The problem with shorting the stock is to know WHEN. Unfortunately, no one can read the future, so no matter how certain you are that the ultimate value of SCO stock is some approximation of zero, you can't short on the infinite time. You have to say WHEN, and that's risky.
Playing the futures is the best way to lose *lots* of money really fast. Sorry, I've forgotten the name of the famous old British bank (something with a B? Bartlett's?) that went down the tubes that way (from one guy's shenanigans in Singapore? Nick something?), but both Sumitomo and Daiwa lost a few billion bucks that way. They didn't actually go all the way down the tubes, though they mergered a bunch of times as a result.
Having said that, maybe we can put a maximum window of survival on SCO. Unfortunately, I'm almost sure it will go beyond the time limit for short trading.
The SCO stock price is already kiting the publicity, so the real question is how long they can stall. I think that once any of the law suits goes far enough, the court will order SCO to shut up, and then their whole house of cards will collapse. All of the "semi-definite" dates that I've seen were a year or so down the road. And unfortunately, most lawyers are really good at stalling.
The stock advice is "buy on the rumor, sell on the news". SCO has a whole LOT of rumor, and so someone keeps buying their stock. As long as you can find a bigger sucker to pay a higher price on the next rumor, it's a good strategy--but in the end someone is going to get stuck with a whole lot of highly decorative toilet paper.
My prediction is that this is not intended to last more than one or two shows. That would involve ongoing expenses, and SCO doesn't need to spend money on anything except lawyers and FUD.
To maximize the FUD in this case, I predict they will schedule the first couple of "shows" where there are heavy concentrations of Linux users and Open Source fanatics. They will deliberately ignore questions of security and crowd control--and hope for a riot. Heck, they might even plant a few trained rabble rousers in the crowd just to make sure.
After the resulting riot, they'll cry and scream about how SCO has to defend "law and order" against the mindless mobs. Having achieved their actual purpose, the rest of the tour will be cancelled.
You have to think about it from their M$ perspective. The OS is their weapon to dominate the computer industry. When you're building weapons, you don't want them to be small and safe. You want the biggest, hairiest, and most devastating gun your enemies have ever been on the wrong end of.
Of course the problem is that you can also blow your own leg off--or the customers' legs these days.
What are you talking about? Was this some kind of troll? There's no justice there, but I can confirm that several of my other favorite anti-spam resources are inaccessible, and probably also suffering from the spammers' DDoS attacks. That's SamSpade and UXN. No reason to be discreet since the spammers are obviously already targeting them.
In general, network performance has been lousy these days, even though the spammers' beloved email continues to flow. The powers-that-be sysadmins really need to crack down on these spammers and obliterate them. Too bad the army is tied up in Iraq dealing with those dangerous-but-oil-endowed peasants.
This is completely sideways. So far all the comments seem to be completely missing the forest to stare at an ugly leaf.
What Mountain View is doing is completely unethical and they should already be out of business. The entire foundation of their business is to exploit human confusion for profit.
What Verisign is doing is not intrinsically evil. The DNS system is intended to reduce confusion, and it is reasonable that the DNS system SHOULD respond intelligently to help confused users. The relatively minor problem here is that Verisign is trying to do a good thing in a way that maximizes their profitability and exploits their position at the top of the mountain. The side effect of putting scammers like Mountain View out of business would be a GOOD thing.
Cheering for Mountain View is like wanting an experienced hit man to "take care" of your troublesome neighbor. (However, I do agree that Verisign is going out of bounds, but Microsoft has been doing worse things for much longer.)
Posing this as a sample question, but it's something I've been looking into recently, and the HTTP protocol documents themselves have not been very enlightening so far. The docs say that either side can close the HTTP connection, and some references seem to say that the client has primary responsibility to do so. However, I've discovered that many servers like opening "sticky" 9000 second connections, apparently so they can stuff more advertising at you at their convenience. (Amazon and Yahoo seem to be especially big abusers.) My router usually has about 5-600 open connections because of this, which is part of a longer story...
McDonalds has nothing to say about SCO
on
Back To SCO
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think the only thing that will stop SCO now is bankruptcy. The only question is whether or not they lose the lawsuit first. Actually, considering Bush v. Gore, I suppose it is possible they could win it, but the more you learn about the history of the code in question, the less likely it seems. More likely someone else can sue SCO for prior IP violations.
