Sure. "They" are radical Islamists. "Freedom" is living in a society that does not attempt to emulate the behaviors and social mandates of nomadic tribes on the Arabian peninsula in the 7th Century CE. They "hate" it because they believe not only that people who do not live in the way they believe Islam dictates are doomed to hell, but also that God will be displeased with them if they allow people to live in ways that differ from their belief of how God wants people to live.
And the third world DIES because of medicine patents.
Very nice, very flip. You conveniently ignore, of course, the simple fact that, were it not for patents, nobody would get new medications, since nobody would invest the billions necessary to develop them.
With a "stateside release date of November 1," this is coming out just in time to distract the young voters from performing their civic duty. We're being repressed!! Whoa, okay. Too much medication...
"They will re-release a movie over and over again. First comes the vanilla version, with maybe a trailer and nothing else. Then comes the Collectors Edition, with a commentary track and production notes. Then comes the Directors Cut with added footage, remastered nontheless...This is not to say that piracy is good, but considering how the movie studios treat the customers, I don't feel bad for them one but."
Yeah, I fully agree. I was pretty outraged when Peter Jackson came to my house with a shotgun, dragged me down to Best Buy, and held the gun to my head while I bought the vanilla edition of The Two Towers.
Nobody's forcing you to buy the movie on DVD. If you don't want to, don't! I've held off buying any of the LotR movies until the boxed set of the extended edition arrives at Christmastime. Nobody's stopping you from doing the same.
As for product placement, there's hardly anything new there. Do you think ET ate Reese's Pieces because Spielberg really really likes them? If Mars Inc. had ponied up more than Hershey, he'd have been happily munching on peanut M&Ms. Do you think that Bond drove an Aston Martin because he loved it? Nope, because Aston _paid_ MGM.
But he was talking about vested OPTIONS, not vested stock. Vested options just means that the options can be exercised. Options can be (and in this case were) both vested (i.e. exercisable) and worthless (i.e. nobody in their right mind would exercise their "right" to buy stock at $50, when they could buy it in the market at $5).
Well, it's unfortunate that you got fired, but if your options were originally struck at $52-54, then they'd currently be worthless, anyway, so you haven't lost anything. If you hadn't traded the options in, they still wouldn't have been worth anything.
"I'll stop doing that when I feel the price for an album has settled to a more reasonable price point."
I think that it's reasonable that you rent me your car for nothing but the cost of gas and maintenance. I'll be buy sometime tonight to pick it up. Sound fair?
Some already do. A few years back, my mother received a certificate from the State of Illinois, congratulating her on 25 years of accident free driving. Funny thing is, she came to the US, got her license, and then never drove. She hadn't been behind the wheel of a car for at least 24 of those years.
No, but without the US military presence in Europe, Sweden (and the rest of Western Europe) would certainly have gone the way of Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. and become a Soviet satellite state.
Watch your language. Regardless of what you think of the RIAA, owners of access points, whatever, I don't think any of these groups are proposing the mass murder of people using unsecured WiFi access points. Nazi is a powerful word, and you cheapen it using it in this context.
XM-3 will launch either late 04 or early 05. Once it's up, they'll move XM-1 and XM-2 into the same orbit, and split broadcasting between them, to extend their lives. XM-4 will launch in ~2007, at which point 1 and 2 will be taken out of service.
Bullhockey. For 17 people on Slashdot, maybe. For everyone else, it's a way to get things people want without paying for them, and with very little liklihood of getting caught. If you don't like music pricing, it's 100% your right not to buy it, and to tell the vendor you're not buying it because of the pricing. It's not your right to say "this is too much, so I'm going to steal it." A free transaction is one in which both parties consent, and a key part of that consent is the right of either party to say "take it or leave it," and then walk away if the response isn't acceptable. You can argue that the music industry is being unwise in how they structure their pricing and licensing, but it's their right to be dumb.
This is just CYA language. The traditional phone companies are common carriers, so their responsibilities and liabilities in regards to use of their networks is very well established. Vonage is not quite fish (telco), nor fowl (ISP), so they're covering their butts, just in case they find themselves in a situation where the regulatory climates mandates that they pass data along.
