To short stock, you usually need to deposit a certain amount of cash with your broker, to act as a guarantee that you will actually be able to buy the stock back if it goes up.
If the stock goes down, you can buy it back for less than you sold it for, your broker will give you back your money plus your profit. But if it goes up, you have a choice: Send your broker more money to risk, or cut your losses and buy the stock back. If the stock keeps going up, you will have to keep sending more money until you give up or simply go broke.
This potential for infinite losses is the big risk in shorting. While it's obvious that many stocks are overvalued, it's very hard to know exactly when they will go down and at what price they will peak.
They'll probably charge a subscription fee to non-UK viewers. Nearly all of this money will go straight to the BBC, whereas the BBC's cut from DVD sales is relatively small. (Physically making things is expensive, everyone along the supply chain needs to be paid, and the DVD cartel skims off a lot of the profit.)
And DVD sales won't disappear entirely, at least not overnight. People like owning shiny disks that are accompanied by high-quality photogrpahs and booklets printed on glossy paper.
In the short term, they may move towards charging subscribers whose IP address appears to be in a non-UK ISP's block. In the long term, I suspect that the downloads will only be available to paying subscribers (no matter where in the world they are located), and the TV license fee will disappear entirely. In the very long term, broadcast TV itself will disappear too.
There is a precedent for this: The BBC was originally funded by a *radio* license fee, but as TV gradually became more popular than radio, the tax was slowly shifted to TV, and the radio license abolished. BBC radio is still funded by the TV license, which makes it exceptionally good value if you don't have a TV (or live outside the UK and listen online)! Relying on subscriptions is (correctly) seen as being more commercial, but the key point is that the BBC's customers will still be viewers, not advertisers, so it will still provide unbiased news and interruption-free entertainment.
Subscriptions are also fairer, because they doesn't force UK TV viewers to pay for the BBC even if they don't watch it. (This was never the intention of the license fee: When it was introduced, there were no non-BBC channels, so a license fee was essentially a subscription.) My guess is that a worldwide audience of subscribers will more than compensate for any lost TV license income, but the change will happen over many years, so the BBC will have a chance to modify its business plan if things don't work out.
SCO is going to claim one of two things as a result of what it sees as the GPL's "non-validity": that anything licensed under the GPL should be treated as public domain, or (more likely) that SCO actually holds the copyright on GNU, Linux and most other GPL software (and probably BSD and Windows too) because these are "derivative works" of Unix.
This is BS, of course, but SCO's inflated stock price means it has a lot of money to spend on lawyers.
They have violated it. The GPL says that if you redistribute GPL'd code, you must grant everyone to whom you give or sell it the same GPL rights that you yourself received --- namely, the right to use the software in any way, the right to alter and/or copy it, and the right to redistribute it with source code.
SCO is not doing this. They're distributing Linux, then saying that people who receive a copy do not have the right to use or copy the software without paying additional fees.
Programmers do sell their labor instead of products, thanks to "work for hire" contracts. Software companies sell products, but most programmers don't work for software companies.
The Apple vs. Microsoft case was about copyright, not patents. Had software patents been around back then and had Apple patented the GUI, the case might have succeeded.
This situation may not last much longer. The EU copyright directive demands that all EU countries pass a DMCA-like law, and groups like WIPO and WTO are constantly pressing all countries worldwide to introduce oppressive laws.
As we all know, corporations are greedy, amoral and only interested in profit. But there is a difference between how they go about that, and Verizon is perhaps the least worst of the Baby Bell monopolies. Of course, that isn't difficult: SBC is trying to sue everyone who uses frames in a Web site, and Qwest is appealing to the Supreme Court that it has a first ammendment right to sell its customers' private information.
Still, Verizon does deserve a small amount of credit for standing up to the RIAA. Many corporations (Verizon included) consider their public image very important, as we can see from the huge amount of money they spend on stupid advertising and PR in an attempt to persuade people that they're not evil. If they see that actually doing non-evil things can gain them a good reputation, they will do more non-evil things.
This is, alas, true. SCO is involved in extortion, but unfortunately extortion works.
