That is an interesting question. The AP-AOL Games poll only surveyed adults though. Conducting a scientific survey of people under age 18 is not impossible but difficult/expensive because of the need to get parental consent. A year ago AOL Games commissioned this poll that sampled video games players age 12-55. The sample of teens was on the small side (N=204) but better than nothing. The questionnaire was much more extensive than this year's poll and also got into "offline" game-playing e.g. poker. All this said, I'm not quickly seeing an answer to your question -- and since the sample doesn't include kids under age 12 nor adults over 55, it can't really be answered anyway, although the numbers presented at that link indicate (not surprisingly) that teens are somewhat more likely to play games than adults.
You must be one of the three in five Slashdotters who don't get jokes.
or one of the three kinds of people in this world: Those who are good at math, and those who aren't.
Anyway, I just began an experiment of my own two hours ago, disabling all filters to see just how much spam is coming in, and thus far I've gotten 746 spam and three legitimate emails, or 99.6% spam. This test is only two hours old, but still. If you own your own domain names and have seen the exponential escalation in spam to manufactured addresses in the last month or two, you know what I'm talking about.
A better answer is just to encourage a civic-minded sensibility among the news reporting agencies so that they voluntarily refuse to report exit poll data until after the polls close. Or even after all the polls close.
I know i'm a day+ late to this thread but here goes anyway.
Within each state, after 2000 all the VNS members agreed not to project results until all polls in a state are closed. Before then they had agreed to wait until a "substantial majority" of the polls had closed in a state.
In a presidential election time zones obviously are a problem. But even if there weren't exit polls, in a landslide presidential election it becomes possible to do the math from more easterly time zones and figure out the winner before the West finishes voting. That's because election officials in the eastern zones may release actual vote count promptly after their states' polls close. Only real solution would be a nationwide uniform poll closing time, which entails its own problems, which is why Congress has not seen fit to impose this.
Intuition might suggest that but your hypothesis has been the subject of academic studies (in the 1980 presidential election, for the most notable example) and there's no empirical evidence to support it.
ummm, SUNW increased from about $40/share at the start of the year to $144 yesterday. Maybe it looks "down" to you because today it split 2 for 1, but today it closed at $78+ so it's still going up. SGI is over 11, not at 2. And SGI is repositioning itself with major Linux initiatives.
Linux is (almost sickeningly) THE buzzword for investors now.
I'm afraid "investors" is the wrong word for many of those running up the stock prices of any company with even the most remote Linux connection . They're daytraders, momentum players, speculators, gamblers -- but they're not "investing" in these companies because they believe in Linux. In some cases what these folks are doing is a lot closer to a legal Ponzi scheme.
I have very mixed feelings about the Linux stock craze. On the one hand, I like to invest in genuine Linux-related companies, to support the movement by backing the companies that support it (as I'm not a coder, the only other ways I can really support open source are by using it, especially on servers at work, and talking it up). OTOH, what happens if the bubble bursts? Will people see the current craze as having been a speculative frenzy and leave it at that, or would a boom-turned-bust have graver implications for the open source movement and the companies at its forefront?
I wonder if they're going to be buying up companies in 6 months.
December issue of Linux Magazine has an article on SGI's Linux initiatives and quoted a "source close to VA Linux" saying SGI would be "a perfect fit... It makes a lot of sense." SGI has a stake in VA as well as a close working relationship with VA, in the shrinkwrapped Debian project and other things. Article also quoted analyst Stacey Quandt of Giga saying a VA-SGI merger "would be very compelling... Larry Augustin may also want to acquire SGI because his company is a smaller player in the Linux market than the likes of IBM and Compaq. This would expand VA's mindshare and market share."
Not sure if that's what has been moving SGI stock price upward in the past week. Disclosure: Long SGI
Welcome to the law of supply and demand. Clearly there is intense demand for LNUX stock, and I can't blame VA Linux one bit for boosting the offering price -- why should they leave the money on the table?