"Maybe I'm missing something, but... Since they are only selling 9% of their total stock, in effect, they still have majority controlling interest in their own company and can, in effect, tell Wall Street to go stick it."
Well, no. If you're a public company, mgmt is obliged to act in accordance with the interests of the entire investor base, including minority investors. So, for example, a company couldn't decide to sell key assets to the Chairman for $1, even if he owned 70% of the stock, since such an action would be detrimental to the interests of the other 30% of the shareholders.
Baker did the voiceovers for a truly mediocre game, _Hostile Waters_, five or six years ago. Bit strange to hear his disembodied voice booming from my PC speakers.
I agree that it's dubious, but there is a rationale - not an entirely convincing one, but one worth considering. The idea is that hate crimes are not only directed against the individual, but designed to intimidate and terrorize persons of that race/gender/religion/etc. In essence, you don't just injure the person you kill, but also cause injury to similar people. Not entirely plausible, IMRHO, but not totally wacko either.
Wow, Christian Bale playing a rich, handsome, borderline sociopath. We've never seen THATbefore. That being said, although the guy's typecast, at least he's good at it.
"Any investment analyst will tell you that it's far better to have numerous low-priced shared than a few high-priced ones."
Well, not really. Once upon a time (say 25 years ago), it was costly in terms of brokerage fees to purchase shares in what's called an "odd lot," a volume not equal to a multiple of 100 shares. So, someone who wanted to buy $10k of a particular stock would pay quite a bit more in fees to buy 50 shares @ $200 each than 200 shares at $50 each. In that environment, stock splitting actually made good sense. Today, it still makes some sense when the #s get so high that some investors can't even afford a single share (hence the Berkshire class B shares). Otherwise, however, it's mainly a matter of aesthetics - people have a gut feel about what a "reasonable" price per share is, and that seems to be somewhere between $10 and $100.
I agree with you that looking at the raw price per share is a silly way to value a stock. If Google had only ten shares, and somebody offered to sell me one for $50k, that'd be a hell of a deal. If they had 10 billion shares, then it would be a bit less attractive.
That being said, your math is wrong. Google and its owners (the founders, the VCs, Time Warner, etc.) are selling 24.6 million shares to the public. Once the IPO is done, they'll have 268.5 million shares outstanding, so they're selling a bit less than 10% of the company into the market. With 268.5 million shares outstanding, and quarterly earnings of $79.1 million, annualized to $316.4 million, they're delivering annual earnings per share of $1.18. That's a P/E of 91.5 to 114, depending on the IPO price. While Google's a great company, that's a damn pricey valuation.
Also, remember that the Class A shares they're selling are really second-class shares. The founders have issued themselves special Class B shares that guarantee them voting control, even if they own a very small % of the overall equity of the company.
"If your school is crap and only teaches courses which are irrelevant to the local business community"
Huh? So, you're saying that courses in everything but IT functions and graphic design/multimedia are crap? The VAST VAST majority of people who start up a PC every morning at work see Windows staring back at them, like it or not. For most users, Mac and *NIX are irrelevant. _Everybody_ needs to know Windows, at least now. Not everybody needs to know Mac and/or *NIX. I'm not saying that this is the way it _should_ be, but let's stop pretending that/. is representative of the world at large.
Initial trials are in Keller TX, Huntington Beach CA, and Tampa FL. They didn't say aye or nay on doing anything in PA this year on the conference call, but they did say that NJ will _not_ be included this year. Looks like they're starting out with the old GTE properties, since there are fewer potential regulatory entanglements there.
"One of the reason a lot of things, especially electronics, are more expensive in europe is that both the euro and the pound are beating our U.S. dollar into submission at the moment."
Actually, this would make things cheaper in Europe than the US. Think about it - if the pound is stronger, then it can buy more dollars, so things priced in dollars get cheaper.
Which is exactly the problem. We don't HAVE this Atom-Xeroxer. The vast majority of goods CAN'T be instantly and freely duplicated. If the people who make goods that CAN be duplicated have no way to prevent people from duplicating them, then their relative ability to buy other stuff drops dramatically. That's where the problem lies. If everything's scarce, then we're fine. If nothing's scarce, then we're fine. If we're somewhere in between, not so good.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's called China.
