How are they clearly in financial trouble? The article suggests that they need an IPO to satify the venture capitalists. They did just have a shakeup and lay off a few people but there hasn't been any news that implies they are close to having to shut the doors.
Mandrake is sold full price. They allow free downloads but if you want any of the extra goodies then you purchase one of their boxed sets. I always purchase a boxed set because I like the convenience of having the base distro on hand.
I personally don't cosider it to be throwing away money. I think Mandrake can and will become profitable. They won't ever be a really big company but I expect them to become profitable. Given that belief they make a reasonable investment as long as I am not expecting spectacular returns. I do however expect that they can outperform a savings account or money market over the long haul. I'd be perfectly happy to send some cash their way and not worry about it for 20 years or so.
The one thing you all keep missing is that Mandrake is the most community oriented of the larger Linx distros. They have a built in market for a sale of shares to people who believe in their company. If I were in their shoes I would try very hard to make sure those people were included in any effort to sell shares. One of the biggest failings of the Linux IPO era was that the people who used the product and cared about the companies didn't get to buy in. They were the people willing to hold for the long term and would have benefited the companies most as shareholders. Instead the people who got to actually purchase the shares were the people and companies that wanted to make a fast buck and when things went south raised the biggest ruckus. I will purchase MAndrake shares if made available in a low cost way because I think the company has a way of doing business that can be profitable and satisfying to me as a shareholder. I would never purchas MS or Rambus stock because I don't like the way they do business but Mandrake does it right. I may not get rich but at least I'll be able to look in the mirror and see something that I respect.
Especially since Rambus has been getting their clock cleaned in court. Anybody who invested in Rambus is guilty of not doing enough research. There is nothing coming out recently about the company that is really news. I can remember reading in the computer press in 94 or so about their trying to pull a fast one on JEDEC and the information was available for anybody who looked for it. In my opinion anyone who purchased that company deserved to get taken to the cleaners.
Huh? Mandrake can do this without having to purchase their own stock on an exchange. If they go for selling their stock in a way that doesn't require an exchange they can distribute it pretty much any way they want. I think that the SEC rule rquiring the stock value to be less than $5,000,000 sucks but if they wanted they could offer all of the stock as a bonus when buying one of their packs. Hopefully their is a way in French law to allow them to offer a reasonable amount of stock directly to their customers. I am a US citizen but to the best of my knowledge there is nothing in US law that can prevent me from purchasing their stock if it is offered in France. I want them to offer their stock with a DRIP plan. I believe MD can be around a really long time and a DRIP would allow me to achieve a sizeable stake in the company over time.
There is nothing cool in any way about putting all of my personal information on a server that I do not control. The potential for misuse is too great. I don't care who is running the server. I would be a fool to trust that the information would remain protected. It makes it too easy for crackers and too easy for the Feds. What we need to do is to put together some sort of educational effort and get the average user to realize why tis kind of setup is not in their best interest.
The idea of accepting donations wasn't even Mandrake's. It was their customers. There are people out there that felt they owed Mandrake for letting them download some great software and asked for it. There are people who felt that Mandrakeforum is a great idea and would like to see it get more funding than it currently does. There are a lot of reasons for it but the company does not pressure anyone to donate. They have made it available to those who want to pay back some for the work that they have put into making Mandrake such a great distribution. You can also specify where you want the donation to go and if I remeber correctly some of the choices aren't even Mandrake projects. If Mandrake was out for every dime then they would not make iso's available for download and make everyone buy copies of their software. Go to Mandrakeforum and look back through old post and see how many of the users there were in favor of this idea. You all might find out something about community. Mandrake listens to its customers I find that rare enough out of a company of any kind so that I want them to stay in business.
I was one of the ones that asked them to do it. There are lots of things that Mandrake does that benefit the community and don't come cheap. With the donation page you can pick what area that you want to contribute to and that is where the money goes. Mandrakeforum is a great feature that is not truly necessary but I love it. From their side it is not an area I would put any money into but as a Mandrake user I would hate to see it go. I'm donating to it and there are lots of other choices.
Oh I agree. Hemp should not be illegal to grow. It has many uses. Somebody pointed out that production meathods have not been optimized for it to produce the most oil. I'm just not sure you could optimize the oil production without damaging the fiber production. It has been my experience that when you are going for the maximum return in one area of production you tend to lose somewhat in another.
Yes they have a problem because they are slow to change rpms but that would make them perfectly ok for the kind of system I am talking about. The best performance for a generator happens at a certain speed. A stirling engine and a generator matched so that both perform best at the same rpm would be a very effective way to power a hybrid car. Use a flywheel storage system and you should be able to out perform any of the other solutions with very respectable mileage results.
