For all you Microsofties that say it's all over, here's an update for you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/
Judge may have to force open Windows
Richard Wray Saturday July 5, 2003 The Guardian
The US government "remains concerned" that Microsoft is making it difficult for rivals to access Windows despite being ordered to open up its software to competitors last year.
In a report presented to US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who presided over the settlement of the long-running Microsoft case, the US government says the court may have to force Microsoft to account for the delay in opening itself up.
Dell may have cut another deal with MS at some stage, but at least until the MS anti-trust case Dell would have still paid for the MS licence on that machine, even if it shipped without the software.
My understanding was that one of the few grievances that were actually addressed, this being from the '95 settlement?, was the elimination of the license per CPU sold regardless if Windows was installed or not M$ extortion. This was a fundamental grievance from day one from competitors, but the PC vendors were scared to make a peep about it.
I read that such an agreement was signed, but I never saw it have any effect. As recently as a couple of years ago, I was unable to buy a PC without Windows installed, and not only that, but some version of M$ garbage apps. I got the last Win 98 SE from a PC vendor (Xii) that I could find anywhere in the country two years ago, and the last Win Me (a discontinued HP Pavillion laptop on display) that I could find almost a year ago. I have Mandrake 8.1 on another PC and just ordered 9.1, so it's Linux from here on out.
Ahhh. Commercial competition. As opposed to what? Residential competition?
The world has changed now and I see smarter software efforts coming from Europe in OSS than we have with commercial PC software companies in the US.
You only see that because you are a typical leftist whiner that thinks that europe is the best at EVERYTHING.
end quote
As opposed to non-commercial, open source competition. I am an American programmer who used to write DOS assembler commercial apps (PC Paintbrush, for example) and now am an AS/400 RPG programmer (multi-billion dollar company, several > 1 billion record file processing on a suite of the largest AS/400's) who programs PHP and Java at home. When I comment on what I see as far superior intelligence demonstrated in the last few years in software development in Europe, I had people just like you in mind which I was comparing them to. You remind me of the arrogance of every empire in their last days.
I'm not questioning its existence. I'm merely pointing out that, given the number of corporations these rules would apply to and the number that are in violation of it as much as Microsoft is, it's either a case of the exemptions are so easy to get that the law may as well not exist, or that the IRS never bothers with enforcing it, in which case, the law may as well not exist.
The IRS does enforce it, and in fact the reason I know about the excessive reserve earnings is because their scrutiny was in the news along with monopoly trial coverage. The justification for reserved earnings must be spelled out in financial statements, and M$ can no longer spell out $45 bn worth of justifications now that the monopoly suit has been settled.
They are paying dividends only because the IRS excessive earnings regulation will cause them to lose nearly 40% of it now that they no longer can justify retaining $45 bn in reserved earnings. The alternative is to pay out a substantial portion as dividends, conveniently after waiting until the Republicans made it much less costly to break up their tax shelter.
They were nefarious "deeds", not "goals", and someone did call the justice department. M$ products are considered good because they destroyed any company that was creating superior software. These are historical facts, not opinions.
When I state there is no competition, and the PC software industry shows it, I mean by that commercial competition. The world has changed now and I see smarter software efforts coming from Europe in OSS than we have with commercial PC software companies in the US. M$ clearly recognizes this, and I think the reach to India is to embrace and extend their development past the Europeans and try to create the same critical mass in the East as they have enjoyed to date. Not sure if they will succeed, but I feel Linux desktop is getting close enough where whole countries can and have declared freedom from M$, especially with their latest pay for life licensing.
Our free enterprise system doesn't work unless there is competition. The list of companies that M$ destroyed because they were competition is a Who's Who of every PC software vendor that had anything going. In fact, they propped up Apple and Corel that were going under only when M$ was under the gun and being scrutinized for having destroyed all competition!
The companies and the methods used to destroy them are a book's worth of nefarious deeds. Once a monopoly, our system falls apart. That was clearly seen at the turn of the 20th century and is the reason anti-monopoly laws were passed. It is not Karl Marx versus Adam Smith, it is monopoly versus competitive free enterprise. There is no competition, and the PC software industry shows it.
I believe his salary on which he pays taxes is pretty low for a chairman of a company the size of M$. (maybe $350,000 ?) The contributions to charity are stock donations. Does he have to pay taxes to donate stock to cgarity? He's sold quite a bit of stock, so he's paid a hell of a lot of taxes on that, as you point out.
Didn't GWB eliminate taxes on dividends? That'd be pure cash for the Gatester, right?
No. GWB eliminated DOUBLE taxation on dividends. The company already paid taxes on that money.
Derek
But the question was on "dividends", not "that money". The answer has been stated several times, reduced, scheduled for elimination, etc., and the poor soul shouldn't have needed help from you in any event.
Sheesh, the Microsofties are out in force tonight. The alternative to that great "deal" of $30 a PC, all PC's, even if Windows wasn't on it, was a prohibitively expensive price as you quoted.
This was found to be monopolist behavior by the courts and Microsoft was ordered to cease and desist their despicable monopolist extortion. That is the only reason companies like Dell have been able to offer a Linux PC without paying M$ for Windows regardless. Anyway, isn't it getting close to your bedtime out there in Seattle?
For some reason, my posts don't show up in the filtered view (>0) when I reply through an email notification of a response. I'm reposting as a test and I guess I'll quit responding through email if it shows up.
Do you have any idea what percentage of corporations in the US are covered by the $250,000 threshold? It's at least 60%. That should give you an idea of how easy it is to get around this rule.
From this cursory reading, as long as your board can make a good-faith claim that it's keeping the earnings for future expansion or whatnot, this rule does not apply.
For all practical intents and purposes (that is to say, outside of cases where you incorporate a corporation to rent you your house, or the corporation is a mob front, etc.), this rule does not exist.