All I can say is if I had the chance to get 100 shares of LNUX at the offering price -- even if that proves to be $35 or $40 or more -- I would do whatever it takes to get the money together, short of taking out a second mortgage. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that your son's college fund will be far, far better for it.
Of course there's risk involved in any stock and IPOs are particularly speculative, but I've watched a bunch of IPOs since before RHAT and those that price way above their initial range have without fail gone absolutely nuts in the aftermarket. Sycamore Networks (SCMR), for example, priced at $38, opened at $280 (that is not a typo), skidded within an hour or so to as low as a mere $180 and has climbed ever since. It closed today at 253 1/2.
In any event, make your own decisions and best of luck to you. I'm hoping to pick up maybe 20 shares if I can afford it in the aftermarket and hold on for a while. Just gotta have a stock with the ticker LNUX...
Nothing in the Wired article discussing the merits of the prosecution case (great journalism, Wired)
Just to clarify, this is a Reuters story, not original reporting by Wired. (Minor peeve of mine is that/. frequently credits reports to the places where they're posted, not the organization that actually originates it.)
"there's nothing done that's wrong" said he, which is an interesting way of phrasing it.
Not sure I'd read much into that. He tortures syntax regularly, even in the most innocuous situations.
disclaimer: i'm a CORL shareholder.
Re:I hope they improved the install procedure
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Debian Retail on CNN
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· Score: 1
This new CNET review of Corel's beta Linux distro touts its "terrific installation" (although a partitioning utility apparently isn't in there yet). As noted elsewhere, Corel's distro is based on Debian. It's unclear yet whether Corel will open-source the components it has built itself from scratch, i.e. the installer, but the review indicates that Corel at least is addressing the installation issue.
Disclaimer: I'm a CORL shareholder
Re:I just put $17,000 in COREL (CORL)'s Stock.
on
Corel Clears the Air
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· Score: 1
Corel proved they weren't capable of marketing the NetWinder, and so sold the design off to another company.
Corel is and always has been a software company, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they had trouble marketing a product that's hardware as well as software. The bigger surprise may be that they developed the Netwinder in the first place. But judging by the reviews I've seen, Corel did quite a good job with the design, and it certainly gave them some valuable Linux experience. (And they still own 25% of rumored-to-be-pre-IPO Rebel.com so their investment in Netwinder certainly wasn't for naught.)
The point of Open Source, is to let a large community debug and improve the product.
Could it be that the community has grown too large at this point for that to work in all cases? If Corel doesn't have the infrastructure right now to constructively process input from many thousands of beta testers, perhaps it is prudent to begin testing on a smaller scale. (I note that the company continues to hire Linux gurus.)
Of course Corel might also be concerned that the initial beta is indeed incomplete and unstable. As the company has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders (full disclosure: including me), it would want to try to avoid potentially damaging press about a raw beta distro.
OTOH, such a practical concern may well conflict with GPL terms. I'm glad Corel says it will fully release all GPL etc source later this quarter, but I also understand the argument that the GPL needs to be defended against erosion. So I've come to the conclusion that something needs to be done now, not soon, to avoid potentially alienating the coders upon whom Corel will continue to rely.
How about this:
Corel releases a list of all GPL'd elements of the distro that it has NOT changed, IOW that are already widely and freely available. Maybe even post them on an FTP site even though they're available at many other sites already.
Make available to anyone who asks for it the source code of any GPL'd elements that Corel has modified.
And release a list of elements that are not derived from GPL'd software and which will remain proprietary or perhaps licensed in some other way upon final release.
If Corel were to release source in such a way that precludes putting together the pieces to re-create the (potentially incomplete/unstable) Corel Linux distro beta 1, wouldn't that address the company's stated concerns while also living up to the letter of the GPL? If you wrote something that was GPL'd, Corel modified it and now they were giving you the modified code, would you have a gripe anymore?
Disclaimers: To use my favorite acronym of this week: IANAL. I also am not a coder or a GPL expert. Just trying to find possible solutions that aren't counterproductive for either side in this squabble.
