I don't know how you come up with 10 pissed off lawyers.
Last year, in June, but I think even up until October, SCO claimed to have 330 employees.
When the recent layoffs were announced, they said they were laying off "way less than ten percent" of their 275 employees.
275? I thought they had 330?
Since SCO currently has 275 employees, the "way under ten percent" must mean they are laying off 27 people, which would be 9.81%.
This leaves them with 248. This means they have lost 82 people (330 - 248) or 24.84% ("way under 25%" using SCO speak) of their workforce in less than a year. Perhaps even in just six months.
Now since SCO didn't have layoffs until now, how do you suppose they dropped from 330 to 275 employees in the meantime? (I won't say anything about rats and sinking ships.)
Now why do I just bindly assume in SCO speak that "way under 10 percent" actually means 9.81%? Because if it were under nine percent, they would have said "way under nine percent!". So instead of laying off 27, they could have laid off 26 (9.45%) or laid off 5 (9.09%), in which case my above quackulations would need adjustment.
Thanks for your efforts. A great answer even. But it doesn't really, truly answer the unspoken thing that slashdot wants.
It is not free as in lunch.
Even if it were, then it would not be free as in freedom.
Even if it were, then it would not run the most popular games...er, um, I mean application software (i.e. for Windows).
Even if it did, there would be something else wrong with it.
That's what kills me. IBM was a wonderfull example of how such hard ball practices fail, in the early 90's they got nailed harder than anybody.
After 40+ years of abusive monopoly control, crushing competitors, even in the 1950's.
Example: Early 50's. IBM discovers that Rand has an entry level computer way cheaper than IBM's hugely expensive machines. So IBM make their low end machine available for half of what it costs to manufacture! But with barely enough memory to be useful. Soon the customer would need memory, and IBM would more than make a profit on the entire system once the memory upgrade was purchased.
The book is just chock full of dirty tricks.
You suggest that such tactics fail. Well, I suppose I agree that they must fail eventually. But am I doomed to spend my entire career under Microsoft's control? Oh, suppose, by your theory that they fail badly by the time I retire. Who cares anymore?
Thank goodness, it looks like the industry will have some freedom much sooner than happened in IBM's case.
Can Microsoft really charge "monopoly rents"? Do you think Microsoft could get away with charging $1000 per Windows seat? I don't think so..
Who do you think would stop them?
There is not a bright line. It is a continuum of prices. Obviously, if they charged $1 Million per seat, very few wold buy. If they simply increase their prices another $50, nothing would happen, and nothing could happen. They clearly have the potential to be highly abusive, while still giving paid-for politicians the plausibility to say that this is good for the economy / we support big business / etc., etc.
Do you actually believe that the US Government can control Microsoft?
They couldn't control IBM. Finally during Regan's presidency, Baxter (DOJ) dropped the IBM antitrust, after many, many (I believe 13) years of litigation. Why did they drop it? "Because the suit was meritless." The suit meritless? That reminds me of...
Asscroft: This was not a sell out. (Of "settling" Microsoft case.)
Read the book: Big Blue: IBM's use and abuse of power.
This book is literally an education on monopolist behavior. If you read it, you would amazed at how many of IBM's dirty tricks are practiced by Microsoft.
One very important lesson. The monopoly and especially lock in are the most important things. Even more important than short term profitability. Even more important than staying within the law.
After all the law will do is fine you. Maybe even painfully. But in the end, you still have a monopoly with locked in customers. You can charge what economists call "monopoly rents". So you're still in control of the game. Nothing is more important than maintaining the monopoly.
Anyway, I'm off topic. But the book is a very interesting read of things done in decades past that many here are too young to remember.
Cone of Advertising, cone of secret Teleprompting
on
Directed Sound
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Not cone of silence!
Cone of marketing.
Cone of limited time only specials!
Cone of "welcome passerby, if you look directly to your left...."
Cone of "your girlfriend can't hear this, so listen closely..."
Just so this post isn't totally lame, here is a potential useful application.
Directed sound technology might be useful in applications where you want to give someone audible feedback or instructions, where someone normally would have one of those tiny earpieces. Cyrano de Bergerac. (See the commedy with Steve Martin called Roxane.) One man is secretly prompting another man with what to say to lure a potential girlfriend.
