By abused, I think he means that the attitude in network protocol design is "let's hack HTTP to do this". For instance, how many P2P protocols are just HTTP?
Ten years ago, Metallica's original contract with Elektra (signed in 1984), expired and there was a lot of competition from every label in the business to sign them to a new contract (after all, their untitled 1991 album was well on its way to being one of the bestselling albums of all time, and its predecessors were storming off store shelves). Metallica and Elektra reached an agreement that basically made Metallica completely independent of the RIAA. The arrangement that was reached was the creation of a corporation E/M Ventures, with the four members of the band, their management (Q Prime), Elektra being the sole shareholders (IIRC, the breakdown was something like 22% Lars Ulrich, 22% James Hetfield, 16% Kirk Hammett, 10% Jason Newsted, 15% Q Prime, and 15% Elektra). Elektra transferred the copyrights on all the catalog recordings (1983-1991) to E/M as their investment, along with a record deal that would pay E/M Ventures royalties equal to 50% of the wholesale price (in other words about $4 to %5 per album, or $7 to $8 per double album), with no deductions for anything (all record production and promotion expenses would be handled by E/M). This deal only expires when a simple majority of the voting shares decides to terminate it and buy back Elektra's share.
Elektra basically makes little to no money (apart from their share of E/M's profits) on the sale of a Metallica CD... all costs related to manufacturing and distribution are eaten by them. However, they're making this money with little risk; Metallica can put out basically anything and it will go platinum, simply on the strength of a rabid fan-base (much like Rush's, but probably at least twice the size).
E/M owns all aspects of Metallica's business interests. The tours are done by E/M (or subsidiaries thereof). The merchandising revenues are to E/M. Thus, Elektra gets a cut of all those revenue streams, which are actually even bigger than the recording streams. Elektra also gets a cut of international record sales by Vivendi and Sony. Metallica gets out of this what effectively amounts to total independence from the system. Even if Elektra doesn't want to release something, they're obligated to manufacture and distribute it, otherwise they forfeit their share (for no compensation, through breach of contract).
RPM's are relocatable (at least most, if not all of the packages Mandrake distributes are; hardcoded directories are against Mdk policy and caught by rpmlint). Just edit your.rpmmacros and set macros like %{bindir}, %{libdir}, etc.
Arena football video game? Jesus H Christ. Play Madden on Easy setting with arenaball rosters (which you can download) and you've basically got arena football.
My idea would be to have a website set up where you could "donate" any amount you wished to any band/artist you wished. The website would take the donations and cut a check to the artist on a regular basis.
I have personally downloaded material that's illegal from Furthur. Specifically, Bay Area Thrashers, which was a fake live recording of pre-Kirk Hammett Metallica but was actually the demo tapes with crowd noise thrown in. Metallica has managed to stop distribution of that, unlike genuine Metallica live bootlegs (which the band has continually reiterated are OK1 to make and non-commercially distribute).
1: however, at festival type gigs, Metallica generally defers to other bands on the bill. If one other band on the bill is opposed to live taping, then they go along with the standard anti-taping measures. For instance, I was frisked pretty heavily at Sunday's Summer Sanitarium tour stop in Foxboro.
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.
Where does anything specifically say that the IRS is making Microsoft comply with this rule?
Regardless, the IRS can make the determination all it wants... it can be appealed to the US Tax Court, which would then decide whether the IRS was justified in making that determination, at which point the IRS essentially has to prove that the retained earnings and question are not needed. Yes, the IRS essentially has to prove a negative, and even if they get close to it, the following situation would still wreck their case:
The defendant goes out and actually uses a suitably large portion of their cash for expansion, for example by acquiring a suitably large corporation.
It does exist, and was in the news. Sorry you didn't see it or understand.
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.
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.
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.
[T]hey could put it to more efficient use to build stockholder value in terms of share value, rather then giving some of it to the stockholder, and some of it for the gov't.
I'd like to point out that, in general, corporations are horrible at investing their money (especially when it's not internally invested on new projects). One need only look at the carcasses of the old-line conglomerates to see this.
That's like complaining that General Motors has a monopoly because if you go down to Crazy Al's Pontiac/Buick/GMC, you can't buy a Toyota (well, not counting the Pontiac Vibe being a twin of the Toyota Matrix...
...that like the videotape, the web, and the DVD, the porn industry will be among the first to put this to commercial use and the first to see significant profits.
Hell, I suspect that the Bible was the second thing Gutenberg printed, the first after he printed porn!