Sure. "They" are radical Islamists. "Freedom" is living in a society that does not attempt to emulate the behaviors and social mandates of nomadic tribes on the Arabian peninsula in the 7th Century CE. They "hate" it because they believe not only that people who do not live in the way they believe Islam dictates are doomed to hell, but also that God will be displeased with them if they allow people to live in ways that differ from their belief of how God wants people to live.
And the third world DIES because of medicine patents.
Very nice, very flip. You conveniently ignore, of course, the simple fact that, were it not for patents, nobody would get new medications, since nobody would invest the billions necessary to develop them.
With a "stateside release date of November 1," this is coming out just in time to distract the young voters from performing their civic duty. We're being repressed!! Whoa, okay. Too much medication...
Or too little...
"They will re-release a movie over and over again. First comes the vanilla version, with maybe a trailer and nothing else. Then comes the Collectors Edition, with a commentary track and production notes. Then comes the Directors Cut with added footage, remastered nontheless...This is not to say that piracy is good, but considering how the movie studios treat the customers, I don't feel bad for them one but."
Yeah, I fully agree. I was pretty outraged when Peter Jackson came to my house with a shotgun, dragged me down to Best Buy, and held the gun to my head while I bought the vanilla edition of The Two Towers.
Nobody's forcing you to buy the movie on DVD. If you don't want to, don't! I've held off buying any of the LotR movies until the boxed set of the extended edition arrives at Christmastime. Nobody's stopping you from doing the same.
As for product placement, there's hardly anything new there. Do you think ET ate Reese's Pieces because Spielberg really really likes them? If Mars Inc. had ponied up more than Hershey, he'd have been happily munching on peanut M&Ms. Do you think that Bond drove an Aston Martin because he loved it? Nope, because Aston _paid_ MGM.
But he was talking about vested OPTIONS, not vested stock. Vested options just means that the options can be exercised. Options can be (and in this case were) both vested (i.e. exercisable) and worthless (i.e. nobody in their right mind would exercise their "right" to buy stock at $50, when they could buy it in the market at $5).
Well, it's unfortunate that you got fired, but if your options were originally struck at $52-54, then they'd currently be worthless, anyway, so you haven't lost anything. If you hadn't traded the options in, they still wouldn't have been worth anything.
"I'll stop doing that when I feel the price for an album has settled to a more reasonable price point."
I think that it's reasonable that you rent me your car for nothing but the cost of gas and maintenance. I'll be buy sometime tonight to pick it up. Sound fair?
Some already do. A few years back, my mother received a certificate from the State of Illinois, congratulating her on 25 years of accident free driving. Funny thing is, she came to the US, got her license, and then never drove. She hadn't been behind the wheel of a car for at least 24 of those years.
No, but without the US military presence in Europe, Sweden (and the rest of Western Europe) would certainly have gone the way of Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. and become a Soviet satellite state.
Amount that Sweden and South Korea have paid to shelter under US protection since WWII? Zero.
Watch your language. Regardless of what you think of the RIAA, owners of access points, whatever, I don't think any of these groups are proposing the mass murder of people using unsecured WiFi access points. Nazi is a powerful word, and you cheapen it using it in this context.
XM-3 will launch either late 04 or early 05. Once it's up, they'll move XM-1 and XM-2 into the same orbit, and split broadcasting between them, to extend their lives. XM-4 will launch in ~2007, at which point 1 and 2 will be taken out of service.
>>
Bullhockey. For 17 people on Slashdot, maybe. For everyone else, it's a way to get things people want without paying for them, and with very little liklihood of getting caught. If you don't like music pricing, it's 100% your right not to buy it, and to tell the vendor you're not buying it because of the pricing. It's not your right to say "this is too much, so I'm going to steal it." A free transaction is one in which both parties consent, and a key part of that consent is the right of either party to say "take it or leave it," and then walk away if the response isn't acceptable. You can argue that the music industry is being unwise in how they structure their pricing and licensing, but it's their right to be dumb.
This is just CYA language. The traditional phone companies are common carriers, so their responsibilities and liabilities in regards to use of their networks is very well established. Vonage is not quite fish (telco), nor fowl (ISP), so they're covering their butts, just in case they find themselves in a situation where the regulatory climates mandates that they pass data along.