The IRS makes that determination, which is what I said and defended, and for somestrange reason even the IRS couldn't see $45 bn in planned and contingency requirements.
It does exist, and was in the news. Sorry you didn't see it or understand.
Do you have any idea what percentage of corporations in the US are covered by the $250,000 threshold? It's at least 60%. That should give you an idea of how easy it is to get around this rule.
From this cursory reading, as long as your board can make a good-faith claim that it's keeping the earnings for future expansion or whatnot, this rule does not apply.
For all practical intents and purposes (that is to say, outside of cases where you incorporate a corporation to rent you your house, or the corporation is a mob front, etc.), this rule does not exist.
The IRS makes that determination, which is what I said and defended, and for somestrange reason even the IRS couldn't see $45 bn in planned and contingency requirements.
It does exist, and was in the news. Sorry you didn't see it or understand.
Uh, the IRS doesn't require a corporation to pay out dividends...
I couldn't find any of the news article from the past that I have read that stated that the IRS was looking at M$'s excessive reserves, and it took me awhile to find something in Google that explains this clearly, but this excerpt does it nicely. I read it cached, it was from http://www.corporateservicecenter.com/Library/BKCh apter11.htm
quote
Accumulating Excessive Earnings. Corporations that accumulate over $250,000 in earnings may be penalized by additional taxes on top of those that apply to corporate profits. The reason for this is that the Internal Revenue Service assumes that you are holding the money to avoid distributing taxable dividends. However, if your corporation plans to make significant equipment purchases, or is planning on expanding or diversifying, then reasonable grounds exist for retaining excess earnings. But your minutes must record the reasons for the accumulation, including the cost estimates for putting the plans into place. Your reasons do not have to be immediate. They can be long-range, since your minutes reflect your long-term corporate needs.
Other possible reasons for accumulating excessive earnings are:
For building inventory.
To protect against loss of profits when the corporation depends on a small number of customers.
To reserve funds for profit-sharing and pension plan obligations.
To invest or lend money to suppliers or customers that are necessary to maintain their business.
To build reserves against actual or potential lawsuits.
end quote
Not only does the IRS require paying dividends, in effect they consider it running a tax shelter if you don't and accumulate excessive earnings as M$ has. The basis for the reserved earnings all these years have been detailed in their financial statements.
I'd say it would be spent by shareholders in a more direct way than the money is being used by being invested in liquid investments by M$, but even in liquid investments the money was funding short term loans of some type.
On the other hand, maybe 40% go to Gates, Ballmer, Allen and a few other billionaires. In at least Gates case, he has been tending to donate his money overseas, so the full $10 bn definitely won't be spent here. A lot of his non-health donations I think tend to get spent back on M$ products and PC's, so some of his donations will end up back at M$.
Also read today that over half of us non-billionares are saying in polls that they're spending tax refunds on paying bills, which isn't the new purchases that Republicans were looking for. On the other hand, in my opinion, paying bills frees up the credit limit to buy more anyway. Six of one, half a dozen of another..:)
1) M$ had an inordinate amount of money stashed away, pushing the limits of accounting rules for contingencies, earmarks for future projects, etc., but with being threatened with breakup it's hard to argue with what all contingencies they may have needed to consider.
2) With settlement of the suit, that excuse went away. They have to pay out a dividend because the IRS says so.
3) They held out (wink, wink IRS) until the Republicans reduced the dividend tax.
4) Billg is probably just as glad about it anyway so he doesn't have to sell more stock for whatever reason he was selling it, presumably partially at least to fund his charities.
As GPL'd code, though, it could be out there somewhere. They couldn't sell it and apparently couldn't even give it away. Don't know whether that's an indictment of a browser interface, the quality of the product, or more likely, no one in their right mind wanting to keep track of their hours unless a PHB was holding a gun to their head.
The company being in Chicago reminds me of another Chicago software house, one that went bankrupt about the same time as this time tracking software met its demise. The guy started it by writing business software on his kitchen table around 1980 and fifteen years later was one of Chicago's top 10 richest people. The company was SSA, and the software was BPCS. For those that think business software isn't complicated, a crack at modifying business software like BPCS that was used at over 7,000 companies to fix bugs and implement features for the customers would set them straight very quickly.
As an example, I was a consultant for SSA and fixed a nasty bug found by the then Cieba-Geigy. Seems that when an order allocated material from multiple warehouses, a change to the quantity of the order and subsequent deallocation and reallocation of the new quantity would hose the item counts and leave orphaned allocation records, etc. The number of topic specialists, vendor programmers, and customer programmers needed to create and modify an ERP is just enormous. Yet one of the major ones was started on a kitchen table and the source was sold with the product and was heavily customized by most customers, so there are similarities to the OSS model referred to throughout this thread.
The consulting company I was with at the time wrote a time tracking project management system with inhouse benchwarmers and rookies to give them some experience and give the company something they could use out of it. The design came from the top technical staff, but if those rookies and benchwarmers could write something that worked well then any group of programmers could do it. In fact, I couldn't believe a good one hasn't been done in PHP. I checked my PHP OSS downloads and TUTOS looks pretty good. I haven't had time to look at it yet. No one's holding a gun to my head at the moment...:)
IBM spent at least a billion dollars (that was before the billion on Linux) on a Java business framework called San Francisco that went nowhere. You will never get them to admit it, but all the stuff you just said about what seemingly is intuitive commonality in business functionality, and what OO proponents say about reusabilty, flexibility, and "easy-to-use programming building blocks" went absolutely nowhere. A billion dollars trying to write a common business Java framework that can be inherited and overridden for customized behavior, commitments from some longtime IBM ERP vendors to port to it, and no end of talking about it from IBM, and finally they just quit talking about it. Massive proof that all the statements mentioned above are oft repeated yet for some reason can't be demonstrated to be true.