Now you could send someone secret audible messages so that they say intelligent things instead of their own original thoughts. Useful for political campaigns where public figure is near to public crowd, near enough for them to notice any earpiece electronics he might be wearing.
is so badly written that it does not warrant a response. Perhaps the reason it irritates people is because of this.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
I think Wilde is just plain wrong.
There is nothing wrong with having a moral compass. There is nothing wrong with defending right and exposing wrong.
Perhaps a problem is that those who would condemn those who refute published harmful inaccuracies, is that they have no sense of right and wrong. No sense of justice. I'm not sure if the word sociopaths would exactly fit here?
OpenOffice.org's file format is XML. Multiple XML files and other binary files (graphics, etc.) are all stored into a Zip file. OOo files are typically much smaller than the same document in say, Word.
I think any area that is that monotheistic (perhaps inappropriate use of that word) is a bit scary in that if you are not-of-that-religion, things will not go easily for you.
Monotheistic is the wrong word.
As I understand the word, and
if you Google
you see that the word simply means a belief that there is only one single God.
Now a place that is polytheistic could also be intollerant to the point that you could be in trouble if you don't conform to the majority belief. (Polytheistic = belief in multiple gods.) If you don't believe in our defined set of gods, you are in big trouble!
Conversly, a place that is monotheistic, as many (most?) religions are, doesn't mean that you can't openly disagree and believe differently, or not at all.
The book Applied Cryptography does address much of this.
PKI is based on the premise that it is not feasible to factor sufficiently large numbers which are the product of two very large primes. Mathematicians could come up with a breakthrough. There have been several optimizations in the last couple decades (mentioned in the book). Nonetheless, it is believed that this problem is still a "hard" problem.
The book also addresses the question of guessing how much computer power there will be in the future. The text is very interesting in this part. It then goes on to address the question from a different perspective, thermodynamics. Given the minimum number of ergs of energy to represent a bit state change in a hypothetical ideal computing system, and the minimum sizes, how big and how much energy would be required to mount attacks on key lengths of various sizes. Even if you had such an efficient system, and built it as a dyson sphere around a star, capturing all of the energy, you would not be able to attack keys usable today that are over a certian length.
Conclusion: with suficiently long keys, in use today, your major concern would be a mathematical breakthrough that dramatically reduces the work from a brute force attack to an attack on a more limited keyspace.
I'm sure that some people here are laughing at Microsoft for its "lax security." Of course if you really wanted to protect a Word document you could use Office 2003's built-in encryption features, which rely on Windows Rights Management. Yet the people who criticize Microsoft for Word's "security hole" are also the most vocal opponents to anything having to do with trusted computing, including Windows Rights Management. You can't have it both ways, you know.
My argument is with this statement you made. The last sentence. You can have it both ways.
You CAN have no-DRM, and also have security.
The fact that Microsoft Office 2003's security relies on WRM is Microsoft's problem.
Yes, I should poke fun at their poor security. At the same time, Yes, I should critize them for promoting DRM. In so doing, what I'm asking for is both: (1) security, and (2) no-DRM. And you CAN, CAN, CAN have it both ways.
Slashdot Mirror
There were 330 employees up until June, and I believe even up until October.
See this slashdot post I made earlier.
Tough Shit. They where working for the devil and they knew it.
How offensive!
Please. In the future...
Do not compare the devil to SCO. Even the Bible says something about not slandering celestial beings (book of James?).
If RBC places an order sell these freaking shares at any price, as fast as you can!!! for a volume of 740,740 shares...
would this potentially affect the stock price?
in what way might the price be affected?
what effect, if any, might this have on the long term outlook of the company?
are there any other concerns a wise investor should have?
Any good investing tips appreciated. (Especially when they are from an internet site! rather than from someone qualified to give investment advice.)
Thanks!
I don't know how you come up with 10 pissed off lawyers.
Last year, in June, but I think even up until October, SCO claimed to have 330 employees.
When the recent layoffs were announced, they said they were laying off "way less than ten percent" of their 275 employees.
275? I thought they had 330?
Since SCO currently has 275 employees, the "way under ten percent" must mean they are laying off 27 people, which would be 9.81%.
This leaves them with 248. This means they have lost 82 people (330 - 248) or 24.84% ("way under 25%" using SCO speak) of their workforce in less than a year. Perhaps even in just six months.