Anyway, on the topic of fostering SCO's bankruptcy, don't forget that they do have a revenue stream besides stock speculation. True, more like a trickle in relative terms, but still worth dealing with if it will generate some more bad press. AFaIK, the big drip in that other revenue stream is McDonalds, and I still think they deserve a boycott. M$-style motto:
McDonalds: You deserve a boycott today!
By the way, I contacted McDonalds to ask them if they are still SCO's star customers, and they came back with the stone wall. Or maybe it was just a really ignorant marketroid?
So you want to say you shouldn't generalize from one person to the group, and the example you want to use is a company. Well, what about when the person is the president of the company? I think Darl and SCO can be more or less equated, and I generalize to say any employee who hasn't left SCO by October 15th is a fugghead!
Hit 'em in the wallet! Boycott McDonalds!
on
SCO's Next Target: SGI?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, I don't think I'm joking anymore. The only thing SCO seems to understand is threats to the wallet. So far they've been doing all the threatening, which is actually sort of reasonable since their wallets are so close to close to empty. However, the small bit of real cash in their wallets came from their few customers, and SCO is "proud" to list McDonalds as one of their major accounts.
How many Slashdotters eat at McDonalds? A boycott might be a serious threat!
Exactly. How would you know who had won? Could be the communists, for all the magic box reveals. Actually, one of Stalin's more famous quotes is about elections. I don't remember the exact words, but he essentially says that it's enough for the people to know that there has been an election. After that, it doesn't matter who they actually voted for--the only thing that matters is who counts the votes.
Or, as in Florida in 2000, who does NOT count the votes.
On the current topic, technology is neutral. You can use it to make better voting systems that are harder to cheat, or you can use it to make it easier to rig the elections. All the evidence is that increasing the rigability of the elections is the way they're going.
How many of you even noticed how they cancelled the exit polls in 2002, which may have been the last major independent validity check on the elections. Quite a bit of evidence of vote rigging in 2002, but no hard evidence exists. (Actually, they recently released some of the exit poll data, but 20% had somehow disappeared. "Somehow" in a pig's eye.)
Excuse me, but I think there is no earthly justification for not printing a copy of the ballot, and showing it the voter and saving it just in case someone wants to doublecheck.
The link that is described as referring to an event involving Halley's Comet is talking about a different comet. I should poke around for events actually involving Halley's, but I'll just settle for saying that I don't recall hearing anything unusual as it wandered away, and I'm actually rather skeptical we could see so much of it at that time (though the latest imaging is an impressive accomplishment).
Your point is unclear as it relates to the critical questions here. Are you saying that SCO's behavior is more consistent with using LSD? I really don't see much creativity in their rantings. However, neither to I detect see much of mental energy one is supposed to associate with coke or speed.
I think SCO's delusions seem to be more of the pink elephant variety. Is McBride an old alky? Certainly would explain a lot.
Hmm... But IBM has many customers who are also Linux users. Though in one sense it would be better to try to consolidate all of those individual lawsuits, SCO is threatening the users individually, so it might also make sense for IBM to focus on some prominent customers and encourage them to go after SCO, perhaps even to the point of putting some legal support behind them. If SCO is claiming to be so scared of an IBM-supported conspiracy, why not exploit that idea, too?
However, I think the reality is that IBM is just quite willing to wait and let SCO finish playing with the rope. So far they seem to be wrapping it around their own necks quite nicely.
Actually, I've been wondering why IBM has been going so slow on this, but it's pretty obvious when you remember the money part. No way IBM is going to forget about the money. But what assets does SCO have? Apart from their lawsuit against IBM, nothing, and IBM already knows the lawsuit is worthless. It isn't actually costing IBM anything to wait and hope for SCO to raise enough cash to make it worth the while of suddenly squishing them.
Still, I think this one has to be a hoax. All the reports are second and third hand. My bet is that someone got annoyed at SCO's unending attacks on the credibility of Linux, and hit on this strategy to undermine SCO's credibility.
