this. In particular, I think it is CA that hired that famous litigation attorney. Also, since silicon valley is in CA a refusal to sign by CA is particularly telling.
I believe that if this drags on a little longer, unlike before, this will be a plus. The reason is that I've heard many economists on the government side hoping that XP will revive the economy as win98 did in 98. I think XP is not living up to that bill at the moment and in a month or 2 this will become apparent even to the DC big honchos. At that point restricting M$ won't quite look like shooting the economy in the foot...
notice the quote:
"We express no opinion as to whether permanent injunctive relief may be obtained
after a full trial on the complaint, as that issue is not before us."
This only prevents the preliminary injunction, it does not prevent a full trial....
Don't be, it will all clear up in the next episode of "Soap", er JonKatz...
Seriously, though, it seems to me that the trend towards globalization at least partially stems from an economic fundamental: people (all of them) are trying to increase their utility (that's econ-speak for health, happiness, money, and everything you might want bundled into 1 quantifiable mathematical construct). This means that corporations want to go after other markets (to market their products, lower their costs, etc), and people in other countries see the prosperity in the west and in particular in the US and want to mimick it. I say this as a respectful resident alien (who invented that term? I'm pretty sure I have no antennae). It is a natural process that people will freely choose. The only way it will reverse is if by some miracle other markets become unattractive to corporations at the same time as their inhabitants' standard of living increases. This is a little bit of a contradiction...
Maybe you've finally landed on the way that people developing open source projects can be paid. Send an RFP to the group that put the code together and assuming that they'll customize it a bit for you, they could finally make money on the code. This is particularly true for packages that don't have as much commercial power behind them (i.e., when there isn't a project-name.com for them).
When M$ first realized that they miscalculated with the internet party and created msn, they would crash netscape browsers. Anyone else remember that? Luckily there wasn't anything too interesting on msn (or msnbc) at the time so it wasn't a big loss, just annoying. Also, later on when they started "embracing and extending" there were webpages that would have problems with older netscapes.
As usual, M$ is going after the money. This is not new, IBM realized that service is where the money is almost a decade ago. Open Source is, at least in part, an ideological movement and therefore can naturally plug the holes where there is less money to be made. Fighting with M$ over market share in OS was a noble thing, and we may win ultimately with some DoJ help, but this will not change the fact that M$ is going after the money. We all know that they aren't really technology innovators, their strength has always been seeing where the market is (even if they realize it later than others) and going after it with a well-oiled marketing machine. That's what they're trying to do now with services.
I thought it was a given that to get the patent issues resolved things will have to be changed. Why then seek public comment now rather than wait until it is more stable? Is it to create pressure on potential claimants? I can see how pressure would help but why would public comment create it?
I read the letter and although I share their concerns I am afraid that a politician seeing this letter will dismiss it as a letter from zealots or unreasonable people. I think this because there are so many specific demands listed. It seems to me that a more generally worded demand (such as: "Order Microsoft to take FTC-specified steps that will remedy the privacy and security concerns, such as..."). This gives the FTC room to feel big enough to think what's appropriate on their own without getting what to the uneducated may look like a tirade of demands. Again, I repeat, I agree with the general sentiment I just don't think the way it is presented is effective.
As an aside: changing Passport is maybe feasible, but getting a politician to stop XP when it looks to many like the only current hope for reviving the tech sector is simply not going to happen. Why do they think that? It's a tradition, every time a new M$ OS comes out it totally uses all available resources so people/corps need to buy new PCs reviving the semi, PCB, OEM, sw market somewhat. Old story.
A similar cost argument could have applied to disposable cameras and yet they do have their uses and have a real market. I think this could be a great replacement for those disposable cameras, although I agree that there may be a problem with people hacking them. Perhaps they'll use a "deposit" like for bottles or credit card guarantee like for hotel rooms.
How big of a room do you need for these monster screens? It seems to me that you would first have to have a huge room for this. Friends of mine have a 65" TV in a rather large living room and still it's pretty close. In this case you would also need some distance for the projector, right?
PS I couldn't get the bstv I guess they were/.-ed faster than the blink of an eye.
the problem is when you have a small metro area that is very dense and a high concumer of telco services. Even if you had redundant services, it setill makes economic sense (from the service point of view) to locate both (say) switches in the same area therefore, it would only somewhat help with an attack such as this.
A place this side of the atlantic that has robot competitions is the Exploratorium in SF. They have different categories, including Sumo Wrestling Robots. This year's competition was last month, here's a list of the events. A few years ago I saw this in person and thought it was great (very crowded, though). Too bad I'm on the other coast now.