Now since SCO didn't have layoffs until now, how do you suppose they dropped from 330 to 275 employees in the meantime? (I won't say anything about rats and sinking ships.)
Now why do I just bindly assume in SCO speak that "way under 10 percent" actually means 9.81%? Because if it were under nine percent, they would have said "way under nine percent!". So instead of laying off 27, they could have laid off 26 (9.45%) or laid off 5 (9.09%), in which case my above quackulations would need adjustment.
http://www.apple.com
Thanks for your efforts. A great answer even. But it doesn't really, truly answer the unspoken thing that slashdot wants.
It is not free as in lunch.
Even if it were, then it would not be free as in freedom.
Even if it were, then it would not run the most popular games...er, um, I mean application software (i.e. for Windows).
Even if it did, there would be something else wrong with it.
That's what kills me. IBM was a wonderfull example of how such hard ball practices fail, in the early 90's they got nailed harder than anybody.
After 40+ years of abusive monopoly control, crushing competitors, even in the 1950's.
Example: Early 50's. IBM discovers that Rand has an entry level computer way cheaper than IBM's hugely expensive machines. So IBM make their low end machine available for half of what it costs to manufacture! But with barely enough memory to be useful. Soon the customer would need memory, and IBM would more than make a profit on the entire system once the memory upgrade was purchased.
The book is just chock full of dirty tricks.
You suggest that such tactics fail. Well, I suppose I agree that they must fail eventually. But am I doomed to spend my entire career under Microsoft's control? Oh, suppose, by your theory that they fail badly by the time I retire. Who cares anymore?
Thank goodness, it looks like the industry will have some freedom much sooner than happened in IBM's case.
Who do you think would stop them?
There is not a bright line. It is a continuum of prices. Obviously, if they charged $1 Million per seat, very few wold buy. If they simply increase their prices another $50, nothing would happen, and nothing could happen. They clearly have the potential to be highly abusive, while still giving paid-for politicians the plausibility to say that this is good for the economy / we support big business / etc., etc.
Do you actually believe that the US Government can control Microsoft?
They couldn't control IBM. Finally during Regan's presidency, Baxter (DOJ) dropped the IBM antitrust, after many, many (I believe 13) years of litigation. Why did they drop it? "Because the suit was meritless." The suit meritless? That reminds me of...
Typical *nix admin, thinking that posting on Slashdot is 'working hard as usual'.
Maybe the *nix admin's server isn't broken.
Still a bit better than MS admins, who think that posting misinformed bullshit on Slashdot is 'working hard as usual'...
It may actually be working hard if one is being paid to post misinformed bovine feces on slashdot.
At one time they did.
Read the book: Big Blue: IBM's use and abuse of power.
This book is literally an education on monopolist behavior. If you read it, you would amazed at how many of IBM's dirty tricks are practiced by Microsoft.
One very important lesson. The monopoly and especially lock in are the most important things. Even more important than short term profitability. Even more important than staying within the law.
After all the law will do is fine you. Maybe even painfully. But in the end, you still have a monopoly with locked in customers. You can charge what economists call "monopoly rents". So you're still in control of the game. Nothing is more important than maintaining the monopoly.
Anyway, I'm off topic. But the book is a very interesting read of things done in decades past that many here are too young to remember.
Not cone of silence!
Cone of marketing.
Cone of limited time only specials!
Cone of "welcome passerby, if you look directly to your left...."
Cone of "your girlfriend can't hear this, so listen closely..."
Just so this post isn't totally lame, here is a potential useful application.
Directed sound technology might be useful in applications where you want to give someone audible feedback or instructions, where someone normally would have one of those tiny earpieces. Cyrano de Bergerac. (See the commedy with Steve Martin called Roxane.) One man is secretly prompting another man with what to say to lure a potential girlfriend.
Now you could send someone secret audible messages so that they say intelligent things instead of their own original thoughts. Useful for political campaigns where public figure is near to public crowd, near enough for them to notice any earpiece electronics he might be wearing.
$1 per CPU hour. But nobody said anything about how fast that CPU needs to be.
How about a beowulf cluster of x286's?
Fifty old slow cpu's and you're making $50/hour.