"Marc Benioff, the chief executive of startup Salesforce.com Inc.,...has told anyone who would listen that today's business software is too expensive and too dang complicated. "We have created an industry of complexity and we need to do something about it," he says."
Wal-Mart just informed their top suppliers they must have pallet license plates (RFID's) when Wal-Mart receives their product. Does Salesforce.com support pallet license plates? Or is that some of that "complexity" they left out? Much simpler to just not be a potential major supplier to Wal-Mart, isn't it?
"For starters, give up the "not-built-here" dogma that has kept some software makers from working with new, easy-to-use programming building blocks made by Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and IBM."
The "easy-to-use programming building blocks" from Microsoft is apparently.Net, from Sun is apparently Java, and from IBM is a figment of his imagination (ok, Websphere, apparently, no idea how anyone could call an app server from IBM an easy to use programming building block)..Net is an easy-to-use programming building block? Last I read, VB programmers were freaking out over it. Oracle apps (somebody said a few posts above that Oracle isn't business software, that it's a database, they obviously don't know what 11i is) are written in Java, IBM's middleware is Java where they can get away with the lack of performance, and Peoplesoft, SAP, and JDE should give up their NIH languages and rewrite in a.Net language or Java because they're easy-to-use programming building blocks? Then why isn't Oracle sweeping Peoplesoft off it's feet? oops, I guess they'll try it another way. Then why isn't Oracle sweeping SAP off its feet? The writer is absolutely clueless.
"That reluctance also has made some companies slow to adopt standardized programming technologies like the Extensible Markup Language, which makes it easier for different kinds of software to work together."
Slow to adopt XML? That's all anybody friggin talks about. The writer is a freakin liar as well. Name me something about XML that is significantly different than a.DIF file exchange. Self defining fields? You still have to agree on the definitions ahead of time. You can rearrange the fields at will? Whoopee. Yeah, that just solved that dratted complicated software problem. XML would be good for complex data in allowing unending flexibility in describing the data but it's brain dead for large file exchanges. Ok, fine, so it's used anyway for consistency, but it made a freaking difference? Computer writers do their best to get you as breathless as they are about it, I'll give them that.
"Database giant Oracle Corp.'s flubbing of its first all-Internet business software, Oracle 11i, is legendary...Problem was, it had an estimated 10,000 bugs."
From what I read, even with 10,000 bugs it was more stable than some of their earlier client server stuff.
"Although few software execs may actually say it, many agree with Benioff. Software should be delivered as a service over the Internet instead of shipped to customers on a disk."
And your data delivered along with it, one screen at a time? That's ok for contact info, even useful for those on the move. And granted, a server across the internet is much like a server across the local net, but still, not too much complex could be going on with an operation like that.
This is more of the web services along with the browser and XML is a panacea, sort of reminds me of a mainframe in a glass room, replace 3270/5250 with a browser, flat files with XML, FTP with web services, and the glass room with the vendor and we've solved all those nasty software problems! Businesses should just understand, if Larry hasn't provided it for you, you don't need it. I'm sure he must have provided pallet license plates, otherwise Wal-Mart has no business demanding them...
This comes the next day after I posted that SCO was after $3 to $4 billion, including buying them out, but they just raised it to $3 billion alone just for damages. I would have thought the $4 billion figure was good for a buyout yesterday, but after MAD was declared today by SCO they probably will require a lot more to settle now.
Here's what I based my reasoning on. The dollar values given of $250 million per year for Unix licensing fees that dropped to $50 million means that $1 billion approximates the direct loss of licensing fees since IBM did this and for the forseeable future. In addition, buying them out would require the billion plus a considerable premium for the value of future licensing fees.
In my opinion, all the comments about any Linux kernel contributors besides IBM are irrelevant, that this is a case strictly between SCO and IBM, and that the threats against Linux licensees are leverage against IBM. I think SCO thinks they can blackmail IBM to the tune of something like $3 billion to $4 billion to buy out their rights to Unix source code and IP and make their Linux future secure.
Obviously, IBM is not going to just acquiesce, but the code to look at is not historic, not from individual contributors, and not random. It is the enterprise features that IBM spent a billion dollars adding to Linux according to their press releases, and it's probably not a coincidence that SCO chose that billion dollar figure themselves to sue for. Again, that is not pie in the sky, we'll settle for enough to vacation in Tahiti, that's the ground floor for a deal to buy them out, in other words, maximize the shareholders value of the assets of SCO.
In my opinion, this has nothing to do with Linux and open source and everything to do with throwing your cards in and cashing out. It throws a lot of FUD on Linux, to be sure, but again that is powerful leverage against IBM which has made Linux their future. I look for IBM to pony up and acquire the rights to secure their future with Linux and AIX. The ones behind this surely hope they will never have to work again.
Let me also add that the interview with the lady analyst who took the SCO NDA look the other day revealed to me what's going on based on news articles I've read through the past couple of years and all the/. posts through the last few weeks.
IBM said they were investing a billion dollars in Linux to make it enterprise ready. I vaguely recall it included stuff like journalling and some kind of improved multi-CPU threading, etc., in other words, stuff they had in AIX. The lady said the source involved was mainly from the newer Linux releases.
In my opinion, SCO believes that IBM took some of the enterprise level treasure from Unix and put it into Linux, thus voiding the value of Unix. The fact that IBM had signed an NDA for some joint development that fell through (IIRC, shades of OS/2?) and licensed AIX from SCO makes this a much more compelling case. One 80 line section including comments is enough to show that copying took place, and they probably feel they can make a case that the enterprise level functionality that IBM donated included valuable infrastructure from Unix.
The dollar values given of $250 million per year for Unix licensing fees that dropped to $50 million means that $1 billion approximates the direct loss of licensing fees since IBM did this and for the forseeable future. In addition, buying them out would require the billion plus a considerable premium for the value of future licensing fees.