The oddest language from my point of view was Refine. It was a lisp based object oriented language with relatively few parentheses. Yes, you heard right, lisp and "few parentheses" mentioned in the same breath. We used it to create a prototype and it was interesting. I believe it grew out of Teitelbaum's group at Cornell (creators of the Synthesizer, which 1st year CS majors at Cornell were forced to code on way back when). Anyone else ever use it? I found it to have many of lisp's disadvantages (garbage collection, anyone?) without all the advantages. It did have a good plugin for emacs though (and forced this vi veteran to learn emacs).
Slashdot Mirror
Given the large amount of publicity Google's IPO is getting, and assuming the dutch auction will be pretty open to the public (I trust Google for that), the whole point of the dutch auction is to dampen the first day effect and make sure the company, and not day traders, gets most of the upside the market is willing to give it. Notice the assumptions up top, though... Theory doesn't always translate into real life.
And another thing: read the prospectus: the wall st guys are still getting a pretty good cut!
The master-slave now is not just for drivers but also for power. Under the USB gogo you'd still have to specify a device that will supply the power to the other USB device (one of nice features of USB is that the devices don't need to be plugged into a power supply) so connecting 2 "power slaves" to transfer files would not work.
Many in my family were "blessed" with acidy sweat/skin. This means that any watch we buy aside from all plastic or all titanium will have it's mechanism eroded in a matter of weeks or months (depending on person). One clockmaker even asked if we dipped a 6 month old designer watch into the ocean for a day or 2... Anyway, with Titanium watches my brother has had the same (very expensive) watch for 3 years now. Since Plastic only goes so far, I bought Ti this year too (although w/ leather strap, but even the strap clasp is Ti). It's light and reliable - what more could we ask for?
There is a lot of dark fiber out there (definitely in US, but also elsewhere), the problem is that it is not where there is likely to be demand for this type of crypto. The large urban metros (read: where gov'ts sit) are congestion points in general.
This is a natural economic process. When it was complicated and expensive to use web, only people that were heavy consumers used it (read: long sessions). As time goes on and it becomes easier and cheaper less intense consumers will get it. Therefore, we should expect the average user surf time to go down. What would be interesting to see is a statistic that breaks down average surfing time by how many years consumer has had internet access (e.g., avg for newbie users, avg for 1 year users, 2 years, etc).
(refering to Sun) "I think it's going to be really hard for an open standards company like that to get deep into the software business". So Linux yes, open source not so much...
nuff said.
I took my daughter to see the loenids and she was really impressed. It seems to me that the Geminids will not be as spectacular so I may skip it. I was really happy that it got her thinking (she's 6, in 1st grade) about earth moving thru space and got her more interested in the planets and meteors. We live relatively close to NYC and we went to the Natural History Museum a few months ago. They have a piece of a meteor on display, which I loved, but she was unimpressed. I think we'll go again and see if her reaction is different this time.
it's amazing to me how may times developers think their users are luddites and will not figure out how to circumvent shortcuts (as in the case of this CD). It's not just the domain of software either, Pentium 90s could be speeded up to 100 with 2 minutes of work by anyone that isn't afraid of a screwdriver.
I guess shortcuts are just too appealing.
The question is: is there a limit/border and if so, where is it? If it's wrong to sell to Saudi Arabia, is it right to sell to city librarys? To parochial schools that block contents? To parents that block content from their children? It seems pretty obvious to me that the parents one is OK (before you flame, wait! let me put my flame retardant on. OK, proceed). Selling to the Saudis is morally dubious at best, so where is the line?
By the way, morality in many other aspects has never stopped old time American companies in the past. Need examples? How about Phillip Morris: is it moral to sell something to people that will harm them for sure and shorten their life span almost surely? Still, people have no problem investing in this company.
Einstein without a mustache.
Plain unnatural!
especially if you have toothpicks for fingers. Maybe it's just me...
Yahoo just announced that 3 more states have surrendered (see here). The list of suspected early surrenderers was on Yahoo earlier as: New York (confirmed), Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina and Kentucky. Since then 3 added ones have joined... :-(...
Since the 2 big states are leading the effort, it is key that they NOT sign off on this. In particular, I think it is CA that hired that famous litigation attorney. Also, since silicon valley is in CA a refusal to sign by CA is particularly telling.
I believe that if this drags on a little longer, unlike before, this will be a plus. The reason is that I've heard many economists on the government side hoping that XP will revive the economy as win98 did in 98. I think XP is not living up to that bill at the moment and in a month or 2 this will become apparent even to the DC big honchos. At that point restricting M$ won't quite look like shooting the economy in the foot...
notice the quote:
"We express no opinion as to whether permanent injunctive relief may be obtained
after a full trial on the complaint, as that issue is not before us."