"[Y]ou can't condemn the ISPs for doing what they're doing to minimize the abuse." -- Laura Atkins, president of
SpamCon
IOW, the ends justify the means. This is dangerous thinking, and IMHO, anyone thinking along these lines is an absolute menace to society. When one starts thinking that the ends justify the means, you get into cases where it becomes acceptable to seize the property of others for the greater good of society, or invade a sovereign nation to depose a dictator because a hypothetical democracy would be better for the people there, or to ban all computing devices to eradicate the scourge of digital copyright infringement. People of this view are not deserving of the benefits of society, for this manner of thinking is antithetical to any and all social forms.
However, expenses on figures reported to the SEC and so forth are generally rounded to either the nearest thousand or to the nearest million, so AOL's actually spending $10 million on spammer assassinations...;-)
At any rate after they ran out of book titles to use for movie titles, they used the titles of the Bond short stories and then they just kind of degenerated into making movies using characters from the books. (Hint, "Moonraker" had nothing to do with with invisible space stations, fleets of space shuttles, or a plot to create the perfect society by killing off everyone living *on* Earth at the time)
Basically true. Ian Fleming sold them the rights to use The Spy Who Loved Me as a title, but explicitly forbade them from using the plot or characters (he was embarassed by the experiment of writing a Bond novel from the girl's perspective). In the case of Moonraker, they weren't planning to make it as a film ever (they had judged the novel's plot to be unfilmable), but after Star Wars was a huge success, they decided, "Let's send James Bond into space... oh, here's a title we could use". After this, they went to using short story titles (For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, [From] A View to a Kill, and The Living Daylights) and generally taking bits and pieces from said short stories along with scenes and plot points from the novels and short stories that weren't used. For instance, For Your Eyes Only combines the short story of that name (some character names), "Risico" (the Greek smuggling angle), and a scene from "Live and Let Die". The first all-original plot & character combination was A View to a Kill, and the first original title was Licence to Kill (which borrowed Felix Leiter's maiming by a shark, which sets Bond off on a personal vendetta, from "Live and Let Die").
"Moonraker" (the novel) has basically been done twice in the Brosnan-era, in slightly different ways; Goldeneye's Trevelyan is trying to destroy London and has a hidden past, while Die Another Day is closer to the book, in that Graves is a member of high society and all that. Now if only they worked the bridge game into things...
Some geeks are into Star Wars, I'm into Bond...;o)
Slashdot Mirror
By abused, I think he means that the attitude in network protocol design is "let's hack HTTP to do this". For instance, how many P2P protocols are just HTTP?
AOL was just signing that deal so that they keep that option open, if Mozilla ends up not delivering the goods.
What I get the impression that means is questions that are regarding one particular case, but with details changed will not be discussed.
Odd... I'm an anti-MS zealot GNU/Hippie (not fully, but I could truthfully be accused of that) and I'd take the XBox over the PS2...
Ten years ago, Metallica's original contract with Elektra (signed in 1984), expired and there was a lot of competition from every label in the business to sign them to a new contract (after all, their untitled 1991 album was well on its way to being one of the bestselling albums of all time, and its predecessors were storming off store shelves). Metallica and Elektra reached an agreement that basically made Metallica completely independent of the RIAA. The arrangement that was reached was the creation of a corporation E/M Ventures, with the four members of the band, their management (Q Prime), Elektra being the sole shareholders (IIRC, the breakdown was something like 22% Lars Ulrich, 22% James Hetfield, 16% Kirk Hammett, 10% Jason Newsted, 15% Q Prime, and 15% Elektra). Elektra transferred the copyrights on all the catalog recordings (1983-1991) to E/M as their investment, along with a record deal that would pay E/M Ventures royalties equal to 50% of the wholesale price (in other words about $4 to %5 per album, or $7 to $8 per double album), with no deductions for anything (all record production and promotion expenses would be handled by E/M). This deal only expires when a simple majority of the voting shares decides to terminate it and buy back Elektra's share.
Elektra basically makes little to no money (apart from their share of E/M's profits) on the sale of a Metallica CD... all costs related to manufacturing and distribution are eaten by them. However, they're making this money with little risk; Metallica can put out basically anything and it will go platinum, simply on the strength of a rabid fan-base (much like Rush's, but probably at least twice the size).
E/M owns all aspects of Metallica's business interests. The tours are done by E/M (or subsidiaries thereof). The merchandising revenues are to E/M. Thus, Elektra gets a cut of all those revenue streams, which are actually even bigger than the recording streams. Elektra also gets a cut of international record sales by Vivendi and Sony. Metallica gets out of this what effectively amounts to total independence from the system. Even if Elektra doesn't want to release something, they're obligated to manufacture and distribute it, otherwise they forfeit their share (for no compensation, through breach of contract).