In my opinion, all the comments about any Linux kernel contributors besides IBM are irrelevant, that this is a case strictly between SCO and IBM, and that the threats against Linux licensees are leverage against IBM. I think SCO thinks they can blackmail IBM to the tune of something like $3 billion to $4 billion to buy out their rights to Unix source code and IP and make their Linux future secure.
Obviously, IBM is not going to just acquiesce, but the code to look at is not historic, not from individual contributors, and not random. It is the enterprise features that IBM spent a billion dollars adding to Linux according to their press releases, and it's probably not a coincidence that SCO chose that billion dollar figure themselves to sue for. Again, that is not pie in the sky, we'll settle for enough to vacation in Tahiti, that's the ground floor for a deal to buy them out, in other words, maximize the shareholders value of the assets of SCO.
I am saddened to see Ray Noorda behind this, but I think he is tired of getting screwed by the likes of M$ and IBM. In my opinion, this has nothing to do with Linux and open source and everything to do with throwing your cards in and cashing out. It throws a lot of FUD on Linux, to be sure, but again that is powerful leverage against IBM which has made Linux their future. I look for IBM to pony up and acquire the rights to secure their future with Linux and AIX. The ones behind this surely hope they will never have to work again.
After reading all the comments in this great discussion, I want to clarify some points in my post.
Although chess is a game, certainly a great deal of intelligence is used to create moves, and software that created moves which implemented strategies without relying on pre-programmed algorithms or lookups in a history database of human games would exhibit the same intelligence that an untrained human uses to play the game. However, I was instead referring to the algorithms used in chess programs to recreate human playing as clever alogorithms rather than intelligence. In other words, without relying on lookups of past human behavior, it would require original thought to play the game, which is the essence of intelligence.
I also to some degree dismissed the ability to play games as displaying intelligence in the sense that brute force algorithms that try methodical combinations and record the results as feedback for reusing the combinations is not original thought, even if a human play history database is not used for lookup. Of course, with chess the number of possible moves and difficulty in generating successful combinations of moves with brute force algorithms means that an activity as complex as chess won't be done with anything that is brute force, so that thought is not applicable here.
Also, in my example of a program exhibiting original thoughts, if what is recognized as original thoughts came from a static software program it is still being generated by a clever algorithm. While I don't know what it will take to generate thinking and reasoning, an unstated premise I had was that it would require software that can extend its behavior, probably through writing new code that both puts together existing functionality in new orders and creates new functionality when needed in a non random way. The ability to determine what is needed and then create it is what would constitute original thought and intelligence.
I do recognize that some consider the algorithms to create new algorithms an indirect extension of the original code, but I contend that providing low level constructs to create syntax as expressions of desired behavior is not the same as what an intelligent program would create using it. Whether this will be achieved is a question, but I contend that a program extending itself with additional logic to exhibit new behaviors is that which is required to achieve artificial intelligence. Most anything else is just a software program executing pre-programmed logic.
I am not dogmatic about this though, and I agree with the writer who describes understanding words in context as exhibiting artificial intelligence, if applied to unknown data, even if it is able to be accomplished with a static software program and very clever algorithms. Of course this has been very difficult to achieve. The SHRDLU context understanding is great, but they are just very specific algorithmic responses within a highly constrained environment, not to demean that achievement at all. Indeed, the comment that we haven't seen anything better in all these years since is very telling.
Thus programming a computer to play chess was worth a PhD at one time, until that problem was solved. I wrote a Double Deck Pinochle program twenty years ago that plays as well as I do and is really hard to beat (and has been floating around as DOS freeware for several years now). Is that program artificially intelligent? Of course not. It is no more intelligent than any other software program, blindly executing logic as programmed. But if it were a classier card game (bridge), a few years earlier (on a PDP-11 instead of a TRS-80 Z-80), and I had been an advanced comp sci student (I was a student, but not a very good one... so I ended up dropping out and writing code), then if appropriately cloaked in mumbo-jumbo, I coulda been a PhD...:)
So, what is AI? It is not pattern matching. That leaves out the million rule database of behavior factoids, recognition based on lining up bit patterns, and so called learning by storing away data and matching it later to identify an event. Those are all just software logic exercises. The results may be more interesting to humans than how many widgets are forecast to be sold or made or purchased for the next month, but they are no more intelligent.
Here's a question. Is the activity of insects considered intelligence? It seems to me that robot programming is attempting to emulate the intelligence level of insects. It is arguable if that is even intelligence.
The game of Life was often portrayed in decades past as intelligence, with combinatorial algorithms creating a "winner" within some set of constraints. Is anything found in life that mutates in an endless search for something that succeeds at surviving the real game of life intelligence? I think most would say not. Yet if I write a program that randomly attempts to extend its behavior in attempt to achieve some overall goal, it would undoubtedly be described as artificial intelligence. If the real organisms that act in this manner are not intelligent, why would the software be considered intelligent? Because we made it happen instead of nature? Because we are working on a PhD? Because it resembles life more than a widget forecaster? Perhaps that should be described as attempting to create artificial life rather than artificial intelligence.
Rather than continuing to describe clever algorithms as "intelligence" that emulate human activities such as playing chess, where the game is more complicated than chasing your friend up and down a tree but still a game, or recognizing faces, which is a primitive behavior, one must isolate that from all animal behavior which is human thought and say, this is intelligence. What does it take for software to approach generating original thoughts? I don't know, but only then will the software be intelligent, artificial or otherwise.
Here's an e-mail I just sent to SBC at their site: http://www.sbc.com/
Hello. I am an SBC residential phone customer and Cingular cellular customer. I also am a heavy user of the internet and a computer programmer.
Your decision to lay claim to basic web page constructs such as "dynamic content from a static link over a network" (commonly known as sidebar navigation menus, icons, and anything else you can click on) and then attack some little company in Oregon with your crap as a test case for taxing everyone on the internet is an affront to civilization and the internet.