For a much more serious (ie. life and death) result of this, consider kidnapping and ransom demands. It's rare for diplomats to be kidnapped, because most governments have a "don't negotiate with terrorists" policy. But businesses often will secretly pay to get their valuable executives back, and as a reuslt the kidnapping of business tyravelers is rising
All copyright is viral: If you include someone else's work in your own, you need to reach an agreement with the copyright holder or abide by the terms of the work's redistributuion license. That applies whether the work you include is copied from BSD, Linux or Windows.
The BDS license merely requires attribution. The GPL requires a little more: that you publish the source code. The Windows license varies all the time, but is always much more restrictive, banning redistribution altogether. Even use of Windows sometimes requires granting Microsoft the right to remotely install DRM software on your PC.
This is true according to the intent of the GPL itself, but don't many commercial GPL'd programs treat it as a EULA anyway? They ask users to click through before installing. Maybe they think people are so used to EULAs that clicking through a box of legalese without reading it has become an expected part of every installation procedure, and maybe they're right.
There's also a bit in the GPL about "disclaimer of warranty". That looks very EULA-like, just because a similar clause is found in many EULAs, and indeed virtually every software license, free and otherwise. Most people regard a warranty as something that applies to their use of a product, not its subsequent redistribution.
The chance of one particular DNA sample matching one particular crime may be negligible, but the large number of crimes committed and the large number of people in a database covering the whole population make false matches a vritual certainty. DNA evidence should only be used to confirm or exonerate a suspect who is found by other means. However, a DNA database of everyone in the country will make speculative searches easy, and police will find the temptation to use it as a substitute for detective work irrestistible.
The only way to exonerate yourself from a false DNA match will be to have an absolutely watertight alibi. And the only way to achieve this will be to accept total surveillance of every aspect of life. An ordinary alibi like "I was drinking in a bar with my friend" or "I was in bed with my wife" won't do, because many cops or judges will assume (correctly) that it's much more likely that your friend/wife is lying to protect you than that the DNA has made a mistake.
The Fed will always be able to print more money to avoid true deflation, but we'll still see relative deflation. For example, prices of things like food and energy will rise to keep pace with the increasing money supply, while salaries stay the same and so are effectively reduced.
This is why the upper management give themselves huge stock options while they still can. If they can become significant shareholders, they'll be able to retire early and benefit from the future outsourcing of their jobs.
Of course, only people whose companies give them a lot of stock can do this. Option plans for ordinary employees are at best a tax-efficient way for the company to pay staff a bonus, at worst a way for management to trick employees into working harder for even less salary.
Yahoo has a near-monopoly on mailing lists, thanks to its purchases of bankrupt listservs. These usually have a higher S:N ration than Usenet, though many are "members-only": you have to join the list to see its archives.
The Web-based interface is horrible (full-screen ad pages before every other message), but it's still possible to susbcribe and post to its lists without ever visiting the site.
Even if you give them fake personal info (as I do), the NYT is still able to see what content you are accessing, and at what time. This is valuable data to them, even if they don't know who exactly you are. They can draw inferences like "User x always reads the science and politics sections" or "User y only visits on Monday and Thursday evening".
I don't see any problem with this. It's anonymous, and the hassle of retyping a username and pw every type I wipe my cookies is minimal.
I'd like to ask the IP lawyers what criteria they use to recognize fair use. I assume that when deciding whether to prosecute a case, they try to estimate whether it's likely to result in a conviction.
But how do the lawyers tell the difference between criminal copyright infringement and lawful fair use? Are there a set of guidelines that they follow, or does it just depend on the individual lawyer's judgement, or that of the judge and the jury?
Simple. You'll have to "upgrade" to a PC equipped with Palladium/Nexus/whatever-it's-called-this-week.
This is the ultimate convergence between business and government. The govt. gets to avoid any messy legal issues by outsourcing all its unconstitutional activity to MS, and MS gets to avoid any future anti-monopoly legislation by gaining control over everybody's votes.
Note that voting green isn't a total waste. If you hate Bush and you really can't bring yourself to vote Democrat, it's better to vote green than not vote at all. Sure, you won't directly help get rid of Bush, but votes are the one thing (other than bribes, of course) that politicians pay attention to.
