Probably a combination of marketing and distribution. We all know it isn't their customer service that'll convince anyone to buy one.
The sad thing is, Gateway's marketing will likely succeed in pushing these things -- one would hope that people buying servers aren't the same idiots impressed by a spotted cow box, but alas we know how futile that hope is.
Why would you attack some trees? They've never done anything to you. And anyway, they're probably spiked, and you don't want to get between these two groups of loonies.
Prostitutes and their dextrous abilities come to mind, especially where it's legal like in Nevada. One of the biggest arguments is in favor of the legalization of prostitution is so that prostitutes can receive health care -- I suppose rsi is one of those injuries most never planned to receive.
What does altavista sell/provide that could possibly be worth $5 billion?
A search engine that, while popular, can't match the quality of some of its upstart competition, ie google.
A portal that, while somewhat popular, is not much better than any other portal, and portals are a dime-a-dozen these days.
Some web-auction services that, quite frankly, aren't going to unseat ebay any time soon.
Web-based email service, as if no one else is doing that these days.
An online yellow-pages-like business directory -- a market that lots of companies are entering and which has had a lot of competition (like switchboard) for a while.
Plus some other assorted things like stockquotes, weather, etc. that are well covered by other sites.
All altavista has going for it right now is an established brand name and an established web presence. While those two things are good to have, their value is diminished as most of the rest of the business world gets onto the web. There's room for altavista to make some sort of profit, perhaps, but it likely wouldn't be soon, and it certainly wouldn't justify a multi-billion-dollar market cap. Most internet IPOs just don't.
Mike O'Connor is the guy that owns or did own televison.com as well as a bunch of other such domains (Bar.com, Cafes.com, Company.com, Corp.com, Grill.com, Haven.com, Place.com, Pub.com, Shelter.com -- if business.com got $7.5million, then maybe company.com will get a comperable sum, since they're both equally silly). At one point he was offered US$1.1million, so whatever he's getting out of the current arrangement with mktv.com is probably more than that.
If you want some historical information (circa 1998) about the sale of altavista.com, you can also go here.
The 'c' doesn't make much of a difference, because exite.com just refers you to excite.com. They are registered by different corporations, however, and this behavior might change sometime in the future.
Clearly what this physicist should do is file a patent for the "reignition of stellar clouds during massive space-time collapse". Since intellectual property refuses to die, it will likely still apply when the Big Crunch occurs, and he'll file for a federal injunction. The result will be retroactive, and dark matter will cease to bother us in our own time. Hooray.
Witb all the ipo money they have, Red Hat is going to buy up a couple more companies before they're done; normally, companies use ipo money to invest in fab plants or advertising, and neither is particularly relevant to linux at the moment, so they have to pour the money somewhere, and there's only so much money that can be burned internally. Corel, however, isn't the best choice, for reasons stated elsewhere.
As for buying out Troll Tech and QT, Red Hat had better want to maintain QT under its current liscense or under a more open liscense, because of that certain clause that allows the KDE Free QT Foundation to release QT under a BSD liscense given the correct conditions.
And shortly after this information was leaked, secret double-agent panda Hsing-Hsing committed suicide at the National Zoo. The tricky part was knowing the leak was going to happen months in advance so he could start dying of renal failure.
Uncle Sam has already failed in regulating Internet content with the (expletive) Communications Decency Act.
They never go to try to do any regulating, because injunctions were (properly) issued because of its facially-evident unconstitutionality. It would have failed if enforced, but that's still a matter of opinion and can't be imperically determined from those particular events.
The country where the purchaser resides can tax the credit-card purchase, and the exporting country can tax the export at the dock. The intermediate countrieds might not be able to do too much, but that doesn't mean all must fail. Fail they would if I had my way, but unfortuniately I don't.
But if you're already being increadibly reckless with your environment, what is the additional harm in a little nuclear fallout, should it come to that? (Nevermind that the stuff doesn't exactly respect borders or even continents.)
[T]he Ukrainian government says it needs $1.2 billion from the West to finish construction of two new reactors to replace the output that will be lost by closing Chernobyl.
There's nothing quite like nuclear suicide to raise the ante in international treaty negotiations. The Ukrainian economy has taken a harsh beating since the USSR fell apart, and they do need this electricity if they hope to get their industries cranking again.
