What if gold is essential for some unknown process in the seas? Maybe mining the gold will have some unpleasant side effects. I often wonder this same thing when I think about mining asteroids for precious metals. What if some proto-virus is brought back, a la "The Andromeda Strain".
Admittedly, this is far-fetched, but I imagine that even an inert substance like gold must affect the ecosystem, But then again, Maybe the amount that would be extracted is still tiny compared to the sea-water reserves. How much gold is in that water?
Now if the internet worked the way it should, I would now be able to instantly pay a small fee ($1?) to read a downloaded or online version of "Profession". And plenty of people would do the same. The publisher would make money and the exchange would be better informed.
Instead, maybe a very few will actually buy the book from Amazon, and most of us will forget about it. What a shame.
I can't see that I blame IBM for being careful. Loki's situation certainly argues that Linux as a desktop replacement for Windows is far away.
On the other hand, Loki's situation might really have nothing to do with Linux as a desktop OS and more with bad management at Loki.
Not to be too Darwinian, but it may be counterproductive to "support" Loki at this point. Sometimes it's more merciful to let a sick company die.
It doesn't look like they are publically traded, but at their point they could probably be had for next to nothing. Probably that $500,000 would to the trick. Of course, that could just be the tip of the iceberg of their outstanding obligations. So any/.ers who cashed in before the collapse, now it is time to give back to the community and buy that mother of a company!
But back to the facts...
$500,000!!! They are filing bankruptcy over chickenfeed!!!
If IBM were smart, they would swoop in and save this company. Games may not be Linux's short- or medium-term purpose, but in the long-run, games are useful because they tend to push systems to their limits and advance the state of the art. This is particularly important for Linux development on the desktop market.
There really is very little money involved here: $500,000 . This makes me wonder why they took such a drastic step. I mean, this is pretty much less than the mortgage on most houses in Silicon Valley. I wonder if there is more that Loki is not telling us.
The actual report's conclusions are very kind to MS.
From the paper's conclusion:
"In contrast to many critics of Windows Product Activation, we think that WPA does not prevent typical hardware modifications and, moreover, respects the user's right to privacy."
I think that the real fear is that this WPA may work too well, making it difficult to use unauthorized copies but being fairly unobtrusive to paying users. I mean, why is every on here so up in arms about this. If it really sucks, won't that hurt MS and be for the good?
But based on the conclusions in this report, WPA is actually a pretty good sytem that is gonna make MS a lot more money, without significantly harming market share.
What's really important is that the libraries' (in win or lin) functionality is well defined. When you have no idea what it's supposed to do, that's when you can't keep your set up clean. Libraries, used right, free up memory and ease development. Done wrong, they cause a big mess. There should never be anything on your system that you don't know what it does.
You always pay for what you read or watch.
You pay for it when you buy that car,
that advertised on the TV as you drank at the bar.
And your money went to that radio show that shilled for Coke.
And to that magazine that talked you into what brand to smoke.
Your attention span has been bought and sold,
so you will buy what you are told.
An independent voice?
A bit of choice?
These are arguments gone cold,
in our relentless pursuit of Mammons' gold.
OK. point taken. Sometimes the technology understanding gap can cause initial problems. But at the core the issue is pretty clear: how does one protect one's children from "dangerous knowledge".
I would say that it is not so much a change in technology that causes problems, but a change in attitudes. We, as a society have both become more liberal and conservative about certain knowledge. Kids can watch more violent entertainment on TV or in the movies, but are less likely to actually be taught how to fight. Pornography is very prevalent, yet our hypersexualized popular culture has become strangely neuter.
Your grandparents generation may have looked at less pornography, but they also probably went to prostitutes more often.
I remember, in the pre-web days, finding an innocuos book in the school library. It was about 50 years old, in the chemistry section, and basically gave instructions on how to produce nerve gas. Now this book was in the library for decades, and nobody complained, and no students used mustard gas on campus. Nowadays, in our current hysterical climate, if the contents of that book were put online, there would be cries of corrupted youth.
Sin was not invented in the last twenty years, we're just more obsessed with it now. The technology is secondary.