The same applies if you're (for example) an extreme libertarian who thinks the Democrats are worse than the Republicans, but can't bring yourself to vote for a president who is massively expanding the power of the federal government while stripping away constitutional rights. Or if, like what seems to be a majority of people, you just think both big parties are indistinguishable. There are usually plenty of independents running, nearly any of whom would be less insane than the present administration. It's always better to vote than not to.
As someone who has personally changed from (1) to (3), I think this is wrong. My change happened incrementally, though, as a result of several years experience using computers. First, I liked Microsoft software, because I thought that (for example) Word had better features than AmiPro. I even liked Bill Gates, seeing him as the geek here who'd taken on the Big Bad (well, Big Blue) and won. By now, I absolutely hate the company, recognize that most of its software is crap, and embrace Stallman's philosophy with the zeal of a convert.
Also, I think you missed the most important group: (4) Those that are dimly aware of Microsoft's influence, but don't yet care about it enough to have formed an opinion of approval or disapproval.
It doesn't take SSRIs: Any drug will do. Many historic geniuses were alcoholics, for example, but they did their great work in their sober moments. With SSRIs, the relief is continuous.
I was most creative/intelligent as a young teenager, when I thought I could wait a few years to have sex. When I got to college, I wasn't willing to wait anymore, and realized that going to parties or hanging around in bars was a more effective way to get laid than trying to write the Great American Novel or unify relativity with quantum mechanics.
Of course, that isn't such a good idea in the long term. I think it was Cringely who said, "While the rest of us were getting laid, Bill Gates was taking over the world."
Shit is right. If I said that in my corporate meeting, my boss would point out that Palpatine didn't really want to destroy Luke at all. He was manipulating Luke to destroy Vader and, in the process, succumb to the Dark Side and so replace Vader as Sith Lord.
Very true. I'd like to add that ethics isn't the only reason not to do business with unethical bastards. Even from a purely selfish perspective, they should be avoided, for the simple reason that unethical bastards can't be trusted.
Enron is a great example. Anyone who bothered with any due diligence could see that its managers were involved with all kinds of murder, torture and corruption, yet somehow investors still thought it made good "business sense" to turn their life savings over to these criminals. If a company's CEO is lying to a judge, the IRS and the company's employees, he might just be lying to potential customers too.
A few years ago, my (former!) boss forwarded me an email, about an amazing Nigerian investment opportunity because I'd been to Africa and knew something about the country.
Slashdot Mirror
If the stock goes down, you can buy it back for less than you sold it for, your broker will give you back your money plus your profit. But if it goes up, you have a choice: Send your broker more money to risk, or cut your losses and buy the stock back. If the stock keeps going up, you will have to keep sending more money until you give up or simply go broke.
This potential for infinite losses is the big risk in shorting. While it's obvious that many stocks are overvalued, it's very hard to know exactly when they will go down and at what price they will peak.
And DVD sales won't disappear entirely, at least not overnight. People like owning shiny disks that are accompanied by high-quality photogrpahs and booklets printed on glossy paper.
In the short term, they may move towards charging subscribers whose IP address appears to be in a non-UK ISP's block. In the long term, I suspect that the downloads will only be available to paying subscribers (no matter where in the world they are located), and the TV license fee will disappear entirely. In the very long term, broadcast TV itself will disappear too.
There is a precedent for this: The BBC was originally funded by a *radio* license fee, but as TV gradually became more popular than radio, the tax was slowly shifted to TV, and the radio license abolished. BBC radio is still funded by the TV license, which makes it exceptionally good value if you don't have a TV (or live outside the UK and listen online)! Relying on subscriptions is (correctly) seen as being more commercial, but the key point is that the BBC's customers will still be viewers, not advertisers, so it will still provide unbiased news and interruption-free entertainment.
Subscriptions are also fairer, because they doesn't force UK TV viewers to pay for the BBC even if they don't watch it. (This was never the intention of the license fee: When it was introduced, there were no non-BBC channels, so a license fee was essentially a subscription.) My guess is that a worldwide audience of subscribers will more than compensate for any lost TV license income, but the change will happen over many years, so the BBC will have a chance to modify its business plan if things don't work out.