Not that SCO has any credibility to spare, but as a reported "legal strategy" this is just too incredible. Or did Monty Python manage to pass the bar exam?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with shorting the stock is to know WHEN. Unfortunately, no one can read the future, so no matter how certain you are that the ultimate value of SCO stock is some approximation of zero, you can't short on the infinite time. You have to say WHEN, and that's risky.
Playing the futures is the best way to lose *lots* of money really fast. Sorry, I've forgotten the name of the famous old British bank (something with a B? Bartlett's?) that went down the tubes that way (from one guy's shenanigans in Singapore? Nick something?), but both Sumitomo and Daiwa lost a few billion bucks that way. They didn't actually go all the way down the tubes, though they mergered a bunch of times as a result.
Having said that, maybe we can put a maximum window of survival on SCO. Unfortunately, I'm almost sure it will go beyond the time limit for short trading.
The SCO stock price is already kiting the publicity, so the real question is how long they can stall. I think that once any of the law suits goes far enough, the court will order SCO to shut up, and then their whole house of cards will collapse. All of the "semi-definite" dates that I've seen were a year or so down the road. And unfortunately, most lawyers are really good at stalling.
The stock advice is "buy on the rumor, sell on the news". SCO has a whole LOT of rumor, and so someone keeps buying their stock. As long as you can find a bigger sucker to pay a higher price on the next rumor, it's a good strategy--but in the end someone is going to get stuck with a whole lot of highly decorative toilet paper.
My prediction is that this is not intended to last more than one or two shows. That would involve ongoing expenses, and SCO doesn't need to spend money on anything except lawyers and FUD.
To maximize the FUD in this case, I predict they will schedule the first couple of "shows" where there are heavy concentrations of Linux users and Open Source fanatics. They will deliberately ignore questions of security and crowd control--and hope for a riot. Heck, they might even plant a few trained rabble rousers in the crowd just to make sure.
After the resulting riot, they'll cry and scream about how SCO has to defend "law and order" against the mindless mobs. Having achieved their actual purpose, the rest of the tour will be cancelled.
You have to think about it from their M$ perspective. The OS is their weapon to dominate the computer industry. When you're building weapons, you don't want them to be small and safe. You want the biggest, hairiest, and most devastating gun your enemies have ever been on the wrong end of.
Of course the problem is that you can also blow your own leg off--or the customers' legs these days.
What are you talking about? Was this some kind of troll? There's no justice there, but I can confirm that several of my other favorite anti-spam resources are inaccessible, and probably also suffering from the spammers' DDoS attacks. That's SamSpade and UXN. No reason to be discreet since the spammers are obviously already targeting them.
In general, network performance has been lousy these days, even though the spammers' beloved email continues to flow. The powers-that-be sysadmins really need to crack down on these spammers and obliterate them. Too bad the army is tied up in Iraq dealing with those dangerous-but-oil-endowed peasants.
This is completely sideways. So far all the comments seem to be completely missing the forest to stare at an ugly leaf.
What Mountain View is doing is completely unethical and they should already be out of business. The entire foundation of their business is to exploit human confusion for profit.
What Verisign is doing is not intrinsically evil. The DNS system is intended to reduce confusion, and it is reasonable that the DNS system SHOULD respond intelligently to help confused users. The relatively minor problem here is that Verisign is trying to do a good thing in a way that maximizes their profitability and exploits their position at the top of the mountain. The side effect of putting scammers like Mountain View out of business would be a GOOD thing.
Cheering for Mountain View is like wanting an experienced hit man to "take care" of your troublesome neighbor. (However, I do agree that Verisign is going out of bounds, but Microsoft has been doing worse things for much longer.)
Posing this as a sample question, but it's something I've been looking into recently, and the HTTP protocol documents themselves have not been very enlightening so far. The docs say that either side can close the HTTP connection, and some references seem to say that the client has primary responsibility to do so. However, I've discovered that many servers like opening "sticky" 9000 second connections, apparently so they can stuff more advertising at you at their convenience. (Amazon and Yahoo seem to be especially big abusers.) My router usually has about 5-600 open connections because of this, which is part of a longer story...