Well I'm not a parent, but I once was a kid, so I have at least half of the experience down. But playing armchair parent is fun when you don't have to live with the kid.
I don't think calling someone a lazy ass is a terribly harsh flame. In these particular circumstances, as was said before, if the kid is only with them on alternate weekends, I would say that they want to try to have as much "quality time" as possible. Putting the computer in a central area makes sense. Of course, that makes it harder for Mom and Dad to look up goatsex in their free time.
I don't know the kid or the parents or the circumstances, neither does anyone else posting.
What's most interesting about this discussion is that it shows that people are now turning to perfect strangers in how to parent, that most intimate of activities. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing. The action itself isn't harmful, but it does indicate that traditional channels of support for parents are disappearing.
Anyone ever see that movie Avalon? Remember how TV was shown as displacing the more human elements of family life? The computer and the Internet is now doing the same thing. I don't know if this is causative or symptomatic, but it is remarkable nonetheless.
Without knowing the report methodology however, or more details on the data, this is definitely a "closed source" report. In fact, without these details, the information must be accepted on faith. In short, the scientific validity of this report is unknown, and thus, really not useful for any thinking person
Yeah, but the more they try to close the loopholes, the cleverer the hacks will get to get around them. And the cleverer the hacks are, the more inspired the hackers will be to publicize and exploit them.
Just because their will be a reaction to attempts to break open sytem, that doesn't mean that we should lose our ambition to try and hack them
Now before I get flamed for being an amoral anarchist with no understanding of the need for property and order, let me point out that much good comes out of hacking, and that most hacking is not harmful. It allows progress by using a system in ways it was not intended to be used. This is progress.
Wasn't Galileo just hacking our understanding of motion? He got in trouble for it, though.
I was going for humor with the "nostalgia" comment. Either my writing style is off or your sense of humor is. I'll also freely admit that both may be the case.
In retrospect, I should have put it as "at least for nostalgia's sake" instead of "just for nostalgia's sake".
So where were you when I was originally submitting the question? Probably celebrating analog landlines with a primitive tribal dance.
If Amtrak is basically a government agency, as many of the posts here seem to indicate, then this behaviour seems unconstitutional to me.
Now just because the Feds thought it up does not mean it is constitutional. Even if it is unconstitutional, they can go years milking this set-up before it gets overturned.
It seems to me that it is reasonable for someone to be informed by a government agency what information they provide will be used for purposes other than those obviously involved with the activity involved. There is a federal rule requiring the reasoning for all paperwork to be disclosed. Amtrak doesn't seem to be following this rule.
I say that every Amtrak passenger should be read their Miranda rights before they attempt to buy a ticket.
Then watch the fun happen!
Excelsior,
ME
Top Ten Reasons Blow Blew
on
Review: Blow
·
· Score: 2
10. It said it was based on a true story and then substantially diverged with the true elements of that story. The Last half of the movie is almost completely fiction.(read the book).
9. Those montage scenes. Yes, we can definitely tell that Ted Demme used to direct a lot of music videos.
8. Johny Depp. Just like in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," Depp showed he is just a pretty face with no range as an actor.
7. The story told without showing. In the beginning, when they were looking for pot in Mexico, and they had an (ugh!!!) montage scene of people playing around at the pool. Then Johny Dipshit voices over with "We worked hard and we played hard." We'll have to take his word for it, because the film made it look like Spring Break on Padre Island.
6. No good, raunchy sex scenes. Drugs are good because they help guys get laid. Sad but true. There was no good sex in the movie. Pretty tame for a movie called blow. That's the whole point of drug use, to get laid. Oh sure, Jung wasn't getting all the poontang he could from coked-up starlets. He was a decent family man. Ha!
5. Building Sympathy for George Jung. Jung was no victim. He eventually got caught at the height of his career and enthusiastically cooperated with the Feds to entrap his former colleagues. In his book he was unrepentant.
4. The friggin' daughter subplot. Drug Daddy Knows Best? What is this crap?
3. It's two hours long! If a movie is bad, like this one is, making it longer just prolongs the agony. Anyone notice that Woody Allen's best early movies are about one and a half hours long?