"Maybe I'm missing something, but ... Since they are only selling 9% of their total stock, in effect, they still have majority controlling interest in their own company and can, in effect, tell Wall Street to go stick it."
Well, no. If you're a public company, mgmt is obliged to act in accordance with the interests of the entire investor base, including minority investors. So, for example, a company couldn't decide to sell key assets to the Chairman for $1, even if he owned 70% of the stock, since such an action would be detrimental to the interests of the other 30% of the shareholders.
Baker did the voiceovers for a truly mediocre game, _Hostile Waters_, five or six years ago. Bit strange to hear his disembodied voice booming from my PC speakers.
I agree that it's dubious, but there is a rationale - not an entirely convincing one, but one worth considering. The idea is that hate crimes are not only directed against the individual, but designed to intimidate and terrorize persons of that race/gender/religion/etc. In essence, you don't just injure the person you kill, but also cause injury to similar people. Not entirely plausible, IMRHO, but not totally wacko either.
Wow, Christian Bale playing a rich, handsome, borderline sociopath. We've never seen THAT before. That being said, although the guy's typecast, at least he's good at it.
"Any investment analyst will tell you that it's far better to have numerous low-priced shared than a few high-priced ones."
Well, not really. Once upon a time (say 25 years ago), it was costly in terms of brokerage fees to purchase shares in what's called an "odd lot," a volume not equal to a multiple of 100 shares. So, someone who wanted to buy $10k of a particular stock would pay quite a bit more in fees to buy 50 shares @ $200 each than 200 shares at $50 each. In that environment, stock splitting actually made good sense. Today, it still makes some sense when the #s get so high that some investors can't even afford a single share (hence the Berkshire class B shares). Otherwise, however, it's mainly a matter of aesthetics - people have a gut feel about what a "reasonable" price per share is, and that seems to be somewhere between $10 and $100.
I agree with you that looking at the raw price per share is a silly way to value a stock. If Google had only ten shares, and somebody offered to sell me one for $50k, that'd be a hell of a deal. If they had 10 billion shares, then it would be a bit less attractive.
That being said, your math is wrong. Google and its owners (the founders, the VCs, Time Warner, etc.) are selling 24.6 million shares to the public. Once the IPO is done, they'll have 268.5 million shares outstanding, so they're selling a bit less than 10% of the company into the market. With 268.5 million shares outstanding, and quarterly earnings of $79.1 million, annualized to $316.4 million, they're delivering annual earnings per share of $1.18. That's a P/E of 91.5 to 114, depending on the IPO price. While Google's a great company, that's a damn pricey valuation.
Also, remember that the Class A shares they're selling are really second-class shares. The founders have issued themselves special Class B shares that guarantee them voting control, even if they own a very small % of the overall equity of the company.
"If your school is crap and only teaches courses which are irrelevant to the local business community"
/. is representative of the world at large.
Huh? So, you're saying that courses in everything but IT functions and graphic design/multimedia are crap? The VAST VAST majority of people who start up a PC every morning at work see Windows staring back at them, like it or not. For most users, Mac and *NIX are irrelevant. _Everybody_ needs to know Windows, at least now. Not everybody needs to know Mac and/or *NIX. I'm not saying that this is the way it _should_ be, but let's stop pretending that
Initial trials are in Keller TX, Huntington Beach CA, and Tampa FL. They didn't say aye or nay on doing anything in PA this year on the conference call, but they did say that NJ will _not_ be included this year. Looks like they're starting out with the old GTE properties, since there are fewer potential regulatory entanglements there.
"One of the reason a lot of things, especially electronics, are more expensive in europe is that both the euro and the pound are beating our U.S. dollar into submission at the moment."
Actually, this would make things cheaper in Europe than the US. Think about it - if the pound is stronger, then it can buy more dollars, so things priced in dollars get cheaper.
Which is exactly the problem. We don't HAVE this Atom-Xeroxer. The vast majority of goods CAN'T be instantly and freely duplicated. If the people who make goods that CAN be duplicated have no way to prevent people from duplicating them, then their relative ability to buy other stuff drops dramatically. That's where the problem lies. If everything's scarce, then we're fine. If nothing's scarce, then we're fine. If we're somewhere in between, not so good.