They have the knowledge and capability to do it given enough time But I doubt if they have parts on hand and in working order that they could adapt to the problem in a reasonable amount of time. The ESA doesn't have anywhere near the launch experience we have and would have to get the approval from the member states which would be time consuming. Russia has the launch experience but probably couldn't cobble together a solution in enough time. There have been entirely too many PHA's that were right up on the Earth when discovered. The US is the only space capable entity on Earth with even a remote chance of cobbling together a solution quickly. Especially if that required solution would require multiple space launches to achieve. A creative and quick thinking genius could pobably work out a solution using only off the shelf parts.
Does anybody know of any companies doing research into powering an electric car with a stirling engine? From what I remember stirling engines have the best efficiency of any hydrocarbon type engine but they are limited in practicality because it takes time to speed them up or slow them down. It seems to me that they would be great to power a generator and flywheel storage device. Use the stirling engine to power the generator and use the generator to power an eletric motor. On startups and acceleration pull more power from the flywheel and feed it back on braking. While cruising or idling power the flywheel back up to account for power losses from friction. Internal combustion engines are not the only way to use hydrocarbon fuels and probably not even the best way. I would also bet that you could set up the engine to burn any kind of flamable liquid giving much greater options for fuel choice.
Actually Cannabis Sativa is not a very good choice for oil production. There are several plants that blow its doors off as far as efficiency at producing oil. The most common being soybeans.
I have read it in many places over much time. I never believed anything the tobacco companies said and consider anybody who did so to be a complete fool undeserving of any awards from the lawsuits. I smoke and it was my own stupidity that put me in that position. I have no right to complain about the tobacco companies. I knew the risks as did any person who started smoking any time since the mid 50's. I have been smoking longer than most slashdotters have been alive. There is no excuse for it and I don't plead one but it really ercks me to see these people say it was all the tobacco companies fault. There is such a thing as personal responsibility.
Since when did a slave owner dying create any free and independant entities? When the slave owner died the slaves were considered part of the estate and passed on to his heirs unless he specifically freed them in his will. This was not a common event. To their way of thinking that would be the same as you withdrawing all of your money from your bank account and throwing it out the window at the instant of your death.
Are you nuts? If I go to a site and the privacy agreement says one thing and they later change it to another I expect the right to remove my info from their records. I have an expectation of a certain behavior and they have changed the rules. Luckily I have never purchased anything from Amazon and likely never will. Books are easy to find and I will purchase mine from places that value me as a customer and aren't arrogant enough to believe that they can make arbitrary decisions to my detriment without losing my business.
You need to check some of your facts. HP has become extremely disillusioned with the Itanium. The AMD solutions will run existing apps far better than the Itanium which is important to the majority of buyers. There have been far fewer problems moving OS's to the platform. They have the support of Compaq. I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see Compaq using it as a replacement for Alphas in lower end systems.
Every competitor in the 32 bit space still has to implement IA32 bit instructions or they have no software to run. They usually do it their own way but it is still the same instruction set. Transmeta has a choice in the 64 bit world. They can try to reverse engineer the IA64 bit instruction set which they probably can't do, they can use the AMD solution, or they can come up with their own. If they could go the Intel way they would have an assurance of lots of software working with their chips but would be dependant on Intels good nature. Like that is really likely. They can implement their own solution which nobody will code for. Or they can use AMD's solution which is likely to have a reasonable amount of software ported to it and looks to be easier to port to than Intel's. I seriously doubt that Intel will license any more manufacturers to use their designs and Transmeta would like to stay in business. That only left them with one real choice. Plus they really need a way to run on a high volume motherboard and nobody is going to design and produce motherboards for a Transmeta specific solution in the volume required to be competitive. This is the only real option Transmeta has to succeed in the 64 bit world.
Buzzzzz, wrong answer. You slow down which puts you in a lower orbit with higher angular momentum which lets you get ahead of the object then speed up to allow you to match orbits. The easiest way is actually backwards to what so called common sense would have you think.
At the moment there isn't another nation on the face of the planet with the resources and capability to pull off such a stunt. Please call again when yours can. Thank you have a nice day.
How about the fact that any reasonably sized asteroid is large enought to cause severe climactic and atmospheric damage. The equivilant of nuclear winter. A water hit is in some ways even worse than a dry land hit. If it does hit dry land you won't be building anything there for a long time. It would take quite a while for the crater to cool down and there would probably be seismic disturbances for decades. I'm willing to bet that any dangerous sizes body hitting the Earth would cause enough of a rumble in the crust to cause fault lines all over the world to release any built up pressure.
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How are they clearly in financial trouble? The article suggests that they need an IPO to satify the venture capitalists. They did just have a shakeup and lay off a few people but there hasn't been any news that implies they are close to having to shut the doors.