2. Blow? Blow me! Sorry, I just had to say it.
And the number one reason Blow blew is...
...drum roll...
Jon Katz's review! And a hearty bronx cheer for all the moderating morons who took off the points of the replies that complained that such a contemptibly uninformed and uninspired piece ever got featured, especially for such an unimportant movie.
If we ran across some life form capable of interstellar travel, they would probably be so advanced compared to us technologically that we would be at their mercy.
I tried going on to Everything and Everything2 and giving it a try. The idea is great: to set up a system of knowledge which self organized.
Unfortunately, the content was crap. The level of expertise on any post was about that of a junior high-schooler. I suspect that is the demographic of most of the contributors.
I'm not knocking junior high. I was young and shallow and self-absorbed once too, but E2 seems more like an interesting sociology experiment than a source of knowledge about the broader world.
The only thing E2 is about is itself.
Someone please prove me I am wrong, but I suspect that the ratio of crap:moderately-interesting material is about 100:1.
That's depressing, and wrong, from an technologically ethical point of view. The web as a medium requires openness.
Here's a novel suggestion, if somewhat heretical. Maybe the current slashdot format does not scale as well as might hoped.
I'm not knocking the slashcode. Hey, I'm posting here, aren't I. My point is that maybe it needs to be organized differently thatn it currently is.
Just a thought. Or maybe I don't know how to navigate around in it well enough
1) "Amortization of goodwill and intangibles" accounts for $16.2 million. This makes sense, as amortization is not really a cash flow issue. It's just something they put on their books. Doesn't cost them a penny. In fact it reduces their tax liability, should they make a profit.
2)"Stock based compensation" $5.1 million.
This one is a little sketchier as to whether it should be adjusted. It definitely can dilute shareholder value. But I'm not sure what it represents. Is it the value of options granted, the cost of issueing or exercising the options? Again, it may not affect cash flow, but probably does impact balance sheet or tockholder equity.
3)"Merger, acquisition and other" $2.3 million. Well, thios makes sense as mergers and acquisitions are not normal operating expenses, though with net economy companies, I'd be hesitant on that too.
All these add up to about 23.6 million, so take that away from the 24.15 million net loss and you have about 600K.
So it looks like they are just about breaking even from operations, if you don't count stock options and merger and acquisition costs.
They're definitely running low on cash. Though other assets, like debt and equity, are growing, but who knows what that debt and equity is. If it's shares and bonds from Amazon.com, look out!
While the edge won't be affected until we have fiber to the curb, the core will stand to benefit from this.
We ran a story on optical switching a while back and what it comes down to is that any traffic under 2.5 Gbps is just to granular to be switched without electronic intervention.
What sounds cool about this technology is that it seems to have the medium direct the traffic by wavelength. If that's the case, then maybe it can take the place of tunable lasers or MEMS devices. I'm thinking it could work like one of those automated coin sorters. Wavelengths of a certain size get shunted to the right pipe. It's a passive, not an active solution.
We are running a story on a federal bill to criminalize spam.
You'll notice something rather interesting. The bill passed in the House but just sort of languished in the Senate last year.
I'm careful who I send my email address to and have been pretty lucky in avoiding spam.
I don't want anyone going to jail for this kind of thing. And there is a legitimate first amendment issue here. People have the right to communicate with you, even about stupid stuff
Civil penalties are the only prudent way to deal with spam.
I guess I should be more strident, but I've got enough of a life so that I don't get too worked up over this stuff. When people do get all worked up they demand criminal penalties, which sends people to jail, which costs money, which either lowers spending on education or gets our taxes raised.
And that means I'll have less money to spend on booze and whores, but the whores will be cheaper because there will be a glut of them because education spending will go down so the whores won't be educated enough to get real jobs.
That, my friends, is an economic analysis of the situation.
Slashdot Mirror
What if gold is essential for some unknown process in the seas? Maybe mining the gold will have some unpleasant side effects. I often wonder this same thing when I think about mining asteroids for precious metals. What if some proto-virus is brought back, a la "The Andromeda Strain".
Admittedly, this is far-fetched, but I imagine that even an inert substance like gold must affect the ecosystem, But then again, Maybe the amount that would be extracted is still tiny compared to the sea-water reserves. How much gold is in that water?