The fact that this action will precipitate an international crisis and help get the financial aid flowing again is just an added bonus.
Star Division had produced a linux port of star office long before Sun bought them out. If you step out of the past conditional and start talking about future development, then your point would be correct. Still, I would not tie my continuing linux use to Corel if I were you; they have a history of jumping onto bandwagons without following through. Hopefully this time will be different, but such hope is no reason to be rash.
It'll have developed large areas of silver hair on its back, amass several females in a personal harem, and keep the others in line with displays of violence and aggression, sometimes ritual and sometimes real.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought the question was about what happens when Mozilla becomes an alpha male.
Personally, I don't think malls are going anywhere too fast: there's just too big an installed user base.
I, however, wouldn't mourn their loss if it came to that. Malls are one of the singles greatest wastes of real estate, sources of traffic, light pollution, etc. Surely, no one would defend strip malls as they have sprung up in this country.
Yes, it would cause untold social expense to cut out the middleman, who in this case is doing his best to fill a low-paying retail position. I would argue, however, that the demise of malls would actually open up opportunitites for local small businesses to thrive again, which would soak up any resulting unemployment. The internet has allowed more and more businesses to succeed without tying themselves to a single brand in the form of a commercial chain.
Instead, what you'll be seeing is further integration between online purchasing and brick&mortar stores. Instead of purchasing your book online and waiting days for it to show up via the mail, imagine ordering your book online and having it delivered locally by courier. Local stores are capable of performing value-added services; they're just in a bit of flux right now as to how to go about doing so.
The government cares about such invasions of privacy on the part of individuals and corporations because, quite frankly, it encroaches upon the prerogative of the state. Just as the state is to have a monopoly on violence in society, so is the state wish to have a monopoly on the invasion of privacy: Echelon, et al. Just as common murder challenges the king's authority as the only legitimate source of death within his realm, so does common wiretapping do as much in this matter.
Hopefully, we can concentrate all of these atrocities within the state and then geld the state with constitutional amendments, as we have in the US concerning torture and the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. Alas, my cynicism would counsel otherwise.
There's only one of these things, so no one can build a beowolf cluster out of it.
I have to wonder whether this will have any impact on the MS antitrust suit, since perhaps MS can point to this thing and say: "Look, it's competition, and it's not running Windows!" Maybe this's why the Justice Department has become a bit more open to the idea of settling through arbitration!
So called software "piracy" is obviously an option for those unable or unwilling to purchase software, and indeed it is a common choice throughout the South, where copyright law is often poorly enforced. But this places users at the mercy of the law, increasing their vulnerability to those rich and powerful enough to use it to their own advantage. Also, development organisations themselves are vulnerable to enforcement in their home countries, so they can not support or encourage such practices.
And this is exactly what the software companies are banking on.
If you notice, though companies like Microsoft, do occasionally make some noise about rampant IP abuse in third-world countries, the companies rarely do anything real to try to prevent it. The reason is the same there as it was here ten years ago: let the populace "pirate" the software, get hooked on the company's closed platform, and then when there's a critical mass of addicts who are far enough along that they actually have the money to pay for the software, step in and start enforcing copyright laws. This is the same rationale followed by crack dealers and cigarette manufacturers who give out some amount of product for free at the beginning in order to get an addicted population who is then beholden to them for their fix later.
You have an option of clicking the box that says "no score +1 bonus" when posting a comment that isn't quite so insightful. If you read/.'s moderation faq, you'd find that Rob wants moderation to happen this way.
Of course, you have better things to do, so I'll step out of your way now.;)
Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution enumerates the relevant federal power as "Congress shall have the power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" The key phrase here is "for limited Times". Retroactively extending the duration of copyrights or bestowing perpetual copyrights is plainly unconstitutional.
Needless to say, unconstitutionality has never prevented legislators from passing unconstitutional acts, and the late Sonny Bono had his day in Congress a year ago and changed the rules, and we'll all suffer for it. There are some legal battles being fought on this issue, but I can't seem to drag up the references.
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Probably a combination of marketing and distribution. We all know it isn't their customer service that'll convince anyone to buy one.