This is BS, of course, but SCO's inflated stock price means it has a lot of money to spend on lawyers.
SCO is not doing this. They're distributing Linux, then saying that people who receive a copy do not have the right to use or copy the software without paying additional fees.
Programmers do sell their labor instead of products, thanks to "work for hire" contracts. Software companies sell products, but most programmers don't work for software companies.
The Apple vs. Microsoft case was about copyright, not patents. Had software patents been around back then and had Apple patented the GUI, the case might have succeeded.
This situation may not last much longer. The EU copyright directive demands that all EU countries pass a DMCA-like law, and groups like WIPO and WTO are constantly pressing all countries worldwide to introduce oppressive laws.
As we all know, corporations are greedy, amoral and only interested in profit. But there is a difference between how they go about that, and Verizon is perhaps the least worst of the Baby Bell monopolies. Of course, that isn't difficult: SBC is trying to sue everyone who uses frames in a Web site, and Qwest is appealing to the Supreme Court that it has a first ammendment right to sell its customers' private information.
Still, Verizon does deserve a small amount of credit for standing up to the RIAA. Many corporations (Verizon included) consider their public image very important, as we can see from the huge amount of money they spend on stupid advertising and PR in an attempt to persuade people that they're not evil. If they see that actually doing non-evil things can gain them a good reputation, they will do more non-evil things.
This is, alas, true. SCO is involved in extortion, but unfortunately extortion works.
For a much more serious (ie. life and death) result of this, consider kidnapping and ransom demands. It's rare for diplomats to be kidnapped, because most governments have a "don't negotiate with terrorists" policy. But businesses often will secretly pay to get their valuable executives back, and as a reuslt the kidnapping of business tyravelers is rising
All copyright is viral: If you include someone else's work in your own, you need to reach an agreement with the copyright holder or abide by the terms of the work's redistributuion license. That applies whether the work you include is copied from BSD, Linux or Windows.
The BDS license merely requires attribution. The GPL requires a little more: that you publish the source code. The Windows license varies all the time, but is always much more restrictive, banning redistribution altogether. Even use of Windows sometimes requires granting Microsoft the right to remotely install DRM software on your PC.
This is true according to the intent of the GPL itself, but don't many commercial GPL'd programs treat it as a EULA anyway? They ask users to click through before installing. Maybe they think people are so used to EULAs that clicking through a box of legalese without reading it has become an expected part of every installation procedure, and maybe they're right.
There's also a bit in the GPL about "disclaimer of warranty". That looks very EULA-like, just because a similar clause is found in many EULAs, and indeed virtually every software license, free and otherwise. Most people regard a warranty as something that applies to their use of a product, not its subsequent redistribution.
The chance of one particular DNA sample matching one particular crime may be negligible, but the large number of crimes committed and the large number of people in a database covering the whole population make false matches a vritual certainty. DNA evidence should only be used to confirm or exonerate a suspect who is found by other means. However, a DNA database of everyone in the country will make speculative searches easy, and police will find the temptation to use it as a substitute for detective work irrestistible.
The only way to exonerate yourself from a false DNA match will be to have an absolutely watertight alibi. And the only way to achieve this will be to accept total surveillance of every aspect of life. An ordinary alibi like "I was drinking in a bar with my friend" or "I was in bed with my wife" won't do, because many cops or judges will assume (correctly) that it's much more likely that your friend/wife is lying to protect you than that the DNA has made a mistake.
The Fed will always be able to print more money to avoid true deflation, but we'll still see relative deflation. For example, prices of things like food and energy will rise to keep pace with the increasing money supply, while salaries stay the same and so are effectively reduced.
This is why the upper management give themselves huge stock options while they still can. If they can become significant shareholders, they'll be able to retire early and benefit from the future outsourcing of their jobs.
Of course, only people whose companies give them a lot of stock can do this. Option plans for ordinary employees are at best a tax-efficient way for the company to pay staff a bonus, at worst a way for management to trick employees into working harder for even less salary.