Now if the internet worked the way it should, I would now be able to instantly pay a small fee ($1?) to read a downloaded or online version of "Profession". And plenty of people would do the same. The publisher would make money and the exchange would be better informed.
Instead, maybe a very few will actually buy the book from Amazon, and most of us will forget about it. What a shame.
I can't see that I blame IBM for being careful. Loki's situation certainly argues that Linux as a desktop replacement for Windows is far away.
On the other hand, Loki's situation might really have nothing to do with Linux as a desktop OS and more with bad management at Loki. Not to be too Darwinian, but it may be counterproductive to "support" Loki at this point. Sometimes it's more merciful to let a sick company die.
It doesn't look like they are publically traded, but at their point they could probably be had for next to nothing. Probably that $500,000 would to the trick. Of course, that could just be the tip of the iceberg of their outstanding obligations. So any /.ers who cashed in before the collapse, now it is time to give back to the community and buy that mother of a company!
But back to the facts...
$500,000!!! They are filing bankruptcy over chickenfeed!!!
the good stuff is at www.camilleart.com
If IBM were smart, they would swoop in and save this company. Games may not be Linux's short- or medium-term purpose, but in the long-run, games are useful because they tend to push systems to their limits and advance the state of the art. This is particularly important for Linux development on the desktop market.
There really is very little money involved here: $500,000 . This makes me wonder why they took such a drastic step. I mean, this is pretty much less than the mortgage on most houses in Silicon Valley. I wonder if there is more that Loki is not telling us.
The actual report's conclusions are very kind to MS.
From the paper's conclusion:
"In contrast to many critics of Windows Product Activation, we think that WPA does not prevent typical hardware modifications and, moreover, respects the user's right to privacy."
I think that the real fear is that this WPA may work too well, making it difficult to use unauthorized copies but being fairly unobtrusive to paying users. I mean, why is every on here so up in arms about this. If it really sucks, won't that hurt MS and be for the good?
But based on the conclusions in this report, WPA is actually a pretty good sytem that is gonna make MS a lot more money, without significantly harming market share.
What's really important is that the libraries' (in win or lin) functionality is well defined. When you have no idea what it's supposed to do, that's when you can't keep your set up clean. Libraries, used right, free up memory and ease development. Done wrong, they cause a big mess. There should never be anything on your system that you don't know what it does.
I misspelled that didn't I? Sorry, the heat of the moment got to me.
You always pay for what you read or watch.
You pay for it when you buy that car,
that advertised on the TV as you drank at the bar.
And your money went to that radio show that shilled for Coke.
And to that magazine that talked you into what brand to smoke.
Your attention span has been bought and sold,
so you will buy what you are told.
An independent voice?
A bit of choice?
These are arguments gone cold,
in our relentless pursuit of Mammons' gold.
OK. point taken. Sometimes the technology understanding gap can cause initial problems. But at the core the issue is pretty clear: how does one protect one's children from "dangerous knowledge".
I would say that it is not so much a change in technology that causes problems, but a change in attitudes. We, as a society have both become more liberal and conservative about certain knowledge. Kids can watch more violent entertainment on TV or in the movies, but are less likely to actually be taught how to fight. Pornography is very prevalent, yet our hypersexualized popular culture has become strangely neuter.
Your grandparents generation may have looked at less pornography, but they also probably went to prostitutes more often.
I remember, in the pre-web days, finding an innocuos book in the school library. It was about 50 years old, in the chemistry section, and basically gave instructions on how to produce nerve gas. Now this book was in the library for decades, and nobody complained, and no students used mustard gas on campus. Nowadays, in our current hysterical climate, if the contents of that book were put online, there would be cries of corrupted youth.
Sin was not invented in the last twenty years, we're just more obsessed with it now. The technology is secondary.
Well I'm not a parent, but I once was a kid, so I have at least half of the experience down. But playing armchair parent is fun when you don't have to live with the kid.
I don't think calling someone a lazy ass is a terribly harsh flame. In these particular circumstances, as was said before, if the kid is only with them on alternate weekends, I would say that they want to try to have as much "quality time" as possible. Putting the computer in a central area makes sense. Of course, that makes it harder for Mom and Dad to look up goatsex in their free time.