Redhat makes a lot more from services and things like Cygwin. Mandrake actually sells more boxed sets. I'd say 40-50%.
Mandrake is sold full price. They allow free downloads but if you want any of the extra goodies then you purchase one of their boxed sets. I always purchase a boxed set because I like the convenience of having the base distro on hand.
I personally don't cosider it to be throwing away money. I think Mandrake can and will become profitable. They won't ever be a really big company but I expect them to become profitable. Given that belief they make a reasonable investment as long as I am not expecting spectacular returns. I do however expect that they can outperform a savings account or money market over the long haul. I'd be perfectly happy to send some cash their way and not worry about it for 20 years or so.
The one thing you all keep missing is that Mandrake is the most community oriented of the larger Linx distros. They have a built in market for a sale of shares to people who believe in their company. If I were in their shoes I would try very hard to make sure those people were included in any effort to sell shares. One of the biggest failings of the Linux IPO era was that the people who used the product and cared about the companies didn't get to buy in. They were the people willing to hold for the long term and would have benefited the companies most as shareholders. Instead the people who got to actually purchase the shares were the people and companies that wanted to make a fast buck and when things went south raised the biggest ruckus. I will purchase MAndrake shares if made available in a low cost way because I think the company has a way of doing business that can be profitable and satisfying to me as a shareholder. I would never purchas MS or Rambus stock because I don't like the way they do business but Mandrake does it right. I may not get rich but at least I'll be able to look in the mirror and see something that I respect.
Especially since Rambus has been getting their clock cleaned in court. Anybody who invested in Rambus is guilty of not doing enough research. There is nothing coming out recently about the company that is really news. I can remember reading in the computer press in 94 or so about their trying to pull a fast one on JEDEC and the information was available for anybody who looked for it. In my opinion anyone who purchased that company deserved to get taken to the cleaners.
Huh? Mandrake can do this without having to purchase their own stock on an exchange. If they go for selling their stock in a way that doesn't require an exchange they can distribute it pretty much any way they want. I think that the SEC rule rquiring the stock value to be less than $5,000,000 sucks but if they wanted they could offer all of the stock as a bonus when buying one of their packs. Hopefully their is a way in French law to allow them to offer a reasonable amount of stock directly to their customers. I am a US citizen but to the best of my knowledge there is nothing in US law that can prevent me from purchasing their stock if it is offered in France. I want them to offer their stock with a DRIP plan. I believe MD can be around a really long time and a DRIP would allow me to achieve a sizeable stake in the company over time.
There is nothing cool in any way about putting all of my personal information on a server that I do not control. The potential for misuse is too great. I don't care who is running the server. I would be a fool to trust that the information would remain protected. It makes it too easy for crackers and too easy for the Feds. What we need to do is to put together some sort of educational effort and get the average user to realize why tis kind of setup is not in their best interest.
The idea of accepting donations wasn't even Mandrake's. It was their customers. There are people out there that felt they owed Mandrake for letting them download some great software and asked for it. There are people who felt that Mandrakeforum is a great idea and would like to see it get more funding than it currently does. There are a lot of reasons for it but the company does not pressure anyone to donate. They have made it available to those who want to pay back some for the work that they have put into making Mandrake such a great distribution. You can also specify where you want the donation to go and if I remeber correctly some of the choices aren't even Mandrake projects. If Mandrake was out for every dime then they would not make iso's available for download and make everyone buy copies of their software. Go to Mandrakeforum and look back through old post and see how many of the users there were in favor of this idea. You all might find out something about community. Mandrake listens to its customers I find that rare enough out of a company of any kind so that I want them to stay in business.
I was one of the ones that asked them to do it. There are lots of things that Mandrake does that benefit the community and don't come cheap. With the donation page you can pick what area that you want to contribute to and that is where the money goes. Mandrakeforum is a great feature that is not truly necessary but I love it. From their side it is not an area I would put any money into but as a Mandrake user I would hate to see it go. I'm donating to it and there are lots of other choices.
If it is so secure how come it is leading in the race for defacements?
Oh I agree. Hemp should not be illegal to grow. It has many uses. Somebody pointed out that production meathods have not been optimized for it to produce the most oil. I'm just not sure you could optimize the oil production without damaging the fiber production. It has been my experience that when you are going for the maximum return in one area of production you tend to lose somewhat in another.
Yes they have a problem because they are slow to change rpms but that would make them perfectly ok for the kind of system I am talking about. The best performance for a generator happens at a certain speed. A stirling engine and a generator matched so that both perform best at the same rpm would be a very effective way to power a hybrid car. Use a flywheel storage system and you should be able to out perform any of the other solutions with very respectable mileage results.