Either get your act together or I'll find a company that isn't an irresponsible jerk to be a customer of. You want to try to make a living off of bs patents, go ahead, be a laughingstock idiot, but I'm not going to support you with my business in the meantime.
Now get back to the basics of providing good access to that internet and take a bunch of your lawyers and pitch them. They're giving you bad advice, if you haven't realized it by now.
Slashdot Mirror
For all you Microsofties that say it's all over, here's an update for you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/
Judge may have to force open Windows
Richard Wray
Saturday July 5, 2003
The Guardian
The US government "remains concerned" that Microsoft is making it difficult for rivals to access Windows despite being ordered to open up its software to competitors last year.
In a report presented to US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who presided over the settlement of the long-running Microsoft case, the US government says the court may have to force Microsoft to account for the delay in opening itself up.
(snip)
end quote
rd
Dell may have cut another deal with MS at some stage, but at least until the MS anti-trust case Dell would have still paid for the MS licence on that machine, even if it shipped without the software.
My understanding was that one of the few grievances that were actually addressed, this being from the '95 settlement?, was the elimination of the license per CPU sold regardless if Windows was installed or not M$ extortion. This was a fundamental grievance from day one from competitors, but the PC vendors were scared to make a peep about it.
I read that such an agreement was signed, but I never saw it have any effect. As recently as a couple of years ago, I was unable to buy a PC without Windows installed, and not only that, but some version of M$ garbage apps. I got the last Win 98 SE from a PC vendor (Xii) that I could find anywhere in the country two years ago, and the last Win Me (a discontinued HP Pavillion laptop on display) that I could find almost a year ago. I have Mandrake 8.1 on another PC and just ordered 9.1, so it's Linux from here on out.
rd
Ok- what companies were "destroyed" by Microsoft?
I would only spend time educating someone I respect.
rd
My quotes in italics:
I mean by that commercial competition.
Ahhh. Commercial competition. As opposed to what? Residential competition?
The world has changed now and I see smarter software efforts coming from Europe in OSS than we have with commercial PC software companies in the US.
You only see that because you are a typical leftist whiner that thinks that europe is the best at EVERYTHING.
end quote
As opposed to non-commercial, open source competition. I am an American programmer who used to write DOS assembler commercial apps (PC Paintbrush, for example) and now am an AS/400 RPG programmer (multi-billion dollar company, several > 1 billion record file processing on a suite of the largest AS/400's) who programs PHP and Java at home. When I comment on what I see as far superior intelligence demonstrated in the last few years in software development in Europe, I had people just like you in mind which I was comparing them to. You remind me of the arrogance of every empire in their last days.
rd
I'm not questioning its existence. I'm merely pointing out that, given the number of corporations these rules would apply to and the number that are in violation of it as much as Microsoft is, it's either a case of the exemptions are so easy to get that the law may as well not exist, or that the IRS never bothers with enforcing it, in which case, the law may as well not exist.
The IRS does enforce it, and in fact the reason I know about the excessive reserve earnings is because their scrutiny was in the news along with monopoly trial coverage. The justification for reserved earnings must be spelled out in financial statements, and M$ can no longer spell out $45 bn worth of justifications now that the monopoly suit has been settled.
They are paying dividends only because the IRS excessive earnings regulation will cause them to lose nearly 40% of it now that they no longer can justify retaining $45 bn in reserved earnings. The alternative is to pay out a substantial portion as dividends, conveniently after waiting until the Republicans made it much less costly to break up their tax shelter.
rd
They were nefarious "deeds", not "goals", and someone did call the justice department. M$ products are considered good because they destroyed any company that was creating superior software. These are historical facts, not opinions.
rd
When I state there is no competition, and the PC software industry shows it, I mean by that commercial competition. The world has changed now and I see smarter software efforts coming from Europe in OSS than we have with commercial PC software companies in the US. M$ clearly recognizes this, and I think the reach to India is to embrace and extend their development past the Europeans and try to create the same critical mass in the East as they have enjoyed to date. Not sure if they will succeed, but I feel Linux desktop is getting close enough where whole countries can and have declared freedom from M$, especially with their latest pay for life licensing.
rd
Our free enterprise system doesn't work unless there is competition. The list of companies that M$ destroyed because they were competition is a Who's Who of every PC software vendor that had anything going. In fact, they propped up Apple and Corel that were going under only when M$ was under the gun and being scrutinized for having destroyed all competition!
The companies and the methods used to destroy them are a book's worth of nefarious deeds. Once a monopoly, our system falls apart. That was clearly seen at the turn of the 20th century and is the reason anti-monopoly laws were passed. It is not Karl Marx versus Adam Smith, it is monopoly versus competitive free enterprise. There is no competition, and the PC software industry shows it.
rd
I believe his salary on which he pays taxes is pretty low for a chairman of a company the size of M$. (maybe $350,000 ?) The contributions to charity are stock donations. Does he have to pay taxes to donate stock to cgarity? He's sold quite a bit of stock, so he's paid a hell of a lot of taxes on that, as you point out.
rd
Didn't GWB eliminate taxes on dividends? That'd be pure cash for the Gatester, right?
No. GWB eliminated DOUBLE taxation on dividends. The company already paid taxes on that money.
Derek
But the question was on "dividends", not "that money". The answer has been stated several times, reduced, scheduled for elimination, etc., and the poor soul shouldn't have needed help from you in any event.
rd
Sheesh, the Microsofties are out in force tonight. The alternative to that great "deal" of $30 a PC, all PC's, even if Windows wasn't on it, was a prohibitively expensive price as you quoted.
This was found to be monopolist behavior by the courts and Microsoft was ordered to cease and desist their despicable monopolist extortion. That is the only reason companies like Dell have been able to offer a Linux PC without paying M$ for Windows regardless. Anyway, isn't it getting close to your bedtime out there in Seattle?
rd
wasn't because I posted through email notification, just bad karma I guess...
rd
For some reason, my posts don't show up in the filtered view (>0) when I reply through an email notification of a response. I'm reposting as a test and I guess I'll quit responding through email if it shows up.