The sad thing is, Gateway's marketing will likely succeed in pushing these things -- one would hope that people buying servers aren't the same idiots impressed by a spotted cow box, but alas we know how futile that hope is.
Why would you attack some trees? They've never done anything to you. And anyway, they're probably spiked, and you don't want to get between these two groups of loonies.
With spelling like that, I was expecting to see a gameboy up in the corner saying "Ferst Post!!!".
Prostitutes and their dextrous abilities come to mind, especially where it's legal like in Nevada. One of the biggest arguments is in favor of the legalization of prostitution is so that prostitutes can receive health care -- I suppose rsi is one of those injuries most never planned to receive.
A search engine that, while popular, can't match the quality of some of its upstart competition, ie google.
A portal that, while somewhat popular, is not much better than any other portal, and portals are a dime-a-dozen these days.
Some web-auction services that, quite frankly, aren't going to unseat ebay any time soon.
Web-based email service, as if no one else is doing that these days.
An online yellow-pages-like business directory -- a market that lots of companies are entering and which has had a lot of competition (like switchboard) for a while.
Plus some other assorted things like stockquotes, weather, etc. that are well covered by other sites.
All altavista has going for it right now is an established brand name and an established web presence. While those two things are good to have, their value is diminished as most of the rest of the business world gets onto the web. There's room for altavista to make some sort of profit, perhaps, but it likely wouldn't be soon, and it certainly wouldn't justify a multi-billion-dollar market cap. Most internet IPOs just don't.
Mike O'Connor is the guy that owns or did own televison.com as well as a bunch of other such domains (Bar.com, Cafes.com, Company.com, Corp.com, Grill.com, Haven.com, Place.com, Pub.com, Shelter.com -- if business.com got $7.5million, then maybe company.com will get a comperable sum, since they're both equally silly). At one point he was offered US$1.1million, so whatever he's getting out of the current arrangement with mktv.com is probably more than that.
If you want some historical information (circa 1998) about the sale of altavista.com, you can also go here.
The 'c' doesn't make much of a difference, because exite.com just refers you to excite.com. They are registered by different corporations, however, and this behavior might change sometime in the future.
Clearly what this physicist should do is file a patent for the "reignition of stellar clouds during massive space-time collapse". Since intellectual property refuses to die, it will likely still apply when the Big Crunch occurs, and he'll file for a federal injunction. The result will be retroactive, and dark matter will cease to bother us in our own time. Hooray.
Witb all the ipo money they have, Red Hat is going to buy up a couple more companies before they're done; normally, companies use ipo money to invest in fab plants or advertising, and neither is particularly relevant to linux at the moment, so they have to pour the money somewhere, and there's only so much money that can be burned internally. Corel, however, isn't the best choice, for reasons stated elsewhere.
As for buying out Troll Tech and QT, Red Hat had better want to maintain QT under its current liscense or under a more open liscense, because of that certain clause that allows the KDE Free QT Foundation to release QT under a BSD liscense given the correct conditions.
And shortly after this information was leaked, secret double-agent panda Hsing-Hsing committed suicide at the National Zoo. The tricky part was knowing the leak was going to happen months in advance so he could start dying of renal failure.
Uncle Sam has already failed in regulating Internet content with the (expletive) Communications Decency Act.
They never go to try to do any regulating, because injunctions were (properly) issued because of its facially-evident unconstitutionality. It would have failed if enforced, but that's still a matter of opinion and can't be imperically determined from those particular events.
The country where the purchaser resides can tax the credit-card purchase, and the exporting country can tax the export at the dock. The intermediate countrieds might not be able to do too much, but that doesn't mean all must fail. Fail they would if I had my way, but unfortuniately I don't.
The universe is flat, eh? Maybe it should talk to these people.
But if you're already being increadibly reckless with your environment, what is the additional harm in a little nuclear fallout, should it come to that? (Nevermind that the stuff doesn't exactly respect borders or even continents.)
Dialups just aren't fast enough for this to be rolled out anytime soon, and people don't appreciate having their phonelines tied up, either.
But, when cable modems and all the rest really catch on, look out!
[T]he Ukrainian government says it needs $1.2 billion from the West to finish construction of two new reactors to replace the output that will be lost by closing Chernobyl.