This only prevents the preliminary injunction, it does not prevent a full trial....
Don't be, it will all clear up in the next episode of "Soap", er JonKatz...
Seriously, though, it seems to me that the trend towards globalization at least partially stems from an economic fundamental: people (all of them) are trying to increase their utility (that's econ-speak for health, happiness, money, and everything you might want bundled into 1 quantifiable mathematical construct). This means that corporations want to go after other markets (to market their products, lower their costs, etc), and people in other countries see the prosperity in the west and in particular in the US and want to mimick it. I say this as a respectful resident alien (who invented that term? I'm pretty sure I have no antennae). It is a natural process that people will freely choose. The only way it will reverse is if by some miracle other markets become unattractive to corporations at the same time as their inhabitants' standard of living increases. This is a little bit of a contradiction...
Maybe you've finally landed on the way that people developing open source projects can be paid. Send an RFP to the group that put the code together and assuming that they'll customize it a bit for you, they could finally make money on the code. This is particularly true for packages that don't have as much commercial power behind them (i.e., when there isn't a project-name.com for them).
When M$ first realized that they miscalculated with the internet party and created msn, they would crash netscape browsers. Anyone else remember that? Luckily there wasn't anything too interesting on msn (or msnbc) at the time so it wasn't a big loss, just annoying. Also, later on when they started "embracing and extending" there were webpages that would have problems with older netscapes.
As usual, M$ is going after the money. This is not new, IBM realized that service is where the money is almost a decade ago. Open Source is, at least in part, an ideological movement and therefore can naturally plug the holes where there is less money to be made. Fighting with M$ over market share in OS was a noble thing, and we may win ultimately with some DoJ help, but this will not change the fact that M$ is going after the money. We all know that they aren't really technology innovators, their strength has always been seeing where the market is (even if they realize it later than others) and going after it with a well-oiled marketing machine. That's what they're trying to do now with services.
I thought it was a given that to get the patent issues resolved things will have to be changed. Why then seek public comment now rather than wait until it is more stable? Is it to create pressure on potential claimants? I can see how pressure would help but why would public comment create it?
I read the letter and although I share their concerns I am afraid that a politician seeing this letter will dismiss it as a letter from zealots or unreasonable people. I think this because there are so many specific demands listed. It seems to me that a more generally worded demand (such as: "Order Microsoft to take FTC-specified steps that will remedy the privacy and security concerns, such as..."). This gives the FTC room to feel big enough to think what's appropriate on their own without getting what to the uneducated may look like a tirade of demands. Again, I repeat, I agree with the general sentiment I just don't think the way it is presented is effective.
As an aside: changing Passport is maybe feasible, but getting a politician to stop XP when it looks to many like the only current hope for reviving the tech sector is simply not going to happen. Why do they think that? It's a tradition, every time a new M$ OS comes out it totally uses all available resources so people/corps need to buy new PCs reviving the semi, PCB, OEM, sw market somewhat. Old story.
A similar cost argument could have applied to disposable cameras and yet they do have their uses and have a real market. I think this could be a great replacement for those disposable cameras, although I agree that there may be a problem with people hacking them. Perhaps they'll use a "deposit" like for bottles or credit card guarantee like for hotel rooms.
How big of a room do you need for these monster screens? It seems to me that you would first have to have a huge room for this. Friends of mine have a 65" TV in a rather large living room and still it's pretty close. In this case you would also need some distance for the projector, right?
/.-ed faster than the blink of an eye.
PS I couldn't get the bstv I guess they were
the problem is when you have a small metro area that is very dense and a high concumer of telco services. Even if you had redundant services, it setill makes economic sense (from the service point of view) to locate both (say) switches in the same area therefore, it would only somewhat help with an attack such as this.
A place this side of the atlantic that has robot competitions is the Exploratorium in SF. They have different categories, including Sumo Wrestling Robots. This year's competition was last month, here's a list of the events. A few years ago I saw this in person and thought it was great (very crowded, though). Too bad I'm on the other coast now.
The oddest language from my point of view was Refine. It was a lisp based object oriented language with relatively few parentheses. Yes, you heard right, lisp and "few parentheses" mentioned in the same breath. We used it to create a prototype and it was interesting. I believe it grew out of Teitelbaum's group at Cornell (creators of the Synthesizer, which 1st year CS majors at Cornell were forced to code on way back when). Anyone else ever use it? I found it to have many of lisp's disadvantages (garbage collection, anyone?) without all the advantages. It did have a good plugin for emacs though (and forced this vi veteran to learn emacs).