And given the choice between Redhat at 12 and Andover at 12, I'd take RH in a heartbeat.
Let's do some math here. Assume for the sake of argument that all andover.net's current revenue is from banner ads (they also expect some from software, according to the prospectus). andover.net says the sites they own currently get 40 million page views a month. Last I read, banner ad space generally was going for $20-60 CPM (cost per 1,000 page views) industrywide, as much as $100 CPM for specialty sites. Slashdot, freshmeat etc have GREAT demographics -- folks who'd run out and buy the Single-Person Air Scooter before we got to the seventh First Post on the subject. So I may be conservative in guessing they charge $50 CPM, but for the sake of argument:
$50 CPM at 40 million pageviews/month equals $2 million revenue/month or $24 million/year.
By comparison, Red Hat reported revenue of $10 million for the year ended 2/28/99.
Now in reality, andover.net reports $1.1 million revenue for the nine months ending June 30, all of it from advertising, and figures that will actually come to $1.6 million (including $215,000 for software) once the acquisitions of/. and The Animation Factory are factored in. But when was/. acquired? IOW, if we deduce that/. adds $300,000 to andover.net's bottom line for the 9 months ended June 30 and all of it in ad revenues, is that 5 day's worth of ads, a month's, or what? And the balance sheet doesn't seem to factor in FM at all.
I haven't looked much at the expense side of the picture yet but I'd think Red Hat would incur far greater R&D and tech support costs than andover.net. Although who knows what it might cost to get us to truly flawless MetaMetaMetaMetaMetaModeration?;-)
Agreed that it's fairer to funnel the dough to the newly public company than the "scalpers" (institutions doing opening-day flipping). However:
It will be interesting to watch this offering, since it doesn't present the same opportunity for ridiculous first-few-day gains that RedHat did.
It bears noting that anyone at all (with money, of course) could have bought RHAT on the open market at $40-50/share the day it went out, and they'd have more than a 100% gain as of right now, barely a month later. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I am kicking myself for not having done just that.) The difference is that if it had been an OpenIPO-style system, Red Hat Inc. would have raised more than three times as much as it did in the IPO.
But you make another good point in saying the offering company bears greater risk in an OpenIPO. In a standard IPO the underwriter bears that risk, which is theoretically why they stand to pocket the great rewards of a successful offering.
I've worked for years at a news organization where getting breaking news out immediately is paramount, so I know full well the perils of running with early information. Even if you get the news from a seemingly reliable source, sometimes some of it turns out to be simply wrong.
In a forum like/. I agree with an earlier poster who urged that developments be added as UPDATES to the initial report (as you sometimes do), so that early comments remain in context. Of course you run a greater risk of the initial report making you look silly, but most of us are grownups here and ought to understand how these things can happen.
I also applaud/. for checking these things out yourselves before running them, as with the 911-on-Linux story the other day. A true "news" site needs to do basic bullshit-detection to retain credibility. The nearly instantaneous feedback on/. adds an entirely new dimension but the better comments serve a journalistic purpose too -- to find the truth. (I don't mean to sound religious about this, and I'm not saying journalism is perfect, but at least in theory that's what it's supposed to be about.)
Now that/. is owned by a company with actual money, any thought to hiring "real" journalists, who know how to do quick detective work?
Slashdot Mirror
This was a standard telephone poll (random digit dial). See methodology details.
That is an interesting question. The AP-AOL Games poll only surveyed adults though. Conducting a scientific survey of people under age 18 is not impossible but difficult/expensive because of the need to get parental consent. A year ago AOL Games commissioned this poll that sampled video games players age 12-55. The sample of teens was on the small side (N=204) but better than nothing. The questionnaire was much more extensive than this year's poll and also got into "offline" game-playing e.g. poker. All this said, I'm not quickly seeing an answer to your question -- and since the sample doesn't include kids under age 12 nor adults over 55, it can't really be answered anyway, although the numbers presented at that link indicate (not surprisingly) that teens are somewhat more likely to play games than adults.