Oh, and did I mention that my 50 old x286 boxes all share a single dial up line?
On a 300 baud modem?
is so badly written that it does not warrant a response. Perhaps the reason it irritates people is because of this.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
I think Wilde is just plain wrong.
There is nothing wrong with having a moral compass. There is nothing wrong with defending right and exposing wrong.
Perhaps a problem is that those who would condemn those who refute published harmful inaccuracies, is that they have no sense of right and wrong. No sense of justice. I'm not sure if the word sociopaths would exactly fit here?
OpenOffice.org's file format is XML. Multiple XML files and other binary files (graphics, etc.) are all stored into a Zip file. OOo files are typically much smaller than the same document in say, Word.
You can't spell fiasco without SCO
Nor SCOundrel.
I think any area that is that monotheistic (perhaps inappropriate use of that word) is a bit scary in that if you are not-of-that-religion, things will not go easily for you.
Monotheistic is the wrong word.
As I understand the word, and if you Google you see that the word simply means a belief that there is only one single God.
Now a place that is polytheistic could also be intollerant to the point that you could be in trouble if you don't conform to the majority belief. (Polytheistic = belief in multiple gods.) If you don't believe in our defined set of gods, you are in big trouble!
Conversly, a place that is monotheistic, as many (most?) religions are, doesn't mean that you can't openly disagree and believe differently, or not at all.
spam is not a problem that will be solved by legislation alone
The junk fax problem was getting out of control in the early 90's. (NINTEEN-ninties that is)
That one was solved by legislation PLUS enforcement.
Don't assume we all know what "SPF" is. Unless you mean "Sun Protection Factor"
AOL publishing SPF's? Too many TLA's.
BTW, Isn't it SCO that we need protection from, not Sun? IMHO, SCO will soon be wanting protection from IBM.
Most of those contracts include a clause such that they are allowed to modify the contract without notifying you beforehand.
Then shouldn't I be equally allowed to change the contract without notifying them beforehand? Especially since I didn't write the original contract?
So how will the MPAA feel about this? Will they have a knyption hissy fit like the RIAA? Begin lawsuits against anyone who buys this Linksys box?
I think it beats another new "helpful" feature like "CRL Finder."
Shite Finder.
OpenOffice.org Draw can import/export SVG
Export. But not import. Not in the latest release 1.1.0 version. (Although I would love to be proven wrong!)
>>So then, why the hell is it called a one-way function?
>Because it's very difficult to reverse
Isn't that what I just said?
I'm not confused.
Check the definition of a one way function. Not the definition you are using.
The book Applied Cryptography does address much of this.
PKI is based on the premise that it is not feasible to factor sufficiently large numbers which are the product of two very large primes. Mathematicians could come up with a breakthrough. There have been several optimizations in the last couple decades (mentioned in the book). Nonetheless, it is believed that this problem is still a "hard" problem.
The book also addresses the question of guessing how much computer power there will be in the future. The text is very interesting in this part. It then goes on to address the question from a different perspective, thermodynamics. Given the minimum number of ergs of energy to represent a bit state change in a hypothetical ideal computing system, and the minimum sizes, how big and how much energy would be required to mount attacks on key lengths of various sizes. Even if you had such an efficient system, and built it as a dyson sphere around a star, capturing all of the energy, you would not be able to attack keys usable today that are over a certian length.
Conclusion: with suficiently long keys, in use today, your major concern would be a mathematical breakthrough that dramatically reduces the work from a brute force attack to an attack on a more limited keyspace.
I'm sure that some people here are laughing at Microsoft for its "lax security." Of course if you really wanted to protect a Word document you could use Office 2003's built-in encryption features, which rely on Windows Rights Management. Yet the people who criticize Microsoft for Word's "security hole" are also the most vocal opponents to anything having to do with trusted computing, including Windows Rights Management. You can't have it both ways, you know.
My argument is with this statement you made. The last sentence. You can have it both ways.
You CAN have no-DRM, and also have security.
The fact that Microsoft Office 2003's security relies on WRM is Microsoft's problem.
Yes, I should poke fun at their poor security. At the same time, Yes, I should critize them for promoting DRM. In so doing, what I'm asking for is both: (1) security, and (2) no-DRM. And you CAN, CAN, CAN have it both ways.