I don't know the kid or the parents or the circumstances, neither does anyone else posting.
What's most interesting about this discussion is that it shows that people are now turning to perfect strangers in how to parent, that most intimate of activities. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing. The action itself isn't harmful, but it does indicate that traditional channels of support for parents are disappearing.
Anyone ever see that movie Avalon? Remember how TV was shown as displacing the more human elements of family life? The computer and the Internet is now doing the same thing. I don't know if this is causative or symptomatic, but it is remarkable nonetheless.
Here's the press release that the e-commerce report was quoting:
= pr 010604
http://www.jup.com/company/pressrelease.jsp?doc
Without knowing the report methodology however, or more details on the data, this is definitely a "closed source" report. In fact, without these details, the information must be accepted on faith. In short, the scientific validity of this report is unknown, and thus, really not useful for any thinking person
Why are more than 64 ports pushing the law of physics?
Yeah, but the more they try to close the loopholes, the cleverer the hacks will get to get around them. And the cleverer the hacks are, the more inspired the hackers will be to publicize and exploit them.
Just because their will be a reaction to attempts to break open sytem, that doesn't mean that we should lose our ambition to try and hack them
Now before I get flamed for being an amoral anarchist with no understanding of the need for property and order, let me point out that much good comes out of hacking, and that most hacking is not harmful. It allows progress by using a system in ways it was not intended to be used. This is progress.
Wasn't Galileo just hacking our understanding of motion? He got in trouble for it, though.
I was going for humor with the "nostalgia" comment. Either my writing style is off or your sense of humor is. I'll also freely admit that both may be the case.
In retrospect, I should have put it as "at least for nostalgia's sake" instead of "just for nostalgia's sake".
So where were you when I was originally submitting the question? Probably celebrating analog landlines with a primitive tribal dance.
;^p
If Amtrak is basically a government agency, as many of the posts here seem to indicate, then this behaviour seems unconstitutional to me.
Now just because the Feds thought it up does not mean it is constitutional. Even if it is unconstitutional, they can go years milking this set-up before it gets overturned.
It seems to me that it is reasonable for someone to be informed by a government agency what information they provide will be used for purposes other than those obviously involved with the activity involved. There is a federal rule requiring the reasoning for all paperwork to be disclosed. Amtrak doesn't seem to be following this rule.
I say that every Amtrak passenger should be read their Miranda rights before they attempt to buy a ticket.
Then watch the fun happen!
Excelsior,
ME
10. It said it was based on a true story and then substantially diverged with the true elements of that story. The Last half of the movie is almost completely fiction.(read the book).
9. Those montage scenes. Yes, we can definitely tell that Ted Demme used to direct a lot of music videos.
8. Johny Depp. Just like in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," Depp showed he is just a pretty face with no range as an actor.
7. The story told without showing. In the beginning, when they were looking for pot in Mexico, and they had an (ugh!!!) montage scene of people playing around at the pool. Then Johny Dipshit voices over with "We worked hard and we played hard." We'll have to take his word for it, because the film made it look like Spring Break on Padre Island.
6. No good, raunchy sex scenes. Drugs are good because they help guys get laid. Sad but true. There was no good sex in the movie. Pretty tame for a movie called blow. That's the whole point of drug use, to get laid. Oh sure, Jung wasn't getting all the poontang he could from coked-up starlets. He was a decent family man. Ha!
5. Building Sympathy for George Jung. Jung was no victim. He eventually got caught at the height of his career and enthusiastically cooperated with the Feds to entrap his former colleagues. In his book he was unrepentant.
4. The friggin' daughter subplot. Drug Daddy Knows Best? What is this crap?
3. It's two hours long! If a movie is bad, like this one is, making it longer just prolongs the agony. Anyone notice that Woody Allen's best early movies are about one and a half hours long?
2. Blow? Blow me! Sorry, I just had to say it.
And the number one reason Blow blew is...
...drum roll...