AP routinely publishes the complete question wording and topline results to all questions it asks in its polls. See AP-AOL Games poll q&a.
or one of the three kinds of people in this world: Those who are good at math, and those who aren't.
Anyway, I just began an experiment of my own two hours ago, disabling all filters to see just how much spam is coming in, and thus far I've gotten 746 spam and three legitimate emails, or 99.6% spam. This test is only two hours old, but still. If you own your own domain names and have seen the exponential escalation in spam to manufactured addresses in the last month or two, you know what I'm talking about.
AP reports Senate Armed Services Committee chairman says Pentagon plan to create this market will be scrapped.
I know i'm a day+ late to this thread but here goes anyway.
Within each state, after 2000 all the VNS members agreed not to project results until all polls in a state are closed. Before then they had agreed to wait until a "substantial majority" of the polls had closed in a state.
In a presidential election time zones obviously are a problem. But even if there weren't exit polls, in a landslide presidential election it becomes possible to do the math from more easterly time zones and figure out the winner before the West finishes voting. That's because election officials in the eastern zones may release actual vote count promptly after their states' polls close. Only real solution would be a nationwide uniform poll closing time, which entails its own problems, which is why Congress has not seen fit to impose this.
Intuition might suggest that but your hypothesis has been the subject of academic studies (in the 1980 presidential election, for the most notable example) and there's no empirical evidence to support it.
ummm, SUNW increased from about $40/share at the start of the year to $144 yesterday. Maybe it looks "down" to you because today it split 2 for 1, but today it closed at $78+ so it's still going up. SGI is over 11, not at 2. And SGI is repositioning itself with major Linux initiatives.
I'm afraid "investors" is the wrong word for many of those running up the stock prices of any company with even the most remote Linux connection . They're daytraders, momentum players, speculators, gamblers -- but they're not "investing" in these companies because they believe in Linux. In some cases what these folks are doing is a lot closer to a legal Ponzi scheme.
I have very mixed feelings about the Linux stock craze. On the one hand, I like to invest in genuine Linux-related companies, to support the movement by backing the companies that support it (as I'm not a coder, the only other ways I can really support open source are by using it, especially on servers at work, and talking it up). OTOH, what happens if the bubble bursts? Will people see the current craze as having been a speculative frenzy and leave it at that, or would a boom-turned-bust have graver implications for the open source movement and the companies at its forefront?
December issue of Linux Magazine has an article on SGI's Linux initiatives and quoted a "source close to VA Linux" saying SGI would be "a perfect fit ... It makes a lot of sense." SGI has a stake in VA as well as a close working relationship with VA, in the shrinkwrapped Debian project and other things. Article also quoted analyst Stacey Quandt of Giga saying a VA-SGI merger "would be very compelling ... Larry Augustin may also want to acquire SGI because his company is a smaller player in the Linux market than the likes of IBM and Compaq. This would expand VA's mindshare and market share."
Not sure if that's what has been moving SGI stock price upward in the past week. Disclosure: Long SGI
Welcome to the law of supply and demand. Clearly there is intense demand for LNUX stock, and I can't blame VA Linux one bit for boosting the offering price -- why should they leave the money on the table?
...
All I can say is if I had the chance to get 100 shares of LNUX at the offering price -- even if that proves to be $35 or $40 or more -- I would do whatever it takes to get the money together, short of taking out a second mortgage. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that your son's college fund will be far, far better for it.
Of course there's risk involved in any stock and IPOs are particularly speculative, but I've watched a bunch of IPOs since before RHAT and those that price way above their initial range have without fail gone absolutely nuts in the aftermarket. Sycamore Networks (SCMR), for example, priced at $38, opened at $280 (that is not a typo), skidded within an hour or so to as low as a mere $180 and has climbed ever since. It closed today at 253 1/2.
In any event, make your own decisions and best of luck to you. I'm hoping to pick up maybe 20 shares if I can afford it in the aftermarket and hold on for a while. Just gotta have a stock with the ticker LNUX
disclaimer: i'm a CORL shareholder.