Yahoo has a near-monopoly on mailing lists, thanks to its purchases of bankrupt listservs. These usually have a higher S:N ration than Usenet, though many are "members-only": you have to join the list to see its archives.
The Web-based interface is horrible (full-screen ad pages before every other message), but it's still possible to susbcribe and post to its lists without ever visiting the site.
Even if you give them fake personal info (as I do), the NYT is still able to see what content you are accessing, and at what time. This is valuable data to them, even if they don't know who exactly you are. They can draw inferences like "User x always reads the science and politics sections" or "User y only visits on Monday and Thursday evening".
I don't see any problem with this. It's anonymous, and the hassle of retyping a username and pw every type I wipe my cookies is minimal.
I'd like to ask the IP lawyers what criteria they use to recognize fair use. I assume that when deciding whether to prosecute a case, they try to estimate whether it's likely to result in a conviction.
But how do the lawyers tell the difference between criminal copyright infringement and lawful fair use? Are there a set of guidelines that they follow, or does it just depend on the individual lawyer's judgement, or that of the judge and the jury?
Simple. You'll have to "upgrade" to a PC equipped with Palladium/Nexus/whatever-it's-called-this-week.
This is the ultimate convergence between business and government. The govt. gets to avoid any messy legal issues by outsourcing all its unconstitutional activity to MS, and MS gets to avoid any future anti-monopoly legislation by gaining control over everybody's votes.
Note that voting green isn't a total waste. If you hate Bush and you really can't bring yourself to vote Democrat, it's better to vote green than not vote at all. Sure, you won't directly help get rid of Bush, but votes are the one thing (other than bribes, of course) that politicians pay attention to.
The same applies if you're (for example) an extreme libertarian who thinks the Democrats are worse than the Republicans, but can't bring yourself to vote for a president who is massively expanding the power of the federal government while stripping away constitutional rights. Or if, like what seems to be a majority of people, you just think both big parties are indistinguishable. There are usually plenty of independents running, nearly any of whom would be less insane than the present administration. It's always better to vote than not to.
As someone who has personally changed from (1) to (3), I think this is wrong. My change happened incrementally, though, as a result of several years experience using computers. First, I liked Microsoft software, because I thought that (for example) Word had better features than AmiPro. I even liked Bill Gates, seeing him as the geek here who'd taken on the Big Bad (well, Big Blue) and won. By now, I absolutely hate the company, recognize that most of its software is crap, and embrace Stallman's philosophy with the zeal of a convert.
Also, I think you missed the most important group:
(4) Those that are dimly aware of Microsoft's influence, but don't yet care about it enough to have formed an opinion of approval or disapproval.
It doesn't take SSRIs: Any drug will do. Many historic geniuses were alcoholics, for example, but they did their great work in their sober moments. With SSRIs, the relief is continuous.
I was most creative/intelligent as a young teenager, when I thought I could wait a few years to have sex. When I got to college, I wasn't willing to wait anymore, and realized that going to parties or hanging around in bars was a more effective way to get laid than trying to write the Great American Novel or unify relativity with quantum mechanics.
Of course, that isn't such a good idea in the long term. I think it was Cringely who said, "While the rest of us were getting laid, Bill Gates was taking over the world."
Shit is right. If I said that in my corporate meeting, my boss would point out that Palpatine didn't really want to destroy Luke at all. He was manipulating Luke to destroy Vader and, in the process, succumb to the Dark Side and so replace Vader as Sith Lord.
Very true. I'd like to add that ethics isn't the only reason not to do business with unethical bastards. Even from a purely selfish perspective, they should be avoided, for the simple reason that unethical bastards can't be trusted.
Enron is a great example. Anyone who bothered with any due diligence could see that its managers were involved with all kinds of murder, torture and corruption, yet somehow investors still thought it made good "business sense" to turn their life savings over to these criminals. If a company's CEO is lying to a judge, the IRS and the company's employees, he might just be lying to potential customers too.
A few years ago, my (former!) boss forwarded me an email, about an amazing Nigerian investment opportunity because I'd been to Africa and knew something about the country.
How is Sun's letter any different?