I think the only thing that will stop SCO now is bankruptcy. The only question is whether or not they lose the lawsuit first. Actually, considering Bush v. Gore, I suppose it is possible they could win it, but the more you learn about the history of the code in question, the less likely it seems. More likely someone else can sue SCO for prior IP violations.
Anyway, on the topic of fostering SCO's bankruptcy, don't forget that they do have a revenue stream besides stock speculation. True, more like a trickle in relative terms, but still worth dealing with if it will generate some more bad press. AFaIK, the big drip in that other revenue stream is McDonalds, and I still think they deserve a boycott. M$-style motto:
McDonalds: You deserve a boycott today!
By the way, I contacted McDonalds to ask them if they are still SCO's star customers, and they came back with the stone wall. Or maybe it was just a really ignorant marketroid?
So you want to say you shouldn't generalize from one person to the group, and the example you want to use is a company. Well, what about when the person is the president of the company? I think Darl and SCO can be more or less equated, and I generalize to say any employee who hasn't left SCO by October 15th is a fugghead!
Actually, I don't think I'm joking anymore. The only thing SCO seems to understand is threats to the wallet. So far they've been doing all the threatening, which is actually sort of reasonable since their wallets are so close to close to empty. However, the small bit of real cash in their wallets came from their few customers, and SCO is "proud" to list McDonalds as one of their major accounts.
How many Slashdotters eat at McDonalds? A boycott might be a serious threat!
Exactly. How would you know who had won? Could be the communists, for all the magic box reveals. Actually, one of Stalin's more famous quotes is about elections. I don't remember the exact words, but he essentially says that it's enough for the people to know that there has been an election. After that, it doesn't matter who they actually voted for--the only thing that matters is who counts the votes.
Or, as in Florida in 2000, who does NOT count the votes.
On the current topic, technology is neutral. You can use it to make better voting systems that are harder to cheat, or you can use it to make it easier to rig the elections. All the evidence is that increasing the rigability of the elections is the way they're going.
How many of you even noticed how they cancelled the exit polls in 2002, which may have been the last major independent validity check on the elections. Quite a bit of evidence of vote rigging in 2002, but no hard evidence exists. (Actually, they recently released some of the exit poll data, but 20% had somehow disappeared. "Somehow" in a pig's eye.)
Excuse me, but I think there is no earthly justification for not printing a copy of the ballot, and showing it the voter and saving it just in case someone wants to doublecheck.
The link that is described as referring to an event involving Halley's Comet is talking about a different comet. I should poke around for events actually involving Halley's, but I'll just settle for saying that I don't recall hearing anything unusual as it wandered away, and I'm actually rather skeptical we could see so much of it at that time (though the latest imaging is an impressive accomplishment).
Your point is unclear as it relates to the critical questions here. Are you saying that SCO's behavior is more consistent with using LSD? I really don't see much creativity in their rantings. However, neither to I detect see much of mental energy one is supposed to associate with coke or speed.
I think SCO's delusions seem to be more of the pink elephant variety. Is McBride an old alky? Certainly would explain a lot.
Hmm... But IBM has many customers who are also Linux users. Though in one sense it would be better to try to consolidate all of those individual lawsuits, SCO is threatening the users individually, so it might also make sense for IBM to focus on some prominent customers and encourage them to go after SCO, perhaps even to the point of putting some legal support behind them. If SCO is claiming to be so scared of an IBM-supported conspiracy, why not exploit that idea, too?
However, I think the reality is that IBM is just quite willing to wait and let SCO finish playing with the rope. So far they seem to be wrapping it around their own necks quite nicely.
Actually, I've been wondering why IBM has been going so slow on this, but it's pretty obvious when you remember the money part. No way IBM is going to forget about the money. But what assets does SCO have? Apart from their lawsuit against IBM, nothing, and IBM already knows the lawsuit is worthless. It isn't actually costing IBM anything to wait and hope for SCO to raise enough cash to make it worth the while of suddenly squishing them.
Still, I think this one has to be a hoax. All the reports are second and third hand. My bet is that someone got annoyed at SCO's unending attacks on the credibility of Linux, and hit on this strategy to undermine SCO's credibility.
Not that SCO has any credibility to spare, but as a reported "legal strategy" this is just too incredible. Or did Monty Python manage to pass the bar exam?