Disclaimer: I'm a CORL shareholder
Full disclosure: CORL long.
Could it be that the community has grown too large at this point for that to work in all cases? If Corel doesn't have the infrastructure right now to constructively process input from many thousands of beta testers, perhaps it is prudent to begin testing on a smaller scale. (I note that the company continues to hire Linux gurus.)
Of course Corel might also be concerned that the initial beta is indeed incomplete and unstable. As the company has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders (full disclosure: including me), it would want to try to avoid potentially damaging press about a raw beta distro.
OTOH, such a practical concern may well conflict with GPL terms. I'm glad Corel says it will fully release all GPL etc source later this quarter, but I also understand the argument that the GPL needs to be defended against erosion. So I've come to the conclusion that something needs to be done now, not soon, to avoid potentially alienating the coders upon whom Corel will continue to rely.
How about this:
If Corel were to release source in such a way that precludes putting together the pieces to re-create the (potentially incomplete/unstable) Corel Linux distro beta 1, wouldn't that address the company's stated concerns while also living up to the letter of the GPL? If you wrote something that was GPL'd, Corel modified it and now they were giving you the modified code, would you have a gripe anymore?
Disclaimers: To use my favorite acronym of this week: IANAL. I also am not a coder or a GPL expert. Just trying to find possible solutions that aren't counterproductive for either side in this squabble.
Let's do some math here. Assume for the sake of argument that all andover.net's current revenue is from banner ads (they also expect some from software, according to the prospectus). andover.net says the sites they own currently get 40 million page views a month. Last I read, banner ad space generally was going for $20-60 CPM (cost per 1,000 page views) industrywide, as much as $100 CPM for specialty sites. Slashdot, freshmeat etc have GREAT demographics -- folks who'd run out and buy the Single-Person Air Scooter before we got to the seventh First Post on the subject. So I may be conservative in guessing they charge $50 CPM, but for the sake of argument:
$50 CPM at 40 million pageviews/month equals $2 million revenue/month or $24 million/year.
By comparison, Red Hat reported revenue of $10 million for the year ended 2/28/99.
Now in reality, andover.net reports $1.1 million revenue for the nine months ending June 30, all of it from advertising, and figures that will actually come to $1.6 million (including $215,000 for software) once the acquisitions of /. and The Animation Factory are factored in. But when was /. acquired? IOW, if we deduce that /. adds $300,000 to andover.net's bottom line for the 9 months ended June 30 and all of it in ad revenues, is that 5 day's worth of ads, a month's, or what? And the balance sheet doesn't seem to factor in FM at all.
I haven't looked much at the expense side of the picture yet but I'd think Red Hat would incur far greater R&D and tech support costs than andover.net. Although who knows what it might cost to get us to truly flawless MetaMetaMetaMetaMetaModeration? ;-)
But you make another good point in saying the offering company bears greater risk in an OpenIPO. In a standard IPO the underwriter bears that risk, which is theoretically why they stand to pocket the great rewards of a successful offering.
If you want to do something about it, use an identity and one day maybe you too will be awarded moderation privileges.
Now someone please moderate this here post down as off-topic.
In a forum like /. I agree with an earlier poster who urged that developments be added as UPDATES to the initial report (as you sometimes do), so that early comments remain in context. Of course you run a greater risk of the initial report making you look silly, but most of us are grownups here and ought to understand how these things can happen.
I also applaud /. for checking these things out yourselves before running them, as with the 911-on-Linux story the other day. A true "news" site needs to do basic bullshit-detection to retain credibility. The nearly instantaneous feedback on /. adds an entirely new dimension but the better comments serve a journalistic purpose too -- to find the truth. (I don't mean to sound religious about this, and I'm not saying journalism is perfect, but at least in theory that's what it's supposed to be about.)
Now that /. is owned by a company with actual money, any thought to hiring "real" journalists, who know how to do quick detective work?