Jon Katz's review! And a hearty bronx cheer for all the moderating morons who took off the points of the replies that complained that such a contemptibly uninformed and uninspired piece ever got featured, especially for such an unimportant movie.
Excelsior,
ME
If we ran across some life form capable of interstellar travel, they would probably be so advanced compared to us technologically that we would be at their mercy.
Rights, schmights.
Amen.
I tried going on to Everything and Everything2 and giving it a try. The idea is great: to set up a system of knowledge which self organized.
Unfortunately, the content was crap. The level of expertise on any post was about that of a junior high-schooler. I suspect that is the demographic of most of the contributors.
I'm not knocking junior high. I was young and shallow and self-absorbed once too, but E2 seems more like an interesting sociology experiment than a source of knowledge about the broader world.
The only thing E2 is about is itself.
Someone please prove me I am wrong, but I suspect that the ratio of crap:moderately-interesting material is about 100:1.
Excelsior,
ME
That's depressing, and wrong, from an technologically ethical point of view. The web as a medium requires openness. Here's a novel suggestion, if somewhat heretical. Maybe the current slashdot format does not scale as well as might hoped. I'm not knocking the slashcode. Hey, I'm posting here, aren't I. My point is that maybe it needs to be organized differently thatn it currently is. Just a thought. Or maybe I don't know how to navigate around in it well enough
The Web is a victim of its own success. Now every snake-oil salesman, fanboy and their grandmother has a website.
Even Slashdot is too big. How the hell are you supposed to follow a conversation this big.
especially with the goatsex.
I'm gonna start mailing postcards.
Excelsior,
ME
I think it's already been answered elsewhere in the posts. $600,000 is less than 1 cent per share, so they just round and say it's a wash
Here are my guess for the "adjustments"
1) "Amortization of goodwill and intangibles" accounts for $16.2 million. This makes sense, as amortization is not really a cash flow issue. It's just something they put on their books. Doesn't cost them a penny. In fact it reduces their tax liability, should they make a profit.
2)"Stock based compensation" $5.1 million. This one is a little sketchier as to whether it should be adjusted. It definitely can dilute shareholder value. But I'm not sure what it represents. Is it the value of options granted, the cost of issueing or exercising the options? Again, it may not affect cash flow, but probably does impact balance sheet or tockholder equity.
3)"Merger, acquisition and other" $2.3 million. Well, thios makes sense as mergers and acquisitions are not normal operating expenses, though with net economy companies, I'd be hesitant on that too.
All these add up to about 23.6 million, so take that away from the 24.15 million net loss and you have about 600K.
So it looks like they are just about breaking even from operations, if you don't count stock options and merger and acquisition costs.
They're definitely running low on cash. Though other assets, like debt and equity, are growing, but who knows what that debt and equity is. If it's shares and bonds from Amazon.com, look out!
Excelsior,
ME
While the edge won't be affected until we have fiber to the curb, the core will stand to benefit from this.
We ran a story on optical switching a while back and what it comes down to is that any traffic under 2.5 Gbps is just to granular to be switched without electronic intervention.
What sounds cool about this technology is that it seems to have the medium direct the traffic by wavelength. If that's the case, then maybe it can take the place of tunable lasers or MEMS devices. I'm thinking it could work like one of those automated coin sorters. Wavelengths of a certain size get shunted to the right pipe. It's a passive, not an active solution.
Excelsior, MEWe are running a story on a federal bill to criminalize spam.
You'll notice something rather interesting. The bill passed in the House but just sort of languished in the Senate last year.
I'm careful who I send my email address to and have been pretty lucky in avoiding spam.
I don't want anyone going to jail for this kind of thing. And there is a legitimate first amendment issue here. People have the right to communicate with you, even about stupid stuff
Civil penalties are the only prudent way to deal with spam.
I guess I should be more strident, but I've got enough of a life so that I don't get too worked up over this stuff. When people do get all worked up they demand criminal penalties, which sends people to jail, which costs money, which either lowers spending on education or gets our taxes raised.
And that means I'll have less money to spend on booze and whores, but the whores will be cheaper because there will be a glut of them because education spending will go down so the whores won't be educated enough to get real jobs.
That, my friends, is an economic analysis of the situation.