There's nothing quite like nuclear suicide to raise the ante in international treaty negotiations. The Ukrainian economy has taken a harsh beating since the USSR fell apart, and they do need this electricity if they hope to get their industries cranking again.
The fact that this action will precipitate an international crisis and help get the financial aid flowing again is just an added bonus.
Star Division had produced a linux port of star office long before Sun bought them out. If you step out of the past conditional and start talking about future development, then your point would be correct. Still, I would not tie my continuing linux use to Corel if I were you; they have a history of jumping onto bandwagons without following through. Hopefully this time will be different, but such hope is no reason to be rash.
It'll have developed large areas of silver hair on its back, amass several females in a personal harem, and keep the others in line with displays of violence and aggression, sometimes ritual and sometimes real.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought the question was about what happens when Mozilla becomes an alpha male.
Personally, I don't think malls are going anywhere too fast: there's just too big an installed user base.
I, however, wouldn't mourn their loss if it came to that. Malls are one of the singles greatest wastes of real estate, sources of traffic, light pollution, etc. Surely, no one would defend strip malls as they have sprung up in this country.
Yes, it would cause untold social expense to cut out the middleman, who in this case is doing his best to fill a low-paying retail position. I would argue, however, that the demise of malls would actually open up opportunitites for local small businesses to thrive again, which would soak up any resulting unemployment. The internet has allowed more and more businesses to succeed without tying themselves to a single brand in the form of a commercial chain.
Instead, what you'll be seeing is further integration between online purchasing and brick&mortar stores. Instead of purchasing your book online and waiting days for it to show up via the mail, imagine ordering your book online and having it delivered locally by courier. Local stores are capable of performing value-added services; they're just in a bit of flux right now as to how to go about doing so.
The government cares about such invasions of privacy on the part of individuals and corporations because, quite frankly, it encroaches upon the prerogative of the state. Just as the state is to have a monopoly on violence in society, so is the state wish to have a monopoly on the invasion of privacy: Echelon, et al. Just as common murder challenges the king's authority as the only legitimate source of death within his realm, so does common wiretapping do as much in this matter.
Hopefully, we can concentrate all of these atrocities within the state and then geld the state with constitutional amendments, as we have in the US concerning torture and the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. Alas, my cynicism would counsel otherwise.
There's only one of these things, so no one can build a beowolf cluster out of it.
I have to wonder whether this will have any impact on the MS antitrust suit, since perhaps MS can point to this thing and say: "Look, it's competition, and it's not running Windows!" Maybe this's why the Justice Department has become a bit more open to the idea of settling through arbitration!
So called software "piracy" is obviously an option for those unable or unwilling to purchase
software, and indeed it is a common choice throughout the South, where copyright law is
often poorly enforced. But this places users at the mercy of the law, increasing their
vulnerability to those rich and powerful enough to use it to their own advantage. Also,
development organisations themselves are vulnerable to enforcement in their home
countries, so they can not support or encourage such practices.
And this is exactly what the software companies are banking on.
If you notice, though companies like Microsoft, do occasionally make some noise about rampant IP abuse in third-world countries, the companies rarely do anything real to try to prevent it. The reason is the same there as it was here ten years ago: let the populace "pirate" the software, get hooked on the company's closed platform, and then when there's a critical mass of addicts who are far enough along that they actually have the money to pay for the software, step in and start enforcing copyright laws. This is the same rationale followed by crack dealers and cigarette manufacturers who give out some amount of product for free at the beginning in order to get an addicted population who is then beholden to them for their fix later.
You have an option of clicking the box that says "no score +1 bonus" when posting a comment that isn't quite so insightful. If you read /.'s moderation faq, you'd find that Rob wants moderation to happen this way.
;)
Of course, you have better things to do, so I'll step out of your way now.
Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution enumerates the relevant federal power as "Congress shall have the power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" The key phrase here is "for limited Times". Retroactively extending the duration of copyrights or bestowing perpetual copyrights is plainly unconstitutional.
Needless to say, unconstitutionality has never prevented legislators from passing unconstitutional acts, and the late Sonny Bono had his day in Congress a year ago and changed the rules, and we'll all suffer for it. There are some legal battles being fought on this issue, but I can't seem to drag up the references.