RPM's are relocatable (at least most, if not all of the packages Mandrake distributes are; hardcoded directories are against Mdk policy and caught by rpmlint). Just edit your .rpmmacros and set macros like %{bindir}, %{libdir}, etc.
Arena football video game? Jesus H Christ. Play Madden on Easy setting with arenaball rosters (which you can download) and you've basically got arena football.
Already done.
Pay up.
I have personally downloaded material that's illegal from Furthur. Specifically, Bay Area Thrashers, which was a fake live recording of pre-Kirk Hammett Metallica but was actually the demo tapes with crowd noise thrown in. Metallica has managed to stop distribution of that, unlike genuine Metallica live bootlegs (which the band has continually reiterated are OK1 to make and non-commercially distribute).
1: however, at festival type gigs, Metallica generally defers to other bands on the bill. If one other band on the bill is opposed to live taping, then they go along with the standard anti-taping measures. For instance, I was frisked pretty heavily at Sunday's Summer Sanitarium tour stop in Foxboro.
I've had a VIA 686 sound chip for a few years with no trouble (I'm currently using ALSA, but there is some OSS support, too).
Three words: themeable crash screens!
Where does anything specifically say that the IRS is making Microsoft comply with this rule?
Regardless, the IRS can make the determination all it wants... it can be appealed to the US Tax Court, which would then decide whether the IRS was justified in making that determination, at which point the IRS essentially has to prove that the retained earnings and question are not needed. Yes, the IRS essentially has to prove a negative, and even if they get close to it, the following situation would still wreck their case:
The defendant goes out and actually uses a suitably large portion of their cash for expansion, for example by acquiring a suitably large corporation.
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.
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.
I'd like to point out that, in general, corporations are horrible at investing their money (especially when it's not internally invested on new projects). One need only look at the carcasses of the old-line conglomerates to see this.
Uh, the IRS doesn't require a corporation to pay out dividends...
Dell and HPaq != the PC industry...
That's like complaining that General Motors has a monopoly because if you go down to Crazy Al's Pontiac/Buick/GMC, you can't buy a Toyota (well, not counting the Pontiac Vibe being a twin of the Toyota Matrix...
...that like the videotape, the web, and the DVD, the porn industry will be among the first to put this to commercial use and the first to see significant profits.
Hell, I suspect that the Bible was the second thing Gutenberg printed, the first after he printed porn!
Once you get Mandrake, it's not that difficult to put any other Linux distro on it. FreeBSD will probably work as well.
Mandrake aims to be roughly binary compatible with Red Hat.
If Slashdot ran the post office, you'd receive four copies of the same letter or package, often on the same day.
IOW, the ends justify the means. This is dangerous thinking, and IMHO, anyone thinking along these lines is an absolute menace to society. When one starts thinking that the ends justify the means, you get into cases where it becomes acceptable to seize the property of others for the greater good of society, or invade a sovereign nation to depose a dictator because a hypothetical democracy would be better for the people there, or to ban all computing devices to eradicate the scourge of digital copyright infringement. People of this view are not deserving of the benefits of society, for this manner of thinking is antithetical to any and all social forms.
However, expenses on figures reported to the SEC and so forth are generally rounded to either the nearest thousand or to the nearest million, so AOL's actually spending $10 million on spammer assassinations... ;-)
John Gardner wrote a novelization of the film...
Basically true. Ian Fleming sold them the rights to use The Spy Who Loved Me as a title, but explicitly forbade them from using the plot or characters (he was embarassed by the experiment of writing a Bond novel from the girl's perspective). In the case of Moonraker, they weren't planning to make it as a film ever (they had judged the novel's plot to be unfilmable), but after Star Wars was a huge success, they decided, "Let's send James Bond into space... oh, here's a title we could use". After this, they went to using short story titles (For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, [From] A View to a Kill, and The Living Daylights) and generally taking bits and pieces from said short stories along with scenes and plot points from the novels and short stories that weren't used. For instance, For Your Eyes Only combines the short story of that name (some character names), "Risico" (the Greek smuggling angle), and a scene from "Live and Let Die". The first all-original plot & character combination was A View to a Kill, and the first original title was Licence to Kill (which borrowed Felix Leiter's maiming by a shark, which sets Bond off on a personal vendetta, from "Live and Let Die").
"Moonraker" (the novel) has basically been done twice in the Brosnan-era, in slightly different ways; Goldeneye's Trevelyan is trying to destroy London and has a hidden past, while Die Another Day is closer to the book, in that Graves is a member of high society and all that. Now if only they worked the bridge game into things...
Some geeks are into Star Wars, I'm into Bond... ;o)
Alternatively, you could make the computers in each room be LTSP terminals and run xmms on them...