Do you have any idea what percentage of corporations in the US are covered by the $250,000 threshold? It's at least 60%. That should give you an idea of how easy it is to get around this rule.
From this cursory reading, as long as your board can make a good-faith claim that it's keeping the earnings for future expansion or whatnot, this rule does not apply.
For all practical intents and purposes (that is to say, outside of cases where you incorporate a corporation to rent you your house, or the corporation is a mob front, etc.), this rule does not exist.
The IRS makes that determination, which is what I said and defended, and for somestrange reason even the IRS couldn't see $45 bn in planned and contingency requirements.
It does exist, and was in the news. Sorry you didn't see it or understand.
rd
Do you have any idea what percentage of corporations in the US are covered by the $250,000 threshold? It's at least 60%. That should give you an idea of how easy it is to get around this rule.
From this cursory reading, as long as your board can make a good-faith claim that it's keeping the earnings for future expansion or whatnot, this rule does not apply.
For all practical intents and purposes (that is to say, outside of cases where you incorporate a corporation to rent you your house, or the corporation is a mob front, etc.), this rule does not exist.
The IRS makes that determination, which is what I said and defended, and for somestrange reason even the IRS couldn't see $45 bn in planned and contingency requirements.
It does exist, and was in the news. Sorry you didn't see it or understand.
rd
Uh, the IRS doesn't require a corporation to pay out dividends...
h apter11.htm
I couldn't find any of the news article from the past that I have read that stated that the IRS was looking at M$'s excessive reserves, and it took me awhile to find something in Google that explains this clearly, but this excerpt does it nicely. I read it cached, it was from http://www.corporateservicecenter.com/Library/BKC
quote
Accumulating Excessive Earnings. Corporations that accumulate over $250,000 in earnings may be penalized by additional taxes on top of those that apply to corporate profits. The reason for this is that the Internal Revenue Service assumes that you are holding the money to avoid distributing taxable dividends. However, if your corporation plans to make significant equipment purchases, or is planning on expanding or diversifying, then reasonable grounds exist for retaining excess earnings. But your minutes must record the reasons for the accumulation, including the cost estimates for putting the plans into place. Your reasons do not have to be immediate. They can be long-range, since your minutes reflect your long-term corporate needs.
Other possible reasons for accumulating excessive earnings are:
For building inventory.
To protect against loss of profits when the corporation depends on a small number of customers.
To reserve funds for profit-sharing and pension plan obligations.
To invest or lend money to suppliers or customers that are necessary to maintain their business.
To build reserves against actual or potential lawsuits.
end quote
Not only does the IRS require paying dividends, in effect they consider it running a tax shelter if you don't and accumulate excessive earnings as M$ has. The basis for the reserved earnings all these years have been detailed in their financial statements.
I'm just a programmer, but I read the news.
rd
I'd say it would be spent by shareholders in a more direct way than the money is being used by being invested in liquid investments by M$, but even in liquid investments the money was funding short term loans of some type.
On the other hand, maybe 40% go to Gates, Ballmer, Allen and a few other billionaires. In at least Gates case, he has been tending to donate his money overseas, so the full $10 bn definitely won't be spent here. A lot of his non-health donations I think tend to get spent back on M$ products and PC's, so some of his donations will end up back at M$.
Also read today that over half of us non-billionares are saying in polls that they're spending tax refunds on paying bills, which isn't the new purchases that Republicans were looking for. On the other hand, in my opinion, paying bills frees up the credit limit to buy more anyway. Six of one, half a dozen of another..
rd
I'd say the factors behind this are:
1) M$ had an inordinate amount of money stashed away, pushing the limits of accounting rules for contingencies, earmarks for future projects, etc., but with being threatened with breakup it's hard to argue with what all contingencies they may have needed to consider.
2) With settlement of the suit, that excuse went away. They have to pay out a dividend because the IRS says so.
3) They held out (wink, wink IRS) until the Republicans reduced the dividend tax.
4) Billg is probably just as glad about it anyway so he doesn't have to sell more stock for whatever reason he was selling it, presumably partially at least to fund his charities.
rd
As GPL'd code, though, it could be out there somewhere. They couldn't sell it and apparently couldn't even give it away. Don't know whether that's an indictment of a browser interface, the quality of the product, or more likely, no one in their right mind wanting to keep track of their hours unless a PHB was holding a gun to their head.
The company being in Chicago reminds me of another Chicago software house, one that went bankrupt about the same time as this time tracking software met its demise. The guy started it by writing business software on his kitchen table around 1980 and fifteen years later was one of Chicago's top 10 richest people. The company was SSA, and the software was BPCS. For those that think business software isn't complicated, a crack at modifying business software like BPCS that was used at over 7,000 companies to fix bugs and implement features for the customers would set them straight very quickly.
As an example, I was a consultant for SSA and fixed a nasty bug found by the then Cieba-Geigy. Seems that when an order allocated material from multiple warehouses, a change to the quantity of the order and subsequent deallocation and reallocation of the new quantity would hose the item counts and leave orphaned allocation records, etc. The number of topic specialists, vendor programmers, and customer programmers needed to create and modify an ERP is just enormous. Yet one of the major ones was started on a kitchen table and the source was sold with the product and was heavily customized by most customers, so there are similarities to the OSS model referred to throughout this thread.