They have the knowledge and capability to do it given enough time But I doubt if they have parts on hand and in working order that they could adapt to the problem in a reasonable amount of time. The ESA doesn't have anywhere near the launch experience we have and would have to get the approval from the member states which would be time consuming. Russia has the launch experience but probably couldn't cobble together a solution in enough time. There have been entirely too many PHA's that were right up on the Earth when discovered. The US is the only space capable entity on Earth with even a remote chance of cobbling together a solution quickly. Especially if that required solution would require multiple space launches to achieve. A creative and quick thinking genius could pobably work out a solution using only off the shelf parts.
Does anybody know of any companies doing research into powering an electric car with a stirling engine? From what I remember stirling engines have the best efficiency of any hydrocarbon type engine but they are limited in practicality because it takes time to speed them up or slow them down. It seems to me that they would be great to power a generator and flywheel storage device. Use the stirling engine to power the generator and use the generator to power an eletric motor. On startups and acceleration pull more power from the flywheel and feed it back on braking. While cruising or idling power the flywheel back up to account for power losses from friction. Internal combustion engines are not the only way to use hydrocarbon fuels and probably not even the best way. I would also bet that you could set up the engine to burn any kind of flamable liquid giving much greater options for fuel choice.
Actually Cannabis Sativa is not a very good choice for oil production. There are several plants that blow its doors off as far as efficiency at producing oil. The most common being soybeans.
I have read it in many places over much time. I never believed anything the tobacco companies said and consider anybody who did so to be a complete fool undeserving of any awards from the lawsuits. I smoke and it was my own stupidity that put me in that position. I have no right to complain about the tobacco companies. I knew the risks as did any person who started smoking any time since the mid 50's. I have been smoking longer than most slashdotters have been alive. There is no excuse for it and I don't plead one but it really ercks me to see these people say it was all the tobacco companies fault. There is such a thing as personal responsibility.
Since when did a slave owner dying create any free and independant entities? When the slave owner died the slaves were considered part of the estate and passed on to his heirs unless he specifically freed them in his will. This was not a common event. To their way of thinking that would be the same as you withdrawing all of your money from your bank account and throwing it out the window at the instant of your death.
Are you nuts? If I go to a site and the privacy agreement says one thing and they later change it to another I expect the right to remove my info from their records. I have an expectation of a certain behavior and they have changed the rules. Luckily I have never purchased anything from Amazon and likely never will. Books are easy to find and I will purchase mine from places that value me as a customer and aren't arrogant enough to believe that they can make arbitrary decisions to my detriment without losing my business.
Read comment #59. If you purchase anything from an Amazon site you are ggoing to end up in the US database. That means no privacy.
You need to check some of your facts. HP has become extremely disillusioned with the Itanium. The AMD solutions will run existing apps far better than the Itanium which is important to the majority of buyers. There have been far fewer problems moving OS's to the platform. They have the support of Compaq. I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see Compaq using it as a replacement for Alphas in lower end systems.
Every competitor in the 32 bit space still has to implement IA32 bit instructions or they have no software to run. They usually do it their own way but it is still the same instruction set. Transmeta has a choice in the 64 bit world. They can try to reverse engineer the IA64 bit instruction set which they probably can't do, they can use the AMD solution, or they can come up with their own. If they could go the Intel way they would have an assurance of lots of software working with their chips but would be dependant on Intels good nature. Like that is really likely. They can implement their own solution which nobody will code for. Or they can use AMD's solution which is likely to have a reasonable amount of software ported to it and looks to be easier to port to than Intel's. I seriously doubt that Intel will license any more manufacturers to use their designs and Transmeta would like to stay in business. That only left them with one real choice. Plus they really need a way to run on a high volume motherboard and nobody is going to design and produce motherboards for a Transmeta specific solution in the volume required to be competitive. This is the only real option Transmeta has to succeed in the 64 bit world.
Buzzzzz, wrong answer. You slow down which puts you in a lower orbit with higher angular momentum which lets you get ahead of the object then speed up to allow you to match orbits. The easiest way is actually backwards to what so called common sense would have you think.
At the moment there isn't another nation on the face of the planet with the resources and capability to pull off such a stunt. Please call again when yours can. Thank you have a nice day.
How about the fact that any reasonably sized asteroid is large enought to cause severe climactic and atmospheric damage. The equivilant of nuclear winter. A water hit is in some ways even worse than a dry land hit. If it does hit dry land you won't be building anything there for a long time. It would take quite a while for the crater to cool down and there would probably be seismic disturbances for decades. I'm willing to bet that any dangerous sizes body hitting the Earth would cause enough of a rumble in the crust to cause fault lines all over the world to release any built up pressure.