The consulting company I was with at the time wrote a time tracking project management system with inhouse benchwarmers and rookies to give them some experience and give the company something they could use out of it. The design came from the top technical staff, but if those rookies and benchwarmers could write something that worked well then any group of programmers could do it. In fact, I couldn't believe a good one hasn't been done in PHP. I checked my PHP OSS downloads and TUTOS looks pretty good. I haven't had time to look at it yet. No one's holding a gun to my head at the moment...
rd
IBM spent at least a billion dollars (that was before the billion on Linux) on a Java business framework called San Francisco that went nowhere. You will never get them to admit it, but all the stuff you just said about what seemingly is intuitive commonality in business functionality, and what OO proponents say about reusabilty, flexibility, and "easy-to-use programming building blocks" went absolutely nowhere. A billion dollars trying to write a common business Java framework that can be inherited and overridden for customized behavior, commitments from some longtime IBM ERP vendors to port to it, and no end of talking about it from IBM, and finally they just quit talking about it. Massive proof that all the statements mentioned above are oft repeated yet for some reason can't be demonstrated to be true.
rd
Here are some quotes from this dufus:
"Marc Benioff, the chief executive of startup Salesforce.com Inc.,...has told anyone who would listen that today's business software is too expensive and too dang complicated. "We have created an industry of complexity and we need to do something about it," he says."
Wal-Mart just informed their top suppliers they must have pallet license plates (RFID's) when Wal-Mart receives their product. Does Salesforce.com support pallet license plates? Or is that some of that "complexity" they left out? Much simpler to just not be a potential major supplier to Wal-Mart, isn't it?
"For starters, give up the "not-built-here" dogma that has kept some software makers from working with new, easy-to-use programming building blocks made by Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and IBM."
The "easy-to-use programming building blocks" from Microsoft is apparently
"That reluctance also has made some companies slow to adopt standardized programming technologies like the Extensible Markup Language, which makes it easier for different kinds of software to work together."
Slow to adopt XML? That's all anybody friggin talks about. The writer is a freakin liar as well. Name me something about XML that is significantly different than a
"Database giant Oracle Corp.'s flubbing of its first all-Internet business software, Oracle 11i, is legendary...Problem was, it had an estimated 10,000 bugs."
From what I read, even with 10,000 bugs it was more stable than some of their earlier client server stuff.
"Although few software execs may actually say it, many agree with Benioff. Software should be delivered as a service over the Internet instead of shipped to customers on a disk."
And your data delivered along with it, one screen at a time? That's ok for contact info, even useful for those on the move. And granted, a server across the internet is much like a server across the local net, but still, not too much complex could be going on with an operation like that.
This is more of the web services along with the browser and XML is a panacea, sort of reminds me of a mainframe in a glass room, replace 3270/5250 with a browser, flat files with XML, FTP with web services, and the glass room with the vendor and we've solved all those nasty software problems! Businesses should just understand, if Larry hasn't provided it for you, you don't need it. I'm sure he must have provided pallet license plates, otherwise Wal-Mart has no business demanding them...
rd
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1017965.html
end quote
This comes the next day after I posted that SCO was after $3 to $4 billion, including buying them out, but they just raised it to $3 billion alone just for damages. I would have thought the $4 billion figure was good for a buyout yesterday, but after MAD was declared today by SCO they probably will require a lot more to settle now.
Here's what I based my reasoning on. The dollar values given of $250 million per year for Unix licensing fees that dropped to $50 million means that $1 billion approximates the direct loss of licensing fees since IBM did this and for the forseeable future. In addition, buying them out would require the billion plus a considerable premium for the value of future licensing fees.
In my opinion, all the comments about any Linux kernel contributors besides IBM are irrelevant, that this is a case strictly between SCO and IBM, and that the threats against Linux licensees are leverage against IBM. I think SCO thinks they can blackmail IBM to the tune of something like $3 billion to $4 billion to buy out their rights to Unix source code and IP and make their Linux future secure.
Obviously, IBM is not going to just acquiesce, but the code to look at is not historic, not from individual contributors, and not random. It is the enterprise features that IBM spent a billion dollars adding to Linux according to their press releases, and it's probably not a coincidence that SCO chose that billion dollar figure themselves to sue for. Again, that is not pie in the sky, we'll settle for enough to vacation in Tahiti, that's the ground floor for a deal to buy them out, in other words, maximize the shareholders value of the assets of SCO.
In my opinion, this has nothing to do with Linux and open source and everything to do with throwing your cards in and cashing out. It throws a lot of FUD on Linux, to be sure, but again that is powerful leverage against IBM which has made Linux their future. I look for IBM to pony up and acquire the rights to secure their future with Linux and AIX. The ones behind this surely hope they will never have to work again.
rd
Let me also add that the interview with the lady analyst who took the SCO NDA look the other day revealed to me what's going on based on news articles I've read through the past couple of years and all the
IBM said they were investing a billion dollars in Linux to make it enterprise ready. I vaguely recall it included stuff like journalling and some kind of improved multi-CPU threading, etc., in other words, stuff they had in AIX. The lady said the source involved was mainly from the newer Linux releases.
In my opinion, SCO believes that IBM took some of the enterprise level treasure from Unix and put it into Linux, thus voiding the value of Unix. The fact that IBM had signed an NDA for some joint development that fell through (IIRC, shades of OS/2?) and licensed AIX from SCO makes this a much more compelling case. One 80 line section including comments is enough to show that copying took place, and they probably feel they can make a case that the enterprise level functionality that IBM donated included valuable infrastructure from Unix.
The dollar values given of $250 million per year for Unix licensing fees that dropped to $50 million means that $1 billion approximates the direct loss of licensing fees since IBM did this and for the forseeable future. In addition, buying them out would require the billion plus a considerable premium for the value of future licensing fees.
In my opinion, all the comments about any Linux kernel contributors besides IBM are irrelevant, that this is a case strictly between SCO and IBM, and that the threats against Linux licensees are leverage against IBM. I think SCO thinks they can blackmail IBM to the tune of something like $3 billion to $4 billion to buy out their rights to Unix source code and IP and make their Linux future secure.
Obviously, IBM is not going to just acquiesce, but the code to look at is not historic, not from individual contributors, and not random. It is the enterprise features that IBM spent a billion dollars adding to Linux according to their press releases, and it's probably not a coincidence that SCO chose that billion dollar figure themselves to sue for. Again, that is not pie in the sky, we'll settle for enough to vacation in Tahiti, that's the ground floor for a deal to buy them out, in other words, maximize the shareholders value of the assets of SCO.
I am saddened to see Ray Noorda behind this, but I think he is tired of getting screwed by the likes of M$ and IBM. In my opinion, this has nothing to do with Linux and open source and everything to do with throwing your cards in and cashing out. It throws a lot of FUD on Linux, to be sure, but again that is powerful leverage against IBM which has made Linux their future. I look for IBM to pony up and acquire the rights to secure their future with Linux and AIX. The ones behind this surely hope they will never have to work again.
rd
After reading all the comments in this great discussion, I want to clarify some points in my post.
Although chess is a game, certainly a great deal of intelligence is used to create moves, and software that created moves which implemented strategies without relying on pre-programmed algorithms or lookups in a history database of human games would exhibit the same intelligence that an untrained human uses to play the game. However, I was instead referring to the algorithms used in chess programs to recreate human playing as clever alogorithms rather than intelligence. In other words, without relying on lookups of past human behavior, it would require original thought to play the game, which is the essence of intelligence.
I also to some degree dismissed the ability to play games as displaying intelligence in the sense that brute force algorithms that try methodical combinations and record the results as feedback for reusing the combinations is not original thought, even if a human play history database is not used for lookup. Of course, with chess the number of possible moves and difficulty in generating successful combinations of moves with brute force algorithms means that an activity as complex as chess won't be done with anything that is brute force, so that thought is not applicable here.
Also, in my example of a program exhibiting original thoughts, if what is recognized as original thoughts came from a static software program it is still being generated by a clever algorithm. While I don't know what it will take to generate thinking and reasoning, an unstated premise I had was that it would require software that can extend its behavior, probably through writing new code that both puts together existing functionality in new orders and creates new functionality when needed in a non random way. The ability to determine what is needed and then create it is what would constitute original thought and intelligence.
I do recognize that some consider the algorithms to create new algorithms an indirect extension of the original code, but I contend that providing low level constructs to create syntax as expressions of desired behavior is not the same as what an intelligent program would create using it. Whether this will be achieved is a question, but I contend that a program extending itself with additional logic to exhibit new behaviors is that which is required to achieve artificial intelligence. Most anything else is just a software program executing pre-programmed logic.
I am not dogmatic about this though, and I agree with the writer who describes understanding words in context as exhibiting artificial intelligence, if applied to unknown data, even if it is able to be accomplished with a static software program and very clever algorithms. Of course this has been very difficult to achieve. The SHRDLU context understanding is great, but they are just very specific algorithmic responses within a highly constrained environment, not to demean that achievement at all. Indeed, the comment that we haven't seen anything better in all these years since is very telling.
rd
Thus programming a computer to play chess was worth a PhD at one time, until that problem was solved. I wrote a Double Deck Pinochle program twenty years ago that plays as well as I do and is really hard to beat (and has been floating around as DOS freeware for several years now). Is that program artificially intelligent? Of course not. It is no more intelligent than any other software program, blindly executing logic as programmed. But if it were a classier card game (bridge), a few years earlier (on a PDP-11 instead of a TRS-80 Z-80), and I had been an advanced comp sci student (I was a student, but not a very good one... so I ended up dropping out and writing code), then if appropriately cloaked in mumbo-jumbo, I coulda been a PhD...
So, what is AI? It is not pattern matching. That leaves out the million rule database of behavior factoids, recognition based on lining up bit patterns, and so called learning by storing away data and matching it later to identify an event. Those are all just software logic exercises. The results may be more interesting to humans than how many widgets are forecast to be sold or made or purchased for the next month, but they are no more intelligent.
Here's a question. Is the activity of insects considered intelligence? It seems to me that robot programming is attempting to emulate the intelligence level of insects. It is arguable if that is even intelligence.
The game of Life was often portrayed in decades past as intelligence, with combinatorial algorithms creating a "winner" within some set of constraints. Is anything found in life that mutates in an endless search for something that succeeds at surviving the real game of life intelligence? I think most would say not. Yet if I write a program that randomly attempts to extend its behavior in attempt to achieve some overall goal, it would undoubtedly be described as artificial intelligence. If the real organisms that act in this manner are not intelligent, why would the software be considered intelligent? Because we made it happen instead of nature? Because we are working on a PhD? Because it resembles life more than a widget forecaster? Perhaps that should be described as attempting to create artificial life rather than artificial intelligence.
Rather than continuing to describe clever algorithms as "intelligence" that emulate human activities such as playing chess, where the game is more complicated than chasing your friend up and down a tree but still a game, or recognizing faces, which is a primitive behavior, one must isolate that from all animal behavior which is human thought and say, this is intelligence. What does it take for software to approach generating original thoughts? I don't know, but only then will the software be intelligent, artificial or otherwise.
rd
Here's an e-mail I just sent to SBC at their site: http://www.sbc.com/
Hello. I am an SBC residential phone customer and Cingular cellular customer. I also am a heavy user of the internet and a computer programmer.
Your decision to lay claim to basic web page constructs such as "dynamic content from a static link over a network" (commonly known as sidebar navigation menus, icons, and anything else you can click on) and then attack some little company in Oregon with your crap as a test case for taxing everyone on the internet is an affront to civilization and the internet.
Either get your act together or I'll find a company that isn't an irresponsible jerk to be a customer of. You want to try to make a living off of bs patents, go ahead, be a laughingstock idiot, but I'm not going to support you with my business in the meantime.
Now get back to the basics of providing good access to that internet and take a bunch of your lawyers and pitch them. They're giving you bad advice, if you haven't realized it by now.
Ralph